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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An Iranian general on Monday acknowledged that more than 300 people have been killed in the unrest surrounding nationwide protests, giving the first official word on casualties in two months.
That estimate is considerably lower than the toll reported by Human Rights Activists in Iran, a U.S.-based group that has been closely tracking the protests since they erupted after the Sept. 16 death of a young woman being held by the country’s morality police.
The activist group says 451 protesters and 60 security forces have been killed since the start of the unrest and that more than 18,000 people have been detained.
The protests were sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was detained for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code. They quickly escalated into calls for the overthrow of Iran’s theocracy and pose one of the most serious challenges to the ruling clerics since the 1979 revolution that brought them to power.
Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the aerospace division of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, was quoted by a website close to the Guard as saying that more than 300 people have been killed, including “martyrs,” an apparent reference to security forces. He also suggested that many of those killed were ordinary Iranians not involved in the protests.
He did not provide an exact figure or say where his estimate came from.
Authorities have heavily restricted media coverage of the protests. State-linked media have not reported an overall toll and have largely focused on attacks on security forces, which officials blame on shadowy militant and separatist groups.
Hajizadeh reiterated the official claim that the protests have been fomented by Iran’s enemies, including Western countries and Saudi Arabia, without providing evidence. The protesters say they are fed up after decades of social and political repression, and deny having any foreign agenda.
The protests have spread across the country and drawn support from artists, athletes and other public figures. The unrest has even cast a shadow over the World Cup, with some Iranians actively rooting against their own national team because they see it as being linked to the government.
The niece of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently called on people to pressure their governments to cut ties with Tehran over its violent suppression of the demonstrations.
In a video posted online by her France-based brother, Farideh Moradkhani urged “conscientious people of the world” to support Iranian protesters. The video was shared online this week after Moradkhani’s reported arrest on Nov. 23, according to the activist group.
Moradkhani is a long-time activist whose late father was an opposition figure married to Khamenei’s sister and is the closest member of the supreme leader’s family to be arrested. The branch of the family has opposed Khamenei for decades and Moradkhani has been imprisoned on previous occasions for her activism.
“I ask the conscientious people of the world to stand by us and ask their governments not to react with empty words and slogans but with real action and stop any dealings with this regime,” she said in her video statement.
The protests, now in their third month, have continued despite a brutal crackdown by Iranian security forces using live ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas.
Iran refuses to cooperate with a fact-finding mission that the U.N. Human Rights Council recently voted to establish.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will not engage in any cooperation, whatsoever, with the political committee,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said Monday.
In a separate development, Iran released a 76-year-old dual Iranian-Austrian citizen from prison for health reasons, the Austria Press Agency reported.
APA quoted the Austrian Foreign Ministry confirming that Massud Mossaheb was given indefinite medical leave. The ministry said “intensive diplomatic efforts” had led to his release, which was first reported by Austrian daily Die Presse. There was no immediate comment from Iran.
Mossaheb was arrested on suspicion of espionage in early 2019 during a visit to the capital, Tehran, and later sentenced to 10 years in prison. He must remain in Iran and report to authorities every other week, APA reported.
Iran has detained several dual nationals in recent years on charges of threatening national security. Analysts and rights groups accuse hard-liners in Iran’s security agencies of using foreign detainees as bargaining chips in negotiations or prisoner swaps with the West, which Tehran denies. | https://www.news10.com/news/international/ap-niece-of-supreme-leader-asks-world-to-cut-ties-with-iran/ | 2022-11-28T20:16:40 | en | 0.975721 |
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The third round of Congo peace talks facilitated by the East Africa regional bloc opened in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, on Monday with a plan to discuss reforms that will facilitate disarmament of rebel groups.
Kenyan President William Ruto and Burundi’s Évariste Ndayishimiye attended the Monday opening session in person, while the presidents of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda attended virtually.
The leaders reiterated their commitment to support and ensure lasting peace in Congo.
The facilitator of the talks, former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta, said the aim was to discuss political process and institutional reforms that will ensure an environment that is conducive to the disarmament, rehabilitation and reintegration of armed groups in Congo.
Leaders who attended a summit in Angola last week called for a cease-fire followed by a rebel withdrawal from the major towns that are currently under the control of the M23 rebel group.
While M23 was not formally a party to the talks in Angola, it has said it will accept the cease-fire. But it also says it doesn’t trust the Congolese government to honor the deal and end hostilities.
The East Africa regional bloc secretary general, Peter Mathuki, said some of the groups were present in Monday’s talks, but did not specify which ones.
The facilitator plans to identify the root cause of conflict in Congo’s five provinces and discuss the restoration of state leadership in the provinces to facilitate lasting peace.
The full deployment of regional forces made up of soldiers from the member states will also be discussed.
A contingent of Kenyan troops has already been deployed to eastern Congo as part of a regional force that includes troops from Uganda, Burundi and South Sudan.
Kenyatta emphasized that the region could only facilitate the peace process. In the end it is the Congolese people who will ensure peace and have the huge responsibility of maintaining peace.
“I look forward to opportunities that will enable the region to continue working closely to enhance and strengthen the bonds of purposeful friendship and strategic cooperation for the mutual benefit of all citizens of East Africa,” he said.
The M23 rebel group rose to prominence a decade ago when its fighters seized Goma, the largest city in Congo’s east, which sits along the border with Rwanda. After a peace deal, many of M23′s fighters were integrated into the national military.
The group re-emerged last November, saying the government had failed to live up to its decade-long promises. By June, M23 had seized the strategic town of Bunagana near the border with Uganda.
M23 has been a sticking point in deteriorating relations between Congo and Rwanda. Many of the rebel fighters are Congolese ethnic Tutsis and Rwanda’s president is of Rwandan Tutsi descent.
When formed more than a decade ago, M23 was fighting to protect the rights of Congo’s ethnic Tutsis. But many observers say M23 and other armed groups operating in eastern Congo are now seeking control of the region’s vast mineral wealth. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/ap-talks-begin-on-disarmament-of-rebel-groups-in-eastern-congo/ | 2022-11-28T20:16:44 | en | 0.959382 |
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EXCLUSIVE-Microsoft likely to offer EU concessions soon in Activision deal -sources
Microsoft is likely to offer remedies to EU antitrust regulators in the coming weeks to stave off formal objections to its $69 billion bid for "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard, people familiar with the matter said.
Microsoft is likely to offer remedies to EU antitrust regulators in the coming weeks to stave off formal objections to its $69 billion bid for "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard, people familiar with the matter said. The U.S. software giant and Xbox maker announced the deal in January to help it compete better with leaders Tencent and Sony.
It has since then faced regulatory headwinds in the European Union, Britain and in the United States, with Sony criticising the deal and even calling for a regulatory veto. The deadline for the European Commission, which is investigating the deal, to set out a formal list of competition concerns known as a statement of objection is in January. Offering remedies before such a document is issued could shorten the regulatory process.
"Ultimately, such a move could secure an early clearance with the European Commission and subsequently be used by the parties before other antitrust agencies," said Stephane Dionnet, a partner at law firm McDermott Will & Emery. "However, it remains to be seen whether the active complainants will validate such concessions (in particular in terms of scope) and if behavioural remedies will also be accepted by the CMA and the FTC," he said, referring to the UK and U.S. antitrust agencies.
Microsoft's remedy would consist mainly of a 10-year licensing deal to Playstation owner Sony, another person with direct knowledge said. Activision shares were up 2% after the Reuters story was published.
The EU competition watchdog, which is scheduled to decide on the deal by April 11, and Sony declined to comment. Microsoft said it was working with the Commission to address valid marketplace concerns.
"Sony, as the industry leader, says it is worried about Call of Duty, but we've said we are committed to making the same game available on the same day on both Xbox and PlayStation. We want people to have more access to games, not less," a Microsoft spokesperson said. The deal has been cleared unconditionally in Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Serbia.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Britain, France sign deal to boost cooperation on illegal migration | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/technology/2268083-exclusive-microsoft-likely-to-offer-eu-concessions-soon-in-activision-deal--sources | 2022-11-28T20:16:48 | en | 0.965025 |
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistani authorities launched a new nationwide anti-polio drive on Monday amid a spike in new cases among children, health officials said. It is the sixth such campaign this year and will last for five days, aiming to inoculate children under the age of 5 in high-risk areas.
The newest drive was aimed at Islamabad and in the high-risk districts in eastern Punjab and southwestern Baluchistan province. A similar campaign will be launched in the northwest in the first week of December.
Pakistan regularly launches polio campaigns despite attacks on workers and police assigned to inoculation drives. Militants falsely claim the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children. Since April, Pakistan has registered 20 new polio cases and the outbreak has been seen as a blow to the efforts to eradicate the disease, which can cause severe paralysis in children.
Pakistan came close to eradicating polio last year, when only one case was reported.
Since then, the new cases have been reported in the northwest, forcing the government to launch anti-polio drives at small intervals in high-risk areas across the country. The last such campaign was launched earlier this month.
Pakistan’s anti-polio campaigns are also supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which last month pledged $1.2 billion to the effort to end polio worldwide. The money will be used for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s strategy through 2026. The initiative is aimed at ending the polio virus in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the last two endemic countries, the foundation said last month. | https://www.news10.com/news/international/ap-pakistan-launches-new-anti-polio-drive-amid-spike-in-cases/ | 2022-11-28T20:16:47 | en | 0.957179 |
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s shift to nuclear-powered submarines will assure its South Pacific neighbors of its commitment to regional security, Britain’s Minister of State for the Indo-Pacific said Monday.
Australia will announce in March what type of submarine powered with U.S. nuclear technology it wants to build under a deal with the United States and Britain revealed in September last year.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan said she expects the three nations to work closely together to deliver a fleet of eight submarines.
“It’s going to be a really exciting project and really importantly will assure, I think, not only for Australia, but for the Indo-Pacific region, for those Pacific islands that assurance that Australia’s commitment to their security is unassailable,” Trevelyan told the National Press Club.
The previous Australian government infuriated French President Emmanuel Macron by canceling a contract for a French-built fleet of 12 conventionally-powered submarines worth 90 billion Australian dollars ($66 billion). It opted instead for nuclear-powered versions.
This month, Macron described Australia going nuclear as a “confrontation with China.”
Trevelyan said she disagreed with Macron’s stance that Australia should have stayed with the French contract.
“The Pacific is a big place. Having nuclear-powered submarines means you can go further for longer, it’s a practical question,” Trevelyan said.
“The French navy has nuclear-powered submarines. What they were proposing to build for (Australia), diesel submarines, is not what the French use,” she added.
Australia’s government, elected in May after nine years in opposition, has been trying to build closer relations with its neighbors in a region where China is exerting more influence.
The government has accused the previous leadership of Australia’s worst foreign policy failure in the Pacific since World War II with China’s signing of a security pact with the Solomon Islands in April.
That accord has raised fears that a Chinese naval base might be established in the South Pacific. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/ap-uk-minister-says-australian-submarines-will-assure-neighbors/ | 2022-11-28T20:16:52 | en | 0.967068 |
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WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Protesters gathered Monday at the home of Poland’s ruling party leader to vent anger at what they regard as an erosion of women’s rights under his conservative government and a recent remark about women using alcohol.
The protesters who gathered outside Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s house spoke out against a near total ban on abortion pushed by his Law and Justice party that took effect last year, as well as policies that discourage in-vitro fertilization procedures.
Women’s Strike, a prominent women’s rights movement, called people to the streets only after Kaczynski earlier this month blamed Poland’s low birthrate partly on young women drinking too much alcohol.
Other demonstrations were taking place in a handful of Polish cities.
While the alcohol comment angered many at the time, the outrage appeared to have subsided as the protest was much smaller than some of the Women’s Strike-led demonstrations of the past year, some of which were huge.
Some people accuse Kaczynski, a 73-year-old bachelor, of being out of touch and not understanding all the reasons that make it difficult today for women to decide to have children.
Women’s Strike says there are many reasons for the country’s low birth rate, including Poland’s de facto prohibition of abortion, a lack of general access to sexual education and in vitro procedures, high inflation, a housing shortage and a lack of access to day care centers.
The protest was being held on a symbolic day: the 104th anniversary of women winning voting rights in Poland, among the world’s earliest.
Kaczynski said at a news conference ahead of the protest that he didn’t understand why the protesters chose to demonstrate in front of his home “since I have always been a supporter of full equality for women.” | https://www.news10.com/news/international/ap-poles-vent-anger-at-leader-over-his-policies-ideas-on-women/ | 2022-11-28T20:16:55 | en | 0.977487 |
U.S. FTC sues Google, iHeartMedia for alleged deceptive ads promoting Pixel 4
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and seven U.S. states sued Alphabet Inc's Google and iHeartMedia Inc on Monday over alleged deceptive ads promoting Google's Pixel 4 smartphone in 2019 and 2020, the FTC said.
"The Federal Trade Commission and seven state attorneys general sued Google LLC and iHeartMedia, Inc. today for airing nearly 29,000 deceptive endorsements by radio personalities promoting their use of and experience with Google’s Pixel 4 phone in 2019 and 2020," the FTC said in a statement.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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U.S. president unveils investments in Indonesia carbon capture, transport | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/technology/2268089-us-ftc-sues-google-iheartmedia-for-alleged-deceptive-ads-promoting-pixel-4 | 2022-11-28T20:16:56 | en | 0.889478 |
LONDON (AP) — British health authorities have recorded 50 cases of diphtheria this year among recently arrived asylum seekers, including one man who died after falling sick at a crowded migrant center.
The U.K. Health Protection Agency said Monday that the infected people likely caught the disease in their countries of origin or during their journeys to the U.K. It said a similar increase had been seen elsewhere in Europe.
In 2021 there were 11 cases in the U.K., where most people are vaccinated against diphtheria in childhood. The infection affects the nose, throat and sometimes skin and can be fatal if not treated quickly.
The outbreak comes amid criticism of the government over accommodation conditions for people who arrive in the U.K. across the English Channel in small boats. Many have been held for days or weeks at Manston, a disused airport in southeast England serving as a processing center. At one point last month more than 4,000 people were staying at the facility, designed to hold a maximum of 1,600.
Earlier this month a man staying at Manston became sick and later died in hospital. A PCR test for diphtheria was positive, though immigration minister Robert Jenrick said authorities were awaiting post-mortem results to determine the cause of death.
Thousands of migrants from around the world travel to northern France each year in hopes of crossing the Channel to Britain. There has been a sharp increase in the number of people attempting the journey in dinghies and other small craft as authorities have clamped down on other routes such as stowing away on buses or trucks.
More than 40,000 people have arrived so far this year in Britain after making the hazardous Channel trip, up from 28,000 in all of 2021 and 8,500 in 2020.
In an attempt to deter the crossings, Britain’s government has announced a controversial plan to put people who arrive in small boats on a one-way flight to Rwanda in a bid to break the business model of smuggling gangs.
Critics say the plan is immoral and impractical. It is being challenged in the courts. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/ap-uk-says-50-recently-arrived-migrants-found-with-diphtheria/ | 2022-11-28T20:16:59 | en | 0.976829 |
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BRUSSELS (AP) — Law enforcement authorities in six different countries have joined forces to take down a “super cartel” of drugs traffickers controlling about one third of the cocaine trade in Europe, the European Union crime agency said on Monday.
Europol said 49 suspects have been arrested during the investigation, with the latest series of raids across Europe and the United Arab Emirates taking place between Nov. 8-19.
The agency said police forces involved in “Operation Desert Light” targeted both the “command-and-control center and the logistical drugs trafficking infrastructure in Europe.”
Over 30 metric tons (33 tons) of drugs were seized during the investigations run in Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UAE with the support of Europol. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration also played a role in bringing down the organization, which was also involved in money laundering, Europol said.
“The scale of cocaine importation into Europe under the suspects’ control and command was massive,” Europol said, adding that the suspects used encrypted communications to organize drugs shipments.
The Netherlands was the country where most of the arrests were made, with 14 suspects arrested in 2021. Europol said six “high-value targets” were arrested in Dubai.
Dutch authorities said one of the suspects arrested in Dubai allegedly imported thousands of kilos of cocaine into the Netherlands in 2020 and 2021. The 37-year-old man with both Dutch and Moroccan nationality is also being prosecuted for laundering large amounts of money and possession of firearms. Police started investigating him after investigators cracked the encrypted messaging service Sky ECC, which is popular with criminals.
A 40-year-old Dutch-Bosnian citizen was also arrested in Dubai following an investigation based on intercepted Sky messages, according to Dutch police. He is suspected of importing into Europe cocaine and raw materials for the production of amphetamines.
Record amounts of cocaine are being seized in Europe. Its availability on the continent has never been higher, with extremely high purity and low prices.
More than 214 tons of cocaine were seized in the region in 2020, a 6% increase from the previous year, and experts from the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction believe that amount could reach 300 metric tons (330 tons) in 2022. | https://www.news10.com/news/international/ap-police-bring-down-european-cocaine-super-cartel/ | 2022-11-28T20:16:59 | en | 0.973656 |
Elon Musk: Apple threatened to yank Twitter from App Store
He later tagged Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook's Twitter account in another tweet, asking "what's going on here?" Musk also said "yes" in response to a user question on whether Apple was threatening Twitter's presence in the App Store or making moderation demands.
Elon Musk accused Apple Inc of threatening to block Twitter Inc from its app store without saying why in a series of tweets on Monday that also said the iPhone maker had stopped advertising on the social media platform. The billionaire CEO of Twitter and Tesla also said Apple was pressuring Twitter over content moderation demands.
The action, unconfirmed by Apple, would not be unusual as the company has routinely enforced its rules that led to the removal of apps such as Gab and Parler, which is popular with U.S. conservatives. Parler was restored by Apple in 2021 after the app updated its content and moderation practices, the companies said at the time.
"Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?," Musk, who took Twitter private for $44 billion last month, said in a tweet. He later tagged Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook's Twitter account in another tweet, asking "what's going on here?"
Musk also said "yes" in response to a user question on whether Apple was threatening Twitter's presence in the App Store or making moderation demands. Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The world's most valuable firm spent an estimated $131,600 on Twitter ads between Nov. 10 and Nov. 16, down from $220,800 between Oct. 16 and Oct. 22, the week before Musk closed the Twitter deal, according to ad measurement firm Pathmatics. A rising list of firms from General Mills Inc to luxury automaker Audi of America have stopped or paused advertising on Twitter since the acquisition.
Musk, a self-described free speech absolutist, said earlier this month that Twitter had seen a "massive" drop in revenue and blamed activist groups for pressuring advertisers. Ad sales account for about 90% of Twitter's revenue. The platform has in the past few days reinstated the account of former U.S. President Donald Trump, as well as comedian Kathy Griffin and U.S. House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The Trump reinstatement prompted a coalition of civil rights activists to say last week that they were urging Twitter's advertisers to issue statements about pulling their ads off the platform. At a presentation for advertisers in May, some ad agencies and brands were already skeptical on concerns that Musk would scale back content moderation and security protection on the platform.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Trump defied Jan 6 committee subpoena, panel says | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/technology/2268091-elon-musk-apple-threatened-to-yank-twitter-from-app-store | 2022-11-28T20:17:04 | en | 0.968583 |
LONDON (AP) — Russian soldiers must be held accountable for raping Ukrainian women and committing other acts of sexual violence during Russia’s war in Ukraine, the country’s first lady, Olensa Zelenska, told an international conference on preventing sexual violence in conflicts Monday.
Zelenska told the London summit that sexual violence was being perpetrated “systematically and openly” as the war in Ukraine drags on. Phone recordings have shown Russian soldiers openly discussing rape with their relatives at home, Zelenska said.
“Sexual violence is the most cruel, most animalistic way to prove mastership over someone. And for victims of this kind of violence, it is difficult to testify in war times because nobody feels safe”, she said.
“This is another instrument that they’re using as their weaponry. This is another weapon in their arsenal in this war and conflict. That’s why they’re using this systematically and openly,” she added.
Zelenska then visited Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s official residence at No. 10 Downing Street. She was greeted by Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, and the two women decorated the Christmas tree outside the residence in front of assembled photographers.
Zelenska is expected to address British lawmakers on Tuesday as part of her U.K. visit.
Sunak visited the Ukrainian capital Kyiv earlier this month, where he offered continued U.K. support to Ukraine in its fight against Russia. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/ap-ukraine-first-lady-attends-london-meeting-on-sexual-violence/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:05 | en | 0.962441 |
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BERLIN (AP) — Iran has released a 76-year-old dual Iranian-Austrian citizen from prison for health reasons, the Austria Press Agency reported Monday.
APA quoted the Austrian foreign ministry confirming that Massud Mossaheb was given indefinite medical leave.
The ministry said “intensive diplomatic efforts” had led to his release, which was first reported by Austrian daily Die Presse.
APA reported that Mossaheb must remain in Iran and report to authorities every other week.
Mossaheb was arrested on suspicion of espionage in early 2019 during a visit to Tehran.
He was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Two other Austrians remain imprisoned in Iran, APA reported. | https://www.news10.com/news/international/ap-report-austrian-iranian-gets-medical-leave-from-iran-prison/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:07 | en | 0.987315 |
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine prepared for more Russian strikes against energy and other key infrastructure Monday in what appears to be a weekly pattern, and warned of possible evacuations from the capital.
Estonia’s foreign minister joined counterparts from six Baltic and Nordic nations — in the largest delegation to visit Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale war — to pledge electric generators, warm clothes and food. The goal is to help Ukrainians cope with their coldest months of need and keep their resolve high.
“Russia is weaponizing civilian energy security, and it is truly shameful,” Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu said in Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned late Sunday that Russian troops “are preparing new strikes, and as long as they have missiles, they won’t stop.” He met Monday with senior government officials to discuss what actions to take.
“The upcoming week can be as hard as the one that passed,” he predicted.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg insisted Russian President Vladimir Putin was intent on using frost, snow and ice to his advantage, not only on the battleground but against Ukrainian civilians.
“President Putin is now trying to use the winter as a weapon of war against Ukraine, and this is horrific and we need to be prepared for more attacks,” he said on the eve of a two-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Bucharest, Romania. “That’s the reason why NATO’s allies have stepped up their support to Ukraine.”
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said some of the city’s 3 million people might have to be evacuated to where essential services would be less prone to shutdowns caused by missile attacks.
For weeks, Russia has been pounding energy facilities around Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with missile strikes, usually on Mondays at the work week’s beginning, resulting in outages of power and water supplies.
Based on the pattern of infrastructure attacks and the Russian military’s preparation time, an advisor to Ukraine’s interior minister said on national TV that the next strikes could occur as soon as later Monday or in another week. A Ukrainian military spokesman also said on national TV that Russian aircraft had intensified their activity over Ukraine on Monday.
With temperatures hovering around freezing, and expected to dip as low as minus 11C (12 Fahrenheit) in little more than a week, international help was increasingly focused on items like generators and transformers, to make sure blackouts that affect everything from kitchens to operating rooms are as limited and short as possible. The power situation was so dire that Ukraine’s energy trader — in normal times an exporter — tested importing electricity from neighboring Romania.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “continues trying to make Ukraine a black hole — no light, no electricity, no heating to put the Ukrainians into the darkness and the cold,” said European foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who is leading a meeting of EU ministers in Bucharest, Romania, to help Ukraine with its humanitarian crisis. “So we have to continue our support providing more material for the Ukrainians to face the winter without electricity.”
Ukraine’s energy provider Ukrenergo said Monday that it is still short 27% of output and that “the scale and complexity of the damage are high, and repair works have continued around the clock.”
Power supply was restored to 17% of residents in the southern city of Kherson, which Ukraine reclaimed earlier this month. The Russians have continued pounding the city with artillery barrages from newly consolidated positions across the Dnieper River. Britain’s Defense Ministry reported that the strikes reached a record high, 54, on Sunday.
Ukraine’s presidential office said Monday that at least four civilians were killed and 11 others wounded in the latest Russian attacks. It said intense fighting is continuing in the east, with the Russians shelling Bakhmut and Toretsk.
“People are sheltering in the basements, many of which are filled by water,” said Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko. “They have been living in catastrophic conditions without power or heating.”
Also Monday, Russia denied that it plans to withdraw from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, which it has occupied since the early days of the war.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a call with reporters that it was pointless to look for signs of a pullback from the plant “when there are none and there can’t be.”
Peskov’s comments were in response to Ukrainian claims that Russian forces were bound to retreat from the plant as they face a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The plant was shut down because of repeated shelling, for which Russia and Ukraine have traded blame. The U.N. nuclear watchdog and international leaders have urged Russia to demilitarize the plant to avoid a nuclear disaster, but Moscow has rejected the demands, arguing that it needs to maintain troops there to ensure its safety.
—-
Raf Casert contributed from Brussels.
___
Follow AP coverage of the war in Ukraine at: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine | https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/ap-ukraine-on-edge-for-more-attacks-west-eyes-humanitarian-aid/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:09 | en | 0.970303 |
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Cyber Monday sales to touch up to $11.6 bln as shoppers go discount hunting
"With Walmart and Target closing stores on Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday represents a make-or-break benchmark." Shoppers will find record discounts today for computers, peaking at 27% off listed price, while nearly all other categories, including apparel, toys and furniture, also have double-digit discounts, Adobe said.
Spending on Cyber Monday, the biggest U.S. online shopping day, may hit a record $11.6 billion, according to a report, as discounts on everything from pajamas to AirPods drive shoppers to buy even under the strain of inflation. The Adobe Analytics report is predicting Cyber Monday spending of $11.2 billion to $11.6 billion, an increase of up to 8.5% from a year earlier, as inflation-weary consumers have been putting off holiday shopping for weeks in the hopes of deep post-Thanksgiving markdowns.
Adobe Analytics, which measures e-commerce by analyzing transactions at websites, has access to data covering purchases at 85% of the top 100 internet retailers in the United States. Cyber Monday sales fell 1.4% last year as retailers spread out promotional deals across weeks from as early as October to better manage inventories amid widespread product shortages.
However, big single day shopping events appear to be back in vogue this year, with major retailers including Target, Macy's and Best Buy expecting a return to pre-pandemic shopping patterns. Target's website on Monday advertised discounts of up to 40% on Hot Wheels toys and holiday decor, while Amazon offered around 60% off on high-end watches and accessories. Walmart and Best Buy websites also showed discounts worth hundreds of dollars on high-end laptops and televisions.
"Shoppers are waiting out the season in anticipation of deeper discounts and are less susceptible to shiny objects," said Carol Spieckerman, president at consultancy Spieckerman Retail. "With Walmart and Target closing stores on Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday represents a make-or-break benchmark."
Shoppers will find record discounts today for computers, peaking at 27% off listed price, while nearly all other categories, including apparel, toys and furniture, also have double-digit discounts, Adobe said. U.S. shoppers spent a record $9.12 billion online on Black Friday, according to Adobe Analytics. However, with sporadic rain in some parts of the country, brick-and-mortar stores and malls saw thinner crowds than usual.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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EU sanctions to target Iran Guards 'inner circle', Germany says | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/technology/2268097-cyber-monday-sales-to-touch-up-to-116-bln-as-shoppers-go-discount-hunting | 2022-11-28T20:17:12 | en | 0.943386 |
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BERLIN (AP) — Senior members of the smallest party in Germany’s coalition government are seeking to hit the brakes on plans to ease rules for obtaining German citizenship, arguing Monday that the government must first do more to ensure that people in the country illegally are deported.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, a member of his center-left party, have signaled in recent days that they’re keen to move ahead quickly with liberalizing the rules — one of a series of modernizing reforms that Scholz’s three-party coalition agreed to tackle when it took office nearly a year ago.
But senior lawmakers with the pro-business Free Democrats, who tended to ally with the center-right before joining Scholz’s coalition last year and are now struggling in the polls, have pushed back on that plan. They point to a pledge in the coalition agreement to “effectively reduce irregular migration” and argue that too little has happened on that front.
The Free Democrats’ general secretary, Bijan Djir-Sarai, told Monday’s edition of the daily Rheinische Post daily that “now is not the moment to simplify citizenship law. There is no progress so far on repatriation and on combating illegal migration.” He added that the coalition must not “take the second step before the first.”
The head of the German parliament’s defense committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann of the Free Democrats, said it’s right for people who have long lived and worked in Germany to be integrated faster. “But before Ms. Faeser makes that her top priority, she should first ensure that those who are here illegally, those who may also have attracted the attention of law enforcement, are repatriated properly,” she told n-tv television.
Faeser’s plans call for people to be eligible for German citizenship after five years of legal residence, or three in case of “special integration accomplishments,” rather than the eight or six years at present. The coalition also pledged last year to drop restrictions on holding dual citizenship.
Germany’s center-right opposition objects both to shortening the waiting period and to allowing dual citizenship as a rule. At present, most people from countries other than European Union members and Switzerland in principle have to give up their previous nationality when they gain German citizenship, but there are several exemptions.
“Already today, about 60% of people who are naturalized keep their previous citizenship,” Scholz said in a speech Monday. “And for the other 40% it’s often hard to understand … why that doesn’t go for them in their individual case.” | https://www.news10.com/news/international/ap-smallest-german-governing-party-stalls-on-citizenship-reform/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:14 | en | 0.965103 |
WASHINGTON (AP) — “We the People” is Jill Biden’s holiday theme with White House decorations designed for “the people” to see themselves in the tree ornaments, mantel displays, mirrors and do-it-yourself creations that have turned the mansion’s public spaces into a winter wonderland.
“The soul of our nation is, and has always been, ‘We the People,’” the first lady said at a White House event honoring the volunteers who decorated over Thanksgiving weekend. “And that is what inspired this year’s White House holiday decoration.”
“The values that unite us can be found all around you, a belief in possibility and optimism and unity,” Jill Biden said. “Room by room, we represent what brings us together during the holidays and throughout the year.”
Public rooms are dedicated to unifying forces: honoring and remembering deceased loved ones, words and stories, kindness and gratitude, food and traditions, nature and recreation, songs and sounds, unity and hope, faith and light, and children.
A burst of pine aroma hits visitors as they step inside the East Wing and come upon trees adorned with mirrored Gold Star ornaments bearing the names of fallen service members.
Winter trees, woodland animals and glowing lanterns placed along the hallway help give the feeling of walking through snow.
Likenesses of Biden family pets — Commander and Willow, the dog and cat — first appear at the end of the hallway before they are seen later in the Vermeil Room, which celebrates kindness and gratitude, and the State Dining Room, which highlights children.
Recipes contributed by the small army of volunteer decorators spruce up the China Room’s mantel. Handwritten ones — for apple crisp and pizzelle, an Italian cookie — are family recipes shared by the first lady.
Aides say she was inspired by people she met while traveling around the country and by the nation’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
A copy of the Declaration of Independence is on display in the library, while the always-show-stopping 300-pound (136 kilogram) gingerbread White House this year includes a sugar cookie replica of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, where the documents were signed.
The executive pastry chef used 20 sheets of sugar cookie dough, 30 sheets of gingerbread dough, 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of pastillage, 30 pounds (14 kilograms) of chocolate and 40 pounds (18 kilograms) of royal icing to create the gingerbread and sugar cookie masterpiece.
A new addition to the White House collection this year is a menorah, which is lit nightly during the eight-day Jewish festival of Hanukkah. White House carpenters built the menorah out of wood that was saved from a Truman-era renovation and sterling silver candle cups.
Some 50,000 visitors are expected to pass through the White House for the holidays, including tourists and guests invited to nearly a month’s worth of receptions. Among them will be French President Emmanuel Macron, who will meet with President Joe Biden at the White House on Thursday and be honored at a state dinner, the first of the Biden administration.
More than 150 volunteers, including two of the first lady’s sisters, helped decorate the White House during the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
The decorations include more than 83,000 twinkling lights on trees, garlands, wreaths and other displays, 77 Christmas trees and 25 wreaths on the White House exterior. Volunteers also used more than 12,000 ornaments, just under 15,000 feet (4,500 meters) of ribbon and more than 1,600 bells.
Some of the decorations are do-it-yourself projects that the first lady hopes people will be encouraged to recreate for themselves, aides said. They include plastic drinking cups turned into bells and table-top Christmas trees made from foam shapes and dollar store ramekins.
Groupings of snowy trees fill corners of the East Room, which reflects nature and recreation, and scenes from four national parks are depicted on each fireplace mantel: Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah.
In the Blue Room, the official White House Christmas tree — an 18 1/2-foot (5.6-meter) Concolor fir from Auburn, Pennsylvania — is decorated to represent unity and hope with handmade renderings of the official birds from all 57 territories, states and the District of Columbia.
The State Dining Room is dedicated to the next generation — children — and its trees are decorated with self-portrait ornaments made by students of the 2021 Teachers of the Year, “ensuring that children see themselves” in the décor, the White House said.
Hanging from the fireplace in the State Dining Room are the Biden family Christmas stockings.
“We the People” are celebrated again in the Grand Foyer and Cross Hall on the State Floor, where metal ribbons are inscribed with the names of all the states, territories and the District of Columbia.
As part of Joining Forces, her White House initiative to support military families, Jill Biden was joined by National Guard leaders from across the country, as well as National Guard families. Her late son, Beau Biden, was a major in the Delaware Army National Guard.
She met before the event with children from National Guard families, telling them she wanted to hear their stories because “you have served right alongside of your parents and you deserve to have your courage, and your sacrifice, recognized, too.”
The White House noted that the holiday guide book given to visitors was designed by Daria Peoples, an African American children’s book author who lives in Las Vegas. Peoples is a former elementary school teacher who has written and illustrated a series of picture books to support children of color, including those who have experienced race-based trauma. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/ap-we-the-people-is-the-white-houses-theme-for-the-holidays/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:17 | en | 0.948989 |
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MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Somali forces on Monday stormed a hotel in the capital, Mogadishu, where Islamic extremists had been holed up for more than 18 hours after killing eight civilians and trapping dozens in the building, officials said.
Police spokesperson Sadik Dodishe said all six extremists died during the operation at the Villa Rosa hotel, and one member of the security forces was also killed.
Dodishe said about 60 people who had been trapped in the hotel were freed and none of them were injured. It was not immediately clear whether others were missing.
According to Dodishe, five of the attackers were killed by security forces, and one blew himself up.
Islamic extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mogadishu resident Mohamed Suleyman told the AP that two of his relatives, both civilians, died in the attack. “It’s a great sadness to learn that two of my relatives were among those killed in yesterday night’s attack,” he said. “We were informed by their colleagues who managed to escape the attack after jumping (over the perimeter) wall of the hotel.”
Ali Moalim, another Mogadishu resident, said he saw “two bodies of the security forces carried by their fellow soldiers.”
Al-Shabab said in a broadcast on its own radio frequency Sunday that its fighters attacked the hotel, which has a restaurant popular with government and security officials. The attack is believed to have started with an explosion before gunmen penetrated the hotel’s gates.
The hotel is not far from the presidential palace, Villa Somalia, in one of the most protected parts of central Mogadishu. A successful attack near the seat of the federal government is likely to instill deep fear among residents of the seaside capital that has long been prone to attacks by militants.
Such militant attacks are common in Mogadishu and other parts of the Horn of Africa nation.
The latest attack comes amid a new, high-profile offensive by the Somali government against al-Shabab, which still controls large parts of central and southern Somalia.
Extremist fighters loyal to the group have responded by killing prominent clan leaders in an apparent effort to dissuade support for the government offensive, and attacks on public places frequented by government officials and others persist.
Hotels and restaurants are frequently targeted, as are military bases for government troops and foreign peacekeepers.
Last month at least 120 people were killed in two car bombings at a busy junction in Mogadishu. Al-Shabab carried out that attack, the deadliest since a similar attack at the same spot killed more than 500 people five years ago.
Al-Shabab opposes Somalia’s federal government, which is backed by African Union peacekeepers, and seeks to take power and enforce a strict version of Sharia law.
The United States has described al-Shabab as one of al-Qaida’s deadliest organizations and targeted it with scores of airstrikes in recent years. Hundreds of U.S. military personnel have returned to the country after former president Donald Trump withdrew them. | https://www.news10.com/news/international/ap-somali-forces-still-battling-with-al-shabab-in-hotel-attack/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:21 | en | 0.984047 |
(WFLA) — A former Arizona teacher who made headlines after being caught having an OnlyFans account has also been booted off the website.
Samantha Peer, also known as Khloe Karter, was once a teacher at the Lake Havasu Unified School District, along with her husband.
However, their educational careers would come to an end after the community learned that the couple was making pornographic content on OnlyFans to supplement their income despite her efforts to avoid being found out.
“I chose an anonymous name as well as blocking the entire state of Arizona on OnlyFans so it wasn’t accessible to anyone living in the state,” she said in a video statement in early November.
At the center of the controversy was the fact that Peer created a video inside a classroom. While Peer admitted to doing so, she said the video was made on a weekend when no children were present.
On Nov. 13, Peer announced on social media that her OnlyFans accounts were both deactivated and that she was blocked from making any other accounts. The account remained disabled as of this report.
Nexstar has reached out to OnlyFans to confirm Peer’s story but the platform has told news outlets that they do not comment on specific accounts.
OnlyFans’ terms of service state that while they can give notice to content creators who are at risk of losing their accounts, the website also reserves the right to suspend or terminate accounts “immediately and without prior notice.”
While the website allows some users to create pornographic material for an audience for a subscription fee, it has rules that limit what adult content creators can do.
Extreme or criminal sexual activity is forbidden on the platform. With regards to content filmed in a public setting — for example, a classroom — content creators can face penalties if public nudity is recorded in a country where it is illegal and if it is in an area where the public is “reasonably likely to see the activities being performed.”
“This does not include outdoor places where members of the public are not present, for example, private property such as a private backyard, or secluded areas in nature where members of the public are not present,” the terms of service state.
In addition to losing both her teaching job and her OnlyFans accounts, Peer said she has continued to face backlash from both the public and her family.
“You’re nuts for filming in a classroom,” said one commenter. “That’s outta pocket and you know it.”
Peer responded to criticism that she did not appear to show proper remorse for her actions in a follow-up statement.
“I pay the price every single day,” she said. “Of course I’m remorseful. I miss [teaching] a lot.”
The former educator has since moved to another platform to create her content and appears to still be active on social media. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/former-teacher-who-made-adult-video-in-classroom-says-she-was-kicked-off-onlyfans/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:24 | en | 0.983295 |
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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The third round of Congo peace talks facilitated by the East Africa regional bloc opened in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, on Monday with a plan to discuss reforms that will facilitate disarmament of rebel groups.
Kenyan President William Ruto and Burundi’s Évariste Ndayishimiye attended the Monday opening session in person, while the presidents of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda attended virtually.
The leaders reiterated their commitment to support and ensure lasting peace in Congo.
The facilitator of the talks, former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta, said the aim was to discuss political process and institutional reforms that will ensure an environment that is conducive to the disarmament, rehabilitation and reintegration of armed groups in Congo.
Leaders who attended a summit in Angola last week called for a cease-fire followed by a rebel withdrawal from the major towns that are currently under the control of the M23 rebel group.
While M23 was not formally a party to the talks in Angola, it has said it will accept the cease-fire. But it also says it doesn’t trust the Congolese government to honor the deal and end hostilities.
The East Africa regional bloc secretary general, Peter Mathuki, said some of the groups were present in Monday’s talks, but did not specify which ones.
The facilitator plans to identify the root cause of conflict in Congo’s five provinces and discuss the restoration of state leadership in the provinces to facilitate lasting peace.
The full deployment of regional forces made up of soldiers from the member states will also be discussed.
A contingent of Kenyan troops has already been deployed to eastern Congo as part of a regional force that includes troops from Uganda, Burundi and South Sudan.
Kenyatta emphasized that the region could only facilitate the peace process. In the end it is the Congolese people who will ensure peace and have the huge responsibility of maintaining peace.
“I look forward to opportunities that will enable the region to continue working closely to enhance and strengthen the bonds of purposeful friendship and strategic cooperation for the mutual benefit of all citizens of East Africa,” he said.
The M23 rebel group rose to prominence a decade ago when its fighters seized Goma, the largest city in Congo’s east, which sits along the border with Rwanda. After a peace deal, many of M23′s fighters were integrated into the national military.
The group re-emerged last November, saying the government had failed to live up to its decade-long promises. By June, M23 had seized the strategic town of Bunagana near the border with Uganda.
M23 has been a sticking point in deteriorating relations between Congo and Rwanda. Many of the rebel fighters are Congolese ethnic Tutsis and Rwanda’s president is of Rwandan Tutsi descent.
When formed more than a decade ago, M23 was fighting to protect the rights of Congo’s ethnic Tutsis. But many observers say M23 and other armed groups operating in eastern Congo are now seeking control of the region’s vast mineral wealth. | https://www.news10.com/news/international/ap-talks-begin-on-disarmament-of-rebel-groups-in-eastern-congo/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:29 | en | 0.959382 |
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is strengthening U.S. policy aimed at stemming sexual violence in war conflict zones, elevating the problem — increasingly documented in Ukraine and elsewhere — to the level of a possible serious human rights abuse that triggers sanctions and other actions against foreign perpetrators.
Biden on Monday signed a presidential memorandum that seeks to combat the use of rape by both foreign governments and individuals as a weapon of war.
The memorandum directs for the first time that the State and Treasury departments and other agencies give equal consideration of acts of sexual violence to other serious human rights abuses in leveraging sanctions and other punishment against foreign actors.
Currently, U.S. policy allows for the imposition of sanctions for conflict-related sexual violence, but it is not commonly used.
Biden’s action comes when the United Nations has warned that sexual violence in Ukraine, especially against women and girls, remains prevalent and underreported. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield has previously cited “a mountain of credible reports of atrocities committed by Russia’s forces against civilians,” including “horrific accounts of sexual violence.”
The Biden administration on Monday pointed to a proliferation of sexual violence cases in Ukraine, Ethiopia and elsewhere. It cited a U.N. report that found 3,293 verified sexual violence cases in 2021 across 18 countries, an increase of about 800 compared with the previous year. The U.N. has estimated that for each rape reported in connection with a conflict, about 10 to 20 cases go undocumented.
The administration had previously pledged $400,000 in addition to its annual contribution of $1.75 million to the Office of the U.N. Special Representative to the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict. The State Department plans an added investment of $5.5 million over the next two years to civil society projects and survivor groups seeking sexual violence accountability and will expand programs to help survivors and investigate and document acts of such violence. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/political-news/ap-biden-boosts-us-effort-to-stem-sexual-violence-in-war-zones/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:30 | en | 0.946226 |
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CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s shift to nuclear-powered submarines will assure its South Pacific neighbors of its commitment to regional security, Britain’s Minister of State for the Indo-Pacific said Monday.
Australia will announce in March what type of submarine powered with U.S. nuclear technology it wants to build under a deal with the United States and Britain revealed in September last year.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan said she expects the three nations to work closely together to deliver a fleet of eight submarines.
“It’s going to be a really exciting project and really importantly will assure, I think, not only for Australia, but for the Indo-Pacific region, for those Pacific islands that assurance that Australia’s commitment to their security is unassailable,” Trevelyan told the National Press Club.
The previous Australian government infuriated French President Emmanuel Macron by canceling a contract for a French-built fleet of 12 conventionally-powered submarines worth 90 billion Australian dollars ($66 billion). It opted instead for nuclear-powered versions.
This month, Macron described Australia going nuclear as a “confrontation with China.”
Trevelyan said she disagreed with Macron’s stance that Australia should have stayed with the French contract.
“The Pacific is a big place. Having nuclear-powered submarines means you can go further for longer, it’s a practical question,” Trevelyan said.
“The French navy has nuclear-powered submarines. What they were proposing to build for (Australia), diesel submarines, is not what the French use,” she added.
Australia’s government, elected in May after nine years in opposition, has been trying to build closer relations with its neighbors in a region where China is exerting more influence.
The government has accused the previous leadership of Australia’s worst foreign policy failure in the Pacific since World War II with China’s signing of a security pact with the Solomon Islands in April.
That accord has raised fears that a Chinese naval base might be established in the South Pacific. | https://www.news10.com/news/international/ap-uk-minister-says-australian-submarines-will-assure-neighbors/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:36 | en | 0.967068 |
NEW YORK (AP) — Democrats celebrating a successful effort to keep control of the U.S. Senate this year will soon confront a 2024 campaign that could prove more challenging.
The party enters the next cycle defending 23 seats, including two held by independents who caucus with Democrats. That’s compared with just 10 seats that Republicans hope to keep in their column.
Adding to the potential hurdles is that some 2024 contests are in states that have become increasingly hostile to Democrats, including Montana, Ohio and West Virginia. Other Democratic-held seats are in some of the same hotly contested states that were at the center of this year’s midterms, such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada. And while Democrats carried each of those races, they did so at great cost and with sometimes narrow margins. In Nevada, for instance, Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto won by less than 1 percentage point, or about 9,000 votes.
For now, both parties insist they’re laser focused on coming out on top in the Dec. 6 Senate runoff in Georgia. But Democrats who are on the ballot in 2024 know that they could face fierce headwinds and are studying the results of this year’s election, when the party outperformed expectations.
For Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat facing her first reelection campaign, that means staying focused on kitchen table issues and touting legislation like the infrastructure law and gun violence legislation signed by President Joe Biden.
“We know that races are always close,” Rosen said in an interview. “We never take anything for granted.”
The dynamics of the next Senate campaign could be influenced by a variety of outside factors, particularly the presidential election and the attention it generates. Biden, who turned 80 this month, has said his “intention” is to run for reelection and that he will make a final decision early next year. Former President Donald Trump has already announced a third White House bid, and multiple other Republicans are lining up to launch campaigns. The eventual nominee in each party could have a profound impact on down-ballot races, including those for Senate.
But perhaps the biggest question for Senate Democrats seeking reelection will be who Republicans nominate as their opponents. The GOP lost several Senate elections this year, including those in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada, after Trump-backed candidates struggled to raise money and connect with a broader, more moderate range of voters during the general election.
In Nevada, the Republican field to challenge Rosen has not begun to shape up but is expected to attract several contenders. One name receiving attention is Sam Brown, a former U.S. Army captain who was awarded a Purple Heart after being severely wounded in Afghanistan. Brown ran for Senate this year and put up a strong challenge in the Republican primary before losing to Adam Laxalt, who lost in the general election to Cortez Masto.
Richard Hernandez, who was Brown’s campaign adviser, said, “He has committed to his supporters that he will never stop fighting for their issues, but he has not made any decisions as to whether that involves a future run for office.”
Also in the southwest, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist Democrat, will be up for reelection. The race, like other recent statewide contests in Arizona, is expected to be very competitive. But Sinema is likely to first face a well-funded primary challenger after angering much of the Democratic base by blocking or watering down progressive priorities like a minimum wage increase or Biden’s big social spending initiatives. She has not said whether she plans to run for reelection.
Sinema’s most prominent potential primary challenger is U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, who has a long history of feuding with Sinema. Gallego has not announced his plans for 2024 but has made it no secret that he’s thinking about challenging Sinema. He even raised money on the prospect he might oppose Sinema.
An independent expenditure group is also raising money, saying it will support grassroots organizations committed to defeating Sinema in a Democratic primary.
Republicans hope a bruising Democratic primary might give them an opening to win the seat after losing Senate races in Arizona in three consecutive elections.
Sinema is among a trio of moderate Senate Democrats who have sometimes used their leverage in an evenly divided chamber to block or blunt some of Biden’s plans and nominees. They will also be among the party’s most vulnerable incumbents in 2024.
The other two senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, will be running as Democrats in states that Trump handily carried in 2020.
Manchin has already drawn a GOP challenger in U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney, who declared a week after winning reelection that he was setting his sights on higher office. Manchin has not yet said whether he’ll run for reelection.
Republicans see Tester, a three-term senator, as vulnerable, and the opportunity to run for the seat could draw a fierce primary contest between former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Rep. Matt Rosendale. Zinke, who won a House seat in this year’s midterm elections, said he will decide whether to run next year, and Rosendale declined to answer.
Tester has not announced if he will seek another term but has said he anticipates 2024 will be just as tough as his last race in 2018, when he beat Rosendale in a close contest.
In Pennsylvania, Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey has not said whether he intends to run for a fourth term. Casey easily won reelection in 2018, but Pennsylvania has been competitive for Republicans, including in this year’s Senate race won by Democrat John Fetterman.
One potential Republican challenger whose name has been floated in Pennsylvania is former hedge fund CEO David McCormick, who narrowly lost the Republican primary in this year’s race to celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz. McCormick advisers declined to comment on that prospect. Conservative activist Kathy Barnette, who finished a close third in the Republican primary, didn’t respond to messages about whether she’s considering a 2024 campaign.
Wisconsin, which saw Republican Sen. Ron Johnson narrowly win reelection this year, is also expected to have another competitive Senate race in two years.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin is widely expected to seek a third term but has not officially announced. There are no official Republican candidates, but U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher has been talked about as a possibility.
Gallagher brushed off a query about whether he was considering challenging Baldwin, saying in a statement that he was focused on tackling issues like inflation and the border over the next two years after having just won reelection.
“Any talk of the next election, especially since we just had an election, distracts from the serious work we need to do,” he said.
A number of high-profile Republican senators will also be up for reelection in 2024, including Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rick Scott of Florida.
On the Democratic side, a number of the party’s former presidential candidates will face voters. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have all said they plan to seek another term.
Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats and is one of the most influential progressives in Congress, has not said if he intends to run for reelection.
In Utah, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney will face his first Senate reelection bid — if he chooses to run. Romney remains popular with many residents in Utah but has faced backlash from his own party for being the only Republican who voted twice to remove Trump from office after his two impeachments by the House.
When asked if Romney planned to run for reelection, his spokesperson Arielle Mueller did not offer any detail on his plans, saying instead that the senator was focused on tackling “significant challenges facing the country.”
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, a Republican who has been a Trump ally, is one of the GOP figures who has been seen as a potential 2024 Senate candidate in the state. Reyes’ longtime political consultant Alan Crooks wouldn’t say whether the attorney general will launch a campaign but argued he was getting pressure from within Utah and outside the state to have him run.
“He’s certainly set up to run, but it does not mean he’s considering it,” Crooks said.
___
Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix; Sam Metz in Salt Lake City; and Kevin Freking in Washington contributed to this report.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/political-news/ap-democrats-kept-the-senate-this-year-but-2024-may-be-harder/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:37 | en | 0.973018 |
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LONDON (AP) — British health authorities have recorded 50 cases of diphtheria this year among recently arrived asylum seekers, including one man who died after falling sick at a crowded migrant center.
The U.K. Health Protection Agency said Monday that the infected people likely caught the disease in their countries of origin or during their journeys to the U.K. It said a similar increase had been seen elsewhere in Europe.
In 2021 there were 11 cases in the U.K., where most people are vaccinated against diphtheria in childhood. The infection affects the nose, throat and sometimes skin and can be fatal if not treated quickly.
The outbreak comes amid criticism of the government over accommodation conditions for people who arrive in the U.K. across the English Channel in small boats. Many have been held for days or weeks at Manston, a disused airport in southeast England serving as a processing center. At one point last month more than 4,000 people were staying at the facility, designed to hold a maximum of 1,600.
Earlier this month a man staying at Manston became sick and later died in hospital. A PCR test for diphtheria was positive, though immigration minister Robert Jenrick said authorities were awaiting post-mortem results to determine the cause of death.
Thousands of migrants from around the world travel to northern France each year in hopes of crossing the Channel to Britain. There has been a sharp increase in the number of people attempting the journey in dinghies and other small craft as authorities have clamped down on other routes such as stowing away on buses or trucks.
More than 40,000 people have arrived so far this year in Britain after making the hazardous Channel trip, up from 28,000 in all of 2021 and 8,500 in 2020.
In an attempt to deter the crossings, Britain’s government has announced a controversial plan to put people who arrive in small boats on a one-way flight to Rwanda in a bid to break the business model of smuggling gangs.
Critics say the plan is immoral and impractical. It is being challenged in the courts. | https://www.news10.com/news/international/ap-uk-says-50-recently-arrived-migrants-found-with-diphtheria/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:44 | en | 0.976829 |
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OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The former warden of an abuse-plagued federal women’s prison known as the “rape club” went on trial Monday, accused of molesting inmates and forcing them to pose naked in their cells.
Ray J. Garcia, who retired after the FBI found nude photos of inmates on his government-issued phone last year, is among five workers charged with abusing inmates at the federal correctional institution in Dublin, California, and the first to go to trial.
Opening statements kicked off Monday in federal court in Oakland, with prosecutors spelling out evidence they said would show Garcia’s abuse of several inmates followed a pattern, starting with compliments, flattery and promises of transfers to lower security prisons and escalated to sexual encounters. Garcia, 55, has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he would face up to 15 years in prison.
An Associated Press investigation in February revealed a culture of abuse and cover-up that had persisted for years at the prison, about 21 miles (34 kilometers) east of Oakland. That reporting led to increased scrutiny from Congress and pledges from the federal Bureau of Prisons that it would fix problems and change the culture at the prison.
Garcia is charged with abusing three inmates between December 2019 and July 2021, but jurors could hear from as many as six women who say he groped them and told them to pose naked or in provocative clothing. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said prosecutors can call three additional accusers as witnesses, even though their allegations are not part of his indictment.
One of the women testified Monday that she started developing romantic feelings for Garcia and that their first sexual encounter was in the bathroom of the visitor’s area of the prison. The woman, whose prison job was to clean the visitation room, said Garcia told her he knew of several parts of the visitation area that wouldn’t be captured by surveillance cameras.
“I felt like he cared about me and he loved me,” the woman said, her voice breaking.
“He just said the sweetest, nicest things, it took me by surprise but I wanted to make him happy,” she said of their first sexual encounter in the bathroom. She said he later took nude photographs of her.
Garcia’s lawyer argues, though, that there was no surveillance video capturing the alleged sexual misconduct. Union officials have long complained the prison has an inadequate number of cameras.
“The evidence is not going to show one single video of any of these supposed events,” Garcia’s defense lawyer, James Reilly, said. In court papers, the defense argued that Garcia took pictures of one inmate because he wanted documentation that she was breaching policy by standing around naked.
The case, with shades of #MeToo behind bars, is also likely to put a spotlight on the Bureau of Prisons, calling into question its handling of sexual abuse complaints from inmates against staff and the vetting process for the people it chooses to run its prisons.
The AP generally does not name people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they consent to being identified. All sexual activity between a prison worker and an inmate is illegal. Correctional employees enjoy substantial power over inmates, controlling every aspect of their lives from mealtime to lights out, and there is no scenario in which an inmate can give consent.
Garcia was promoted from associate warden to warden in November 2020 while he was still abusing inmates, prosecutors say. The Bureau of Prisons has said it didn’t find out about the abuse until later. Garcia is the highest-ranking federal prison official arrested in more than 10 years.
The agency’s new director, Colette Peters, has reiterated the agency’s zero-tolerance policy for staff sexual misconduct and has called for harsher punishment for workers who commit abuse. But as abuse raged at Dublin, the process for reporting it was inherently broken.
Garcia was in charge of staff and inmate training on reporting abuse and complying with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act at the same time he was committing abuse, prosecutors say, and some inmates say they were sent to solitary confinement or other prisons for accusing employees of abuse.
Prosecutors say Garcia tried to keep his victims quiet with promises that he’d help them get early release. He allegedly told one victim he was “close friends” with the prison official responsible for investigating staff misconduct and couldn’t be fired. According to an indictment, he also said he liked to cavort with inmates because, given their lack of power, they couldn’t “ruin him.”
Garcia is also accused of ordering inmates to strip naked for him as he made his rounds and of lying to federal agents who asked him if he had ever asked inmates to undress for him or had inappropriately touched a female inmate.
“If they’re undressing, I’ve already looked,” Garcia told the FBI in July 2021, according to court records. “I don’t, like, schedule a time like, ‘You be undressed, and I’ll be there.’”
Garcia was placed on administrative leave before retiring. He was arrested in September 2021.
Earlier this month, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco directed federal prosecutors across the U.S. to “consider the full array of statutes,” including the federal Violence Against Women Act in cases involving Bureau of Prisons employees who are accused of sexual misconduct.
In those cases, Monaco said prosecutors should consider asking judges for sentences that go beyond the federal guidelines if the sentence recommended in the guidelines isn’t “fair and proportional to the seriousness of the offenses.”
Of the four other Dublin workers charged with abusing inmates, three have pleaded guilty and one is scheduled to stand trial next year. James Theodore Highhouse, the prison’s chaplain, is appealing his seven-year prison sentence, arguing that it was excessive because it was more than double the recommended punishment in federal sentencing guidelines.
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Sisak and Balsamo reported from New York. On Twitter, follow Michael Sisak at http://twitter.com/mikesisak and Michael Balsamo at http://twitter.com/MikeBalsamo1 and send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/political-news/ap-ex-prison-warden-faces-trial-over-inmate-abuse-allegations/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:45 | en | 0.979915 |
LONDON (AP) — Russian soldiers must be held accountable for raping Ukrainian women and committing other acts of sexual violence during Russia’s war in Ukraine, the country’s first lady, Olensa Zelenska, told an international conference on preventing sexual violence in conflicts Monday.
Zelenska told the London summit that sexual violence was being perpetrated “systematically and openly” as the war in Ukraine drags on. Phone recordings have shown Russian soldiers openly discussing rape with their relatives at home, Zelenska said.
“Sexual violence is the most cruel, most animalistic way to prove mastership over someone. And for victims of this kind of violence, it is difficult to testify in war times because nobody feels safe”, she said.
“This is another instrument that they’re using as their weaponry. This is another weapon in their arsenal in this war and conflict. That’s why they’re using this systematically and openly,” she added.
Zelenska then visited Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s official residence at No. 10 Downing Street. She was greeted by Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, and the two women decorated the Christmas tree outside the residence in front of assembled photographers.
Zelenska is expected to address British lawmakers on Tuesday as part of her U.K. visit.
Sunak visited the Ukrainian capital Kyiv earlier this month, where he offered continued U.K. support to Ukraine in its fight against Russia. | https://www.news10.com/news/international/ap-ukraine-first-lady-attends-london-meeting-on-sexual-violence/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:50 | en | 0.962441 |
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ATLANTA (AP) — In-person early voting for the last U.S. Senate seat is underway statewide in Georgia’s runoff, with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock working to get the jump on Republican challenger Hershel Walker who is putting less emphasis on advance balloting.
After winning a state lawsuit to allow Saturday voting after Thanksgiving, Warnock spent the weekend urging his supporters not to wait until the Dec. 6 runoff. Trying to leverage his role as pastor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s church and Georgia’s first Black U.S. senator, Warnock concentrated his efforts Sunday among Black communities in metro Atlanta.
“What we are doing right now is soul work,” Warnock said at Liberty International Church southwest of downtown, where he rallied supporters before leading a march to a nearby early voting site where he cast his ballot. “We are engaged in a political exercise,” Warnock continued, “but this is moral and spiritual work, and for us that has always been based on the foundation of the church.”
Walker, in contrast, did not hold public events over the long Thanksgiving weekend, and he has not emphasized early voting in his runoff campaign appearances, even as the Republican Party and its aligned PACs attempt to drive voter turnout after Walker underperformed other Georgia Republicans in the general election. Walker finished the first round with about 200,000 fewer votes than Gov. Brian Kemp, who easily won a second term. Walker resumes his campaign Monday with stops in small-town Toccoa and suburban Cumming.
Early in-person voting continues through Friday. Runoff Election Day is Tuesday of next week.
Warnock led Walker by about 37,000 votes out of about 4 million cast in the general election but fell short of the majority required under Georgia law, triggering a four-week runoff blitz. Warnock first won the seat as part of concurrent Senate runoffs on Jan. 5, 2021, when he and Sen. Jon Ossoff prevailed over Republican incumbents to give Democrats narrow control of the Senate for the start of President Joe Biden’s tenure. Warnock won a special election and now is seeking a full six-year term.
This time, Senate control is not in play, with Democrats already having secured 50 seats to go with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote. That puts pressure on both Warnock and Walker to convince Georgia voters that it’s worth their time to cast a second ballot, even if the national stakes aren’t as high.
As of late Sunday, almost 200,000 ballots had been cast in the relative handful of counties that opted to have weekend voting. That total was built on long lines in several heavily Democratic counties of metro Atlanta, enough to give Democrats confidence that their core supporters remain excited to vote for Warnock. But the total remains a small fraction of the nearly 2.3 million early in-person voters ahead of the Nov. 8 general election.
And Democrats remain cautious given that the early voting window is much shorter than two years ago, when the second round spanned two months between the general election and runoff. Voting on Saturday was allowed only because Warnock and Democrats sued amid a dispute with the Republican secretary of state over whether Saturday voting could occur on a holiday weekend.
The senator followed up with a parade of Black leaders for weekend rallies and a march reminiscent of voting rights demonstrations during the civil rights movement.
“We have one vote here that can change the world,” Andrew Young, a former Atlanta mayor and onetime aide to King, implored Black voters on Sunday. Rising from his wheelchair to speak, the 90-year-old former congressman and U.N. ambassador reminded the assembly of the congressional compromise that ended post-Civil War Reconstruction and paved the way for Jim Crow segregation across the South.
“One vote at the end of the Civil War pulled all of the Union troops out of the South and lost us the rights we had fought for in the war and that people had fought for us,” he said, starting “a struggle that we have been in ever since.”
Warnock was shifting to a suburban focus late Monday with an evening concert headlined by the Dave Matthews Band.
Walker, for his part, has drawn enthusiastic crowds in the early weeks of the runoff, as well, and his campaign aides remain confident that he has no problem among core Republicans. His challenge comes with the middle of the Georgia electorate, a gap highlighted by his shortfall compared to Kemp.
“I feel Herschel Walker benefited by having Brian Kemp in the original election on Nov. 8, and I think Kemp not being there will hurt the Republicans a little bit,” said Alpharetta resident Marcelo Salvatierra, who voted for Republican Kemp and Democrat Warnock and still supports the senator in the runoff.
Salvatierra said he backed Kemp’s re-election “because it seems to me Georgia has done well.” But Republicans at the federal level, he said, never offered a serious counter to Democratic control of Washington, while Walker also comes with considerable personal baggage.
“Character matters and I sense he doesn’t have character,” Salvatierra said.
Warnock has encouraged that sentiment among core Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans. For months, he’s said Walker, a former football star making his first bid for public office, was “not ready” for the Senate. In recent weeks, he’s ratcheted up the attack to say Walker is “not fit,” highlighting the challenger’s falsehoods about his accomplishments in the private sector, along with allegations of violence against women and accusations by two women that Walker encouraged and paid for their abortions. Walker, who backs a national ban on abortions without exceptions, denies that he ever paid for any abortions.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections
Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections | https://www.fox44news.com/news/political-news/ap-georgia-runoff-early-voting-for-warnock-walker-round-2/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:52 | en | 0.970631 |
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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine prepared for more Russian strikes against energy and other key infrastructure Monday in what appears to be a weekly pattern, and warned of possible evacuations from the capital.
Estonia’s foreign minister joined counterparts from six Baltic and Nordic nations — in the largest delegation to visit Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale war — to pledge electric generators, warm clothes and food. The goal is to help Ukrainians cope with their coldest months of need and keep their resolve high.
“Russia is weaponizing civilian energy security, and it is truly shameful,” Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu said in Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned late Sunday that Russian troops “are preparing new strikes, and as long as they have missiles, they won’t stop.” He met Monday with senior government officials to discuss what actions to take.
“The upcoming week can be as hard as the one that passed,” he predicted.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg insisted Russian President Vladimir Putin was intent on using frost, snow and ice to his advantage, not only on the battleground but against Ukrainian civilians.
“President Putin is now trying to use the winter as a weapon of war against Ukraine, and this is horrific and we need to be prepared for more attacks,” he said on the eve of a two-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Bucharest, Romania. “That’s the reason why NATO’s allies have stepped up their support to Ukraine.”
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said some of the city’s 3 million people might have to be evacuated to where essential services would be less prone to shutdowns caused by missile attacks.
For weeks, Russia has been pounding energy facilities around Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with missile strikes, usually on Mondays at the work week’s beginning, resulting in outages of power and water supplies.
Based on the pattern of infrastructure attacks and the Russian military’s preparation time, an advisor to Ukraine’s interior minister said on national TV that the next strikes could occur as soon as later Monday or in another week. A Ukrainian military spokesman also said on national TV that Russian aircraft had intensified their activity over Ukraine on Monday.
With temperatures hovering around freezing, and expected to dip as low as minus 11C (12 Fahrenheit) in little more than a week, international help was increasingly focused on items like generators and transformers, to make sure blackouts that affect everything from kitchens to operating rooms are as limited and short as possible. The power situation was so dire that Ukraine’s energy trader — in normal times an exporter — tested importing electricity from neighboring Romania.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “continues trying to make Ukraine a black hole — no light, no electricity, no heating to put the Ukrainians into the darkness and the cold,” said European foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who is leading a meeting of EU ministers in Bucharest, Romania, to help Ukraine with its humanitarian crisis. “So we have to continue our support providing more material for the Ukrainians to face the winter without electricity.”
Ukraine’s energy provider Ukrenergo said Monday that it is still short 27% of output and that “the scale and complexity of the damage are high, and repair works have continued around the clock.”
Power supply was restored to 17% of residents in the southern city of Kherson, which Ukraine reclaimed earlier this month. The Russians have continued pounding the city with artillery barrages from newly consolidated positions across the Dnieper River. Britain’s Defense Ministry reported that the strikes reached a record high, 54, on Sunday.
Ukraine’s presidential office said Monday that at least four civilians were killed and 11 others wounded in the latest Russian attacks. It said intense fighting is continuing in the east, with the Russians shelling Bakhmut and Toretsk.
“People are sheltering in the basements, many of which are filled by water,” said Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko. “They have been living in catastrophic conditions without power or heating.”
Also Monday, Russia denied that it plans to withdraw from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, which it has occupied since the early days of the war.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a call with reporters that it was pointless to look for signs of a pullback from the plant “when there are none and there can’t be.”
Peskov’s comments were in response to Ukrainian claims that Russian forces were bound to retreat from the plant as they face a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The plant was shut down because of repeated shelling, for which Russia and Ukraine have traded blame. The U.N. nuclear watchdog and international leaders have urged Russia to demilitarize the plant to avoid a nuclear disaster, but Moscow has rejected the demands, arguing that it needs to maintain troops there to ensure its safety.
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Raf Casert contributed from Brussels.
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Follow AP coverage of the war in Ukraine at: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine | https://www.news10.com/news/international/ap-ukraine-on-edge-for-more-attacks-west-eyes-humanitarian-aid/ | 2022-11-28T20:17:57 | en | 0.970303 |
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Jurors who will decide whether to convict Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and four associates of seditious conspiracy resumed deliberations Monday in the high-stakes trial stemming from the U.S. Capitol attack.
Rhodes and his co-defendants are accused of a weekslong plot to stop the transfer of power from Republican Donald Trump to Democrat Joe Biden. Prosecutors say the plot came to a head on Jan. 6, 2021 when Rhodes’ followers stormed the Capitol alongside hundreds of other angry Trump supporters.
Hundreds of people have been convicted in the Capitol attack that left dozens of officers injured and sent lawmakers running for their lives. Jurors in the Oath Keepers case will decide, for the first time, whether the actions of any Jan. 6 defendants amount to seditious conspiracy — a rarely used charge that carries both significant prison time and political weight.
The jury in Washington D.C.’s federal court deliberated last Tuesday before going home for the long Thanksgiving weekend. Rhodes, of Granbury, Texas, is on trial with Thomas Caldwell, of Berryville, Virginia; Jessica Watkins, of Woodstock, Ohio; Kelly Meggs, of Dunnellon, Florida; and Kenneth Harrelson of Titusville, Florida.
They would be the first people convicted of seditious conspiracy at trial since the 1995 prosecution of Islamic militants who plotted to bomb New York City landmarks. The charge calls for up to 20 years behind bars. The five defendants also face several other charges.
Throughout the nearly two-month-long trial, defense attorneys argued there was never any plot, that prosecutors have twisted their admittedly bombastic words. Defense lawyers argued that the Oath Keepers who did enter the Capitol were swept up in a spontaneous outpouring of election-fueled rage rather than acting as part of a plot.
Rhodes took the witness stand to tell jurors that he had no idea that his followers were going to storm the Capitol and that he was upset after he found out that some did. Rhodes said he believed it was stupid for any Oath Keepers to go into the Capitol and insisted that was not their “mission.”
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For full coverage of the Capitol riot, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege
More on Donald Trump-related investigations: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump | https://www.fox44news.com/news/political-news/ap-jury-deliberations-resume-in-oath-keepers-1-6-sedition-case/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:00 | en | 0.962576 |
CAPITAL REGION (NEWS10) — ‘Tis the season to hit the slopes. With the winter season quickly approaching, although it feels like it’s already here because of the cold, here are some opening dates you can look forward to to “shred the gnar” and ski or snowboard at Capital Region ski resorts and beyond.
West Mountain
- Projected opening day: December 10
West Mountain is currently preparing for the Winter months. West Mountain’s projected opening date for the ’22-23 winter season will be Saturday, December 10 for skiing, and Thursday, December 22 for tubing, with the possibility of opening earlier, weather permitting.
Hunter Mountain
Hunter Mountain is currently open for the winter season. The Hunter Main Base Lodge is open Monday-Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and on Saturday and Sunday from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Passes are on sale right now until Sunday, December 4 on their website.
Gore Mountain
- Opening day: November 25
Gore Mountain is open for the season as of November 25. More terrain will be opening, however, as some more difficult paths have not been opened due to weather at this point. The North Quad and Tahawus trail have been opened for experts, with snowmakers awaiting to set up Tannery, Uncas, Headwaters, and Sleeping Bear during the next cold stretch.
Windham Mountain
- Opening Day: November 21
Windham Mountain opened for the season on November 21. Windham Mountain is warning skiers however that terrain is only suitable for advanced skiers and riders at this time. The base lodge is open, and the Westside Six (F-Lift) is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
McCauley Mountain
- Projected opening: Early December
McCauley Mountain is currently closed and prepping for the winter season, but their projected opening is to be in early December.
Royal Mountain
- Projected opening: Weekend of Dec. 3/4
Weather permitting, Royal Mountain looks to open for the winter season the weekend of Saturday, December 3, and Sunday, December 4.
Maple Ski Ridge
Maple Ski Ride is open for the season, with differing hours however from day to day. On weekends and holidays, they are open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, they are open from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays (on Nordic Nights) they are open and run from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. On Monday and Tuesday holidays, they will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Their holidays are December 26 through December 30, January 16, and February 20 through February 24. They will be open on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. They will be closed on Christmas.
Jiminy Peak (MA)
- Projected opening day: Weekend of Dec. 3/4
Jiminy Peak‘s planned re-opening is Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., weather permitting. The snowmaking progress began Thursday, November 17, and ran until Monday, November 21 on West Way, North Glade, Upper & Lower Slingshot, Lower Glade, Foxes, Grand Slam, Exhibition East, 360, 180, and Cricket.
Stratton Mountain (VT)
- Opening day: November 25
Stratton Mountain opened up on Friday, November 25. Their hours are 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. for lifts to Mid Mountain, Monday-Friday. 9 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. for lifts to the summit, Monday-Friday. On weekends, lifts to the summit run from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and lifts to mid mountain run from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. | https://www.news10.com/news/local-news/capital-region-ski-resorts-opening-day-guide/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:04 | en | 0.973024 |
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said Monday that Russia has abruptly and without explanation postponed the scheduled resumption of arms control talks this week.
The State Department said Russia had “unilaterally postponed” a meeting of the Bilateral Consultative Commission that was scheduled to begin Tuesday in Egypt and last through next week. It said Russia had promised to propose new dates but had offered no reason for the delay.
“The United States is ready to reschedule at the earliest possible date as resuming inspections is a priority for sustaining the treaty as an instrument of stability,” the department said. It said it had no details on why Russia wanted the postponement or when the talks might be rescheduled.
In Moscow, a Russian foreign ministry statement reported by Russian news agencies offered no reason for the postponement.
The Bilateral Consultative Commission hammers out details of U.S. and Russian inspections of each others’ military sites under the terms of the New START treaty, the last major arms control pact between Washington and Moscow.
The commission has not met in more than a year, initially because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but has since languished due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The meeting in Cairo had been aimed at showing the two sides remain committed to arms control and keeping open lines of communication despite other differences.
In announcing the planned resumption of the talks, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the discussions would be focused entirely on implementing the New START inspection process and would not include any discussion of the conflict in Ukraine.
“We believe deeply around the world in the transformative power and the importance of diplomacy and dialogue,” Price said on Nov. 8.
“It demonstrates our commitment to risk reduction, to strategic stability, something we remain committed to, something that is profoundly in the bilateral interest, and we hope the upcoming meeting is constructive,” he said.
Inspections of U.S. and Russian military sites under the New START treaty were paused by both sides because of the spread of coronavirus in March 2020.
The commission last met in October 2021, but Russia then unilaterally suspended its cooperation with the treaty’s inspection provisions in August to protest U.S. support for Ukraine.
“We’ve made clear to Russia that measures imposed as a result of Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine don’t prevent Russians and Russian inspectors from conducting New START treaty inspections in the United States,” Price said. “So we hope that the meeting of the BCC will allow us to continue with those inspections.” | https://www.fox44news.com/news/political-news/ap-us-says-russia-abruptly-postpones-arms-control-talks/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:07 | en | 0.962029 |
ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — The Albany Parking Authority will hold a public meeting to review and collect community feedback regarding the initial feasibility study for the possible redevelopment of Downtown Albany’s Riverfront Garage. The meeting will take place at The Blake Annex on Wednesday, November 30, at 4:30 p.m.
During the meeting, consultants will review the study’s goals, the existing condition of the garage, and the future possibility of the site. Community members and stakeholders are encouraged to attend the meeting to provide their feedback. A second meeting will follow in the future to present findings for additional community feedback.
“Reconnecting Albany to and increasing the utilization of its riverfront is of vital importance to the future economic and cultural development of New York’s Capitol City,” said Matthew Peter, Executive Director of the Albany Parking Authority. “While the parking needs in Downtown Albany must be factored in, this study will also provide the opportunity to explore what else is possible at this location and how a new facility could better integrate with the community. We at the Parking Authority believe that this potential redevelopment could play a pivotal role in the City’s future, and we are asking the public for their input on what they would like to see as part of a new Riverfront Garage and in the surrounding areas.” | https://www.news10.com/news/local-news/public-invited-to-discuss-the-future-of-albanys-riverfront-garage/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:10 | en | 0.950744 |
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The last conversation Sandra Torres had with her 10-year-old daughter was about her nervous excitement over whether she’d make the all-star softball team. Hours later, Eliahna Torres was one of 19 children and two teachers massacred at their elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
With little closure and few answers about law enforcement’s 77-minute wait on May 24 in the school hallway rather than confronting the gunman, Sandra Torres filed a federal lawsuit on Monday against police, the school district and the maker of the gun the shooter used.
“My baby never made it out of the school,” she said. “There’s no accountability or transparency. There’s nothing being done.”
The lawsuit accuses the city, the school district and several police departments of a “complete failure” to follow active shooter protocols and violations of the victims’ constitutional rights by “barricading them” inside two classrooms with the killer for more than an hour. The city, school district and police did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Torres is being helped by the legal arm of the group Everytown for Gun Safety. Her suit also names the manufacturer of the AR-style semiautomatic rifle that Salvador Ramos used to fire more than 100 rounds in the horrific mass shooting.
The claim is part of a new and expanding legal front in the nationwide court battle over firearms. While gunmakers are typically immune under federal law from lawsuits over crimes committed with their products, families of victims of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, secured a $73 million settlement with Remington, the maker of the weapon used in that shooting a decade ago.
The settlement came after the victims successfully argued that suing over marketing under state law was an exception to the federal immunity measure.
The new Uvalde suit alleges that marketing tactics by Daniel Defense violated the Federal Trade Commission Act by negligently using militaristic imagery, product placement in combat video games and social media to target “vulnerable and violent young men,” said Eric Tirschwell, executive director at Everytown Law.
“It wasn’t by accident that he went from never firing a gun to wielding a Daniel Defense AR-15,” Tirschwell said, citing the findings of a report written by an investigative committee from the Texas House of Representatives. “We intend to prove Daniel Defense marketing was a significant factor in the choices that Ramos made.”
The company, based in Black Creek, Georgia, did not immediately return a message seeking comment, but in a congressional hearing over the summer CEO Marty Daniels called the Uvalde shooting and others like it “pure evil” and “deeply disturbing.” Still, he separated the weapons themselves from the violence, saying mass shootings in America are local problems to be solved locally.
Everytown is also part of a similar lawsuit after a shooting attack on parade-goers in Highland Park, Illinois, based on a state law. If arguments based on federal law are successful, it could open up gunmakers to costly civil lawsuits as the nation grapples with rising gun violence and a brutal string of mass shootings.
“It would be an important step forward to holding gun manufacturers to account if their marketing crosses a line,” Tirschwell said.
The case also names the gun shop where Ramos bought the weapon used in the shooting, along with another AR-15 and ammunition, purchases that totaled thousands of dollars, though only one weapon was used in the shooting. One patron later told the FBI he “looked like … a school shooter,” according to the report from the Texas House of Representatives.
The July report found that nearly 400 law enforcement officials rushed to the mass shooting, but “egregiously poor decision-making” resulted in more than an hour of chaos before the gunman was finally confronted and killed. It criticized state and federal law enforcement as well as local authorities for failing to follow active shooter training and prioritizing their own safety over the victims’ lives.
Another parent whose child was wounded in the shooting and two parents whose children were on campus at the time filed the first suit related to the Uvalde shooting in late September.
For Sandra Torres, the case is also another way to seek answers about the botched police response.
“For 77 minutes they did nothing. Nothing at all,” she said. “She’ll never know what it’s like to get married, to graduate, to go to her first prom … never forget their faces.” | https://www.fox44news.com/news/political-news/ap-uvalde-mom-sues-police-gunmaker-in-school-massacre/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:14 | en | 0.967605 |
MONTGOMERY VILLAGE, Md. (AP) — Crews on Monday rescued the injured pilot and passenger of a small plane that crashed into a Maryland electricity transmission tower, knocking out power for tens of thousands of customers and leaving the aircraft dangling 10 stories off the ground.
The plane crashed into the tower that supports high-tension lines at around 5:40 p.m. Sunday and got stuck about 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground, Montgomery County Fire Chief Scott Goldstein said. The crash happened about a mile from the Montgomery County Airpark in Montgomery Village, a Washington, D.C., suburb. It knocked out power in the surrounding area and caused Metrorail delays.
Video from the scene showed numerous rescue personnel and vehicles surrounding the tower shortly after it happened. At the time of the crash, the conditions were misty and rainy, said Pete Piringer, a spokesperson for the county’s Fire & Rescue Service.
Piringer said the rescue was complicated by the fact that the lines were live when the plane hit.
After electrical workers made sure it was safe to try to reach the pilot and passenger, who were in contact with authorities via cellphone and were anxious to be rescued, crews secured the plane to the tower at around 12:15 a.m. Monday and took the two to safety a few minutes later, officials said.
The State Police identified the pilot as Patrick Merkle, 65, of Washington, D.C., and the passenger as Janet Williams, 66, of Marrero, Louisiana. Both had serious but non-life-threatening injuries, and hypothermia set in while they waited to be rescued, Goldstein said. Their rescue was faster than anticipated since the pilot and passenger were able to assist, he said.
The plane was later lowered to the ground revealing a crushed front end.
The single-engine Mooney M20J had departed White Plains, New York, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. The FAA, National Transportation Safety Board and Maryland State Police are investigating.
The utility Pepco had reported that power was temporarily cut to about 120,000 customers in Montgomery County, but it was restored to most of them before the people were rescued.
The county’s public school system closed its schools and offices Monday due to the outage’s impact on safety and school operations. | https://www.news10.com/news/national/ap-2-rescued-after-plane-hits-transmission-tower-in-maryland/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:16 | en | 0.978285 |
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The Dallas Mavericks are close to a deal with four-time All-Star guard Kemba Walker, a person with knowledge of the agreement told The Associated Press on Monday.
Walker’s career has been on hold because of knee injuries, but the 32-year-old could give superstar Luka Doncic some much-needed backcourt help for the struggling Mavericks.
The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the deal isn’t finalized and is pending a physical. The deal was first reported on Substack by longtime NBA reporter Marc Stein.
Dallas is on a season-worst four-game losing streak to drop below .500 after reaching the Western Conference finals last season.
The Mavericks lost Jalen Brunson to the New York Knicks in free agency after he flourished playing next to Doncic, and Brunson played a big role in Dallas winning playoff games without its three-time All-Star.
The loss of Brunson also cost the Mavericks one of their two primary ball-handlers behind Doncic. Spencer Dinwiddie has had to carry most of that load this season.
The shooters around Doncic also have been struggling, with Dorian Finney-Smith, Reggie Bullock and Tim Hardaway going in and out of slumps so far.
Walker was limited to 37 games last season, his only one with the New York Knicks, because of knee issues that have been affecting him for years.
The No. 9 overall pick in 2011, Walker blossomed as an All-Star in the last three of eight seasons with Charlotte before he signed as a free agent with Boston.
Walker played most of the pandemic-altered 2019-20 season, the last of five consecutive seasons in which he averaged at least 20 points per game.
Walker played just 43 games in his second season with the Celtics before an offseason trade to the Knicks.
The Mavericks announced they have waived guard Facundo Campazzo, a move that clears a roster spot for Walker. Campazzo played sparingly after signing the day before the season started.
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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.fox44news.com/sports/ap-ap-source-mavs-close-to-deal-with-4-time-all-star-walker/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:22 | en | 0.976059 |
The U.S. Census Bureau’s chief is defending a new tool meant to protect the privacy of people participating in the statistical agency’s questionnaires against calls to abandon it by prominent researchers who claim it jeopardizes the usefulness of numbers that are the foundation of the nation’s data infrastructure.
The tool known as differential privacy “was selected as the best solution available” against efforts by outside groups or individuals to piece together the identities of participants in the bureau’s censuses and surveys by using third-party data and powerful computers, U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Santos said in a letter last week. Concerns about privacy have grown in recent years as cyberattacks and threats of personal data being used for the wrong reasons have become more commonplace.
Several prominent state demographers and academic researchers had asked the statistical agency in August to abandon using differential privacy on future annual population estimates, which are used in the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funding each year, and future releases of American Community Survey data, which provide the most comprehensive information on how people live in the U.S.
The demographers and researchers said the application of the privacy method for the first time on 2020 census data had delayed their release and created inaccuracies in the numbers used to determine political power and distribute federal funds. The researchers said in their letter that there were thousands of small jurisdictions throughout the U.S. that won’t get usable data because of the algorithms applied to the numbers to protect confidentiality.
By continuing to use the differential privacy algorithms, “the Census Bureau risks failing its responsibilities as a federal statistical agency to provide relevant, accurate, timely, and credible information for the public good,” the researchers and demographers said. “In fact, the experience of the last few years has undermined user trust in the Census Bureau.”
Differential privacy algorithms add intentional errors to data to obscure the identity of any given participant and is most noticeable at the smallest geographies, such as census blocks. Data used for determining how many congressional seats each state gets and for redrawing political districts were released last year, but more detailed figures from the 2020 census won’t be made public until next year, almost three years after they were collected.
Some bias using the privacy tool “was inevitable from a purely mathematical perspective,” but bureau statisticians have worked to minimize it, and delays were caused by the pandemic, which pushed back a series of releases of the 2020 census data, Santos said.
Meanwhile, the bureau’s watchdog agency said in a report last week that the statistical agency had failed to stop simulated cyberattacks it had conducted as part of a covert operation to test the bureau’s cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Inspector General said that its team had obtained unauthorized access to a domain administrator account, gotten personally identifiable information about bureau employees and used insecure programs to send out fake emails.
The Census Bureau said in a response to the report that the exercise had allowed it to improve its cyber defenses.
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Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP. | https://www.news10.com/news/national/ap-census-bureau-chief-defends-new-privacy-tool-against-critics/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:24 | en | 0.960084 |
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Make some room, Phi Slama Jama. Another Houston team has reached the top of men’s college basketball.
Nearly four decades after Clyde Drexler and Akeem Olajuwon took the Cougars to No. 1, the latest bunch led by Marcus Sasser and star freshman Jarace Walker took over the top spot in the AP Top 25 on Monday. They received 45 of 63 first-place votes from the national media panel, easily outdistancing second-place Texas and third-place Virginia.
“It’s not like we went online and applied for it and waited for a response back. We’ve been working for this,” said Houston coach Kelvin Sampson, whose team is coming off a Final Four and Elite Eight trip the past two seasons. “But remember, it’s a rental. You don’t own it. You’re just renting it because someday somebody else is going to be No. 1.”
North Carolina had been No. 1 all season, but the Tar Heels lost to Iowa State and in a four-overtime thriller to Alabama at the Phil Knight Invitational to cede the top spot to Houston, which beat Kent State in its only game last week.
The last time the Cougars ascended to No. 1 was the final poll of the 1982-83 season, when “The Glide” and “The Dream” along with coach Guy Lewis were the favorites to win it all. They rolled through the NCAA Tournament before falling to Jim Valvano and North Carolina State in an iconic championship game in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
“I’ve never been ranked No. 1,” said Sampson, now in his 34th season as a college basketball coach. “We were ranked all 12 years at Oklahoma. I’m sure we were ranked at Indiana. Then we’ve been ranked five or six straight years. We’re used to having a high level of success.”
Texas received eight first-place votes and Virginia received two. Arizona climbed from 14th to fourth after emerging from a stacked field to win the Maui Invitational. Purdue jumped from 24th all the way to fifth and scooped up eight first-place votes after beating West Virginia, Gonzaga and Duke at the Phil Knight Legacy tourney.
“Our guys are competitive. They’re fun to coach. They get along. They’re out there playing with purpose and that’s what you have to have,” said Boilermakers coach Matt Painter, whose team was briefly No. 1 about this time last season.
“Early in the season, very few teams play with the purpose collectively,” he said. “I thought our guys played with a purpose.”
Baylor was sixth, Creighton seventh and U Conn climbed from 20th to eighth after beating Oregon, Alabama and Iowa State to win the Phil Knight Invitational. Kansas fell from third to ninth after losing to Tennessee in the championship game of the Battle 4 Atlantis, while Indiana rounded out the top 10.
There was a tie for 11th between SEC rivals Alabama and Arkansas with the Volunteers, another conference foe, right behind them. Gonzaga dropped from sixth to 14th, its first time outside the top 10 since Feb. 5, 2018, and Auburn was 15th.
Illinois was next followed by Duke and North Carolina in a tough week for Tobacco Road. The Blue Devils fell from eighth after their 75-56 loss to the Boilermakers.
Kentucky and Michigan State joined UCLA, Maryland, Iowa State, San Diego State and Ohio State in rounding out the poll.
RISING AND FALLING
Purdue made a rare 19-spot jump as the poll underwent a massive shakeup. UConn climbed 12 spots, Arizona moved up 10, Tennessee climbed nine and Alabama seven. On the flip side, the Tar Heels tumbled 17 spots, Duke dropped nine, Gonzaga fell eight and San Diego State fell seven.
IN AND OUT
Despite all the movement, Iowa State was the only newcomer this week, checking in at No. 23 after beating Villanova and North Carolina before falling to UConn. The Cyclones replaced Iowa, which dropped out after a one-week stay following its loss to TCU in the title game of the Emerald Coast Classic.
CONFERENCE WATCH
There are six difference conferences represented in the first seven teams in the poll. The Big Ten leads the way with six in the Top 25 while the SEC has five and the Big 12 has four, though three of them are in the top 10.
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AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25 | https://www.fox44news.com/sports/ap-houston-reaches-no-1-in-ap-poll-for-first-time-since-1983/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:29 | en | 0.970696 |
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a state board must reconsider its rejection of a substitute teaching license for the former police officer who shot and killed Philando Castile in 2016.
Jeronimo Yanez applied to be a substitute teacher in 2020, but his application was denied based on “immoral character or conduct.” The appeals court ruled that this reason was unconstitutionally vague and the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board must reconsider — focusing narrowly on whether Yanez’s conduct makes him unfit to teach.
The appeals court said that upon reconsideration, the board must identify factors it is using to determine whether Yanez’s conduct “violated moral standards for the teaching profession.” The board must also avoid characterizing policing practices — such as a pretextual reason for a traffic stop — as immoral.
“The board’s decision must focus exclusively on Yanez’s conduct and his fitness to be a teacher, not fitness to be a police officer,” the appeals court ruled.
Messages left with Yanez’s attorney and with the licensing board were not immediately returned Monday.
Yanez, a former St. Anthony police officer, shot Castile during a traffic stop after Castile, who was Black, said he had a gun. Authorities later discovered that Castile, a 32-year-old elementary school cafeteria worker, had a permit for the firearm.
The case got widespread attention after Castile’s girlfriend, who was in the car with her young daughter, began livestreaming the shooting’s aftermath on Facebook.
Yanez was charged with manslaughter but was acquitted by a jury. The shooting and Yanez’s subsequent acquittal led to massive public outcry and protests in Minnesota and beyond.
Yanez left the police department after his trial. In February 2020, he applied for a substitute teaching license, according to the appeals court ruling. At the time of his application, he was teaching Spanish part-time at a parochial school. The school’s principal supported his license application.
During the application process, the board’s disciplinary committee investigated Yanez’s case and recommended that his application be denied.
He appealed to an administrative-law judge, who also recommended that his application be denied after a hearing in which St. Paul Public Schools Superintendent Joseph Gothard testified that Yanez’s actions were hurtful and offensive to the community. An expert who testified for Yanez said the traffic stop was lawful and that he agreed the deadly use of force was reasonable.
The administrative-law judge found Yanez prejudged Castile as a robbery suspect because of his “wide set nose” — initiating a pretextual traffic stop that indicated “racial bias, microaggressions, and negativity bias that are detrimental to students, especially students of color.”
The administrative-law judge also found that Yanez failed to establish that his use of deadly force was reasonable and necessary. The board ultimately denied Yanez’s application.
Yanez argued on appeal that denying his application due to “immoral character or conduct” was unconstitutionally vague. The appeals court agreed, saying that other jurisdictions have found that immorality means different things to different people, and that the conduct in question must be directly related to a teacher’s ability to teach.
The appeals court said that the phrase is nebulous and “vulnerable to the caprice of ever-changing public opinion and the potential for arbitrary, biased enforcement” but that it could survive constitutional scrutiny if narrowed to “relate to professional morals in the occupation of teaching.”
Castile’s mother, Valerie Castile, said Monday that she didn’t know Yanez was trying to obtain a substitute teaching license, and that she doesn’t think he belongs in the classroom.
She said children – particularly students of color — might have trouble focusing on what Yanez is teaching and could worry that they were in danger. She said parents would also need to be notified if he was in a classroom.
“The community knows about what he did and I don’t think the kids would be comfortable even having him there,” she said. “We have to think about our children’s comfort levels. … We have to think about those children and the trauma they suffered because of what he did.” | https://www.news10.com/news/national/ap-court-cop-who-shot-castile-wrongly-denied-teaching-license/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:31 | en | 0.98523 |
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — In an filthy alley behind a Los Angeles donut shop, Ryan Smith convulsed in the grips of a fentanyl high — lurching from moments of slumber to bouts of violent shivering on a warm summer day.
When Brandice Josey, another homeless addict, bent down and blew a puff of fentanyl smoke his way in an act of charity, Smith sat up and slowly opened his lip to inhale the vapor as if it was the cure to his problems.
Smith, wearing a grimy yellow T-shirt that said “Good Vibes Only,” reclined on his backpack and dozed the rest of the afternoon on the asphalt, unperturbed by the stench of rotting food and human waste that permeated the air.
For too many people strung out on the drug, the sleep that follows a fentanyl hit is permanent. The highly addictive and potentially lethal drug has become a scourge across America and is taking a toll on the growing number of people living on the streets of Los Angeles.
Nearly 2,000 homeless people died in the city from April 2020 to March 2021, a 56% increase from the previous year, according to a report released by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Overdose was the leading cause of death, killing more than 700.
Use of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that is cheap to produce and is often sold as is or laced in other drugs, has exploded. Because it’s 50 times more potent than heroin, even a small dose can be fatal.
It has quickly become the deadliest drug in the nation, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Two-thirds of the 107,000 overdose deaths in 2021 were attributed to synthetic opioids like fentanyl, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The drug’s toll spreads far beyond the streets.
Jennifer Catano, 27, has the names of two children tattooed on her wrists, but she hasn’t seen them for several years. They live with her mother.
“My mom doesn’t think it’s a good idea because she thinks it’s gonna hurt the kids because I’m not ready to get rehabilitated,” Catano said.
She has overdosed three times and been through rehab seven or eight times.
“It’s scary to get off of it,” she said. “The withdrawals are really bad.”
Catano wandered around a subway station near MacArthur Park desperate to sell a bottle of Downey fabric softener and a Coleman camping chair she stole from a nearby store.
Drug abuse can be a cause or symptom of homelessness. Both can also intersect with mental illness.
A 2019 report by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority found about a quarter of all homeless adults in Los Angeles County had mental illnesses and 14% had a substance use disorder. That analysis only counted people who had a permanent or long-term severe condition. Taking a broader interpretation of the same data, the Los Angeles Times found about 51% had mental illnesses and 46% had substance use disorders.
Billions of dollars are being spent to alleviate homelessness in California but treatment is not always funded.
A controversial bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom could improve that by forcing people suffering from severe mental illness into treatment. But they need to be diagnosed with a certain disorder such as schizophrenia and addiction alone doesn’t qualify.
Help is available but it is outpaced by the magnitude of misery on the streets.
Rita Richardson, a field supervisor with LA Door, a city addiction-prevention program that works with people convicted of misdemeanors, hands out socks, water, condoms, snacks, clean needles and flyers at the same hotspots Monday through Friday. She hopes the consistency of her visits will encourage people to get help.
“Then hopefully the light bulb comes on. It might not happen this year. It might not happen next year. It might take several years,” said Richardson, a former homeless addict. ”My goal is to take them from the dark to the light.”
Parts of Los Angeles have become scenes of desperation with men and women sprawled on sidewalks, curled up on benches and collapsed in squalid alleys. Some huddle up smoking the drug, others inject it.
Armando Rivera, 33, blew out white puffs to attract addicts in the alley where Smith was sleeping. He needed to sell some dope to buy more. Those without enough money to support their habit, hovered around him, hoping for a free hit. Rivera showed no mercy.
Catano couldn’t sell the chair, but eventually she sold the fabric softener to a street vendor for $5.
It was enough money for another high. | https://www.news10.com/news/national/ap-fentanyls-scourge-plainly-visible-on-streets-of-los-angeles/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:37 | en | 0.969794 |
AL RAYYAN, Qatar (AP) — Mohammed Kudus said there wasn’t much difference between the way Ghana played in its opening World Cup match against Portugal or its second game against South Korea.
Except the result, of course.
Kudus scored twice, including the go-ahead goal after the South Koreans evened the match in the second half, and Ghana staved off elimination with a 3-2 victory on Monday.
Mohammed Salisu also scored for the Black Stars, who were disappointed after a close 3-2 opening loss to Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal and were in need of points against South Korea for a chance to reach the knockout round in Qatar.
“I think the game against Portugal was one of the best games you can have. The energy and the commitment from the whole team was good. So we approached this game the same way,” Kudus said. “We have the same mentality game after game after game, so we are going in the same direction with the same energy no matter who we play.”
Down 2-0, Cho Gue-sung scored both of South Korea’s goals about three minutes apart early in the second half to even the game at 2-2.
But Kudus’ low left-footed goal in the 68th minute sailed out of the reach of goalkeeper Kim Seung-gyu to give the Black Stars back the lead. Ghana goalkeeper Lawrence Ati-Zigi preserved the victory with a leaping save off Cho’s attempt in stoppage time.
“We conceded goals a bit early in the game, and that forced us to play a chasing-style game that wasn’t easy. After the first half, we vowed to keep trying until the end,” Cho said. “We never gave up and eventually caught up (to them), but the last goal we conceded was regrettable. We kept pounding for an equalizer but couldn’t break through.”
South Korea forward Son Heung-min remained without a goal in Qatar. The Tottenham forward wore a mask to protect a broken left eye socket he sustained in a Champions League game against Marseille earlier this month.
South Korea coach Paulo Bento was handed a red card in the moments following the match after a heated exchange with English referee Anthony Taylor. The Portuguese coach was furious when South Korea won a corner at the end of 10 minutes of stoppage time but the whistle was blown before it could be taken.
The red card means that Bento will not be on the sideline for South Korea’s final match against Portugal on Friday.
Assistant coach Sergio Costa said “the result at the end was totally unfair” and added that he did not hear Bento say anything “inappropriate.”
South Korea played to a 0-0 draw in its opener with Uruguay. The team was making its sixth straight World Cup appearance.
But now the South Koreans are in danger of elimination. Costa suggested the anger of Bento would unite the team.
“Count on us for the next match,” he said.
Ghana became the third African nation to make it to the World Cup quarterfinals at the 2010 tournament. Black Stars captain Andre Ayew was also on that squad. No African team has reached the World Cup semifinals.
Known for its controlled possession, South Korea dominated the first 20 minutes. Ghana broke through in the 24th when Salisu scored in a scramble in front of the net off a free kick. After a spirited celebration encircled by his teammates, Salisu nervously crouched on the field while the goal was confirmed by video review.
Kudus, a 22-year-old midfielder for Ajax, doubled the lead with a header off a long cross from Jordan Ayew, despite the desperate efforts of defender Kim Jin-su.
Cho did a knee slide in front of South Korea’s bench and was dogpiled by his teammates after his first goal in the 58th minute. His second came in the 61st.
Now Ghana turns to its Group H finale on Friday against Uruguay.
“It feels good, but it feels even better because we got the whole three points. That was the most important thing,” Kudus said. “The whole team played their part and I think the energy is very good now in Ghana and it’s a good boost for our next game.”
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AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/world-cup and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.fox44news.com/sports/ap-kudus-scores-2-ghana-beats-south-korea-3-2-at-world-cup/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:37 | en | 0.97613 |
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HONOLULU (AP) — The world’s largest active volcano was erupting Monday and wasn’t immediately threatening communities on Hawaii’s Big Island, but officials warned residents to be ready for worse.
Many current residents weren’t living there when Mauna Loa last erupted 38 years ago. The U.S. Geological Survey warned the roughly 200,000 people on the Big Island that an eruption “can be very dynamic, and the location and advance of lava flows can change rapidly.”
The eruption began late Sunday night following a series of fairly large earthquakes, said Ken Hon, the scientist-in-charge at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.
There’s been a surge of development on the Big Island in recent decades — its population has more than doubled, from 92,000 in 1980.
Most of the people on the island live in the city of Kailua-Kona to the west of the volcano, which has about 23,000 people, and Hilo to the east, with about 45,000. Officials were most worried about several subdivisions about 30 miles to the south of the volcano, which are home to about 5,000 people.
A time-lapse video of the eruption from overnight showed lava lighting up one area, moving across it like waves on the ocean.
The U.S. Geological Survey said that the eruption had migrated to a rift zone — a place where the mountain rock is cracked and relatively weak — making it easier for magma to emerge.
An eruption from the zone could send lava toward the county seat of Hilo or other towns in East Hawaii but it could take the lava weeks or months to reach populated areas.
“We don’t want to try and second-guess the volcano,” Hon said. “We have to let it actually show us what it’s going to do and then we inform people of what is happening ASAP.”
Hawaii County Civil Defense announced that it had opened shelters because it had reports of people evacuating from along the coast on their own initiative.
The average Mauna Loa eruption is not typically prolonged, lasting a couple of weeks, Hon said.
“Typically, Mauna Loa eruptions start off with the heaviest volume first,” Hon said. “After a few days, it starts to calm down a little bit.”
The USGS warned residents at risk from Mauna Loa lava flows to review their eruption preparations. Scientists had been on alert because of a recent spike in earthquakes at the summit of the volcano, which last erupted in 1984.
Portions of the Big Island were under an ashfall advisory issued by the National Weather Service in Honolulu, which said up to a quarter-inch (0.6 centimeters) of ash could accumulate in some areas.
Mauna Loa is one of five volcanoes that together make up the Big Island of Hawaii, which is the southernmost island in the Hawaiian archipelago.
Mauna Loa, rising 13,679 feet (4,169 meters) above sea level, is the much larger neighbor of Kilauea, which erupted in a residential neighborhood and destroyed 700 homes in 2018. Some of its slopes are much steeper than Kilauea’s, so lava can flow much faster when it erupts.
During a 1950 eruption, the mountain’s lava traveled 15 miles (24 kilometers) to the ocean in fewer than three hours.
Tourism is Hawaii’s economic engine but Roth predicted few problems for those on vacation during the eruption.
“It will be spectacular where it is, but the chances of it really interrupting the visitor industry — very, very slim,” he said.
For some, the eruption might cut down on some travel time, even if there is more volcanic smog caused by higher sulfur-dioxide emissions.
“But the good thing is you don’t have to drive from Kona over to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park to see an eruption anymore,” Roth said. “You can just look out your window at night and you’ll be able to see Mauna Loa erupting.”
Julia Neal, owner of Pahala Plantation Cottages, said the eruption brings some relief after many preparedness meetings, and much wondering about what the volcano will do.
“It’s exciting,” she said. “It’s kind of a relief that it’s happening and we’re not waiting for it to happen.”
A few future guests from the U.S. mainland called Neal “asking me to make a prediction, which I can’t,” she said. “So I said, just stand by.”
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Associated Press writers Jennifer Kelleher in Honolulu and Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed to this report. | https://www.news10.com/news/national/ap-hawaiis-mauna-loa-starts-to-erupt-sending-ash-nearby/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:43 | en | 0.963129 |
DOHA, Qatar (AP) — In one corner, Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez. In the other, Lionel Messi.
The Argentina star may have gotten into trouble with the wrong person after moving the Mexican national team jersey with his foot while celebrating his team’s much-needed World Cup win against Mexico on Saturday.
The Mexican boxer said on Twitter that Messi “ was cleaning the floor ” with the Mexican shirt. He said it was a disrespectful attitude by the Argentina star toward the Mexicans.
“He better ask God not to run into me,” Canelo tweeted.
Messi was taking his right shoe off when he — apparently without intention — moved the Mexico shirt which he had exchanged with a Mexican player after Argentina’s 2-0 win. The shirt was on the floor as the Argentines celebrated in the locker room.
Former Argentina forward Sergio “Kun” Aguero came out on Messi’s defense.
“Mr. Canelo, don’t go finding excuses or creating trouble, certainly you don’t know soccer or what happens in a locker room,” he said on Twitter. “The shirts are always on the floor after a match as they are sweaty.”
Former Spain player Cesc Fabregas also defended Messi, saying it’s normal for players to leave the shirts on the floor before they can be taken to be washed.
The 35-year-old Messi is trying to win his first World Cup title with Argentina. The win over Mexico kept the Argentines in position to advance to the knockout round.
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AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/world-cup and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.fox44news.com/sports/ap-messi-gets-in-trouble-with-mexican-boxer-canelo-at-world-cup/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:44 | en | 0.974655 |
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A judge accepted a plea deal Monday for a man who randomly killed a Florida couple in their garage six years ago and then chewed on one victim’s face that will send him to a mental hospital for treatment.
Austin Harrouff, 25, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to two counts of first-degree murder and other charges for the 2016 slayings of John Stevens, 59, and his wife, Michelle Mishcon Stevens, 53. He also seriously injured a neighbor who tried to help them.
Harrouff, who attended Florida State University before the attack, will be committed to a secure mental health facility until doctors and a judge agree that he is no longer dangerous. If the trial had gone forward, Harrouff could have faced life in prison.
A number of family members of the slain couple expressed anger at the decision and made victim impact statements directed at Harrouff, his family, the defense team and prosecutors.
Cindy Mishcon, the sister of Michelle Mishcon and an attorney, laid out a methodical case of why she does not believe that Harrouff was insane when the killings occurred.
“You can’t even look at me?” she asked Harrouff, who was sitting at the defense table, wearing a red and white striped prison uniform and glasses. She said that she had begun writing her victim impact statement when she was “naive enough” to think there would be justice.
Cindy Mishcon said that reality set in for her as she listened to tapes of Harrouff’s jailhouse phone calls with family members and the reading of pages of text messages in the year prior to the killings, which were part of the court record. The text messages with his friends outlined the life of a student who was smoking marijuana, taking other drugs and abusing alcohol during the year before killing the couple.
She said she realized “you don’t care about anyone but yourself” and that “the only victim you and your family see is you, and the Harrouff name.”
“Is it really so hard for you to understand that you are a cold blooded murderer and not a victim,” she asked.
Other family members echoed her sentiments.
The agreement worked out between the defense and prosecution avoided a trial that had been scheduled to start Monday before Circuit Judge Sherwood Bauer and had been expected to last three weeks.
The judge said Harrouff will remain in the Martin County Jail until he is taken to a secure mental health facility monitored by the Florida Department of Children and Families. Bauer said he will not be allowed to leave the facility without a court order.
Two mental health experts, one hired by the defense and another by prosecutors, examined Harrouff and found he suffered an acute psychotic episode during the attack, and couldn’t distinguish between right and wrong.
The trial had been delayed by the pandemic, legal wrangling and Harrouff’s recovery from critical injuries suffered while drinking a chemical during the attack.
Defendants are presumed sane under Florida law, meaning that Harrouff must show he had a severe mental breakdown that prevented him from understanding actions or that they were even wrong by “clear and convincing” evidence.
He has claimed he was fleeing a demon when the attack happened.
Craig Trocino, a University of Miami law professor, said that finding Harrouff not guilty by reason of insanity would effectively be a life sentence because “it’s highly unlikely” that they would risk releasing a killer as notorious as Harrouff.
Harrouff’s parents and others said he had acted strangely for weeks. His parents had set up an appointment for him to be evaluated, but the attack occurred first. | https://www.news10.com/news/national/ap-judge-accepts-insanity-plea-deal-for-man-in-face-biting-case/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:50 | en | 0.983225 |
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — Michigan quarterback Cade McNamara has entered the transfer portal, team spokesman Dave Ablauf confirmed on Monday.
McNamara had a season-ending injury to his right knee on Sept. 17 against Connecticut, one game after J.J. McCarthy won the starting job.
McCarthy will lead the second-ranked Wolverines against Purdue on Saturday night in the Big Ten championship game in Indianapolis, needing a win to earn a spot in the College Football Playoff.
Last year, McNamara helped Michigan end an eight-game losing streak to rival Ohio State and go on to win the conference championship for the first time since 2004. The third-team All-Big Ten player in 2021 threw for 2,576 yards with 15 touchdowns and six interceptions.
McNamara, who is from Reno, Nevada, can potentially play at another school for two seasons. He redshirted as a freshman in 2019 and the NCAA has given any student-athlete from the 2020-21 school year an extra year of eligibility.
Coach Jim Harbaugh allowed McNamara and McCarthy to start a game this season before deciding who would be the first-string quarterback. That did not sit well with the returning starter.
“I would definitely say it’s pretty unusual,” said McNamara, sounding surly, after a win over Colorado State in his last start. “It was kind of a thing that I wasn’t expecting. By the end of camp, I thought I had my best camp and put myself in a good position.”
Earlier this month, McNamara posted a picture of himself in a wheelchair with a brace over a protective wrap on his right leg after being under the care of Los Angeles Rams and Dodgers team doctor Neal ElAttrache.
“Turns out I have been dealing with a serious injury since the middle of last season,” McNamara wrote on Instagram. “Then after suffering another serious knee injury this season, my goal was to get back on the field as soon as possible. Sadly I was unable to heal properly but thanks to Dr. ElAttrache he was able help me determine exactly what I needed to do to come back the best version of myself. What lies ahead is a lot of work and rehab but I will come back better than ever!”
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AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://twitter.com/ap_top25. Sign up for the AP’s college football newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/mrxhe6f2 | https://www.fox44news.com/sports/ap-michigan-quarterback-cade-mcnamara-enters-transfer-portal/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:52 | en | 0.970402 |
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LONDON (AP) — Prince William and the Princess of Wales will be looking to focus attention on their Earthshot Prize for environmental innovators when they make their first visit to the United States in eight years this week, a trip clouded by tensions with William’s brother, Prince Harry, and his wife, Meghan, who have criticized Britain’s royal family in the American media.
William and his wife, Catherine, will travel to Boston on Wednesday for three days of public engagements before announcing the prize winners on Friday in a ceremony headlined by pop star Billie Eilish.
Boston, birthplace of John F. Kennedy, was chosen to host the second annual prize ceremony because the late president’s 1962 “moonshot” speech — setting the challenge for Americans to reach the moon by the end of the decade — inspired the prince and his partners to set a similar goal for finding solutions to climate change and other environmental problems by 2030. The first Earthshot Prizes were awarded last year in London just before the U.K. hosted the COP26 climate conference.
But as much as the royals try to focus on the prize, William is likely to face questions about Harry and Meghan, who have criticized the royal family for racism and insensitive treatment in interviews with Oprah Winfrey and other U.S. media. The Netflix series “The Crown” has also resurrected some of the more troubled times of the House of Windsor just as the royal family tries to show that it remains relevant in modern, multicultural Britain following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
“You could say that the royal family, particularly as far as America is concerned, have had a bit of a bumpy ride of late,’’ said Joe Little, the managing editor of Majesty Magazine. “They’ve come in for huge amounts of criticism on the back of ‘The Crown’ and also the Oprah Winfrey interview, which has not particularly reflected well on the House of Windsor, so I think it’s a good opportunity whilst they’re in the U.S. … to sort of redress the balance if at all possible.’’
Whatever those efforts are, they will take place in and around Boston, where William and Kate will remain for their entire visit.
The royal couple will keep the focus on environmental issues, meeting with local organizations responding to rising sea levels in Boston and visiting Greentown Labs in Somerville, Massachusetts, an incubator hub where local entrepreneurs are working on projects to combat climate change.
But they will also address broader issues, using their star power to highlight the work of Roca Inc., which tries to improve the lives of young people by addressing issues such as racism, poverty and incarceration. They will also visit Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, a leader on research into the long-term impact of early childhood experiences.
William and Kate will also meet with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and visit the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library and Museum with the late president’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy.
“The prince and princess are looking forward to spending time in Boston, and to learning more about the issues that are affecting local people, as well as to celebrating the incredible climate solutions that will be spotlighted through the Earthshot Prize,” their Kensington Palace office said in a statement.
Earthshot offers 1 million pounds ($1.2 million) in prize money to the winners of five separate categories: nature protection, clean air, ocean revival, waste elimination and climate change. The winners and all 15 finalists also receive help in expanding their projects to meet global demand.
Among the finalists is a startup from Kenya that aims to provide cleaner-burning stoves to make cooking safer and reduce indoor air pollution. It was the brainchild of Charlot Magayi, who grew up in one of Nairobi’s largest slums and sold charcoal for fuel.
When her daughter was severely burned by a charcoal-fired stove in 2012, she developed a stove that uses a safer fuel made from a combination of charcoal, wood and sugarcane. The stoves cut costs for users, reduce toxic emissions and lower the risk of burns, Magayi says.
Other finalists include Fleather, a project in India that creates an alternative to leather out of floral waste; Hutan, an effort to protect orangutans in Malaysia; and SeaForester, which seeks to restore kelp forests that capture carbon and promote biodiversity.
The winners will be announced Friday at Boston’s MGM Music Hall as part of a glitzy show headlined by Eilish, Annie Lennox, Ellie Goulding and Chloe x Halle. It will include video narrated by naturalist David Attenborough and actor Cate Blanchett.
Prizes will be presented by actor Rami Malek, comedian Catherine O’Hara, and actor and activist Shailene Woodley. The show will be co-hosted by the BBC’s Clara Amfo and American actor and producer Daniel Dae Kim.
The ceremony will be broadcast Sunday on the BBC in the U.K., PBS in the U.S. and Multichoice across Africa. | https://www.news10.com/news/national/ap-sibling-unease-dogs-prince-williams-earthshot-us-trip/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:58 | en | 0.958752 |
South Carolina remained the unanimous No. 1 choice in The Associated Press women’s basketball poll released Monday as the Gamecocks keep close watch on the foot injury of reigning Player of the Year Aliyah Boston.
The Gamecocks received all 29 first-place votes in the poll released Monday, a day after Boston left a game with her injury. Coach Dawn Staley said Boston was “questionable” going forward but added that the “team doctor wasn’t too, too concerned.”
South Carolina’s next game is Tuesday at home against No. 15 UCLA.
Stanford remained No. 2 after cruising through a tournament in Hawaii. It’s the 618th appearance for Cardinal coach Tara VanDerveer, tying the late Pat Summitt for most all-time. Summitt’s teams only missed being in the poll 14 times during her Hall of Fame career at Tennessee.
UConn, Ohio State and Indiana rounded out the top five.
The Huskies are one of four Big East teams to be ranked this week as Marquette entered the poll at No. 24. It’s the first time the Big East has four ranked teams since the conference realigned in 2014. The league is 56-14 so far this season, including going 8-2 against ranked teams.
“We’ve been trying to earn a little more respect,” Marquette coach Megan Duffy said of the Big East. “Tried to schedule tougher non-conference (games). ‘Nova’s playing people. Us going to the Bahamas was great. Creighton’s doing what they’ve been doing since last season. Getting some of those quality wins is everything.”
North Carolina moved up two spots to No. 6 after rallying to beat then-No. 5 Iowa State in the Phil Knight tournament. The Cyclones fell to eighth.
The Tar Heels visit the Hoosiers on Tuesday in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge. Indiana returns home after winning two games in Las Vegas at a subpar venue that lacked basic necessities.
Notre Dame remained No. 7 while Virginia Tech and Iowa finished off the top 10. At No. 9, Virginia Tech has matched its best ranking ever and is in the top 10 for the first time since 1999.
Tennessee fell out of the poll this week marking the 56th time in the 827-week history of the poll that the Lady Vols weren’t ranked. Kansas State also fell out with Gonzaga moving in at No. 23.
FALLING CARDINALS
Louisville dropped to 18th in the poll this week after falling to South Dakota State in the fifth place game at the Battle 4 Atlantis last week. It’s the Cardinals lowest ranking since Jan. 11, 2016.
Louisville entered the top 10 in the preseason poll in 2017 and hadn’t been out since, a span of 98 consecutive weeks. It was the longest active streak.
“It’s a compliment to the consistency that we built here,” Louisville coach Jeff Walz said of being ranked in the top 10 for so long. “Obviously are goal would have been to stay in the top 10, but it’s a new team and growing.”
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AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25 | https://www.fox44news.com/sports/ap-south-carolina-tops-womens-ap-top-25-stanford-uconn-next/ | 2022-11-28T20:18:58 | en | 0.957181 |
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(WFLA) — A former Arizona teacher who made headlines after being caught having an OnlyFans account has also been booted off the website.
Samantha Peer, also known as Khloe Karter, was once a teacher at the Lake Havasu Unified School District, along with her husband.
However, their educational careers would come to an end after the community learned that the couple was making pornographic content on OnlyFans to supplement their income despite her efforts to avoid being found out.
“I chose an anonymous name as well as blocking the entire state of Arizona on OnlyFans so it wasn’t accessible to anyone living in the state,” she said in a video statement in early November.
At the center of the controversy was the fact that Peer created a video inside a classroom. While Peer admitted to doing so, she said the video was made on a weekend when no children were present.
On Nov. 13, Peer announced on social media that her OnlyFans accounts were both deactivated and that she was blocked from making any other accounts. The account remained disabled as of this report.
Nexstar has reached out to OnlyFans to confirm Peer’s story but the platform has told news outlets that they do not comment on specific accounts.
OnlyFans’ terms of service state that while they can give notice to content creators who are at risk of losing their accounts, the website also reserves the right to suspend or terminate accounts “immediately and without prior notice.”
While the website allows some users to create pornographic material for an audience for a subscription fee, it has rules that limit what adult content creators can do.
Extreme or criminal sexual activity is forbidden on the platform. With regards to content filmed in a public setting — for example, a classroom — content creators can face penalties if public nudity is recorded in a country where it is illegal and if it is in an area where the public is “reasonably likely to see the activities being performed.”
“This does not include outdoor places where members of the public are not present, for example, private property such as a private backyard, or secluded areas in nature where members of the public are not present,” the terms of service state.
In addition to losing both her teaching job and her OnlyFans accounts, Peer said she has continued to face backlash from both the public and her family.
“You’re nuts for filming in a classroom,” said one commenter. “That’s outta pocket and you know it.”
Peer responded to criticism that she did not appear to show proper remorse for her actions in a follow-up statement.
“I pay the price every single day,” she said. “Of course I’m remorseful. I miss [teaching] a lot.”
The former educator has since moved to another platform to create her content and appears to still be active on social media. | https://www.news10.com/news/national/former-teacher-who-made-adult-video-in-classroom-says-she-was-kicked-off-onlyfans/ | 2022-11-28T20:19:05 | en | 0.983295 |
DOHA, Qatar (AP) — The lights at Stadium 974 briefly dimmed dramatically just before halftime Monday during a World Cup match between Brazil and Switzerland.
Brazil was about to take a corner when the lights at the temporary stadium dimmed enough that the play stopped. The full lights came back on within seconds and play quickly resumed.
Stadium 974 is named for Qatar’s international telephone code and also the number of shipping containers lining the facade of the arena.
The stadium near the Doha Port area will be dismantled after the tournament.
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AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/world-cup and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.fox44news.com/sports/ap-stadium-lights-dim-at-brazil-switzerland-world-cup-game/ | 2022-11-28T20:19:05 | en | 0.947449 |
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DENVER (KDVR) — Frontier Airlines announced that it is no longer offering customer service over the phone. Instead, the Colorado-based budget airline will switch entirely to online-based interactions.
The customer service options will now be accessible through its website, social media, text messages or WhatsApp.
When a customer calls the old line, NPR reports they now hear a recorded message directing them to other methods of contact.
A spokesperson for Frontier said this will allow for quicker responses, as chat agents can help three people or more at a time. Frontier told Nexstar’s KDVR that the average guest request can be completed within 15 to 20 minutes.
The change comes as long hold times on customer service phone lines caused problems for fliers primarily over the summer when the airline experienced a surge in cancellations and delays.
Frontier Airlines sent KDVR this statement:
“Our Customer Care function recently transitioned to fully digital communications, which enables us to ensure our customers get the information they need as expeditiously and efficiently as possible. We have found that most customers prefer communicating via digital channels. Customers can visit our website and interact initially with a chatbot which provides answers to common questions. If live agent support is needed, we have live chat available 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Customers may also chat with us via common social media channels and Whatsapp.”
Frontier Airlines | https://www.news10.com/news/national/frontier-airlines-shuts-down-customer-service-phone-line/ | 2022-11-28T20:19:11 | en | 0.92832 |
DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Struggling and unconvincing without Neymar on the field, Brazil still played well enough to secure a spot in the next round of the World Cup.
The five-time champions overcame the absence of their injured star to beat Switzerland 1-0 with a late goal Monday and make it to the round of 16 with a match to spare in Group G.
“Of course we miss a player like Neymar,” Brazil coach Tite said. “The team loses a lot without him. But we also have other players who can get the job done, as we saw it today.”
Defensive midfielder Casemiro got the only goal in the 83rd minute of a game in which Brazil had difficulties creating scoring chances without its main playmaker. The Real Madrid player scored with a one-timer into the far corner, using the outside of his right foot for a shot that deflected slightly off defender Manuel Akanji.
“We knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. We had to be patient,” Casemiro said. “Out first objective was to advance and we achieved that.”
Neymar stayed at the team’s hotel to treat a right ankle injury sustained in the opener in Qatar. He posted an Instagram story showing him watching the match on television while undergoing treatment on his foot.
“Casemiro has been the best defensive midfielder in the world for a long time,” Neymar wrote on Twitter.
Team doctors have not yet given a timetable for Neymar’s return — or said if he will return at all.
“We know that Neymar is a great player and that he makes a difference,” Brazil defender Marquinhos said. “In difficult moments he takes on the responsibility and creates the opportunities, but we showed once again that we have quality players to make up for his absence.”
The win gave Brazil six points from two matches, leaving Switzerland with three. Serbia and Cameroon, which drew 3-3 earlier Monday, have one point each.
Switzerland, which had no attempts on target, needs a win in the last match against Serbia to guarantee its spot in the next stage. A draw may be enough depending on the match between Brazil and Cameroon.
The result extended Brazil’s unbeaten run in the group stage to 17 matches, with 14 wins and three draws. It has lost only one of its last 29 group games, with the last defeat coming against Norway in 1998 in France.
Switzerland had lost only two of its last 13 group matches at the World Cup.
“I can’t really blame the team, it did a good job for quite some time,” Switzerland coach Murat Yakin said through a translator. “I don’t think it’s a disappointment. We have a lot of good takeaways here. The next game is something we have control over.”
It was an even match early on, with both teams trying to control the game but not creating many significant chances. Without Neymar, Brazil struggled to get near Switzerland’s area until Casemiro’s goal. The assists came from Vinícius Junios and Rodrygo, the Real Madrid players who until recent had Casemiro as their teammate. Casemiro now plays for Manchester United.
Tite replaced Neymar with Fred, Casemiro’s teammate at Man United, freeing up Lucas Paquetá to play closer to the attack. Éder Militão, who plays as a central defender at Real Madrid, came in for Danilo in the right back position, instead of veteran Dani Alves.
With Paquetá not being able to create much for Brazil, Tite began the second half with Rodrygo in the team. Richarlison, who scored both of Brazil’s goals in the opener, was not as effective and was substituted in the second half.
Vinícius Júnior thought he had given Brazil the lead with a shot from inside the area after a pass by Casemiro in the 64th, but video review determined there was offside in the buildup. Few had noticed it until the VAR call was announced at Stadium 974.
LIGHTS OUT
The lights dimmed for a few seconds before halftime at Stadium 974, prompting a brief stoppage in play. Brazil was about to take a corner when it suddenly started turning dark at the temporary stadium.
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Tales Azzoni on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tazzoni
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AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/world-cup and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.fox44news.com/sports/ap-without-neymar-brazil-edges-switzerland-1-0-at-world-cup/ | 2022-11-28T20:19:13 | en | 0.979834 |
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QUEENSBURY, N.Y. (NEWS10) – Residents of Glens Falls and Queensbury may be familiar with the aging culvert running under Corinth Road, also known as County Route 28. Warren County is looking to give an upgrade to the route that carries Clendon Brook under the road, and is seeking community input.
Next month, the Warren County Department of Public Works is set to host a public comment meeting on that very topic. On Thursday, Dec. 15, the county will hold a public meeting to discuss and consider proposals on how to go about replacing the existing culvert. The culvert in question is between Corinth Road’s intersections with Sherman Island Road and Van Dusen Road.
The meeting will be held from 6-7 p.m. at the West Glens Falls Emergency Squad building, 86 Luzerne Road in Queensbury. The meeting will begin with a short presentation on the state of the culvert, followed by time set aside for public comment and questions. Any inquiries ahead of time can be sent to the Warren County Department of Public Works at (518) 761-6556, or by email to publicinfo@warrencountydpw.com. | https://www.news10.com/news/north-country/comment-sought-on-queensbury-culvert-replacement/ | 2022-11-28T20:19:17 | en | 0.941823 |
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PHOENIX (AP) — Republican officials in a rural Arizona county refused on Monday to certify the 2022 election ahead of the deadline amid pressure from prominent Republicans to reject a vote count that had Democrats winning U.S. Senate, governor and other statewide races.
State election officials have said they will sue Cochise County if the board of supervisors misses Monday’s deadline to approve the official tally of votes, known as the canvass. The two Republican county supervisors delayed the canvass vote until hearing once more about concerns over the certification of ballot tabulators, though election officials have repeatedly said the equipment is properly approved.
Democratic election attorney Marc Elias pledged on Twitter to sue the county. Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’s office has previously said it would sue if the county misses the deadline.
“The Board of Supervisors had all of the information they needed to certify this election and failed to uphold their responsibility for Cochise voters,” Sophia Solis, a spokeswoman for Hobbs, said in an email.
Elsewhere, Republican supervisors in Mohave County postponed a certification vote until Thursday. after hearing comments from residents angry about problems with ballot printers in Maricopa County. Officials in Maricopa County, the state’s largest, containing Phoenix, said everyone had a chance to vote and all legal ballots were counted.
Election results have largely been certified without issue in jurisdictions across the country. That’s not been the case in Arizona, which was a focal point for efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election and push false narratives of fraud.
Arizona was long a GOP stronghold, but this month Democrats won most of the highest profile races over Republicans who aggressively promoted Trump’s 2020 election lies. Kari Lake, the GOP candidate for governor who lost to Hobbs, and Mark Finchem, the candidate for secretary of state, have refused to acknowledge their losses. They blame Republican election officials in Maricopa County for a problem with some ballot printers.
Navajo, a rural Republican-leaning county, and Coconino, which is staunchly Democratic, voted to certify on Monday. In conservative Yavapai County, residents cited problems in Maricopa County in urging the Board of Supervisors not to approve the election results. The meeting was underway.
Republican supervisors in Mohave County said last week that they would sign off Monday but wanted to register a protest against voting issues in Maricopa County. In Cochise County, GOP supervisors had demanded that the secretary of state prove vote-counting machines were legally certified before they would approve the election results.
State Elections Director Kori Lorick has said the machines are properly certified for use in elections. She wrote in a letter last week that the state would sue to force Cochise County supervisors to certify, and if they don’t do so by the deadline for the statewide canvass on Dec. 5, the county’s votes would be excluded. That move threatens to flip the victor in at least two close races — a U.S. House seat and state schools chief — from a Republican to a Democrat.
Lake has pointed to problems on Election Day in Maricopa County, where printers at some vote centers produced ballots with markings that were too light to be read by on-site tabulators. Lines backed up amid the confusion, and Lake says an unknown number of her supporters may have been dissuaded from voting as a result.
She filed a public records lawsuit last week, demanding the county produce documents shedding light on the issue before voting to certify the election on Monday. Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich has also demanded an explanation ahead of the vote.
The county responded on Sunday, saying nobody was prevented from voting, and 85% of vote centers never had lines longer than 45 minutes. Most vote centers with long lines had others nearby with shorter waits, county officials said.
The response blamed prominent Republicans, including party chair Kelli Ward, for sowing confusion by telling supporters on Twitter not to place their ballots in a secure box to be tabulated later by more robust machines at county elections headquarters.
The county said that just under 17,000 Election Day ballots were placed in those secure boxes and all were counted. Only 16% of the 1.56 million votes cast in Maricopa County were made in-person on Election Day. Those votes went overwhelmingly for Republicans.
The Republican National Committee and the GOP candidate for Arizona attorney general, Abraham Hamadeh, filed an election challenge in his race, which is slated for an automatic recount with Hamadeh trailing by 510 votes.
Ward has urged supporters to push their county supervisors to delay certification votes until after an afternoon scheduling hearing in the Hamadeh case.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections | https://www.news10.com/news/politics/ap-arizona-counties-face-deadline-to-certify-2022-election/ | 2022-11-28T20:19:23 | en | 0.975726 |
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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is strengthening U.S. policy aimed at stemming sexual violence in war conflict zones, elevating the problem — increasingly documented in Ukraine and elsewhere — to the level of a possible serious human rights abuse that triggers sanctions and other actions against foreign perpetrators.
Biden on Monday signed a presidential memorandum that seeks to combat the use of rape by both foreign governments and individuals as a weapon of war.
The memorandum directs for the first time that the State and Treasury departments and other agencies give equal consideration of acts of sexual violence to other serious human rights abuses in leveraging sanctions and other punishment against foreign actors.
Currently, U.S. policy allows for the imposition of sanctions for conflict-related sexual violence, but it is not commonly used.
Biden’s action comes when the United Nations has warned that sexual violence in Ukraine, especially against women and girls, remains prevalent and underreported. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield has previously cited “a mountain of credible reports of atrocities committed by Russia’s forces against civilians,” including “horrific accounts of sexual violence.”
The Biden administration on Monday pointed to a proliferation of sexual violence cases in Ukraine, Ethiopia and elsewhere. It cited a U.N. report that found 3,293 verified sexual violence cases in 2021 across 18 countries, an increase of about 800 compared with the previous year. The U.N. has estimated that for each rape reported in connection with a conflict, about 10 to 20 cases go undocumented.
The administration had previously pledged $400,000 in addition to its annual contribution of $1.75 million to the Office of the U.N. Special Representative to the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict. The State Department plans an added investment of $5.5 million over the next two years to civil society projects and survivor groups seeking sexual violence accountability and will expand programs to help survivors and investigate and document acts of such violence. | https://www.news10.com/news/politics/ap-biden-boosts-us-effort-to-stem-sexual-violence-in-war-zones/ | 2022-11-28T20:19:31 | en | 0.946226 |
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NEW YORK (AP) — Democrats celebrating a successful effort to keep control of the U.S. Senate this year will soon confront a 2024 campaign that could prove more challenging.
The party enters the next cycle defending 23 seats, including two held by independents who caucus with Democrats. That’s compared with just 10 seats that Republicans hope to keep in their column.
Adding to the potential hurdles is that some 2024 contests are in states that have become increasingly hostile to Democrats, including Montana, Ohio and West Virginia. Other Democratic-held seats are in some of the same hotly contested states that were at the center of this year’s midterms, such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada. And while Democrats carried each of those races, they did so at great cost and with sometimes narrow margins. In Nevada, for instance, Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto won by less than 1 percentage point, or about 9,000 votes.
For now, both parties insist they’re laser focused on coming out on top in the Dec. 6 Senate runoff in Georgia. But Democrats who are on the ballot in 2024 know that they could face fierce headwinds and are studying the results of this year’s election, when the party outperformed expectations.
For Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat facing her first reelection campaign, that means staying focused on kitchen table issues and touting legislation like the infrastructure law and gun violence legislation signed by President Joe Biden.
“We know that races are always close,” Rosen said in an interview. “We never take anything for granted.”
The dynamics of the next Senate campaign could be influenced by a variety of outside factors, particularly the presidential election and the attention it generates. Biden, who turned 80 this month, has said his “intention” is to run for reelection and that he will make a final decision early next year. Former President Donald Trump has already announced a third White House bid, and multiple other Republicans are lining up to launch campaigns. The eventual nominee in each party could have a profound impact on down-ballot races, including those for Senate.
But perhaps the biggest question for Senate Democrats seeking reelection will be who Republicans nominate as their opponents. The GOP lost several Senate elections this year, including those in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada, after Trump-backed candidates struggled to raise money and connect with a broader, more moderate range of voters during the general election.
In Nevada, the Republican field to challenge Rosen has not begun to shape up but is expected to attract several contenders. One name receiving attention is Sam Brown, a former U.S. Army captain who was awarded a Purple Heart after being severely wounded in Afghanistan. Brown ran for Senate this year and put up a strong challenge in the Republican primary before losing to Adam Laxalt, who lost in the general election to Cortez Masto.
Richard Hernandez, who was Brown’s campaign adviser, said, “He has committed to his supporters that he will never stop fighting for their issues, but he has not made any decisions as to whether that involves a future run for office.”
Also in the southwest, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist Democrat, will be up for reelection. The race, like other recent statewide contests in Arizona, is expected to be very competitive. But Sinema is likely to first face a well-funded primary challenger after angering much of the Democratic base by blocking or watering down progressive priorities like a minimum wage increase or Biden’s big social spending initiatives. She has not said whether she plans to run for reelection.
Sinema’s most prominent potential primary challenger is U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, who has a long history of feuding with Sinema. Gallego has not announced his plans for 2024 but has made it no secret that he’s thinking about challenging Sinema. He even raised money on the prospect he might oppose Sinema.
An independent expenditure group is also raising money, saying it will support grassroots organizations committed to defeating Sinema in a Democratic primary.
Republicans hope a bruising Democratic primary might give them an opening to win the seat after losing Senate races in Arizona in three consecutive elections.
Sinema is among a trio of moderate Senate Democrats who have sometimes used their leverage in an evenly divided chamber to block or blunt some of Biden’s plans and nominees. They will also be among the party’s most vulnerable incumbents in 2024.
The other two senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, will be running as Democrats in states that Trump handily carried in 2020.
Manchin has already drawn a GOP challenger in U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney, who declared a week after winning reelection that he was setting his sights on higher office. Manchin has not yet said whether he’ll run for reelection.
Republicans see Tester, a three-term senator, as vulnerable, and the opportunity to run for the seat could draw a fierce primary contest between former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Rep. Matt Rosendale. Zinke, who won a House seat in this year’s midterm elections, said he will decide whether to run next year, and Rosendale declined to answer.
Tester has not announced if he will seek another term but has said he anticipates 2024 will be just as tough as his last race in 2018, when he beat Rosendale in a close contest.
In Pennsylvania, Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey has not said whether he intends to run for a fourth term. Casey easily won reelection in 2018, but Pennsylvania has been competitive for Republicans, including in this year’s Senate race won by Democrat John Fetterman.
One potential Republican challenger whose name has been floated in Pennsylvania is former hedge fund CEO David McCormick, who narrowly lost the Republican primary in this year’s race to celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz. McCormick advisers declined to comment on that prospect. Conservative activist Kathy Barnette, who finished a close third in the Republican primary, didn’t respond to messages about whether she’s considering a 2024 campaign.
Wisconsin, which saw Republican Sen. Ron Johnson narrowly win reelection this year, is also expected to have another competitive Senate race in two years.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin is widely expected to seek a third term but has not officially announced. There are no official Republican candidates, but U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher has been talked about as a possibility.
Gallagher brushed off a query about whether he was considering challenging Baldwin, saying in a statement that he was focused on tackling issues like inflation and the border over the next two years after having just won reelection.
“Any talk of the next election, especially since we just had an election, distracts from the serious work we need to do,” he said.
A number of high-profile Republican senators will also be up for reelection in 2024, including Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rick Scott of Florida.
On the Democratic side, a number of the party’s former presidential candidates will face voters. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have all said they plan to seek another term.
Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats and is one of the most influential progressives in Congress, has not said if he intends to run for reelection.
In Utah, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney will face his first Senate reelection bid — if he chooses to run. Romney remains popular with many residents in Utah but has faced backlash from his own party for being the only Republican who voted twice to remove Trump from office after his two impeachments by the House.
When asked if Romney planned to run for reelection, his spokesperson Arielle Mueller did not offer any detail on his plans, saying instead that the senator was focused on tackling “significant challenges facing the country.”
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, a Republican who has been a Trump ally, is one of the GOP figures who has been seen as a potential 2024 Senate candidate in the state. Reyes’ longtime political consultant Alan Crooks wouldn’t say whether the attorney general will launch a campaign but argued he was getting pressure from within Utah and outside the state to have him run.
“He’s certainly set up to run, but it does not mean he’s considering it,” Crooks said.
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Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix; Sam Metz in Salt Lake City; and Kevin Freking in Washington contributed to this report.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. | https://www.news10.com/news/politics/ap-democrats-kept-the-senate-this-year-but-2024-may-be-harder/ | 2022-11-28T20:19:38 | en | 0.973018 |
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OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The former warden of an abuse-plagued federal women’s prison known as the “rape club” went on trial Monday, accused of molesting inmates and forcing them to pose naked in their cells.
Ray J. Garcia, who retired after the FBI found nude photos of inmates on his government-issued phone last year, is among five workers charged with abusing inmates at the federal correctional institution in Dublin, California, and the first to go to trial.
Opening statements kicked off Monday in federal court in Oakland, with prosecutors spelling out evidence they said would show Garcia’s abuse of several inmates followed a pattern, starting with compliments, flattery and promises of transfers to lower security prisons and escalated to sexual encounters. Garcia, 55, has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he would face up to 15 years in prison.
An Associated Press investigation in February revealed a culture of abuse and cover-up that had persisted for years at the prison, about 21 miles (34 kilometers) east of Oakland. That reporting led to increased scrutiny from Congress and pledges from the federal Bureau of Prisons that it would fix problems and change the culture at the prison.
Garcia is charged with abusing three inmates between December 2019 and July 2021, but jurors could hear from as many as six women who say he groped them and told them to pose naked or in provocative clothing. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said prosecutors can call three additional accusers as witnesses, even though their allegations are not part of his indictment.
One of the women testified Monday that she started developing romantic feelings for Garcia and that their first sexual encounter was in the bathroom of the visitor’s area of the prison. The woman, whose prison job was to clean the visitation room, said Garcia told her he knew of several parts of the visitation area that wouldn’t be captured by surveillance cameras.
“I felt like he cared about me and he loved me,” the woman said, her voice breaking.
“He just said the sweetest, nicest things, it took me by surprise but I wanted to make him happy,” she said of their first sexual encounter in the bathroom. She said he later took nude photographs of her.
Garcia’s lawyer argues, though, that there was no surveillance video capturing the alleged sexual misconduct. Union officials have long complained the prison has an inadequate number of cameras.
“The evidence is not going to show one single video of any of these supposed events,” Garcia’s defense lawyer, James Reilly, said. In court papers, the defense argued that Garcia took pictures of one inmate because he wanted documentation that she was breaching policy by standing around naked.
The case, with shades of #MeToo behind bars, is also likely to put a spotlight on the Bureau of Prisons, calling into question its handling of sexual abuse complaints from inmates against staff and the vetting process for the people it chooses to run its prisons.
The AP generally does not name people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they consent to being identified. All sexual activity between a prison worker and an inmate is illegal. Correctional employees enjoy substantial power over inmates, controlling every aspect of their lives from mealtime to lights out, and there is no scenario in which an inmate can give consent.
Garcia was promoted from associate warden to warden in November 2020 while he was still abusing inmates, prosecutors say. The Bureau of Prisons has said it didn’t find out about the abuse until later. Garcia is the highest-ranking federal prison official arrested in more than 10 years.
The agency’s new director, Colette Peters, has reiterated the agency’s zero-tolerance policy for staff sexual misconduct and has called for harsher punishment for workers who commit abuse. But as abuse raged at Dublin, the process for reporting it was inherently broken.
Garcia was in charge of staff and inmate training on reporting abuse and complying with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act at the same time he was committing abuse, prosecutors say, and some inmates say they were sent to solitary confinement or other prisons for accusing employees of abuse.
Prosecutors say Garcia tried to keep his victims quiet with promises that he’d help them get early release. He allegedly told one victim he was “close friends” with the prison official responsible for investigating staff misconduct and couldn’t be fired. According to an indictment, he also said he liked to cavort with inmates because, given their lack of power, they couldn’t “ruin him.”
Garcia is also accused of ordering inmates to strip naked for him as he made his rounds and of lying to federal agents who asked him if he had ever asked inmates to undress for him or had inappropriately touched a female inmate.
“If they’re undressing, I’ve already looked,” Garcia told the FBI in July 2021, according to court records. “I don’t, like, schedule a time like, ‘You be undressed, and I’ll be there.’”
Garcia was placed on administrative leave before retiring. He was arrested in September 2021.
Earlier this month, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco directed federal prosecutors across the U.S. to “consider the full array of statutes,” including the federal Violence Against Women Act in cases involving Bureau of Prisons employees who are accused of sexual misconduct.
In those cases, Monaco said prosecutors should consider asking judges for sentences that go beyond the federal guidelines if the sentence recommended in the guidelines isn’t “fair and proportional to the seriousness of the offenses.”
Of the four other Dublin workers charged with abusing inmates, three have pleaded guilty and one is scheduled to stand trial next year. James Theodore Highhouse, the prison’s chaplain, is appealing his seven-year prison sentence, arguing that it was excessive because it was more than double the recommended punishment in federal sentencing guidelines.
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Sisak and Balsamo reported from New York. On Twitter, follow Michael Sisak at http://twitter.com/mikesisak and Michael Balsamo at http://twitter.com/MikeBalsamo1 and send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/. | https://www.news10.com/news/politics/ap-ex-prison-warden-faces-trial-over-inmate-abuse-allegations/ | 2022-11-28T20:19:45 | en | 0.979915 |
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ATLANTA (AP) — In-person early voting for the last U.S. Senate seat is underway statewide in Georgia’s runoff, with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock working to get the jump on Republican challenger Hershel Walker who is putting less emphasis on advance balloting.
After winning a state lawsuit to allow Saturday voting after Thanksgiving, Warnock spent the weekend urging his supporters not to wait until the Dec. 6 runoff. Trying to leverage his role as pastor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s church and Georgia’s first Black U.S. senator, Warnock concentrated his efforts Sunday among Black communities in metro Atlanta.
“What we are doing right now is soul work,” Warnock said at Liberty International Church southwest of downtown, where he rallied supporters before leading a march to a nearby early voting site where he cast his ballot. “We are engaged in a political exercise,” Warnock continued, “but this is moral and spiritual work, and for us that has always been based on the foundation of the church.”
Walker, in contrast, did not hold public events over the long Thanksgiving weekend, and he has not emphasized early voting in his runoff campaign appearances, even as the Republican Party and its aligned PACs attempt to drive voter turnout after Walker underperformed other Georgia Republicans in the general election. Walker finished the first round with about 200,000 fewer votes than Gov. Brian Kemp, who easily won a second term. Walker resumes his campaign Monday with stops in small-town Toccoa and suburban Cumming.
Early in-person voting continues through Friday. Runoff Election Day is Tuesday of next week.
Warnock led Walker by about 37,000 votes out of about 4 million cast in the general election but fell short of the majority required under Georgia law, triggering a four-week runoff blitz. Warnock first won the seat as part of concurrent Senate runoffs on Jan. 5, 2021, when he and Sen. Jon Ossoff prevailed over Republican incumbents to give Democrats narrow control of the Senate for the start of President Joe Biden’s tenure. Warnock won a special election and now is seeking a full six-year term.
This time, Senate control is not in play, with Democrats already having secured 50 seats to go with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote. That puts pressure on both Warnock and Walker to convince Georgia voters that it’s worth their time to cast a second ballot, even if the national stakes aren’t as high.
As of late Sunday, almost 200,000 ballots had been cast in the relative handful of counties that opted to have weekend voting. That total was built on long lines in several heavily Democratic counties of metro Atlanta, enough to give Democrats confidence that their core supporters remain excited to vote for Warnock. But the total remains a small fraction of the nearly 2.3 million early in-person voters ahead of the Nov. 8 general election.
And Democrats remain cautious given that the early voting window is much shorter than two years ago, when the second round spanned two months between the general election and runoff. Voting on Saturday was allowed only because Warnock and Democrats sued amid a dispute with the Republican secretary of state over whether Saturday voting could occur on a holiday weekend.
The senator followed up with a parade of Black leaders for weekend rallies and a march reminiscent of voting rights demonstrations during the civil rights movement.
“We have one vote here that can change the world,” Andrew Young, a former Atlanta mayor and onetime aide to King, implored Black voters on Sunday. Rising from his wheelchair to speak, the 90-year-old former congressman and U.N. ambassador reminded the assembly of the congressional compromise that ended post-Civil War Reconstruction and paved the way for Jim Crow segregation across the South.
“One vote at the end of the Civil War pulled all of the Union troops out of the South and lost us the rights we had fought for in the war and that people had fought for us,” he said, starting “a struggle that we have been in ever since.”
Warnock was shifting to a suburban focus late Monday with an evening concert headlined by the Dave Matthews Band.
Walker, for his part, has drawn enthusiastic crowds in the early weeks of the runoff, as well, and his campaign aides remain confident that he has no problem among core Republicans. His challenge comes with the middle of the Georgia electorate, a gap highlighted by his shortfall compared to Kemp.
“I feel Herschel Walker benefited by having Brian Kemp in the original election on Nov. 8, and I think Kemp not being there will hurt the Republicans a little bit,” said Alpharetta resident Marcelo Salvatierra, who voted for Republican Kemp and Democrat Warnock and still supports the senator in the runoff.
Salvatierra said he backed Kemp’s re-election “because it seems to me Georgia has done well.” But Republicans at the federal level, he said, never offered a serious counter to Democratic control of Washington, while Walker also comes with considerable personal baggage.
“Character matters and I sense he doesn’t have character,” Salvatierra said.
Warnock has encouraged that sentiment among core Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans. For months, he’s said Walker, a former football star making his first bid for public office, was “not ready” for the Senate. In recent weeks, he’s ratcheted up the attack to say Walker is “not fit,” highlighting the challenger’s falsehoods about his accomplishments in the private sector, along with allegations of violence against women and accusations by two women that Walker encouraged and paid for their abortions. Walker, who backs a national ban on abortions without exceptions, denies that he ever paid for any abortions.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections
Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections | https://www.news10.com/news/politics/ap-georgia-runoff-early-voting-for-warnock-walker-round-2/ | 2022-11-28T20:19:51 | en | 0.970631 |
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Jurors who will decide whether to convict Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and four associates of seditious conspiracy resumed deliberations Monday in the high-stakes trial stemming from the U.S. Capitol attack.
Rhodes and his co-defendants are accused of a weekslong plot to stop the transfer of power from Republican Donald Trump to Democrat Joe Biden. Prosecutors say the plot came to a head on Jan. 6, 2021 when Rhodes’ followers stormed the Capitol alongside hundreds of other angry Trump supporters.
Hundreds of people have been convicted in the Capitol attack that left dozens of officers injured and sent lawmakers running for their lives. Jurors in the Oath Keepers case will decide, for the first time, whether the actions of any Jan. 6 defendants amount to seditious conspiracy — a rarely used charge that carries both significant prison time and political weight.
The jury in Washington D.C.’s federal court deliberated last Tuesday before going home for the long Thanksgiving weekend. Rhodes, of Granbury, Texas, is on trial with Thomas Caldwell, of Berryville, Virginia; Jessica Watkins, of Woodstock, Ohio; Kelly Meggs, of Dunnellon, Florida; and Kenneth Harrelson of Titusville, Florida.
They would be the first people convicted of seditious conspiracy at trial since the 1995 prosecution of Islamic militants who plotted to bomb New York City landmarks. The charge calls for up to 20 years behind bars. The five defendants also face several other charges.
Throughout the nearly two-month-long trial, defense attorneys argued there was never any plot, that prosecutors have twisted their admittedly bombastic words. Defense lawyers argued that the Oath Keepers who did enter the Capitol were swept up in a spontaneous outpouring of election-fueled rage rather than acting as part of a plot.
Rhodes took the witness stand to tell jurors that he had no idea that his followers were going to storm the Capitol and that he was upset after he found out that some did. Rhodes said he believed it was stupid for any Oath Keepers to go into the Capitol and insisted that was not their “mission.”
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For full coverage of the Capitol riot, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege
More on Donald Trump-related investigations: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump | https://www.news10.com/news/politics/ap-jury-deliberations-resume-in-oath-keepers-1-6-sedition-case/ | 2022-11-28T20:19:57 | en | 0.962576 |
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is in the fight of his political life, grinding through the promises and proposals, cajoling and deal-making necessary to win over reluctant colleagues whose support he needs to become House speaker.
Every new commitment from McCarthy can be seen as a potentially strategic move, intended to quell skeptics on his right flank as he reaches for the speaker’s gavel. With a slim House majority in the midterm elections, the GOP leader must solidify his ranks in a sprint for the 218 votes he’ll need when the new Congress convenes — each coming at a cost and with no room for error.
“We’ll get there,” McCarthy said in accepting his party’s nomination to run for speaker.
The overtures McCarthy is making, some symbolic, others substantive, provide a snapshot of the speaker hopeful’s emerging leadership style. While McCarthy is expected to prevail in his quest for the speaker’s gavel, it is destined to come at a political price, setting the tone and tenor of new Congress.
To start, McCarthy has promised to restore committee assignments for far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., after she and another right-flank lawmaker were booted by Democrats over incendiary remarks.
And he has vowed to oust Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and other high-profile Democrats from their committees in a form of political payback, setting up a divisive House action early in the new Congress.
McCarthy has assured that under his leadership, the House will remove the metal detectors that were installed to prevent firearms in the House chamber; end COVID-era protocols that allowed lawmakers to vote by proxy; and fully reopen the Capitol’s limited visitor access since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection by supporters of the former president, Donald Trump.
And in a dramatic nod to the far-right, McCarthy has threatened an impeachment investigation against Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas unless he resigns over the department’s handling of the U.S.’s southern border with Mexico.
“McCarthy’s problem is, he can’t get to 218 without Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar and Matt Gaetz,” Schiff said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” referring to the House GOP’s most outspoken far-right members. “And so he will do whatever they ask.”
The challenge ahead for McCarthy is not unique, as he races to shore up support before the new Congress convenes in January. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., faced detractors during her own pursuit of the gavel, forced to skillfully pick off the naysayers one by one until she had secured backing.
But the problem McCarthy faces is distinctly Republican, one that almost doomed his most recent predecessors. Paul Ryan and John Boehner both suffered politically as they were pushed and prodded by the GOP’s increasingly far-right flank to make concessions for their support. Eventually both men won the speaker’s gavel, but ultimately retired early.
After pushing his party to victory in the midterm elections, McCarthy won the nod from a majority of his colleagues nominating him to run for speaker. But the 188-31 vote among Republicans showed the shortfall he must overcome. When the new Congress convenes in January, the whole House, Republicans and Democrats, will vote on speaker and McCarthy’s party will need to stick together with their slim majority for him to prevail. Otherwise, a different Republican could emerge as a compromise candidate.
“It’s a tall order,” said Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., a past chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, who waged a long-shot challenge to McCarthy for the nomination.
“I know he thinks he’s going to get there,” Biggs said. “I don’t know that he can.”
Even though McCarthy defeated Biggs, 188-31, in the closed-door voting, with another five Republicans casting ballots for other candidates, that’s a pool of some three dozen votes the GOP leader needs to claw back if he hopes to win the speaker’s job.
“They know they’ve got a problem,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., another Freedom Caucus member. “In other words, 36 no votes is a problem.”
As the party leader, McCarthy has countless tools at his disposal, including favors he can dole out to win support — from prime committee assignments or newly created leadership roles to commitments to elevate lawmakers’ own priorities, including investigations of President Joe Biden, his family and his administration.
The influential Freedom Caucus has long wanted more say in the legislative process — rather than a top-down approach — and its members are pushing McCarthy with more specific demands that would give them more power even at McCarthy’s expense.
”I’m hopeful at the end of the day that we will come together as a conference and elect Kevin,” Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the incoming chairman of the Oversight Committee, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Comer said there are “certainly five to eight members that have said they’re leaning towards voting no against Kevin McCarthy.” Opposition of that magnitude would derail McCarthy’s bid to become speaker.
The California Republican has been here before, having withdrawn from the speaker’s race in 2015 when it became clear he did not have enough support.
To win over skeptics, McCarthy has been meeting with Republicans as they hammer out their internal party rules for the new Congress. While such rules generally don’t have much relevance for the public, they play an important role behind the scenes.
For example, some conservatives want McCarthy to impose a ban on earmarks, which allow lawmakers to direct federal dollars to local projects and programs in their home states, a legislative perk long derided as wasteful.
Others want McCarthy to enforce a balanced federal budget in future years, which would require vast spending cuts.
Some of the more conservative members of the House want to restore a rule that allows any member at any time to submit a motion to remove the speaker, which had been used by then-Rep. Mark Meadows as a pressure point during Boehner’s tenure. Instead, they adopted a provision stating that submitting such a “motion to vacate the chair” should only be done with party agreement.
McCarthy exited one private meeting calling it “a great discussion.” He indicated it’s the beginning of a long process over the next weeks.
“I don’t know if this is winning them over,” he said. “I think it’s discussing and listening to them.”
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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report. | https://www.news10.com/news/politics/ap-mccarthys-pursuit-of-speakers-gavel-comes-at-a-high-cost/ | 2022-11-28T20:20:04 | en | 0.969423 |
Updated November 28, 2022 at 2:59 PM ET
Officials in a rural, Republican-controlled county in Arizona have voted to delay certifying the results of this month's midterm elections and miss the state's legal deadline of Monday, despite finding no legitimate problems with the local counts.
The move by the board of supervisors for Cochise County in southeastern Arizona, near Tucson, puts more than 47,000 Arizonans' votes at risk and is expected to set off court action. The state's secretary of state's office plans to file a lawsuit on Monday, spokesperson Sophia Solis said by email.
"There is no reason for us to delay," said the board's chair, Ann English, a Democrat, whose vote was outnumbered by the county's two Republican supervisors, Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd.
Before Monday's vote, Arizona's state election director, Kori Lorick, said in a statement that the state's secretary of state "will use all available legal remedies to compel compliance with Arizona law and protect Cochise County voters' right to have their votes counted" if the board failed to complete its "non-discretionary duty."
Many election watchers have been raising concerns that Republican officials may disrupt the process for making the election results official after GOP leaders in Cochise County voted on Nov. 18 to wait to decide whether to certify the results until the legal deadline on Monday.
They cited claims about the certification of election equipment, which Lorick confirmed had been tested and properly certified. Still, Crosby and Judd have called for a meeting on Friday to discuss the claims.
In the opposite corner of Arizona, another Republican-controlled county — Mohave County — may end up following Cochise County's lead in not certifying election results. Last week, GOP officials there said they want to hold off on making a decision until Monday's deadline in order to make a political statement. They recessed their meeting Monday and are set to resume their discussion later in the day.
The controversy over local vote certifications comes as Republicans continue to criticize the election administration in Arizona's Maricopa County, the state's largest county and home to Phoenix. Maricopa's Republican leadership has defended its handling of the election and said no voters were disenfranchised as a result of technical issues. Still, GOP candidates for governor and state attorney general have questioned the results and sought more information after electronic vote-counting tabulators malfunctioned early on Election Day in some of the county's voting locations.
Ben Giles, a reporter with NPR member station KJZZ in Phoenix, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.publicradiotulsa.org/npr-national-news/npr-national-news/2022-11-28/an-arizona-county-has-refused-to-certify-election-results-by-the-legal-deadline | 2022-11-28T20:20:07 | en | 0.966947 |
NEW YORK — Stocks fell on Wall Street Monday, giving back some of their huge gains made last week on hopes the worst of the nation's inflation may finally have passed.
The S&P 500 fell 0.9%, or 35.68 points, to 3,957.25 after drifting between gains and losses several times through the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.6%, or 211.16, to 33,536.70, and the Nasdaq composite fell 1.1%, or 127.11, to 11,196.22.
The losses follow Wall Street's best week since June, when the S&P 500 surged 5.9% after encouraging data on inflation sparked speculation the Federal Reserve may ease up on its fusillade of interest-rate hikes meant to get prices under control. Such rate hikes have raised worries about a possible recession, while also dragging down prices for stocks, bonds and cryptocurrencies.
Some analysts have called Wall Street's recent rally overdone, including a 5.5% surge for the S&P 500 on Thursday alone, saying one report does not mean the coast is clear, even if it was encouraging. Some officials at the Federal Reserve have also urged caution, with Fed Governor Christopher Waller saying the better-than-expected reading on inflation for October "was just one data point" and that "everybody should just take a deep breath."
Such warnings weighed on stocks Monday, as did a rise in Treasury yields. But the market also got a brief boost after Fed Vice Chair Lael Brainard gave comments that investors took as a hint that the steepest of the Fed's rate hikes may have passed.
"The inflation data was reassuring, preliminarily," she said. "It will probably be appropriate, soon, to move to a slower pace of rate increases."
In each of its last four meetings, the Fed has hiked its key overnight rate by a big 0.75 percentage points, which is triple the usual amount. Bets have increased since last week's inflation report that the Fed's next move will be an increase of only 0.50 percentage points. While that's still a big increase relative to history, investors are starving for any indication the Fed may ease up on its rate hikes.
Even before last week's report on inflation, Fed Chair Jerome Powell already said such a dial down in the size of rate hikes may be imminent. But he also said the Fed nevertheless could still ultimately take rates higher than earlier expected, and that it may hold rates at that high level a while to make sure inflation stays under control.
Fed officials have been reiterating how the Fed's campaign against high inflation still looks to be a long one.
"Quit paying attention to the pace and start paying attention to where the endpoint is going to be," Waller said. "Until we get inflation down, that endpoint is still a ways out there."
On Wall Street, Hasbro fell 9.9% for the largest loss in the S&P 500 index. Analysts in a BofA Global Research report raised concerns the company may be overproducing cards for its "Magic: The Gathering" game, threatening to undercut a lucrative business.
On the winning side was Moderna, which climbed 4.6% after reporting encouraging data on its bivalent vaccine targeting COVID-19.
Bond yields rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which helps set mortgage rates, rose to 3.87% from 3.81% late Thursday. Bond markets were closed Friday for Veterans Day.
Crypto-related stocks kept whipsawing following the implosion last week of FTX, a major crypto trading exchange. Coinbase, another crypto exchange platform, fell 7.4%.
Several economic reports due this week could offer more clues about where inflation is heading.
On Tuesday, the government will issue its October report on prices at the wholesale level. Economists say inflation there likely slowed to 8.3% from September's 8.5% rate for year-over-year price changes.
On Wednesday, markets will see how resilient U.S. households have been in their spending when the government gives its latest monthly update on sales at retailers.
Economists say retail sales likely grew 0.9% in October from a month earlier, a much stronger showing than September's flat performance. The data, though, does not take inflation into account and could be a reflection of nothing more than higher prices being charged at the register.
Retailers could offer more color on that, with a long line of them scheduled to say this week how much profit they earned during the summer.
Home Depot and Walmart report earnings on Tuesday. Target reports its results on Wednesday, and Macy's reports results on Thursday.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.publicradiotulsa.org/npr-national-news/npr-national-news/2022-11-28/wall-street-slips-giving-back-some-of-last-weeks-big-gains | 2022-11-28T20:20:08 | en | 0.970881 |
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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — When John Fetterman goes to Washington in January as one of the Senate’s new members, he’ll bring along an irreverent style from Pennsylvania that extends from his own personal dress code — super casual — to hanging marijuana flags outside his current office in the state Capitol.
Pennsylvania’s unique lieutenant governor, who just flipped the state’s open Senate seat to Democrats, may be the only senator ever to be declared an “American taste god” — as GQ magazine once did.
The 6-foot-8 Fetterman will tower over the currently tallest senator, Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas by 3 inches. And he might be the most tattooed senator (if not the only tattooed senator).
He may break some things: He can be aggressively progressive, campaigning hard on a pledge to rid the Senate of the filibuster rule. He also might become the Senate’s biggest media attraction: He’s plainspoken and, especially on social media, has a wicked wit.
He has a fan in Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whom Fetterman endorsed for president in 2016 when Sanders was the insurgent Democrat challenging the establishment favorite in the primary, Hillary Clinton.
Sanders called Fetterman’s race the nation’s marquee contest — a victory for a progressive candidate who focused on economic issues, middle-class struggle and the increasing enrichment of the rich.
“And I think if there’s any candidate who was running more than anybody else, who identified with the working class, who made clear it that he was going to Washington to represent working people, it was John Fetterman,” Sanders told The Associated Press.
Fetterman has played down his own progressivism. Instead, he said the Democratic Party has come around to his long-held positions — such as legalizing marijuana — and has held himself out as a Democrat who votes like a Democrat.
On the campaign trail, Fetterman said he would like to emulate his fellow Pennsylvania Democrat, third-term Sen. Bob Casey, an institution in the state’s politics who campaigned for Fetterman and is lending his chief of staff to help oversee Fetterman’s transition.
Casey doesn’t expect Fetterman’s progressive politics will sideline him, saying Democrats already have a broad coalition that can get things done, such as President Joe Biden’s infrastructure legislation and massive health care and climate change bill.
“I think you see a kind of a broad coalition that’s going to hold together to, you know, to move the country forward. So I think John will fit well into that,” Casey said. “And there’ll be times when he’s got an issue that he wants to pursue that not everyone will want, but we can work through those.”
Fetterman, 53, is fresh off winning the midterm election’s most expensive — and, probably, most unusual — race for Senate.
In the middle of the campaign, Fetterman survived, then recovered from a stroke that he says almost killed him. He went on to beat Dr. Mehmet Oz, the heart surgeon-turned-TV celebrity who spent $27 million of his own money after moving from New Jersey to run.
Fetterman still suffers from auditory processing disorder — a stroke’s common aftereffect — that could require him to use closed-captioning in hearings, meetings and debates. It also could possibly limit his ability to engage in the common practice of giving interviews to reporters in Senate corridors.
Fetterman’s fashion sensibility — he sports hoodies and shorts, even in winter — came up on the campaign trail, when Republicans plastered him as someone who dresses like a teenager living in his parents’ basement. At one campaign event for Oz, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., jokingly told the crowd that Oz at least “wears pants.”
In the Senate, Fetterman will be joining the clubbiest of clubs, 100 of the nation’s ultimate insiders: millionaires, scions and king — or queen — makers. His supporters very much see him taking to the Senate differently: as an outsider.
Fetterman became something of a progressive hero without the party’s help, attracting a following as the mayor of a Pittsburgh satellite community. In that role, he performed same-sex marriages before they were legal and got arrested in a demonstration after Pittsburgh’s regional health care giant closed a hospital in Braddock, his poverty-wracked town.
“He’s for us — not for the big movie stars or the big people who have all the money. He’s for the little Pennsylvania guys,” said one supporter, Lydia Thomas.
In a possible preview to his Senate tenure, Fetterman’s campaign struck a balance between insiderism and outsiderism.
He has forged bonds with Casey and Gov. Tom Wolf and got high-profile campaign trail help from Biden and former President Barack Obama. But as lieutenant governor, he forged a reputation as someone who didn’t schmooze with state lawmakers and, as a candidate, who didn’t kiss party insiders’ rings.
When it came time for the state Democratic Party to endorse in the four-way Senate primary, Fetterman dismissed it as transactional; his campaign slagged it off as an “inside game.”
On the campaign trail, Fetterman regularly used Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia as a foil, suggesting Manchin doesn’t vote like a Democrat should and won’t get rid of the filibuster.
At one packed county Democratic party breakfast, he asked voters if there were any “Joe Manchin Democrats” in the room. Nobody spoke up. Then Fetterman told them that a Democrat who doesn’t support eliminating the filibuster “must believe that there are 10 or 12 Republican senators of conscience.” Manchin’s office wouldn’t comment.
It’s not clear that Fetterman views himself as an outsider, or that he intended to run that way. He has dismissed questions about his style or how he would fit into the Senate, saying it should be the least of anyone’s concerns given the stakes.
“Here’s what I promise to never to do: I promise to never incite a riot on Capitol Hill. I promise to never stand up on the floor of the Senate after I’ve been driven from it by a bunch of rioters and lie about our election in Pennsylvania,” Fetterman said in an interview last year.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, Fetterman was in high demand from TV networks and carried Biden’s shield. As a senator, he may again be in high demand on the Sunday talk shows. And his social media feeds will bear watching: His campaign trolled Oz relentlessly, and he sometimes spits out cuss words when describing things he doesn’t like.
Then there’s his wardrobe. Fetterman has said that he will wear a suit in the Senate chamber and, sure enough, when he showed up for orientation earlier this month, he wore one. He isn’t entirely a stranger to dressing up; he has worn a suit while presiding as lieutenant governor in the state Senate.
Senate aides aren’t sure if the Senate dress code is written down anywhere. And while men are expected to wear jackets and ties, Casey suggests that the dress code isn’t always enforced.
“Lately I’ve seen certain Republican members whose names I will not reveal — but if you watch closely on the video, you can see — have showed up without ties, or sometimes without a jacket,” Casey said.
Fetterman has not always shown reverence for job expectations or requirements he may not like. For instance, as mayor of Braddock, he skipped roughly one-third of the borough council meetings during his 13 years in office, records show.
He skipped dozens of voting sessions in the state Senate during his four years as lieutenant governor, including eight of nine days this fall while he was on the campaign trail. When he did show up to preside, Republican senators complained that he showed a lack of interest in learning the rules of order.
Twice, Republican senators went through extraordinary procedural maneuvers to remove him as the presiding officer in the middle of a voting session, contending he had willfully defied rules of order to help fellow Democrats in partisan showdowns.
Not only that, but he ruffled feathers by hanging flags — such as the pro-marijuana legalization and LGBTQ and transgender-rights flags — from the door of the lieutenant governor’s office and its second-floor outdoor balcony that overlooks the state Capitol’s sweeping front steps.
Republicans, complaining he was turning his Capitol office into a dorm room, slipped a provision into lame-duck budget legislation to stop it — prompting Fetterman to lampoon them as marshaling the “gay pride police.”
The U.S. Senate will have its own partisanship and its own transactional dealings between members. Casey says Fetterman is prepared for it, having been a mayor and lieutenant governor. What may be the biggest change for Fetterman, Casey said, is the demand on his time that will keep him in Washington and away from his wife and three school-age children.
“Your life becomes — because of the schedule of votes and hearings — the time in Washington and that’s different,” Casey said. “Most people don’t have that kind of schedule where … sometimes you’re in Washington more than the state that you represent.”
___
Associated Press national political writer Steve Peoples and video journalist Jessie Wardarski contributed to this report. Follow Marc Levy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/timelywriter | https://www.news10.com/news/politics/ap-pennsylvania-campaign-wildcard-fetterman-turns-to-governing/ | 2022-11-28T20:20:12 | en | 0.970221 |
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said Monday that Russia has abruptly and without explanation postponed the scheduled resumption of arms control talks this week.
The State Department said Russia had “unilaterally postponed” a meeting of the Bilateral Consultative Commission that was scheduled to begin Tuesday in Egypt and last through next week. It said Russia had promised to propose new dates but had offered no reason for the delay.
“The United States is ready to reschedule at the earliest possible date as resuming inspections is a priority for sustaining the treaty as an instrument of stability,” the department said. It said it had no details on why Russia wanted the postponement or when the talks might be rescheduled.
In Moscow, a Russian foreign ministry statement reported by Russian news agencies offered no reason for the postponement.
The Bilateral Consultative Commission hammers out details of U.S. and Russian inspections of each others’ military sites under the terms of the New START treaty, the last major arms control pact between Washington and Moscow.
The commission has not met in more than a year, initially because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but has since languished due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The meeting in Cairo had been aimed at showing the two sides remain committed to arms control and keeping open lines of communication despite other differences.
In announcing the planned resumption of the talks, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the discussions would be focused entirely on implementing the New START inspection process and would not include any discussion of the conflict in Ukraine.
“We believe deeply around the world in the transformative power and the importance of diplomacy and dialogue,” Price said on Nov. 8.
“It demonstrates our commitment to risk reduction, to strategic stability, something we remain committed to, something that is profoundly in the bilateral interest, and we hope the upcoming meeting is constructive,” he said.
Inspections of U.S. and Russian military sites under the New START treaty were paused by both sides because of the spread of coronavirus in March 2020.
The commission last met in October 2021, but Russia then unilaterally suspended its cooperation with the treaty’s inspection provisions in August to protest U.S. support for Ukraine.
“We’ve made clear to Russia that measures imposed as a result of Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine don’t prevent Russians and Russian inspectors from conducting New START treaty inspections in the United States,” Price said. “So we hope that the meeting of the BCC will allow us to continue with those inspections.” | https://www.news10.com/news/politics/ap-us-says-russia-abruptly-postpones-arms-control-talks/ | 2022-11-28T20:20:19 | en | 0.962029 |
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The last conversation Sandra Torres had with her 10-year-old daughter was about her nervous excitement over whether she’d make the all-star softball team. Hours later, Eliahna Torres was one of 19 children and two teachers massacred at their elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
With little closure and few answers about law enforcement’s 77-minute wait on May 24 in the school hallway rather than confronting the gunman, Sandra Torres filed a federal lawsuit on Monday against police, the school district and the maker of the gun the shooter used.
“My baby never made it out of the school,” she said. “There’s no accountability or transparency. There’s nothing being done.”
The lawsuit accuses the city, the school district and several police departments of a “complete failure” to follow active shooter protocols and violations of the victims’ constitutional rights by “barricading them” inside two classrooms with the killer for more than an hour. The city, school district and police did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Torres is being helped by the legal arm of the group Everytown for Gun Safety. Her suit also names the manufacturer of the AR-style semiautomatic rifle that Salvador Ramos used to fire more than 100 rounds in the horrific mass shooting.
The claim is part of a new and expanding legal front in the nationwide court battle over firearms. While gunmakers are typically immune under federal law from lawsuits over crimes committed with their products, families of victims of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, secured a $73 million settlement with Remington, the maker of the weapon used in that shooting a decade ago.
The settlement came after the victims successfully argued that suing over marketing under state law was an exception to the federal immunity measure.
The new Uvalde suit alleges that marketing tactics by Daniel Defense violated the Federal Trade Commission Act by negligently using militaristic imagery, product placement in combat video games and social media to target “vulnerable and violent young men,” said Eric Tirschwell, executive director at Everytown Law.
“It wasn’t by accident that he went from never firing a gun to wielding a Daniel Defense AR-15,” Tirschwell said, citing the findings of a report written by an investigative committee from the Texas House of Representatives. “We intend to prove Daniel Defense marketing was a significant factor in the choices that Ramos made.”
The company, based in Black Creek, Georgia, did not immediately return a message seeking comment, but in a congressional hearing over the summer CEO Marty Daniels called the Uvalde shooting and others like it “pure evil” and “deeply disturbing.” Still, he separated the weapons themselves from the violence, saying mass shootings in America are local problems to be solved locally.
Everytown is also part of a similar lawsuit after a shooting attack on parade-goers in Highland Park, Illinois, based on a state law. If arguments based on federal law are successful, it could open up gunmakers to costly civil lawsuits as the nation grapples with rising gun violence and a brutal string of mass shootings.
“It would be an important step forward to holding gun manufacturers to account if their marketing crosses a line,” Tirschwell said.
The case also names the gun shop where Ramos bought the weapon used in the shooting, along with another AR-15 and ammunition, purchases that totaled thousands of dollars, though only one weapon was used in the shooting. One patron later told the FBI he “looked like … a school shooter,” according to the report from the Texas House of Representatives.
The July report found that nearly 400 law enforcement officials rushed to the mass shooting, but “egregiously poor decision-making” resulted in more than an hour of chaos before the gunman was finally confronted and killed. It criticized state and federal law enforcement as well as local authorities for failing to follow active shooter training and prioritizing their own safety over the victims’ lives.
Another parent whose child was wounded in the shooting and two parents whose children were on campus at the time filed the first suit related to the Uvalde shooting in late September.
For Sandra Torres, the case is also another way to seek answers about the botched police response.
“For 77 minutes they did nothing. Nothing at all,” she said. “She’ll never know what it’s like to get married, to graduate, to go to her first prom … never forget their faces.” | https://www.news10.com/news/politics/ap-uvalde-mom-sues-police-gunmaker-in-school-massacre/ | 2022-11-28T20:20:27 | en | 0.967605 |
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