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Fall activities are plentiful in Muskingum County
ZANESVILLE — Summer is coming to a close, but it doesn't mean activities cease in Muskingum County.
The Zanesville-Muskingum County Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Visitors Bureau has compiled numerous offerings, as vice President Kelly Ashby noted there are opportunities to enjoy nature and events for all ages.
Anyone interested in local events can sign up for a weekly email, called What's Happening, distributed by the Visitors Bureau at visitzanesville.com. Ashby noted their tourism partners play a key role in helping promote area events.
"Fall is one of the busiest times of year in Muskingum County. There are a great deal of family-fun activities," Ashby said. "Fall foliage is a big part, and many people love to drive and cruise through Muskingum County to take it in. There are a lot of ways to get out and experience nature or explore parts of Zanesville and the whole county."
Here are five activities for the fall:
1. Mt. Perry Train Rides
The Zanesville & Western Scenic Railroads offer the Mt. Perry Train Rides, located at 5705 Ohio 204, through October. This weekend, Sept. 24 and 25, is the Train Robbery Mystery Show, while a Hobo Camp is held Oct. 1 and 2.
The Pumpkin Train runs the remainder of the weekends, Oct. 8-9, 15-16, 22-23 and 29-30.
Trains depart every hour from noon to 4 p.m. Tickets and information are available on their website, www.zwsr.org.
Ashby noted the train rides are one of the county's most popular attractions.
"Not every county has a railroad so this is unique to our area," Ashby said. "They offer a variety of themed rides, and we get tons of calls about it. It's a great way to explore and experience the fall foliage, and everyone can enjoy it."
2. Pumpkin Patches & More
McDonald's Corn Maze & Pumpkin Patch, 3220 Adamsville Road in Zanesville, has been around for nearly three decades offering fun for families, especially ones with young children.
The corn maze gets a lot of attention, but there are plenty of other things to do like hay rides, a petting zoo, a jumping pillow, pedal tractor track, an Enchanted Forest and agricultural exhibits.
People can also pick out a pumpkin, and other fall decorations available for purchase. The season runs through Oct. 31, and information on pricing and hours can be found at mcdonaldsgreenhouse.com/fall-corn-maze or by calling 740-819-5814.
PV's Pumpkin Patch, 9860 Vickers Hill Rd, in Frazeysburg, offers a variety of attractions like wagon and barrel rides, ziplines and a playground. PV's is open from Sept. 24 to Oct. 30, and people can also buy pumpkins, gourds, Indian corn and cornstalks.
For more information, visit www.pvpumpkinpatch.com or call 740-828-6262.
3. Ghost Tours
There are a couple options for people who enjoy the paranormal or are looking for a good scare.
The Downtown Zanesville Ghost Tours, held at Secrest Auditorium at 334 Shinnick St. in Zanesville, are offered from 7 to 8:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays from Sept. 30 to Oct. 29.
The tours allow people to explore the supernatural activity and history of downtown Zanesville. Gary Felumlee, author of Ghosts in the Valley The Return, scripted the way, and guides from Zane Trace Players will lead the tours.
People should wear comfortable shoes due to the amount of walking, and proceeds help the Zane Trace Players and Tenner Theatre. For more information, reservations and pre-payment, call 740-455-8282 ext. 108.
Ashby noted the hunts sold out last year.
"It was extremely popular last year, and the Renner Theater does a great job putting this together," she said. "They visit 13 different locations. The actors dress up in period costumes and provide factual and historical information. It's a great chance to learn history and visit some of the sites in downtown Zanesville."
Prospect Place, 12150 Main St. in Trinway, also offers Fall Ghosts Hunts and Tours. For more information, visit www.gwacenter.org or call 740-202-1909.
4. Zane Grey Fall Festival
Another look at history comes in the form of the National Road and Zane Grey Fall Festival held on Saturday, Oct. 1 at the National Road-Zane Grey Museum, at 8850 E. Pike in Norwich.
The event features crafts, games, spinning demonstrations, music, food and pumpkins. More information is available online at www.nationalroadandzanegreymuseum.org or by calling 740-826-3305.
5. Annual Farm Show
The Education of Yesterday Annual Farm Show, 3685 Cass Irish Ridge Road in Dresden, is held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15 and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. to Sunday, Oct. 16.
People can view antiques, machinery, large farm toys and antique tools. There are also digger tractor rides, train and tractor wagon rides are available, and admission is a donation.
Information is available on their Facebook page, Facebook.com/Educationofyesterday.
Other events happening if those don't pique your interest:
- Free Trail of Treats, 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 9 at Collegial Woods at OU-Zanesville. For more information, email mvpd@muskingumcounty.org.
- Y-City Scarecrow Display Contest, downtown Zanesville, from Fridays, Oct. 7 to Oct. 21. People can vote at www.visitzanesville.com.
- Etta Mae & The Southern Fried Chicks Performance will be held at 8 p.m. Oct. 15 at Secrest Auditorium.
- Downtown Zanesville First Friday from 4 to 9 p.m. Oct. 7. For more information, visit www.artcozfirstfriday.org.
- Yeary's Apple & Peach Orchard, 11195 Yeary Road in Adamsville, allows people to pick apples through December or until they are gone. The hours are 8 a.m. to dark on Monday to Saturday and 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday. For more information, call 740-796-5922.
- Nightmare in Nashport, 7200 Frazeysburg Rd. in Nashport, offers a trail with scenes, structures and scares. For more information, visit www.nightmareinnashport.com or call 740-704-6644.
- Super Saturdays on Main Street in Dresden features store specials every Saturday through the village of Dresden. For more information visit its Facebook page, Destination Dresden, or www.destinationdresden.com.
- Fall Tours at the Wilds. Visit https://thewilds.columbuszoo.org/
- Naturalist programs at Dillon State Park. Visit https://ohiodnr.gov/go-and-do/plan-a-visit/find-a-property/dillon-state-park
For more information on these events and others in Muskingum County, visit www.visitzanesville.com or stop in the Welcome Center in Downtown Zanesville.
bhannahs@gannett.com; @brandonhannahs
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CADDO PARISH, La. (KTAL/KMSS) — A Shreveport man arrested Monday in Caddo Parish on dozens of counts of child pornography and sexual abuse of animals is now facing dozens more after investigators say they found new evidence.
According to the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office, 25-year-old Jacob Butler now faces 141 counts of pornography involving juveniles and 79 counts of sexual abuse of an animal, bringing the total counts to 220.
During the initial investigation, the sheriff’s office says detectives searched Butler’s devices and found 29 images of child pornography involving children as young as 4 years old and 41 images depicting sexual abuse of dogs and horses.
Butler was arrested and booked into the Caddo Correctional Center, where he remains in held without bond.
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SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – The trial of the Shreveport man in the slaying of a local couple who gave him a ride from the mall is once again on hold due to COVID.
DeWayne Willie Watkins, 37, is charged in the November 2018 murders of 32-year-old Heather Angela King Jose and her husband, 43-year-old Kelly Dean Jose. Prosecutors say he shot them both after they gave him a ride from Mall St. Vincent on the night of the slayings and left their bodies to burn inside a vehicle in the carport of a vacant home in the Queensborough neighborhood.
Nearly 20 prospective jurors were seated by Monday afternoon on the first day of jury selection. The prosecution had begun its voir dire, or preliminary examination, which lasted around two-and-a-half hours before the Court recessed just after 5 p.m. The defense was slated to begin their voir dire Tuesday morning.
Watkins coughed and sneezed throughout Monday’s proceedings and tested positive for COVID when he returned to Caddo Parish Correctional Center that evening.
There is a mandatory mask mandate in Judge John D. Mosely’s courtroom. Watkins, along with everyone else in the courtroom, has been masked throughout the proceeding.
The trial is scheduled to resume on Monday. The week-long recess will give Watkins time to recover and others in the courtroom time to get tested.
This is not the first time COVID concerns have caused a delay in the trial, with the first trial ending in a mistrial three days after it began in June.
Watkins was first scheduled to go to trial on Oct. 18, 2021, only for it to be reset for Feb. 7, 2022, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and reset again for June 26. Three days into jury selection, however, Judge Mosely declared a mistrial after it was learned that an attorney involved tested positive for COVID-19, and a key witness also was symptomatic.
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LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY) – Zalaya Fryer, 18, was shot four times last week at the Himbola Apartments in Lafayette.
Today, Fryer says she’s thankful to be alive. “I really didn’t think I was going to make it, to be honest.”
Fryer said she was at her friend’s apartment when two people began arguing. “She told him to leave. I was supposed to do her hair that day and he came back and started shooting,” Fryer said.
The suspect fired seven to ten shots; she was struck four times with three bullets going into her thigh and one into her wrist. Until this day she says she doesn’t understand how she was the only one who got hit. “I really didn’t want to die, that’s all I kept thinking about because that’s the first time that happened to me so I didn’t know what to expect,” stated Fryer.
She credits the Himbola apartment security guard who helped save her life. “He just was crying and showed the most support and he was saying I know it’s going to hurt but you gotta do it. Just started wrapping me up and just did what he had to do.”
Moving forward, Fryer said her mindset has changed. She said she and the suspect’s girlfriend are no longer friends. “Either stay by yourself or keep a small crowd. That’s the only thing I want to do is continue working, have one friend and take care of my kids and move on.”
Lafayette Police are still actively investigating the shooting.
Police Spokesperson Sgt. Robin Green said investigators have narrowed down a suspect.
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SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – Broadmoor STEM Academy will be closed Tuesday due to a power outage.
Caddo Parish Schools sent the following message at about 8:19 on August 23.
“Broadmoor STEM Academy will be closed today, August 23, due to a power outage. Parents have been asked to return to the campus to pick up their children, and buses are on their way to the campus to transport bus riders back home.”
Classes at Caddo Magnet High were also put on pause because of a power outage on campus. They expect restoration sometime today and classes will resume Wednesday.
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- High Mark Construction Sees a 900% Return On Ad Spend in Just Four Months -
BALTIMORE, Sept. 21, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Since 2021, Vitamin®, a leading digital-first integrated marketing agency, has been a strategic agency partner with High Mark Construction (HMC), one of the Mid-Atlantic's up and coming commercial and general contracting firms, specializing in exterior renovations and repair. Following the May 2022 launch of the new HMC brand and website, Vitamin continued the relationship with a targeted lead generation and paid search campaign.
As of August 2022, the campaign has generated a nearly 900% return on ad spend (ROAS), where every ad dollar spent has seen an average return of $9.80 in new business.
"I was confident that we would have a solid investment return, but these results are extraordinary," says HMC Owner Mike Kimball. "Since we began working with Vitamin, we have seen steady growth and this latest program has really shifted things into a higher gear. The Vitamin team brings a comprehensive understanding of the digital ad environment and the best ways to ensure High Mark Construction is seen by the consumers we're after."
Vitamin's lead-generation campaign follows the May 2022 implementation and management of new brand messaging, a new identity, fresh marketing collateral, site signage and vehicle wraps, and a new website. The new branding showcases a forward-thinking company that continues to revolutionize the home and commercial contracting experience, rooted in the company's personalized, concierge service.
"Our goal was to make the customer experience a seamless journey from the first online touchpoint, to when they connect with the HMC team," says Michael Karfakis, founder of Vitamin. "It's vital that the lead generation efforts speak to potential clients that will immediately recognize how High Mark Construction is different. From there, the consumer sees the online brand experience as an extension of the advertising experience, and views it as a consistent transition from start to finish, just like the highly rated Google reviews confirm."
Karfakis adds that the remarkable results are proof that the integration of the ad campaign and the rebrand, combined with a client focused on integrity, can deliver tremendous growth opportunities.
Vitamin® is the "Cure for the Common Brand®," a full-service, digital-first agency providing clients with high-quality, process-driven deliverables within the disciplines of branding, website design and development, SEO/SEM, media & advertising, print, public relations, and social media. Founded in 2002, the Baltimore-based agency specializes in integrated, deeply branded experiences that define clients and bring their unique differences to life, focusing on inbound lead generation and lead nurturing. As the agency has enjoyed significant growth in recent years, including the purchase of a new Baltimore headquarters, its roster and range of clients have also expanded. Vertical expertise includes banking, built environment, commercial real estate, financial services, healthcare & human services, manufacturing, and non-profit market sectors. Vitamin is a certified MBE/DBE/SBE by the Maryland DOT. Learn more at vitaminisgood.com and on social media @vitaminisgood.
View original content:
SOURCE Vitamin
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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Fairness matters, especially in education. Lack of fairness that is, lack of equality, can turn into fewer opportunities for those on the wrong side of the divide.
A study released Aug. 23 by WalletHub ranked the most and least equitable Arkansas school districts.
To develop their rankings, researchers compared household incomes in each district to the state average, then compared how much districts spend per student to the state average. Comparing those figures determined the score.
The top five most equitable school districts in the study were the Hector, Ashdown, Lafayette County, Bearden, and Shirley school districts. The bottom five scores went to the Pulaski County Special, Pea Ridge, Bentonville, Valley View, and Amorel school districts.
The study cites how low equity students, measured as the amount of money spent per student, have less access to things that matter for robust education, such as technology.
Researchers went on to cite that split from economic factors was exacerbated to an even greater extent due to the COVID-19 pandemic, during which many students had to rely on devices and solid internet access for remote learning.
The equity gap can have long-term consequences, the study claims, noting that students with fewer early-learning opportunities are less likely to pursue higher learning, in turn leading to lower lifetime earnings. More education can reflect over $1,000 per week income gain, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Arkansas has 253 school districts and spends, on average, $10,319 per student. When compared in the study to other states and the District of Columbia, Arkansas ranked second overall in equability, coming in behind only Iowa.
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Manore's tough love bringing out the best in Bedford volleyball team
TEMPERANCE − Bedford volleyball was a team in transition last year.
The Mules were young and brimming with potential. Those flashes of greatness came in spurts right up until the team lost to Saline in the District finals.
Inexperience never let Bedford off the hook.
Jodi Manore has coached at Bedford for 38 years and knows what it takes to build a successful team. Her blunt demeanor coupled with a supportive drive have worked magic on one of the winningest programs in state history.
"She's hard on us, but it's because she expects the most out of us," said Hannah Fausze. "Clearly it shows because we hold ourselves now to that expectation and we're doing really good."
The Mules are making good on their potential this year.
Five different players recorded five or more kills Tuesday as Bedford dominated in a three-set sweep against arch-rival Monroe. The Mules won 25-12, 25-18, 25-11 to improve to an impressive 22-6-1 overall this season.
Despite their success and strong play, Manore's approach has not changed.
"I'm just as hard on them this year," she said. "But if they're doing the right things, you don't have to be hard on them."
There was little need for a hard approach Tuesday.
Bedford cruised through the first and third sets, only hitting a few snags in the middle frame before pulling away for the win.
Everybody had a part to play.
Macy Madalinski led the Mules, hitting .529 with 10 kills. Victoria Gray (.750) and Kadie Morse (.500) recorded 6 kills apiece with excellent efficiency. Jaelyn Hall added 7 kills and Fausze had 5.
"It's exciting," Fausze said. "If it's Jae or Vic or anyone, if they get a good kill, everybody goes crazy. It's great now because Victoria has another year under her belt, Jaelyn has a couple years now. We have a really big front row and we can just put the ball down."
Fausze is one of just three seniors on the squad. Gray and setters Alivia Brown and Kaylin Schroeder are sophomores, while Madalinski, Morse, and Hall are part of a large junior class.
Any of those girls have the skill to be the No. 1 player on most teams in the Monroe County Region. That gives Bedford a depth few teams can match.
"We don't have to count on just one," Manore said. "Last year, Kadie and Vic were a year younger. And Jae was just a sophomore too. They're far improved. That's three big hitters who are a year older. They've learned a lot."
Bedford picked up points from each of its five hitters early in the first set. Gray started the match with a kill, followed by three from Fausze for a 4-1 lead. Hall's first kill made it 5-1, Morse extended it to 9-3, and two quick hits from Madalinski put it up to 12-3.
Morse and Madalinski combined for the final four points of the set.
"They just have tons of options," Monroe coach Angela Tedora said. "They are better than they were even at the beginning of the year. We saw them at their tournament and their hitters are connecting with their setters a whole lot more than they were at the beginning of the year."
Schroeder directed Bedford's offense with 29 assists. Defensively, Taylor Destatte and Rylee Haberland contributed 15 digs apiece and Gray recorded 3 blocks.
"Everything has been coming together," Fausze said. "From the beginning, we all just got along. We all trust each other, we all like each other."
After rallying from behind in the second set, Bedford closed out the match strong.
Schroeder served four straight points to start the third and final set, Gray took over for four points and Madison Goforth had three straight aces to build up a commanding 14-3 lead. Morse had the match-winning kill.
"I'm in no way disappointed in my kids' effort," Tedora said. "They did not come in and lay down. The first and third game we struggled, but the second game they gave it everything they had."
Monroe held multiple leads in the second set.
The Trojans scored the first three points of the set and kept fighting even as Bedford rallied. The Mules tied it at 5-5 and 7-7 before taking their first lead.
Even after the Mules pulled away for a 20-11 advantage, Monroe kept up the fight with five-straight points that put the Trojans within four and forced Bedford to call a timeout. The Mules came out of the short break on a 5-2 run to win the set.
Anna Tedora stole the show for Monroe with a number of highlight-reel plays on defense. She finished with 19 digs and a near-perfect rating on serve receive.
"She's just hungry," Coach Tedora said. "She just wants to compete. She's a competitor and she gives it everything she's got."
Alana Aulph (8 assists) and Sydney Button (8 kills) also played well for the Trojans, who dipped to 6-9-1 overall.
"We just need to keep plugging along," Tedora said.
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(The Hill) – The White House is expected to announce a plan to cancel a chunk of student loan debt on Wednesday, in addition to an extension of the existing payment pause, three sources with knowledge of the situation told The Hill.
Sources said President Biden’s intended measure will include $10,000 in loan forgiveness for borrowers who make less than $125,000 annually, as well as another payment freeze for roughly four months.
The $10,000 figure would be the largest forgiveness of federal student loans per individual to date.
The move comes just a week ahead of the White House’s self-imposed Aug. 31 deadline. The timing has left millions of Americans waiting for guidance from the Department of Education on whether student loan payments that have been deferred since the start of the pandemic would resume next month.
The potential announcement on Wednesday comes within the smallest window of time borrowers have had to determine when their payments would resume. The White House, under Biden and former President Trump, have extended the pause six times since March of 2020, sometimes giving borrowers up to a month’s notice on whether their bills would be due.
Trump’s order temporarily stopped the accrual of interest on federal student loans, effectively putting $1.6 trillion in debt owed by some 40 million Americans on hold.
Since Biden has taken office, his administration has greenlit over $31 billion in student loan relief for hundreds of thousands of borrowers. But that relief has only extended in certain cases, including for those who have attended schools found to have misled students, borrowers with disabilities, and those participating in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
But the $10,000 in forgiveness for a much wider breadth of borrowers will likely not satisfy some Democrats or activists who have pushed the Biden administration to forgive much more in federal student loan debt.
In May, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) met with Biden to push for forgiveness. Advocates and other Democrats, including Schumer, have pressed for forgiveness of $50,000 per borrower or to cancel debt entirely.
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(The Hill) — Anthony Fauci, who on Monday announced that he is leaving the Biden administration, pushed back on conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic hours later, calling the claims “a distortion of reality.”
“What we’re dealing with now is just a distortion of reality, conspiracy theories which don’t make any sense at all pushing back on sound public health measures, making it look like trying to save lives is encroaching on people’s freedom,” Fauci said on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
False claims and criticisms, particularly about the origins of the COVID-19 virus, Fauci said, “impeded a proper response to a public health challenge” and continue to interfere with addressing public health issues.
Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser and the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was a leader in the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the MSNBC interview, he pushed back on the theories and the personal attacks against him.
“It’s a complete distortion of reality, I mean, a world where untruths have almost become normalized, how we can see something in front of our very eyes and deny it’s happening,” Fauci said.
“I mean, that’s the environment we’re living in. You could look at January 6 on TV, and you have some people who actually don’t believe it happened. How could that possibly be? And it’s now spilling over in denial about public health principles.”
The announcement that he’ll leave the administration in December for his “next chapter” after decades in government has drawn a surge of Republican lawmakers saying they’ll keep investigating Fauci even after he steps down.
“Make no mistake, his resignation WILL NOT stop us from investigating his role & the origins of the #COVID19 pandemic,” said Rep. Neal Dunn (R-Fl.) on Twitter.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) tweeted that “[Fauci] will be asked to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in concerning the lab leak,” referring to theories that the virus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China.
Fauci also told Maddow that community input and pressure was constructive as the government dealt with HIV/AIDS, but that current COVID-19 criticisms are counterproductive.
Fauci said it’s possible that “the better angels in our society prevail,” but called the ongoing theories “very troublesome.”
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| 2022-09-21T15:07:43Z
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BEIJING (AP) — With China’s biggest freshwater lake reduced to just 25% of its usual size by a severe drought, work crews are digging trenches to keep water flowing to one of the country’s key rice-growing regions.
The dramatic decline of Poyang Lake in the landlocked southeastern province of Jiangxi had otherwise cut off irrigation channels to nearby farmlands. The crews, using excavators to dig trenches, only work after dark because of the extreme daytime heat, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
A severe heat wave is wreaking havoc across much of southern China. High temperatures have sparked mountain fires that have forced the evacuation of 1,500 people in the southwest, and factories have been ordered to cut production as hydroelectric plants reduce their output amid drought conditions. The extreme heat and drought have wilted crops and shrunk rivers including the giant Yangtze, disrupting cargo traffic.
Fed by China’s major rivers, Poyang Lake averages about 3,500 square kilometers (1,400 square miles) in high season, but has contracted to just 737 square kilometers (285 square miles) in the recent drought.
As determined by water level, the lake officially entered this year’s dry season Aug. 6, earlier than at any time since records began being taken in 1951. Hydrological surveys before then are incomplete, although it appears the lake may be at or around its lowest level in recent history.
Along with providing water for agriculture and other uses, the lake is a major stopover for migrating birds heading south for the winter.
China is more accustomed to dealing with the opposite problem: seasonal rains that trigger landslides and flooding every summer. Two years ago, villages and fields of rice, cotton, corn and beans around Poyang Lake were inundated after torrential rains.
This year, a wide swath of western and central China has seen days of temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in heat waves that have started earlier and lasted longer than usual.
The heat is likely connected to human-caused climate change, though scientists have yet to do to the complex calculations and computer simulations to say that for certain.
“The heat is certainly record-breaking, and certainly aggravated by human-caused climate change,” said Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre in the Netherlands. “Drought is always a bit more complex.”
The “truly mind-boggling temperatures roasting China” are connected to a stuck jet stream — the river of air that moves weather systems around the world — said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
She said an elongated area of relatively high atmospheric pressure parked over western Russia is responsible for both China’s and Europe’s heat waves this year. In China’s case, the high pressure is preventing cool air masses and precipitation from entering the area.
“When hot, dry conditions get stuck, the soil dries out and heats more readily, reinforcing the heat dome overhead even further,” Francis said.
In the hard-hit city of Chongqing, some shopping malls have been told to open only from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. to conserve energy. Residents have been seeking respite in the cool of air raid shelters dating from World War II.
That reflects the situation in Europe and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, with high temperatures taking a toll on public health, food production and the environment.
___
Associated Press science writer Seth Borenstein in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
___
See more of AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
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| 2022-09-21T15:07:49Z
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BENTON, La. (KTAL/KMSS) — Wrestling an alligator out of a Benton backyard was all in a day’s work for some Bossier Parish Sheriff’s deputies Tuesday.
Deputies were called to the property of the daughter of a BPSO employee who found a three-foot alligator outside. The sheriff’s office says deputies Steve Hoff, Connor McLaughin, and Austin Mueller doubled as agents of the Louisiana Wildlife and Fishers and wrestled with the alligator that wandered onto the property of Jerry and Kirsten Lawrence.
Police say deputies were able to safely subdue the scaly “suspect” before anyone could get hurt.
“Many of our animal calls range from loose livestock, horses, and dogs, and sometimes alligators,” said Sheriff Whittington. “Our deputies just have to be prepared for almost any call that comes in, because you never know what the day will bring.”
The deputies relocated and released the alligator into the Bodcau Wildlife Management area in Benton.
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| 2022-09-21T15:07:57Z
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SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – An elderly woman is recovering after her rescue from a West Shreveport manhole Tuesday afternoon.
It happened just before 5 p.m. just off Kennedy Dr. near Airport Park, where firefighters say the woman fell into an open manhole. Since the sewer access was set back from the road and not easily visible, no one saw her fall in.
Fortunately, she had her cell phone with her and called 911 and was able to help firefighters find her by waving her cane through the opening.
They lowered a ladder into the sewer access and the fire department says she was able to climb out on her own. She was taken to a local hospital to be checked out but was alert and talking to her rescuers and does not appear to have suffered any serious injuries.
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| 2022-09-21T15:08:04Z
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BOSSIER CITY, La. (KTAL/KMSS) — The man wanted as a material witness in the 2018 double murder of a local couple that got underway Monday in Caddo Parish is in custody after officers tracked him down at a Bossier City motel.
Eric Dorch, 42, has been wanted as a material witness in the trial of DeWayne Willie Watkins since a warrant was issued for his arrest in June, but police had not had any luck in finding him. On Monday, the Caddo Parish District Attorney’s Office requested assistance from the public as jury selection in the Watkins trial was getting underway.
Around 10:30 a.m., officers with the Bossier City Marshal’s Office were handcuffing Dorch after finding him in a room at the David Motel on Benton Road. BPSO says Dorch was cooperative and arrested without incident. He was booked into the Bossier City Jail as a fugitive out of Caddo Parish on the material witness warrant and transferred to the Caddo Parish Correctional Center early Tuesday afternoon.
No bond has been set.
Dorch was among the witnesses investigators believe was aware of the murders in Shreveport of 32-year-old Heather Angela King Jose and her husband, 43-year-old Kelly Dean Jose, and allegedly knew Watkins was involved. The first-degree murder trial was placed on hold Tuesday after Watkins tested positive for COVID-19.
The trial is scheduled to resume on Monday.
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| 2022-09-21T15:08:12Z
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SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – Retired Shreveport Fire Chief Scott Wolverton is among those pushing the Shreveport City Council to reconsider proposed changes to firefighters’ health care coverage.
The former chief, along with several other retired firefighters, addressed the council during Monday’s work session. Although speaking against the proposed changes under the auspices of the Retired Fire Fighters Association, Wolverton now serves as director of Emergency Preparedness for the Willis-Knighton Health System.
The former firefighters shared their concerns and opposition to the insurance changes proposed by the Health Care Trust Fund Board, complaining it would affect their coverage with Willis-Knighton Health Systems, which is not currently present under the contract.
The groups said current employees would have to pay more to keep their doctors while retired employees would lose access to their doctors. Wolverton asked the council to reconsider approving this current contract. He said more than 60% of Shreveport Fire Department employees receive their care from Willis-Knighton.
“These retirees have served and they have answered the call. Every time they have been requested. Many being exposed to hazards that today are considered by law to be occupational diseases,” Wolverton said. “They have earned the ability to be able to choose their health care without having to give up their continuity of care with their Willis-Knighton doctors and hospitals, and keep it without creating a more financial burden on them.”
Jaf Fielder, president and CEO of Willis-Knighton Health System also addressed the council stating Willis Knighton System’s opposition to the new proposed retirement health care plan for 2023.
There was a disagreement, however, between Shreveport’s Chief Financial Officer Kasey Brown over whether e-mails were sent and received regarding contract negations.
Henry Whitehorn, chief administrative officer for the City of Shreveport, said there will be no agreement to lower costs until after a meeting is held with stakeholders on Sept. 7, adding that the City needs to recalculate its health care costs.
The City Council will discuss this further during its regular meeting Tuesday.
Councilman John Nickelson suggested the council wait to approve any plan until there is more clarity on the issue.
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SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – The Shreveport police and fire departments are hosting four listening sessions to receive public input and provide updates on bond projects funded through a Public Safety Bond Proposition in 2021.
Voters passed the bond proposition in December, and now the police and fire departments want to know how voters would like bond money spent to build new police substations.
According to the community meeting announcement made by the City of Shreveport, the $70.65 million in funding allocations will be spent as follows:
- $4.5M – to construct police substations
- $27.5M – for a central police headquarters
- $2M – for city jail maintenance and improvements
Other money within the bond will allow the Shreveport Fire Department to buy new fire trucks and vehicles, fire station renovations, and fire academy maintenance.
The community meetings will start at 6 p.m. at the following locations:
- Thursday, August 25 – North Louisiana Technical College
- Monday, August 29 – Southfield School
- Wednesday, September 7 – A.B. Palmer Community Center
- Thursday, September 8 – Independence Stadium Skybox
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JERUSALEM (AP) — Archaeologists unearthed a lavish 1,200-year-old estate in Israel’s desert south that offers a unique glimpse of life for wealthy residents of the Negev region, the country’s antiquities authority said Tuesday.
The discovery in the Bedouin town of Rahat dates to the early Islamic period in the 8th or 9th century, the authority said.
The luxury home is built around a courtyard and features four wings with several rooms for its residents. One lavish section features a marble hallway with stone floors and elaborate wall decorations. Archaeologists also found shards of decorated glass serving dishes.
Underneath the courtyard, archaeologists were surprised to discover subterranean vaults made of stone, which they believe were used to store items at cooler temperatures away from the scorching desert sun. The vaults appear to be carefully constructed and sturdy enough to allow people to move between them underground. An opening from the vaulted rooms also leads to a cistern where residents could access cool drinking water.
Experts say the mansion’s owners likely lived a life of prosperity and had plenty to go around.
“The luxurious estate and the unique impressive underground vaults are evidence of the owners’ means,” said the excavation directors in a statement. “Their high status and wealth allowed them to build a luxurious mansion that served as a residence and for entertaining.”
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| 2022-09-21T15:08:34Z
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(The Hill) — The monkeypox virus has reached all 50 states.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, Wyoming reported a single case of the virus on Monday, becoming the final state in the country to do so.
In a news release, the Wyoming Department of Health (WDH) said the lone virus case is from a male resident in Laramie County, adding that state public health representatives have followed up with the infected individual to see if other residents had direct contact with him.
“Because monkeypox spreads through close, intimate contact we do not believe the risk for the virus is now a higher concern for the local community or for most people in Wyoming,” WDH state health officer and state epidemiologist Alexia Harrist. “Monkeypox does not spread easily like familiar viruses such as influenza or COVID-19.”
Harrist also recommended that getting vaccinated is the best possible way to “prevent further spread” of the virus.
“While anyone can become ill with monkeypox, vaccine eligibility is currently limited to people who are at highest risk in connection with this outbreak and how its spreading,” she said. “The goal is to put available vaccine supplies to the best possible use.”
As of Monday, there are 15,433 reported cases of monkeypox in the U.S with New York leading the way with nearly 3,000 reported cases, followed by California, Florida, Texas and Georgia, CDC data showed.
Recently, the Department of Human and Health Services officially declared monkeypox a public health emergency in the U.S.
The Biden administration, which has faced criticism for its slow initial response to the outbreak, plans to accelerate the production of the monkeypox vaccine by making an additional 1.8 million doses available starting this week.
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| 2022-09-21T15:08:41Z
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TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Many women use reproductive health apps to plan or prevent pregnancy. Now, a new study finds the most popular apps have weak privacy protections.
Women enter the most sensitive data into these apps: information about their cycle, pregnancy, and doctor appointments.
The concern is these apps don’t just put your privacy at risk but also possibly your freedom.
“I hope that our information isn’t weaponized against us,” Serena White said.
Like millions of other women, White downloaded a period and pregnancy tracking app.
She said the app made life easier, but she deleted it soon after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.
“You were concerned about law enforcement having your personal information?” Investigator Mahsa Saeidi asked.
“I was concerned, and I was concerned enough to just go ahead and say, you know, this app isn’t necessary for me,” White said.
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy is a professor and constitutional law expert at Stetson Law.
“So the problem with a period tracking is that it could be used as evidence against a woman,” Torres-Spelliscy said.
Many are reacting to a new study by the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit advocating for privacy rights.
Researchers said they looked at 25 popular apps and devices.
They found most have vague privacy policies.
Additionally, they don’t spell out what data could be shared with law enforcement.
The non-profit said that means police could use the data to prosecute pregnant people.
“How likely would it be for this data to be used in a case against a women seeking an abortion?” asked Saeidi.
“This is a brave new world,” Torres-Spelliscy said. “A lot of these apps are relatively recent … the law has not really caught up with the way that people live.”
The professor said when you provide information to a third party, that makes it very easy for law enforcement to get it.
“Because they can subpoena if they have probable cause to think that there’s a crime, they can go after that third party, and the third party doesn’t have the same 5th amendment rights to object,” Torres-Spelliscy said.
“At this point, it’s a little premature to say will law enforcement use these apps in the most pernicious ways that they could, but I am certainly worried about it.”
Some of the apps have questioned how this study was conducted.
The professor said she’s not surprised that pregnancy tracking apps have weak privacy protections because that’s the case with most apps.
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| 2022-09-21T15:08:49Z
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TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A Florida deputy who was caught on video pointing a gun at a pregnant Black woman during a traffic stop has resigned, authorities tell WFLA.
Deputy Jason Desue left the Bradford County Sheriff’s Office after the incident, which occurred around midnight on Friday, Aug. 12, First Coast News reported.
The mother, Ebony Washington, who is four months pregnant, told WJAX she and her four children were on their way home to Jacksonville from Gainesville when Desue tried to pull her over for speeding. She was going 75 miles per hour in a 55-mph zone, according to reports.
Washington said she was looking for a safe, well-lit place to pull over, and turned on her hazard lights and kept driving until she got to a convenience store.
“It was dark and I was with my kids. I felt uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to be able to not have anyone else around,” she recalled.
Body camera video released by the sheriff’s office shows Desue follow her into the parking lot, get out of his patrol car and immediately point his gun at her van.
“If you make a move that’ll be the last mistake you make. Do not move,” Desue told Washington.
“I didn’t know he had a gun until I told him my seatbelt was still on and he said, ‘Get out. I have my gun. I’m not worried,’” the mother recalled.
After Desue ordered her to step out of the vehicle, Washington exited the van with her hands raised and tried to explain why she didn’t stop in time.
“Your excuse means nothing to me right now,” Desue said.
“I’m trying to tell you the only reason why I didn’t stop,” she told him. “I’m a very educated woman with a master’s degree … It’s dark out and I have three kids with me. I’m pregnant, and I did not want them to feel uncomfortable.”
“Just shut up about the why,” Desue said. “I don’t care about why.”
One of Washington’s children recorded video of the incident. Another could be heard crying as the deputy pointed a gun at their mother, First Coast reported.
“I was scared he was going to either take her to jail or that he might hurt her,” Washington’s daughter, Saige Washington, told WJAX. “Why is he so upset? She wasn’t doing anything.”
“Had I have done any movement outside of what he told me to do that would’ve been the opportunity for him to pull the trigger,” Washington said. “Him having power, the badge, the gun and the authority to do things, I think sometimes officers, like himself, they take advantage.”
The deputy gave Washington a speeding ticket and eventually let her go. When she apologized again, he told her to “apologize to herself for not thinking.”
In a statement provided to WFLA by his spokesman, Bradford County Sheriff Gordon Smith said he had already accepted Desue’s resignation while “continuing the internal investigation into his conduct.”
“I am disturbed and disheartened how Jacob Desue handled the traffic stop on Ebony Washington. She responded in a manner that was totally understandable in this circumstance,” Smith said. “Jacob Desue should have deescalated the situation but disappointingly was unable to respond in the appropriate manner.”
Smith told First Coast Washington did exactly what he would tell his daughter, wife or anyone else who feels uncomfortable during a traffic stop to do, “You reduce your speed, you turn on your flashing lights, be acknowledged,” he said.
“The whole thing would upset my children, my grandchildren,” the sheriff added. “So a lot of things that should have been done weren’t done. And at the end of the day, we determined that was something that we didn’t need representing us, or protecting our community.”
Although Smith said Washington did things right, she still blames herself for how things unfolded.
“None of this would’ve happened had I not been speeding,” she told First Coast. “My husband always says … ‘Why you so in a rush?’”
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| 2022-09-21T15:08:56Z
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A former Louisville police detective who helped falsify the warrant that led to the deadly police raid at Breonna Taylor’s apartment has pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge.
Federal investigators said Kelly Goodlett added a false line to the warrant and later conspired with another detective to create a cover story when Taylor’s March 13, 2020, shooting death by police began gaining national attention.
Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was shot to death by officers who knocked down her door while executing a drug search warrant. Taylor’s boyfriend fired a shot that hit one of the officers as they came through the door and they returned fire, striking Taylor multiple times.
Goodlett, 35, appeared in a federal courtroom in Louisville on Tuesday afternoon and admitted to conspiring with another Louisville police officer to falsify the warrant. Goodlett briefly answered several questions from federal judge Rebecca Jennings Grady.
Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, was in the courtroom Tuesday but did not speak after the proceedings.
Three former Louisville officers were indicted on criminal civil rights charges earlier this month by a federal grand jury. Goodlett was not indicted, but charged in a federal information filing, which likely means the former detective is cooperating with investigators.
Goodlett will be sentenced Nov. 22. Grady said there may be “extenuating circumstances” that may move the court to push back the sentencing date. Part of the plea hearing was also kept under seal and was not discussed in open court Tuesday. She faces up to five years in prison for the conviction.
She resigned from the department Aug. 5, a day after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced new federal charges in the Taylor case.
Former officers Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany were indicted on charges related to the warrant used to search Taylor’s home. A third former officer, Brett Hankison, was charged with using excessive force when he retreated from Taylor’s door, turned a corner and fired 10 shots into the side of her two-bedroom apartment. He was acquitted by a jury on similar state charges earlier this year. Jaynes, Meany and Hankison have all been fired.
The three former officers face a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted on the civil rights charges.
Federal prosecutors said in court records that Jaynes, who drew up the Taylor warrant, had claimed to Goodlett days before the warrant was served that he had “verified” from a postal inspector that a suspected drug dealer was receiving packages at Taylor’s apartment. But Goodlett knew this was false and told Jaynes the warrant did not yet have enough information connecting Taylor to criminal activity, prosecutors said. She added a paragraph saying the suspected drug dealer, Jamarcus Glover, was using Taylor’s apartment as his current address, according to the court records.
Two months later, when the Taylor shooting was attracting national headlines, the postal inspector told a media outlet he had not verified packages for Glover were going to Taylor’s apartment. Jaynes and Goodlett then met in Jaynes’ garage to “get on the same page” before Jaynes talked to investigators about the Taylor warrant, court records said.
They decided to say Sgt. John Mattingly, who is identified in the court records as J.M., told them Glover was receiving packages at Taylor’s home, according to prosecutors. Mattingly was shot in the leg during the raid at Taylor’s apartment.
Meany, who signed off on the Taylor warrant and was still a Louisville police sergeant when he was indicted on Aug. 4, was fired by Louisville Police Chief Erika Shields on Friday.
Shields said in a statement that Meany has not yet had his case heard by a jury, but “he is facing multiple federal charges after a lengthy investigation by the DOJ” and should not “expect continued employment under such conditions.”
Hankison was the only officer charged who was on the scene the night of the killing.
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| 2022-09-21T15:09:04Z
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SAVANNAH, Ga. (WSAV) — Even with all of the fall vibes on the horizon, it won’t be long before some are imagining rows upon rows of evergreens standing tall in the North Pole, providing the scent of fresh pine.
For those who might want to get there early, there is a job opportunity at the North Pole that is available now. However, before heading to the attic in search of those reindeer antlers headbands and matching mittens, it might be important to take note.
Frontier Grow Lab, located in the North Pole, is currently hiring someone to help them with some trimming, not for Christmas, but for cannabis.
According to the job description, the full-time position pays $16 an hour, and the harvest portion of the position includes helping the team cut down and weigh plants, remove excess fan leaves and prepare plants for curing and drying.
Once they are properly dried, plants must be “bucked down,” which includes removing buds from stems and properly storing them. Once it is finished curing, you will be helping trim the bud by hand as well as sorting and processing the material.
The job also includes making pre-rolls in-house which involves helping the team with all the steps involved in this process, including running the pre-roll machine, weighing, twisting & packing pre-rolls.
The age requirement is 21 years or older, and applicants must be able to acquire a marijuana permit holder as soon as possible. One of the reason’s the company says people should apply is to learn the ins and outs of processing cannabis.
According to the job posting, Frontier Grow Labs has been in the legal industry since 2016. The company also states, “We are a team that appreciates comradery, hard work, self-motivation, and excellent communication. Frontier Grow Labs prioritizes quality product and proper handling processes above all else.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), marijuana — which can also be called cannabis, weed, pot, or dope — refers to the dried flowers, leaves, stems, and seeds of the cannabis plant. The cannabis plant contains more than 100 compounds. These compounds include tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is impairing or mind-altering, as well as other active compounds, such as cannabidiol (CBD). CBD is not impairing, meaning it does not cause a “high,” according to the CDC.
The CDC says marijuana can make the heart beat faster and can make blood pressure higher immediately after use. It could also lead to an increased risk of stroke, heart disease, and other vascular diseases.
According to Harvard Health Publishing, the most common use for medical marijuana in the United States is for pain control. While some suggest that marijuana isn’t strong enough for severe pain (for example, post-surgical pain or a broken bone), some say it is quite effective for the chronic pain that plagues millions of Americans, especially as they age.
According to the Georgia Department of Public Health, Georgia’s medical marijuana law allows certain qualified people to legally possess up to 20 fluid ounces of “low THC oil.” It authorizes the Georgia Department of Public Health to issue a “Low THC Oil Registry Card” to those qualified, which will prove that they are authorized to have the oil and protect them from arrest.
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — More than four grueling months and $300 million later, the federal government has declared the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history 100% contained, a notable milestone but just another step in what local residents and officials say will be a long journey toward recovery.
The blaze was sparked in the spring by two errant prescribed fires conducted by the U.S. Forest Service. More than 530 square miles (1,373 square kilometers) of the Rocky Mountain foothills burned, hundreds of homes were destroyed, livelihoods were lost and drinking water supplies were contaminated.
Local officials say there are years of work ahead of them to restore the landscape and protect against post-fire flooding.
San Miguel County Manager Joy Ansley and her team have been working nonstop since the first plumes of smoke began rising from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. They helped coordinate the evacuation of thousands of people from small mountain villages and worked with the state and the city of Las Vegas as flames approached.
With the summer rainy season in full swing, Ansley said parts of northern New Mexico are flooding on a weekly basis.
“It’s going to be a long process and just because the fire is contained, we’re certainly not out of the woods,” she said Tuesday.
In addition to costs related to fighting the fire, federal emergency managers have paid out more than $4.5 million in aid to affected individuals and households and $6.7 million in low-interest loans for smalls businesses.
While more than 1,200 applications for individual assistance have been vetted, the Federal Emergency Management Agency would not say how many total applications have been received or denied.
Some residents have voiced frustrations about denials over a lack of having a street address for their rural properties. Others have complained that federal officials don’t understand rural life in northern New Mexico and how fallout from the fire has affected them.
New Mexico’s major disaster declaration has been expanded to include flooding, mudflows and debris flows directly related to the wildfires. Dasha Castillo, a spokesperson for FEMA, said residents who already applied for wildfire disaster assistance just need to update their original application to include flooding or other damage.
Castillo encouraged people to contact FEMA if they applied and haven’t heard back.
Legislation is pending in Congress that would authorize full compensation for New Mexico residents and business owners for losses caused by the massive wildfire, but there’s uncertainty about the ultimate price tag.
The scar left behind by the wildfire includes some areas that were reduced to ash and others where the severity was less intense. More than 400 firefighters are still assigned to the blaze and have been busy repairing hundreds of miles of fire lines cut to corral the flames, digging trenches to control erosion and removing fallen trees and other debris.
The U.S. Forest Service said helicopters will distribute about 138 tons (125 metric tonnes) of seed and 5,440 tons (4,935 metric tonnes) of mulch. So far, about 4 square miles (10 square kilometers) have been seeded.
No hot spots have been reported for more than a month, but given the history of how the blaze started officials wanted to be confident when declaring containment, said Stefan La-Sky, a fire information officer with the U.S. Forest Service.
“We don’t take that number lightly,” he said of the designation.
New Mexico marked an early start to what has been a devastating wildfire season across the U.S. with a deadly fire in Ruidoso and then the blaze near Las Vegas.
In all, federal fire officials report more than 9,372 square miles (24,273 square kilometers) have burned since the start of the year to outpace the 10-year average, and predictions for more warm, dry weather mean some areas will see above-normal wildfire activity into the fall.
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CRAWFORD CO. Ark. – Attorneys for the man at the center of a viral Crawford County arrest are holding a press conference Tuesday afternoon, one day after their client left jail.
A viral video appears to show Crawford County Sheriff Office deputies Zack King and Levi White and Mulberry police officer Thell Riddle beating 27-year-old Randal Worcester in front of a convenience store Sunday morning.
According to local authorities, Worcester was accused of spitting and threatening a store clerk at a different store in the area. Crawford County Sheriff Jim Damante said Worcester was cooperative when deputies first approached him but quickly combative as they tried to arrest him.
In the video, the officers can be seen punching, kneeing and smashing Worcester’s head into the cement. Damante said in a news conference Monday that the Mulberry officer’s dashcam captured video that wasn’t recorded on the bystander’s camera.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation released a statement late Monday noting that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Arkansas, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the FBI Little Rock Field Office have opened a civil rights investigation.
The deputies and police officer are currently on paid leave as the Arkansas State Police and FBI investigate the incident.
FULL MEDIA CONFERENCE BELOW
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2022 Seoul -
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2022 Tokyo -
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Entrepreneur spotlight -
Zhang saves match point to stun Garcia in Tokyo thriller
2022 Tokyo
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Get to know Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva, Andorra's teenage trailblazer
2022 Seoul -
Zheng Qinwen routs top seed Badosa in Tokyo to reach quarterfinals
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Asia Muhammad bringing a new style of fashion to tennis apparel
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Zhang saves match point to stun Garcia in Tokyo thriller
2022 Tokyo
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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — The FBI is looking for the public’s assistance in finding a fugitive last seen in Arkansas.
According to an August 23 FBI report, Johnathan Juan Lawrence, 25, is wanted for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit bank fraud and he was last seen in the central Arkansas area. Lawrence is approximately 5’8″ tall, weighs about 185 pounds and has black hair and brown eyes.
An August 3 indictment in the Eastern District of Arkansas Federal Court reveals that Lawrence was charged along with 21 other defendants that “intentionally conspired and agreed to execute and attempt to execute a scheme to defraud Bank of America” from January-August 2021. The indictment explains that the scheme involved unemployment debit cards for “multiple state unemployment systems.”
The charge specifically leveled against Lawrence stems from a $2,500 transfer made on March 30, 2021.
FBI Little Rock asks that anyone with any information about Lawrence’s location contact its office at (501) 221-9100.
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Edward Buckles, Jr. was 13 when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and completely upended his life. Buckles and his family moved from New Orleans to Lafayette, Louisiana for several months while their hometown began to recover from the catastrophic storm.
He told The Associated Press he doesn’t remember much from those months living in Lafayette, grasping for a sense of normalcy in the aftermath of one of the most destructive hurricanes in American history.
His community was experiencing so much destruction. Now as an adult, he views that blank spot in his memory as a response to the trauma of what he witnessed.
Buckles’ parents asked him at the time if he was okay, but he wasn’t quite able to figure that out for himself in the moment. Later the trauma resurfaced. With kids, he said, “what’s responsible and what’s important is that you set them up to deal with that trauma once it surfaces.”
But the filmmaker said in his new documentary “Katrina Babies” that not all the children who were traumatized by living through the hurricane and its aftermath had adults checking in on them. So that’s what he set out to do, capturing several New Orleans residents as they reconcile with a childhood marred by Hurricane Katrina.
The documentary, which has garnered critical praise, will be available for streaming on HBO Max on August 24 and debuts on HBO the same day at 9 pm ET, 17 years and a day after the hurricane formed in the Atlantic Ocean.
It shows how New Orleans and its people were changed by the storm. It depicts the childhood trauma it caused for a generation coming of age after one of the United States’ first major climate-related disasters. New Orleanians featured in the documentary share stories of seeing dead people and pets, of leaving home and returning to communities destroyed, while they were still children.
The film looks at climate past and present and, the filmmakers hope, sounds alarm bells for the climate future.
“I hope this is a local and American story that will motivate people to want to do better and care about human beings, and about how intrinsically linked we are with nature and that the future is clear: There is going to be more of this,” said Audrey Rosenberg, lead producer of the film.
Buckles said that while Hurricane Katrina might has been a formative experience for him and the youth of New Orleans at the time, more waters have come through since. Though he isn’t a climate scientist, he knows firsthand the repeated damage wrought on his hometown by hurricanes and tropical storms made more intense by climate change.
“My grandmother lost her home due to flooding from Hurricane Katrina,” he said. “She has been flooded seven more times just from tropical storms.”
Cierra Chenier, 26, was featured in the documentary and also knows people who have had to rebuild multiple times since Hurricane Katrina due to subsequent hurricanes and storms.
She said the loss of culture and history in New Orleans due to repeated climate-related disasters like Hurricane Katrina shaped her decision to become a local historian and writer.
“I got into wanting to preserve our history because of how quickly I felt my childhood became history,” she said. Even though the storm was 17 years ago, she said, it continues to shape the present.
“In preserving our stories, writing about those stories and narrating those stories, it’s always connected to the present and we can form better solutions for the future,” she said.
Chenier, Buckles and the other youth affected by Hurricane Katrina have a lot to say about the future, having experienced years of government inaction to limit climate change or prepare and recover from climate disasters. Year after year, New Orleanians and the state and federal government know that hurricane season is going to come and be potentially catastrophic because of climate change, Buckles said.
And still, he said, Hurricane Ida, which hit New Orleans 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina, affected people in his community in eerily similar ways to the 2005 storm. The relief measures, he said, were nearly as slow.
As a result, people in his community have become more resilient. But he said he wonders whether government agencies are relying on those harmed by climate-related disasters to help themselves when what they really need is public planning and preparation.
“The youth are tired of dealing with this, myself included,” he said. “And we cannot forget to hold accountable those who need to be held accountable.”
___
Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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MONROE, La. (KTVE/KARD) — On Monday, August 22, 2022, the Metro Narcotics Unit conducted a search warrant at a residence on the 1000 block of South 8th Street in Monroe, La. As agents began to make entry into the residence, 50-year-old Keith Lynn Barnes allegedly attempted to flee the scene through the back door.
Once Barnes was captured and placed in handcuffs, he advised authorities that he lived at the residence, but nothing illegal in the home belonged to him. Agents went on to search the residence and discovered the following items:
- 54.3 grams of crack cocaine
- 900 dosage units of ecstasy
- 24.9 grams of marijuana
- Xanax
- A loaded handgun
According to authorities, they discovered that Barnes was on parole due to being convicted of distributing crack cocaine in 2007. As authorities searched Barnes, they allegedly discovered an additional 25 dosage units of ecstasy.
Barnes was transported to the Ouachita Correctional Center and charged with two counts of Possession with Intent to Distribute a Controlled Dangerous Substance, Illegal Carrying a Weapon in the Presence of Narcotics, Possession of a Controlled Dangerous Substance, and Possession of a Firearm by a Convicted Felon.
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BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – A two-day trial has been set for a federal lawsuit that would stop the transfer of juveniles to Angola at the Middle District Courthouse of Louisiana Tuesday.
Attorneys representing Louisiana youth and their families, including Attorney Ron Haley filed an emergency motion last week to stop the transfer of juveniles to Angola.
In July, Governor John Bel Edwards announced the plan to transfer the juveniles with little details on how or when this would take place. Haley said the state confirmed with Chief Judge Shelly D. Dick during a telephone conference that they do not plan to transfer the juveniles until Sept.15. The judge ordered the state to submit a detailed plan to the court by Sept. 2, according to Haley.
The state has until tomorrow to provide a list of juveniles they plan to transfer to the adult prison as well as their guardians’ information. Haley said the judge gave their team until Monday to interview the youths residing in Bridge City Center for Youth.
The trial has been set for September 6-7.
Watch the full presser Haley held Tuesday afternoon below:
The governor’s office shared the following statement Tuesday regarding plans to transfer juvenile inmates:
The governor and secretary of OJJ have spoken on multiple occasions about the need to transfer some juvenile offenders temporarily to the Angola facility, which is the best option available at this time. In addition, they are also working on more permanent long term solutions. The issues are complex and officials are working diligently to develop a plan that will meet the needs of the youth, support them in their rehabilitation and ensure their safety as well as that of the staff and community. The plan is a work in progress.
Office of the Governor
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DALLAS (KXAN) — Gov. Greg Abbott declared a disaster for 23 Texas counties, including Dallas, after storms caused damage and devastating flash flooding.
Abbott signed the declaration in Dallas Tuesday afternoon after receiving a briefing from local leaders and first responders about the damage sustained there.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area was one of the areas most impacted by rain and flooding this week. NBC 5 reported a 60-year-old woman died after her vehicle was swept away by floodwater in Mesquite, east of downtown Dallas.
The Dallas police chief also shared he may have to mandate officers to double up during their patrols, because the storms Monday either damaged or destroyed 28 police vehicles. He said the city’s fire department also lost a large piece of its equipment.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins on Monday declared a state of disaster for his county and requested state and federal assistance for affected individuals.
Abbott on Monday increased the readiness level of the Texas State Emergency Operations Center (SOC) to Level II (Escalated Response). The Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) also activated five more Texas A&M Task Force 1 swiftwater boat squads and a floodwater boat squad to help local first responders.
TDEM on Monday also told Nexstar it has more than 250 people ready to help in any part of the state.
Over the weekend, the state had already readied boat teams from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, helicopters from the Texas Department of Public Safety and ground transportation from the Texas National Guard, among other resources.
The state said Texans can report damage to homes and businesses online using TDEM’s damage survey. You can also learn more flood safety tips using this website.
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DALLAS (Nexstar) — The record-setting torrential downpour across Texas cities Monday brought damage throughout the state, with at least one person reported dead and at least 100 homes damaged so far.
Dozens of other Texans were rescued after what experts consider an one-in-1,000-year flash flood drenched the Dallas-Fort Worth area Monday. The storm came after the city and various other parts of the state completed a months-long drought, with all of the held-up summer rain downpouring in a span of a few hours.
A 60-year-old woman died after her vehicle was washed away by floodwaters, according to Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. Elsewhere, authorities evacuated residents from flooded areas and made water rescues. Videos show cars submerged on the highway, with streets looking more like rivers, and many vehicles were left abandoned in the floodwaters.
Brittany Taylor of Dallas was one of many who woke up Monday night to her entire apartment flooded, just two days after she moved in.
“I looked out the window, and I might as well have been on a boat, because the water was so high outside,” she said.
Taylor said because she had just moved in, she wasn’t sure if the loud rain noises were normal or not. When she finally got out of bed she looked at the window and saw the flooded streets, only to find it had made its way into her apartment.
“That was my dream apartment. I didn’t even get to have a housewarming party,” she said.
Between her apartment and car, Taylor guesses she lost tens-of-thousands worth of property. Friends and family have quickly rallied behind her, starting a GoFundMe to help her recover.
“This apartment for me was such a milestone of me being able to provide for myself. It’s been a journey to get here. And in one night, I lost my apartment and my car. It’s one of my biggest financial setbacks,” she said. “I wish I was in a position where I could take care of myself and not need help.”
Some parts of the Dallas-Fort Worth area saw upward of 15 inches of rain in a five to six hour timespan. At a press conference Tuesday morning with state leaders, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said the city is assessing how infrastructure held up, but acknowledged that amount of rain in a short period of time would be tough for even more flood-prepared cities.
“There is no infrastructure that can withstand 15 inches of water in five hours. But it doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility to look and see where we have some deficiencies,” Johnson said.
The extreme rain also caused damage in other areas of the state, as west as El Paso and as east as Tyler. An EF-1 tornado added to the damage outside of Tyler, touching down in Winona on Monday.
Central Texas saw extreme flooding on Monday that also poured out on to roads during peak rush hour in an already congested downtown Austin. While there were no reports of damage in the greater Austin area, Kerr County in Central Texas was included in Gov. Greg Abbott’s disaster declaration, covering 23 counties.
The state said Texans can report damage to homes and businesses online using TDEM’s damage survey. You can also learn more flood safety tips using this website.
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Startling new revelations from Twitter’s former head of security, Peiter Zatko, have raised serious questions about the security of the platform’s service, its ability to identify and remove fake accounts, and the truthfulness of its statements to users, shareholders and federal regulators.
Zatko — better known by his hacker handle “Mudge” — is a respected cybersecurity expert who first gained prominence in the 1990s and later worked in senior positions at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Agency and Google. Twitter fired him from the security job early this year for what the company called “ineffective leadership and poor performance.” Zatko’s attorneys say that claim is false.
In a whistleblower complaint made public Tuesday, Zatko documented what he described as his uphill 14-month effort to bolster Twitter security, boost the reliability of its service, repel intrusions by agents of foreign governments and both measure and take action against fake “bot” accounts that spammed the platform.
Many of Zatko’s claims have not been corroborated and the complaint did not provide documentary support for his charges. In a statement, Twitter called Zatko’s description of events “a false narrative.”
Here are five takeaways from that whistleblower complaint.
TWITTER’S SECURITY AND PRIVACY SYSTEMS WERE GROSSLY INADEQUATE
In 2011, Twitter settled a Federal Trade Commission investigation into its privacy practices by agreeing to put stronger data security protections in place. Zatko’s complaint charges that Twitter’s problems grew worse over time instead.
For instance, the complaint states, Twitter’s internal systems allowed far too many employees access to personal user data they didn’t need for their jobs — a situation ripe for abuse. For years, Twitter also continued to mine user data such as phone numbers and email addresses — intended only for security purposes — for ad targeting and marketing campaigns, according to the complaint.
TWITTER’S ENTIRE SERVICE COULD HAVE COLLAPSED IRREPARABLY UNDER STRESS
One of the most striking revelations in Zatko’s complaint is the claim that Twitter’s internal data systems were so ramshackle — and the company’s contingency plans so insufficient — that any widespread crash or unplanned shutdown could have tanked the entire platform.
The concern was that a “cascading” data-center failure could quickly spread across Twitter’s fragile information systems. As the complaint put it: “That meant that if all the centers went offline simultaneously, even briefly, Twitter was unsure if they could bring the service back up. Downtime estimates ranged from weeks of round-the-clock work, to permanent irreparable failure.”
TWITTER MISLED REGULATORS, INVESTORS AND MUSK ABOUT FAKE “SPAM” BOTS
In essence, Zatko’s complaint states that Tesla CEO Elon Musk — whose $44 billion bid to acquire Twitter is headed for October trial in a Delaware court — is correct when he charges that Twitter executives have little incentive to accurately measure the prevalence of fake accounts on the system.
The complaint charges that the company’s executive leadership practiced “deliberate ignorance” on the subject of these so-called spam bots. “Senior management had no appetite to properly measure the prevalence of bot accounts,” the complaint states, adding that executives were concerned that accurate bot measurements would harm Twitter’s “image and valuation.”
ON JAN. 6, 2021, TWITTER COULD HAVE BEEN AT THE MERCY OF DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEES
Zatko’s complaint states that as a mob assembled in front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, eventually storming the building, he began to worry that employees sympathetic to the rioters might try to sabotage Twitter. That concern spiked when he learned it was “impossible” to protect the platform’s core systems from a hypothetical rogue or disgruntled engineer aiming to wreak havoc.
“There were no logs, nobody knew where data lived or whether it was critical, and all engineers had some form of critical access” to Twitter’s core functions, the complaint states.
A PLAYGROUND FOR FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS
The Zatko complaint also highlights Twitter’s difficulty in identifying — much less resisting — the presence of foreign agents on its service. In one instance, the complaint alleges, the Indian government required Twitter to hire specific individuals alleged to be spies, and who would have had significant access to sensitive data thanks to Twitter’s own lax security controls. The complaint also alleges a murkier situation involving taking money from unidentified “Chinese entities” that then could access data that might endanger Twitter users in China.
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Twitter’s former head of security alleged that the company misled regulators about its poor cybersecurity defenses and its negligence in attempting to root out fake accounts that spread disinformation, according to a whistleblower complaint filed with U.S. officials.
The revelation could create serious legal and financial problems for the social media platform, which is currently attempting to force Tesla CEO Elon Musk to consummate his $44 billion offer to buy the company. Several members of Congress on Tuesday called on regulators to investigate the claims.
Peiter Zatko, who served as Twitter’s security chief until he was fired early this year, filed the complaints last month with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice. The legal nonprofit Whistleblower Aid, which is working with Zatko, confirmed the authenticity of a redacted copy of the complaint posted online by the Washington Post.
“This was a last resort for him,” said John Tye, the group’s co-founder and chief disclosure officer, in an interview Tuesday. He said Zatko exhausted all attempts to get his concerns resolved inside the company before his firing in January.
Among Zatko’s most serious accusations is that Twitter violated the terms of a 2011 FTC settlement by falsely claiming that it had put stronger measures in place to protect the security and privacy of its users. Zatko also accuses the company of deceptions involving its handling of “spam” or fake accounts, an allegation that is at the core of Musk’s attempt to back out of the Twitter takeover.
Shares of Twitter Inc. closed down more than 7% Tuesday.
Better known by his hacker handle “Mudge,” Zatko is a highly respected cybersecurity expert who first gained prominence in the 1990s and later worked in senior positions at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Agency and Google.
He joined Twitter at the urging of then-CEO Jack Dorsey in late 2020, the same year the company suffered an embarrassing security breach involving hackers who broke into the Twitter accounts of world leaders, celebrities and tech moguls, including Musk, in an attempt to scam their followers out of bitcoin.
Twitter said in a prepared statement Tuesday that Zatko was fired for “ineffective leadership and poor performance” and said the “allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers and its shareholders.” The company called his complaint “a false narrative” that is “riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context.”
Zatko’s attorneys, Debra Katz and Alexis Ronickher, said Twitter’s claim about his poor performance is false and that he repeatedly raised concerns about “grossly inadequate information security systems” with top executives and Twitter’s board of directors. The lawyers said that in late 2021, after the board was given “whitewashed” information about those security problems, Zatko escalated his concerns, “clashed” with CEO Parag Agrawal and board member Omid Kordestani and was fired two weeks later.
The 84-page complaint describes a broken corporate culture at Twitter that lacked effective leadership and where Zatko said top executives practiced “deliberate ignorance” of pressing problems. His description of Dorsey’s leadership style is particularly scathing; he described the Twitter founder as “extremely disengaged” during the last months of his tenure as CEO to the point where he would not even speak during meetings on complex issues facing the company.
Zatko said he heard from colleagues that Dorsey would remain silent for “days or weeks.” Dorsey announced he was stepping down as Twitter CEO in November 2021.
The disclosure says Twitter offered no monetary incentives for improving security and platform integrity, although the company did offer $10 million bonuses last year for top executives who could generate short-term user growth.
Among Zatko’s accusations of cybersecurity malpractice: Software and security updates were disabled on more than a third of employees’ computers — unduly exposing them to malware — and it was common for people to install “whatever software they wanted on their work systems.” Such lapses are typically considered cardinal sins in cybersecurity.
Whistleblower Aid said it is legally precluded from sharing Zatko’s statement. The same group worked with former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, who testified to Congress last year after leaking internal documents and accusing the social media giant of choosing profit over safety.
“I wouldn’t say he’s happy about having to become a whistleblower, but he’s resolute in his decision,” Tye said. “And committed to getting to the bottom of this.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Senate’s intelligence committee, Rachel Cohen, said the committee has received Zatko’s complaint and is working to set up a meeting “to discuss the allegations in further detail. We take this matter seriously.”
Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said in a prepared statement that if the claims are accurate, “they may show dangerous data privacy and security risks for Twitter users around the world.”
Among the most alarming complaints is Zatko’s allegation that Twitter knowingly allowed the Indian government to place its agents on the company payroll where they had “direct unsupervised access to the company’s systems and user data.”
A 2011 FTC complaint noted that Twitter’s systems were full of highly sensitive data that could allow a hostile government to find precise location data for specific users and target them for violence or arrest. Earlier this month, a former Twitter employee was found guilty after a trial in California of passing along sensitive Twitter user data to royal family members in Saudi Arabia in exchange for bribes.
The complaint said Twitter was also heavily reliant on funding by Chinese entities and that there were concerns within Twitter that the company was providing information to those entities that would enable them to learn the identify and sensitive information of Chinese users who secretly use Twitter, which is officially banned in China.
Zatko also describes willful ignorance by Twitter executives on counting the millions of accounts that are automated “spam bots” or otherwise have no value to advertisers because there is no person behind them. Zatko cited a “damning” 2021 outside report that found Twitter’s tools for tackling bots were neither sufficiently automated or sophisticated and instead relied on humans “not adequately staffed or resourced, to address the misinformation and disinformation problem.”
Alex Spiro, an attorney representing Musk in his effort to back out of his Twitter acquisition deal, said lawyers have issued a subpoena for Zatko. “We found his exit and that of other key employees curious in light of what we have been finding,” Spiro wrote in an email Tuesday. Spiro said Zatko and Musk have not been in contact at any time this year.
Tye said “he’s never met Elon Musk. Doesn’t know Elon Musk. They know people in common.” Asked if mutual friends could have shared information about Twitter’s bot problems with Musk, Tye said Zatko “has not communicated with any other party about his disclosures” since filing the complaints in July.
——
AP writers Tom Krisher and Marcy Gordon contributed to this report.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Unlike its cars, Tesla shares are about to get less expensive.
Tesla is splitting its stock 3 for 1, so after the close of trading Tuesday, investors will receive two additional Tesla shares for every one they owned as of Aug. 17. In theory, that should drop Tesla’s share price by about two-thirds before trading starts on Wednesday.
Stock splits don’t make a company more valuable or more profitable. Tesla joins stock market heavyweights Amazon and Google parent Alphabet in splitting their high-priced shares this year. Even meme-stock darling GameStop has done a stock split.
WHY DO A STOCK SPLIT?
Stock splits are used by companies when their stock price gets too high for retail investors to buy individual shares, or when a company wants more shares in the marketplace to make them easier to trade.
Employees who hold a company’s stock can benefit as well if new investors push the price higher. The lower prices also should make the shares easier to sell.
Tesla shares traded for more than $1,000 when the company announced its intention to split the stock in March. That’s a bit steep for most retail investors. Some brokerages let investors buy fractions of a share, but not all.
Companies that split their stock tend to outperform the broader market in the three-, six- and 12-month periods following the announcement of a split, according to a BofA Global Research report issued in March. Since 1980, the 12-month performance of companies that split their stock has more than doubled the S&P 500’s.
HOW HAS TESLA’S STOCK BEEN DOING?
Tesla shares closed at $889.36 Tuesday and are down about 16% for the year. A price around $296, while still not exactly cheap, could entice more investors to buy the stock.
Any investor in Tesla is in part making a bet on the company’s mercurial CEO, Elon Musk, who has succeeded in making Tesla the world’s most valuable automaker and himself the world’s richest man, according to Forbes.
But the ride can get bumpy with Musk at the wheel. In April, Musk struck a deal to buy the social media platform Twitter. Some Tesla investors sold their shares, worried that Musk would be distracted from running Tesla if the deal went through. The shares fell as low as $620 in late May.
Musk has since done an about-face and wants out of the deal. The dispute heads to court in October. Tesla’s stock began to recover in July, boosted by better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and an overall upward trend in the stock market.
HAVE OTHER NOTABLE COMPANIES SPLIT THEIR STOCK?
Amazon and Alphabet, the parent of Google, each split their stock 20-for-1 in the past few months. Both companies got swept up in a broad rally for big tech stocks after the initial shock of the pandemic and their shares soared north of $2,000.
Alphabet shares have risen 2% since its stock split went into effect on July 18 but are still down about 20% for the year. Google had its slowest revenue growth in two years in the second quarter, a sign that the tailwinds propelling big technology companies during the pandemic have shifted into a challenging new direction.
Amazon shares have gained almost 9% since the split took effect on June 6, but like Alphabet the company has faced challenges and its stock is down nearly 20% year to date. Consumers have shifted their behavior and are spending more on services and less on goods. Like many companies, Amazon has seen its own costs rise significantly.
Even GameStop, the so-called meme stock that rocketed to ridiculous heights last year before falling back to earth somewhat, decided to do a stock split. Although in GameStop’s case it had been retail investors who drove the stock higher in the first place.
GameStop shares closed Tuesday at $33.56 and are down about 6% since the split took effect, partially reflecting the drop in the market the past few days.
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Months before Russia invaded Ukraine, Yaroslav Yemelianenko decided to set up a battery-operated camera showing his company’s tourist information center at a checkpoint near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Imagine his surprise when sitting in his Kyiv apartment on Feb. 24, his livestream showed dozens of Russian tanks driving south from Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear power disaster, toward the Ukrainian capital.
“In two hours, we saw a huge amount of Russian equipment on the cameras,” Yemelianenko, the founder of Chernobyl Tour, said Tuesday.
Russian troops shut off all official government surveillance cameras, but didn’t notice the small camera Yemelianenko had installed to monitor his booth where his employees sold souvenirs and postcards to tourists.
Chernobyl Tour had been taking tourists through the “exclusion zone,” the radioactive area surrounding the plant, showing them the facility, a nearby city the Soviets built to house workers and radioactive forests.
Yemelianenko immediately decided to provide his video to the Ukrainian government. For several days, while the battery power lasted, Yemelianenko and colleagues monitored and transmitted data to the Ukrainian army every 10 to 15 minutes.
“Psychologically, it was difficult. On the one hand, we read the news with reassurance that no one would enter Kyiv. At the same time, we kept counting the number of (pieces of) Russian military equipment,” Yemelianenko said in an interview.
The stream of Russian military equipment just kept coming, all shown on the video monitor. Tanks, along with trucks carrying troops and communications equipment, stream along the gray road, past Yemlianenko’s booth bearing a radiation symbol and his company’s name, in English. So much Russian equipment was on the road that traffic jams developed on the way to Kyiv, 94 miles (150 kilometers) away.
After a few days, the signal was lost. Russian troops had seized the power plant, scene of the April 1986 nuclear catastrophe. But Yemelianenko and his team had already developed an alternative — a network of informants in villages near Chernobyl. Even though Russian forces already occupied these villages, the locals risked their safety to provide Yemelianenko details on the positions of military equipment.
Ukrainian forces subsequently took back control of the Chernobyl plant. With the passage of time and the military focus shifting elsewhere, the videos have made their way into the public domain.
The video offers a rare, first-hand glimpse into Russia’s earliest invasion moves, when the plan was to take Kyiv. Russian troops retreated from the capital in late March. Since then, Yemelianenko and his team have been volunteering in liberated villages to provide food and medicine.
While the risk of additional radiation leaks has abated at Chernobyl, it has increased because of fighting near Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, also in Ukraine, Zaporizhzhia.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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| 2022-09-21T15:10:59Z
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Elon Musk might have just gotten a leg up in his effort to back out of buying Twitter.
The billionaire Tesla CEO has spent months alleging that the company he agreed to buy for $44 billion undercounted its fake and spam accounts — and that he shouldn’t have to consummate the deal as a result.
Now, a whistleblower complaint from Twitter’s former security chief alleging the company misled regulators about its privacy and security protections — and its ability to detect and root out fake accounts — might play into Musk’s hands in an upcoming trial scheduled for Oct. 17 in Delaware.
Musk’s legal team, in fact, has already issued a subpoena to the whistleblower, Peiter Zatko — also known by his hacker handle “Mudge” — who served as Twitter’s head of security until he was fired early this year.
Alex Spiro, a lawyer representing Musk in his efforts to back out of buying Twitter, said the legal team “found his exit and that of other key employees curious in light of what we have been finding.”
Disclosure of the Mudge document changes the dynamic of the Twitter lawsuit from what appeared to be an easy win for Twitter, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in an interview.
“For Musk, it’s almost like a kid waking up on Christmas morning and seeing this under the tree,” he said. “It gives the Musk camp a leg to stand on going into the court battle.”
The whistleblower complaint boosts Musk’s claims on the spam bot issue, and will bring more focus on it in Washington, Ives said. “For Twitter’s board, it’s their worst nightmare that this came out at such a critical juncture.”
But Ives called the timing of the complaint “extremely interesting” just weeks before the trial in Delaware.
Twitter called the complaint “a false narrative” about the company and its privacy and data security practices “that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context.”
In an emailed statement, the company said Zatko’s “allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers and its shareholders.”
Some experts, though, see the whistleblower disclosure as little more than good optics for Musk.
While getting a lot of headlines, it probably won’t change what’s likely to be a Twitter victory in its lawsuit demanding that Musk go through with the purchase, said Erik Gordon, a University of Michigan law and business professor.
That’s because Musk knew of and complained on Twitter about the number of fake “spam bot” accounts the company had on its platform before he signed the deal, Gordon said. To void the purchase contract, Musk has to show a “material adverse change” in the company, a change so large that it would make the deal nothing like what Musk bargained for, Gordon said. “He can’t claim that he was misled. He can claim that the whistleblower said ‘Hey Elon, you were right.’ It hurts Twitter but doesn’t help Musk much.”
Gordon, who has taught merger and acquisition law, said the Delaware Court of Chancery normally doesn’t let people out of deals if the circumstances don’t go their way. It has ordered contracts to be performed in the past. The Mudge disclosure, he said, might give the Twitter board some cover to accept a settlement short of Musk buying the company. But he expects any settlement to exceed a $1 billion breakup fee in the contract.
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| 2022-09-21T15:11:06Z
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CHARLEROI, Belgium (AP) — A Belgian-British teenage pilot was on track Tuesday to become the youngest person to fly around the world solo in a small plane as he landed in southern Belgium ahead of the penultimate leg of his global odyssey.
Mack Rutherford, who turned 17 during the journey, touched down at Buzet Airstrip near the city of Charleroi, where he originally learned to fly. He’s due to land in Bulgaria on Wednesday. His aim: to displace Travis Ludlow of Britain, who was 18 when he set the record in 2021.
Rutherford is flying a Shark, one of the fastest ultralight aircraft in the world with a cruising speed reaching 300 kph (186 mph), which has been specially fitted out for the long journey. It’s normally a two-seater, but an extra fuel tank has been installed next to the young pilot.
It’s the same kind of aircraft used by his 19-year-old sister, Zara Rutherford, when she set the world record on Jan. 20 for the youngest woman to fly solo around the world.
Mack’s lonely journey, which began on March 23, took him through 52 countries over five continents. To conform with Guinness World Records requirements, the route crossed the equator twice.
“It was supposed to take between two to three months and it’s been five months now,” he told The Associated Press. Administrative formalities in Crete and Dubai “because of paperwork issues, visas, permits, things like that,” caused the delay.
The flight took him through Africa and the Gulf region — where he face periods of extreme heat — then on to India, China, South Korea and Japan. From there, he headed to Alaska and down the U.S. West Coast to Mexico. The teen then headed north again along the U.S. East Coast to Canada, across the Atlantic via Iceland, to the U.K. and Belgium.
If all goes well, and weather permitting, he’ll fly east across Europe via Slovakia and land at an airport in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, on Wednesday.
Proud father Sam Rutherford said his two children have set a shining example.
“They have got around the world safely, effectively, professionally. And they’ve shown to other youngsters that you don’t have to be 18 even, and certainly not 30, to make a difference and do something and follow your dreams,” he told AP.
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| 2022-09-21T15:11:20Z
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(NewsNation) — Health officials in northern Michigan are investigating reports of an unidentified, parvovirus-like illness being reported in dogs.
The unidentified illness, which has killed dozens of dogs, first appeared in Otsego and Clare counties, according to NewsNation local affiliate WOOD-TV.
A report from the Clare County Cleaver said more than 30 dogs in the area died in a matter of days from the virus.
On Facebook, the Otsego Animal Shelter said dogs they’ve seen have parvo-like symptoms such as bloody diarrhea, vomiting, lethargy and loss of appetite. However, when the canines are taken to a veterinarian, their parvo test comes back negative.
The illness is not affecting certain breeds more than others, Otsego Animal Shelter noted, and cases have been reported in counties around northern and central Michigan.
In a news release from the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the agency urged dog owners to work with their veterinarians to ensure their pet is up to date on routine vaccinations. Health officials also say dogs and puppies should be kept away from other animals until they are fully vaccinated or if the canines are showing any signs of illness.
According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, canine parvovirus — or “parvo” — affects the gastrointestinal tracts of dogs and is spread by “direct dog-to-dog contact and contact with contaminated feces (stool), environments, or people.”
The virus is highly contagious, with unvaccinated dogs and puppies under 4 months at the highest risk.
According to the MDARD, canine parvovirus is not contagious to people or other animals. Also, it should not be confused with Parvovirus B19, which infects only humans.
The AVMA says there is no specific drug out there that will kill parvovirus in infected dogs.
The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development is working with local animal control shelters, veterinarians, the Michigan State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and others to learn more about the reports and try to find a cause of the mystery illness.
“Our team at the MSU VDL has the expertise to lead this diagnostic investigation, including the detection and identification of potential infectious or toxic causes,” said Kim Dodd, director of the Michigan State University Diagnostic Laboratory. “Our work starts with looking for known causes of disease, and if none is found, we’ll explore novel explanations such as new virus variants. Our team is working hard to find clear answers, and we will provide an update when we know more.”
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| 2022-09-21T15:11:28Z
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — About 2,000 protesters upset with the government’s pandemic response converged Tuesday on New Zealand’s Parliament — but there was no repeat of the occupation six months ago in which protesters camped on Parliament grounds for more than three weeks.
Many of the protesters said they had no intention of trying to stay. And police ensured a repeat was unlikely by closing streets, erecting barricades and banning protesters from bringing structures onto Parliament’s grounds.
The previous protest created significant disruptions in the capital and ended in chaos as retreating protesters set fire to tents and hurled rocks at police.
This time there was also a counter-protest, with several hundred people gathering in front of Parliament as the main march entered the grounds. The two sides shouted insults but a line of police officers kept them physically separated.
The earlier protest had been more sharply focused on opposition to COVID-19 vaccination mandates.
New Zealand’s government initially required that health workers, teachers, police, firefighters and soldiers get vaccinated. But it has since removed most of those mandates, with the exception of health workers and some others. It has also removed requirements that people be vaccinated to visit stores and bars.
Tuesday’s protest was as much about lingering discontentment over the government’s handling of the crisis as it was about current rules, including a requirement that people wear masks in stores.
Protester Carmen Page said people who hadn’t been vaccinated face ongoing discrimination and people lost their jobs and homes as a result of the mandates, which she said amounted to government overreach.
“We’re not here to be controlled,” Page said. “We just want to live our lives freely. We want to work where we want to work, without discrimination.”
At the counter-protest, Lynne Maugham said she and her husband had extended a stay in the capital to attend.
“I’ve got nothing but respect for the mandates, for the vaccinations, for the way the health providers have handled the whole thing,” she said.
Maugham said the government hadn’t done everything perfectly but had done a good job overall. “There’s no blueprint for handling a pandemic,” she said.
Like many of the protesters opposing mandates and other government’s actions, Mania Hungahunga was part of a group called The Freedom & Rights Coalition and a member of the Christian fundamentalist Destiny Church.
Hungahunga said every New Zealander had been negatively impacted by the mandates. He said he’d traveled from Auckland to protest but wasn’t planning an occupation.
“We’re just here for the day, a peaceful day, just to get our message through to the public and the people of Wellington,” he said.
Many of the protesters said they were hoping that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern would get voted out in next year’s election. Protest leader Brian Tamaki told the crowd he was starting a new political party to contest the election.
Tamaki and his wife, Hannah Tamaki, founded the Destiny Church, which they say is the largest Māori and Pacific Island church movement in New Zealand.
Ardern was first elected prime minister in 2017 and her initial pandemic response proved enormously popular. Her liberal Labour Party won re-election in 2020 in a landslide of historic proportions.
But as the pandemic dragged on and the country faced new problems, including inflation, Ardern’s popularity has waned. Recent opinion polls have put the conservative opposition National Party ahead of Labour.
Authorities said there were no initial reports of violence or other problems at the protests.
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| 2022-09-21T15:11:43Z
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CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The Australian government will launch an inquiry aimed at preventing a prime minister from ever again secretly amassing new ministerial powers, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday.
Albanese’s predecessor Scott Morrison secretly appointed himself to five ministerial roles between March 2020 and May 2021, usually without the knowledge of the original minister.
After the revelations, Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue issued legal advice that Morrison had been “validly appointed” in the duplicated portfolios.
But to be appointed without notifying ministers, the parliament or the public was not “consistent with the principle of responsible government,” Donaghue said in his 29-page legal opinion, which Albanese released publicly Tuesday.
Morrison’s extraordinary power grab is seen as part of a wider trend in Australian politics to concentrate power within a leader’s office at the expense of the British Westminster tradition of delegating responsibilities among ministers.
Albanese, who replaced Morrison at May elections, said his Cabinet had been briefed on Donaghue’s advice on Tuesday and agreed to set up an inquiry into how to avoid a repeat of Morrison’s behavior.
Albanese’s office would immediately discuss with the staff of Governor-General David Hurley, who represents Queen Elizabeth II, Australia’s head of state, a plan to publish all future ministerial appointments.
Such publishing could be enshrined in law to ensure it was “not dependent upon the goodwill of the government of the day,” Albanese said.
“What we’re dealing with here wasn’t envisaged. I don’t think anyone in this room, certainly no one in the current government, sat around and said: ‘I wonder if Scott Morrison has been put in charge of the Department of Industry Science, the Department of Home Affairs or whether he’s made himself Treasurer?’” Albanese told reporters at a news conference.
Morrison, who is now an opposition lawmaker, told reporters last week that he usually kept his extra powers secret because they could be misconstrued. The portfolios were health, finance, treasury, resources and home affairs.
Morrison said his power grab had been an emergency measure made necessary by the coronavirus crisis, but his only known use of the secret powers had nothing to do with the pandemic. He overturned a decision by former minister Keith Pitt to approve a contentious gas exploration project north of Sydney that would have harmed his coalition’s reelection chances.
Morrison said on Tuesday he acted as he did as prime minister with the “best of intentions to do all I could to protect Australia in the face of multiple crises.
“I accept that many Australians will not agree with, accept or understand all the decisions I made during those difficult times,” Morrison said in a statement.
Those who want an Australian president to replace the British monarch as Australia’s head of state in a republic have been critical of the governor-general’s role in the secrecy.
While Hurley was obliged to follow Morrison’s advice in rubber-stamping the prime minister’s growing list of portfolios, critics argue a governor-general should have insisted on public disclosure.
Hurley’s office said in a statement: “The governor-general had no reason to believe that appointments would not be communicated.”
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TRUCKEE, Calif. (KTXL) — On Tuesday, an autopsy was performed by the Nevada County Sheriff-Coroner which identified the body found in Prosser Reservoir as Kiely Rodni, the missing 16 year-old girl.
After being missing for more than two weeks, Rodni’s body, along with her car, was found in the Prosser Reservoir by an independent group of searchers, Adventures with Purpose, on Sunday.
“We have located a decedent inside the vehicle,” Nevada County Sherrif Shannon Moon said in a news conference on Monday. “We believe it is our missing person. We have not been able to positively identify but it’s more than likely where we are today.”
Rodni was last seen in early August after reportedly attending a party with more than 100 minors and young adults near the Prosser Family Campground in Truckee, California, about 100 miles northeast of Sacramento.
The next day, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office told Nexstar’s KTXL they were treating her disappearance as a possible abduction since her car was also missing. The last known ping from Rodni’s cellphone was near Prosser Lake but previous searches prior to Sunday had not turned up any signs of Kiely or her vehicle.
About 35 minutes after Oregon-based Adventures with Purpose began searching Prosser Reservoir, diver Nick Rinn said he discovered Rodni’s vehicle.
“It’s an emotional moment for sure, especially when I first dropped down. The first thing I saw was the vehicle upside down. I looked at the license plate, could tell right away this was the vehicle that we were looking for,” Rinn told KTXL. He was also able to see human remains in the car.
“We notified family, and dad and grandpa were there less than two minutes,” team leader Doug Bishop said. “It was tough. It was very, very tough. Very tough moment.”
The Nevada County Sheriff’s Office says the investigation remains ongoing.
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| 2022-09-21T15:12:06Z
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(NEXSTAR) – If you’re planning to order or send gifts by mail this year, put a little extra aside for shipping.
As the United States Postal Service looks ahead to the peak holiday shipping season, the agency is planning to offset added costs by temporarily upping prices.
This “peak-season pricing” would be in effect from Oct. 2, 2022 to Jan. 22, 2023, USPS says.
Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, First-Class Package Service, Parcel Select and Retail Ground prices are all affected, though international products are not.
The change in price depends on the weight of the parcel and the distance it’s being shipped. Some changes are minor — as low as 25 cents — while others are substantial. The biggest price jump is $6.50 for shipping heavier, commercial Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express packages over long distances. (See a product-by-product breakdown from USPS.)
Businesses that use USPS to ship products, like small business owners on Etsy, for example, could raise shipping and handling fees to cover the peak pricing changes.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is also planning to request another permanent stamp price hike in January, the Associated Press reports. The price increases are necessary as inflation is expected to add $1 billion to USPS’ budget, DeJoy said.
The price of Forever stamps just went up in July from 58 cents to 60 cents. Less than a year ago, the stamps cost 55 cents.
“The fact of the matter is that we have a long road and a lot of hard work ahead in our 10-year transformation to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of the Postal Service,” DeJoy said to the Board of Governors earlier this month.
As the name of Forever stamps suggests, they can be used to mail a letter regardless of when they were purchased (or what price they were at the time).
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| 2022-09-21T15:12:13Z
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RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Weeks ahead of Brazil’s presidential election, police carried out search warrants Tuesday targeting several business leaders who allegedly participated in a private chat group that included comments favoring a possible coup and military involvement in politics.
The search and seizure warrants were issued by a Supreme Court justice who heads the nation’s electoral authority, according to a statement from the federal police. They were aimed at prominent supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro, according to two of the people whose properties were searched and an official with knowledge of the operation.
Many of the comments were speculative and appeared to reflect personal opinion rather than a coordinated effort to undermine Brazilian democracy. However, they fed into national jitters over whether Bolsonaro’s unsubstantiated allegations that the electoral system is vulnerable to fraud were laying the groundwork for a power grab if the vote doesn’t go his way.
The first round of the election is Oct. 2, with a possible runoff Oct. 30 if no candidate gets more than 50% of the votes.
According to the official with knowledge of the searches, the warrants targeted eight businessmen who appeared in a story last week on the online news site Metropoles, which published screenshots from their chat group on the WhatsApp messaging app. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.
Many of the executives appearing in the Aug. 17 Metropoles story have since said they support democracy, and allies of Bolsonaro immediately decried the operation as judicial overreach.
In 2018, Bolsonaro’s swift rise from fringe lawmaker to presidential candidate was turbocharged by automated WhatsApp messages that companies sent to voters en masse.
In addition to issuing the search warrants, Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the businessmen’s social media accounts be blocked and their bank accounts frozen, the online news site G1 reported. De Moraes also lifted seals on their banking records and authorized federal police to take depositions from the executives, the site reported.
“This is clearly an operation to intimidate any prominent figure from taking a political stand for Bolsonaro or against the left,” Eduardo Bolsonaro, the president’s son and a federal lawmaker, said on Twitter. “This is an attack on democracy in the midst of an electoral campaign. Censorship. There’s no other word!”
In its Aug. 17 story, Metropoles said it had been monitoring the WhatsApp group titled “Businessmen & Politics” for months. It reproduced messages allegedly sent by owners of a popular restaurant chain, shopping malls and construction companies, among others, expressing their allegiance to Bolsonaro and backing the president’s claims that the judicial system is working against him.
Some also highlighted the benefits of authoritarian governance models.
“I prefer a coup to the return of the Workers’ Party. A million times more,” one of the members is seen saying on a published screenshot, referring to the leftist party of the election’s front-runner, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “And certainly no one will stop doing business with Brazil. As they do with several dictatorships around the world.”
The Associated Press was not able to confirm the authenticity of the screenshots.
Bolsonaro contends the electronic voting machines used in Brazil since the mid-1990s are prone to fraud, without providing any evidence. He has also said some members of the electoral authority are favoring da Silva, who leads all polls to return to the job he held from 2003 to 2010.
The Supreme Court said in an email that de Moraes’ decision to issue the warrants is under seal. The brief police statement mentioned eight warrants in five states.
Among the targeted executives is Luciano Hang, owner of Brazilian retailer Havan and a fervent Bolsonaro supporter, several news outlets reported. On his official Twitter account, Hang said the Metropoles story was “irresponsible” and had created a fake narrative. “I never talked about a coup,” he said.
Other members of the group were more talkative. “If the side that we defend is victorious, the blood of the victims becomes the blood of heroes!” one executive wrote.
Another expressed interest in the executives granting bonuses to their employees who vote for Bolsonaro, before another member informed him this would probably constitute vote buying.
Other business leaders, even those who support Bolsonaro, have been more cautious.
A gathering in Sao Paulo on Friday had dozens of top executives coming out in defense of democracy, a rare feature in previous Brazilian elections since the end of the military rule in 1985. Some of the executives in attendance work for the same companies of leaders who call for a coup.
“Big change goes through congress. The executive is the organizer, but the transformative policies are in congress,” Vander Giordano, a vice president at shopping malls company Multiplan, told journalists. “When you have a moderating center in congress, you have a better debate of ideas, looking at both sides. And that is no matter who wins the election. Our democracy is strong.”
João Cox, who sat on the board of several Brazilian companies, said more businessmen support Bolsonaro now than four years ago. Still, most believe there won’t be huge changes in the short term if da Silva wins. “My worry is more about the long run,” Cox said.
Several members backed Bolsonaro’s promise for a large military parade on Sept. 7, Brazil’s Independence Day, along Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach. “I want to see if the Supreme Court has the courage to rig the elections after a military parade … with the troops applauded by the public,” one wrote.
The parade will “make it clear which side the Army is on,” another said.
Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes has said the military won’t parade, but rather hold a “limited” display there.
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Associated Press writer Mauricio Savarese in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.
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| 2022-09-21T15:12:21Z
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(KTLA) – Some of Hollywood’s biggest celebrities are accused of using too much water while the rest of southern California tries to conserve amid a drought emergency. But water resource officials say it’s not just the stars who are using more than their fair share – thousands are being warned about using too much water.
They’re some of the biggest names in Hollywood: Sylvester Stallone, Kevin Hart, and Kim and Kourtney Kardashian. They’re also apparently some of the biggest water wasters in the Hidden Hills neighborhood of Calabasas.
Las Virgenes Municipal Water District officials say the stars, some of which aren’t even home, are among some 1,600 customers who have surpassed 150% of their monthly water budgets at least four times since the agency declared a drought emergency last December.
Now water officials say they may install a device that will restrict their water usage to their properties.
“They are in line to get a flow restriction device put on their water meters in order to limit how much water they’re continuing to use,” said Michael McNutt of the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District.
McNutt says the device will cause indoor faucets to trickle out and outdoor sprinklers will go from flowing freely to sputtering to a stop.
He explains the only surefire way to avoid getting a flow restriction device is to contact the water district and sign a commitment form that you’ll work with the district to come into compliance. If you don’t, you’ll get a flow restriction device put on for two weeks straight.
“If, once it’s removed, they continue to exceed their water budgets by 150%, it’s put back on for a minimum of a month,” McNutt said.
Violators will also get hit with some pretty pricey fines for each violation.
Representatives for Stallone and retired NBA star Dwyane Wade say the are taking measures to reduce their water usage. Las Virgenes officials say all the stars who have been publicly outed are taking some of the necessary steps.
“The great thing about the celebrities is they’re all working with us to get to where they need to be,” McNutt said.
District officials say people need to do away with thirsty lawns and replace them with drought-tolerant landscaping and install drip irrigation, which sends the water straight to the root to help save things like trees.
In the meantime, water officials say they’d love to work with high-profile people to demonstrate how to create a more drought-tolerant California.
“What I would love for them to do is contact me and work with me to put out public service messages, not only about what they’re doing, but how people can be like them and be a part of the solution,” McNutt said.
Water officials say that they have installed about 50 of those flow restriction devices to different homes. McNutt says none of those homes belong to celebrities because all of them are cooperating to bring down their water usage.
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| 2022-09-21T15:12:28Z
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Inmates at a troubled West Virginia prison where James “Whitey” Bulger was beaten to death found out ahead of time that the notorious Boston gangster would be arriving, according to new details revealed in court.
Sean McKinnon, who is accused of acting as a lookout while two other men killed Bulger, told his mother on a phone call shortly before Bulger came to USP Hazelton in October 2018 that inmates were preparing for the arrival of a “higher profile person.”
After McKinnon told her that it was Bulger, she told him to stay away from the gangster, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Hannah Nowalk, according to a transcript of a hearing Monday in Ocala, Florida.
McKinnon told his mother: “I can’t,” to which she responded: “You get in trouble.”
“Don’t worry. Oh, I don’t plan it,” McKinnon said, according to the prosecutor.
The call was among new information disclosed about the slaying of 89-year-old Bulger during a detention hearing for 36-year-old McKinnon, who is charged with conspiring with two other men — Fotios “Freddy” Geas, 55, and Paul J. DeCologero, 48 — to kill Bulger hours after he arrived at Hazelton from another lockup in Florida.
Bulger’s killing has raised questions about why the known “snitch” was transferred to the troubled prison, known as “Misery Mountain,” and why he was placed in the general population instead of more protective housing.
An attorney for McKinnon, who was Geas’ cellmate, told the judge that the phone call doesn’t show he was involved in any plot to kill Bulger. She said it wasn’t just that McKinnon knew, but “the entire unit was alerted that Whitey Bulger was coming to the unit.”
“The fact that his roommate was a henchman has nothing to do with him. He didn’t select his roommate. The fact that he knew that doesn’t really tell the Court that he was involved in the conspiracy,” defense attorney Christine Bird said, according to the transcript.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Philip Lammens on Monday ruled that McKinnon should remain locked up until trial, calling him a risk of flight and danger to the community.
Nowalk told the judge that surveillance video shows Geas and DeCologero entering Bulger’s cell around 6 a.m. The footage shows McKinnon sitting at a table that faces Bulger’s cell while the other two men were inside the cell for about seven minutes. Bulger was found dead in his bed about two hours later, Nowalk said, according to the transcript.
An inmate witness told the grand jury in the case that he asked McKinnon and DeCologero if they were the guys who killed Bulger and they said they were, Nowalk said. That same witness “then indicated that Pauly (DeCologero) told him that Bulger was a snitch,” Nowalk said.
DeCologero “said as soon as they saw Bulger come into the unit, they planned to kill him,” Nowalk said. “And then Pauly (DeCologero) told this inmate witness that Sean McKinnon was the lookout,” she said.
An inmate witness will also testify that DeCologero said that he and Geas “used a belt with a lock attached to it” to beat Bulger to death, Nowalk said.
Bulger, who ran the largely Irish mob in Boston in the 1970s and ’80s, served as an FBI informant who ratted on his gang’s main rival, according to the bureau. He later became one of the nation’s most-wanted fugitives.
Bulger strongly denied ever being a government informant. An intake screening form Bulger signed after arriving at Hazelton said he answered “no” when asked if there were any reasons he should be kept out of the general population and if he ever assisted law enforcement in any way.
There is no attorney listed in the Bulger case yet for DeCologero, who has since been moved from Hazelton to another federal prison facility.
DeCologero, who was in an organized crime gang led by his uncle in Massachusetts, was convicted of buying heroin that was used to try to kill a teenage girl his uncle wanted dead because he feared she would betray the crew to police. The heroin didn’t kill her, so another man broke her neck, dismembered her and buried her remains in the woods, court records say.
Geas, a Mafia hitman, remains at Hazelton. He and his brother were sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for their roles in several violent crimes, including the 2003 killing of Adolfo “Big Al” Bruno, a Genovese crime family boss in Springfield, Massachusetts. Geas remains in prison at Hazelton.
McKinnon had been on supervised release when he was arrested last week in Florida on charges including conspiracy to commit first degree murder. He is also charged separately with making false statements to a federal agent. Prosecutors say he told federal agents he wasn’t aware of what happened to Bulger.
McKinnon pleaded guilty in 2015 to stealing a dozen handguns from a Vermont firearms dealer. He was moved to a halfway house in February before being released from there in July.
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| 2022-09-21T15:12:36Z
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BEIJING (AP) — China is easing its tight restrictions on visas after it largely suspended issuing them to foreign students and others more than two years ago at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The website of the Chinese Embassy in India said the updated procedures would take effect from Wednesday, without mentioning specific requirements for vaccines or proof of a negative virus test.
China still requires those arriving from abroad be quarantined at a hotel or private home and proof of a negative test is required for entry to many public and commercial spaces.
The easing of visa restrictions is significant for Indian students, especially those pursuing degrees in medicine that are far more affordable in China than in Western nations.
“For students who return to China to resume their studies: ‘Certificate of Returning to Campus’ issued by the university in China” is required, the Embassy said.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington also posted a notice saying the new rules for students and others would take effect from Wednesday.
Similar notes were posted on the websites of other Chinese embassies and consulates including in Pakistan, a long-time Chinese ally, the Philippines, with whom it contests territory in the South China Sea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan and the northern English city of Manchester. Other embassy websites were temporarily inaccessible, but the Foreign Ministry’s move appears to indicate steps toward a broader restoration of foreign engagement.
Preference was given to holders of travel permits issued by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and students who have already obtained residency rights in China that allow them to live and work in the country, similar to a U.S. Green Card.
China largely closed its borders after the virus was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. The government has pursued a hard-line “zero-COVID” policy that has seen millions placed under lockdown, but such measures have gradually been lifted amid reduced case numbers and public outcry against the economic and social costs.
Sporadic outbreaks continue to occur, with 1,641 new cases of domestic transmission announced Wednesday, including in far-flung regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang in the northwest. Most of those were asymptomatic and no new deaths were reported.
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| 2022-09-21T15:12:44Z
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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — A jury on Tuesday convicted two men of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, delivering swift verdicts in a plot that was broken up by the FBI and described as a rallying cry for a U.S. civil war by anti-government extremists.
The result was a big victory for the U.S. Justice Department. A different jury just four months ago couldn’t reach unanimous decisions on Adam Fox or Barry Croft Jr. but acquitted two other men, a stunning conclusion that led to a second trial.
Their arrests nearly two years ago came at an extremely tense time: the volatile homestretch of the election between Joe Biden and then-President Donald Trump playing out against a backdrop of armed protests over COVID-19 restrictions, especially in Michigan.
Jury selection in the retrial of Fox and Croft coincidentally occurred a day after FBI agents searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate for documents, putting the agency in headlines at the same time that the judge was trying to detect any biases about law enforcement in the jury pool.
Fox and Croft were convicted Tuesday of two counts of conspiracy related to the kidnapping scheme and attempts to use a weapon of mass destruction. Prosecutors said they wanted to blow up a bridge to disrupt police if the abduction could be pulled off at Whitmer’s vacation home.
Croft, 46, a trucker from Bear, Delaware, was also convicted of another explosives charge. The jury deliberated for roughly eight hours over two days.
“Today’s verdicts prove that violence and threats have no place in our politics and those who seek to divide us will be held accountable. They will not succeed,” said Whitmer, a Democrat, who turned 51 years old on Tuesday.
“But we must also take a hard look at the status of our politics,” she added. “Plots against public officials and threats to the FBI are a disturbing extension of radicalized domestic terrorism that festers in our nation, threatening the very foundation of our republic.”
Law enforcement officials across the country have been warning about an increase in threats and the potential for violence against agents or buildings.
Fox and Croft, who face sentences of up to life in prison, just stared at the jury as the verdicts were read. Defense attorney Christopher Gibbons shook his head while another defense lawyer, Joshua Blanchard, removed his glasses.
Jurors declined to speak to reporters.
“It’s been a good fight. We were hoping for a different outcome,” Gibbons said.
During closing arguments Monday, a prosecutor had a blunt message: No one can strap on an AR-15 rifle and body armor and snatch a governor.
“But that wasn’t the defendants’ ultimate goal,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler said. “They wanted to set off a second American civil war, a second American Revolution, something that they call the boogaloo. And they wanted to do it for a long time before they settled on Gov. Whitmer.”
The investigation began when Army veteran Dan Chappel joined a Michigan paramilitary group and became alarmed when he heard talk about killing police. He agreed to become an FBI informant and spent the summer of 2020 getting close to Fox and others, secretly recording conversations and participating in drills at “shoot houses” in Wisconsin and Michigan.
The FBI turned it into a major domestic terrorism case with two more informants and two undercover agents embedded in the group. Evidence showed the group had many gripes, particularly over stay-at-home orders and other pandemic restrictions imposed by Whitmer.
Fox, Croft and others, accompanied by the government operatives, traveled to northern Michigan to see Whitmer’s vacation home at night and a bridge that could be destroyed. Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, too, were on that ride. They pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution.
Whitmer was not physically harmed; six men were arrested hours away from her home in October 2020.
David Porter, who leads the FBI in western Michigan, hailed the verdicts.
“Here in America, if you disagree with your government you have options. … What you cannot do is plan or commit acts of violence,” he said outside the courthouse.
Defense attorneys tried to put the FBI on trial, repeatedly emphasizing through cross-examination of witnesses and during closing remarks that federal players were present at every crucial event and had entrapped the men.
Fox and Croft, they said, were “big talkers” who liked to smoke marijuana and were guilty of nothing but exercising their right to say vile things about Whitmer and government.
“This isn’t Russia. This isn’t how our country works,” Blanchard, Croft’s attorney, told jurors. “You don’t get to suspect that someone might commit a crime because you don’t like things that they say, that you don’t like their ideologies.”
Gibbons said the FBI isn’t supposed to create “domestic terrorists.” He described Fox, 39, as poor and living in the basement of a Grand Rapids-area vacuum shop, which was a site for meetings with Chappel and an agent.
Hours after the verdicts, U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker unsealed his Aug. 14 findings about a juror. Blanchard had disclosed early in the trial that his office took a call from someone who said the juror was eager to get picked and would vote to convict.
“The juror repeatedly and consistently denied making any such statements,” said Jonker, who, with staff, spoke to the person in private. “Based on the court’s observation of the juror’s demeanor and behavior, these responses were credible.”
In separate but related cases, eight other men linked to the kidnapping scheme are being prosecuted by the Michigan attorney general in state courts.
Whitmer in 2020 blamed Trump for stoking mistrust and fomenting anger over coronavirus restrictions and refusing to condemn hate groups and right-wing extremists like those charged in Michigan.
On Aug. 6, three days before jury selection, Trump told conservative activists that the kidnapping plan was a “fake deal.”
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Find the AP’s full coverage of the kidnapping plot trial: https://apnews.com/hub/whitmer-kidnap-plot-trial
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White reported from Detroit.
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Follow Ed White at http://twitter.com/edwritez
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| 2022-09-21T15:12:59Z
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The attorney for a man seen on video being punched and kneed by Arkansas officers said Tuesday that the violent arrest is part of an alleged pattern of excessive force by a sheriff’s deputy, and policing experts said some of the blows appeared to be unjustified or even criminal.
A bystander’s video of 27-year-old Randal Worcester’s arrest on Sunday in the small town of Mulberry sparked outrage after it was posted online. All three officers were later suspended, and state and federal authorities have opened criminal investigations into their actions. It’s the latest case in which increasingly omnipresent cameras have led to consequences for officers and raised questions about what level of force police are justified in using and when.
An Arkansas sheriff’s deputy was caught in the video repeatedly punching and kneeing Worcester in the head before grabbing his hair and slamming him against the pavement. As that was happening, another officer was holding Worcester down as a third also kneed him over and over.
Carrie Jernigan, an attorney for Worcester, said the deputy who punched him, Levi White, used excessive force against other people she’s representing. “There’s something going on and we just need to get it addressed,” she said during a Tuesday news conference with her two other clients.
Russell Wood, a lawyer for the two Crawford County sheriff’s deputies, stressed that the 34-second clip doesn’t show everything that happened and said Worcester had earlier attacked one of the deputies, leaving him with a concussion. Wood said in a statement that the deputy’s “pain compliance strikes” didn’t do any “damage” and that Worcester’s own violence authorized the officers to use “all necessary force.”
Policing experts, however, say that blows to the head amount to the potentially deadly use of force and are only justified in an arrest when a suspect poses a current and serious threat. They say a full investigation is needed, but that the video raises obvious “red flags” about the actions of the officers, who had Worcester pinned to the ground by the time the bystander began recording from a nearby car.
“Depending on your level of resistance, (officers) could use defensive strikes or what they call pain strikes to get compliance, but that’s not a blow to the head,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminology professor who studies the use of force by police. “He would have to be doing something pretty serious to get hit in the head like that.”
Worcester’s arrest came after police received reports about a man making threats outside of a convenience store in Mulberry, a community of about 1,600 people roughly 140 miles (220 kilometers) northwest of Little Rock, near the Oklahoma state line. He was treated at a hospital on Sunday before being jailed on charges including second-degree battery and resisting arrest. He was released Monday on a $15,000 bond.
Crawford County Sheriff Jimmy Damante said that when officers arrived at the convenience store, Worcester turned over an unspecified “weapon” but then became violent. The sheriff’s office identified the three officers involved as deputies Zack King and White and local police officer Thell Riddle.
State records show that Riddle was fired in 2008 from the police department in the nearby town of Kibler after just six months on the job for being involved in a “domestic disturbance” when a woman claimed he hit her in the eye. Riddle was not charged. The records from the state Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training, first reported Monday by the Arkansas Advocate, also show that Riddle resigned from the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office after nearly eight years in 2008 because of “personal conflicts.”
Wood said Worcester had been threatening a woman with a knife and, upon being confronted, grabbed White by the legs and slammed him to the ground, stunning the deputy. Worcester then climbed onto White and “began striking him on the back of the head and face,” the attorney said.
Wood called on the Mulberry police to release dashboard-camera video, which he said shows more of what happened, and contended that in such a situation the suspect “must be taken off the streets at all costs.”
Officers’ use of force is regulated by both the law and department policy. Bowling Green State University criminologist Philip Stinson called what is shown on the footage of Worcester’s arrest “completely unwarranted.” He said an earlier attack on one of the officers might explain their actions — suggesting their later beating of the man was punitive — but that it wouldn’t provide them a legal justification.
“The force was excessive and, in my view, criminal,” said Stinson, a former officer.
The prosecution of police for using force on the job is relatively rare, and body-worn and dashboard camera videos often show officers’ actions were justified. But the increasing presence of police cameras and bystanders with cellphones has also provided evidence that sometimes undercuts officers’ explanations of their use of force.
In neighboring Louisiana, a state trooper also explained his use of force during a 2019 arrest as “pain compliance.” The trooper later resigned and was arrested and charged with state and federal crimes after his bodycam footage showed him striking a Black motorist 18 times with a flashlight as the man wailed, “I’m not resisting!”
Stinson said that, thus far, ubiquitous cameras have not changed policing as much as they’ve revealed it.
“This type of thing happens with great regularity,” he said.
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This story has been corrected to show Russell Wood is not representing a Mulberry police officer.
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| 2022-09-21T15:13:15Z
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ORLANDO, Fla. (WFLA) – A man from Orlando, Florida, will now spend the rest of his life in prison for abusing his stepson.
Timothy Lee Wilson, 36, was arrested and found guilty on numerous counts of false imprisonment, aggravated child abuse and child neglect in June, after a server at the Mrs. Potato restaurant in Orlando noticed that an 11-year-old child was being kept from eating by his family on New Year’s Day.
The server, identified as Flaviane Carvalho, also noticed bruising on the 11-year-old’s face and arms, prompting her to hold up a sign — out of Wilson’s sight — to get the boy’s attention.
“Do you need help?” the sign read.
When the child nodded that he did, Carvalho called the police.
Further investigation found that Wilson tortured and abused his stepson in a variety of ways, the State Attorney’s Office for Orange and Osceola Counties wrote in a news release upon his conviction in June. Police said the child’s mother, Kristen Swann, knew of the abuse and did not get the boy medical care.
“[The child] had been tortured, maliciously punished, and deprived of food and water for days at a time,” according to the news release. “A search warrant revealed that the victim was kept in a separate hotel room used for storage, away from Mr. Wilson, the victim’s mother, and the younger sibling.”
The boy’s was also made to do “military-style exercises” and “hung upside down from a door by his neck and feet, and at one point, handcuffed to a dolly cart on Christmas Day,” the State Attorney wrote.
Orlando Rolón, the then-Orlando chief of police, believed at the time that the boy could have possibly died had Wilson’s abuse continued.
“We probably would’ve been talking about a potential homicide investigation if [Carvalho] had not intervened when she did,” Chief Rolón said.
On June 6, a six-person jury found Wilson guilty of two counts of false imprisonment of a child under 13, three counts of aggravated child abuse with a weapon, four counts of aggravated child abuse, and one count of child neglect.
Wilson was sentenced to life on Friday morning, a judicial assistant at the Orange County Courthouse confirmed. Specifically, he was sentenced to multiple life sentences and multiple 30-year sentences, to run concurrently.
The victim’s mother, meanwhile, was charged with two counts of child neglect.
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| 2022-09-21T15:13:22Z
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A former Louisville police detective who helped falsify the warrant that led to the deadly police raid at Breonna Taylor’s apartment has pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge.
Federal investigators said Kelly Goodlett added a false line to the warrant and later conspired with another detective to create a cover story when Taylor’s March 13, 2020, shooting death by police began gaining national attention.
Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was shot to death by officers who knocked down her door while executing a drug search warrant. Taylor’s boyfriend fired a shot that hit one of the officers as they came through the door and they returned fire, striking Taylor multiple times.
Goodlett, 35, appeared in a federal courtroom in Louisville on Tuesday afternoon and admitted to conspiring with another Louisville police officer to falsify the warrant. Goodlett briefly answered several questions from federal judge Rebecca Jennings Grady.
Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, was in the courtroom Tuesday but did not speak after the proceedings.
Three former Louisville officers were indicted on criminal civil rights charges earlier this month by a federal grand jury. Goodlett was not indicted, but charged in a federal information filing, which likely means the former detective is cooperating with investigators.
Goodlett will be sentenced Nov. 22. Grady said there may be “extenuating circumstances” that may move the court to push back the sentencing date. Part of the plea hearing was also kept under seal and was not discussed in open court Tuesday. She faces up to five years in prison for the conviction.
She resigned from the department Aug. 5, a day after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced new federal charges in the Taylor case.
Former officers Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany were indicted on charges related to the warrant used to search Taylor’s home. A third former officer, Brett Hankison, was charged with using excessive force when he retreated from Taylor’s door, turned a corner and fired 10 shots into the side of her two-bedroom apartment. He was acquitted by a jury on similar state charges earlier this year. Jaynes, Meany and Hankison have all been fired.
The three former officers face a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted on the civil rights charges.
Federal prosecutors said in court records that Jaynes, who drew up the Taylor warrant, had claimed to Goodlett days before the warrant was served that he had “verified” from a postal inspector that a suspected drug dealer was receiving packages at Taylor’s apartment. But Goodlett knew this was false and told Jaynes the warrant did not yet have enough information connecting Taylor to criminal activity, prosecutors said. She added a paragraph saying the suspected drug dealer, Jamarcus Glover, was using Taylor’s apartment as his current address, according to the court records.
Two months later, when the Taylor shooting was attracting national headlines, the postal inspector told a media outlet he had not verified packages for Glover were going to Taylor’s apartment. Jaynes and Goodlett then met in Jaynes’ garage to “get on the same page” before Jaynes talked to investigators about the Taylor warrant, court records said.
They decided to say Sgt. John Mattingly, who is identified in the court records as J.M., told them Glover was receiving packages at Taylor’s home, according to prosecutors. Mattingly was shot in the leg during the raid at Taylor’s apartment.
Meany, who signed off on the Taylor warrant and was still a Louisville police sergeant when he was indicted on Aug. 4, was fired by Louisville Police Chief Erika Shields on Friday.
Shields said in a statement that Meany has not yet had his case heard by a jury, but “he is facing multiple federal charges after a lengthy investigation by the DOJ” and should not “expect continued employment under such conditions.”
Hankison was the only officer charged who was on the scene the night of the killing.
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LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — Gary Gaines, coach of the Texas high school football team made famous in the book and movie “Friday Night Lights,” has died. He was 73.
Gaines’ family said in a statement the former coach died Monday in Lubbock after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
Gaines made many stops in West Texas during a 30-year coaching career, but was best known for a four-year stint leading the highly successful program at Odessa Permian. Gaines returned to Permian later in his career.
His 1988 team was chronicled in Buzz Bissinger’s bestselling book, which portrayed a program and school that favored football over academics and attributed racist comments to assistant coaches.
Gaines, who was played by Billy Bob Thornton in the 2004 movie, said he never read the book and felt betrayed by Bissinger after the author spent the entire 1988 season with the team.
The book, which portrayed Gaines as a compassionate coach caught in the win-at-all-costs culture of a high school program in football-crazed Texas, also was turned into a TV series.
Permian lost in the state semifinals in 1988, a season that included the loss of star running back James “Boobie” Miles to a knee injury during a preseason scrimmage. Miles’ character played a prominent role in the movie.
The book described scenes of “for sale” signs being placed in the front yard of Gaines’ home. His record from 1986-89 was 47-6-1.
Gaines led Permian to the fifth of the program’s six state championships with a perfect season in 1989, then left to become an assistant coach at Texas Tech.
He later coached two of Permian’s rivals, Abilene High and San Angelo Central, before returning to college as the coach at Abilene Christian. Another four-year run as Permian’s coach started in 2009, and Gaines also was a school district athletic director in Odessa and Lubbock.
“I just can’t find the words to pay respects,” retired coach Ron King, a former Permian assistant, told the Odessa American. “It’s a big loss for the coaching profession. There are a lot of coaches he took under his wing and mentored.”
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| 2022-09-21T15:13:37Z
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(NEXSTAR) — Starting Wednesday, Subway is giving customers the chance to get 50% off sandwiches for one month starting Sept. 1 — but spots are limited. Here’s how it works.
The Subway Footlong Pass is $15 and will only be sold to 10,000 rewards members, Subway says. Pass holders will be able to get 50% off one footlong sub one time per day through September.
The average price for a footlong sub depends on toppings and locations.
Subway’s pass joins the likes of Taco Bell’s Taco Lover’s Pass, launched last year, which let users get one taco per day with a $5-$10 monthly subscription. Likely because they are often so hard to obtain, when fast food and fast casual chains announce subscription or unlimited passes they generate a lot of buzz.
Among the most famous restaurant passes is Olive Garden’s Never Ending Pasta Pass, which offers buyers nine weeks of unlimited pastas for $100. The sought-after item hasn’t been available since 2019, however.
Another legendary pass is McDonald’s Gold Card, which grants free food for life to the lucky few who managed to get their hands on one.
Sales of Subway’s Footlong Pass start at 8 a.m. ET August 24 and end at 7:59 a.m. ET August 26, and are available while supplies last.
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| 2022-09-21T15:13:44Z
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ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece will gradually extend a fence along its land border with Turkey and increase surveillance measures following an increase in illegal immigration from its eastern neighbor, the Greek government said Tuesday.
The decision was taken during a meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, of top immigration, security and military officials.
A government statement said the meeting discussed “the problem of increased pressure for illegal entry, both along the land border and along the sea border” in the eastern Aegean Sea.
Greece has already built a 40-kilometer (25-mile) fence in the area of the Evros River, along the northeastern land border. Athens has repeatedly accused Ankara of deliberately sending thousands of migrants who live in Turkey into Greece to destabilize its neighbor. Relations between the two regional rivals are tense over immigration and undersea energy exploration rights.
In 2020, Turkey said it was throwing open its western borders to migrants who wanted to travel on to Europe. Greece stepped up frontier security to prevent thousands of people from breaking through in the Evros region, and subsequently expanded the existing fence.
“It was decided to gradually expand the fence along the whole length of the Evros,” with an initial focus on potential trouble spots, Tuesday’s statement said. “It was also decided to upgrade and strengthen surveillance systems.”
Greece has also accused Turkey of encouraging or facilitating illegal immigration by sea of thousands of people from the Middle East, Asia and Africa who try to reach the nearby Greek islands in unseaworthy boats. Turkish authorities, and human rights groups, have in turn accused Greece of illegally returning asylum-seekers who make it onto Greek territory without allowing them to make their asylum bids.
Greek authorities were criticized this month over a group of mainly Syrians reported trapped for days on an islet in the Evros River. Greek officials said the islet was on the Turkish side of the border. They were eventually located at a different location on the Greek side, after being allegedly pushed back and forth for days by both sides.
After nearly a million people entered Europe across the Greek-Turkish border in 2015, an agreement between the European Union and Ankara sought to limit the flows. But it hasn’t been fully implemented.
Turkey hosts large migrant populations. Greece argues that its neighbor is a safe destination for asylum-seekers who should therefore not seek to travel on westwards.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of migration issues at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
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STOCKHOLM (AP) — The longtime leader of the nationalist Sweden Democrats says he’s hoping for a stronger role as a “blow torch” in Swedish politics after a parliamentary election next month even if he doesn’t get a seat in the next government.
Jimmie Akesson, who for almost two decades has sought to move his party from the far-right fringe toward the mainstream, has joined forces with a center-right opposition bloc in a bid to unseat the Social Democratic minority government led by Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson.
Akesson’s party already has had a significant impact on politics in Sweden. Both the center-left government and the opposition in recent years have adopted tougher stances on crime and immigration — core issues for the Sweden Democrats.
“Fundamentally, it is a good thing. We want to change society. We want to make things better. So we welcome when other parties adopt our policies,” Akesson, 43, told The Associated Press after a campaign speech Monday in the southern city of Helsingborg.
Because of its far-right roots, Akesson’s party was treated as a pariah by all other parties when it first entered parliament in 2010. The Sweden Democrats were seen as a threat to fundamental values in Swedish society, including tolerance toward asylum-seekers from conflict zones in the Middle East and Africa.
But the debate on migration has shifted amid growing concerns about how well some immigrants are integrating, increasingly segregated cities and a rise in gang violence.
After losing two consecutive elections, three of Sweden’s four center-right parties are now campaigning to form a government with the support of the Sweden Democrats after the Sept. 11 vote and making similar promises of longer prison terms for violent criminals and more restrictive policies for asylum-seekers.
Polls show the the opposition neck-and-neck with a center-left bloc led by the Social Democrats. The Sweden Democrats are polling around 18%-19%, slightly better than the party’s 2018 election result of 17.5% of the vote.
Akesson told the AP that while he would prefer to be in government, he’s not at this stage demanding Cabinet seats if the center-right opposition win the election — as long as he can wield influence from the outside as a “blow torch, a watchdog that makes sure that they actually carry through” on their promises.
His party, which says it rejects fascism and Nazism, recently published a study into the roots of the Sweden Democrats. Swedish newspaper Expressen revealed the author was a party member. Nonetheless, the investigation confirmed that several of the party’s founders in the 1980s had links to fascist and neo-Nazi movements.
Akesson said it was good to get an “academic” review of the party’s past, though he thinks the results were of limited political value since the party’s origins were already well known.
“Those who founded our party are no longer taking part,” he told the AP. “Most of them disappeared already after one or two years. So the Sweden Democrats today is something different from what was founded about 30 years ago.”
Akesson joined the Sweden Democrats in the mid-’90s and took over as party leader in 2005. He softened the party’s image, changed its official logo from a torch to a flower and expelled the most radical members.
But critics say the party’s roots shine through in the rhetoric of its top officials. Social Democratic and center-right officials criticized the party’s spokesman on criminal justice issues, Tobias Andersson, last week for a tweet regarding the Sweden Democrats’ campaign advertisement on the Stockholm subway.
Posting a picture of a train car covered in the party logo, Andersson wrote: “Welcome to the repatriation train. You have a one-way ticket. Next stop, Kabul.”
Andersson refused to apologize for the tweet, saying it was mocking those who were offended by the party’s campaign posters. Social Democratic Justice Minister Morgan Johansson responded that the tweet showed the true nature of the group that center-right parties were trying to form a government with.
Like many far-right and right-wing populist parties in Europe, the Sweden Democrats have also been accused of sympathies toward Russian President Vladimir Putin. A week before the Ukraine invasion, when asked in an interview with public broadcaster SVT which leader he preferred — U.S. President Joe Biden or Putin — Akesson replied “it depends on the context.”
Speaking Monday, Akesson said the party’s line on Putin’s government was clear.
“We said 12 years ago when we entered Parliament that we must build up the armed forces because Putin is getting more and more aggressive, and then other parties said that’s not necessary,” he said. “Today, Russia is more or less a full-scale dictatorship that in addition is carrying out crimes against international law against its neighbors.”
The Sweden Democrats used to be skeptical toward NATO membership but, like the governing Social Democrats, turned in favor of joining the alliance together with neighboring Finland after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The NATO application is undergoing a ratification process and is not an issue in the election.
___ Associated Press contributor Anders Kongshaug in Copenhagen contributed to this report.
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BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — The two top officials of Hungary’s meteorological service were fired Monday after an inaccurate rain forecast prompted the postponement of a fireworks display on the country’s most important national holiday.
The firings of the head and deputy head of the National Meteorological Service prompted accusations of political interference from Hungary’s nationalist government.
The annual St. Stephen’s Day fireworks show along the Danube River in Budapest — billed as the largest display in Europe — was called off Saturday afternoon based on forecasts that said extreme weather was likely around the 9 p.m. start time.
By evening, the storms had not materialized in the capital, but the show, which typically draws more than a million spectators, already had been rescheduled for the next week due to safety concerns.
The firings were announced in a brief statement by Minister of Technology and Industry Laszlo Palkovics, a top cabinet member in the government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The fired weather service chief, Kornelia Radics, had served in her post since 2013 and her deputy, Gyula Horvath, since 2016.
While the minister did not provide a reason for the dismissals, the meteorological service had received harsh criticism in Hungary’s government-aligned media, which charged that the service’s “gravely wrong” forecast had caused a needless postponement of the fireworks display.
The Ministry of Technology and Industry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Critics of Orban’s government, which has been accused of corruption, nepotism and anti-democratic tendencies, charged that the firings were politically motivated and reminiscent of Hungary’s communist past.
In a Tuesday statement, the meteorological service demanded the reinstatement of its fired leaders. The agency described coming under “political pressure” concerning its assessments of weather models on the holiday and that those applying the pressure “ignored the scientifically accepted uncertainty inherent in meteorological forecasts.”
“It is our firm view that, despite considerable pressure from decision-makers, our colleagues … provided the best of their knowledge and are not responsible for any alleged or actual damage,” the service wrote.
Independent lawmaker Akos Hadhazy wrote in a Facebook post Monday that the meteorological service had “never before had such a responsibility. They can choose to remain silent, or they can choose to strike until the chief, who was fired in a communist-style move, is reinstated.”
“Their decision could change the fate of the whole country,” Hadhazy wrote.
The planned St. Stephen’s Day display, held every Aug. 20, was to present “a condensed chronicle of a thousand years from the birth of Christian Hungary to the present day, focusing on the lessons of national values,” according to the event’s website.
It was billed as a “tableau of the great periods and significant moments of Hungarian history, emphasizing the important national values that can also provide a moral lesson for everyday life.”
While the display is a popular annual event, some Hungarians oppose its scale and cost in the country of fewer than 10 million inhabitants. A petition against holding the display gathered nearly 200,000 signatures, arguing the money should be used to support Hungary’s floundering economy.
“In a country where the currency is weakening day by day while prices are rising, there is no place for such a luxurious spectacle,” the petition reads.
The postponement of the fireworks came 16 years after a deadly St. Stephen’s Day event in 2006, when strong storms with wind gusts of up to 60 miles per hour (100 kilometers per hour) hit Budapest as around 1.5 million people had gathered to view the display.
Five people were killed and more than 300 were injured amid the panic that ensued.
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VILLAGE OF TEWA, Ariz. (AP) — They skateboarded on basketball courts and in parking lots, through highway intersections and down roads that twist from the mesas that rise above the high desert.
They set up tricks with old railroad ties and lumber, sometimes using their own skateboards to move the materials in place. During a pandemic that led to lockdowns, curfews and mask mandates on the Hopi reservation, the solo nature of skateboarding was a comfort.
But the reservation that borders the northeast corner of Arizona lacked a designated skate spot. So a group of Hopi teenagers made it happen, seeing out a project they initially thought would take months and displaying the Hopi cultural value of sumi’nangwa — coming together for the greater good.
“I hope this will inspire other youth groups to try and do something like this to make the Hopi community a better place for the future generations of our people,” said Quintin “Q” Nahsonhoya, one of a handful of co-leads on the project.
The skateboarding destination opened late this spring in the Village of Tewa. It’s called Skate 264 for the highway that runs through the 2,500 square-mile (6,474-square-kilometer) Hopi reservation and connects the more than dozen villages. Kira Nevayaktewa came up with the logo that features a cat named “Skategod” that was part of the crew.
The youth group first wanted to ensure the community wanted a skate park, so they surveyed residents who overwhelmingly supported the idea. The group received a grant for branding, sold merchandise to raise money, secured a plot of land and got materials donated through partnerships.
Skate parks have popped up across Indian Country in recent years, many of them youth-led. Some host competitions like one on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota or the All Nations Skate Jam held during the Gathering of Nations powwow in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to much smaller spots like those on Hopi. Native Americans also have created their own brands of skateboards that feature traditional designs with modern twists. The sport that has Indigenous roots tied to surfing has gained even more acceptance since it debuted at the 2020 Olympics, said Betsy Gordon, who curated an exhibit on skateboarding in Native communities at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
“That gives it legitimacy in a lot of adult eyes, people who are making the rules or who fund (skate parks),” she said. “This sense of skateboarding being outsider and niche and oppositional and dangerous, I think it’s really disappearing.”
The creators of the Hopi skate spot — all teenagers when they started work in it in late 2020 — make it clear skateboarding is for everyone. Go at your own pace. Create your own style. No one is too good to fall, they say in an online Wipe Out Wednesday feature.
In one of their videos, someone picks up a skateboard for the first time, learns new tricks and is celebrated even when he doesn’t land them.
“For Hopi, a lot of things have to do from the heart and not willing to give up,” said Terrill Humeyestewa, one of the co-leads. “The skateboard is is kind of the same principle as that. Have a good mind, strong heart, think about what you’re doing it for and everything will work out OK.”
The co-leads, who also include Laela Nevayaktewa and Jacque Thorpe, have a mix of shy and outspoken characteristics. Each of them became comfortable talking with people outside their circle of family and friends. They got approval from the Village of Tewa for land to build the skate spot — no small feat on tribal land where development requires approval from clans, permit holders or the larger community.
The group raised money by selling beanies, stickers and shirts at roadside stands. Nahsonhoya’s father, Brandon, and stepmother, Valaura, served as fiscal sponsors and created partnerships with a Phoenix-area skateboard company that donated the ramp and props, and others who donated concrete for the foundation. Other family members and the broader community helped with the manual labor, feeding the crew or providing guidance.
Some of the co-leads have graduated high school since starting the project, others are finishing up. While safety was a priority, they said they also wanted to bring joy to others through skateboarding, stay active and avoid bad influences.
“It keeps you from doing nothing with your time, and that’s how I see Hopi and skateboarding coming together, filling your days and your time with something positive,” Thorpe said.
Adult mentors lent their skills for video production, photography, graphic design and organizing to keep the group on track and encourage them.
“I didn’t know about skateboarding, but what I do know is community organizing and local fundraising, and I have a lot of connections in the community, so I can figure it out with you guys,” Samantha Honanie, a mentor, told the group.
“If they believed in themselves, we were going to walk them through this whole process,” said Paul Molina, another mentor.
The Village of Tewa now is overseeing the park and eventually will have security guards to patrol the area. Village leaders are hoping to add lights and a basketball court alongside the softball fields for the youth, said Deidra Honyumptewa, chair of the village’s board of directors.
“It’s a huge testament to us leaders, or older people, that these kids can get things done and they see a need for it,” she said.
___
Fonseca covers Indigenous communities on AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FonsecaAP
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CLEVELAND (AP) — Cleveland State University violated a student’s Fourth Amendment right to privacy when he was required to use a webcam to show his bedroom before taking an online test, a federal judge in Cleveland ruled.
Matthew Besser, the attorney for student Aaron Ogletree, said that the lawsuit was filed last year to stop the university from enforcing an illegal practice aimed at preventing cheating and that Ogletree is not seeking monetary damages.
The ruling Monday by U.S. District Judge J. Philip Calabrese appears to set a precedent regarding student privacy rights, Besser said.
“Freedom from government intrusion into our homes is the very core of what the Fourth Amendment protects,” Besser said. “If there is any place where students have a reasonable expectation of privacy, it’s in their homes.”
Ogletree initially protested but scanned his room before a chemistry test, fearing he would receive a failing grade if he did not comply, Besser said.
Calabrese in his ruling ordered Besser and attorneys for Cleveland State to meet to determine what the next step in the case will be. He said in the order that Ogletree’s right to privacy “outweighs Cleveland State’s interests in scanning his room.”
Cleveland State spokesperson David Kielmeyer said Tuesday the school cannot comment on “active litigation.”
“Ensuring academic integrity is essential to our mission and will guide us as we move forward,” Kielmeyer said.
Ogletree said in the lawsuit that the COVID-19 pandemic forced him during the school’s 2021 spring semester to take classes online to protect his family members’ health.
The decision whether to require students to show their rooms before a test is left to the discretion of individual professors and is not enforced by all instructors, Ogletree said in the lawsuit. Room scans are visible to other students who are taking a test, Ogletree’s lawsuit said.
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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Najib Razak is Malaysia’s first former prime minister to go to prison — a mighty fall for a British-educated politician whose father and uncle were the country’s second and third prime ministers, respectively.
The enormous 1MDB financial scandal tied directly to him was not just a personal blow but also shook — temporarily at least — the stranglehold his party, the United Malays National Organization, had over Malaysian politics. UMNO had traditionally been assured the support of the country’s ethnic Malay majority and had headed the National Front coalition government since the country became independent of Britain in 1957.
Najib set up the 1MDB state investment fund shortly after taking power in 2009. The U.S. Justice Department and other investigators alleged that at least $4.5 billion was stolen from 1MDB by associates of Najib between 2009 and 2014, and laundered through layers of bank accounts in the U.S. and other countries to finance Hollywood films and extravagant purchases that included hotels, a luxury yacht, art works and jewelry. Then-U.S. Attorney-General Jeff Sessions described the scandal as “kleptocracy at its worst.”
The Justice Department’s civil case filings also alleged $700 million was transferred from bank accounts used in the money laundering to the bank account of “Malaysian Official 1.” It didn’t name the official, but corroborating details made clear it was Najib.
Najib in July 2020 was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment by Malaysia’s High Court after being found guilty of abuse of power, criminal breach of trust and money laundering for illegally receiving 42 million ringgit ($9.4 million) from SRC International, a former unit of 1MDB.
Najib, 69, has maintained his innocence and had been out on bail pending his appeals.
The Court of Appeal upheld his conviction and sentence in December, describing the case as a “national embarrassment.” On Tuesday, the Federal Court affirmed the lower court’s decision, sending Najib straight to prison to begin his sentence.
Najib had once cast himself as a liberal and reforming leader of the predominantly Muslim country of over 33 million people. He speaks impeccable English with a posh accent, has his own blog and has a strong social media following.
At the same time, he often seemed far removed from the concerns of ordinary Malaysians and the poor rural Malays who are the bedrock of UMNO. He was mocked by the opposition for once saying he prefers eating quinoa, an expensive imported South American grain, to rice, a staple of the Malaysian diet.
Revelations after his downfall unveiled a serious taste for luxury, particularly on the part of his wife, Rosmah Mansor, who has also faced criminal charges. The total value of cash, jewelry, watches and handbags seized in 2018 from properties linked to Najib amounted to at least $273 million, police said. The haul included 12,000 pieces of jewelry — 2,200 rings, 1,400 necklaces, 2,100 bracelets, 2,800 pairs of earrings, 1,600 brooches and 14 tiaras along with 567 handbags, 423 watches and 234 pairs of sunglasses.
Malalysia has long been beset by corruption, but generally it had been associated with money politics designed to help keep UMNO in power.
Najib was thrust into politics in 1976 after his father died, becoming Malaysia’s youngest lawmaker at age 22, and the youngest ever deputy minister two years later. He became prime minister in 2009, replacing Abdullah Ahmad Badawi who was blamed for the National Front’s reduced majority in an election the previous year.
As both finance minister and prime minister, Najib guided his country through the global financial crisis of 2009, abolished draconian colonial-era security laws and reached out to ethnic minorities with a “1Malaysia” campaign. Then-President Barack Obama praised him as a “reformer with much to do.”
However, his National Front coalition suffered a further loss of support in 2013, losing the popular vote to the opposition for the first time though still winning 133 of 222 parliamentary seats.
In response, Najib imposed new repressive security measures and increasingly pandered to Islamists and ethnic chauvinism to shore up his Malay support base. Opposition leader and former Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim was convicted of sodomy for a second time in 2015 and imprisoned in a case he said was fabricated by the government to crush the opposition.
As he came under more and more pressure over the 1MDB scandal, Najib sacked critics in his government including an attorney-general and deputy prime minister, and muzzled the media.
The new attorney-general cleared Najib in 2016, saying the money was a political donation from the Saudi royal family and that most of it was returned.
A 2018 election tested the damage done to Najib by the 1MDB scandal. Crucial to an alliance formed to bring down Najib was the leadership of Mahathir Mohamad, a former prime minister who quit UNMO and ran a vigorous campaign despite being in his 90s. Mahathir, popular among his fellow Malays, led the country from 1981 to 2003, during which was credited for the country’s rocketing economic growth.
Najib’s coalition won just 79 of Parliament’s 222 seats, its worst-ever showing, while Mahathir’s Alliance of Hope won 121 seats.
Despite the election debacle and his graft conviction, Najib remained politically influential. His UMNO party leads the current government after defections of lawmakers caused the collapse of Mahathir’s reformist government.
“I think the guilty verdict is a very, very good outcome for Malaysia. The Malaysian public has been waiting for a very long time to see the ex-prime minister go to jail,” James Chin, professor of Asian studies at Australia’s University of Tasmania, told The Associated Press. “So with today’s verdict, it is quite clear, at least in the Malaysian case, that even if you hold the No. 1 political position and you did something wrong, you will have to pay the price for it.”
___
Peck reported from Bangkok.
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BERLIN (AP) — A man has died after falling from a peak in the Austrian Alps as he was trying to take a photo of a companion with whom he had reached the summit, police said Tuesday.
The 77-year-old German and his companion, a 63-year-old Spanish woman, hiked to the Greitspitze — a peak about 2,870 meters (9,400 feet) above sea level on the Austrian-Swiss border — on Sunday, police in Tyrol province said.
The man took a picture of the woman next to the cross marking the summit, then stepped back to take a photo from further away, they said in a statement. He lost his balance after apparently failing to notice that he was already close to the edge and fell down a roughly 60-meter (197-foot) rock face, sustaining fatal injuries.
Rescue services were alerted by a witness who was also at the summit at the time. The man’s body was recovered by a police helicopter.
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| 2022-09-21T15:14:37Z
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(The Hill) – Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday said he does not have a reaction to former President Trump’s statement over the weekend that labeled his wife, former Trump Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, “crazy.”
Asked in Kentucky if had any reaction to Trump’s statement, McConnell responded simply “no.”
In a statement posted to Truth Social on Saturday, Trump criticized McConnell for a statement he made that week about the current crop of GOP Senate hopefuls, before making a dig at Chao, his wife of 29 years, calling her “crazy.”
“Why do Republicans Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard working Republican candidates for the United States Senate. This is such an affront to honor and to leadership,” Trump wrote. “He should spend more time (and money!) helping them get elected, and less time helping his crazy wife and family get rich on China!”
Chao served as Transportation secretary during the Trump administration for nearly four years, resigning one day after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. In a letter to Transportation Department staff, she called the riot “entirely avoidable” and said she was “deeply troubled” by the event.
Chao previously served eight years as Labor secretary under former President George W. Bush.
The mention of Chao’s family was likely a reference to the shipping company Foremost Group, which was founded by Chao’s father and is currently run by her sister.
The Department of Transportation inspector general previously discovered that Chao used department staff to assist the family business. The watchdog referred the facts to the Justice Department, which declined to investigate the then-secretary.
Trump’s statement bashing the couple came days after McConnell said the House had a better chance of flipping red than the Senate in the November midterm elections, citing “candidate quality” — a referenced to Trump-backed candidates in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona and Georgia who have lagged behind their Democratic opponents in recent polls.
“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different — they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” McConnell told reporters in Kentucky when asked about his midterm expectations.
Trump’s attack on McConnell was the latest in the duo’s year-plus feud, which ramped up after the GOP leader slammed the then-president following the Jan. 6 riot. Since then, Trump has frequently criticized McConnell, calling him disloyal, an “Old Crow,” and earlier this month, taking a swipe at him after the Senate passed a sweeping climate, tax and health care bill.
But this weekend’s attack comes as Republicans are struggling in their fight to take control of the Senate come November. McConnell had earlier said this year’s midterm elections would be “very good” for Republicans, but he has since changed his tone, warning that the breakdown of the upper chamber following the races will be “extremely close.”
“Right now, we have a 50-50 Senate and a 50-50 country, but I think when all is said and done this fall, we’re likely to have an extremely close Senate, either our side up slightly or their side up slightly,” he said last week.
According to FiveThirtyEight, Democrats are favored to keep control of the Senate over Republicans, 64 percent to 36 percent.
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| 2022-09-21T15:14:45Z
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MOSCOW (AP) — At Moscow’s sprawling Izmailovsky outdoor souvenir market, shoppers can find cups and T-shirts commemorating Russia’s deployment of troops into Ukraine — but from the 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. There’s nothing about the “special military operation” that began six months ago.
Throughout the capital, there are few overt sign that Russia is engaged in the worst fighting in Europe since World War II. Displays of the letter “Z” — which initially spread as an icon of the fight, replicating the insignia painted on Russian military vehicles — are hardly seen.
There are only some scattered posters on bus shelters, showing the impassive face of one soldier or another and the words, “Glory to the heroes of Russia.” The posters give no clue as to what the man did, or where he did it.
The public reticence, or denial, about the operation in Ukraine is striking in a country where military exploits are deeply woven into the social fabric. The annexation of Crimea produced almost instant memes, notably images of President Vladimir Putin that called him “the most polite person.” a smug variant on the characterization of Russian troops as polite. Victory Day, marking the defeat of Nazi Germany, is obsessively observed with weeks of anticipation.
A Lamborghini dealership on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, a main Moscow thoroughfare, still displays a Victory Day banner, even though the showroom is dark. Lamborghini pulled out of Russia, along with hundreds of other foreign companies that suspended or ended their operations after Russia sent troops into Ukraine.
Darkened storefronts and deserted spaces in shopping malls that once held popular fast-food outlets such as McDonald’s and Starbucks are the most visible sign of the conflict in Moscow. The companies’ departures were a psychological blow to Muscovites who had become used to the shiny comforts of consumer culture.
“At first, we were very disappointed,” said Yegor Driganov, a young man taking in the view along the riverbank opposite Moscow City, a cluster of gleaming towers that includes four of Europe’s five tallest buildings. “But stores started to appear to replace them.”
Former McDonald’s and Starbucks outlets were acquired by Russian entrepreneurs who speedily moved to reopen with almost carbon-copy operations.
“We walk around, go around as usual,” said Driganov’s companion, Polina Polishchuk, characterizing the city’s mood.
Although the belief that Russia can create homegrown alternatives to businesses that left has become an article of faith among officials, many Russians have private doubts.
A survey by the Levada Center, Russia’s only independent pollster, found that 81% of Russians believe the country will be able to replace foreign food operations with domestic alternatives, while only 41% think local industries can fully substitute for electronic goods and only a third believe domestic car production can make up for the loss of imports.
The automotive industry was slammed by sanctions that dried up the supply of parts. The state statistics service said car production in May had fallen a punishing 97% from the same month in 2021. Putin recently admitted Russia’s shipyards are also suffering supply shortages.
The panic that swept Russia in the immediate aftermath of broad Western sanctions and foreign companies abandoned the country has abated. The ruble, which lost half of its value against the dollar right after the sanctions, not only rebounded but rose to levels not seen in years. But if that’s good for national pride, it’s a burden on export-reliant industries whose products became more costly.
Russia’s economic prospects are far from clear amid crosscutting statistics. Unemployment is down, contrary to many predictions. But the gross domestic product fell a sharp 4% in the second quarter of the year — the first full period of fighting — and is predicted to contract by nearly 8% for the full year. Inflation is calculated to be 15% for the year.
“It seems to me that it’s obvious to everyone that it won’t be as it was before,” Central Bank of Russia head Elvira Nabiullina warned the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an annual showpiece gathering aimed at investors. “External conditions have changed for a long time indeed, if not forever.”
But if impending economic troubles are obvious, they don’t appear to be causing wide anxiety.
Izmailovsky souvenir vendor Mikhail Sukhorukov shrugged off concerns, even though European sanctions on air travel to Russia have cut off much of the tourist trade that was important to him. “It’s periodical, like a wave,” he said, adding that he chose to be sanguine rather than “go to the cemetery.”
“Moscow leads its normal life because people are trying to preserve their sense of normal and relative psychological comfort,” said Nikolai Petrov, a senior research fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Program. “Russia is at full steam heading toward a dead end and the people, by and large, prefer not to think about it and live their lives.”
Petrov also suggested that Muscovites are amid a “summer effect … when a person not so much watches what is happening in the world, even in a neighboring country, but rather builds his own reality with family, vacationing and so on.”
The desire to take vacations has been a peculiar success story for Russia’s sense of self-sufficiency in the sanctions era. Denied easy air connections to Western Europe — industry experts say Russian travel to popular Italy has dropped to nearly nothing — Russians have found exotic domestic destinations, such as Sakhalin Island, 6,300 kilometers (3,900 miles) from Moscow, where tourism reportedly is up 25%; traffic to Baltic Sea beaches in Kaliningrad has reached all time daily highs.
Tourism to Crimea, however, is expected to be about 40% lower than usual.
Although Moscow’s streets show little indication that a conflict is raging, the airwaves of full of the news. The flagship news magazine show on state TV, Vesti Nedeli, recently devoted nearly an hour — about half its running time — to the Ukraine operation. Lengthy segments painted the Kremlin’s military as highly effective, using top-of-the-line weapons.
About 60% of Russians rely on state television as their main news source, but may find it unreliable. A Levada survey this month found that fully 65% of Russians disbelieve some or all of what they see on state media about Ukraine.
“There are a lot of (media) sources” to counter state TV, said Driganov, relaxing along the river.
Many of those sources, however, can be accessed only through a VPN, or virtual private network. Russia has banned or blocked an array of foreign news media, bullied critical domestic media into closing and banned use of Facebook and Twitter.
In a repressive environment, assessing the population’s views as a whole, even by an internationally respected pollster such as Levada, is uncertain.
Levada polling polling found about 75% of Russians support the military operation, but less than half do so unconditionally.
Some of the equivocators probably expressed support “just in case, fearing repercussions for themselves.” said Levada director Denis Volkov.
___
Associated Press writer Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed.
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CHICAGO (AP) — Most U.S. adults think gun violence is increasing nationwide and want to see gun laws made stricter, according to a new poll that finds broad public support for a variety of gun restrictions, including many that are supported by majorities of Republicans and gun owners.
The poll by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research also shows majorities of U.S. adults view both reducing gun violence and protecting gun ownership as important issues.
The poll was conducted between July 28 and Aug. 1, after a string of deadly mass shootings — from a New York grocery store to a school in Texas and a July 4 parade in Illinois — and a 2020 spike in gun killings that have increased attention on the issue of gun violence. Overall, 8 in 10 Americans perceive that gun violence is increasing around the country, and about two-thirds say it’s increasing in their state, though less than half believe it’s increasing in their community, the poll shows.
The question of how to prevent such violence has long divided politicians and many voters, making it difficult to change gun laws. In June, a conservative majority on the Supreme Court expanded gun rights, finding a constitutional right to carry firearms in public for self-defense.
Later that same month, President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan gun safety bill. The package, approved in the wake of shootings like the one that killed 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, was both a measured compromise and the most significant bill addressing gun violence to be approved in Congress in decades — an indication of how intractable the issue has become.
The poll found 71% of Americans say gun laws should be stricter, including about half of Republicans, the vast majority of Democrats, and a majority of those in gun-owning households.
Nicole Whitelaw, 29, is a Democrat and gun owner who grew up hunting and target shooting in upstate New York with her strongly Republican family. Whitelaw, who now lives along Florida’s Gulf Coast, supports some gun restrictions, such as prohibiting people convicted of domestic violence from owning firearms and a federal law preventing mentally ill people from purchasing guns.
She said other restrictions — such as banning sales of AR-15 rifles — are “going too far” and may not solve the problem. Whitelaw pointed to the the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many people bought up all the toilet paper they could find.
“I think people would start trying to hoard guns,” she said, adding that a better approach is to make smaller changes and see what impact they have.
The poll shows bipartisan majorities of Americans support a nationwide background check policy for all gun sales, a law preventing mentally ill people from purchasing guns, allowing courts to temporarily prevent people who are considered a danger to themselves or others from purchasing a gun, making 21 the minimum age to buy a gun nationwide and banning those who have been convicted of domestic violence from purchasing a gun.
A smaller majority of Americans, 59%, favor a ban on the sale of AR-15 rifles and similar semiautomatic weapons, with Democrats more likely to support that policy than Republicans, 83% vs. 35%.
Chris Boylan, 47, from Indianapolis, opposes restrictions on guns. As a teacher for many years, Boylan said he has “buried more kids than I care to count” and believes gun violence is a major problem. But the Republican, who said he leans more toward Libertarian in his personal stances, believes the issue is more about mental health and a too-lenient criminal justice system.
“Blaming the gun is an oversimplification of what the issues really are,” Boylan said. “It’s not the gun. It’s a hearts-and-minds issue to me.”
The new poll finds 88% of Americans call preventing mass shootings extremely or very important, and nearly as many say that about reducing gun violence in general. But 60% also say it’s very important to ensure that people can own guns for personal protection.
Overall, 52% of Americans — including 65% of Republicans and 39% of Democrats — say both reducing mass shootings and protecting the right to own guns for personal protection highly important.
University of Chicago professor Jens Ludwig said the poll’s findings show that concerns raised by opponents of gun restrictions are “very off base.” Led by the National Rifle Association, the gun lobby argues that any new limitations on who may have a gun or what type of firearms may be sold will lead to nationwide bans on all weapons and ammunition.
The poll showed most Americans’ opinions are more nuanced and there is support for some changes even among Republicans, who as elected officials typically oppose gun control, said Ludwig, who also is director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab.
“It should shut the door to some of the ‘slippery slope’ arguments,” he said.
The poll also found that only about 3 in 10 Americans support a law allowing people to carry guns in public without a permit. Seventy-eight percent of Democrats are opposed. Among Republicans, 47% are in favor and 39% are opposed.
Ervin Leach, 66, lives in Troutman, North Carolina, north of Charlotte, believes gun violence is a major problem and says that laws should be much more strict. A Democrat, Leach said he supports measures like background checks — or what he said should be “in-depth studies” — and a minimum age of 21 to buy a gun.
The poll found 1 in 5 people have experienced gun violence themselves in the last five years, such as being threatened with a gun or a shooting victim, or had a close friend or family member who has. Black and Hispanic Americans are especially likely to say that they or someone close to them has experienced gun violence.
Leach, who is Black, said the gun violence he sees in the news has made him more cautious.
“I don’t like people approaching me,” he said. “It used to be if someone was on the side of the road, you’d stop to help. Now, you go to help somebody, you might lose your life.”
All the killings have caused Leach to contemplate buying a gun for his own protection. While he hasn’t had a chance yet to get his gun permit, he said, “That is my intention.”
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| 2022-09-21T15:15:01Z
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MOSCOW (AP) — Hundreds of people lined up Tuesday to pay tribute to the daughter of a leading right-wing Russian political thinker killed in a car bombing that Moscow blamed on Ukrainian intelligence.
Speaking during a farewell ceremony at a Moscow broadcast production center, Alexander Dugin said with his voice breaking that his 29-year-old daughter, a commentator with a nationalist Russian television channel, “died for the people, died for Russia.”
“The huge price we have to pay can only be justified by the highest achievement, our victory,” he said, standing next to his daughter’s casket, her black-and-white portrait placed behind it. “She lived for the sake of victory, and she died for the sake of victory. Our Russian victory, our truth, our Orthodox faith, our state.”
Darya Dugina was killed when a remotely-controlled explosive device planted in her SUV blew up on Saturday night as she was driving on the outskirts of Moscow, ripping the vehicle apart and killing her on the spot, authorities said.
Her father, a philosopher, writer and political theorist who ardently supports Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to send troops into Ukraine, was widely believed to be the intended target. Russian media quoted witnesses as saying that the SUV belonged to Dugin and that he had decided at the last minute to travel in another vehicle.
During the memorial service at the Ostankino television center that topped newscasts on state television, the 60-year-old Dugin shared what he said were his daughter’s last words to him, spoken at a nationalist festival they both attended just before her death: “Father, I feel like a warrior, I feel like a hero. I want to be one. I don’t want any different fate. I want to be with my people, with my country.”
Speaking at a separate event Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denounced Dugina’s killing as a “barbaric crime for which there is no forgiveness.”
The car bombing, unusual for Moscow since the gang wars of the turbulent 1990s, triggered calls from Russian nationalists to respond by ramping up strikes on Ukraine. Ukraine has denied any involvement in the bombing.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reaffirmed the denial on Tuesday, telling a news conference in Kyiv about Dugina’s killing: “That is not our responsibility. She is not a citizen of our country. We are not interested in her.”
Leonid Slutsky, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the lower house of Russia’s parliament, attended Tuesday’s farewell ceremony for Dugina. Slutsky, who took part in several rounds of talks with Ukrainian negotiators in March, indicated the killing would have repercussions for the conflict in Ukraine.
“We see that Kyiv isn’t inclined to have talks, and my own position as a member of the negotiation team is that it would be hard to engage in talks after that horrible tragedy,” he said.
Putin on Monday sent a letter of condolences to Dugin and his wife, denouncing the “cruel and treacherous” killing and saying that Dugina “honestly served people and the Fatherland, proving what it means to be a patriot of Russia with her deeds.” He posthumously awarded Dugina the Order of Courage, one of Russia’s highest medals.
Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor to the KGB, said Dugina’s killing was “prepared and perpetrated by the Ukrainian special services.”
The FSB said that a Ukrainian citizen, Natalya Vovk, carried out the killing after arriving in Russia in July with her 12-year-old daughter and renting an apartment in the building where Dugina lived in order to shadow her. It said that Vovk and her daughter were at the nationalist festival that Dugin and his daughter attended.
The agency said that Vovk drove to Estonia after the killing, using a different license plate for her vehicle. On Monday, the FSB released videos from surveillance cameras purportedly showing her entering and leaving Russia, and also a close-up of her allegedly in front of the entrance to a Moscow apartment building where Dugina lived and where Vovk rented an apartment.
The FSB also posted pictures of her vehicle with different license plates.
Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu dismissed the Russian claim, saying in televised remarks: “We regard this as one instance of provocation in a very long line of provocations by the Russian Federation, and we have nothing more to say about it.”
Dugin, dubbed “Putin’s brain” and “Putin’s Rasputin” by some in the West, has been a prominent proponent of the “Russian world” concept, a spiritual and political ideology that emphasizes traditional values, the restoration of Russia’s global influence and the unity of all ethnic Russians throughout the world.
Dugin helped popularize the “Novorossiya,” or “New Russia” concept that Russia used to justify the 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and its support of separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine. He has urged the Kremlin to step up its operations in Ukraine.
Dugin has also promoted authoritarian leadership in Russia and spoken with disdain of liberal Western values. He has been slapped with U.S. and European Union sanctions.
His daughter expressed similar views and had appeared as a commentator on the TV channel Tsargrad, where Dugin had served as chief editor.
Dugina herself was sanctioned by the U.S. in March for her work as chief editor of United World International, a website that Washington has described as a source of disinformation.
___
Jan M. Olsen contributed to this report from Copenhagen, Denmark.
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PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysian ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak began his 12-year prison sentence Tuesday after losing his final appeal in a graft case linked to the looting of the 1MDB state fund, with the top court unanimously upholding his conviction and sentence.
Najib, Malaysia’s first former leader to be imprisoned, was whisked away to Kajang prison on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur after the verdict. Opposition leaders, activists and many citizens hailed the court’s swift ruling, calling it a victory for Malaysians who voted in 2018 to oust his government and bring Najib to justice.
The five-member Federal Court panel said it found the High Court’s decision was correct and that Najib’s appeal was “devoid of any merits.”
“This is a simple and straightforward case of abuse of power, criminal breach of trust and money laundering,” said Chief Justice Maimun Tuan Mat, who read out the verdict.
“We are unable to conclude that any of the findings of the High Court, as affirmed by the Court of Appeal, were perverse or plainly wrong so as to warrant appellate intervention. We agree that the defense is so inherently inconsistent and incredible that it does not raise a reasonable doubt on the prosecution case,” she said.
The court ordered Najib, who has been out on bail pending appeals since his sentence in 2020, to begin his time behind bars. He also must pay a 210 million ringgit ($47 million) fine.
1MDB was a development fund that Najib set up shortly after taking power in 2009. Investigators allege at least $4.5 billion was stolen from the fund and laundered by Najib’s associates. Najib was found guilty in 2020 of seven charges of corruption for illegally receiving $9.4 million from SRC International, a former unit of 1MDB.
Najib, 69, has maintained his innocence. Just before the verdict, he stood up in the dock to make a statement protesting the top court’s series of refusals last week to postpone the appeal hearings.
Najib said he felt he was “unfairly treated” and that his case has been rushed through. He pointed out that a leaked verdict by the Federal Court had been posted on a website and said if this was true, it would be the a “judicial misconduct of the highest order.”
Maimun said the appeal hearings had ended because Najib’s newly appointed lawyers refused to make any new arguments in protest of not being given more time to prepare.
Najib appeared in shock after the verdict was read. He was immediately surrounded by his family and supporters. His lawyer later told reporters they may seek a review of the court’s decision.
“This is a historic moment for Malaysia, where the most senior leader has actually now faced an unprecedented moment of political accountability,” said Bridget Welsh, a Southeast Asian expert at Malaysia’s Nottingham University. ”For this decision, which is the first of many cases involving this particular scandal, to move in this particular direction really is a testimony to the rule of law in Malaysia, and the strengthening of the demands for the rule of law in Malaysia.”
Earlier Tuesday, Najib sought to remove Maimun from the case, citing possible bias because her husband had made a negative Facebook posting about Najib’s leadership shortly after his ouster in 2018 general elections. But the judges dismissed Najib’s application.
The Federal Court last week also dismissed a bid by Najib to seek a retrial on grounds of bias by the High Court judge, and refused to postpone the appeal to give his new lawyers more time to prepare. The court also denied a request by Najib’s new lawyer to withdraw from the case.
Maimun, Malaysia’s first female chief justice who was appointed in 2019, has come under attack on social media from Najib’s supporters. Police arrested a man over the weekend in connection with death threats made against Maimun. Hundreds of Najib’s supporters gathered outside the court in a show of support.
The Federal Court office said in a later statement that the verdict leaked online was an earlier draft. It said the court has begun an internal probe into the leak and lodged a complaint with police.
Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said the verdict was a testament to the rule of law and praised the judges’ courage in light of attacks on the integrity of the judiciary. The Center to Combat Corruption & Cronyism called the verdict a “monumental expression of justice for our nation.”
The prison term will cement Najib’s fall from grace. The British-educated Najib was born into Malaysia’s political elite. His father was the country’s second prime minister and his uncle was the third.
He was thrust into politics in 1976 after his father died, becoming Malaysia’s youngest lawmaker at age 22, and the youngest ever deputy minister two years later. He became prime minister in 2009 as a reformer but his term was tainted by the 1MDB scandal that sparked investigations in the U.S. and several other countries and caused his government’s downfall.
Najib faces a total of 42 charges in five separate trials linked to 1MDB, and his wife is also on trial on corruption charges.
Najib, who has a strong social media following, remains politically influential. His United Malays National Organization leads the current government after defections of lawmakers caused the collapse of the reformist government that won the 2018 polls.
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NAPA, Calif. (KRON) — Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband pleaded guilty to DUI causing injury Tuesday morning in Northern California.
Paul Pelosi was sentenced by Napa County Superior Court Judge Joseph Solga to serve five days in jail, pay more than $6,000 in fines, and enroll in a three-month-long DUI class. Paul Pelosi did not appear in the courtroom. His defense attorney, Amanda Bevins, appeared in court for him and submitted his plea in writing.
Nancy Pelosi was traveling on the East Coast when her husband was arrested May 28.
Paul Pelosi, 82, was driving on Highway 29 near Oakville Cross Road when his Porsche was hit by a Jeep. California Highway Patrol officers blamed Pelosi for causing the crash, saying he was under the influence of alcohol.
“His eyes appeared red/watery, he was unsteady on his feet, his speech was slurred, and he had a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emanating from his breath. CHP determined Mr. Pelosi was the proximate cause of the collision,” the officer wrote in an arrest report.
The Jeep driver was injured in the wreck.
When the CHP officer asked Paul Pelosi for his driver’s license, he handed the officer his license and an 11-99 Foundation membership card, according to the arrest report. The 11-99 Foundation is a scholarship fund that provided more than $42 million in support of CHP families, according to its website. 11-99 is a radio code used by CHP officers and dispatchers that means “officer needs assistance.”
A blood sample was taken from Paul Pelosi two hours after the crash.
“Mr. Pelosi’s blood sample had a .082% blood alcohol content,” prosecutors wrote. It is illegal to drive in California with a Blood Alcohol Content of 0.08% or more.
Paul Pelosi was booked into jail after the crash and was released just a few hours later. It’s unclear when he will begin serving his five-day jail sentence.
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| 2022-09-21T15:15:46Z
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(The Hill) — The Justice Department seized at least 700 pages of classified materials when it first recovered documents from former President Donald Trump’s Florida home in January, according to a letter released by the National Archives on Tuesday.
An exchange between the custodians for presidential records and Trump’s attorneys, released after it was first obtained by a conservative news outlet, indicates the former president’s legal team spent months attempting to block the FBI and the intelligence community from reviewing the documents to assess the potential national security fallout.
It also reveals that among the materials were those at “the highest levels of classification, including Special Access Program (SAP) materials.”
The May letter from Archives also reiterates a warning first relayed by the Justice Department (DOJ) the month before.
“Access to the materials is not only necessary for purposes of our ongoing criminal investigation, but the Executive Branch must also conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps,” Debra Steidel Wall, acting archivist of the United States, wrote in relaying a message from DOJ’s National Security Division.
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| 2022-09-21T15:15:53Z
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MORROW, Ga. (AP) — Two white Atlanta police officers who clashed with Rayshard Brooks acted reasonably during the 2020 encounter that ended with the 27-year-old Black man’s fatal shooting, a specially appointed prosecutor said Tuesday in announcing his decision not to pursue charges against them.
Officer Garrett Rolfe, who shot and killed Brooks in June 2020, and Officer Devin Brosnan faced a “quickly evolving” situation when Brooks lunged and grabbed one of their Tasers during an arrest attempt, said Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia.
“We did not look at this with 20/20 hindsight. Given the quickly changing circumstances, was it objectively reasonable that he used deadly force? And we conclude it was,” Skandalakis said of Rolfe.
The shooting happened against the backdrop of heightened tensions and protests nationwide after the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer less than three weeks earlier. Sometimes-violent protests over Floyd’s death had largely subsided in Atlanta, but Brooks’ killing set off a new round of demonstrations against police brutality and racial injustice.
Skandalakis said he believes that context is important and acknowledged that encounters between police and the African American community are sometimes “very volatile,” but he said he doesn’t believe race played a role in this instance.
“This isn’t one of those cases,” he said. “This is a case in which the officers were willing to give Mr. Brooks every benefit of the doubt and, you know, unfortunately, by his actions, this is what happened.”
On June 12, 2020, police responded to complaints of a man sleeping in a car in the drive-thru lane of a Wendy’s restaurant. Police body camera video shows the two officers having a calm conversation with Brooks for roughly 40 minutes.
Then, when the officers told Brooks he’d had too much to drink to be driving and tried to arrest him, Brooks resisted in a struggle caught on dash camera video. Brooks grabbed a Taser from one of the officers and fled, firing it at Rolfe as he ran. Rolfe fired his gun, and an autopsy found that Brooks was shot twice in the back.
Police Chief Erika Shields resigned less than 24 hours after Brooks died, and protesters set fire to the Wendy’s, which was later demolished.
L. Chris Stewart, a lawyer for Brooks’ family, said Tuesday that Brooks should not have fought with the officers and that if they had used deadly force during that fight, they would have been completely justified.
“But they did not. They did not. They chose not to when they were justified. But they decided to use lethal force as a man was running away — 19 feet away,” he said.
He and his law partner, Justin Miller, noted that the prosecutors said they had to hire experts and break down the encounter video frame by video frame to reach a decision. Something that complicated should have been presented to a grand jury of Fulton County citizens to decide whether charges were merited, the family’s lawyers said.
Stewart said the family will continue its fight for justice in civil court, where they have a lawsuit pending.
The two officers’ lawyers have said their actions were justified.
“This was the proper and only decision that could be reached based upon the evidence and Georgia law,” Brosnan attorneys Don Samuel and Amanda Clark Palmer said in an emailed statement.
Lawyers Noah H. Pines, Bill Thomas and Lance LoRusso said Rolfe will not be making a statement at this point.
Skandalakis and former Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter, who was co-counsel in the case, spent about an hour during the news conference walking through the details of the encounter between Brooks and the two officers. Porter showed still images taken from videos to break down what happened once things turned violent.
Skandalakis called it “a peaceful encounter that all of a sudden becomes a violent encounter,” saying that once Brooks took the Taser from Brosnan, he assumed an offensive position.
Porter said Brooks proceeded to “beat the crap” out of the two officers after Rolfe’s lawful attempt to arrest him. Rolfe acted in accordance with Georgia law and Atlanta Police Department policy given the facts of the situation, he said.
“The police didn’t come into this encounter hot,” he said. “There was no hostility.”
Rolfe was fired a day after the shooting, but his dismissal was overturned in May 2021 by the Atlanta Civil Service Board. The board found that the city failed to follow its own procedures for disciplinary actions.
Five days after Brooks was killed, then-Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard held a dramatic news conference to announce warrants had been taken out against Rolfe and Brosnan. Rolfe’s charges included felony murder, aggravated assault and violation of his oath. Brosnan was charged with aggravated assault and violating his oath.
Skandalakis said Tuesday that he would file paperwork to dismiss those warrants. He declined to comment when asked whether Howard had rushed charges.
The Atlanta Police Department said in a statement that both officers are on administrative duty and will undergo training and recertification.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, who was a City Council member when the shooting happened, said in a statement his “heart continues to ache” for Brooks’ family, but he respects the “independent role” that the special prosecutor played.
Two months after he announced the charges, Howard lost the Democratic primary in his bid for reelection. Just weeks after taking office in January 2021, his successor, Fani Willis, asked Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr to reassign the case, citing concerns about Howard’s actions.
Willis has since gained national attention for her ongoing investigation into whether former President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to influence the outcome of the 2020 election in Georgia.
Carr initially refused to reassign the case, but in July 2021 appointed Skandalakis to take it over after a judge excused Willis and her office.
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| 2022-09-21T15:16:08Z
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The sense of dread deepened Tuesday in Ukraine because of warnings that Russia may try to spoil the country’s Independence Day holiday and mark the war’s six-month point with intensified attacks.
The U.S. reinforced the worry with a security alert citing “information that Russia is stepping up efforts to launch strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and government facilities in the coming days.” As it has done previously, it urged American citizens to “depart Ukraine now.” Several European countries issued similar warnings.
Kyiv authorities banned mass gatherings in the capital through Thursday for fear of missile attacks around Independence Day, which, like the six-month mark in the war, falls on Wednesday. The holiday celebrates Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
“Our country is having a very hard time, and we need to be careful,” 26-year-old Vlad Mudrak said in support of the ban.
Anxiety also mounted after the weekend car bombing outside Moscow that killed the daughter of a leading right-wing Russian political theorist. Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out the attack. While Ukraine denied involvement, the bloodshed stirred fears of Russian retaliation.
Hundreds of people paid tribute at a memorial service Tuesday to the bombing victim, Darya Dugina, 29, the daughter of Alexander Dugin, a writer dubbed “Putin’s brain” and “Putin’s Rasputin” because of his purported influence on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Dugina, a pro-Kremlin TV commentator, died when the SUV she was driving blew up Saturday night as she was returning home from a patriotic festival. Her father, a strong supporter of the invasion of Ukraine, was widely believed to be the intended target.
Over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Russia “may try to do something particularly nasty, something particularly cruel” this week.
On Tuesday, however, Zelenskyy stressed defiance rather than worry when he raised the national flag at a memorial one day ahead of Independence Day.
“The blue and yellow flag of Ukraine will again fly where it rightfully should be — in all temporarily occupied cities and villages of Ukraine,” he said, including the Crimea Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.
He added: “It is necessary to liberate Crimea from occupation. It will end where it had started.”
At a separate event, Zelenskyy appeared to downplay the threats this week, indicating that at most, he expected increased intensity rather than new targets, and he added, “No one wants to die, but no one is afraid of Russia, and this is the most important signal.”
NATO, meanwhile, said Zelenskyy can continue to count on the 30-nation alliance for help in defending itself in what Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called “a grinding war of attrition.” The war broke out on Feb. 24.
“This is a battle of wills and a battle of logistics. Therefore, we must sustain our support for Ukraine for the long term so that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation,” Stoltenberg said at an international conference on Crimea.
One particular source of foreboding is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, in southeastern Ukraine, where shelling has raised fears of a catastrophe.
Shelling close to the Zaporizhzhia plant continued early Tuesday. Regional Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said Russian forces fired on Marhanets and Nikopol, two towns less than a dozen kilometers (7 miles) from the power station.
The U.N. Security Council met Tuesday to discuss the danger, and the U.N. nuclear agency renewed its request to assess safety and security at the plant if Ukraine and Russia agree.
Another source of concern is the fate of Ukrainian prisoners of war. Michelle Bachelet, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, cited reports that Russia and its separatist allies in eastern Ukraine are planning to put Ukrainian POWs on trial, possibly in the coming days. The Kremlin has denounced Ukrainian prisoners as Nazis, war criminals and terrorists, and several prisoners have been sentenced to death.
In the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, Russian authorities reported four people were killed and nearly a dozen wounded in Ukrainian shelling of a separatist headquarters and other buildings.
In other developments, the U.S. plans to announce on Wednesday an additional $3 billion or so in aid to train and equip Ukrainian forces, according to American officials speaking on condition of anonymity. They said the money will fund contracts for drones and other weapons.
A small bright spot emerged in Ukraine: A new soccer season started Tuesday in Kyiv. Shakhtar Donetsk and Metalist 1925 from Kharkiv — teams from eastern cities fighting for their existence — played to a 0-0 draw in a 65,000-capacity downtown stadium with no fans allowed.
“This is work … to show the world that life in Ukraine does not stop but continues,” Shakhtar coach Igor Jovicevic said.
___
Full coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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| 2022-09-21T15:16:16Z
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(The Hill) – Republican Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz’s campaign is taking a jab at Democratic opponent John Fetterman after the lieutenant governor’s campaign ridiculed — and raised money off of — a video showing the GOP hopeful shopping for groceries while complaining about the price of crudité.
“If John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly,” Rachel Tripp, Oz’s senior communications advisor, said in a statement, which was first reported by Insider.
The statement was criticized by Fetterman in a tweet on Tuesday evening.
“I had a stroke. I survived it. I’m truly so grateful to still be here today,” he said. “I know politics can be nasty, but even then, I could *never* imagine ridiculing someone for their health challenges.”
On Tuesday, Fetterman’s campaign released a letter signed by over 100 Pennsylvania doctors warning against Oz’s candidacy. In an event promoting the letter, Val Arkoosh, a physician who ran in the Democratic Senate primary earlier this year, slammed Oz’s comments.
“No real doctor, or any decent human being, to be honest, would ever mock a stroke victim who is recovering from that stroke, in the way that Dr. Oz is mocking John Fetterman,” Arkoosh said.
At issue was a video made in April that showed Oz grocery shopping as he sought to make the case that inflation was making items such as asparagus, broccoli, guacamole, and salsa more expensive. In the video, he referred to the store name as “Wegner’s,” what appeared to be a combination of Wegmans and Redner’s.
Oz also referred to the items as crudité, which Fetterman mocked, saying in a tweet, “in PA we call this a… veggie tray.”
Fetterman’s campaign said it had raised more than half a million dollars off the viral video within a day, including more than $65,000 from a sticker that has the phrase “Wegners: Let them eat Crudite” on it.
The produce-centric tit-for-tat comes as Fetterman’s campaign seeks to portray Oz as a carpetbagger from New Jersey who is out of touch with Pennsylvania voters.
Oz’s team, meanwhile, has sought to show Fetterman as inauthentically engaging with voters on the ground, at one point sending out a “basement tracker” update of the Senate hopeful.
Fetterman suffered a stroke in May, keeping the Democrat off the campaign trail for several months.
The Senate race, one of many that could determine control of the currently 50-50 upper chamber, has become one of the most closely watched in the nation.
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| 2022-09-21T15:16:24Z
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WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The publisher of a new textbook in Poland says it is removing a passage on human fertility that many interpreted as being about in vitro fertilization and which caused widespread offense.
The publishing house, Bialy Kruk, said Monday that that it disagreed with the criticism and the “wrong interpretation” of the passage but that “taking into account the social good … we decided with the author to remove the controversial fragment from the textbook.”
In its first version, the book titled “History and the Present” described what the author views as modern approaches to sexuality and child bearing. The passage appears to take a dim view of in vitro fertilization, without using the term.
It said: “Increasingly sophisticated methods of separating sex from love and fertility lead to the treatment of sex as entertainment and fertility as human production, one could say breeding. This raises a fundamental question: Who will love the children thus produced?”
Many people interpreted that passage as meaning that children born by IVF are undeserving of love.
The Education Ministry said on Twitter that only a mind “sick and mad with hatred” would interpret the passage that way.
The book was added to a list of school books in July in preparation for a new subject, called “history and the present,” which the government is introducing this fall.
Critics of the conservative government view the textbook as part of a larger attempt to indoctrinate young people in conservative and nationalistic values. The book also takes a dim view of feminism and other liberal movements.
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| 2022-09-21T15:16:32Z
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(The Hill) — Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine was 73.2 percent effective against the disease in children under 5, the company said Tuesday.
The company touted the data as reinforcing the importance of the vaccine, which was authorized in June, after months of waiting for a vaccine for the youngest children.
The effectiveness is after three shots of the vaccine. The Pfizer vaccine’s authorization was delayed earlier this year to allow time to study a third shot, with the idea that two shots were not enough.
The results, based on 34 cases, came when the strain of the virus circulating was primarily the omicron subvariant BA.2, slightly different than the BA.5 omicron subvariant that is largely circulating now.
Pfizer said Tuesday that it is working on a vaccine for children under 12 specifically targeting BA.5, matching its approach for adults 12 and over.
“Building on the strong safety and immunogenicity data that led to FDA authorization of our COVID-19 vaccine for children 6 months through 4 years, we are pleased to share confirmatory evidence that a full course of vaccination helps protect against symptomatic disease, particularly during a time when the Omicron BA.2 strain was predominant,” said Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.
Getting parents to vaccinate their young children is an ongoing challenge. Only about five percent of children under 5 have been vaccinated so far, ABC News reported last week.
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| 2022-09-21T15:16:39Z
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(The Hill) – Congressional Republicans are vowing to keep investigating Anthony Fauci even after he steps down from his government roles at the end of the year.
“Retirement can’t shield Dr. Fauci from congressional oversight,” House Committee on Oversight and Reform ranking member James Comer (R-Ky.), said in a statement. Comer would likely become the chair of the committee in a Republican majority.
Fauci, who is chief medical adviser to the president and has spent decades as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, announced Monday that he would step down from his positions in the Biden administration after more than a half century in government. Fauci said he is not retiring, and plans to “pursue the next phase” of his career.
Republicans have already launched probes into the origins of the coronavirus and are planning further investigations and hearings if they win the majority in November, including possibly digging into Fauci’s own records.
“Fauci’s resignation will not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic. He will be asked to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in concerning the lab leak,” tweeted Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has gotten into heated exchanges with Fauci during Senate hearings and is in line to become chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee if Republicans win the Senate majority.
Fauci, who became the most public face of the federal government’s COVID-19 response, also became a top target of Republicans. He publicly disagreed with former President Trump over the level of threat the virus posed and unproven treatments, and he was among the leading voices calling for mitigation measures.
“In January, a GOP Congress should hold Fauci fully accountable for his dishonesty, corruption, abuse of power, and multiple lies under oath,” tweeted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). “Never in our nation’s history has one arrogant bureaucrat destroyed more people’s lives.”
Republicans have pushed the theory that the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and that U.S. funding went to “dangerous” research on coronaviruses at the same lab.
Two studies released last month point to the theory that the virus was transmitted from animals to humans, likely in a Wuhan market, though some scientists think the idea that it escaped from a lab warrants further investigation. The U.S. intelligence community has said the virus was not created as a bioweapon.
Additional investigation is unlikely to happen without cooperation from China.
“Emails obtained by Oversight Committee Republicans reveal what Dr. Fauci said publicly about COVID origins was very different than what was said privately,” Comer said in his statement. “Dr. Fauci was warned by top scientists early on that the virus looked genetically manipulated and likely leaked from the Wuhan lab. Despite these facts, Dr. Fauci dismissed these ideas in public as conspiracy theories. We need to know if Dr. Fauci concealed anything from government officials in order to shield the NIH’s cozy relationship with EcoHealth Alliance, a grantee that awarded taxpayer funds to the Wuhan lab to conduct dangerous research on bat coronaviruses. The American people deserve transparency and accountability about how government officials used their taxpayer dollars, and Oversight Committee Republicans will deliver.”
Some Republicans suggested that Fauci timed his departure from government to avoid dealing with a GOP majority taking power next year.
“Dr. Fauci is conveniently resigning from his position in December before House Republicans have an opportunity to hold him accountable for destroying our country over these past three years. This guy is a coward,” tweeted Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), a former chair of the House Freedom Caucus.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) tweeted in reaction to Fauci’s departure: “Interesting timing… #COVIDHearings.”
Peter Staley, a longtime HIV/AIDS activist and friend of Fauci, responded to an assertion from Donald Trump Jr. that Fauci is trying to avoid oversight by leaving the government at the end of the year.
“Tony knows full well this doesn’t preclude his being Benghazied by your fellow numbnuts in the House. He’s ready for it, and fully armed with the truth,” Staley tweeted.
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| 2022-09-21T15:16:47Z
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A new report suggests ways Providence, Rhode Island, can atone for its extensive ties to the transatlantic slave trade and centuries of racism and discrimination by, among other things, establishing home repair funds, launching financial literacy programs and boosting aid to Black and Indigenous organizations.
The report, issued Monday by the Providence Municipal Reparations Commission, notably doesn’t recommend giving out direct payments to Black and Native American residents, as some had called for.
Instead, it defines “reparations” as efforts that close the “present-day racial wealth and equity gaps,” and outlines 11 areas for the city to focus its reparations work, including criminal justice reform, neighborhood development, health equity and improving educational and cultural opportunities.
Providence’s reparations effort was launched the same year Rhode Island voters approved a ballot referendum getting rid of the words “and Providence Plantations” from the state’s formal name because of its slavery connotations.
The new report suggests creating a dedicated fund to support residents impacted by urban renewal policies that displaced and negatively impacted communities of color. It also calls for forgiving certain municipal court debts; ending police use of so-called “no-knock” warrants; decriminalizing consumption of alcohol in public; and creating a school curriculum based on the city’s research into its racist and discriminatory policies.
But the report doesn’t suggest how much money should be spent on the many specific initiatives it lists, or which should take priority over others. Mayor Jorge Elorza, who launched the reparations effort two summers ago and is leaving office at the end of the year, is expected to address next steps in the process Thursday, including how he proposes to spend $10 million in federal coronavirus pandemic funds the city has specifically earmarked for reparations-related work.
The report recommends limiting eligibility for reparations-related efforts to those with Indigenous heritage or ancestors originating from sub-Saharan Africa, residents of neighborhoods disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, and low income households earning less than 50% of the area median income.
Rodney Davis, chair of the commission, said in a statement that he hopes the report helps advance new city policies and programs and inspires outside institutions to also get involved.
“Our recommendations are centered on the objective of moving people, institutions, and businesses in a similar direction towards universal equity,” he said.
Last year, Elorza’s administration released a historical report tracing the city’s racist and discriminatory practices and their legacy, from colonial through modern times. The reparations commission has been meeting since the spring with members appointed by the mayor and city council.
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| 2022-09-21T15:16:54Z
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Eight associates of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny are under criminal investigation for allegedly spreading fake information about Russia’s army, which invaded Ukraine six months ago, one of the accused reported Tuesday.
Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokeswoman, said on the Telegram messaging app that she and the seven others are accused in connection with their comments on a YouTube channel about the alleged bombing of Ukrainian civilians by Russian soldiers and calls to set fire to Russian military enlistment offices.
Navalny was arrested in Russia in January 2021 upon returning from Germany, where he had been recuperating from nerve-agent poisoning he blames on the Kremlin. He was given a 2½-year sentence for a parole violation.
In March, Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of fraud and contempt of court, allegations he rejected as politically motivated and an attempt by the authorities to keep him behind bars for as long as possible.
Earlier this month, Navalny said prison officials ordered him to serve at least three days in solitary confinement, citing a minor infraction, in retaliation for his activism behind bars.
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| 2022-09-21T15:17:02Z
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(The Hill) — Scientists have uncovered a link between the world’s most commonly used weedkiller and convulsions in animals — raising questions about the herbicide’s potential impact on the human nervous system as well.
Exposure to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, increased seizure-like behavior in soil-dwelling roundworms, according to the researchers, who published their findings in Scientific Reports on Tuesday.
With glyphosate use expected to rise dramatically over the coming years, understanding its possible effects on human health is critical, according to the study.
“It is concerning how little we understand the impact of glyphosate on the nervous system,” lead author Akshay Naraine, a Ph.D. candidate at Florida Atlantic University and the International Max Planck Research School for Synapses and Circuits, said in a statement.
“More evidence is mounting for how prevalent exposure to glyphosate is, so this work hopefully pushes other researchers to expand on these findings and solidify where our concerns should be,” Naraine added.
Just last month, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that more than 80 percent of urine sampled by the agency was at or above the detection limit for glyphosate, as The Hill reported.
Bayer, which manufactures Roundup, has faced thousands of lawsuits alleging that the product causes cancer. While the International Agency for Research on Cancer deemed glyphosate a “probable” carcinogen in 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency said in 2020 that there was insufficient evidence to show that the chemical is a probable or likely carcinogen.
In Tuesday’s study, Naraine and his colleagues said they used the roundworm C. elegans to test the effects of glyphosate alone and of both the U.S. formulation of Roundup and the British product from two distinct periods.
The two windows in question were before and after 2016, at which time the United Kingdom banned a surfactant — called polyethoxylated tallowamine — that had been in the earlier formulation.
These varying conditions, the scientists explained, helped them pinpoint which effects were specific to the active ingredient glyphosate.
Ultimately, the authors found that glyphosate exacerbated convulsions in C. elegans and concluded that a receptor protein called GABA-A was the neurological target for the observed physiological changes. In humans, these receptors are essential to locomotion and contribute to sleep and mood regulation, according to the authors.
Scientists often study C. elegans to gain an understanding about human diseases and development, as they share a common ancestor.
The data revealed a significant distinction between exposure to glyphosate alone and Roundup — with exposure to Roundup increasing the percentage of C. elegans that did not recover from seizure activity, according to the study.
The scientists also used significantly lower levels of glyphosate and Roundup than is suggested on the product — more than 300 times less herbicide than the lowest concentration recommended for consumer use.
Yet they found that the roundworms convulsed at concentrations that were diluted 1,000 times more than concentrations previously deemed toxic, according to the study.
“Given how widespread the use of these products is, we must learn as much as we can about the potential negative impacts that may exist,” Ken Dawson-Scully, a professor of neurobiology and Naraine’s faculty mentor, said in a statement.
“There have been studies done in the past that showed the potential dangers, and our study takes that one step further with some pretty dramatic results,” added Dawson-Scully, who also serves as a senior vice president and associate provost at Nova Southeastern University.
Roundworms already experience convulsions when they encounter thermal stress — and these new findings show that exposure to glyphosate and Roundup can exacerbate these impacts, according to Naraine.
“This could prove vital as we experience the effects of climate change,” Naraine said.
Dawson-Scully acknowledged that, at this point, there is no insight as to “how exposure to glyphosate and Roundup may affect humans diagnosed with epilepsy or other seizure disorders.”
“Our study indicates that there is significant disruption in locomotion and should prompt further vertebrate studies,” he said.
The Hill has reached out to Bayer for comment.
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| 2022-09-21T15:17:10Z
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CHERNIHIV, Ukraine (AP) — Danyk Rak enjoys riding his bike, playing soccer and quiet moments with the family’s short-legged dog and two white cats, Pushuna and Lizun.
But at age 12, his childhood has been abruptly cut short. His family’s home was destroyed and his mother seriously wounded as Russian forces bombarded Kyiv’s suburbs and surrounding towns in a failed effort to seize the capital.
Six months after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, and with no end to the conflict in sight, The Associated Press revisited Danyk as well as a police officer and an Orthodox priest whose lives have been upended by war.
“I WANT TO BE AN AIR FORCE PILOT”
Tears come to Danyk’s eyes as his mother, Luda, recalls being pulled from the rubble, covered in blood, after shrapnel tore through her body and smashed her right foot.
Twenty-two weeks after she was wounded, she’s still waiting to have her foot amputated and to be fitted with a prosthetic. She keeps the piece of shrapnel surgeons removed during one of her many operations.
Danyk lives with his mother and grandmother in a house near Chernihiv, a town 140 kilometers (nearly 90 miles) north of Kyiv, where a piece of tarp covers the broken bedroom windows. He sells milk from the family’s cow that grazes in the nearby fields. A handwritten sign wrapped in clear plastic on the front gate reads: “Please buy milk to help my mother who is injured.”
“My mother needs surgery and that’s why I have to help her. I have to help my grandmother too because she has heart problems,” Danyk said.
Before schools reopen on Sept. 1, Danyk and his grandmother have been joining volunteers several days a week clearing the debris from buildings damaged and destroyed in the Russian bombardment outside Chernihiv. On the way, he stops at his old house, most of it smashed to the foundations.
“This was my bedroom,” he says, standing next to scorched mattress springs that protrude from the rubble of bricks and plaster.
Polite and soft spoken, Danyk says his father and stepfather are both fighting in the Ukrainian army.
“My father is a soldier, my uncles are soldiers and my grandfather was a soldier, too. My stepfather is a soldier and I will be a soldier,” he says with a look of determination. “I want to be an air force pilot.”
“THIS BRIDGE WAS THE ROAD FROM HELL”
Before the Russian withdrawal from Kyiv and surrounding areas on April 2, suburbs and towns near the city’s airport were pounded by rockets, artillery fire and aerial bombardment in an effort to break the Ukrainian defenses.
Entire city blocks of apartments were blackened by the shelling in Irpin, just 20 kilometers (12 miles) northwest of the capital, along a route where police Lt. Ruslan Huseinov patrolled daily.
Some of the most dramatic scenes from the early stages of the war were of the evacuation from Irpin underneath a destroyed highway bridge, where thousands escaped the relentless attacks.
Huseinov was there for 16 days, organizing crossings where the elderly were carried along muddy pathways in wheelbarrows.
Reconstruction work has begun on the bridge, where mangled concrete and iron bars hang over the river. Clothing and shoes from those who fled can still be seen tangled in the debris.
“This bridge was the road from hell,” says Huseinov, 34, standing next to an overturned white van still lodged into a slab of smashed concrete.
“We got people out of (Irpin) because conditions were terrible — with bombing and shelling,” he said. “People were really scared because many lost their children, members of their family, their brothers and sisters.”
Crosses made from construction wood are still nailed to the railings of the bridge to honor those lost and the effort to save civilians.
“The whole world witnessed our solidarity,” says Huseinov, who grew up in Germany and says he would never again take the good things in life for granted.
“In my mind, everything has changed: My values in life,” he said. “Now I understand what we have to lose.”
“BEFORE THE WAR, IT WAS ANOTHER LIFE”
The floor of the Church of Andrew the Apostle has been re-tiled and bullet holes in the walls plastered over and repainted — but the horror of what happened in March lies only a few yards away.
The largest mass grave in Bucha — a town outside Kyiv that has become synonymous with the brutality of the Russian attack — is behind the church.
“This grave contained 116 people, including 30 women, and two children,” said Father Andriy, who has conducted multiple burial services for civilians found shot dead or killed by shelling, some still only identified as a number while the effort to name all of Bucha’s victims continues.
Many of the bodies were found before the Russians pulled out of the Kyiv region, Father Andriy said.
“We couldn’t bury people in the cemetery because it’s on the outskirts of the city. They left people, dead people, lying in the street. Dead people were found still in their cars. They were trying to leave but the Russians shelled them,” said Father Andriy, wearing a large cross around his neck and a dark purple cassock.
“That situation lasted two weeks, and the local authorities began coming up with solutions (to help) relatives and loved ones. It was bad weather and wild animals were discovering the bodies. So something had to be done.”
He decided to carry out burial services in the church yard, many next to where the bodies had been discovered.
The experience , he said, has left people in the town badly shaken.
“I think that, neither myself or anyone who lives in Ukraine, who witnessed the war, can understand why this happened,” he said.
“Before the war, it was another life.”
“For now we are surviving on adrenaline,” he said. “But I’m worried that the aftermath will last decades. It will be hard to get past this and turn the page. Saying the word ‘forgive’ isn’t difficult. But to say it from your heart — for now , that’s not possible.”
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Full coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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AP staffers Vasilisa Stepanenko and Roman Hrytsyna contributed.
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DILLON COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) – A South Carolina elementary school principal who was shot to death early Sunday morning was found dead inside a car by authorities with the suspect still inside, according to the Dillon County sheriff.
Dr. Wendy Cook, 54, was the principal at Stewart Height Elementary School in the Dillon County Four School District. Her death was ruled a homicide on Monday by Coroner Donnie Grimsley.
Authorities arrested Kyle Church, 31, after being called at about 3:15 a.m. to an address just outside Dillon to investigate gunshots, according to Sheriff Douglas Pernell.
Pernell said deputies found Church inside a car with Cook, who was dead. Deputies also recovered a gun inside the car.
Church was charged with murder as well as possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. He appeared before a magistrate on Monday and will now have to appear before a circuit court judge for a bond hearing, Pernell said.
Pernell said Tuesday that Cook and Church were acquaintances but could not provide additional details. He also said he did not know whether Church was one of Cook’s former students.
The sheriff said the next steps in how the case proceeds will be up to the solicitor’s office.
The district confirmed news of Cook’s death on its Facebook page Monday.
State Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman said in a statement Monday night that she was saddened by Cook’s death.
“Her colleagues and friends in the Dillon County School District 4 talk about the great work she did leading her school and the many impacts she had on her students and staff,” Spearman said. “My deepest condolences are with the entire Dillon school community as they grieve this loss.”
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CHARLEROI, Belgium (AP) — A Belgian-British teenage pilot was on track Tuesday to become the youngest person to fly around the world solo in a small plane as he landed in southern Belgium ahead of the penultimate leg of his global odyssey.
Mack Rutherford, who turned 17 during the journey, touched down at Buzet Airstrip near the city of Charleroi, where he originally learned to fly. He’s due to land in Bulgaria on Wednesday. His aim: to displace Travis Ludlow of Britain, who was 18 when he set the record in 2021.
Rutherford is flying a Shark, one of the fastest ultralight aircraft in the world with a cruising speed reaching 300 kph (186 mph), which has been specially fitted out for the long journey. It’s normally a two-seater, but an extra fuel tank has been installed next to the young pilot.
It’s the same kind of aircraft used by his 19-year-old sister, Zara Rutherford, when she set the world record on Jan. 20 for the youngest woman to fly solo around the world.
Mack’s lonely journey, which began on March 23, took him through 52 countries over five continents. To conform with Guinness World Records requirements, the route crossed the equator twice.
“It was supposed to take between two to three months and it’s been five months now,” he told The Associated Press. Administrative formalities in Crete and Dubai “because of paperwork issues, visas, permits, things like that,” caused the delay.
The flight took him through Africa and the Gulf region — where he face periods of extreme heat — then on to India, China, South Korea and Japan. From there, he headed to Alaska and down the U.S. West Coast to Mexico. The teen then headed north again along the U.S. East Coast to Canada, across the Atlantic via Iceland, to the U.K. and Belgium.
If all goes well, and weather permitting, he’ll fly east across Europe via Slovakia and land at an airport in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, on Wednesday.
Proud father Sam Rutherford said his two children have set a shining example.
“They have got around the world safely, effectively, professionally. And they’ve shown to other youngsters that you don’t have to be 18 even, and certainly not 30, to make a difference and do something and follow your dreams,” he told AP.
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz as a toddler was intellectually and physically behind other children, which caused him to isolate himself and hit and bite to get what he wanted, a daycare administrator and former neighbor testified Tuesday at his penalty trial for mass murder.
He remained socially and behaviorally stunted through elementary school, a special education counselor also testified.
Cruz’s attorneys began the second day of their defense by building on testimony that his birth mother’s cocaine and alcohol abuse during pregnancy left him severely brain damaged, putting him on a road that led to him murdering 14 students and three staff members at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018.
They are trying to persuade his jury to sentence him to life without parole instead of death. Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to the murders and the trial is only to determine his sentence. Prosecutors say no drugs were found in Cruz’s system at birth. The defense says that’s because his birth mother was put in a residential drug rehab program when she was six months pregnant, but the damage had been done.
Anne Fischer, who ran the daycare center Cruz attended from about age 1, said he did not progress as fast as other children and was smaller. She said while the other toddlers could ask for their water cups and use a spoon, Cruz could not. She said he would fall down when he tried to run and his head and ears seemed disproportional to his body.
“He isolated himself a lot. He would sit in the corner and observe,” Fischer said.
He pushed other kids because he “didn’t know how to express himself,” she said. “If someone else had a toy that Nikolas wanted, he would just go up and grab the toy and hit the child’s hand to get the toy or the object. If a teacher was trying to work with him to get him to use his spoon or not his hand, he would hit the teacher’s hand away.”
She said Lynda Cruz, his adoptive mother, was loving toward Nikolas and tried to do the best she could, but was slow to admit he had problems.
She said that since the shooting, she sometimes feels a bit guilty, wondering if there was something she could have done “so he could be a better person.”
Patricia Devaney-Westerlind, who lived across the street from Lynda and Roger Cruz, said Lynda Cruz kept the family’s 4,500-square-foot home immaculate and that she was nurturing to Nikolas and his younger half-brother Zachary, whom the family also adopted.
“He was a cute little baby,” she said of Nikolas. “She would go and get him all these sailor outfits. She was just the happiest I ever saw her.”
But she saw many of the same issues that Fischer did — that other than her daughter, who was about eight months younger than him, Nikolas Cruz could not relate to other children.
“I didn’t see anything that different until about maybe 18 months old. He’s very, very hyper. Very,” she said. “Always running around. He wasn’t talking, so if he wanted a toy, he would go after someone.”
Devaney-Westerlind said when the children of the neighborhood would gather at her home, Cruz would stay by himself and hide behind the blinds.
“You’d see all the kids playing on the floor with different toys and he’d be somewhere else,” she said.
She said Cruz was a bed and pants wetter until he was 6 or 7, which caused other children to pick on him.
“He would get upset and he would start breaking their toys,” she said. “He would be very upset, he would clench his fists. He’d be very angry. It would go on for a while. He wouldn’t get over it.”
John Newnham, a special education counselor who worked with Cruz from kindergarten through fifth grade, said he was usually kept in small classes with similarly diagnosed students. He said Cruz seemed fearful, would avoid eye contact and didn’t like shaking hands or other forms of greeting like a fist bump.
When Roger Cruz died shortly after Nikolas entered kindergarten, he said, Lynda Cruz remained a loving parent but became overwhelmed by being a single mom of two “very rambunctious” boys who were “defiant and hard to control and given to conflict in the neighborhood.”
“She was reluctant to discipline the boys. She was somewhat fearful of them,” Newnham said.
He said Cruz lacked self-confidence and would say about himself, “I’m just stupid. I’m a freak.” He would tear up his writings and break his pencils.
“He was somewhat of a perfectionist,” Newnham said.
Lynda Cruz died in November 2017, about four months before the shooting.
The defense is trying to overcome the prosecution’s case, which featured surveillance video of Cruz mowing down students and staff as he stalked a three-story building for seven-minutes, photos of the aftermath and a jury visit to the building.
For Cruz to receive a death sentence, the jury must be unanimous. If one juror votes for life, that will be his sentence.
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BANGKOK (AP) — Groups of protesters gathered in Thailand’s capital on Tuesday to call for the country’s prime minister to step down, saying he has exceeded his constitutional term limit.
A demonstration at Bangkok’s Democracy Monument, a traditional protest venue, appeared to draw fewer than 200 protesters, mixed in with bystanders and journalists.
Anti-government activists have been seeking Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s resignation for almost three years, saying he holds the post illegitimately because he came to power by leading a military coup that ousted an elected government in 2014.
They have fresh hopes that he can be thrown out of office because of an article in the constitution that limits prime ministers to eight years in office. They say the eight years ended on Tuesday, a day before the anniversary of Prayuth taking the post of prime minister in the military government installed after the coup.
But Prayuth’s supporters contend the countdown on his term began after 2014.
They say the current constitution, which contains the provision limiting prime ministers to eight years, came into effect on April 6, 2017, and that should be used as the starting date. Another interpretation favoring his continuing tenure is that the countdown began on June 9, 2019, when Prayuth took office under the new constitution following a 2019 general election. He must call new elections by next year in any case.
A petition from opposition lawmakers arguing that Prayuth has reached the eight-year limit was sent Monday to the Constitutional Court, with speculation that its nine-member panel might announce on Wednesday whether it will rule on the matter.
The possibility that the court might decide against Prayuth — considered slight because it has generally ruled in the government’s favor in a slew of political cases — has raised tensions.
Polls show the prime minister’s popularity is at a low ebb. He has been accused of mishandling the economy and botching Thailand’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020, thousands of people took to the streets in multiple protests to demand that Prayuth and his Cabinet resign, while calling for the constitution to be amended and the monarchy to be reformed. The student-driven movement was sparked in part by the court-ordered dissolution of the popular opposition Future Forward Party.
The protest movement at one point attracted crowds of 20,000-30,000 in Bangkok. Several confrontations with the authorities grew violent. A legal crackdown on activists, arrested in many cases under a law against insulting the monarchy because of their criticism of the royal institution, has embittered Prayuth’s critics more.
The major faction of the protest movement, calling itself Ratsadon — The People — issued a statement Sunday affirming its call for Prayuth’s ouster.
“For more than eight years, Thai society has fallen under the darkest and most bitter times. A period under the rule of a tyrant who took power away from the people. A tyrant who inherits power through a mechanism without democratic legitimacy,” the statement said.
It declared that the Constitutional Court “must listen.”
“We, the people, are hopeful that deep down, you, and General Prayuth’s cronies will come to your senses and realize that the time of General Prayuth as prime minister of Thailand has come to an end according to the 2017 constitution of Thailand.”
Fearful of protesters marching to Prayuth’s offices at Government House, security forces have blocked some streets with shipping containers, a tactic they have previously used against anti-government protesters.
At Democracy Movement, where the protest was set to end at midnight and resume Wednesday, a costumed dancer slowly whirled around lit candles placed on the ground while another protester burned Prayuth’s picture in a bowl together with items such as salt and incense sticks in a ritual curse. Firecrackers were set off and protesters raised a three-finger salute that has become their symbol of resistance.
“The people are suffering. It’s difficult to earn a living. Prices are rising. Oil prices are on the rise and eggs are expensive. Everything is expensive. Nothing is good right now. Prayuth shouldn’t run the government anymore,” said Manee, a 44-year-old protester who declined to give her last name for fear of retribution by the authorities. “He must get out.”
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This version corrects that Tuesday was the day before the anniversary of Prayuth becoming prime minister in the post-coup military government, not that it was the anniversary of the coup.
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UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. nuclear agency renewed its request Tuesday to assess the safety and security at Europe’s largest nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine which Russia and Ukraine accuse each other of shelling, sparking warnings of a possible nuclear catastrophe.
U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo announced at the start of an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant that Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, requested to send an IAEA mission “to carry out essential safety, security and safeguard activities at the site.”
“Preparations for the mission are proceeding and the IAEA is in active consultations with all parties regarding its efforts to send such a mission as soon as possible,” DiCarlo said. “We welcome Ukraine and Russia’s recent statements indicating support for the IAEA’s aim to send a mission to the plant, which would be the IAEA’s first to that site since the start of the war.”
Grossi said in a statement that “the mission is expected to take place within the next few days if ongoing negotiations succeed.”
DiCarlo said the U.N. has the logistics and security capacity in Ukraine “to support any IAEA mission to the plant from Kyiv, provided Ukraine and Russia agree.”
The Zaporizhzhia plant has been under the control of Russian forces since early March, soon after their invasion of Ukraine. Technical experts from Ukraine continue to operate the nuclear equipment.
DiCarlo called the situation in and around the plant “dangerous” and warned that if the almost daily reports “of alarming incidents involving the plant” continue or escalate, “we could face a disaster.”
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council that since its last meeting on the operation of Zaporizhzhia about two weeks ago, “the nuclear safety situation has further deteriorated.”
“The armed forces of Ukraine continue basically every day to shell the territory of the nuclear power plant and the town of Enerhodar and this creates a real risk of a radiation accident,” he said.
“We expect that the IAEA trip mission will take place in the very near future and the agency experts will confirm the real situation at the station,” Nebenzia said. “We stand ready to extend maximum support possible to resolve all organizational issues.”
Ukraine’s U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya welcomed the readiness of the IAEA’s Grossi to send a mission to Zaporizhzhia. He said earlier Tuesday Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba responded to Grossi’s letter with the proposed IAEA itinerary saying it is in compliance with Ukrainian legislation “and in general might be accepted.”
“Further arrangements are to be made based on the security conditions and require communication of detailed route plans and other logistical aspects as soon as possible,” Kyslytsya said.
Kyslytsya stressed that Ukraine would like to see the IAEA mission bolstered by incorporating “military and political components,” and having IAEA experts remain at the plant until it is returned to Ukraine.
He also reiterated Ukraine’s demand for Russian troops to withdraw from Zaporizhzhia and for a demilitarized zone around the plant.
After last week’s high-level meeting in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv involving U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the presidents of Ukraine and Turkey, it appeared progress had been made on an IAEA mission to the plant. But there had been no sign of progress until DiCarlo’s announcement.
DiCarlo told the council that the U.N. chief had discussed the issue of the plant’s safety during a phone call with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Aug. 15, and with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the Aug. 18 Lviv meeting.
The Russian and Ukrainian ambassadors accused each other’s country of responsibility for the attacks in an around Zaporizhzhia.
Nebenzia accused Ukraine of “using nuclear blackmail” by shelling the plant and called Western proposals for Russian forces to withdraw and to create a demilitarized zone “irresponsible.” He said they don’t take into account the need for the safe functioning of the plant.
Addressing Western members of the council, he said: “Once again, we appeal to you to stop covering up what your Kyiv protegees are doing and compel them to stop attacking the Zaporizhzhia (plant) which is fraught with risk of accident and radioactive contamination of European countries.”
Nebenzia cited Russian Defense Ministry reports alleging Ukrainian shelling and said “a whole slew of such photographic evidence” was sent to Security Council members on Tuesday.
He insisted that Russia has no heavy weapons at the plant, and that a “disaster” has been avoided because of the “smooth joint work” between the Ukrainian workers, fire squads, emergency people and Russian military.
Ukraine’s Kyslytsya said Russia needs Zaporizhzhia to “wage war” against his country and accused Moscow of “turning the issue of nuclear safety at the facility into a farce, a circus.”
“Nobody who is at least conscious can imagine that Ukraine would target a nuclear power plant at tremendous risk of nuclear catastrophe and on its own territory,” he said. “Such a catastrophe would lead to many deaths and pollution for many years to come.”
Kyslytsya said Russia also needs the plant “for propaganda purposes because the de-occupation of the plant will mean a failure of Putin’s campaign in the south of Ukraine.”
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Hello, this is your daily dose of news from Onmanorama. Tune in to get updated about the major news stories of the day.
1. KSRTC CMD apologises for man's assault by Kattakada depot crew
2. Governor signs five bills, leaves contentious ones untouched
3. Parambikulam dam shutter damaged, water gushes into Chalakudy river
4. Malayali student commits suicide at Punjab university, peers protest
5. Popular comic Raju Srivastava no more
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Let's get into the details....
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1. KSRTC Chair and MD Biju Prabhakar said on Wednesday that employees who are not willing to correct themselves will be dismissed as per protocol.He was responding to Tuesday's incident where four employees of the public transporter were suspended for thrashing a 55-year-old man, named Preman, for demanding a student's concession card for his daughter. His college-going daughter was even shoved by the employees at the bus depot after a brief war of words erupted between them. A few hours later, Transport Minister Antony Raju said that four employees, including the station master of the Kattakkada KSRTC depot, have been suspended with immediate effect.
Biju Prabhakar noted that the behaviour of a few employees affects the reputation of the whole establishment. He said, "The incident is deplorable and extremely unfortunate. It is upsetting that such incidents tarnish the corporation's name when it is trying to tide over the crisis with corrective measures. I apologise to the public for the treatment meted out to the girl and her father. We will never protect such employees. The government has been asked to weed out such individuals. The Transport Minister is also of the similar view."
The High Court too registered a suo motu case on the shocking incident.
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2. Continuing his standoff with the State Government, Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan refused to sign the controversial bills seeking amendment to the Lokayukta Act and those pertaining to university affairs as they came up before him.
However, he gave assent to five out of the 11 bills presented to him for nod just ahead of his visit to Delhi on Wednesday. Khan signed the five bills and left out the contentious ones as he had announced earlier. These bills were passed by the legislature and were despatched to the Governor for his assent.
He is set to depart for the national capital on Wednesday and will be back in Kerala on October 3. As per the procedure, bills are forwarded from the Assembly to the legal department in the Secretariat, from where they are sent to the Chief Minister's Office before despatch to the Raj Bhavan. Once bills reach before him, the Governor will assess whether they are legal and constitutional. He also has the power to either seek explanations or send them back to the government. He can even forward them to the President via the Central government for approval.
Indicating that his nod was unlikely for controversial bills, last week Khan had said he was not a rubber stamp to sign on dotted lines.
He even alleged the bills were intended to legalise all illegal activities taken place so far.
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3. The water flow to Chalakudy river increased on Wednesday after one of the three shutters of Parambikulam Dam located in Palakkad district was damaged.
The shutter, which is usually raised by 10 centimetres at a time, automatically opened for the entire height of 25 feet by 2 am on Wednesday.
A security personnel on night shift alerted the authorities about the incident after he heard a loud noise. He had noticed a huge outflow of water from the dam shutter on investigating.
The Kerala Police and Water Authority have asked the residents near the river to exercise caution. Palakad District Collector Mrunmayi Shashank informed that people from vulnerable tribal areas will be relocated to safer havens.
The dam is on the Parambikulam river and is located at Parambikulam area of Palakkad district. It is India's largest embankment dam and ranks in the top 10 in the world in terms of the volume of water it can hold.
The Parambikulam Dam is under the control of Tamil Nadu government.
The two functioning shutters of the dam were, meanwhile, lifted by 10 cm each to prevent any damage to these shutters from rising pressure of the water.
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Before we move on, do you love football? Then we have a new podcast suggestion for you, Extra Time! A weekly podcast from Onmanorama that brings together news, views and analysis from the world of football. Join Hosts Arun George and Kannan to make sense of the major matches, club transfers and the players who made the difference.
Now, back to Daily News Dose.
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4. A first-year student of a private university in Punjab's Phagwara committed suicide, triggering a protest by fellow students on the campus, police said on Wednesday.
The deceased student, 21-year-old Agni S Dilip, hailing from Kerala, was studying B Design at Lovely Professional University (LPU). Soon after the suicide, other students of the university held a protest on the campus. Police have been deployed outside the university campus. Prima facie, the student was facing some personal issues, as was suggested by a suicide note left by him, a police official in Phagwara said. Police also said the student's parents have been informed and an investigation is underway.
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5. Popular comedian and actor Raju Srivastava, who was on ventilator support for over a month, has passed away. The news was confirmed by his brother Dipoo Srivastava on Wednesday morning.
According to his family, Raju was admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, after suffering a heart attack while working out at the gym. Though he underwent an angioplasty, he did not regain consciousness, though he had shown signs of improvement.
Srivastava, who has been in the entertainment industry since the 1980s, shot to fame after participating in the first season of the reality stand-up comedy show 'The Great Indian Laughter Challenge' in 2005. His role as Gajodhar Bhaiya in the comedy show soon went on to become a fan favourite. He was also a participant in Big Boss Season 3.
Raju had a huge passion to be a comedy artist from his childhood and would participate in several stage programmes. Born on December 25, 1963, Satya Prakash Srivastava, who later became famous as Raju Srivastava, came from a middle-class family in Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur.
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That brings us to the end of this episode. Be sure to come back tomorrow. As always, thanks for listening to Daily News Dose.
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NEW YORK (AP) — A Colorado businessman charged in a “We Build The Wall” fraud case that once included onetime presidential adviser Steve Bannon among defendants wants his October retrial moved from New York to Colorado to save money and spare him from what his lawyer says is bias from political polarization he’ll otherwise face.
Attorney John Meringolo wrote in papers submitted to a Manhattan federal court judge late Monday that Timothy Shea cannot get a fair and impartial retrial in New York.
He also asked that the retrial be moved from Oct. 24 to early December, saying prosecutors have recently produced a previously seized laptop computer taken from Shea’s Castle Rock, Colorado, residence that contains an email exchange not introduced at the first trial, which ended in June with a deadlocked jury.
In requesting a change of venue, Meringolo cited what he called the “obviously politically charged atmosphere of the jury room” at the first trial and said the effect of “political polarization” became obvious when the trial ended in a mistrial after 11 jurors tried to force one juror off the panel, saying he possessed political bias.
A similar venue-change request was denied before Shea’s first trial. Meringolo said the first trial was an immense financial burden for his client and a move would enable him to have witnesses who live closer to Colorado testify on his behalf.
Shea has pleaded not guilty to charges that he cheated thousands of donors who contributed $25 million to a campaign to build a wall along the southern U.S. border.
Shea stood trial alone after Bannon, a onetime adviser to then-President Donald Trump, was pardoned. Two other defendants pleaded guilty. The case was prosecuted in New York after it was determined that donors to the fund were from everywhere in the country, including New York.
Conspiracy and falsification of records charges against Shea were filed after questions arose over how donations were spent from the “We Build The Wall” campaign. Only a few miles of wall were built.
Shea owns an energy drink company, Winning Energy, whose cans have featured a cartoon superhero image of Trump and claim to contain “12 oz. of liberal tears.”
Prosecutors declined through a spokesperson to comment on the defense requests.
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| 2022-09-21T15:18:10Z
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CHICAGO (AP) — A former merchandizing agent for R. Kelly testified Tuesday that the singer offered him $1 million to find a VHS tape featuring Kelly as prosecutors sought to persuade jurors that Kelly was desperate to recover the missing recording, knowing it could land him in legal peril if it fell into the hands of law enforcement.
Based in part on that recording, which prosecutors say shows the R&B star sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl, Kelly faces charges that include production of child pornography. He is also accused of fixing his 2008 state child pornography trial by threatening witnesses and endeavoring to conceal video evidence.
Charles Freeman testified Tuesday that Kelly reached out to him in 2001 to ask him to hunt down the recording. Freeman, a 52-year-old from Kansas City, also explained how he pressured Kelly and his associates for years to pay him the full $1 million after Freeman found and returned the tape.
Freeman told jurors he didn’t know the contents of the video until after he retrieved it from a home in Atlanta in 2001 and then slipped it into a VHS player at a friend’s home later that day.
“I observed Robert Kelly with a young lady having sex,” he said.
When a prosecutor asked Freeman, who testified Tuesday under an immunity agreement, why it took him nearly two decades to turn the recording over to police that and other recordings of child pornography tied to Kelly, Freeman responded: “Because the police wasn’t going to pay me a million dollars.”
Kelly, 55, is already serving a 30-year prison sentence imposed by a federal judge in New York in June for his 2021 convictions on racketeering and sex trafficking charges. If convicted in Chicago, he could see years added to that sentence.
At his 2008 trial, at which Kelly was ultimately acquitted, state prosecutors described Kelly lugging a duffel bag full of his homemade child pornography tapes everywhere he went. Despite Kelly’s efforts in the 1990s to keep them close, some leaked out or were stolen by disgruntled workers or friends, prosecutors said.
After acquitting Kelly in 2008, some jurors told reporters they had no choice but to find Kelly not guilty because the girl — who then was in her 20s — did not take the witness stand to confirm it was her in the video. Last week, she did testify at the federal trail in Chicago, saying she was the minor in the video and Kelly was the adult man.
But actually getting the $1 million Freeman said he was promised by Kelly became an all-consuming task that lasted years, he told jurors.
Soon after Freeman found the video, he met with two Kelly associates in 2001 at a Kansas City hotel expecting to receive the full payment, Freeman testified. When he walked into a room and saw two brown bags full of cash, he told jurors he knew right away it wasn’t enough.
“That ain’t no million dollars,” he recalled telling Kelly’s people.
Freeman said he ended up leaving with one paper bag stuffed with $75,000 in cash after being assured he’d eventually get the full $1 million. Even after turning over the tape and getting partial payment, Freeman retained enormous leverage over Kelly, including the possibility that he could go public with what he knew.
Freeman described himself stalking Kelly at concerts to demand he pay the balance of the $1 million, threatening to go public with what he knew and filing lawsuits to squeeze Kelly to pay. He said each threat and lawsuit typically led to Kelly associates throwing more money at Freeman, sometimes literally.
Another time at R. Kelly’s suburban Chicago home, Freeman said a Kelly associate and now co-defendant at the ongoing trial, Derrel McDavid, told Freeman to take off all his clothes and get into Kelly’s swimming pool so he could be sure Freeman wasn’t wearing a recording device for law enforcement.
“I ain’t getting in no pool naked,” Freeman recalled telling McDavid. Freeman said he eventually did take off his shirt to show he wasn’t wearing a wire.
Later, as he pulled out of a parking lot, McDavid gave Freeman another installment, tossing a brown bag with $100,000 in ten bundles of $10,000 through Freeman’s open car window.
McDavid and another Kelly associate, Milton Brown, are on trial with Kelly. McDavid is accused of helping Kelly fix the 2008 trial, while Brown is charged with receiving child pornography. Like Kelly, they also have denied wrongdoing.
Freeman testified that in late 2003 or early 2004, McDavid approached him again about recovering yet another tape that had gone missing from Kelly’s collection. He said he told McDavid, “If I gotta recover another tape, you gotta pay me another million dollars.”
Freeman is expected to take the stand again Wednesday, when defense attorneys will have their chance to cross-examine him.
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Follow Michael Tarm on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mtarm and find AP’s full coverage of the R. Kelly trial at https://apnews.com/hub/r-kelly.
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| 2022-09-21T15:18:18Z
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(NEXSTAR) — A 61-year-old woman who survived a bear attack in Vermont over the weekend is crediting her Jack Russell terrier with their escape, according to Fish and Wildlife officials.
Susan Lee was walking the terrier and her labradoodle along a trail on her property in Strafford Saturday when the bear surprised her. She later told Game Warden Sergeant Jeffrey Whipple and Game Warden Kyle Isherwood that she had lost sight of her dogs and recalled them just before hearing a loud noise and seeing the bear charge at her.
Lee said she tripped on a stone wall, and then the bear was on top of her. When she felt pain in her upper left leg she knew the bear had bitten down on her.
The attack was cut short by her Jack Russell terrier, a breed that usually stands about 1 foot tall and weighs between 13 and 17 pounds.
“Ms. Lee stated that her Jack Russel terrier intervened by barking at the bear, which got off her and appeared to focus on the dog,” officials stated in a news release. Lee said she and the terrier managed to retreat down the trail and the bear took off in another direction. The labradoodle would make it home later, according to USA Today.
Whipple told the outlet that the Jack Russell had to execute “some ninja moves” to keep the bear from injuring it.
Despite the bite wound to her leg and “multiple scratches between two and nine inches long on both her sides,” Lee managed to get home safely and text a friend to take her to the hospital for treatment. She also called 911 to report the attack.
Isherwood responded to the scene of the attack with Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department Bear Biologist Jaclyn Comeau and the two concluded that the bear, who they weren’t able to locate, was likely a female with cubs that was provoked when Lee and her dogs surprised them.
“Bear attacks are extremely rare in Vermont,” said Comeau, adding that the department has records of only three prior bear attacks in the state. “However, at this time of year black bears are moving in family units and mothers will be protective of their cubs. If confronted by a bear it is essential to remain calm and back away slowly, and to fight back immediately if attacked.”
Lee was treated at an area hospital where Whipple and Isherwood interviewed her about the attack and warned her of the danger of rabies. Nexstar asked about the results of a possible rabies test but the department did not respond by publishing time.
Lee’s injuries were described as “non-life-threatening.”
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BERLIN (AP) — A woman was arrested Tuesday in southern Germany after allegedly injuring three people with what was described as a “sword-like object,” police said.
Police said they were alerted just before noon to the incident in a square in Weiden in der Oberpfalz, a town in Bavaria near the Czech border. They said in a statement that passers-by were able to hold the suspect, a 65-year-old woman from a neighboring area, until she was detained by officers sent to the scene.
Two of the victims, men aged 46 and 61, were taken to a hospital and one of them had been released by mid-afternoon. No one had life-threatening injuries, police said.
They didn’t give further details on the weapon or of a possible motive.
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| 2022-09-21T15:18:33Z
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(NEXSTAR) – In 2019, hackers were able to gain access to more than 100 million Capital One customer accounts and credit card applications, compromising the personal information of thousands of people across the U.S. Now, those impacted by the breach have just a few weeks to claim their part of a $190 million settlement reached in a class-action lawsuit.
As part of the lawsuit, plaintiffs say Capital One’s cloud computing systems, which were hosted by Amazon, lacked adequate protections to stop hackers. Capital One and Amazon are listed as defendants in the lawsuit, and have denied wrongdoing and “that the information accessed by the attacker had been made public or disseminated by the attacker,” according to a website created for the settlement.
Capital One agreed to the $190 million settlement in December, and a U.S. federal court preliminarily approved it in February. Originally, those who may qualify for the settlement had until August 22 to file a claim. The deadline has now been extended to September 30, CNET reports.
What happened in the breach?
While hackers had access to accounts in March 2019, the breach wasn’t made public until four months later in July.
The same month, former Seattle tech worker Paige A. Thompson was arrested after Capital One informed the FBI of her “hacking activity.” Federal authorities found Thompson was able to use a tool she created to scan Amazon Web Services accounts looking for misconfigured accounts.
She then used those accounts to hack and download data from over two dozen entities, including Capital One. The U.S. Department of Justice accused her of posting about her theft on sharing site GitHub.
Earlier this year, Thompson was convicted of wire fraud and computer intrusions. She is scheduled to be sentenced in September.
Capital One says it has since addressed the flaw in its system and agreed, as part of the settlement, to “adopt, pay for, implement, and maintain extensive Business Practice Commitments related to information security for a period of at least two (2) years.”
Are you eligible for payment in the settlement?
Roughly 98 million Americans are eligible for a cash payment in the settlement, according to Capital One. The bank says it has sent a notice to those who “are likely a member of the Settlement Class.” You can also call 1-855-604-1811 to confirm your eligibility.
Anyone who already chose to opt-out of the settlement does not qualify to receive a payment.
How to file a claim
If you are an eligible member of the settlement class, Capital One says you can file a claim to be reimbursed up to $25,000 in cash for lost time (up to 15 hours at a rate of at least $25 an hour) and out-of-pocket costs relating to the breach. This includes fraud charges, money you spent to prevent identity theft, and fees to address identity theft, fraud or falsified tax returns.
Additionally, you can submit a claim to enroll in at least three years of Identity Defense Services through the Pango Group at no cost.
Claims must be filed online or mailed in by September 30, 2022. You will need the Unique ID and PIN included in the notice Capital One sent via mail or email. If you haven’t received a notice, or misplaced yours, you can call a Settlement Administrator at 1-855-604-1811 for assistance.
According to Capital One, if you are requesting reimbursement for out-of-pocket losses and/or lost time, you will need to provide additional, detailed information to qualify.
Because final approval for the settlement is still pending — a hearing is scheduled for September 8 — it’s unclear when exactly payments will be sent out. If the settlement receives final approval, payments could be available soon after.
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| 2022-09-21T15:18:41Z
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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday is set to announce his long-delayed move to forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loans for many Americans and extend a pause on payments to January, according to three people familiar with the plan.
Biden has faced pressure from liberals to provide broader relief to hard-hit borrowers, and from moderates and Republicans questioning the fairness of any widespread forgiveness. The delay in Biden’s decision has only heightened the anticipation for what his own aides acknowledge represents a political no-win situation. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Biden’s intended announcement ahead of time.
The precise details of Biden’s plan, which will include an income cap limiting the forgiveness to only those earning less than $125,000 a year, were being kept to an unusually small circle within the Biden administration and were still not finalized on the eve of the announcement.
Down-to-the-wire decision-making has been a hallmark of the Biden White House, but the particular delay on student loans reflects the vexing challenge confronting him in fulfilling a key campaign promise.
The plan would likely eliminate student debt entirely for millions of Americans and wipe away at least half for millions more.
The nation’s federal student debt now tops $1.6 trillion after ballooning for years. More than 43 million Americans have federal student debt, with almost a third owing less than $10,000 and more than half owing less than $20,000, according to the latest federal data.
The continuation of the pandemic-era payment freeze comes just days before millions of Americans were set to find out when their next student loan bills will be due. This is the closest the administration has come to hitting the end of the payment freeze extension, with the current pause set to end Aug. 31.
Wednesday’s announcement was set for the White House after Biden returns from vacation in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. The administration had briefly considered higher education schools in the president’s home state for a larger reveal, but scaled back their plans.
Biden was initially skeptical of student loan debt cancellation as he faced off against more progressive Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who had proposed cancellations of $50,000 or more, during the 2020 primaries.
As he tried to shore up support among younger voters and prepare for a general election battle against then-President Donald Trump, Biden unveiled his initial proposal for debt cancellation of $10,000 per borrower, with no mention of an income cap.
Biden narrowed his campaign promise in recent months by embracing the income limit as soaring inflation took a political toll and as he aimed to head off political attacks that the cancellation would benefit those with higher take-home pay. But Democrats, from members of congressional leadership to those facing tough re-election bids this November, have pushed the administration to go as broad as possible on debt relief, seeing it in part as a galvanizing issue, particularly for Black and young voters this fall.
The frenzied last-minute lobbying continued Tuesday even as Biden remained on his summer vacation. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., one of the loudest advocates in recent years for canceling student loan debt, spoke privately on the phone with Biden, imploring the president to forgive as much debt as the administration can, according to a Democrat with knowledge of the call.
In his pitch, Schumer argued to Biden that doing so was the right thing to do morally and economically, said the Democrat, who asked for anonymity to describe a private conversation.
Inside the administration, officials have discussed since at least early summer forgiving more than $10,000 of student debt for certain categories of borrowers, such as Pell Grant recipients, according to three people with knowledge of the deliberations. That remained one of the final variables being considered by Biden heading into Wednesday’s announcement.
Democrats are betting that Biden, who has seen his public approval rating tumble over the last year, can help motivate younger voters to the polls in November with the announcement.
Although Biden’s plan is narrower than what he initially proposed during the campaign, “he’ll get a lot of credit for following through on something that he was committed to,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who worked with Biden during the 2020 election.
She described student debt as a “gateway issue” for younger voters, meaning it affects their views and decisions on housing affordability and career choices. A survey of 18- to 29-year-olds conducted by the Harvard Institute of Politics in March found that 59% of those polled favored debt cancellation of some sort — whether for all borrowers or those most in need — although student loans did not rank high among issues that most concerned people in that age group.
Some advocates were already bracing for disappointment.
“If the rumors are true, we’ve got a problem,” Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, which has aggressively lobbied Biden to take bolder action, said Tuesday. He emphasized that Black students face higher debut burdens than white students.
“President Biden’s decision on student debt cannot become the latest example of a policy that has left Black people — especially Black women — behind,” he said. “This is not how you treat Black voters who turned out in record numbers and provided 90% of their vote to once again save democracy in 2020.”
John Della Volpe, who worked as a consultant on Biden’s campaign and is the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, said the particulars of Biden’s announcement were less important than the decision itself.
“It’s about trust in politics, in government, in our system. It’s also about trust in the individual, which in this case is President Biden.”
Combined with fears about expanding abortion restrictions and Trump’s reemergence on the political scene, Della Volpe said student debt forgiveness “adds an additional tailwind to an already improving position with young people.”
Republicans, meanwhile, see only political upside if Biden pursues a large-scale cancellation of student debt ahead of the November midterms, anticipating backlash for Democrats — particularly in states where there are large numbers of working-class voters without college degrees. Critics of broad student debt forgiveness also believe it will open the White House to lawsuits, on the grounds that Congress has never given the president the explicit authority to cancel debt on his own.
The Republican National Committee on Tuesday blasted Biden’s expected announcement as a “handout to the rich,” claiming it would unfairly burden lower-income taxpayers and those who have already paid off their student loans with covering the costs of higher education for the wealthy.
“My neighbor, a detective, worked 3 jobs (including selling carpet) & his wife worked to make sure their daughter got quality college degree w/no student debt,” Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, tweeted Tuesday. “Big sacrifice. Now their taxes must pay off someone else’s student debt?”
Biden’s elongated deliberations have sent federal loan servicers, who have been instructed to hold back billing statements while he weighed a decision, grumbling.
Industry groups had complained that the delayed decision left them with just days to notify borrowers, retrain customer service workers and update websites and digital payment systems, said Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance.
It increases the risk that some borrowers will inadvertently be told they need to make payments, he said.
“At this late stage I think that’s the risk we’re running,” he said. “You can’t just turn on a dime with 35 million borrowers who all have different loan types and statuses.”
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Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed from Washington.
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| 2022-09-21T15:18:48Z
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is forecasting that this year’s budget deficit will be nearly $400 billion lower than it estimated back in March, due in part to stronger than expected revenues, reduced spending, and an economy that has recovered all of the jobs lost during the multi-year pandemic.
In full, this year’s deficit will decline by $1.7 trillion, representing the single largest decline in the federal deficit in American history, the Office of Management and Budget says.
Despite the gains, the administration said Tuesday that it is forecasting a deficit of $1.03 trillion for the budget year that ends Sept. 30. That number signifies a movement away from the record deficit in 2020, which reached $3.13 trillion.
The administration’s Mid-Session Review said much of the improvement in the deficit forecast for this year stemmed from the economy “transitioning from a historic and rapid recovery to stable and steady growth.”
The administration sees inflation pressures remaining into 2023, however.
“The President’s top economic priority continues to be tackling the challenge of inflation, without giving up the historic economic gains we’ve made over the past 18 months,” said Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget in a statement.
“While costs are still too high for too many families, the President’s economic plan is working and we’re on the right track,” she said.
Because the projections of the Mid-Session Review were finalized in June, it does not include the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act and estimated $740 billion climate, healthcare and tax measure.
And while the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office in July said, that fast economic growth and higher tax revenues have caused the federal debt this year to be lower than forecast, the organization warns in its 30-year outlook that debt will soon spiral upward to new highs that could ultimately imperil the U.S. economy.
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| 2022-09-21T15:18:55Z
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Responding to an increasing number of threats born of conspiracy theories that agents were going to aggressively target middle income taxpayers, the Internal Revenue Service announced Tuesday that it was conducting a comprehensive review of safety at its facilities.
The climate, healthcare and tax legislation signed into law by President Joe Biden last week included $80 billion in funding for tax collection efforts. Although Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen specifically directed the agency to not focus its attention on taxpayers with middle class incomes, misinformation spread rapidly online that agents were going to crack down on taxpayers of all earnings levels.
The baseless assertions also said the IRS would distribute firearms to employees authorized to used deadly force, prompting threats to the IRS employees.
Now agency leadership has launched an examination of agency safety.
“We are conducting a comprehensive review of existing safety and security measures,” said Chuck Rettig, IRS commissioner about the agency’s 600 office locations nationwide. “This includes conducting risk assessments,” he said, by monitoring perimeter security, designations of restricted areas, exterior lighting, security around entrances of facilities and other measures.
“For me this is personal. I’ll continue to make every effort to dispel any lingering misperceptions about our work,” Rettig said in a Tuesday letter to employees. “And I will continue to advocate for your safety in every venue where I have an audience.”
Rettig, whose term at the IRS ends in November, is tasked with developing a plan on how to spend the new infusion of funds included in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Along with anonymous online forums, high-ranking Republican politicians have spread falsehoods about the IRS workforce and how the newly allocated funds would be spent.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., sent an August 16 open letter to Americans, calling on them not to take any new IRS positions, reinforcing false information about open roles at the agency and their access to firearms.
“The IRS is making it very clear that you not only need to be ready to audit and investigate your fellow hardworking Americans, your neighbors and friends, you need to be ready and, to use the IRS’s words, willing, to kill them,” he said in the letter.
Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said members have been vocal about their fears and worries about their safety.
“IRS employees are certainly very hard working and honest, they do the business of funding the government. They’re saying they don’t deserve to be treated as the enemy of the government,” he said.
He added that members who are of retirement age have expressed a greater desire to retire due to the increased attention on their jobs. More than half of the IRS’ enforcement workforce of 80,000 is retirement eligible.
Reardon said several workers have talked about being reminded of the 2010 Austin, Texas suicide attack, where Andrew Joseph Stack III deliberately crashed his single engine plane into the Echelon office building, killing himself and Internal Revenue Service manager Vernon Hunter.
“The rhetoric we’re hearing now is dangerous” Reardon said. “It’s putting these patriotic Americans at risk.”
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| 2022-09-21T15:19:03Z
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(The Hill) – A federal judge on Tuesday responded to former President Trump’s lawsuit requesting a special master to review the documents collected by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago residence, giving Trump a Friday deadline to clarify his request.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon issued an order for Trump to elaborate on how the court has jurisdiction and precisely what he wants the court to order in the case.
She also asked Trump’s team to provide more details on whether they served the Department of Justice (DOJ) with the suit and on the lawsuit’s effect on another proceeding, determining if parts of the affidavit supporting the search warrant should be released.
The request was one of two brief orders filed on Tuesday by Cannon, who was nominated to the position by Trump in 2020. She also issued a separate one asking two of his attorneys to correctly format and resubmit their motions to appear pro hac vice, which allows lawyers to appear in courts in which they are not admitted for a particular case.
The former president filed the lawsuit on Monday to temporarily block the FBI from reviewing the documents it seized from his Florida home until the agency appoints a special master to provide outside oversight, marking Trump’s first major legal action since agents executed a search warrant at the property on Aug. 8.
A letter released by the National Archives on Tuesday said DOJ seized at least 700 pages of classified materials when it first recovered documents from Trump’s Florida home in January. Authorities separately seized another 11 sets of classified documents earlier this month.
Trump has repeatedly attacked the FBI and the search as being politically motivated, and he has said the materials include those protected by attorney-client privilege and potentially executive privilege.
He alluded to the forthcoming suit on Friday, claiming the FBI violated his Fourth Amendment rights protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures.
His attorneys outlined many of those concerns in Monday’s motion as it asked the court to appoint a special master, who generally ensures a court’s orders are carried out. The appointment is typically rare in the context of the execution of a search warrant.
The request comes after DOJ began its common practice of leveraging a “filter team” to examine the documents, which is designed to prevent prosecutors from seeing protected materials.
Trump also asked the court to also require the government to provide a more detailed property receipt, which lists the seized materials, and to return any documents outside the scope of the search warrant.
A federal judge signed off on the warrant days before the search took place, permitting agents to search the “45 Office,” all storage rooms, and other areas at Mar-a-Lago available to be used by Trump and his staff in which boxes or documents could be stored.
The warrant allowed the agents to seize any property in those areas that constituted evidence of violations of the Espionage Act and two other statutes.
The laws included one statute that bars the concealment, removal, and mutilation of government documents, and the other prohibits similar actions when done “with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence [an] investigation.”
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| 2022-09-21T15:19:10Z
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Archives and Records Administration recovered more than 100 documents bearing classified markings, totaling more than 700 pages, from an initial batch of 15 boxes retrieved from Mar-a-Lago earlier this year, according to newly public government correspondence with the Trump legal team.
The numbers make clear the large volume of secret government documents recovered months ago from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, well before FBI officials returned there with a search warrant on Aug. 8 and removed an additional 11 sets of classified records. The warrant reveals an FBI investigation into the potential unlawful possession of the records as well as obstruction of justice.
The figures on documents were included in a May 10 letter in which acting archivist Debra Steidel Wall told a lawyer for Trump, Evan Corcoran, that the Biden administration would not be honoring the former president’s protective claims of executive privilege over the documents.
Corcoran had weeks earlier requested additional time to review the materials in the boxes before the National Archives produced them to the FBI so that he could determine whether any specific document was subject to executive privilege and therefore exempt from disclosure, according to the letter.
The letter was made public Tuesday on the website of the National Archives. It was released Monday night on a website launched by John Solomon, who was appointed by Trump in June to be one of his designated representatives to the National Archives and who is a Trump ally and conservative journalist.
The archivist’s letter says the Justice Department had found “no precedent for an assertion of executive privilege by a former President against an incumbent President to prevent the latter” from obtaining from the National Archives presidential records that belong to the federal government and that are needed for current government business.
As a result, the letter said, claims of executive privilege would not be honored and the FBI would be given access to the documents in a matter of days.
The National Archives had asked the Justice Department to investigate after saying that it had located classified material among the 15 boxes of records it retrieved from Mar-a-Lago that it said should have been turned over by Trump at the end of his White House tenure.
In the letter, archivist Wall writes that in those boxes, the National Archives had identified items marked as classified at the top secret level as well as information about special access programs.
It says the records included over 100 documents with classified markings, “comprising more than 700 pages” and cites an excerpt from separate correspondence from the Justice Department’s National Security Division saying that “access to the materials is not only necessary for purposes of our ongoing criminal investigation” but also for an “assessment of the potential damage” resulting from the manner in which the documents were transported and stored.
Corcoran did not immediately return messages seeking comment on the letter.
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Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri in Washington contributed to this report.
___
More on Donald Trump-related investigations: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump
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WASHINGTON (AP) — A new tax credit for U.S. buyers of qualifying electric vehicles made in North America has ignited the specter of a trade war as a domestic imperative of the Biden administration and Democrats collides with the complex realities of globalization.
Democrats included the credit in the expansive climate and health care policy law passed earlier this month as a way to incentivize domestic battery and electric vehicle production. But manufacturers in Europe and South Korea, which sell millions of vehicles in the U.S., have threatened to lodge legal complaints with the World Trade Organization.
Adam Hodge, a spokesman for the U.S. Trade Representative, said the intent of the tax credit is to boost “U.S. EV manufacturing, infrastructure, and innovation that will help us meet our clean energy goals, reduce costs, and create jobs” and “to reduce our dependence on China” for critical materials.
How the Biden administration handles the allegations brought by foreign governments and manufacturers will demonstrate whether the president’s international trade position will mirror the Trump administration’s go-it-alone approach, leaving the World Trade Organization’s dispute resolution process in disarray.
The law includes a tax credit of up to $7,500 that could be used to defray the cost of purchasing an electric vehicle. But to qualify for the full credit, the electric vehicle must contain a battery built in North America with 40% of the metals mined or recycled on the continent. And those rules become more strict over time, such that only a few American manufacturers could produce vehicles that qualify for the credits.
That has caused consternation among U.S. carmakers, who say they have ramped up efforts to bolster their supply chains in order to qualify for the credit.
“We are working overtime to localize our supply chains and ramp up production,” said Chris Smith, chief government affairs officer at Ford in a statement last week.
It also has roiled the framework for dealing with the layered matters of international trade.
Earlier this month, when asked about the tax credit, European Commission spokeswoman Miriam Garcia Ferrer said, “we think that it’s discriminatory, that it’s discriminating against foreign producers in relation to U.S. producers,” calling the credits a “new, potential, trans-Atlantic trade barrier.”
“Of course this would mean that it would be incompatible with the WTO,” she said.
Hildegard Mueller, the head of Germany’s auto lobby group VDA, which represents major manufacturers such as Volkswagen and smaller suppliers, also criticized the measures and has asked the EU to intervene.
“We are critical of the fact that the subsidy is tied to conditions which relate to local value creation and therefore disadvantage products from third countries,” Mueller said. “The European Commission is called upon to clearly advocate for non-discriminatory support here.”
However, the potential for a World Trade Organization complaint highlights the void left in part by the Trump administration, which blew up the WTO’s appeals body when it blocked the approval of new judges to serve on the dispute resolution panel. The panel is supposed to have seven judges. But their ranks have dwindled because the United States — under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Trump — has blocked new appointments to protest the way the WTO does business.
The WTO acts as a high court for international trade issues and has 164 member-countries.
Daniel Pruzin, a spokesman for the organization, said it has a policy of “not commenting on matters which are or may be the subject of WTO dispute proceedings,” adding that the WTO has yet to receive communication from any members with an intent to initiate dispute proceedings against the EV tax credit.
Simon Lester, current president of WorldTradeLaw.net, which provides summary and analysis of all WTO reports and arbitrations, said “there are pretty strong claims that various aspects of the statue violate a number of WTO obligations.”
“There are possible defenses the U.S. could raise, but the defenses are somewhat weak,” he said.
Presidents of both parties in the U.S. have expressed deep skepticism of WTO, but Biden administration officials have tried to bolster trade relationships overseas.
One measure of how far the administration will go is whether it will approve new judges. A representative from the White House did not comment on whether the administration intends to approve new judges for the administrative body.
Trade experts are not confident there will be a functioning WTO body in the near future.
“The U.S. has an interest in this situation not to have a ruling against them,” Lester said.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the conservative-leaning American Action Forum said “there is no question” that provisions in the tax credit plan are discriminatory to foreign manufacturers. Without a resolution to the EV tax credit complaints, he said, “this will lead to some sort of retaliation on large U.S. corporations that do business in Europe.”
He added, “This isn’t even a close call, which means the U.S. doesn’t plan to step up and fix the appeals process anytime soon. On a bipartisan basis, leaders have become disenchanted with the WTO because of its inability to put pressure on China.”
Padideh Ala’i, an American University law professor who specializes in trade, said because the WTO has been unable to rein in China for its trade violations, the adjudicative organization has been seen as ineffective.
“But international rulemaking is important and in the absence of that what are we left with — a nonfunctioning appeals body,” world trade relationships will now be left to bilateral agreements and negotiations between powerful parties and smaller countries.
“We entered into these arrangements so that we can safeguard peace, so now we are going to find out what the alternatives are without a WTO appellate body.”
___
Associated Press reporters Tom Krisher in Detroit, Frank Jordans in Berlin, Lorne Cook in Brussels and Joe McDonald in Beijing contributed to this report.
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The husband of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pleaded guilty Tuesday to misdemeanor driving under the influence charges related to a May crash in California’s wine country and was sentenced to five days in jail and three years of probation.
Paul Pelosi already served two days in jail and received conduct credit for two other days, Napa County Superior Court Judge Joseph Solga said. Paul Pelosi will work eight hours in the court’s work program in lieu of the remaining day, Solga said during Paul Pelosi’s sentencing, which he did not attend.
State law allows for DUI misdemeanor defendants to appear through their attorney unless ordered otherwise by the court.
As part of his probation, Paul Pelosi will also be required to attend a three-month drinking driver class, and install an ignition interlock device, where the driver has to provide a breath sample before the engine will start. He will also have to pay nearly $7,000 in fines, the judge said.
Paul Pelosi was arrested following a May 28 crash in Napa County, north of San Francisco, after a DUI test showed he had a blood alcohol content of .082%, just over the legal limit.
Officers responding to the crash after 10 p.m. near the wine country town of Yountville said they found Pelosi in the driver’s seat of a 2021 Porsche Carrera and the other driver standing outside a sport utility vehicle, according to the complaint.
California Highway Patrol officers reported that Pelosi was “unsteady on his feet, his speech was slurred, and he had a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage.”
Pelosi offered to officers his driver’s license along with an “11-99 Foundation” card when asked for identification, the complaint says. The 11-99 Foundation supports CHP employees and their families.
Prosecutors filed the case as a misdemeanor because of injuries to the 48-year-old driver of the SUV. They have declined to identify the driver, saying the person has requested privacy.
In an interview with investigators from the district attorney’s office, the driver reported pain in his upper right arm, right shoulder and neck the day after the crash. He said he also had headaches.
Pelosi was released on $5,000 bail after his arrest.
Speaker Pelosi was in Rhode Island to deliver the commencement address at Brown University at the time. Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis learned who his Democratic challenger will be this fall. The impact of redistricting was on full display. Democrats sorted through rivalries amongst themselves. And the issue of abortion rights may give Democrats a boost in a tough election year.
The most intense stretch of the midterm primary season ended Tuesday with results that will set up fierce general election contests across the United States.
Takeaways from Tuesday’s contests in Florida and New York:
ABORTION WILD CARD
Midterm elections are usually miserable for the party in power. But Democrats hope one of their biggest losses in memory may ultimately salvage 2022 for them.
Ever since the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court revoked the constitutional right for a woman to obtain an abortion, Democrats have seen a boost in donations, polling and performance in special elections for open congressional seats. The latest came Tuesday in a Hudson Valley swing district that, in a Republican wave year, should have been an easy GOP win. Instead, Democratic Ulster County executive Pat Ryan defeated his Republican counterpart from Duchess County, Marc Molinaro.
The stakes, governing-wise, were small — the seat will disappear in the fall as a new congressional map goes into effect. But because the race became a referendum on abortion after the high court’s ruling, the political implications are huge. It comes after a ballot measure to ban the procedure was crushed in solidly conservative Kansas.
Republicans were anticipating a typical midterm landslide, with inflation high and President Joe Biden’s approval rating low. It may still end up a solid GOP year, but Ryan’s win is the latest indication that Democrats don’t have to abandon hope.
DESANTIS FLEXES HIS MUSCLE
One Florida politician wasn’t facing a primary challenge on Tuesday but made sure to dominate the news anyway — DeSantis.
DeSantis is considered former President Donald Trump’s top rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, partly because of the way he’s leaned into political and cultural divides in the Sunshine State. On Tuesday, he demonstrated why.
The governor began the day with a Cabinet meeting, which included the only Democrat elected statewide in Florida, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried. She was competing for her party’s nomination to face DeSantis that evening.
DeSantis shook Fried’s hand as the meeting concluded and told her “good luck” before criticizing her campaign and predicting — accurately, it turned out — her loss in brief remarks to reporters.
“I think that you know she had an opportunity as being the only Democrat elected statewide to exercise some leadership and maybe get some things done and instead she’s used her time to try and smear me on a daily basis, that’s all she does,” DeSantis said of Fried.
After polls closed in the evening, DeSantis grabbed the spotlight again, speaking to a crowd in Miami. “We’re not going to let this state be overrun by woke ideology, we will fight the woke in the business, we will fight the woke in government agencies, we will fight the woke in our schools,” DeSantis said. “We will never, ever surrender to the woke agenda. Florida is the state where woke goes to die.”
Expect to hear a lot more like that from DeSantis in the months — and possibly years — ahead.
GERRYMANDERING’S LONG SHADOW
Florida and New York, which held primary elections Tuesday, were two of the states whose legislative maps were most radically redrawn this year to favor one political party. It was part of a centuries-old political gambit known as gerrymandering.
But Tuesday night showed two different sides of gerrymandering. The New York map that Democrats redrew to ruthlessly target vulnerable Republicans got tossed out by the state’s highest court as an illegal partisan act.
The map was redrawn to be more balanced, disregarding the political fortunes of some of New York’s most prominent members of Congress and lumping several high-profile lawmakers in the same district in a push for equity. Ignoring scattered protests that its April ruling came too late in the process to change the map, the high court moved the state’s congressional primary to Tuesday, two months after its June primary for state offices.
That’s why New York’s Democratic primaries Tuesday were so fractious and chaotic.
In contrast, Florida’s Republican-appointed State Supreme Court declined to change the partisan map that DeSantis pushed the Republican-controlled Florida legislature to approve. Unlike the New York court, the Florida court declined to mess with the map close to the election.
As a result, Florida’s incumbent House members generally stayed put Tuesday night, not forced into any career-ending primary battles because of districts being moved. The great exception was Rep. Charlie Crist, who ran for — and won — the Democratic nomination for governor partly because DeSantis’ map transformed his district into a solidly Republican one. The new map also effectively eliminated two seats, currently represented in Washington by Black Democrats, where African Americans comprise the largest share of voters.
Nationally, both parties tried to gerrymander during the past redistricting cycle, but Democrats were reined in slightly more than Republicans — largely due to Florida and New York. Florida’s top court may change that in the coming years when it rules on challenges to DeSantis’ maps.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering multiple cases that could change the ability of courts to redistrict gerrymanders. That may help determine whether we see more congressional primaries like New York’s, or more like Florida’s.
DEMOCRATIC DIVISIONS
It’s been muted by the spectacle of Trump’s makeover of the GOP, but Democrats also spent the primary season torn over the direction of their party.
Left-wing contenders continued to mount primary challenges to centrist Democrats. The left lost its most prominent bids to dislodge incumbent House members in south Texas and Cleveland.
Two new losses came Tuesday, when a liberal state senator was crushed by Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney in a congressional primary north of New York City. And attorney Dan Goldman, who worked on Trump’s first impeachment, narrowly beat a bevy of more progressive rivals in a primary for a congressional seat centered in Brooklyn.
But the left has won some victories this primary season, nabbing a nomination for a House seat in Pennsylvania and seeing one of its favorite politicians, that state’s lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, win the party’s nomination for Senate.
Neither side has been crushed, so expect more left-on-center primaries next election cycle.
TRUMP’S PARTY, WITH AN ASTERISK
Trump set out to demonstrate his dominance of the GOP this primary season, and he succeeded — to a point.
His approval helped set the party’s Senate field and was pivotal in a number of hotly contested primaries. He claimed his biggest prize last week, when his chosen candidate beat Rep. Liz Cheney in Wyoming’s Republican primary. On Tuesday, Trump’s chosen candidate, Air Force veteran and conservative activist Anna Luna, won her primary in an open GOP-leaning seat on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
But Trump had some huge humiliations — especially when he tried to intervene in governor’s races in Idaho, Nebraska and especially Georgia, where Trump failed to oust Gov. Brian Kemp for refusing to overturn the 2020 election in his state and award it to Trump.
Even more significantly, Trump elevated candidates who may not be able to win competitive races — or may even pose a threat to democracy itself. Last week, the GOP’s Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, warned that his party may not win a Senate majority due to “candidate quality” among its nominees. They include Trump-backed candidates struggling in swing states, like Herschel Walker in Georgia, JD Vance in Ohio and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania.
Others, like the GOP’s nominees for Pennsylvania governor, Doug Mastriano, and Arizona governor, Kari Lake, have denied that Trump lost the 2020 election, raising questions about whether they’d certify the actual winners of future elections if they take over their statehouses.
Trump does not always have to intercede for extreme candidates who have mimicked his style to rise in Republican primaries. On Tuesday, Laura Loomer, a conservative provocateur who’s been banned from several social media websites for posting anti-Muslim remarks, surprised many with a strong — albeit unsuccessful — showing in a primary challenge to 73-year-old Florida Rep. Daniel Webster.
Still, Trump’s effect on the GOP became immeasurable this primary season.
___
This story has been corrected to show Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney defeated a liberal state senator, not an assemblywoman; and deletes a reference to a Democratic-appointed court as having redrawn the map since others were involved as well.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 40 million Americans could see their student loan debt reduced — and in many cases eliminated — under the long-awaited forgiveness plan President Joe Biden announced Wednesday, a historic but politically divisive move in the run-up to the midterm elections.
Fulfilling a campaign promise, Biden is erasing $10,000 in federal student loan debt for those with incomes below $125,000 a year, or households that earn less than $250,000. He’s canceling an additional $10,000 for those who received federal Pell Grants to attend college.
It’s seen as an unprecedented attempt to stem the tide of America’s rapidly rising student debt, but it doesn’t address the broader issue — the high cost of college.
Republicans quickly denounced the plan as an insult to Americans who have repaid their debt and to those who didn’t attend college. Critics across the political spectrum also questioned whether Biden has authority for the move, and legal challenges are virtually certain.
Biden also extended a pause on federal student loan payments for what he called the “final time.” The pause is now set to run through the end of the year, with repayments to restart in January.
“Both of these targeted actions are for families who need it the most: working and middle-class people hit especially hard during the pandemic,” Biden said at the White House on Wednesday afternoon.
The cancellation applies to federal student loans used to attend undergraduate and graduate school, along with Parent Plus loans. Current college students qualify if their loans were issued before July 1. For dependent students, their parents’ household income must be below $250,000.
Most people will need to apply for the relief. The Education Department has income data for a small share of borrowers, but the vast majority will need to prove their incomes through an application process. Officials said applications will be available before the end of the year.
Biden’s plan makes 43 million borrowers eligible for some debt forgiveness, with 20 million who could get their debt erased entirely, according to the administration. About 60% of borrowers are recipients of federal Pell Grants, which are reserved for undergraduates with the most significant financial need, meaning more than half can get $20,000 in relief.
Sabrina Cartan, a 29-year-old media strategist in New York City, is expecting her federal debt to get wiped out entirely. When she checked the balance Wednesday, it was $9,940.
Cartan used the loans to attend Tufts University, and with Biden’s plan she will be able to help her parents repay the additional thousands they borrowed for her education. As a first-generation college student, she called it a “leveling moment.”
“I know there are people who feel that this isn’t enough, and that is true for a lot of people,” said Cartan, who already has repaid about $10,000 of her loans. “I can say for me personally and for a lot of people, that is a lot of money.”
For Braxton Simpson, Biden’s plan is a great first step, but it’s not enough. The 23-year-old MBA student at North Carolina Central University has more than $40,000 in student loans. As an undergraduate student she took jobs to minimize her debt, but at $10,000 a semester, the costs piled up.
As a Black woman, she felt higher education was a requirement to obtain a more stable financial future, even if that meant taking on large amounts of debt, she said.
“In order for us to get out of a lot of the situations that have been systemically a part of our lives, we have to go to school,” Simpson said. “And so we end up in debt.”
The plan doesn’t apply to future college students, but Biden is proposing a separate rule that would reduce monthly payments on federal student debt.
The proposal would create a new payment plan requiring borrowers to pay no more than 5% of their earnings, down from 10% in similar existing plans. It would forgive any remaining balance after 10 years, down from 20 years now.
It would also raise the floor for repayments, meaning no one earning less than 225% of the federal poverty level would need to make monthly payments.
As a regulation, it would not require congressional approval. But it can take more than a year to finalize.
Biden’s plan comes after more than a year of deliberation, with the president facing strong lobbying from liberals who wanted sweeping debt forgiveness, and from moderates and conservatives who questioned its basic fairness or said it does nothing to fix the debt crisis.
“In my view, the administration should have further targeted the relief, and proposed a way to pay for this plan,” said Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo. “While immediate relief to families is important, one-time debt cancellation does not solve the underlying problem.”
Once a popular campaign promise during the presidential primary, the issue created an almost unwinnable situation. Still, many Democrats rallied around it, including support from those who wanted Biden to go beyond $10,000.
“I will keep pushing for more because I think it’s the right thing to do,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who had urged Biden to forgive up to $50,000 a person. “But we need to take a deep breath here and recognize what it means for the president of the United States to touch so many hard-working middle class families so directly.”
Proponents see cancellation as a matter of racial justice. Black students are more likely to take out federal student loans and at higher amounts than their white peers.
The NAACP, which pressed Biden to cancel at least $50,000 per person, said the plan is “one step closer” to lifting the burden of student debt.
Derrick Johnson, the group’s president, urged Biden to cancel the debt quickly and without bureaucratic hurdles for borrowers.
Biden’s decision to impose an income cap goes against objections from some who say adding the detailed application process to verify incomes could deter some borrowers who need help the most.
The Biden administration defended the cap as a gate against wealthier borrowers. Politically, it’s designed to counter arguments from critics who call debt cancellation a handout for the wealthy. Republicans hit hard with that argument on Wednesday despite the cap.
“President Biden’s inflation is crushing working families, and his answer is to give away even more government money to elites with higher salaries,” Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell said. “Democrats are literally using working Americans’ money to try to buy themselves some enthusiasm from their political base.”
One of the chief political sticking points has been the cost: Biden’s new plan, including debt cancellation, a new repayment plan and the payment freeze, will cost between $400 billion to $600 billion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit that advocates for lower deficits.
Asked about the cost Wednesday, Susan Rice, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, said, “I can’t give you that off the top of my head.”
There are also lingering questions about the administration’s authority to cancel student loan debt. The Justice Department released a legal opinion concluding that the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act gives the education secretary the “authority to reduce or eliminate the obligation to repay the principal balance of federal student loan debt.”
The legal opinion also concluded that the forgiveness could be applied on a “class-wide” basis in response to the coronavirus pandemic, a national emergency..
Lawsuits are likely nonetheless. The Job Creators Network, which promotes conservative economic policies, said it was considering legal options, with president and CEO Alfredo Ortiz calling the president’s effort “fundamentally unfair” to those who never took out loans for college.
___
AP writers Zeke Miller, Annie Ma and Sharon Lurye contributed to this report.
___
The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of student loan debt at https://apnews.com/hub/student-loans.
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