McCarthy's race for speaker risks upending House on Day One
WASHINGTON (AP) — In his quest to rise to House speaker, Kevin McCarthy is charging straight into history — potentially becoming the first nominee in 100 years unable to win the job on a first-round floor vote.
The increasingly real prospect of a messy fight over the speaker’s gavel on Day One of the new Congress on Jan. 3 is worrying House Republicans, who are bracing for the spectacle. They have been meeting endlessly in private at the Capitol trying to resolve the standoff.
Taking hold of a perilously slim 222-seat Republican majority in the 435-member House and facing a handful of defectors, McCarthy is working furiously to reach the 218-vote threshold typically needed to become speaker.
“The fear is, that if we stumble out of the gate,” said Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., a McCarthy ally, then the voters who sent the Republicans to Washington “will revolt over that and they will feel let down.”
Not since the disputed election of 1923 has a candidate for House speaker faced the public scrutiny of convening a new session of Congress only to have it descend into political chaos, with one vote after another, until a new speaker is chosen. At that time, it eventually took a grueling nine ballots to secure the gavel.
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Libya militia held Lockerbie suspect before handover to US
CAIRO (AP) — Around midnight in mid-November, Libyan militiamen in two Toyota pickup trucks arrived at a residential building in a neighborhood of the capital of Tripoli. They stormed the house, bringing out a blindfolded man in his 70s.
Their target was former Libyan intelligence agent Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, wanted by the United States for allegedly making the bomb that brought down New York-bound Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, just days before Christmas in 1988. The attack killed 259 people in the air and 11 on the ground.
Weeks after that night raid in Tripoli, the U.S. announced Mas'ud was in its custody, to the surprise of many in Libya, which has been split between two rival governments, each backed by an array of militias and foreign powers.
Analysts said the Tripoli-based government responsible for handing over Mas'ud was likely seeking U.S. goodwill and favor amid the power struggles in Libya.
Four Libyan security and government officials with direct knowledge of the operation recounted the journey that ended with Mas'ud in Washington.
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What Trump promised, Biden seeks to deliver in his own way
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump pledged to fix U.S. infrastructure as president. He vowed to take on China and bulk up American manufacturing. He said he would reduce the budget deficit and make the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.
Yet after two years as president, it's Joe Biden who is acting on those promises. He jokes that he's created an “infrastructure decade” after Trump merely managed a near parody of "infrastructure weeks." His legislative victories are not winning him votes from Trump loyalists or boosting his overall approval ratings. But they reflect a major pivot in how the government interacts with the economy at a time when many Americans fear a recession and broader national decline.
Gone are blanket tax cuts. No more unfettered faith in free trade with non-democracies. The Biden White House has committed more than $1.7 trillion to the belief that a mix of government aid, focused policies and bureaucratic expertise can deliver long-term growth that lifts up the middle class. This reverses the past administration's view that cutting regulations and taxes boosted investments by businesses that flowed downward to workers.
With new laws in place, Biden is taking the gamble that the federal bureaucracy can successfully implement and deliver on his promises, including after he leaves office.
That is a tricky spot, as Trump himself learned that global crises such as a pandemic can quickly ruin the foundations of an economic agenda, causing businesses and voters to shift priorities. There are few guarantees that the economy behaves over 10 years as government forecasts expect, while Biden's policies will likely be challenged by the new Republican majority in the House.
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Iran authorities arrest actress of Oscar-winning movie
CAIRO (AP) — Iranian authorities arrested one of the country’s most renowned actresses Saturday on charges of spreading falsehoods about nationwide protests that grip the country, state media said.
The report by IRNA said Taraneh Alidoosti, star of the Oscar-winning movie “The Salesman,” was detained a week after she made a post on Instagram expressing solidarity with the first man recently executed for crimes allegedly committed during the protests.
The announcement is the latest in a series of celebrity arrests, that have included footballers, actors and influencers, in response to their open display of support for anti-government demonstrations now in their third month
According to the report published on the state media’s official Telegram channel, Alidoosti was arrested because she did not provide ’’any documents in line with her claims.″
It said that several other Iranian celebrities had also ″been summoned by the judiciary body over publishing provocative content,″ and that some had been arrested. It provided no further details.
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Oppenheimer wrongly stripped of security clearance, US says
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration has reversed a decades-old decision to revoke the security clearance of Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist called the father of the atomic bomb for his leading role in World War II’s Manhattan Project.
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the 1954 decision by the Atomic Energy Commission was made using a “flawed process" that violated the commission’s own regulations.
“As time has passed, more evidence has come to light of the bias and unfairness of the process that Dr. Oppenheimer was subjected to while the evidence of his loyalty and love of country have only been further affirmed," Granholm said in a statement on Friday.
Oppenheimer, who died in 1967, led the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The theoretical physicist was later accused of having communist sympathies and his security clearance was revoked following a four-week, closed-door hearing.
In stripping Oppenheimer of his clearance, the Atomic Energy Commission did not allege that he had revealed or mishandled classified information, nor was his loyalty to the country questioned, according to Granholm's order. The commission, however, concluded there were “fundamental defects” in his character.
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Dead boy pulled from rubble of latest Russian hit on Ukraine
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Emergency crews pulled the body of a toddler from the rubble in a pre-dawn search Saturday for survivors of a Russian missile strike that tore through an apartment building in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih.
The missile was one of what Ukrainian authorities said were 16 that eluded air defenses among the 76 missiles fired Friday in the latest Russian attack targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure, part of Moscow's strategy to leave Ukrainian civilians and soldiers in the dark and cold this winter.
Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko of the Dnipropetrovsk region, where Kryvyi Rih is located, wrote on the Telegram social media app that "rescuers retrieved the body of a 1-1/2-year-old boy from under the rubble of a house destroyed by a Russian rocket.” In all, four people were killed in the strike, and 13 injured — four of them children — authorities said.
Reznichenko said the pounding from Russian forces continued overnight, damaging power lines and houses in the cities and towns of Nikopol, Marhanets and Chervonohryhorivka, which are across the Dnieper River from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
By Saturday morning, Ukraine’s military leadership said Russian forces had fired more than a score of further missiles since the barrage a day earlier. It did not say how many of those might have been stopped by the air defenses.
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More questions than answers as EU corruption scandal unfolds
BRUSSELS (AP) — No one answers the door or the phone at the offices of the two campaign groups linked to a cash-for-favors corruption scandal at the European Union’s parliament, allegedly involving Qatar. No light is visible inside.
No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ), a pro-human rights and democracy organization, and Fight Impunity, which seeks to bring rights abusers to book, share the same address, on prime real estate in the governmental quarter of the Belgian capital.
The heads of the two organizations are among four people charged since Dec. 9 with corruption, participation in a criminal group and money laundering. Prosecutors suspect certain European lawmakers and aides “were paid large sums of money or offered substantial gifts to influence parliament’s decisions.” The groups themselves do not seem to be under suspicion.
Qatar rejects allegations that it’s involved. The Gulf country that’s hosting the soccer World Cup has gone to considerable trouble to boost its public image and defend itself against extensive criticism in the West over its human rights record.
The lawyer for Fight Impunity President Pier Antonio Panzeri is not talking. He declined to comment about his client’s role in an affair that has shaken the European Parliament and halted the assembly's work on Qatar-related files.
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Comeback king Vikings set NFL rally record in win vs. Colts
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — With the Minnesota Vikings gathered in their humbled locker room at halftime in a huge hole, cornerback Patrick Peterson set the tone for an historic escape by promising his offensive teammates the defense would do its part to hold the Indianapolis Colts.
“You just need five touchdowns,” Peterson told them. “That's nothing."
This rally sure was something, though.
The Vikings completed the biggest comeback in NFL history, erasing a 33-point deficit by beating the Colts 39-36 on Greg Joseph's 40-yard field goal with three seconds left in overtime Saturday to win the NFC North division in their typical dramatic fashion.
Kirk Cousins passed for 460 yards and four touchdowns to lead the Vikings (11-3), who trailed 36-7 late in the third quarter and became just the third team in league history to win 10 games in a season by eight points or fewer.
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Snow pummels parts of Northeast; thousands without power
BOSTON (AP) — Utility crews raced Saturday to restore power to tens of thousands of customers across New England and New York after a powerful storm dumped 2 feet of snow in some places.
More than 160,000 customers in New England were in the dark as of the afternoon and another 20,000 were without power in New York as heavy snow brought tree limbs onto power lines, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks outages across the country.
Restoration efforts were complicated by snow still falling in some places, making travel dangerous. Doug Foley, Eversource president of electric operations in New Hampshire, said snow-covered roads were making it tough for workers to reach communities in order to assess damage and make repairs.
"We are still taking on system damage in parts of the state where heavy, wet snow continues to fall, and hundreds of additional crews are coming to New Hampshire to support our restoration effort,” Foley said in an emailed statement.
As of Saturday afternoon, Eversource had restored power to nearly 61,000 customers in New Hampshire since the beginning of the storm, but another 40,000 remained without power, according to the utility.
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Famed LA cougar P-22 euthanized following health problems
LOS ANGELES (AP) — P-22, the celebrated mountain lion that took up residence in the middle of Los Angeles and became a symbol of urban pressures on wildlife, was euthanized Saturday after dangerous changes in his behavior led to examinations that revealed worsening health and injuries likely caused by a car.
Officials with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said the decision to euthanize the beloved big cat was made after veterinarians determined it had a skull fracture and chronic illnesses including a skin infection and diseases of the kidneys and liver.
"His prognosis was deemed poor,” said the agency's director, Chuck Bonham, who fought back tears during a news conference announcing the cougar's death. “This really hurts ... it's been an incredibly difficult several days.”
The animal became the face of the campaign to build a wildlife crossing over a Los Angeles-area freeway to give mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, deer and other animals a safe path between the nearby Santa Monica Mountains and wildlands to the north.
Seth Riley, wildlife branch chief with the National Park Service, called P-22 “an ambassador for his species,” with the bridge a symbol of his lasting legacy.
The Associated Press
