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Children as young as 8 should be screened for anxiety, task force says
(CNN) - Mental health in children and adolescents has only worsened during the pandemic, experts say.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is set to recommend that children ages 8 and older should be screened for anxiety.
The task force is made up of an independent panel of experts who makes recommendations on screenings and preventative medicine.
The decision to recommend early screenings in children for anxiety was based on a review of studies that evaluated screening tests in adolescents and the benefits of early treatment.
The task force found with moderate certainty that screening for anxiety in children older than 8 would lead to improving outcomes.
The draft report was released on the task force’s website on Tuesday.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/children-young-8-should-be-screened-anxiety-task-force-says/ | 2022-04-15T00:28:07 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/children-young-8-should-be-screened-anxiety-task-force-says/ |
Dad accidentally runs over 2-year-old, killing him, police say
TULSA, Okla. (Gray News) – A father in Oklahoma ran over his 2-year-old son, killing him, in a situation police deemed a tragic accident.
According to the Tulsa Police Department, officers arrived at the home Tuesday night and learned the man accidentally ran over the toddler with his Dodge pickup while trying to park in the driveway.
Investigators said that the family arrived home from the grocery store and parked the truck in front of their home. The mother and the toddler got out of the truck and began walking toward the house.
The father then pulled the truck into the driveway and “felt a bump,” police said. He got out of the truck and found out that the 2-year-old had ran back toward the truck and had been run over with the right rear wheel.
Police said the child was rushed to the hospital in critical condition, and he died overnight.
Police said this is a “tragic situation for everyone involved” and that no charges are being filed.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/dad-accidentally-runs-over-2-year-old-killing-him-police-say/ | 2022-04-15T00:28:15 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/dad-accidentally-runs-over-2-year-old-killing-him-police-say/ |
FBI issues warning of online sextortion targeting children
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) -The FBI Columbia Field Office issued a warning to parents and caregivers about sextortion cases targeting children.
The organization said they’ve received increasing reports about adults on social media and online games posing as adolescents to coerce children to produce sexual images. After receiving the images, the perpetrators tell the child they’ll post the images online if they don’t send them money.
Investigators found young boys ranging from 14 to 17 years old have become the primary targets for the extortion schemes.
“The victims of these crimes may be afraid to come forward, so it’s important to have open discussions with your children about their activities online,” said FBI Columbia Special Agent in Charge, Susan Ferensic.
The FBI advised parents to tell their children to be careful when sharing anything online, especially with strangers.
If you or someone you know has become a victim of sextortion you can contact the FBI Columbia Field Office at 803-551-4200. When contacting law enforcement on these cases, it is advised to not delete anything until investigators can review it to help catch the offender.
More information about these types of crimes and protecting children from predators can be found at the link here.
Copyright 2022 WIS. All rights reserved.
Notice a spelling or grammar error in this article? Click or tap here to report it. Please include the article’s headline. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/fbi-issues-warning-online-sextortion-targeting-children/ | 2022-04-15T00:28:21 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/fbi-issues-warning-online-sextortion-targeting-children/ |
Future liability releases at center of Boy Scouts bankruptcy
DOVER, Del. (AP) — Protecting local Boy Scouts of America councils and troop sponsoring organizations from future liability for child sex abuse claims is critical to the national group’s reorganization plan, BSA attorneys told a Delaware bankruptcy judge Tuesday.
Attorneys opposing the plan countered that liability releases for non-debtor third parties are neither fair nor necessary, and that they infringe on the rights of abuse survivors to seek compensation for their abuse.
The Boy Scouts, based in Irving, Texas, petitioned for bankruptcy protection in February 2020, seeking to halt hundreds of individual lawsuits and create a settlement trust for abuse victims. Although the organization faced about 275 lawsuits at the time, more than 82,000 sexual abuse claims have been filed in the bankruptcy case.
The reorganization plan calls for the Boys Scouts and its 250 local councils, along with settling insurance companies and troop sponsoring organizations, to contribute some $2.6 billion in cash and property and assign their insurance rights to a settlement trust fund for abuse victims. More than half that money would come from the BSA’s two largest insurers, Century Indemnity Co. and The Hartford. Those companies would contribute $800 million and $787 million, respectively.
In exchange, the parties contributing to the settlement trust would be released from further liability for sexual abuse claims dating back decades.
The local BSA councils are not debtors in the bankruptcy, but Boy Scouts attorney Jessica Lauria argued that they are inextricably intertwined with the national organization and deserve to be protected from future lawsuits in exchange for contributing to the compensation fund.
“There can be no doubt that there is an identity of interests, and frankly an extreme interconnectedness, between the local councils and the national organization,” Lauria said. Sponsoring organizations similarly are closely tied to BSA and local councils and critical to their operations, she added.
Richard Mason, an attorney for the local councils, told Judge Laura Selber Silverstein that without the liability releases, the compensation fund “basically evaporates.”
Absent approval of the BSA’s plan, the local councils would face “massive litigation” and would be forced to seek bankruptcy protection themselves, endangering the future of Scouting and the ability of abuse survivors to obtain compensation, Mason added.
But opponents questioned why the liability releases for local councils and sponsoring organization are needed in order for the BSA to emerge from bankruptcy. They noted that the Boy Scouts proposed a plan last year under which the settlement trust would be funded only by the national organization, and only for claims made against it. Under that plan, the councils and local sponsoring organizations would make no contribution and would have no protection from liability for abuse claims.
“Debtors said that was workable, feasible,” Silverstein noted. “So why is it necessary to have this elaborate, interconnected, intertwined plan for the Boy Scouts?”
Lauria replied that “BSA-only plan” may have been feasible when first proposed, but that it was never “optimal.” She also noted that the BSA has spent some $100 million more on professional fees in the bankruptcy since then and can’t afford to fund a settlement trust on its own at this point.
Edwin Caldie, an attorney representing scores of alleged abuse victims in Guam, argued that the BSA’s current plan unfairly strips them of their rights to pursue abuse claims against Catholic church officials.
The Guam group includes creditors with claims against the Archdiocese of Agana, which sought bankruptcy protection in 2019 amid a flood of child sex abuse claims. Many of those claims involve the late priest Louis Brouillard, who was also a BSA Scoutmaster and who was accused of molesting more than 100 children.
The BSA plan would channel claims against the Guam diocese into the proposed BSA settlement trust without the consent of survivors and unfairly deprive them of the ability to pursue BSA insurance policies, Caldie said.
Caldie accused the settling insurers of using “extortionist” tactics in negotiations with the Boy Scouts to obtain liability releases to which they would not be entitled under the policies they issued.
He also rejected the notion that a relatively small number of survivors should not be allowed to interfere with approval of a reorganization plan supported by tens of thousands of other claimants.
“From a common sense perspective, the BSA made a decision to shun and silence survivors of child sexual assault for decades and did not report their perpetrators for decades,” Caldie said. “.... The Guam survivors are not terribly comfortable with ‘greater good’ arguments now, especially made buy the BSA.”
Closing arguments on whether the judge should approve the BSA plan are expected to conclude Wednesday.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/future-liability-releases-center-boy-scouts-bankruptcy/ | 2022-04-15T00:28:28 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/future-liability-releases-center-boy-scouts-bankruptcy/ |
Homebuyers stymied by fewer homes, high prices, rising rates
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Shortly after moving to South Florida for a new job with the U.S. military, Shannon Kaufman and his wife, Wendy, signed up for a whole other mission: buying a home.
For months, they scoured listings, strategizing late into the night on which homes to target and working out how much they could afford, even if it meant using some of their retirement savings.
After visiting 200 listings and making offers on 15 homes that ultimately didn’t pan out, the Kaufmans finally found a home that fits at least some of their needs. They’ll be renting it, however.
“We found a place that’s smaller than we want, but it’ll work until we have something built or until the market cools off,” said Shannon Kaufman, 47.
America’s housing market has grown increasingly frenzied, and prices are out of reach for many buyers, especially first-timers. This spring, traditionally the busiest season for home sales, is more likely to deliver frustration and disappointment for aspiring homebuyers than it is homeownership.
The number of homes for sale nationally remains near record lows, fueling fierce competition among buyers vying for fewer homes. From Los Angeles to Raleigh, North Carolina, when a house does hit the market, it typically sells within days.
Bidding wars are common, often driving the sale price well above what the owner was asking. And would-be buyers planning to finance their purchase with a home loan are often losing out to investors and others able to buy a home with cash. A quarter of all homes sold in February were purchased with cash, up from 22% a year ago, according to the National Association of Realtors. Real estate investors accounted for 19% of transactions in February, up from 17% a year ago.
Nichol Khan, a project manager, and her husband Ed moved to Mesa, Arizona, from Phoenix two years ago to shorten their commute to work. Home prices in the Phoenix area have jumped 20% from a year ago to $500,000, according to Realtor.com.
“The prices just keep going up and up,” Khan said.
The couple has lost out on more than a dozen homes they bid on. Some of the homes ended up selling for less in cash than the couple had offered.
“We don’t have $500,000 in cash,” said Khan, 42. “We just could not be competitive with that.”
Fewer homes on the market and high prices have been the hallmark of the housing market for the past 10 years or so. Now, rising mortgage rates further complicate the homebuying equation. Higher rates could limit the pool of buyers and cool the rate of home price growth — good news for buyers. But higher rates also weaken their buying power.
The average rate on a 30-year home loan has climbed to around 4.7%. A year ago, average rates hovered just above 3%, according to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac. The increase follows a sharp move up in 10-year Treasury yields, reflecting expectations of higher interest rates overall as the Federal Reserve moves to hike short-term rates in order to combat surging inflation.
Would-be buyers who applied for a home loan in February faced a median monthly mortgage payment of $1,653, including principal and interest, an increase of 8.3% from a year ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
“It’s hard to believe, but I do think it’s going to be tougher this year, in some respects, than it was in previous years,” said Danielle Hale, Realtor.com’s chief economist. “So far, at least, we have seen the number of homes for sale continue to decline and prices continue to rise. Those two factors combined suggest that the competitive market is going to keep buyers on their toes.”
Buyers should set their sights on homes that are listed well within what they can afford, experts say.
“You should be looking 15%-20% below their limit; that gives them room for appraisal gaps, it gives them room for negotiating,” said Tracy Hutton, a broker with Century 21 in Indianapolis.
Being well prepared sometimes isn’t enough when a homeowner prefers to accept an all-cash offer, rather than sell to a buyer with financing.
Wendy Kaufman in South Florida couldn’t even get into an open house for a property on the market after she revealed the couple had a mortgage backed by the Veterans Administration.
“When they saw I had a VA preapproval they said, ‘Sorry we don’t want to work with you.’” she said.
Sometimes, buyers don’t have a chance to make an offer before a home is snapped up, sight unseen.
In the Miami area, so-called “blind offers” have become common as a way to get around other buyers, said Rafael Corrales, a Redfin agent.
One reason is the ultra-low level of homes for sale, which for the greater Miami metropolitan area, was down 55% in February from a year ago, according to Realtor.com.
While every market is unique, there is one common hurdle across the U.S.: affordability. The median U.S. home price jumped 15% in February from a year earlier to $357,300, according to the National Association of Realtors.
The San Jose, California, metro area had 40% fewer homes for sale in February than a year ago, according to Realtor.com. Buyers there have to navigate some of the most expensive home prices in the nation. The median home listing price climbed 13.3% to about $1.36 million in February from a year earlier.
The market trends are a bit more welcoming for buyers in the Midwest, including the Indianapolis metropolitan area, where the number of homes for sale was down about 23% from a year ago. The median home price there stood at $287,000 in February, up 8.5% from a year earlier.
In Raleigh, home listings were down a whopping 55% in February from a year earlier. Competition for fewer homes helped push the median home price to $430,000, a 9% increase from February 2021.
Those trends made for a more competitive market for first-time buyers like Lisa Piercey and her husband, Alex Berardo. First-time buyers made up 29% of all homes sold nationally last month. That share has averaged 31% annually over the past 10 years.
The couple began looking in December for homes at $350,000 or below. They offered $5,000 over the asking price on two properties but lost out to rival bidders.
“That was all we could afford,” said Lisa Piercey, a 32-year old project manager. “It’s really defeating, really disappointing.”
In the end, the couple bought a townhome in a new construction community, though they see it as a stepping stone to a more spacious house with a big yard.
“Its big enough that we can still start our family and then move when the market hopefully dies down in a couple of years,” she said.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/homebuyers-stymied-by-fewer-homes-high-prices-rising-rates/ | 2022-04-15T00:28:35 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/homebuyers-stymied-by-fewer-homes-high-prices-rising-rates/ |
How to tell you’re being phished and 9 other common online scams to watch out for
(Twingate) - The internet can feel packed with scams sometimes, especially for anyone who’s had their credit card or other information stolen. But most scams fall into a small variety of types that are easy to identify and avoid once you know about them.
There are only so many ways to reinvent the wheel—scammers will usually fall into a set number of categories. Twingate assembled a list of common online scams that internet users should be wary of, drawing on research from government organizations, payment processors, and tech companies.
One of the major categories of scamming is called social engineering. An old-fashioned method that still works surprisingly well, social engineering is any fraud where a human being communicates with you to obtain information in person, online, or over the phone. Scammers will use manipulative, deceptive, or psychological tactics to get someone to reveal confidential information.
As our lives increasingly have shifted online, scammers have followed, posing as everything from fake online boyfriends to made-up charities. So the next time you get a voicemail claiming to be from Microsoft, an email that says your antivirus service is out of date, or a pop-up ad from “newy0rktimes.com,” take a few seconds and think about whether it’s a genuine message before doing anything. Continue reading to learn about the most common online scams today.
Phishing
Phishing is one of the most common online scams. It’s a form of social engineering, meaning a scam in which the “human touch” is used to trick people. One offline form of phishing is when you receive a scam phone call where someone claims to be calling from the fraud department at your bank and requests your account number as verification.
With online phishing, scammers do the same kind of thing but use emails and links to fraudulent websites to fool users. In your spam folder, you’ll often see messages claiming to be from Bank of America and others. These links lead to imitation bank sites designed to capture your personal banking information.
Advanced fee scam
These email messages are notorious—and the stuff of internet legend: “Hello sir, I have a huge sum to send you!” In this scam, a forlorn prince, bank manager, church reverend, or otherwise reputable-sounding stranger has a large amount of money that they need you to hold for them. All you have to do is send them several hundred or thousand dollars to cover some kind of transactional cost upfront.
Never believe any stranger who wants to send you money, and listen to your gut. If something sounds too good to be true, it is highly likely that it is a scam.
Romance scam
Romance scams are one of the darkest and most sinister scams because of the time investment and emotions involved. Romance scammers pretend to be regular people, often older people, who are looking for love and want to meet eligible singles in other countries. They’ll build an emotional connection with their target by exchanging romantic messages and pretending to be in love.
The scam comes in when, eventually, a series of misfortunes befall the romantic partner. They might plan a visit to finally meet—but suddenly won’t have money to pay for the plane ticket. Then they’re hospitalized with a mystery illness and need money to pay the bill. This continues until the victim grows suspicious of the mounting costs.
Formjacking
Formjacking is a web scam that works the same way as a credit card skimmer does in real life. You go to a website to place an order and enter your information as usual. The transaction even goes through and seems to be fine, except that some code hacked into the website has copied your financial data to someone else.
The owners of the website may not even realize something is happening because they don’t pay close attention to their infrastructure. Make sure the websites you deal with are secure.
Phony tech support
Phony tech support is a form of social engineering. This scam may come as an email or a phone call, claiming that your computer has been compromised in some way and that you must call a number or visit a website to fix it.
From there, the scammer may install malware like keyboard capture software (or worse). On the phone, they may request remote access to your computer to help you. These scammers often claim to be from Microsoft or Apple as a way to establish legitimacy.
Ransomware
Ransomware is a kind of malicious software that is installed without your knowledge. This is usually from an email or fraudulent site, meaning it also uses phishing to imitate your bank or another institutional website. Someone calls or emails with a link that installs the ransomware on your machine. What makes ransomware different is what comes next.
The software locks certain kinds of information on your machines, like your saved documents, photos, and other files. You have to pay to unlock the data and get your files, although the FBI cautions against actually paying.
Scareware
Scareware is a form of manipulative scamming that threatens users by making them believe they need new software on their machines. One of the common forms is to tell users they need new antivirus software and to offer that software from a fraudulent source.
It’s often easy to tell these websites or emails apart from real ones: Look closely at the URLs or email addresses, which usually have strange spellings or other clues that signal you’re not dealing with legitimate companies.
Sextortion
Sextortion is an especially grim crime that targets minors, although it can also affect adults. Now that so many people meet romantic partners online, it’s common to exchange explicit photos. That’s also true of teenagers or even of younger children, who can find themselves in online relationships with people who ask for personal information and photos.
Once someone has this material, they can use it as a way to demand more and will threaten to share info or post photos publicly if their target refuses. Unlike the other crimes on this list, sextortion doesn’t always have financial goals.
Charity and disaster fraud
Crowdfunding and mutual aid are becoming more common as a way for people to share resources and help others pay for medical bills and other costs, or to donate following natural disasters. Unfortunately, this well-meaning way to help others in the community has also been targeted by scammers through charity and disaster fraud.
Scammers can make fake Twitter accounts to imitate people in need. They’ll even set up bots to make new accounts that look like your friend’s account to reply with Paypal links that redirect to the scammer. If you aren’t sure about the credibility of a group or crowdfunding page, it is always best to seek more information.
Work from home
This scam is simple and it’s a variation of an age-old, real-life scam. Think of those signs you see on street corners that say, “I make $16,000 a month working from home!” When you call, these people want you to buy training materials to become a real estate agent or something similar.
The same is true of many online ads that say you can work from home and make $500 a day or some other attractive amount. The best advice is also the oldest: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
This story originally appeared on Twingate and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
Copyright 2022 Stacker via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/how-tell-youre-being-phished-9-other-common-online-scams-watch-out/ | 2022-04-15T00:28:42 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/how-tell-youre-being-phished-9-other-common-online-scams-watch-out/ |
Man arrested after shooting dog in face, police say
JUPITER, Fla. (Gray News) – Police in Florida arrested a man who they say shot and injured a dog, leaving the animal for dead.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said Boots the dog was shot in the face at Kennedy Estates Park in Jupiter on Friday. He suffered a fractured lower jaw, causing several of his teeth to be knocked out.
Boots was taken to an emergency vet where he is currently recovering.
The investigation led police to Benjamine Brown, who they say surrendered Wednesday without incident.
Brown was arrested and booked into Palm Beach County Jail.
Police said Boots will be adopted once he is fully healed.
Anyone else with information is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-458-TIPS.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/man-arrested-after-shooting-dog-face-police-say/ | 2022-04-15T00:28:50 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/man-arrested-after-shooting-dog-face-police-say/ |
Man pretended to be federal marshal to steal car from dealership, police say
TULSA, Okla. (Gray News) – A man in Oklahoma was arrested Monday after police said he attempted to steal a car from a dealership and then pretended to be a federal marshal.
According to the Tulsa Police Department, dealership employees said Randy Cantwell came into the office asking to look at an Audi on the lot. An employee grabbed the keys and went outside with Cantwell to look at the vehicle.
When the employee told Cantwell he couldn’t test drive the vehicle because it was not ready to be driven, Cantwell told the employee he was going to take the vehicle anyway. Police said he then told the employee that he was a federal marshal and had the power to take the vehicle.
Police said the workers blocked the vehicle in to stop Cantwell from stealing it. When Cantwell realized he was stuck, he walked away from the lot.
Officers arrived and spoke with Cantwell, who provided no verification that he was a federal marshal. Instead, he told officers that he became a federal marshal after former President Donald Trump “enacted martial law.”
Police said Cantwell was arrested for false impersonation of law enforcement.
Copyright 2022 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/man-pretended-be-federal-marshal-steal-car-dealership-police-say/ | 2022-04-15T00:28:57 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/man-pretended-be-federal-marshal-steal-car-dealership-police-say/ |
Nestle Toll House to roll out stuffed cookie dough
Published: Apr. 13, 2022 at 11:46 AM EDT
(CNN) - Nestle Toll House is stuffing its cookie dough.
The iconic brand has been baking up some tasty new creations with its first-ever stuffed cookie dough.
You’ll have two flavors to choose from – chocolate chip cookie dough with fudge filling and double chocolate cookie dough with salted caramel filling.
The new dough delights are expected in the refrigerated aisle in July.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/nestle-toll-house-roll-out-stuffed-cookie-dough/ | 2022-04-15T00:29:04 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/nestle-toll-house-roll-out-stuffed-cookie-dough/ |
Newberry County after school caregiver arrested in child assault case
NEWBERRY, S.C. (WIS) - The South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) announced it arrested 35-year-old Lauren Folk.
Folk worked for the Boys and Girls Club after school program for Rueben Elementary School. In the affidavit she is accused of grabbing the face of a four-year-old child under her care on Feb. 10, 2022 and pushing him backwards.
Folk was arrested on charges of Assault and Battery Third Degree.
Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster asked SLED to investigate on February 14.
Folk was booked at the Newberry County Detention Center.
The case will be prosecuted by the Eighth Judicial Circuit Solicitor’s Office.
We will have more on this investigation as it is updated.
Copyright 2022 WIS. All rights reserved.
Notice a spelling or grammar error in this article? Click or tap here to report it. Please include the article’s headline. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/newberry-county-after-school-caregiver-arrested-child-assault-case/ | 2022-04-15T00:29:11 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/newberry-county-after-school-caregiver-arrested-child-assault-case/ |
Online puppy scam duped animal lovers, Google claims in lawsuit
SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) - Google is going after an alleged fraudster they say is behind several online puppy-selling scams.
The tech giant is suing, saying the responsible party has been “perpetrating a puppy fraud scheme to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic for personal gain.”
The promise of purebred puppies had sweet pictures to match, but 20 sites were listed as fraudulent in a lawsuit filed Monday by google.
The tech company said a person in Africa used several Google services in an online puppy scam.
It claims people were sending hundreds of dollars in exchange for puppies that never arrived.
“The damage is actually two parts, the emotional and financial,” said Ahmed Banafa, a San Jose State University tech expert.
Banafa said for any animal lover, especially one in search of canine companionship, one look at a cute face could be enough to let your guard down.
Court documents said Google was tipped off by AARP, which had been contacted by a victim.
“Well, I mean, the statistic is out. Thirty-five percent of the online scam is actually, you know, a puppy scam. So that tells you how bad how bad it is,” Banafa said.
The Google suit points to a study that found puppy scams increased by 165% in the U.S. from January to October 2021, compared to the same period in 2019 before COVID-19 hit.
Such scams are a concern for the Peninsula Humane Society and SPCA.
“It’s disappointing that there are people out there taking advantage of, of individuals who want to add an animal to their home. And you know, and that’s really difficult for organizations such as ourselves because we have animals available for adoption,” said Buffy Martin-Tarbox of Peninsula Humane Society and SPCA.
But if you are browsing, experts say be aware that most illegitimate websites will try to avoid any real-time contact.
Fraudsters will talk about payment before the pet. And when it comes to making a purchase, use a method that will protect you.
“It’s good that the tech companies are taking notice of it and understanding that people can abuse the, you know, the excellence of their products and algorithms. Number two, now people know about it,” Banafa said.
Copyright 2022 KGO via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/online-puppy-scam-duped-animal-lovers-google-claims-lawsuit/ | 2022-04-15T00:29:18 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/online-puppy-scam-duped-animal-lovers-google-claims-lawsuit/ |
Orphaned mountain lion cub found by hikers treated at Oakland Zoo
(CNN) – An orphaned mountain lion cub is being cared for at the Oakland Zoo in California.
The little female cub’s name is Rose.
She’s only about 4 to 5 months old, but she’s already a fighter.
She looks skinny in photos the zoo released of her.
Rose was initially spotted by hikers in a preserve in San Mateo, California, and they say she was all by herself and looked unhealthy.
It took some time for wildlife biologists to track her down, but they finally caught up to her and brought her to the zoo Sunday.
She was extremely emaciated, dehydrated and covered in fleas and ticks when she was taken in.
However, the caretakers at the Oakland Zoo say she has a feisty spirit and an obvious will to live, so they’re guardedly optimistic their little Rose will blossom.
If all goes well with her recovery over the next few months, the zoo says it will work to find her a good home.
Unfortunately, she won’t be able to go back to the wild because she’ll have missed out on the crucial time with her mother to learn how to survive on her own.
The Oakland Zoo provides veterinary care for sick, injured, burned or orphaned wild mountain lions through a partnership with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. To learn more, you can visit the zoo’s website.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/orphaned-mountain-lion-cub-found-by-hikers-treated-oakland-zoo/ | 2022-04-15T00:29:24 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/orphaned-mountain-lion-cub-found-by-hikers-treated-oakland-zoo/ |
Planting Tips on National Gardening Day
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) -Maintaining a garden is not everyone’s strongest skill but as we celebrate National Gardening Day on Thursday a local gardener is sharing a few tips to help you along the way. Bonita Clemens says you don’t need a green thumb to do it. Most days for Bonita Clemens start with her talking to her fruit and vegetable plants at a garden outside Lenoir-Rhyne University in Columbia. “Everything has a reason and purpose,” Clemens said. She has been taking care of plants since she was a little girl, learning the skill from her grandmother.
“My grandmama she’s 95 still got her plants and flowers,” Clemens said. The garden is one of three where she teaches greenery lovers how to take care of plants and flowers. She’s helping ten women and several young people grow things like carrots, potatoes, and spinach. “It’s a way to reduce stress,” Clemens said.
She says taking care of plants reduces stress and creates a bond with nature. Clemens says the key to gardening and keeping plants alive isn’t too hard. Start with seeds, soil not dirt, give it a little water and at least five or six days to grow and you’re on your way to owning a green thumb. On this National Gardening Day Clemens says she’s hoping people will get out in the sun and plant something. Right now she’s working to create a blue zone in the 29203 zip code. Planting now to build a healthy tomorrow.
“A blue zone is an area where people live to be 100 years old on no medications, walking without a cane and so again we’re planting that seed now,” Clemens said.
Copyright 2022 WIS. All rights reserved.
Notice a spelling or grammar error in this article? Click or tap here to report it. Please include the article’s headline. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/planting-tips-national-gardening-day/ | 2022-04-15T00:29:35 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/planting-tips-national-gardening-day/ |
Rates of certain STDs increased in 2020, CDC data shows
(CNN) - Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that rates of sexually-transmitted diseases in the United States dropped early in the pandemic, but increased by the end of 2020.
The data was published Tuesday in the 2020 STD Surveillance Report.
By the end of the year, gonorrhea rates had risen 10%. Rates of syphilis were up 7%.
Those numbers included increased rates of disease among newborns, called congenital syphilis. It went up 15% from 2019, representing a 235% increase from 2016.
Congenital syphilis occurs when a woman with syphilis passes it to her baby during pregnancy and it can lead to serious health problems and death.
Commenting on the data Tuesday, a CDC official highlighted the pandemic’s dramatic disruption to life as we knew it.
Chlamydia rates were down 1.2% from 2016.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/rates-certain-stds-increased-2020-cdc-data-shows/ | 2022-04-15T00:29:44 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/rates-certain-stds-increased-2020-cdc-data-shows/ |
Severe weather, tornado in Texas injures 23
SALADO, Texas (KWTX/Gray News) - The severe weather and tornado that struck in the Salado area Tuesday evening leveled buildings, downed power lines, uprooted trees and injured at least 23 people, Bell County Judge David Blackburn said.
Of those injured, 12 required hospitalization and one appears to be in critical condition, Blackburn said.
According to the county judge, the first call regarding a tornado was received at about 5:37 p.m. Tuesday. Dozens of calls soon followed after the tornado crossed from northern Williamson County into the Salado area in southern Bell County, KWTX reported.
Blackburn said search and rescue crews have done multiple walkthroughs and, as of 10 p.m. on Tuesday, believe everyone in the storm-ravaged area is accounted for.
“Buildings were reduced to rubble and power lines are scattered all over the place,” Blackburn said, “The damage is extensive and, at this time, to not have any fatalities is very significant.”
Blackburn said the county is ready to provide an emergency shelter to those affected, but homeowners afflicted by the storm turned down help Tuesday evening.
The focus will now turn to cleaning up the debris from damaged homes and restoring downed power lines in the area.
“There will be many, many days of cleanup after this,” the county judge warned.
Copyright 2022 KWTX via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/severe-weather-tornado-texas-injures-23/ | 2022-04-15T00:29:51 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/severe-weather-tornado-texas-injures-23/ |
Solicitor reveals new details after sentencing in Upstate woman’s shooting death
UNA, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - An Upstate woman who killed a younger woman outside her home pleaded guilty in court this week. Linda Huntley, 71, shot and killed 24-year-old Alexandra Toney on Edgewood Avenue on Feb. 8, 2019.
The solicitor’s office said Toney knew Huntley.
According to the solicitor, Toney had been at the home earlier in the day before the shooting, seeking payment for marijuana she sold to a 16-year-old.
During the incident, Huntley pointed a gun at Toney and told her to leave the property. The solicitor says Toney threatened to come back with “10 Gs” and shoot up the house.
Toney did return later that night and parked a Nissan Pathfinder across the street with multiple people inside including her two young children in the backseat.
When Toney got out of the Pathfinder, a verbal argument ensued with people at the home and Huntley shot Toney from her front porch. She called 911 and deputies arrived to find Huntley with her rifle at her feet.
Huntley had no criminal record.
She told investigators she thought Toney and a male passenger had something in their hands when they approached the home that night. No other gun was recovered from the scene though.
Huntley pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, first-degree assault and battery, possession of a weapon during a violent crime, and three counts of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature.
She was sentenced to 30 years in prison on the manslaughter charge, suspended to 3 years of service. Since she has already been behind bars for three years awaiting sentencing, she was released. She will also serve 5 years of home detention and 5 years of probation.
The solicitor’s office said she will be supervised for the rest of her life and runs the risk of a lengthy prison sentence if she violates the terms of her release.
Copyright 2022 WHNS. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/solicitor-reveals-new-details-after-sentencing-upstate-womans-shooting-death/ | 2022-04-15T00:29:58 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/solicitor-reveals-new-details-after-sentencing-upstate-womans-shooting-death/ |
Songs by Wu-Tang, Alicia Keys added to Recording Registry
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) — Critically acclaimed debut albums by Wu-Tang Clan and Alicia Keys, Ricky Martin’s Latin pop megahit “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” are among the recordings being inducted this year into the National Recording Registry.
The Library of Congress announced on Wednesday the 25 songs, albums, historical recordings and even a podcast that will be preserved as important contributions to American culture and history.
Keys’ “Songs In A Minor,” released in 2001, introduced the young New York musician to the world with her unique fusion of jazz, R&B and hip hop and earned her five Grammy awards. With songs like “Fallin’” the album has been certified as seven-times multiplatinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
The Staten Island collective Wu-Tang Clan, including RZA, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, GZA, Ghostface Killah, Method Man and more, released their highly influential debut “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” in 1993, which combined East Coast hardcore rap centered around kung fu film storylines and samples.
Other albums that were included were Linda Ronstadt’s “Canciones de Mi Padre,” a musical tribute to her Mexican-American roots, Bonnie Raitt’s Grammy-winning “Nick of Time,” A Tribe Called Quest’s “The Low End Theory,” and the Cuban musical ensemble’s self-titled debut “Buena Vista Social Club,” which also inspired a film by the same name.
Other songs now in the registry include Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin,’” “Walking the Floor Over You” by Ernest Tubb, “Moon River” by Andy Williams and “Reach Out, I’ll Be There,” by The Four Tops.
The Four Tops song was penned by the songwriting trio of Brian and Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier and became a No. 1 song in 1966 known for its unorthodox arrangement and the urgent, operatic vocals of lead singer Levi Stubbs. The last surviving member of the band, Duke Fakir, said he was honored to have their song included in the registry.
“When we recorded ‘I’ll Be There,’ I have to admit (for the first time), we thought of the song as an experiment for the album,” Fakir said in a statement. “We never believed it would even make it on the album, let alone be a hit for all time in ‘The Library of Congress.’ I wish Levi, Obie (Benson), and Lawrence (Payton) were here with me today so we could celebrate this incredible accolade together. And we owe an incredible debt of gratitude to Holland Dozier Holland, the tailors of great music, who wrote it.”
Other recordings include public radio station WNYC’s broadcasts from Sept. 11, 2001 and Marc Maron’s interview with Robin Williams on his podcast “WTF with Marc Maron.”
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/songs-by-wu-tang-alicia-keys-added-recording-registry/ | 2022-04-15T00:30:04 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/songs-by-wu-tang-alicia-keys-added-recording-registry/ |
South Carolina State University’s Parade of Champions is back
Published: Apr. 13, 2022 at 11:08 AM EDT
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - South Carolina State University has set its Parade of Champions for Saturday, April 23 at 8:30 a.m.
The university postponed the parade earlier this year because of inclement weather.
The public is invited to join SC State in honoring the bulldogs.
Honorees will include the 2021 Celebration Bowl Champion Bulldogs Football Team and other championship teams.
Details about the route and participants are pending.
Copyright 2022 WIS. All rights reserved.
Notice a spelling or grammar error in this article? Click or tap here to report it. Please include the article’s headline. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/south-carolina-state-universitys-parade-champions-is-back/ | 2022-04-15T00:30:12 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/south-carolina-state-universitys-parade-champions-is-back/ |
Study: Climate crisis supercharging rainfall in hurricanes
Published: Apr. 13, 2022 at 2:07 AM EDT|Updated: Apr. 13, 2022 at 2:12 AM EDT
(CNN) - A new study suggests the climate crisis is supercharging rainfall in hurricanes.
The study was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
It found that rainfall from hurricanes during the record-breaking 2020 season was as much as 11% higher due to human-caused climate changes.
Researchers determined that global warming increased hourly rainfall rates in tropical storms and hurricanes from 5% to 10%.
When experts observed just hurricanes, the increase was 8% to 11%.
The findings suggest the threat surged over the past few decades and it will likely increase more in the future.
That’s because warmer air can hold more water vapor, which leads to higher rainfall rates.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/study-climate-crisis-supercharging-rainfall-hurricanes/ | 2022-04-15T00:30:18 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/study-climate-crisis-supercharging-rainfall-hurricanes/ |
WH environmental justice advisors press for Justice40 action
(AP) - Key members of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council said Tuesday that the Biden administration hadn’t done enough to make good on its promise that 40% of all benefits from climate investment go to disenfranchised communities.
Speaking at a press briefing ahead of the HBCU Climate Change Conference in New Orleans, the council members said they’ve secured $14 million from the Bezos Earth Fund for a program called Engage, Enlighten and Empower to hold the Biden administration accountable for carrying out its Justice40 initiative.
President Biden made the commitment in a sweeping executive order on his first day in office. The initiative has been held up as an unprecedented push to bring environmental justice to communities long plagued by pollution and climate inaction.
The three members of the federal environmental justice council leading the $14 million-dollar effort, Beverly Wright, Peggy Shepard and Robert Bullard, have been working closely with the administration on Justice40.
But Wright told members of the press that more needs to be done to “turn a novel idea into a project that works.”
The trio are combining philanthropic grants from the Bezos Earth Fund, $6 million from Shepard’s WE ACT for Environmental Justice, $4 million from Wright’s Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and $4 million from the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, to ensure federal funding from Justice40 “goes where it’s intended,” Shepard said.
The effort should “ensure equitable implementation of the Justice40 initiative at the state and local level and empower local communities to participate in the policy-making” that comes as a result of the initiative, a press release said.
The funds will go to educate grassroots organizations on the resources available to them through Justice40, inform state and local governments on how the money should be used, and develop a screening tool to determine where Justice40 funds are needed most, one that includes racial demographic data. Controversially a federal screening tool used by the administration does not take into account the racial makeup of communities.
There has been little change on the ground yet from the Justice40 pledge because the federal government is still trying to figure out which communities are most in need of the investment. In recommendations to the Biden administration, many reputable environmental justice advocates pushed for a methodical, intentional process for identifying disadvantaged communities and disbursing funds.
At the briefing, Wright and Bullard said they’ve seen past federal social and infrastructure projects fail to deliver on promises to disadvantaged communities and don’t want to see it happen again.
“There’s been a lot of really novel approaches at changing the lives of Americans in general that have worked out” benefitting just white Americans, Wright said.
Bullard pointed to discrimination in how flood relief was distributed in Texas, where the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice is located, as an example.
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Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.
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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.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/wh-environmental-justice-advisors-press-justice40-action/ | 2022-04-15T00:30:26 | 1 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/wh-environmental-justice-advisors-press-justice40-action/ |
Wofford College student charged in sex crime investigation, SLED says
SPARTANBURG, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - Wofford College Campus Safety and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division arrested a student Monday in connection with an investigation into an alleged sex crime.
Graham Boswell, 22, is charged with third-degree criminal sexual conduct. SLED helped with the arrest after they were asked by Wofford College officers to assist in the investigation.
Wofford College released the following statement:
“Wofford College takes student safety seriously. All members of the campus community have the right to study, work, compete and socialize in a safe environment. The college is committed to making assistance for students readily available, and we are committed to our responsibilities according to the Clery Act.”
Boswell was a member of the college rifle team during his sophomore year, but a spokesperson for Wofford confirmed he is no longer a member.
Copyright 2022 WHNS. All rights reserved. | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/wofford-college-student-charged-sex-crime-investigation-sled-says/ | 2022-04-15T00:30:33 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/2022/04/13/wofford-college-student-charged-sex-crime-investigation-sled-says/ |
(The Hill) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Thursday that it had authorized the first test to detect COVID-19 through breath for emergency use.
The InspectIR COVID-19 Breathalyzer is able to identify five volatile organic compounds tied to the coronavirus in a person’s breath by using a technique known as gas chromatography gas mass-spectrometry, delivering results in less than three minutes, according to the FDA.
The agency said that in a study of 2,409 people, which included both people with and without symptoms, the test had a 99.3 percent specificity rate, which measures the percent of correctly identified negative test samples.
The FDA also noted that the InspectIR COVID-19 Breathalyzer had a 91.2 percent sensitivity rate, which measures the percent of correctly identified positive test samples.
Still, the health agency said that a molecular test should be used to confirm positive test results returned by the COVID-19 breath test.
“Today’s authorization is yet another example of the rapid innovation occurring with diagnostic tests for COVID-19,” Jeff Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a statement.
“The FDA continues to support the development of novel COVID-19 tests with the goal of advancing technologies that can help address the current pandemic and better position the U.S. for the next public health emergency.”
The InspectIR COVID-19 Breathalyzer, which the FDA said was about the size of a piece of carry-on luggage, will be able to be used in places like mobile testing sites, hospitals and doctor’s offices, the agency said.
About 100 of the InspectIR COVID-19 Breathalyzers, each of which the FDA said can be used to test roughly 160 samples per day, are anticipated to be made each week. | https://www.wfla.com/community/health/coronavirus/fda-approves-first-covid-19-breath-test-for-emergency-use/ | 2022-04-15T00:30:51 | 0 | https://www.wfla.com/community/health/coronavirus/fda-approves-first-covid-19-breath-test-for-emergency-use/ |
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — For the first time since February 2011, the mortgage rate in the United States for a 30-year-fixed rate home loan hit 5%. In November 2018, the rate approached 5%, but never quite made it before dropping down to historic lows in December 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic raged.
Amid ongoing inflation month after month, the Federal Reserve has planned a total of seven rate increases across the market, the first of which hit in March. The second has not yet come, and the mortgage rate has still risen to 5%. Still, due to lack of available inventory, home prices continue to climb.
The market’s fluctuation and continuous price increases have a large impact on buyers, according to Freddie Mac, one of two federally-backed mortgage companies.
“As Americans contend with historically high inflation, the combination of rising mortgage rates, elevated home prices and tight inventory are making the pursuit of homeownership the most expensive in a generation,” Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist said.
The question becomes: Is a home worth what you’ll pay for it?
Right now, the prices for homes in the U.S. have risen steadily as a result of limited inventory and slower building processes. Inflation has made rent and materials more expensive, trapping potential homebuyers, especially first-timers, in a spot between paying a lot more in rent, or buying a home for more than it may be worth.
The lack of more homes available, while millions sit empty across the U.S. for a variety of reasons, has contributed to the price increases, even when the actual value of the property doesn’t change. Mortgage rates rising means not only that your home is going to be more expensive when you buy it, especially while the market remains hot, but that your monthly payments will be higher due to the interest rates increasing.
Some areas are seeing prices climb faster than others, with places like Florida rapidly growing more expensive alongside rapid levels of migration. The population of the Sunshine State is booming due to people moving in from out of state at the same time its birth rate is on the rise, unlike other states.
Homes are selling fast, but prices are rising faster. As a result, taxes on home purchases are also climbing.
According to ATTOM, a real estate analysis company, property taxes went up in 2021. However, the company said the weird part was the amount.
“It’s hardly a surprise that property taxes increased in 2021, a year when home prices across the country rose by 16%,” said Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence at ATTOM. “In fact, the real surprise is that the tax increases weren’t higher, which suggests that tax assessments are lagging behind rising property values, and will likely continue to go up in 2022.”
The study by ATTOM found that in almost three-quarters of the U.S., the tax levels went up faster than the national average in the past year.
According to their data analysis, total taxes rose as high as they did “because home values went up far faster than taxes around the country,” causing effective tax rates to decline. Median home values spiked by about 10%, according to ATTOM, due to the tight supply of homes for sale compared to the number of buyers.
To encourage more home purchases, the Federal Home Financing Agency increased loan limits for prospective buyers. In some areas, residents can apply for loans as high as $970,800 if the market is one of 100 U.S. metros deemed “higher-cost.” Other potential homeowners can get as much as $647,000 in 2022 for a federally-backed mortgage. The increased amounts were intended to address issues with rising prices while wages stagnated, comparatively.
For longer-term strategy to address housing issues, FHFA said some of its tools are limited for relief. It noted those concerns in its 2022 to 2026 strategic plan, published April 14.
“The agency’s ability to affect the supply of affordable housing for low- and moderate-income households is limited, and the market is constrained by shortages,” FHFA said. “Both labor shortages and materials supply-side challenges reduce the affordability of new housing construction and the renovation of existing housing.”
The agency said as mortgage rates increase from the lows set during the COVID-19 pandemic, with more increases to follow through 2024, the rising rates could add to affordability concerns for new borrowers as the housing supply remains tight. | https://www.wfla.com/news/national/as-higher-mortgage-rates-hit-us-low-supply-creates-gap-between-price-and-value/ | 2022-04-15T00:30:57 | 0 | https://www.wfla.com/news/national/as-higher-mortgage-rates-hit-us-low-supply-creates-gap-between-price-and-value/ |
THE BRONX (PIX11) — A Bronx man was sentenced to 14 years behind bars Thursday for repeatedly stabbing his pregnant fiancé, causing the death of their unborn child.
Oscar Alvarez, 34, pleaded guilty to attempted murder in the May 21, 2018 attack, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said. He stabbed Livia Abreu six times inside their Bronx apartment.
“The defendant viciously attacked a woman who was 26 weeks pregnant, while she pleaded for her life and that of her unborn baby,” Clark said. “He kept her from medical attention for a half hour. This mother courageously tricked the defendant by pretending to be dead and then seeking help. The defendant faces many years in prison for the butchering of this young woman, which lead to the death of her unborn child.”
Abreu crawled to a neighbor’s apartment for help, Clark said. Her unborn child died. She was hospitalized for about two weeks.
PIX11 News previously reported Abreu was a former U.S. paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division.
At the time of the stabbing, an NYPD source explained to PIX11 that the loss of an unborn fetus is not considered a homicide. | https://www.wfla.com/news/national/new-york-man-gets-14-years-for-stabbing-pregnant-fiance-causing-unborn-babys-death/ | 2022-04-15T00:31:03 | 1 | https://www.wfla.com/news/national/new-york-man-gets-14-years-for-stabbing-pregnant-fiance-causing-unborn-babys-death/ |
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WFLA) – It’s been a whirlwind 24 hours for former USF pitcher Phoenix Sanders. Wednesday night he was in Durham, North Carolina in Triple-A, and Thursday morning he was on a 7 a.m. flight, on his way to realizing a lifelong dream.
“You start playing Little League,” Sanders said. “You start playing catch in the backyard, to fulfill this goal. I think it all really hit me last night, sitting at home, trying to fall asleep and unable to fall asleep. Like ‘Wow. We actually did it.’ Again, words can’t even (describe) how it feels. It’s unbelievable.”
“He’s put-up some solid seasons in the minor leagues,” said Rays manager Kevin Cash about the newest addition to his pitching staff. “Opportunities don’t happen for everybody that do that, but we’re happy that it is for him. You talk to our player development group, his managers, his pitching coaches—everybody has raved about him as a person and as a teammate.”
Even Sander’s wife, who’s seven months pregnant, couldn’t believe this moment was finally here.
“She’s like, ‘Are you serious?’” Sanders said. “She thought she was dreaming—kind of like how I thought I was dreaming too. It was kind of like an ‘Aha moment.’ We’ve kind of had to grind. We’ve played well. We’ve had friends get up to the big leagues, like ‘OK that’ll be us. That’ll be us.’ We waited and we waited and it’s finally paid off.”
Giving him a warm welcome in the clubhouse Thursday morning, was his former USF teammate, Shane McClanahan. The two pitchers overlapped for two years there, and Sanders recalled what a talented– but maybe underrated– a group they had.
“We rattled off 23 and one to start my senior year and I’m like, ‘Oh this is going to be a lot of fun.’” Sanders said. “We all had good opportunities and it’s actually pretty cool because now, McClanahan has been here, I’m here, our Sunday guy is in Triple-A with the Brewers and we have two other guys in Triple-A with other organizations. It’s kind of a prideful thing like yeah, USF’s a mid-major but like how the Rays have done it—a little bit under-market, under the radar, but we kind of keep winning and keep producing guys that are really doing it.”
Sanders and McClanahan have enjoyed being in the same organization on their respective journeys to the majors, running similar courses, but still with that friendly competition that goes back to their college days.
“It was funny because my senior year, his redshirt freshman year, I got to be the Friday guy and he was the Saturday guy,” Sanders recalled. “So I always jab at him for that a little bit, but I think he ended up being the Opening Day starter here so I think at the end of the day he kind of got the last laugh.”
“That’s a pretty unique bond,” Cash said, about having college teammates on his team. “I think it helps for the incoming player, certainly Phoenix, to have some comfort. Now, he’s been around. He knows most of our players, but to know that he’s got a good relationship with Shane, certainly can help.”
Sanders made his major league debut in the fifth inning Thursday when the Rays were trailing the Athletics 5-1. After giving up a single, walk, and another single, he settled in and retired the next eight batters he faced to close out his first big league outing.
Sanders ended up going three full innings, giving up two hits, one run, walking one, and striking out two.
The Rays lost the game 6-3 and now head to Chicago for a six-game road trip– their first road trip of the season.
They’ll play three against the White Sox, followed by three against the Cubs, before returning to Tropicana Field next Friday. | https://www.wfla.com/sports/rays/former-usf-pitcher-phoenix-sanders-makes-mlb-debut-with-rays/ | 2022-04-15T00:31:09 | 1 | https://www.wfla.com/sports/rays/former-usf-pitcher-phoenix-sanders-makes-mlb-debut-with-rays/ |
Hyatt Brown: Congressional leaders need to consider debt-to-GDP solutions
DAYTONA BEACH — Billionaire and philanthropist Hyatt Brown has been thinking about the federal government.
Armed with several dozen graphs and charts, Brown made a presentation to the Tiger Bay Club of Volusia County on Thursday, spelling out what he sees as a looming economic concern: How much is owed versus the gross domestic product, or the debt-to-GDP ratio. He cited the figure at 138%, as compared with China, at about 70%.
Brown, who from 1978 to 1980 was Florida Speaker of the House but has not run for office since, called this "a severe problem we have that sooner or later we have to deal with."
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What's more, Brown said there are ways to do it, but said it will take elected officials — the president, senators and representatives — to take actions that might not be politically expedient.
Addressing the problem, he said, boils down to whether those elected officials are representatives or delegates.
"The difference is the representative always wants to find out exactly what the general opinion is of the people they are representing," Brown said. "A delegate is one who knows they are going to make votes that really aren’t all that popular back home but they do it because they know it’s the right thing for the whole."
How to reduce debt-to-GDP
After the costly World War II, the United States' debt was about 124% of GDP.
Congress raised taxes while a number of other factors came into play — such as population growth — leading to a reduction in the debt-to-GDP ratio to about 24%.
Brown addressed one common refrain from politicians.
“Everyone says cut spending. Cut spending. Cut spending,” he said.
The problem with that is virtually no one will support cuts in the federal spending on national defense, Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security.
Brown said one former congressman he knows well and helped fund was the conservative Republican Ander Crenshaw of Jacksonville, who served from 2001 to 2017. Brown said he asked Crenshaw why he was retiring from Congress when he had reached a position of power as deputy majority whip and a member of the Appropriations Committee.
Crenshaw said he had worked to make cuts in government spending, but was running low on ideas on how to make a major impact.
"We're down to the bone," Crenshaw said, according to Brown. "We can't cut any more and I'm tired of the knuckle-dragging. I'm going to go back to Jacksonville and I'm going to enjoy life."
So the next most likely solution, Brown concluded, is to raise GDP.
One issue with the American GDP is the U.S. economy's reliance on folks "buying stuff," Brown said.
“We’re buying things more than we’re selling things. And if we wanted to increase GDP by $900 billion all you do is change that negative to flat,” he said. "Buy American."
There are other ways GDP grows, he said, including:
- Population growth, either in the form of increased births or immigration
- Increased efficiency in the production of goods and services
- A positive export balance
- Increased government spending
- More private investment
Brown said a "short-term joker in the deck" is the stock market, which has seen long periods of expansion followed by precipitous drops. In the long run, though, the market is up, while he said forward earnings are projected at 19.5, which is better than average.
The United States, he emphasized, has an economy that's the envy of the rest of the world.
"I'd say yeah, don't worry about it," Brown said. "It will all work out."
During a question-and-answer session, retired Dr. Carl "Rick" Lentz asked Brown about the possibility of moving from cash to a digital currency.
"It's coming," Brown said. "The people who hate it are the criminals and the black market, where people re running businesses for cash and, therefore, they're avoiding taxes."
Lentz expressed reservations.
"The problem that I have is that everything you're spending on everything, you have no secrets," he said.
Brown responded; "Do you have any secrets? I don't have any secrets."
Never miss a story: Subscribe to The Daytona Beach News-Journal using the link at the top of the page. | https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/local/volusia/2022/04/14/hyatt-brown-challenges-congress-address-severe-gdp-debt-ratio/7304531001/ | 2022-04-15T00:31:51 | 1 | https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/local/volusia/2022/04/14/hyatt-brown-challenges-congress-address-severe-gdp-debt-ratio/7304531001/ |
BALTIMORE — The defense filed three motions in State Attorney Marilyn Mosby's pretrial hearing that were ultimately denied by Judge Griggsby Thursday afternoon.
The judge ruled, saying the superseding indictment laid out elaborate details in the case against State’s Attorney Mosby.
The motions were to request a hearing for a bill of particulars, to dismiss the indictment entirely or to disqualify the lead prosecutor Leo Wise in the case because of an alleged personal vendetta against Mosby.
Mosby's lawyer, Attorney A. Scott Bolden, alleged the entire case stemmed from “selective and vindictive prosecution” fueled by personal animus.
MORE: Superseding indictment filed against City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby
He alleged the lead prosecutor's contributions to Mosby’s opponents for the States Attorney’s office supported their personal agenda against her.
The government said that’s just not true.
Mosby’s attorney argued that without that “genuine personal animus” this case wouldn’t have gone forward.
U.S. attorneys called that “another play in a political playbook.”
The judge defended her ruling, saying the defense didn’t show objective evidence that prosecutors acted in person animus and rejected all three motions.
WMAR-2 caught up with States Attorney Mosby and her legal team for their reaction to that ruling.
"I think we are more disappointed, than surprised," said Attorney Bolden. "The facts of this case, for a motion to dismiss, ought to be troubling to the U.S. Attorney and Department of Justice. These facts that were documented and truthful, while they may not have risen to the level for the court to dismiss the charges, they are problematic."
It doesn't affect my election," Mosby said. "I've been victorious every single time they have come for me. I will be victorious again. I've won every single time, State Ethics, State Board of Elections, suits, harassments. I've won every time and I will win this time."
Mosby was indicted on four charges.
The indictment states that Mosby falsely certified the following information on the form, which stated she had "experienced adverse financial consequences stemming from the virus or disease as a result of:
- being quarantined, furloughed or laid off
- having reduced work hours
- being unable to work due to lack of child care
- the closing or reduction of hours of a business i own or operate.
The indictment continues, stating that Mosby's gross salary for 2020 was $247,955.58 and was never reduced and than rather than experiencing a reduction in income in 2020, her gross salary in 2020 increased over her salary in 2019, which was $238,772.04.
On May 29, 2020, Mosby received an electronic transfer of $36,000 which the indictment says was used toward a down payment for a vacation home in Kissimmee, Florida that she purchased in September 2020.
Count two further addressed Mosby's federal tax debt and the Kissimmee Vacation home.
They charge that from around July 2020 to September 2020, Mosby knowingly made false statements or reports for the purpose of influencing in any way the action of Cardinal Financial Company, a mortgage lending business.
According to the indictment, Mosby certified the only liabilities she owed were those disclosed in the application, when in fact she knew she owed significant amounts in federal taxes, and that she was not presently delinquent "or in default on any Federal debt" when they say she was "delinquent in paying her federal taxes resulting in the IRS filing a $45,022 lien against her in March 2020.
They say she agreed that she would not give a management firm or any other person or entity control over the occupancy or use of the vacation home.
Further, the indictment charges that Mosby submitted a second COVID distribution request in December 2020, and requested a withdrawal of $50,000 from her retirement account. She then falsely certified the same information on the form as listed above.
Count four details the charge of a false statement on a loan application and states that she drafted a letter to be submitted by her loan broker to the mortgage company in December 2020.
They state that she falsely represented that she'd spent the past "70 days" living in Florida working remotely when she was not. They also state that from around January 2021 to February 2021, Mosby "knowingly made a false statement or report for the purpose of influencing the action of United Wholesale Mortgage."
(Insert 6PM quote)
This trial will go forward starting September 19th. | https://www.wmar2news.com/news/local-news/judge-denies-three-motions-in-states-attorney-marilyn-mosbys-pretrial-hearing | 2022-04-15T00:35:48 | 0 | https://www.wmar2news.com/news/local-news/judge-denies-three-motions-in-states-attorney-marilyn-mosbys-pretrial-hearing |
Frank James posted dozens of videos ranting about race, violence, and his struggles with mental illness. One stands out for its relative calm: A silent shot of a packed New York City subway car in which he raises his finger to point out passengers, one by one.
Even as police arrested James on Wednesday in the Brooklyn subway shooting that wounded 10 people, they were still searching for a motive from a flood of details about the 62-year-old Black man’s life.
An erratic work history. Arrests for a string of mostly low-level crimes. A storage locker with more ammo. And hours of rambling, bigoted, profanity-laced videos on his YouTube channel that point to a deep, simmering anger.
“This nation was born in violence, it’s kept alive by violence or the threat thereof, and it’s going to die a violent death,” says James in a video where he takes on the moniker “Prophet of Doom.”
After a 30-hour manhunt, James was arrested without incident after a tipster — thought by police to be James himself — said he could be found near a McDonald’s on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Mayor Eric Adams triumphantly proclaimed “We got him!” Police said their top priority was getting the suspect, now charged with a federal terrorism offense, off the streets as they investigate their biggest unanswered question: Why?
A prime trove of evidence, they said, is his YouTube videos. He seems to have opinions about nearly everything — racism in America, New York City’s new mayor, the state of mental health services, 9/11, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Black women.
A federal criminal complaint cited one in which James ranted about too many homeless people on the subway and put the blame on New York City’s mayor.
“What are you doing, brother?” he said in the video posted on March 27. “Every car I went to was loaded with homeless people. It was so bad, I couldn’t even stand.”
James then railed about the treatment of Black people in an April 6 video cited in the complaint, saying, “And so the message to me is: I should have gotten a gun, and just started shooting.”
In a video posted a day before the attack, James criticizes crime against Black people and says things would only change if certain people were “stomped, kicked and tortured” out of their “comfort zone.”
Surveillance cameras spotted James entering the subway system turnstiles Tuesday morning, dressed as a maintenance or construction worker in a yellow hard hat and orange working jacket with reflective tape.
Police say fellow riders heard him say only “oops” as he set off one smoke grenade in a crowded subway car as it rolled into a station. He then set off a second smoke grenade and started firing, police said. In the smoke and chaos that ensued, police say James made his getaway by slipping into an R-train going the opposite direction and exiting after the first stop.
Left behind at the scene was the gun, extended magazines, a hatchet, detonated and undetonated smoke grenades, a black garbage can, a rolling cart, gasoline and the key to a U-Haul van, police said.
That key led investigators to James, and clues to a life of setbacks and anger as he bounced among factory and maintenance jobs, got fired at least twice, and moved among Milwaukee, Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York.
Investigators said James had 12 prior arrests in New York and New Jersey from 1990 to 2007, including for possession of burglary tools, criminal sex act, trespassing, larceny and disorderly conduct.
James had no felony convictions and was not prohibited from purchasing or owning a firearm. Police said the gun used in the attack was legally purchased at an Ohio pawn shop in 2011. A search of James' Philadelphia storage unit and apartment turned up at least two types of ammunition, including the kind used with an AR-15 assault-style rifle, a taser and a blue smoke canister.
Police said James was born and raised in New York City. In his videos, he said he finished a machine shop course in 1983 then worked as a gear machinist at Curtiss-Wright, an aerospace manufacturer in New Jersey, until 1991 when he was he was hit by a one-two punch of bad news: He was fired from his job and, soon after, his father whom he had lived within New Jersey died.
Records show James filed a complaint against the aerospace company in federal court soon after he lost his job alleging racial discrimination, but it was dismissed a year later by a judge. He says in one video, without offering specifics, that he “couldn’t get any justice for what I went through.”
A spokesperson for Curtiss-Wright didn’t immediately respond to a call-seeking comment.
James describes going in and out of several mental health facilities, including two in the Bronx borough of New York City in the 1970s.
“Mr. Mayor, let me say to you I’m a victim of your mental health program in New York City,” James says in a video earlier this year, adding he is “full of hate, full anger and bitterness.”
James says he later was a patient at Bridgeway House, a mental health facility in New Jersey, although that could not be immediately confirmed. Messages left with the facility were not returned.
“My goal at Bridgeway in 1997 was to get off Social Security and go back to f------ work,” he says in a video, adding that he enrolled in a college and took a course in computer-aided design and manufacturing.
James says he eventually got a job at telecommunications giant Lucent Technologies in Parsippany, New Jersey, but says he ended up getting fired and returned to Bridgeway House, this time not as a patient but as an employee on the maintenance staff. A message-seeking comment was sent to Lucent Technologies.
“I just want to work. I want to be a person that’s productive,” he said.
Touches of that earnest, struggling man showed up after James’ parked car was hit in Milwaukee. Eugene Yarbrough, the pastor of Mt. Zion Wings of Glory Church of God in Christ next door to James’ apartment, said James was impressed that the pastor owned up to hitting the car. Neither James nor anyone else was there to see the accident. And James called him up to say so.
“I just couldn’t believe it would be him,” Yarbrough said. “But who knows what people will do?”
Newsy is the nation’s only free 24/7 national news network. You can find Newsy using your TV’s digital antenna or stream for free. See all the ways you can watch Newsy here. | https://www.wmar2news.com/news/national/prophet-of-doom-subway-suspect-left-ranting-video-clues | 2022-04-15T00:35:54 | 1 | https://www.wmar2news.com/news/national/prophet-of-doom-subway-suspect-left-ranting-video-clues |
Stocks are closing lower on Wall Street on Thursday as investors gave mixed reviews to earnings from four of the nation's largest banks.
The S&P 500 fell 1.2% and ended a shortened trading week with a decline of more than 2%. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 2.83% as inflation worries continue to overhang the markets. Investors again turned their attention to the drama surrounding Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Twitter.
Musk offered to buy the social media company for $54.20 a share, two weeks after revealing he'd accumulated a 9% stake. The Commerce Department said retail sales rose 0.5% in March.
Musk criticized Twitter for not living up to free speech principles and said, in a regulatory filing, that it needs to be transformed as a private company. Twitter’s stock was up 0.2% at $45.92, well below Musk’s offering price. | https://www.wmar2news.com/news/national/us-stocks-fall-as-investors-eye-elon-musks-offer-for-twitter | 2022-04-15T00:36:00 | 1 | https://www.wmar2news.com/news/national/us-stocks-fall-as-investors-eye-elon-musks-offer-for-twitter |
Nathan Nelson watched in 2017 as his home inspection business floundered and bills mounted.
Then, he had an idea that he thought could save him — stealing golf carts, according to court records.
For the next four years, Nelson hopscotched around the Midwest and Southeast, taking them from rural golf courses in the dead of the night, court records show. He later sold the carts through websites like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace.
Then, last June, prosecutors said Nelson’s scheme unraveled when he was arrested in Georgia while trying to steal from a business that services golf carts.
Nelson, a 45-year-old Florida resident, was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday after pleading guilty to interstate transportation of stolen property, a felony. A federal judge in North Dakota also ordered Nelson to pay $13,713 in restitution to several of the courses he targeted and to forfeit $222,736 to the federal government. Under his plea deal, the judge dismissed the other eight charges against him.
Nelson’s lawyer, Lorelle Moeckel, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post late Wednesday. But in court documents filed earlier this month, Moeckel said her client takes full responsibility for stealing the golf carts. Over the years, she said, Nelson repeatedly told himself after a heist that it would be the last — until it wasn’t, and he decided to steal again “to ease his financial problems.”
“He was lured by the idea of quick easy cash and made a very poor choice,” Moeckel said, adding that Nelson lacked confidence, primarily because of a stutter that affected his ability to communicate.
Nelson started his scheme in June 2017 and kept it going until he was arrested, federal prosecutors said. Often under the alias “Mason Weber,” Nelson stole or tried to steal about 84 golf carts from courses spanning thousands of miles, including ones in North Dakota, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Georgia, according to court records. He was successful on at least 70 of those attempts, authorities said.
After stealing the carts, which he started using a universal key, Nelson would drive them away from the course clubhouses to nearby locations where he’d staged a getaway vehicle, court records state. In several thefts, he used a Penske moving truck he’d rented, authorities said. FBI agents later used the GPS tracker in the Penske truck to tie him to golf courses in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan — all of which had reported thefts.
Prosecutors said Nelson offloaded the carts, valued at $5,000 or more, for about half of what they were worth. He told one buyer that he had access to a steady supply of cheap golf carts because his wife worked for a company that leased them out, according to court records.
FBI agents interviewed one of Nelson’s buyers who, starting in 2019, had purchased between 20 and 30 carts. The man still had four and let the agents inspect them. He also gave them a collection of scorecard pencils he’d found over the years. Branded with golf course names, the pencils tied Nelson to the businesses he’d hit, officials said.
On June 11, sheriff’s deputies in Georgia’s Seminole County discovered Nelson trying to steal carts from Dixie Sales and Service, which does maintenance work on golf cars, authorities said. When they searched him, deputies allegedly found golf cart keys, preprinted labels with fake serial numbers and “burglary tools.” He also had two IDs, both with his photo: a Florida driver’s license with his real name and one from Iowa for “Mason Weber,” records show.
It was the end of a four-year scheme that mushroomed into a multistate plot that spanned half the country and involved golf carts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, authorities said. Up until then, his lawyer said, Nelson had been a law-abiding citizen. Then came the money troubles and a plan to solve them by stealing “a couple golf carts.”
“[F]rom there it became easier and easier for him to stray from his long held moral compass,” Moeckel said. | https://www.unionleader.com/news/back_page/his-business-was-failing---so-he-stole-and-sold-golf-carts-for-easy/article_1aeb25c0-6517-56ec-9d34-e6f7c76febc2.html | 2022-04-15T00:39:33 | 1 | https://www.unionleader.com/news/back_page/his-business-was-failing---so-he-stole-and-sold-golf-carts-for-easy/article_1aeb25c0-6517-56ec-9d34-e6f7c76febc2.html |
In a rural Dutch town, the day started like any other. The sun’s rays rose over the farming community of Fijnaart. The cows mooed from their stalls, ready to be milked. But inside a dairy farmer’s storage room, there was something missing — 3,500 pounds of it to be exact.
“They stole the cheese,” said Gerda van Dorp, who runs Torenpolderkaas, a dairy farm and cheese business, with her husband, Joost. “I can’t even describe the feeling when you see all those empty shelves.”
A group of thieves pulled off the heist in the dead of the night. How they managed to carry out 161 heavy wheels of Gouda worth over $22,000 on March 29 is a mystery that has stumped people far beyond the town of less than 7,000 residents.
For the past week, van Dorp’s days have been filled answering media requests and doing interviews with outlets across the Netherlands, the United States and Canada — so much so that the dairy farmer said she has struggled to find the time to get back to producing cheese.
“You’ll be the last one,” she told The Washington Post. “That is, unless Oprah comes calling.”
Cheese heists, though unusual, are not unheard of, said Theo Dekker, chairman of Bond van Boerderij-zuivelbereiders, an interest group for Dutch dairy farmers.
“In 2016 there was a burglary wave and in 2020 it happened again,” Dekker said in an email to The Post. “Cheese is a wanted product because it is easy to sell.”
If there’s one thing that unites people worldwide, it’s a love of cheese. The product can be traced back to nearly all cultures and has been present for thousands of years, enabling a steady demand.
But selling the stolen Gouda in the Netherlands could prove tricky for the thieves, since cheese there is marked with a unique code revealing its origin, type and fat content. Dekker’s hunch is that they will attempt to sell it abroad — potentially in Russia, where economic sanctions levied after its attack on Ukraine prevent Dutch dairy from being bought. Unfortunately, that means there’s not much Dutch authorities can do to help van Dorp, especially since her farm had no security cameras to record the culprits.
The ordeal has left van Dorp missing two months of stock. Yet the stolen wheels of cheese are much more than an economic setback for the dairy farmer.
“I always say it’s not just making cheese,” she said. “You have to love making cheese because it’s a lot of work. And it’s not just something you do. You really have to love it — just like farming.”
Van Dorp, a mother of two, said cheesemaking is almost like raising a kid: “You give it so much attention, love and care. You put in the effort and then you watch it become a mature, round wheel.”
At Torenpolderkaas, the cheese’s journey from fresh dairy to delicious slice starts on Sunday, when the van Dorps milk some of their 105 cows.
But milk doesn’t turn into cheese on its own. It has to be prepared, acidified, curdled, cut, pressed and drained in a lengthy process that takes almost a whole day, van Dorp said. Next, it gets shaped into its signature round figure and put into a salt bath for one to two days. A week is then spent coating and drying it. Finally, the wheel is placed on a shelf to mature for at least three months, after which it’s ready to go into the belly of a happy customer.
While cheesemaking is a love affair for van Dorp, the toiling doesn’t come without sacrifice.
Her children, ages 5 and 10, sometimes wonder why their parents have no days off. Vacations are often cut short, and most days are spent in their sprawling fields.
Van Dorp never imagined that life for herself. Raised near The Hague — a city with over 514,000 residents — she “started laughing so hard” when she realized the dashing man she met during a 2005 vacation in Italy was a farmer.
“I didn’t see myself as a farmer,” she said. “And then I moved in 2008 to a town that basically only has a supermarket, flower shop, drugstore and a restaurant. That’s life — and love.”
Life in Fijnaart — about 75 miles south of Amsterdam — was tranquil until that Tuesday morning, when her husband came running in screaming that the shelves were empty.
It seemed unimaginable in a town so small that such a thing would happen. Their dog had not barked, and they heard no commotion throughout the night. It took van Dorp hours to process the loss — only managing to repeat, “It’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone,” in a phone call with her mother.
“It was heartbreaking and something that makes you lose your faith in humanity,” she said.
Nevertheless, van Dorp said her family has received supportive texts, phone calls, cards and flowers. Some have been inspired to buy her dairy farm’s products. And a cheesemaker from another town, whom the van Dorps have never met, organized a GoFundMe campaign to help the family.
“This makes you realize that yes, some people are bad,” she said. “But most people are good, honest and have sympathy for you when you need it the most.” | https://www.unionleader.com/news/back_page/thieves-strike-in-the-netherlands-with-heist-of-22-000---in-cheese/article_75b40724-f6fc-5811-b563-ed3c10586d1c.html | 2022-04-15T00:39:39 | 1 | https://www.unionleader.com/news/back_page/thieves-strike-in-the-netherlands-with-heist-of-22-000---in-cheese/article_75b40724-f6fc-5811-b563-ed3c10586d1c.html |
LINCOLN — Pete Goerlich isn’t ready to bid adieu to the slopes of New Hampshire quite yet.
The Denville, N.J., resident was snowboarding Wednesday at Loon Mountain Resort, the only Granite State ski area still keeping the lifts running.
“I love spring. It’s the best time to go,” Goerlich said, because there are “fewer people, and the snow is softer.”
While Goerlich hit the slopes, his companion, Sallie Liberio, and their two dogs, Ben and Magnolia, explored the resort, which closes for the season Sunday beginning with a sunrise Easter service.
Loon and other New Hampshire ski areas say they had a decent, profitable season.
“Visits were definitely up over last year,” said Louise Smith, Loon’s communications manager. Parent company Boyne Resorts does not disclose attendance or revenue figures.
The newly installed Kancamagus 8 chairlift that went into service on Dec. 10 was “a wonderful addition” to Loon’s winter operations, and come summer it will boost access to Loon’s expanding mountain-biking amenities, she said.
Loon set its closing date at April 17 before the season started, based on meteorological and historical data. The mountain made a bunch of snow early on, Smith said, and was then blessed with 107 inches of natural snow as of Wednesday, three more inches than last season.
John DeVivo, general manager of Franconia Notch State Park and Cannon Mountain, and Kyle Matzke, marketing manager of Ragged Mountain, also reported solid, if unspectacular, seasons.
“As far as visits, we’re down 12 percent year-to-date from last year, and we are down 9 percent compared to our 10-year averages, but our revenue was up by roughly those same averages,” DeVivo said Thursday. “What we’re seeing is fewer visits but stronger revenues and doing more stuff at full price.”
The accounting for the 2021-2022 season, which ended April 10, is ongoing, said DeVivo, but he is confident that Cannon will “finish in the black for sure.”
Ragged Mountain, meanwhile, is looking to the upcoming wedding season and reflecting on the past winter, which had ups and downs, said Matzke, but still saw 118 days of operation.
“Last year (2020-21) was an historic year for Ragged in terms of skier visits and revenues and this season saw comparable numbers,” Matzke said.
“Our skier visits were down slightly due to questionable weather in February,” he said, “and in March, when we typically get hit with a good amount of snow, we got rain instead.”
For much of the winter, Ragged Mountain was trending at a record pace, Matzke said.
Despite only receiving 80 inches of natural snow, “our mountain-operations team did a tremendous job,” said Matzke, adding that the 2021-22 season also saw Ragged Mountain step back from “dynamic and flex pricing” for lift tickets because of strong demand for tickets at full price.
As the pandemic waned, he said, “people have become more comfortable in going into our lodges,” which translated to increased food and beverage sales.
The past season also saw a huge jump in participation and attendance at Ragged Mountain’s end-of-season events, which had been on hiatus for two seasons, Matzke said.
The events coincided with the start of season-pass sales for 2022-23, which Matzke said were on par with past years.
“Right now we’re transitioning into our wedding season. We have 18 weddings from the end of May to October,” Matzke said.
Ragged Mountain opened for the 2021-2022 season a week later than usual, he said, and closed on April 3, which he noted, is right about the time that many of Ragged Mountain’s patrons from the southern tier of New Hampshire and in Massachusetts “lose their snow” and start thinking about springtime activities.
While Loon and Cannon are among the largest ski areas in New Hampshire, and Ragged Mountain is a notch or two below them, family-owned King Pine is smaller still. Still it also counted the 2021-22 season as a successful one, said Thomas Prindle, the resort’s marketing manager.
Prindle said the season could be summed up in “a very simple and straightforward soundbite: At King Pine Ski Area we had a decent season. We exceeded skier-visits year-to-year.”
In summer, Purity Spring Resort, of which King Pine is part, “becomes very active” both lakeside and on the mountain, said Prindle, “and we’re excited to be heading into a more normal operation.” | https://www.unionleader.com/news/business/as-season-comes-to-a-close-ski-resorts-report-decent-business/article_2d5014d1-00bd-5788-92c3-736831c2c316.html | 2022-04-15T00:39:45 | 0 | https://www.unionleader.com/news/business/as-season-comes-to-a-close-ski-resorts-report-decent-business/article_2d5014d1-00bd-5788-92c3-736831c2c316.html |
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk took aim at Twitter with a $43 billion cash takeover offer Thursday, with the Tesla CEO saying the social media company needs to be taken private to grow and become a platform for free speech.
“Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it,” Musk, who is already the San Francisco-based company’s second-largest shareholder, said in a letter to its board on Wednesday. The offer was made public in a regulatory filing on Thursday.
His offer price of $54.20 per share represents a 38% premium to Twitter’s April 1 close, the last trading day before his 9.1% stake in the social media platform was made public.
Musk — the world’s richest person with a $273.6 billion fortune according to a Forbes tally — rejected an invitation to join Twitter’s board this week after disclosing his stake, a move analysts said signaled his takeover intentions as a board seat would have limited his shareholding to just under 15%.
Investors were not immediately convinced. Shares of Twitter were flat to slightly lower in midday trading. Some argued Musk’s bid undervalued the micro-blogging platform that has become a global means of communication for individuals and world leaders.
Saudi Arabia’s prince Alwaleed bin Talal tweeted from his verified account about the deal. Describing himself as one of the “largest & long-term shareholders of Twitter,” he said Musk’s offer undervalued the company and he rejected it.
Musk, for his part, told Twitter it was his “best and final offer” and said he would reconsider his investment if the board rejects it.
“Since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company,” Musk said in his letter to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor.
Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” has been critical of the social media platform and its policies, and recently ran a poll on Twitter asking users if they believed it adheres to the principle of free speech.
After Twitter banned former President Donald Trump over concerns around incitement of violence following last year’s Capitol attack by his supporters, Musk tweeted: “A lot of people are going to be super unhappy with West Coast high tech as the de facto arbiter of free speech.”
In an interview with Sirius XM’s Americano Media on Wednesday — before Musk’s announcement — Trump said he “probably wouldn’t have any interest” in returning to Twitter, where he had more than 88 million followers.
White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on Musk’s offer for Twitter, saying that market regulators operate independently from political leadership.
Company employees, some of whom were panicked over Musk’s impact on its ability to moderate content, were expected to attend a Twitter all-hands meeting later on Thursday to discuss the news, one source told Reuters.
Twitter will review the offer with advice from Goldman Sachs and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a source told Reuters.
Musk said investment bank Morgan Stanley was acting as financial adviser for his offer. He did not say how he would finance the transaction if it goes ahead.
“We think Musk could look to fund the transaction, if approved, through a combination of debt financing and potentially Tesla shares. Given the size of the transaction (about $43B), we think it is conceivable that some Tesla shares could be sold given much of his wealth is tied to the company,” CFRA Research analyst Angelo Zino said.
Musk sold more than $15 billion worth of his Tesla shares, about 10% of his stake in the electric vehicle maker, last year to settle a tax obligation.
‘SERIAL UNDERPERFORMER’
Twitter’s lower-than-expected user additions in recent months have raised doubts about its growth prospects, even as it pursues big projects such as audio chat rooms and newsletters.
“The big question for the Twitter board now is whether to accept a very generous offer for a business that has been a serial underperformer and tends to treat its users with indifference,” said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets.
Twitter will not decide on the fate of Musk’s bid on Thursday, according to a source familiar with the situation. What the board is discussing is the parameters of the valuation process and it would then ask its advisers to review the bid and await for the results, the source said.
Musk has amassed more than 80 million followers since joining Twitter in 2009 and has used it to make several announcements, including teasing a go-private deal for Tesla that landed him in hot water with regulators.
Musk is bound by a 2018 settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision requiring him to obtain pre-approval on some of his Twitter posts after he tweeted that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private.
“If he really wants to take Twitter private his past run-ins with regulators might not pose an obstacle – but it might make potential financing sources leery of providing the cash for the deal – unless he is willing to pledge a large portion of his Tesla holdings to collateralize the debt,” said Howard Fischer, a partner at law firm Moses & Singer and former senior trial counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Musk’s move also raises the question of whether other bidders might emerge for Twitter.
“It would be hard for any other bidders/consortium to emerge and the Twitter board will be forced likely to accept this bid and/or run an active process to sell Twitter,” Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives wrote in a client note. | https://www.unionleader.com/news/business/elon-musk-makes-43-billion-cash-takeover-offer-for-twitter/article_c39112c6-3613-56c1-86c6-92b0e67f1a9a.html | 2022-04-15T00:39:51 | 0 | https://www.unionleader.com/news/business/elon-musk-makes-43-billion-cash-takeover-offer-for-twitter/article_c39112c6-3613-56c1-86c6-92b0e67f1a9a.html |
LANCASTER — In the heart of this North Country community, the historic Parker J. Noyes building — where sugar-coated pills were invented — is nearing an extensive nearly $3 million rehabilitation.
Purchased by the Northern Forest Center in 2018 because of its potential to contribute “to Lancaster’s downtown vitality,” the Noyes building “is creating quality downtown living spaces for residents, adding new commercial space where small businesses can thrive, and creating palpable excitement on Lancaster’s vibrant Main Street,” according to the Forest Center.
The first floor of the three-floor, 11,000-square-foot building will be home to the Root Seller Marketplace, while the second and third floors will have a total of six two-bedroom apartments which will be rented at market rate.
Listed on the New Hampshire State Register of Historic Places, the Noyes building is expected to open later this spring.
The building is named after the Parker J. Noyes Company, whose then pharmacist-owner invented the sugar-coated pill and which also made pills and animal-feed pellets, the forerunner of modern kibble.
The company moved north to a site on Route 2 in the 1980s where its successor — Trividia Manufacturing Solutions — continues to operate, the Forest Center said.
While the overwhelming majority of the money to renovate and reinvigorate the Noyes building has come from private sources, the federal government had an important, early role in the funding process, which U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen discussed during a tour of the building on Wednesday.
The upgrade was partially funded through the Northern Border Regional Commission, said Shaheen, adding that there are efforts to get the commission more money for similar projects. She said the prospect of enabling legislation passing in Congress is enhanced by the fact that both Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is president of the Senate, and Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., are from border states.
“I’m thoroughly impressed by the newly renovated space at the Parker J. Noyes building,” said Shaheen, who earlier this year introduced legislation that her office said would extend the authorization of the NBRC “and broaden the Commission’s ability to award grants to projects that expand rural access to child care, health care and affordable housing needs.”
Forest Center President Rob Riley told Shaheen that, with the Noyes building, “we’re building this for the next 150 years.”
Julie Renaud Evans, who is the Forest center’s program director, said when the Noyes building opens, Lancaster will “once again have a strong anchor building” in the downtown. | https://www.unionleader.com/news/business/rehab-of-lancasters-historic-parker-j-noyes-building-where-the-sugar-coated-pill-was-invented/article_62062e1d-8ac0-55a6-81ca-ec7f121d7088.html | 2022-04-15T00:39:57 | 0 | https://www.unionleader.com/news/business/rehab-of-lancasters-historic-parker-j-noyes-building-where-the-sugar-coated-pill-was-invented/article_62062e1d-8ac0-55a6-81ca-ec7f121d7088.html |
NEW YORK — A federal judge Thursday ordered the man accused of this week’s mass shooting in a New York City subway car to remain in custody, after prosecutors said his “terrifying” attack disrupted life in the city in a way not seen in two decades.
The man, Frank James, suspected of injuring 23 people in the attack, made an initial court appearance Thursday wearing a beige prison garb, sneakers, black eyeglasses and a blue surgical mask. He faces a federal charge of violently attacking a mass transit system.
James, 62, was represented by two public defenders, who requested that he undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
“The defendant terrifyingly opened fire on passengers in a crowded subway train,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Winik said in court, adding that the incident interrupted “the morning commute in a way this city hasn’t seen in more than 20 years.”
“He fired approximately 33 rounds in cold blood at terrified passengers who had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide,” she said in a court filing.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Roanne Mann ordered James to be held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the main jail for defendants awaiting federal trial in New York City, pending a bail application from his lawyers.
James was arrested on Wednesday in lower Manhattan, capping a 30-hour manhunt for the lone suspect wanted in an assault that unnerved riders of the largest and busiest U.S. metropolitan rapid rail network and renewed calls for greater subway security.
James was taken into custody about five miles from the scene of Tuesday’s assault, which unfolded during the morning rush-hour as the Manhattan-bound N train was pulling into an underground station in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park community.
Police said 10 people were shot outright, five of them hospitalized in critical but stable condition, and 13 others were injured in the stampede of terrified passengers pouring from the smoke-filled subway car onto the platform of the 36th Street station. All were expected to survive.
The gunman vanished in the pandemonium, but investigators said they established James as a suspect when a sweep of the crime scene turned up a credit card in his name and the keys to a U-Haul van that he had rented and left parked several blocks away.
Authorities at the scene also recovered the Glock 9 mm semi-automatic handgun used in the attack, along with three extended-ammunition magazines, a torch, a hatchet, a bag of fireworks and a container of gasoline, according to police and court documents.
The next day, investigators tracked James down to Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood with the help of tips from residents who recognized him from wanted photos, some of whom posted sightings on social media, police said. He was taken into custody without incident, according to officials.
Authorities have offered no possible motive for the assault. But according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case, James posted a number of YouTube videos addressing statements to New York City’s mayor about homelessness and the subway system.
A YouTube account apparently belonging to James was taken down Wednesday for violating the online video platform’s “community guidelines,” the company said.
The New York Times and New York Post, each citing law enforcement sources, reported that James himself alerted police to his general whereabouts on Wednesday in a call he placed to a tip line from a McDonald’s fast-food outlet. The reports could not be independently verified by Reuters.
A criminal complaint filed by federal prosecutors on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn charged James with a single count of committing a terrorist or other violent attack against a mass transportation system — a felony that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
James, a Bronx native with recent addresses in Philadelphia and Milwaukee, had nine prior arrests in New York and three in New Jersey, according to the New York Police Department.
The subway shooting suspect, described by eyewitnesses as dressed in construction-worker garb, is accused of setting off two smoke canisters from the rear of the subway car moments before opening fire on fellow passengers.
In addition to items found at the subway station, searches of James’ apartment and a storage locker in Philadelphia uncovered more handgun and rifle magazines, ammunition, a Taser and a pistol barrel attachment for a silencer, the FBI said. | https://www.unionleader.com/news/crime/suspect-in-new-york-subway-shooting-ordered-to-remain-in-jail/article_6fb3bc29-860e-5f3c-bfe8-129ab5b47e3f.html | 2022-04-15T00:40:03 | 0 | https://www.unionleader.com/news/crime/suspect-in-new-york-subway-shooting-ordered-to-remain-in-jail/article_6fb3bc29-860e-5f3c-bfe8-129ab5b47e3f.html |
Purdue Pharma and the Sackler families, manufacturers of the opioids that devastated this country, are paying up to $6 billion to individual claimants and states for opioid abatement programs. Why? From April 2020 to April 2021, there were 75,673 opioid-related deaths in the U.S., and at least 2 million Americans have a substance use disorder related to prescription opioid pain medication.
There are big lessons to be learned from all that — ones that wisely might be applied to the legalization of medical marijuana, for example. Just because something makes people feel better, and is thought to be pretty harmless, doesn’t mean it won’t end up causing health problems. A new study out of Massachusetts General Hospital, published in JAMA Network Open, shows that when folks with pain, anxiety or depression obtain a medical marijuana card, a lot of them end up with cannabis use disorder (CUD) without seeing any improvement in their symptoms. CUD is characterized by the need for increasing amounts of the drug to gain its effects and use of it even when it makes you feel lousy.
If you’re considering using marijuana to treat these type of symptoms, ask yourself, “Are there alternative treatments, like stress management, physical activity, a change in nutrition, talk therapy, massage or acupuncture, that could provide relief without risking dependency?” As a country, we should ask the same question now that 36 states give out medical marijuana cards. I say, “Let’s get lifestyle upgrades prescribed and covered by insurance!” That could change the world.
Health pioneer Michael Roizen, M.D., is chief wellness officer emeritus at the Cleveland Clinic and author of four No. 1 New York Times bestsellers. His next book is “The Great Age Reboot: Cracking the Longevity Code for a Younger Tomorrow.” Do you have a topic Dr. Mike should cover in a future column? If so, please email questions@GreatAgeReboot.com. | https://www.unionleader.com/news/health/medical-marijuana-can-trigger-bigger-problems-than-it-treats/article_d1f2f18f-7333-50ea-915a-bdd41ce0f19f.html | 2022-04-15T00:40:09 | 0 | https://www.unionleader.com/news/health/medical-marijuana-can-trigger-bigger-problems-than-it-treats/article_d1f2f18f-7333-50ea-915a-bdd41ce0f19f.html |
Looking for a way to add both form and function to a space? Consider a bench or ottoman. Not only do these smaller scale furniture pieces provide functionality, in many cases they can be the best fit and furniture solution in size and scale. Need ideas on the best way to incorporate benches and ottomans into your home? Here are some top tips!
Do’s
1. Do consider ottomans in entry areas. They can serve as an alternative to a console while still helping to convey a point of entry.
2. Do use benches or ottomans as additional seating in social areas such as living and family rooms.
3. Do use benches and ottomans as a way to infuse color and texture into a room.
4. Do use ottomans and benches in areas in which small-scale furniture selections are appropriate.
5. Do use benches and ottomans to make a design statement.
Don’ts
1. Don’t ignore opportunities to use benches and ottomans as a finishing touch in a space such as at the foot of a bed.
2. Don’t use ottomans and benches in overly large rooms. They may appear too small in large spaces.
3. Don’t use ottomans and benches in ways that don’t provide function. Avoid using them in a purely decorative way. Function is best.
4. Don’t ignore opportunities to use benches and ottomans in unexpected ways such as a coffee table.
5. Don’t forget that ottomans and benches are modular and versatile and can be used in pairs or groupings if needed.
Cathy Hobbs, based in New York City, is an Emmy Award-winning television host and a nationally known interior design and home staging expert with offices in New York City, Boston and Washington, D.C. Contact her at info@cathyhobbs.com or visit her website at cathyhobbs.com. | https://www.unionleader.com/news/homes/design-recipes-benches-ottomans-provide-form-and-function/article_5a3b8fb4-d972-5e74-bf0f-5b08f6247c06.html | 2022-04-15T00:40:15 | 1 | https://www.unionleader.com/news/homes/design-recipes-benches-ottomans-provide-form-and-function/article_5a3b8fb4-d972-5e74-bf0f-5b08f6247c06.html |
DEAR ABBY: A friend of mine lost her husband a couple of years ago. I didn’t think she was looking for love or companionship, but all of a sudden she has met a younger man, and I’m concerned. I have observed several red flags, but I’m not sure if I should say something.
She owns a home in a big city and another smaller, very nice one with a view of the lake in a resort town three hours away. This man has posted on his main Facebook page a picture of “his” new cabin. (I don’t have any details regarding who else was there.) I looked at his Facebook pictures and saw one of his daughter, who looks to be around 13, along with several pictures of a woman I assume to be his beautiful significant other posing with him and his daughter.
On my friend’s birthday, he showed up at her door with a huge bouquet, balloons and all. She called a mutual friend about the flowers and was all giddy. This scenario makes me suspect he’s a predator who may start asking her for money. What, if anything, should I do?
— FRIEND SEEING SIGNS
DEAR FRIEND: If it were me, I’d ask my friend how SHE enjoyed the family party at her lake house — and whether she has seen what this new man in her life has posted about it on his FB. Then, I would tell her how seeing his claim that the place is “his” made you do a double-take. After that, I would simply listen.
DEAR ABBY: My mother-in-law, “Gladys,” was never a particularly good mother as her kids were growing up. We don’t get along very well. She interjects herself into every aspect of my family’s life, especially when some sort of crisis happens. Most recently, it concerned the death of my wife’s father’s second wife. Gladys actually parked her truck in front of ours to prevent us from going over there to give him emotional support.
When she acts like this, my wife refuses to stand up to her. This woman has more than once come between me and my family. How should I confront her and my wife about this? I feel like Gladys had her chance, but now it is my place to call the shots. Please tell me if I am being unreasonable.
— HUSBAND AND DAD IN GEORGIA
DEAR HUSBAND: I don’t think you are being unreasonable. I do think you need to have a serious, private conversation with your wife. You both need to learn how to set firm boundaries for her mother. If you need help doing that, consult a marriage counselor. A marriage in which one spouse feels sidelined is headed for trouble.
DEAR READERS: At sundown, the first night of Passover begins. This major Jewish holiday celebrates the most momentous event in Jewish history — the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. Happy Passover to my readers who observe this important holiday.
— LOVE, ABBY | https://www.unionleader.com/news/human_interest/dear-abby-widows-friend-unsettled-when-mystery-man-appears/article_7792690f-87d5-5a7e-9dda-aa83175df9e3.html | 2022-04-15T00:40:22 | 0 | https://www.unionleader.com/news/human_interest/dear-abby-widows-friend-unsettled-when-mystery-man-appears/article_7792690f-87d5-5a7e-9dda-aa83175df9e3.html |
DEAR HELOISE: I love gardening, but I live on the second floor of an apartment building and need to grow things on my patio. I don’t have room for dirt and rocks, and when I repot a plant it’s such a mess. Any hints for me?
— Anna D., Blacksburg, Va.
Anna, get a medium-size box and fold the bottom closed, but do not tape it shut. Place all your potting soil, rocks, etc., in there and repot your plants in the box. When you’re done, shake out the excess dirt and leaves from the bottom of the box. Then flatten the box along the corner folds and store under a bed or in a closet for the next time you want to repot a plant. By the way, this box trick also can be used to spray-paint a smaller object.
— Heloise
Avocados
DEAR HELOISE: Do I have to start my avocado seed in a glass of water?
— Tracy H., Clovis, N.M.
Tracy, no, you don’t have to use a glass of water. You can use a pot of soil, but keep the dirt damp. You can use any container to get your avocado tree started. I’ve used an empty cottage cheese container with holes punched in the bottom for drainage. Once the avocado has a stem that is about 3 to 4 inches or taller, repot to a larger container to allow the roots to grow.
— Heloise
Reduced carbon footprint
DEAR HELOISE: My husband and I believe in reducing our carbon footprint, so we use cloth diapers instead of disposable ones. I wash out my baby’s diapers, but on bad weather days I have to dry them indoors, and I don’t have enough places to hang them to dry. I’m always running out of diapers because there just aren’t enough clean, dry diapers. Help!
— Barbara N., Everett, Wash.
Barbara, hang your baby’s diapers on hangers on the shower curtain rod. You should be able to line up a lot of them on the rod that way. If they seem to dry too slowly, you can use a hair dryer or a portable floor heater to help reduce the drying time. But be very careful with the floor heater and don’t get it too close to any cloth material.
— Heloise
Dirty games
DEAR HELOISE: My kids love board games, and in the evenings we often play board games. Unfortunately, the boards seem to get filthy and rather beat-up looking in a short time. Is there any way we can avoid this problem?
— Jordan S., Logan, Utah
Jordan, use a can of clear spray varnish (matte is best). Spray the board, including the edges, a couple of times with a thin spray each time. That should slow down the deterioration of your board games.
— Heloise
Tiny treasures
DEAR HELOISE: My 5-year-old son drags home little “treasures” he finds and insists on displaying them all over the house. I like pretty rocks, bird feathers and bird’s nests, too, but not on my coffee table. What can I do with these unwanted items?
— Lisa G., Pine Bluff, Ark.
Lisa, make a place in your son’s room to display his little treasures. And explain to him that this is the designated spot to display them. It will be his special spot.
— Heloise | https://www.unionleader.com/news/human_interest/hints-from-heloise-plant-problem/article_d3b4d374-84fc-55ca-b62b-1c727fc62533.html | 2022-04-15T00:40:28 | 0 | https://www.unionleader.com/news/human_interest/hints-from-heloise-plant-problem/article_d3b4d374-84fc-55ca-b62b-1c727fc62533.html |
KYIV/LVIV, Ukraine — Russia said the crew of its Moskva warship were evacuated Thursday after an explosion of ammunition aboard that Ukraine said was caused by a missile strike, and a U.S. defense official said the stricken vessel was still trying to put out a fire.
The warship, a Soviet-era missile cruiser, is still believed afloat and the United States is under the assumption that the cruiser is heading to Sevastopol, the senior U.S. official said.
“Our assessment is that she still appears to be battling a fire on board,” the official added.
Russia’s defense ministry said the fire on the vessel, its Black Sea fleet flagship, had been contained but left the ship badly damaged. It did not acknowledge the ship, which had more than 500 sailors aboard, had been attacked and said the cause of the fire was under investigation.
Ukraine’s southern military command said it hit the warship with a Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship missile and that it had started to sink.
Reuters was unable to verify any of the various statements about the ship.
The United States said it did not have enough information to determine whether the ship was hit by a missile.
“We don’t have the capacity at this point to independently verify that but certainly, the way this unfolded, it’s a big blow to Russia,” said national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
The Moslva’s loss or disabling would be another hit to Russia’s stuttering campaign — on the 50th day of its war in Ukraine — as it readies for a new assault in the eastern Donbas region that is likely to define the conflict’s outcome.
Russian forces have pulled back from some northern parts of Ukraine after suffering heavy losses and failing to take the capital Kyiv. Ukraine and its Western allies say Moscow is redeploying for a new offensive.
“Russian forces are increasing their activities on the southern and eastern fronts, attempting to avenge their defeats,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Wednesday night video address.
Russia’s navy has fired cruise missiles into Ukraine and its Black Sea activities are crucial to supporting land operations in the south of the country, where it is battling to seize full control of the port of Mariupol after weeks of bombardment.
Russian news agencies said the Moskva, commissioned in 1983, was armed with 16 anti-ship Vulkan cruise missiles with a range of at least 440 miles.
Kyiv says the Moskva featured in one of the landmark early exchanges of the war, when Ukrainian border guards on Snake Island, a small outcrop in the Black Sea, told the ship to “Go (expletive) yourself” after it demanded they surrender.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said Russia was massing troops not only along the Russia-Ukraine border, but also in Belarus and Moldova’s breakaway Transdniestria region. Moldova’s government separately accused Russia’s army of trying to recruit Moldovans.
Moscow’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Authorities in Transdniestria, which borders southern Ukraine, on Monday denied Russia was preparing forces there to threaten Ukraine.
The Kharkiv, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions in the country’s east were being hit by missile strikes, Malyar said.
Kharkiv’s governor said shelling killed four civilians.
Russian officials said Ukrainian helicopters had hit residential buildings and injured seven people in the Bryansk region, the latest of a series of cross-border attacks that Moscow has said may trigger a retaliatory attack on Kyiv.
The governor of the Belgorod region said a village there was also attacked, but that no one was wounded. Neither side’s statements could be independently verified and Ukraine’s military did not respond to requests for comment.
Russia said Wednesday more than 1,000 Ukrainian marines from one of the units still holding out in the shattered city of Mariupol had surrendered. Ukrainian officials did not comment.
If taken, it would be the first major city to fall to Russian forces since they invaded on Feb. 24, allowing Russia to reinforce a land corridor between separatist-held eastern areas and the Crimea region it seized and annexed in 2014.
‘FORGIVE US’
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said nine humanitarian corridors had been agreed on for Thursday to evacuate civilians, including by private car, from Mariupol.
Ukraine says tens of thousands of people are believed to have been killed in the city.
Mariupol’s mayor, Vadym Boichenko, said Russia had brought in mobile crematoria “to get rid of evidence of war crimes” — a statement that it was not possible to verify independently.
Moscow has blamed Ukraine for civilian deaths and accused Kyiv of denigrating Russian armed forces.
In the village of Lubianka northwest of Kyiv, from where Russian forces had tried and failed to subdue the capital before retreating, a message to Ukrainians had been written on the wall of a house that had been occupied by Russian troops.
“We did not want this ... forgive us,” it said.
The Kremlin says it launched a “special military operation” to demilitarize and “liberate” Ukraine from nationalist extremists, a message villagers said had been repeated to them by the Russian troops.
“To liberate us from what? We’re peaceful ... We’re Ukrainians,” Lubianka resident Viktor Shaposhnikov said.
Andriy Nyebytov, head of the Kyiv region police, said more than 800 bodies had been found in three districts which had been occupied by Russian forces.
“We are finding terrible things: buried and hidden bodies of people who were tortured and shot, and who died as a result of mortar and artillery fire,” Nyebytov said in televised comments. His statements could not immediately be verified.
Ukraine’s human rights ombudswoman, Lyudmyla Denisova, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that according to preliminary information, more than 700 people had been killed in the northern city of Chernihiv during the invasion. It was not possible to verify the assertion independently.
Russia has denied attacking civilians and said some reports have been staged for propaganda purposes.
RUSSIA ISOLATED
Moscow’s incursion, the biggest attack on a European state since 1945, has seen more than 4.6 million people flee abroad, killed or wounded thousands and raised fears of conflict between Russia and the United States, the world’s top nuclear powers.
Western-led sanctions have triggered the worst economic crisis in Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, say analysts.
The conflict has also galvanized NATO and prompted Russia’s neighbors Sweden and Finland to discuss joining the Western military alliance.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, warned that such a move would force Russia to boost its defenses in the Baltic region, including with nuclear weapons. | https://www.unionleader.com/news/military/russia-to-tow-stricken-warship-to-port-after-what-ukraine-says-was-missile-hit/article_7754109e-d8a6-56a4-bfe7-ac7eb1935d60.html | 2022-04-15T00:40:34 | 1 | https://www.unionleader.com/news/military/russia-to-tow-stricken-warship-to-port-after-what-ukraine-says-was-missile-hit/article_7754109e-d8a6-56a4-bfe7-ac7eb1935d60.html |
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday signed into law a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a restriction the U.S. Supreme Court could soon declare to be constitutional when it finishes reviewing a similar Mississippi ban this spring.
Florida’s law, which is due to go into effect July 1, will significantly reduce access to late-term abortions for women across the Southeast if it is not stopped in court. Women across the region travel hundreds of miles to end pregnancies in Florida because of stricter abortion laws in surrounding states.
The state currently permits abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy.
“This will represent the most significant protections for life that have been enacted in this state in a generation,” DeSantis said at a news conference before signing the bill.
The new measure makes exceptions to the 15-week restriction only in cases when the mother is at risk of death or “irreversible physical impairment,” or if the fetus has a fatal abnormality. Republican state senators defeated an amendment that would have made exceptions for rape, incest and human trafficking.
“Nobody should be forced to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles for essential health care — but in signing this bill, Gov. DeSantis will be forcing Floridians seeking abortion to do just that,” Planned Parenthood Action Fund president Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement.
Republican-led states are rapidly passing anti-abortion legislation in 2022, with the anticipation that the U.S. Supreme Court will reinstate a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi this spring. The court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, expressed openness to Mississippi’s case during oral arguments in December.
The court’s decision could overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade precedent, which established the right to abortion before the fetus is viable, and pave the way for states to successfully pass stricter bans.
Kentucky’s legislature enacted a sweeping anti-abortion bill Wednesday that has suspended abortions in the state, pending legal challenges. Tuesday, Oklahoma’s governor signed a near-total abortion ban into law, which would take effect this summer.
Florida’s law is the second 15-week ban that has been enacted this year, after Arizona’s Republican governor signed a similar measure last month.
West Virginia lawmakers also introduced a 15-week ban this year, but that bill died in the Senate. | https://www.unionleader.com/news/national/florida-governor-signs-15-week-abortion-ban-into-law/article_a67db625-a9c3-5984-b939-418a6e4ebe76.html | 2022-04-15T00:40:40 | 1 | https://www.unionleader.com/news/national/florida-governor-signs-15-week-abortion-ban-into-law/article_a67db625-a9c3-5984-b939-418a6e4ebe76.html |
CONCORD — A key House committee on Thursday embraced maps to redistrict state Senate and Executive Council districts over the objection of critics who charged both put Democratic towns together to make easier the election of Republicans running elsewhere.
The House Special Committee on Redistricting voted, 8-7, in favor of both, with all Republicans in support and all Democrats in opposition.
State Rep. Carol McGuire, R-Epsom, said historically the redistricting plan from one legislative body gets the benefit of the doubt from the other.
“They meet all legal and constitutional requirements; the districts are contiguous and the population is properly divided,” McGuire said of the Senate redistricting map (SB 240).
“Since we have verified all the requirements, we should support our colleagues in the Senate and vote for them.”
House Democrats said the changes create 15 districts that are likely Republican and nine that lean very Democrat. They said only four of the 24 seats would be competitive.
“The map we have been sent has significant defects in it,” Weber said. “Our citizens want districts that are compact and competitive yet this map provides neither.”
Senate Redistricting Committee Chairman James Gray, R-Rochester, was the only one to testify in person in support of both plans.
The public sign-ups were 281-6 against the Senate map, 262-8 against the council redistricting.
Gray defended using incumbency as one factor in how he redrew Senate districts.
“It’s what I consider to be the opposite of gerrymander; it’s so someone doesn’t get to decide, ‘Hey, we’re going to have these two Democrats to run against each other.’” Gray said.
David Andrews, a board member with Open Democracy Now, said Gray made more extreme changes to Senate districts than needed to account for population shifts found in the 2020 Census.
“Yes, we needed to make some changes, but each change was made to give a partisan change to the majority party,” Andrews said.
GOP councilors got some, not all, changes wanted
Critics cited packing the heavily Democratic college towns of Hanover, Plymouth and New London into one district while creating a more, GOP-dominant one than current District 9 that would snake 70 miles from Bedford to Hinsdale on the Vermont border.
Frank Knaack, policy director with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, said the Senate initially was going to keep the Executive Council districts as they were, until three GOP incumbents started lobbying for their own changes.
“Executive council members actually asked for this so you can’t get a better example of politicians picking their voters, rather than the other way around,” Knaack said.
For example, the Senate-passed council map (SB 241) takes from Dist. 1 the town of Hanover where former, two-term Democratic Councilor Mike Cryans lives.
Cryans is already preparing a rematch to try and unseat Councilor Joe Kenney, R-Wakefield, who beat him in 2020.
Gray said the goal of the changes was to dramatically alter Council Dist. 2 that now runs mostly one town long the entire width of the state.
House Democrats had offered an alternative map for the council to place all of Democratically-dominant Cheshire County in the district of Councilor Dave Wheeler, R-Milford.
The panel rejected it also on a party-line vote, 8-7.
The maps now head to the full House for its review.
While Gov. Chris Sununu has yet to expressly endorse either plan, he’s been positive about them, in contrast to the congressional map that he’s vowed to veto. | https://www.unionleader.com/news/politics/voters/house-panel-endorses-senate-exec-council-redistricting/article_573ed28d-7c06-56cd-aaf8-937822758dcd.html | 2022-04-15T00:40:46 | 1 | https://www.unionleader.com/news/politics/voters/house-panel-endorses-senate-exec-council-redistricting/article_573ed28d-7c06-56cd-aaf8-937822758dcd.html |
CONCORD — The House Special Committee on Redistricting will audition Gov. Chris Sununu’s alternative plan for realigning the state’s two congressional districts at a hearing next week.
The move comes as an impatient New Hampshire Supreme Court has named a master and set court dates to resolve a lawsuit over congressional redistricting and draw its own map if the Legislature and governor can’t reach a deal.
“Accordingly, we must take certain preliminary steps in this case now so that, in the event that the legislative process fails to produce a fully enacted congressional redistricting plan, we will be prepared to resolve the case in a thorough and efficient manner,” the justices wrote.
Committee Chairman Barbara Griffin, R-Goffstown, has agreed to sponsor Sununu’s congressional map as an amendment to a non-germane bill (SB 200) that faces a public hearing before her committee on Thursday.
According to observers, this does not mean House legislative leaders are on board with Sununu’s proposal. In fact, it remains to be seen who other than the governor will be in favor of it.
New Hampshire is one of only four states whose lawmakers have yet to reach agreement on congressional redistricting.
In one of the other three stalemated states, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis took over the redistricting process at the invitation of legislative leaders there.
Last month, Sununu said the congressional map (HB 52) the House of Representatives and state Senate passed would create two non-competitive U.S. House districts, and he would veto it.
That proposal would have moved 75 city wards and towns from one district to the other, affecting more than 300,000 citizens.
The Democratic cities of Dover, Somersworth and Portsmouth would have gone from the 1st to the 2nd District.
The Manchester- and Nashua-area towns of Hudson, Litchfield and Pelham would have gone from the 2nd to the 1st.
House-Senate map gives, takes
This map clearly would make the 1st District lean more Republican and pose a greater challenge for Congressman Chris Pappas to win a third term this fall.
In turn, the plan would cement the likelihood that Congresswoman Annie Kuster would coast to a sixth two-year term in the 2nd District.
Sununu hasn’t endorsed anyone in that race but a close ally, Littleton beer company maker Jeff Cozzens, already is running as a Republican against Kuster.
In Sununu’s map, towns to go from the 1st District to the 2nd District would include Bedford, Hooksett, Merrimack and Ossipee.
In turn, the strong Republican towns of Salem, Windham, Atkinson, Northwood and Deerfield would all go from the 2nd to the 1st District, along with Loudon and Pittsfield in central New Hampshire.
David Andrews, a board member of Open Democracy Now, said Sununu’s map is an improvement on the House-Senate effort. Open Democracy Now is a non-partisan organization whose experts presented maps they claimed would create more competitive districts than the ones House and Senate Republicans advanced.
“I would have thought that they would have swapped Epsom and Loudon to make the deviations work better, but it is a much better map than the original Republican proposal,” Andrews said Thursday.
Both the independent Cook Political Report and Inside Elections said Sununu’s map would make the 1st CD more competitive than the one the GOP-led Legislature passed.
President Joe Biden won the current 1st CD by 6% over Donald Trump in November 2020.
In Sununu’s map, Biden beat Trump by 4.4%.
in the towns the House and Senate-passed map moved into the 1st CD, Trump beat Biden by 2%.
In the Second District, Biden beat Trump by 8.7%; in the towns Sununu put in the 2nd CD, Biden won by roughly 10.2%.
‘A nothing burger’?
Greg Moore, state director of Americans for Prosperity, helped create the current maps a decade ago as House chief of staff.
“We’ll see, but this may prove to be a nothing burger,” Moore said. “If the Democrats trash it, and the Republicans think they can do better, how does this one get any traction?”
Moore said he’s certain legislative redistricting experts have other maps they can try on Sununu if his own plan falls flat.
The governor’s map has a greater population deviation between the two districts than the one he vowed to veto — 90 residents in that one vs. 1,431 in his.
In congressional redistricting, judges elsewhere have ruled states must have a “rational basis” for not making the difference as small as possible.
Former House Speaker Terie Norelli, a Portsmouth Democrat, led a group that sued the state shortly after Sununu issued his veto threat.
The suit asked the high court to redraw congressional maps.
They argued holding elections with the current maps would violate the Constitution because of population shifts found in the 2020 Census.
In its order and schedule the justices wrote this “in no way precludes the Legislature from enacting a redistricting plan.”
The Supreme Court named Stanford Law School professor Nathaniel Persily as a special master. Parties to the case, including the House and Senate, have until April 25 to file legal briefs.
The process calls for preliminary oral arguments on May 4 and a hearing on May 25 to consider any alternative map Persily were to devise. | https://www.unionleader.com/news/politics/voters/sununu-gets-tryout-on-congressional-redistricting-map/article_ff1b429b-2750-54c5-ac4f-2f07e52cf365.html | 2022-04-15T00:40:52 | 1 | https://www.unionleader.com/news/politics/voters/sununu-gets-tryout-on-congressional-redistricting-map/article_ff1b429b-2750-54c5-ac4f-2f07e52cf365.html |
MANILA — The Philippine military and aid workers pledged on Thursday to keep searching for 103 people missing after Tropical Storm Megi ripped through central areas this week, burying many under landslides and killing at least 138.
Megi was the first cyclone this year to hit the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,600 islands that sees an average of 20 tropical storms a year.
“We are doing retrieval operations and still looking for the missing,” Sen. Richard Gordon, chairperson of the Philippine Red Cross, told Reuters.
Rescue workers were not immediately allowed to go to landslide-hit areas because of rains and unstable soil, Gordon said. “It was deadly because it dumped a lot of rain and it hit the mountains.”
Of the total casualties, 101 were in Baybay, a mountainous area prone to landslides in Leyte province, where more than 200 people were also injured, the city government said.
A landslide killed 31 people in Leyte’s Abuyog town.
Three died in Cebu and Samar and three people drowned in other provinces, police and the national disaster agency said.
“The search, rescue and retrieval operations will continue,” a Philippine Army infantry unit in Baybay said on Facebook.
Aerial photographs and video from the local government showed collapsed hillsides burying coconut plantations and houses in mud.
In one area, rescuers had to use rubber boats to reach a landslide.
Megi, which made landfall on Sunday with sustained winds of up to 40 miles per hour and gusts of up to 49 mph, has since dissipated.
More than 162,000 residents are sheltering in evacuation centers, government data showed.
In December, category 5 Typhoon Rai ravaged the central Philippines, with the death toll reaching 405 and nearly 1,400 injured. Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever recorded, killed 6,300 in 2013. | https://www.unionleader.com/news/weather/search-is-on-for-103-missing-after-philippine-storm-kills-at-least-138/article_7ca771bc-8c7b-5a1d-a776-e0ce25472711.html | 2022-04-15T00:40:53 | 0 | https://www.unionleader.com/news/weather/search-is-on-for-103-missing-after-philippine-storm-kills-at-least-138/article_7ca771bc-8c7b-5a1d-a776-e0ce25472711.html |
KYIV/LVIV, Ukraine — Russia said its lead warship in the Black Sea sank on Thursday after an explosion and fire that Ukraine claimed was caused by a missile strike, dealing a blow to Moscow as it readied for new attacks that were likely to determine the conflict’s outcome.
The Moskva, Russia’s flagship in its Black Sea fleet, sank as it was being towed to port in stormy weather, Russian news agencies quoted the defense ministry as saying.
Russia said earlier that over 500 crew aboard the Soviet-era missile cruiser were evacuated after ammunition on board exploded. Ukraine said it hit the warship with a Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship missile.
Russia, which has not acknowledged an attack, said the incident is under investigation.
Reuters was unable to verify any of the statements, including whether the ship had sunk.
“While the cruiser ‘Moskva’ was being towed to the destination port, the ship lost stability due to damage to the hull from the fire,” the defence ministry said.
“In the stormy sea conditions, the ship sank,” it said.
The incident came as Russia’s navy continues its bombardment of Ukrainian cities on the Black Sea nearly 50 days after it launched the invasion. Residents of Odesa and Mariupol, on the adjacent Azov Sea, have been bracing for new Russian attacks.
The United States said it did not have enough information to determine whether the Moskva was hit by a missile.
“(But) certainly, the way this unfolded, it’s a big blow to Russia,” said national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
Russian forces have pulled back from some northern parts of Ukraine after suffering heavy losses and failing to take the capital Kyiv. Ukraine and its Western allies say Moscow is redeploying for a new offensive in the eastern Donbas region.
Russia launched its assault in part to dissuade Ukraine from joining NATO. But the invasion has pushed Finland, which shares a long border with Russia, and nearby Sweden to consider joining the U.S.-led military alliance. read more
Moscow warned NATO on Thursday that if Sweden and Finland join, Russia would deploy nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles in a Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea, in the heart of Europe.
Commenting on Russia’s military setbacks, CIA Director Williams Burns said the threat of Russia potentially using nuclear weapons in Ukraine cannot be taken lightly, but that the agency has not seen much practical evidence reinforcing that concern.
Russia’s navy has fired cruise missiles into Ukraine and its Black Sea activities are crucial to supporting land operations in the South and East, where it is battling to seize full control of the port of Mariupol, its main target in the Donbas.
Russia’s coat of arms, the double headed eagle, is seen on covers of the missile cruiser Moskva in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Sevastopol
A satellite image shows a view of Russian Navy’s guided missile cruiser Moskva at port, in Sevastopol
A satellite image shows a view of Russian Navy’s guided missile cruiser Moskva at Black Sea, northwest of Sevastopol
Russia said Wednesday more than 1,000 Ukrainian marines from one of the units still holding out in Mariupol had surrendered. Ukrainian officials did not comment.
If taken, Mariupol would be the first major city to fall to Russian forces since they invaded, allowing Moscow to reinforce a land corridor between separatist-held eastern Donbas areas and the Crimea region it seized and annexed in 2014.
Ukraine said thousands of people were believed to have been killed in Mariupol, where efforts were under way to evacuate civilians. On Thursday, Russia’s defense ministry said 815 people had been evacuated from the city over the past 24 hours. Ukraine said that figure was 289.
Ukrainian officials have long warned that Russia was massing troops for assaults in the East, including on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
But Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Malyar, said on Thursday that Russia was also staging troops along the country’s borders with Belarus and Moldova’s breakaway Transdniestria region.
Moldova separately accused Russia’s army of trying to recruit Moldovans. Moscow’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Authorities in Transdniestria, bordering southern Ukraine, denied Russia was preparing forces there. read more
Maylar said that shelling in Kharkiv had killed four civilians, with missile strikes there and in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions in the South. Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said three civilians were killed in the region.
Russia said Ukraine had carried out a helicopter attack on the Russian Bryansk region, the latest of several cross-border attacks that Moscow has said may trigger a retaliatory strike on Kyiv.
Seven people were injured in the Bryansk attack, which hit residential buildings, Russian officials said. Another Russian region, Belgorod, said a village there was attacked but that no one was wounded. Neither side’s statements could be verified. Ukraine’s military did not reply to requests for comment. read more
‘TERRIBLE THINGS’
Moscow’s incursion, the biggest attack on a European state since 1945, has seen more than 4.6 million people flee abroad, killed or wounded thousands and raised fears of conflict between Russia and the United States, the world’s top nuclear powers.
Andriy Nyebytov, head of the Kyiv region police, said more than 800 bodies had been found in three districts which had been occupied by Russian forces.
“We are finding terrible things: buried and hidden bodies of people who were tortured and shot, and who died as a result of mortar and artillery fire,” Nyebytov said in televised comments. His statements could not immediately be verified.
Russia has denied attacking civilians and said some reports have been staged for propaganda purposes.
Warning that spillover effects from the Ukraine war were worsening crises elsewhere, U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths on Thursday released $100 million in emergency funding for Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Nigeria and Yemen. | https://www.unionleader.com/russian-warship-sinks-ukraine-says-its-missile-is-responsible/article_dcb3b524-b668-5fc3-aa83-60fa38119359.html | 2022-04-15T00:40:59 | 0 | https://www.unionleader.com/russian-warship-sinks-ukraine-says-its-missile-is-responsible/article_dcb3b524-b668-5fc3-aa83-60fa38119359.html |
BEIRUT — Syrian state television reported that Israeli air strikes had hit several locations in the countryside west of the capital Damascus on Thursday.
Syrian state news agency SANA, citing a military source, said Syrian air defenses had shot down “some” of the missiles fired.
It said the strikes only caused physical damage but did not specify further.
Israel has mounted frequent attacks against what it has described as Iranian targets in Syria, where Tehran-backed forces, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, have deployed over the last decade to support President Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s war.
A pro-government allied commander denied to Reuters that Thursday’s strikes had hit their positions outside Damascus.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli government.
In March, state media reported that an Israeli attack over the Syrian capital Damascus killed two civilians and left some material damage.
U.S. consumer sentiment unexpectedly rose to a three-month high in early April as optimism about job growth and wage expectations more than outweighed decades-high inflation.
Looking for a way to add both form and function to a space? Consider a bench or ottoman. Not only do these smaller scale furniture pieces provide functionality, in many cases they can be the best fit and furniture solution in size and scale. Need ideas on the best way to incorporate benches …
Actor Cuba Gooding Jr. pleaded guilty Wednesday to forcibly touching a woman at a Manhattan nightclub in 2018, according to the Associated Press. The sexual misconduct allegation was among many made against Gooding, who was arrested three years ago by the New York Police Department.
BRUNSWICK, Maine — Shoppers aren't aware, but every night, workers at the new Hannaford Supermarkets store here at Cook's Corner pull down what look like polyester window shades across the walls of produce cases. Sure, they help keep vegetables from drying out. But their real value is holdin…
U.S. officials announced Wednesday the discovery of an alarmingly sophisticated and effective system for attacking industrial facilities that includes the ability to cause explosions in the energy industry. | https://www.unionleader.com/wire/national/update-2-israeli-air-strikes-near-syrias-capital-damascus--state-tv/article_1fef0e8f-4e6d-56ef-a741-6ddbfad5a211.html | 2022-04-15T00:41:05 | 1 | https://www.unionleader.com/wire/national/update-2-israeli-air-strikes-near-syrias-capital-damascus--state-tv/article_1fef0e8f-4e6d-56ef-a741-6ddbfad5a211.html |
WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday issued an emergency use authorization for what it said is the first device that can detect COVID-19 in breath samples.
The InspectIR COVID-19 Breathalyzer is about the size of a piece of carry-on luggage, the FDA said, and can be used in doctor’s offices, hospitals and mobile testing sites. The test, which can provide results in less than three minutes, must be carried out under the supervision of a licensed health care provider.
Dr. Jeff Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, called the device “yet another example of the rapid innovation occurring with diagnostic tests for COVID-19.”
The FDA said the device was 91.2% accurate at identifying positive test samples and 99.3% accurate at identifying negative test samples.
“InspectIR expects to be able to produce approximately 100 instruments per week, which can each be used to evaluate approximately 160 samples per day,” the agency said. “At this level of production, testing capacity using the InspectIR COVID-19 Breathalyzer is expected to increase by approximately 64,000 samples per month.”
While COVID-19 cases now are at much lower levels in the U.S., in recent weeks an even more contagious version of omicron, called BA.2, has become the dominant type locally and around the world.
Pfizer to seek COVID booster for healthy 5- to 11-year-olds
Pfizer said Thursday it wants to expand its COVID-19 booster shots to healthy elementary-age kids.
U.S. health authorities already urge everyone 12 and older to get one booster dose for the best protection against the newest variants -- and recently gave the option of a second booster to those 50 and older.
Now Pfizer says new data shows healthy 5- to 11-year-olds could benefit from another kid-sized shot.
In a small study, 140 youngsters who’d already gotten two shots were given a booster six months later, and researchers found the extra shot generally revved up their immune response. But a closer look at 30 of the children found a 36-fold increase in virus-fighting antibodies, levels high enough to fight the super-contagious omicron variant, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said in a press release.
The data has not been published or vetted by independent experts.
In the coming days, the companies plan to ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize a booster for healthy 5- to 11-year-olds. They also plan to share the data with European and other regulators. | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/covid-19-breath-test-fda-authorization/507-bd965cb6-2142-49e1-9490-93d21970989e | 2022-04-15T00:44:31 | 0 | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/covid-19-breath-test-fda-authorization/507-bd965cb6-2142-49e1-9490-93d21970989e |
BEAVERTON, Ore. — People living in a Beaverton neighborhood are calling for changes to a stretch of roadway where a pedestrian was struck and killed in a hit-and-run on Monday night.
"This is a really nice neighborhood," Affouet Price said. "People are nice, but once they get in their cars it's kind of crazy."
Price and her husband live at the corner of Southwest 154th and Barrows, the eastern edge of a stretch of road that saw the deadly crash Monday evening.
"I was truly, truly saddened because it was right behind my door," Price said.
Monday's crash happened near Southwest 157th and Barrows, a few blocks away from the Prices. Authorities have since revealed that beloved husband, father, and local umpire Michael Frainey was out for a walk when he was hit and killed by a potentially intoxicated driver.
"I just couldn't believe it — but at the same time, I'm like, it's not surprising," Price said.
Price said that she sees a lot of drivers speeding on Southwest Barrows. She sees crashes, too. A city spokesperson said that between January 2019 and January 2022, there were more than 30 crashes on Barrows. One of those crashes was outside the Prices' home.
"I don't know if they were speeding or what, but they clipped the wall, went across the road ... there's a barricade and they hit it and they jumped their car and flipped it and it landed in the wetlands behind me," Scott Price said.
Crashes like that one and the deadly one this week explain a change.org petition that already has more than 600 signatures. The petition calls for safety improvements on Barrows. Neighbors would like to see speed cushions or rumble strips, enhanced police enforcement, and an additional four-way traffic signal, among other things.
"There's just so many people now, and there are so many houses and apartments and new buildings and restaurants — and everybody is walking — that it needs to slow down," a woman by the name of Theresa told KGW.
The Prices agree. They hope change comes sooner rather than later.
"There's no need to make another family be sad and break such bad news," Affouet Price said.
The hit-and-run driver that authorities tracked down has not been arrested, but may face DUII and hit and run charges. | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/beaverton-hit-and-run-deadly-barrows-road-neighbors-call-for-change/283-0e4ccad7-41ea-4276-b179-34d33ad9bf93 | 2022-04-15T00:44:37 | 1 | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/beaverton-hit-and-run-deadly-barrows-road-neighbors-call-for-change/283-0e4ccad7-41ea-4276-b179-34d33ad9bf93 |
NEW DELHI (AP) — Popular Bollywood stars Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt were married Thursday in a private ceremony at their Mumbai residence.
The couple wore ivory outfits as they came out and waved to photographers from their apartment building. Kapoor picked Bhatt up and walked back into the apartment with her in his arms.
The wedding ceremony was attended by close relatives, Bollywood stars and cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar and his wife.
Kapoor, 39, belongs to Bollywood’s popular Kapoor clan which has dominated the Hindi film industry since the 1940s. His parents, Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Kapoor, were prominent Bollywood stars in the 1970-80s.
He is the grandson of veteran actor-director Raj Kapoor, who was rated as Bollywood’s best showman. Raj Kapoor’s father, Prithviraj Kapoor, was an actor who ran a theater company and acted in Hindi classics in the 1940s.
Bhatt, 29, also belongs to a Bollywood family. Her father, Mahesh Bhatt, is a well-known filmmaker, and her mother, Soni Razdan, is a former actress. Bhatt made her debut in Karan Johar’s teen drama “Student of the Year” in 2012. She won an award for playing a kidnapping victim in the road drama ”Highway” in 2014.
Ranbir Kapoor began his film career by assisting producer-director Sanjay Leela Bhansali in the film “Black” in 2005. He made his acting debut in Bhansali’s ”Saawariya” in 2007. | https://www.cbs42.com/local/bollywood-stars-ranbir-kapoor-alia-bhatt-marry-in-mumbai/ | 2022-04-15T00:44:39 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/local/bollywood-stars-ranbir-kapoor-alia-bhatt-marry-in-mumbai/ |
WARSAW, Poland — After spending years of their lives in Oregon, Mike and Nancy Teskey wanted to explore the world. They moved to Mozambique in 2018, then to Poland last year. When Russia started invading Ukraine, they didn't hesitate to lend a helping hand at the Polish-Ukrainian border.
Olga Zakrevska was home with her family when she heard and felt the horrors of war approach as Russia launched its invasion on February 24.
"When the missile struck the region where we live in Kyiv, my husband told me that 'it’s high time for you to save children,'" said Zakrevska.
In Ukraine, men between 18 and 60 years of age were barred from leaving the country. They were mandated to stay and fight or assist in other ways. Zakrevska had to leave her husband, brother, and father-in-law behind, knowing she may never see them again — a risk taken for the safety of her two children.
“Actually my husband told me 'this is your mission, this is your mission,'" said a tearful Zakrevska.
She gathered her 7-year-old-son, 14-year-old daughter and mother-in-law and together they boarded a train to Poland. The trip, Zakrevska said, was a nightmare. For her, the constant sound of bombs and missiles was not the scariest part of the journey — that came when the train had to make stops.
"I was afraid of somebody coming there and invading the train and doing something bad, like bombing," explained Zakrevska.
After 19 hours of traveling, they finally reached Poland. That was a major relief for the family. They knew there was hope across the border where former Portland residents Mike and Nancy Teskey were waiting for them.
"We picked them up and brought them here to our home, to our apartment," said Mike Teskey.
The couple had wanted a change of pace and left Oregon several years ago. They now live in Warsaw, Poland.
The Teskeys learned of Zakrevska's story from someone they knew in Portland. The couple opened their home and hearts; helping with meals, medical appointments and the visa process at the U.S. embassy in Warsaw.
"Which involves — how do they get out of Warsaw to the States, where they hope to be," said Mike Teskey.
They helped Zakrevska's daughter get to Vancouver, Washington on a tourist visa. She now lives with her aunt. Zakrevska hopes her son will join them soon. In the meantime, she’s working on getting visas for herself and mother-in-law.
Mike Teskey says there are a lot of the hoops and hurdles in the visa application process. Depending on the type of visa, prices range from $160 to around $600.
"We’re not actually very unique," said Mike and Nancy Teskey. "We are one of many, many families both at the American School of Warsaw and throughout Poland that are doing what they can to help people."
Regardless, Zakrevska and her family — one separated by war, but united by the love of strangers — call the Teskeys angels.
"We call them angels because we are blessed to have such people, and now we know that God works through people," she said. | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/nation-world/ukraine/portland-couple-helps-ukrainian-family-warsaw-poland-refugee-aid/283-ae21a5f6-9813-4be7-9b45-a5827172117a | 2022-04-15T00:44:43 | 1 | https://www.kgw.com/article/news/nation-world/ukraine/portland-couple-helps-ukrainian-family-warsaw-poland-refugee-aid/283-ae21a5f6-9813-4be7-9b45-a5827172117a |
DECATUR, Ga. (AP) — The brother of rapper Arthur “Archie” Eversole, known for the “We Ready” anthem used by Atlanta’s pro soccer team, has been charged in the musician’s fatal shooting, police said Thursday.
Eversole was found with a gunshot wound at a Chevron gas station just east of Atlanta on March 25 and died at a hospital April 3, DeKalb County police said in a statement.
Eversole’s brother, Alexander Kraus, was charged with murder after being apprehended at a home near the gas station where they say the shooting occurred, DeKalb County police Lt. Shane Smith said in an email. It wasn’t known Thursday whether Kraus has a lawyer who could be reached for comment on his behalf.
Eversole was best known for his 2002 hit that was adopted by fans of the Atlanta United soccer club, which plays it before the start of every home game.
The team said in a statement Thursday that it was “heartbroken” about Eversole’s death.
“A staple in the Atlanta hip-hop scene, Archie adopted Atlanta United before our first season and continued to be one of our club’s most fervent supporters,” the team said. “In addition to his decorated musical career, his voice will long live in our supporters’ minds as ‘We Ready’ billows through the speakers for kickoff at Atlanta United matches.” | https://www.cbs42.com/local/brother-charged-in-we-ready-rapper-archie-eversoles-death/ | 2022-04-15T00:44:46 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/local/brother-charged-in-we-ready-rapper-archie-eversoles-death/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Charlie Rose, whose career as a journalist imploded in 2017 due to sexual misconduct allegations, emerged Thursday by posting online a lengthy interview he conducted with investor Warren Buffett.
Rose said in a message on his website that he was proud to have the recent conversation with Buffett. The 80-year-old journalist said it was the first interview he had conducted in more than four years.
“It’s great to see you,” Rose told Buffett, the 91-year-old chief of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the richest men in the world.
“It’s great to see you,” Buffett answered. Their talk lasted 75 minutes and focused solely on Buffett. Rose’s experiences were not discussed.
Rose’s television talk show, which had aired on PBS since 1991, ended abruptly in November 2017 after The Washington Post published a story in which several women who had worked with him alleged a pattern of sexual misconduct that included groping and walking naked in front of them.
He called one 21-year-old staffer to tell her his fantasies of seeing her swim in the nude, the Post said in its investigation, published at the height of the #MeToo movement.
Rose apologized for his actions but it didn’t save his job. He was also fired from “CBS This Morning,” which he had co-hosted with Gayle King since 2012.
On his website, Rose called the Buffett interview “a step in a journey to engage the most interesting people and explore the most compelling ideas in the world.”
In the interview, the two men talked about Buffett’s career, which began when he bought stocks for $114.75 in 1942, when he was 11 years old. He described his typical day, which would include calling a co-worker a half hour before the stock market opened to direct him on what business to conduct — sometimes involving billions of dollars in buying and selling.
Buffett talked about his company’s annual meeting, on April 30, where he planned to talk to and answer questions from thousands of his investors.
To that end, he brushed aside some of Rose’s specific questions, including when the interview broached the topic of the war in Ukraine.
“It doesn’t do me any good — and doesn’t do the world any good — to have me talk about it,” Buffett said.
Asked how time has changed him, Buffett said, “I’ve gotten dumber but I’ve gotten wiser.” He can’t add numbers as quickly, sometimes forgets names and occasionally climbs to the top of the stairs and forgot what he came up for. But allocating capital, he said, “I can do … as well as ever.”
Not everyone on social media welcomed Rose’s return, with some people posting old articles on Twitter about what he was accused of. Rebecca Carroll, author of “Surviving the White Gaze,” posted her December 2017 Esquire article in which she wrote of the “toxic and degrading” atmosphere she found when she was a producer on Rose’s PBS show, and the ramifications of the #MeToo movement for Black women.
“Powerful white men will always reemerge,” Carroll wrote on Twitter. “They will always be fine.” | https://www.cbs42.com/local/charlie-rose-reemerges-with-first-interview-since-firings/ | 2022-04-15T00:44:53 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/local/charlie-rose-reemerges-with-first-interview-since-firings/ |
A former personal assistant to Amber Heard said she never saw the actress suffer any physical abuse at the hands of then-husband Johnny Depp — but she said Heard once spit in her face when she asked for a higher salary.
Heard descended into screaming fits of blind rage, sent incoherent text messages at 4 a.m. and was often drunk and high on illegal drugs, Kate James testified in a video deposition that was played in court Thursday during the trial for Depp’s libel suit against Heard.
Depp, on the other hand, was very calm, almost shy, “like a total Southern gentleman,” James said.
The “Pirates of the Caribbean” actor has accused Heard of indirectly defaming him in a 2018 opinion piece that she wrote for The Washington Post. Heard refers to herself in the article as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” The piece doesn’t name Depp. But his attorneys argue that it clearly references a restraining order that Heard sought in May 2016, right after Depp told her he wanted a divorce.
Depp denies abusing Heard, but Heard’s lawyers say evidence will prove that he did. The actor’s denials, they argue, lack credibility because he frequently drank and used drugs to the point of blacking out and failing to remember anything he did.
The video testimony from James offered an inverse view: Depp was the peaceful one, she said, while Heard was frequently intoxicated and verbally abusive, including to her own mother and sister.
“Her poor sister was treated like a dog that you kicked, basically,” James said.
James, who worked for Heard from 2012 to 2015, said she was paid “very poorly.” She said she was hired with an initial salary of $25 an hour and that her duties ranged from picking up Heard’s dry cleaning to talking with the actress’s Hollywood agents.
James said she also was tasked with picking up two copies of any magazine that featured Heard and storing them in the garage to prevent Depp from seeing them. Heard went into a “blind rage” when James failed to place the magazines in the garage, James said.
Regarding Heard and Depp’s time together, James said Heard was a “very dramatic person” who was deeply insecure in the relationship. Heard often called James to cry and complain about Depp, she said.
“I remember one time she called me when she was alone in New York City, and she was crying and walking around the streets,” James said. She said she told Heard to go inside: “I was worried that the paparazzi might take a photo of her.”
Some of the deposition focused on a text message that Depp had sent to James after he and Heard split up. Depp’s text read: “Come over for a spot of purple and we’ll fix her flabby ass nice and good.”
A lawyer asked if “spot of purple” meant wine and whether “her” meant Heard. James said she didn’t want to speculate.
“This is the way he writes,” James said of Depp. “It’s very random and you don’t sort of question it. … He writes in a very abstract way.”
Lawyers also presented a video deposition of Laurel Anderson, a couple’s therapist who worked with Heard and Depp in 2015, when they were ages 29 and 52, respectively.
Anderson said both suffered childhood abuse. As a couple, they were engaged in “mutual abuse,” she testified.
Heard’s father beat her, Anderson said, adding, “It was a point of pride to her if she felt disrespected to initiate a fight.”
Heard would also rather be in a fight with Depp than see him leave, and “would strike him to keep him there,” Anderson said.
The therapist recalled a time when Heard told her that Depp “was ‘stepping up,’ as she would say, on a lot of drugs.”
“And she slapped him because he was being incoherent and talking about being with another woman,” Anderson said. She noted that Depp’s mother was in the hospital at the time.
Anderson said Depp told her that Heard “gave as good as she got.” She also said that in at least one session in which she saw Heard alone, the actress told her that Depp hit her. She said Heard showed her bruises, both in photos and in person.
Anderson said Heard also told her that Depp at one point allegedly said, “No one likes you. You’re getting fame from me. I’m falling out of love with you. You’re a whore.”
Anderson also said that Heard’s “jackhammer style of talking” and habit of cutting off Depp overwhelmed him.
Heard “wanted to want to divorce” but also didn’t, and was still figuring out what to do, Anderson said. “She loved him. He loved her. She wasn’t stupid. She knew that what they were doing wasn’t healthy.”
Both Depp and Heard are expected to testify at the trial in Fairfax County Circuit Court, scheduled for six weeks, along with actors Paul Bettany and James Franco and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.
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This story has been edited to correct a word in Anderson’s quote to “jackhammer,” not “chat-hammer.” | https://www.cbs42.com/local/depp-witness-actor-was-southern-gentleman-heard-was-mean/ | 2022-04-15T00:45:01 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/local/depp-witness-actor-was-southern-gentleman-heard-was-mean/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — A coalition of arts organizations is distributing more than $4 million in aid to nonprofits around the U.S. that have sustained losses during the pandemic.
The Literary Arts Emergency Fund, established in 2020, includes the Academy of American Poets, the Community of Literary Magazine & Presses and the National Book Foundation. It will distribute $4.3 million in funding to 313 literary arts organizations and publishers around the country.
Beneficiaries range from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop to the Texas Book Festival. The emergency fund, which allotted $3.5 million in 2020, was made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.
“These grants remain vital because the impact of the emergency of COVID-19 remains very present in our lives,” Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, said in a statement Thursday.
“Throughout the United States, readers, writers, poets, students, and teachers rely on our country’s vibrant ecosystem of literary magazines, presses, and organizations— one that reveals the power and the possibility of the literary arts to the broader public. We are proud to continue our support for this emergency fund and look forward to the remarkable poetry and literature it will help cultivate.”
But the grants will not cover all, or even most of the losses of its recipients. According to the Literary Fund, those being supported project a cumulative deficit of more than $18 million.
“In some ways, this year was even more challenging than last year for literary organizations and publishers as there were fewer opportunities to receive emergency funding but also increased costs including producing hybrid events,” Ruth Dickey, executive director of the National Book Foundation, said in a statement.
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Online: poets.org/literary-arts-emergency-fund-awards-43-million-historically-under-funded-literary-arts-field-it | https://www.cbs42.com/local/hundreds-of-arts-organizations-to-receive-emergency-funding/ | 2022-04-15T00:45:09 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/local/hundreds-of-arts-organizations-to-receive-emergency-funding/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Journalists are sounding an alarm about the spread of disinformation in society and how it affects their jobs on a daily basis, along with skepticism on whether traditional methods to combat it really work.
The free speech advocates PEN America found in a survey of journalists released Thursday that 90% said their jobs have been affected by false content created with the intent to deceive.
Disinformation takes many forms: former President Donald Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election, unproven COVID-19 treatments spreading online and wild QAnon theories about pedophilia. It could be as simple as a local politician lying about an opponent’s record or this week’s debate over whether video showed bird poop landing on President Joe Biden’s jacket during a speech.
When more than 1,000 journalists returned the survey, PEN America was struck at how images in written responses “kept coming up with people being flooded with disinformation,” said Dru Menaker, the organization’s chief operating officer.
“Clearly, we have touched a nerve,” she said.
Four in five respondents labeled it a serious problem and most say they deal with it regularly, either through sources passing along false information or the need to debunk something spreading online.
False information can be spread through bots, or in doctored photos and video that needs to be verified, Menaker said. It has spread in large part because its purveyors find it effective.
Luke O’Brien, a journalist and fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, is now an expert on a beat that hardly existed a decade ago. He said he’s been stunned at how fast misinformation spreads into the media.
“It just gets worse and worse,” he said.
While most journalists work to combat it, 11% of those surveyed admitted that they had unwittingly passed along false information, and 17% said they avoided doing a story because they feared being subject to a “fake news” backlash that would seek to discredit their reporting.
Asked by PEN America about sources of the most egregious misinformation they’ve encountered, 76% of the journalists cited right-wing conspiracy theorists (35% said left-wing conspiracy theorists). Seventy percent said government officials or politicians, 65% said advocacy groups and 54% mentioned organizations specifically designed to create disinformation.
Public hostility toward journalists and a business climate that has reduced ranks in the field, particularly outside of big cities and among those who cover minority communities, has amplified the issue.
One Los Angeles Times reporter who returned the survey told about reporting on a militia-backed group that was using disinformation to gain power in local government. The group’s leader went on a podcast to call the reporter and a colleague Nazis who needed to be “taken care of,” and she now keeps a bulletproof vest in her closet.
O’Brien said he first became aware of bad actors operating online in the mid-2010s when covering the harassment of women in the video game industry.
Several news organizations have strengthened their efforts to root out disinformation in recent years. The Associated Press, for example, has a 12-person verification unit that investigates claims spread online, along with a separate fact-check operation and reporters that cover disinformation as a news beat.
AP has a weekly column, “Not Real News,” that dissects the most popular but completely untrue stories circulating online.
Many don’t have the capacity, though. “We need more journalists,” one survey respondent said. “The ones who are left are overwhelmed and do not have the time to take on the entire world of disinformation.”
Many of the journalists don’t think enough is being done to train people on how to deal with these issues. Yet there’s also little unanimity in how to do this.
While some believe it’s important to report on false claims, others believe that only gives them greater circulation. O’Brien said there are ways to report them without amplification, by not including links, for example.
It’s important to report on what is going on for the historical record, he said. Journalists should also devote resources to reporting on who is behind disinformation, both bankrolling and executing it.
Fact-checkers are often met with resentment, and have to guard against readers who feel they are being talked down to, Menaker said. Some of those surveyed concede that journalists have to do a better job showing to readers or viewers that they’re not remote, that they are part of the community.
Frighteningly, there may be no way to combat this effectively. And some people simply won’t accept it if presented with facts contrary to what they believe.
“Some people are despairing that people have just become unmoored from facts, that there is a substantial part of the audience that may be unreachable,” she said. | https://www.cbs42.com/local/journalists-despair-over-toll-of-disinformation-on-jobs/ | 2022-04-15T00:45:16 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/local/journalists-despair-over-toll-of-disinformation-on-jobs/ |
ROME (AP) — Letizia Battaglia, an Italian photographer who documented the arrests of Mafia bosses and the bodies of their victims, has died in her native Sicilian city of Palermo. She was 87.
Among the authorities announcing her death was Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando, who stood vigil next to her coffin during her wake in city hall on Thursday, a day after her death. No cause of death was cited, but Battaglia had been in frail health for some time.
Much of her work, predominantly in black-and-white, explored the everyday lives of those who lived in Palermo’s poor neighborhoods, where Cosa Nostra bosses held sway. Battaglia photographed ordinary Sicilians in moments of grief and joy.
Among her noted photos was that of the body of Sicily’s assassinated governor being held by his brother, who 35 years later would be elected Italy’s president.
Battaglia recounted how, on Jan. 6, 1980, she raced to the scene of a fatal shooting of a man in a car and began photographing it, before she knew who the victim was.
Only shortly later would she learn that the deceased was the governor, Piersanti Mattarella, and that one of the men rushing to hold his body as it was removed from the car was his brother, Sergio, who 35 years later would become Italy’s president.
Asked frequently about that photograph, Battaglia would say that while she captured a scene of death, for her it represented a moment of hope as Sergio Mattarella would have the resolve and courage to follow a political career and later hold Italy’s highest office.
Besides death in Palermo’s streets, Battaglia photographed their life. The cover photo of a book of her photographs, “Palermo amore amaro” (Palermo bitter love) features a thin young girl, almost an adolescent, holding a soccer ball in one hand and giving the camera a hard look as she leans against a graffiti-marred door in 1982 in Kalsa, a tough Palermo neighborhood.
Another photo captures a girl, washing dishes in a home so poor, there’s a toilet bowl in the kitchen. Other photographs show couples embracing at the beach or kissing in the countryside.
Other photos by Battaglia capture scenes all too familiar to Palermo’s people, especially in the 1980s, when Mafia clan turf wars bloodied the city. One 1983 photo shows three bodies — one slumped on the ceramic floor, another on a couch and the third in an armchair — in a triple homicide in an apartment.
There there’s the photo of a mother, advanced in years, holding the photo of her son, a radio journalist who dared denounce the local mobsters by name on the air — and who was killed, tied to a railroad track and blown apart by sticks of dynamite stuffed into his clothes.
“Letizia Battaglia with her snapshots captured the souls of Palermo,” Sen. Pietro Grasso, who formerly was Italy’s top anti-Mafia prosecutor, wrote on Facebook in a condolence tribute. ”Those of the women and of the girls that she took photos of for all of her life, and the crime photos, of the Mafia, often arriving at the scene of the crime before the police forces.”
She captured the “sorrow of the victims the arrogance of the mob bosses, the blood on the street, the protagonists in the fight against Cosa Nostra,” Grasso said.
Born in Palermo on March 5, 1935, she married when she was 16 and had three daughters. In her 30s, she began to take photographs, working in Milan but then hired by a Sicilian newspaper to work in Palermo. Battaglia’s work was also published by major Italian newsweekly magazines L’Espresso and Panorama.
Battaglia also spent several years in politics, serving as Palermo culture commissioner during one of Orlando’s earlier administrations and as a representative in Sicily’s regional legislature.
Volcanic in personality, forever young in outlook, Battaglia, whose surname means “battle” in Italian, worked through her last months of failing health. One of her last assignments was the cover for 7, a weekly magazine of Corriere della Sera daily. The photo portrayed a 19-year-old Italian singer-songwriter, Ariete,
In an interview in the “Palermo amore amaro” book, the interviewer notes at the end that the two of them in their conversation never spoke about the Mafia.
“Well, better,” Battaglia replied. “Why always talk about them. Let’s step over them.”
Her family said her remains would be cremated and scattered in the sea near Palermo at her request. | https://www.cbs42.com/local/letizia-battaglia-who-shot-life-and-death-in-palermo-dies/ | 2022-04-15T00:45:24 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/local/letizia-battaglia-who-shot-life-and-death-in-palermo-dies/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Before he was working with Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, Amy Winehouse and many others, Mark Ronson was a teen DJ in 1990s downtown New York, a place and time he will look back on in an upcoming book.
The Oscar and Grammy-winning producer and songwriter has a deal with Grand Central Publishing for “93 ‘Til Infinity,” scheduled for 2023. Ronson says he will write a combination memoir-DJ study-New York celebration, centering the narrative on favorite venues and events.
“Before smartphones hit the dancefloor and bottle service & VIP banquettes shrunk the club, in the 90’s people stayed all night in the same place to dance, hustle, politic, and party like no one was watching — ascending hip hop moguls, artists, hustlers, models, posers, dancers and hard-working 9 to 5’ers all rubbing shoulders with each other,” Ronson said in a statement Thursday.
“At that moment, New York was still the center of the music game and in the land of Biggie, Wu-Tang and Tribe, we celebrated them every night. More importantly, this era also happened to be the most exciting time in my life. “ | https://www.cbs42.com/local/mark-ronson-will-remember-the-dj-life-in-upcoming-book/ | 2022-04-15T00:45:31 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/local/mark-ronson-will-remember-the-dj-life-in-upcoming-book/ |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Oprah Winfrey and the Smithsonian Channel are partnering to highlight racial disparities in the health care system through a new campaign and documentary.
The network revealed on Thursday the Color of Care campaign to create a solution toward health equity. The campaign will follow the premiere of Winfrey’s “The Color of Care” documentary, which airs May 1.
Through Harpo Productions, Winfrey will executive produce the documentary that chronicles how people of color suffer from systematically substandard health care in the United States, with the COVID-19 pandemic being a catalyst to shed light on the issue.
The documentary will coincide with the campaign, which expects to take a broader look at the topic. The yearlong campaign will feature multiple activations in the coming months, including a digital series. It will bring together impacted communities, medical and nursing schools, health care workers and policymakers in hopes of finding a solution to inequities.
“The COVID crisis has exposed gross inequalities in our healthcare system which, if left unaddressed, will again disproportionately impact people of color during the next health emergency,” said James Blue III, the head of the Smithsonian Channel. “This campaign will work to address these inequalities.” | https://www.cbs42.com/local/oprah-smithsonian-focus-on-health-care-racial-disparities/ | 2022-04-15T00:45:39 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/local/oprah-smithsonian-focus-on-health-care-racial-disparities/ |
TROUTMAN, N.C. (AP) — A person was shot and wounded outside the North Carolina home of rapper DaBaby, authorities said Thursday, but it was unclear if he himself was involved or hurt.
DaBaby and at least one other person were at the home when the shooting happened Wednesday evening, Troutman Police Chief Josh Watson told The Associated Press. But he wouldn’t say who was shot or who did the shooting, citing an ongoing investigation. He said the injuries of the unidentified wounded person were not life-threatening.
A spokesperson for the rapper didn’t immediately respond to an email request for comment on Thursday.
Troutman, located in Iredell County, is 35 miles (56 km) north of Charlotte.
The shooting is the latest in a series of incidents involving DaBaby, whose real name is Jonathan Kirk. In 2019, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed weapon after a fatal shooting at a Walmart in Huntersville, North Carolina, just south of Troutman. He was not charged in the shooting.
Last year, the Grammy-nominated rapper was arrested after he took a loaded gun into an upscale store on Rodeo Drive. | https://www.cbs42.com/local/police-person-shot-outside-north-carolina-home-of-dababy/ | 2022-04-15T00:45:46 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/local/police-person-shot-outside-north-carolina-home-of-dababy/ |
PARIS (AP) — Films by David Cronenberg, Park Chan-wook and Kelly Reichardt will vie for the coveted Palme d’Or at a Cannes Film Festival set to unspool against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.
Cannes film festival artist director Thierry Frémaux and president Pierre Lescure announced the lineup to this year’s festival, Cannes’ 75th, in a press conference Thursday in Paris. After canceling the 2020 event and hosting a slightly scaled down 2021 edition, the French Riviera festival is looking to reclaim its pre-pandemic allure with some 35,000 accredited attendees expected next month.
The 18 films announced in Cannes’ prestigious competition lineup feature new works by several former Palme winners, including Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda(“Broker”), Swedish social satirist Ruben Ostlund (“Triangle of Sadness”) and Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (“Tori and Lokita”).
Also in competition: Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future,” starring Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart and Viggo Mortensen; Kelly Reichardt’s “Showing Up,” which reunites her with “Wendy and Lucy” star Michelle Williams; Chan-wook’s Korean mystery thriller “Decision to Leave”; and French filmmaker Claire Denis’ “Stars at Noon” with Margaret Qualley.
The 75th anniversary of the French Riviera film extravaganza “is happening in special circumstances: the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, a world that has changed and will keep changing,” Fremaux said.
The biggest Hollywood splashes expected at Cannes had already been announced, including a screening of “Top Gun: Maverick,” which will be accompanied by a tribute to star Tom Cruise. The “Top Gun” sequel will play out of competition, as will Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Presley biopic “Elvis,” starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks.
Organizers will announce the jury at a later date.
Cannes’ international village of flag-waving pavilions annually hosts more than 80 countries from around the world. But organizers earlier said no Russian delegations would be welcome at the this year because of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian director, Kirill Serebrennikov, who recently fled Russia for Berlin after several years banned from travel, will premiere his latest film, about composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky
As usual, most of the directors in the competition are men. Only three of the 18 films competing for the Palme d’Or were directed by women. Last year, Julia Ducournau became only the second woman in Cannes history to win the top prize, for her film “Titane,” the body-horror thriller.
The festival will open on May 17 with the premiere of the zombie comedy “Final Cut,” by “The Artist” director Michel Hazanvicius. The film had earlier been scheduled to debut in January at the Sundance Film Festival but was pulled when the festival shifted to a virtual edition amid a virus surge.
Ethan Coen will debut his first feature without his brother, Joel, in the out-of-competition documentary “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind.” Other highlights include George Miller’s first film since 2015’s “Mad Max: Fury Road”: “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” a fantasy romance with Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton. And Brett Morgan will premiere “Moonage Daydream,” a David Bowie documentary.
As has been the case since 2017, no Netflix films are in competition at Cannes. The streamer and the festival have been an impasse due to the country’s rigid windowing rules. Once a film plays in cinemas in France, it can’t stream for 15 months. Earlier this year, though, Netflix signed a three-year agreement with French film guilds to spend a minimum of $45 million financing French and European films to play theatrically in France.
The Cannes Film Festival runs May 17-28. | https://www.cbs42.com/local/top-gun-to-star-at-cannes-film-fest-under-ukraine-shadow/ | 2022-04-15T00:45:54 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/local/top-gun-to-star-at-cannes-film-fest-under-ukraine-shadow/ |
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — As a casino dealer, Shamikah Townsend knows when the odds are in her favor.
And they definitely are right now.
While working at one Atlantic City casino last year, she went to a job fair held by a different one, and was surprised at how instantly in-demand she was when the recruiter wanted to hire her as a craps dealer.
“She said, ‘I’ll pay you to move to Florida in two weeks,'” Townsend said. “I didn’t know craps, so I had to be honest and tell her, but I went out and I learned it.”
On Monday, Townsend made her move, getting hired on the spot at a job fair held by the Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City.
Townsend is part of a great hiring wave taking place at casinos across the nation as the gambling halls compete to add staff while recovering from the coronavirus pandemic that drove customers away and led to staff reductions.
But casinos are just one of many industries struggling to add new workers, and they find themselves competing with each other not only for casino workers, but for people with experience in the hotel, restaurant and tourism industries, to name just a few.
“Gaming is facing the same labor issues that we see across the broader economy,” said Casey Clark, senior vice president of the American Gaming Association, the casino industry’s national trade group. “In our recent CEO survey, the labor shortage is a top concern across the country.
“Competition for talent is a huge impediment for growth, and we’re also experiencing an expansion of gaming with customer demand increasing,” he said. “Those things are problematic when they happen together.”
That has led to some innovative tactics, including the use of virtual reality goggles at some MGM Resorts International job fairs to let applicants experience what the job will be like before signing on the dotted line.
Atlantic City’s casinos are also talking with state government agencies about funding new transit options to get people to jobs at casinos from farther-out places. One possibility: something like the contract the Borgata had with a state transit agency in 2008 for a daily shuttle bus between its Atlantic City casino and Camden — an hour-long trip reaching clear across the state.
In Clark County, Nevada, home to Las Vegas, an economic development official said last month more than 40,000 jobs have gone unfilled since the state’s casinos reopened after a temporary closure in 2020. During one job fair in February, Caesars Entertainment was looking to hire 500 people.
On Friday in Las Vegas, about 6,000 people are expected to attend a jobs fair in which 105 casino and other employers will offer 13,000 jobs.
“Work is available whether you are a first-time job seeker, changing fields, newly relocated to the area or retired and wish to return to work,” said Wanda Gispert, a vice president with MGM Resorts.
Nationwide, there were about 1.65 million workers employed in the gambling, amusement and recreation sectors of the U.S. economy in March, representing about 91% of the pre-pandemic workforce, Clark said. The AGA said it does not have a figure for casino employment alone.
Joe Lupo, president of Atlantic City’s Hard Rock casino, is also president of the Casino Association of New Jersey. He estimates there are 2,000 full and part-time casino jobs open in Atlantic City right now, where the overall workforce of 22,000 is down from 49,000 in 2003.
“Coming out of COVID, especially last year, after the restrictions were lifted, the workforce supply just has not been available,” he said. “It’s been difficult for all of us to find enough people. I certainly know after meeting with everyone last week that every property is hiring.”
That has very practical effects in casino resorts, which might not be able to open all their hotel rooms, or open all the craps or roulette tables they have. Restaurants that used to serve 700 tables a night may only be able to do 300, executives said.
As they are in other industries, workers are reaping the benefits of switching jobs, or taking a new one after being unemployed for a time. Casinos are increasing wages and benefits, and are offering to train workers without the type of experience that was once required just to get a foot in the door for an interview.
“Everybody’s looking to hire the same person,” said Bill Callahan, general manager of the Ocean casino in Atlantic City. “We always need people.”
In some departments, “people that made $14 an hour a year ago might now be making $16 or $17,” Callahan said.
Ocean is starting an in-house training program to teach people how to become dealers, something most applicants had to learn on their own before, Callahan added.
The Morongo casino in Cabazon, California, has been regularly holding job fairs since December, and has at least four more scheduled for this month.
In North Carolina, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians said last month it needed nearly 900 additional workers for its two casinos in the state. Tribal leaders are considering recruiting workers from other countries and housing them in dormitories.
And in West Virginia, racetrack casinos told state regulators last month that a shortage of workers is preventing them from operating at full strength for a third year in a row.
Townsend, the newly hired dealer in Atlantic City, says circumstances are coming together nicely for her.
“I wanted to move up and improve my situation,” she said. “These places have to compete with everybody else for workers now, and there’s money to be had.”
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Follow Wayne Parry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/a-safe-bet-if-you-want-a-casino-job-odds-are-on-your-side/ | 2022-04-15T00:46:01 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/a-safe-bet-if-you-want-a-casino-job-odds-are-on-your-side/ |
In his first letter to Amazon shareholders, CEO Andy Jassy offered a defense of the wages and benefits the company gives its warehouse workers while also vowing to improve injury rates inside the facilities.
Jassy, who took over from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as CEO last July, wrote the company has researched and created a list of the top 100 “employee experience pain points” and is working to solve them.
“We’re also passionate about further improving safety in our fulfillment network, with a focus on reducing strains, sprains, falls, and repetitive stress injuries,” he wrote.
The company is set to face two shareholder votes next month tied to workplace injuries. One calls for an independent audit into the working conditions and treatment of its warehouse workers, while the other seeks to assess whether Amazon’s policies give rise to racial and gender disparities in its workplace injury rates. The retailer had argued against both proposals, but U.S. securities regulators disagreed and allowed the resolutions to stand.
A report released this week by Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of four labor unions, found Amazon employed 33% of all U.S. warehouse workers in 2021, but was responsible for 49% of all injuries in the industry. Jassy pushed back on the report during an interview with CNBC Thursday morning, saying it was not accurate.
He further wrote in theshareholder letter that the company’s injury rates can sometimes be misunderstood, saying it has operations jobs that fit both the “warehousing” and “courier and delivery” categories.
Offering his own data, Jassy acknowledged the company’s warehouse injury rates “were a little higher than the average” compared to other warehouses, but lower than average compared to Amazon’s courier and delivery peers.
“This makes us about average relative to peers, but we don’t seek to be average,” Jassy wrote. “We want to be best in class.”
Union organizers in Staten Island, New York and Bessemer, Alabama have often rallied workers while pointing to the company’s injury rates. The nascent Amazon Labor Union, which won the union election in Staten Island earlier this month, is now seeking to negotiate with the retailer for a union contract. But Amazon has rebuffed those attempts and is seeking to re-do the election.
Jassy didn’t mention the union push in his letter, but said the company offers “robust” benefits, and has increased hourly wages in the past few years. When asked about the union win during the interview, he said it was employee’s choice whether they want to join a union but believes they’re better off not doing so.
He argued unions could slow down change, and believes workers are better off having direct relationships with their managers, an argument the company has made in the lead-up to the union elections to persuade its employees not to unionize. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/amazon-ceo-jassy-says-he-wants-to-improve-warehouse-safety/ | 2022-04-15T00:46:09 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/amazon-ceo-jassy-says-he-wants-to-improve-warehouse-safety/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks closed lower on Wall Street Thursday as investors gave mixed reviews to earnings from four of the nation’s largest banks.
The S&P 500 fell 1.2%, ending a shortened trading week with a 2.1% decline. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.3% and the Nasdaq composite lost 2.1%. Both indexes also ended in the red for the week.
A quartet of big banks reported noticeable declines in their first-quarter profits as the latest earnings season kicks into gear. Volatile markets and the war in Ukraine caused deal-making to dry up while a slowdown in the housing market meant fewer people sought mortgages.
Citigroup rose 1.6% while Wells Fargo fell 4.5%. Morgan Stanley rose 0.7% and Goldman Sachs slipped 0.1%.
Bond yields rose again, sending the 10-year Treasury yield to 2.83%, and the price of U.S. oil rose, finishing nearly 11% higher for the week.
“With higher oil prices, higher bond yields, (it) implies the market continues to worry about inflation, worried about Ukraine, worried about the Fed’s response to all of this,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA.
The S&P 500 fell 54 points to 4,392.59. The Dow dropped 113.36 points to 34,451.23. The Nasdaq fell 292.51 points to 13,351.08. The U.S. stock market will be closed for Good Friday.
Technology stocks led the way lower Thursday, offsetting gains elsewhere in the market. Pricey valuations for many of the bigger technology companies give them more sway in directing the broader market higher or lower. Microsoft fell 2.7%.
Retailers and other companies that rely on consumer spending also weighed on the market. Amazon fell 2.5%. Energy stocks rose along with the price of crude oil. Exxon Mobil rose 1.2%.
Smaller company stocks also lost ground. The Russell 2000 fell 20.12 points, or 1%, to 2,004.98.
Investors again turned their attention to the drama surrounding Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk and Twitter. Musk offered to buy the social media company for $54.20 a share, two weeks after revealing he’d accumulated a 9% stake.
Musk has criticized Twitter for not living up to free speech principles and said, in a regulatory filing, that it needs to be transformed as a private company. Twitter’s stock fell 1.7% at $45.08, well below Musk’s offering price.
Wall Street had mixed economic data to review following several hot inflation reports earlier in the week. The Commerce Department said retail sales rose 0.5% in March, boosted by higher prices for gasoline, as consumers continue to spend despite high inflation.
Inflation remains at its highest levels in 40 years in the U.S. and that has economists and analysts closely watching how consumers react to higher prices on everything from food to clothing and gasoline. Concerns about inflation have worsened amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has made for more volatile energy prices and contributed to rising oil and wheat prices globally.
U.S. crude oil prices reversed an early decline Thursday and settled 2.6% higher.
The head of the International Monetary Fund warned Thursday that Russia’s war against Ukraine was weakening the economic prospects for most of the world’s countries and reaffirmed the danger high inflation presents to the global economy.
Rising prices are driving the Federal Reserve and many other central banks to tighten monetary policy by raising interest rates, among other measures, to help cool the surging demand that is contributing to the problem.
Bond yields have been mostly on the rise as Wall Street prepares for higher interest rates.
Investors received another update on the recovery in the jobs market. The number of people seeking unemployment benefits ticked up last week, according to the Labor Department, but remained at a historically low level. The data reflect a robust U.S. labor market with near record-high job openings and few layoffs.
Besides the banks, insurer UnitedHealth Group was the other big name on the earnings docket. UnitedHealth rose 0.4% after reporting solid first-quarter results and raising its 2022 forecasts.
Investors are closely watching the latest round of corporate earnings to determine how companies have been dealing with rising costs and whether consumers have pulled back their spending.
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Veiga reported from Los Angeles. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/asian-shares-track-wall-street-higher-oil-prices-retreat/ | 2022-04-15T00:46:16 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/asian-shares-track-wall-street-higher-oil-prices-retreat/ |
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In a victory for President Joe Biden, a federal appeals court Thursday refused to revisit its March decision reviving administration plans to account for potential damage from greenhouse gas emissions when creating rules for pollution-generating industries.
A Louisiana-based federal judge had blocked the so-called social cost of carbon policy earlier this year, saying it would bring costly regulatory burdens and drive up energy prices. But a panel of three 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges in New Orleans unanimously stayed the lower court last month. On Thursday, the appeals court issued a brief order saying none of the court’s 17 full-time judges sought a rehearing, which had been requested by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.
Landry led the challenge on behalf of Louisiana and nine other states. His office did not immediately respond to an email asking whether he would appeal to the Supreme Court. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming joined Louisiana in the challenge.
The policy aims to put a dollar value on damage caused by every additional ton of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. That cost estimate would be used to shape future rules for oil and gas drilling, automobiles, and other industries, and a higher estimate could justify more stringent rules.
On his first day in office, Biden issued an order that restored the cost estimate to about $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions after the Trump administration had reduced the figure to about $7 or less per ton. Former President Donald Trump’s estimate included only damage felt in the U.S. versus the global damage captured in higher estimates that were previously used under the Obama administration.
Republicans and business groups have questioned the accuracy of the complex economic models used to determine the cost estimate. They argue that an emphasis on future climate damage would hobble the economy, particularly the energy industry.
The 5th Circuit panel said in last month’s ruling that any regulatory burdens the policy might bring are speculative at this point and that Louisiana and other states challenging the policy therefore had no standing to sue. It said U.S. District Judge James David Cain, a Trump appointee in Louisiana’s Western district, had gone “outside the authority of the federal courts” in ordering the Biden administration “to comply with prior administrations’ policies on regulatory analysis absent a specific agency action to review.”
The ruling panel included judges Leslie Southwick, appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, and James Graves and Gregg Costa, both appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama. Of the 17 full-time judges on the court, 12 were nominated by Republican presidents — six of those by Trump. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/biden-cost-of-carbon-policy-survives-another-legal-hurdle/ | 2022-04-15T00:46:24 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/biden-cost-of-carbon-policy-survives-another-legal-hurdle/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Four big banks reported noticeable declines in their first-quarter profits Thursday, as the volatile markets and war in Ukraine caused deal-making to dry up while a slowdown in the housing market meant fewer people sought to get a new mortgage or refinance.
The results from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo were similar to the results out of JPMorgan Chase, which on Wednesday reported a double-digit decline in profits.
At Goldman Sachs, profits fell 43% to $3.63 billion. Citigroup posted a 47% decline in profits to $4 billion, Wells Fargo’s profits fell 21% and Morgan Stanley’s earnings dropped 11%.
In some ways, comparing this quarter to a year ago doesn’t tell an accurate story of how well Wall Street is doing. The first quarter of 2021 was helped by the start of widespread vaccination campaigns for COVID-19, as well as recovery in the economy from the pandemic. Banks also released large portions of their loan-loss reserves — money they sock away to cover potentially bad loans in a rough economy — last year. Those were a one-time boost to profits.
But banks are often seen as a proxy for the overall economy, and the first quarter of 2022 has been considerably rougher than a year earlier. Markets have struggled with high inflation, as well as a run up in oil prices largely caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Interest rates have also risen sharply in response to the Federal Reserve signaling that it plans to raise interest rates multiple times this year, which in turn has caused mortgage rates to rise.
Outside of the slowdown in deal-making, the war in Ukraine plus the broad international sanctions placed on Russia weighed on the results of at least two banks, Citigroup and to a lesser extent, Goldman Sachs. Citi said it had to set aside $1.9 billion in potential loan losses due to its exposure to Russia, where the bank operates a consumer banking franchise as well as a modest investment bank. Meanwhile Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said the bank had $300 million in losses this quarter tied to Russia.
That’s on top of the $1.5 billion that JPMorgan set aside on Wednesday to cover higher inflation costs as well as its exposure to Russia.
But where the banks really took a hit this quarter was in investment banking. Goldman Sachs said investment banking revenues fell 40% from a year earlier, while Morgan Stanley reported a 38% decline in investment banking fees. Citigroup reported a 43% drop in investment banking revenues.
The drop in investment banking revenues largely has to do with companies sitting on the sidelines in the quarter due to the volatility.
Wells Fargo, which has a smaller investment bank, was more heavily impacted by the slowdown in the housing market. Revenues from mortgage originations at Wells were down 33% from a year earlier. Freddie Mac said the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hit 5% last week, nearly double where it was less than a year ago.
“Rising rates drove a significant slowdown in mortgage banking, especially refinance activity,” said Kyle Sanders, an analyst with Edward Jones, who covers Wells Fargo, in an email. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/big-bank-profits-decline-as-deal-making-mortgages-slow/ | 2022-04-15T00:46:31 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/big-bank-profits-decline-as-deal-making-mortgages-slow/ |
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The board of directors of Brazil’s oil giant Petrobras elected on Thursday José Mauro Coelho as its new president – the third to take the lead of the state-run company in a little more than three years.
His appointment by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro last week followed the dismissal of his predecessor, Gen. Joaquim Silva e Luna, a former defense minister. The general lost the government’s support after the company boosted fuel prices to pass some of the global oil increases to consumers.
Brazil’s government owns 50.26% of Petrobras, but Bolsonaro’s picks for presidents must be approved by the company’s board.
Coelho worked for 12 years at the state energy research agency, and later was chairman of the board at the state company that manages contracts for offshore pre-salt oil exploration and production. From 2020 until last October, he was secretary for petroleum, natural gas and biofuels at the mining and energy ministry.
Market observers and analysts see Coelho’s appointment for a one-year term as a sign that Petrobras will maintain the same international fuel price policy, resisting political pressure to lower gasoline and diesel prices in an election year.
“It is a suitable profile for the position,” said Gesner de Oliveira, an economist and professor at the Fundação Getulio Vargas university in Sao Paulo. “But these changes generate concern because they are the result of government interference in the company.”
This is the second time since he assumed office in 2019 that Bolsonaro, who is running for reelection in October, has made changes at the top of Petrobras because of rising fuel prices.
Before Silva e Luna, Roberto Castello Brancohad also been encouraged to make adjustments to the firm’s policy, but since 2016, Petrobras’ gasoline and diesel prices have been pegged to international oil prices. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/bolsonaro-pick-for-president-of-brazil-oil-giant-takes-over/ | 2022-04-15T00:46:38 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/bolsonaro-pick-for-president-of-brazil-oil-giant-takes-over/ |
SALINAS, Calif. (AP) — Firefighters contained a massive blaze at a central California food processing plant that prompted authorities to tell thousands of nearby residents to evacuate Thursday and to order tens of thousands more to stay inside their homes.
The fire started Wednesday night at the Taylor Farms packaged salad plant in Salinas, about 110 miles (177 kilometers) south of San Francisco.
The flames were under control by late morning Thursday, but the shelter-in-place and evacuation orders remained while hazardous materials crews worked the scene, said Sophia Rome, a spokesperson for the city of Salinas.
Authorities initially said they feared the fire could generate an explosion and a plume of hazardous ammonia, but the Salinas Fire Department said later that those threats appeared to be minimal.
About 2,700 people living closest to the plant were told that they should evacuate, while 35,000 more were ordered to shelter inside their homes, the Monterey County Office of Emergency Services said in a statement.
Those staying home were told to shut windows and to turn off ventilation systems “until further notice,” the statement said.
Officials said some people evacuated after the fire was reported at 7:15 p.m. Officials did not say what caused the fire.
A woman who answered the phone at Taylor Farms in Salinas told a reporter seeking comment to call back later for information.
Salinas has a population of about 160,000 people and is in a key agricultural region. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/california-food-plant-fire-prompts-evacuations-for-thousands/ | 2022-04-15T00:46:46 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/california-food-plant-fire-prompts-evacuations-for-thousands/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. regulators will soon begin cracking down on vaping companies using a now-closed loophole, including a line of fruit-flavored e-cigarettes that have become teenagers’ top choice.
Under a law taking effect Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration can regulate e-cigarettes and similar products that use synthetic nicotine.
The action targets Puff Bar and several other vaping companies that recently switched their formulas to laboratory-made nicotine to skirt FDA oversight.
The change will allow the FDA to “hold e-cigarette companies using synthetic nicotine to the same public health standards we’ve implemented for other tobacco products,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said in a tweet Wednesday. Companies must now register with the FDA and submit their products for review within 30 days.
Puff Bar did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The FDA’s action does not automatically ban Puff Bar and similar products. Instead it brings them under the same regulatory scheme as older e-cigarettes that derive their nicotine from tobacco.
“The synthetic nicotine products do not necessarily just disappear on their own,” Robin Koval, chief executive of the Truth Initiative, an advocacy group that runs anti-tobacco ads. “The FDA will have to decide how they want to enforce the law and hopefully they will.”
The FDA has been reviewing applications for a vast array of vaping devices, formulas and flavors — rejecting more than 1 million, usually because of their potential appeal to youngsters. Anti-tobacco advocates hope the agency will quickly do the same for any applications submitted by Puff Bar and other manufacturers.
Nicotine, the chemical the makes smoking and vaping addictive, occurs naturally in tobacco plants.
The 2009 law that first gave the FDA oversight of cigarettes and related products only referred to tobacco-based nicotine. That left an opening for artificial nicotine, which is being used in e-cigarette liquids, nicotine pouches and other products.
Last month, Congress passed language clarifying that the FDA can regulate any form of nicotine, regardless of the source.
After appearing in 2019, Puff Bar has grown to become the most popular e-cigarette among teenagers, by far, sold in flavors like blueberry, strawberry banana and mango. Under FDA pressure, the company said it was halting sales in 2020, pulling its disposable vaping devices out of convenience stores, gas stations and vape shops.
Last February, the company announced a “fresh launch” of its colorful devices using synthetic nicotine. In marketing language, the company said its products “do not contain tobacco or anything derived from tobacco.” That put Puff Bar in a legal gray area, because federal, state and local restrictions nearly always apply to tobacco-based products, not nicotine itself.
Stanford researchers last year found synthetic nicotine products for sale via online platforms that prohibit tobacco sales, such as Amazon, eBay and Target. Under the new law, synthetic nicotine will be subject to the same federal age limit and sales restrictions as other tobacco products.
Using synthetic nicotine is not a new idea. Tobacco companies experimented with chemically derived nicotine as early as the 1960s, but deemed it too expensive for mass production. Manufacturing advances in recent years finally made it a viable alternative to tobacco-derived nicotine.
A large government survey last year showed Puff Bar had leapfrogged over better-known brands to become the top choice among high schoolers who vape. Juul — which is widely blamed for initially sparking the teen vaping trend — was the fourth most popular brand.
In 2020, the FDA restricted flavors in cartridge-based e-cigarettes like Juul to just menthol and tobacco, which are generally preferred by adults. But the flavor ban didn’t apply to disposable e-cigarettes like Puff Bar and other types of vaping devices.
Anti-tobacco groups worry that the FDA seems to consistently be one or two steps behind whichever products are making inroads among kids.
“The lesson we can all take away from this is that when the FDA’s actions are incomplete and happen after the fact — which has often been the case with e-cigarettes — you will always be playing whack-a-mole and catch-up,” said Koval.
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Follow Matthew Perrone on Twitter: @AP_FDAwriter
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The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/e-cigs-using-synthetic-nicotine-come-under-fda-oversight/ | 2022-04-15T00:46:53 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/e-cigs-using-synthetic-nicotine-come-under-fda-oversight/ |
The head of the European Central Bank reiterated Thursday that the bank would raise interest rates “some time after” ending its pandemic stimulus efforts later this year, sticking to a gradual path even as the United States, United Kingdom and other countries take a harder line to combat soaring consumer prices.
People in the 19 countries that use the euro currency have seen costs increase for everything from food to fuel as inflation rose to an annual rate of 7.5% last month, the highest since statistics began in 1997.
Driven by energy prices that have soared ever higher since Russia invaded Ukraine, record inflation has sharpened attention on when the European Central Bank will take more drastic steps to control excessive price increases for consumers.
The bank said recent economic data confirmed its expectations of ending its pandemic stimulus efforts later this year and that the exact timing would depend on the economic situation.
Bank President Christine Lagarde, who previously opened the door a crack for an interest rate increase this year, said “we are sticking to our sequence,” with any rate hike following the end of the bond purchases meant to support the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. That could mean “anywhere between a week to several months,” Lagarde said, before the bank could decide on “an interest rate hike and subsequent hikes.”
Speaking by video news conference after testing positive for COVID-19 last week, Lagarde stressed the uncertainty over the war and the bank’s willingness to stay flexible in adjusting its policies, saying the experience with pandemic stimulus purchases showed “flexibility served us well.”
She noted that inflation “will stay high in the near term and then moderate to some extent” amid uncertainty from the war. While higher energy prices were fueling inflation, weaker growth could lower the price pressures in the economy, Lagarde said.
Her comments suggest the bond purchases will end in July followed by a first interest rate increase in September, said Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro at ING bank. He called it “normalization at a snail’s pace” after large doses of stimulus applied during the depths of the pandemic.
The war has sent inflation surging to unexpectedly high levels. Prices for oil and gas have been rising on fears of a cutoff from Russia, which is the world’s largest oil exporter, and as the recovery from the pandemic increases demand for fuel.
As inflation grows worldwide, the U.S. Federal Reserve hiked its benchmark short-term rate last month and indicated it will continue raising it sharply this year. The Bank of England has raised raised its key interest rate three times since December.
Lagarde said the European and U.S. economies were not comparable. One reason is that “the euro area is going to be more exposed and will suffer more consequences as a result of the war by Russia against Ukraine … comparing our respective monetary polices is comparing apples and oranges.”
Economists say much of the U.S. inflation is homegrown — a side effect of massive federal stimulus and support spending during the pandemic. Europe’s inflation, on the other hand, is largely imported through higher oil prices, which are generally beyond the reach of interest rate policy that central banks control.
On top of that, higher inflation and supply bottlenecks are weighing on economic growth, leading to what some are calling “stagflation.” A combination of slow growth and high inflation, the phenomenon poses central banks with a dilemma: that the rate hikes needed to combat inflation could also hurt growth and jobs.
Stressing consumer purchasing power has helped French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, a far-right nationalist, narrow the polling gap against centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron in the campaign ahead of the runoff April 24.
The ECB’s benchmark rates are at record lows: zero for lending to banks and minus 0.5% on deposits from banks, a penalty rate aimed at pushing them to lend the money instead. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/european-central-bank-faces-pressure-from-record-inflation/ | 2022-04-15T00:47:00 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/european-central-bank-faces-pressure-from-record-inflation/ |
Mercurial billionaire Elon Musk now says he wants to buy Twitter outright, taking it private to restore its commitment to what he terms “free speech.” But his offer, which seemed to fall flat with investors on Thursday, raises as many questions as it answers.
Among them: Is he serious? Can he get the money together? Would a sale make shareholders happy? And what would the social platform look like if he succeeds?
WHY IS MUSK INTERESTED IN TWITTER?
Ostensibly because the service, he says, isn’t living up to its potential as a “platform for free speech.” Musk insists that he’s not interested in making money off Twitter and on Thursday said his motivation sprang from the realization that “having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.”
Twitter, like other social media platforms, suspends accounts for violating content standards, including on violence, hate speech or harmful misinformation. Its suspension of Donald Trump angered the former president’s followers.
Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist” — but he has blocked Twitter users who question or disagree with him. Regulators have also accused his car company, Tesla, of retaliating against Black workers who spoke up about discrimination.
HAS MUSK SAID WHERE HE WILL GET THE FUNDS TO BUY TWITTER?
No. And his regulatory filing says the offer is subject to “completion of anticipated financing.”
During a Thursday on-stage interview at the TED 2022 conference, Musk noted vaguely that he has “sufficient assets” to complete the deal, adding: “I can do it if possible.”
CAN HE JUST BUY TWITTER OUTRIGHT FROM HIS PERSONAL WEALTH?
Musk is the world’s wealthiest man, according to Forbes, with a nearly $265 billion fortune. But much of his money is tied up in Tesla stock — he owns about 17% of the company, according to FactSet, which is valued at more than $1 trillion — and SpaceX, his privately held space company. It’s unclear how much cash Musk has.
“I do think this will be somewhat painful and I’m not sure that I will actually be able to acquire it,” Musk said in his Thursday interview.
Musk could sell Tesla stock to raise money — which could hurt Tesla’s share price — or borrow against his stock holdings. But Forbes notes that he has already used more than half of his Tesla stake as loan collateral.
WOULD TWITTER SHAREHOLDERS BE HAPPY WITH HIS OFFER?
The stock traded lower than the offer price of $54.20 a share Thursday, suggesting investors doubt the deal will go through. The shares have traded above $70 in the past 12 months and peaked at $80.75 in February 2021.
There has been executive turnover since co-founder Jack Dorsey’s departure in November left Twitter with a new CEO, Parag Agrawal, whose initial actions have involved internal reorganizations. There have not been any major changes to Twitter, which, despite its outsized influence due to high-profile celebrity and politician posters, as well as a devoted base of journalists, has fewer users than social media rivals like Facebook and TikTok. Musk himself is a huge user, with more than 81 million followers.
Dorsey, still a major shareholder, has not indicated what he thinks of Musk’s offer.
Twitter said only that it will look at the offer. A spokesperson declined to answer if the board will put in place a defense against a hostile takeover known as a “poison pill.”
HOW MIGHT MUSK REMAKE TWITTER?
It’s hard to know with Musk, and even trying to game out this hypothetical might be taking the man too seriously. By saying Twitter is not living up to its potential to be a “platform for free speech,” he seems to be saying he would scale back content moderation. But he has also called for the company to crack down on spam accounts, which implies more moderation.
He proposed dropping ads from the service — ads are how Twitter makes money — and making its San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter. He also seems to approve of a button to edit tweets.
WHAT CONCERNS DOES MUSK AS AN OWNER OF TWITTER RAISE?
Social-media companies struggle to contain misinformation and hate speech. Musk, whose tweets can lead online bullies to swarm his critics online, does not seem keen on content moderation.
“Regulators worldwide will be wincing at the potential free speech implications should Musk’s takeover bid succeed,” said GlobalData analyst Rachel Foster-Jones. “Musk is clearly serious about promoting free speech for the benefit of democracy, but the line between free speech and hate speech or misinformation is becoming increasingly muddied, and attempts to change Twitter could easily lead to these issues spiraling out of control.”
In his talk with Anderson, Musk said that Twitter is “ bound by the laws of the country it operates in, so obviously there are some limitations on free speech in the U.S. and of course Twitter would have to abide by those rules.” But he said it was “quite dangerous” to have “tweets be mysteriously promoted and demoted” and having a “black-box algorithm.”
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Twitter may hire bankers and advisers to help it review the deal, said Third Bridge technology, media and telecom analyst Scott Kessler. And other buyers could emerge. “It seems that if would-be strategic and/or financial buyers are interested in Twitter, they should probably engage now.” | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/explainer-what-is-musk-really-doing-as-he-guns-for-twitter/ | 2022-04-15T00:47:08 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/explainer-what-is-musk-really-doing-as-he-guns-for-twitter/ |
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A major fertilizer company says the limits Union Pacific is putting on rail traffic to clear up congestion will delay shipments that farmers need during the spring planting season.
CF Industries said Thursday that the railroad ordered it to cut its shipments nearly 20%. Union Pacific has said it is limiting rail traffic and hiring aggressively as part of a plan to improve service after grain and ethanol shippers complained about shortcomings.
Federal regulators have announced plans to hold a hearing later this month aboutthe service problems along Union Pacific and other major U.S. railroads that have forced some grain mills and ethanol plants to curtail production while waiting on trains and left farmers without a place to sell their crops because grain elevators are having trouble shipping grain.
“The timing of this action by Union Pacific could not come at a worse time for farmers,” said CF Industries CEO Tony Will. “Not only will fertilizer be delayed by these shipping restrictions, but additional fertilizer needed to complete spring applications may be unable to reach farmers at all.
CF Industries said the limits will affect fertilizer deliveries to Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas and California from its plants in Louisiana and Iowa. The company said it believes it is one of just 30 companies Union Pacific imposed restrictions on.
Union Pacific spokeswoman Kristen South said the measures the Omaha, Nebraska-based railroad is taking are designed to address problems in the supply chain that have clogged rail shipments. The railroad has also brought 100 locomotives out of storage and shifted roughly 80 crew members to high-demand locations. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/fertilizer-company-complains-about-railroad-shipment-limits/ | 2022-04-15T00:47:16 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/fertilizer-company-complains-about-railroad-shipment-limits/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the International Monetary Fund warned Thursday that Russia’s war against Ukraine was weakening the economic prospects for most of the world’s countries and called high inflation “a clear and present danger’’ to the global economy.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said the consequences of Russia’s invasion were contributing to economic downgrades for 143 countries, although most of them should continue to grow. The war has disrupted global trade in energy and grain and is threatening to cause food shortages in Africa and Middle East.
Georgieva made her comments in a speech on the eve of next week’s spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington.
An unexpectedly strong recovery from 2020’s pandemic recession has caught businesses by surprise, leaving factories, ports and freight yards unable to keep up with robust customer demand and forcing prices higher.
Chronically high inflation, which is forcing the world’s central banks to raise interest rates and likely slow economic growth in the process, amounts to “a massive setback for the global recovery,’’ Georgieva said.
Georgieva also warned of “the fragmentation of the world economy into geopolitical blocs,” with the West imposing far-reaching sanctions on Russia and China expressing support for the autocratic Russian regime of President Vladimir Putin.
“In a world where war in Europe creates hunger in Africa; where a pandemic can circle the globe in days and reverberate for years; where emissions anywhere mean rising sea levels almost everywhere — the threat to our collective prosperity from a breakdown in global cooperation cannot be overstated,” Georgieva said.
Before the war, Russia and Ukraine had supplied 28% of global wheat exports. And Russia and Belarus accounted for 40% of exports of the fertilizer potash.
“Now,’’ Georgieva said, “grain and corn prices are soaring, and leaders across Africa and the Middle East are telling me that supplies are running low. Food insecurity is a grave concern.
“We must act now with a multilateral initiative to bolster food security. The alternative is dire: More hunger, more poverty and more social unrest — especially for countries that have struggled to escape fragility and conflict for many years.’’
Georgieva called on the world to support the Ukrainians and noted that the IMF had delivered $1.4 billion in emergency financing to help Ukraine meet its immediate spending needs. The IMF is also offering assistance to Ukraine’s neighbors, including Moldova, which has accepted more than 400,000 war refugees.
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This story has been corrected to show that the IMF expects the Ukraine war to contribute to weaker economic growth for 143 countries, not 186. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/imf-chief-ukraine-war-and-inflation-threaten-global-economy/ | 2022-04-15T00:47:23 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/imf-chief-ukraine-war-and-inflation-threaten-global-economy/ |
A former police officer who discussed Russia’s invasion on the phone. A priest who preached to his congregation about the suffering of Ukrainians. A student who held up a banner with no words — just asterisks.
Hundreds of Russians are facing charges for speaking out against the war in Ukraine since a repressive law was passed last month that outlaws the spread of “false information” about the invasion and disparaging the military.
Human rights groups say the crackdown has led to criminal prosecutions and possible prison sentences for at least 23 people on the “false information” charge, with over 500 others facing misdemeanor charges of disparaging the military that have either led to hefty fines or are expected to result in them.
“This is a large amount, an unprecedentedly large amount” of cases, said Damir Gainutdinov, head of the Net Freedoms legal aid group focusing on free speech cases, in an interview with The Associated Press.
The Kremlin has sought to control the narrative of the war from the moment its troops rolled into Ukraine. It dubbed the attack a “special military operation” and increased the pressure on independent Russian media that called it a “war” or an “invasion,” blocking access to many news sites whose coverage deviated from the official line.
Sweeping arrests stifled antiwar protests, turning them from a daily event in large cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg into rare occurrences barely attracting any attention.
Still, reports of police detaining single picketers in different Russian cities come in almost daily.
Even seemingly benign actions have led to arrests.
A man was detained in Moscow after standing next to a World War II monument that says “Kyiv” for the city’s heroic stand against Nazi Germany and holding a copy of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” Another was reportedly detained for holding up a package of sliced ham from the meat producer Miratorg, with the second half of the name crossed off so it read: “Mir” — “peace” in Russian.
A law against spreading “fake news” about the war or disparaging the military was passed by parliament in one day and took force immediately, effectively exposing anyone critical of the conflict to fines and prison sentences.
The first publicly known criminal cases over “fakes” targeted public figures like Veronika Belotserkovskaya, a Russian-language cookbook author and popular blogger living abroad, and Alexander Nevzorov, a TV journalist, film director and former lawmaker.
Both were accused of posting “false information” about Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine on their widely followed social media pages -– something Moscow has vehemently denied, insisting that Russian forces only hit target military targets.
But then the scope of the crackdown expanded, with police seemingly grabbing anyone.
Former police officer Sergei Klokov was detained and put in pretrial detention after discussing the war with his friends on the phone. His wife told the Meduza news site that in casual conversation at home, Klokov, who was born in Irpin near Kyiv and whose father still lived in Ukraine when Russian troops rolled in, condemned the invasion.
Klokov was charged with spreading false information about the Russian armed forces and faces up to 10 years in prison.
St. Petersburg artist Sasha Skochilenko also faces up to 10 years in prison on the same charge: She replaced price tags in a grocery store with antiwar flyers. On Wednesday, a court ordered Skochilenko to pretrial detention for 1 1/2 months.
The Rev. Ioann Burdin, a Russian Orthodox priest in a village about 300 kilometers (about 185 miles) northeast of Moscow, was fined 35,000 rubles ($432) for “discrediting the Russian armed forces” after posting an antiwar statement on his church’s website and talking to a dozen congregants during a service about the pain he felt over people in Ukrain’e dying.
Burdin told AP his speech elicited mixed reactions. “One woman made a scene over the fact that I’m talking about (it) when she just came to pray, ” he said, adding that he believed it was one of those hearing the sermon who reported him to the police.
Marat Grachev, director of a shop that repairs Apple products in Moscow, similarly got in trouble when he displayed a link to an online petition titled, “No to war” on a screen in the shop. Many customers expressed support when they saw it, but one elderly man demanded it be taken down, threatening to report Grachev to the authorities.
Police soon showed up, and Grachev was charged with discrediting the military. A court ordered him to pay a fine of 100,000 rubles ($1,236).
Another court ruled against Moscow student Dmitry Reznikov for displaying a blank piece of paper with eight asterisks, which could have been interpreted as standing for “No to war” in Russian — a popular chant by protesters. The court found him guilty of discrediting the armed forces and fined him 50,000 rubles ($618) for holding the sign in central Moscow in a mid-March demonstration that lasted only seconds before police detained him.
“It’s the theater of the absurd,” his lawyer Oleg Filatchev told AP.
A St. Petersburg court last week fined Artur Dmitriev for a sign containing President Vladimir Putin’s quote – albeit with a few words omitted for brevity – from last year’s Victory Day parade marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
“The war brought about so many unbearable challenges, grief and tears, that it’s impossible to forget. There is no forgiveness and justification for those who once again are harboring aggressive plans,” Putin had said, according to the Kremlin website.
Dmitriev was fined 30,000 rubles for discrediting the Russian military. That prompted him to post Friday on Facebook: “The phrase by Vladimir Putin, and ergo he himself … are discrediting the goals of the Russian armed forces. From this moment on, (internet and media regulator) Roskomnadzor must block all speeches by Putin, and true patriots -– take down his portraits in their offices.”
Net Freedoms’ Gainutdinov said that anything about the military or Ukraine can make a person a target. Even wearing a hat with the blue and gold of the Ukrainian flag or a green ribbon, considered a symbol of peace, have been found to discredit the military, the lawyer added.
Reznikov, who is appealing his conviction for the poster with asterisks, said he found the crackdown scary. After his first misdemeanor conviction, a second strike would result in criminal prosecution and a possible prison term of up to three years.
Both Burdin and Grachev, who also are appealing, received donations that exceeded their fines.
“I realized how important it is, how valuable it is to receive support,” Grachev said.
Burdin said the publicity about his case spread his message far beyond the dozen or so people who initially heard his sermon — the opposite of what the authorities presumably intended by fining him.
“It’s impossible to call it anything other than the providence of God,” the priest added. “The words that I said reached a much larger number of people.”
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/kremlin-crackdown-silences-war-protests-from-benign-to-bold/ | 2022-04-15T00:47:30 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/kremlin-crackdown-silences-war-protests-from-benign-to-bold/ |
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises is facing renewed pressure from a hedge fund to speed up its transition to digital publishing and consider adding new digital-savvy leaders to its board after successfully fighting off a hostile takeover from a different hedge fund.
Lee’s largest shareholder, Cannell Capital, this week disclosed buying nearly 20,000 more of the company’s shares, giving it a 9.1% stake. The fund’s head, Carlo Cannell, said he thinks Lee needs new board members and executives with experience running a digital publishing business.
“I have some confidence in (Lee’s) management — not a lot,” Cannell said in an interview. “I have great or very little confidence in the board depending on which board member you are referring to.”
Cannell Capital has been prodding Lee to make changes for several years. That includes running a 2019 campaign encouraging shareholders to vote against three board members, including Lee Chairman Mary Junck, and announcing last September that it planned to vote against all incumbent Lee board members.
Cannell Capital and another hedge fund that owns a large stake in Lee, Praetorian Capital, also questioned the amount Lee spent on advisors as it was fending off a $24 per share takeover offer from another hedge fund, Alden Global Capital. But the investor who leads Praetorian, Harris Kupperman, has indicated that he is more comfortable with the company’s current direction.
Cannell estimated that Lee spent somewhere between $3 million and $5 million on advice from investment bankers and lawyers during the proxy fight with Alden — an amount he suggested might have been better spent on the company’s journalists. Kupperman agreed.
“I think the shareholders would have voted for the current guys, and they could have saved a few million dollars,” Kupperman said.
Lee publishes dozens of newspapers including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Buffalo News, Omaha World-Herald and nearly every other daily newspaper in Nebraska. The chain expanded significantly in 2020 when it bought all of Berkshire Hathaway’s newspapers and Warren Buffett endorsed Lee as the best long-term steward for the publications.
Lee executives have defended the progress they are making in the company’s digital transition. Lee representatives declined to respond to Cannell’s questions Thursday, but the company will update investors again next month when it releases its next earnings report.
Lee said last quarter that it had 450,000 digital-only subscribers and it expects that number to grow to 900,000 by 2026. The Davenport, Iowa-based company said its digital ad and subscription revenue grew 17%, although its profit in the three-month period that ended Dec. 26 declined nearly 20% to $13.2 million.
Kupperman said he is making a long-term investment with his 7.3% stake in the business and he thinks Lee is “on the right path in terms of growing the digital subscribers.”
The pressure on Lee isn’t likely to let up anytime soon, said Tim Franklin, senior associate dean of Northwestern University’s Medill journalism school and the former president of the Poynter Institute, the media think tank and nonprofit owner of the Tampa Bay Times. He noted hedge funds aren’t known for their patience in waiting for companies to grow their stock prices or profit margins.
But he said Lee — like all print media companies — is in the middle of the difficult transition from relying on print publication revenue to digital. The newspaper industry has been contracting for years as more readers shift online and companies cut back on print ads.
“All news organizations, including Lee, are trying to walk this balancing act of preserving as much of their print revenue as they possibly can at the same time that they’re trying to grow digital revenue,” Franklin said. “And that needs to be done with great delicacy because the fate of news organizations may hang in the balance of getting this right.”
Lee fought strongly against Alden’s takeover bid because the New York-based hedge fund has a reputation for imposing extreme cost cuts and deep layoffs at the newspapers it owns, which includes all the Tribune papers it bought last year.
Alden hasn’t said what its plans are for its 6.3% Lee stake after its takeover bid failed, and an Alden spokeswoman didn’t respond to questions this week. The two other hedge funds with larger stakes in Lee have said they believed the company is worth significantly more than what Alden offered.
Rick Edmonds, Poynter’s media analyst, said it appears that investors expected Alden to raise its bid or a bidding war to break out because Lee’s share price soared to $44.43 early this year before falling back to $25.51 Thursday. That might open the door for another potential buyer. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/news-publisher-lee-faces-renewed-pressure-from-hedge-funds/ | 2022-04-15T00:47:38 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/news-publisher-lee-faces-renewed-pressure-from-hedge-funds/ |
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Recreational marijuana sales in New Jersey for those 21 and older will begin April 21, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday.
“This is a historic step in our work to create a new cannabis industry,” said Murphy, who made the announcement via Twitter.
The news comes just three days after state regulators greenlighted permits for seven facilities, which already sell medical cannabis, to begin retailing recreational marijuana. It’s also about a year after the state’s regulatory commission started operating, and a year and a half after voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot question to allow recreational marijuana for people 21 and older.
New Jersey and 17 others states, along with the District of Columbia, have legalized recreational marijuana. Thirty-seven states, including New Jersey, have legalized medical marijuana.
New Jersey’s recreational sales are slated to begin ahead of New York, where sales are not expected to start until the end of the year, state officials have said.
Neighboring Pennsylvania has medical cannabis but not recreational. Some cities, including Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, have passed ordinances to decriminalize marijuana or make it a low law enforcement priority. Legislation to permit recreational marijuana in Delaware was defeated last month in the Legislature.
Three of the seven New Jersey facilities, known as alternative treatment centers, are in the northern part of the state. Three are in the south, and one is in its central.
To get approval, the centers agreed that the coming influx of recreational buyers won’t interrupt access for patients. The facilities said they would reserve parking spaces for patients as well as keep hours specifically for patients only.
There are about 130,000 medical marijuana patients in the state, with an estimated roughly 800,000 potential recreational consumers, and fewer than 800,000 estimated “tourism” consumers, according to the commission.
Ben Kovler, the CEO of Green Thumb Industries, which operates dispensaries in several states, is preparing for the start of recreational sales at facilities in Paterson and Bloomfield. Kovler said he expects a “tidal wave” of demand.
“We are witnessing the end of prohibition 2.0,” he said in an emailed statement.
The alternative treatment centers that already had medical cannabis retail sales are getting a head start in the recreational market, but regulators have attached strings to their advantage. The centers have to meet social equity standards, such as providing technical knowledge to new marijuana businesses, especially social equity applicants — those located in economically struggling parts of the state or people who have had cannabis-related offenses.
“We remain committed to social equity,” Cannabis Regulatory Commission Chair Dianna Houenou said in a statement. “We promised to build this market on the pillars of social equity and safety. Ultimately, we hope to see businesses and a workforce that reflect the diversity of the state.”
How much tax revenue New Jersey gets from recreational marijuana isn’t clear. Murphy’s fiscal year 2023 budget, which is pending before the Democrat-led Legislature, estimates revenues of just $19 million in a nearly $49 billion budget. In 2019, as legalization of recreational marijuana was still just pending before voters, he had estimated about $60 million in revenue.
Legislation governing the recreational market calls for the 6.625% sales tax to apply, with 70% of the proceeds going to areas disproportionately affected by marijuana-related arrests. Black residents were likelier — up to three times as much — to face marijuana charges than white residents. Towns can also levy a tax of up to 2%. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/nj-to-start-recreational-marijuana-sales-april-21/ | 2022-04-15T00:47:45 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/nj-to-start-recreational-marijuana-sales-april-21/ |
Pfizer said Thursday it wants to expand its COVID-19 booster shots to healthy elementary-age kids.
U.S. health authorities already urge everyone 12 and older to get one booster dose for the best protection against the newest variants — and recently gave the option of a second booster to those 50 and older.
Now Pfizer says new data shows healthy 5- to 11-year-olds could benefit from another kid-sized shot.
In a small study, 140 youngsters who’d already gotten two shots were given a booster six months later, and researchers found the extra shot generally revved up their immune response. But a closer look at 30 of the children found a 36-fold increase in virus-fighting antibodies, levels high enough to fight the super-contagious omicron variant, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said in a press release.
The data has not been published or vetted by independent experts.
Pfizer tested the kid booster while omicron was surging this winter. While COVID-19 cases now are at much lower levels in the U.S., in recent weeks an even more contagious version of omicron, called BA.2, has become the dominant type locally and around the world.
In the coming days, the companies plan to ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize a booster for healthy 5- to 11-year-olds. They also plan to share the data with European and other regulators.
Vaccinations are generally less effective against the omicron variant than earlier versions of the coronavirus — but they do still offer strong protection against severe disease. While COVID-19 is a bigger threat to adults, youngsters can get seriously ill. But regulators will have to decide if healthy elementary-age kids really need a booster, and if so, when.
The Pfizer shots are the only vaccine available to U.S. children. Those ages 5 to 11 receive one-third of the dose given to everyone 12 and older. Just over a quarter in the younger age group have gotten two doses since vaccination opened to them in November, shortly before omicron struck.
The U.S. hasn’t yet allowed vaccinations for children under 5. But certain 5- to 11-year-olds — those with severely weakened immune systems — already are supposed to get three doses, to give that high-risk group a better chance of responding.
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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. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/pfizer-to-seek-covid-booster-for-healthy-5-to-11-year-olds/ | 2022-04-15T00:47:53 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/pfizer-to-seek-covid-booster-for-healthy-5-to-11-year-olds/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Retail sales rose modestly in March, but higher prices for food, gasoline and other basics took a big share of consumers’ wallets.
Retail sales increased 0.5% after registering a revised 0.8% increase from January to February, reported the U.S. Commerce Department Thursday. Spending has been fueled by wage gains, solid hiring and more money in banking accounts. January’s increase of 4.9% was the biggest jump in spending since March 2021, when American households received a final federal stimulus check of $1,400. But soaring prices on everything, particularly at the gas pump, are making shoppers choosier about how they spend their money.
Excluding an 8.9% increase at gas stations, overall retail sales slipped 0.3% last month.
Overall, the retail sales picture was mixed, but shoppers still showed resilience in spending, economists said. Business at general merchandise stores was up 5.4%, while sales at clothing stores rose 2.6%. Restaurants had a 1% increase. But online sales dropped 6.4%, while auto sales were down 1.9% as auto companies faced a vehicle shortage. Major retailers will be issuing quarterly earnings reports next month, which will give a fuller picture of the state of the consumer.
“They are spending selectively this month, and the gasoline price spike from the Russian-Ukraine war was where most of the expenditures were made,” said Christopher S. Rupkey, chief economist at research firm FWDBONDS LLC.
But he added, “Inflation is not going away, but it will likely stop getting worse and that means less of a headwind for spending.”
Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail, agreed that shoppers are nervous about inflation. He added that online purchases are taking a hit because he believes they’re more discretionary and easy to cut back. He also thinks the pullback online could be a consequence of shoppers assessing higher delivery charges.
The retail report covers only about a third of overall consumer spending and doesn’t include services such as haircuts, hotel stays and plane tickets, areas that have been rebounding from the depths of the pandemic.
Retailers are closely monitoring Russia’s war with Ukraine and how it could weigh on shoppers’ confidence but also worsen inflation. The conflict has already limited supplies of wheat, vegetable oils, and electronic components like chips. It’s pushed up fertilizer prices that were already high, made scarce supplies even harder to find and squeezed farmers, especially those in the developing world. In addition to the Russian invasion, rising COVID-19 cases and renewed restrictions in China could worsen supply chain issues.
The Labor Department said Tuesday that its consumer price index jumped 8.5% in March from 12 months earlier, the sharpest year-over-year increase since 1981. Prices have been pushed up by bottlenecked supply chains, robust consumer demand and disruptions to global food and energy markets worsened by the war. From February to March, inflation rose 1.2%, the biggest month-to-month jump since 2005. Gasoline prices drove more than half that increase.
According to AAA, the average price of a gallon of gasoline — $4.07 — is up 42% from a year ago, though it’s dipped in the past couple of weeks.
The March inflation numbers were the first to fully capture the surge in gasoline prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. Moscow’s attacks have triggered far-reaching Western sanctions against the Russian economy.
The acceleration of inflation is happening in an otherwise strong economy. In March, employers added a robust 431,000 jobs — the 11th straight month in which they’ve added at least 400,000. For 2021, they added 6.7 million jobs, the most in any year on record. In addition, job openings are near record highs, layoffs are at their lowest point since 1968 and the unemployment rate is just above a half-century low.
Matt Shay, CEO of National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, said that “consumers are adapting and shopping smarter for themselves and their families.” He believes the strength of the consumer can carry the economy through this economic uncertainty if policy makers implement measured policies and “don’t overreact to current conditions.”
NRF said the challenge for the Federal Reserve is to cool off demand without pushing the economy into a dramatic slowdown.
To protect themselves against any consumer spending downturn, retailers are cutting back on expenses, while taking a measured approach to ordering merchandise as well as adding surcharges.
Amazon announced on Wednesday that it will add a 5% “ fuel and inflation surcharge ” to fees it charges third-party sellers who use the e-commerce giant’s fulfillment services. The Seattle-based company said on its website that the added fees, which take effect April 28, are “subject to change” and will apply to both apparel and non-apparel items.
Gary Friedman, CEO of upscale furniture chain RH, formerly known as Restoration Hardware, told analysts in late March that the company has seen consumer demand weakening in the company’s first quarter, which started in late January, that coincided with Russia’s war with Ukraine.
“I don’t think anybody really understands how high prices are going to go everywhere, in restaurants, in cars, in everything,” Friedman said. “If you’re going into a very difficult unpredictable time, you just got to be super flexible. You’ve got to be able to improvise, adapt, overcome, and kind of be ready for anything.”
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AP Economics Writer Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report.
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Follow Anne D’Innocenzio: http://twitter.com/ADInnocenzio | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/retail-sales-up-0-5-in-march-despite-soaring-inflation/ | 2022-04-15T00:48:00 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/retail-sales-up-0-5-in-march-despite-soaring-inflation/ |
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s central bank on Thursday kept its main interest rate unchanged for a fourth month even as surging inflation has hit a 20-year high and eroded people’s purchasing power.
In a statement following a monetary policy committee meeting, the bank said it was keeping its policy rate “constant” at 14%.
The decision was in line with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s opposition to high borrowing costs in a bid to boost growth, investment and exports. The Turkish leader insists that raising interest rates cause inflation — a position that contradicts established economic thinking.
Turkey’s central bank has cut rates by 5 percentage points since September despite high inflation, then has paused them since January. The series of rate cuts last year triggered a currency crisis and rising consumer pricesthat have been aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and soaring energy costs.
Yearly inflation hit 61.14% in March, deepening the squeeze on households that were already struggling to purchase basic goods. The Turkish lira lost 44% of its value against the U.S. dollar last year.
In an effort to soften the blow on households, the government has implemented tax cuts on basic goods and has adjusted electricity tariffs.
In comparison, the United States, United Kingdom and the 19 countries that use the euro currency have seen decades-high levels of inflation — 8.5%, 7% and 7.5%, respectively — but are nowhere close to Turkey’s eye-watering rate. Central banks in the U.S. and U.K. have raised interest rates to combat inflation. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/turkeys-central-bank-keeps-rate-steady-amid-high-inflation/ | 2022-04-15T00:48:14 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/turkeys-central-bank-keeps-rate-steady-amid-high-inflation/ |
LONDON (AP) — British authorities have authorized a coronavirus vaccine for adults made by French drugmaker Valneva, despite the government’s decision last year to cancel an order for at least 100 million doses.
The U.K. is the first country to authorize Valneva’s vaccine, which is also under review by the European Medicines Agency. Britain’s medicines regulator said Thursday that the two-dose vaccine is intended for adults ages 18 to 50, with the second dose given about a month after the first.
The Valneva vaccine is made with the decades-old technology used to manufacture shots for flu and polio. It is the sixth COVID-19 vaccine the U.K. has cleared and the only one that utilizes a “killed” virus; scientists grow the coronavirus in a lab and then inactivate the virus so it cannot replicate or infect cells.
The U.K. government scrapped an agreementwith Valneva in September to purchase at least 100 million doses, saying at the time that British regulators probably would not cleared the shot. Valneva said Britain canceled the deal because of supply concerns.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said in September that he couldn’t go into details because of commercial issues but that the deal was spiked because “it was also clear to us that the vaccine in question that the company was developing would not get approval.”
Britain was an early backer of the Valneva vaccine, agreeing to invest millions of pounds in a production facility in Scotland. As part of the contract, the U.K. had agreed to buy 100 million doses with options for another 90 million.
Even without the Valneva vaccine, the government has acquired more than enough doses to fully vaccinate everyone in the country twice. To date, nearly 60% of the British population has received three doses.
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Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/uk-clears-6th-covid-shot-despite-canceling-deal-for-doses/ | 2022-04-15T00:48:21 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/uk-clears-6th-covid-shot-despite-canceling-deal-for-doses/ |
UnitedHealth Group delivered a better-than-expected first quarter and raised its 2022 forecast, as growth in Medicare Advantage and care delivery once again helped the health care giant.
The nation’s largest health insurance provider said Thursday that enrollment in its Medicare Advantage plans grew nearly 9% to about 6.9 million people, and the company also booked growth in other government-funded coverage. Its larger commercial enrollment stayed nearly flat.
UnitedHealth is the biggest provider of Medicare Advantage plans, which are privately run versions of the federally funded Medicare program.
The company runs UnitedHealthcare, a health insurance business that covers more than 50 million people mostly in the United States. It also has been squeezing more growth out of its Optum segment, which runs one of the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit managers and a growing number of clinics and urgent care and surgery centers.
First-quarter operating earnings, which don’t count interest expense and taxes, slid for the company’s health insurance business but jumped almost 20% to $3.2 billion for Optum compared to last year.
UnitedHealth said the revenue it drew per customer from its care-providing Optum Health business grew by 33% as the company expanded deeper into value-based care. That involves reimbursing doctors based more on the patient’s health instead of for each service provided.
UnitedHealth and competitors like the drugstore chains CVS Health and Walgreens are all trying to become regular sources of care for more customers, especially those with Medicare Advantage plans.
The idea is that regular care will keep patients with chronic health problems like diabetes healthy and out of expensive hospitals. It’s an approach gaining favor with bill payers like insurers and employers.
Overall, UnitedHealth earnings grew more than 3% to $5.03 billion in the first quarter, even though the company’s largest expense, medical costs, climbed 17%.
Company leaders told analysts Thursday morning that UnitedHealth started the quarter with about 40,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations in January. That marked the highest total of any month since the pandemic started more than two years ago.
That total then dwindled to about 2,000 hospitalizations by March, as the omicron surge of virus faded.
UnitedHealth’s adjusted results totaled $5.49 per share in the first quarter, and total revenue jumped more than 14% to $80.1 billion.
Analysts expected, on average, earnings of $5.36 per share on $78.73 billion in revenue in the second quarter, according to FactSet.
For the full year, UnitedHealth now expects adjusted earnings of $21.20 to $21.70 per share. That’s an increase of 10 cents on both ends of the range from a forecast it laid out late last year.
FactSet says analysts expect earnings of $21.61 per share for 2022.
UnitedHealth’s forecast hike was conservative compared to how much the company beat first-quarter expectations, Jefferies analyst David Windley said in a research note. But he added that this was expected given the unknown nature of the pandemic.
Shares of Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group Inc. climbed slightly to $538.09 in Thursday afternoon trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, of which UnitedHealth is a component, also rose slightly.
UnitedHealth’s share price has more than doubled over the past couple years.
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Follow Tom Murphy on Twitter. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/unitedhealth-tops-q1-forecasts-raises-2022-outlook/ | 2022-04-15T00:48:29 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/unitedhealth-tops-q1-forecasts-raises-2022-outlook/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of people seeking unemployment benefits ticked up last week but remained at a historically low level, reflecting a robust U.S. labor market with near record-high job openings and few layoffs.
Jobless claims rose by 18,000 to 185,000, the Labor Department said Thursday, after nearly touching the lowest level since 1968 in the previous week. The four-week average of claims, which levels out week-to-week ups and downs, edged up from 170,000 to 172,000.
“Claims are still at very low levels, underscoring historically tight labor market conditions,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “We expect initial claims to remain below (200,000) in the weeks ahead, as employers, who continue to struggle to attract and retain workers, will keep layoffs to a minimum.”
Two years after the coronavirus pandemic sent the economy into a brief but devastating recession, American workers are enjoying extraordinary job security. Weekly applications for unemployment aid, a proxy for layoffs, have remained consistently below the pre-pandemic level of 225,000.
Last year, employers added a record 6.7 million jobs, and they’ve added an average of 560,000 more each month so far in 2022. The unemployment rate, which soared to 14.7% in April 2020 in the depths of the COVID-19 recession, is now just 3.6%, barely above the lowest point in 50 years. And there is a record proportion of 1.7 job openings for every unemployed American.
The resilience of the job market and the overall U.S. economy is striking in light of a still-destructive pandemic, the economic consequences of Russia’s war against Ukraine and the highest consumer inflation in 40 years.
Fewer than 1.48 million Americans were collecting traditional unemployment benefits in the week of April 2. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/us-jobless-claims-rise-but-remain-near-a-half-century-low/ | 2022-04-15T00:48:36 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/us-jobless-claims-rise-but-remain-near-a-half-century-low/ |
WASHINGTON (AP) — Long-term U.S. mortgage rates continued to climb this week as the key 30-year loan rate reached 5% for the first time in more than a decade amid persistent high inflation.
The average 5% rate on the 30-year mortgage was up from 4.72% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday. The average rates in recent months have been showing the fastest pace of increases since 1994. By contrast, a year ago the 30-year rate stood at 3.04%.
The average rate on 15-year, fixed-rate mortgages, popular among those refinancing their homes, jumped to 4.17% from 3.91% last week.
With inflation at a four-decade high, rising mortgage rates, elevated home prices and tight supply of homes available for sale, the goal of homeownership has become the most expensive in a generation, Freddie Mac says. And this comes as the spring homebuying season begins.
Home prices are up about 15% over the past year and as much as 30% in some cities. Available homes had been in short supply even before the coronavirus pandemic started just over two years ago.
A government report Wednesday showed that the surging cost of energy pushed up wholesale prices a record 11.2% last month from a year earlier — another sign that inflationary pressure is widespread in the U.S. economy. Energy prices, which soared worldwide after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, were up 36.7% from March 2021. The wholesale inflation report was issued a day after the Labor Department disclosed that consumer prices in March jumped 8.5% from a year earlier, the fastest annual clip since December 1981. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/us-long-term-mortgage-rates-rise-30-year-loan-reaches-5/ | 2022-04-15T00:48:43 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/business/us-long-term-mortgage-rates-rise-30-year-loan-reaches-5/ |
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Rights activists and others are urging Rwandan authorities to free the man who inspired the film “Hotel Rwanda,” saying his health is failing after an appeals court upheld his 25-year jail term for terror offenses.
Paul Rusesabagina, who holds Belgian citizenship and U.S. residency, is credited with sheltering a group of ethnic Tutsi during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. He was convicted in September on charges including membership in a terrorist group, murder and abduction.
Rusesabagina is a well-known critic of Rwandan President Paul Kagame and lived in exile in the U.S.
Some activists who spoke Wednesday during an online event in support of Rusesabagina said the U.S. could do more to free the 67-year-old recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. They also appealed to the compassion of Rwandan authorities.
“I am asking President Kagame that you extend the grace that you’ve shown to me and my family to Paul and his family now,” said Don Cheadle, appealing to Rwanda’s leader. “Please lead with mercy.”
Cheadle, who played Rusesabagina in the 2004 Hollywood movie, said the former hotel manager had “more than given his pound of flesh” after many months in custody.
Rusesabagina is credited with saving more than 1,000 people by sheltering them at the hotel he managed during the genocide, in which more than 800,000 Tutsi and Hutu who tried to protect them were killed.
He left Rwanda in 1996.
The criminal case against Rusesabagina attracted international attention because of his high profile, the circumstances surrounding his arrest in 2020, and his limited access to an independent legal team. Throughout his trial Rusesabagina maintained that he was not guilty and asserted that he didn’t expect to get justice.
His conviction came more than a year after he disappeared during a visit to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. He appeared days later in Rwanda in handcuffs, accused of supporting the armed wing of his opposition political platform, the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change.
The armed group claimed some responsibility for attacks in 2018 and 2019 that killed nine people in southern Rwanda. Rusesabagina testified at trial that he helped to form the armed group to help refugees but said he never supported violence.
Rusesabagina’s family and supporters insist his arrest was in response to his criticism of Kagame over alleged rights abuses. Kagame’s government has repeatedly denied targeting dissenting voices with arrests and extrajudicial killings.
Terry George, who directed “Hotel Rwanda,” said his film became “the center of a disinformation campaign” as Rusesabagina’s stature in the Rwandan diaspora grew with his criticism of Rwandan authorities.
“He turned to me and thanked me for making the film,” George said of Kagame, recalling a screening of the film in Kigali, the Rwandan capital. “The film was universally received in Rwanda at the time.”
Rwandan officials have since dismissed Rusesabagina as a “manufactured” hero.
Kagame’s Rwanda “is one of the world’s worst perpetrators of transnational repression,” said Nicole Bibbins Sedaca of the Freedom House group. ”We have to hold authoritarian regimes to account when they use tools like transnational repression, when they take political prisoners simply to target and silence their critics.”
Kate Gibson, a member of Rusesabagina’s legal team, said her client didn’t get a just trial. She also charged Wednesday that members of Rusesabagina’s legal team in Rwanda “have been subjected to unthinkable indignities over and over again.” She gave no details.
A Rwandan appeals court on April 4 upheld Rusesabagina’s 25-year jail sentence, rejecting prosecutors’ efforts to have him imprisoned for life.
Rusesabagina’s health has worsened, according to his family.
“He is sick. He is ill,” Anaise Kanimba said of her father. “We probably believe he had a stroke and we don’t have time. We don’t have time, and that’s why we need your help. We need the help of the international community. We need the help of the world.” | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/activists-urge-release-of-hotel-rwanda-hero-rusesabagina/ | 2022-04-15T00:48:51 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/activists-urge-release-of-hotel-rwanda-hero-rusesabagina/ |
BEIJING (AP) — Anti-virus controls that have shut down some of China’s biggest cities and fueled public irritation are spreading as infections rise, hurting a weak economy and prompting warnings of possible global shockwaves.
Shanghai is easing rules that confined most of its 25 million people to their homes after complaints they had trouble getting food. But most of its businesses still are closed. Access to Guangzhou, an industrial center of 19 million people near Hong Kong, was suspended this week. Other cities are cutting off access or closing factories and schools.
Spring planting by Chinese farmers who feed 1.4 billion people might be disrupted, Nomura economists warned Thursday. That could boost demand for imported wheat and other food, pushing up already high global prices.
The closures are an embarrassment to the ruling Communist Party and a setback for official efforts to shore up slumping growth in the world’s second-largest economy. They come during a sensitive year when President Xi Jinping is expected to try to break with tradition and award himself a third five-year term as leader.
Beijing has promised to reduce the human and economic cost of its “zero-COVID” strategy, but Xi on Wednesday ruled out joining the United States and other governments that are dropping restrictions and trying to live with the virus.
“Prevention and control work cannot be relaxed,” Xi said, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. “Persistence is victory.”
The risk that China might tumble into recession is increasing, Ting Lu, Jing Wang and Harrison Zhang of Nomura warned in a report.
“The logistics crunch is worsening,” they said. “The markets should also be concerned about the delayed spring planting of grain in China.”
The government reported 29,411 new cases Thursday, all but 3,020 with no symptoms. Shanghai accounted for 95% of that total, or 27,719 cases. All but 2,573 had no symptoms.
A health official warned Wednesday that Shanghai didn’t have the virus under control despite its easing restrictions.
Some 6.6 million people were allowed to leave their homes in areas that had no new cases for at least a week. But at least 15 million others still are barred from going outdoors.
Most people have obeyed despite grumbling about shortages of food, medicine and access to elderly relatives who need help. But videos on the popular Sina Weibo social media service show some trading punches with police.
Grape Chen, a data analyst in Shanghai, said she was panicking about getting medicines for her father, who is recovering from a stroke. She called police after getting no response from an official hotline but was told quarantine rules bar officers from helping.
“We are willing to cooperate with the country,” Chen said. “But we also hope that our lives can be respected.”
The city government of Suzhou, a center for smartphone manufacturing and other high-tech industry west of Shanghai, told its 18 million people to stay home when possible.
Taiyuan, a blue-collar city of 4 million in central China, suspended inter-city bus service, according to the official China News Service. Ningde in the southeast barred residents from leaving.
A restaurant cook in Taiyuan said his family has been confined to their apartment compound since April 3 after cases were found in neighboring compounds.
“Our lives will be seriously affected if the restrictions last long,” said the cook, who would give only his surname, Chen.
“My wife and I are earning nothing,” Chen said. “We have three children to support.”
All but 13 of China’s 100 biggest cities by economic output are under some form of restrictions, according to Gavekal Dragonomics, a research firm.
“The intensity is increasing,” Gavekal said in a report this week.
The volume of cargo handled by the Shanghai port, the world’s busiest, has fallen 40%, according to an estimate by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China. Automakers have suspended production due to disruption in deliveries of supplies.
Restrictions on areas that produce the world’s smartphones, consumer electronics and other goods are prompting forecasters to cut expectations for this year’s economic growth to as low as 5%, down sharply from last year’s 8.1% expansion.
The ruling party’s target is 5.5%. Growth slid to 4% over a year earlier in the final quarter of 2021 after tighter official controls on debt triggered a collapse in home sales and construction, industries that support millions of jobs.
Even before the latest shutdowns, the ruling party was promising tax refunds and other help for entrepreneurs who generate wealth and jobs.
Premier Li Keqiang, the No. 2 leader and top economic official, called this week for “quicker rollout” of aid for businesses that face a “key juncture for survival,” China News Service reported.
Under a strategy dubbed “dynamic clearing,” authorities are trying to use more targeted measures to isolate neighborhoods instead of whole cities with populations bigger than some countries. But some local leaders are imposing more sweeping controls.
Shanghai leaders were criticized for trying to minimize economic damage by ordering testing but no shutdown once cases were found last month. A citywide shutdown was ordered with only a few hours’ warning after case numbers soared.
That was in contrast to Shenzhen, a tech and finance center of 17.5 million people near Hong Kong that closed the city March 13 after an outbreak and ordered mass testing. It reopened a week later and business returned to normal.
Guangzhou has imitated Shenzhen. Most access to the city of 19 million was suspended Monday and mass testing ordered after 27 infections were found.
Li Guanyu, a 31-year-old woman in Guangzhou, said residents can leave her apartment compound only once every other day to buy food but stores are well-stocked.
“This happened a bit suddenly,” said Li. “Maybe the Shanghai situation is so bad that Guangzhou started mass testing and lockdowns as soon as cases were discovered.”
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AP researchers Yu Bing in Beijing and Chen Si in Shanghai and video producer Olivia Zhang in Beijing contributed. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/anti-virus-shutdowns-in-china-spread-as-infections-rise/ | 2022-04-15T00:49:00 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/anti-virus-shutdowns-in-china-spread-as-infections-rise/ |
BEIJING (AP) — China on Thursday said it would reject “any pressure or coercion” over its relationship with Russia, in response to a call from U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen for Beijing to use its “special relationship with Russia” to persuade Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian defended China’s position on the war, saying it had “made considerable efforts to de-escalate the situation, defuse the crisis and rebuild peace.”
“China is playing a constructive role in the Ukraine issue,” Zhao told reporters at a daily briefing.
China has refused to condemn theinvasion of Ukraine by strategic partner Russia, or even refer to the conflict as a war in deference to Moscow, which uses the term “special military operation.”
“We oppose unfounded accusations and suspicions against China, nor will we accept any pressure or coercion,” Zhao said. “Time will tell that China’s claims are on the right side of history.”
China has also amplified Russian propaganda about the war, including unsupported claims that the U.S. and Ukraine have been developing biological weapons.
It has staunchly opposed economic sanctions against Russia and has abstained or sided with Moscow in U.N. votes following the beginning of the war on Feb. 24, just weeks after Russian leader Vladimir Putin met with China’s Xi Jinping in Beijing.
In a speech Wednesday,Yellen said Beijing “cannot expect the global community to respect its appeals to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity in the future if it does not respect these principles now.”
“The world’s attitude towards China and its willingness to embrace further economic integration may well be affected by China’s reaction to our call for resolute action on Russia,” she said.
Yellen’s speech at the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank, came a week before the world’s finance ministers and central bank governors convene in Washington for the International Monetary Fund-World Bank Group Spring Meetings.Her direct appeal to China underscores an increasing frustration that the United States and its allies have with a country that has only deepened its ties with Russia since the invasion of Ukraine.
Making no mention of Russia’s aggression, Zhao reiterated China’s stance that it “maintains that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries should be respected and safeguarded,” and that “Ukraine’s sovereignty and security should be preserved, and Russia’s legitimate security concerns should also be respected.” | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/china-rejects-pressure-or-coercion-over-russia-relations/ | 2022-04-15T00:49:07 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/china-rejects-pressure-or-coercion-over-russia-relations/ |
MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Agricultural workers in the east and Horn of Africa are preparing for their most severe drought in forty years, as authorities warn that higher temperatures and less than normal rainfall was recorded by weather agencies in March and April this year.
The Intergovernmental Authority on Development said rains will likely fail for a fourth consecutive year, triggering fears of increased cases of malnutrition, threats to livelihoods and severe risks for 29 million people in the region. Meteorologists are linking the unfolding drought to human-caused climate change which is leading to increased warming in the Indian Ocean, causing more frequent cyclones.
Like most of Africa, the east and the Horn’s economic mainstay is agriculture, which is rain-fed, making it vulnerable to extreme weather events. Mama Charity Kimaru, who practices mixed farming by rearing livestock and planting cereals and vegetables in her 30-acre farm in Nyandarua, some 80 miles (126 kilometers) north of Nairobi, is among the farmers who are preparing for the worst outcomes. Kimaru says that increased temperatures recorded over the past few months have denied her livestock pasture and the crops she had planted in anticipation of the long rains season have failed.
The weather agency previously said in February that the region should prepare for a “wetter than average” long rains season, which normally pours from March to May, but the agency revised its previous forecasts this week.
“The March, April, May rains are crucial for the region and, sadly, we are looking at not just three, but potentially four consecutive failed seasons,” Workneh Gebeyehu, the executive secretary of the intergovernmental agency, said. “This, coupled with other stress factors such as conflicts in both our region and Europe, the impact of COVID-19, and macro-economic challenges, has led to acute levels of food insecurity across the greater Horn of Africa.”
Below average rainfall for 2022 are likely to prolong the already extremely dry conditions which have not been experienced to this degree since 1981. Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia — which will be severely impacted by the reduced rains — are already in the midst of a dire famine.
Lack of rainfall during the short rains season late last year and the ongoing drought during the current long rains season has already led to crop failures and livestock deaths, causing high food prices and intercommunal conflicts over scarce pasture and dwindling water resources.
“Whenever we have intense cyclones in the Southwest Indian Ocean, we always prepare for a long drought season in eastern and the Horn regions,” Evans Mukolwe, the former science director at the U.N., said. “This is because the cyclones suck much of the moisture depriving the region of the much-needed precipitation. It has been the pattern for decades.”
Aid organizations are already concerned about how worsening climate change impacts will affect the region in future decades.
“This is not the Horn’s first drought, nor is it likely to be its last,” said Sean Granville-Ross, the regional director for Africa for the aid agency Mercy Corps. “As the climate emergency worsens, droughts will become more frequent and severe. People affected by climate change cannot wait for one crisis to end before preparing for the next.”
“The international response must prioritize immediate needs while allocating additional resources to long-term, smart interventions that will result in long-term change and assist communities in becoming more drought-resistant.”
The U.N. humanitarian office warned last week that the current drought “risks becoming one of the worst climate induced emergencies in recent history in the Horn of Africa.” It also said that the $1.5 billion drought response appeal required to assist some 5.5 million people in Somali remains seriously underfunded.
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/east-and-horn-of-africa-prep-for-worst-drought-in-decades/ | 2022-04-15T00:49:15 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/east-and-horn-of-africa-prep-for-worst-drought-in-decades/ |
SANTA TECLA, El Salvador (AP) — A day after the bloodletting — 62 gang killings that convulsed El Salvador — the crackdown began.
Before dawn on Sunday, March 27, just hours after congress approved a state of emergency, heavily armed police and soldiers entered the packed, gang-controlled neighborhood of San Jose El Pino.
Freed from having to explain an arrest or grant access to a lawyer, they went door to door, dragging out young men. They established a perimeter with barbed wire barricades where they controlled who entered and who left, demanding identification and searching everyone.
President Nayib Bukele has responded to the surge in gang killings with mass arrests in poor neighborhoods like San Jose El Pino, each day posting the growing arrest total and photos of tattooed men. The highly publicized roundups are not the result of police investigations into the murders in late March, but propel a tough-on-crime narrative that critics are calling “punitive populism.”
In just over two weeks, more than 10,000 alleged gang members have been arrested — a huge number for a small country of 6.5 million people. They can be held for 15 days without charges, one of the measures decried by international human rights groups and the U.S. government.
“They came in with everything,” said 36-year-old Héctor Fernandez on his way to his factory job on a recent morning. “Whoever didn’t open the door, they knocked it down. They were looking for the guys. I think they took almost all of them, but others managed to get out.”
Critics say the mass arrests are more show than substance. They note that amid all of the chest-thumping rhetoric and slickly produced videos of roughly handled prisoners, authorities are not talking about the investigations or arrests of those suspected of actual involvement in the March 26 killings. But many Salvadorans are pleased to see action against gangs that have long-terrorized their communities.
“It’s for everyone’s safety,” Fernandez said, nervously looking around to see if anyone was watching. He said he minds his own business and hasn’t had trouble with the Mara Salvatrucha, the gang that controls his neighborhood. “I leave, (police and soldiers) search me. I go to work, come back in the evening, they search me. I pass and go home.”
Bukele, a highly popular master of social media, has filled his platforms with photos of handcuffed and bloodied gang members, orders to his security cabinet and attaboys from his supporters. At the same time, he has lashed out at human rights organizations and international agencies critical of some measures.
“If we don’t rid our country of this cancer now, then when will we ever do it?” Bukele said to a parade ground of soldiers — and the world — in a video he released last week. “We will go and find them wherever they are. Regardless of who protests. Regardless of how angry the international community gets.”
Gangs control swaths of territory through brutality and fear. They’ve driven thousands to emigrate to save their own lives or the lives of their children who are forcibly recruited. Their power is strongest in El Salvador’s poorest neighborhoods where the state has long been absent. They are a drain on the economy, extorting money from even the lowest earners and forcing businesses that can’t or won’t pay to close.
The wave of violence at the end of March — it stretched across the country and its victims included a municipal maintenance worker, a taxi driver, a farmer– demanded a government response. Bukele chose a state of emergency provided for in the constitution.
But El Salvador’s security forces and justice system had the legal tools to investigate and prosecute those involved in the killings without the suspension of fundamental rights, critics say. What they did not have was the carte blanche that has yielded the media spectacle of the past two weeks, starring Bukele as savior-in-chief.
“There are a lot of doubts about whether the measures that Bukele’s government has taken to confront the wave of murders are really aimed at investigating the crimes and responding to the victims,” said Leonor Arteaga, a Salvadoran who is program director at the Due Process of Law Foundation in Washington.
Instead, she said, it seems Bukele is using the situation “to advance his authoritarian plans and in his intention to control all critical voices and squash any dissident.”
Bukele’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Abraham Ábrego, director of the strategic litigation program at Cristosal, a non-governmental organization in El Salvador, said his group was working to document arbitrary arrests and other abuses.
Bukele has shown himself to be masterful at building and controlling narratives, he said. “There is a term that we use called ‘punitive populism,’ which is using the state’s powers of criminal persecution to show strength, to show toughness,” Ábrego said.
On Tuesday, the head of a national police union said some high-ranking police officials had pressured officers to make false statements justifying some arrests to meet arrest quotas, including in a small remote town with no gang presence.
Omar Serrano, vice rector at Central American University José Simeón Cañas, said that like previous administrations, the president has opted for a more militarized approach to dealing with the gangs.
“This is not going to solve the country’s serious problems,” Serrano said. The government line is that the problem of the gangs is one of national security, “when deep down it is a social problem.”
After the congress approved the state of emergency, Bukele returned to lawmakers multiple times for changes to the country’s criminal code. Among other things, they lengthened sentences, reduced the age of criminal responsibility to 12 and established prison sentences of 10 to 15 years for journalists who disseminate gang messages that could cause anxiety or panic among the people.
He had already ordered his head of prisons to keep all gang members confined to their cells 24 hours a day and to reduce their meals to twice daily. “Message for the gangs: because of your actions, now your ‘homeboys’ will not be able to see a ray of sunlight,” Bukele wrote on Twitter.
Human Rights Watch, the international advocacy organization that Bukele has taken to mocking as “Homeboys Rights Watch,” said the government had overreached.
“The Salvadoran government should adopt rights-respecting measures to protect people from heinous gang violence, dismantle these groups, and bring those responsible for crimes to justice,” said Juan Pappier, senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Instead, Bukele’s government has enacted overbroad, harshly punitive laws that undermine the fundamental rights of all Salvadorans.”
But Salvadorans seem to be ambivalent about the crackdown. In a leafy park in front of Santa Tecla’s municipal market and short distance from San Jose El Pino, Adela Maravilla Ceballos walked with her groceries on a recent morning.
“It’s good what they’re doing, they took long enough,” the 52-year-old homemaker said. “These guys don’t understand anything else. Who is going to be against security? Only the criminals.”
Still, some of the images had bothered her. Her two sons went to the United States years ago looking for better opportunities.
“I am a mother and sometimes it hurts me when they grab them and hit them and I see how they cry,” she said.
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Sherman reported from Mexico City. AP writer E. Eduardo Castillo in Mexico City contributed to this report. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/el-salvador-presidents-mass-arrests-punitive-populism/ | 2022-04-15T00:49:22 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/el-salvador-presidents-mass-arrests-punitive-populism/ |
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Heavy rains and flooding have killed at least 341 people in South Africa’s eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, including the city of Durban, and more rainstorms are forecast in the coming days.
The death toll is expected to rise as scores of people, including whole families, are missing, officials said Thursday.
The persistent rains have wreaked havoc in the province, destroying homes, collapsing buildings and washing away major roads.
The damage to Durban and the surrounding eThekwini metropolitan area is estimated at $52 million, eThekwini Mayor Mxolosi Kaunda said Thursday.
At least 120 schools have been flooded, causing damage estimated at more than $26 million and bringing officials to temporarily close all schools in the province.
At least 18 students and one teacher from various schools have died in the floods, Education Minister Angie Motshekga said.
“This is a catastrophe and the damage is unprecedented. What is even more worrying is that more rain is expected in the same areas that are already affected,” Motshekga said in a statement issued Thursday.
Police used stun grenades to disperse residents in the Reservoir Hills areas of Durban who were protesting what they said was the lack of official assistance, according to South African media reports.
The South African National Defense Force has deployed troops to assist with rescue and mop-up operations.
The floods have knocked out water and electricity to large parts of Durban and the surrounding eThekwini metropolitan area and it will take at least a week to restore those services, according to officials.
President Cyril Ramaphosa visited is convening an emergency Cabinet meeting to declare the floods a national disaster so that funds can be released to help repair the damage. He visited several areas hit by the floods and mudslides on Wednesday.
Fourteen crocodiles that were swept away from a farm in the Tongaat area north of Durban have been recaptured, according to wildlife officials. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/floods-in-south-africas-durban-area-kill-more-than-300/ | 2022-04-15T00:49:30 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/floods-in-south-africas-durban-area-kill-more-than-300/ |
BERLIN (AP) — Four people were arrested in Germany and weapons were seized in an investigation into suspected anti-government extremists who allegedly planned to cause a long nationwide blackout and kidnap well-known figures including the country’s health minister, authorities said Thursday.
Prosecutors in Koblenz and Rhineland-Palatinate’s state criminal police office said that raids were carried out at 20 properties across the country Wednesday following an investigation that was launched in October. The suspects were members of a chat group called “United Patriots” on the Telegram messenger service.
Investigators said the suspects they identified were associated with the protest movement against coronavirus restrictions and with the Reich Citizens movement, which disputes the legitimacy of the post-World War II German constitution and, by extension, the current government. In all, 12 people are under investigation.
Investigators said in a statement that the group’s declared aim was to destroy Germany’s electricity supply facilities and cause a long blackout, with the goal of producing “conditions similar to civil war” and ultimately overthrowing the country’s democratic system.
Police seized 22 firearms, including a Kalashnikov rifle, along with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, thousands of euros in cash, and numerous gold bars and silver coins.
The group allegedly planned to kidnap well-known public figures. Investigators said those included Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, the German news agency dpa reported.
Lauterbach said he was “appalled” to hear the news and thanked investigators.
“The whole thing shows that corona protests have not just become more radical, but that it is now about more than corona — that there is an attempt here to destabilize the state,” he told reporters during a visit to Husum on Germany’s North Sea coast. “This is a small minority in our society, but highly dangerous.”
“This will not influence my own work,” Lauterbach said, adding that he will continue trying to balance the interests of people who want looser measures against COVID-19 with those who want stricter ones.
The suspects, all German citizens, are accused of preparing a serious act of violence and of violating weapons laws. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/germany-nabs-4-in-probe-of-anti-government-extremist-group/ | 2022-04-15T00:49:37 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/germany-nabs-4-in-probe-of-anti-government-extremist-group/ |
PARIS (AP) — The capital of France may be thousands of miles away from the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, but what happens in French voting stations this month could have repercussions there.
Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has close ties to Russia and wants to weaken the European Union and NATO, which could undercut Western efforts to stop Russia’s war on Ukraine. Le Pen is trying to unseat centrist President Emmanuel Macron, who has a slim lead in polls ahead of France’s April 24 presidential runoff election.
Here are some of the ways the French election could impact the war in Ukraine:
ARMING UKRAINE
Macron’s government has sent 100 million euros worth of weaponry to Ukraine in recent weeks and said Wednesday it will send more as part of a Western military aid effort. France has been a major source of military support for Ukraine since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 from Ukraine and supported separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine.
Le Pen expressed reservations Wednesday about supplying Ukraine with additional arms. She said, if she were elected president, she would continue defense and intelligence aid but would be “prudent” about sending weapons because she thinks the shipments could suck other countries into the war with Russia.
SOFTENING SANCTIONS
Le Pen’s campaign has successfully tapped into French voter frustration over rising inflation, which has worsened as a consequence of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine and the ensuing Western sanctions against Russia, a major gas supplier and trade partner for France and Europe.
The European Union has been unusually unified in agreeing on five rounds of ever-tougher sanctions against Russia. If she became France’s president, Le Pen could try to thwart or limit additional EU sanctions since further action requires unananimous backing from the bloc’s 27 member nations.
France is the EU’s No. 2 economy after Germany and key to EU decision-making. France also now holds the rotating EU presidency, giving France’s next leader significant influence.
Le Pen is notably opposed to sanctions on Russian gas and oil. She also said in the past that she would work to lift sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea, and even recognize Crimea as part of Russia.
COURTING PUTIN
Earlier in his first term, Macron tried reaching out to Putin, inviting him to Versailles and a presidential resort on the Mediterranean, in hopes of bringing Russia’s policies back into greater alignment with the West.
The French president also sought to revive peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv over the long-running conflict in eastern Ukraine between the government and Russia-backed separatists. Macron visited Putin at the Kremlin weeks before Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine and has continued talking to the Russian leader during the war. At the same time, Macron has supported multiple rounds of EU sanctions.
Le Pen’s party has deep ties to Russia. She met with Putin as a French presidential candidate in 2017 and has praised him in the past. She is warmly welcomed at Russian Embassy events in Paris, and her far-right party also got a 9 million-euro ($9.8 million) loan from a Russian-Czech bank because she said French banks refused to lend the party money.
Le Pen says the war in Ukraine has partly changed her mind about Putin, but she said Wednesday that the West should try to restore relations with Russia once the conflict ends. She suggested a “strategic rapprochement” between NATO and Russia to keep Moscow from allying too closely with China.
WEAKENING NATO AND THE EU
While Macron is a staunch defender of the EU and recently reinforced France’s participation in NATO operations in Eastern Europe, Le Pen says France should keep its distance from international alliances and strike its own path.
She favors pulling France out of NATO’s military command, which would take French military staff out of the body that plans operations and lead to the country losing influence within the Western military alliance.
France withdrew from NATO’s command structure in 1966, when French President Charles de Gaulle wanted to distance his country from the U.S.-dominated organization, and reintegrated under conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009.
If it were up to her, Le Pen would reduce French spending on the EU and try to diminish the EU’s influence by chipping away at the bloc from within while no longer recognizing that European law has primacy over national law.
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Follow AP’s coverage of France’s presidential election at https://apnews.com/hub/french-election-2022
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Follow all AP stories on Russia’s war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/how-frances-presidential-election-could-impact-ukraine-war/ | 2022-04-15T00:49:45 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/how-frances-presidential-election-could-impact-ukraine-war/ |
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Ri Chun Hi, North Korea’s most famous state TV anchor, has announced major events for decades, including nuclear and missile tests and the death of a leader, with an instantly identifiable, passionate voice.
The anchor, dubbed the “pink lady” abroad for her bright traditional Korean attire, became the topic of official North Korean media herself Thursday after leader Kim Jong Un gave her a luxurious residence and asked her to continue to serve as the voice of his ruling Workers’ Party.
Experts say Kim is providing special treatment to elite North Koreans to boost their loyalty as he grapples with the pandemic, a troubled economy and a stalemate in nuclear diplomacy with the United States.
“(Kim) said it is the sincerity of the party that it would spare nothing for a national treasure like her, who has worked as a revolutionary announcer for the party for more than 50 years since her girlhood,” the official Korean Central News Agency said. Kim expressed his “expectation that she would as ever vigorously continue her work in good health as befitting a spokeswoman for the party.”
Kim met Ri, who is about 79, on Wednesday after inaugurating a newly built riverside terraced residential district in Pyongyang, the capital, KCNA said. It said houses in the district were presented to Ri and other people who have given distinguished service to the state.
North Korea often inaugurates construction projects to mark key state anniversaries. Friday is the 110th birthday of Kim’s late grandfather, state founder Kim Il Sung. It’s the most important anniversary in North Korea, which has been ruled by three generations of the Kim family since its foundation in 1948. The new housing area is where Kim Il Sung’s official residence was located until the 1970s.
Pyongyang is North Korea’s showcase city, and its elite residents enjoy relatively affluent lives compared with people in remote rural areas where many still suffer from poverty and malnutrition. A majority of North Koreans who have fled the country in the past two decades have come from its northern regions close to the border with China.
“By giving houses to those who have been faithful to him, Kim Jong Un would want to further bolster their loyalty and internal unity,” said Moon Seong Mook, an analyst with the Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy. “Ri Chun Hi is a clear example of such people as she’s strongly propagated his nuclear and missile tests and served as a sort of bugler for him.”
Kim toured Ri’s house with her and held her hand as they descended the stairs. Ri said she felt her new house is like a hotel and that all her family members “stayed up all night in tears of deep gratitude for the party’s benevolence,” according to KCNA.
Ri later used her trademark over-the-top speaking technique to narrate a state TV video of Kim showing her the house.
Ri joined state TV in the early 1970s when the country was still governed by Kim Il Sung, and she has gradually become the face and voice of the country’s propaganda-driven news broadcasts.
Her close ties to Kim were shown last year at a government foundation anniversary ceremony when she watched from an elevated veranda right next to Kim, and at one point put her hand on his shoulder and whispered to him. At another event, she was the first person to shake Kim’s hand before holding his arm and posing for a group photo.
Moon, the analyst, said Ri receives Cabinet member-level treatment at home, appears healthy and is expected to continue to handle key televised announcements for at least the next few years.
Ri’s passionate, effusive style has sometimes generated laughter in other countries. In 2011, a Taiwanese TV station apologized after one of its newsreaders mimicked the tone Ri used when she announced the death of Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il.
Since inheriting power upon his father’s death, Kim Jong Un, 38, has led North Korea with absolute authority. But he is facing one of the toughest moments of his rule after the coronavirus pandemic shocked an economy already in dire shape from mismanagement and U.S.-led sanctions. Analysts say recent missile tests were meant to advance his weapons arsenal and pressure the U.S. into recognizing North Korea as a nuclear state and relaxing international sanctions. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/kim-gives-north-koreas-most-famous-newscaster-a-luxury-home/ | 2022-04-15T00:49:52 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/kim-gives-north-koreas-most-famous-newscaster-a-luxury-home/ |
OTTAWA, Ontario — Canada is sending soldiers to Poland to help with the care, co-ordination and resettlement of Ukrainian refugees in Poland, including some who will come to Canada.
Defense Minister Anita Anand announced the deployment of up to 150 troops Thursday.
More than 2.6 million Ukrainians have fled into Poland since the first Russian troops crossed into Ukraine on Feb. 24 and over 2 million more have fled into other surrounding countries.
Anand said the majority of the deployed troops will head to reception centers across Poland to help care for and register Ukrainian refugees.
Another group is being sent to help co-ordinate international aid efforts.
Canada has deployed hundreds of additional troops to eastern Europe since Russia’s invasion as the NATO military alliance seeks to both support Ukraine and prevent the conflict from expanding into a broader war.
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR:
— Russian military’s damaged Black Sea flagship sinks
— Pressure on US to give Ukraine more intelligence on Russia
— UN says Ukraine war threatens to devastate many poor nations
— Ukraine’s detention of oligarch close to Putin angers Moscow
— Polish, Baltic presidents visit Ukraine in show of support
— Go to https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukrainefor more coverage
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OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:
KYIV, Ukraine — The head of the U.N. World Food Program said people are being “starved to death” in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol and he predicted the country’s humanitarian crisis is likely to worsen as Russia intensifies its assault in the coming weeks.
WFP executive director David Beasley also warned in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press in Kyiv that Russia’s invasion of grain-exporting Ukraine risks destabilizing nations far from its shores and could trigger waves of migrants seeking better lives elsewhere.
The war that began Feb. 24 was “devastating the people in Ukraine,” Beasley said, lamenting the lack of access faced by the WFP and other aid organizations in trying to reach those in need amid the conflict.
The fluid nature of the conflict, which has seen fighting shift away from areas around the capital and toward eastern Ukraine, has made it especially difficult to reach hungry Ukrainians.
The WFP is trying to put food supplies now in areas that could be caught up in the fighting, but Beasley acknowledged that there are “a lot of complexities” as the situation rapidly evolves.
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UNITED NATIONS — The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations accused Russia of making the precarious food situation in Yemen and elsewhere worse by invading Ukraine, calling it “just another grim example of the ripple effect Russia’s unprovoked, unjust, unconscionable war is having on the world’s most vulnerable.”
Linda Thomas-Greenfield told a U.N. Security Council meeting on war-torn Yemen on Thursday that the World Food Program identified the Arab world’s poorest nation as one of the countries most affected by wheat price increases and lack of imports from Ukraine.
Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky shot back saying: “The main factor for instability and the source of the problem today is not the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, but sanctions measures imposed on our country seeking to cut off any supplies from Russia and the supply chain, apart from those supplies that those countries in the West need, in other words energy.”
The sharp exchange took place a day after a U.N. task force warned that the war threatens to devastate the economies of many developing countries that are now facing even higher food and energy costs and increasingly difficult financial conditions.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched their report saying: “As many as 1.7 billion people — one-third of whom are already living in poverty — are now highly exposed to disruptions in food, energy and finance systems that are triggering increases in poverty and hunger.”
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NEW YORK — A Russian legislator and two aides were charged with conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions as they pushed a covert Russian propaganda campaign in the U.S. to win support for moves against Ukraine and other countries, an indictment unsealed Thursday said.
Three conspiracy charges were brought in an indictment in Manhattan federal court against the legislator, Aleksandr Babakov, 59, and two of his staff members — Aleksandr Nikolayevich Vorobev, 52, and Mikhail Alekseyevich Plisyuk, 58.
All three men named are based in Russia and remain at large, authorities said. Babakov currently serves as deputy chairman of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian legislature, federal authorities said in a release.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Babakov’s actions show Russia’s “illegitimate actions against Ukraine extend beyond the battlefield, as political influencers under Russia’s control allegedly plotted to steer geopolitical change in Russia’s favor through surreptitious and illegal means in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West.”
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Russian authorities have accused Ukrainian forces of launching air strikes on the Russian region of Bryansk which borders with Ukraine, the latest in a series of allegations of cross-border attacks by Kyiv on Russian territory.
Russia’s Investigative Committee alleged that two Ukrainian military helicopters entered Russia’s air space Thursday and, “moving at low altitude, acting deliberately, they carried out at least six air strikes on residential buildings in the village of Klimovo,” about 11 kilometers away from the Russian border.
It said at least six houses in the village were damaged and seven people, including a toddler, sustained injuries. The Investigative Committee has launched a probe into the attack.
Earlier on Thursday, Russia’s state security service, or the FSB, also accused Ukrainian forces of firing mortars at a border post in the Bryansk region on Wednesday.
The reports could not be independently verified. Earlier this month, Ukraine’s top security officials denied that Kyiv was behind an air strike on an oil depot in the Russian city of Belgorod, 35 miles from the border.
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PARIS — France is moving its embassy in Ukraine back to Kyiv from the western city of Lviv, after Russian troops pulled away from regions around the capital and have concentrated on embattled eastern Ukraine.
The French Foreign Ministry announced the move Thursday after Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba about French military and humanitarian support for Ukraine. A date for the move was not announced.
France had maintained its embassy in Kyiv at the outset of the war but moved its operations to Lviv in March. France sent a new convoy of fire trucks, ambulance and emergency equipment to Ukraine on Thursday and a team of French investigators arrived this week to gather evidence of war crimes.
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Russian news reports say a criminal case has been opened against a Siberian journalist whose news website had published content critical of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.
Mikhail Afanasyev, the chief editor of Novy Fokus in the Russian region of Khakassia, was arrested by security forces Wednesday over the website’s reporting on 11 riot police who had allegedly refused deployment to Ukraine as part of Russia’s military action there.
Afanasyev was accused Thursday of disseminating “deliberately false information” about the Russian armed forces, an offense which carries a maximum 10-year jail sentence, according to a law passed in early March.
Another Siberia-based journalist was also arrested Wednesday on suspicion of breaching Russia’s new laws on the media coverage of the situation in Ukraine. Sergei Mikhailov, the founder of the LIStok weekly newspaper based in the Republic of Altay, was reportedly placed in pre-trial detention over the outlet’s alleged “calls for sanctions against Russia.”
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LONDON — Britain’s Foreign Office says it is freezing the assets worth up to 10 billion pounds ($13.1 billion) belonging to two Russian oligarchs described as long-standing business associates of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.
Officials said Thursday that Eugene Tenenbaum took control of Evrington Investments Ltd., an Abramovich-linked investment company, immediately following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. Tenenbaum, who is also a director of Chelsea Football Club, was hit with an asset freeze.
The other sanctioned Russian is David Davidovich, who was subject to an asset freeze and a travel ban.
The move came after the Channel Island of Jersey said this week it is freezing an estimated $7 billion of assets suspected to be connected to Abramovich, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Britain’s government said the measures “cut key revenue sources for Putin’s war machine” amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron declined to use the term “genocide” to describe Russia’s Ukraine war, arguing against an “escalation of words.”
Asked about the use of the term by U.S. President Joe Biden, Macron said “the word genocide must be spelled out by jurists, not by politicians.”
Speaking on French radio France Bleu, Macron said he spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday and will speak again with him later that day. He said he will do “everything to end this war and stay by the Ukrainians’ side.”
Macron previously denounced “war crimes” in Ukraine and France sent magistrates and police officers to help the International Criminal Court, which opened an investigation.
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GENEVA — The international Red Cross says it’s rolling out its largest-ever cash assistance program to help more than 2 million people in Ukraine or who have fled abroad cope with the fallout from Russia’s invasion.
Nicole Robicheau, spokeswoman of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said Thursday the organization plans to distribute “well over 100 million” Swiss francs — about $106 million –- to people affected by Russia’s seven-week-old war in Ukraine.
Humanitarian groups like the IFRC have recently touted the effectiveness of cash assistance programs for people in places hit by events like natural disasters, drought, famine and conflict, as a way to “allow people to decide what they need” and “put money back into the local economy,” Robicheau said by phone.
The program aims to help some 360,000 people inside Ukraine and many more in countries of refuge.
IFRC says it and national Red Cross organizations have already helped over 1 million people with items like blankets, food, mats and kitchen equipment.
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MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Western countries’ attempts to phase out Russian gas imports will have a negative impact on their economies.
Speaking Thursday, Putin said European attempts to find alternatives to Russian gas shipments will be “quite painful for the initiators of such policies.”
He argued that “there is simply no reasonable replacement for it in Europe now.”
Putin noted that “supplies from other countries that could be sent to Europe, primarily from the United States, would cost consumers many times more.” He added it would “affect people’s standard of living and the competitiveness of the European economy.”
The European Union is dependent on Russia for 40% of its natural gas and 25% of its oil.
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PARIS — France’s government says it has frozen 33 properties on the French Riviera, Paris and elsewhere that belong to Russian oligarchs targeted for sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
The Finance Ministry this week published an updated list of Russian-owned properties that have been frozen in France, including a luxury chateau overlooking the Mediterranean on the Cap d’Antibes that reportedly belonged to sanctioned Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.
Together, the 33 properties are estimated to be worth more than half a billion euros. Unlike property that is seized or confiscated, frozen properties still belong to their owners and they can continue living in them. But they cannot be sold or rented out.
The total value of Russian assets frozen or seized in France is now approaching 24 billion euros, with the bulk of that being nearly 23 billion euros in frozen financial assets for the Russian central bank. Aside from financial assets and properties, French authorities have also frozen or seized three yachts and four transport ships, and frozen six helicopters and three artworks.
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LVIV, Ukraine — Russia’s Defense Ministry says the fire at the Moskva cruiser, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, has been contained. It says the vessel remains afloat and will be towed to the port.
The ministry said in a statement Thursday that there is no open fire at the ship anymore and explosions of the ammunitions have ceased. “The main missile weapons were not damaged,” the statement read.
Ukrainian officials claimed however that the ship has sunk, saying it’s a “resounding slap in the face” to Moscow’s forces. The conflicting accounts couldn’t be immediately reconciled.
Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to Ukrainian president’s office, said in a Facebook post that 510 crew were onboard the Moskva cruiser as it sank in the Black Sea, following serious damage from a Ukrainian missile strike.
Military analyst Oleg Zhdanov said the damaging of the Moskva significantly raises the morale of Ukrainian forces on the eve of a new wave of Russian offensive in the Donbas.
In the early hours of Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry said the ship sustained “serious damage” after its ammunition detonated “as the result of a fire.” The ministry did not ascribe the fire to a missile strike.
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LONDON — Ireland’s foreign minister is in Kyiv, the latest in a string of senior European politicians to make the trip to show support for Ukraine’s fight against Russian invasion.
The Irish government says Simon Coveney, who is also defense minister, is meeting Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov.
Ireland has sent Ukraine 20 million euros ($22 million) in humanitarian aid and 33 million euros ($36 million) in non-lethal military assistance.
It is also a strong backer of Ukraine’s bid to join the European Union, and the government said Coveney would discuss how Ireland can “assist Ukraine in its application for EU candidate status.”
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BERLIN — German authorities say they have seized a massive superyacht in Hamburg after determining that it belongs to the sister of Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov.
The Federal Criminal Police Office said Wednesday that, after “extensive investigations” and despite “offshore concealment,” it had been able to determine that the owner is Gulbakhor Ismailova, Usmanov’s sister.
Superyacht Dilbar was launched in 2016 at a reported cost of more than $648 million.
The German police office said German authorities worked in Brussels to ensure that European Union sanctions applied to the owner. It says the yacht can no longer be sold, rented, or loaded.
The United States and EU last month announced economic sanctions against Usmanov, a metals magnate, over his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine.
A German official said in early March that the superyacht was registered to a holding company in Malta, but subsequent investigation by the Federal Criminal Police Office revealed the vessel is owned by a series of companies based in the Cayman Islands, Cyprus and Switzerland leading to Usmanov’s sister as the beneficial owner.
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PRAGUE — Three Czech lawmakers from Parliament’s upper house, the Senate, are visiting Kyiv together with their counterparts from Poland. Led by speaker Milos Vystrcil, they were invited by Ruslan Stefanchuk, chairman of Ukraine’s unicameral parliament Verkhovna Rada.
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UNITED NATIONS — A U.N. task force is warning in a new report that Russia’s war against Ukraine threatens to devastate the economies of many developing countries that are now facing even higher food and energy costs and increasingly difficult financial conditions.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched the report Wednesday stressing that the war is “supercharging” a crisis in food, energy and finance in poorer countries that were already struggling to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and a lack of access to adequate funding for their economic recovery.
Rebeca Grynspan, secretary-general of the U.N. agency promoting trade and development who coordinated the task force, said 107 countries have “severe exposure” to at least one dimension of the food, energy and finance crisis and 69 countries are severely exposed to all three and face “very difficult financial conditions with no fiscal space, and with no external financing to cushion the blow.”
The report urges countries to ensure a steady flow of food and energy through open markets, and it calls on international financial institutions to do everything possible to ensure more liquidity immediately.
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ODESA, Ukraine — In the Odesa region of Ukraine, Gov. Maksym Marchenko says forces have struck the Russian guided-missile cruiser Moskva with two missiles and caused “serious damage.”
Moskva is the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the ship was damaged Wednesday, but not that it was hit by Ukraine.
The Ministry says ammunition on board detonated as a result of a fire whose causes “were being established,” and the Moskva’s entire crew was evacuated. The cruiser typically has about 500 on board.
Odesa is Ukraine’s biggest port.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he’s “sincerely thankful” to the U.S. for the new round of $800 million in military assistance.
In his daily late-night address to the nation, Zelenskyy also said he was thankful for Wednesday’s visit by the presidents of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.
He said those leaders “have helped us from the first day, those who did not hesitate to give us weapons, those who did not doubt whether to impose sanctions.”
In his telephone conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden, Zelenskyy said they discussed the new weapons shipment, even tougher sanctions against Russia and efforts to bring to justice those Russian soldiers who committed war crimes in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy also said work was continuing to clear tens of thousands of unexploded shells, mines and tripwires that were left behind in northern Ukraine by the retreating Russians.
He urged people returning to their homes in those towns to be wary of any unfamiliar object and report it to the police. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/live-updates-russia-ukraine-war-3/ | 2022-04-15T00:50:00 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/live-updates-russia-ukraine-war-3/ |
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis washed the feet of a dozen inmates at a prison near Rome in a Holy Thursday ritual that symbolizes humility and service and highlights his papacy’s attention to those on society’s margins.
He arrived in a motorcade that included Italian police cars at the prison in Civitavecchia, a port city, 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Rome. The ritual was closed to the public for security reasons and to protect the privacy of the inmates.
But afterwards, the Vatican said the pope performed the foot-washing, following Jesus’ example, “in a sign of love inspired by love” aimed at service and humility. The 12 inmates included men and women of various ages and of different nationalities, it said.
Symbolizing the number of Jesus’ apostles, the twelve sat on chairs on a raised platform. The pontiff washed, dried, then kissed the feet of each of the inmates, all who were wearing masks against the spread of COVID-19. Some inmates leaned over to kiss the pope’s hands in gratitude.
In the prison chapel, the pope celebrated a Mass attended by inmates, some prison staff and Italy’s justice minister, the Vatican said in a statement.
The Vatican did not say what accommodations might have been made to enable the pope, who has been hobbled of late by a knee-ligament problem, to perform the foot-washing ceremony. For years, Francis has also suffered from sciatica, a nerve inflammation that can cause back and leg pain.
Earlier, during a Holy Thursday Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, Francis advised the 1,800 priests in attendance not to focus on worldly concerns such as power or status but exhorted them to “serve, with a clear conscience, the holy and faithful people of God.”
Francis made no reference to decades of scandals involving Catholic priests who sexually abused children and were often transferred from parish to parish by bishops who tried to avoid embarrassment rather than protect minors.
During the Holy Thursday Mass, large urns of oil are blessed for use in ceremonies in churches in the Rome area. When Francis went to bless the oil by breathing into it, an aide helped him rise from his chair and walk toward the silver urn. At the end of the ceremony, Francis descended the steps down from the altar clinging to an aide’s arm, and even while assisted limped his way out of the basilica.
Holy Week, which draws hundreds of thousands of faithful to the Vatican, began with Palm Sunday Mass on April 10 in St. Peter’s Square and culminates this Sunday at Easter, when the faithful mark the resurrection of Jesus.
This year, the Good Friday torch-lit Way of the Cross procession in Rome returns to its traditional venue at the ancient Colosseum after a two-year absence due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Vatican has invited a Russian woman and a Ukrainian woman, who work together at a Rome hospital, to carry a cross together during the procession. That has angered some Ukrainians, including the country’s ambassador to the Holy See and the archbishop of Kyiv. Their objections center on whether such a gesture, implying reconciliation, is suitable, given Russia’s invasion of its neighbor and its ongoing war against the country’s people.
The Vatican is still going ahead with the procession’s lineup of participants, who take turns carrying a lightweight cross during the procession, which is presided over by the pontiff and recalls Jesus’ death by crucifixion. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/pope-marks-holy-thursday-ahead-of-prison-feet-washing-ritual/ | 2022-04-15T00:50:08 | 1 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/pope-marks-holy-thursday-ahead-of-prison-feet-washing-ritual/ |
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — A delegation of six U.S. lawmakers led by Republican Lindsey Graham from South Carolina arrived in Taiwan on Thursday for a two-day visit that has already been denounced by China.
The U.S. lawmakers are to meet with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and the island’s defense minister. The visit is “again a demonstration of the U.S.’s ‘rock solid’ support and commitment to Taiwan” amid a “severe” situation in Ukraine, the island’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Graham is joined by Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Sen. Robert Portman of Ohio, Sen. Benjamin Sasse of Nebraska, and Representative Ronny Jackson of Texas.
The visit follows an announcement last week that U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi would visit Taiwan. However, Pelosi’s trip was postponed after she tested positive for COVID-19.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian denounced the visit on Thursday, saying “China is firmly opposed to any form of official exchanges between the U.S. and Taiwan.”
Taiwan is a self-ruled island claimed by China as part of its territory. China’s People’s Liberation Army sends fighter jets flying toward the island on a near-daily basis.
“Relevant U.S. lawmakers should abide by the one-China policy upheld by the U.S. government. The U.S. should … stop official contacts with Taiwan, and avoid going further down the dangerous path,” Zhao said at a daily briefing.
“We will continue to take strong measures to resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Zhao said. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/senior-us-lawmakers-arrive-in-taiwan-for-visit/ | 2022-04-15T00:50:16 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/senior-us-lawmakers-arrive-in-taiwan-for-visit/ |
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Somalia on Thursday inaugurated 290 new lawmakers, bringing the country a step closer to completing a prolonged electoral process marred by alleged corruption and irregularities.
The swearing-in ceremony was held in the capital’s heavily fortified Halane military camp, protected by sandbagged fences and high concrete walls. Somali police and African Union troops were deployed to the surrounding areas, putting Mogadishu under lockdown.
Dozens more legislators are yet to be selected and sworn in.
Later the lawmakers will elect speakers and deputies for both parliamentary chambers before they sit to choose a new president.
“We are observing a new set of parliamentarians taking over from others. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate parliamentarians who have been sworn in today. This is a huge responsibility assigned on you by your constituents, and it is a vote of confidence,” said Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble.
Hussein Sheikh Ali of the Mogadishu-based research group Hiraal Institute said the inauguration of lawmakers “marks a great relief day for all Somalis and (the) international community who invested in Somalia to move forward.”
Somalia’s parliamentary and presidential polls were delayed for more than a year amid political turmoil after President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed’s mandate expired in Feb. 2021 without a successor in place.
The delay raised political tensions and the threat of violence in a country prone to attacks by Islamic extremists who oppose the federal government.
Al-Shabaab claimed to have thrown mortar shells targeting the area where the lawmakers were being sworn in on Thursday. Authorities didn’t say if anyone was hurt. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/somalia-swears-in-lawmakers-in-step-to-choosing-new-leader/ | 2022-04-15T00:50:23 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/somalia-swears-in-lawmakers-in-step-to-choosing-new-leader/ |
BERLIN (AP) — A man who allegedly launched a grenade into a crowd of civilians waiting for food in Damascus in 2014, killing at least seven people, has been charged in Germany with war crimes and murder, prosecutors said Thursday.
The stateless man, identified only as Moafak D. in line with German privacy rules, was a member of the Free Palestine Movement, one of the groups that at the time controlled the Yarmouk district of the Syrian capital on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, federal prosecutors said in a statement.
They said that, on March 23, 2014, the suspect launched a grenade from an anti-tank weapon into a crowd in the district’s Rejeh Square who were waiting for food aid from UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. At least seven people were killed and three wounded, including a 6-year-old child.
The Yarmouk district, which grew out of a Palestinian refugee camp, was cordoned off by the Syrian government from July 2013 to April 2015, causing shortages of food, water and medical supplies.
The suspect was arrested in Berlin on Aug. 4. Prosecutors didn’t say how or when he came to Germany. He has been charged at a regional court in the German capital with war crimes, seven counts of murder, three of attempted murder and three of bodily harm.
Germany’s application of the rule of “universal jurisdiction,” allowing the prosecution of serious crimes committed abroad, led in January to the first conviction of a senior Syrian official for crimes against humanity.
The Berlin court will now have to decide whether to bring Moafak D.’s case to trial. | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/suspect-in-syria-killings-faces-german-war-crimes-charges/ | 2022-04-15T00:50:31 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/news/international/suspect-in-syria-killings-faces-german-war-crimes-charges/ |
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The head of the U.N. World Food Program said people are being “starved to death” in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, and he predicted the country’s humanitarian crisis is likely to worsen as Russia intensifies its assault in the coming weeks.
WFP executive director David Beasley also warned in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press in Kyiv that Russia’s invasion of grain-exporting Ukraine risks destabilizing nations far from its shores and could trigger waves of migrants seeking better lives elsewhere.
The war that began Feb. 24 was “devastating the people in Ukraine,” he said, lamenting the lack of access faced by the WFP and other aid organizations in trying to reach those in need amid the conflict.
“I don’t see any of that easing up. I just don’t see it happening right now,” he said.
The fluid nature of the conflict, which has seen fighting shift away from areas around the capital and toward eastern Ukraine, has made it especially difficult to reach hungry Ukrainians.
The WFP is trying to put food supplies now in areas that could be caught up in the fighting, but Beasley acknowledged that there are “a lot of complexities” as the situation rapidly evolves.
A lack of access is part of the problem, he said, but so is a shortage of manpower and fuel as resources are diverted to the war effort.
“It’s not just going to be the next few days — but the next few weeks and few months could even get more complicated than it is now,” he said. “In fact, it’s getting worse and worse, concentrated in certain areas, and the front lines are going to be moving.”
Beasley expressed particular concern about the port city of Mariupol, where a dwindling number of Ukrainian defenders is holding out against a Russian siege that has trapped well over 100,000 civilians in desperate need of food, water and heating.
Russian forces that control access to the city have not allowed in aid, even though the WFP has demanded access.
“We will not give up on the people of Mariupol and other people that we cannot reach. But it’s a devastating situation: the people being starved to death,” he said.
Russia is determined to seize the city so its forces from the annexed Crimean Peninsula can fully link up with troops elsewhere in the eastern Donbas region, Ukraine’s industrial heartland and the target of the coming offensive.
The U.N. food chief warned of disastrous ripple effects due to Ukraine’s role as major international grain supplier.
A global food shortage caused by the war could prompt “mass migration beyond anything we’ve seen since World War II,” he said, echoing remarks he made to the U.N. Security Council last month.
Russia and Ukraine together produce 30% of the world’s wheat supply and export about three-quarters of the world’s sunflower seed oil. Half of the grain the WFP buys for distribution around the world comes from Ukraine.
Some 30 million metric tons of grain bound for export are unable to be shipped because of the war, Beasley said. Ukrainian farmers are struggling to access fertilizer and seed, and those who can plant may see their harvest rot in the fields if the war drags on and there’s no way to ship it, he warned.
The shipping challenges have forced the WFP to halve rations for millions of people, many in Africa, and more cuts may be needed, he said.
“People are going to be starving to death,” he said.
Beasley also visited areas near Kyiv that were ravaged by the Russian invasion, including the town of Bucha, where evidence of mass killings and other atrocities against civilians have shocked the world.
He described neighborhoods “completely decimated by bombings,” likening what he saw to a nightmare that was impossible to believe.
But he stopped short of describing the killings a genocide, as U.S. President Joe Biden did this week.
“Well, I know one thing. People are dying,” he said when asked about Biden’s comments. “But there’s no doubt in my mind this is a horror story and it is truly heartbreaking.”
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The missile cruiser Moskva, named in honor of the Russian capital, was launched during the Cold War, saw service during conflicts in Georgia, Syria and Ukraine, and helped conduct peacetime scientific research with the United States.
Now the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet has sunk in those waters off Ukraine while being towed to port after a fire onboard, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said.
It was an inglorious demise for the vessel initially christened the Slava, or “glory.”
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WARSHIP?
The Russian Defense Ministry said the heavily damaged Moskva sank in a storm Thursday under tow after being gutted by fire. It previously said the blaze set off some of its weapons and forced the crew to evacuate. It denied there had been an attack by Ukraine on the ship, which would normally have about 500 sailors aboard.
Maksym Marchenko, the governor of the Odesa region, said Ukraine struck the ship late Wednesday with two Neptune missiles and caused “serious damage.” Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister, later said he was unable to confirm its fate or if it even had been hit by Ukrainian forces.
It was not immediately possible to reconcile the different accounts, and cloud cover made it impossible to locate the ship or determine its condition from satellite photos. The U.S. was unable to confirm Ukraine’s claims.
The Moskva was about 69 miles (100 to 104 kilometers) due south of Odesa when the fire occurred, according to a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal U.S. military assessments.
WHAT WAS THE WARSHIP’S CAPABILITY?
The Moskva could carry 16 long-range cruise missiles, and its loss will greatly reduce Russia’s firepower in the Black Sea.
Its sinking represents a major blow to Russian prestige seven weeks into a war that already is widely seen as a historic blunder.
WHAT WAS ITS HISTORY?
The warship was launched as the Slava from a shipyard in Mykolaiv in what was then the Soviet republic of Ukraine in July 1979, according to open-source intelligence firm Janes. Commissioned in late December 1982, it was 611.5 feet (186 meters) long. It was designed to carry a crew of 476 with an additional 62 officers.
The Slava served as the flagship of the Soviet fleet in the Black Sea. It carried both surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, deck guns, torpedoes and mortars. It also had a helicopter deck.
During the Cold War, it also carried nuclear weapons. In 1989, under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, U.S. and Soviet scientists took part in a joint test abroad the Slava in the Black Sea to measure the emission of neutrons and gamma rays from a nuclear warhead on a cruise missile.
In late 1989, the Slava was supposed to host a meeting off Malta between Gorbachev and then-President George H.W. Bush, but gale force winds prompted the Soviet-hosted side of the talks to be held instead on the docked cruiser Maxim Gorky.
FROM SLAVA TO MOSKVA
The Slava underwent repairs from 1990-1999. During that time, the Soviet Union collapsed, an independent Ukraine emerged and Russia’s economy foundered. Finally overhauled and rechristened the Moskva, the ship hosted both President Vladimir Putin and then-Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi during a 2003 visit to Sardinia.
“Thank God, our cruisers can still go on their own, our planes and missiles can fly,” Putin said at the time.
Putin’s later comments at the La Maddalena naval base show how much has changed. He described the Moskva’s presence as a sign that “the level of trust between Russia and the NATO countries is rising.” NATO’s eastward expansion and Russian security were among the reasons Putin cited for sending troops to Ukraine.
During Russia’s war in its former republic of Georgia in 2008, the Moskva took part in operations in the Black Sea, and Georgia said it was involved in an attack on the country.
In 2014, as Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, the Moskva blocked Ukrainian naval vessels from leaving Lake Donuzlav.
In 2015-16, it was deployed to the Mediterranean Sea to provide support for the Russian military campaign backing Syrian President Bashar Assad in his country’s civil war. Its sailors were decorated for their service there and in the war on Georgia.
The Moskva underwent repairs and modernization from 2018 to July 2020, according to Janes.
After Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the Moskva took part in an attack on Zmiinyi — or Snake — Island, which sits about 35 kilometers (21 miles) off the coast. In an audio widely circulated online, a Ukrainian soldier responds: “Russian warship, go (expletive) yourself.”
The Associated Press cannot independently verify the incident, but Ukraine and its supporters consider it an iconic moment of defiance.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Instagram account posted a photo of him holding commemorative stamps marking the purported moment. They show a lone Ukrainian soldier on a beach, rifle in one hand, the other giving the middle finger to the passing Moskva, its “121” ship number visible on it.
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LONDON (AP) — Britain announced a deal with Rwanda on Thursday to send some asylum-seekers thousands of miles to the East African country — a plan it said would stop people-smugglers sending desperate migrants on treacherous journeys across the English Channel.
U.K. opposition politicians and refugee groups condemned the move as inhumane, unworkable and a waste of public money, and the United Nations said it raised “a number of human rights concerns.”
The plan would see some people who arrive in Britain as stowaways on trucks or in small boats picked up by the U.K. government and flown 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) to Rwanda, apparently for good.
Critics accused Prime Minister Boris Johnson of using the issue to distract attention from a scandal over government gatherings that breached pandemic lockdown rules. Johnson is resisting calls to resign after being fined by police this week over the parties.
Migrants have long used northern France as a launching point to reach Britain, either by hiding on trucks or ferries, or — increasingly since the coronavirus pandemic shut down other routes in 2020 — in small boats organized by smugglers. More than 28,000 people entered the U.K. in boats last year, up from 8,500 in 2020. Dozens have died, including 27 people in November when a single boat capsized.
On Thursday, dozens of men, women and children were picked up by British lifeboats and brought ashore at the Channel port of Dover as Johnson, speaking just a few miles away, outlined the plan.
“Anyone entering the U.K. illegally … may now be relocated to Rwanda,” Johnson said in a speech to troops and coast guard members at an airport near Dover. Action, he said, was needed to stop “vile people smugglers (who) are abusing the vulnerable and turning the Channel into a watery graveyard.”
The Rwandan government said the agreement would initially last for five years, and Britain had paid 120 million pounds ($158 million) up front to pay for housing and integrating the migrants.
Rwandan Foreign Affairs Minister Vincent Biruta said the agreement “is about ensuring that people are protected, respected, and empowered to further their own ambitions and settle permanently in Rwanda if they choose.”
He said his country is already home to more than 130,000 refugees from countries including Burundi, Congo, Libya and Pakistan.
Johnson denied the plan was “lacking in compassion” but acknowledged it would inevitably face legal challenges and would not take effect immediately.
Rwanda is the most densely populated nation in Africa, and competition for land and resources there fueled decades of ethnic and political tensions that culminated in the 1994 genocide in which more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis, and Hutus who tried to protect them, were killed.
Johnson insisted that Rwanda had “totally transformed” in the last two decades. But human rights groups have repeatedly criticized President Paul Kagame’s current government as repressive.
Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said the claim Rwanda was a safe country “is not grounded in reality.”
“Arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and torture in official and unofficial detention facilities is commonplace, and fair trial standards are flouted in many cases,” Mudge said.
Britain says relocation decisions will not be based on migrants’ country of origin but on whether they used “illegal or dangerous routes” to reach the U.K. from a safe country such as France. Not all such arrivals will be considered suitable to be sent to Rwanda; it was unclear what the criteria for making the decisions would be, though the British government said children would not be sent to the African country.
The United Nations’ human rights office said it had raised its “concerns directly with the U.K. authorities.”
A spokeswoman for the office said the U.K. was “shifting … its responsibilities and obligations under international human rights and refugee law onto a country which is already taking great asylum responsibilities.”
Previous policies of sending refugee applicants abroad have been highly controversial.
In 2013, Australia began sending asylum-seekers attempting to reach the country by boat to Papua New Guinea and the tiny atoll of Nauru, vowing that none would be allowed to settle in Australia. The policy all but ended the people-smuggling ocean route from Southeast Asia, but was widely criticized as a cruel abrogation of Australia’s international obligations.
Israel sent several thousand people to Rwanda and Uganda under a contentious and secretive “voluntary” scheme between 2014 and 2017. Few are believed to have remained there, with many trying to reach Europe.
Steve Valdez-Symonds, refugee director at Amnesty International U.K., said the British government’s “shockingly ill-conceived idea will go far further in inflicting suffering while wasting huge amounts of public money.”
The chief executive of the U.K.-based Refugee Council, Enver Solomon, called it “dangerous, cruel and inhumane.”
Rwandan opposition figure Victoire Ingabire told the AP that her government’s decision to take in migrants was questionable, given that the country is also a source of refugees.
The British and French governments have worked for years to stop the cross-Channel journeys, without much success, often swapping accusations about who is to blame for the failure.
Britain’s Conservative government has floated myriad proposals, not all of them workable, including building a wave machine in the Channel to drive boats back. Johnson said Thursday that the Royal Navy would take charge of responding to small-boat crossings, but that the idea of pushing vessels back towards France had been rejected as too dangerous.
Several earlier proposed locations for the U.K. to send migrants — including the remote Ascension Island, Albania and Gibraltar — were rejected, at times angrily, by the nations in question.
The Rwanda plan faces hurdles both in Britain’s Parliament and in the courts. Johnson’s Conservative government has introduced a tough new immigration bill that would make it more difficult for people who enter the country by unauthorized routes to claim asylum and would allow asylum-seekers to be screened abroad. It has not yet been approved by Parliament, with the House of Lords seeking to dilute some of its most draconian provisions.
Labour Party lawmaker Lucy Powell said the Rwanda plan might please some Conservative supporters and grab headlines, but was “unworkable, expensive and unethical.”
“I think this is less about dealing with small boats and more about dealing with the prime minister’s own sinking boat,” Powell told the BBC.
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Ignatius Ssuuna in Kigali, Rwanda, and Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg, South Africa, contributed to this story.
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JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The number of coronavirus cases and deaths in Africa have dropped to their lowest levels since the pandemic began, marking the longest decline yet seen in the disease, according to the World Health Organization.
In a statement on Thursday, the U.N. health agency said COVID-19 infections due to the omicron surge had “tanked” from a peak of more than 308,000 weekly cases to fewer than 20,000 last week. Cases and deaths fell by 29% and 37% respectively in the last week; deaths decreased to 239 from the previous week.
“This low level of infection has not been seen since April 2020 in the early stages of the pandemic in Africa,” WHO said, noting that no country in the region is currently seeing an increase of COVID-19 cases.
The agency warned, however, that with winter approaching for Southern Hemisphere countries, “there is a high risk of another wave of new infections.” The coronavirus spreads more easily in cooler temperatures when people are more likely to gather in larger numbers indoors.
“With the virus still circulating, the risk of new and potentially more deadly variants emerging remains, and the pandemic control measures are pivotal to effective response to a surge in infections,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s Africa director.
The decline in Africa is consistent with falling COVID-19 numbers globally, although in China officials fear the country still doesn’t have its latest surge in omicron-involved cases under control despite a “zero-tolerance” approach that has triggered a three-week lockdown in Shanghai,where at least 15 million people are still barred from going outside.
The measures have led to frustration among Shanghai residents about running out of food and medicines. This week, government authorities also closed off access to Guangzhou, an industrial center of 19 million people near Hong Kong and other cities are cutting their outside links or closing factories and schools.
Meanwhile, scientists in the U.S. warn the country may be about to see a wave of cases fueled by the omicron subvariant BA.2, which has already peaked across Europe. The country expects to soon mark the deaths of at least 1 million Americans killed by COVID.
Earlier this week, WHO said scientists in Botswana and South Africa have detected new forms of the omicron variant, labeled as BA.4 and BA.5, but aren’t sure yet if they might be more transmissible or dangerous.
To date, the new versions of omicron have been detected in four people in Botswana and 23 people in South Africa. Beyond Africa, scientists have confirmed cases in Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom. WHO said there was so far no evidence the new sub-variants spread any differently than the original omicron variant.
Despite repeated warnings from WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus that the coronavirus would devastate Africa, the continent has been among the least affected by the pandemic.
In an analysis released last week, WHO estimated that up to 65% of people in Africa have been infected with the coronavirus and said unlike many other regions, most people infected on the continent didn’t show any symptoms.
Scientists at WHO and elsewhere have speculated that factors including Africa’s young population, the lower incidence of chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes and warmer weather, may have helped it avoid a bigger wave of disease. Still, some countries have seen significant increases in the numbers of unexplained deaths, suggesting authorities were missing numerous COVID-19 cases.
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