Warnock beats Walker in Georgia; Trump Organization convicted; baseball's hot stove heating up | Top headlines for Dec. 6 & 7, 2022On this updated version of Hot off the Wire (posted Dec. 7 at 6:51 a.m. CT):
Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a runoff election in Georgia. The victory by the state’s first Black senator ensures Democrats an outright majority in the chamber for the rest of President Joe Biden’s current term.
Donald Trump’s company has been convicted of tax fraud for a scheme by top executives to avoid paying personal income taxes on perks such as apartments and luxury cars. As punishment, the Trump Organization could be fined up to $1.6 million.
A handful of centenarian survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor are expected to gather at the scene in Hawaii to commemorate those who perished 81 years ago in the Japanese bombing.
Officials say thousands of police officers have carried out raids across much of Germany against suspected far-right extremists who allegedly sought to overthrow the government in an armed coup.
When Russian forces launched a military campaign against infrastructure in Ukraine, they opened a front that carried the war along power lines and water mains to homes, schools, hospitals and Ukrainian livelihoods. The government in Kyiv and the Western countries that have backed it with billions in military aid now are scrambling along with the United Nations and aid groups to get blankets, insulation, generators, medical supplies, cash and more basics into the invaded country as winter looms.
The Fed is expected to raise interest rates again when it meets next week.
In sports, baseball's winter meetings are producing free agent signings, Cleveland's Donovan Mitchell lit up the L.A. Lakers for 43, in college basketball number two Texas went down and and there's quarterback news from the NFL.
On the original version of Hot off the Wire (posted Dec. 6 at 4 p.m. CT):
Special counsel Jack Smith has subpoenaed local election officials in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania. Smith is asking for communications with or involving former President Donald Trump, his campaign aides and a list of allies involved in his efforts to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack will make criminal referrals to the Justice Department.
Top House and Senate leaders have bestowed Congressional Gold Medals on law enforcement officers who defended the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Anderson Lee Aldrich, the suspect accused of entering a Colorado Springs gay nightclub and killing five people and wounding 17 others, was charged with 305 criminal counts including hate crimes and murder.
North Korea has fired a barrage of artillery rounds into waters near rival South Korea for the second consecutive day for ongoing U.S.-South Korea live-fire drills.
A panel is calling for changes at the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees most of the nation's food supply, saying revamped leadership, a clear mission and more urgency are needed to prevent illness outbreaks and to promote good health.
Jim Stewart, the white Tennessee farm boy and fiddle player who co-founded the influential Stax Records with his sister in a Black, inner-city Memphis neighborhood and helped build the soulful “Memphis sound,” has died at age 92.
While filming “Emancipation,” Will Smith routinely drew inspiration from the words “sacred motivation” that were written on the front page of a script. But the Oscar winner heavily leaned on the phrase even more in recent months, as he tried to overcome the backlash to his Oscars slap and banishment from the ceremony.
The major freight railroads now face pressure from investors to add sick days after Congress declined to require them as part of the contracts they imposed last week to avert a potentially devastating nationwide rail strike.
Much of the Arctic is in a burst of freak December warming. Temperatures in Alaska’s northernmost community hit 40 degrees Monday morning.
—The Associated Press
