Mary Green
Reporter
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Mary Green reports for the KCRG-TV9 News at 10 p.m. — though you might also catch her at 4, 5, or 6, depending on the day.
Before moving to eastern Iowa, Mary started her career as a multimedia journalist at WFXL in Albany, Georgia, where she covered local government, tornadoes, hurricanes, and even a bit of snow.
Despite being born and raised in Tampa, Florida, Mary is no stranger to the Midwest. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame and loves to cheer on the Irish!
If you see Mary and her dog, a beagle named Chris Bosh, around town, please say hi! You can also reach her at Mary.Green@kcrg.com, or through Facebook or Twitter.
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The House of Representatives passed its new map Thursday in Columbia, updating the boundaries for the state’s 124 House districts.
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South Carolina’s attorney general said more lawsuits could be coming if the state decides to challenge other pandemic-related actions from the Biden administration. To this point, South Carolina has already joined other states to file three lawsuits challenging federal vaccine requirements
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South Carolina’s teacher shortage has worsened in the last year, with more than a thousand teaching jobs unfilled at the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year across the state.
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Members of the Senate Redistricting Subcommittee heard comment Monday on South Carolina’s proposed Congressional map, with every member of the public speaking at the meeting unsparing in their criticism of the proposal.
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“We’re probably going to run out of trees in early December,” Bryan Price of Price’s Christmas Tree Farm said. Price owns the Lexington County farm and also serves as the president of the South Carolina Christmas Tree Association, which counts around 50 farms as members, and he said many of them will likely also quickly sell out of trees this season.
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Each year, Americans collectively donate hundreds of billions of dollars to charity, with much of that giving during the holiday season, according to the National Philanthropic Trust.With the season of giving now underway, Secretary of State Mark Hammond is advising South Carolinians, “Give from the heart, but please give smart.”
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H. 4605, also known as “Freedom from ideological coercion and indoctrination,” would regulate what goes on at any entity that receives state funding, grants, or tax exemptions, including public and private schools, colleges and universities, nonprofit organizations, state contractors, and private businesses.
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Booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine are now recommended for everyone 18 and older after the CDC signed off on the booster eligibility expansion late last week.
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AAA is forecasting this year’s Thanksgiving travel period will be nearly as busy as it was before the pandemic, after a sizable slowdown last year. The auto club expects about 678,000 cars will be on South Carolina roads from Wednesday through Sunday, up from 617,000 cars in 2020 and just a 1% decrease from 2019′s total.
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According to the SCDE, someone complained about the illustrated book Gender Queer: A Memoir being available at a high school library in the Fort Mill School District. The book, chronicling author Maia Kobabe’s LGBTQ-plus life, is described as a “guide on gender identity” on Amazon.
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“We’re not out of the woods,” DHEC State Epidemiologist Dr. Linda Bell said. “Substantially, transmission throughout the state is still very significant, and it’s a great worry as we are seeing a slow in that decline in cases.”
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The full South Carolina House of Representatives will return to Columbia in December to finish redistricting.
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That map now awaits final approval from the entire House of Representatives, then Gov. Henry McMaster’s signature, to become law for the next 10 years.
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News of the Florence Republican’s death was confirmed Friday by his office.
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The book, Gender Queer: A Memoir, chronicles the LGBTQ+ life of author Maia Kobabe and is currently the top-selling LGBTQ+ graphic novel on Amazon, which describes it as a “guide on gender identity.”
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That has resulted in Americans paying more at the pump, at the car dealership, and at the grocery store, just two weeks before Thanksgiving.
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The bill is just awaiting President Joe Biden’s signature to become law and for funding to start being dispersed across the country.
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At the beginning of last year, a report found there were nearly 700 open teaching positions in South Carolina.
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State leaders argued in May that the move was necessary to curb South Carolina’s labor shortage.
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DHEC says it supports CDC’s approval for children ages 5 to 11, urges parents to get them vaccinated
DHEC has announced its support of the CDC’s approval for children aged 5 to 11 and is urging SC parents to get their children vaccinated.
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If local first responders are overwhelmed with an emergency or disaster, they call in South Carolina’s urban search and rescue team.
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At this point, 19 states, including South Carolina, have filed four lawsuits against the federal government over a vaccine requirement for all federal contractors.
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The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control sent guidance to the state’s vaccine providers Friday on the changes in availability.
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The South Carolina Department of Mental Health also operates 16 local centers across the state, where he said people can walk in and find out that same day what kind of help they can get.
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McMaster says that infrastructure is holding back the state’s rural communities because they are so outdated.
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The heat reached a boiling point in June, when workers at the Broad River Road Complex in Columbia, the DJJ’s long-term facility, walked off the job over concerns about safety, low pay, and long hours.
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The state reports more than 17,000 children are enrolled in the SC Voucher program, through which parents can receive assistance to pay for childcare.
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The redistricting process was initially delayed because data from the U.S. Census, which is used to determine districts, was released later than usual because of the pandemic.
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By default, this regulation is the job of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, but OSHA does allow states, including South Carolina, to enforce their own workplace safety plans if they are up to par with the federal government’s.
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The process to authorize the Pfizer shot for children aged 5 to 11 starts next Tuesday when a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel will meet to determine if it will recommend the vaccine’s use.
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Now the South Carolina Republican says the administration “needs to be held accountable.”
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The state health department still recommends all those recently infected people get vaccinated, if they haven’t already.
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But lawmakers did not meet Tuesday after the Senate president canceled the special session, and they have not set a date to reschedule.
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Newly released results from a survey of South Carolina teachers found the pandemic is worsening their frustration and discouragement and is contributing to some of them quitting their jobs.
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Victims of cybercrimes in South Carolina have already lost more money so far this year than in all of 2020, according to the FBI.
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South Carolina is becoming one of the most popular states for Americans to move to.
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The boost will come as the result of the FDA granting emergency use authorization to a new test, ACON’s Flowflex COVID Home Test, this week.
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South Carolina’s top educator and public health director are both encouraging more school districts to take advantage of an opportunity that can get more quarantined students back in the classroom sooner.
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Those educators hope state leaders and lawmakers, especially, will see their messages: “Even One Child Was Too Many” and “#ProtectOurKids.”
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The growth follows a year in which many students across the country were forced to learn online, and in South Carolina, thousands are sticking with that style of learning.
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The shift came after a federal judge temporarily blocked the one-year state law limiting school mask mandates on Tuesday, ruling it violates the rights of students with disabilities.
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Lawmakers face another deadline moving closer to raise the debt ceiling.
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Many Americans remaining unvaccinated pushes the target for herd immunity further away as the virus continues to mutate into strains that spread more easily, including the delta variant.
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The recommendation followed much debate, intensifying in the last week, over who should qualify for this dose.
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Many facilities are not requiring staff to be vaccinated at this point, and data shows a lot of those workers are choosing not to.
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During previous surges in the pandemic, cases have risen first, followed by hospitalizations and then deaths, and then they have declined in that order.
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Weekly school reports show those interruptions have affected tens of thousands of students and staff so far this school year, which just began about a month ago.
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Statewide testing shows African-American, Hispanic students falling further behind in SC than others
Language arts scores for Hispanic students decreased about 4%, from 36.6% in 2019 to 32.6% in 2021.
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The association said some providers have even run out of that treatment, monoclonal antibodies, and the drug will not be restocked before next week.
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There are still questions about when and for whom these booster shots will be approved for use.