Pennsylvania’s highest court on Saturday night threw out a lower court’s order preventing the state from certifying dozens of contests on its Nov 3 election ballot in the latest lawsuit filed by Republicans attempting to thwart President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the battleground state.

The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, threw out the three-day-old order, saying the underlying lawsuit was filed months after the expiration of a time limit in Pennsylvania’s expansive year-old mail-in voting law allowing for challenges to it.

Justices also remarked on the lawsuit’s staggering demand that an entire election be overturned retroactively.

“They have failed to allege that even a single mail-in ballot was fraudulently cast or counted,” Justice David Wecht wrote in a concurring opinion.

The state’s attorney general, Democrat Josh Shapiro, called the court’s decision “another win for Democracy.”

President Donald Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, meanwhile, have repeatedly and baselessly claimed that Democrats falsified mail-in ballots to steal the election from Trump. Biden beat Trump by more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a state Trump had won in 2016.

The week-old lawsuit, led by Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of northwestern Pennsylvania, had challenged the state’s mail-in voting law as unconstitutional.

As a remedy, Kelly and the other Republican plaintiffs had sought to either throw out the 2.5 million mail-in ballots submitted under the law — most of them by Democrats — or to wipe out the election results and direct the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature to pick Pennsylvania’s presidential electors.

In any case, that request — for the state’s lawmakers to pick Pennsylvania’s presidential electors — flies in the face of a nearly century-old state law that already grants the power to pick electors to the state’s popular vote, Wecht wrote.

While the high court’s two Republicans joined the five Democrats in opposing those remedies, they split from Democrats in suggesting that the lawsuit’s underlying claims — that the state’s mail-in voting law might violate the constitution — are worth considering.

Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough, elected as a Republican in 2009, had issued the order Wednesday to halt certification of any remaining contests, including apparently contests for Congress.

It did not appear to affect the presidential contest since a day earlier, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, had certified Biden as the winner of the presidential election in Pennsylvania.

Wolf quickly appealed McCullough’s decision to the state Supreme Court, saying there was no “conceivable justification” for it.

The lawsuit’s dismissal comes after Republicans have lost a flurry of legal challenges brought by the Trump campaign and its GOP allies filed in state and federal courts in Pennsylvania.

On Friday, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia roundly rejected the Trump campaign’s latest effort to challenge the state’s election results.

In that lawsuit, Trump’s campaign had complained that its observers had not been able to scrutinize mail-in ballots as they were being processed in two Democratic bastions, Philadelphia and Allegheny County, which is home to Pittsburgh.

Trump’s lawyers vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court despite the judges’ assessment that the “campaign’s claims have no merit.”

Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday demanded the “definitive punishment” of those behind the killing of a scientist who led Tehran’s disbanded military nuclear program, as the Islamic Republic blamed Israel for a slaying that has raised fears of reignited tensions across the Middle East.

After years of being in the shadows, the image of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh suddenly was to be seen everywhere in Iranian media, as his widow spoke on state television and officials publicly demanded revenge on Israel for the scientist’s slaying.

Israel, long suspected of killing Iranian scientists a decade ago amid earlier tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program, has yet to comment on Fakhrizadeh’s killing Friday. However, the attack bore the hallmarks of a carefully planned, military-style ambush, the likes of which Israel has been accused of conducting before.

The attack has renewed fears of Iran striking back against the U.S., Israel’s closest ally in the region, as it did earlier this year when a U.S. drone strike killed a top Iranian general. The U.S. military acknowledged moving an aircraft carrier back into the region, while an Iranian lawmaker suggested throwing out U.N. nuclear inspectors in response to the killing.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called Fakhrizadeh “the country’s prominent and distinguished nuclear and defensive scientist.” Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of state, said Iran’s first priority after the killing was the “definitive punishment of the perpetrators and those who ordered it.” He did not elaborate.

Speaking earlier Saturday, President Hassan Rouhani blamed Israel for the killing.

“We will respond to the assassination of Martyr Fakhrizadeh in a proper time,” Rouhani said. “The Iranian nation is smarter than falling into the trap of the Zionists. They are thinking to create chaos.”

The United Nations called for restraint.

“Of course we condemn any assassination or extra-judicial killing,” said Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. “We urge restraint and the need to avoid any actions that could lead to an escalation of tensions in the region.”

Both Rouhani and Khamenei said Fakhrizadeh’s death would not stop the nuclear program. Iran’s civilian atomic program has continued its experiments and now enriches a growing uranium stockpile up to 4.5% purity in response to the collapse of Iran’s nuclear deal after the U.S.′ 2018 withdrawal from the accord.

That’s still far below weapons-grade levels of 90%, though experts warn Iran now has enough low-enriched uranium for at least two atomic bombs if it chose to pursue them.

Analysts have compared Fakhrizadeh to being on par with Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who led America’s Manhattan Project in World War II that created the atom bomb.

Fakhrizadeh headed Iran’s so-called AMAD program that Israel and the West have alleged was a military operation looking at the feasibility of building a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency says that “structured program” ended in 2003. Iran long has maintained its nuclear program is peaceful.

Fakhrizadeh’s widow appeared unnamed on state television in a black chador, saying his death would spark a thousand others to take up his work.

“He wanted to get martyred and his wish came true,” she said.

Hard-line Iranian media has begun circulating memorial images showing Fakhrizadeh standing alongside a machine-gun-cradling likeness of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, whom the U.S. killed in the January drone strike.

Soleimani’s death led to Iran retaliating with a ballistic missile barrage that injured dozens of American troops in Iraq. Tehran also has forces at its disposal all around Israel, including troops and proxies in neighboring Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Islamic Jihad — and to a lesser extent Hamas — in the Gaza Strip. The Iranian Guard’s naval forces routinely shadow and have tense encounters with U.S. Navy forces in the Persian Gulf as well.

Hours after the attack, the Pentagon announced it had brought the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier back into the Middle East, an unusual move as the carrier already spent months in the region. It cited the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq as the reason for the decision, saying “it was prudent to have additional defensive capabilities in the region to meet any contingency.”

Iran has conducted attacks targeting Israeli interests abroad over the killing of its scientists, like in the case of the three Iranians recently freed in Thailand in exchange for a detained British-Australian academic.

Iran also could throw out inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, who have provided an unprecedented, real-time look at Iran’s nuclear program since the deal. Nasrollah Pezhmanfar, a hard-line lawmaker, said a statement calling to expel the “IAEA’s spy inspections” could be read Sunday, the parliament’s official website quoted him as saying.

Friday’s attack happened in Absard, a village just east of the capital that is a retreat for the country’s elite. Iranian state television said an old truck with explosives hidden under a load of wood blew up near a sedan carrying Fakhrizadeh.

As Fakhrizadeh’s sedan stopped, at least five gunmen emerged and raked the car with rapid fire, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency said. The precision of the attack led to the suspicion of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service being involved. The CIA separately declined to comment on the attack Saturday.

State media has only said the attack killed Fakhrizadeh, though a statement Saturday from the European Union described the incident as killing “an Iranian government official and several civilians.” EU officials did not respond to requests for comment.

In Tehran, a small group of hardline protesters burned images of Trump and President-elect Joe Biden, who has said his administration will consider reentering Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers. While burning an American and Israeli flag, the hard-liners criticized Iran’s foreign minister who helped negotiate the nuclear deal, showing the challenge ahead of Tehran if officials chose to come back the accord.

On Saturday night, the family of Fakhrizadeh gathered at a mosque in central Tehran for his funeral service, a website associated with Iranian state TV reported. The scientist’s body lay in a flag-draped, open coffin, his eyes closed.

Faulting inaction in Washington, governors and state lawmakers are racing to get pandemic relief to small-business owners, the unemployed, renters and others whose livelihoods have been upended by the widening coronavirus outbreak.

In some cases, elected officials are spending the last of a federal relief package passed in the spring as an end-of-year deadline approaches and the fall COVID-19 surge threatens their economies anew. Democrats have been the most vocal in criticizing President Donald Trump and the GOP-controlled Senate for failing to act, but many Republican lawmakers are also sounding the alarm.

Underscoring the need for urgency, the number of new COVID-19 cases reported in the United States reached 205,557 on Friday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University – the first time its daily figure topped the 200,000 mark. Its previous daily high was 196,000 on Nov. 20.

The total number of cases reported in the U.S., since the first one in January, has topped 13 million.

The Democratic governors of Colorado and New Mexico convened special legislative sessions in the closing days of November to address the virus-related emergency. Earlier this week, the New Mexico Legislature passed a bipartisan relief bill that will deliver a one-time $1,200 check to all unemployed workers and give up to $50,000 to certain businesses.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said the state took action to help residents “who have real issues about keeping food on their table, a roof over their head.”

“While the United States of America is on fire, the Trump administration has left states to fight this virus on their own,” she said, noting state efforts alone simply are not enough. “It is clear no help is coming — not from this president, not from this administration. As we have done every day this year, New Mexico will step up.”

In Colorado, a special session scheduled for Monday will consider roughly $300 million in relief to businesses, restaurants and bars, child-care providers, landlords, tenants, public schools and others.

“Even as cases have exploded across the country, Congress and the president have not yet passed much-needed relief for people,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said in announcing the session. “Here in Colorado, we want to do the best with what we have to take care of our own.”

In New Jersey and Washington state, Republicans who are a minority in both legislatures were the ones pushing for special sessions. They want to direct more money to struggling small-business owners.

Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin, who control both houses of the Legislature, are considering whether to return in December to address effects of the latest coronavirus wave after Democratic Gov. Tony Evers put forward a $500 million COVID-19 relief bill earlier this week. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, plans to convene lawmakers in December to contend with the virus, partially at Republicans’ urging.

“Senate Republicans are committed to recovering our economy that has been harmed by broad and prolonged shutdowns,” Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka said in a statement. “We will work with anyone to find solutions.”

State government leaders want Trump and Congress to extend the Dec. 30 deadline for spending virus relief money already allocated under the CARES Act, which was approved in March, and to provide more federal funding to deal with the consequences of the latest surge.

“It’s just heartbreaking what they’re allowing to happen with no federal government intervention,” said Washington state House Speaker Laurie Jinkins, a Democrat.

In making his decision to call the Minnesota Legislature into special session, Walz cited “a sense of urgency” around doing something on the state level due to the lack of a federal response.

The Minnesota Council of Nonprofits reported that more than half of the state’s charitable organizations received forgivable loans through the CARES Act’s Paycheck Protection Program this year, while another $12 million from the CARES Act is going to organizations that provide food to the needy. But all that will be spent — or lost — by the end of December without congressional action.

“I would reiterate to our federal partners — to the outgoing administration and to the incoming Biden administration — please work together, please find a compromise in there, please. If you have to, move a package now with the idea that you will come back and move one later,” Walz said. “COVID is not going to end at the end of the month. We are in an unrelenting spike.”

In Ohio, where Republicans control every branch of government, Gov. Mike DeWine and legislative leaders pushed a $420 million pandemic spending package through a special bipartisan panel late last month. Funded through the CARES Act, it offered grants to small businesses, bars and restaurants, low-income renters, arts groups, and colleges and universities.

Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, a Republican, gives credit to the federal government for the billions in aid previously sent out, but he said small businesses and people who have lost work need more federal assistance.

“The election’s over,” Benninghoff said. “This is not a time for finger-pointing.”

In neighboring New Jersey, the partisan divide over $4 billion in COVID-19 borrowing backed by the Democratic governor and Legislature prompted a court challenge by minority Republicans. The state’s high court sided with Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration, citing the unprecedented nature of the outbreak.

Even so, Murphy has regularly pleaded with Congress for more aid.

“It’s shameful that they have not acted in Congress, especially (Senate Majority Leader Mitch) McConnell and the Republican Senate, to throw a lifeline to small businesses,” he said.

Republicans have proposed a $300 million aid package to small businesses and nonprofits, but the legislation is stalled. GOP lawmakers told the governor if he does not call a special session to address the need, many businesses and charities “might not survive the winter.”

Having already committed the bulk of their virus relief allotment, lawmakers in one state, Illinois, were forced to end the year with an unaddressed $3.9 billion budget deficit. They canceled what would be their regular fall session in November, citing the health threat posed by the virus, and expressed hope for help from the nation’s capital when they return.

“If the federal government doesn’t stand up and step in, we’re in a very bad situation — for our schools, colleges and universities, health care programs, child care, senior services,” House Majority Leader Greg Harris, a Democrat, said. “This isn’t like all the blue states are hurting and all the red states are humming along. Everybody’s in bad shape.”

China scientists have claimed that Covid-19 may have originated in India or Bangladesh.

The researchers at the Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences suggested that the virus existed on the Indian subcontinent before the Wuhan outbreak in December last year.

"Our result shows that Wuhan is not the place where human-to-human SARS-CoV-2 transmission first happened," they wrote.

"Both the least mutated strain's geographic information and the strain diversity suggest that the Indian subcontinent might be the place where the earliest human-to-human SARS-CoV-2 transmission occurred, which was three or four months before the Wuhan outbreak."

The study which bases its findings on research into strains of the virus provided by 17 different countries was posted on SSRN.Com, the preprint platform of the medical journal The Lancet, on November 17.

It challenges general orthodoxy among scientists that the virus originated in the wet markets of Wuhan.

The research, led by Dr Shen Libing, claimed the traditional approach to tracing the origin of Covid-19 strains did not work as it used a bat virus discovered in Yunnan, southwest China, several years ago.

Scientists use this as an ancestral reference to examine the evolutionary history of the bug but the bat virus is not the human virus' ancestor. 

So, the researchers claim this prevents scientists from tracing the origins of the pandemic and they used a new method that involves counting the number of mutations in each viral strain.

The Chinese scientists claim that the strains with the most mutations have been around for a longer time, and those with fewer mutations are closer to the original ancestor of Covid-19.

Their paper claims that the least mutated strain was found in eight countries – Australia, Bangladesh, Greece, the US, Russia, Italy, and the Czech Republic.

It also says that the area of the first outbreak should have the greatest genetic diversity, and cites India and Bangladesh.

The researchers propose that India's young population, extreme weather, and drought created the necessary conditions for the virus to jump to humans.

However, the findings are still a preprint and are yet to be peer-reviewed. So, they should not be seen as established conclusions. 

Indian scientists have also challenged the findings of the study, says The Sun.

Mukesh Thakur, an Indian virologist, told the South China Morning Post the conclusions were a "misinterpretation."

And Marc Suchard, professor in human genetics and biostatistics at UCLA, said that the "arbitrary collection" of viral strains used was "unlikely to yield the progenitor."

"The method holds great promise, but it comes with considerable uncertainty," Marc said.

Iran’s president vowed Saturday to exact revenge over the killing of a scientist linked to Tehran’s disbanded military nuclear program as he joined other officials in blaming Israel for the slaying.

Israel, long suspected of killing scientists a decade ago amid tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program, has yet to comment on the killing Friday of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. However, the attack bore the hallmarks of a carefully planned, military-style ambush.

The slaying threatens to renew tensions between the U.S. and Iran in the waning days of President Donald Trump’s term, just as President-elect Joe Biden has suggested his administration could return to Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers from which Trump earlier withdrew. The Pentagon announced early Saturday that it sent the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier back into the Mideast.

But analysts have compared Fakhrizadeh to being on a par with Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who led the U.S.′ Manhattan Project in World War II that created the atom bomb.

“We will respond to the assassination of Martyr Fakhrizadeh in a proper time,” Rouhani said.

He added: “The Iranian nation is smarter than falling into the trap of the Zionists. They are thinking to create chaos.”

Friday’s attack happened in Absard, a village just east of the capital that is a retreat for the Iranian elite. Iranian state television said an old truck with explosives hidden under a load of wood blew up near a sedan carrying Fakhrizadeh.

As Fakhrizadeh’s sedan stopped, at least five gunmen emerged and raked the car with rapid fire, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency said.

Fakhrizadeh died at a hospital after doctors and paramedics couldn’t revive him. Others wounded included Fakhrizadeh’s bodyguards. Photos and video shared online showed a Nissan sedan with bullet holes in the windshield and blood pooled on the road.

Hours after the attack, the Pentagon announced it had brought the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier back into the Middle East, an unusual move as the carrier already spent months in the region. It cited the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq as the reason for the decision, saying “it was prudent to have additional defensive capabilities in the region to meet any contingency.”

The attack comes just days before the 10-year anniversary of the killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari that Tehran also blamed on Israel. That and other targeted killings happened at the time that the so-called Stuxnet virus, believed to be an Israeli and American creation, destroyed Iranian centrifuges.

Those assaults occurred at the height of Western fears over Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran long has insisted its program is peaceful. However, Fakhrizadeh led Iran’s so-called AMAD program that Israel and the West have alleged was a military operation looking at the feasibility of building a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency says that “structured program” ended in 2003.

IAEA inspectors monitor Iranian nuclear sites as part of the now-unraveling nuclear deal with world powers, which saw Tehran limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

After Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the deal, Iran has abandoned all those limits. Experts now believe Iran has enough low-enriched uranium to make at least two nuclear weapons if it chose to pursue the bomb. Meanwhile, an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility exploded in July in what Tehran now calls a sabotage attack.

Fakhrizadeh, born in 1958, had been sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council and the U.S. for his work on AMAD. Iran always described him as a university physics professor. A member of the Revolutionary Guard, Fakhrizadeh had been seen in pictures in meetings attended by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a sign of his importance in Iran’s theocracy.

In recent years, U.S. sanctions lists name him as heading Iran’s Organization for Defensive Innovation and Research. The State Department described that organization last year as working on “dual-use research and development activities, of which aspects are potentially useful for nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons delivery systems.”

Iran’s mission to the U.N., meanwhile, described Fakhrizadeh’s recent work as “development of the first indigenous COVID-19 test kit” and overseeing Tehran’s efforts at making a possible coronavirus vaccine.

Also read: Iran scientist linked to military nuclear program killed