Six people were arrested in an operation targeting online child predators in Franklin County, Attorney General James Uthmeier announced on Thursday.

Florida wildlife officials have given preliminary approval to a plan to reopen Apalachicola Bay for oyster harvesting, five years after the waters were closed due to dwindling shellfish populations.

As thousands of U.S. counties and towns report vote totals, it can be hard to figure out when the results reported so far will reflect the outcome.

A fired Vermont deputy sheriff who is the only candidate on the November ballot to become sheriff says he did nothing wrong when he kicked a handcuffed and shackled prisoner.

A man pleaded not guilty in Ohio to charges of raping a 10-year-old girl who traveled to Indiana for an abortion.

The Ohio sheriff’s deputy who fatally shot Casey Goodson Jr. in the back five times wants the criminal case moved into federal court.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The mother of a Black man shot by an Ohio sheriff's deputy demanded answers Wednesday to her son's death, saying he'd done nothing wrong and was returning from the dentist with sandwiches for his family when he was killed. Police have only said that the deputy “shot” Goodson without detailing how many shots were fired. The deputy who shot Goodson was Jason Meade, a 17-year veteran of the sheriff’s office. One witness heard Meade command Goodson to drop his gun, and when he didn’t, the deputy shot him, Tobin said. The sheriff’s office does not provide officers with body cameras, and the deputy’s SWAT vehicle did not have a dash-mounted camera.

This photo made on Oct. 6, 2020, in Westerville, Ohio, shows Ohio absentee ballots. (AP Photo/Kantele Franko)COLUMBUS, Ohio – Nearly 50,000 voters received incorrect absentee ballots in the county that is home to Ohio’s capital and largest city, elections officials said Friday as they promised corrected ballots would be mailed within 72 hours. With about 240,000 ballots mailed, that meant one in five voters received a wrong ballot. The Franklin County Elections Board said 49,669 voters received incorrect ballots out of 237,498 that were mailed. LaRose said Friday that while the Franklin County board made “a serious mistake,” the county was working hard to fix it.

This photo made on Oct. 6, 2020, in Westerville, Ohio, shows Ohio absentee ballots. (AP Photo/Kantele Franko)BOSTON – Several high-profile cases of voters getting incorrect blank absentee ballots in the mail are raising questions about how often such mix-ups occur and whether they could affect this year’s presidential election. About 100,000 absentee ballots with the wrong names and addresses printed on the return envelopes were sent to voters in Brooklyn, N.Y., in late September. County elections spokesman Mike Sanchez said every affected voter has already been mailed a corrected ballot. His bigger concern is the tendency of some election officials to rely heavily on outside contractors, for mail-in and in-person voting.

This photo made on Oct. 6, 2020, in Westerville, Ohio, shows Ohio absentee ballots. (AP Photo/Kantele Franko)BOSTON – Several high-profile cases of voters getting incorrect blank absentee ballots in the mail are raising questions about how often such mix-ups occur and whether they could affect this year's presidential election. About 100,000 absentee ballots with the wrong names and addresses printed on the return envelopes were sent to voters in Brooklyn, N.Y., in late September. County elections spokesman Mike Sanchez said every affected voter has already been mailed a corrected ballot. His bigger concern is the tendency of some election officials to rely heavily on outside contractors, for mail-in and in-person voting.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – An Ohio judge has temporarily blocked the Republican secretary of state’s order limiting counties in the critical presidential battleground to one ballot drop box, and the state and Republicans have appealed. The state immediately appealed, and the Ohio Republican Party followed suit late Thursday, placing the fate of the order on hold. The faceoff makes unclear how many drop boxes will be available to Ohio voters just 2 1/2 weeks before voting begins Oct. 6. Access to ballot drop boxes has become an urgent matter nationally amid the coronavirus pandemic, questions about mail-in voting security and cutbacks at the post office. The Ohio Republican Party lashed out at Frye as a “partisan judge" and accused him of colluding with fellow Democrats before issuing his decision.

The Apalachicola Bay ecosystem, considered quintessential Florida, is in ruin. To try to save it, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will shut down wild oyster harvesting for as long as five years, barring nearly everyone on the water from carrying tongs. No one issue gutted the wild oyster community, fishermen and scientists say, but a combination of factors conspired to leave it on the brink of death. At its peak, according to the state, oystering in Apalachicola Bay supported approximately 2,500 jobs. If I dont make any money off the Apalachicola Bay oysters anymore thats fine, said Rash, the distributor.

WJLA via CNNCOLUMBUS, Ohio - One Ohio county had an "unusually high number" of overdose deaths in a little over a day, the county's coroner said. "As of about 10 am this morning we have had 10 people die of overdoses in about 26 hours," Franklin County Coroner Dr. Anahi Ortiz said on Facebook Sunday. The last peak of overdoses that the coroner's office posted about was in August 12, when six people died in less than 24 hours. That same year, the Drug Enforcement Administration issued a national alert that said "drug incidents and overdoses related to fentanyl are occurring at an alarming rate." In 2017, Franklin County set up a 3-year Opiate Action Plan to combat the opiate epidemic in the state.

ATLANTA - Public safety officials say there were 26 traffic deaths in Georgia during the holiday travel period surrounding the Fourth of July. The state Department of Public Safety said in a news release Monday that the holiday travel period was 102 hours long, stretching from 6 p.m. Wednesday through midnight Sunday. State troopers investigated 513 crashes across the state. The deadly wrecks included a chain-reaction crash Saturday in north Georgia that killed seven people, including a 3-year-old child. Also during the holiday travel period, 422 people were arrested for driving under the influence, and 12,554 citations and 16,846 warnings were issued.