National news, weather, sports highlights in 2024
During the past weeks, the highlights for local news, weather and sports have been reviewed in local papers and with the start of a new year, this article will feature news, weather and sports headlines that took place across the nation in 2024.
These highlights reviewed are not the only news items that took place, but the ones listed will bring to mind stories of the past year.
National
Arguably, the top news item in 2024 had to deal with national politics and especially the presidential election in November.
As the year progressed, Democrat U.S. President Joe Biden would be facing a rematch of the 2020 election against former Republican president Donald J. Trump.
But things changed in June when Biden had a poor showing in a debate against Trump and a month later was persuaded to remove his name from running for his second term.
In early August, vice-president Kamala Harris accepted her party’s nomination at the Democrat Convention in Chicago.
As the next two months went by, pollsters kept saying the race between Harris and Trump was going to be razor thin.
However when election day arrived, the race turned out to be anything but close.
Trump picked up 312 electoral votes to Harris’ 226 and he won all seven states known as the ‘swing states’ and was elected the 47th president.
Trump became only the second U.S. president in history to win non-consecutive terms. The other was Grover Cleveland in the late 1800’s.
During the summer campaign months, two assassination attempts took place on Trump with one taking place in Butler, Pennsylvania when the assassin’s bullet nicked Trump’s earlobe. Although no gun was fired, the other took place in Florida when the assassin was laying in wait near a golf course where Trump was playing a round of golf
Another political story dealt with Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell announcing he would be retiring from being the Senate Republican leader.
A third huge political story for this year took place this past week when the longest surviving former U.S. President Jimmy Carter passed away at the age of 100.
Another major news events included the continuation of the Ukraine-Russia war as well as the war in the Middle East involving Hamas, an Islamic militant group and Israel.
The movie Oppenheimer was won the Academy Award as the Best Picture.
Weather
Each year that goes by different areas of the United States can expect to be hit by snow and ice storms, violent weather accompanied by tornadoes and hurricanes slamming into the Gulf Coast or Atlantic states.
This year was no different with a number of tornadoes occurring in the spring and fall months.
Probably one of the largest outbreaks of tornado laden storms took place between April 25-28 when 164 tornadoes touched down in the Midwest, Southern and High Plains states.
Six people lost their lives, over 175 were injured and approximately $1.2 billion in damage occurred.
The hurricane season was active as well with five storms striking the continental United States.
Hurricane Helene made landfall in the Big Bend region of Florida on Sept. 26 and as it moved north, it stalled causing catastrophic flooding and a number of fatalities over central Appalachia in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.
Considered the strongest tropical cyclone in 2024, Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key, Florida, on Oct. 9.
Milton killed at least 32 people in the United States and caused damages estimated at $85 billion.
One other weather phenomena involved a total solar eclipse.
On April 8 the solar eclipse traveled across 15 states starting in Texas heading northeast toward Maine. Along the path, millions of U.S. citizens watched as the moon totally covered sun and causing a dimming to darkness during the eclipse.