diff --git "a/past/2022/20220613_gcs.jsonl" "b/past/2022/20220613_gcs.jsonl"
new file mode 100644--- /dev/null
+++ "b/past/2022/20220613_gcs.jsonl"
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+{"question_id": "20220610_0", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:36", "search_result": [{"url": "http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/03/15/singapore-named-worlds-most-expensive-city-no-u-s-city-makes-top-10-list/427418002/", "title": "Singapore named the world's most expensive city to live in", "text": "Karen Gilchrist\n\nCNBC\n\nSingapore has been dubbed the world's most expensive city to live in for the fifth year running.\n\nThe city-state marched in ahead of New York, London and Los Angeles, which didn't even feature in the top 10 priciest places in the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) Worldwide Cost of Living 2018 survey.\n\nThe EIU's annual ranking compares the prices of over 150 items in 133 cities around the world, such as bread, wine, cigarettes and petrol. It is designed to help hiring managers calculate fair salaries when relocating their employees overseas.\n\nThe 10 most expensive cities in the world\n\nCity Index Change 1. Singapore 116 0 2. Paris, France 112 +5 3. Zurich, Switzerland 112 +1 4. Hong Kong 111 -2 5. Oslo, Norway 107 +6 6. Geneva, Switzerland 106 +1 7. Seoul, S. Korea 106 0 8. Copenhagen, Denmark 105 +1 9. Tel Aviv, Israel 103 +2 10, Sydney, Australia 102 +4\n\nNote: Index is based on New York Cityhaving a score of 100.Change represents the number of ranks higher or lower. Source: EIU Worldwide Cost of Living 2018 survey\n\nSingapore's top ranking is reflective of a regional trend, with the costs of living picking up across parts of Asia as their economies expand. The Southeast Asian financial centre was joined in the top 10 by Seoul, which ranked in seventh position, as well as Hong Kong and Sydney.\n\nHowever, some of the world's cheapest cities are still in Asia, such as India and Pakistan.\n\nEurope, too, continues to be expensive — Paris, Zurich, Oslo, Geneva and Copenhagen appeared in the top 10. The only city outside of Asia or Europe to appear in the top 10 was Tel Aviv.\n\nMeanwhile, the weakening of the U.S. dollar in 2017 caused New York and Los Angeles to slip to 13th and 14th positions, respectively.\n\nBangalore, Chennai, Karachi and New Delhi all featured among the top 10 cheapest locations this year.\n\nThey were joined by Damascus, Caracus, Almaty, Lagos, Algiers and Bucharest.\n\n© CNBC is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news and commentary. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2018/03/15"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2021/12/01/most-expensive-cities-in-world-2021/8819589002/", "title": "The most expensive cities in the world list gets shake-up in 2021", "text": "Move over Paris, there's a city more expensive than you this year.\n\nThe annual Worldwide Cost of Living index was released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and the Israeli city of Tel Aviv vaulted from fifth last year to first this year, leapfrogging Paris as the most expensive. The city's rise is accredited to hiked grocery and transport prices as well as the Israeli shekel's strength over the U.S. dollar\n\nOverall, cities in general were reported to be more expensive and inflation was the fastest growing in five years (3.5% year-on-year), research from the EIU revealed. That's largely as a result of supply-chain blockages and consumer habits changing amid the coronavirus pandemic.\n\nParis tied with Singapore for second place this year. Zurich, Switzerland and Hong Kong, which both tied at the top with Paris last year, slid down to fourth and fifth, respectively.\n\n'World's Best':NYC loses top spot on list that names San Francisco a better place to live\n\nNew York City (sixth) and Los Angeles (ninth) were the only two U.S. cities to rank in the top 10. Cities with currencies stronger against the U.S. dollar are likely to appear higher in the rankings because the index is benchmarked against prices in New York City.\n\nThe Worldwide Cost of Living Index explored the rise and fall of living costs in 173 cities altogether. The EIU's global team of researchers compares the price of more than 200 everyday products and services in the cities every March and September. Data for the survey has been used for more than three decades.\n\nThe top 21 most expensive cities in the world", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/12/01"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/07/11/the-50-most-densely-populated-cities-in-the-world/39664259/", "title": "The most densely populated cities the world: Mumbai, India tops list", "text": "Elzy Kolb\n\n24/7 Wall Street\n\nAmericans living in big cities like New York or Los Angeles are familiar with the stress of overcrowded streets and sidewalks and the lack of parking. It’s nearly impossible to find a spot to spread your beach blanket at Coney Island in the summer, and the long wait to cross the George Washington bridge connecting Manhattan with the borough of Fort Lee in New Jersey should be a crime.\n\nBut take a look at the crowds from another perspective: In the United States, we don’t actually know anything about real overcrowding – not a single American city ranks among the top 50 most densely populated urban areas in the world. At the other end of the spectrum, these are the least densely populated places in the world.\n\nA variety of factors help explain the high density of these cities, where it seems impossible to walk without bumping into pedestrians every second: more births than deaths, people moving to cities for jobs or forced off rural land by natural disasters, skyrocketing land prices, to name a few.\n\nPopulation density is determined by the number of residents who live within a given land area – usually a mile or kilometer. According to the United Nations, as of 2016, about 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas. This is expected to grow to 60% by 2030, with one in three people living in cosmopolises with at least 500,000 residents – maybe in some of the world’s 33 megacities.\n\nIn time for the World Population Day, marked every year on July 11 to raise awareness about urgent population issues, 24/7 Tempo identified the most densely populated cities in the world, using data from CityMayors Statistics, a global source for urban statistics.\n\nAmerican health:Average life expectancy in the US has been declining for 3 consecutive years\n\n50. Tokyo/Yokohama, Japan\n\n• Population density: 12,296 per square mile\n\n• Population: 33,200,000\n\n• Square miles: 2,700 miles\n\nTokyo is the capital of Japan, and people flock to the city since it is the country's political and business center. In addition to the many workers who call the region home, there is a thriving student population, thanks to more than a dozen internationally ranked universities. Young people move to Tokyo to further their education, and stay for the available internships and jobs. Despite the crowds, the quality of life earns high marks for safety, public transportation, leisure activities and culture.\n\n49. Porto Alegre, Brazil\n\n• Population density: 12,439 per square mile\n\n• Population: 2,800,000\n\n• Square miles: 225 miles\n\nPorto Alegre, the capital of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, is one of four Brazilian cities among the 50 most densely populated metro areas. It is one of the nation's top regions for commerce and industry, as well as education and finance. As the name suggests, it has a busy port, plus jobs in tech, agriculture, manufacturing and more.\n\n48. Barcelona, Spain\n\n• Population density: 12,579 per square mile\n\n• Population: 3,900,000\n\n• Square miles: 310 miles\n\nBarcelona isn't too far behind Madrid when it comes to Spanish cities with the greatest population density. The capital of Catalonia is a beloved destination for tourists, with an estimated 30 million-plus visitors taking to Barcelona's beaches, streets and cultural sites in 2017. Though the out-of-towners pump billions of euros into the local economy, some residents, including elected officials, are declaring a strong preference for refugees over tourists, noting that migrants become part of the community, while short-term visitors destabilize it.\n\n47. Moscow, Russia\n\n• Population density: 12,649 per square mile\n\n• Population: 10,500,000\n\n• Square miles: 830 miles\n\nThe largest country on Earth by area, Russia's overall population density is a mere 23 people per square mile when you take all of that vast space into consideration. But the headcount density is radically different in the crush of the capital city, where more than 12,000 people share each square mile. Moscow is the northern-most megacity on the planet, and also the coldest. It has one of Europe's largest economies, and low living costs compared to other major cities.\n\n46. Buenos Aires, Argentina\n\n• Population density: 12,801 per square mile\n\n• Population: 11,200,000\n\n• Square miles: 875 miles\n\nArgentina's capital city is among the world's busiest ports; its varied economy includes government, commerce, industry, technology and culture. Agriculture, including grain exports, is among the leading businesses, with the Buenos Aires province being one of the top 10 wheat producers on Earth; the world's largest livestock market is located in the capital city.\n\n45. Sapporo, Japan\n\n• Population density: 12,981 per square mile\n\n• Population: 2,075,000\n\n• Square miles: 160 miles\n\nEven though there's not much elbow room around Sapporo, the megapolis shows high potential for renewable energy development. One of three Japanese areas among the 50 most densely populated places on Earth, Sapporo is the capital of the Hokkaido prefecture. It has a thriving international port, well-regarded universities and research institutes, IT industry, and a cool factor due to its recognition as the first Asian city chosen as a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the field of media and arts.\n\n44. Tel Aviv, Israel\n\n• Population density: 13,150 per square mile\n\n• Population: 2,300,000\n\n• Square miles: 175 miles\n\nThe second largest city in Israel, Tel Aviv is the country's top destination for new immigrants from the United States, Africa, Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere. While some gravitate to the city for religious reasons or for asylum, others are attracted by the booming economy and business opportunities. Tel Aviv leads the world in the number of per capita startups, and has the highest gross domestic product investment in research and development.\n\n43. London, UK\n\n• Population density: 13,210 per square mile\n\n• Population: 8,278,000\n\n• Square miles: 627 miles\n\nMore than 300 languages are spoken by students in London, the capital city of England, where foreign-born migrants make up a sizable chunk of the population. However, the U.K. also has a high rate of internal migration, with London a revolving door of people arriving to take advantage of business opportunities, jobs, high salaries and the seductive lure of the big city. Others leave the metropolis to raise families or in search of a lower cost of living.\n\n42. Madrid, Spain\n\n• Population density: 13,430 per square mile\n\n• Population: 4,900,000\n\n• Square miles: 365 miles\n\nThe largest city in Spain as well as its capital, Madrid is among the most densely populated metropolitan areas in Europe. Besides being known for its sports teams, cultural institutions, history and architecture, the city is among Europe's biggest financial centers, a hub of international business and commerce, as well as Spain's main manufacturing center. Most of the nation's wealthiest neighborhoods are located in the capital city.\n\n41. Ankara, Turkey\n\n• Population density: 13,772 per square mile\n\n• Population: 3,100,000\n\n• Square miles: 225 miles\n\nMore than half of Turkey's borders are coastal, but the landlocked Ankara is its capital. It ranks second to Istanbul in size and industrial importance. Government is the biggest business, followed by manufacturing of everything from food products to construction materials and tractors. Ankara recently opened the largest hospital in Europe, with more than 3,600 beds, 12,000 employees, and eight divisions specializing in various types of medicine.\n\nAiming for new audience:Facebook is trying to woo YouTube stars with new ways to make money\n\n40. Athens, Greece\n\n• Population density: 13,953 per square mile\n\n• Population: 3,685,000\n\n• Square miles: 264 miles\n\nWith a written history going back more than three millennia, Athens is one of the oldest cities in the world. The Greek capital continues to be the heart of the country's political, cultural, financial and economic life. The ancient city was recently rated highly on a list of cheap European vacations, cited for its antiquities, museums and charming neighborhoods for dining and shopping.\n\n39. Guadalajara, Mexico\n\n• Population density: 15,210 per square mile\n\n• Population: 3,500,000\n\n• Square miles: 230 miles\n\nOne of three Mexican cities among the top 50 most densely populated areas in the world, Guadalajara is the capital and the largest urban area in the state of Jalisco. It has gained a reputation as the Silicon Valley of Mexico, with a sizable talent pool of coders, engineers and programmers, along with startups and venture capital. Besides that, Guadalajara is known for its tequila and mariachi bands.\n\n38. Osaka/Kobe/Kyoto, Japan\n\n• Population density: 16,592 per square mile\n\n• Population: 16,425,000\n\n• Square miles: 990 miles\n\nOsaka, Kobe and Kyoto comprise the most densely populated region in Japan; each is the capital of its prefecture, and the combined area is known as the Kansai region. The major industries include manufacturing, distribution, finance and high tech. Attractions such as temples, castles, shopping, and dining abound in the region.\n\n37. Bangkok, Thailand\n\n• Population density: 16,668 per square mile\n\n• Population: 6,500,000\n\n• Square miles: 390 miles\n\nThailand's capital as well as its most densely populated city, Bangkok is the country's center of government, finance and industry. While the majority of the residents are of Thai ethnicity, the city has a variety of districts with Chinese, Indian, Japanese and Arab populations. While numerous sites give Bangkok high marks for quality of life, citing affordable cost of living, vibrant culture, good education and job opportunities. On the down side, its air pollution is among the worst on Earth.\n\n36. Monterrey, Mexico\n\n• Population density: 17,303 per square mile\n\n• Population: 3,200,000\n\n• Square miles: 185 miles\n\nMonterrey is the capital of the Mexican state of Nuevo León, which has the nation's strongest economy. Construction and manufacturing surged in the state in 2018, and foreign direct investment (FDI) increased 127% over the previous year. The local unemployment rate hovers around 3.5%. But Monterrey isn't all work and no play – the city currently features a lively nightlife, plus outdoor activities and cultural institutions, and the World Cup is on the schedule for 2024.\n\n35. Khartoum, Sudan\n\n• Population density: 17,770 per square mile\n\n• Population: 4,000,000\n\n• Square miles: 225 miles\n\nKhartoum is the capital of Sudan. Political unrest is rampant in this northeastern African nation. Last spring, the military ousted autocratic leader Omar al-Bashir, and since then, Khartoum has been the site of often-violent demonstrations, with at least 11 people killed during June 30 protests this summer. American travelers are urged to stay away from the area because of terrorism and civil unrest.\n\n34. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil\n\n• Population density: 17,704 per square mile\n\n• Population: 10,800,000\n\n• Square miles: 610 miles\n\nThough capital cities are often a country's most densely populated area, that's not the case in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro regularly attracts attention for special events such as the recent Copa America tournament and the annual carnival celebration, believed to be the biggest in the world. Though tourism plays an important role in the city's economy, oil, agriculture, banking, fishing and finance are all major industries as well.\n\n33. Dalian, China\n\n• Population density: 18,310 per square mile\n\n• Population: 2,750,000\n\n• Square miles: 150 miles\n\nAll eyes were on Dalian at the start of July, as the northeastern China city hosted the 2019 World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions, or Summer Davos Forum. This is the seventh time the forum has been held in Dalian since 2007. The forum, which typically draws about 2,000 participants from around the world, has elevated the city's profile internationally, and spurred infrastructure development, including new roads and building reconstruction. Dalian aims to increase its importance as an international trading center.\n\n32. Istanbul, Turkey\n\n• Population density: 19,991 per square mile\n\n• Population: 9,000,000\n\n• Square miles: 450 miles\n\nNot only is Istanbul the most densely populated city in Turkey, it is also the largest transcontinental city in the world, with its well-packed footprint landing in both Europe and Asia. The city, which is known for having some of the worst traffic in the world, is looking to the sky: It's currently building the world's largest airport. In recent years, Istanbul has become a destination for hundreds of thousands of Syrians, with Turkey ranking as the country taking in the most refugees worldwide.\n\n31. Recife, Brazil\n\n• Population density: 20,837 per square mile\n\n• Population: 3,025,000\n\n• Square miles: 145 miles\n\nWith two ports, a thriving IT industry, agriculture and manufacturing, Recife is the major business and economic powerhouse of northeastern Brazil. The capital of the state of Pernambuco, the city is the second largest medical center in the country. With hundreds of hospitals and clinics, thousands of beds, and the latest medical technology, it serves patients across a large area. Unfortunately, Recife also has a high crime rate, including homicides, earning it a place on the list of most dangerous cities in the world as well.\n\nHeavyweight fight:Amazon, Microsoft wage war over $10 billion opportunity with the Pentagon\n\n30. Lahore, Pakistan\n\n• Population density: 21,236 per square mile\n\n• Population: 5,100,000\n\n• Square miles: 240 miles\n\nThe capital of the Punjab province, the second largest province by area, Lahore is Pakistan's second most populous city, with less than half the population density of the nation's capital city, Karachi. Punjabi, Urdu and English are the most commonly spoken languages in Lahore. The metropolis is the nation's engineering hub, producing cars, heavy machinery, steel, chemicals and more. Industry, traffic, crop burning and solid waste disposal all contribute to making this regional capital one of the world's most polluted cities.\n\n29. Singapore\n\n• Population density: 21,628 per square mile\n\n• Population: 4,000,000\n\n• Square miles: 185 miles\n\nOften referred to as an economic tiger, Singapore, an island city-state, boasts a high gross domestic product per capita, low unemployment, and thriving electronics and pharmaceutical industries. The city often has superlatives linked with its name: It's among the most expensive city in the world (it's a three-way tie with Paris and Hong Kong), the world's most competitive economy, and – perhaps surprisingly, in such a high-rise environment – the city with the most trees, to name just a few of its attributes.\n\n28. Santiago, Chile\n\n• Population density: 21,683 per square mile\n\n• Population: 5,425,000\n\n• Square miles: 250 miles\n\nOn a clear day, you have a good view of the Andes Mountains from Santiago, Chile's capital city. The fourth most densely populated city in South America is also home to the continent's tallest building, the Gran Torre Santiago, standing almost 1,000 feet high. The city has the country's greatest concentration of industry, which includes clothing, shoe and textile manufacturing; banking and a stock exchange; and mining and metallurgy.\n\n27. Mexico City, Mexico\n\n• Population density: 21,750 per square mile\n\n• Population: 17,400,000\n\n• Square miles: 800 miles\n\nMexico City, situated more 7,300 feet above sea level, is North America's highest capital city, as well as its most densely populated metropolitan area. It is also the world's largest Spanish-speaking city, and one of the largest financial centers on the continent. Mexico City has a large immigrant and expatriate population from the around the globe, including the U.S., Canada, Europe, the Caribbean and elsewhere. Warm weather, good food and a lower cost of living are among the attractions.\n\n26. St Petersburg, Russia\n\n• Population density: 22,069 per square mile\n\n• Population: 5,300,000\n\n• Square miles: 240 miles\n\nLocated just below the Arctic Circle in the far northwest, St. Petersburg served as the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two centuries, until Moscow took over the honors in 1918. St. Petersburg remains a huge and important city 100 years post the Bolshevik revolution, and its historical district was named a UNESCO world heritage site in 1990. In addition to its major Baltic Sea port, the city is known as a Russian cultural center teeming with theaters, concert halls, palaces and museums, and architectural wonders. The Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines is a unique venue, featuring vending machines and games that were the Soviet equivalent of Pac-Man, with an ideological component.\n\n25. São Paulo, Brazil\n\n• Population density: 23,294 per square mile\n\n• Population: 17,700,000\n\n• Square miles: 760 miles\n\nSão Paulo is Brazil's most densely populated area, one of the most crowded metro areas in the Southern Hemisphere, and the world's largest Portuguese-speaking city. The capital of the state of the same name, São Paulo is the financial capital of Brazil. It is also a major export center, dealing in products such as soybean, coffee, raw sugar and corn.\n\n24. Hyderabad, India\n\n• Population density: 23,545 per square mile\n\n• Population: 5,300,000\n\n• Square miles: 225 miles\n\nIn a 2018 report, Hyderabad was credited with having the highest gross domestic product growth among 20 cities in emerging Asia-Pacific nations. The city, which is the capital of the state of Telangana, was rated second among nine Indian cities for employment growth rate over two years. For the fourth straight year, Hyderabad was named India's top city for standard of living.\n\n23. Shenyang, China\n\n• Population density: 24,013 per square mile\n\n• Population: 4,200,000\n\n• Square miles: 175 miles\n\nThis northeastern Chinese industrial city is located a little more than 300 miles from the North Korea border. The capital of Liaoning Province, Shenyang's main products include cars and auto parts, construction materials, chemicals, steel and agricultural products. Unlike Northeast China's other provincial capital cities, Shenyang's population has grown in recent years, with the increase attributed to job seekers, increased college enrollment and more families having second children.\n\n22. Baghdad, Iraq\n\n• Population density: 23,901 per square mile\n\n• Population: 5,500,000\n\n• Square miles: 230 miles\n\nFollowing the defeat of the Islamic State last year, Baghdad residents reported that life was starting to feel somewhat safe and normal. People who had fled during more than a decade of war and upheaval began returning to their hometown, the capital of Iraq. The economy in Iraq had been picking up in recent months.\n\n21. Cairo, Egypt\n\n• Population density: 24,400 per square mile\n\n• Population: 12,200,000\n\n• Square miles: 500 miles\n\nCairo is among the most densely populated cities in Africa, with its ongoing growth attributed to the disparity between the annual birth rate (30 births per 1,000 people) and death rate (7 deaths per 1,000 people). Egypt's capital city has such a perennial housing shortage that for decades residents have occupied every viable bit of space, including among the above-ground tombs in the el-Arafa necropolis, also known as the City of the Dead.\n\nA car for Nazis and hippies alike:Say goodbye to the Volkswagen Beetle\n\n20. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam\n\n• Population density: 24,500 per square mile\n\n• Population: 4,900,000\n\n• Square miles: 200 miles\n\nHo Chi Minh City's population is more than double the population of Hanoi, Vietnam's capital and the next largest city. Migrants are attracted to the city for job opportunities in manufacturing, business and tourism, and by the per capita gross domestic product, which is twice as high as the national average in 2016. The country is investing in infrastructure improvements, such as Ho Chi Minh's metro rapid transit network, to help Vietnam preserve its status as one of the world's fastest growing tourist destinations.\n\n19. Bangalore, India\n\n• Population density: 26,191 per square mile\n\n• Population: 5,400,000\n\n• Square miles: 206 miles\n\nBangalore is one of the world's least expensive cities. Nevertheless, it's standard of living was rated among the best in India in a recent report, which may explain why much of the population growth in Bangalore is due to migration from other Indian states. The capital of the state of Karnataka, Bangalore is home to many tech companies, earning it the nickname of the Silicon Valley of India.\n\n18. Tianjin, China\n\n• Population density: 27,158 per square mile\n\n• Population: 4,750,000\n\n• Square miles: 175 miles\n\nChina's largest coastal city, Tianjin has the biggest port in the northern part of the country. Besides being a major transport and shipping hub, the city is also a manufacturing center, producing cars, textiles, metalwork and chemicals. Tianjin is China's fourth most densely populated city, with growth expected to continue over the next decade.\n\n17. Jakarta, Indonesia\n\n• Population density: 27,138 per square mile\n\n• Population: 14,250,000\n\n• Square miles: 525 miles\n\nEmployment opportunities and a high standard of living are among the factors causing people from across Indonesia to migrate to the capital city of Jakarta. About half of the population is thought to have actually been born in the city. The growth, which is predicted to continue, has brought problems, including the worst air pollution in Southeast Asia. Auto emissions and coal-fired power plants are among the main sources of the hazardous air quality.\n\n16. Tehran, Iran\n\n• Population density: 27,372 per square mile\n\n• Population: 7,250,000\n\n• Square miles: 265 miles\n\nMigrants are behind the population growth in Tehran. Most of the newcomers to the capital of Iran come from other cities within the country. However, reverse migration could be on the upswing, with residents becoming concerned about environmental problems and fewer economic opportunities. Though Tehran is an old and interesting city, Iran ranks high on the list of countries the U.S. government doesn't want you to visit, citing a high risk of kidnapping, arrest and detention.\n\n15. Manila, Philippines\n\n• Population density: 27,307 per square mile\n\n• Population: 14,750,000\n\n• Square miles: 540 miles\n\nBased on employment growth and gross domestic production per capita growth between 2014 and 2016, Manila has a solid place on the list of top-performing metro areas, according to a study published in 2018. The densely populated city had employment growth of 5.7%, and GDP per capita of 5.5%, landing it among the 10 top performers on Earth. While the solid financial outlook may contribute to growth, Manila could become a destination for dedicated shoppers: The Philippine capital is the site of the biggest Ikea store in the world, which is set to open in 2020.\n\n14. Kinshasa, DRC\n\n• Population density: 27,612 per square mile\n\n• Population: 5,000,000\n\n• Square miles: 181 miles\n\nMigration from rural areas, high fertility rates, and widening of the city's boundaries have contributed to the burgeoning population in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. With a life expectancy of just over 50 years, millions of people facing food insecurity, and 85% of the population believing their government is corrupt, the DRC is considered one of the world's most miserable places to life.\n\n13. New Delhi, India\n\n• Population density: 28,600 per square mile\n\n• Population: 14,300,000\n\n• Square miles: 500 miles\n\nThere's always a trade-off: New Delhi is one of the least expensive cities in the world, but it also has some of the worst air quality. Improved infrastructure, education and standard of living have attracted people from all over the country to India's capital. Technology, banking, transportation and government are the biggest employers in this densely populated metro area.\n\n12. Beijing, China\n\n• Population density: 29,827 per square mile\n\n• Population: 8,614,000\n\n• Square miles: 289 miles\n\nPopulation growth in the Beijing megalopolis comes from a variety of sources, including migrants moving to the nation's capital in search of opportunity, and the easing of restrictions limiting families to only one child. One of the oldest capital cities in the world, Beijing's urban problems include air pollution, dealing with domestic waste, and traffic congestion.\n\n11. Lima, Peru\n\n• Population density: 30,419 per square mile\n\n• Population: 7,000,000\n\n• Square miles: 230 miles\n\nThe densely populated Lima is the financial and industrial hub and capital city of Peru. Fishing and mining (gold, copper, zinc and lead) are among the region's main businesses. Manufacturing and tourism are other revenue generators. Lima will be in the spotlight this summer as it hosts the 2019 Pan American Games.\n\nLooking for a home? The housing market is about to shift in a bad way for buyers\n\n10. Shanghai, China\n\n• Population density: 34,718 per square mile\n\n• Population: 10,000,000\n\n• Square miles: 288 miles\n\nFor more than two decades, Shanghai has been among the fastest growing urban areas in the world. Migration is behind much of the population expansion, with people from other regions of China flocking to the area. Shanghai is the world's busiest container port; major industries include financial services, tech, wholesale and retail, real estate, transportation, construction, and manufacturing.\n\n9. Bogota, Colombia\n\n• Population density: 35,000 per square mile\n\n• Population: 7,000,000\n\n• Square miles: 200 miles\n\nLocated at more than 8,000 feet above sea level, Bogota is among the highest capital cities on Earth. The country's center of government and industry, Bogota is aiming to become one of the greenest cities on the continent. A member of the World Green Building Council for the past decade, Bogota has tightened its building codes, made a priority of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and improving sustainability.\n\n8. Chennai, India\n\n• Population density: 37,223 per square mile\n\n• Population: 5,950,000\n\n• Square miles: 160 miles\n\nThe capital of Tamil Nadu state, Chennai is a governmental, industrial and cultural center in southern India. Much of the growth in the megalopolis is from migrants moving from rural areas in the state in search of jobs, though Chennai is also a destination for people from throughout the nation. In recent weeks the region has faced a water shortage, as four of the largest reservoirs are virtually dry from lack of rain.\n\n7. Taipei, Taiwan\n\n• Population density: 39,263 per square mile\n\n• Population: 5,700,000\n\n• Square miles: 145 miles\n\nThough there's no doubt that Taipei is among the most densely populated places on Earth, there's some concern that the headcount may actually begin to drop. A low birth rate and aging population are fueling fears of a future dwindling workforce and decline in productivity that could slow technical innovation and take a toll on the economy.\n\nTaiwan is the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage, and in June, Taipei was the scene of Asia's largest gay pride parade.\n\n6. Seoul/Incheon, South Korea\n\n• Population density: 43,208 per square mile\n\n• Population: 17,500,000\n\n• Square miles: 405 miles\n\nLow birth rates have caused Seoul's population growth to level off somewhat. But there's not likely to be much room to roam in South Korea's capital for the foreseeable future. The city's population density is about twice that of New York City and four times higher than that of Los Angeles. The region has the distinction of having one of the best-run airports in the world, Incheon International.\n\n5. Shenzhen, China\n\n• Population density: 44,464 per square mile\n\n• Population: 8,000,000\n\n• Square miles: 180 miles\n\nThere are a lot of \"mosts\" associated with Shenzhen. Though not a capital city, it is the most densely populated region in China. It is also the location of four of the world's tallest buildings. As of 2017, Shenzhen ranked 6th among cities with the most electric cars on the road. And as of 2017, Shenzhen-based Huawei was 49th on the list of the most valuable brands in the world.\n\n4. Lagos, Nigeria\n\n• Population density: 47,027 per square mile\n\n• Population: 13,400,000\n\n• Square miles: 285 miles\n\nThe one-time capital of Nigeria, Lagos is the most densely populated region in Africa. Among the reasons for the overcrowding is the influx of job seekers from rural areas, and refugees from countries like Togo and Cameroon fleeing to the mega-city. The cost of living in Lagos is among the lowest in the world, but the country as a whole has some of the poorest health statistics, including a life expectancy of just over 53 years of age and an infant mortality rate of almost 67 per 1,000 live births.\n\n3. Karachi, Pakistan\n\n• Population density: 49,000 per square mile\n\n• Population: 9,800,000\n\n• Square miles: 200 miles\n\nThe former capital of Pakistan, Karachi is the most crowded city in the Muslim world. Migrants and refugees from Bangladesh, Burma, Uganda, Iran and Afghanistan have moved into the area. Migrant workers from other regions of Pakistan add to the density. Though Karachi ranks among the least expensive cities for expatriates, it's also rated one of the least livable, with a drop in standard of living likely, according to a 2018 study.\n\n2. Kolkata, India\n\n• Population density: 61,945 per square mile\n\n• Population: 12,700,000\n\n• Square miles: 205 miles\n\nThere's a lot going on in the planet's second most crowded megalopolis. In addition to being a financial and manufacturing center, Kolkata has a major port and thriving tech sector. Nevertheless, problems with severe air pollution, poverty and infrastructure need to be addressed in the capital city of West Bengal state.\n\nCathedral controversy:Catholic school fires teacher for same-sex marriage, reaches settlement\n\n1. Mumbai, India\n\n• Population density: 76,790 per square mile\n\n• Population: 14,350,000\n\n• Square miles: 187 miles\n\nTens of thousands of people find themselves packed into each square mile of the most crowded urban area on Earth. Regardless of the overall dearth of space, the good life is alive and well in Mumbai, which has one of the greatest populations of mega-millionaires. From traffic congestion to huge landfills to breathtaking architecture, Bollywood movies and urban parkland, Mumbai is a city of contrasts and surprises.\n\n24/7 Wall Street is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news and commentary. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2019/07/11"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/roadwarriorvoices/2016/04/19/most-expensive-cities-business-travel/83243314/", "title": "The most expensive cities for business travel", "text": "Jelisa Castrodale\n\nSpecial for USA TODAY\n\nIf you'll be traveling to San Francisco for your next business trip, you might want to tell your corporate accountants to brace themselves. For the third year in a row, San Francisco is the priciest destination in America – and the third most expensive city in the world, according to the 32nd annual Corporate Travel Index, ranking the most (and least) expensive cities for corporate travelers.\n\nThe average per-diem for the California city was a whopping $547.34, which includes the cost of a hotel, rental car and food, an increase of 7% over last year's already expensive total. The other cities in the top five were New York ($523.05), Boston ($502.69), Seattle ($418.88) and Washington, D.C. ($411.10).\n\nThe national average for a hotel, transportation and three square meals was $318.80 per day, or about what it would cost you to spend a night in St. Louis ($318.71), the 26th most expensive city on the list. Across the United States, the average costs were up 3.9% in 2015, compared with the average in 2014, which added up to $306.91 per day. Hotel costs have increased 5.6% in the past year, up to a nightly average of $172.80.\n\nAlthough the average cost of food has only increased 1.9% across the country, the cost of three meals in Santa Barbara, California – the most expensive city for business travelers to eat in – has increased by an appetite-killing 27%, to a daily average of $131.77.\n\nOn the opposite side of the rankings, the five least costly cities were less than half of the price of a night in San Francisco. The 100th ranked city on the list was Norfolk, Va. ($248.15), preceded by Jackson, Miss. ($250.76), Bakersfield, Calif. ($251.28), Shreveport, La. ($251.31) and Tucson, Ariz. ($252.79).\n\nBusiness Travel News also calculated the average per diem cost for cities outside the United States and its priciest destination for 2015 might be a surprise. Caracas, Venezuela, took the top spot with an average per diem of $1,702.44, the result of an inflationary spiral that makes San Francisco – and the rest of the world – look like bargains by comparison. See the slideshow above for complete rankings.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2016/04/19"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/08/24/moving-costs-most-expensive-cities-move/37557751/", "title": "25 Most Expensive Cities to Move – 24/7 Wall St.", "text": "Grant Suneson\n\n24/7 Wall Street\n\nEach year, hundreds of thousands of Americans leave their hometowns and move to a new place. Some go for education and others for career opportunities. Some elderly Americans head to warmer climates to enjoy their retirement. No matter the reason, moving is rarely easy, and often can be rather expensive.\n\nPacking up all of one’s belongings and relocating to a different part of the state or the country is not an option for everyone. Moving is challenging, time consuming, and costly. The average cost of moving to a large city is at least $1,200. In one case the average is more than $1,500.\n\nAnd that figure only includes direct moving expenses such as truck rental, hired help, and fuel for the journey. That figure does not take into account the largest single expense when moving to a new place -- the price of place being moved into. The average price of the security deposit and one month’s rent in the largest U.S. cities is at least $1,500 dollars -- and more than double that amount in many cases.\n\n24/7 Wall Street reviewed average moving costs and average first month’s rents and security deposits in America’s 100 largest metro areas to determine the 25 most expensive cities to move to.\n\nMore:These are the 25 worst cities in the U.S. to raise children\n\nMore:Employment stagnation: Which city in your state is weakest for job growth?\n\n25. Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, Florida\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $3,741\n\n$3,741 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,482\n\n$2,482 Median household income: $44,007\n\n$44,007 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 11.9%\n\n24. Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, Nevada\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $3,750\n\n$3,750 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,492\n\n$2,492 Median household income: $50,882\n\n$50,882 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 7.7%\n\n23. Colorado Springs, Colorado\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $3,837\n\n$3,837 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,572\n\n$2,572 Median household income: $56,227\n\n$56,227 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 5.6%\n\n22. Bakersfield, California\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $3,853\n\n$3,853 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,522\n\n$2,522 Median household income: $58,669\n\n$58,669 Population change from migration (2010-2017): -0.8%\n\n21. Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, Minnesota\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $3,888\n\n$3,888 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,586\n\n$2,586 Median household income: $52,611\n\n$52,611 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 2.4%\n\n20. Madison, Wisconsin\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $3,891\n\n$3,891 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,626\n\n$2,626 Median household income: $56,464\n\n$56,464 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 3.9%\n\n19. New Haven-Milford, Connecticut\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $3,898\n\n$3,898 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,614\n\n$2,614 Median household income: $38,126\n\n$38,126 Population change from migration (2010-2017): -1.3%\n\n18. Sacramento--Roseville--Arden-Arcade, California\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $3,938\n\n$3,938 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,650\n\n$2,650 Median household income: $52,071\n\n$52,071 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 4.3%\n\n17. Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Connecticut\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $4,069\n\n$4,069 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,632\n\n$2,632 Median household income: $43,137\n\n$43,137 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 0.8%\n\nMore:US cities where incomes are growing at the fastest pace\n\nMore:US cities where incomes are shrinking at the fastest pace\n\n16. Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, Colorado\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $4,074\n\n$4,074 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,776\n\n$2,776 Median household income: $56,258\n\n$56,258 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 7.3%\n\n15. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, Florida\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $4,074\n\n$4,074 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,792\n\n$2,792 Median household income: $31,642\n\n$31,642 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 7.4%\n\n14. Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Oregon\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $4,087\n\n$4,087 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,768\n\n$2,768 Median household income: $58,423\n\n$58,423 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 6.0%\n\n13. Charleston-North Charleston, South Carolina\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $4,106\n\n$4,106 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,854\n\n$2,854 Median household income: $57,603\n\n$57,603 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 10.6%\n\n12. Austin-Round Rock, Texas\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $4,154\n\n$4,154 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,890\n\n$2,890 Median household income: $60,939\n\n$60,939 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 13.3%\n\n11. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, Massachusetts\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $4,185\n\n$4,185 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,854\n\n$2,854 Median household income: $58,516\n\n$58,516 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 3.6%\n\nMore:Infrastructure spending: Which state is falling apart the worst?\n\n10. Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, Virginia\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $4,247\n\n$4,247 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,988\n\n$2,988 Median household income: $67,719\n\n$67,719 Population change from migration (2010-2017): -1.0%\n\n9. Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, California\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $4,392\n\n$4,392 1st month's rent and deposit: $3,118\n\n$3,118 Median household income: $58,979\n\n$58,979 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 2.7%\n\n8. New York-Newark-Jersey City, New York\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $4,515\n\n$4,515 1st month's rent and deposit: $2,988\n\n$2,988 Median household income: $55,191\n\n$55,191 Population change from migration (2010-2017): -0.1%\n\n7. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, District of Columbia\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $4,602\n\n$4,602 1st month's rent and deposit: $3,286\n\n$3,286 Median household income: $72,935\n\n$72,935 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 3.8%\n\n6. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Washington\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $4,873\n\n$4,873 1st month's rent and deposit: $3,562\n\n$3,562 Median household income: $74,458\n\n$74,458 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 7.0%\n\nMore:What city is adding the most jobs in your state? A look at who's hiring\n\n5. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, California\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $4,904\n\n$4,904 1st month's rent and deposit: $3,574\n\n$3,574 Median household income: $51,538\n\n$51,538 Population change from migration (2010-2017): -0.7%\n\n4. Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, California\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $4,927\n\n$4,927 1st month's rent and deposit: $3,596\n\n$3,596 Median household income: $61,709\n\n$61,709 Population change from migration (2010-2017): -0.6%\n\n3. San Diego-Carlsbad, California\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $5,174\n\n$5,174 1st month's rent and deposit: $3,828\n\n$3,828 Median household income: $68,117\n\n$68,117 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 2.3%\n\n2. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $5,523\n\n$5,523 1st month's rent and deposit: $4,192\n\n$4,192 Median household income: $90,303\n\n$90,303 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 3.0%\n\n1. San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, California\n\nAvg. total moving cost: $5,661\n\n$5,661 1st month's rent and deposit: $4,330\n\n$4,330 Median household income: $87,701\n\n$87,701 Population change from migration (2010-2017): 4.9%\n\nDetailed findings and methodology\n\nMoving can be very expensive anywhere in the country, but prices are the highest for those moving to the West Coast. Of the 25 metro areas with the highest moving costs, 10 are in West Coast states, with eight in California. In fact, all the top five most expensive places to move to are in the Golden State.\n\nMore:Priced out of the market? Cities where the middle class can no longer afford a home\n\nOutside of California, Connecticut, Colorado, and Florida are the only states with more than one metro area among the 25 most expensive cities to move to -- each with two cities. The other metro areas are scattered across the country in states like Texas, South Carolina, Minnesota, New York and Nevada.\n\nWhile moving costs to these 25 places are very high, they may offer incentives other cities with cheaper moving costs do not. For one, the median household income in most of the cities on the list is well above the national median of $55,322 a year. The higher incomes may be one of the reasons that people are flocking to these areas -- despite the high cost of getting there. Across the country, the average population change due to migration over the past seven years was 2.2 percent. Among these 25 metro areas, 18 have a greater rate of net migration.\n\n24/7 Wall Street determined the 25 cities with the highest moving costs by combining the median price of one month’s rent plus a security deposit and the estimated moving cost to the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. The rent is for a three-bedroom housing unit, and the security deposit is equivalent to one month’s rent. The estimated moving cost is within the most populated zip code in the principal city of each metro area.\n\nThe median price of rent comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2015 American Community Survey. The moving cost was determined using data from real estate data company Moving Inc. The 2016 median household income data and 2010-2017 population change from migration came from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. The Urban Honolulu metro area in Hawaii is the only place that lacked data on moving costs, so it was omitted from the list.\n\n24/7 Wall Street is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news and commentary. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2018/08/24"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/12/03/worlds-drunkest-countries-2021/8849598002/", "title": "These were the world's drunkest countries in 2021, according to a ...", "text": "Americans were among the heaviest drinkers in the world in early 2021, with participants reporting to being drunk a little under twice a month, or 23 times a year, a new international study has shown.\n\nAmong the 22 countries involved in the 2021 Global Drug Survey, the United States ranked No. 4 and respondents from Australia reported getting drunk more than any other country, with an average of 26 times a year, or about twice a month.\n\nDenmark and Finland followed with an average of 23 incidents per year of getting drunk, nearly twice higher than the global average of 14.6 times per year.\n\nHow much is too much?:Here's how much alcohol is too much - and how to avoid holiday binging\n\nThe study also looked at the number of days per year participants drank alcohol, where rankings changed significantly.\n\nFrance took the top spot with 132 days of alcohol consumption per year, or around three drinks a week. New Zealand followed with 120 days, and the Netherlands with 112 days.\n\nOn average, respondents from the United States drank 83 days of the year, around two times a week. This was slightly lower than the global average of 101 drinks a year.\n\nThis may seem like a lot, but respondents in most countries got drunk about 30% less than last year, said the survey's CEO, Adam Winstock.\n\n\"I just think the longer the pandemic went on, the novelty of lunchtime drinking and getting drunk wore off, and then the reality just kind of stepped in,\" Winstock said. \"I think most people realize they cope better without getting drunk or drinking all the time and using lots of drugs.\"\n\nPandemic drinking:Alcohol trends in graphics\n\nThe Global Drug Survey, which is based in London, was established in 2012. The 2021 version of the survey collected data from 32,022 people across 22 countries and was published in 11 languages. Data was collected between Dec. 2020 and March 2021 and collected data on the usage of alcohol, cannabis and other drugs internationally.\n\nCis men accounted for 62% of the global sample, while cis women accounted for 34%. People identifying as transgender, non-binary or intersex made up 3.5% of respondents. More than 60% of respondents were under the age of 34.\n\nThe data was collected exclusively from anonymous online users with rates of drug usage higher than the general population, according to the report.\n\nHere's the top ten countries ranked by the number of times respondents from each country said they got drunk per year:", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/12/03"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/roadwarriorvoices/2015/10/28/these-are-the-10-most-expensive-city-hotels-in-the-u-s/83277538/", "title": "These are the 10 most expensive city hotels in the U.S.", "text": "Karina Martinez-Carter\n\nspecial for USA TODAY\n\nLuxury-Hotels.com recently released a ranking of the most expensive urban hotels in the United States, and surprise, surprise: New York City hotels occupy all but two of the top 10 spots.\n\nThe numbers are based on \"the cheapest available rate\" for a double room in the month of October 2015, as October is the priciest month at most hotels, according to Luxury-Hotels.com. Only urban accommodations were surveyed, so no far-flung resorts are included.\n\nThe most expensive starting rate came in at a whopping $995 per night, with Mandarin Oriental, New York and The Ritz-Carlton New York, Central Park tying for No. 1. That's still a good $894 below a night at the world's most expensive hotel, though. That property — Amangiri, a resort in Canyon Point, Utah — also happens to be the U.S.\n\nClick through the slideshow to see the full list.\n\n[sigallery id=\"KtmuzhDWoQeGtkYmbWmbTZ\" title=\"Most expensive urban hotels\" type=\"sigallery\"]", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2015/10/28"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/25/worlds-most-expensive-countries-are-islands-bermuda-cayman-islands/39797441/", "title": "World's most expensive countries are islands: Bermuda, Cayman ...", "text": "Colman Andrews\n\n24/7 Wall Street\n\nThe most expensive countries in the world, according to new cost-of-living indices, are both places where the (expensive) living is easy: The Cayman Islands in the Caribbean and the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda, off the coast of North Carolina. That’s according to midyear cost-of-living data collected by Numbeo, a Serbian-based website that describes itself as maintaining “the world’s largest database of user contributed data about cities and countries worldwide.”\n\nThe site includes the cost of groceries, restaurants, transportation, utilities and rent (including mortgage payments) in its index of cost of living plus rent. Indices are broken out separately for cost of living without rent and for groceries and restaurants. The indices are computed relative to costs in New York City, which are counted at 100%. An index of 120% indicates costs that are 20% higher than those in the city, while one of 80% means costs are 20% lower.\n\nSmart money:How your 2019 vacation can pay for your 2020 vacation\n\nVacation:The biggest cruise ships in the world\n\nBermuda has the highest cost of living index, including rent, at 114.03%, followed by the Cayman Islands at 109.49%. Their positions flip if rent is factored out, with the Caymans at 141.64% and Bermuda at 138.22%. (Switzerland is in third place by both measures.)\n\nIsland countries are often among the places where the most garbage is accumulated. This is mostly because their economies are dependent on tourism.\n\nBermuda is also the place where restaurant meals cost the most (150.40%), while groceries are more expensive in the Caymans (157.93%).\n\nThe most expensive American territory is the U.S. Virgin Islands, in fifth place for cost of living both with rent (73.81%) and without (97.23%). The U.S. as a whole ranks 15th for the combined figure (56.39%) and 25th if rent if factored out (70.95%).\n\nThe 1%:The 5 most ridiculous myths about the rich\n\nYou might be surprised at how much money you need to live comfortably in some cities. While it is true that the nation’s most highly populous cities tend to be more expensive, this is not the case for all major cities – this is how much it will cost you to live in America’s major cities.\n\nThe cheapest place in the world to live? Pakistan, in 136th place, with a cost-of-living plus rent index of 11.62% and an index without rent of 18.58%.\n\n24/7 Wall Street is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news and commentary. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2019/07/25"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/hotelcheckin/2013/04/18/tripadvisor-room-service-study--denver-best-value-honolulu-vegas-most-expensive/2085213/", "title": "Room service: A club sandwich can set you back $24", "text": "Barbara DeLollis, USA TODAY\n\nFor many travelers, the price of ordering a basic sandwich from the hotel's room service department is a major pet peeve.\n\nA new study by TripAdvisor, however, reveals that prices of room service items vary greatly by location. In fact, in some cities, they're not all that bad.\n\nPerhaps most surprisingly, New York, the USA's most expensive city in terms of hotel rates, doesn't top the list of being the most expensive for room service, according to the new study by the online review giant.\n\nThat honor goes to Honolulu, the popular tourist destination where hotel rates have been soaring since last year. Las Vegas, where revelers tend to make impulse purchases, ranks No. 2.\n\nHow did TripAdvisor measure room service costs?\n\nThe company recently priced out six often-ordered items in four-star hotels in 60 destinations around the world to get an apples-to-apples comparison for its newly launched \"TripIndex\" of room service prices. The six items include a club sandwich ordered from room service; a bottle of water, mini bottle of vodka, peanuts and a can of soda purchased from the minibar, and dry cleaning for one shirt.\n\nHere is how the Top 10 U.S. cities stacked up, based on the price for those six items, according to the index:\n\nDenver — $40.46\n\nDallas — $42.49\n\nSeattle — $44.19\n\nMinneapolis — $48.09\n\nBoston — $50.43\n\nLos Angeles — $50.60\n\nOrlando — $51.19\n\nChicago — $51.37\n\nNew Orleans — $51.74\n\nSan Francisco — $52.24\n\nThe same six items will cost you about $65 in Honolulu, and just more than $64 in Las Vegas, according to TripAdvisor.\n\nStill, those prices pale in comparison to Moscow, the most expensive city in the survey, where the items will set you back about $83. Behind Moscow is Paris, at about $69.\n\n$24 for a club sandwich?\n\nWhen it comes to ranking the U.S. cities solely on the price of a club sandwich delivered to your room, the ranking changes.\n\nHonolulu still ranks as the most expensive city ($23.65) and New York came in second ($21.75) followed by Washington, D.C. ($17.35).\n\nBoutique hotel icon Ian Schrager has been trying to change consumers' perception about ridiculous room services prices at his Public Hotel in Chicago, where the best available rate for tonight on its website costs $195.\n\nThe hotel's room service program, called \"Public Express,\" is served in brown paper bags instead of on white-clothed carts delivered by dedicated staffers.\n\nHotelChatter.com's editor Juliana Shallcross tried out the service two years ago and proclaimed it a success.\n\nShe praised the modern delivery process, which does away from the stodgy formality of chain hotels.\n\n\"I remember a knock on the door, a stylish young man handing me a brown paper bag with my breakfast in it and then disappearing quickly,\" she says. \"I didn't have to sign anything either.\"\n\nBest of all, the young man didn't linger for a tip, she says.\n\nSo far, however, the newfangled system hasn't caught on.\n\nA can of Coke: Nearly $6 in Honolulu hotels\n\nA can of Coca-Cola also varies depending on your hotel's location. You can pay as much as $5.92 in Honolulu to a low of $2.81 in Seattle, according to the study.\n\nBut that's only if your hotel room has a minibar.\n\nOver the last few years, a growing number of hotels have been removing them from guest rooms partly to cut costs involved with the laborious process of replenishing stock, and also because consumers simply aren't using them as much.\n\nThe 1,900-room Marriott Marquis in Manhattan is one of the hotels that removed guestroom minibars a few years ago after seeing reduced purchases, says spokeswoman Kathleen Duffy.\n\nToday, the hotel maintains a gift-shop-turned-market on its eighth-floor lobby that sells everything from fresh pastries to ice cream. Yet while variety is better, prices are still high. A plastic bottle of Coke still costs around $3.50, more than you'd pay in a convenience store on the street.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2013/04/18"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/04/04/what-it-actually-costs-to-live-in-americas-most-expensive-cities/37748097/", "title": "What it Actually Costs to Live in America's Most Expensive Cities", "text": "Thomas C. Frohlich\n\n24/7 Wall Street\n\nWith unemployment at over a decade low, wages at all-time highs, and poverty on the decline, the U.S. economy is flourishing -- or so it would seem. For Americans struggling financially it can be difficult to feel encouraged by such optimistic reports. It is a common complaint among ordinary Americans and economists alike: economic measures might be indicative of overall economic performance but rarely connect to the lived experiences of Americans.\n\nFor example, while the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, most agree this is not a livable wage. The Economic Policy Institute, a non profit think tank, calculated the income families need to secure a modest, yet adequate standard of living in counties and metro areas across the United States. Americans entering the workforce or starting a family have thousands of cities to choose from -- and some are more expensive places than others.\n\nIn order to illustrate what it looks like to live in the most and least expensive places, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed monthly living expenses from EPI's family budget calculator in the most expensive metro areas based on the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ regional price parities. According to the EPI, compared with federal measures of poverty, its family budgets provide a more accurate and complete measure of economic security in America.\n\nIn an email to 24/7 Wall St., EPI research assistant Zane Mokhiber explained, “Wherever housing and childcare is expensive, cities are expensive, and vice versa.” By contrast, food, transportation, and health care costs tend to be relatively uniform across the the nation’s major cities.\n\nIn all of the 25 cities where goods and services are most expensive -- with the exception of the Riverside, California, metro area -- average monthly housing costs for a family of four are $1,200 or higher. Childcare costs for families living in these cities average between $1,000 and nearly $3,000 per month. In 10 of the cities on this list, monthly childcare costs exceed housing expenses.\n\nAs Mokhiber noted, a high cost of living is not the same as low affordability, and it is important to measure living costs against income. While not universally the case, residents of the most expensive cities tend to have higher incomes.\n\nClick here to see what it actually costs to live in America's most expensive cities.\n\nClick here to see our methodology.\n\n25. Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD\n\n> BEA cost of living: 7.2% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $7,378\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,325\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $799\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 39.5%\n\n> Poverty rate: 10.4%\n\n24. Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA\n\n> BEA cost of living: 7.4% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $6,528\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,156\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $757\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 21.0%\n\n> Poverty rate: 16.4%\n\n23. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL\n\n> BEA cost of living: 7.6% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $7,081\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,351\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $853\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 30.5%\n\n> Poverty rate: 15.4%\n\n22. Salinas, CA\n\n> BEA cost of living: 8.1% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $8,083\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,433\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $802\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 24.8%\n\n> Poverty rate: 12.5%\n\n21. Manchester-Nashua, NH\n\n> BEA cost of living: 8.5% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $6,977\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,218\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $817\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 37.3%\n\n> Poverty rate: 8.2%\n\n20. Boulder, CO\n\n> BEA cost of living: 8.9% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $8,465\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,461\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $893\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 60.6%\n\n> Poverty rate: 11.0%\n\n19. Anchorage, AK\n\n> BEA cost of living: 9.2% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $9,587\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,337\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $644\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 32.2%\n\n> Poverty rate: 7.2%\n\n18. Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA\n\n> BEA cost of living: 9.5% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $8,034\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,520\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $817\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 32.4%\n\n> Poverty rate: 13.9%\n\n17. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA\n\n> BEA cost of living: 10.5% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $8,095\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,527\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $854\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 42.0%\n\n> Poverty rate: 9.6%\n\n16. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH\n\n> BEA cost of living: 11.1% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $9,463\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,740\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $877\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 46.9%\n\n> Poverty rate: 9.6%\n\n15. Trenton, NJ\n\n> BEA cost of living: 11.3% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $7,848\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,329\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $797\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 42.7%\n\n> Poverty rate: 11.1%\n\n14. New Haven-Milford, CT\n\n> BEA cost of living: 11.4% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $7,818\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,299\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $787\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 35.1%\n\n> Poverty rate: 11.2%\n\n13. San Diego-Carlsbad, CA\n\n> BEA cost of living: 16.3% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $8,129\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,682\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $847\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 37.4%\n\n> Poverty rate: 12.3%\n\n12. Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA\n\n> BEA cost of living: 17.2% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $8,772\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,739\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $860\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 33.6%\n\n> Poverty rate: 9.5%\n\n11. Vallejo-Fairfield, CA\n\n> BEA cost of living: 17.6% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $7,453\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,341\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $782\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 25.4%\n\n> Poverty rate: 11.6%\n\n10. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA\n\n> BEA cost of living: 17.7% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $7,691\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,663\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $830\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 33.5%\n\n> Poverty rate: 15.0%\n\n9. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV\n\n> BEA cost of living: 19.1% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $8,795\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,693\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $858\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 50.2%\n\n> Poverty rate: 8.4%\n\n8. Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT\n\n> BEA cost of living: 20.1% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $8,387\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,272\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $883\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 46.6%\n\n> Poverty rate: 8.6%\n\n7. Santa Rosa, CA\n\n> BEA cost of living: 21.0% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $9,165\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,843\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $913\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 33.9%\n\n> Poverty rate: 9.2%\n\n6. Napa, CA\n\n> BEA cost of living: 21.9% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $8,565\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,575\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $982\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 35.1%\n\n> Poverty rate: 7.3%\n\n5. New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA\n\n> BEA cost of living: 22.0% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $10,344\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,789\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $908\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 39.0%\n\n> Poverty rate: 13.5%\n\n4. Urban Honolulu, HI\n\n> BEA cost of living: 24.4% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $9,632\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,893\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $1,074\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 34.4%\n\n> Poverty rate: 8.5%\n\n3. San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA\n\n> BEA cost of living: 24.7% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $12,370\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $3,121\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $998\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 48.5%\n\n> Poverty rate: 9.2%\n\n2. Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA\n\n> BEA cost of living: 24.8% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $9,283\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $1,764\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $931\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 40.5%\n\n> Poverty rate: 13.7%\n\n1. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA\n\n> BEA cost of living: 27.1% more expensive than national average\n\n> Monthly living costs, family of 4: $10,758\n\n> Monthly housing costs, family of 4: $2,522\n\n> Monthly food costs, family of 4: $896\n\n> Adults with at least a bachelor's degree: 50.1%\n\n> Poverty rate: 9.4%\n\nMethodology:\n\nIn order to determine what it actually costs to live in America’s most expensive cities, 24/7 Wall St. first identified the 25 cities with the highest cost of living according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) as measured by regional price parities for metro. We matched to each of these cities monthly living costs for a family of four (two parents and two children) and other cost of living data provided by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).\n\nThe EPI data is the basis for its Family Budget Calculator, which measures the income a family needs in order to attain a modest yet adequate standard of living. The budgets estimate community-specific costs for 10 family types (one or two adults with zero to four children) in all counties and metro areas in the United States.\n\nPoverty rates and educational attainment rates come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 1-year 2016 American Community Survey.\n\n24/7 Wall Street is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news and commentary. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2019/04/04"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_1", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:36", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/16/health/abbott-formula-shortage/index.html", "title": "Judge signs off on steps troubled baby formula manufacturer must ...", "text": "(CNN) A federal judge has signed off on a legally binding agreement between the United States Food and Drug Administration and the baby formula manufacturer Abbott Nutrition, the company at the heart of a nationwide formula recall.\n\nThe 33-page agreement lays out steps the manufacturer must take to restart production at its manufacturing plant in Sturgis, MI. Once Abbott has completed the to-do list to the FDA's satisfaction, the company says it would take 2 weeks to resume production of baby formula at the facility.\n\n\"There are a number of steps to be taken once the plant can restart, including restarting equipment, test runs and multiple tests and checks on ingredients,\" said Abbott spokesperson Jonathon Hamilton, in an email to CNN.\n\nThe agreement requires Abbott to clean and sanitize its facility and all the equipment in it. The manufacturer must also hire an independent third party expert to review its processes. The company is also being asked to review and change its environmental monitoring program, its product sampling and testing plans, and its employee training programs.\n\nAfter the production lines are running again, Abbott says it would take a minimum of six to eight weeks for new cans of formula to be delivered to stores, the company said in a press release.", "authors": ["Brenda Goodman"], "publish_date": "2022/05/16"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/04/health/abbott-formula-plant-restarts/index.html", "title": "Abbott restarts production of specialty formulas at Michigan plant ...", "text": "(CNN) Specialty formula production restarted Saturday at the Abbott plant in Sturgis, Michigan, that has been at the center of a recall and a factor in a nationwide formula shortage.\n\nAbbott said it is starting with production of EleCare, an amino acid-based hypoallergenic product for babies who can't tolerate other formulas, as well as other specialty formulas. Abbott said the first batches of Elecare product are expected to be available to consumers around June 20.\n\nSimilac and other products made at the plant will take longer to become available.\n\n\"We're also working hard to fulfill the steps necessary to restart production of Similac and other formulas and will do so as soon as we can,\" the company said in a Saturday statement\n\nThe Sturgis plant has been shut down for months following a US Food and Drug Administration inspection that found Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria -- which can be deadly to infants -- in several areas. Similac, Alimentum and EleCare powdered infant formulas made at the plant were recalled, and the closure exacerbated shortages caused by supply chain disruptions. Families across the United States have struggled to find formula for infants and for people with specific nutrition needs.\n\nRead More", "authors": ["Jamie Gumbrecht"], "publish_date": "2022/06/04"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/12/politics/america-baby-formula-shortage-what-matters/index.html", "title": "A perfect storm hits baby formula - CNNPolitics", "text": "A version of this story appeared in CNN's What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here\n\n(CNN) The baby formula shortage story has so many elements. But the top line is that the closure of the country's largest formula plant in February has many parents worried they might not be able to feed their babies.\n\nThere are no answers from government and business, other than parents who can't find formula should call their pediatricians.\n\nThe possible contamination of formula from Abbott Nutrition may have sickened four babies. Two died after consuming powdered formula manufactured by the company's facility in Sturgis, Michigan. Abbott has questioned whether the rare infections caused by Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria occurred because of its formula.\n\nParents are looking for alternatives to formula and wading through misinformation about how to feed their babies during the shortage. Don't try to make your own formula, experts have told CNN.\n\nBusiness angles. Shutting down one single factory exacerbated pandemic-related supply chain issues and supercharged this nationwide shortage -- even though only certain batches of Similac, Alimentum and EleCare powdered infant formulas were actually recalled in February.\n\nMore than half of formula is out of stock in eight states and the District of Columbia, according to a new report from Datasembly, a real-time data tracking agency.\n\nAbbott said on Wednesday that it could restart production at the Michigan facility, pending US Food and Drug Administration approval, within two weeks. Formula from the shuttered plant could be on shelves six to eight weeks after that.\n\nWhistleblower angles. A former employee sent detailed allegations to the FDA that Abbott was hiding safety issues A former employee sent detailed allegationsto the FDA that Abbott was hiding safety issues months before formula was recalled\n\nTransparency angles. The FDA was first aware of complaints about baby formula back in September, according to documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests but the Abbott recall didn't occur until four months later. The FDA was first aware of complaints about baby formula back in September, according to documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by Consumer Reports and other news organizations,but the Abbott recall didn't occur until four months later.\n\nfollowing inspections dating back to 2019. In March, the FDA said Abbott had failed to take steps to prevent contamination at its Michigan plant, and noted a pattern of deficienciesfollowing inspections dating back to 2019.\n\nTrade angles. The American baby formula market, for regulatory reasons and due to recent trade agreements, is relatively shut off from other countries, which is helping drive the product shortage in the US. The conservative Cato Institute looked in particular at the The American baby formula market, for regulatory reasons and due to recent trade agreements, is relatively shut off from other countries, which is helping drive the product shortage in the US. The conservative Cato Institute looked in particular at the effect of the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement , which restricted imports of formula from Canada.\n\nJUST WATCHED Hear from concerned parents affected by the baby formula shortage Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Hear from concerned parents affected by the baby formula shortage 02:30\n\nProtection angles. The government bureaucracy's effort to protect babies, paired with tons of regulation and restriction on formula from other countries, has made adjusting to the shortage nearly impossible for many families.\n\nThe Biden administration is defending the FDA as Republicans seek to cast blame. The FDA's stringent requirements for formula mean that even formula from Europe, which has its own standards, often cannot be sold in the US.\n\nNow, you knew it was coming ... politics angles. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was among the Republicans to blame President Joe Biden for the shortage.\n\n\"This problem has been developing in slow motion for several months now, but the Biden Administration has been characteristically sluggish and halting in response,\" McConnell said in a statement on Wednesday.\n\nIt is a shift for Republicans, normally arguing for less government intervention, to now be criticizing the White House for being slow to intervene.\n\nBiden spoke with baby formula retailers and manufacturers on Thursday, and afterward White House officials described limited steps it could take, including increasing imports and looking for ways to cut administrative red tape. Details to follow, officials said.\n\nThis is the tradeoff. The federal regulators Americans expect to keep products safe also need to keep them available, White House press secretary Jen Psaki acknowledged this week.\n\nShe said the FDA is working with formula manufacturers to ensure their increased production, ease supply lines and get formula to those who need it most. But they won't be rushing things, she said.\n\n\"I'd go back to why this decision was made in the first place, which was to save babies' lives,\" Psaki told reporters on Thursday. \"And the FDA is not going to approve manufacturing again unless they are certain of the safety.\"\n\nBut she had no concrete answers for parents running out of formula.\n\nAnd no, there does not appear to be a strategic national reserve of baby formula like there is for personal protective equipment or petroleum.\n\nDesperate searches. None of what's above is going to make Darice Browning feel any better. She's the Oceanside, California, woman who appeared on HLN's \"Morning Express\" on Wednesday to explain how her children, both of whom have severe allergies to dairy, will get the formula they need.\n\nBrowning said she's ignoring the FDA warnings and giving her kids EleCare infant formula, even though it has been recalled by Abbott.\n\n\"It will last maybe two or two-and-a-half weeks,\" she said. \"Everybody is saying you might open these plants back up in six to eight weeks, but I don't have that kind of time. What am I going to do?\"", "authors": ["Analysis Zachary B. Wolf"], "publish_date": "2022/05/12"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/08/business/baby-formula-shortage/index.html", "title": "The baby formula shortage is getting worse - CNN", "text": "New York (CNNBusiness) For months stores nationwide have been struggling to stock enough baby formula. Manufacturers say they're producing at full capacity and making as much formula as they can, but it's still not enough to meet current demand.\n\nThe out-of-stock rate for baby formula hovered between 2% and 8% in the first half of 2021, but began rising sharply last July. Between November 2021 and early April 2022, the out-of-stock rate jumped to 31%, data from Datasembly showed.\n\nThat rate increased another 9 percentage points in just three weeks in April, and now stands at 40%, the statistics show. In six states — Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri, Texas and Tennessee — more than half of baby formula was completely sold out during the week starting April 24, Datasembly said.\n\nAnd although seven states had between 40-50% of baby formula products out of stock as of early April, 26 states are now struggling with supply.\n\n\"This issue has been compounded by supply chain issues, product recalls and historic inflation,\" Datasembly CEO Ben Reich said. \"Unfortunately, given the unprecedented amount of volatility to the category, we anticipate baby formula to continue to be one of the most affected products in the market.\"", "authors": ["Parija Kavilanz", "Ramishah Maruf", "Cnn Business"], "publish_date": "2022/05/08"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/05/16/fda-allow-sale-foreign-baby-formula/9792963002/", "title": "Baby formula shortage: FDA, Abbott agree on terms to reopen factory", "text": "On Monday evening, baby formula producer Abbott announced it had reached a deal with the Food and Drug Administration, laying out a path to reopen a factory in Sturgis, Michigan, that shut down amid recalls earlier this year, contributing to the current shortage.\n\nIn a statement, the company confirmed that it has entered into a consent decree with the FDA, in which the agency and company agree on the benchmarks required to resume production and ensure the facility meets safety guidelines.\n\nFDA officials said late Monday that if a court approves the agreement, the Michigan site could restart in two weeks.\n\nThe site would initially produce specialty metabolic formulas EleCare and Alimentum, followed by Similac and eventually other formulas, food and drug officials said.\n\n\"Our number one priority is getting infants and families the high-quality formulas they need, and this is a major step toward re-opening our Sturgis facility so we can ease the nationwide formula shortage. We look forward to working with the FDA to quickly and safely re-open the facility,\" said chairman and CEO Robert B. Ford. \"We know millions of parents and caregivers depend on us and we're deeply sorry that our voluntary recall worsened the nationwide formula shortage. We will work hard to re-earn the trust that moms, dads and caregivers have placed in our formulas for more than 50 years.\"\n\nIn a statement issued by the Department of Justice, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said, “The actions we are announcing today will help to safely increase the supply of baby formula for families. The Justice Department will vigorously enforce the laws ensuring the safety of our food and other essential consumer products, and we will work alongside our partners across government to help make sure those products are available to the American people.”\n\n(Are you worried about a looming recession? Share your thoughts with USA TODAY on the form below or click here.)\n\nIn a CNN interview earlier in the day, FDA commissioner Dr. Robert Califf had presented a somewhat rosy timeline for reopening the facility. He had predicted that once a deal was struck, the factory could reopen and resume producing formula within two weeks and be back to normal a few weeks later.\n\nHowever, Abbott said things will not move quite that fast.\n\n\"From the time Abbott restarts the site, it will take six to eight weeks before product is available on shelves,\" the company noted in its statement.\n\nOnce it does, Abbott says it will start producing the formulas.\n\nCan foreign formula fill the gap?\n\nThe FDA on Monday also confirmed it will allow the sale of foreign formula in the U.S.\n\nThe agency, which says it has already streamlined the process for distributing foreign formula once it arrives at U.S. ports, said it will also permit formula manufactured here but intended for export to be sold domestically.\n\nWhile the U.S. produces 98% of the formula consumed here, it does currently import a small amount from Mexico, Ireland and the Netherlands.\n\n“Today’s action paves the way for companies who don’t normally distribute their infant formula products in the U.S. to do so efficiently and safely,\" Califf said in a statement. \"We are hopeful this call to the global market will be answered and that international businesses will rise to the occasion to assist in bolstering the supply of products that serve as the sole source of nutrition for many infants. With these flexibilities in place, we anticipate that those products that can quickly meet safety and nutrition standards could hit U.S. stores in a matter of weeks.”\n\nCaliff, along with Susan Mayne, the FDA's director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and FDA deputy commissioner Frank Yiannas, told reporters late Monday that companies that want to take advantage of any \"flexibilities\" should submit information to the FDA which will evaluate if the foreign formulas provide \"adequate nutrition.\"\n\nMayne said will include labeling that \"needs to be English, if possible,\" and other information on the formula's nutritional adequacy and their facilities' inspection history.\n\n\"These are the types of flexibilities that we are communicating in this guidance,\" Mayne said.\n\n'A DESPERATE SITUATION FOR MANY FAMILIES': How the baby formula shortage is costing parents\n\nSAFE SUBSTITUTES: Here's what you can feed your baby – and what you shouldn't\n\nCaliff said that while an adequate supply of formula needed to feed every baby is finally in place at this point, \"it's not necessarily in the right place. And so we're needing to help parents find other formula.\"\n\nHe added, \"We'll need to be watching this every step of the way because as you know, we don't want to be sending product out which is dangerous for infants. I have every anticipation that we've got a path forward now that will work.\"\n\nThe baby formula shortage began in November, when about 11% of popular brands were out of stock, according to data analytics firm Datasembly. As of May 8, 43% of baby formula was sold out at retailers across the U.S. because of recalls and supply chain strains. Retailers such as CVS, Target, and Walmart have put purchase limits on formula,\n\nIn the meantime, parents are being advised to contact their pediatricians to discuss the best course of action for their child, which could entail seeking samples of new formula brands or donated pasteurized breast milk.\n\nPediatricians update guidance on cow's milk, plant milk and premature formula\n\nAlthough the FDA's moves offer a light at the end of the tunnel, the shortage is still raging. To that end, the American Academy of Pediatrics put out new guidance Tuesday on feeding babies, taking a relaxed stance on cow's milk, plant milk and formula intended for premature babies and toddlers.\n\nMost notably, the professional assocation now says parents can give whole cow's milk to babies who are older than six months and don't have any allergies or other special health needs, as long as they supplement it with iron-rich solid foods. The change is intended as a stopgap to tide babies over until the shortage abates, with the Academy warning, \"This is not ideal and should not become routine.\"\n\nAAP also said premature formula can be safely given to full-term babies for several weeks if no other option is available. As for toddler formula, it would be safe to give to babies who are close to their first birthday as long as use does not exceed a few days.\n\nThe group also said that soy milk may be an acceptable temporary substitute for babies around a year old but advised parents to seek out brands that are fortified with protein and calcium.\n\nThe financial fallout\n\nThe shortage is quickly becoming a financial crisis for many families, especially those that are low-income. Because WIC is not yet equipped to handle online shopping and many families can no longer find eligible formulas in store, some are having to use Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits or pay out of pocket, which \"puts stress on the rest of the household,\" explains Brian Dittmeier, senior director of public policy at the National WIC Association, the nonprofit advocacy arm of WIC.\n\nContributing: Terry Collins, USA Today.\n\nWorried about a recession? Share your thoughts with USA TODAY\n\nWith the chances of a recession increasing, USA TODAY wants to know if you're worried and making preparations. Share your thoughts and experiences with USA TODAY for possible inclusion in future coverage. If you don't see the form below, click here.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/16"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/24/health/formula-shortage/index.html", "title": "Abbott plans to restart plant at the heart of the baby formula recall on ...", "text": "(CNN) Abbott Nutrition said Tuesday that it plans to restart work at the Sturgis, Michigan, plant at the heart of the nationwide baby formula recall on June 4, with the first batches of new formula expected to be available to consumers on or around June 20.\n\nWhen the plant resumes manufacturing formula, the company confirmed to the US Food and Drug Administration, it will start with EleCare and other specialty metabolic formulas.\n\nAbbott will also release about 300,000 cans of EleCare Specialty Formula on a case-by-case basis to people who need it urgently. This is an amino acid-based hypoallergenic product for babies who can't tolerate cow's milk in other formulas due to an intolerance or allergy.\n\nThis formula was not a part of the company's recall earlier in the year, but it has been on hold at the Sturgis plant because the agency was concerned that it was produced under \"insanitary conditions.\" The FDA said the formula will undergo enhanced testing to make sure it is safe.\n\nThe formula will be available immediately at no charge. Parents and caregivers can ask their doctors for more information or call Abbott at 1-800-881-0876.\n\nRead More", "authors": ["Jen Christensen"], "publish_date": "2022/05/24"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/shopping/2022/04/09/baby-formula-shortage-2022-worsens/9525498002/", "title": "Baby formula shortage 2022 worsens after Abbott Similac recall", "text": "Less than two months after a baby formula recall, retailers are reporting shortages with some stores rationing sales.\n\nNearly 30% of popular baby formula brands may be sold out at retailers across the U.S., according to an analysis by Datasembly, which assessed supplies at more than 11,000 stores.\n\nThat's a higher level than other products, said Ben Reich, CEO of the Tysons, Virginia-based research firm.\n\n\"Inflation, supply chain shortages, and product recalls have brought an unprecedented amount of volatility to the category, and we expect to continue to see baby formula as one of the most affected categories in the market,” he said.\n\nBaby formula shortage:5 things you can do to feed your baby during a formula shortage\n\nRecall Database:Check USA TODAY's recall resource for the latest updates\n\nThe shortage comes after Abbott Nutrition voluntarily recalled in mid-February select batches of Similac, Alimentum and EleCare formulas manufactured in Sturgis, Michigan. The recall was expanded in late February to include one lot of Similac PM 60/40.\n\nThe Food and Drug Administration said two weeks ago that the formula maker failed to maintain sanitary conditions and procedures at that plant.\n\nBaby formula supplies limited\n\nBut formula supplies were limited before the recall.\n\nKrishnakumar Davey, president of strategic analytics at IRI, told The Wall Street Journal that formula shortages are intermittent and vary based on retailer and location. Davey said some of the nation’s 10 largest retailers had more than 20% of baby formula out of stock the week ended Jan. 2.\n\n\"Product supply challenges are currently impacting most of the retail industry,\" CVS Health, which owns the pharmacy chain, said in a statement to USA TODAY. \"We’re continuing to work with our national brand baby formula vendors to address this issue and we regret any inconvenience that our customers may be experiencing.\"\n\nWalgreens is limiting shoppers to three infant and toddler formula products per transaction \"to help improve inventory,\" the company said in a statement to USA TODAY. \"Due to increased demand and various supplier issues, infant and toddler formulas are seeing constraint across the country,\" its statement said.\n\nNearly 75% of infants get some formula by the 6-month mark, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.\n\n'Full-time job trying to find Similac'\n\nAfter she visited three different stores in one day, Elyssa Schmier, the vice president of government relations for advocacy group MomsRising, \"all of a sudden realized my formula was nowhere to be found. … It's almost a full-time job trying to find Similac.\"\n\nAfter experiencing the nationwide shortage firsthand, Schmier organized an Instagram Live discussion Friday with Brian Dittmeier, who is the senior director of public policy for the National WIC Association.\n\nManufacturers \"are tuned into this and it is our understanding that across the board, folks are ramping up production,\" Dittmeier said.\n\n\"Now, it's not like flipping a switch,\" he said. \"We will probably continue to see shortages in the next couple of weeks. But our hope is that as production ramps up, that later this spring it should be easier for families across the country.\"\n\nWhat's everyone talking about? Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day\n\nFormula out-of-stock rates increasing\n\nDatasembly's analysis found that during the first seven months of 2021 baby formula supplies were \"relatively stable\" with out-of-stock supplies between 2-8%. But in subsequent months, it has continued to worsen, Reich said, as out-of-stock rates rose into double digits and reached 23% at the end of January.\n\nThe out-of-stock situation started to affect baby formula in July 2021, varying between 2-8% and has continued to worsen into 2022.\n\nAmong the states hit worst with baby formula supply shortages, according to Datasembly: Minnesota had the highest out-of-stock percentage for the week of March 13th at 54%, followed by Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Texas, all at 40% or higher.\n\nCities with the highest out-of-stock rates: San Antonio (56%), Minneapolis (55%), and Des Moines (50%), for the week of March 13. Houston, New Orleans, and Oahu were above 45%.\n\nWalmart truck driver pay:Walmart starting pay range for new truck drivers is between $95,000 and $110,000 after wage increase\n\nEaster eggs price hike?:Bird flu, inflation cause egg prices to rise ahead of Easter and Passover holidays\n\nContributing: Kelly Tyko, USA TODAY\n\nFollow Mike Snider on Twitter: @mikesnider.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/04/09"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/16/politics/baby-formula-biden-administration-steps/index.html", "title": "FDA announces it will make it easier to import some baby formulas ...", "text": "(CNN) The US Food and Drug Administration said Monday that it is making it easier to import certain infant formulas as it works to address a nationwide shortage .\n\nThe US ordinarily produces 98% of the infant formula it uses, with imported formula primarily coming from Mexico, Ireland and the Netherlands, the agency said in a statement. But because of the shortage, the FDA is outlining a process by which it \"would not object to the importation of certain infant formula products intended for a foreign market,\" as well as the US distribution of products that were made domestically for export to other countries.\n\n\"Companies seeking to take advantage of these flexibilities should submit information for the FDA to quickly evaluate whether the product can be used safely and whether it provides adequate nutrition,\" the agency said. \"For example, labeling, information on nutritional adequacy and safety testing, and information about facility inspection history.\"\n\nThe administration will prioritize applications \"that stand a good chance of being successful, that indicate sort of clear quality and safety and nutritional adequacy and all of that, and that have potential to move significant product into the United States quickly,\" a White House official told CNN, including imports from countries like Ireland, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the Netherlands, which feature safety inspection systems similar to those in the US.\n\nThe FDA said it is already in discussions with some manufacturers and suppliers regarding additional supply, but officials warn that even importing formula from abroad won't offer immediate relief.\n\n\"With these flexibilities in place, we anticipate that those products that can quickly meet safety and nutrition standards could hit U.S. stores in a matter of weeks,\" FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said in a statement.\n\nSusan Mayne, director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said on a media call Monday that \"it depends in part on what kind of information we get in from others, but I think we're looking at weeks in terms of getting the imported product into the market.\"\n\nThe news comes as the White House is working with key manufacturers to help provide logistics support during the baby formula shortage, an official said in a statement on Monday.\n\n\"The White House is having ongoing conversations with the four major infant formula manufacturers -- Reckitt, Abbott, Nestle/Gerber, and Perrigo -- to work with them to identify transportation, logistical, and supplier hurdles to increasing production of formula at their US- and FDA-approved facilities, to expand the amount and speed of FDA-approved formula being shipped into the country, and ensure that formula is quickly moving to retailers from factories,\" the White House official said.\n\nCNN reported earlier Monday that the Biden administration is confronting a barrage of questions and criticism for the national baby formula shortage that has anxious and angry parents hopping from store to store in search of baby food. The administration offered a new website, HHS.gov/formula , to provide resources to families in need, but when a CNN reporter tested out some of those options, the exercise resulted in apologetic customer service representatives, one hold time that lasted well over an hour and serious challenges in finding baby formula through some of the main suggestions listed on the new Health and Human Services website.\n\nThe White House is also in \"ongoing communication\" with Target, Amazon, Walmart and other major retailers, the official said, \"to identify parts of the country that may be at risk of critically low supply of infant formula, and have offered to work with manufacturers and retailers to bring more formula to those parts of the country, including with US government transportation and logistics support.\"\n\nPresident Joe Biden held virtual meetings Thursday with the leadership of Target and Walmart, as well as formula manufacturers Reckitt and Gerber, respectively. Officials have since been in \"close communication to follow up on those conversations,\" per the official.\n\nThere are also efforts to shore up the supply chain, with outreach to formula manufacturers' suppliers.\n\n\"We are also contacting suppliers to infant formula manufacturers to inform them that their materials are critical for boosting U.S. infant formula production and they should prioritize their production and delivery,\" the official noted.\n\nDuring an appearance on CNN's \"New Day\" on Monday, Califf said the administration is \"doing everything we can\" to resolve the shortage.\n\nCaliff pointed to efforts to work with manufacturers to increase production, to work on the supply chain and to work closely with Abbott to get its shuttered plant open as soon as possible.\n\nAfter Abbott restarts the site, it will take six to eight weeks for the products to reach store shelves, the company said Monday.\n\nPressed on how much of an effect the move to make it easier to import some formulas will have, Califf said the situation more broadly will \"gradually improve\" over a \"few weeks.\"\n\nThis Thursday, Califf testifies before the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee on the FDA's 2023 budget request and on the oversight of infant formula.\n\nThe baby formula shortage has been exacerbated by the shutdown of the country's largest formula plant, the Abbott Nutrition facility in Sturgis, Michigan.\n\nProduction halted at the facility in February after reports that four infants who consumed formula manufactured at the plant had fallen ill with rare and serious infections caused by Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria. Two of the babies died. A whistleblower also detailed allegations to the FDA that Abbott was hiding safety issues months before the infant formula was recalled in February.\n\nIn the end, however, testing by the FDA and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the genetic sequences of the Cronobacter samples from the plant did not match any of the bacteria isolated from the sick children or the formula inside their homes. Genetic samples from the sick babies also did not match each other, suggesting there was no link between their cases, Abbott said in a news release.\n\nAdditionally, Abbott said no baby formula distributed to consumers tested positive for Cronobacter or Salmonella.\n\nPressed on how soon supply will be back to normal, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra declined to give specifics, saying on CNN Monday that \"Abbott is the one that can tell you the timeline.\"\n\nBecerra said the federal government is working with the company to make sure it's addressing the safety concerns raised to them and that \"it should be done in a matter of weeks.\"\n\n\"We don't run their plants. Only they can address the safety concerns that were identified through our inspections. They have been working on this a while. We have been advising them of what they need to do,\" Becerra told CNN's Kate Bolduan on \"At This Hour.\"\n\n\"We'll do everything we can, we'll pull all the levers we can to help them move quickly as possible, but they control their plant. They own and operate it. They're the ones that have to do the fix.\"\n\nAbbott said last week that it could restart production at its Michigan facility, pending FDA approval, within two weeks, but it could be a few more weeks until the formula is made available on shelves.\n\nOn CNN, Becerra also defended the administration's response to the Abbott recall and complaint, saying, \"We have been moving as quickly as we can.\"\n\n\"FDA moves with deliberate speed to make sure that if you're going to do something as drastic as urge a manufacturer to pull a product off the shelves, that there's good evidence for it. That's why it takes a little time,\" he said.\n\nThis story has been updated with additional reporting.", "authors": ["Betsy Klein", "Katherine Dillinger", "Veronica Stracqualursi"], "publish_date": "2022/05/16"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/28/health/baby-formula-whistleblower/index.html", "title": "Whistleblower alerted FDA to alleged safety lapses at baby formula ...", "text": "(CNN) A former employee of Abbott Nutrition documented his concerns that the company was hiding safety problems at its Sturgis, Mich., production facility and sent a detailed complaint to the US Food and Drug Administration months before infant formula was removed from grocery store shelves.\n\nThe complaint was released Thursday by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Connecticut, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee. The congresswoman said she had received the complaint this week and called its allegations \"extremely disturbing.\"\n\nAbbott recalled three popular brands of powdered infant formula in February after reports that four infants drinking formula manufactured at the facility had fallen ill with rare and serious infections caused by Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria. Two of the babies died. Production at the facility was halted and remains paused.\n\nIn an April 15 statement posted to the company's website, Abbott said it was working closely with the FDA to restart operations at the plant.\n\nThe former employee, who worked at Abbott Laboratories' Sturgis site, stated that he saw records falsified \"on multiple occasions,\" and in most situations, information was not disclosed when it should have been.\n\nFor instance, according to the complaint, the employee reported observing events that were understated or inaccurately described \"to limit or avoid oversight\" and then \"failing to maintain accurate maintenance records.\"\n\nAfter several samples of a batch of infant formula were found to contain microorganisms, or \"micros,\" the whistleblower claims that the plant performed a time code removal, in which formula produced around the same time as the contaminated samples was discarded, but formula produced outside of those time codes was released to be sold without additional testing to make sure it was safe for consumption.\n\nIn 2020, the complaint says, product wasn't recalled from the market even after management became aware of a problem with the integrity of the packaging, an issue that the whistleblower said should have caused the manufacturer to take the product off shelves and conduct more testing.\n\n\"Abbott takes employee concerns very seriously and we foster a culture of compliance to produce the best and highest-quality formula,\" the company said in a statement Thursday. \"We empower our employees to identify and report any issues that could compromise our product safety or quality, which comes before any other considerations.\n\n\"With regard to the document released by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) this former employee was dismissed due to serious violations of Abbott's food safety policies. After dismissal, the former employee, through their attorney, has made evolving, new and escalating allegations to multiple authorities. Abbott is reviewing this new document and will thoroughly investigate any new allegations.\"\n\nThe complaint says the employee was fired for raising safety concerns.\n\n\"Others also raised concerns, some with management but more often among colleagues at the Sturgis site. Given the overriding fear of retaliation, few were as outspoken as the Complainant,\" according to the complaint. \"Ultimately despite an admirable employment record at Abbott and elsewhere, Complainant was terminated based upon his repeated elevation of compliance concerns.\"\n\nThe document says the man's termination is being investigated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.\n\nThe complaint also says that managers may have been \"sanitizing\" files before they reached FDA inspectors. \"Active efforts were undertaken and even celebrated during and after the 2019 FDA audit to keep the auditors from learning of certain events believed to be associated with the discovery of micros in infant formula at the Sturgis site,\" the document says. It goes on to claim that the Sturgis site has continued to permit lax practices around cleaning.\n\n\"I am deeply concerned about the practices at this Abbott facility and their apparent failure to implement and enforce internal controls at this facility,\" DeLauro said in a statement read into the record of an Appropriations Committee hearing. \"We need to know exactly who in the company was aware of this failure and the alleged attempts to hide this information from the FDA.\n\n\"I am equally concerned that the FDA reacted far too slowly to this report,\" DeLauro said, noting that the agency had received the whistleblower's statement in October but did not interview the man until December and did not do an in-person inspection of the Sturgis facility until January.\n\nDeLauro has asked the inspector general of the US Department of Health and Human Services to scrutinize the FDA's response.\n\nThe FDA responded to questions from CNN about the pace of its response with a statement:\n\n\"We know there have been questions about the timeline related to the Abbott Nutrition infant formula recall. However, this remains an open investigation with many moving parts. Our top priority is ensuring that any recalled product produced at the Sturgis, Mich. facility has been removed from the market. We are continuing to investigate and will continue to update our consumer alert should additional consumer safety information become available.\n\n\"Once the immediate risk to the public has been addressed, we will conduct a review and, as outlined in our recently released Foodborne Outbreak Response Improvement Plan, we will build in performance measures across the FDA's foods program to better evaluate the timeliness and effectiveness of outbreak and regulatory investigation activities,\" the statement says.\n\nCronobacter infections in infants are almost always caused by drinking contaminated powdered baby formula. Cronobacter can be introduced during manufacturing but also after containers of formula are opened at home.\n\nFormula types included in the recall include Similac Sensitive, Similac Pro-total Comfort, Similac Advance, and Similac PM 60/40, Alimentum and EleCare.\n\nAbbott Nutrition is also the exclusive supplier for many state WIC programs. WIC, or Special Supplemental Nutrition Programs for Women, Infants, and Children, supplies food to low-income mothers and their young children.\n\nInspection reports obtained by CNN through a US Freedom of Information Act request revealed numerous deficiencies at the facility. FDA testing found Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria on equipment in the plant.\n\nIn a preliminary assessment, the FDA determined that Abbott did not take steps to prevent products from becoming contaminated during manufacturing.\n\nGet CNN Health's weekly newsletter Sign up here to get The Results Are In with Dr. Sanjay Gupta every Tuesday from the CNN Health team.\n\nIn a statement posted on its website in March, Abbott said it is reviewing the FDA's observations. \"We're taking this seriously and are working closely with the FDA to implement corrective actions.\"\n\n\"It is important to note that no Cronobacter sakazakii or Salmonella was found in any of our testing of products distributed to consumers. Additionally, the unique genetic makeup of the Cronobacter sakazakii microbes found in non-product contact areas at the Sturgis facility did not match the Cronobacter sakazakii microbes from the reported cases,\" the statement says.\n\nAbbott added in Thursday's statement, \"A thorough review of all available data indicates that the infant formula produced at our Sturgis facility is not likely the source of infection in the reported cases and that there was not an outbreak caused by products from the facility.\"", "authors": ["Brenda Goodman", "Jacqueline Howard"], "publish_date": "2022/04/28"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/06/04/baby-formula-abbott-restarts-plant/7513435001/", "title": "Baby formula: Abbott restarts plant linked to contamination", "text": "Matthew Perrone\n\nAssociated Press\n\nWASHINGTON — Abbott Nutrition has restarted production at the Michigan baby formula factory that has been closed for months due to contamination, the company said Saturday, taking a step toward easing a nationwide supply shortage expected to persist into the summer.\n\nThe February shutdown of the largest formula factory in the country led to the supply problems that have forced some parents to seek formula from food banks, friends and doctor's offices.\n\nAbbott said it initially will prioritize production of its EleCare specialty formulas for infants with severe food allergies and digestive problems who have few other options for nutrition. The company said it will take about three weeks before new formula from the plant begins showing up on store shelves.\n\n\"We will ramp production as quickly as we can while meeting all requirements,\" Abbott said in a statement.\n\nThe plant's reopening is one of several federal actions expected to improve supplies in the weeks ahead. President Joe Biden's administration has eased import rules for foreign manufacturers, airlifted formula from Europe and invoked federal emergency rules to prioritize U.S. production.\n\nAbbott closed the Sturgis, Mich., factory in February after the Food and Drug Administration began investigating four bacterial infections among infants who consumed powdered formula from the plant. Two of the babies died. The company continues to state that its products have not been directly linked to the infections, which involved different bacterial strains.\n\nFDA inspectors eventually uncovered a host of violations at the plant, including bacterial contamination, a leaky roof and lax safety protocols. The FDA has faced intense scrutiny for taking months to close the plant and then negotiate its reopening. Agency leaders recently told Congress they had to enter a legally binding agreement with Abbott to assure all the problems were fixed.\n\nAbbott's February recall of several leading brands, including Similac, squeezed supplies that had already been strained by supply chain disruptions and stockpiling during COVID-19 shutdowns.\n\nThe shortage has been most dire for children with allergies, digestive problems and metabolic disorders who rely on specialty formulas. The Abbott factory is the only source of many of those products, providing nutrition to about 5,000 U.S. babies, according to federal officials.\n\nAbbott is one of just four companies that produce about 90% of U.S. formula. The company's recalls and shutdown triggered a cascade of effects: Retailers have limited customer purchasing to conserve supplies and parents have been told to switch brands to whatever formula is in stock.\n\nFDA Commissioner Robert Califf recently told lawmakers it could be about two months before formula supplies return to normal levels. The agency has waived many of its regulatory requirements to accept more formula from the United Kingdom, Australia and other nations.\n\nU.S. manufacturers, including Reckitt and Gerber, have also stepped up production, running plants 24/7 and sourcing more formula from alternate facilities.\n\nMore:\n\nBiden says he wasn't alerted to baby formula shortage until April. Companies knew 'from the beginning.'\n\nWhy can't some infants breastfeed during the formula shortage? What health experts want you to know\n\nBiden invokes Defense Production Act to boost baby formula production", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/04"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_2", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:36", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/08/golf/minjee-lee-us-womens-open-payout-spc-spt-intl/index.html", "title": "US Women's Open champion Minjee Lee reflects on a 'big step' for ...", "text": "(CNN) Records tumbled in Minjee Lee's wake at the US Women's Open on Sunday.\n\nThe Australian claimed the highest payout in women's golf history in Southern Pines, North Carolina, cruising to her second major triumph with a record-breaking performance worthy of the $1.8 million prize.\n\nLee headed into the last day riding the tide of an unprecedented first three rounds, shooting 67, 66, 67 to break Juli Inkster's 23-year-old record across 54 holes with a 13-under par 200.\n\nThe scintillating start meant that even a level-par 71 on the final round didn't stop the 26-year-old from breaking the 72-hole championship scoring record, pipping Inkster, In Gee Chun and Annika Sorenstam by one stroke with her 13-under 271 finish.\n\nLeading by six shots at the 12th hole and finishing four strokes ahead of American Mina Harigae, her victory had looked to be a procession even before the Australian took to the final tee -- but not to Lee.\n\n\"I was nervous as hell,\" Lee admitted to CNN's World Sport. \"But it was pretty cool.\n\n\"Walking down that 18th hole ... looking at all the crowd, looking at the finish line -- it was just a really special moment.\"\n\nLee cruised to victory with a dominant performance in Southern Pines.\n\n'It's a great thing for the women's game'\n\nIn lifting the Harton S. Semple trophy, Lee became the first Australian to do so since Karrie Webb in 2001, and was rewarded for her efforts with a champagne shower courtesy of compatriot Hannah Green.\n\nThe other reward was the unprecedented $1.8 million prize pot. That sum alone eclipses Lee's winnings for her most profitable ever season in 2018, where 10 top five finishes over 27 LPGA events saw her claim over $1.5 million, based on figures from the LPGA website.\n\nSecond-placed Harigae earned the largest runner-up sum in women's golf history, taking home $1.08 million of the record $10 million overall prize purse.\n\nLee plays a shot on the 17th hole.\n\nThough prize purses for women in the game still trail those of the men -- Jon Rahm earned $2.25 million from a total $12.5 million purse for his US Open triumph in June 2021 -- Lee sees progress being made.\n\n\"We're aiming for higher and higher each time,\" Lee said. \"For the USGA and the US Open to step up and start that, it's a big step in the right direction.\n\n\"It's a great thing for the women's game and the LPGA.\"\n\nQuestions of money have dominated the golfing world this week with the lucrative inaugural LIV Golf Tournament set to tee off at the Centurion Club near London on Thursday.\n\nThe venture, backed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, pledges to award $250 million in total prize money across eight tournaments. Former World No. 1 Dustin Johnson announced he was resigning from the PGA Tour to compete in the event.\n\nWhile Lee admitted she hadn't been following the story closely, she understood the controversy the new event had attracted.\n\n\"I don't really know too much about that, obviously it's been a little bit controversial,\" Lee said.\n\n\"I guess it's just perspective on where you are in your life right now,\" she added.\n\nRole model\n\nTriumph in Southern Pines marked the second major of the Australian's career, adding to her triumph at the Evian Championship last year, and her eighth win on the LPGA Tour.\n\nBut despite the accolades, Lee is targeting a legacy beyond prize money and trophies -- inspiring the next generation of young golfers.\n\n\"Hopefully they can watch me on TV and I can be a great role model for all the girls and boys all around the world to follow your dreams,\" Lee said. \"You can do it. Anybody can do it.\n\n\"As long as you stick to your plan and stick to what you love then I think you're always going to be doing the right thing.\"\n\nHer rise to become the No. 3 golfer in the world has been aided by the encouragement of her family, none more so than younger brother Min Woo Lee, a golf pro himself on the PGA Tour.\n\nMin Woo Lee smiles with his sister Minjee Lee during the par three contest prior to the Masters in April.\n\n\"This one hits hard. Tears in my eyes. So so proud,\" he tweeted following his sister's triumph, in just another example of the \"great support\" Lee's family have given her since she burst onto the scene with victory at the U.S Girls' Junior in 2012.\n\n\"They've been with me every step of the way and I've only always got encouragement from them,\" she said.\n\n\"If I wanted to practice, I could go practice. If I didn't then I didn't have to. They've just always been a great support and still are and it's just been a really great journey so far.\"", "authors": ["Jack Bantock", "Coy Wire"], "publish_date": "2022/06/08"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/05/golf/minjee-lee-us-womens-open/index.html", "title": "Minjee Lee wins US Women's Open - CNN", "text": "(CNN) Minjee Lee has won the US Women's Open, finishing four strokes ahead of American golfer Mina Harigae.\n\nLee, who is from Australia, took a three-shot lead into the final round over Harigae, having broken a 23-year-old record with her 54-hole score of 200 after shooting a 67 on Saturday.\n\nThe tournament took place at Pine Needles Golf Club in Southern Pines, North Carolina -- the fourth time the venue has hosted the event.\n\nThe 26-year-old got her final round off to an ideal start with a comfortable birdie on the first hole, followed by another on the second as she drained a 30-foot putt.\n\nLee wobbled slightly on holes five and seven as she made bogeys, but recovered her composure to follow those errors with four pars and a birdie.\n\nRead More", "authors": ["Matthew Foster"], "publish_date": "2022/06/05"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/lpga/2022/04/28/annika-sorenstam-compete-2022-us-women-open-pine-needles/9574296002/", "title": "Why Annika Sorenstam is returning to U.S. Women's Open at Pine ...", "text": "SOUTHERN PINES – As a Hall of Famer and 10-time major champion, Annika Sorenstam has nothing left to prove on the golf course.\n\nAn eight-time LPGA Player of the Year and the only woman to shoot 59, Sorenstam won 72 LPGA events and competed in a men’s PGA tournament during her 16-year career.\n\nShe thought she was done with competitive golf in 2008. Then, after a 13-year break, she returned and won the 2021 U.S. Senior Women’s Open.\n\nThat victory opened up an opportunity to compete in the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open at Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club, the site of her dominant win in 1996.\n\nIn just over a month, the 51-year-old Sorenstam will return to Southern Pines for her first U.S. Women’s Open appearance since she retired nearly 14 years ago.\n\nDuring a conversation with reporters Tuesday at media day ahead of the championship, scheduled for June 2-5, Sorenstam highlighted several reasons for her return.\n\n“Obviously, honored to get an invite. That is a nice gesture and I wanted to appreciate that,” Sorenstam said.\n\n“Peggy (Kirk Bell) was next, coming here. And then, my kids wanted me to play. They’re like, ‘C’mon, Mommy.’ Also, I’m working with these young girls and many of them — these young ladies — have played in the Annika Invitational the last few years.\n\n“To have them out there to continue to support and inspire, you’ve got to be in the mix to talk about what it’s like, so it keeps me a little more relevant when I mentor some of these girls. Now I can do that a bit more with ease.”\n\nFavorite foursome\n\nDuring her time away from professional golf, Sorenstam has formed a favorite foursome that includes her husband and caddie, Mike McGee, and their two children, 11-year-old Will and 12-year-old Ava.\n\n“This isn’t necessarily about me trying to do a comeback, it was more about the family,” she said.\n\nPrior to her eight-stroke win at the Senior Open last August, Sorenstam’s kids had only seen YouTube clips of her at the peak of her powers on the golf course. In June, they’ll get to see their mother compete against the best of the best.\n\n“It’s pretty neat, especially our son who is very into sports. He knows every statistic there is. For him to just see it and live it is a big deal. He’s really been my practicing partner. We’re out there together hitting balls. I’m a righty, he’s a lefty, so I’ll toss a bucket in the middle and we can hit,” Sorenstam said.\n\n“I want to inspire him, too. I want him to know you don’t wake up and there’s a trophy at the door. You have to put in the work. I think they see that. … I’m hoping that this will feed him and he can live his dream and do whatever he wants.\n\n\"The same thing with our daughter. It’s like when you have a passion you gotta do it, but you gotta put in the time. That’s hopefully the message I’m sending to, not only my kids but, hopefully, people in general who have some kind of hobby and want to pursue it. It’s never too late to continue.”\n\nThe pull of Pine Needles\n\nWould Sorenstam have played in the U.S. Women’s Open this year if it had been at any other site?\n\n“No, I would not have,” she said. “I’m pretty sure about that.”\n\nA quarter-century after a six-stroke victory at Pine Needles, Sorenstam reflected on the place that allowed her the chance to form a lasting bond with the late Peggy Kirk Bell, who passed away in 2016 at the age of 95.\n\n“Peggy couldn’t pronounce my name, so she called me 'Heineken' for some reason,” Sorenstam said. “I had to explain to her that I wasn’t from Germany and I don’t drink beer. That was our internal joke the whole time I knew Peggy.”\n\nA World Golf Hall of Fame inductee and longtime Pine Needles owner, Bell continued to grow closer with Sorenstam every year.\n\nSorenstam, who felt she owed it to the Bell family and the USGA to compete in this year's championship, hasn’t forgotten some of those shared experiences.\n\n“Mrs. Bell would drive up in a cart and she would park next to me and watch me hit balls and have a smart comment, and then she would leave and come back and I would meet her for lunch and she took me into her office,” she recalled.\n\n“I didn’t know that much about her the first time I met her but she was showing me all these photos on the wall and she would fly around in a plane and I thought to myself, ‘She’s one tough cookie.' \"\n\nInspiring the next generation\n\nAfter leaving Pine Needles on Tuesday afternoon, Sorenstam made her way to Sunrise Theater for the premiere of “Becoming Annika,” a documentary that will debut May 10 on Golf Channel.\n\nAt the conclusion of the film, an all-female production that highlights Sorenstam’s career, she addressed a row of young girls in the crowd.\n\n“I think that dreams do come true, if you put your mind to it and you put your effort into it. My dad told me a long time ago that there are no shortcuts to success,” she said.\n\n“Golf turned out to be my vehicle, my story, and that’s why I give back to the ANNIKA Foundation. I want to inspire the next generation of young girls, just like yourself.”\n\nSorenstam’s ANNIKA Foundation, which she started in 2007 near the end of her career, focuses on supporting girls’ and women’s golf around the globe. A return to the major championship stage offers Sorenstam another opportunity to inspire that generation.\n\n“I’ll never forget Will looked at me and said, ‘Don’t worry, Mommy, Jessica and Nelly Korda’s ages together is what you are.’ That really didn’t make it any better, but obviously the honor of being invited here is very special,” she said.\n\n“Being a past champion here is very special and my relationship with Peggy and her family. The last 14 years has really been trying to inspire the next generation of girls. I figured if I tell them to get out of the box and try different things, and explore and live your dream, then I’ve got to do that too. You can’t just say and not do. So I think we just decided to let’s do this.”", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/04/28"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2022/05/30/golf-us-womens-open-record-purse-changing-lives/50303481/", "title": "US Women's Open golf: $10 million purse could change players' lives", "text": "Beth Ann Nichols\n\nGolfweek\n\nSOUTHERN PINES, N.C. — Stephanie Meadow finished third in her professional debut at the 2014 U.S. Women's Open on Pinehurst No. 2. She earned $285,102 for her efforts, a massive sum for a recent college graduate.\n\n\"I had a rough time in '16 and '17,\" said Meadow of the years immediately following her father Robert's death. \"That money carried me through that.\"\n\nThe U.S. Women's Open purse has long had a life-changing impact, not just for winners, but for many like Meadow, who cash the biggest checks of their careers. Some, like her, won't yet be tour members.\n\nThis week, that will likely happen more than ever with an historic $10 million purse on the table thanks in large part to the addition of ProMedica, the championship's first presenting sponsor.\n\nBrittany Lang echoes the thoughts of many of her peers when she says playing on the LPGA was never about the money. When she won this championship in 2016, she remembers walking in the parking lot with her mom and brother and asking, \"What do you win for this? I don't even know.\"\n\nIt was always about the dream.\n\n\"Now that I'm close to hanging it up,\" said Lang, \"and I have a daughter, and you start thinking about money and you play worse.\"\n\nLang made $810,000 when she won the Open at CordeValle.\n\nThe winner of this week's championship will earn $1.8 million. The player who finishes runner-up will earn $1,080,000. That's more than last year's winner, Yuka Saso, who earned $1 million.\n\nU.S. WOMEN’S OPEN: Thursday first-round tee times, TV/streaming info\n\nNEVER MISS A MOMENT: Sign up now for daily updates sent to your inbox\n\nGOLFWEEK: All the latest news and features from the links\n\n\"Honestly, the thought of a $10 million purse just absolutely blows my mind to be perfectly honest,\" said former major champ Karen Stupples. \"I don't even know how to think about money in those terms and how - what it means going into your bank account, what the potential is there in one big chunk, even for like a 30th place or a 40th place.\"\n\nEven those who miss the cut this week will receive $8,000, double last year.\n\nEarly on in her career, Matilda Castren had three seasons in which she lost money. She gave herself a five-year span to earn her LPGA card and make it.\n\n\"I remember looking at my bank account and there was $10 left,\" said Castren. \"OK, I just have to survive until next month, and then I know I'm getting a check. That's a really common thing. I think a lot of people don't realize it. People just think you're living your dream playing golf every week. It's really not as simple as that.\"\n\nCastren, 27, won seven times in college at Florida State and competed on the Epson Tour until earning her LPGA card for the 2020 season through Q-School. In 2021, she won LPGA Mediheal Championship to become the first player from Finland to win on tour. She earned $225,000 for her victory.\n\n\"It just felt so surreal,\" she said, \"just logging into my mobile app and seeing all the zeroes.\"\n\nA now-engaged Meadow would like to buy a house in the near future, but must weigh the risk of parting with a large chunk of money against the possibility that she might get injured or go through another rough patch where little money is coming in.\n\n\"I think the older you get,\" she said, \"the more you realize how lucky the (PGA Tour) guys are.\"\n\nHow big is $10 million? Consider that next week's purse at the ShopRite LPGA Classic is $1,750,000. There are 15 events on the LPGA schedule with purses that are less than $2 million.\n\n\"We don't start playing golf for money,\" said veteran Carolina Masson. \"That's not the incentive, that's not the reason. But when you come out here, especially as a young player, money is an issue because you need a lot of money to do what you do for a full season.\n\n\"Playing for this kind of money is huge; it gives so much opportunity.\"", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/30"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2022/01/07/us-womens-open-purse-nearly-doubles-usga/49622449/", "title": "U.S. Women's Open purse nearly doubles, USGA says", "text": "Beth Ann Nichols\n\nGolfweek\n\nThe U.S. Women's Open just set a new benchmark for women's golf.\n\nWith the addition of the championship's first presenting sponsor in ProMedica, the purse has been elevated to $10 million for 2022, nearly doubling last year's purse of $5.5 million. There are plans to increase the purse to $12 million over the next five years.\n\nThe winner of the 2022 U.S. Women's Open will receive $1.8 million. As USGA CEO Mike Whan points out, only three players on the LPGA earned more than that all season in 2021.\n\n\"The USGA prides itself on conducting championships that not only provide an incredible stage for the athletes, but also give younger players something to dream about,\" Whan said in a release. \"For more than 75 years, the U.S. Women's Open has been the one that every little girl, in every country around the world, has dreamed of winning.\n\n\"This partnership with ProMedica allows us to substantially grow the championship in every way, from its purpose, to its purse, to the places that host the event. While I'm incredibly proud of what we are announcing today, I know this is just the beginning, as together with ProMedica, we'll push to change the game and what it means to young women worldwide in order to reach new heights every year.\"\n\nThe standards in women's golf keep rising as big tournaments across the board invest more in the LPGA. Last summer, the AIG Women's British Open set a new record for women's golf with a $5.8 million prize fund. This year, when the event moves to Muirfield for the first time, players will compete for $6.8 million.\n\nThe winner of the CME Group Tour Championship in 2022 will earn the largest check in women's golf: $2 million.\n\nThe addition of a presenting sponsor enabled the USGA to take this next important step for America's biggest event. ProMedica, a mission-based, not-for-profit integrated health and well-being organization that serves communities in 28 states will use the platform of the U.S. Women's Open to generate charitable dollars for its ProMedica Impact Fund, which is now the official charity of the championship.\n\nThe excitement doesn't end with the purse, however, as where they're headed is just as impactful. With venues like Pebble Beach, Merion and Oakmont already announced as future sites, five more were added to an already impressive list:\n\nRiviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, California (2026)\n\nInverness Club in Toledo, Ohio (2027)\n\nPinehurst No. 2 in Village of Pinehurst, North Carolina (2029)\n\nInterlachen Country Club in Edina, Minnesota (2030)\n\nOakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (2031 and 2042)\n\nThe 2022 U.S. Women's Open returns to Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club June 2-5. In 2023, the championship will be contested for the first time at Pebble Beach Golf Links.\n\nThis will also be the first time the tournament will be staged at Riviera, where Ben Hogan won the first of his four U.S. Open Championships in 1948. Inverness has hosted eight USGA championships as well as the 2021 Solheim Cup and will also be hosting its first Women's Open along with Oakland Hills.\n\nThis will be the second U.S. Women's Open contested at Pinehurst No. 2. Michelle Wie won the first in 2014 when the men's and women's championships were first held back-to-back. That will happen again in 2029.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/01/07"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2022/06/05/us-womens-open-minjee-lee-victory/50333135/", "title": "U.S. Women's Open: Minjee Lee cruises to second major title", "text": "Beth Ann Nichols\n\nGolfweek\n\nSOUTHERN PINES, N.C. — After three days of some of the lowest scoring in U.S. Women’s Open history, a fight broke out at Pine Needles.\n\nChallenging hole locations, an uptick in wind and the biggest purse in women’s golf history finally brought things to a boil.\n\nOnly the battle wasn’t at the top, as no one could mount a charge to challenge the elegant and unflappable Minjee Lee, who entered the final round with a three-stroke lead and finished at 13 under, four ahead of American Mina Harigae to claim her second major title. The 26-year-old Lee became the first Australian to win the U.S. Women’s Open since Karrie Webb triumphed at Pine Needles 21 years ago.\n\n“It’s been my dream since I was a little girl,” said Lee. “It’s the one that I always wanted to win on; now I’ve done it, and just feels amazing.”\n\nWhen the Women’s Open was held here in 2001, World Golf Hall of Famer Peggy Kirk Bell, who won an LPGA major as an amateur and, along with her husband Warren “Bullet” Bell, built Pine Needles into what’s become a cathedral for women’s golf, invited Patty Berg, Louise Suggs and Kathy Whitworth to give a clinic.\n\nThe entire purse that week was $1.2 million, and Webb earned $212,500 for her efforts. Whitworth wrote in her memoir – The Gift of Golf – that it was money the legendary foursome couldn’t comprehend.\n\n“We were amazed at the lifestyle these girls have on tour today,” Bell wrote. “They have babysitters, free meals and courtesy cars!”\n\nSPORTS NEWSLETTER:Sign up now to get daily updates in your inbox\n\nWhat would Mrs. Bell have said then, of a $10 million purse and Lee’s $1.8 million payday, the largest in women’s golf history to date? (The winner of CME Group Tour Championship in November will earn $2 million.) Coming into this week, no one on the LPGA had crossed the $1 million mark so far this season.\n\n“It’s such a large sum,” said Lee, “and I’m really honored to be the first winner I guess of this sum. We’re only going to get better and better.”\n\nThe only real drama of the day centered on second place, as this marked the first time in women’s golf history that two women would earn seven-figure checks. As the back nine unfolded on Sunday over the revamped Donald Ross design, three players—Lydia Ko, Hyejin Choi and Harigae—battled over a $1,080,000 paycheck.\n\nHarigae, who only two years ago felt the walls closing in as she fought to keep her tour card and pay the bills, delivered a clutch birdie on the par-5 15th hole to finish solo second. Her previous biggest payday on tour was $268,657.\n\n“I’m not going to lie, my stomach hurt the last couple holes coming down,” said Harigae. “I was really stressed out, but I was really just focusing on one shot at a time, making solid contact, and just hitting good putts.”\n\nConsider that while the LPGA took a hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic, Harigae won $2,300 for winning a mini-tour event on the Cactus Tour by 16 shots with a closing 61.\n\nChoi was solo third at 7 under. World No. 1 Jin Young Ko shot a 71 on Sunday to claim solo fourth. Lydia Ko bogeyed her last two holes to shoot 72 and finish solo fifth.\n\n“I think this was the most challenging one this year,” said Jin Young, “and also at the same time I had the most amount of fun.”\n\nWorld No. 2 Nelly Korda, competing in her first event since early February after being sidelined with a blood clod that required surgery, finished with a 73 to tie for eighth.\n\n“In all, I’m pretty happy with how this week went,” said Korda. “Had no expectations. I actually had my best finish in the Women’s Open, so maybe I should just keep that going.”\n\nBorn in Perth, Australia, Lee was introduced to the game by her parents. Her mother, Clara, was a teaching professional near their home and her father, Soonam, was a fine player in his own right. Her younger brother Min Woo, 23, will compete in his first U.S. Open later this month at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts.\n\nA two-time winner on the DP World Tour, Min Woo tied for 14th in his Masters debut in April, where Minjee caddied for him in the Par 3 Contest.\n\nMinjee and Min Woo are the only brother-sister pair to win USGA titles, with Minjee winning the 2012 U.S. Girls’ Junior and Min Woo claiming the 2016 U.S. Junior Amateur.\n\nMinjee now has eight LPGA titles worldwide, including the 2021 Amundi Evian Championship, where she came from an LPGA record-tying seven strokes back to win in a playoff.\n\nLee joins Webb (7) and Jan Stephenson (3) as the only Aussie female golfers with multiple major titles.\n\nPine Needles is now the first venue to ever host four Women’s Opens, and the previous three winners, Annika Sorenstam, Cristie Kerr and Webb, were first-class world-beaters.\n\nLee, who is currently No. 4 in the world and has been as high as No. 2, is the only player on tour who has won multiple events this season and, if she maintains this pace, could become the first Australian to become No. 1 since the Rolex Rankings debuted in 2006.\n\nShe’s now tied with Rachel Hetherington as the the third-winningest Australian player, following Webb (41) and Stephenson (16).\n\n“I think this will be huge for all the little girls and even the boys and the children watching,” said Lee. “I know there’s been a really big boom in WA (Western Australia). The girls have been a lot more interested in playing, so hopefully they watch me on TV and I can be a good role model to them and they’ll start getting more involved.”", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/05"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/asu/2022/05/22/arizona-states-forsterling-hopes-win-title-final-college-event/9870136002/", "title": "Bound for the Women's U.S. Open, Alexandra Forsterling looks to ...", "text": "Following the conclusion of Arizona State's second round at the NCAA Championships, head coach Missy Farr-Kaye went to find Alexandra Forsterling.\n\nShe felt like the senior wasn't playing like \"her normal self\" and trusting her game after finishing four-over-72 and three-over-72 during the event's first two days.\n\nSo Farr-Kaye wanted to remind Forsterling that she is still the same player who qualified for the 2022 U.S. Women's Open and is a finalist for the ANNIKA Award, given to the top women's college golfer.\n\n\"I said, 'You're still the No. 1 player on this team and I just want you to relax and enjoy it and let all that great talent you have come out,'\" Farr-Kaye said.\n\nEven though she finished Sunday at six-over-72, Forsterling heeded her coach's advice by notching three birdies on the back nine during the third day of the NCAA Division I Women's Golf Championship.\n\nIt marked the continuation of her impressive 2022 season, which includes a win at the PING/ASU Invitational and an invite to the Augusta Women's National Amateur in Georgia.\n\nShe was also named the Pac-12 Women's Golf Scholar Athlete of the Year and earned a spot on the conference's first team.\n\nThe Berlin, Germany, native is preparing to take the next step of her career, with plans to play in the Arnold Palmer Cup and qualifying school for the LPGA Tour this summer. But before she heads to North Carolina for the U.S. Women's Open, Forsterling wants to win a national title, something that has evaded her so far during her time in Tempe.\n\n\"That's the one huge thing you're working for all year,\" Forsterling said. \"You want to get a ring on your finger.\"\n\nOnly time will tell whether Forsterling concludes her ASU tenure with a trophy, but her focus will soon shift to the Open, which runs from June 2-5. Forsterling was one of three golfers to clinch a spot in the event after shooting two-under-par over 36 holes during an April qualifier at Gainey Ranch Golf Club in Scottsdale.\n\nShe beat out more than 75 players, one of the more recent triumphs in a string of high-profile victories.\n\nThis season for ASU, Forsterling has seven top-10 finishes. Additionally, she flourished across the Atlantic this summer by winning the German Women's Amateur and earning runner-up in the European Ladies' Amateur.\n\n\"These tournaments really got my confidence back up,\" Forsterling said. \"I got more consistent, changed my putter. All those little things came together and then (I) started off my senior year really good and kept going.\"\n\nFarr-Kaye looks forward to Forsterling returning to that form, and believes she will. Her faith in the German native has been strong since the recruiting process, when Farr-Kaye took the word of an American coach in the country to look at her performances.\n\nEven though Forsterling \"was an exception\" because Farr-Kaye didn't watch her play live in high school, hearing about her amateur success was enough.\n\n\"A lot can be said when you make Federations teams in Europe,\" said the Sun Devils' head coach. \"You (have) got to be a good player.\"\n\nForsterling lived up to that when she arrived in the Grand Canyon State, gradually improving in 18 events across her first two seasons in Tempe. But just before the COVID-19 pandemic, her father passed away unexpectedly.\n\nFarr-Kaye supported Forsterling during this time, and remembers how last summer marked a turning point in her career.\n\n\"I said to her one day, 'Your dad wants you to have fun and play,'\" Farr-Kaye said. \"I said, 'You don't have to play for your dad, but just know that he would want you to be happy and it's okay to move to that space.' She came back, she had a great summer... and all of a sudden I'm like 'Oh my gosh, she has a chance at Augusta National.'\n\n\"Everything started to fall into place, so it's been really fun to watch.\"\n\nThat success is making an impact inside ASU's facility at Papago Golf Course, where a maroon-and-gold board lists goals for the program's golfers.\n\nTop-100 player on Golfstat. All American. Academic All American. Play in the Palmer Cup.\n\nForsterling, currently No. 6 in the Golfweek/Sagarin Women's Golf rankings, has achieved some of these marks throughout her career in Tempe. This has impacted fellow Sun Devils, including freshman Grace Summerhays, to push to qualify for events including the Augusta Women's National Amateur.\n\n\"Just being able to learn off her is great,\" Summerhays said. \"Honestly, just having her as my friend is pretty cool, too. I get to see how she plays on the course, how she reacts to things.\"\n\nSince this week marks Forsterling's final college event, Farr-Kaye is making sure to tell her to enjoy all the experiences from the course to the van rides and the team dinners, and not worry about the future.\n\nWhether that future includes a title remains to be seen, but Forsterling is ready to do whatever she can to make it happen in her last time donning maroon and gold.\n\n\"It would mean so much to me, especially for the team,\" Forsterling said. \"We're getting along so well and I think we would all really deserve it.\"\n\nASU women's golf struggles during third round, but advances to top-15\n\nRoughly 90 minutes after finishing its third round, ASU went to work.\n\nThe Sun Devils, who finished 14-over-par on Sunday, hit the driving range and putting green to practice as the leaderboard of the NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championship continued to change.\n\n“We’ll see how the day shakes out,” Farr-Kaye said. “They’re beating themselves up a lot right now and we’ll have a good afternoon. We’ll see where it all ends up.”\n\nIt ended up great for the Sun Devils, who made the 15-team cut to keep their hopes for a ninth national title alive.\n\nFreshman Calynne Rosholt and senior Alessandra Fanali both shot one-over-72, while programs including Texas, Virginia and TCU dropped multiple spots to help ASU solidify its place in the fourth round.\n\nFarr-Kaye belives that her squad, currently No. 12 in the standings, will grow from today’s performance, which included 17 bogeys to nine birdies. She also hopes their mindsets shift from focusing on the mistakes they made to their successes at Grayhawk Golf Club so far.\n\n“What I said to them was that, ‘Everybody has contributed in the last three days with some great things,’” ASU’s head coach said. “That’s what they need to focus on. Not what they’re not doing, not what they’re not missing, but what they’ve done and what hopefully we’ll have a chance to continue to do.”\n\nTomorrow comes with high stakes since the field is reduced to eight and it is the last day of individual play. Rosholt is the Sun Devils’ only player in the top 25, currently tied for 15th at +4.\n\n“They want to represent Arizona State well,” Farr-Kaye said. “They want to represent their families well (and) everybody out watching. It’s really easy to put a little extra pressure on yourself and so I think… we just need to play our regular game and not get too stressed out.”", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/22"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2019/04/16/wisconsin-to-host-2025-us-womens-open/39351379/", "title": "Wisconsin to host 2025 U.S. Women's Open", "text": "AP\n\nMILWAUKEE (AP) — The U.S. Golf Association announced Tuesday that Erin Hills in Wisconsin will host the 2025 U.S. Women's Open, as well as the 2022 U.S. Mid-Amateur.\n\nThe golf course northwest of Milwaukee hosted the U.S. Open in 2017. It will be the first Women's Open to be held at Erin Hills and the third the state has hosted.\n\nHall of Famer Se Ri Pak globalized the women's game with a playoff victory over amateur Jenny Chuasiriporn in 1998 at Blackwolf Run, north of Milwaukee. And, Na-Yeon Choi won her only major in a return to Blackwolf Run in 2012.\n\nThe Women's Open will be held May 29 through June 1, 2025. The Mid-Amateur championship featuring the top amateur golfers who are done playing collegiately will be held Sept. 10-15, 2022.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2019/04/16"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2022/06/05/lee-wins-us-womens-open-horschel-takes-memorial/50333523/", "title": "Lee wins U.S. Women's Open, Horschel takes Memorial", "text": "AP\n\nSOUTHERN PINES, N.C. (AP) — Minjee Lee won the U.S. Women’s Open by four strokes over Mina Harigae at Pine Needles on Sunday to earn $1.8 million, the largest payout in the history of women’s golf.\n\nLee closed with an even-par 71 to finish at 13-under 271 after the Australian flirted with the tournament record of 16 under set by Juli Inkster in 1999 at Old Waverly. Lee’s winnings came from a record $10 million purse.\n\nHarigae shot a 72 for her best finish in a major and a check of slightly more than $1 million.\n\nSouth Korea’s Hye-Jin Choi was one of only two players to break par Sunday, carding a 70 to finish third at 7 under. South Korea’s Jin Young Ko, the world’s No. 1-ranked player, was fourth at 6 under after a 71.\n\nThe 26-year-old Lee was never challenged on a course that played significantly tougher than the previous three days. She opened with rounds of 67, 66 and 67.\n\nLee became the sixth straight international player to win the U.S. Women’s Open and the first from Australia since mentor Karrie Webb in 2001. It was her second win at a major championship overall after winning the Evian Championship last July. Her previous best finish at the U.S. Open was a tie for 11th in 2017.\n\nLee, who entered the week ranked No. 4 in the world, has won eight LPGA Tour events and became the first repeat winner this year following her victory at the Founders Cup three weeks ago in New Jersey.\n\nPGA TOUR\n\nDUBLIN, Ohio (AP) — Billy Horschel ended any doubt about his victory at Muirfield Village with an eagle putt from one end of the green to the other on the 15th hole, sending him to a four-shot victory at the Memorial.\n\nHorschel was staked to a five-shot lead at the start of a sun-soaked final round and no one ever got closer than two shots. He closed with an even-par 72.\n\nHorschel finished at 13-under 275 and won $2.16 million, the largest paycheck of his career. As an elevated event, the win comes with a three-year exemption.\n\nAaron Wise shot a 71 to finish second. The consolation prize was a day off on Monday. Wise moved from No. 88 to No. 44 in the world ranking and is now exempt from 36-hole U.S. Open qualifying.\n\nPGA TOUR CHAMPIONS\n\nDES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Jerry Kelly birdied the first hole of a playoff with Kirk Triplett on Sunday to win the PGA Tour Champions’ Principal Charity Classic.\n\nKelly hit his approach to 4 feet on the par-4 18th to set up the winning putt. The 55-year-old from Wisconsin has nine victories on the 50-and-over tour after winning three times on the PGA Tour.\n\nKelly and Triplett each shot 5-under 67 to finish at 18-under 198 at Wakonda Club, two strokes ahead of Steven Alker (69) and Hall of Famer Bernhard Langer (68).\n\nThe 60-year-old Triplett won the last of his eight senior titles in 2019.\n\nEUROPEAN TOUR\n\nWINSEN, Germany (AP) — Kalle Samooja of Finland finished with back-to-back birdies and set the course record with an 8-under 64 to win the Porsche European Open for his first European tour title and a spot in the U.S. Open.\n\nThe 34-year-old Samooja finished at 6-under 28, two shots ahead of Wil Besseling (71).\n\nSamooja's win and Besseling's runner-up finish put them among the top 10 players not already eligible who earned U.S. Open spots based on a four-tournament money list.\n\nKORN FERRY TOUR\n\nRALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Davis Thompson won the REX Hospital Open on his 23rd birthday for his first Korn Ferrry Tour victory, closing with a 2-under 69 to beat Andrew Yun and Vincent Norrman by a stroke.\n\nThe No. 2-ranked player from the inaugural PGA Tour University, Thompson finished at 17-under 268. Yun and Norrman closed with 68s.\n\nOTHER TOURS\n\nScott Vincent of Zimbabwe closed with a 5-under 66 for a one-shot victory over Travis Smyth in the International Series-England on the Asian Tour. Vincent earned $360,000 from the $2 million purse, part of the $300 million infusion in the Asian Tour from Saudi-funded LIV Golf Investments. ... Kazuki Higa won for the second time this year on the Japan Golf Tour. He closed with a 4-under 67 for a one-shot victory over Tomoharu Otsuki in the BMW Japan Golf Tourr Championship Mori Building Cup. ... Nicolai Kristensen shot a 4-under 66 and beat Ugo Coussaud (68) in a playoff in the D+D Real Czech Challenge on the European Challenge Tour. ... Morgane Metraux of Switzerland won her first Ladies European Tour title when she made eagle on the first playoff hole to win the Ladies Italian Open over Meghan MacLaren and Italian amateur Alessandra Fanali. ... Rourke van der Spuy shot a 3-underr 69 for a three-stroke victory over Hennie Otto and Louis de Jager in the SunBet Challenge on the Sunshine Tour in South Africa. ... Olympic silver medalist Mone Inami closed with a 1-under 71 for a two-shot victory over Saiki Fujita in the Richard Mille Yonex Ladies on the Japan LPGA. ... Yu Jin Sung had a 2-under 70 and won the Lotte Open by four shots over Su Ji Kim on the Korean LPGA. ... Scott Stevens birdied the par-4 18th hole four straight times — the first in regulation and the last three in a playoff with Jake Knapp — to win the PGA Tour Canada-Mackenzie Tour’s season-opening Royal Beach Victoria Open in British Columbia. Stevens closed with a 3-under 67 to match Knapp (63) at 16-under 264. ... Chile’s Cristóbal Del Solar overcame a double bogey on the par-3 16th to beat Mitchell Meissner by a stroke in the PGA Tour Latinoamerica’s Volvo Golf Championship in Colombia. The former Florida State player closed with a 6-under 69 to finish at 16 under.\n\n___\n\nMore AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/05"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2021/08/08/kentucky-junior-jensen-castle-wins-us-womens-amateur/117967510/", "title": "Kentucky junior Jensen Castle wins US Women's Amateur", "text": "AP\n\nHARRISON, N.Y. (AP) — Kentucky junior Jensen Castle won the U.S. Women’s Amateur on Sunday, beating Arizona junior Hou Yu-chiang of Taiwan 2 and 1 in the 36-hole final at Westchester Country Club.\n\nCastle, from West Columbia, South Carolina, won after opening with a 7-over 79 on Monday in the first round of stroke play and surviving a 12-for-2 playoff late Tuesday to get into the 64-player field for match play.\n\n“Still hasn’t registered,” Castle said. “It feels like just another tournament, but then I step back and I’m like, this is a USGA event with so much history.”\n\nShe’s the third No. 63 seed to win a USGA title, following Clay Ogden in the 2005 U.S. Amateur Public Links and Steven Fox in the 2012 U.S. Amateur.\n\nAfter Hou won the 30th and 31st with birdies to pull within one, Castle took the par-4 33rd with a par, lost the par-3 34th to Hou’s birdie and finished off the match with a birdie on the par-4 35th.\n\nRanked 248th in the world amateur ranking, Castle wrapped up an automatic spot on the U.S. Curtis Cup team this month in Wales. She also earned spots in the Women’s British Open at Carnoustie in two weeks, and the 2022 ANA Inspiration, U.S. Women’s Open, Evian Championship and Augusta National Women’s Amateur.\n\n“I don’t even know where (Wales) is, but I’m so excited,\" Castle said. \"I’ve never been out of the country so that’s really exciting. I’m just excited to represent the United States. That’s always been a dream of mine.”\n\nCastle hadn't played any competitive golf since her U.S. Women’s Amateur qualifier in Dayton, Ohio, on July 8 because of a stress fracture in her ribs.\n\nHou hadn’t played a competitive event since the NCAA Championships in late May due to a partially torn labrum in her left hip.\n\n“This is golf, and I am really looking forward to what’s next for me,” said Hou, who has entered the first stage of LPGA Tour Qualifying School. “Congratulations to the champion. She played really well.”", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/08/08"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_3", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:36", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/06/us/california-bees-fish-court-ruling-scn-trnd/index.html", "title": "California bees can legally be fish and have the same protections, a ...", "text": "(CNN) A fishy ruling from California: A California court has ruled bees can legally be considered fish under specific circumstances.\n\nThe ruling, released May 31 , reversed an earlier judgment which found bumblebees could not be considered \"fish\" under the California Endangered Species Act.\n\n\"The issue presented here is whether the bumblebee, a terrestrial invertebrate, falls within the definition of fish, as that term is used in the definitions of endangered species in section 2062, threatened species in section 2067, and candidate species (i.e., species being considered for listing as endangered or threatened species) in section 2068 of the Act,\" wrote California's Third District Court of Appeal in its ruling.\n\nThe California Endangered Species Act was designed to protect \"native species or subspecies of a bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant.\"\n\nNotably, invertebrates are absent from the list of protected species.\n\nRead More", "authors": ["Zoe Sottile"], "publish_date": "2022/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/10/us/five-things-june-10-trnd/index.html", "title": "5 things to know for June 10: January 6, Covid-19, Ukraine ...", "text": "CNN —\n\nGet '5 Things' in your inbox If your day doesn’t start until you’re up to speed on the latest headlines, then let us introduce you to your new favorite morning fix. Sign up here for the ‘5 Things’ newsletter.\n\nAlthough President Joe Biden would surely rather be talking about gas prices going down, he’s now targeting drivers’ key concerns about buying electric vehicles so they can avoid high prices at the pump entirely. On Thursday, the Biden administration proposed a rule to standardize about 500,000 electric vehicle chargers across the US so they can work with any electric vehicle – similar to the way a gas pump works with any car or truck.\n\nHere’s what you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.\n\n(You can get “5 Things You Need to Know Today” delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.)\n\n1. January 6\n\nThe House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol held its first prime-time hearing Thursday, detailing the findings of the panel’s investigation and playing new disturbing video of the riot. The panel showed some never-before-seen material, including bird’s-eye view footage from security cameras that showed the enormous pro-Trump mob as it started swarming the Capitol grounds. The footage also showed how the crowd took its cues directly from Trump, with one rioter reading a Trump tweet over a megaphone for the other rioters to hear. In addition to other closed-door depositions of members of Trump’s team, the committee also revealed testimony from Trump White House officials who said the former President did not want the attack to stop, angrily resisted his own advisers who were urging him to call off the rioters, and thought his own vice president “deserved” to be hanged as the violent crowd chanted “Hang Mike Pence.”\n\n2. Coronavirus\n\nA team of scientists responsible for determining the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic released its first report Thursday, saying that all hypotheses remain on the table – including a possible laboratory incident. The 27-member advisory group convened by the World Health Organization said available data suggests the virus jumped from animals to humans, but there are still gaps in “key pieces of data.” The most closely genetically related viruses were found in bats in China and Laos, according to the report, but a “spill-over event to humans” has not been identified. The preliminary report also said that it is important to evaluate the possibility that Covid-19 was introduced into the human population through a laboratory incident because lab leaks have happened in the past. And since there is no new data available, the group said the lab-leak theory cannot be ruled out.\n\n3. Ukraine\n\nAs Ukraine tries to hold on to key frontline cities, Russia is struggling to provide basic public services to civilian populations in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, according to a British intelligence report published today. The report claims that access to drinking water, internet connectivity and phone services remain inconsistent, while the Ukrainian city of Kherson “likely faces a critical shortage of medicines” and Mariupol runs the risk of a cholera outbreak. Last month, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted that many occupied areas remained without electricity, water or sewage services. The report also comes a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin compared himself favorably to Peter the Great, a Russian monarch from the late 17th century, using the likening to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.\n\nVideo Ad Feedback 02:17 - Source: CNN 'We're staying': Why some in Sloviansk won't leave their homes\n\n4. Maryland shooting\n\nA 23-year-old man shot four coworkers – three fatally – at a manufacturing plant in western Maryland Thursday before fleeing the scene and exchanging gunfire with state police, authorities said. A trooper and the suspect were wounded and hospitalized, according to Lt. Col. Bill Dofflemyer of the Maryland State Police. Investigators have not yet established a motive for the shooting. The incident is the 254th mass shooting this year, as the country is on pace to match or surpass last year’s total, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Separately, a man was shot and killed by a police officer outside of an Alabama elementary school Thursday after an altercation with a school resource officer, Etowah County Sheriff Jonathon Horton said during a news conference. At least 34 students were inside Walnut Park Elementary School when the man tried to get inside, Gadsden City School Superintendent Tony Reddick told CNN.\n\n5. India\n\nIndia is facing a firestorm after some of the country’s ruling party officials made derogatory comments about Islam. The United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Oman, and Iraq are among at least 15 Muslim-majority nations to have condemned the remarks made by India’s ruling party spokeswoman Nupur Sharma, which were described as “Islamophobic,” with several countries summoning India’s ambassadors. The incident sparked protests in neighboring Pakistan and prompted calls from around the region to boycott Indian goods. Sharma, who is now suspended, later withdrew her remarks and said it was never her intention to “hurt anyone’s religious feelings.”\n\nBREAKFAST BROWSE\n\nMystery creature is caught on camera and authorities need help ID’ing it\n\nTexas officials are asking the public to help identify this mystery “wolfman” creature. What do you think it is?\n\nBritney Spears wedding\n\nAnd they lived happily ever after! The pop superstar and her partner Sam Asghari are embarking on an exciting new chapter.\n\nTwo people rescued after falling in a tank full of chocolate\n\nThankfully, the people were rescued. (Did you think of the scene from “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” too? I can’t be the only one…)\n\nPerseverance rover has made a friend on Mars\n\nThe rover has a new pet on the red planet! But it’s probably not the type of pet you’re thinking of.\n\n11-year-old gets plucked from audience and stuns judges on ‘America’s Got Talent’\n\nAnd just like that, a star is born.\n\nQUIZ TIME\n\nAccording to a recent California ruling, which insect can legally be considered a fish and have the same protections?\n\nA. Spider\n\nB. Ladybug\n\nC. Bumblebee\n\nD. Butterfly\n\nTake CNN’s weekly news quiz to see if you’re correct!\n\nTODAY’S NUMBER\n\n17\n\nThat’s how many professional golfers were suspended from playing in PGA Tour tournaments due to their participation in the controversial Saudi Golf League/LIV Golf series. PGA Tour golfers were previously warned that they were not authorized to participate in the Saudi-backed tour because it violated PGA regulations. Despite the warning – and Saudi Arabia’s record of human rights abuses – several famed golfers including past major winners Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Sergio Garcia still opted to participate, largely because Saudi Arabia’s breakaway tour has pledged to award $250 million in total prize money.\n\nTODAY’S QUOTE\n\n“It’s outrageous that oil and gas companies are able to take advantage and make four times the profits that they made when there wasn’t a war.”\n\n– White House official Bharat Ramamurti, criticizing Big Oil for banking huge profits in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which the Biden administration has blamed for soaring gas prices. He pointed out that the top five oil companies raked in $35 billion in profits during the first quarter alone as energy prices spiked during the onset of Russia’s war. Major oil companies are, in fact, ramping up supply, but just not quickly enough to drive down prices.\n\nTODAY’S WEATHER\n\nVideo Ad Feedback 02:39 - Source: CNN Risk for flooding in the Central Plains\n\nCheck your local forecast here>>>\n\nAND FINALLY\n\nHoney in space\n\nHoney in space\n\nAs this astronaut says, strange things happen when you remove gravity! (Click here to view)", "authors": ["Alexandra Meeks"], "publish_date": "2022/06/10"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/08/14/federal-officials-joshua-tree-threatened-endangered-species-act/2009509001/", "title": "Federal officials: No reason to list Joshua tree as 'threatened'", "text": "The Joshua tree does not require protection under the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service said in a decision announced Wednesday.\n\nConservationists had petitioned the service in 2015, seeking to have the iconic desert plant and namesake of Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California listed as a threatened species. On Tuesday, the petitioners, a group called Wild Earth Guardians, filed a lawsuit complaining that the service was long overdue to respond to their petition.\n\nFish and Wildlife, part of the Department of the Interior, said Wednesday that it had determined that the Joshua tree's habitat is primarily on federally managed land, and has seen \"no major contraction in populations\" in the last 40 years. Joshua trees are found not only in California but also in Nevada and Arizona.\n\nFederal wildlife officials on Wednesday also declined to protect eight other species across the U.S., citing commercial and scientific data. The determinations come two days after the Trump administration unveiled changes to how the Endangered Species Act will be implemented, including ending a ban on considering economic impacts and decreeing that climate change impacts should not be considered.\n\nSecretary of the Interior David Bernhardt has called the changes “improvements to regulations\" and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has praised the changes, saying they would ease the regulatory burden on the American public.\n\nAgency: Joshua trees have 'enough resiliency'\n\nThe decision from the Fish and Wildlife Service's Carlsbad office reviewed the primary stressors to Joshua trees, among them wildfire, invasive plants, effects of climate change, and habitat loss. However, because the two species of Joshua tree, Yucca brevifolia and Yucca jaegeriana, still occupy their historical ranges of roughly 12 million acres, there is “enough resiliency in the population despite threats acting on them,” the service said. The species native to Joshua Tree National Park, Yucca brevifolia, has a historic range of 6.4 million acres, the service said.\n\nTaylor Jones, the biologist and advocate who authored the petition, expressed frustration with Wednesday's decision.\n\n“It appears that this administration is ignoring the science because they don’t believe in climate change,” Jones said. “This is blatant disregard of the climate crisis.”\n\nJones' petition cited climate models indicating the Joshua tree could lose roughly 90% of its habitat in the next 80 years, should the most severe climate conditions bear out. The gradual warming and drying of Southern California, which could see average maximum temperatures in July rise by as many as five or six degrees, could reduce the Joshua tree population in California to one small refuge in the center of Joshua Tree National Park.\n\nIt is unclear whether the agency agrees with the projections cited by Jones, though the findings state that “future stochastic and catastrophic events would not lead to population- or species-level declines in the foreseeable future.” A more detailed examination of the climate change impacts is still to be released, and will include the agency's own 80-year projections.\n\n“This administration has a history of climate-change denial,\" Jones said. \"President Trump called climate change a hoax, and Bernhardt discounted climate change when opening up public lands to oil and gas development. Denial of protections to Joshua trees fits that pattern.”\n\nChanges to the Endangered Species Act\n\nThis week's changes to the Endangered Species Act for the first time allow authorities to compile and review economic impacts of protecting a particular species during the review process; end blanket protections for animals newly deemed threatened; and reduce the scope of assessments during the listing review process. Instead of blanket protections for threatened species, officials said they will require “species-specific regulations for protective status.”*\n\nLegal challenges are expected by California and other states, as well as environmental groups.\n\n“Even as we suffer an extinction crisis and a climate emergency, the Trump administration continues to serve only narrow corporate interests,” said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “By shooting down protections for these imperiled plants and animals, Trump officials are displaying contempt for America’s natural heritage.\"\n\nMore:Joshua trees, monarch butterflies among species that may be impacted by Endangered Species Act change\n\nMore:Riverside County report deals blow to Paradise Valley, a proposed 'new town' near Joshua Tree park\n\nWednesday's decision on the Joshua tree was not made public as a result of Wild Earth Guardian's court filing on Tuesday, according to a Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesperson, Jane Hendron. Wild Earth Guardians said in a statement Wednesday it plans to file another lawsuit appealing Tuesday's decision.\n\nSen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) responded to Tuesday's announcement by saying: \"The iconic Joshua tree defines the California desert, but it could be lost forever if the administration has its way.\" Feinstein also criticized the Trump administration's rule changes for the Endangered Species Act.\n\nBee, mussels, blackbird also rejected\n\nBesides the Joshua tree, the Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday it would decline to extend protections to another tree, freshwater mussels, reptiles and insects across the United States.\n\nPetitioners were seeking protections for species including:\n\nthe Arapahoe snowfly\n\nthe brook floater and smooth pimpleback (two types mussels),\n\ngolden orb spider\n\nthe seaside alder, a tree\n\nthe tricolored blackbird\n\nthe yellow-banded bumble bee.\n\nThe agency asked the public \"to submit to us at any time” any new, relevant information on the status of the species or their habitats.\n\nCommercial as well as scientific information was used in the decisions not to protect the species, the federal agency said. Critics say economic impacts should not be allowed to outweigh biological and other research. Home developers, farmers and others have long argued that economics should be weighed as well.\n\nThe brook floater, a North American mussel, has historically been found from Georgia to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, clustered in sand pockets behind boulders and stream banks. The medium-sized mussel has been wiped out of approximately half of its U.S. locations, making the Canadian population “an important global stronghold for the species,” according to Fisheries and Oceans Canada. U.S. wildlife officials said there are also resilient populations in North Carolina and Maine.\n\nMore:Imperiled by climate change, Joshua trees could be declared a threatened species\n\nMore:How Minerva Hamilton Hoyt saved Joshua Tree park for future generations\n\nCalifornia’s tricolored blackbirds have declined by nearly 90% since the 1930s because of the destruction of wetlands and grasslands, pesticide use that wipes out their insect prey base and loss of nest sites during agricultural operations, environmentalists say. Federal officials said the fact that the bird is protected by California as an endangered species is adequate.\n\nYellow-banded bumblebees, once common in the American Midwest and East Coast and in southern Canada, have declined due to pesticide use and large swaths of habitat lost to development, conservationists say. Federal officials said: \"In the species’ current condition, there is occupancy across the majority of the yellow-banded bumble bee’s historical range.\"\n\nThe seaside alder tree lives in riparian and marshy areas in the East, where it may be threatened by salt-water intrusion via sea-level rise due to climate change. A separate population in Oklahoma is threatened by cattle grazing. But the tree has adequate, diverse habitat and populations, and is equipped to adapt to future change, the wildlife service said.\n\nThe Siskiyou Mountains salamander lives in the Klamath-Siskiyou region of Oregon and California, primarily in old-growth forests. It is threatened by U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management plans to increase logging, according to environmental biologists. Federal officials said that environmental groups had not presented \"substantial\" information to support their contention that fires, logging, mining and other factors were imperiling the salamander's existence.\n\nThree creatures — the golden orb spider, smooth pimpleback mussel and Arapahoe snowfly — were determined to no longer be genetically distinct species. Curry, of the Center for Biological Diversity, said the government appeared to have properly relied on science that determined they are subgroups of larger species.\n\nTrump has protected 18 species to date\n\nThe Endangered Species Act, signed by President Nixon in 1973, covers more than 1,600 species in the United States and its territories. The Trump administration has now protected 18 species and declined protections for more than 60 species, said Curry. Eighteen is the lowest number of species protected by any president this far into a first term, she said.\n\nDuring the eight years of the Obama administration, 360 species were protected under the Endangered Species Act. Under President Bill Clinton's two terms, 523 species were protected.\n\nUnder President George H.W. Bush, who served one term, 232 species were protected. Under President George W. Bush, who served two terms, 62 species were protected.\n\nDuring Ronald Reagan's eight-year presidency, 254 species were protected.\n\n*Clarification: This story has been clarified to explain more clearly about the role economic impacts will play in the Endangered Species Act process and how protections will be extended to species listed as threatened.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2019/08/14"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/11/22/crab-shrimp-lobster-recognized-sentient-uk/8716768002/", "title": "Crabs, octopus and lobsters feel pain, study says. They will be ...", "text": "Lobsters, octopus and crabs will be recognized as sentient beings in the U.K. after new research suggested they have a central nervous system and can feel pain.\n\nThe U.K. government announced Friday that all decapod crustaceans and cephalopod mollusks will be added to the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill after a study from the London School of Economics and Political Science found evidence that the sea creatures are sentient, or can feel.\n\nDecapod crustaceans include shrimp, lobsters, crayfish and hermit crabs. Cephalopod mollusks include squid, octopus and cuttlefish.\n\n\"The UK has always led the way on animal welfare and our Action Plan for Animal Welfare goes even further by setting out our plans to bring in some of the strongest protections in the world for pets, livestock and wild animals,\" Animal Welfare Minister Lord Zac Goldsmith said in the announcement.\n\n'1 in a 100 million' chance:Rare 'cotton candy' color lobster caught off the coast of Maine\n\n'Crab lockdown':Millions of crabs shut down the streets on Australia's Christmas Island\n\nThe legislation will not affect fishing practices or restaurants that sell shellfish but will protect the animals in future decision-making. Once the bill becomes law, an Animal Sentience Committee will be created and report on how well the government is accounting for sentient animals it its decisions.\n\n\"The Animal Welfare Sentience Bill provides a crucial assurance that animal well-being is rightly considered when developing new laws,\" Goldsmith said.\n\n\"The science is now clear that decapods and cephalopods can feel pain and therefore it is only right they are covered by this vital piece of legislation.\"\n\nWant daily news from USA TODAY on your smart speaker? Here's how to get set up.\n\nFollow reporter Asha Gilbert @Coastalasha. Email: agilbert@usatoday.com.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/11/22"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/12/15/monarch-butterflies-endangered-legal-protection/3905631001/", "title": "Monarch butterflies won't get legal protection, despite meeting ...", "text": "The federal government has decided against listing the monarch butterfly as either threatened or endangered.\n\nThe Trump administration has rolled back protections for endangered and threatened species in its push for deregulation.\n\n“We may be witnessing the collapse of the of the monarch population in the West.\"\n\nThe federal government has decided against listing the monarch butterfly as either threatened or endangered – at least for now.\n\nInstead, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will next consider the black-and-orange butterfly, once a common sight in backyard gardens, meadows and other landscapes, as a “candidate” for designation as either threatened or endangered in 2024.\n\nThe delay is because there are so many other higher-priority species across the nation – 161 to be exact – that are ahead of the monarch, the Fish and Wildlife Service said.\n\n“We conducted an intensive, thorough review using a rigorous, transparent science-based process and found that the monarch meets listing criteria under the Endangered Species Act,\" said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director Aurelia Skipwith, in a statement. \"However, before we can propose listing, we must focus resources on our higher-priority listing actions.\n\n“While this work goes on, we are committed to our ongoing efforts with partners to conserve the monarch and its habitat at the local, regional and national levels,\" Skipwith said. \"Our conservation goal is to improve monarch populations, and we encourage everyone to join the effort.”\n\nProtection under the Endangered Species Act would have required the government to develop and fund a comprehensive, nationwide recovery plan, according to National Geographic.\n\n“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agrees that monarchs are threatened with extinction,” Sarina Jepsen, director of endangered species at the Xerces Society conservation group, said Tuesday. “However, this decision does not yet provide the protection that monarchs, and especially the western population, so desperately need to recover.”\n\nThe Trump administration has rolled back protections for endangered and threatened species in its push for deregulation, even as the United Nations says 1 million species – 1 of every 8 on Earth – face extinction because of climate change, development and other human causes.\n\nMonarchs are known for their phenomenal spring and fall migrations, traveling across the continent to and from wintering sites. In eastern North America, monarchs travel north in the spring, from Mexico to Canada, over two to three successive generations, breeding along the way. Western monarchs continue to occupy and breed in warmer climates throughout the summer.\n\nMore:Monarch butterfly population at critically low levels in California\n\nScientists estimate the monarch population in the eastern U.S. has fallen about 80% since the mid-1990s, while the drop-off in the western U.S. has been even steeper.\n\nFor decades, monarchs in the West have been in decline because of loss of habitat, including destruction of their California overwintering sites and loss of both milkweed for caterpillars and flowering resources to fuel migration, the Xerces Society said. The insects are also impacted by climate change and pesticide use.\n\n“We may be witnessing the collapse of the of the monarch population in the West,” said Jepsen of the Xerces Society.\n\nTierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said Tuesday that “47 species have gone extinct waiting for their protection to be finalized. This decision continues the delay in implementing a national recovery plan which monarchs desperately need.\n\n\"Monarchs are beautiful, they play important roles in nature and culture, and their migrations are jaw-dropping. We owe them and future generations an all-in commitment to their recovery.”\n\nContributing: The Associated Press", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2020/12/15"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/02/21/weird-laws-pennsylvania-did-you-know-these-were-actually-books/2906798002/", "title": "Weird laws in Pa.: Did you know these were actually on the books?", "text": "If you pay a fortune teller and expect to get an accurate glimpse into your future, you're probably just a sucker. But if you do it while you're in Pennsylvania, you're also aiding and abetting a crime — since according to state law, fortune telling is illegal.\n\nGood to know, right?\n\nWell, it's not Pennsylvania's only wacky law. So here's a roundup of weird, bizarre, quirky, or otherwise nonsensical laws that really do exist...at least according to state legislatures, local newspapers, or legal databases.\n\nMore:Fastnachts: Where to get your fix in central Pennsylvania for Shrove Tuesday\n\nMore:Pennsylvania can't easily change the name of Negro Mountain. Here's why.\n\nAnd warning, you're probably guilty of one or two violations.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2019/02/21"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/crime/2016/07/22/seven-facts-keeping-kosher/87456202/", "title": "Seven facts about keeping kosher", "text": "Andrew Wolfson\n\n@adwolfson\n\n» The word kosher, literally meaning “clean” or “pure,” refers to food that has been prepared in accordance with Jewish rules and rituals so it can be eaten by religious Jews.\n\n» Because the Torah allows eating only animals that both chew their cud and have cloven hooves, pork is prohibited. So are shellfish, lobsters, oysters, shrimp and clams, because the Old Testament says to eat only fish with fins and scales. Another rule prohibits mixing dairy with meat or poultry.\n\n» Jews can ensure they keep kosher by buying products certified as kosher with a mark called a hekhsher that usually identifies the rabbi or group that certified the product.\n\n» Foods so certified are not \"blessed.\" Rather it means the place they were processed is inspected to make sure kosher standards are maintained. Kosher meat, for example, must be slaughtered without causing pain to the animal, meaning that death occurs almost instantaneously.\n\n» Approximately three-quarters of all prepackaged foods in the U.S. have some kind of kosher certification.\n\n» Reform Jews are not required to keep kosher but if they decide to, they can accomplish that by refraining from eating pork or shellfish, or just observing dietary rules at home, rather than when eating out, or by becoming vegetarians.\n\n» Some Conservative and Orthodox Jews, and businesses, especially in Israel, have rebelled in recent years from buying products stamped kosher because of concerns about corruption and bribery in the inspection process.\n\nSources: Judaism 101.org; Reform Judaism.org; My Jewish Learning.org", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2016/07/22"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/environment/2020/01/03/solar-surges-california-desert-environment-trump/2665799001/", "title": "Solar surges in California desert. Environmentalists aren't happy", "text": "Alfredo Figueroa, an 85-year-old former miner, can rattle off the name of every major geographic feature rising from the desert floor outside of Blythe, Calif., a town of 19,000 off the Interstate 10 freeway, halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix.\n\nOn a warm winter day, the descendant of the Chemehuevi and Yaqui tribes hiked along a mesa dotted with petroglyphs, and waved his walking stick at a chunky mountain peak 20 miles in the distance, bathed in orange by sunshine. \"That's Palen,\" he chuckled, pointing at the formation. \"See his chin sticking up?\"\n\nAll of the peaks are part of creation stories, he says, from birth in the Big Maria range to death in the Mule Mountains just behind him. But it's the time-varnished desert floor that concerns him right now.\n\nTwo industrial solar farm projects — called Crimson Solar and Desert Quartzite — are proposed for just below where he's standing. And between here and Desert Center, 20 miles west, another 10 have been built, are under construction or are seeking approvals.\n\nMandated by law in 2018, California is attempting to engineer a monumental shift to zero-emission electricity by 2045. To get there, the state is adopting various measures, including a first-in-the-nation law that went into effect Jan. 1 requiring rooftop solar panels on nearly all new homes.\n\nWhile California recently surpassed 1 million solar rooftops, clean energy advocates and industry officials say that won't be enough to reach the goals. They argue every possible option will be needed — including solar farms in the desert.\n\nThat's re-ignited a battle with longtime activists like Figuroa. He and area environmental groups say while they are 100% in favor of solar power, it should be installed on rooftops, landfills and other disturbed lands in urban areas — not hundreds of miles away on fragile desert landscapes.\n\n\"Along here are the ancient trails our ancestors took between all these sacred places,\" Figueroa says, pointing to the creosote-studded land where the 350-megawatt Crimson Solar project is proposed. \"This is a pristine area that hasn't been destroyed, and they will destroy it.\"\n\nSolar power for 400,000 homes?\n\nBut when others look out at the Southern California desert, they see a different story.\n\n\"There are two places in the world that have this high level of solar radiance: One is the California desert and the other is northern Africa,\" says Shannon Eddy, founding executive director of the Large-Scale Solar Association, based in Sacramento. \"What's unique about the California desert is that ... it's so close to load centers (cities that need power). There's nothing like it in the world.\"\n\nWith carbon emissions from coal and natural gas-powered plants stoking climate change worldwide, Eddy and others say industrial-strength renewables are critical. \"It's time to dispel the myth that rooftop solar alone is enough,\" says Eddy, who represents solar developers in California, Nevada and Arizona. \"I love rooftop, but we need to be doing that, we need to do large-scale utility, and we need to be looking under mattresses for energy efficiency measures. We need it all!\"\n\nAll told, nearly 30,000 acres of photovoltaic solar farms producing up to 4,000 megawatts could come online in the California desert within the next few years, a 30% uptick statewide over 2018, the latest year for which data is available. That's enough to power as many as 400,000 homes for a year.\n\nCurrent solar projects:\n\nDesert Quartzite (First Solar), about 3,800 acres, 450 megawatts, near final approval\n\nCrimson Solar (Recurrent), about 2,500 acres; 350 megawatts, public comment period open until Jan. 30\n\nPalen (EDF Renewables) approx. 3,140 acres; 500 megawatts, under construction\n\nBlythe (NextEra), approx. 4,318 acres; 485 megawatts (235 operational, 250 pending construction)\n\nMcCoy/Arlington (NextEra) approx. 4,282 acres; 750 megawatts (250 operational, 500 pending construction)\n\nDesert Sunlight (NextEra) approx. 4,084 Acres; 550 megawatts cconstructed and operational\n\nGenesis (NextEra) approx. 1,950 acres; 250 megawatts constructed and operational\n\nDesert Harvest (EDF Renewables) approx. 1,412 acres; 150 megawatts under construction\n\nArica (Clearway Energy Group) approx. 2,000 acres; 265 megawatts, application being processed\n\nVictory Pass (Clearway Energy Group) approx. 1,800 acres; 200 megawatts, application being processed\n\nIP Athos (Intersect Power) private land facility, 3,600 acres, 500 megawatts tie-in on public lands, being constructed\n\nTwo companies have applied for a 12th project on the same acreage; both are being reviewed by BLM.\n\nKevin Emmerich, co-founder of the environmental group Basin and Range Watch, based in Beatty, Nev., has methodically opposed every large solar project in the desert. He says the increase \"is just a gigantic assault of these industrial projects on desert habitats and cultural sites.\"\n\n\"We have the ability to get off of fossil fuels in a responsive, ecologically friendly way,\" he says. \"We're not doing that. We're creating new environmental problems by trying to create solutions to old environmental problems.\"\n\nBut Eddy says the new projects are far more environmentally friendly than earlier ones. She says the project boom may seem large, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to state modeling showing an estimated 90,000 to 125,000 megawatts of large-scale solar power needs to be added to the grid in the next 25 years.\n\n\"We have to figure out where we want to build these plants, and we can't fight each other anymore,\" she says. \"The further we stall, the worse shape we're in\" in terms of greenhouse gases.\n\nRooftops versus long-distance\n\nThe wrangling offers a snapshot of the current state of solar energy in California: It's surging, but not quite as planned. Thanks to homeowner rebates, a sharp drop in prices of photovoltaic panels, and consumer jitters over blackouts due to wildfires, rooftop solar installations have climbed to 9 gigawatts of power, closing in on the 12 gigawatts of industrial solar power.\n\nLarge-scale solar farms are growing too, but, some say, not at the pace originally envisioned in the 2016 Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP).\n\nThat plan was signed by federal, state, county, tribal, environmental and industry groups in the last months of the Obama administration. It was supposed to fast-track California's industrial solar, wind and geothermal projects across 388,000 acres (about 600 square miles). At the same time, it outlined a process to preserve six million acres of federal land.\n\nBut U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials have denied 93 proposals, often due to environmental concerns. Trump administration officials have ordered BLM to re-open the plan to all energy development, including oil and gas drilling and mining.\n\nThe initial slow ramp-up of big solar plants was fine with desert environmental and tribal groups.\n\n\"I don't think the average person driving by appreciates how ecologically valuable these desert wash habitats are,\" says Chris Clarke, associate director of the California desert program for the National Parks Conservation Association. He says large-scale power generation tied to a massive grid is \"a 20th-century business plan for a 21st-century problem.\"\n\nBut others say all options need to be considered as officials push to potentially electrify the entire state with enough clean energy to power nearly 36 million cars and trucks and 17 million buildings.\n\n\"2020 is going to be a pivotal year; I would say it's going to set the pace for the next decade of renewables,\" says Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association, a Sacramento-based group that represents manufacturers of rooftop solar and other small \"distributed\" systems. \"We really don't have a clear road map for how to meet the zero-carbon mandate.\"\n\nDel Chiaro says current state modeling wrongly assumes rooftop solar will plateau or even decline, and questions the megawattage that Eddy says must come from industrial solar farms.\n\nNevertheless, she says, California can't wait a decade to see if enough rooftop solar can be built. Approvals and construction of utility-scale projects in carefully selected landscapes also need to start now. \"Climate change is doing far worse damage to species than habitat loss,\" she says.\n\nFeds want 'to have the DRECP blown up'\n\nWhile both environmentalists and industry representatives say the aims of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan were noble, neither is totally happy with how things have played out.\n\nIn sun-drenched eastern Riverside and San Bernardino counties, many residents and conservationists say the seeming \"no man's land\" areas were wrongly made a \"development focus areas,\" or as they see it, sacrifice zones.\n\nSolar industry representatives, meanwhile, are not pleased with the fees they have to pay to lease public lands for their projects. The costs have skyrocketed 600% in recent years, said Eddy, via a series of increases. A BLM spokeswoman said they now collect $6 million in rent annually from eastern Riverside County projects.\n\nResponding to rural constituents' anger, San Bernardino County has banned the construction of large solar and wind farms across more than one million acres. Riverside County continues to process projects on private lands.\n\nOne reason more projects have not been approved since the DRECP was adopted is that more endangered or threatened species have been found in areas slated for renewable development than expected. At the same time, species that the plan aimed to protect have not always been found in designated conservation areas.\n\n\"They thought the desert tortoise were going to be in one place, and instead, there were lots of them in an area identified for solar development, and none in the places where they're supposed to be,\" says Eddy of the Large-Scale Solar Association\n\nJeremiah Karuzas, BLM's renewable energy program manager for California, says his agency is drafting an amendment to the DRECP. \"We realized some things we needed to fix or adjust to give additional flexibility, both for project developers and BLM itself.\"\n\nAsked about the Interior Department order to allow all kinds of energy projects — including oil drilling and mining — in the DRECP, Karuzas acknowledged the proposed adjustments \"wouldn't apply just to renewable energy, but to any BLM activity in that area.\"\n\nThat prospect sets off alarm bells for solar developers and environmentalists alike, despite their issues with the current plan.\n\n\"The BLM guys know the ways the regs got written has led to barriers that were unintended,\" says V. John White with the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, a Sacramento partnership of major environmental groups and clean energy companies. \"And changes that could be agreed to by environmentalists,(and) solar and wind industry developers, can't get accomplished because the federal government wants to have the DRECP blown up to do more mining.\"\n\nEddy, the solar industry advocate, agrees the plan needs to be fixed, but says fossil fuels should not be added. \"Oil and gas was never envisioned as part of the desert conservation plan,\" she says.\n\nClarke with the National Parks Conservation Association says: \"People have a diversity of opinions about the DRECP, but the conservation community is unanimous that it needs to be defended in its current form.\"\n\nThere is good news, say some\n\nAlex Daue, the assistant director of energy and climate for The Wilderness Society, a national organization, says the solar farm activity along the 10 freeway near existing transmission lines shows that the plan is beginning to work.\n\nDaue sees it as a model for bipartisan legislation proposed in both houses of Congress to designate areas across the West for utility-scale renewables.\n\nThe Public Land Renewable Energy Development Act would identify lower-value areas for commercial-scale renewable development. But instead of sending all land leasing revenues to the general treasury, as is currently done, millions would go to local communities, states and federal conservation and innovation efforts.\n\nAs big cities and suburbs cut the cord with coal-fired power plants in Utah and elsewhere, they're looking to sign contracts with wind and solar power from rural California. That includes the fully approved Palen project, a 3,100-acre development named for a dry lake below the mountains of the same name, near Joshua Tree National Park.\n\nEDF Renewables North America, the developer, announced last month that it has sold nearly all of the 500 megawatts the facility will create. Its customers include Southern California Edison, a subsidiary of Shell Oil, and CleanPowerSF, which serves 300,000 San Francisco customers.\n\nPlants, animals and desert soil\n\nConservationists say the long-distance sales prove the desert is being used as a sacrifice zone. They and developers offer dueling research on the impact of the projects, which average five square miles in size.\n\nClarke with the National Parks Association and Emmerich of Basin and Range Watch say the solar farms are harming myriad plants and animals, like the desert tortoise, Mojave fringe-toed lizard, ironwood tree stands and a suite of desert flowers.\n\nThey point to wildlife mortality counts showing scores of species of birds, along with bats and monarch butterflies, have been injured or killed at solar projects. Thousands of birds have been incinerated or singed mid-air at the Ivanpah desert facility due to its concentrating thermal technology, which creates extreme heat via a series of mirrors.\n\nPilots also have complained about blinding glare produced by its thermal towers, which create a piercing light. BLM and other agencies are conducting \"glint and glare\" and wildlife studies. The thermal technology is not being used in new projects because the price of photovoltaic solar panels has plummeted, notes Eddy.\n\nBut photovoltaic solar can create a phenomenon called the \"lake effect,\" says Clarke, sending birds winging their way into hot panels, mistakenly thinking they are a cool oasis.\n\nPeter Weiner, head of the environment and energy practice at the law firm Paul Hastings in Los Angeles, says there's no research definitively documenting such a problem. \"We don’t think there is evidence of a lake effect,\" says Weiner, who works with solar developers. He said while an early mortality count at the Desert Sunlight facility found dead water birds, there is also a working fish farm nearby that might attract them. Tracking at other PV solar facilities shows \"insignificant\" impacts on birds, he adds.\n\nAnother concern raised by Clarke is that solar installations disturb a type of desert soil called caliche. A 2014 UC Riverside study for the California Energy Commission concluded losses of caliche and organic matter in surface soil layers \"compromise the value of solar energy as an alternative to fossil carbon burning by releasing stored inorganic carbon into the atmosphere and destroying the ability of the deserts to sequester carbon.\"\n\nThe researchers recommended locating solar developments on previously disturbed lands.\n\nWeiner said he is not aware of further studies on caliche, but that solar farm sites are no longer mass graded, with post holes being dug in carefully selected spots. Eddy offered two other studies, funded by solar companies, showing that with proper siting, endangered kit foxes fared better than in raw wilderness at San Luis Obispo County PV farms, possibly even using the panels for protection from predators.\n\nPublic comment period closing soon\n\nAs technology has evolved, developers are proposing smaller solar projects than in the boom days of major federal incentives more than a decade ago. BLM staff now also often ask developers to surgically excise ravines and other watershed areas, to preserve woodlands and other key habitat.\n\nThat's the case with the Crimson Solar project, they note, where Recurrent Energy is seeking a right of way on 2,500 acres of public land to construct a 350-megawatt photovoltaic facility. That's down from nearly 7,000 acres first proposed years ago by another developer.\n\nScott Dawson, director of permitting for Recurrent Energy, said at a recent public hearing that the project would not destroy any petroglyphs or sacred sites, and was being proposed in an environmentally sensitive fashion. Public comment is open until Jan. 30.\n\nBoth Figueroa's cultural resources group, La Cuna de Aztlan, and Basin and Range Watch say while the project is smaller, neither Recurrent nor BLM are presenting the full picture. For instance, says Emmerich, a popular biking and jeep trail would be heavily impacted by chain link fencing, as would vistas from documented historic sites.\n\nThe adjoining 450 megawatt project, Desert Quartzite, by First Solar, could receive final approvals soon. It would connect with Southern California Edison’s Colorado Substation, on about 3,700 acres of federal land and 154 acres of private land.\n\nAs a former Sierra Club staffer, Eddy says tough choices need to be made about where to locate large solar projects.\n\n\"California has set some good and aggressive climate targets, and getting there is going to require breaking ground that hasn't been broken before,\" she says. \"It requires very important conversations about land use, conversations that are deep and profound and difficult. ... The whole world is facing these decisions on a macro-level.\"\n\nCorrection: An earlier version of this story misspelled Alex Daue's last name and gave an incorrect title for him. He is assistant director of energy and climate at The Wilderness Society.\n\nJanet Wilson is senior environment reporter for The Desert Sun and writes USA Today's Climate Point newsletter @janetwilson66 janet.wilson@desertsun.com", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2020/01/03"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/environment/2021/04/19/tiny-borrego-springs-inks-major-water-deal-guarantee-its-survival/7196232002/", "title": "Tiny Borrego Springs agrees to huge water cuts to guarantee its ...", "text": "Borrego Springs, the small desert town at the entrance to California's sprawling Anza-Borrego State Park, has won a judge's approval for an agreement under which large farmers, resort owners and its own water district will slash water use by 74% by 2040. Officials say the cuts are needed to keep the town of 3,000 alive.\n\nMore than a dozen major landholders, including ranchers and developers who've long grown crops and created lush golf greens in the parched desert by pumping large amounts of water from a rapidly depleting aquifer, signed on to the settlement agreement. Together with the town, their share of water rights total more than 75% of an estimated 24,000 acre-feet of water pumped annually out of the desert floor. Within 19 years, that is required to plummet to about 5,700 acre-feet.\n\n\"It’s drastic, but it's necessary to make sure Borrego Springs survives and is a vibrant community,\" said Kathy Dice, president of the Borrego Water District. \"It's going to be hard on agriculture and on recreational services like golf, but it should not affect small landowners out here.\"\n\nVisitors and residents have long been able to grab a bag of fresh grapefruits or oranges from one of several roadside stands in town — a desert novelty. Retirees enjoy rounds of golf on emerald green courses surrounded by spectacular, heat-blasted mountains. That's been changing in recent years, with some farmers opting to fallow fields or sell and move out. One of the main golf courses has closed.\n\nNow, with the water agreement, many landowners think they will not only be able to save what makes the place unique but also the community itself, which has struggled for decades with shrinking water supplies. Unlike Los Angeles or the Coachella Valley, there are no huge pipes or canals shipping imported water here, just a rapidly shrinking aquifer below their feet.\n\n\"We know that there's a shortage of water, but we wanted to get away from the pointing fingers and blaming each other, between all of the farmers and golf courses and the community at large,\" said Jim Seley, 79, owner of Seley Ranches. Seley's father first bought land here in 1953, and Seley's sons want to farm here for years to come. \"The settlement agreement is an effort to put everybody together, working towards the same final result of sustaining the valley.\"\n\nUnder a front-loaded agreement, all large users, whether they signed on or not, will be required to ratchet down by 5% each year the amounts of water they take from the \"critically over-drafted\" aquifer that is gradually replenished with rainfall that flows down from surrounding mountains to Coyote Creek and below the Borrego Valley. By 2030, all will have halved their baseline amounts.\n\nThe first few years, considerable leeway will be allowed, as actual rates of water usage are determined. For decades, some farmers and other large landowners had no water meter, Dice said. They could simply pump as much as they wanted from beneath their parcels.\n\nThe voluminous agreement, signed by Orange County Superior Court Judge Peter Wilson on April 8, changes that. Every parcel will be metered, and amounts used will be monitored and limits enforced by a multi-person water master board. If it turns out the 24,000 acre-feet was an overestimate, then cuts could be relaxed a bit. Conversely, if it was an underestimate, even deeper cuts could be mandated.\n\nState law forces solution\n\nWhen Larry Gilstrap and Susan Deering retired and bought a 3½-acre lot in Borrego Springs in 2009, they were drawn by the stark beauty, forever preserved in the massive state park around them. The fact that it took hours to drive there from anywhere else, over torturously winding mountain roads or across barren, triple-digit desert, added to the appeal. It meant the town would likely never be overdeveloped.\n\n\"The fact that we saw large growth as not being a sustainable thing was definitely a desirable thing,\" he said. \"And the fact that those natural places above us and around us will be protected in perpetuity was definitely an appeal. The mountains and the hundreds of thousands of acres of land that have never seen the hand of man, that will never see a plow or ax or bulldozer, it's amazing.\"\n\nStill, there are unexpected costs.\n\nWhen they began building on their lot in 2012, there was a water meter on site. It didn't mean they had guaranteed flow. By then, realizing there were finite supplies, town planners required the purchase of water \"credits\" in which someone no longer using their portion of the aquifer sold to someone who needed it.\n\n\"I met a guy in a parking lot ... and paid him $7,000 for a piece of paper,\" sad Gilstrap.\n\nGilstrap said he understands the need for the new agreement, and trusts Dice and other town leaders. Dice said ordinary customers who use less than 2 acre-feet of water a year should not notice any difference in water supply, or major changes in their bills.\n\nOne acre-foot equals about 326,000 gallons, or enough water to cover an acre of land, to a depth of 1 foot. An average California household uses between one-half and 1 acre-foot of water per year for indoor and outdoor use. The state park and local elementary school are also guaranteed their current water supply forever.\n\nDice said the water district hoped to offset much of its required cuts by buying up water rights as private property owners pull up stakes. The agreement was also tailored to try to prevent out-of-town water market investors from buying rights for resale.\n\nShe also hopes to maintain the high quality of town water. Flowing down from the surrounding hillsides and through a natural creek, she said it was fantastic water. But researchers feared with underground supplies being diminished, pumpers could start pulling out water that has sat underground for thousands of years, containing both natural toxins like arsenic and manmade contaminants like nitrates.\n\nThe town has been aware for years of the dire decline in its water supplies, with experts gauging losses to its underground aquifer at between 1 and 2 feet a year, depending on the location. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation looked at possibly importing water, but concluded it would cost up to $695 million to build and maintain, and to buy water over 50 years. Those plans were shelved. Discussions about what to do foundered.\n\nIn 2014, a tough new state law, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA, was passed, requiring all 515 of California's groundwater basins to remain usable.\n\n\"The overarching theme of SGMA is ... you still have to have water available for the long term, for generations to come,\" said Joyia Emard, spokeswoman for the California Department of Water Resources. \"You're basically not using it all up now, it's there for the future.\"\n\nMost of the state's 515 basins are in good shape, but 21, including Borrego Springs' subbasin, were declared to be in \"critical overdraft,\" meaning they are drawing out far more than is being replaced, like a bank customer withdrawing far more funds than they are depositing.\n\nThe critically over-drafted basins were required to submit groundwater sustainability plans by Jan. 31, 2020, or show they had a viable alternative. If they didn't, they faced a takeover by the state, which can legally impose draconian pumping fees until a basin regains stability. Areas that don't submit plans or legal alternatives also can't qualify for grants for infrastructure and other projects.\n\nIn the Coachella Valley, the Indio subbasin has an alternate management plan submitted by the Coachella Valley Water District, Coachella Water Authority, Desert Water Agency, and the Indio Water Authority; it was approved in 2019.\n\nBorrego Springs opted for an adjudicated, stipulated agreement instead, a legally binding document. State water resource officials will review the agreement and likely approve it.\n\nDice said the state law was \"a godsend\" because it forced all of the parties who had been talking for years about the valley's shrinking water supply to take concrete steps to shore it up. But to get there, the water district had to take the uncomfortable step of suing all of its members and every water user in the valley to comply with the state groundwater law, and to make sure the agreement would be binding.\n\nSeley and most other major landowners signed, and those who didn't are still required to abide by the deal. He's already reduced Seley Ranches' water usage by 5% for 2020-21, as required. He, his sons and the ranch manager have stripped out old, less productive fruit trees. Some will be replaced in a different configuration that uses less water, others will not. They're already down from 370 to 333 productive acres. They'll also try out soil amendments and new technologies designed to make every drop of water count.\n\nAnd they plan to work with townspeople to increase tourism, promoting their sweet \"Seley Reds\" grapefruits and other premium produce.\n\nSeley says he won't be around to see it, but he still thinks the state and federal governments — which have been promising to clean up the dwindling, polluted Salton Sea to the east — could ship in water from the Gulf of Mexico, desalinate it and supply some to this tiny but fertile spot.\n\nFor Gilstrap, a retired high school teacher, Borrego Springs is a microcosm of what's occurring globally with rapid climate change and water shortages. He's already seen native creosote on his property wilting with less rainfall and less water to tap into underground.\n\nThe constraints of the dry valley are also key to its sustainability, he thinks, and in the end could give it a better shot than cities and suburbs dependent on imports from the depleting Colorado River or Owens Valley.\n\nFor him, the future also lies with tourists, but eco-tourists respectful of nature, including birders, geologists and botanists, and \"people just eager to get out and hike.\"\n\nHe doesn't fear it becoming another wild place overrun by visitors precisely because of its water constraints.\n\n\"Because of those limitations, there are only going to be so many motels, so many places to camp,\" he said. \"Borrego Springs is a beautiful place because it's hard to get to.\"\n\nJanet Wilson is senior environment reporter with The Desert Sun. She also co-authors USA Today's Climate Point newsletter. She can be reached at janet.wilson@desertsun.com or on Twitter @janetwilson66.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/04/19"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/03/05/bottling-water-california-drought/24389417/", "title": "Bottling water without scrutiny", "text": "Story by Ian James | Photos by Jay Calderon, The Desert Sun | March 8, 2015\n\nMiles from the nearest paved road in the San Bernardino National Forest, two sounds fill a rocky canyon: a babbling stream and the hissing of water flowing through a stainless steel pipe.\n\nFrom wells that tap into springs high on the mountainside, water gushes down through the pipe to a roadside tank. From there, it is transferred to tanker trucks, hauled to a bottling plant and sold as Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water.\n\nUPDATE: Groups seek fast ruling in suit to halt Nestle water use\n\nNestle Waters North America holds a longstanding right to use this water from the national forest near San Bernardino. But the U.S. Forest Service hasn't been keeping an eye on whether the taking of water is harming Strawberry Creek and the wildlife that depends on it. In fact, Nestle's permit to transport water across the national forest expired in 1988. It hasn't been reviewed since, and the Forest Service hasn't examined the ecological effects of drawing tens of millions of gallons each year from the springs.\n\nEven with California deep in drought, the federal agency hasn't assessed the impacts of the bottled water business on springs and streams in two watersheds that sustain sensitive habitats in the national forest. The lack of oversight is symptomatic of a Forest Service limited by tight budgets and focused on other issues, and of a regulatory system in California that allows the bottled water industry to operate with little independent tracking of the potential toll on the environment.\n\nIn an investigation of the industry's water footprint in the San Bernardino National Forest and other parts of California, The Desert Sun found that:\n\nNo state agency is tracking exactly how much water is used by all of the bottled water plants in California, or monitoring the effects on water supplies and ecosystems statewide. The California Department of Public Health regulates 108 bottled water plants in the state, collecting information on water quality and the sources tapped. But the agency says it does not require companies to report how much water they use.\n\nThat information, when collected piecemeal by state or local agencies, often isn't easily accessible to the public. In some cases, the amounts of water used are considered confidential and not publicly released.\n\nEven as Nestle Waters has been submitting required reports on its water use, the Forest Service has not been closely tracking the amounts of water leaving the San Bernardino National Forest and has not assessed the impacts on the environment.\n\nWhile the Forest Service has allowed Nestle to keep using an expired permit for nearly three decades, the agency has cracked down on other water users in the national forest. Several years ago, for instance, dozens of cabin owners were required to stop drawing water from a creek when their permits came up for renewal. Nestle has faced no such restrictions.\n\nOnly this year, after a group of critics raised concerns in letters and after The Desert Sun inquired about the expired permit, did Forest Service officials announce plans to take up the issue and carry out an environmental analysis.\n\nA growing debate over Nestle's use of water from the San Bernardino National Forest parallels other arguments in places from the San Gorgonio Pass to Mount Shasta. And those debates have turned more contentious as a fourth year of drought weighs on California's depleted water supplies.\n\nStatewide, the bottled water industry accounts for a small fraction of overall water use. The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that roughly 1 percent of the water used in the state goes to industrial users, with bottling plants being a small portion of that. Pumping from wells can pull down groundwater levels, and drawing water from springs can reduce the amounts flowing in streams.\n\nBottled water companies in California are typically subject to environmental reviews only when a permit for a new project triggers a formal study. Otherwise, the impacts of bottling plants on creeks and aquifers often aren't scrutinized by government agencies.\n\nIn the San Bernardino National Forest, Nestle insists its bottling of spring water isn't causing any harm. Water from Arrowhead Springs has been tapped and sold for more than a century. The company says it is complying with all the requirements of its expired permit in the national forest and has been informed by the Forest Service that it can keep operating lawfully until a new permit is eventually issued. The company also says that at all of the springs where it draws water, it monitors the environment and manages its water use to ensure \"long-term sustainability.\"\n\nThe Forest Service and Nestle have had a cooperative relationship over the years. In 2003, the Old Fire swept through the area and destroyed portions of Nestle's pipeline. A month later, deadly floods and mudslides thundered down from the mountains. As Nestle workers rebuilt the pipeline on the mountainside, Forest Service officials oversaw the work. But the agency didn't require a new permit at the time, and in the years since hasn't examined whether draining away spring water poses problems for the creek and the forest.\n\nTwo former Forest Service employees interviewed by The Desert Sun say they think it's wrong that the agency for decades hasn't studied the impacts on the national forest. During the drought, they say, there is now an urgent need to protect the water sources on public lands and reexamine Nestle's bottling operation.\n\n\"They're taking way too much water. That water's hugely important,\" said Steve Loe, a biologist who retired from the Forest Service in 2007. \"Without water, you don't have wildlife, you don't have vegetation.\"\n\nStanding on a roadside several miles from the springs, Loe motioned to the peaks in the distance, and to the steep mountainside where a natural rock formation shaped like an arrowhead marks the location of Arrowhead Springs. Beneath that arrowhead, hot springs bubble from the ground at a long-closed hotel that once attracted celebrities in the 1940s. In nearby Strawberry Canyon, cold springs gush from the mountain and into the pipes for bottling.\n\n\"When you take water from the springs that are the source of those waters, you dry up these canyons,\" Loe said. \"And they're the most important habitats that we have.\"\n\nAn avid hiker and outdoorsman, Loe can rattle off a list of animals that need the water in Strawberry Creek: frogs, insects, salamanders, and birds such as Bell's vireo and willow flycatchers.\n\nAn increasingly rare species of native fish, the Santa Ana speckled dace, used to survive in Strawberry Creek. Then, after the wildfire and floods of 2003, the little fish disappeared from Strawberry Creek and other nearby streams. Scientists who surveyed the area concluded that the devastating fire and flooding had wiped out the populations.\n\nLoe said he suspects the bottling operation contributed to their demise by leaving few spots with enough water for them to survive through the summers. \"It makes everything in the stream more vulnerable having all of that water removed.\"\n\nNestle disputes that and says its use of water didn't harm the fish. But Loe said siphoning off water that could otherwise flow in the creek poses clear threats that need to be fully studied, particularly in light of the drought and climate change.\n\nLoe first raised his concerns in an email in September to a list of federal and state officials and others, including a Nestle Waters manager. He pointed out that Nestle's permit \"has long expired and needs to be reissued,\" requiring an analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). He suggested a meeting.\n\nSoon afterward, Loe met with the Nestle manager and laid out his concerns. Five months later – after he and others sent additional critical letters to the government and after The Desert Sun posed questions about the expired permit – Forest Service officials met with Loe and told him they have started to evaluate the reissuance of the expired permit.\n\nWhile pleased that the agency acknowledged the issue, Loe still has concerns. He wants to see an environmental study prepared by an independent third party. He also wants a review of Nestle's use of water from Deer Canyon Springs in the national forest. He said it's time for immediate measures to put more water into the streams while those environmental reviews, which can take years, are carried out.\n\n\"Because of the drought emergency, they need to go beyond just doing the NEPA,\" Loe said. \"I would like to see the Forest Service and Nestle agree not to take water until they know if it's OK to take water. This hasn't been studied in a long time.\"\n\nUltimately, Loe said, protecting the flows of Strawberry Creek will likely require putting limits on how much water can be piped out.\n\n\"To keep taking water is just so risky if you care about the long-term health of that stream,\" he said. \"We should be sitting down with Nestle and we should be saying, 'We've got to do something here.'\"\n\nStrawberry Creek cascades down from the mountains in a rocky canyon filled with live oaks, white alder trees and poison oak. Often, the stream is narrow enough to jump across. Running alongside it is a 4-inch stainless steel pipe supported on metal scaffolding.\n\n\"That's Arrowhead's pipe coming down right there,\" said Gary Earney, a retired Forest Service employee, standing on the bank of the creek and leaning on a walking stick.\n\nEarney used to administer permits for the Forest Service, and he said the agency has never done an assessment of how the taking of water affects the creek. Back when the water pipes were installed in the early 20th century, he pointed out, no one conducted environmental reviews. Now, he said, it's long overdue.\n\n\"I'm not opposed to the taking of water. But the water removed needs to be surplus to the needs of the national forest,\" Earney said. If the water is needed for wildlife, he said, it should instead be diverted at the national forest's boundary after it has flowed through the creek.\n\nDetermining how much water is needed for a healthy ecosystem, he said, will require a thorough study. And that hasn't been done in all these years, he said, because the Forest Service lacks sufficient funding after repeated budget cuts and has a large backlog of expired permits.\n\n\"It's a national problem,\" Earney said. \"I think it's just improper management and poor funding.\"\n\nWalking among boulders, Earney said that if more water were allowed to flow in the creek, it would provide for plants and animals and would also sink into aquifers at the base of the mountains.\n\n\"We need to ensure that we have enough water to sustain the forest's health,\" Earney said. \"I think we should look at whether or not it's a more beneficial use of this water to be bottled and sold in small bottles, or to be allowed to go down and drain off the forest and recharge the groundwater.\"\n\nWhile Nestle's expired permit hasn't been scrutinized in nearly three decades, some other water users have been required to cut back. In the mid-2000s, as part of a regional review, the Forest Service went through the permits of hundreds of cabins on land in the national forest and reexamined their use of water from creeks. In Barton Flats, for instance, dozens of cabin owners were told they could no longer draw water from Barton Creek; instead, they would have to use wells or install tanks and truck in water. Cabin owners spent thousands of dollars putting in tanks.\n\n\"Some of these people had been using the water with water rights for 80 years, and it was very costly to make the change. Nestle takes more water from the stream in one day than the total of all of those cabin owners in a year,\" Loe said. \"It's just so unfair.\"\n\n\"We made the little people do the right thing,\" he said, \"and we're not making the big people do the right thing.\"\n\nAmanda Frye, a community activist who lives in Redlands, said she finds the lack of oversight by the Forest Service disturbing, particularly during the drought.\n\n\"The U.S. government is just giving away our natural resources to an international corporation,\" Frye said. \"I think that's really wrong.\"\n\nEmployees of the San Bernardino National Forest say they oversee about 1,500 permits for various uses of national forest lands, ranging from power lines to cabins. About 360 of those permits are expired, and officials say they are gradually working on the backlog.\n\n\"The Nestle permit is just one of those 360. It's not like we've purposely held that one out,\" said Al Colby, a public services staff officer who oversees permits. \"The thing is that Nestle continues to pay the fee that they were charged back when the permit was still valid.\"\n\nBecause of that, he said, the expired permit's conditions have remained in effect. \"Basically as long as they're paying the fee that was established before it expired, the permit is enforceable.\"\n\nThe national forest has continued to collect a permit fee of $524 from Nestle Waters each year.\n\nThe permit, granted to Nestle predecessor Arrowhead Puritas Waters, Inc., was signed in 1978. An amendment said it would \"expire and become void\" in 1988.\n\nThe permit allows the company to maintain more than 4 miles of water pipelines in the national forest, as well as horizontal wells that tap into the springs on the mountainside. Records show the water is drawn from a dozen spring sites, and flows through separate pipes before coming together in the single pipe that runs along Strawberry Creek.\n\nForest Service officials said that in the 2000s there was talk of renewing Nestle's permit but that other priorities took precedence. Over the years, they said, those other priorities have included wildfires, forest thinning projects, a new rail line through Cajon Pass, and updating permits relating to Southern California Edison.\n\nIn Southern California and elsewhere, backlogs of expired permits developed as the Forest Service underwent repeated budget cuts in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The agency has also been burdened with the growing costs of fighting larger and more destructive wildfires, cutting into the amounts of money available for activities such as reviewing permits.\n\nJason Collier, a lands and recreation specialist who handles special use permits, said he didn't know how much water Nestle has been using. He pointed out that when the permit was issued in the 1970s, reporting the volumes of water wasn't one of the conditions.\n\n\"If that tool was in the box,\" he said, \"then we could exercise it.\"\n\nCollier recalled that reissuing Nestle's expired permit was \"part of the discussion\" at one point – until the additional railroad track in Cajon Pass came up.\n\n\"Then the discussion became, 'There's a backlog in Long Beach (port) and we can't get our shipping containers moved. You work on the railroad,'\" Collier said. \"That's our reality, right or wrong.\"\n\nAsked why the Forest Service reviewed the permits of more than 700 cabin owners while leaving Nestle's alone, Collier said that he couldn't speak to how the priorities were set but that the agency took up the cabin permits as part of a region-wide review.\n\nNow that the Forest Service is considering Nestle's permit, Colby said one of the agency's first steps was to request files from the company.\n\n\"We need whatever information they have, studies that they have about the area, whatever permit files that they've got,\" Colby said. \"Once we look at all that information, plus our own permit file, that'll help us figure out the scope of what we need to be doing.\"\n\nReissuing the permit likely will require studies to answer questions about how the water would flow if it weren't being extracted from the springs, said Robert Taylor, the forest hydrologist. Some of those questions, he said, include where a drop of water would otherwise go, whether it would in fact reach the creek, and how long its journey down the watershed would take.\n\nTaylor said he didn't have specifics of the amounts of water used from Arrowhead Springs because the information is collected by another agency tasked with that responsibility. Taylor said he hadn't looked at Nestle's use of water from Deer Canyon Springs either.\n\n\"We have a lot to do. There are a lot of expired permits. We get direction from the regional office and the Washington office on how to handle our levels of permits,\" Taylor said. \"I have 660,000 acres of the national forest to work on, and I'm just one guy. When it becomes a priority, I'll deal with it.\"\n\nNestle SA, headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland, is the world's largest food company. Nestle CEO Paul Bulcke has made headlines warning that water scarcity poses a major threat to food security around the world. Another influential figure on Nestle's board of directors is former U.N. Children's Fund Executive Director Ann Veneman, who was U.S. secretary of agriculture from 2001-2005 and oversaw the Forest Service under President George W. Bush.\n\nThe company has invested heavily in expanding its bottled water business. Subsidiary Nestle Waters, headquartered in Paris, is the world's biggest bottled water company. And its division Nestle Waters North America is the largest bottled water producer in the United States, with a total of 29 plants in the U.S. and Canada and net sales of $4.1 billion last year.\n\nFive of its bottling plants are located in California – in Sacramento, Livermore, Los Angeles, Cabazon and Ontario.\n\nA display case in the lobby of the Ontario bottling plant shows early 20th century glass bottles for one of the many brands Nestle has purchased over the years: Arrowhead.\n\nThe company says water has been sold under an Arrowhead brand since 1894. Nestle has records showing that water has been collected from some of the springs it now uses since at least 1906, one year before the government in 1907 created the San Bernardino National Forest on lands that had previously been known as a forest reserve.\n\nThe story of how water bottling developed alongside the hot springs and resort is told in the book \"Arrowhead Springs: California's Ideal Resort\" by Mark Landis. According to the book, a sanitarium was first built at the hot springs in 1864, and by 1909 the Arrowhead Springs Company was formed to start bottling and selling water. For years, water was transported by rail in a \"Water Train\" of tank cars to a bottling plant in Los Angeles. Then, in the 1960s, trucks began hauling water to bottling plants.\n\nNowadays, water from Arrowhead and other springs arrives by tanker truck at the Ontario plant, while water from Deer Canyon Springs flows through a pipeline. Nestle says that nowhere else in the country does its spring water come from sites on national forest lands. The plant also uses purified groundwater to produce the brand Nestle Pure Life.\n\nInside the plant, machinery hums. A stream of empty bottles soar past on an air-driven production line. Filled and capped, the bottles emerge on conveyor belts ready to be sold.\n\nDavid Thorpe, Nestle's western supply chain director, touted the company's water efficiency, saying it takes about 1.3 liters of water to produce one liter of bottled water – much less than soft drinks or beer.\n\n\"We're very, very efficient water users,\" Thorpe said. \"One of the things we're constantly working on is how to become more efficient.\"\n\nStatewide, Nestle Waters used a total of 2,164 acre-feet of water from all sources in 2014, said Larry Lawrence, Nestle's natural resource manager. That's about 705 million gallons – enough to irrigate roughly 700 acres of farmland, or keep two golf courses green, or fill 1,068 Olympic-size swimming pools.\n\nThe company's water use in the state has been growing along with its sales of bottled water. Figures provided by Nestle show that between 2011 and 2014, during years of extreme drought, the company's water use in California increased 19 percent. Lawrence said, however, that the company carefully monitors its springs and adjusts the volumes of water drawn from different springs in response to the amounts flowing.\n\nIn Southern California, the company can tap spring water from six locations in Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Inyo counties, and has been drawing water from five of those sites recently. The springs' names are printed on Arrowhead bottles: Southern Pacific Springs, Long Point Ranch, Palomar Mountain Granite Springs, Deer Canyon Springs, Arrowhead Springs and Coyote Springs.\n\n\"Everything is operated sustainably,\" Lawrence said. He said the company has been closely observing all of its springs as the drought has left less water flowing in many areas.\n\n\"We watch those flows and we manage our water take to those conditions,\" he said. \"We look at environmental conditions around our sources as well to make sure that there's no impacts other than drought impacts that we see naturally occurring.\"\n\nThere are no regulations that would dictate drought measures for water bottlers and other industries in California. Lawrence said the company has its own internal procedures for managing springs during the dry years.\n\n\"We study our springs, and if we're seeing a spring slowdown in flow or being impacted in a way that we think is possibly from the drought itself, we may choose to take water from a different source or go to a source that's further away from our factory,\" Lawrence said. \"We will restrict the flow from sources based on our assessment of the environment around the spring sites.\"\n\nThe company's water system at Arrowhead Springs is largely \"self-regulating,\" Lawrence said, because it is gravity-fed and there is no pumping involved. He said Nestle uses the spring water that naturally flows from the ground, and the amounts change based on fluctuations in the springs' flow.\n\nAnd while the company's overall water use had increased, Lawrence said Nestle has reduced the use of water from some springs, including Arrowhead, to avoid relying too heavily on them.\n\n\"We can harvest what's available,\" he said. \"And on really wet years we certainly can't take all of the water that's available, and on dry years, we're pretty careful about what we do take.\"\n\nThe company says it bottled nearly 25 million gallons from Arrowhead Springs last year, on average about 68,000 gallons a day. That was down from about 27 million gallons during 2013.\n\nThose amounts are only a portion of the water drawn from the springs by Nestle. The state water code requires that groundwater pumping data be collected in four Southern California counties, and a group of local water districts gather and verify the information. Records filed with the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District show a total of 51 million gallons of groundwater used in 2013. But Lawrence said a portion of that water is delivered to the old Arrowhead Springs hotel under a contract with the owner, and some of the water is also regularly released back into the canyon, both near the springs and near the hotel.\n\nOver the years, the Forest Service has authorized maintenance work such as replacing deteriorated valves and pipes. In a 1993 letter, then-District Ranger Elliott Graham wrote that because the company had kept paying the annual fee and had complied with regulations, \"the permit is deemed valid until a new Special Use Permit is reissued.\"\n\nLawrence said Nestle has sought to renew the expired permit several times and is ready to work with the Forest Service.\n\n\"We just have to work through the process,\" Lawrence said. He said Nestle is waiting for word from the Forest Service on the next steps and would welcome \"a science-based study of the watershed.\"\n\n\"We're hoping just to work through whatever biological process or study of the environment that they want to work with us on,\" Lawrence said. \"We think we can certainly support our conclusions that our business is not harming the environment.\"\n\nSales of bottled water have been booming for years in the United States. Last year, preliminary figures from the Beverage Marketing Corporation showed about $13 billion in bottled water sales in 2014, an increase of 6.1 percent from a year earlier.\n\nBottled water plants are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and in California they are also regulated by the state's Department of Public Health.\n\nThe state's list of 108 licensed bottled water plants includes companies that sell individual-size bottles as well as larger jugs for home and office delivery. They range from CG Roxane, which packages Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring Water at plants in Weed and Olancha, to DS Services of America, which bottles brands such as Alhambra to Sparkletts at eight plants across California.\n\nOne small company, Borrego Springs Bottled Water, sells water pumped from the desert aquifer in San Diego County. Other companies with bottled water plants include Niagara Bottling, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo's Bottling Group, and supermarket companies such as Safeway, Vons and Ralphs.\n\nTo meet growing demand, companies have opened more bottling plants over the years. And some, such as Nestle, have sought out new springs.\n\n\"One of the things that we're constantly looking for is additional water sources that meet our requirements. They're relatively rare,\" Lawrence said. \"The drought year is a great year to go look for water because if it's sustaining its volume during a drought, then it's a nice, stable source.\"\n\nPeople often contact Nestle offering to sell water from new sources, Lawrence said. The vast majority of those springs don't meet the company's requirements. But occasionally they do.\n\nSince 2005, Nestle has been bottling water from Deer Canyon Springs in the San Bernardino National Forest under an agreement with the Cucamonga Valley Water District. Nestle approached the water district about the possibility, and the agency wasn't using water from the springs at the time.\n\n\"We weren't pulling from this canyon source because it was yielding such a small amount of water,\" said Kristeen Farlow, a spokeswoman for the Cucamonga Valley Water District. The water district owns rights to use all of the \"subsurface and surface flows\" from the canyon.\n\n\"Because it's spring water, we sell that water to Nestle at a premium,\" Farlow said. \"We opted to sell them that spring water at a premium so that way we could then take those funds and reinvest.\"\n\nThat deal, along with gradual rate increases paid by customers, has helped boost the water district's operating revenues, which grew from $44.7 million in 2005 to $83.4 million in 2014.\n\nIt's not clear how much Nestle is paying the water district, or how much the agency has benefitted from the deal. A copy of the agreement that the water district provided to The Desert Sun was heavily redacted to remove references to the price paid and other details. The water district cited an exemption in the state's public records law for \"trade secrets.\"\n\nThe Cucamonga Valley Water District, which supplies water to more than 190,000 customers, says the earnings from Nestle have allowed it to keep customers' rates lower than they would otherwise be. Just how much isn't clear.\n\nLawrence said that Nestle and the water district have built \"a great public-private relationship.\" As part of that relationship, Nestle has provided financial support for the Frontier Project, a state-of-the-art building next to the water district's offices that showcases water- and energy-saving construction. Nestle has also sponsored cleanups of creeks.\n\nAt Deer Canyon Springs, meanwhile, records show the amounts of water flowing to Nestle's bottling plant have increased during the drought. The Cucamonga Valley Water District, which sells water under an agreement with Nestle, reported 76 million gallons drawn from Deer Canyon last year, up from 56 million gallons in 2013 and more than in the previous two years.\n\nLoe said he's troubled that Nestle is removing water that would otherwise flow through the canyon and provide for wildlife. He said it's urgent that the Forest Service take a hard look at whether the use of Deer Canyon Springs is taking a toll on the forest.\n\nOthers have raised concerns about Nestle's use of water from a desert spring in Millard Canyon in Cabazon, where the company runs a bottling plant on the reservation of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians.\n\nReports filed by the tribe with the state show that 598 acre-feet of groundwater was pumped in Millard Canyon during 2013, and 3 acre-feet of water was diverted. That translates to 196 million gallons a year, enough water to fill nearly 300 Olympic swimming pools. It's not clear how much of that water was bottled.\n\nIt also isn't clear how diverting that water may be affecting the desert spring and the oasis around it. The Morongo tribe has not granted requests by The Desert Sun to visit the area. The tribe and Nestle, however, insist they are managing water sustainably and causing no environmental harm.\n\n\"Morongo strictly monitors springs in Millard Canyon as part of its extensive reservation groundwater monitoring program,\" Michael Fisher, a spokesman for the tribe, said in an email. The tribe says it also uses surface water and flows from its wastewater treatment plant to replenish the aquifer. \"Morongo and Nestle continue to carefully monitor and limit the amount of water used by the plant to ensure the springs remain healthy.\"\n\nDisputes over bottled water have flared and led to lawsuits in California, Texas, New Hampshire, Maine and Michigan, among other places.\n\nIn parts of Northern California, some bottling companies have changed their plans in the face of strong local opposition. Nestle Waters proposed in 2003 to build a plant in the town of McCloud, at the base of Mount Shasta. Six years later, after a legal fight over the local government's agreement to sell water to Nestle, the company announced it was scrapping the plan and would instead use a plant in Sacramento.\n\nIn 2009, Crystal Geyser Water Company announced it would build a bottling plant in the Northern California city of Orland. But facing opposition and a court battle, the company canceled the plan in 2011.\n\nCrystal Geyser has since bought a vacant bottling plant previously run by Coca-Cola on the outskirts of the city of Mount Shasta and says it will start bottling sparkling mineral water and other drinks later this year.\n\nA group of residents say they're deeply worried about the effects on wells and a nearby spring, and are demanding an environment impact report – a step that Siskiyou County officials say isn't required in this case. It's the sort of argument that has sometimes emerged in fights over bottled water: whether or not agencies are meeting obligations under the California Environmental Quality Act, which requires a review when a project involves significant environmental impacts.\n\nCalifornia also has other laws intended to protect the flows of streams. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife, for instance, must be notified of any project that would \"substantially divert or obstruct the natural flow.\" However, the state agency doesn't have any program to monitor the potential impacts of bottling plants or other businesses on streams.\n\nIn that regard, the water laws in California and other western states generally provide fewer protections than those of much wetter states in the Great Lakes region, said Noah Hall, a professor who specializes in environmental and water law at Wayne State University in Detroit. In Minnesota, for instance, Hall said state officials respond proactively to relatively dry periods and reduce the amounts of water that permit holders are entitled to use.\n\n\"They don't wait for the overpumping to harm the stream during the low-flow period,\" Hall said. Not so in California, where Hall said the law is essentially \"about taking the water out of the stream and using it.\"\n\n\"The law in most western states regarding water was written more than a hundred years ago when states wanted to see streams dried up to promote economic development,\" Hall said. If people want to see greater protections for streams, he said, \"it's time to change the law.\"\n\nOne significant change came last year as Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that for the first time established a statewide framework for managing groundwater in California. Those measures, which will take years to fully go into effect, give the state new authority to step in when necessary to prevent depleted aquifers from declining further. Primary responsibility for oversight, though, will remain with local agencies.\n\nAnd it's often local agencies that, when they are required to, collect data on the quantities of water used by bottling plants. That information isn't tracked in a comprehensive way by the state. In some cases, the information is kept confidential. In other cases, it isn't collected at all.\n\n\"It would be really great if there was public information about how much water these plants actually bottled, and where it came from,\" said Peter Gleick, a water researcher who is president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute. In order to know whether bottled water is being produced sustainably, he said, people need access to information about the sources tapped and the amounts bottled.\n\n\"There's so much angst statewide about water in general, and a lot of it is the result of a lack of transparency about who's using water to do what, from where,\" Gleick said. \"I'm a fan of public transparency about water use. The other issue, of course, is there is a question about converting a public good into a private product.\"\n\nWhile researching the bottled water industry several years ago, Gleick requested records from the state and obtained data from license applications showing how much water bottling companies anticipated using.\n\nThe state Department of Public Health has said recently, however, that it doesn't \"authorize, regulate, or track\" the amounts of water used by bottled water plants.\n\nThe state also doesn't keep a breakdown of water use by other sectors, such as golf courses or breweries or factories. Morrie Orang, who manages the water use unit of the Department of Water Resources, said a detailed state breakdown of water use by different industries is on his \"wish list.\" He said the agency plans to create a survey to send to businesses asking them to voluntarily provide information.\n\nThe way water is managed in California, bottled water plants are subject to the same simple rules as anyone else: As long as a company owns a right to water or buys it from someone who has a right to it, it can keep on pumping.\n\nWhat's missing from that system, Gleick said, is oversight and monitoring.\n\n\"The real issue is nobody's really paying attention to the local consequences on groundwater and streams,\" Gleick said. \"There's a real difference between saying, 'We know there's no problem because we're watching,' and 'We don't know if there's a problem because nobody's watching.' Those are different, and all too often with our environmental challenges, we learn that nobody's really watching. And that needs to be fixed.\"\n\nIn the San Bernardino National Forest, the newly announced plan to take up the matter of Nestle's expired permit comes as the Forest Service is developing a nationwide policy to manage groundwater on national forests.\n\nThe agency released a proposed directive for groundwater management in May, saying in a summary that \"there is a clear need for the Forest Service—in cooperation with the States—to take an active role in managing all water resources on these lands.\"\n\nThe proposal, which is to be finalized later this year, would create new procedures for permits that involve using groundwater. It would also require that the potential impacts of groundwater withdrawals be evaluated, and that the quantities of water drawn from springs be measured and reported to the Forest Service.\n\nIt's not clear how those changes, if adopted, might affect Nestle's use of spring water from the national forest.\n\nIn Strawberry Creek, downstream from Arrowhead Springs, state and federal wildlife officials are considering whether to reintroduce speckled dace to help save waning populations of the fish.\n\nAccording to Nestle, the flows cascading down through the canyon are sustaining a healthy creek. As the Forest Service considers reissuing a permit, the biggest question it will need to answer is whether that is in fact true.\n\nIan James can be reached by email at ian.james@desertsun.com and on Twitter at @TDSIanJames.\n\nJoin the conversation about bottled water in California by commenting on this story, sharing comments on Twitter using #CABottledWater and @MyDesert, or sending a letter to letters@desertsun.com.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2015/03/05"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_4", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:36", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/04/24/jimmy-choo-sale/100834922/", "title": "Luxury retailer Jimmy Choo puts itself up for sale", "text": "Nathan Bomey\n\nUSA TODAY\n\nBritish fashion chain Jimmy Choo said it was considering selling itself, among other moves, adding another company to the list of luxury retailers headed for a shakeup.\n\nJimmy Choo said it would consider \"various strategic options,\" which comes as the luxury segment grapples with sluggish sales. Upscale retailer Kate Spade recently declared that it would consider similar options, likely including a possible sale.\n\nJimmy Choo's largest shareholder, JAB Luxury, which owns 66.7% of the company's shares, said it \"is supportive of this process.\"\n\nThe seller of high-end shoes, handbags and accessories also reported Monday that sales at stores open at least a year fell 0.8% in 2016 after increasing 1.1% in 2015 and 5.7% in 2014.\n\nTo be sure, the company enjoyed a 14.5% revenue bump in 2016 to 364 million pounds, or $465.5 million. And operating profit rose 42.6% to 42.5 million pounds, or $54.4 million.\n\nBut when taking out favorable currency fluctuations fueled by the United Kingdom's vote to exit the European Union, revenue increased only 1.6%. The company is targeting China for growth and is renovating some stores to adopt a new format that it says has jolted sales.\n\nJimmy Choo CEO Pierre Denis said in the company's annual report Monday that he saw\"improving retail trends across all regions\" despite \"increased geopolitical uncertainty.\"\n\nIn the U.S., however, deteriorating demand from department stores is undermining sales. Excluding currency rates, sales in the company's Americas division plunged 13% in 2016.\n\nJimmy Choo had 150 company-owned stores worldwide and 64 franchised stores as of December 31, and planned to open about 10 locations in 2017.\n\nJimmy Choo's stock rose 11% to close at 186.50 pounds in London on Monday.\n\nFollow USA TODAY reporter Nathan Bomey on Twitter @NathanBomey.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2017/04/24"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/08/business/kohls-stock-investor-day/index.html", "title": "Kohl's says it's no longer a department store - CNN", "text": "New York (CNN Business) Kohl's is under intense pressure from Wall Street raiders and up against stiff competition from Amazon, Target and others. Now it's hoping that overhauling its brand image can beat back those threats.\n\nKohl's KSS announced plans Monday to add Sephora mini-shops to roughly 75% of its 1,100 US stores, open 100 new locations at half the size of its traditional outlets in the next four years and increase its popular Kohl's Cash rewards program to 7.5% on purchases, up from 5%. Kohl's also unveiled new strategies to grow online, including self-service for pickup orders and returns.\n\nThe approaches are part of a larger attempt to change how consumers see the Kohl's brand amid a department store sector that's been in decline for years. Traditional chains such as Sears, JCPenney and others have been forced into bankruptcy, prompting Kohl's to search for new ways to connect with shoppers.\n\nKohl's has lost 17% of its market share since 2011, primarily to discount stores such as TJ Maxx, Amazon and rival clothing brands, according to UBS analyst Jay Sole.\n\n\"We're evolving our position from a department store to a more focused lifestyle concept centered around the active and casual lifestyle,\" Kohl's CEO Michelle Gass said in a presentation to investors Monday.\n\nRead More", "authors": ["Nathaniel Meyersohn", "Cnn Business"], "publish_date": "2022/03/08"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/03/07/charlotte-russe-bankrupt-retailer-says-its-negotiations-buyer/3089828002/", "title": "Charlotte Russe store closings: Bankrupt retailer shuttering stores", "text": "The demise of another national retailer will cost the Oakdale Mall in Johnson City and the Arnot Mall in Big Flats two more storefronts.\n\nCharlotte Russe will close all of its stores and is in negotiations to sell its intellectual property, the company confirmed Wednesday.\n\n“We are partnering with the buyer and remain in talks to sell the (intellectual property), are optimistic about the future of the brand, and remain in ongoing negotiations with a buyer who has expressed interest in a continued brick and mortar presence to continue to serve our loyal customers in the future,” the fashion retailer said in a statement to USA TODAY.\n\nIn a court hearing in Wilmington, Delaware, on Wednesday, Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein approved the sale of Charlotte Russe's assets to SB360 Capital Partners LLC, a liquidation company.\n\nAccording to court documents, store liquidation sales \"shall commence no later than March 7\" and end \"no later than April 30.\"\n\nLike with other liquidation sales, all sales are final.\n\nCharlotte Russe has outlets at local malls in Johnson City and Big Flats, in addition to stores at Destiny USA in Syracuse, and the Viewmont Mall in Scranton. The closing represents yet another blow to the mall environment, particularly the local ones where the so-called \"retail apocalypse\" has been especially troublesome.\n\nMore:Recent mortgage transfer spells trouble for Oakdale Mall\n\nMore:What you need to know about the Oakdale Mall\n\nMore:Van Cott Jewelers closing Oakdale Mall store after 44 years, clearance starts this week\n\nMore:Van Cott Jewelers closing Oakdale Mall store after 44 years, clearance starts this week\n\nSB360 Capital Partners, describes itself on its website as \"one of the oldest, most experienced companies in the country conducting Store Closing and Going Out of Business Sales.\" It's an affiliate of the Schottenstein family, which also owns DSW Inc. and American Eagle Outfitters.\n\nCharlotte Russe Holdings had been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy for some time, having announced a deal to renegotiate certain debts more than a year ago.\n\nThe San Diego-based mall chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early February and outlined plans to close 94 stores. The chain also put itself up for sale and said if it didn't find a buyer it would liquidate.\n\nThe company, which also controls Peek children's clothing stores, caters its items toward women's fashion and has more than 500 stores in 49 states and Puerto Rico. In its filing, the company said it had received a bankruptcy financing package worth up to $50 million to help it continue operating.\n\nThe bankruptcy marks the latest in a series of similar cases among mall retailers that have been unable to identify a sustainable path amid declining foot traffic and intense digital competition.\n\nThe company has more than 8,700 employees.\n\nFollow Kelly Tyko on Twitter: @KellyTyko", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2019/03/07"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/19/business/kohls-stock-department-stores-activist-investor/index.html", "title": "How Kohl's became such a mess - CNN", "text": "New York (CNN Business) In 2018, Kohl's was a bright spot in the beleaguered department store sector.\n\nSales were growing,stock price was booming and new CEO Michelle Gass was earning widespread praise for her creative approach , including partnering withto offer free Amazon returns at Kohl's stores.\n\nOut of the three largest US department store chains — Kohl's,and— Kohl's looked to be in the strongest position.\n\nNot anymore. Kohl's is in turmoil today.\n\nThe chain's sales are lower than before the pandemic, despite strong consumer spending and as its rivals enjoy big gains. Activist investors are circling Kohl's and demanding leadership changes. A sale of the company could be on the horizon.\n\n\"We see a company that's lost its way,\" said Jonathan Duskin, managing partner at Macellum Advisors, an activist investment firm that has become Kohl's third largest shareholder.\n\nKohl's is under heavy pressure from investors and retail rivals.\n\nMacellum and a group of activist investors took a stake in Kohl's last year. The group reached a settlement with Kohl's in April, but Macellum has recently revived its effort to overhaul Kohl's because of continued stock price weakness and market share losses.\n\nKohl's \"should be doing better than Macy's, not worse,\" Duskin said. \"We see a lot of initiatives that sound okay, but never really result in growth.\"\n\nIn a statement, a Kohl's spokesperson blasted Macellum, saying the firm was \"using a misinformed, shifting and hollow narrative\" to push for changes that would not improve Kohl's and result in \"poorly qualified and inexperienced\" board directors.\n\nThe spokesperson said Kohl's has made \"substantial progress in transforming our business and positioning the Company for long-term success.\"\n\n\"We are already delivering results,\" the spokesperson added, pointing to the company's record earnings in 2021, operating profit margins reached two years ahead of schedule and an increase in the company's quarterly dividend.\n\nKohl's is attempting yet another makeover to turn things around, but its success is far from guaranteed.\n\nFighting the tide\n\nWith more than 1,100 US stores and around $19 billion in annual sales, Kohl's is the largest department store chain in the United States.\n\nWalmart WMT Target TGT The department store sector has been in structural decline for years against pressure from Amazon, growing big-box chains includingand, and discount clothing stores like TJMaxx. Companies such as Sears, JCPenney, Neiman Marcus, Barney's and others have filed for bankruptcy in recent years.\n\nDepartment stores including Kohl's have been undercut on prices by discount players from the bottom, and prestige by luxury stores at the top, said John Fisher, a senior lecturer at Boston College's Carroll School of Management and former CEO of Saucony running shoes.\n\n\"It's hard to be unique,\" Fisher said. \"I think Kohl's is caught right now by death in the middle.\"\n\nKohl's CEO Michelle Gass has been considered one of the most innovative executives in retail.\n\nTJMaxx TJX Kohl's has lost around 17% of its market share since 2011, primarily to off-price retailers such as, as well as Amazon, according to UBS.\n\n\"[F]orces like consumers' migration to online and preference for value have contributed to this erosion,\" UBS analyst Jay Sole said in a recent report. \"This will likely continue after the pandemic.\"\n\nStarbucks SBUX Since Gass, a former top deputy to Howard Schultz at, took over as Kohl's CEO in 2018, the company has attempted a handful of approaches to draw customers and stave off competitors.\n\nNike NKE Under Armour UA In addition to the returns partnership with Amazon, Kohl's expanded its athleisure clothing business with brands such asand. Kohl's also shrunk the size of a handful of stores and leased out the extra space to Aldi and Planet Fitness, made a bigger play for Millennials with new brands such as PopSugar and, more recently, opened Sephora beauty stores inside Kohl's.\n\nThese strategies have not led to major improvements. Kohl's has improved its athleisure business and other areas, but its women's clothing business has slumped.\n\nIn 2018, sales inched up 0.7% from the prior year. In 2019, they dropped 1.2% before plunging 20% in 2020 due to store closures and Covid-19 restrictions.\n\nLast year, after stores reopened and shoppers refreshed their wardrobes, sales bounced back 23% — but that was still below pre-pandemic levels.\n\nCompetition has become more cutthroat in the four years since Gass took over, and \"a lot of Kohl's stores feel tired,\" said Neil Saunders, managing director of retail at GlobalData. \"It has been very easy for customers to switch away from Kohl's to others offering something better.\"\n\nAnd brand partnerships with Amazon and Sephora do not address core issues, he added. \"Kohl's needs to look to improving its own brand rather than relying on others to lift it.\"\n\nA sale looming?\n\nOver the last few months, activist investors have been pressing for changes at Kohl's.\n\nOne firm, Engine Capital, urged Kohl's to spin off its e-commerce business from its stores or find a buyer to take the company private. \"Even the most patient long-term shareholders cannot be expected to endure the punishing underperformance and perpetual value disconnect seen at Kohl's,\" Engine Capital said in December.\n\nA month later, Macellum Advisors said it would nominate a slate of new board members at Kohl's because Kohl's board and leadership \"spent another year materially mismanaging the business.\" Private equity firms also made buyout offers for Kohl's, which the company rejected\n\nTo fight off pressure, Kohl's last week laid out plans for a \"complete reinvention of our business model and our brand\" at an investor day.\n\nKohl's said it would add Sephora mini-shops to roughly 75% of its 1,100 US stores, open 100 new locations at half the size of its traditional outlets in the next four years and increase its popular Kohl's Cash rewards program to 7.5% on purchases, up from 5%. Kohl's also unveiled new strategies to grow online, including self-service for pickup orders and returns.\n\n\"We're evolving our position from a department store to a more focused lifestyle concept centered around the active and casual lifestyle,\" Gass said in a presentation.\n\nBut to Duskin at Macellum Advisors, the plan was \"disappointing.\"\n\nHe believes the strategy won't meaningfully change how consumers see Kohl's — and he says it's time for a new board and, possibly, a new CEO. Kohl's has not fully taken advantage of its stores being located away from traditional malls, which are losing foot traffic, he said, and he questions whether the investment in Sephora is worth the cost.\n\nKohl's said last week that it has engaged with more than 20 potential buyers for the company, a sign of wide interest. Hudson's Bay Co., the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue, also is considering a bid, Axios reported Wednesday.\n\nKohl's board has an \"ongoing dialogue with potential bidders\" and will measure any offers against its own \"compelling standalone plan,\" a spokesperson said.\n\nDuskin expects Kohl's to accept a buyout offer, he said. \"This company can easily be turned around.\"", "authors": ["Nathaniel Meyersohn", "Cnn Business"], "publish_date": "2022/03/19"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2021/12/13/how-supply-chain-affecting-what-you-can-buy-grocery-stores-management-issues/6180317001/", "title": "How the supply chain is affecting what you can buy at grocery stores", "text": "On any given week, Cleo's Bodega Grocery & Café, a small-scale market on Doctor MLK Jr Street, could have difficulty getting a specific food item, thanks to the supply chain issues.\n\n\"It's not necessarily about products getting to us slower,\" said Sibeko Jywanza, director of food justice at Flanner House. \"It's whether or not they are available at all.\"\n\nRecently, it's been Atlantic salmon and shrimp. The store also found that certain varieties of Lunchables, ready-to-eat meals popular with kids, are hard to get. And Jywanza said the store competed against bigger stores and nonprofits to get turkeys and Cornish hens for Thanksgiving.\n\nRevisit:What to expect from Indiana's economy in 2022\n\nAnecdotes about so-called food shortages and empty grocery store shelves dominated headlines in recent months. While not as extreme, jams in the food supply chain are all too real for some local markets like Cleo's Bodega which has learned to be flexible in finding ways to get food products to customers.\n\nJywanza's department oversees the bodega, a small grocery store and café that opened in 2019. Even before the pandemic, the store found itself competing against larger grocers for items.\n\nSupply chain constraints have exacerbated the problem. For instance, Jywanza said distributors sometimes have a certain quantity of products for order; but large-scale major-market grocery stores may buy up all the units before Cleo's can make an order.\n\n\"Something might not be available one week or the next because it's all gone,\" he said, adding that a product shortage affects Cleo's harder than it would bigger stores selling a wider variety of brands. \"If we're only limited to getting one particular brand of that particular item, it just limits how many things that we could put on our shelves.\"\n\nHow COVID impacted the food supply chain\n\nNational organizations representing large and independent grocers say there's plenty of food in the supply chain. However, demand issues on the supply-side are impacting what consumers can serve for breakfast, lunch or dinner.\n\nThe food supply chain has three key components: production, involving farmers and ranchers; processing, involving manufacturers; and retail. Each part of the chain contributes to the price of food, which can also be influenced by outside factors such as trade and weather.\n\nOn its website, the Food Industry Association, also known as FMI, notes that cost increased at every stage of the food supply chain during the pandemic.\n\nMore:Construction industry seeks to attract workers amid hiring challenges\n\nAt the beginning, many restaurants closed as communities sought to contain the spread of the coronavirus. As a result, ranchers and growers lost one of their buyer channels making it costly to harvest, produce and store raw and intermediate food. Meanwhile, more Americans began cooking at home, increasing their demand for grocery products. .\n\n\"Grocery shopper demand doubled overnight, and now, the demand pressures we felt in March 2020 have not returned to pre-pandemic levels,\" FMI said via email.\n\nThe average household spent $161 on groceries at the height of the pandemic, compared to $113 in 2019, the association notes. Though spending has decreased, it's held steady at $144 per week since then.\n\n\"You still see a lot of people who are eating at home much more than they used to, who are eating more meals a day at home, and so there's a lot of demand for products,\" Andy Harig, FMI's vice president of tax, trade sustainability and policy development, told IndyStar in a telephone interview.\n\nWhen asked about supply constraints, Ohio-based Kroger, which has at least 49 stores across the Indianapolis area, deferred to comments CEO Rodney McMullen made during the company's Q3 earnings call with analysts.\n\nMcMullen said Kroger customers continued to eat at home because it was more affordable, convenient and healthier.\n\nExplore:Kroger opens its first new Indiana store since 2017 in Brownsburg\n\n\"We also saw them continuing to cook at home leading up to and during the holiday and select more premium products to elevate the food experience,\" he said. \"These are all reasons why we believe the food at home change is structural and not temporary.\"\n\nWhile consumer demand for food to cook at home remains high, labor shortages, increases on input costs —the price to create a product — and other COVID-related expenses are contributing to supply chain issues and creating conditions that make certain products harder to get.\n\nProduction and processing costs increased during the pandemic as companies adapted plexiglass barriers and frequent sanitization as safeguards to protect products from contamination.\n\nDig Deeper:$15 is becoming the new starting hourly wage in Indiana\n\nLabor costs are up as companies offer higher wages to entice workers. Industry experts says fewer truckers are available to help move product and a backlog at US ports are contributed to slowing the delivery of imports.\n\nHarig said the system cannot move product along fast enough to consistently meet consumer demand at stores.\n\n\"We see these kind of issues playing out where you have that sort of perfect storm,\" he said.\n\nLike 'Black Friday'\n\nIt can be difficult explaining the supply chain and the grocery business to customers — especially if an item is for sale one week and not the next, or consistently available for several weeks before disappearing.\n\nStill, Cleo's tries, Jywanza said. If a product is not available, apologies are given and offers are extended for customers to check again in the next week.\n\n\"The essentials and the basics are what we try to do as a small scale store, and yeah those are the things that people are always looking for,\" Jywanza said. \"Those are also the things that people are always getting from other stores.\"\n\nRevisit:How supply chain disruptions will affect Black Friday shopping\n\nHarig notes a manufacturer may scale back on their product offering if they don't have enough of an item such as a imported spice they are waiting to arrive from overseas.\n\nFood demand is regional, making it harder to determine where product shortages are occurring. How quickly a product can get to grocery shelves depends on where it's going and how long it takes to get there.\n\nAnd, as Harig explains typically it's a piece of a product — rather than the entire product — that gets jammed in the supply chain. Ingredients in processed or frozen foods are more likely to be snagged by the slower movement through the chain.\n\n\"A lot of our spices, things like cinnamon or cardamom, they come from overseas,\" he said. \"You also have a lot of packaging that comes from overseas. Sometimes that can be the challenge too. Whether that's a milk carton, or if it's a bubble pack on something like a frozen pizza, you have to make sure that that's available as well.\"\n\nHarig advises consumers to buy what they need and want. Still, he said they should feel confident enough to resist the urge to stockpile products.\n\nMcMullen told analysts Kroger had planned for today's supply chain constraints this past spring.\n\n\"We kept the additional warehouses originally brought on to support business or COVID to ensure we were able to provide for customers throughout the holiday season as well,\" he said, adding that the chain leverage what it learned from the pandemic and the chain has its own fleet to transport products. \"Because of our team's agility, we are better in stock today than we were a year ago.\"\n\nSupply chain jams can hinder sales for businesses like Cleo's Bogeda. Jywanza said customers seeking a specific item are more likely to leave without purchasing something else if they don't find what they're looking for.\n\nAnd, customers aren't always forgiving — especially if they leave feeling like they've wasted a trip to the store or dinner plans go awry.\n\n\"If we don't have other brands of that particular item available — some people don't want to switch brands, but they will get it if they're looking for that — if they walk out and go somewhere else their comfort and their confidence in that store will decrease,\" he said. \"They will build more confidence in the store that they went to that either, they got their particular item or had the off-brand.\"\n\nMore:Fact check: Supply chain delays not related to COVID-19 vaccine mandates\n\nTo be fair, Jywanza said this is an issue Cleo's has always had to deal with, given its size. The bodega switched distributors in September 2020. It doesn't have the ability to stockpile like bigger stores given its space and storage limitations.\n\nCleo's opened more than two years ago at Flanner House, a nonprofit social services center, to make fresh, healthy foods available to the Dr MLK Jr. Street corridor on near northwest side. The stores sells produce, meat and dried goods.\n\nJywanza said Cleo's is getting better at figuring out which products it can order week to week.\n\nThe store has learned to be flexible in how it gets products, such as sourcing from different vendors or possibly linking up with other smaller grocers to negotiate an exchange.\n\n\"When it time to do your inventory, you pretty much have to almost be like you're Black Friday shopping or something like that and be the first person to kind of get to it,\" he said jokingly.\n\nThe impact on food prices\n\nIn addition to inflation, the confluence of factors impacting the supply chain contribute to the prices consumers pay at check out.\n\nRecent data from the Department of Labor reflects a 7.1% increase in food prices across the Midwest for the 12-month period ending in November, as determined by the Consumer Price Index which measures the change in retail prices.\n\nRead more:How inflation is affecting your wallet in Indiana\n\n\"A change of $1 or 2 can make a difference on a product,\" Jywanza said.\n\nBeef and pork prices are up. And, Harig said input prices — wheat and corn for feed and fertilizer prices for produce — also have increased.\n\nDuring the earnings call, Kroger CFO Gary Millerchip said Kroger saw higher product cost inflation in most categories during the third quarter. Kroger said it passes along prices to the customer where it makes sense.\n\nIn a statement, the Washington D.C.-based National Grocers Association said via email that independent grocers and their wholesalers are working closely with suppliers to keep prices as steady as possible.\n\nPrice inflation is driven by a perfect storm of factors including an ongoing shortage of labor across the entire supply chain, acute shortage of truck drivers, increased ingredient inputs and occasional disruptions in product packaging production, the association said.\n\n\"As costs rise from producers and the supply chain, our members are following the same pricing structures and policies that they always have,\" the association said. \"While there is plenty of food in the supply chain, we anticipate consumers will continue to experience sporadic disruptions in certain product categories as we have seen over the past year and half due to the ongoing supply and labor challenges.\"\n\nLooking ahead\n\nEconomists expect supply chain issues to continue into the first quarter of 2022, but they don't expect the supply side issues to be permanent.\n\n\"We have to get through COVID,\" Harig said. \"We have to get sort of back on a path where people feel there's a little bit more more normalcy.\"\n\nHe expects supply chains to even out in the second or third quarter.\n\nFor Cleo's, the uncertainty makes it hard to strategize.\n\n\"If things aren't there, things aren't there,\" Jywanza said. There's not really anything that you can do about that except for trying to have alternatives for people to get.\"\n\nHe's seeking to do just that.\n\nJywanza expects the competition for products to remain fierce as bigger stores have greater buying power and can leverage their relationships with suppliers.\n\n\"The big whale gets gets most of the fish, right?\" Jywanza said.\n\nContact IndyStar reporter Alexandria Burris at aburris@gannett.com or call 317-617-2690. Follow her on Twitter: @allyburris.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/12/13"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/06/08/nordstrom-department-store-private/102622170/", "title": "Nordstrom could go private as department stores struggle", "text": "Nathan Bomey\n\nUSA TODAY\n\nThe Nordstrom family is exploring a bid to acquire the department-store chain that bears their family name in a deal that would turn the publicly traded company into a private venture to help it navigate the turmoil that has engulfed the retail industry.\n\nThe luxury department-store retailer said Thursday that several members of the Nordstrom family, including multiple company executives, had formed a group to weigh the potential deal.\n\nThe prospect of a deal drove Nordstrom stock up 10.3%, closing at $44.63, up $4.15 a share, for the day.\n\nThe possible shakeup comes amid a period of upheaval for department stores, which are facing declining mall traffic as shoppers increasingly buy more merchandise online for home delivery. Some of the nation's best-known chains, including Sears and J.C. Penney, have announced hundreds of store closures in recent months.\n\nMeanwhile, the luxury retail sector is also facing obstacles connected to the strong U.S. dollar, which is curbing tourist spending.\n\nNordstrom first offered its shares to the public in 1971, and sales exceeded $100 million two years later. In the fiscal year ended Jan. 28, Nordstrom's sales were about $14.5 billion, up 2.9%. Net earnings fell 41% to $354 million. Seattle-based Nordstrom has 122 full-line department stores in North America and 221 Nordstrom Rack stores, which are geared toward Millennials and people seeking high-quality discounted merchandise. About 23% of the company's business is online, which is up from 5% a decade ago but still puts the company at significant risk as shoppers lose interest in the department-store experience.\n\nThe prospect of Nordstrom going private represents an acknowledgment that the chain known for outstanding, personal service, although profitable and more stable than much of the department-store sector, must reinvent itself. Escaping the wrath of shareholders who demand strong quarterly results is a major benefit of private ownership.\n\n\"There’s no doubt that retail will be, for the foreseeable future, undergoing dramatic transformation, and that's very difficult to do in a publicly traded environment,\" said Greg Portell, lead partner in the retail practice of consulting firm A.T. Kearney. \"It's not unlike being an awkward teenager: Nobody enjoys their teenage years because everything’s changing, and to do that in the public eye is very difficult and in many ways counterproductive.\"\n\nU.S. department-store sales fell 37.8% to $156.9 billion from 2006 to 2016, according to retail trade publication The Robin Report.\n\nOther ailing retailers should consider going private so that they can invest the capital necessary to overhaul their business model, he said.\n\nFormer Nordstrom executive Kathy Gersch, executive vice president of consultancy Kotter International, said the chain could benefit from going private as long as the Nordstrom family members pay attention to what outsiders are telling them. Nordstrom family members considering the potential deal collectively hold about 31% of the company's stock, according to CFRA Research, and they're seeking to acquire the rest of the shares.\n\n\"Even though it’s public, it’s a family business,\" Gersch said. \"They view it that way.\"\n\nIn going public, Nordstrom would further reduce the number of publicly traded U.S. companies. Many corporations, seeking a shield from quarterly profit demands and regulatory scrutiny, are spurning the public market. At last count, there were 3,599 in the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index, which tracks all stocks actively traded in America. That's down more than 50% from the 1997 peak of 7,459.\n\nNordstrom stores are performing well in apparel but poorly in accessories, while benefiting from a buy-online, pick-up-in-store strategy, which has helped lift retail chains such as Best Buy. But foot traffic to slumping malls are taking a toll.\n\n\"We don't have great traffic numbers,\" James Nordstrom, the company's president of stores, told analysts in May. \"It's been down.\"\n\nThe company had suffered a serious setback after a disappointing first-quarter earnings report last month, which caused its stock to lose nearly a fifth of its value. Sales at Nordstrom stores open at least a year fell 0.8% during the period.\n\nThough the company projected flat same-store sales for the current fiscal year, CFRA Research analyst Efraim Levy estimated sales would be \"slightly down.\"\n\nNordstrom said Thursday that it had formed a special committee of independent directors and hired legal and financial advisers to evaluate the possible deal.\n\nThe family members considering the bid are Co-Presidents Blake Nordstrom, Peter E. Nordstrom and Erik Nordstrom; President of Stores James Nordstrom; Chairman Emeritus Bruce Nordstrom; and Anne Gittinger.\n\nTheir ancestor, John W. Nordstrom, and Seattle shoemaker Carl Wallin jointly opened the Wallin & Nordstrom shoe store in 1901. After evolving and growing into a nationwide independent shoe chain, the company that became known as Nordstrom started selling women's clothing in 1963.\n\nFollow USA TODAY reporter Nathan Bomey on Twitter @NathanBomey.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2017/06/08"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/01/05/sears-ending-leases-another-19-stores/96163038/", "title": "Department stores become endangered as Sears, Macy's struggle", "text": "Charisse Jones\n\nUSA TODAY\n\nSears is closing 150 stores and selling its vaunted Craftsman tool brand, but those steps may not be enough to stop the unraveling of the American icon.\n\nWith Sears' announcement Thursday coming only a day after rival Macy's saying it would close 68 locations, the department store concept itself is looking like an endangered species. In a retail landscape now dominated by online sellers like Amazon and big-box chains like Walmart and Home Depot, Sears finds itself in a search for a reason to exist.\n\n\"The brand has lost relevance, it’s lost customers and it’s lost its real reason for existence on the American retail scene,'' says Neil Saunders, CEO of Conlumino, a retail consulting firm. Following \"the trajectory they're on, there are no real signs of them turning it around to profitability.''\n\nIs your local Sears or Kmart among 150 stores to be axed? See the list\n\nSears has more than 1,300 stores remaining in its portfolio, so its demise could be prolonged. But if the retailer is unable to stem its financial bleeding and is forced into bankruptcy or perhaps a final assets sale, its loss would be akin to that of dominating American companies like airline Pan Am or five-and dime F.W. Woolworth.\n\n\"I honestly don’t see a spot for Sears long-term,\" says Van Conway, CEO of Van Conway & Partners, who has advised retail companies and other businesses on reorganization and insolvency. \"My mom shopped at Sears. That was the only place she could go. Now you have 50 choices, and Sears is outdated.’’\n\nFounded in 1886, Sears launched its first large, general catalog a decade later and for generations was the go-to source for products ranging from watches to washing machines. Though it lost its place as the nation's biggest retailer to Walmart in the 1990s, Sears enjoyed a renaissance during that decade under the helm of then-CEO Arthur Martinez, who pushed a greater focus on apparel sales and other initiatives.\n\nThe company faltered in the 2000s, selling its more than $30 billion credit portfolio to Citibank in 2003 and merging the Sears brand with Kmart, another struggling big box chain.\n\nMacy's is closing these 68 stores: Is yours on the list?\n\nCEO Edward Lampert, a hedge fund manager who shepherded the Sears tie-up with Kmart, initiated his own turnaround strategy, loaning the company cash, spinning off parts of the business and putting Sears' Kenmore, Diehard and Craftsman brands up for sale.\n\nSears' travails are part of a broader struggle that has engulfed many traditional retailers trying to compete in an environment in which consumers can buy virtually any item by browsing online and without setting foot in a store.\n\nExpect more store closings despite big holiday sales\n\n\"One thing people used to use department stores for was wide choice and selection,'' Saunders says. \"There's no wider choice than on the Internet, so a lot of the reasons for going to those department stores just doesn't exist the way it once did.''\n\nIn addition to Sears, many retailers, including Kohl's and JCPenney, have failed to innovate in ways that will continue to woo shoppers. “We're seeing now in retail a lot of legacy players that are dead, dying or in danger of dying because of their inability to do that,'' says Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, who is the former CEO of Sears Canada.\n\nThe flurry of steps taken in recent days by Sears is a stark illustration of the moves it is making to try to survive. In addition to the store closures, Sears announced Wednesday that it had obtained a $500 million loan commitment backed by mortgages on 46 properties belonging to its subsidiaries. That adds to its long-term debt, which had ballooned from $2.2 billion at the end of January 2016 to $3.7 billion at the end of October.\n\n\"From what I can see, these are very intelligent financial maneuvers to raise money,’’ says Conway. “But the whole issue is, is the core business of the retailer viable?\"", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2017/01/05"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/06/12/jcpenney-bankruptcy-store-closures-2020-list-liquidation-sale/5327167002/", "title": "JCPenney store closings 2020 list: Liquidation sale to start soon", "text": "J.C. Penney on Thursday received bankruptcy court approval to begin liquidation sales at stores that are closing permanently.\n\nThe department store chain, which is expected to close 242 stores for good, also won rent relief as it tries to avoid liquidation. The company won't have to pay rent for June or July until July 13 for the roughly 600 stores it's not permanently closing, Judge David Jones ruled.\n\nThe company had requested rent relief for all of its locations, but the judge limited the deferred rent payments to stores that expect to continue operations.\n\nLiquidation sales could begin as soon as this weekend at the initial 154 J.C. Penney stores that will permanently close. (Scroll down to see the list.)\n\nSave better, spend better: Money tips and advice delivered right to your inbox. Sign up here\n\nThe Texas-based chain is the largest company to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection so far during the coronavirus pandemic.\n\nThe going-out-of-business sales are expected to last 10 to 16 weeks.\n\nFlorida, Ohio and Indiana each have nine closures, California has eight, and New York, Texas and Georgia have seven closings apiece.\n\nThe company is hoping to shed debt and split into two entities: an operating business and a real estate investment trust. If that plan doesn't work, the company may agree to sell itself. Although the retailer hopes to stay in business, liquidation of the entire chain remains a possibility.\n\nAre more store closings coming?:As many as 25,000 stores could shutter in 2020 due to COVID-19 impact\n\nLiquidation sales have changed:Going-out-of-business sales different because of COVID-19\n\nJ.C. Penney attorneys told Judge Jones on Thursday that they face a crucial deadline of July 15 to deliver a business plan supported by key lenders. Without one, the company is expected to pursue a sale instead. Such a sale could lead to a total liquidation if no suitors emerge who are willing to continue operating the business.\n\nBecause of the COVID-19 pandemic, the store liquidation sales will be handled differently from past liquidations. Fewer shoppers will be allowed into stores because of social distancing guidelines.\n\nJ.C. Penney store closings 2020\n\nHere are the first 154 J.C. Penney stores that are permanently closing.\n\nAlabama J.C. Penney closing stores\n\nAndalusia: Covington Mall, 922 River Falls St.\n\nFlorence: Regency Square, 301 Cox Creek Parkway\n\nScottsboro: Jackson Square, 1601 S Broad\n\nSpanish Fort: Spanish Fort Town Center, 22500 Town Center Ave.\n\nArizona J.C. Penney store closings\n\nCottonwood: Little Creek Center, 1100-B Highway 260\n\nPhoenix: Christown Spectrum, 1727 W Bethany Home Road\n\nTucson: El Con Shopping Center, 3501 E Broadway\n\nArkansas closing J.C. Penney stores\n\nBatesville: Independence Center, 475 S St. Louis St.\n\nConway: Conway Towne Center, 201 Skyline Drive\n\nEl Dorado: Mellor Park Mall, 1845 N West Ave.\n\nHarrison: The Fashion Center, 814 U.S. Highway 62-65 N\n\nCalifornia J.C. Penney store closings\n\nChino: Rancho Del Chino Shopping Center, 14659 Ramona Ave.\n\nDelano: 1228 Main St.\n\nLos Banos: San Luis Plaza, 951 W Pacheco Blvd.\n\nPaso Robles: Woodland Plaza, 120 Niblick Road\n\nSan Bernardino: Inland Center, 300 Inland Center\n\nTracy: West Valley Mall, 3100 Naglee Road\n\nTurlock: Countryside Plaza, 1840 Countryside Drive\n\nYreka: Yreka Junction Mall, 1810 Fort Jones Road\n\nColorado J.C. Penney closing stores\n\nDurango: Durango Mall, 800 S Camino Del Rio\n\nFort Collins: 135 Bockman Drive\n\nGreeley: Greeley Mall, 2080 Greeley Mall\n\nMontrose: River Landing Shopping Center, 3400 Rio Grande Ave.\n\nConnecticut J.C. Penney store closure\n\nTorrington: Torrington Commons, 251 High St.\n\nFlorida J.C. Penney closing stores\n\nBradenton: Desoto Square Mall, 303 301 Blvd. W\n\nCape Coral: Coralwood Shopping Center, 2301 Del Prado Blvd.\n\nFort Myers: Gulf Coast Town Center, 10083 Gulf Center Drive\n\nJacksonville: Regency Square Mall, 9501 Arlington Expressway\n\nLake Wales: Eagle Ridge Mall, 501 Eagle Ridge Drive\n\nMary Esther: Santa Rosa Shopping Center, 300 Mary Esther Blvd.\n\nOrlando: Orlando Fashion Square, 3115 E Colonial Drive\n\nSebring: Lakeshore Mall, 901 U.S. 27 N\n\nTampa: Westshore Plaza, 201 Westshore Plaza\n\nGeorgia J.C. Penney closing stores\n\nAthens: Georgia Square, 3700 Atlanta Highway\n\nAtlanta: Northlake Mall, 4840 Briarcliff Road NE\n\nDouglasville: Arbor Place Mall, 6650 Douglas Blvd.\n\nGainesville: Lakeshore Mall, 150 Pearl Nix Parkway\n\nRome: Mount Berry Mall 300 Mount Berry Square NE\n\nStatesboro: Statesboro Mall, 325 Northside Drive E\n\nWaycross: Hatcher Point Mall, 2215 Memorial Drive\n\nIdaho closing J.C. Penney stores\n\nLewiston: Lewiston Shopping Center, 1826 19th Ave.\n\nPonderay: Bonner Mall, 300 Bonner Mall Way\n\nIllinois J.C. Penney closing stores\n\nBourbonnais: Northfield Square, 1600 N State Route 50\n\nCalumet City: River Oaks Shopping Center, 200 River Oaks Center Drive\n\nCarbondale: University Mall, 1201 E Main\n\nFreeport: Freeport Mall, 1810 S West Ave.\n\nMount Vernon: Times Square Mall, 115 Times Square Mall\n\nIndiana J.C. Penney closing stores\n\nBedford: Bedford Town Fair, 1118 James Ave.\n\nElkhart: Concord Mall, 3701 S Main St.\n\nIndianapolis: NW Pavilion at Michigan Road, 8752 Michigan Road\n\nKokomo: Kokomo Mall, 1718 E Blvd.\n\nMadison: River Point Mall, 435 E Clifty Drive\n\nMuncie: Muncie Mall, 3501 Granville Ave.\n\nPlymouth: Pilgrim Place Mall, 1350 Pilgrim Lane\n\nRichmond: Richmond Square, 4199 National Road E\n\nVincennes: Vincennes Plaza, 640 Niblack Blvd.\n\nIowa J.C. Penney store closings\n\nCarroll: 504 N Adams St.\n\nMarshalltown: Marshalltown Mall, 2500 Shopping Center St.\n\nKansas J.C. Penney store closures\n\nEmporia: Flint Hills Village, 1678 Industrial Road\n\nLiberal: Liberal Plaza, 1513 N Kansas Ave.\n\nSalina: Central Mall, 2259 S 9th St.\n\nKentucky J.C. Penney closing stores\n\nCampbellsville: Green River Plaza, 399 Campbellsville Bypass\n\nDanville: Danville Manor Shopping Center, 1560 Houstonville Road\n\nHopkinsville: Bradford Square, 4000 Fort Campbell Blvd.\n\nMaysville: Market Square, U.S. 68 S and AA Highway\n\nMiddlesboro: Middlesboro Mall, 905 N 12th St.\n\nOwensboro: Town Square Mall, 5000 Frederica St.\n\nLouisiana J.C. Penney store closures\n\nLafayette: Acadiana Mall, 5725 Johnston St.\n\nMetairie: Lakeside Shopping Center, 3301 Veterans Memorial Blvd.\n\nShreveport: Regal Court Shopping Center, 7451 Youree Drive\n\nMaryland closing J.C. Penney stores\n\nAbingdon: Boulevard at Box Hill, 3411 Merchant Blvd.\n\nLanham: Woodmore Towne Center at Glen, 9100 McHugh Drive\n\nLa Vale: Country Club Mall, 1262 Vocke Road\n\nMichigan J.C. Penney closures\n\nAlpena: Alpena Mall, 2338 U.S. 23 S\n\nCadillac: Cadillac Shopping Center, 1550 N Mitchell St.\n\nPetoskey: 408 E Mitchell St.\n\nMinnesota closing J.C. Penney stores\n\nCoon Rapids: Riverdale Village, 12550 Riverdale Blvd.\n\nEden Prairie: Eden Prairie Center, 8201 Flying Cloud Drive\n\nMaple Grove: Grove Square Shopping Center, 13701 Grove Drive\n\nWillmar: Kandi Mall, 1605 South First St.\n\nMississippi J.C. Penney store closings\n\nLaurel: Sawmill Square Mall, 910 Sawmill Road\n\nStarkville: Starkville Crossing, 864 Highway 12 W\n\nMissouri closing J.C. Penney stores\n\nKirksville: Kirksville Shopping Center, 2206 S Baltimore St.\n\nIndependence: Bolger Square, 17610 E 39th St. S\n\nMontana J.C. Penney store closure\n\nBozeman: Gallatin Valley Mall, 2825 W Main St.\n\nNebraska closing J.C. Penney store\n\nGrand Island: Conestoga Mall, 3404 W 13th St.\n\nNew Hampshire J.C. Penney closings\n\nKeene: West Street Shopping Center, 381 West St.\n\nNorth Conway: Mountain Valley Mall, State Highway 16 and Route 302\n\nRochester: Lilac Mall, 25 Lilac Mall (Route 125)\n\nWest Lebanon: Upper Valley Plaza, 250 Plainfield Road\n\nNew Mexico J.C. Penney store closure\n\nAlamogordo: White Sands Mall, 3199 N White Sands\n\nNew York J.C. Penney closing stores\n\nAuburn: Finger Lakes Mall, 1579 Clark Street Road\n\nBatavia: Batavia City Centre, 40 Batavia City Center\n\nCanandaigua: Roseland Shopping Center, 3225 State Route 364\n\nNew Hartford: Sangertown Square Mall, 1 Sangertown Square\n\nOswego: Oswego Plaza, 140 State Route 104\n\nRome: Freedom Mall, 205 Erie Blvd. W\n\nSyracuse: Destiny USA, 9559 Destiny USA Drive\n\nNorth Carolina J.C. Penney closures\n\nHenderson: Henderson Square, 380 N Cooper Drive\n\nLumberton: Biggs Park Shopping Center, 2910 N Elm St.\n\nNew Bern: Twin Rivers Mall, 3100 M L King Jr Blvd.\n\nRaleigh: North Hills Shopping Center, 4217 Six Forks Road\n\nRockingham: Richmond Plaza, 1305 E Broad Ave.\n\nOhio closing J.C. Penney stores\n\nAkron: Chapel Hill Mall, 2000 Brittain Road\n\nAkron: Tri County Plaza, 1500 Canton Road\n\nAlliance: Carnation Mall, 2500 W State St.\n\nAshtabula: Ashtabula Mall, 3315 N Ridge Road E\n\nCincinnati: Governors Plaza, 9365 Fields Ertel Road\n\nDefiance: Northtowne Mall, 1500 N Clinton St.\n\nEast Liverpool: Summit Square Shopping Center, 16280 Dresden Ave.\n\nParma: The Shoppes At Parma, 7900 Day Drive\n\nPiqua: Miami Valley Mall, 987 E Ash St.\n\nOklahoma J.C. Penney store closures\n\nEnid: Oakwood Mall, 4125 W Owen K Garriott Road\n\nMcAlester: Tandy Town Shopping Center, 1744 E Carl Albert Parkway\n\nMidwest City: Town Center Plaza, 7271 SE 29th St.\n\nMuskogee: Arrowhead Mall, 501 N Main St.\n\nShawnee: Shawnee Mall, 4901 N Kickapoo Ave.\n\nTulsa: Tulsa Promenade, 4101 S Yale Ave.\n\nOregon J.C. Penney closures\n\nBend: Cascade Village, 63455 N Highway 97\n\nMcMinnville: McMinnville Plaza, 2180 NE Highway 99 W\n\nRoseburg: Garden Valley Mall, 780 NW Garden Valley Blvd.\n\nSalem: Salem Center, 305 Liberty St. NE\n\nPennsylvania J.C. Penney closing stores\n\nButler: Clearview Mall, 101 Clearview Circle\n\nHanover: North Hanover Mall, 1155 Carlisle St.\n\nMonaca: Beaver Valley Mall, 200 Beaver Valley Mall\n\nMonroeville: Monroeville Mall, 500 Monroeville Mall\n\nTarentum: Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills, 167 Pittsburgh Mill Circle\n\nSouth Carolina J.C. Penney closings\n\nAnderson: Anderson Mall, 3187 N Main St.\n\nBeaufort: Cross Creek Mall, 328 Robert Smalls Parkway\n\nFlorence: Magnolia Mall, 2701 David H McLeod Blvd.\n\nMyrtle Beach: Myrtle Beach Mall, 10177 N Kings Highway\n\nOrangeburg: Prince of Orange Mall, 2390 Chestnut St.\n\nRock Hill: Rock Hill Galleria, 2321 Dave Lyle Blvd.\n\nSouth Dakota J.C. Penney store closure\n\nBrookings: University Mall, 990 22nd Ave. S\n\nTennessee J.C. Penney closing stores\n\nCleveland: Bradley Square, 200 Paul Huff Parkway NW\n\nColumbia: Columbia Mall, 800 S James Campbell Blvd.\n\nDyersburg: Dyersburg Mall, 2700 Lake Road\n\nKingsport: Kingsport Town Center, 2101 Fort Henry Drive\n\nMaryville: Foothills Mall, 101 Foothills Mall\n\nMcMinnville: Three Star Mall, 1410 Sparta St.\n\nTexas J.C. Penney store closings\n\nDallas: Timber Creek Crossing, 6051 Skillman St.\n\nGreenville: Crossroads Mall, 6834 Wesley St.\n\nHuntsville: West Hills Mall, 2 Financial Plaza\n\nLewisville: Music City Mall, 2401 S Stemmons Fairway\n\nLufkin: Lufkin Shopping Center, 4600 S Medford Drive\n\nPalestine: Palestine Mall, 1930 S Loop 256\n\nParis: Mirabeau Square, 3560 Lamar Ave. Highway 82\n\nUtah J.C. Penney closing locations\n\nLayton: Layton Hills Mall, 1201 N Hill Field Road\n\nLogan: Cache Valley Mall, 1350 N Main St.\n\nVermont J.C. Penney closing stores\n\nBennington: Bennington Square, 99 Bennington Square\n\nBerlin: Berlin Mall, 282 Berlin Mall Road\n\nVirginia closing J.C. Penney stores\n\nDanville: Danville Mall, 325 Piedmont Drive\n\nStaunton: Colonial Mall, 90 Lee Jackson Highway\n\nWisconsin J.C. Penney store closure\n\nMenomonee Falls: Crossroads Shopping Center, N96W18515 County Line Road.\n\nWhen do new cars come out?:You'll have to wait to buy 2021, as automakers delay next year's models\n\nStarbucks store closings: Coffee giant says it will close 400 stores but expanding pickup options\n\nFollow USA TODAY reporters Nathan Bomey and Kelly Tyko on Twitter @NathanBomey and @KellyTyko.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2020/06/12"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/18/business/kohls-stock-activist-investor/index.html", "title": "The pitchforks are out for Kohl's - CNN", "text": "New York (CNN Business) Kohl's can't catch a break from Wall Street.\n\nFor the second time in as many months and third time in a year, an activist investor is putting pressure on the department store chain to make changes or sell the company.\n\nKohl's KSS Activist hedge fund Macellum Advisors, which owns about 5% ofstock, said in a letter Tuesday that Kohl's board of directors and leadership team spent last year \"materially mismanaging the business and failing to implement necessary\" improvements.\n\nMacellum said it planned to nominate a slate of new board members unless Kohl's decides to work with the firm. If Kohl's board won't make changes, the company should explore a sale, the activists said.\n\nShares of Kohl's rose around 6% Tuesday on the news.\n\nRead More", "authors": ["Nathaniel Meyersohn", "Cnn Business"], "publish_date": "2022/01/18"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/31/business/kohls-stock-activist-investor/index.html", "title": "The future of Kohl's is about to be decided - CNN", "text": "New York (CNN Business) Kohl's is pushing back against intense pressure from Wall Street to make changes or sell the company.\n\nThe retailer sent a sharply worded letter to shareholders Thursday ahead of the its annual meeting in May, urging them to reject an activist investor's efforts to gain control of the company and install its own board of directors.\n\nHedge fund Macellum has criticized Kohl's in recent months, arguing the chain has underperformed competitors and lacks a compelling strategy. It wants Kohl's to consider selling its real estate assets, spin off its e-commerce business or find a buyer for the whole company.\n\nMacellum last month nominated 10 new directors to Kohl's 13-member board, which would give it more than enough votes to approve a takeover.\n\nIn its letter Thursday Kohl's called on shareholders to \"reject Macellum's empty agenda\" and vote against its \"inexperienced, unqualified\" board nominees.\n\nMacellum is pushing for \"a hasty sale at any price\" and its nominees are \"not truly independent,\" Kohl's said, because of their ties to the fund's founder, Jonathan Duskin. Duskin is also one of the board nominees.\n\n\"The choice is clear: Re-elect the Kohl's Board ... or elect Jonathan Duskin and his associates to destroy value,\" Kohl's said in the letter.\n\nMacellum did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\n\nKohl's is also considering a sale of the company.\n\nThe retailer said earlier this month that it has engaged with more than 20 potential buyers, a sign of wide interest. Hudson's Bay Co., the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue, is also reportedly considering a bid.\n\nThere are also some broader concerns about the pressure from Wall Street and any potential sale of the company.\n\nWisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin wrote a letter last week to Kohl's, which was founded in the state and is based there, calling on the company to reject any offers that propose selling real estate assets, \"increase the risk of bankruptcy, or imperil the jobs and retirement security of thousands of Wisconsin workers.\"\n\nDepartment store woes\n\nKohl's, the largest department store chain in the United States, is trying to prove the exception to the decline of the sector in recent years.\n\nAmazon AMZN Walmart WMT Target TGT Department store brands have long struggled against competition fromand discount clothing chains such as TJMaxx. Numerous big retailers including Sears, JCPenney, Neiman Marcus, Barney's and others have filed for bankruptcy in recent years.\n\nKohl's KSS returns and expanding its athleisure business. The changes haven't helped much. has attempted a variety of strategies to increase sales, such as partnering with Amazon to handlereturns and expanding its athleisure business. The changes haven't helped much.\n\nIn 2018, sales inched up 0.7% from the prior year, but in 2019, they dropped 1.2%. Sales plunged 20% in 2020 as Covid-19 raged, all but eliminating in-store shopping amid pandemic restrictions and mandatory closures.", "authors": ["Nathaniel Meyersohn", "Cnn Business"], "publish_date": "2022/03/31"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_5", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:36", "search_result": []}
+{"question_id": "20220610_6", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:36", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/06/politics/january-6-public-hearings-explainer/index.html", "title": "The January 6 committee is about to show its work. Here's what you ...", "text": "A version of this story appeared in CNN's What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here\n\nWashington (CNN) More than 500 days removed from the violent attack on the US Capitol, the committee investigating it is ready to show its work.\n\nThe House select committee will hold its first public hearing this week, on June 9 at 8 p.m. ET. Sources told CNN this hearing will be a broad overview of the panel's 10-month investigation and set the stage for subsequent hearings, which are expected to cover certain topics or themes.\n\nWhile the setup of the hearings has been a work in progress and evolving, sources note, the presentations will likely feature video clips from January 6, as well as some of the roughly 1,000 interviews the committee has conducted behind closed doors.\n\nIn recent days, new information about the insurrection has also emerged. The New York Times reported Friday that former Pence chief of staff Marc Short warned Pence's lead Secret Service agent the day before the attack that there could be a threat to the then-vice president. A source familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN that The New York Times' account of the conversation was accurate.\n\nIn the meantime, here's what we're expecting from the committee's hearings.\n\nWill there be new information?\n\nYes, at least according to an advisory from the committee released last week.\n\n\"The committee will present previously unseen material documenting January 6th, receive witness testimony, preview additional hearings, and provide the American people a summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power,\" the panel said.\n\nWhat can people expect?\n\nCommittee members have teased that the hearings could be focused on former President Donald Trump's direct role in undermining the election results.\n\nBroadly, the panel has been working toward a thesis that Trump's obsession with the election loss and his peddling of false claims about the results is what laid the groundwork for the violent and deadly riot at the Capitol.\n\nAhead of the hearing, Rep. Liz Cheney , one of just two Republicans on the committee, has asserted that the attack was part of an \"extremely well-organized\" conspiracy.\n\n\"It is extremely broad. It's extremely well organized. It's really chilling,\" Cheney told CBS \"Sunday Morning\" when asked if the attack amounted to a conspiracy, adding: \"I have not learned anything that has made me less concerned.\"\n\nDemocratic Rep. David Cicilline told CNN Saturday that \"disturbing\" new evidence would be presented at the upcoming hearings, stressing the significance of this process.\n\n\"There will be, I think, substantial evidence that really demonstrates the coordination and the planning and the effort, despite the fact that they understood that Donald Trump lost the election and even once the insurrection began and the violence began, there were ongoing efforts to persuade the former President to stop the violence and call on folks to go home, and he refused to do it,\" Cicilline told CNN\n\nThe lawmaker added: \"I think the American people are going to learn facts about the planning and execution of this that will be very disturbing.\"\n\nFormer Virginia Rep. Denver Riggleman, who worked as a technical adviser for the House select committee, similarly said Sunday that people will be \"absolutely surprised\" by what will be presented.\n\nWhat witnesses might appear?\n\nCNN has learned that two people directly tied to former Vice President Mike Pence are among those who have received invitations to appear. Former Pence chief counsel Greg Jacob and former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig have received outreach from the committee about their possible testimony.\n\nIn addition to Luttig and Jacob, CNN has learned Short is expected to be called to testify.\n\nAll three men have already been interviewed privately by committee investigators. In some cases, their testimony has already been used by the committee as part of court filings and subpoena requests of other potential witnesses in their investigation.\n\nHow will the hearings compare to Trump's impeachment proceedings?\n\nOne source close to the committee told CNN that the panel has drawn on experiences from Trump's two impeachment proceedings. Those hearings have served as a model of both what to do and not to do.\n\nA key difference to typical committee proceedings is that the January 6 hearings will not feature the voices of prominent Trump supporters in Congress.\n\nThe panel's only two Republican members, Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, are both outspoken critics of Trump.\n\nHow is Trump preparing?\n\nThe former President has made it clear he is looking for cover from his closest allies around the upcoming public hearings.\n\nRead this report from CNN's Melanie Zanona, Zachary Cohen and Ryan Nobles. Trump's team has communicated to some of his most loyal acolytes on Capitol Hill that the former President wants people vigorously defending him and pushing back on the select committee while the public hearings play out, according to GOP sources familiar with the request.\n\nBut part of the challenge for Republicans — especially after they decided to boycott the select committee — is that they have little insight into what the investigation has uncovered and what might be revealed in the public hearings, making it harder for them to settle on a precise strategy.\n\nHow should Americans approach these hearings?\n\nWith as little emotion as possible, journalist Bob Woodward told CNN\n\n\"I think we need to say: 'This is what we know. This is what we don't know.' Be very, very careful and be as unemotional, frankly -- it's difficult, but be as unemotional as possible here,\" he said.", "authors": ["Paul Leblanc"], "publish_date": "2022/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/11/politics/jan-6-hearings-witness-list-preparations/index.html", "title": "January 6 committee finalizing witness list and topics ahead of high ...", "text": "Washington (CNN) A month before it kicks off a series of high-profile public hearings , the House select committee investigating January 6 is still finalizing its witness list and preparing to reach out to people it wants to testify publicly.\n\nThe first hearing, set for June 9, will be a broad overview of the panel's 10-month investigation and set the stage for subsequent hearings, which are expected to cover certain topics or themes including what President Donald Trump was doing as the riot unfolded, the pushing of baseless election fraud claims that motivated rioters, how law enforcement responded to the attack, and the organizing and financing behind the January 6 rallies , sources tell CNN.\n\nWhile the setup of the hearings is still a work in progress and evolving, sources note, the presentations will likely feature video clips from January 6, as well as some of the nearly 1,000 interviews the committee has conducted behind closed doors. That could help the committee share more testimony, as well as deal with potentially recalcitrant witnesses.\n\nThe committee may begin reaching out to potential witnesses as soon as next week, according to two sources familiar with the matter.\n\nAmong the witnesses whose testimony was videotaped were members of Trump's family, including recent interviews with Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.\n\nA representative for Donald Trump Jr. declined to comment. A representative for Ivanka Trump and Kushner did not respond to a request for comment, and a spokesperson for the committee also declined to comment about next month's hearings.\n\nMultiple people who have been interviewed by the committee tell CNN they expect to be called as first-hand fact witnesses to the events on or around January 6, though none of them say they've been notified by the committee yet. Those people include former members of the Trump administration, former White House officials and rally planners.\n\nAt least one fact witness who has been deposed by the committee behind closed doors already told the panel they will refuse to testify publicly if asked, according to a source familiar with the matter. Other witnesses, including rally organizers, have indicated they may be willing to participate in public hearings under a certain set of ground rules, two additional sources familiar with the matter told CNN.\n\nAmong the key witnesses who sources say are likely to be called for the public hearings are former Justice Department officials Jeff Rosen and Richard Donoghue, the interim attorney general and deputy attorney general during the final month of the Trump administration. Both have testified to the committee about Trump's efforts to pressure the Justice Department to investigate unfounded allegations of voter fraud after the 2020 election.\n\nNeither Rosen nor Donoghue have been asked to testify at a public hearing, according to sources familiar with the matter.\n\nAlso expected to be on the final witness list for public hearings are top aides to former Vice President Mike Pence , including his former chief of staff Marc Short and former general counsel Greg Jacob.\n\nIt's unclear if the committee will ask Pence to appear for public hearings, but two people familiar with the investigation say they would be very surprised if he testified.\n\n\"We understand the interest in talking to the vice president, and we haven't made decisions at this point,\" committee member Democratic Rep. Pete Aguilar of California told CNN's John Berman on Tuesday morning. \"But I can tell you that we continue to receive ample evidence that will help us in this discussion.\n\nIn January, the committee's chairman, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, told CNN the panel wanted to hear directly from Pence, but last month Thompson walked that back\n\n\"There's no effort on the part of the committee to get him to come in\" Thompson said.\n\nFormer President Trump is also not expected to be asked to testify, according to two sources familiar with the investigation. Both sources indicated that they did not think Trump would cooperate in a productive manner, and doubt that he would agree to testify under oath in a public setting.\n\nHowever, the committee is interested in calling back for the public hearings former White House staffers who observed Trump during the attack. The committee has long sought to determine what the former president did and did not do during the riot\n\nAll-day meetings to sort through mountains of evidence\n\nMembers of the House Select committee Rep. Zoe Lofgren, left, Rep. Bennie Thompson, center, and Rep. Liz Cheney, right, during a business meeting in Washington, D.C., on Monday, March 28, 2022.\n\nAlong with its nearly 1,000 witness interviews, the committee has issued hundreds of subpoenas, obtained thousands of phone records and text messages, and poured over stacks of documents won in hard-fought court battles , including the White House records secured from the National Archives after a lawsuit went to the Supreme Court. Turning that work into compelling hearings for the American public will be critical to the committee's overall success.\n\nPlanning sessions have become so demanding, committee staffers have been locked in all-day meetings to sort through key details including witnesses and hearing topics. Some of the panel's nine members have instructed their personal offices to clear their schedules for the whole month of June.\n\nEach of the committee's nine members has been assigned to lead presentations of different topic areas, similar to how impeachment managers led certain portions of the two impeachment proceedings against Trump.\n\nOne source close to the committee told CNN that the panel has drawn on experiences from Trump's two impeachment proceedings. Those hearings have served as a model of both what to do and not to do.\n\nA key difference to typical committee proceedings is that the January 6 hearings will not feature the voices of prominent Trump supporters in Congress. The panel's only two Republican members, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, are both outspoken critics of Trump.\n\nThe committee is still considering whether to subpoena any House Republicans who have refused to cooperate voluntarily, and if the list of lawmakers it wants to talk to should expand.\n\nHearings will feature different teams' work\n\nThe June hearings will incorporate the work of the panel's investigative teams, which have been designated different colors.\n\nOne of those teams, the gold team, has examined efforts by Trump and his allies to pressure Justice Department officials, as well as those at the state level, to overturn the results of the election. Thompson told CNN in January that the hearings would likely include testimony from state election officials, as well as former top members of the Trump Justice Department.\n\n\"They will be a combination of exhibits, staff testimony and outside witnesses,\" Thompson told CNN last week. \"Some of them will be people that people have not heard from before, and I think their testimony will be on point as to why this investigation was so important.\"\n\nThe main goal of the committee in holding the hearings is to show that even though Trump was told repeatedly there was no election fraud, he continued to push forward with his campaign to overturn the election.\n\nLooming over the June hearings will be a number of questions. Chief among them is whether the panel intends to make criminal referrals to the Justice Department, either for Trump or anyone else.\n\nIn March, a federal judge said that it was \"more likely than not\" that Trump attempted to corruptly disrupt the January 6 congressional certification of the 2020 election. A key goal for the hearings, sources say, will be shedding light on what Trump was doing as the riot unfolded, including establishing a timeline for the 187 minutes between when the violence began and when Trump finally released a video telling rioters to go home.\n\nAsked by CNN's Berman on Tuesday if he believes Trump's inaction during the riot constitutes a dereliction of his duty as commander in chief, Aguilar said that he did.\n\n\"Yes. I think that the president had every opportunity to walk into the press room, to tweet, to talk to the American public, and to tell these insurrectionists to go home, to tell them we're going to have a peaceful transition of power,\" Aguilar told Berman. \"That's a hallmark of democracy. And each and every step of the way he chose not to do that.\"\n\nThis story has been updated with additional reporting.", "authors": ["Annie Grayer", "Ryan Nobles", "Jamie Gangel", "Zachary Cohen"], "publish_date": "2022/05/11"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/09/politics/january-6-hearing-trump/index.html", "title": "What to watch for at the House's first prime-time hearing on the ...", "text": "CNN —\n\nThe House select committee investigating January 6 will use its first prime-time public hearing on Thursday to make the case that former President Donald Trump was at the center of a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election and prevent the transition of power, according to the committee.\n\nThe panel will reveal new evidence that aides say will help “connect the dots” between Trump’s election lies, his attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election win and the violence that unfolded on January 6, 2021, when rioters stormed the US Capitol in an effort to stop the counting of electoral votes.\n\nAides outlined the first public hearing, which will take place in prime time, as the committee’s opening salvo – previewing what’s to come in the month’s worth of planned hearings.\n\nHere’s what to expect:\n\nNew video and attempt to draw a direct line between Trump and violence\n\nThursday, the committee plans to show previously unseen video of testimony collected during closed depositions that includes interviews with Trump White House aides, campaign officials and members of Trumps’ family.\n\nCommittee aides said they also plan to show video to remind the public what happened on January 6 when the Capitol was overrun by a violent mob. “We’ll bring the American people back to the reality of that violence and remind them of just how horrific it was,” one aide said.\n\nThe committee said the “vast majority” of the video that it plans to show has not been seen publicly before.\n\nThat video will be supplemented by live witness testimony from two witnesses who had an up-close view of the rioters: US Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who was among the first injured by rioters on January 6, and documentarian Nick Quested, who had unique access to members of militia groups who took part in the attack.\n\nThe committee will seek to use that evidence to draw a direct line between Trump and the groups who perpetrated the violence on January 6. Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson and Vice Chair Liz Cheney will make opening statements and they will be the ones to question the witnesses Thursday, aides said.\n\nWhile the hearings won’t be the committee’s final word – a report is planned for later in the year – it’s the panel’s highest-profile opportunity to convince the public whose views have hardened about why it should care about what happened on January 6. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress are preparing their own counter-programming to attack the committee’s work as a political attack on Trump.\n\nTrump’s pressure campaign and inaction on January 6\n\nThursday’s hearing is the first in a series planned this month to illustrate what the panel’s months-long investigation into January 6 has uncovered. Aides said that the opening hearing would serve to lay out a summary of the committee’s findings, which all points back to Trump himself.\n\nThe two witnesses who will testify on Thursday will play a key role in that opening statement.\n\n“We expect that they’re going to recount their experiences, particularly what they saw and heard from the rioters who tried to occupy the Capitol, of the rioters who tried to stop the transfer of power,” committee aides told reporters.\n\nFuture hearings are expected to build on what happens Thursday night. CNN has previously reported that former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his then-deputy, Richard Donoghue, have been invited by the committee to testify during one of its public hearings.\n\nRosen and Donoghue have previously spoken with the committee behind closed doors about Trump’s pressure campaign against top Justice Department officials to investigate baseless claims of election fraud.\n\nTestimony provided by individuals close to former Vice President Mike Pence is also expected to be featured, in some way, during the series of hearings. Trump and his allies mounted a pressure campaign against Pence as it sought to convince him to help overturn the election outcome and then-aides to the former vice president have detailed concerns they had about his safety leading up to, and on, January 6.\n\nThe panel is also expected to focus on what Trump was doing, and not doing, as the violence on Capitol Hill was unfolding – linking the former President’s inaction to his role at the center of a broader conspiracy.\n\nThe committee has in its possession video footage from depositions with former Trump officials and members of the Trump family, including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who were with the President on January 6 and can speak to what he was doing that day. Some of that footage will be revealed during the first hearing but may also appear during later presentations.\n\nVideo from Trump’s inner circle\n\nThe committee conducted more than 1,000 closed-door depositions as part of its investigation, including with several members of Trump’s inner circle: daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner and senior White House aides Hope Hicks and Stephen Miller.\n\nNow those depositions are likely to play a key role in the committee’s public hearings – even if Trump’s allies aren’t planning to testify publicly, according to committee aides.\n\nAides said there weren’t currently plans to release the transcripts of the depositions, meaning the hearings will only include snippets of what was said behind closed doors. Still, the video could provide new insight into what members of Trump’s family thought about the former President’s push to overturn the 2020 election.\n\nCommittee aides also signaled that Thursday’s hearing will include new video of the violent attack on the Capitol itself. Video of the riot created some of the most dramatic moments of the 2021 Senate impeachment trial, and the aides say most of the video the committee plans to show at the hearings has not been seen previously.\n\nWhat will be absent: The opposition\n\nWhile Thursday’s January 6 committee hearing will have all the trappings of a typical congressional hearing – a chair, opening statements, witnesses – it will be missing a key component: any opposition.\n\nAides said Thompson, a Democrat, and Cheney, a Republican, will do most of the talking during Thursday’s opening hearing, showcasing how the committee is the product of a bipartisan effort.\n\nBut while the January 6 committee is made up of five Democrats and two Republicans, they’re all working toward the same goal of showing how Trump was at the center of the attack on the Capitol.\n\nThat will give the committee more control over what happens on Thursday. There won’t be interruptions, outbursts or grandstanding from opponents of the committee, like there were during the House’s 2019 impeachment hearings. But the setup also means the committee runs the risk that Thursday ends up feeling more like a lengthy presentation than a congressional hearing.\n\nFor Trump and his allies – who have repeatedly attacked the committee as its hearings have approached – criticisms of the hearings will have to come from the outside. That’s not to say they won’t have a platform: Fox does not plan to air the hearing Thursday, so the channel’s conservative hosts can offer counter-programming in real time.", "authors": ["Zachary Cohen Jeremy Herb Ryan Nobles Annie Grayer", "Zachary Cohen", "Jeremy Herb", "Ryan Nobles", "Annie Grayer"], "publish_date": "2022/06/09"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/05/politics/january-6-committee-2022-strategy/index.html", "title": "Here's the January 6 committee's strategy for 2022 - CNNPolitics", "text": "Washington (CNN) As the first anniversary of the attack on the US Capitol approaches, the House committee investigating January 6 faces its biggest challenge yet: proving allegations that there was a coordinated effort behind the insurrection and convincing the American people that former President Donald Trump was complicit.\n\nTo do so, the House select committee is sketching out its strategy for 2022, including preparing for a series of public hearings intended to address Trump's continued false claims that the election was somehow fraudulent.\n\nEnvisioned as prime-time broadcasts, some of those hearings would focus on the two months between the 2020 election and the January 6 riot and will likely include testimony from state election officials, as well as former top members of the Trump Justice Department.\n\nThe hearings are expected to be followed by an interim report over the summer and a final report in the fall ahead of November's pivotal midterm elections. The goal will be to establish a definitive narrative about what happened on January 6 and propose legislative recommendations to prevent such an attack from happening again.\n\n\"In this great country of ours, I'm convinced that sunlight and truth [are] the best disinfectant when you're dealing with a lie,\" committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, told CNN. \"Hopefully we will provide the proper disinfectant for what's happened on January 6, so that people will understand it.\"\n\nRep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the select committee investigating the January 6 attack, speaks to reporters after a business meeting on Capitol Hill on December 13, 2021.\n\nFor any of this to be successful, the committee must overcome a series of obstacles, not the least of which is skepticism from a broad swath of the American public that holds on to the false belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump. The committee is also fighting nearly a dozen legal challenges by key Trump allies, as well as Trump himself, who has asked the Supreme Court to block access to his White House records.\n\nDespite this, committee members say the investigation is in full swing.\n\nThey've interviewed more than 300 witnesses and collected some 35,000 records. House investigators are subpoenaing bank records to follow the money behind the pro-Trump rallies that preceded the insurrection, and they're poring over texts and other communications to examine the role of Trump and his allies.\n\nThe committee is also studying how Trump's actions stoked violence on January 6 -- and whether his inaction as the Capitol riot dragged on for hours amounted to a \"dereliction of duty.\"\n\nCommittee members revealed this week that they have \" firsthand testimony \" that Trump was watching the insurrection on television as staffers, friends and even his own children implored him to stop the riot.\n\n\"Any man who would provoke a violent assault on the Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes, any man who would watch television as police officers were being beaten, as his supporters were invading the Capitol of the United States, is clearly unfit for future office,\" GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who serves as vice chair of the panel, said on ABC's \"This Week.'\n\nMembers of the panel must also decide whether to engage in a charged fight by subpoenaing their own Republican colleagues who refuse to cooperate . Thompson told CNN that decision will be made \"in the next few weeks.\"\n\n\"There are still some critical questions that remain for us, and the closer we get to Donald Trump, the more we are finding,\" committee member Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, told CNN. \"I think we've painted two-thirds of a picture. The broad strokes are there, the outline of all the major objects are there, but there's some extremely important details that still remain to be filled.\"\n\nThe most important of those details pertain to the question of coordination between the White House and what ultimately unfolded on January 6.\n\nThompson told CNN this week that the three-hour delay before the National Guard received permission to send reinforcements on January 6 \"was, in my opinion, by design.\"\n\n\"When people are breaking into the United States Capitol, it should not take long for reinforcements to arrive,\" Thompson said. \"Three hours is just absolutely too long.\"\n\nMilitary leaders have maintained there was no delay. It took time to move Guard members from traffic duty to riot control, they say, especially after DC officials had repeatedly said they did not need more National Guard forces ahead of the riot.\n\nThompson also said he believes the effort to spread the lie of a stolen election \"was part of an organized plan.\"\n\nDetails of the work\n\nMuch of the committee's work has happened behind closed doors, in an office building on the edge of the Capitol complex. Depositions are not always announced. Subpoenas are not always made public. Most of the committee's 40-plus staffers keep a low profile.\n\nThe committee is divided into five investigative teams, each with its own color designation.\n\nThe green team is tasked with tracking money, including the funding behind the rallies, as well as untangling the complex web of financial ties between rally organizers and entities affiliated with Trump or his campaign, according to multiple sources. That team has made considerable progress , sources tell CNN.\n\nThe blue team is focused on how government agencies prepared ahead of January 6 and responded to the attack. The gold team is examining efforts by Trump and his allies to pressure Department of Justice officials, as well as those at the state level, to overturn the results of the election. The red team is investigating rally planners and the \"Stop the Steal\" movement. The purple team is digging into domestic violence and extremist groups, including the Proud Boys, 3 Percenters and Oath Keepers.\n\nChairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., speaks with Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., by his side as the House committee investigating January 6 meets on October 19, 2021.\n\nIn interviews with CNN, committee members and staffers describe what has been an all-consuming amount of work, including spending nights and weekends keeping up with the volume of documents coming in. Thompson said that on many weekends when he is deer hunting with his grandson in Mississippi he takes his iPad along.\n\n\"It's challenging,\" said Thompson. \"I accepted the appointment from the speaker, and you know sometimes family and other folks kind of look at you like have you lost your mind.\"\n\nWhat we've learned so far\n\nThough much of the committee's investigation has been done in secret, significant information has begun to emerge. Most notably, last month the panel made public a batch of text messages obtained from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. The messages include revealing communications from some of Trump's closest allies and members of his family.\n\nCheney told ABC News that the panel has \"firsthand testimony\" that during the attack, Trump's daughter and then-senior adviser, Ivanka Trump, asked him to call off the riot. Trump didn't make a statement until 187 minutes after the violence started.\n\nIn one batch of subpoenas, the committee revealed a direct connection between Trump and organizers of the January 6 rallies that preceded the attack, stating Trump had met with organizers in his private dining room off the Oval Office to discuss the rally on the Ellipse and who would be speaking.\n\nPresident Donald Trump speaks at the \"Stop The Steal\" Rally on January 6, 2021, in Washington.\n\nSources tell CNN that the committee is also receiving the communications records of more than 100 people , including former Trump officials and associates, that show contacts before, during and after the attack on the Capitol.\n\nThe panel is still hoping to receive documents from the National Archives to fill in holes about what happened at the White House leading up to and on the day of the attack, including drafts of previously unseen videos that Trump recorded prior to releasing his video message at the White House on January 6.\n\nFacing obstruction from Trump's biggest allies\n\nThe committee still faces an uphill battle in getting some of Trump's closest allies to cooperate. Among them are some of the members' own colleagues, including Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Jim Jordan of Ohio, both of whom turned down the committee's voluntary request to speak with them.\n\nIn the new year, members of the panel will have to decide not only whether to subpoena their colleagues, but also whether to expand the list of Republican lawmakers.\n\nThompson told CNN directly that he was not afraid to subpoena lawmakers if it came to that.\n\nIn December, the House referred Meadows to the Justice Department for possible criminal contempt charges. Trump ally Steve Bannon has already been indicted for contempt of Congress and has a trial date for July . (He has pleaded not guilty.) Former Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark, who pursued unfounded claims of voter fraud in the weeks after the November election, along with a growing list of others, has informed the panel he will plead the Fifth Amendment.\n\n\"We're very serious about trying to get Meadows to testify to us. And we're very serious about trying to get Jeffrey Clark to testify,\" Raskin told CNN. \"But the closer you get to Donald Trump, the more afraid they are of both Donald Trump and also of being criminally prosecuted, so they're turning to the Fifth Amendment.\"\n\nDemocratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, who serves on the panel, told CNN, \"I don't think there's any question that there's some coordination among those who've been subpoenaed as an effort to obstruct the investigation.\"\n\nCommittee members remain steadfast that despite these stonewalling tactics, there are still plenty of ways to build out their investigation. Their swift criminal contempt actions, they believe, will also convince others to talk.\n\n\"It's only a very handful of people who want to risk jail time and fines for contempt of Congress who are obstructing our process,\" Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida, who serves on the panel, told CNN.\n\nBuilding a case before the midterms\n\nThe committee likely has until November to make its case to the American public. If Republicans take over the House, the investigation will almost certainly stop.\n\nAdam Kinzinger of Illinois, the only other Republican committee member besides Cheney, is not running for reelection. Murphy, whose district was redrawn, has also announced her retirement. Cheney faces a tough primary, while Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria will have to run in a competitive district in Virginia.\n\n\"It's certainly a consideration that if the House of Representatives would change hands in 2022 that the other party would not want to continue this work,\" Luria said. \"They would not want these things exposed. They want to just brush it away.\"\n\nRep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., speaks in the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, on July 27, 2021, at the Cannon House Office Building.\n\nWith a majority of Republican voters still doubting the legitimacy of Biden's election win, the committee faces tough hurdles in making its case.\n\n\"Will it change minds? I think it's hard to say,\" said former Republican Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, who is a CNN contributor. \"As we know, the country is deeply polarized and tribalized, and some people won't let new facts change their hardened opinions.\"\n\nSome members of the panel have suggested the investigation could result in evidence related to criminal activity by Trump, but that's not the committee's focus.\n\nLegal scholar and Harvard professor Laurence Tribe told CNN that while the committee does not have the power to prosecute any crimes it may find, it can put pressure on the Justice Department to act.\n\n\"It can't ensure that it will happen, but it can certainly increase the likelihood and create a kind of public momentum that will make it harder for the Justice Department just to sit there and twiddle its thumbs,\" he said.\n\nTribe laid out specific legislative recommendations the panel can make, such as specifying that acting corruptly to impede or obstruct the electoral vote count is a federal crime and protecting the integrity of the process to certify the next president.\n\nA year later, the violence of the day, along with the stakes of the investigation, still weighs on the committee.\n\n\"It is a tremendous sense of responsibility,\" Raskin said of what it means to him to serve on the panel. \"Everywhere we go, people tell us that this is the most important investigation they can remember at least since the Watergate investigation. So there's a high burden of hope being placed upon us.\"\n\nLuria said that when she walks through the empty Rotunda of the Capitol late at night, she often reflects on the violent and troubling incidents that happened in that very hallway.\n\n\"It's incredibly sobering,\" she said.", "authors": ["Annie Grayer", "Ryan Nobles", "Whitney Wild"], "publish_date": "2022/01/05"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/31/politics/pence-marc-short-january-6-committee/index.html", "title": "Marc Short: Mike Pence's former chief of staff testifies in House ...", "text": "(CNN) Marc Short, former Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff, quietly testified before the House select committee investigating January 6 last week in response to a subpoena , sources tell CNN, in the most significant sign to date that Pence's team is cooperating with the probe.\n\nShort, who was with Pence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and participated in a critical White House meeting on January 4, 2021, is seen as a potentially crucial witness in the committee's investigation as the panel pieces together the pressure campaign then-President Donald Trump and his allies waged to try to convince Pence not to certify the presidential election.\n\nShort testified before the select committee in person last Wednesday in a lengthy session, according to a source familiar with the matter. Short had previously supplied a limited number of documents that were subpoenaed by the committee, according to one source, including a memo from Trump aide Johnny McEntee comparing Trump to Thomas Jefferson. It's also customary that witnesses hand over more documents when they testify, according to another source familiar with the matter.\n\nShort's testimony, obtained after months of discussions between his attorney Emmet Flood and lawyers on the committee -- as well as a subpoena -- comes as the panel still does not know whether Pence himself will testify.\n\nShort declined to comment. A spokesman for the committee declined to comment.\n\nWhile the committee has had early, informal discussions with Pence's legal team and hopes he will cooperate in some way, multiple sources told CNN that Pence would prefer aides like Short act as the former vice president's \"proxy\" so Pence himself does not have to appear.\n\nThe prospect of Pence appearing before the January 6 committee underscores the dilemma facing the former vice president, whose political ambitions are intertwined with his strained relationship with Trump. The former President still blames Pence for not trying to overturn the election results in Congress -- and Pence has faced a backlash from Trump's base for his role on January 6.\n\nAs recently as this weekend, Trump was still blaming Pence , including in a written statement where he bluntly admitted had been trying to use Pence to overturn the election result. \"He could have overturned the Election!\" Trump said of Pence.\n\nPence is seeking to walk a tightrope between affirming that he did the right thing on January 6 and the fact that he will need the support of Trump's base, which falsely believes the 2020 election was stolen, to gain traction in a 2024 Republican presidential primary. Pence has been vague about how much he will cooperate with the committee, and his advisers have pushed back in the media after committee members praised Pence as a \"hero\" and \"patriot.\"\n\n\"This is all a political calculation because he wants to run for president. Somehow he thinks he can straddle and do the right thing but not alienate the base,\" one source said.\n\nPence may respond to Trump's comment about him having the right to \"overturn\" the 2020 election later this week when the former vice president speaks before a Federalist Society gathering in Florida, according to a source familiar with Pence's thinking.\n\n\"There was a lot of pressure, but we always knew we were doing the right thing,\" said a source close to Pence.\n\nWhile Pence's aides have spoken to the committee, his allies have signaled that when it comes to executive privilege, there's an inclination to remain deferential to Trump. According to multiple sources, the focus on privilege is one way to send a message to Trump and his base that Pence and his aides are not crossing the former President.\n\nCommittee sources, however, say privilege should not become an issue with Pence and his team. \"Discussions up to this point have been about what questions and what answers could be asked and given without running into any potential privilege roadblocks,\" said one source familiar with the discussions.\n\nIn addition, the committee has made a point publicly of saying that executive privilege can be pierced by criminal activity.\n\nRichard Cullen, who was Pence's lawyer before joining the administration of GOP Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, began initial negotiations about how Pence might cooperate with Tim Heaphy, the committee's chief investigator. Heaphy used to be a partner in Cullen's firm.\n\nWith Cullen leaving Pence's team to join the Virginia governor's office, it's unclear who is now representing Pence.\n\nEarlier this month, Select Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson told NPR he expected the committee would invite Pence to testify by the end of the month, though the Mississippi Democrat later told CNN he hoped Pence would \"do the right thing and come forward and voluntarily,\" while noting the committee had not yet formally asked.\n\nIn addition to Short, the committee has already questioned retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, his former national security adviser who was with Trump at the White House on January 6, as well as retired Judge Michael Luttig, whose tweets on Pence's role on January 6 were cited by Pence in his letter released the morning of January 6 announcing he would certify the election. Another top Pence aide, Greg Jacob, is a potential witness.\n\nThe committee is interested in piecing together how Trump pressured Pence when he and his team called on the vice president to throw out presidential electors while Congress certified Joe Biden's 2020 election win.\n\nThe committee cited Kellogg's testimony in a letter earlier this month seeking testimony from Ivanka Trump, saying Kellogg had testified about how Trump had attempted to coerce Pence to try to overturn the election on a phone call the morning of January 6.\n\nJUST WATCHED 'He must be kidding': Lawmaker reacts after Trump goes after Pence Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH 'He must be kidding': Lawmaker reacts after Trump goes after Pence 03:30\n\n\"You're not tough enough to make the call,\" Kellogg testified that Trump told Pence.\n\nShort was with Pence at the Capitol on January 6 when rioters were chanting \"hang Mike Pence\" and Trump tweeted, \"Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.\"\n\nShort was also at Pence's side in the Oval Office for a pivotal January 4 meeting when Trump and attorney John Eastman tried to convince the then-vice president he could overturn the presidential election results in Congress on January 6. Eastman had drafted a memo arguing Pence could throw out states' results in a scheme to push the election to the House of Representatives, and the meeting is a key part of the select committee's investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn the election result.", "authors": ["Jamie Gangel", "Gloria Borger", "Jeremy Herb"], "publish_date": "2022/01/31"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/18/politics/trump-white-house-documents-january-6-committee/index.html", "title": "Small number of Trump-era White House documents set to be ...", "text": "(CNN) The National Archives plans to release four pages of Trump-era White House documents to the House on Wednesday, in what appears to be the first time the committee that's investigating the January 6 riot would get records that former President Donald Trump wants to keep secret.\n\nThe documents are set to go to the House committee at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, according to a court filing from the Archives, which holds all of the Trump White House records.\n\nIt's not clear what those four pages include, and should they be turned over, it would be up to the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol to make them public.\n\nTrump has previously asked the Supreme Court to block the release of hundreds of pages of records related to January 6, arguing the documents are protected by executive privilege. The Biden White House, however, supports releasing the records to the House select committee, after determining the disclosure is in the nation's best interest and declining to assert executive privilege.\n\nThe Supreme Court has not yet acted, and in the absence of word from the high court the sides are sparring over whether the Biden administration is handling the documents' release in good faith.\n\nTrump's legal team has ratcheted up its attacks of the Biden administration's position on releasing the four pages. As the deadline neared on Wednesday, Trump's team made public multiple letters to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals complaining of the plan.\n\nOne letter called the Archives' decision \"contemptuous behavior,\" and the Archives' choice to notify the court that four pages would be turned over an attempt to \"prophylactically inoculate itself and its officers from contempt proceedings.\"\n\nIn another court filing on Wednesday morning, the National Archives, represented by the Biden Justice Department, said it wasn't intentionally misleading the court about its plan to turn over documents to the House, as Trump's team had accused them of doing.\n\nThe Trump team, the Archives said, hadn't done what's needed in time to block the release of four pages being handed over.\n\n\"The release of certain records from tranche four -- that Appellant has known for over a month would occur today -- will not violate any order of any court. Indeed, that is presumably why Appellant has asked the Supreme Court to enjoin release of documents from that tranche. The Supreme Court, however, has not acted on that request,\" lawyers for the administration wrote.\n\nEven though Trump has not won in lower courts, the appellate court in DC has blocked the release of three tranches of documents pending action from the Supreme Court. The handful of pages the Archives is set to turn over Wednesday are part of a fourth tranche of records.\n\nAn attorney for Trump, Jesse Binnall, responded defiantly in court early Wednesday to the Archives' plan to release four pages to the House.\n\nHe said Trump's team would seek to hold the Biden administration in contempt of court if documents are turned over Wednesday.\n\nThe lawyer also wrote that Trump's team believed the Biden administration was acting in bad faith.\n\nHe accused the administration of planning to hand over to the House duplicates of records that are were processed earlier and clearly part of Trump's ongoing lawsuit before the Supreme Court, before Trump's team stepped in. The Biden administration said in its filing yesterday those records would not be handed over, instead reducing the amount headed to the House from six to four pages.\n\n\"Under no circumstances should the government's misconduct and attempt to create an ad hoc record be sanctioned by this Court,\" Binnall wrote, according to the strongly worded filing. \"The weighty issues being considered by the Supreme Court should be decided under the normal course, not by the government's attempt to bypass a lawful injunction.\"\n\nThe select committee is seeking more than 700 pages of disputed documents as it explores Trump's role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. That includes his appearance at a January 6 rally in which he directed followers to go to the US Capitol where lawmakers were set to certify the election results and \"fight\" for their county.\n\nThe documents include activity logs, schedules, speech notes and three pages of handwritten notes from then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows -- paperwork that could reveal goings-on inside the West Wing as Trump supporters gathered in Washington and then overran the Capitol, disrupting the certification of the 2020 vote.\n\nTrump is also seeking to keep secret a draft proclamation honoring two police officers who died in the siege and memos and other documents about supposed election fraud and efforts to overturn Trump's loss of the presidency, the National Archives has said in court documents.\n\nBroadly, the Trump White House records could answer some of the most closely guarded facts of what happened between Trump and other high-level officials, including those under siege on Capitol Hill on January 6.\n\nThis story has been updated with additional developments.", "authors": ["Katelyn Polantz", "Cnn Reporter", "Crime"], "publish_date": "2022/01/18"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/06/09/january-6-committee-hearing-live-updates/7529743001/", "title": "Jan. 6 committee says probe shows Trump led and directed effort to ...", "text": "Rep. Liz Cheney said Trump oversaw a \"7-part plan\" to overturn election.\n\nFormer Attorney General Bill Barr said he resigned rather than challenge election results.\n\nIvanka Trump said she accepted the Justice Department's finding of no election fraud.\n\nA documentarian showed footage of extremists meeting the night before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.\n\nWASHINGTON – The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack heard riveting testimony Thursday from a police officer wounded in the attack and broadcast to a prime-time audience video of a meeting between men charged with seditious conspiracy.\n\nThe committee also outlined subjects it will cover in a series of June hearings, including former President Donald Trump's pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election and his attempt to replace his attorney general.\n\nThe highlights:\n\n• Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards described how she suffered a concussion while grappling with rioters over bike racks. “I was slipping in people’s blood,” she said. “I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage.” She also recalled seeing Officer Brian Sicknick, who died the next day, turn ghostly white after being sprayed with chemicals.\n\n• Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., vice chair of the committee, charged that Trump “oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated 7-part plan to overturn the presidential election.\"\n\n• Video from British documentarian Nick Quested showed a meeting between leaders of two far-right groups, Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, in a parking garage the night before the attack. Tarrio and Rhodes are each charged with seditious conspiracy and each has pleaded not guilty.\n\n• Former Attorney General William Barr told the House panel investigating the Capitol attack he resigned in December 2020 from the Trump administration rather than challenge the election results.\n\n• Ivanka Trump, the former president's daughter and senior adviser, said she accepted the Justice Department’s finding of no fraud sufficient to overturn the 2020 – in contrast to her father.\n\n\"Donald Trump was at the center of this conspiracy,\" said the committee chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. said, which he called \"the culmination of an attempted coup.\"\n\nTrump rebuked Jan. 6 panel as biased after first hearing\n\nFormer President Donald Trump derided the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack as biased in a statement posted to Truth Social shortly after the panel's first hearing concluded.\n\n\"So the Unselect Committee of political HACKS refuses to play any of the many positive witnesses and statements, refuses to talk of the Election Fraud and irregularities that took place on a massive scale, and decided to use a documentary maker from Fake News ABC to spin only negative footage,\" he wrote. \"Our Country is in such trouble!\"\n\nThe former president's claims of election fraud are unfounded.\n\n- Ella Lee\n\nFact check:Joe Biden legally won presidential election, despite persistent contrary claims\n\nWhen is the next Jan. 6 committee hearing?\n\nThe next hearing of the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol will be Monday at 10 a.m.\n\nTwo more have been announced as well: Wednesday, also at 10 a.m and next Thursday (June 16) at 1 p.m.\n\nSeveral more hearings are expected to be announced in the coming days.Thursday's hearing was the first in a series of public hearings over the next few weeks.\n\nWho's watching?:Jan. 6 committee's long-awaited hearings promise revelations. Will a divided US want to hear them?\n\n- Chelsey Cox\n\nAt DC watch party, hearing gets positive reviews\n\nAfter the hearing concluded at a DC watch party hosted by progressive group Public Citizen, viewers left largely satisfied.\n\nDebbie Allen, 65, a DC native, says she \"was glad to see some new footage.\"\n\n\"I thought they were presenting a cohesive story that gave us a glimpse of what was happening before, during, and after the insurrection.\"\n\nAllen says she has never seen anything like the hearing before. \"I'm 65. The America I grew up in, I thought we were more united about good and bad, right and wrong.\"\n\n- Kenneth Tran\n\nNew evidence: Donald Trump didn't mind the idea of hanging Mike Pence\n\nOne new revelation that surfaced in this hearing: Direct quotes from Donald Trump expressing approval of threats by supporters to hang Vice President Mike Pence.\n\nIn previewing future testimony, committee member Liz Cheney said: \"You will hear that President Trump was yelling and, quote, 'really angry at advisors who told him he needed to be doing something more' and aware of the rioters' chants to 'hang Mike Pence'.\"\n\nShe added: \"The President responded with this sentiment: 'Maybe our supporters have the right idea.' Mike Pence, quote, 'deserves it'.\"\n\nThe New York Times reported last month that White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told colleagues that Trump \"had said something to the effect of, maybe Mr. Pence should be hanged.\"\n\nTrump was angry at Pence for his refusal to throw out the electoral votes that elected President Joe Biden; Pence said he lacked the legal authority to do such a thing.\n\n- David Jackson\n\nThe witnesses:Who were the witnesses at the Jan. 6 committee hearing? Here's who testified about the Capitol riot\n\n‘I was slipping in people’s blood,’ Capitol Police officer says\n\nA Capitol Police officer who was injured during the attack on Jan. 6, 2021 described what she saw as a “war scene” that caused her breath to catch into her throat as she saw what was going on.\n\n“It was something like I had seen out of the movies,” said Caroline Edwards. \"I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up.”\n\n“I saw friends with blood all over their faces,” Edwards said. “I was slipping in people’s blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos.”\n\n- Erin Mansfield\n\nGallery:Chilling images from the Capitol riot: Jan. 6 insurrection in photos\n\nFor one attendee, Jan. 6 committee is compelling, but little hopes of change\n\nAt a DC watch party, Zak Sabim from Virginia listened to the hearing \"because I think right is right and wrong is wrong.\" He said he found the committee's evidence compelling.\n\n\"You have to document it. If it's not appreciated now. Hopefully people in the future will appreciate it,\" he said.\n\nBut Sabim also said he sees America as too polarized now for the committee to achieve any outcomes. The Capitol attack has become like a \"soap opera\" for Sabim.\n\n\"I feel like there's been a couple seasons I missed out on,\" he said \"It seems like something if you're a Democratic voter, you probably know all the cast of characters.\"\n\n- Kenneth Tran\n\nThe hearings:Who will be Jan. 6 hearing's most avid viewer? Donald Trump, with a team ready to hit back.\n\nProud Boys membership tripled; then they organized for Jan. 6\n\nMembership in the \"western chauvinist\" group the Proud Boys nearly tripled after then-President Donald Trump told them in a debate to \"stand back and stand by,\" according to testimony.\n\nThen, when Trump urged Twitter followers to show up for a rally on Jan. 6, “Be there, will be wild!” Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio created a social media group to organize its members to show up on Jan. 6.\n\nThe group was called a “Ministry of Self Defense,” according to Department of Justice Documents shared in the hearing.\n\n- Erin Mansfield\n\nWho are the Proud Boys? They joined the Wisconsin Proud Boys looking for brotherhood. They found racism, bullying and antisemitism.\n\nCapitol Police officer describes spraying of colleague who died\n\nCapitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick turned ghostly white after being sprayed with chemicals while grappling with rioters Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards told the House panel investigating the attack.\n\nSicknick died the next day from strokes ruled by natural causes. But Edwards, who suffered a concussion, said she returned to the police line where she served outside the House clashing with the mob over bicycle racks for more than a half-hour with Sicknick.\n\n“All of a sudden, I see movement to the left of me and I turned and it was Officer Sicknick with his head in this hands,” Edwards testified Thursday. “And he was ghostly pale, which I figured at that point that he had been sprayed and I was concerned.”\n\n“My cop alarm bells went off because if you get sprayed with pepper spray, you're going to turn red,” she added, holding up a sheet of paper. “He turned just about as pale as this sheet of paper.”\n\n- Bart Jansen\n\nEdwards describes blacking out after rioters ripped down first barricade\n\nCapitol Police officer Caroline Edwards described her injuries during the Jan. 6 attacks after rioters ripped down the first barricade moments after she told her sergeant that “we're going to need a few more people down here.”\n\nEdwards said that after the first barricade came down, she and other officers started grappling over the bike racks “to make sure that we can get more people down and get our CPU units time to answer the call.” But she said that she felt a back rack come on top of her head, and her foot caught the stair behind where she was standing.\n\n“My chin hit the handrail and then — I at that point I blacked out — but my back of my head clipped the concrete stairs behind me,” Edwards said.\n\n- Rebecca Morin\n\nLeaders of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers met in a parking garage\n\nLeaders of the ‘western chauvanist’ Proud Boys and the extremist militia group Oath Keepers met in a parking garage the night before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.\n\nNick Quested, a documentary filmmaker, testified that he and his crew went to pick up Enrique Tarrio from jail before meeting with Stewart Rhodes.\n\nThe crew “drove down into the parking garage and filmed the scene of Mr. Tarrio and Mr. Rhodes and certain other individuals in that garage,” Quested said.\n\n— Erin Mansfield\n\nCommittee airs film about Trump's inspiration to Proud Boys, other extremist groups\n\nThe committee produced video clips from a documentary about the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other white nationalist groups who participated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol – and Trump's incitement of them.\n\nThe film replayed Trump's infamous 2020 presidential debate comment about the Proud Boys – \"stand back and stand by\" – and his tweet encouraging people to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. Many violent offenders said they believed they were acting at Trump's behest.\n\n\"We have obtained substantial evidence showing that the president's December 19th tweet, calling his followers to D.C. on January 6th, energized individuals from the Proud Boys and other extremist groups,\" said committee chairman Bennie Thompson.\n\nDocumentary filmmaker Nick Quested testified about his filming of the Proud Boys,\n\n- David Jackson\n\nProud Boys:Who are the Proud Boys? Far-right group has concerned experts for years\n\nHouse panel outlines hearing subjects\n\nRep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., outlined the subjects of other June hearings the House panel investigating the Capitol attack Jan. 6, 2021:\n\n--The hearing Monday at 10 a.m. will explore how former President Donald Trump and his advisers knew he lost the 2020 election, but still spread false and fraudulent information, Cheney said.\n\n--The hearing Wednesday at 10 a.m. will reveal Trump corruptly planning to replace Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, Cheney said.\n\n--The hearing Thursday at 1 p.m. will describe Trump’s pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to reject state electors.\n\nThe fifth June hearing will focus on Trump pressuring officials in states he lost to change their results, particularly in Georgia where he urged them to “find” 11,780 votes he needed to win.\n\nThe final two hearings in June will cover Trump summoning a mob and directing them to march on the Capitol, and then failing to stop the violence, Cheney said.\n\n- Bart Jansen\n\nEdwards says she wondered ‘how we had gotten here’ during Capitol attacks\n\nCaroline Edwards, a U.S. Capitol Police officer injured during the Capitol attack, said that she had never had her “patriotism or duty been called into question” but that she would “gladly sacrifice everything to make sure that the America my grandfather defended is here for many years to come.”\n\nIn her opening statement, Edwards said that she had been called “Nancy Pelosi’s dog” and “a traitor to my country, my oath and my constitution” during the attacks at the Capitol.\n\n“In actuality, I wasn't none of those things,” she said. “I was an American standing face to face with other Americans asking myself…how we had gotten here.”\n\n- Rebecca Morin\n\nPence chief of staff: Veep chose Constitution over Trump\n\nMarc Short, former Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, said he felt proud of much of what was accomplished during the Trump administration, but that his boss split with the president over fighting the election results.\n\nPence refused to single-handedly reject electors, as Trump and his lawyer, John Eastman, repeatedly pressured him to do.\n\n“I think he ultimately knew that his fidelity to the Constitution was his first and foremost oath,” Short told the House panel investigating the Capitol attack in a videotaped deposition. “That's what he articulated publicly. And I think that that's what he felt.”\n\n- Bart Jansen\n\nInvestigation remains ongoing, even as hearings begin\n\nMore information continues to pour into the committee investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol attack is continuing, even as public hearings are ongoing.\n\nRep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., told the public to expect additional information to be included in the final report disclosed to the public because the committee’s investigation remains ongoing.\n\nCheney also said that the Department of Justice has been working with cooperating witnesses and so far has only disclosed some of the information it has identified.\n\n- Erin Mansfield\n\nAdviser Jason Miller: Donald Trump didn't believe evidence he had lost\n\nA Donald Trump political adviser whose videotaped testimony popped up at the Jan. 6 hearing said the committee did not broadcast his remarks in full.\n\nIn the hearing video, Miller testified that an aide told Trump he simply did not have the votes to win the 2020 election.\n\nOn Twitter, Miller said the video was cut off before his next remarks, which were about how Trump did not believe the analysis.\n\nHe provided a transcript:\n\n\"Q: Okay. And what was the President's reaction then when Matt said to him, 'hey, we've looked at the numbers, you're going to lose'? A: I think it's safe to say he disagreed with Matt's analysis.\"\n\n– David Jackson\n\nHead Oath Keeper:Vegas parking valet, Yale law graduate, unhinged Oath Keepers leader: Who is Stewart Rhodes?\n\nFor some DC watch party attendees, the hearing is personal\n\nTwo attendees, Whitney Williams and Raleigh Lancaster, both DC natives, say the hearing is more personal to them since they were close by when protestors breached the Capitol.\n\n\"This isn't really a place where this happens,\" says Lancaster. \"I've just never seen anything like this before.\"\n\nWilliams is retired, and is barely involved in politics. But because the attack was at her doorstep, \"it's so important,\" for her. She says she never listens to congressional hearings but tonight's hearing is different.\n\n\"It'd be a sad day for America,\" says Lancaster, if nothing comes out of the hearing.\n\n- Kenneth Tran\n\nCheney to Republicans: ‘Your dishonor will remain’\n\nIn the final remarks of her opening statement, Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney condemned the members of her party who have chosen to look the other way on the events of Jan. 6 and the efforts that led to it.\n\n“Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible,” she said. “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”\n\n- Ella Lee\n\nCommittee shows video detailing timeline of Capitol attack\n\nAfter opening remarks, the hearing turned to a video of the Jan. 6 attack, detailing minute-by-minute how the attack unfolded led by Trump’s speech outside the White House beforehand.\n\n“I hope Mike is going to do the right thing,” Trump is shown saying. ” I hope. Because if Mike does the right thing, we win the election.”\n\nThe video detailed involvement of the far-right organization Proud Boys. It also showed communication from Capitol Police officers as rioters began to breach the building, breaking windows and storming the steps as members of Congress met to certify the 2020 electoral count.\n\n- Joey Garrison\n\nWidows of officers who died as result of Jan. 6 emotional watching video\n\nCapitol Police officer Harry Dunn stretched his arm out around widows Serena Liebengood and Sandra Garza as the video played of the violence unfolding on Jan. 6.\n\nLiebengood and Garza pulled out tissues and wiped away tears watching the video — their husbands Howie Liebengood and Brian Sicknick died in the aftermath of Jan 6., one by suicide and one after suffering two strokes.\n\n– Dylan Wells\n\nSean Hannity, Kayleigh McEnany wanted Trump to end 'crazy' stuff\n\nThe committee has released notable text messages from major supporters who urged then-President Donald Trump to stop claiming the 2020 election had been stolen – advice Trump has ignored to this day.\n\nA day after the Jan. 6 insurrection, talk show host Sean Hannity texted White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany about what Trump needed: \"No more crazy people\" and \"no more stolen election talk ... Many people will quit.\"\n\nMcEnany texted back: “Love that. Thank you. That is the playbook.”\n\nTrump did not heed that advice.\n\n- David Jackson\n\nMilley recalls Meadows saying ‘need to kill’ narrative that Trump wasn’t in charge\n\nMark Meadows, who served as Trump’s chief of staff, told Gen. Mark Milley, Trump’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that they “need to kill the narrative” that Trump was not in charge.\n\nMilley said during a video deposition that Vice President Mike Pence \"issued very explicit, very direct, unambiguous orders” to “get the military down here.\"\n\n“We need to kill the narrative that the Vice President is making all the decisions,” Milley recalled Meadows telling him in a deposition excerpt. “We need to establish the narrative that the President is still in charge and that things are steady or stable.”\n\n- Rebecca Morin\n\nTrump met with Flynn, Powell, Giuliani before tweeting “Be there, will be wild!”\n\nFormer President Donald Trump met with former aide Gen. Michael Flynn, attorney Sidney Powell, and advisor Rudy Giuliani, among others, to discuss “having the military seize voting machines and potentially rerun elections,” according to Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.\n\nThe meeting that ran late into the evening took place on Dec. 18, according to Cheney. The president met with the group alone before “White House lawyers and other staff discovered the group was there and rushed to intervene.”\n\nThe next day, Trump tweeted that there would be a big protest in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6th. “Be there, will be wild!” he told his followers.\n\n- Erin Mansfield\n\nMore:What we don't know about Jan. 6: What Trump's family told the committee, whether attack was organized\n\nIvanka Trump accepted DOJ’s finding of no election fraud\n\nIvanka Trump, former President Donald Trump’s daughter and senior adviser, said she accepted the Justice Department’s finding of no fraud sufficient to overturn the 2020 – in contrast to her father.\n\nIvanka Trump said she trusted the finding because she respected then-Attorney General William Barr, who said he resigned in part rather than fight to overturn the election. Her conclusion contrasted to her father’s continued efforts to overturn election results.\n\n“It affected my perspective,” Ivanka Trump said. “I respect Attorney General Barr, so I accepted what he was saying.”\n\n- Bart Jansen\n\nIvanka's take:House Jan. 6 panel shows Ivanka Trump opposing claims of 2020 election fraud, in contrast to former President Donald Trump\n\nCheney: Trump had 7-part plan to overturn the presidential election\n\nRep. Liz Cheney said former President Donald Trump “oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated 7-part plan to overturn the presidential election.”\n\nCheney said Trump wanted to prevent the transfer of presidential power. She added that evidence of each element of the plan will be laid out during the hearing.\n\n“All Americans should keep and bear in mind that on the morning of Jan. 6, President Donald Trump's intention was to remain President of the United States despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election,” she said.\n\n- Rebecca Morin\n\nBennie Thompson: Donald Trump was \"the center of this conspiracy\"\n\nIn case there was any doubt, committee chairman Bennie Thompson made clear the night's main theme: President Donald Trump engineered a plot to steal the 2020 election from President-elect Joe Biden.\n\n\"Donald Trump was at the center of this conspiracy,\" Thompson said, describing Jan. 6 as \"the culmination of an attempted coup.\"\n\nThompson pledged to show evidence to back up his claim.\n\n- David Jackson\n\nWhat to know:Here's what you need to know about the Jan. 6 committee and its June hearings\n\nCheney: testimony will show Trump ignored aides' pleas to call off attack\n\nRep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said testimony from a more than a half-dozen Trump aides that Thursday’s hearing will highlight will show that Trump ignored pleas from his staff to call off the riot because he supported it.\n\n\"In the hearings to come, President Trump believed his supporters at the Capitol, and I quote, “were doing what they should be doing,’ Cheney said. “This is what he told his staff as they pleaded with him to call off the mob.\"\n\nCheney said that evidence will also show Trump was angry at advisor who told him that he needed to be do something more even though he was aware of threats to hang Vice President Mike Pence\n\n\"The attack on our Capitol was not a spontaneous riot,” Cheney said, pointing to intelligence about the attack beforehand.\n\n- Joey Garrison\n\nBarr opposed Trump’s claims 2020 election was ‘stolen’\n\nFormer Attorney General William Barr told the House panel investigating the Capitol attack he resigned in December 2020 from the Trump administration rather than challenge the election results.\n\nBarr, who has said publicly the Justice Department found no widespread fraud in the 2020 election, said he met with then-President Donald Trump on Nov. 23, Dec. 1 and Dec. 14 to make it clear he didn’t agree with putting out the election was stolen.\n\n“I told the president it was bull----,” Barr said in a videotaped deposition played at the hearing. “I didn’t want to be a part of it and that’s one of the reasons that went into me leaving when I did.”\n\n- Bart Jansen\n\nPolice officers and widows of officers who died are in attendance\n\nU.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, and D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone are in the hearing room, seated behind where witnesses will testify.\n\nErin Smith, Serena Liebengood, and Sandra Garza – all widows of officers who died in the aftermath of Jan. 6 – are seated with them.\n\nDunn is wearing a shirt that shows definitions of \"insurrection,\" including \"January 6, 2021\"\n\n– Dylan Wells\n\nThompson: American democracy ‘remains in danger’\n\nThe chairman of the House Jan. 6 committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, will open Thursday’s hearing saying efforts to undermine the Constitution and thwart the will of the American people aren’t over, according to excerpts of his remarks.\n\nThompson, D-Miss., will say \"our democracy remains in danger\" and must be protected through the investigation of the Capitol attack. He said a series of hearings this month won’t just look backward at what happened Jan. 6, 2021, but also forward to protect the rule of law.\n\n“We can’t sweep what happened under the rug,” Thompson will say. “We must confront the truth with candor, resolve and determination.”\n\n--Bart Jansen\n\nWho's on the panel:Meet the members of the January 6 House select committee ahead of first public hearing Thursday\n\nOpen minds but no high expectations at a DC watch party\n\nAt a watch party in the Taft Memorial Carillon hosted by the non-profit progressive consumer group Public Citizen, a couple hundred of attendees are anxiously and excitedly waiting for the long awaited Jan. 6 hearing.\n\nGlenn Daigon, from North Bethesda MD, says he doesn't want to be too excited or disappointed with how the hearing turns out: \"I don't see this as a slam dunk either way.\"\n\nBut he would like to see at least some \"indictments and convictions.\" He says if there's no accountability for the Capitol attack, \"there's no point\" in the hearings.\n\n- Kenneth Tran\n\nWhat is Donald Trump doing during the hearing?\n\nDon't expect former President Donald Trump or Vice President Mike Pence to testify –but Trump is expected to watch, according to people who have spoken with him in recent days.\n\nTrump, a prolific and mercurial watcher of television news during his four years in the White House wants to know what the special House committee, packed with political opponents, will bring out to show to the American people, particularly since he has no allies on the committee to tip him off ahead of time, said two people who have talked with him recently and spoke on condition of anonymity about private conversations.\n\nThe original panel would have included GOP allies of Trump but House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy removed all five of his choices after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two of them.\n\n- Chelsey Cox\n\nTrump tuned in:Who will be Jan. 6 hearing's most avid viewer? Donald Trump, with a team ready to hit back.\n\nJim Jordan spurns Jan. 6 committee as Saturday subpoena deadline looms\n\nIn an 11-page letter sent to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, questioned the panel’s legitimacy and again asked its members to share the information amassed on him before he agrees to testify.\n\n“While some courts have recognized the Select Committee’s investigation as having a legitimate legislative purpose, it does not necessarily follow that the Select Committee’s subpoena to me is in furtherance of a legitimate legislative purpose,” Jordan writes in the letter, sent the day of the committee’s first public hearing.\n\nJordan is one of five GOP members subpoenaed by the select committee, alongside Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania; Andy Biggs of Arizona; Mo Brooks of Alabama; and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California. Jordan has until Saturday to comply with the subpoena.\n\n- Ella Lee\n\nGet the latest politics news in your inbox:Sign up for our On Politics newsletter\n\nHouse GOP Leader McCarthy declines to address 2020 election legitimacy\n\nHouse Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., on Thursday declined to say clearly whether President Joe Biden rightfully won the 2020 election.\n\n“We’ve asked this question a long time,” McCarthy said to reporters during a press conference. “Joe Biden is the president. I think you can look that there’s a lot of problems still with the election process.”\n\nMcCarthy, who said Thursday he has answered the questions many times before, has shifted his views since the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection attempt. He suggested days after the attack that Trump resign, but has refused to cooperate with a subpoena from the committee investigating that day.\n\n- Erin Mansfield\n\nBiden calls Jan. 6 attack a ‘flagrant violation of the Constitution’ ahead of primetime hearing\n\nPresident Joe Biden called the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol “a clear, flagrant violation of the Constitution” Thursday, hours before a House committee investigating the insurrection holds its first public hearing.\n\n“A lot of Americans are going to see for the first time some of the details that occurred,” Biden said, giving unprompted remarks on the hearing at the beginning of a bilateral meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Los Angeles at the Summit of Americas.\n\n“I think these guys broke the law and tried to turn around the results an of election. There's a lot of questions - who's responsible, who's involved? I'm not going to make a judgment on that.”\n\n- Joey Garrison\n\nMore:Menendez: Mexico's president tried to ‘blackmail’ Biden to invite ‘dictators’ to Americas summit\n\nBill Barr met with committee about Trump’s election fraud claims\n\nA week before the first public hearing of the House Jan. 6 committee, former attorney general Bill Barr met with the panel about Trump’s claims of election fraud during the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s claims are seen by some as a catalyst for the attack on the Capitol.\n\nBarr’s meeting focused on material in his book, \"One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General.\" Though he left the Trump administration weeks before the insurrection, Barr was still the nation’s top law enforcement officer during and after the presidential election.\n\nAfter a Justice Department investigation into the fraud claims, Barr told the Associated Press in December 2020 that the agency hadn’t “seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”\n\n- Chelsey Cox\n\nFirst 2 witnesses are injured Capitol Police officer, documentarian\n\nTwo witnesses spoke at the first hearing. One was Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who suffered a traumatic brain injury when the mob pushed her to the ground after breaking through a fence of bicycle racks outside the Capitol.\n\nShe was the first of 140 officers injured that day, according to the committee. Other officers have recalled hearing her pleas for help.\n\nThe other witness was an acclaimed British documentarian, Nick Quested, who filmed around the Capitol during the attack. The day before the riot, Quested also filmed the leaders of two far-right groups – Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who are each charged with seditious conspiracy – meeting in a parking garage near the Capitol, according to the New York Times.\n\nMore:Who invaded the US Capitol on Jan. 6? Criminal cases shed light on offenses\n\nWhat Republicans are saying: Some blast committee as illegitimate, partisan\n\nHouse Republicans have blasted the committee as illegitimate, partisan and a sham because of how it was set up.\n\nThe heart of the complaint is that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., refused to seat GOP Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio on the panel. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., then pulled his nominees rather than have her vet them. Pelosi then appointed nine members – including GOP Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois – rather than the 13 authorized.\n\nFederal courts have upheld the panel’s authority repeatedly. But Republicans argue the one-sided appointments mean there will be no meaningful cross-examination of witnesses or alternate views presented during hearings.\n\nWhat we don't know about Jan. 6:What Trump's family told the committee, whether attack was organized\n\nBiden plans to watch hearings\n\nPresident Joe Biden is expected to watch some of Thursday’s hearing despite hosting the Summit of the Americas in California, according to White House chief of staff Ron Klain.\n\nBiden waived executive privilege to give the committee access to Trump administration documents as part of the investigation.\n\n“These are important hearings,” Klain told MSNBC's \"Deadline: White House\" on Wednesday. “He believes in executive privilege generally, but there is no executive privilege to overthrow the government of the United States. There is no executive privilege to protect plans on an insurrection.”\n\nWhat kind of evidence does the committee have?\n\nThe panel collected more than 100,000 documents and more than 1,000 witnesses cooperated in the inquiry. Pictures and thousands of hours of video from security cameras and body-worn cameras on police officers illustrate how the violent mob smashed its way into the Capitol.\n\n“People have gotten information in snippets over the course of a year plus, but the fact is that we’re going to tell the story in a coherent thread through the hearings,” said a committee member, Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va. “It was a tragic event for our country that there were villains that day, of course. But there were people who were heroic, who through their actions really prevented a much worse outcome.”\n\nMore:After Jan. 6, lawmakers want to clarify that vice presidents have ceremonial role in counting votes\n\nMore:What we don't know about Jan. 6: What Trump's family told the committee, whether attack was organized\n\nMore:Prosecutors charge former Proud Boys leader, 4 others with seditious conspiracy in Jan. 6 attack\n\nMore:Who has been subpoenaed so far by the Jan. 6 committee?", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/09"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/25/politics/mark-meadows-texts-2319/index.html", "title": "Mark Meadows' 2,319 text messages reveal Trump's inner circle ...", "text": "Washington (CNN) CNN has obtained 2,319 text messages that former President Donald Trump's White House chief of staff Mark Meadows sent and received between Election Day 2020 and President Joe Biden's January 20, 2021 inauguration.\n\nThe vast trove of texts offers the most revealing picture to date of how Trump's inner circle, supporters and Republican lawmakers worked behind the scenes to try to overturn the election results and then reacted to the violence that effort unleashed at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.\n\nThe logs, which Meadows selectively provided to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack, show how the former chief of staff was at the nexus of sprawling conspiracy theories baselessly claiming the election had been stolen. They also demonstrate how he played a key role in the attempts to stop Biden's certification on January 6.\n\nThe never-before-seen texts include messages from Trump's family -- daughter Ivanka Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner and son Donald Trump Jr. -- as well as White House and campaign officials, Cabinet members, Republican Party leaders, January 6 rally organizers, Rudy Giuliani, My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, Sean Hannity and other Fox hosts. There are also text exchanges with more than 40 current and former Republican members of Congress, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Mo Brooks of Alabama and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.\n\nThe texts include everything from plans to fight the election results to surprising and unexpected reactions on January 6 from some of Trump's staunchest allies. At 2:28 p.m., Greene, the conservative firebrand who had helped to plan the congressional objections that day, texted Meadows with an urgent plea for help as the violence was unfolding at the Capitol.\n\n\"Mark I was just told there is an active shooter on the first floor of the Capitol Please tell the President to calm people This isn't the way to solve anything,\" Greene wrote. Meadows does not appear to reply.\n\nMore messages flooded in.\n\n\"Mark: he needs to stop this, now. Can I do anything to help?\" Mick Mulvaney, Trump's former acting White House chief of staff, texted Meadows.\n\n\"It's really bad up here on the hill. They have breached the Capitol,\" Georgia Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk wrote.\n\n\"The president needs to stop this ASAP,\" texted GOP Rep. William Timmons of South Carolina.\n\n\"POTUS is engaging,\" Meadows sent in response to Loudermilk. \"We are doing it,\" he texted to Timmons.\n\n\"Thanks. This doesn't help our cause,\" Loudermilk replied.\n\nShortly after, Donald Trump Jr. weighed in: \"This his(sic) one you go to the mattresses on. They will try to fuck his entire legacy on this if it gets worse.\"\n\n\"TELL THEM TO GO HOME !!!\" texted Trump's first chief of staff, Reince Priebus.\n\nHeated rhetoric and conspiracy theories\n\nThe text messages CNN obtained begin on Election Day, November 3, 2020. Even before the election was called, Meadows was inundated with conspiracy theories about election fraud , strategies to challenge the results and pleas for Trump to keep fighting. The messages -- from GOP activists, donors, Republican members of Congress and state party officials -- appear to act as an echo chamber affirming Trump's false claims that the election was stolen. For months leading up to Election Day, Trump had claimed the only way he could lose was if the election was rigged.\n\nPreviously disclosed text messages showed that former Trump administration Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr. , each texted Meadows on November 4 and 5 with ideas for overturning the election.\n\nOn November 7, hours before the election was called, Perry texted Meadows again: \"We have the data driven program that can clearly show where the fraud was committed. This is the silver bullet.\"\n\nWhile Perry has previously denied CNN reporting about his text messages to Meadows, CNN has confirmed it's his cell phone and he signed this text, \"Rick Perry,\" including his number.\n\nOther texts, however, include hints of doubt expressed by members of Trump's team and even Meadows himself about the veracity of conspiracy theories being spread by Trump's \"kraken\" team -- outside attorneys working for Trump that included Giuliani and Sidney Powell.\n\nSome key congressional allies who worked with Trump's campaign initially in its efforts to overturn the election, such as Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, ultimately soured on the approach as the January 6 congressional certification neared, CNN previously reported.\n\nThe texts also show how Trump allies were quick to deflect responsibility for the January 6 attack. Shortly after pro-Trump rioters breached the Capitol, one of his top aides began crafting a counter-narrative.\n\nAt 3:45 p.m., Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller suggested to Meadows and Trump aide Dan Scavino that Trump should tweet: \"Call me crazy, but ideas for two tweets from POTUS: 1) Bad apples, likely ANTIFA or other crazed leftists, infiltrated today s peaceful protest over the fraudulent vote count. Violence is never acceptable! MAGA supporters embrace our police and the rule of law and should leave the Capitol now! 2) The fake news media who encouraged this summer s violent and radical riots are now trying to blame peaceful and innocent MAGA supporters for violent actions. This isn't who we are! Our people should head home and let the criminals suffer the consequences!\"\n\nTrump's allies in Congress appeared to get the message. At 3:52 p.m., Greene told Meadows: \"Mark we don't think these attackers are our people. We think they are Antifa. Dressed like Trump supporters.\"\n\nFive minutes later, Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, texted Meadows: \"Cap Police told me last night they'd been warned that today there'd be a lot of Antifa dressed in red Trump shirts & hats & would likely get violent.\"\n\nIn the 16 months since January 6, hundreds of indictments have shown nearly all of those who breached the Capitol were in fact pro-Trump supporters.\n\nWhile Greene was alarmed on January 6, by the next day she was apologizing that the efforts to block Biden's certification had failed.\n\n\"Yesterday was a terrible day. We tried everything we could in our objection to the 6 states. I'm sorry nothing worked. I don't think that President Trump caused the attack on the Capitol. It's not his fault,\" she wrote the morning of January 7. \"Absolutely no excuse and I fully denounce all of it, but after shut downs all year and a stolen election, people are saying that they have no other choice.\"\n\nMeadows replied, \"Thanks Marjorie.\"\n\nRep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) wears a \"Trump Won\" face mask as she arrives on the floor of the House to take her oath of office as a newly elected member of the 117th House of Representatives in Washington, U.S., January 3, 2021.\n\nGreene is currently facing a legal challenge to disqualify her from running for Congress because of her alleged role in January 6. In court testimony Friday, the Georgia Republican repeatedly deflected or said she didn't remember what she had said around the events of January 6. The Meadows text logs offer a new glimpse into what she was telling the White House chief of staff in real time.\n\nOn December 31, Greene reached out to Meadows for advice about how to prepare for objections to certifying the election on January 6.\n\n\"Good morning Mark, I'm here in DC. We have to get organized for the 6th,\" Greene wrote. \"I would like to meet with Rudy Giuliani again. We didn't get to speak with him long. Also anyone who can help. We are getting a lot of members on board. And we need to lay out the best case for each state.\"\n\nMeadows does not appear to respond.\n\nBy January 17, Greene was suggesting ways to keep Trump in office, telling Meadows there were several Republicans in Congress who still wanted the then-President to declare martial law, which had been raised in a heated Oval Office meeting a month earlier.\n\nGreene texted: \"In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall (sic) law. I don't know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next. Please tell him to declassify as much as possible so we can go after Biden and anyone else!\"\n\nAgain, Meadows does not appear to respond.\n\nWhat Meadows turned over\n\nMeadows provided the cache of 2,319 messages to the January 6 committee in December 2021. But soon after, he stopped cooperating and refused to appear for a deposition. Ultimately, the House voted to hold the former White House chief of staff in contempt of Congress. The Justice Department has not yet announced whether it will charge Meadows.\n\nMeadows has sued the House committee in an attempt to block the congressional subpoenas. And in a late-night court filing on Friday, the committee responded with new details revealing Meadows was warned ahead of time that January 6 could turn violent, according to testimony from Cassidy Hutchison, one of Meadows' former White House aides.\n\nIn addition, the committee released text messages Meadows exchanged with Republican members of Congress, including texts with Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania about a scheme to replace Justice Department leaders who opposed Trump's claims of election fraud.\n\nIn late December, Perry reached out to Meadows, connecting him to then-DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, who was pushing unfounded claims of voter fraud inside the Justice Department. Trump was considering firing the acting attorney general and installing Clark instead. Clark invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times when he spoke to the January 6 committee in February.\n\nOn December 26, Perry texted Meadows, \"Mark, just checking in as time continues to count down. 11 days to 1/6 and 25 days to inauguration. We gotta get going!\"\n\n\"Mark, you should call Jeff,\" he continued. \"I just got off the phone with him and he explained to me why the principal deputy won't work especially with the FBI. They will view it as as (sic) not having the authority to enforce what needs to be done.\"\n\n\"I got it,\" Meadows responded. \"I think I understand. Let me work on the deputy position.\"\n\nOn December 28, Perry reached out again: \"Did you call Jeff Clark?\" Meadows does not appear to respond.\n\nMeadows withheld more than 1,000 messages from the committee on claims of privilege, the panel said in Friday's court filing. In his lawsuit, Meadows' attorney argued the former White House chief of staff \"has been put in the untenable position of choosing between conflicting privilege claims.\"\n\nHannity to Meadows: 'Yes sir'\n\nJUST WATCHED 'That's not OK': Bash reacts to Hannity's texts to Mark Meadows Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH 'That's not OK': Bash reacts to Hannity's texts to Mark Meadows 01:43\n\nIn addition to the texts the committee has released, CNN and other news organizations have previously published selections of text messages Meadows received from Lee, Roy, Trump Jr., Perry and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' wife, Ginni Thomas\n\nThe logs obtained by CNN include numerous messages from official White House cell phone numbers. Some have been identified by CNN, others are unknown.\n\nThere are also numerous group texts with Trump's inner circle. The various group chats include Meadows, Ivanka Trump, Trump Jr. and Kushner, as well as top advisers such as Hope Hicks, campaign manager Bill Stepien, Miller and Scavino, among others.\n\nSome texts only include links to news reports and social media. Others appear to contain content that was cut-and-pasted and forwarded. The logs do not contain images or attachments.\n\nSupporters of U.S. President Donald Trump watch a video featuring Fox host Sean Hannity ahead of Trump's arrival to a campaign rally in Michigan on October 30, 2020.\n\nMeadows' messages also include dozens of exchanges with Fox hosts, as well as journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Politico, Bloomberg, NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN.\n\nAmong Meadows' most frequent interactions were those with Fox's Sean Hannity, a well-known friend of Trump. Throughout the logs, Hannity both gives advice and asks for direction.\n\nOn the afternoon of Election Day, Hannity texted Meadows to ask about turnout in North Carolina.\n\nMeadows responded: \"Stress every vote matters. Get out and vote.\"\n\n\"Yes sir,\" Hannity replied. \"On it. Any place in particular we need a push.\"\n\n\"Pennsylvania. NC AZ,\" Meadows wrote. \"Nevada.\"\n\n\"Got it. Everywhere,\" Hannity said.\n\nFor the most part, Meadows' texts are short, and frequently he does not appear to reply at all. Some conversations include non sequiturs. It's unclear whether Meadows did not respond to the messages or if the logs are incomplete, because texts could also have been deleted or withheld for claims of privilege.\n\nCNN reached out for comment to all individuals who sent text messages quoted in this story. Meadows and his attorney did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the January 6 committee declined to comment.\n\nThe fight to 'stop the steal'\n\nThe text messages provide a timeline showing how Trump's team searched all corners for evidence of election fraud and tried to overturn the election. Beginning on Election Day, Meadows was in the middle of it all, from connecting activists pushing conspiracy theories to strategizing with GOP lawmakers and rally organizers preparing for January 6.\n\nThe texts also show Meadows was dealing with everything from mediating a fight over who would be on the speaker's list for the January 6 rally to fielding requests to pay Giuliani's bills.\n\n\"Sir, we are airborne on the way to Michigan from Arizona. We're going to need a hotel for the team and two vehicles to pick us up,\" Bernie Kerik, a Giuliani associate, texted Meadows on December 1.\n\nReached for comment by CNN, Kerik confirmed the text was his and said that he never received a credit card for those travel expenses, paid for it himself and was later reimbursed.\n\nOther texts show Meadows coordinating with GOP activists in the immediate aftermath of the election.\n\n\"Pls get 4 or 5 killers in remaining counts. Need outsiders who will torch the place. Local folks won't do it. Lawyers and operators. Get us in these states,\" American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp texted Meadows on November 4.\n\n\"I may need to get you and mercy (sic) to go to PA,\" Meadows responded, referring to Schlapp's wife, Mercedes, who is a former Trump White House aide.\n\nOn a few occasions, Trump family members weighed in. Ivanka Trump sent a note on November 5 to a group that included Kushner, Hicks, Stepien, Miller and Meadows: \"You are all WARRIORS of epic proportions! Keep the faith and the fight.\"\n\nDozens of Republicans also offered support and advice to Meadows -- as well as perpetuated conspiracy theories that were gaining traction in right-wing media.\n\nFor instance, Rep. Ted Budd, a North Carolina Republican now running for Senate, suggested in a text on November 7 that Dominion Voting Systems could be connected to George Soros' company. Dominion has no corporate ties to Soros, a billionaire and frequent target of baseless conspiracy theories, according to a CNN fact check\n\nOn November 6, Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican, appeared to suggest that state legislatures should appoint electors \"in the various states where there's been shenanigans,\" a move he acknowledged would be \"highly controversial.\" In his text, he wrote the legislatures could appoint \"a look doors,\" which is phonetically similar to electors.\n\nOn December 1, then-Attorney General William Barr infuriated Trump when he publicly stated that the Justice Department did not find widespread evidence of voter fraud. Nevertheless, Meadows received multiple texts pushing back, including from Schlapp later that day: \"Happy to walk ag through our evidence. Its (sic) overwhelming.\"\n\nThe texts also show Meadows reached out to GOP officials in multiple states to lobby for Trump's cause. On two occasions, Meadows attempted to contact Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was under attack from Trump for certifying Georgia's election for Biden.\n\n\"mr Secretary. Can you call the White House switchboard,\" Meadows wrote on December 5. \"Your voicemail is full.\"\n\nRaffensperger does not appear to reply to the messages.\n\nTrump's efforts to overturn the election results in Georgia are under investigation by a district attorney in the Atlanta area.\n\nMeadows also received text messages from GOP activists and local officials making outlandish claims, including allegations that \"traitors inside our intel agencies\" were committing election fraud, as well as baseless charges that voting equipment companies Dominion and Smartmatic had manipulated votes -- the same false claims being pushed by Giuliani and Powell.\n\nBoth companies have filed billion-dollar lawsuits over the false election claims, including against Fox News, right-wing media organizations, Giuliani, Powell and Lindell.\n\nThroughout the two months, Meadows received dozens of messages from Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward, who offered what she claimed were examples and sources of voter fraud.\n\nOn December 9, she sent a text to Meadows letting him know she'd already reached out to Trump's executive assistant: \"This guy says he's cracked the whole election fraud and wants to speak to someone. I sent his info to Molly Michael a few days ago, but I'm not sure it went anywhere.\"\n\n\"I will call him,\" Meadows responded.\n\nMyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, speaks to reporters outside federal court in Washington, Thursday, June 24, 2021.\n\nAnother frequent texter was Lindell, one of the most vocal proponents of baseless election conspiracy theories. Even after courts had dismissed dozens of Trump's legal challenges, the My Pillow CEO was still pressing the White House.\n\n\"Everything Sidney has said is true! We have to get the machines and everything we already have proves the President won by millions of votes!\" Lindell texted Meadows on December 20. \"This is the biggest cover up of one of the worst crimes in history! I have spent over a million$ to help uncover this fraud and used my platform so people can get the word not to give up!\"\n\nMeadows replied, \"Thanks brother. Pray for a miracle.\"\n\n\n\nReached for comment by CNN, Lindell confirmed the text was his. He told CNN that he has not spoken to Meadows since before January 20, 2021, and that at the time he was \"just trying to get an appointment with the President.\"\n\nDoubts about election fraud\n\nWhile Trump and his allies publicly stuck by their claims that the election had been stolen, behind the scenes, Trump's inner circle -- including Meadows -- expressed some doubts. Trump's aides also questioned whether lawyers like Giuliani and Powell were doing more harm than good.\n\nOn November 6, Miller, Trump's campaign spokesman, texted a group, which included Ivanka Trump, Kushner, Hicks, Stepien, Scavino and Meadows, suggesting that the numbers in Philadelphia didn't back up claims about alleged election fraud there.\n\n\"One other key data point: In 2016, POTUS received 15.5% of the vote in Philadelphia County. Today he is currently at 18.3%. So he increased from his performance in 2016. In 2016, Philadelphia County made up 11.3% of the total vote in the state. As it currently stands, Philadelphia County only makes up 10.2% of the statewide vote tally. So POTUS performed better in a smaller share. Sen. (Rick) Santorum was just making this point on CNN - cuts hard against the urban vote stealing narrative,\" Miller wrote.\n\nJason Miller talks on the phone in a meeting room for lawyers of former President Donald Trump during his Senate Impeachment trial on Capitol Hill, February 12, 2021\n\nA week later, Miller wrote to Meadows again, this time saying that campaign research did not find any evidence of a conspiracy involving Soros, the Democratic donor. Miller also said he was concerned about sharing the findings with Trump.\n\n\"Lots there re: functionality problems, not much there on Dem/Soros conspiracy connections,\" Miller wrote on November 13. \"Will defer to you on whether or not to share full report with POTUS. POTUS is clearly hyped up on them, not just from his tweets, but he also called me and Justin separately last night to complain. JM.\"\n\nOn November 20, Meadows was asked by a Florida contact how confident he was about fraud related to Dominion. Meadows texted back: \"Dominion, not that confident. Other fraud. Very confident.\"\n\nTwo days later, Ginni Thomas messaged Meadows with apparent concerns, asking, \"Trying to understand the Sidney Powell distancing...\"\n\nMeadows responded: \"She doesn't have anything or at least she won't share it if she does.\"\n\n\"Wow!\" Ginni Thomas wrote back.\n\nIn one of the few messages Meadows received from Kushner, Trump's son-in-law shared a fact check on December 4 debunking one of the most prominent election fraud claims from Georgia. The article showed that despite inflammatory claims of poll workers stashing suitcases filled with ballots under a table, that did not, in fact, occur.\n\n'Hoping the VP sticks with us'\n\nAfter the Electoral College affirmed Biden's win on December 14, Trump's allies turned their attention to January 6: the congressional certification of the electors and the rally that Trump said on Twitter \"will be wild!\"\n\nOn December 21, Brooks, the Alabama congressman, wrote to Meadows and others in a group text asking whether he should engage with the media about the \"formulation of our January 6 strategies.\"\n\n\"Does the White House want me to reply or be mum?\" Brooks wrote. A staunch Trump ally running for Senate this year, Brooks gave an incendiary speech on January 6 but recently fell out of favor with Trump after suggesting Republicans should move on from 2020.\n\n\n\nIn response to CNN's request for comment, Brooks said he had \"no regrets\" about his speech on January 6 and that he was \"shocked\" by the violence. \"I had no inkling,\" Brooks added.\n\nCruz, a Texas Republican who pushed a plan inside the Senate that would have delayed certification of the election, exchanged just a few messages with Meadows -- links to his statements posted to social media.\n\nOn January 2, the senator sent Meadows his tweet proposing a 10-day audit of the election results.\n\n\"Here's the statement,\" Cruz wrote.\n\n\"Perfect,\" Meadows responded.\n\nThe texts also make frequent reference to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to go along with Trump's plan to try to block the certification on January 6. On December 30, Rep. Brian Babin of Texas expressed concern that congressional leaders might try to short circuit their objections -- and that Pence was not on board.\n\n\"Dems and some Republicans may well try to shortstop our objection efforts. Hoping the VP sticks with us,\" Babin wrote.\n\nOn New Year's Eve, Miller shared a news article with Meadows that Pence opposed a lawsuit intended to help overturn the election. Miller warned that it could be used \"to drive a massive wedge between POTUS and everybody else in the party.\"\n\n\"He's absolutely going to blow his stack on this if he isn't already aware,\" Miller said of Trump. \"Oh boy I don't understand what the VP was thinking here.\"\n\nOn January 5, Jordan, the Ohio congressman and close GOP ally of Meadows, weighed in.\n\n\"On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all -- in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence,\" Jordan wrote.\n\nMeadows responded the morning of January 6: \"I have pushed for this. Not sure it is going to happen.\"\n\nThe January 6 committee included the text exchange in its Friday court filing as evidence of Meadows' alleged involvement in the effort to overturn the election.\n\nThe logs also show Meadows was involved with planning the rally on January 6 , helping to mediate a fight over the speakers list. Trump adviser Katrina Pierson was alarmed at some of the proposed fringe figures who wanted to speak.\n\nCrowds arrive for the \"Stop the Steal\" rally on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC.\n\nOn January 2 and 3, Pierson wrote to Meadows looking for help.\n\n\"Good afternoon, would you mind giving me a call re: this Jan 6th event. Things have gotten crazy and I desperately need some direction. Please,\" she asked on January 2.\n\nThe next day, she reached out again: \"Scratch that, Caroline Wren has decided to move forward with the original psycho list. Apparently Dan Scavino approved??\"\n\nShe continued: \"So, I'm done. I can't be a part of embarrassing POTUS any further.\"\n\nWren was a fundraiser for the Trump campaign and helped organize the January 6 rally. She has been subpoenaed by the January 6 committee\n\nLess than an hour later, Pierson wrote Meadows that she told Wren she was talking to the White House in order to get her to back down.\n\n\"I let her know that I was going to reach out to WH and her tone changed,\" Pierson wrote. \"So, I'll continue to build a proper event.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" Meadows responded.\n\n'As bad as this can get'\n\nIn the aftermath of the violence at the Capitol on January 6, Trump's inner circle discussed in a group text how to deal with the fallout -- and Trump's suspension from Twitter. At 10:10 p.m. on January 6, Kushner texted the group: \"Why don't we post on his Facebook page since he isn't locked out there.\"\n\nIn the final days of Trump's term, as he faced impeachment for a second time, Meadows received words of encouragement from staunch allies, as well as caution from advisers.\n\n\"I would like to pass to POTUS that we are still with him, I believe in him and I want to encourage him,\" Rep. Andrew Clyde, a freshman Georgia Republican, wrote on January 9. \"I truly hope he does create a new platform to complete (sic) with Twitter and I hope he calls it 'Trumpet' and then we can send out 'notes' to each other!\"\n\n\"I will share it with him. Thanks Andrew,\" Meadows responded.\n\nOn January 13, the day the House voted to impeach Trump for inciting the insurrection at the Capitol -- with 10 Republicans joining Democrats -- Miller shared polling data in a group text with Meadows, Scavino and Kushner that showed \"2/3 of the MAGA base wants us to move on.\"\n\n\"I tried to walk the President through this earlier but he won't have any of it,\" Miller said.\n\nAs Trump prepared to leave power, he appeared to be a pariah in the Republican Party. House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy had said during the House's January 13 impeachment debate that the outgoing President \"bears responsibility\" for the riot. Six days later, on January 19, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell denounced Trump from the floor of the Senate, saying the mob that attacked the Capitol was \"provoked by the President and other powerful people.\"\n\nNevertheless, Trump's standing in the Republican Party quickly recovered, especially after McCarthy's January 28 visit to Mar-a-Lago and the February 2021 acquittal of Trump in the Senate impeachment trial.\n\nBut before Trump left office, the Meadows text logs show some of Trump's staunchest allies were dejected. On January 19, in one of the final texts Meadows received as chief of staff, Fox's Sean Hannity shared a video of McConnell's floor speech.\n\nHannity texted Meadows: \"Well this is as bad as this can get.\"", "authors": ["Jamie Gangel", "Jeremy Herb", "Elizabeth Stuart"], "publish_date": "2022/04/25"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/20/politics/supreme-court-trump-white-house-docs/index.html", "title": "Trump's January 6 documents are at the House. When can we see ...", "text": "(CNN) Thanks to the Supreme Court, the House select committee investigating January 6 has now received all the pages from the National Archives that former President Donald Trump had tried to block.\n\nThe defeat of Trump's legal challenge was resounding , though the Supreme Court left the door open to other efforts to challenge certain committee fact-finding efforts on the basis of executive privilege. But its rejection of Trump's arguments is certain to ripple across the considerations other witnesses are making about whether to cooperate with the probe and what chances their potential legal challenges have to success.\n\nAnd by already speaking to more than 400 witnesses and now getting the hundreds of pages top officials' White House records that were at the heart of the case before the Supreme Court, the committee is likely to be able to fill in key details about what has happening around Trump in the lead-up and during the attack on Congress' election certification vote.\n\nHere's what comes next:\n\nWhat documents did the committee want?\n\nThe documents in question were being held by the National Archives, which inherited them when Trump left office. The Archives was processing documents requested by the House on a rolling basis and consulting with both President Joe Biden and Trump about potential assertions of executive privilege.\n\nTrump had initially sued to stop the release of three tranches where Biden declined to assert privilege after Trump had said that they should be kept secret. Those documents amounted to more than 700 pages of records detailing the goings on within the White House in the period the House is investigating. The records include activity logs, schedules, speech notes and three pages of handwritten notes from then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Other top officials' records in the batches are from then-press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, then-Deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin, and even lists showing calls to the President and the Vice President.\n\nWhen can the public see them?\n\nFor now, the documents will be out of public view and within the hands of investigators.\n\nHowever, House Select Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said Thursday that at some point the committee will post the documents publicly, but declined to specify the timeline for doing so.\n\nThe committee had already previewed its intention to release an interim report with their initial findings by the summer, with a final report set to come this fall. Public hearings, which could potentially include testimony from key witnesses, also may be in the works.\n\nThere's an incentive for lawmakers to keep secret for now the content of what they already have, so that witnesses cannot augment their testimony based on what the House already knows.\n\nWhy was the committee seeking the documents?\n\nHouse lawmakers have said they are particularly interested in what was happening within the White House as the Capitol attack unfolded and what Trump knew about the potential it would get violent.\n\nCommittee leaders have said that they're probing the delay in Trump calling off the rioters and whether that amounted to a dereliction of duty. Furthermore, lawmakers have framed up the attack as the culmination of a months-long effort to overturn the results of the election -- and not just a riot that arose out of a vacuum.\n\nThe Trump White House documents may shed light on the other efforts made by the former President and his allies to disrupt Biden's win even before his supporters sought to impede Congress' certification of the results.\n\nWhat does this mean for other people suing the committee or who aren't cooperating?\n\nWednesday's Supreme Court order showed that the justices weren't going to be willing to rubber stamp any legal challenge to the committee's work. Furthermore, the Supreme Court endorsed a key finding by the lower courts, that is now law that witnesses can't challenge in DC: that the House committee \"plainly\" has reason to seek January 6-related documents from the Trump White House, and that Trump's reasons aren't enough to block their requests.\n\nOn Thursday, Judge James Boasberg of the trial-level DC District Court acknowledged in a court challenge from a Trump spokesman against the House committee that it's settled law that the January 6 panel has a legitimate \"legislative purpose.\"\n\n\"How could I decide differently from what the DC Circuit has decided there?\" Boasberg said at a hearing Thursday, noting the Supreme Court \"certainly didn't vacate\" the finding that the House committee has a legislative purpose.\n\nStill, more than a dozen witnesses whose records or testimony have been subpoenaed by the House are still challenging the committee's authority in court. Several of the cases make a claim about the makeup of the committee -- and its lack of members selected by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy -- that some lawyers in Trump-world believe is their best shot for impeding the committee's work.\n\nNotably, the Supreme Court explicitly left open a question presented in Trump's case about the power of a former president to keep secret some of his presidential records even when the current President sides with transparency, making more court fights from recalcitrant witnesses or Trump himself still possible.\n\nBut the Supreme Court siding so firmly against Trump on his top officials' White House records could pen the dam towards more cooperation with the committee.\n\nWhat are Trump's other options for hindering the committee's work?\n\nThe Supreme Court decision Wednesday rested on the DC Circuit's finding that Trump would have lost the case, even if he was the sitting president.\n\n\"Under any of the tests advocated by former President Trump, the profound interests in disclosure advanced by President Biden and the January 6th Committee far exceed his generalized concerns for Executive Branch confidentiality,\" the DC Circuit said, in a part of its opinion the Supreme Court pointed to support the release of the documents.\n\nThe DC Circuit knocked Trump for failing to make arguments specific to the content of the documents for why they should not be disclosed. So in theory, Trump could try his luck again for future tranches where he could argue why individual documents should fall under an executive privilege that trumps the needs of the committee. Questions about whether Trump advisers may be compelled to testify about their communications with Trump could also be further tested in court.\n\nNevertheless, key to Trump's strategy was delay, and running down the clock until Republicans retake the House in the midterms, as expected, and end the committee's investigation. But the courts rejected Trump's request with remarkable speed -- with the Supreme Court's order Wednesday coming down just three months after he filed the case.\n\nThis story has been updated Friday with details of the number of documents being transferred.", "authors": ["Tierney Sneed", "Katelyn Polantz"], "publish_date": "2022/01/20"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021/09/01/arizona-election-senate-audit-cyber-ninjas-maricopa-county/5673563001/", "title": "Arizona audit updates: Small group gathers at state Capitol for J6 rally", "text": "Arizona Republic\n\nMonths ago, Arizona Senate President Karen Fann had hoped for a fairly quick review of election procedures to look for ways the voting system could be improved. The Arizona audit launched in April and originally was expected to last a month. Here's the latest on the long-running political spectacle.\n\nFollow coverage of the Arizona election audit by Republic reporters here.\n\n2 p.m. Saturday: A day after audit announcements, small group rallies in support of Jan. 6 insurrection\n\nSeveral dozen people gathered at the lawn of the Arizona state Capitol for the \"Justice for January 6\" rally Saturday. The event was a localized version of the sparsely-attended Washington, D.C., rally a week earlier, and similar events had been announced in other states.\n\nThe rally at the Arizona state Capitol started just after 2 p.m. with a prayer for those who are imprisoned.\n\nFederal prosecutors have charged hundreds of people with crimes during the Jan. 6 rally, in which insurgents smashed doors and windows at the U.S. Capitol, assaulted police officers, stole property from congressional offices and threatened to kill elected officials including then-Vice President Mike Pence. Five people died during and after the events. Rioters that day stormed the building in an attempt to disrupt the proceedings, presided over by Pence, which officially certified the election of President Joe Biden and the defeat of former President Donald Trump.\n\nThough the crowd at Arizona's capitol Saturday was small, a number of politicians spoke, including congressional candidate Jeff Zink, Arizona Rep. Walter Blackman and former state Rep. Anthony Kern.\n\nThe event also was attended by a group of self-described Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violent confrontations — and by a Phoenix man charged in the Jan. 6 raid who, as a condition of his release from jail, promised a federal court not to associate with Proud Boys.\n\nZink, who had previously told The Republic that he attended the Jan. 6 event, is a congressional candidate. He spoke about his son, who was arrested on charges related to being at the riot.\n\nZink said he condemns “everything about what happened with the destruction of the federal government building” but claimed that the violence was committed by Antifa members and has been mistakenly attributed to supporters of former President Donald Trump.\n\nHis son, Ryan Zink, had posted video online documenting his actions that day. In one, Ryan Zink stood in front of his camera phone, saying \"We knocked down the gates! We're storming the Capitol!\"\n\nRyan Zink, who lives in Texas, was later arrested and charged with several crimes related to the riot. In court records, prosecutors presented other online posts by Zink that they recovered, including one that said, \"Literally inside the capitol shots fired on the floor there is a fire and gas and flash bangs have been used multiple serious injuries reported.\" In another private message, Ryan Zink wrote, \"Broke down the doors, pushed Congress out of session I took two flash bangs I'm ok,\" and later, \"I'm afraid the time for rioting is over better clean those guns and invest in some level 4 armor.\"\n\nJeff Zink said Saturday that his son is one of many whose lives and livelihoods have been upended unfairly because of their association with the events of Jan. 6.\n\nAlso speaking to the crowd was Micajah Jackson, a Phoenix resident who was charged after the Jan. 6 riot.\n\nMicajah Jackson claimed that the “radical” U.S. government, which was under Trump at the time of the riot, used organizations including the FBI and Capitol and D.C. to “set up a coup against patriotic Americans like myself and hundreds of thousands of others that are still being persecuted.”\n\nJackson faces federal charges of knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds and violent entry and disorderly conduct related to the riot. The federal criminal complaint against Jackson shows photographs of him walking outside the Capitol alongside members of the Proud Boys. He later told FBI agents he had traveled alone and acknowledged the Proud Boys had given him an orange armband to wear. The criminal complaint alleges Jackson walked next to a person who yelled through a bullhorn, \"Whose streets?\" The group responded by yelling, \"Our streets.\"\n\nAs part of his release conditions, Jackson agreed to \"not associate with the Proud Boys or any person the defendant knows to be associated with the Proud Boys.\"\n\nOf the few dozen people at the rally, one group included people in \"Proud Boys\" T-shirts, and other speakers noted the group's presence.\n\nOn Saturday, Jackson said at the small rally, \"We’re going to restore law and order in this country and bring God back in this nation and take back our local communities, our school boards, and put the America first agenda back in order.”\n\nKern, the Arizona politician, was photographed in multiple places outside the Capitol raid, but has repeatedly insisted he did not breach the building itself. On Saturday, he said, \"I was there on Jan. 6. Jan. 6 is a big lie. It was not an insurrection. It was not traitorous.\"\n\nKern, who later participated in the Arizona Senate's partisan ballot recount, even though his name appeared on the ballots he was supposed to be counting, has refused to turn over messages or records about his travel to the Jan. 6 event.\n\nHis attorney, responding to public records requests from The Arizona Republic, said Kern attended the rally as a private figure who had \"completed his active service as a public official at the time of the riots.\" In fact, though, Kern was still a member of the Legislature. He had run for re-election and lost, but the new Legislature was not sworn in until five days after the riot.\n\nCouy Griffin, a county commissioner from New Mexico and leader of a group called “Cowboys for Trump,” also came to the Arizona event. Griffin was at the Jan. 6 raid. Later, at a Jan. 14 meeting of the Otero County Board of Commissioners, he told the meeting he planned pack firearms to return to Washington for the inauguration.\n\nThough Griffin faces charges of unauthorized entry and disorderly conduct, on Saturday he said he had been at the Capitol to peacefully pray for the nation alongside thousands of others. Drawing cheers and applause from a few dozen people, he described Jan. 6 as “the most amazing day of my life.”\n\n6:30 p.m.: Ken Bennett: Audit wasn't a 'failure'\n\nSenate audit liaison and former Republican Secretary of State Ken Bennett outlined election laws and procedures that he said were not followed to the letter and suggested “constructive improvements.”\n\nAmong his concerns were 2,500 ballots without serial numbers and an incomplete chain of command from the county dating back to the election, he said. Whether those rise to violations of law, however, would be determined by the state attorney general.\n\nBennett, speaking through video conference, said that he was already hearing from disappointed voters who expected the audit would show a different result.\n\n“I have already started to hear from people saying that the audit failed because it didn’t prove that the election was overturned, or that there was a different result,” Bennett said, nearing the end of roughly 3½ hours of reports on the audit.\n\n“There was no predetermined outcome that if we didn’t find this or didn’t find that we have failed,” Bennett said.\n\nInstead, he said, the review was aimed at identifying the strengths and weaknesses in the election process.\n\nThe fact that the hand count closely matched the county’s tally, he said, should not be seen as something bad.\n\n“I don’t consider that a failure at all,” he said.\n\nBennett said that CEO Doug Logan and the Cyber Ninjas “have identified the most accurate hand counting process that’s ever been used in the country.” Bennett said that ran counter to the criticism from elections experts and some media personalities who mocked spinning ballots on rotating platforms.\n\nYet there is still work to do.\n\n\"Further investigation, with the cooperation of the county, hopefully, is necessary to determine whether ineligible voters were allowed to vote in the 2020 election,��� Bennett said.\n\n— Stacey Barchenger, Richard Ruelas\n\n6:20 p.m.: Machine count confirms original Maricopa County vote tally\n\nA machine recount of ballots cast by Maricopa County voters in 2020 confirmed the county’s count was accurate.\n\nRandy Pullen said the review under his oversight “independently confirmed numbers that the county and Cyber Ninjas found in the ballot count.”\n\nPullen, the Senate audit’s spokesman and a former state GOP chairman, oversaw a 12-day machine recount in July using high-speed machines purchased by the Senate. The machine count tallied 121 votes fewer than the county's official results, which was “not surprising,” Pullen said.\n\nPullen said there were organizational issues with how batches of ballots were provided for his team’s review. Boxes would have six batches of ballots in them, when paperwork said they should have seven, Pullen said as one example.\n\nThe impact of those discrepancies? “If things were done more properly, this would be much easier, it could've been done faster,” he said.\n\nSenate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, said Pullen was brought on board just in case there were discrepancies between what Maricopa County and Cyber Ninjas found in other ballot counts. To date, all those audits have disproven Trump’s claims of fraud.\n\n— Stacey Barchenger\n\n6:05 p.m.: Final report drops earlier reference to canvass effort\n\nA draft report of the state Senate’s audit report states that results from a grassroots voter-canvassing effort were used to enhance the report, but that text is omitted from the final report published today.\n\nThe U.S. Department of Justice warned that knocking on doors as part of the audit could be considered illegal voter intimidation.\n\nCyber Ninjas, the chief contractor hired by the Senate to conduct the audit, said in its original statement of work that canvassing was important to determine whether the election was fair. Senate President Karen Fann rejected the use of canvassing after the DOJ sent its warning, postponing the operation indefinitely.\n\nBut that didn’t stop Liz Harris, a Chandler real estate and unsuccessful legislative candidate in 2020, from leading a group of hundreds of volunteers into neighborhoods around the Valley to ask voters about their election experience.\n\nThe Arizona Republic was invited out for a canvassing session with the group last month, but didn’t observe any problems among the voters interviewed by canvassers. Harris published a report earlier this month that claimed the county election featured significant numbers of invalid voters voting, or valid voters whose votes weren’t counted. Harris refused to release any of the underlying data for the overall claims. Two specific examples of alleged voter problems she provided were debunked by Maricopa County officials and the news media.\n\nA leaked draft report by Cyber Ninjas states that Harris’ group chose on its own to do canvassing “to validate some of our results. We have integrated those results for the completeness of our report.”\n\nHowever, in an interview with news media members after the Senate’s presentation, Fann reiterated that she halted the plan for canvassing after the DOJ warning, and she disputed that any draft report talked of integrating the canvassing results. The final report did not have such language, she said, adding that “sometimes you get misinformation” in draft reports.\n\nThe final report posted on AZSenateRepublicans.com says nothing about integrating the canvassing results, instead stating that because of Fann’s decision, “Cyber Ninjas was not able to perform any canvassing as part of the audit.”\n\nFann said she doesn’t know Harris personally, but told her she would love to have the canvassing results turned over to the state Attorney General’s Office. She emphasized “there is nothing of Liz Harris’s in that report.”\n\nYet if the draft report text wasn’t purely fictional, did Cyber Ninjas at some point use canvassing results in its findings — and then “un-integrate” them?\n\n— Ray Stern\n\n5:50 p.m.: As cyber issues detailed, county pushes back\n\nMaricopa County officials indicated they were underwhelmed as the Arizona Senate hearing on the ballot review ended.\n\n“So it’s over then?” the county tweeted, sharing a post from a reporter about the hand-count results.\n\nCounty officials also quickly explained away many of the main “critical” findings in the report, including questions about the county’s voter rolls and election records.\n\nThey said that if Cyber Ninjas understood data analysis, it would have “performed standard processes to rule out situations that lead to faulty conclusions.”\n\n“Unfortunately, AZ Senators gave unvetted, unqualified, private companies with known biases a platform to share misguided theories and faulty assumptions about Maricopa County elections,” one tweet read.\n\nAs CyFir CEO Ben Cotton attempted to raise questions about the security of the county’s election management system and voting machines, the county reminded people that the tabulation equipment “did its job.”\n\n“Per Chairman (Jack Sellers’) earlier statement, ‘everything else is noise.’”\n\nCotton raised what he described as a host of security issues, including failing to update antivirus programs and failing to preserve security logs.\n\nCotton described tens of thousands of election-related files that were deleted. He said he didn’t know what happened to those deleted files and could not say whether they were archived or not.\n\nCyFIR LLC is a Virginia-based digital security company contracted to work with Cyber Ninjas on the Arizona Senate’s audit.\n\n“This may be part of a normal process,” Cotton said Friday, “but the timing of this become a bit suspect.”\n\nCotton said that it appeared an individual intentionally overwrote security logs. Cotton said he knew when these incidents happened and was able to use security footage to find images of people at computers.\n\n“We have captured screenshots of Maricopa County people at the keyboards during those time periods,” Cotton said.\n\nAfter that, there was applause from the gallery of spectators.\n\nCotton said that beyond the screenshots, his group had identified the employees by name.\n\n“We will not release those names,” he said, “because we understand what the scrutiny is and what the impacts will be to those individuals.”\n\nCotton asserted that at least five devices used in the election had been connected to the internet. He found evidence of online visits to websites, including that of Maricopa County and Microsoft, on a portion of hard drives that was “unallocated,” or hidden from typical use.\n\nMaricopa County officials countered Cotton’s claims. In a tweet on Friday, they said “Maricopa County strongly denies claims that … staff intentionally deleted data.”\n\nOfficials said that files were archived to make room on the county's election management system, not deleted. The Senate did not request the archived data, according to county spokesperson Megan Gilbertson.\n\n\"It had nothing to do with us deleting them,\" said Scott Jarrett, county elections director.\n\nAlthough Cotton claimed he didn't have the information he needed to fully assess the county's network, officials have said that the county provided everything that competent auditors would have needed.\n\nIn a settlement with the county, the Senate announced that the county satisfied its subpoenas.\n\nIn response to Cotton's claims that some county machines showed some internet connections, the county tweeted that these were not machines that are part of the county's air-gapped election management system.\n\nFor example, one of the machines was the server for the Recorder's Office website. The county tweeted: \"We shouldn't have to explain this.\"\n\n— Jen Fifield, Richard Ruelas, Robert Anglen\n\n4:30 p.m.: Brnovich said findings are under review\n\nArizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said Friday his office will review allegations of election fraud raised by Cyber Ninjas in its draft audit report of Maricopa County’s 2020 election results.\n\n“I will take all necessary actions that are supported by the evidence and where I have legal authority. Arizonans deserve to have their votes accurately counted and protected,” Brnovich said in a written statement.\n\nThe Arizona Senate hired Cyber Ninjas to lead a hand recount of all 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County last year. The company concluded that President Joe Biden won the election and former President Donald Trump lost by nearly the same margins the county reported before the audit began.\n\nBrnovich said the office’s Election Integrity Unit will “thoroughly review the Senate’s information and evidence,” adding that he could not comment on specific allegations.\n\nCopies of the draft audit report obtained and reviewed Thursday by The Arizona Republic recommended that “several specific findings of our audit be further reviewed by the Arizona Attorney General for a possible investigation.”\n\nAmong those are questions about mail-in ballots from voters who moved in and out of the state prior to registration deadlines and allegations that more ballots were returned than went out.\n\nMail-in votes from voters who moved within Maricopa County prior to the registration deadline.\n\nMail-in votes from voters who moved out of Arizona prior to registration deadline.\n\nMail-in votes from voters who moved within Arizona but out of Maricopa County prior to registration deadline.\n\n— Robert Anglen\n\n4 p.m.: Cyber Ninjas CEO confirms Biden win, makes recommendations\n\nDoug Logan, CEO of Florida-based cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas, confirmed in the beginning of his presentation that President Joe Biden won in Maricopa County in the company’s hand recount of votes.\n\nFormer President Donald Trump lost votes and Biden gained votes in the hand count results, widening Biden’s victory.\n\nLogan led the months-long review of all 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County. That included a complete recount of the presidential and U.S. Senate votes, and an examination of the ballots that included examining many conspiracy theories.\n\nHe started by explaining there is more to come from Cyber Ninjas, even after Friday. Under a settlement agreement with the county, the Arizona Senate is able to ask questions about the county’s routers and network logs. This is intended to double-check that the county’s voting machines and election results were not connected to the internet.\n\nLogan outlined several areas where he thinks the state and counties can better secure their election data.\n\nIn the draft report that was leaked to the media on Thursday, Cyber Ninjas did not say that they found any internet connections based on their examination of voting machines and the network information it already had access to.\n\n— Jen Fifield\n\n3:45 p.m.: Virginia, Georgia Republicans on hand for report\n\nSeveral members of the national “Election Integrity Caucus” flew to Phoenix for Friday’s review of the state Senate’s election audit, hoping to gather information they’ll use for election reviews in their own states.\n\nArizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, was a founding member of the group and traveled to Virginia last month to push for an Arizona-style audit there. Rogers said at the time that the group reminded her of the Continental Congress. She told conservative media it would be used to start audits like Arizona’s in every state.\n\nVirginia state Sen. Amanda Chase, a Republican who traveled to Phoenix to see the ballot review this summer, said the group was in the Senate gallery on Friday to “hear for ourselves what the Arizona brave legislators are going to show us today.”\n\nShe said she didn’t want the information “filtered through the fake media.”\n\nThe group expects to put out a press release this week after getting a briefing from the group’s Arizona delegation. Even if the final report is similar to draft reports that show Biden still won, “there are concerns that are out there in Virginia,” she said.\n\n“We said that no matter what the results were, we can do better,” she said. “I’ve been committed to fully finding out what happened so it never happens again.”\n\nYG Nyghtstorm, a Republican candidate for Congress in Georgia, is also part of the group. He said that when a large number of voters don’t trust the system, “you owe it to the electorate to some kind of investigation.”\n\n— Ray Stern\n\n3:15 p.m.: Engineer questions ballot signatures\n\nA controversial engineer tied to election conspiracies opened the Arizona Senate’s audit hearing Friday by raising questions about a series of “anomalies” found in Maricopa County mail-in ballots.\n\nShiva Ayyadurai, or \"Dr. Shiva\" as he is known to far-right adherents, said his review of ballots found thousands of ballot envelopes with missing signatures, scribbles and even some duplicates that might have been counted in the county’s 2020 election.\n\nShiva, who said he has four degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said his company, EchoMail Inc., reviewed 1.9 million mail-in ballots “for signature presence detection.” He outlined 11 so-called anomalies that he said deserve further review and suggested the Senate undertake an even broader audit.\n\nThe Arizona Senate signed a $50,000 contract with Ayyadurai on Aug. 27 to review signatures on the envelopes on early ballots sent to the county.\n\nAyyadurai gained prominence in the early days of the pandemic for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines. He criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a tool of the pharmaceutical industry intent on making vaccines mandatory.\n\nIn a YouTube video that racked up more than 6 million views in 2020, Ayyadurai accused Fauci of being a \"deep state\" operative and falsely claimed vitamin C could be used to treat COVID -19.\n\nHe ran two unsuccessful campaigns for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts and has announced his intent to run again in 2024. After the 2020 primary, he wrongly claimed on Twitter the state had illegally deleted 1 million ballot images from his race.\n\nShiva, in a 50-minute presentation, laid out his findings for the Senate, which he ended by asking a series of rhetorical questions for county elections officials and making recommendations to the Senate.\n\nThe county did not provide data to Shiva for his review.\n\nShiva stopped short of accusing the county of wrongdoing, and even said at one point, “I don’t want to accuse that.” He also noted that “there could be an explanation of this” in regard to at least one anomaly.\n\nAmong his findings:\n\nThe county received and might have counted duplicate ballots.\n\nHis company detected more signature scribbles than the county reported.\n\nSome ballots came from voters with matching addresses and signatures but different voter IDs.\n\nBlank signature boxes were stamped verified and approved.\n\nThe number of blank signatures “surged” by 25% after Nov. 4 and through Nov. 9.\n\nShiva said determining whether these issues indicated fraud or not would require a more thorough audit of signatures.\n\n“A full signature verification audit is absolutely necessary,” he said.\n\n— Robert Anglen\n\n2:45 p.m.: Fann presents Brnovich with 'urgent issues'\n\nBefore the first audit report was presented, state Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, sent Attorney General Attorney Mark Brnovich a letter outlining five \"urgent issues\" that she had identified from the contractors' work.\n\nHowever, it was unclear how some of those issues would qualify for an investigation into broken laws, as many of them appeared to suggest system improvements.\n\nFor example, she suggested the state should have a team of cybersecurity experts to ensure election materials are protected. She recommended better maintenance of the voter-registration rolls and protocols to ensure election materials be preserved in the interest of potential future audits and transparency.\n\nShe called the signature-verification process “imperfect” and said signatures should only be accepted if they closely match the voter signature on file with elections officials. That appeared to be one of the issues that the attorney general could look into, Fann suggested.\n\nFann said the Senate is already at work on legislation to ensure Arizona has “an unimpeachable election process.”\n\n— Mary Jo Pitzl\n\n2:35 p.m.: Celebrity news, sort of\n\nAnd now for a celebrity news break.\n\nShiva Ayyadurai, known as Dr. Shiva, who testified Friday about ballot signature verification was married for three years to Fran Drescher, best known as TV’s \"The Nanny.\"\n\n“The first year was bliss, the second year was agony and ecstasy, and the third year was just agony,\" Drescher told New York magazine.\n\nThe couple divorced in 2016.\n\n— Richard Ruelas\n\n2:25 p.m.: Democratic organization hits GOP for election doubts\n\nThe Democratic Attorneys General Association sought Friday to cast blame for undermining public confidence in elections far past Arizona.\n\nThe DAGA called out 18 Republican attorneys general, including Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, for refusing to condemn or actively spreading disinformation about alleged 2020 election problems.\n\nIn a news release timed with the review of the state Senate’s election audit, the Washington D.C.-based group pointed out that former President Donald Trump is pressuring Brnovich to launch a criminal investigation into the audit report.\n\nBrnovich, who is running for U.S. Senate, has walked a fine line between patronizing election deniers and claiming he’s just interested in ensuring fair elections. He antagonized audit critics last month after issuing a decision that Maricopa County officials had to comply with a Senate subpoena to turn over routers and network logs allegedly needed for the audit.\n\nThe 18 Republican attorneys general in some cases “explicitly poured fuel on the fire by joining lawsuits calling the election results into question — leading to things like today’s dangerous Maricopa County ‘audit,’” said DAGA co-chairs Massachusetts AG Maura Healey and Nevada AG Aaron Ford in a joint statement. “Their actions undermine the fabric of our democracy and Constitution, and we call on them to stop them immediately.”\n\nAs the state’s top legal officers, Republican AGs shouldn’t “pander to a dangerous, far-right political agenda” as they’re doing, and should “call out” the audit as a “dangerous political stunt meant to further divide this country.”\n\nBrnovich announced Friday that he would review the audit report’s alleged finding of election problems.\n\n— Ray Stern\n\n2:15 p.m.: County GOP officials call for Ward to resign\n\nMaricopa County Supervisors Clint Hickman and Bill Gates called on Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward to resign after her support for the ballot review.\n\nHickman and Gates, both Republicans, said her baseless claims of a fraudulent election, along with GOP electoral losses during her tenure as chair and promotion of conspiracies is harming the Republican Party.\n\nIn 2020, former President Donald Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden and Democrats picked up a U.S. Senate seat in Arizona.\n\nA state GOP spokesperson did not immediately respond to The Arizona Republic’s request for comment.\n\nWard and the state Republican Party have spent months fundraising off the ballot review, but it appears those funds have not paid for the audit, Hickman and Gates said.\n\nThey said her continued push of a false narrative is harmful to the Republican Party and democracy more broadly.\n\nThey also urged Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who serves as chairman of the Republican Governors Association, to join them in their calls. A spokesperson for Ducey did not immediately comment.\n\n“She's made videos, she's questioned our integrity, she’s asked if maybe we should be picked up by law enforcement, she’s questioned the machinery and Dominion,” Hickman said. “If it comes out that Biden won by even more, Kelli Ward needs to go. It is a track record of losing. She's only won one race (as a state senator), and that was in Mohave County many years ago.\n\n“She has had an issue with creating a track record of victory and she’s been using the party apparatus to fundraise for something that rips apart our democracy, and that’s what this grift is.”\n\nGates said Ward’s leadership is doing long-term harm to the party and could further divide Republicans heading into the 2022 midterm elections.\n\n“She’s not focused on winning elections — she never has been,” Gates said. “She’s focused on tearing down other Republicans. She spends so much time doing that and those around her. And so, it's time to turn the page.”\n\nHe said the release of the Senate’s election review findings is a good opportunity to do so.\n\n“She’s going to continue to relitigate November 2020 and that is a recipe for disaster,” he said.\n\nWard narrowly won re-election to retain her position as chair in January after a race that went to a runoff.\n\n— Yvonne Wingett Sanchez\n\n1:40 p.m.: Fann still claims troubling problems\n\nDuring her opening remarks, Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, acknowledged that draft reports of the ballot review were mostly correct, but said the public has not focused on the many irregularities uncovered in the review by Cyber Ninjas.\n\nDraft reports leaked Thursday showed Cyber Ninjas effectively confirmed Maricopa County’s final tally showing President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Maricopa County, as the county reported 10 months ago.\n\nThe final numbers for each candidate differed slightly, and the Florida company hired by the Arizona Senate emphasized it found troubling irregularities as it went through the 2.1 million ballots.\n\nFann called the alleged irregularities a key part of ensuring election integrity. Fann assailed Maricopa County officials for resisting the audit as she originally envisioned it, and said the report presents matters still demanding attention.\n\n“The interesting fact is truth is truth, numbers are numbers, and we’ve said that from Day One,” she said. “What you have not seen and you have not heard is about the statutes that were broken, how chain of custody was not followed, how we had a number of issues, which is why people questioned the ballots in the elections.”\n\nCounty officials have long said they wanted an audit from an accredited firm. Cyber Ninjas has never before conducted an election review.\n\nState Sen. Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, lamented the lack of cooperation during his opening remarks.\n\n“It is unfortunate that this is an incomplete audit,” he said.\n\n— Ronald J. Hansen\n\n1:30 p.m.: Presentation draws Senate spectators\n\nSeveral Arizona state senators showed up to hear the ballot review presentation in person in the Senate's main chamber.\n\nSeated at their desks were Republican Sens. Paul Boyer of Glendale, Vince Leach of Tucson, Kelly Townsend of Mesa, Wendy Rogers of Flagstaff, and Nancy Barto of Phoenix.\n\nFloor privileges were granted to former lawmakers Anthony Kern and David Livingston.\n\nU.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., took a seat against the Senate's west wall.\n\nKern briefly served as an audit volunteer before being disqualified since it is against protocol for politicians to be reviewing ballots on which they were listed.\n\nOther senators said they would stay home and watch the proceedings online.\n\n— Mary Jo Pitzl\n\n1:10 p.m.: White House downplays ballot review\n\nDuring her regular press briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki seemed to downplay the draft results of the months-long ballot review:\n\n\"It confirmed what we have known for some time, and that millions and millions of people in the country know,\" she said Friday during a White House briefing, shortly before the Arizona Senate proceedings kicked off.\n\nAsked if there’s anything the federal government could do to address calls from Republicans pushing for similar reviews in other states, she said: “I’ll have to check and see if there’s anything substantive that we would have the power to do.”\n\n—Yvonne Wingett Sanchez\n\n1 p.m.: Cyber Ninjas reports about to be made public\n\nThe long-awaited ballot review results from Cyber Ninjas, the Florida company hired by the Arizona state Senate, are about to be posted.\n\nAfter leaked draft reports showed President Joe Biden won Maricopa County by a slightly wider margin over former President Donald Trump on Thursday, the big question is whether those reports were accurate.\n\nFor his part, Trump indicated in a statement on Friday that the report found “significant and undeniable evidence of FRAUD!” The fraud, he wrote in another statement, is “many more times than the so-called margin of “victory.’”\n\nDemocrats and election experts have eyed the draft reports warily, noting that Cyber Ninjas has never conducted an election audit before and the Arizona ballot review has been riddled with problems.\n\nIf the leaked reports are correct, they suggest the Cyber Ninjas tally was little different than the county’s certified results.\n\nIncluding Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian candidate, the draft numbers were about 600 votes different than the county’s official results.\n\nWith nearly 2.1 million votes cast, that suggests Cyber Ninjas disagreed with one vote out of every 3,700 ballots counted.\n\n— Ronald J. Hansen\n\nState Democratic leaders launched a blistering attack on the draft reports of the state Senate's partisan election audit before the expected release of an official report today.\n\nMaricopa County Supervisor Steve Gallardo, Senate Minority Leader Rebecca Rios and House Majority Leader Reginald Bolding, Jr., addressed reporters outside of county headquarters in Phoenix, pulling few punches as they criticized the process and demanded accountability from Republican leaders who support it.\n\nGallardo described the audit as \"nonsense\" and a \"circus\" that has \"undermined democracy\" and cost millions of taxpayer dollars. He wasn't sure what would be in the final report presented by the Senate today, but predicted it would be \"BS.\"\n\n\"The one thing we're going to get out of the review is this: Our elections were safe, secure, and accurate, and (former President) Donald Trump lost Arizona, period,\" Gallardo said. \"And there is nothing else we can do, and nothing else any of the election experts can do to change the minds of the folks who can't accept the fact that their candidate lost.\"\n\nThe conspiracy promoters pushed Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, into a process she had \"no control whatsoever\" of, and that decisions were being made by Trump-supporting groups and people.\n\nRios and Bolding, both Phoenix Democrats, predicted that the audit and the \"embarrassing\" way it turned out would negatively affect Republicans in important elections in 2022, such as the challenge to U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and the race for governor.\n\n\"We need to change the actual people who are running for office and let them know that they are so far to the radical right that it is not consistent with what Arizonans are asking for,\" Bolding said.\n\nRios said Republican lawmakers will use the report to justify new legislation designed to \"suppress the vote\" of people of color, senior citizens and disabled people.\n\n\"At the end of the day, they lost, and they know without suppressing the vote ... that they're going to continue to lose elections,\" she said.\n\nGov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed two bills in this year's legislative session that Democrats saw as creating significant obstacles to voting in the state, including one that changes the rules of the former Permanent Early Voting List.\n\nBolding said Ducey and other Republicans who may not have supported the audit, but didn't condemn it, either, can no longer \"hide\" from voters and would have to choose whether they would continue to tolerate, or more, election-conspiracy rhetoric.\n\n— Ray Stern\n\n11:30 a.m.: Sen. Mark Kelly weighs in\n\nSen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., reiterated his stance that Arizona conducts professional and fair elections ahead of the Senate's 1 p.m. release of the ballot review findings.\n\nThe review of 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County focused on both the presidential race and the 2020 U.S. Senate contest, where Kelly unseated Republican Sen. Martha McSally.\n\n“In the nearly ten months since this election was certified by Republicans and Democrats, I have been focused on doing my job — helping Arizona beat COVID-19 and rebuild our economy,\" a statement from Kelly to The Arizona Republic said. \"Our state does elections well. These baseless conspiracies should not be used to justify any further attempts to undermine our democracy.”\n\n— Yvonne Wingett Sanchez\n\n11:05 a.m.: 'Fed up' Patriot Party supporters rally at Capitol\n\nHundreds of people went to the state Capitol for a rally that organizers said was in support of medical freedom and election integrity hours before results from the audit by Cyber Ninjas was set to be presented to the Senate.\n\nThe Capitol area was a sea of American flags and signs condemning COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Booths were set up to sell shirts and hats, and to sign attendees up for the Patriot Party of Arizona.\n\nA speaker just after 10 a.m. asked attendees to put pressure on Gov. Doug Ducey to call a special session to address vaccine mandates, saying that people are “fed up.”\n\nSen. Kelly Townsend addressed the crowd and asked veterans and parents of a “vaccine-injured child” to stand with her, adding that she is both.\n\nTownsend described President Joe Biden’s administration as “fascist,” saying that she and others in attendance would not comply with vaccine mandates.\n\nSteve Daniels, chair of the Patriot Party of Arizona, said that legislators and candidates who spoke at the rally were asked to sign a pledge to support his group beforehand.\n\nA dustup happened after Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake entered the stage without having signed the pledge.\n\nDaniels showed her the contract as she took the stage and she declined to sign it, saying it would be “irresponsible” to sign it before reading it in its entirety.\n\nAfter some in the crowd continued heckling Lake, an organizer took the microphone and asked for them to allow Lake to finish.\n\n“I’m not afraid of bullies, guys,” Lake told the crowd.\n\nBefore appearing to cut her speech short, Lake expressed confidence that the results of the audit would show fraud. She said as governor she would “prosecute everyone involved” and push back against vaccine mandates.\n\n— BrieAnna J. Frank\n\n10:00 a.m.: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema weighs in\n\nU.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., weighed in on the draft results of the GOP Senate-ordered review of Maricopa County ballots, saying the 2020 election \"was a success\" and a \"demonstration of the will of Arizona voters.\"\n\nIn a written statement to The Arizona Republic ahead of the Senate's official release of the ballot review results, she thanked state and local election officials for their work. She noted the exercise could result in an erosion of public trust in the nation's election systems.\n\n\"It has been deeply troubling to see state leaders wasting time and taxpayer money sowing doubt about the election when no credible evidence of irregularities exists,\" her statement said. \".... The Arizona election produced bipartisan results, in which members of both parties won races — and these results have been confirmed by stakeholders across the political spectrum.\"\n\nEight challenges contesting the state's election results were heard by both federal and state courts, she noted. All were either dismissed or withdrawn.\n\n\"Those of us who are trusted with elected office are, first and foremost, public servants. We serve our constituents — we do not seek to substitute our personal ambitions for the will of the American people,\" she said.\n\n— Yvonne Wingett Sanchez\n\n9:30 a.m.: Congressional panel wants Cyber Ninjas CEO to testify\n\nA congressional committee that has for months been seeking information relating to the company conducting Arizona's long-running ballot review now wants the firm's CEO to testify next month about the matter.\n\nCiting his repeated \"obstruction,\" the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee sent a letter late Thursday to Doug Logan, the head of Cyber Ninjas, saying his appearance has become necessary to understand what it characterized as a \"questionable audit.\"\n\nThe Democrat-controlled panel's request came a day ahead of the scheduled release of his company's review for the Arizona Senate and signals the national concerns among Democrats over its implications. The committee wants him to testify at an Oct. 7 hearing.\n\n— Ronald J. Hansen\n\n8:35 a.m., Sept. 24: What to expect as election audit results are presented\n\nIn a contentious battle between the Arizona Senate and Maricopa County supervisors earlier this year, the Senate prevailed in gaining access to the county's ballots and election materials.\n\nThe Senate's audit contractors recounted the 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County in the presidential and U.S. Senate races and examined each ballot. They also examined all ballot tabulating machines and reviewed signatures on mail-in ballot envelopes.\n\nFour reports are expected to be presented beginning at 1 p.m. Friday by contractors and Senate representatives. Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, and Judiciary Chairman Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, will preside over the event.\n\nDoug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, will present results on the hand count and examination of ballots.\n\nAudit spokesperson Randy Pullen will present results from a separate machine count of ballots.\n\nConspiracy theorist Shiva Ayyadurai will present results from a review of envelope signatures.\n\nSenate liaison Ken Bennett will report his observations on whether election law was followed.\n\n— Mary Jo Pitzl\n\n12 p.m., Sept. 23: GOP gubernatorial candidate wants statewide audit\n\nFormer Republican U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon — who is seeking the GOP nomination for Arizona governor — called for an election audit and canvass to expand across the state on Thursday, one day before Senate leaders overseeing the audit in Maricopa County are scheduled to make the results public.\n\nThough he has not seen the results of the election review, Salmon also used the impending announcement to pledge that if he is elected governor, he would “not sign any other bills, including the state budget, until additional, enhanced election protections” like requiring identification for all forms of voting are in place.\n\nSalmon — who declined to say who won the presidential race in Arizona when asked by The Arizona Republic — said he believes there were “serious discrepancies” in the election. Those call for a statewide audit, he said, to “identify and address the problems taking place in Arizona’s elections.”\n\nWhile Maricopa County’s votes helped hand the state’s electoral votes to Joe Biden by a small margin, Trump won 10 of Arizona's 15 counties, often by massive margins.\n\nPolling shows a majority of Arizona Republicans believe there was fraud in the election, making so-called “election integrity” an easy issue for Republican candidates like Salmon to support ahead of the August 2022 primary election.\n\nIn a Thursday podcast interview with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, which was also recorded on video, Salmon told Bannon that “if we’re going to try to contest this election, we know it’s probably going to end up in the courts at some point and time and we need a lot more forensic evidence.” Salmon’s campaign did not immediately respond to a question about what new legal claims could be made.\n\nThe election result has been certified by Gov. Doug Ducey — also a Republican — and multiple court challenges were tossed out by Arizona courts.\n\n— Stacey Barchenger\n\n2:30 p.m., Sept. 22: Are plans for a 'nullification committee' afoot?\n\nA recent Phoenix meeting of the John Birch Society, which once was a group on the far fringes of the political right, turned into a shouting match over the election review and other issues.\n\nA video of the confrontation posted on Facebook by Daniel McCarthy, who has unsuccessfully run for office in Arizona, might be most notable for showing the elected officials and others who attended the meeting and what some of them had to say.\n\nOne state representative says during the raucous 12-minute video that he is working on a “nullification committee\" for elections laws while another says she is working to eliminate voting machines.\n\nBut before that, there were plenty of fireworks with McCarthy criticizing the election audit.\n\nThe video, which appears to be filmed by an associate of McCarthy, begins with him shouting at Senate audit liaison Ken Bennett as Bennett leaves the room. McCarthy asks if Bennett will provide the two dozen or so people there with an update.\n\nBennett says he has to leave for a meeting to receive a preliminary update on the audit, but McCarthy launches into an outburst that interrupts the meeting despite multiple participants asking him to be quiet.\n\n“A lot of power brokers in the state are here. A lot of people are quite curious about this grift that’s been running,” McCarthy says to Bennett. “Let’s have a conversation on what we can do to install some confidence rather than running a massive grift with an audit where you guys are raising a ton of money and the Republican Party is raising a ton of money, and there’s a bunch of shenanigans.”\n\nThe meeting appears to be in a private room at a restaurant. Bennett leaves after the brief exchange with McCarthy.\n\nMcCarthy asserts that the election was stolen from Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers in Arizona didn’t do enough to prevent the fraud. There has been no evidence of fraud in Arizona’s election, and multiple lawsuits over the matter were dismissed for lack of evidence.\n\nCorporation Commissioner Jim O’Connor takes little interest as he finishes his meal while the men shout across the room.\n\nMesa Republican Verl Farnsworth tries to quiet McCarthy, telling him his outburst is not on the agenda. The two exchange words.\n\nThe video then shows another Arizona Corporation Commissioner, Justin Olson, get up from his meal and leave.\n\nMcCarthy begins railing against COVID-19 vaccines and people who wear masks.\n\nGen. Michael McGuire is there, and McCarthy criticizes him for wearing a mask during an appearance with Gov. Doug Ducey. McGuire retired as director of the Arizona National Guard to run for the U.S. Senate. He keeps his back to McCarthy and doesn’t speak to him.\n\nRep. John Fillmore, R-Apache Junction, tells McCarthy the Legislature is working on a “nullification committee.”\n\nHe didn't explain what he meant by that at the meeting. Reached Thursday, Fillmore said the committee's duty would be to determine which federal laws were acceptable to the state, including election laws.\n\n\"With H.R. 1 where the federal government is trying to have some extreme overreach and take control of elections, there might be some reason there that states might want to nullify that position,\" Fillmore said.\n\nH.R. 1 passed the House in Congress but not the Senate. The law addresses voter access, election integrity and security, campaign finance, and ethics.\n\nIn the video, McCarthy then singles out Rep. Jacqueline Parker, R-Mesa, who explains that lawmakers have made vaccine mandates illegal and are working on election issues.\n\nParker says lawmakers are trying to eliminate the use of machines in voting.\n\n“We are working on that,” she says when asked specifically about machine voting. “Yes, we are trying to get rid of the machines.”\n\n— Ryan Randazzo\n\n5:45 p.m., Sept. 17: Details about audit report presentation are released\n\nAt the Sept. 24 roll out of the results of the review of Maricopa County's 2020 election, three men will present the results of their work.\n\nCyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan will present the findings of the hand count done of the county's 2.1 million ballots — both how the votes added up for the presidential and U.S. Senate candidates and the number of ballots.\n\nAudit spokesman/fundraiser Randy Pullen will discuss the results of the machine count of ballots. Senate President Karen Fann ordered the count after she learned that the Ninjas' hand count of the number of ballots didn't match the official result.\n\nFann, R-Prescott, said the count would serve as a \"check\" on the Ninjas' work. The tally was done on high-speed paper counting machines that cost the Senate about $30,000. Pullen said his presentation would not take much time.\n\nChecking in via Zoom will be Shiva Ayyadura, whose firm, EchoMail, did a review of the signatures on mail-in ballot envelopes. \"Dr. Shiva\" as he is known to his followers, has subscribed to election conspiracies that the 2020 election was stolen.\n\nAyyadura was hired by the Senate for the signature review on a $50,000 contract. He also was a subcontractor for the Cyber Ninjas, hired to review digital images of all 2.1 million ballots.\n\n— Mary Jo Pitzl\n\n4:35 p.m., Sept. 16: Election official seeks inquiry after voter data posted online\n\nMaricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer is asking Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich to investigate after voter registration records were posted online.\n\nVoter registration records known as the “voter file” are available to the public, but it's a felony to publish the information on the internet. The voter file includes the name, address and party affiliation of registered voters, along with some phone numbers. It shows whether the person has voted in recent elections but not the candidates and issues they supported.\n\n“It appears that in this case, information from a public records request may have been posted in violation of state law,” Richer said in a statement Thursday. \"I trust the Attorney General will look into this and take any necessary action.”\n\nRicher did not name the group responsible for the alleged violation, but an expansive list of voters remained accessible Thursday afternoon on a website posting podcasts, articles and other materials in support of the Republican Party.\n\nRicher and Brnovich are both Republicans.\n\n— Associated Press\n\n4:15 p.m., Sept. 16: Audit volunteers celebrate — just don't call it that\n\nState Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, posted pictures on Twitter of a gathering for audit volunteers that apparently took place Wednesday evening at the American Way Market in Chandler, and Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan was in attendance.\n\nLogan's smiling face was captured among Rogers' photos just hours after his lawyer told the Arizona Court of Appeals there was no way Cyber Ninjas could comply with a court order to produce emails, texts and other communications from the audit by Friday. Logan was just too busy, his lawyer said.\n\nLogan and his company on Aug. 25 were ordered by a court to preserve all such records in the event their legal battle to keep them secret was snuffed out by the courts, which is what happened this week when the Arizona Supreme Court declined to take up their appeal. It was the fifth court loss for the Senate in its attempts to withhold the documents.\n\nLogan's lawyer told the court that Cyber Ninjas probably needed 30 days to produce the records, partly because the company still was working on the audit report.\n\nWhen The Arizona Republic noted on Twitter that Logan was seen celebrating the audit that has yet to release results, Senate President Karen Fann took exception. She texted a reporter, writing that \"it was not a celebration party.\"\n\nFann, R-Prescott, was also photographed at the event.\n\nShe said it was planned to thank those who volunteered as observers at the audit. She didn't directly answer when asked whether the observers sent to the audit by the Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs were invited, but it seems unlikely.\n\nSo the \"event\" for \"thanking the people that worked on the audit,\" in Fann's words (which Rogers described as a \"reunion\"), was not a \"celebration.\" Noted.\n\nMeanwhile, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge asked Fann's lawyer in court Thursday when the final audit report would come out, and after a direct question from the judge, the lawyer said Sept. 24. Not long after he made that disclosure, television personality Christina Bobb from One America News posted on Twitter that the report would come out that day, as did Rogers.\n\n— Ryan Randazzo\n\n3 p.m., Sept. 15: Maricopa County still mulling over subpoena request\n\nMaricopa County's Board of Supervisors has met three times in closed-door sessions trying to decide whether to further comply with Arizona Senate Republicans' election-related subpoenas that include a demand to access county routers.\n\nA county spokesperson said no action was expected Wednesday after the third closed-door meeting executive session.\n\nA lot is on the line. Attorney General Mark Brnovich told the supervisors last month they were breaking the law by not fully responding to the subpoenas. He is threatening to withhold state funding if the supervisors don’t comply by Sept. 27.\n\nThe state funding in jeopardy accounts for 42% of the county’s operating budget, affecting public safety, public health, courts, elections and all other county operations.\n\nSupervisors and other county leaders have been mum on what they might do, but a county spokesperson said last week the options include responding further, trying to negotiate with the senators or filing a lawsuit.\n\nThe county has given the Senate nearly everything asked for under the subpoenas, including the ballots and voting machines that launched the audit, but not the county’s routers.\n\nCounty officials have said it would be a security risk to hand over the routers. They also say the Senate’s contractors don’t need them — they already gave them the network logs, voting machines and other materials that would allow the contractors to ensure the voting system wasn’t connected to the internet during the November general election.\n\nThe county’s election system and voting machines don’t use routers to transmit election results, and an independent audit in February found that no internet connections occurred during the election.\n\n— Jen Fifield\n\nNoon, Sept. 15: Too busy to provide proof of voting irregularities?\n\nAfter former President Donald Trump's defeat in November, Matt Braynard, a former campaign staffer of Trump's, got national attention for the claims he made about voting problems in several states, including Arizona. His findings were mentioned recently in a controversial report by Liz Harris on voter canvassing in metro Phoenix.\n\nBut anyone looking for evidence that backs up Braynard's claims will have to wait.\n\nAs he told The Arizona Republic, he's busy until Sept. 18, the day he’ll lead the “Justice for J6” rally in Washington D.C. in support of more than 570 people who face federal charges for participating in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.\n\n“I'm in the political business and that means I can't drop everything I'm doing right now to satisfy some local reporter's questions,” said Braynard, the founder and executive director of Look Ahead America, a Trump-supporting voter outreach organization, in a Sept. 11 message to The Arizona Republic via social media. “I will let you know when I am free to address that stuff but I don't have any time right now.”\n\nHarris' report states that Braynard phone-surveyed Republican voters who didn't have a record of voting and allegedly found that half said they did actually vote. That finding, however, didn’t come with any data to back it up. And if Braynard has released such data, he’s not releasing it now.\n\nBraynard claimed in direct message that he “did release it but finding that out would require journalism.” He subsequently cut off communication.\n\nLaw enforcement officials expect about 700 people to show up for the D.C. rally this Saturday.\n\nIn December, Braynard’s supposed findings in Georgia were debunked in a virtual hearing with lawmakers when Democratic state Rep. Bee Nguyen explained how she’d checked on his multiple examples of claimed voter fraud and found them to be erroneous.\n\nHarris hasn’t yet released any voter data that could be used to verify the claimed canvassing results of her operation, either, and the only two specific examples she gave of problems withered under basic scrutiny.\n\n— Ray Stern\n\n5:30 p.m., Sept. 14: Talk of Pima County canvassing raises questions\n\nState Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, recently told podcast host and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon that he’s \"talking to the Pima County GOP\" about canvassing voters there.\n\nIf so, that's news to the leader of the Pima County Republican Party.\n\nFinchem, who Monday received Trump’s endorsement in his campaign for Arizona secretary of state, made the remarks Sept. 10 following the release of a canvassing report by Liz Harris, a Chandler real estate agent, that relied on dubious statistics and unverifiable statements to advance the conspiracy theory of widespread election fraud.\n\nShelley Kais, chair of the Pima County Republican Party, said she’s not aware of any canvassing operation and nobody in the organization had discussed it, as far as she knows.\n\nSince December, Harris has led a team of election deniers into Valley neighborhoods to knock on doors and ask voters questions in what the U.S. Department of Justice has warned could be acts of voter intimidation.\n\nWhile the DOJ warning led the state Senate to cancel canvassing plans as part of the audit of Maricopa County votes, Harris has carried out the plan that Cyber Ninjas, the lead contractor for the audit, previously said was an “important” part of its scope of work.\n\nNow, Finchem, who was outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and who calls himself the “vanguard” of voter integrity, claims he’s in discussions to launch a door-knocking operation in Pima County with “evidence that Dr. Shiva’s worked on.”\n\n“We hope to release that next week,” he told Bannon on Sept. 10. “It’s big.”\n\nFinchem had mentioned during a separate Aug. 24 interview with Bannon that “we’ve been conducting” an investigation into alleged problems with voting in Pima County. He didn’t return a message Tuesday inquiring about his statements.\n\nPresumably, in the Sept. 10 podcast, Finchem was talking about Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, who helped give a presentation to Arizona lawmakers on Nov. 30 with Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, about supposed flaws in the election.\n\nAudit spokesperson and former Arizona GOP Chair Randy Pullen told The Arizona Republic last week that Finchem “hooked us up” with Ayyadurai. The Senate signed a contract with Ayyadurai in August to review signatures on the envelopes of 1.9 million early ballots sent to the county.\n\nThe Pima County Recorder’s Office didn’t return messages on Tuesday, and it’s unclear who, if anyone, has contracted Ayyadurai to investigate the 2020 election in Pima County.\n\nAsked if she thought widespread voting problems had occurred in Pima County in 2020, Kais said she “didn’t know enough about the process” to answer. Still, “irregularities” in the election are a “really huge issue,” she said. “We need to get to the bottom of it.”\n\n— Ray Stern\n\n5 p.m., Sept. 14: Supreme Court rejects appeal on Cyber Ninjas' records\n\nThe Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the state Senate's bid to keep records from Cyber Ninjas and other contractors working on the election audit out of public view.\n\nAfter the decision was announced, Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, said she was preparing to comply with an order from a lower court to release the documents.\n\nThe Senate had refused to turn over records from the audit that are in the possession of its contractor, Cyber Ninjas, and other subcontractors, even after two Maricopa County Superior Court judges in separate cases and the Appeals Court all ruled they are public documents.\n\nAfter the Appeals Court's ruling, the Senate asked the Supreme Court to weigh in. The justices discussed the matter in a private conference Tuesday and decided not to take it up.\n\n— Ryan Randazzo\n\n11 a.m., Sept. 13: Report makes big claims about voters, offers no proof\n\nElection conspiracy theorists hailed the arrival of a report on a voter-canvassing effort trying to help the Arizona Senate's audit of the 2020 election.\n\nBut the report failed to include any way to verify its dubious findings, and the only two specific examples it provided of alleged ballot problems were swiftly debunked.\n\nThe woman behind the canvassing effort, Liz Harris, refused to release data by which her claims in the Sept. 8 report could be checked. The new report also claims that the canvass team \"can make sworn affidavits supporting these findings readily available,\" but Harris refused to release those, either, or comment about the report to The Arizona Republic.\n\nThe Maricopa County Recorder's and Assessor's offices ripped the report in a joint statement Friday, but noted that officials would investigate the findings — if they could.\n\n— Ray Stern\n\n9 a.m., Sept. 13: GOP state senator targeted with threat\n\nA Republican state senator who has criticized the ongoing review of the 2020 election was threatened in an email sent the same day prominent conspiracy theorist Seth Keshel urged his followers to contact her.\n\nThe Sept. 9 email to Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, begins with a racial slur.\n\nIt goes on to say, \"You have one chance to give the American people the Audit report or were coming for you, we know where you live, we know where you get groceries, and we know where your family lives. You better do the right thing or your [sic] going to feel the consequences. You Understand? We the people are no longer willing to play.\"\n\nIt's only the latest threat against an Arizona public official since Trump lost the November election here, sparking a backlash by supporters across the country who demanded a review of the results.\n\nThe Department of Public Safety's threat mitigation unit is reviewing the email, a department spokesperson said.\n\n— Ray Stern\n\n10 a.m., Sept. 10: Many documents released by Senate inconsequential to audit\n\nThe Arizona Senate turned over thousands of mundane and inconsequential emails in response to a court order making records from its election audit public.\n\nAt the same time, it withheld texts, emails and memos between lawmakers and others, including Cyber Ninjas, the company contracted to lead the audit. The Senate provided a 269-page report listing specific documents it chose not to release because of what it called legislative privilege, attorney-client privilege or other privilege.\n\nThese documents could be critical to understanding what was behind the recount of 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County during the 2020 election.\n\nAmong the records released were thousands of copies of a subscription journal sent daily to legislators, chain emails from constituents, texts from media members and conspiracy-laden screeds from around the world.\n\nThe records were released on Aug. 31 in response to lawsuits filed by the Arizona Republic and a nonprofit watchdog group called American Oversight. A team of six Arizona Republic reporters spent several days going through each of the 22,000 documents.\n\nSeveral thousand records were copies of The Yellow Sheet, a subscription-only political tip sheet published by the Arizona News Service, along with emails from legislative staffers confirming it had been sent.\n\nEmails were almost exclusively in support of the Senate’s actions; out of a batch of 10,000 documents, a reporter found only two or three emails asking lawmakers to call it off.\n\nLawmakers were flooded with emails demanding they hire Jovan Hutton Pulitzer and other conspiracy theorists to do the audit. The requests came not only from across Arizona but also from states from Massachusetts to Oklahoma. Concerned citizens in Poland and Australia added their pleas to the chorus of emails, many of which had a form-letter feel.\n\nThe people behind these emails expressed confidence in the statements of conspiracy-minded data crunchers and appeared to have a blind hatred for local election officials. Many legislators seemed to pander to the writers.\n\nThe tone ranged from polite — \"Respectfully request the Senate use Col. Phil Waldron's firm along with Jovan Pulitzer auditing the ballots,\" wrote Gary Nunns, who did not identify if he was an Arizona resident — to outright demands: \"A forensic audit by Jovan Hutton Pulitzer is what we the people want and need period,\" Joe Gomes wrote to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Warren Petersen.\n\nSenate President Karen Fann often responded with a simple thank you message. To others, she gave brief updates about efforts to move the audit forward.\n\n— Robert Anglen, Mary Jo Pitzl, Ray Stern, Ryan Randazzo, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez\n\n6:45 p.m., Sept. 9: Draft reports expected by middle of next week\n\nSenate President Karen Fann confirmed Thursday that the full draft report of the audit the Senate commissioned earlier this year should arrive at the Senate by the middle of next week.\n\nThe long-anticipated draft was first expected to arrive in late August, but its completion was delayed by a COVID-19 outbreak among three of the Cyber Ninja auditors.\n\nThe draft report will be examined by the Senate’s nine-person legal review team, which will review it for “clarity, accuracy, proof and documentation of any findings,” Fann has said.\n\nIn addition, the legal review team is expecting reports on two other audit-related checks it ordered, according to Randy Pullen, the audit's spokesperson and one of its chief fundraisers. They are the machine count of the number of ballots cast in the election, and a review of the signatures on mail-in ballot envelopes.\n\nThe final reports will be delivered to the Senate Judiciary Committee and made public, although it is unclear how much time it will take to move from draft form to the final version.\n\nThe review team consists of Fann; Judiciary Chairman Sen. Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert; Senate legal counsel Greg Jernigan; contract Senate attorneys Kory Langhofer and Thomas Basile of Statecraft; Garth Kamp, the Senate’s senior policy adviser; audit liaison Ken Bennett, and audit spokesman Randy Pullen. Doug Logan, CEO of the Cyber Ninjas, is also on the team to provide answers and context.\n\nA special committee of the Senate Government Committee also will be required to review the final reports. The committee can recommend any statutory changes that might be needed in the wake of the audit and can request a special session of the Legislature to deal with any proposed bills.\n\nThe committee has not yet been formed because the law that authorized it doesn’t take effect until Sept. 29. When it is named, it will have to act fast: By law, its authority lapses on Dec. 31.\n\n— Mary Jo Pitzl\n\n4 p.m., Sept. 6: U.S. Senate candidate helped pay for audit security\n\nRepublican U.S. Senate hopeful Jim Lamon has emerged as a key behind-the-scenes player in the state Senate's long-running ballot review, from helping bankroll security to directing Ken Bennett to take a position as a spokesperson for the effort.\n\nLamon's involvement adds to an already lengthy list of conservative causes he has helped underwrite during his brief candidacy.\n\nThe solar company executive has said he has paid for security during the ballot inspections and directed Bennett to pause the work he was doing with Lamon to recruit Republican voters so he could help with the partisan election review.\n\nLamon’s partial name appeared in a text message released this week by the Republican-controlled state Senate related to its review of the 2020 election, an exercise Lamon has supported even before it began in earnest earlier this year.\n\nOn the campaign trail, as he met with GOP voters at pancake breakfasts and political meet-and-greets, Lamon has taken credit for helping inspire the ballot review. In one appearance, he said he “started pressuring” Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, to pursue the efforts when legal efforts by electors — including him — to overturn the election came up short.\n\n— Yvonne Wingett Sanchez\n\n9 a.m., Sept. 6: Trump adviser helps funnel money to audit\n\nA prominent Republican attorney who advised President Donald Trump as he tried to overturn the 2020 election helped set up an escrow account to funnel money to companies working on the Arizona election audit.\n\nCleta Mitchell's role came to light as The Arizona Republic combed through documents the state Senate released after a court order. The documents provide previously unknown details on payments to companies and people participating in audit work and link the audit even closer to Trump.\n\nMitchell, who gained national attention for advising Trump during his January call to Georgia election officials in which he asked them to find votes in his favor, arranged for $1 million to be sent from the escrow account in late July to three subcontractors working under Cyber Ninjas, the Senate's lead contractor.\n\nThis adds to the millions of dollars in outside funding that has paid for the months-long partisan review of Maricopa County's ballots and voting machines. Republican leaders in the Senate ordered the unusual review, which has been funded mainly by \"Stop the Steal\" advocates and Trump allies.\n\n— Jen Fifield and Stacey Barchenger\n\n5 p.m., Sept. 5: Taxpayers pick up $425K in audit costs, with more coming\n\nTaxpayers are on the hook for nearly $425,000 for the costs of the audit of the 2020 election results Senate Republicans are conducting, with thousands of dollars more in bills yet to come, state records show.\n\nThe largest expense is for $223,000 in legal fees paid through July, followed by $68,100 for security costs at the state fairgrounds in May.\n\nThose security costs were contracted by the Guardian Defense Fund, a dark-money nonprofit started in February to \"fight back\" against allegations about the involvement of three Arizona Republican politicians in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.\n\nSenate President Karen Fann, who authorized the audit, acknowledged overall costs are climbing. But she said a lot of that is due to Maricopa County's refusal to cooperate with the audit, resulting in legal fees, unexpected security costs and rental charges.\n\n— Mary Jo Pitzl\n\n12:30 p.m., Sept. 5: State Senate hires conspiracy theorist for ballot review\n\nThe Arizona Senate has hired an election conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist to conduct its review of voter signatures on mail-in ballot envelopes in Maricopa County.\n\nCyber Ninjas, the Senate's lead audit contractor, hired the same man to review images of all 2.1 million ballots cast in the 2020 election.\n\nShiva Ayyadurai, or \"Dr. Shiva\" as he is known to far-right adherents, was tapped for both reviews in the waning weeks of the audit process, records show. However, he had participated in discussions with Arizona Republicans about challenging the state's election results as far back as November.\n\nThe Arizona Republic found one of Ayyadurai's contracts among thousands of records the Senate released in response to a court order.\n\n— Robert Anglen and Jen Fifield\n\n7 p.m. Sept. 2: Audit workers get paid ... finally\n\nOne of the firms working on the audit left the project in May, but a payment dispute lingered for months, documents released by the state Senate show.\n\nWake Technologies apparently didn’t pay its subcontractors until it struck an agreement in late July with Cyber Ninjas, the lead contractor on the audit, and the dozens of people Wake had hired.\n\nAs of Aug. 16, records show, 21 subcontractors were mailed checks totaling $166,550. This was labeled as “round one” of payments; in all, Wake was responsible for 41 contractors who were paid hourly rates ranging from $50 to $125.\n\nWake’s role was to recount the 2.1 million ballots cast in the November 2020 election in Maricopa County. The firm worked at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum from early April until May 14, when the audit’s contract for the state fairgrounds property lapsed.\n\nIt is unclear from the settlement agreement what caused the payment delay. But late Thursday, audit spokesman Randy Pullen said Cyber Ninjas had fulfilled its contractual obligation to Wake.\n\n- Mary Jo Pitzl and Jen Fifield\n\n5 p.m., Sept. 1: 'At least 2 weeks' until a final audit report is ready\n\nAs the review of the Maricopa County election moves into its fifth month — at its start, Senate officials said the initial count would take just 30 days — one big remaining unknown is when will the public see the findings.\n\nAt a court status conference over public records Wednesday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael Kemp asked Kory Langhofer, the attorney for the Arizona Senate, that burning question. When would the Cyber Ninja's preliminary report on the audit go to the Senate, Kemp wanted to know, and would the Senate seek to protect that from public disclosure as it has thousands of other records?\n\nSenate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, announced last week that the preliminary report was delayed because Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan and two other members of his team contracted serious cases of COVID-19. The Senate still hasn't received that document, Langhofer said.\n\nLanghofer said the preliminary report is expected to come in three volumes, and one volume is not yet written. He said it will be \"at least two weeks\" before a final report is produced.\n\nKemp engaged in some foreshadowing in the courtroom, anticipating a fight over the documents that the Senate said are not subject to release.\n\n\"I have a feeling there will be some substantial disagreements over whether documents are privileged or not,\" the judge said.\n\n— Ryan Randazzo", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/09/01"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_7", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:36", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/27/politics/dr-oz-pennsylvania-senate-recount/index.html", "title": "Dr. Oz says he's earned 'presumptive Republican nomination,' even ...", "text": "(CNN) Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz released a video on Friday in which the celebrity doctor calls himself the \"presumptive Republican\" nominee on the same day counties can begin recounting ballots in the commonwealth's tight GOP primary.\n\nOz currently holds a roughly 900-vote lead over former hedge fund executive Dave McCormick in the contest for the Republican nomination. CNN has not made a projection in the race.\n\n\"I am blessed to have earned the presumptive Republican nomination for the United States Senate,\" Oz says in the straight-to-camera video . \"This was a tough campaign, I traveled everywhere. You guys were pretty honest sharing with me thoughts, worries you had, you don't feel like you're being heard.\"\n\nOz goes on in the video to position himself more as a general election candidate, telling voters he is going to \"reach to every corner of this commonwealth,\" work with \"anybody who's got good ideas\" and \"bond together\" to \"solve all of our problems.\"\n\nActing Pennsylvania Secretary of State Leigh Chapman announced on Wednesday that the margin between McCormick and Oz was within the 0.5% automatic recount threshold after all of Pennsylvania's counties reported their unofficial results to the state on Tuesday.\n\nRead More", "authors": ["Dan Merica"], "publish_date": "2022/05/27"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/05/18/primaries-mastriano-madison-cawthorn-takeaways/9570598002/", "title": "Primary election takeaways: Pennsylvania results, Trump's impact", "text": "With Doug Mastriano's primary win in Pennsylvania, the \"Big Lie\" could again dominate another election.\n\nEmbattled GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn lost his primary race in North Carolina.\n\nSeveral candidates of color won their primary races Tuesday night.\n\nWASHINGTON – The \"Big Lie\" that Joe Biden did not win the presidency dominates the 2022 primary elections, nearly two years after the 2020 presidential election.\n\nIn a win for former President Donald Trump, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a retired Army colonel, won the Republican nomination for governor of Pennsylvania on Tuesday night. Mastriano has repeatedly supported Trump's falsehoods about Biden's victory, although he attempted to tone down his rhetoric during a victory speech.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/18"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/05/13/who-kathy-barnette-senate-candidate-pennsylvania/9766567002/", "title": "Who is Kathy Barnette? Senate candidate running in Pennsylvania", "text": "The GOP primary race for Senate in Pennsylvania appeared to come down to two candidates: the Donald Trump-endorsed celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz and millionaire former hedge fund manager Dave McCormick supported by top Republicans. But in a new poll, Kathy Barnette, a political commentator, appears to have made it a three-way race.\n\nBarnette’s late surge has alarmed some prominent conservatives, including Trump, who warned that Barnette could “never” win in a general election and raised questions about her past.\n\nThe latest RealClearPolitics average poll showed Barnette less than three points behind Oz, and less than one point ahead of McCormick.\n\nMore coverage:Pennsylvania's candidate-packed, toss-up, celebrity-laden Senate race could decide control of Congress\n\nOn Politics newsletter:Keep up with the latest breaking politics news\n\nTrump is backing 'Dr. Oz':What to know about the ex-TV show host running for Senate in Pennsylvania\n\nWho is Dave McCormick?:Former hedge fund executive running for Senate in Pennsylvania\n\nWho is J.D. Vance?:The Trump-backed Ohio GOP Senate nominee\n\nWho is Kathy Barnette?\n\nBarnette is best known for her career as a political commentator. She has appeared on Fox News and other conservative TV shows. She also hosts a Christian talk radio show.\n\nAccording to her campaign site, Barnette had a career in corporate finance and served 10 years in the military reserves. She also was an adjunct professor at Judson University in Illinois. Her first campaign for Congress failed in 2020, when she lost an election for a House seat to Democrat Madeleine Dean.\n\nShe is originally from the South, where she grew up living in poverty on a pig farm, according to her campaign website.\n\nAs the possibility that Barnette could win the GOP grew days before the election, high-profile conservatives began raising concerns about Barnette’s past.\n\nFox News host Sean Hannity, who is backing Oz, expressed concerns in a segment on his show Thursday about Barnette’s past homophobic and anti-Muslim tweets, saying they would make her unelectable in the general election.\n\nTrump echoed the same in a statement Thursday.\n\n“Kathy Barnette will never be able to win the General Election against the Radical Left Democrats,” Trump said in the statement. “She has many things in her past which have not been properly explained or vetted, but if she is able to do so, she will have a wonderful future in the Republican Party.”\n\nBarnette's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\n\nHow old is Kathy Barnette?\n\nBarnette is 50 years old and was born in Alabama.\n\nWho has endorsed Kathy Barnette?\n\nThe most well-known individual endorsing Barnette is Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser who publicly called on the former president to institute martial law following his 2020 presidential election defeat. A number of state legislators and Utah Rep. Burgess Owens, a Republican, are backing Barnette as well.\n\nWhat is Kathy Barnette’s platform?\n\nBarnette’s platform is in line with much of the GOP’s agenda.\n\nIt includes proposals such as banning so-called “critical race theory” from schools, achieving energy independence while opposing the \"Green New Deal\", implementing a tougher “merit-based” immigration system and codifying the “Remain in Mexico” asylum policy started under Trump.\n\nBarnette has promised to serve only two terms as Senator if elected and not to own any stock during her time in office as part of a pledge to “Remain True to My Oath and Root Out and Punish Corruption.”\n\nBarnette is also anti-abortion, pro-gun rights and vowed to protect free speech, suggesting the break up of “big tech monopolies” in one of her proposals.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/13"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/17/politics/pennsylvania-north-carolina-primary-election/index.html", "title": "Dr. Oz: High-stakes Pennsylvania GOP primary that could shape ...", "text": "(CNN) The Republican primary for Pennsylvania's US Senate race , which could be key to determining control of the chamber in November, was too close to call early Wednesday as Mehmet Oz and Dave McCormick battled for the top spot with thousands of mail-in ballots still to be counted.\n\nThe race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey had been dominated by millions of dollars in negative advertising, mostly between Oz, the celebrity doctor backed by former President Donald Trump , and McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, and their allies.\n\nIn the final days before Tuesday's primary, political commentator Kathy Barnette had appeared poised for a late surge as she tried to claim the \"Make America Great Again\" label, attempting to channel concerns about Oz's conservative bona fides among Trump supporters. But by early Wednesday, Barnette was trailing in third place.\n\nWhile Oz held a razor-thin lead Wednesday morning, advisers to McCormick were confident of their candidate's path to victory.\n\n\"Based on how many uncounted absentee ballots there are and the margin by which Dave has won them so far, that's why we are confident of victory. Dave will win this race,\" Jeff Roe, chief strategist to the McCormick campaign, wrote in an overnight message on Twitter.\n\nAn adviser to Oz pointed to ballots yet to be counted in Philadelphia, where the candidate currently holds a double-digit edge, as well as several counties across the eastern edge of the commonwealth where he is leading McCormick.\n\n\"It's a jump ball,\" the Oz adviser told CNN.\n\nPennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman , who suffered a stroke last week that kept him in the hospital for the final days of the primary, will win the Democratic nod for Senate, CNN projected Tuesday. His victory over moderate Rep. Conor Lamb is a win for progressive Democrats in a race that represents the party's best chance of flipping a seat this fall.\n\nIt appeared to be a mixed night for the former President, who has been preoccupied with trying to pick winners in midterm contests ahead of a possible 2024 White House bid. One of the candidates he backed in an 11th-hour endorsement -- Pennsylvania Republican Doug Mastriano, who championed his election lies -- will win the gubernatorial nod in the Keystone State, CNN projected.\n\nBut one of Trump's acolytes in Congress, North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn , was ousted after a fierce campaign to unseat him by some of his fellow Tar Heel Republicans -- proving that Trump isn't enough of a lifeline to rescue the most controversial candidates.\n\nIn Idaho, incumbent GOP Gov. Brad Little will win reelection, CNN projected , fending off an unusual challenge from his lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, whom Trump had endorsed.\n\nElection denier wins Pennsylvania gubernatorial primary\n\nIn a state that was pivotal to the 2020 election, Mastriano is seeking an office that would allow him sway over the state's electors in the 2024 presidential contest. He will face Democrat Josh Shapiro, the current state attorney general, in November.\n\nIn a taste of the bruising race to come, Shapiro immediately put out a statement Tuesday night calling Mastriano \"a dangerous extremist who wants to take away our freedoms,\" charging that the Republican would seek to \"restrict the vote and spread conspiracy theories.\"\n\nMastriano took a leading role in amplifying those false claims, and spent more than $3,000 from his campaign account to charter buses to Washington ahead of the January 6, 2021, \"Stop the Steal\" rally that preceded the attack on the US Capitol, according to state campaign finance records.\n\nIn the immediate aftermath of the insurrection, Mastriano condemned the violence in a video posted on Facebook, but video and pictures from the event show him near the Capitol, raising questions about his involvement.\n\nIn his victory speech Tuesday night, Mastriano rejected the \"extreme\" label, arguing that Democrats' Covid-19 public health measures were extreme.\n\n\"On day one, any mandates are gone. On day one, any jab for job requirements are gone,\" he said to cheers. \"There is a movement here that is going to shock the state this November.\"\n\nMadison Cawthorn loses\n\nCawthorn, the controversial freshman congressman backed by Trump, conceded his North Carolina primary to state Sen. Chuck Edwards on Tuesday evening, according to Cawthorn's spokesperson.\n\nCawthorn's concession marked a stunningly quick fall for a young conservative once viewed as a potential star within the GOP after he succeeded Mark Meadows, who left Congress to become chief of staff to Trump.\n\nNorth Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis had backed Edwards, telling CNN it was the first time in his career that he'd opposed a sitting Republican.\n\nEdwards confirmed the concession call in remarks to supporters Tuesday night.\n\n\"I received a call from Congressman Cawthorn just a few minutes ago. Just as I expected, he presented himself in a very classy and humble way and offered his support to our campaign in absolutely anyway that we can use him.\"\n\nIn North Carolina's Senate race, Rep. Ted Budd will win the GOP nomination to replace retiring North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, CNN projected Tuesday.\n\nTrump endorsed Budd nearly a year ago, but his candidacy was slow to take off and he struggled to break away from former Gov. Pat McCrory and Rep. Mark Walker in the primary. Heavy spending from the Club for Growth's political action committee ultimately boosted the conservative congressman, who backed voting to toss out the electoral results in Arizona and Pennsylvania in January 2021.\n\nDemocrat Cheri Beasley, who was the first Black woman to lead the North Carolina Supreme Court as chief justice, will be the party's Senate nominee in the state, CNN projected Tuesday. Her main rivals had dropped out of the primary before Tuesday.\n\nA test for Biden too\n\nFarther west, Democrats are closely watching a House primary in Oregon's newly drawn 5th Congressional District, where Rep. Kurt Schrader is fending off a challenge from his left from Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who has received a relatively modest boost from progressive outside groups, led by the Working Families Party.\n\nSchrader, who was President Joe Biden's first congressional endorsement of 2022, has angered some of his fellow Democrats by voting against the American Rescue Plan, Biden's $1.9 trillion Covid relief package, and a measure in the President's Build Back Better package to allow the government to negotiate the price of pharmaceutical drugs, which would dramatically lower prices.\n\nSchrader pushed an alternative provision and ultimately voted for the full bill, but not before joining a group of nine moderates in an effort to decouple it from the bipartisan infrastructure bill -- a tactical step that ultimately helped doom Build Back Better, Biden's would-be signature legislation -- in the Senate.\n\nCORRECTION: A previous version of this story mischaracterized the potential historic significance of Barnette winning the Pennsylvania Senate seat. She would become the first Black Republican woman elected to the Senate.", "authors": ["Maeve Reston"], "publish_date": "2022/05/17"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/06/03/pa-gop-primary-won-mehmet-oz-opponent-david-mccormick-concedes/7506323001/", "title": "PA GOP primary won by Mehmet Oz as opponent David McCormick ...", "text": "WASHINGTON – Doctor and television host Mehmet Oz claimed the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat on Friday after Pennsylvania Republican primary opponent David McCormick conceded that he cannot win a recount.\n\n\"This evening I received a gracious phone call from David McCormick and am tremendously grateful for his pledge of support in the fall election,\" Oz said in a victory statement.\n\nMcCormick, who trailed Oz by less than 1,000 votes after the May 17 Republican primary in Pennsylvania, told supporters at an event in Pittsburgh that the nearly-completed recount showed that the numbers simply weren't there to catch up.\n\n“It’s now clear to me – with the recount now largely complete – that we have a nominee\" in Oz, McCormick said. \"Tonight is really about all us coming together.”\n\nJan. 6 committee hearing on Thursday:Jan. 6 committee's long-awaited hearings promise revelations. Will a divided US want to hear them?\n\nMcCormick, a former hedge fund executive, said he told Oz he would \"do my part\" to unite Republicans and Pennsylvania residents behind the doctor's candidacy to the U.S. Senate. \"He has my full support,\" McCormick said.\n\nOz, who had the endorsement of former President Donald Trumpn during the primary, said he appreciated McCormick's concession and that \"we share the goal of a brighter future for Pennsylvania and America.\"\n\nPennsylvania officials authorized a recount because state law requires one when two candidates finish within 0.5% of each other.\n\nRecount:Pa. GOP Senate primary: Why Oz and McCormick race may not be decided before June\n\nThe celebrity factor:Celebrities? Outsiders? Oz, Fetterman (and Trump) put fame to the test in Pennsylvania primary\n\nOz, who left his long-running television show to pursue a U.S. Senate seat, now faces Democratic nominee John Fetterman, currently the lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania in the fall general election.\n\n\"We will make sure that this U.S. Senate seat does not fall into the hands of the radical left, led by John Fetterman,\" Oz said.\n\nThe Pennsylvania Senate race could decide whether Democrats or Republicans control the U.S. Senate, currently split 50-50 between the parties. The Democrats now have majority power because of the tie-breaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris.\n\nFetterman and other Democrats have described Oz as a celebrity carpetbagger who moved to Pennsylvania to try and buy a U.S. Senate seat. They also cited Oz's opposition to abortion rights and his support for Trump's false claims about election fraud in 2020.\n\nAfter McCormick's concession, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said in a statement that “Mehmet Oz is a fraud and a scam artist who will do, say, and sell anything to help himself – no matter who gets hurt.\"\n\nFetterman, 52, is still recovering from a stroke he suffered the weekend before the primary.\n\nIn a statement earlier in the day, Fetterman said the stroke was more serious than the campaign initially announced. His cardiologist said Fetterman has suffered from both atrial fibrillation and cardiomyopathy in recent years.\n\n“The stroke I suffered on May 13 didn’t come out of nowhere,” Fetterman said in his statement. “Like so many others, and so many men in particular, I avoided going to the doctor, even though I knew I didn’t feel well. As a result, I almost died.”\n\nHe added: “I didn’t do what the doctor told me. But I won’t make that mistake again.”\n\nOz and Fetterman are vying for the seat being vacated by retiring U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa.\n\nDuring the hard-fought Republican primary, McCormick also sought Trump's endorsement. His wife, Dina Powell, worked for the Trump administration as a deputy national security adviser, and other former Trump aides supported McCormick's Senate candidacy.\n\nDuring the primary campaign, McCormick and other Republicans attacked Oz for his lack of political experience and his dual citizenship with both Turkey and the United States.\n\nStill, Oz managed to prevail.\n\nIn his victory statement, the celebrity doctor said that \"I look forward to campaigning in every corner of the Commonwealth for the next five months to earn the support of every Pennsylvanian.\"", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/03"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2022/05/16/north-carolina-pennsylvania-idaho-primaries/9794164002/", "title": "Pennsylvania primary, Madison Cawthorn race in N.C. on tap Tuesday", "text": "Big primary day features key contests in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Oregon.\n\n“Dr. Oz” and embattled GOP congressman Madison Cawthorn face tough races.\n\nWASHINGTON – The busiest primary day of the year so far arrives Tuesday – with the most volatile cast of characters.\n\nThere's the celebrity doctor facing a conservative commentator and a former hedge fund manager in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Democrat who is favored to win a Senate nomination but is recovering from a stroke. A North Carolina congressman trying to survive a knockout bid from fellow Republicans. An Idaho governor battling his lieutenant governor. And Donald Trump.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/16"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/13/politics/kathy-barnette-pennsylvania-senate-primary/index.html", "title": "Kathy Barnette's quick rise has Republicans reeling over potential ...", "text": "Kathy Barnette, US Republican Senate candidate for Pennsylvania, listens to questions during an interview following the Pennsylvania Senate GOP primary debate in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on April 25, 2022.\n\nCNN —\n\nRepublicans are watching conservative candidate Kathy Barnette’s sudden rise in their party’s upcoming Pennsylvania US Senate primary with a mix of unease, wonder and dread.\n\nBarnette’s late surge in the closely watched contest has turned what was broadly seen as a two-person race between celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund manager Dave McCormick into a chaotic three-person affair, with Barnette seen as a wild card who has grassroots momentum mere days before the Tuesday contest.\n\nThe unexpected development has caused even the most influential Republicans to panic, including former President Donald Trump himself, who attempted to quash Barnette’s campaign by claiming in a statement Thursday that she is not a viable general election candidate.\n\n“Kathy Barnette will never be able to win the General Election against the Radical Left Democrats,” Trump said.\n\nThough Trump acknowledged that Barnette, who he described as “not properly explained or vetted,” is poised to “have a wonderful future in the Republican Party,” he reaffirmed his support for Oz and encouraged GOP primary voters to stick with his chosen candidate.\n\n“A vote for anyone else in the Primary is a vote against Victory in the Fall!” he said.\n\nAt a campaign stop Thursday evening, Barnette brushed aside the blistering assessment and smiled when asked about the pointed words from Trump, telling reporters: “I look forward to working with the President.”\n\nAsked if the whirling criticism is a sign that she’s on the rise, Barnette said, “I would agree.”\n\nBut like the former President, other Republicans are worried about the myriad unknowns surrounding Barnette, who until this week was barely a household name in Pennsylvania, let alone a Republican candidate garnering national attention.\n\n“She is a giant walking question mark,” said one Republican operative working on Senate races. “There has been almost no vetting of her. … There is a lot that we don’t know about her, including basic biographical details.”\n\nOz told Fox host Sean Hannity on Wednesday that Barnette was a “mystery person.”\n\n“I don’t see any way, any scenario under which she can win a general election,” he told Hannity, who was among those pushing Trump behind the scenes to endorse Oz earlier this spring.\n\nOne person close to Trump said the former President saw the Oz-Hannity interview as “too heavy-handed” and thought Oz’s attacks on Barnette would only make her stock rise further.\n\n‘There is certainly fear from some Republicans’\n\nThe source of Barnette’s rise, though, is not a mystery: The persistent campaigner has outflanked Oz and McCormick from the right, using Trump’s now-unpopular decision to back the television doctor to rally Pennsylvania’s conservative base to her side and benefiting from an alliance with leading Republican gubernatorial hopeful Doug Mastriano. Barnette has effectively stepped into the void created by that grassroots anger and the singular focus that Oz and McCormick have had on each other for weeks.\n\nWhat worries Republicans now is just how much of Barnette’s personal and professional background remains a mystery and the limited window in which voters might be informed of any liabilities she would have as a candidate on the ballot this November.\n\n“There is certainly fear from some Republicans. The surge happened quickly and sort of out of nowhere,” said a Republican aide focused on Senate races. “She is relatively unknown and unvetted.”\n\nWhile Barnette’s campaign website describes her as a “veteran, former adjunct professor of corporate finance, sought-after conference speaker, and conservative political commentator,” little is known about almost all aspects of her professional life.\n\nThe most in-depth look at Barnette’s personal life came in the form of a two-minute campaign ad released in the wake of the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, in which Barnette revealed that she was “the byproduct of rape” after her mother was molested and became pregnant at age 11.\n\nRepublicans in Washington have also been passing around a Washington Examiner piece titled “Who is Kathy Barnette,” which reports that a series of questions posed to Barnette’s campaign manager about the candidate’s background – including about her military service – went unanswered.\n\nStill, not all Republicans are publicly concerned about Barnette’s rise.\n\nSen. Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told CNN he had no concerns about her emergence in the race – and he downplayed the idea she would be more vulnerable in a general election matchup. He said he has spoken with her as well.\n\n“Everybody’s going to attack everybody. But ultimately, the voters are going to choose,” said Scott, who is neutral in the race.\n\nAnd Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, the only US senator who’s endorsed Barnette, told CNN that the candidate is “extraordinary” and dismissed the attack that Barnette has not been properly vetted.\n\n“Look around the Senate,” Ernst said in the halls of the chamber. “I see a lot of people that I think should have been vetted. But no, I just, I think she is extraordinary.”\n\n“Just because you’re a political newcomer doesn’t mean we write you off,” Ernst added. “I think she’s got a great story. It’s convincing.”\n\nBarnette’s connections to Pennsylvania are also largely unknown, and both her book and campaign website are sparse on basic biographical information about the would-be senator. While Barnette ran unopposed in a Republican congressional primary in 2020 only to lose to Democrat Madeleine Dean by 19 percentage points for a congressional seat in the Philadelphia suburbs, the listing for her 2020 book, “Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: Being Black and Conservative in America,” said she lived in Virginia.\n\nThe book features heavily in Barnette’s stump speech. The candidate writes that she “grew up on a very small farm in southern Alabama in a one stop-sign town.” The house, she writes, had no running water and had an outhouse. In another passage she writes that “for the majority of blacks in Nichburg, Alabama, and surrounding areas, the goal of each day was sheer survival.” Those who support Barnette and have heard her speak often cite her personal story – rural upbringing, college, military service and work as a commentator – as the reason they are backing her.\n\n“I was very impressed with her life story,” said Donna DePue, the vice president of the Wyoming County Council of Republican Women, a group that hosted a luncheon for Barnette. “She was never taught to believe she was lesser than. She came across as the real deal. She is not a disgusting RINO and I liked her sincerity.”\n\n“I keep telling folks that President Trump is not nearly as politically right as parts of this populist movement – Kathy Barnette is a manifestation of that. It’s MAGA vs. ultra MAGA in Pennsylvania,” said former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who was due to host Barnette on his “War Room” podcast Thursday afternoon.\n\nBarnette has also skillfully explained how she, a candidate running in line with Trump and his values, did not get the former President’s endorsement, saying at a recent debate that “MAGA does not belong to President Trump” because “our values never, never shifted to President Trump’s values” and it was “President Trump who shifted and aligned with our values.”\n\nThe explanation worked for many Republican activists, who see Oz as the antithesis of the MAGA movement.\n\nIn response, Oz’s and McCormick’s campaigns and associated super PACs have quickly worked to stop Barnette’s surge. American Leadership PAC, a super PAC backing Oz, posted a video on Wednesday calling Barnette “crazy” and “Pennsylvania’s wackiest candidate” and linking her, a Black Republican, with efforts to defund the police.\n\n“Her surge is tied to her relationship to state Sen. Doug Mastriano. His supporters are supporting her. … Mastriano supporters will follow him off a cliff,” said a Republican operative in Pennsylvania. “[I] have a feeling most will stay with her even through the attacks.”\n\nMastriano’s rise has set off panic in Republican circles. State Sen. Jake Corman withdrew from the gubernatorial race on Thursday and endorsed former US Rep. Lou Barletta. Mastriano is one of the commonwealth’s most outspoken proponents of the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.\n\nRepublicans watching the response to Barnette’s rise, however, believe it may be too late for either operation to slow her rise. And the current response may be the extent of the effort to stop her, given the primary is just days away.\n\nA source close to the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC closely aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said the group had “no plans to get involved in this primary.” The super PAC’s central goal is electing a Republican majority to the Senate, which at times has meant getting involved in primaries to push the candidate it sees as the most electable – an open question about Barnette. But the timing of her rise has effectively hamstrung the group and others.\n\nFor Republicans, the prospect of Barnette winning on Tuesday now turns their focus to a general election with the largely unknown candidate helming one of their most high-profile Senate campaigns. Republicans are buoyant about their chances of taking back the evenly divided Senate in November, powered by President Joe Biden’s slumping poll numbers and a favorable environment for the Republican Party.\n\nBut 2022 would not be the first time an unexpected Republican candidate doomed those chances. Top Republicans are eagerly looking to avoid turning winnable races into clear losses like they did in 2010 and 2012, when far-right, unvetted candidates won primaries but struggled in general elections.\n\nA range of Republican operatives told CNN on Thursday that while Barnette could make their work harder in Pennsylvania, she will have a chance in what will likely be a good year for Republicans.\n\n“It’s absolutely wild, but it still seems early to say she would be a surefire loser in a general,” one of the operatives concluded. “She could explode on the tarmac two weeks after the primary is over. Or she could win.”\n\nThis story has been updated with additional information.", "authors": ["Dan Merica Gaborr", "Dan Merica"], "publish_date": "2022/05/13"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/05/15/trump-dr-oz-fetterman-pennsylvania/9730173002/", "title": "Pennsylvania primary 2022: Oz, Fetterman, Trump test their fame", "text": "Trump-endorsed Dr. Oz is in the midst of a tight GOP primary, with opponents using fame against him.\n\nLt. Gov. John Fetterman has nearly a 40-point lead on U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb in the latest poll.\n\nIn some cases, voters see celebrities as more credible than politicians, one analyst said.\n\nFetterman has 200,000 individual donors, the most by far in the U.S. Senate race in Pa.\n\nWASHINGTON – When Donald Trump talks about why Dr. Mehmet Oz should be a U.S. senator, he cites Oz's medical background, his conservative views – and, above all, something else.\n\nHis celebrity.\n\n\"His show is great,\" Trump told supporters May 6 at a rally in Pennsylvania, site of a primary Tuesday that showcases a powerful development of 20th and 21st century public life: celebrity politics.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/15"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/05/11/dr-oz-senate-pennsylvania-trump/9703579002/", "title": "Who is Dr. Oz? Ex-TV host is running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania", "text": "The celebrity heart surgeon is best known for his TV program \"The Dr. Oz Show.\"\n\nTrump endorsed Oz in April.\n\nOz is the race's frontrunner, but not by a wide margin.\n\nIn the Pennsylvania Senate race, Donald Trump’s clout proved to be just enough to propel celebrity surgeon and TV host Mehmet Oz, better known as Dr. Oz, to a tight GOP primary victory over former hedge fund executive Dave McCormick in a race that took more than two weeks to call.\n\nOz’s victory marks the third Senate primary this cycle in which Trump’s endorsement lifted a candidate with no prior experience holding public office to the GOP nomination.\n\nLast month, conservative commentator J.D. Vancebeat a crowded Republican field in Ohio with the former president’s support, and former National Football League running back Herschel Walker secured his place as the Republican challenger to Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in November’s general election.\n\nOn Politics newsletter:Keep up with the latest breaking politics news\n\nRoe's midterms impact:The Roe v. Wade decision could upend the midterms. Here's where it might matter most\n\n2022 midterm elections:The most interesting Senate races to watch, from Georgia, to Pennsylvania and Florida\n\nOhio GOP Senate nominee:Who is J.D. Vance?\n\nWho is Dr. Oz?\n\nOz is best known for his nationally syndicated television program the Dr. Oz Show, which came to an end with his Senate run. Oz’s ascent to fame began with frequent appearances on the Oprah Winfrey show, where he appeared as a health expert, before finally getting his own show in 2009.\n\nHe had worked as a heart surgeon at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, according to his biography on the Dr. Oz Show website.\n\nIn the medical community, Oz’s promotion of alternative medicines has made him a controversial figure. Some doctors have gone as far as to publicly call for Columbia University, where Oz taught, to cut its ties with the now Senate candidate, Vox reported.\n\nThe university removed Oz’s profile from its website, the Daily Beast and others reported, following his Senate race entrance.\n\nOz earned his doctor of medicine from the University of Pennsylvaniain 1986. He also has an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.\n\nOz's parents immigrated to the U.S. from Turkey. His father, Mustafa, had also been a surgeon.\n\nOz victory:Mehmet Oz is the GOP nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, as David McCormick concedes\n\nHow old is Dr. Oz?\n\nOz was born on June 11, 1960 in Cleveland, Ohio. He is 61 years old.\n\nWhat is Dr. Oz’s policy platform?\n\nOz’s campaign website lists more than a dozen issue areas. In his first campaign ad, Oz appealed to his medical background and addressed the COVID-19 pandemic.\n\n“They took away our freedom,” Oz said in the ad. “Without making us safer.”\n\nHis campaign site notes Oz’s opposition to business shutdowns and support for keeping children in schools. He also told Fox News he was opposed to vaccine mandates.\n\nAnother focus of the Oz campaign is “energy independence,” which was one of many issues highlighted in Trump’s endorsement statement. His campaign site says Oz supports slashing regulations on the fossil fuel industry to increase domestic energy production.\n\nThe rest of Oz’s platform runs the gamut on the GOP's defining issues during Joe Biden's presidency.\n\n“Election security,” “cancel culture,” and “get tough on China,” are all focuses of the campaign along with more classic Republican positions on gun rights, the economy, immigration and abortions.\n\nOn Twitter, Oz weighed in on the leaked majority opinion draft written by Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito, agreeing with Alito’s rebuke of Roe v. Wade.\n\nWho is endorsing Dr. Oz?\n\nAside from Trump, Oz is backed by former Republican Texas governor Rick Perry and Fox News’ Sean Hannity. J.D. Vance, the Ohio GOP Senate nominee, and former Republican presidential candidate and Housing and Urban Development ecretary Ben Carson also support Oz.\n\nWho is Dr. Oz’s daughter?\n\nOne of Oz’s children is his daughter Daphne Oz, a chef and TV personality, who hosts a cooking show that replaced her father’s show. In 1985, Oz married his wife Lisa, with whom he has four children.\n\nWho is Dave McCormick?:Former hedge fund executive running for Senate in Pennsylvania\n\nWho is Kathy Barnette?:The GOP candidate surging late in Pennsylvania Senate race", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/11"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/03/politics/john-fetterman-health/index.html", "title": "Fetterman's cardiologist says Democrat, who had stroke, suffers from ...", "text": "(CNN) John Fetterman's cardiologist said Friday that the Democratic Senate candidate suffers from both atrial fibrillation and cardiomyopathy, issuing a statement that provides more insight into what caused the Pennsylvania lieutenant governor's stroke in May.\n\nDr. Ramesh Chandra said he first saw Fetterman in 2017, when he reported having swollen feet. He said he diagnosed him with \"atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm, along with a decreased heart pump.\" Although he advised him to follow up in the coming months, the doctor said Fetterman did not and \"did not go to any doctor for 5 years and did not continue to take his medications.\"\n\nChandra said Fetterman is \"well compensated and stable\" after receiving a defibrillator that he said \"is working perfectly.\" The doctor added that it was the cardiomyopathy, a condition that makes it harder for the heart to pump blood to the rest of the body, that was the reason the device needed to be implanted.\n\n\"The prognosis I can give for John's heart is this: If he takes his medications, eats healthy and exercises, he'll be fine,\" Chandra wrote. \"If he does what I've told him, and I do believe that he is taking his recovery and his health very seriously this time, he should be able to campaign and serve in the U.S. Senate without a problem.\"\n\nThe letter comes weeks after Fetterman checked himself into a hospital in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on May 13 as he was on his way to a campaign event. He was found to have suffered a stroke and doctors used a thrombectomy, a procedure where doctors enter the body through the groin and wind catheters up to the clot, to address it. Fetterman won the Democratic Senate primary on May 17 while in the hospital and underwent a nearly three-hour surgery that same day to implant the defibrillator. He was released from the hospital on May 22 after a nine-day stay.\n\nFetterman's race will be one of the most closely watched Senate contests in the country, with control of the evenly divided Senate hanging in the balance. The Democrat will face the winner of the GOP primary; the race between celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund executive Dave McCormick has gone to a recount.\n\nDespite multiple statements during and after his time in the hospital, Fetterman did not disclose previously that he had been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation diagnosed in 2017. And while the letter from Chandra provides insight into what led to Fetterman's stroke, the doctors that performed the procedure on the candidate in Lancaster last month have yet to speak publicly.\n\nFetterman, in a statement released Friday in conjunction with Chandra's letter, acknowledged that he \"should have taken my health more seriously.\"\n\n\"The stroke I suffered on May 13 didn't come out of nowhere. Like so many others, and so many men in particular, I avoided going to the doctor, even though I knew I didn't feel well. As a result, I almost died,\" he said. \"I want to encourage others to not make the same mistake.\"\n\nFetterman said he \"didn't follow up\" because he thought \"losing weight and exercising would be enough\" to address his heart issues. He admits he was wrong, saying that the stroke he suffered was \"completely preventable\" and that his doctors have told him that if he had \"continued taking the blood thinners, I never would have had a stroke.\"\n\n\"It's not something I'm proud of, but it is something I hope that others can learn from,\" he said. \"So please: listen to your body, and be aware of the signs. Because ignoring them -- and avoiding the doctor because you might not like what they have to tell you -- could cost you your life.\"\n\nFetterman said that his doctors have instructed him \"to rest, eat healthy, exercise, and focus on my recovery\" and, because of that, it will \"take some more time to get back on the campaign trail like I was in the lead-up to the primary.\"\n\n\"It's frustrating -- all the more so because this is my own fault -- but bear with me, I need a little more time. I'm not quite back to 100% yet, but I'm getting closer every day,\" he said. \"This race is so important for Pennsylvania and for the country. I'm going to be ready for it, and I can't wait to get back on the trail.\"\n\nPrevious statements\n\nFetterman had previously said that the stroke was \"caused by a clot from my heart being in an A-fib rhythm for too long\" and that his doctors were \"able to quickly and completely remove the clot, reversing the stroke, they got my heart under control as well.\" Fetterman also said his doctors had told him he didn't suffer \"any cognitive damage\" and that he is \"well on my way to a full recovery.\"\n\nAfter that statement, Fetterman's campaign announced he had undergone the \"standard procedure to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator\" and his wife, Gisele, told CNN on May 18 that the new implant would \"make sure it's the strongest heart possible\" after it was \"weakened\" by his irregular rhythm.\n\nFetterman was the favorite to win Pennsylvania's Democratic Senate nomination months before he suffered the stroke. And the stint in the hospital didn't dim those chances: Fetterman, from his hospital bed, easily defeated US Rep. Conor Lamb in the commonwealth's Democratic Senate primary.\n\nDays after the primary, Fetterman announced he was leaving the hospital and \"feeling great,\" but would \"continue to rest and recover\" so that he could \"go full speed soon\" and win in November.\n\nThe lieutenant governor has not held a public event since May 12.\n\nCriticism about lack of transparency\n\nDr. Jonathan Reiner, a CNN medical analyst and interventional cardiologist who has treated several high-profile politicians, said there were several anomalies with Fetterman's hospital stay, including its length. He delivered a blistering critique of the letter released Friday by the Fetterman campaign as a \"horrible note.\"\n\n\"First of all, it's not from the doctors who treated him during his stroke. It's from a doctor that he saw in 2017,\" said Reiner, who has called on Fetterman to be more transparent about his condition and recovery.\n\n\"The note doesn't say why the patient had a defibrillator implanted during that admission, doesn't mention his ejection fraction or residual neurologic deficits, doesn't describe a timetable for returning to the campaign trail,\" Reiner said. \"Horrible note. Totally insufficient. The campaign should make available the docs who treated him during the stroke. Why are they hiding them?\"\n\nReiner and other experts on cardiology and vascular neurology previously had told CNN that the time and scope of Fetterman's recent stay in the hospital for his recent stroke spoke to a more complicated health prognosis than one acknowledged by the Democratic Senate nominee, a belief confirmed by Chandra's letter and the revelation of cardiomyopathy and the earlier diagnosis.\n\nReiner and the other doctors said although the procedure Fetterman underwent is common in the United States, the uses of a thrombectomy to combat the stroke and the implantation of a defibrillator spoke to a more complicated health profile.\n\nThe use of a defibrillator, Reiner said, spoke \"to something decidedly more ominous in terms of his status\" because it could mean there is a cardiac structural issue that needed to be addressed before he could go home. In a less worrying moment, Reiner said, a doctor may use less drastic measures to address a heart issue before jumping to a defibrillator.\n\nDr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, president of the American Heart Association, said that while life with a defibrillator is \"very manageable\" and Fetterman's prognosis should be good with it, \"a pacemaker and defibrillator is not standard treatment for atrial fibrillation.\"\n\nLloyd-Jones, who, like Reiner, has not treated Fetterman, added that \"people with atrial fibrillation do not routinely require a pacemaker unless there's something also potentially happening with the conduction system -- the electrical connections of the heart -- separate from the atrial fibrillation.\"\n\nPolitical repercussions\n\nFetterman's health scare -- coupled with the recount on the Republican side -- has effectively frozen the Senate race in time.\n\nFetterman and his team had not offered details about the lieutenant governor's prognosis until Friday. The remarkably limited information from the campaign raised alarms among top Democrats in Pennsylvania and in Washington, officials said, and has prompted party lawyers to study the steps it would take to replace Fetterman on the ballot should that ultimately be necessary. State law sets an August timeline for doing so.\n\n\"Everyone hopes that isn't necessary and he remains on the ballot, but the stakes are too high not to prepare for every scenario,\" a senior party official told CNN, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the delicate nature of Fetterman's recovery.\n\nThere are also concerns about how Republicans may use Fetterman's health in a general election. While both Oz and McCormick have wished Fetterman well as he recovers from the stroke, some Democrats are worried that the broader universe of Republican groups and super PACs could attempt to use Fetterman's health scare against him.\n\nReiner and other doctors told CNN that they believed Fetterman could make a full recovery from the stroke but added that any suggestion that the stroke was small would be incorrect, especially because doctors in Lancaster opted to use thrombectomy to remove the clot.\n\nDr. Shazam Hussain, director of the Cerebrovascular Center at the Cleveland Clinic, said a thrombectomy is mostly used to address \"bigger clots that can cause really bad stroke.\"\n\nLloyd-Jones echoed that suggestion, telling CNN that the use of a thrombectomy suggested the stroke stemmed from a \"larger blood clot\" in \"a larger artery that is blocked\" because the catheters used in the procedure cannot get into smaller areas.\n\nAnd Dr. Michelle Johansen, an assistant professor of neurology and attending physician in the cerebrovascular division at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, said that \"patients who are eligible for thrombectomy normally are in the process of having a bigger stroke.\"", "authors": ["Dan Merica"], "publish_date": "2022/06/03"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_8", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:36", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/08/media/jimmy-kimmel-joe-biden/index.html", "title": "President Biden talks gun control with Jimmy Kimmel for his first in ...", "text": "New York (CNN Business) President Joe Biden made his first in-person appearance on a late night talk show when he stopped by \" Jimmy Kimmel Live! \" Wednesday night.\n\nKimmel kicked off his interview with the President on Wednesday by saying that Biden is to \"aviator sunglasses what Tom Cruise is to aviator sunglasses.\"\n\nThen Kimmel and President Biden didn't waste anytime jumping right into talking about politics with regard to gun control\n\nKimmel asked the President why he won't take more executive action regarding gun violence.\n\n\"Trump passed those out like Halloween candy,\" Kimmel said of executive orders.\n\nBiden explained to Kimmel that he has issued executive orders \"within the power of the presidency\" regarding guns.\n\n\"But what I don't want to do, and I'm not being facetious, I don't want to emulate Trump's abuse of the constitution,\" Biden told Kimmel. \"I often get asked, 'look the Republicans don't play it square, why do you play it square?' Well, guess what? If we do the same thing they do, our democracy will literally be in jeopardy.\"\n\nKimmel pushed back a bit at this assertion saying, \"it's like you're playing Monopoly with somebody who won't pass 'Go' and won't follow any of the rules.\"\n\n\"How do you ever make any progress if they're not following the rules?\" Kimmel asked.\n\nBiden then interjected.\n\n\"You got to send them to jail,\" he said, referencing the square in the board game.\n\nBiden and Kimmel also spoke about inflation, which Biden called \"the bane of our existence.\" The President mentioned that it's mostly in food and gasoline.\n\n\"That's what kills you because it's a little billboard telling everyone how expensive everything is,\" Kimmel said. \"If Donald Trump leaves one of those Sharpies over for you, you could maybe change the price on that, you know?\"\n\nTwitter TWTR Kimmel first announced Biden's appearance viaSunday night, and the interview caused some commotion.\n\n\"Last night we announced that our President, Joe Biden, would be stopping by,\" Kimmel said on Monday's show. \"He will be here, which is nice, because it gives the gang at Fox News something to scream about all week.\"\n\nKimmel then showed a clip of Fox Business host Dagen McDowell saying that the interview takes place in the \"land of insanity in which we all live.\"\n\n\"Oh, I see. What I do is insane. You guys telling us we should arm P.E. teachers to protect kids. That makes sense,\" he said.\n\nKimmel then used some late night language to make his point even further.\n\n\"Tucker Carlson giving Vladmir Putin a reach around every other night, sane,\" he said. \"President on a late night talk show, insane. Got it.\"\n\nKimmel's evolution\n\nHaving Biden join Kimmel, in particular, may be a savvy move by the White House. Kimmel has used his platform to make emotional stands about issues core to progressives' values, including Obamacare and gun control.\n\nIt's quite the evolution for Kimmel who started his career as the raunchy host of Comedy Central's \"The Man Show\" before writing songs about \"f**king Ben Affleck\" and reading Mean Tweets on the ABC late night show.\n\nBut Kimmel's entry into the political world was not much of a choice for the comedian. Many of the issues that Kimmel has taken on are personal for him.\n\nThe reason that Kimmel has been able to stand out as this late night voice of the people is because \"Kimmel simply sounds like a regular guy making reasonable points,\" according to Bill Carter, a CNN analyst who has written multiple books about late-night TV.\n\n\"Probably more than any other current late-night host, Kimmel projects solid working-class and family values,\" Carter said. \"He seems to most viewers a guy who could share a beer and slice of pizza with anybody.\"\n\nCarter added that when Kimmel is on \"the edge of emotional breakdown over his fears for his newborn son, or the massacre of innocent people in his hometown,\" it doesn't come across to most viewers as \"Hollywood activism.\" Instead, \"it comes across as human activism,\" he wrote.\n\nBiden's new strategy\n\nAs for Biden, the reason for the appearance is clear: it helps humanize him to voters and get his message across to millions.\n\nBiden and his advisers have been frustrated in recent months as their attempts to get the President's message to break through to voters have been less than successful. CNN reported last week that the White House is looking for more opportunities to show off Biden's personality outside of the staid set-piece speeches that have mostly marked their public relations strategy in the initial stage of his presidency, giving him little opportunity for the unscripted moments that have become a core part of his political identity over his long career.\n\nThe Kimmel appearance is a chance for him to show off the retail politician traits he's honed during his more than 50 years in politics — traits he's not often been able to use due to a lack of interaction with real voters driven first by the Covid-19 pandemic and then a series of crises that have kept him at the White House.\n\n-- CNN's Kyle Feldscher contributed to this report", "authors": ["Frank Pallotta", "Cnn Business"], "publish_date": "2022/06/08"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2021/12/09/potus-joe-biden-tv-appearance-tonight-show-jimmy-fallon/6458179001/", "title": "Joe Biden set to make first late-night TV appearance as president on ...", "text": "The Associated Press\n\nWASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is getting ready for his first late-night TV appearance since taking office.\n\nBiden is set to appear Friday on NBC's \"The Tonight Show\" with comedian Jimmy Fallon. Biden will appear virtually; the White House didn't say where he will be when he tapes the segment.\n\nBiden has made two previous appearances on the show. He bantered with Fallon in April 2020, a week before he became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, and in September 2016, toward the end of his eight years as vice president.\n\nMore:Joe and Jill Biden's first White House Christmas theme is inspired by people they met across the U.S.\n\nMore:President Biden to entertainment venues: Help us beat COVID by requiring vaccines, testing\n\nMore:First lady Jill Biden covers Vogue, talks 'magical quality' of White House living\n\nIn late November, the Bidens revealed the theme of their first White House Christmas. First lady Jill Biden unveiled decorations matching the theme on Nov. 29, said to be inspired by people the couple met as they traveled the country this year.\n\n“The things we hold sacred unite us and transcend distance, time, and even the constraints of a pandemic: faith, family, and friendship; a love of the arts, learning, and nature; gratitude, service, and community; unity and peace,” the Bidens write in a commemorative 2021 White House holiday guidebook. “These are the gifts that tie together the heart strings of our lives. These are the gifts from the heart.”\n\nThe decor featured a gigantic gingerbread White House that recognizes front-line workers who persevered through the coronavirus pandemic, while the official Christmas tree — an 18-foot-tall (5.5-meter tall) Fraser fir — celebrates the gifts of peace and unity, the White House said.\n\nMore:'SNL': Jason Sudeikis returns as the 'ghost' of President Joe Biden's past\n\nBiden is suffering from a steep drop in the polls and has been under pressure to engage more with the media.\n\nHe has been trying to improve his standing with the public by traveling around the country to promote a $1 trillion infrastructure law, money that will be used to repair roads and bridges and lay down high-speed internet across the country.\n\nThe president also has been trying to rally public support for a separate social welfare and climate bill that has stalled in the Senate.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/12/09"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/29/politics/joe-biden-uvalde-texas-visit/index.html", "title": "Biden in Uvalde, Texas: Confronting grief and calls to 'do something ...", "text": "(CNN) President Joe Biden on Sunday faced the grimly familiar task of comforting families after another mass shooting, this time at an elementary school in Texas , as a broken community -- and a weary nation -- grappled with an endless spate of gun violence.\n\nHearing anguished calls to \"do something\" as he emerged from a midday Mass in Uvalde, Biden told the crowd, \"We will.\" But after a day of somber remembrance, it remained unclear whether or how a nation's grief would translate to meaningful steps to prevent future massacres.\n\nBiden and first lady Jill Biden bore witness to periodic bursts of anger during their visit to Uvalde, where a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers last week. It was their second time in as many weeks mourning alongside families whose loved ones died in a mass shooting.\n\nThe Bidens' visit came amid news from the Justice Department that it's conducting a review of the botched law enforcement response to the Uvalde shooting , which Texas officials have described as punctuated with wrong decisions.\n\nTheir armored black limousine arrived to a makeshift memorial outside Robb Elementary School around 11:15 a.m. Central Time, pulling to a stop next to the sea of flowers, stuffed animals and photos that has grown since the day of the massacre.\n\nThe first lady carried a large bouquet of white roses to place in front of the brick Robb Elementary School sign. The Bidens, both dressed in black, stood quietly for a moment in midday sun. The President made a sign of the cross and wiped away a tear.\n\nAfter speaking with the school's principal and local officials, Biden and the first lady walked to a row of memorial wreaths, each marking one of the slain children or teachers. They touched cardboard cutouts of each one, their photos on the front circled by white flower garlands, in quiet observation.\n\nPresident Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden pay their respects at a makeshift memorial outside of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Sunday.\n\nThe Bidens attended Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, where Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller invited children from the devastated community to sit at the front.\n\n\"Our response must be one of hope and healing,\" he said, urging the community to \"resolve to support one another with respect for our differences.\" The choir sang \"On Eagle's Wings.\"\n\nBiden and the first lady spent the afternoon meeting privately with family members of the victims at Uvalde County Arena, and first responders at Garner Field, before returning to their home in Delaware.\n\nAn adviser traveling with the President said he hoped \"to convey empathy and understanding of what an impossibly horrible moment this is for them\" and \"to offer some small piece of comfort, if that is possible.\"\n\nIt was a solemn task made more grueling by the serious failings of law enforcement who responded to Tuesday's shooting in Uvalde. And it came without promise of major legislative action to prevent further carnage, though a bipartisan group of lawmakers have begun talks to identify areas of potential action.\n\nThe frustrations of an angry public could be felt at the memorial site. Some onlookers awaiting Biden began shouting when Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott arrived to accompany the President.\n\n\"Please Governor Abbott, help Uvalde County,\" one man was shouting. \"We need change. Our children don't deserve this.\"\n\nAs Biden was departing, similar cries for help could be heard before he stepped into his vehicle.\n\nJUST WATCHED Acts of kindness lift up Uvalde community after mass shooting Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Acts of kindness lift up Uvalde community after mass shooting 03:35\n\nA day before his visit, Biden spoke to the agony of the parents he would be meeting Sunday.\n\n\"I'll be heading to Uvalde, Texas, to speak to those families. As I speak, those parents are literally preparing to bury their children, in the United States of America, bury their children. There is too much violence, too much fear, too much grief,\" Biden told graduates Saturday at the University of Delaware commencement ceremony.\n\nFor Biden, the trip represented a somber duty to join grieving families in their darkest moments. He often draws upon his own experience of losing two children -- a young daughter to a car crash and his adult son to brain cancer -- to console fellow parents.\n\n\"To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. There's a hollowness in your chest, and you feel like you're being sucked into it and never going to be able to get out. It's suffocating. And it's never quite the same,\" Biden said the night of the shooting, speaking from the Roosevelt Room shortly after returning from a two-country visit to Asia.\n\nPresident Joe Biden embraces Mandy Gutierrez, the principal of Robb Elementary School, as he and first lady Jill Biden visit Uvalde, Texas, on Sunday.\n\nIn Uvalde, a community shattered by last week's shooting, many came to watch the President and first lady make their way through the memorial site.\n\n\"I think President Biden making an appearance here is good. It's in order. That's what we need. We need the leader of the free world to be here, and sympathize and empathize with us,\" said Ronald Garza, an Uvalde County Commissioner, on CNN.\n\nThe Bidens' visit to Texas came 12 days after the couple traveled to Buffalo, New York , to visit the site of a racist massacre at a grocery store. That shooting left 10 people dead. Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to the city on Saturday to attend the funeral for 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield, the oldest victim of the attack.\n\n\"This is a moment that requires all good people who are loving people to just say we will not stand for this. Enough is enough,\" Harris said before laying a bouquet at a memorial outside the Tops Friendly Markets store where the shooting occurred May 14. As she left, Harris issued a call to ban assault weapons like the ones used to kill in Uvalde and Buffalo.\n\nThe dual visits by the President and vice president to communities afflicted by mass murder were a striking reminder of the scourge of gun violence consuming the nation. Biden, who has spent much of his career working to enact stricter gun laws, again called for action this week.\n\nBut he stopped short of demanding Congress pass any specific bill; the White House says it is up to Democratic leaders in the Senate to determine how to proceed on potential legislation. And he hasn't named a gun violence task force beyond officials already inside the administration.\n\nBiden and his aides also concede there is little more he can achieve through executive action that could prevent the types of massacres that now occur with gruesome frequency.\n\nOn Sunday, Sen. Dick Durbin, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he sensed a \"different feeling,\" among his colleagues in Congress when it comes to the possibility of passing gun control measures in the wake of the Uvalde shooting. But the Illinois Democrat suggested to CNN's Dana Bash on \"State of the Union\" that if anything passed, it would be limited in scope due to the need to compromise with Republicans.\n\nIn Texas, Biden also confronted harrowing accounts of the shooting that even state law enforcement officials said amounted to a failing by police. The decision by responding officers not to enter the classroom where the shooting occurred -- despite 911 calls from students pleading for help -- leaves open the question of whether some lives could have been saved.\n\nThe White House has said it will not prejudge an investigation into the actions of police. But the timeline disclosures, made Friday during a harrowing news conference in Uvalde, only added to the sense of anguish Biden confronted during his visit.\n\nThis story and headline have been updated with additional developments.", "authors": ["Kevin Liptak", "Arlette Saenz"], "publish_date": "2022/05/29"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/10/politics/biden-summit-of-the-americas-takeaways-trump-bolsonaro/index.html", "title": "3 key takeaways from Biden's Summit of the Americas | CNN Politics", "text": "Los Angeles (CNN) In an odd twist of scheduling, President Joe Biden was meeting here Thursday with a leader who's amplified conspiracy theories the very same hour that startling new details emerged about the conspiracy to deny him the presidency.\n\nBiden had for months been averse to engaging Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, who US officials fear is parroting former President Donald Trump's lies about voter fraud to undermine Brazil's system ahead of his own reelection bid this fall.\n\nBut in order to lure him to Los Angeles for a summit of regional leaders that was plagued by boycotts, Biden agreed to a one-on-one meeting.\n\nAnd so, on Thursday afternoon, Biden found himself in a conference room alongside a man who, two days earlier, had deemed his 2020 victory \"suspicious.\" Meanwhile, back in Washington, the House committee investigating attempts to overturn that election was putting the finishing touches on its blockbuster public hearing\n\n\"I'm anxious to hear what's on your mind and talk about whatever you want to talk about,\" Biden told Bolsonaro somewhat obliquely before their meeting. \"I'd like to listen as well as raise a few issues that are of, I think, mutual interest to us.\"\n\nBiden's meeting with Bolsonaro demonstrated the lengths he was willing to go to in order to offer a unified picture of the Western Hemisphere at a conference where disunity was often on display. And its coincidental timing alongside the House hearing on the events of January 6, 2021 -- where the autocratic tendencies of the previous US President were exposed in sometimes-shocking fashion -- laid bare the difficulty in using America's example to promote democracy in an increasingly fractured region.\n\nBiden was able to secure some important commitments this week, including an agreement on migration that came together at the last minute. But questions over attendance and the region's disparate priorities were still on ample display. And Biden's political struggles were never far from the surface.\n\nHere are three takeaways from this week's Summit of the Americas.\n\nTrump lingers\n\nTrump lingered over this week's summit in Southern California like the June gloom, from his Brazilian protégé to the hearing exposing his disinformation scheme to the persistent questions about American commitment in a region he mostly ignored.\n\nBiden actively and explicitly worked to convince his counterparts that he was adopting his own, different approach.\n\n\"I think that there's a means by which we can maybe undo some of the damage done the previous four years, when it wasn't very much taken seriously -- the relationships,\" he said while meeting with leaders from the Caribbean.\n\nA little while later, he said during the summit's opening plenary session that he wanted to discuss \"proposals that I think are a far cry from what we saw from our previous American administration.\"\n\nThis week's summit amounted to the type of presidential work Trump found little use for during his time in office. He skipped the Summit of the Americas when he was in office and complained to his aides about attending the G7 and G20 meetings, questioning their point.\n\nEven President Barack Obama sometimes dreaded the kind of massive summit where he was left to sit for hours listening to endless speeches by other world leaders. He was often seen chomping away on nicotine gum as he took his seat.\n\nThere was little question that Biden would reverse that trend. He said this week that he had often reminded Obama that \"all politics is personal\" — and that actually accomplishing anything required showing up in person.\n\n\"It makes a difference when you get to know someone,\" he said at the start of a dinner he hosted in the Getty Villa's Mediterranean gardens, near Malibu. \"Whether you agree or not, it makes a difference to look in their eyes and understand a little bit more what's in their heart.\"\n\nBiden was in fact so absorbed in meeting his fellow leaders that he missed Thursday night's January 6 hearing in its entirety, despite telling the Canadian Prime Minister earlier in the day that the event would \"occupy my country.\"\n\n\"Didn't have time,\" Biden said with a shrug when CNN asked whether he'd caught any of the coverage.\n\nQuestions of unity\n\nBiden arrived in Los Angeles hoping to use new economic and migration announcements to demonstrate cohesion in a region of fractured politics and, at times, entrenched skepticism of the United States.\n\nAnd by the time the summit was over, 20 leaders had signed on to an agreement that offers a road map for handling the region's large migration flows, perhaps the most significant accomplishment of a gathering whose relevance many had questioned ahead of time.\n\nYet the decision of several leaders to boycott the summit, including the top officials from Mexico and three Central American countries the US has worked hard to cultivate, remained a visible sticking point. They refused to attend because Biden declined to extend invitations to the autocratic leaders of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.\n\nHeading into the summit, White House officials were frustrated that the drama over the participants appeared to be obscuring the important issues at stake. Yet when it came time for the leaders to gather inside the Los Angeles Convention Center, the discord was plain.\n\nAnd on Friday evening, first lady Jill Biden complained that the news coverage of her husband had been \"so unfair.\"\n\n\"Every leader came up to Joe and said what a difference you've made and say how we can work together,\" she told Democratic donors in a backyard in Brentwood.\n\nAs Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris watched from mere feet away, Belize's Prime Minister called it \"inexcusable\" that all the countries of the Americas had not been invited. He said the power of the summit was \"diminished\" by their absence.\n\nArgentine President Alberto Fernández said during a speech later in the program that the rules of future summits should be changed to prevent nations from being excluded. \"We definitely would have wished for a different Summit of the Americas. The silence of those who were absent is calling to us,\" he added.\n\nThe remarks did not come as a surprise to US officials, who were aware of the disagreements beforehand and anticipated that some leaders would air them publicly. Before the summit, some Biden aides suggested there would be a certain amount of political posturing among leaders who have domestic audiences that are often skeptical of the United States.\n\nAnd as he left the stage, Fernández and Biden shared a friendly handshake, a sign that behind the scenes things were not as tense as they appeared.\n\n\"Notwithstanding the disagreements, think back to what we heard today,\" Biden said after sitting through his counterparts' speeches. \"We heard almost total agreement on the substantive things that we should be doing.\"\n\nFraught politics\n\nIn the land of $7-per-gallon gasoline, Biden was never far from his biggest political liability. And while foreign policy can sometimes act as an escape hatch for politically imperiled presidents, a weakened US leader is not helped by boycotts and public shaming from his global counterparts.\n\nMany of the problems Biden hoped to address at his summit are potent political problems as well, including large flows of migrants on the southern border and inflation made worse by unreliable supply chains.\n\nDuring a pause from his summit hosting duties, Biden made a detour to the Port of Los Angeles to address what his team views as the most pressing current issue: high prices for everything from gas to groceries.\n\nHe assigned blame for rising costs to Russia, oil companies, shipping conglomerates and Republicans, insisting he is doing what he can to tame inflation as new numbers showed prices accelerating last month.\n\nTo coincide with his trip West, Biden's aides booked an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel's late-night talk show , often viewed as an opportunity to show off a politician's lighter side.\n\nYet Biden's appearance was a mostly serious interview on gun control and abortion rights, two other intractable issues on which the President has few options to act alone, even as his most ardent supporters demand he do so.\n\n\"I don't want to emulate Trump's abuse of the Constitution, constitutional authority,\" Biden told Kimmel on Wednesday after the late-night host asked why he couldn't issue an executive order like Trump, who \"handed them out like candy.\"\n\nWhen Kimmel asked how you play Monopoly when one side \"won't pass go\" or play by the rules, Biden said: \"You got to send 'em to jail.\"", "authors": ["Kevin Liptak"], "publish_date": "2022/06/10"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/02/politics/joe-biden-messaging-struggles/index.html", "title": "Beneath Biden's struggle to break through is a deeper dysfunction ...", "text": "(CNN) Being familiar never makes the feeling less dreadful: White House aides emailing each other during one of President Joe Biden's stops on the road, tracking who's covering what he's saying, which TV channels are taking the speech live -- and realizing a number of times that the answer was none.\n\n\"You are thinking,\" said one person familiar, \"why are we doing this?\"\n\nBiden and his inner circle get weekly readouts of the metrics on local newspaper coverage of his speeches, how long and for what he was covered on cable, but also videos that staff post on Twitter and other social media interactions. Those reports go on the piles with internal memos from pollsters saying Biden isn't breaking through in traditional news outlets and that the people who are engaged are mostly voters who've already made up their minds.\n\nBut beneath this struggle to break through is a deeper dysfunction calcified among aides who largely started working together only through Zoom screens and still struggle to get in rhythm. They're still finding it hard to grasp how much their political standing has changed over the last year, and there's a divide between most of the White House staff and the inner circle who have been around Biden for longer than most of the rest of that staff has been alive. In an email to CNN, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said, \"That is not the dynamic in the White House.\"\n\nAt the center is a president still trying to calibrate himself to the office. The country is pulling itself apart, pandemic infections keep coming, inflation keeps rising, a new crisis on top of new crisis arrives daily and Biden can't see a way to address that while also being the looser, happier, more sympathetic, lovingly Onion-parody inspiring, aviator-wearing, vanilla chip cone-licking guy -- an image that was the core of why he got elected in the first place.\n\n\"He has to speak to very serious things,\" explained one White House aide, \"and you can't do that getting ice cream.\"\n\nAides regularly talk about how little traction they're getting from one-off Biden appearances or events and then -- whether on inflation, the baby formula shortage or mass shootings or the other crises landing on Biden's desk -- he's often left looking like he's in a reactive crouch on the issues that matter most to voters rather than setting the agenda. Sometimes clipped moments from those speeches that the White House puts out on social media generate huge traffic but, at least as often, moments from the President appearing to be caught off-guard go viral on their own.\n\nAides and allies worry that the West Wing is making the same mistakes as they tout the White House's big pivot to inflation -- which they know is a defining issue for the midterms -- using all the methods Biden and his top advisers keep going back to: A Wall Street Journal op-ed, a basic photo-op Oval Office meeting with the Federal Reserve chairman and Treasury secretary, dispatching Cabinet secretaries for short TV interviews.\n\nBiden's speech on Thursday night calling for real action on new gun control laws was a departure from many of his recent appearances, complete with a carefully stage managed line up of mournful candles in glass lining his walkway into the East Room.\n\nBut even with his intense delivery and repeated return to the word \"Enough\" and laying out of an aspirational agenda that has little chance in Congress, despite broad support among many Americans outside of Washington, he was more than anything reacting to how the conversation had already taken shape without him. And then, less than an hour after he was done issuing his call to action, Biden left for an early weekend at his beach house in Delaware, without much of a public schedule for days.\n\nThe President is a 79-year-old man who still thinks in terms of newspaper front pages and primetime TV programs, surrounded by not-quite-as-senior aides in senior positions with the same late 1990s media diet. Lifelong habits don't tend to fade when people get to their desks in the West Wing.\n\n\"These numbers that get put up by 'soft media,'\" a senior adviser put it to others on staff recently, using a term meant to brush off all platforms that aren't older than Biden's grandkids, \"don't feel as real.\"\n\nIt's not just the kind of news Biden consumes, according to CNN's conversations with 14 White House aides and other Democrats in close touch with the White House. After 50 years of looking up to the Oval Office, televised speeches and front-page stories are how he thinks of a president making news, still conceiving of the presidency as a sort of Rooseveltian ideal where he can lay what's happening for an audience gathered around to hear from a commander-in-chief whose schedule keeps getting cleared for him to write, edit and review each set of remarks.\n\n\"A speech is presidential, remarks are presidential. His view is if he can just explain to people what's going on and why, that people will understand,\" said one person familiar with Biden's thinking.\n\nFinger-pointing inside the White House\n\nBiden aides cite a range of other factors -- a political press corps still hooked on Trump-style melodrama, a news environment dominated by Ukraine and pandemic, a Secret Service buffer that limits what Biden can do, lingering anxiety that he'll catch Covid-19 and possibly become really sick.\n\nThat's in between pointing fingers at each other for whose fault it is. They have the same internal meetings over and over, insisting that they need to change up their whole approach to how they're using Biden -- and then each time watch as nothing changes.\n\nOlder aides dismiss the younger aides as being too caught up in the tweet-by-tweet thinking they say lost the 2020 election for everyone else. Younger aides give up -- what's the point of working up innovative ideas, they ask themselves, if the ideas constantly get knocked down and the aides get looked down on for suggesting them?\n\nResponding to a question about the President's older media habits, Bates noted the weekly time set aside on the President's schedule for creating digital content and the over 70 people on staff who help create it and manage his various accounts, as well as two interviews in the past few months with online-only creators.\n\n\"The President has a well-rounded strategy that combines putting unprecedented resources into digital engagement, speeches that provide many of his most powerful moments, and person-to-person interactions that showcase important qualities like his empathy,\" Bates said.\n\nBiden did more traveling around the country during May than in any month of his presidency so far. But nearly every stop was the same toe-touch, take-a-factory-tour-then-give-a-speech-then-back-on-Air Force One routine, one-off events with a couple of mournful condolence trips to Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, added.\n\nNothing happened that wasn't on script. Nothing that's not fully planned.\n\nWhen they're on message, aides will take solace in driving local news coverage, despite the events not registering outside of whatever media market he lands in. When they're being frank, they acknowledge that they've been slow to realize that doing single events on any topic never seems to make much of an impact.\n\nSpeeches that have broken through -- like the President's sorrow-filled statement delivered while the bodies were still being identified in Uvalde -- are rarely because of either the words themselves or the delivery.\n\nIt's because Biden himself shines through, like when he, a father who's buried two of his own children, talked about the parents in Texas having parts of their souls ripped away, or on his condolence visit a few days later when he placed his hand on each murdered student's oversized photo.\n\nAides still figuring out the best way to present the President\n\nJUST WATCHED Biden tells CNN's Kaitlan Collins he didn't know until April the baby formula shortage would be so serious Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Biden tells CNN's Kaitlan Collins he didn't know until April the baby formula shortage would be so serious 03:29\n\nOutside of those consoler-in-chief moments, Biden and aides know they're not doing much to make him empathetic.\n\nHe'll talk about how he feels families' struggles over inflation and gas prices . He'll talk about how he knows about difficulties of the pandemic and the baby formula shortage. And then aides will talk about how he talked about it.\n\nThey'll tell each other he doesn't have enough time in his schedule. Then they'll say, actually, no, he is doing the kind of events that should resonate, just no one is giving him credit.\n\nThey'll note that the structure of the White House staff -- down to the physical arrangement of the offices, so that the press aides are all clustered together in the only accessible part of the West Wing -- is around interactions with traditional media outlets, even as viewership and readership declines.\n\nThey'll say he's answering reporters' questions whenever he's asked, while nixing interview requests to avoid the hours of prep and possible clean-up. They'll acknowledge that Biden himself feels shut off enough that he's quietly had a half-dozen sessions with favored writers since the fall, like last month's lunch with the New York Times' Tom Friedman, in which the columnist shared his own impressions of Biden's off-the-record thoughts, with only the tuna sandwich, fruit bowl and milkshake approved for publication.\n\nIn a January memo, White House chief of staff Ron Klain offered a compromise plan, to have Biden do one town hall each month to at least grab some unscripted moments and media exposure. That got sucked into the maw of blaming and dysfunction like so much else: Some aides embraced the idea for at least shaking things up a little, some mocked it for being an outdated idea, some complained that the logistics of making that happen would be impossibly time consuming.\n\nIn the end, not a single town hall was scheduled. A White House aide said Wednesday that now more town halls are expected in the near future.\n\nConducting the presidency 'from the set of Jeopardy'\n\nJUST WATCHED Biden administration 'optimistic' inflation will ease over the coming months, top economic official says Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Biden administration 'optimistic' inflation will ease over the coming months, top economic official says 03:28\n\nThe most effective way Biden aides found to convince people the President isn't the doddering right-wing media caricature is when people see him in action, they'll say in meetings and emails and memos. And the best way to convince voters that he's taking action on a list of complaints, which is growing longer almost by the week, is to show him actually doing things.\n\nThose little moments which have always been his magic, the retail politics virtuosity of finding the humanity in almost anyone he talks to and having them find the humanity in him -- that's what they need more of, they say. And anyway, that's what makes him the happiest.\n\nYet Biden keeps showing up behind the same podiums surrounded by the same big screens, talking from a remove about what he feels and what he wants to do about it. He's coming across disconnected, aides have acknowledged to allies in Congress and beyond. And then, they say, the same events keep getting planned.\n\n\"World's most interactive man,\" sighed one person familiar with White House operations after one of the recent events, \"and we're going to have him conduct the presidency from the set of Jeopardy.\"\n\nExcited as White House aides were by the appearance by the K-pop superstars BTS showing up at the daily press briefing on Tuesday, with more than 180,000 people watching the live stream at one point and fans pressed up against the security gates asking what the singers smelled like, they also acknowledged the downside some wish would be more instructive: That brief BTS visit will likely be seen more than anything Biden will do for weeks.\n\n'He has so much more to offer'\n\nWhat they agree on in the White House -- at least recently -- is that Biden's chances of breaking through go up massively the more he picks fights with Republicans.\n\nThey also agree that they're being held back by the President's own reluctance to hit harder, steeped in both his attempt to push America back to what he insists can't be a bygone era of cooperation and his sense that a president shouldn't get petty.\n\nWhen he said at the beginning of May that he \"never anticipated\" that the Trump-style politics would dominate the Republican Party, he was mocked for seeming clueless about a political atmosphere that he spent his whole campaign calling \"a battle for the soul of America.\"\n\nWhen he said over Memorial Day weekend that he counted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Texas Sen. John Cornyn as \"rational Republicans\" whom he could get an agreement with on new gun laws, the forehead smacks among staff and other involved Democrats echoed around the Tidal Basin.\n\nOn assault weapons and other priorities, that \"do something!\" anger is bubbling throughout Biden's base, but what voters are getting back instead is what the President would call a frank assessment that there's not much he actually can do.\n\nAides are facing their own constraints, and not just from the national security officials who've assessed that Biden can't go on TikTok because of security concerns around the Chinese government's stake in the company.\n\nLawyers in the White House Counsel's Office, continually on edge over potential violations of the Hatch Act prohibitions around mixing politics and government, needed to review Biden's new \"ultra MAGA\" line in order for government-salaried aides to be allowed to repeat it, since having them talk about Donald Trump by name was deemed too political. \"Congressional Republicans\" was allowed for official statements because the term refers to a specific target, but using \"Republicans\" generally was also deemed too political.\n\nMany in the West Wing are counting on the recent return of Anita Dunn, who helped both manage Biden and bring a directed sense of mission to the staff during an often otherwise haphazard presidential campaign. She'll be able to shake the President from patterns that have become ingrained, they believe, and to get everyone else organized ahead of the midterms around a clearer, more connected sense of mission.\n\nA White House aide cited stats to show just how much aides have been able to do with Biden's online presence when they can get everyone on the same page. The video Biden shot in the Oval Office with BTS to talk about anti-Asian hate crimes racked up over 50 million views in the first 24 hours, the President's mental health chat with actress Selena Gomez passed 5 million, Jimmy Fallon at the Easter Egg Roll passed 4 million. Pop star Olivia Rodrigo's video with Biden on vaccines is at over 100 million views, but even a less snazzy YouTube town hall on vaccines is over 2 million views.\n\nThe irony, according to a number of top Democrats, is that with the country still battered and shaken from politics, the pandemic, the wobbly economy and just about everything else from the last few years, Joe Biden's persona has all the pieces to meet the moment -- if he came out to meet it.\n\nHe's the empathetic guy. He's the middle-class guy. He's the come together and work it out guy.\n\nSo, while some Democrats in tight races have started distancing themselves from Biden, others have kept asking aides to get more -- so long as he doesn't bring his podium along for the trip.\n\nRep. Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota working to hold onto his seat in the fall, said that he's struck by how much of a difference there was between the distant Biden whom he knows his constituents are seeing every day and the engaged President he talked with on Air Force One at the end of April, flying to the Land of 10,000 Lakes to attend the memorial service for Walter Mondale.\n\n\"I wish every American could have been with us because he was so engaging, empathetic, resolute, and kind. Those are his superpowers,\" Phillips said.\n\n\"It astounds and disappoints me that the magic of the tools of that office are being so under-utilized. He's the grandfather of the country at a time we need one more than ever. He should be giving fireside chats, speaking to -- and hearing from -- Americans directly about their concerns and anxieties. He has so much more to offer America than he has been able to share, and I still hope the country gets to see and feel what I did during that hour with him.\"", "authors": ["Edward-Isaac Dovere"], "publish_date": "2022/06/02"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2022/05/01/white-house-correspondents-dinner-2022-kim-kardashian-trevor-noah/9551960002/", "title": "With help from Kim Kardashian, Joe Biden made the White House ...", "text": "WASHINGTON – The energy changed any time Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson walked into a room.\n\nThe \"It\" couple turned every head as they made their red carpet debut Saturday at the 2022 White House Correspondents' Dinner, Washington's biggest gathering of top politicians, journalists and celebrity guests. Even big names like Gayle King and Drew Barrymore were asked to move on the red carpet once the couple arrived.\n\n\"We're about to step on the red carpet and they go, 'Gayle, Drew, move! Move! Kete are here,' \" King recounted onstage during the dinner.\n\nKardashian and Davidson, guests of Disney/ABC, posed for photographers before making a quick getaway, avoiding any media interviews. So did Brooke Shields, Meghan McCain, \"Jeopardy!\" champ Amy Schneider and Miranda Kerr.\n\nWhite House Correspondents' Dinner: President Joe Biden roasts President Donald Trump and himself at journalism dinner\n\nBut plenty of stars did stop for interviews, including Martha Stewart, Fran Drescher, Billy Eichner, Chris Tucker, Jason Isaacs, Sophia Bush, Fat Joe, Evan Mock, Kyla Pratt and Roy Wood Jr. – the latter showing support for his \"Daily Show\" boss and the evening's host, Trevor Noah.\n\n\"The last person that needs any tips on comedy on tough topics in front of tough people is Trevor Noah,\" Wood told USA TODAY on the red carpet. \"I think he'll be great.\"\n\nIn what was the first in-person iteration of the event in two years and the first since 2016 that welcomed the sitting U.S. president, the WHCD (known affectionately around the beltway as \"nerd prom\"), is an annual event that honors reporters covering the White House and raises money for journalism scholarships.\n\nSince the final WHCD of Barack Obama's presidency in 2016, the event hasn't lived up to its reputation as D.C.'s biggest celebrity night of the year – until now.\n\n\"It's so nice to be in person and see everybody,\" King told USA TODAY. \"Am I worried about COVID? Yes. But it's just good to be around human beings.\"\n\nAfter a pandemic and an anti-press presidency with little A-list star support, D.C.’s big night of schmoozing with journalists and celebrities returned to its former glory, even with lingering COVID-19 concerns.\n\nEspecially after last month's Gridiron Club dinner in D.C. was dubbed a \"superspreader\" event, COVID safety was a hot topic among the roughly 2,600 attendees. (Noah joked attendees should have known not to come when Dr. Anthony Fauci declined his invite, but \"Pete Davidson thinks it's OK.\")\n\n\"Although everyone has been checked for vaccines, it's still an odd sensation to be (among) thousands of people milling around like sardines,\" \"Good Sam\" actor and \"Harry Potter\" alum Isaacs told USA TODAY on the red carpet.\n\nThough a celebrity of sorts himself, President Donald Trump didn't exactly bring the star support with him to the nation's capital. He declined to attend the event during his presidency; few celebrities attended the dinner. Hollywood's big stars tend to lean left, and if President Joe Biden's star-studded inauguration and subsequent visits from Olivia Rodrigo, Angelina Jolie, Ciara and the Jonas Brothers were any indication, the entertainment industry and the White House's relationship is back.\n\n\"It's a very strange mix of D.C. and Hollywood, a bit absurd – very American in that way,\" Eichner told USA TODAY of the WHCD. \"But I actually do think for better or worse … people who have influence over the culture can help push the country forward. Often, we've been ahead of the curve culturally, we've been ahead of it politically in this country, and so I'm proud to be a part of that. Mingling like this can be productive if it's used in the right way.\"\n\nPresident Joe Biden eyes James Corden's late-night gig\n\nBiden took the stage at dinner, taking some playful – and sometimes not so playful – jabs at Trump, news outlets and his Republican opponents. He also gave a nod to late-night host James Corden, who appeared in a pre-taped sketch with Biden and press secretary Jen Psaki, just days after confirming he'd step down as \"Late Late Show\" host next year.\n\n\"The good news is, if all goes well, I have a real shot of replacing James Corden,\" Biden said, comparing the two: Both \"great performers, going out on top after eight years on the job – sounds just about right to me.\"\n\nTrevor Noah hopes he's 'going to be fine' after roasting Biden\n\nRarely does a comedian get the opportunity to look the sitting president in the eyes and poke fun at his administration – again, not something that's happened since Obama's final dinner in 2016.\n\nNoah made up for lost time, roasting Meghan McCain, Kellyanne Conway, CNN+ and, yes, the president, who looked on and laughed vigorously at the jokes directed at him.\n\n\"You realize how amazing it is: In America, you have the right to seek the truth and speak the truth, even if it makes people in power uncomfortable,\" Noah concluded his speech. \"I stood here tonight and I made fun of the president of the United States, and I'm going to be fine.\"\n\n\"I am going to be fine, right?\" Noah feigned concern as he turned to the laughing president for confirmation.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/01"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/20/politics/fact-check-biden-false-claims-first-year-2021/index.html", "title": "Fact check: A look at Biden's first year in false claims - CNNPolitics", "text": "U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, center, before a State of the Union address by U.S. President Joe Biden at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Biden's first State of the Union address comes against the backdrop of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions placed on Russia by the U.S. and its allies.\n\nWASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 06: Pro-Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol following a rally with President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Trump supporters gathered in the nation's capital today to protest the ratification of President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College victory over President Trump in the 2020 election. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)\n\nWASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 20: House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) talks with reporters during a news conference with House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) (L) following a House Republican caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center on October 20, 2021 in Washington, DC. The GOP members of Congress were critical of the entire Democratic slate of legislation and accused them of being unwilling to compromise. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)\n\nFormer President Donald Trump speaks on May 28, 2022 in Casper, Wyoming. The rally is being held to support Harriet Hageman, Rep. Liz Cheneys primary challenger in Wyoming.\n\nThe total number of false claims uttered by President Joe Biden in his first year in office is in the dozens compared to then-President Donald Trump, who delivered well over 1,000 total false claims in his own first year and more than 3,000 the next year. CNN's Daniel Dale reports.\n\nWashington CNN —\n\nWhen President Joe Biden passingly said in a voting rights speech last week that he had been “arrested” in the context of the civil rights movement – even suggesting this had happened more than once – it was a classic Biden false claim: an anecdote about his past for which there is no evidence, prompted by a decision to ad-lib rather than stick to a prepared text, resulting in easily avoidable questions about his honesty.\n\nBiden’s imaginary or embellished stories about his own history were the most memorable falsehoods of his first year in office. They were not, however, the only ones.\n\nThe President also made multiple false claims about important policy matters, notably including three subjects that occupied much of his time: the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the economy and the Covid-19 pandemic.\n\nAnd Biden was incorrect on numerous occasions when ad-libbing about a wide assortment of facts and figures – sometimes in a way that appeared inadvertent, but other times in a way that helped him make a political point.\n\nUnlike his uniquely dishonest predecessor, Biden did not bury fact-checkers in a daily avalanche of serial falseness. Biden never came close to making a dozen false claims in a single speech, let alone five dozen false claims in one address, as Trump once did. In fact, the total number of Biden false claims so far is in the dozens, while Trump delivered well over 1,000 total false claims in his own first year and more than 3,000 the next year.\n\nSo Biden is no Trump. With that said, dozens of false claims from the President of the United States is not nothing. And considering that Biden added dozens more claims that were misleading or lacking in important context, he provided more than enough material to keep fact-checkers on their toes.\n\nHere is a roundup of Biden’s first year in inaccuracy. The White House declined to comment for this article; it has previously commented for individual fact checks on some of the false claims we are discussing again below.\n\nFalse claims about his own past\n\nBiden made a series of claims about his own past that were just not true. It was these easy-to-understand, hard-to-defend personal falsehoods – more than his false claims about complex policy issues or obscure statistics, which supporters could more easily dismiss as good-faith errors – that provided the best ammunition for opponents looking to portray him as deceptive.\n\nAnd like some of Trump’s tall tales about his past, Biden’s tended to be peripheral to his message. In other words, he was hurting his reputation for little possible gain.\n\nWhile talking in November to technical college students standing near a truck, Biden claimed, “I used to drive a tractor-trailer,” though only for “part of a summer.” This was similar to something he had said at a Mack Trucks facility in July, when he claimed, “I used to drive an 18-wheeler, man,” adding, “I got to.” There is no evidence Biden ever drove a big truck; the White House previously noted to CNN that he once had a job driving a school bus (which is not an 18-wheeler or a tractor-trailer) and that, as a senator in 1973, he spent a night riding in a cargo truck (not driving it).\n\nBiden repeatedly told a story about a supposed conversation during his vice presidency with an old friend, an Amtrak train conductor, that could not possibly have happened because the man was dead at the time. He repeatedly boasted that he had traveled “17,000 miles” with Chinese President Xi Jinping, though that number is not even close to correct.\n\nBiden distracted from his voting rights message with the baseless claim last week, which he had made before, about having been arrested during a civil rights protest; in some of the previous versions of the story, he had merely claimed a police officer had taken him home from a protest. (There is evidence Biden participated in some civil rights activities in his youth but no record of any arrest.)\n\nAnd Biden told two different inaccurate stories while trying to emphasize his connection to the Jewish community.\n\nAt a September event in honor of the High Holy Days, Biden told Jewish leaders that he remembered “spending time at” and “going to” Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, the site of an antisemitic massacre in 2018; he had spoken by phone to the synagogue’s rabbi in 2019 but never went. At a Hanukkah event in December, Biden claimed that late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir had invited him to meet with her during the Six-Day War of 1967 (he actually met with her weeks before the Yom Kippur War six years later) and, more significantly, that she had wanted him to be “the liaison between she and the Egyptians about the Suez, and so on and so forth.”\n\nThere is zero evidence Meir ever wanted to use a 30-year-old rookie US senator as a “liaison” with a major adversary.\n\nFalse claims about Afghanistan\n\nBiden was bedeviled over the summer by his chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. And he made a variety of false claims as he tried to defend his handling of the situation – further undermining his authority on an issue on which he was already struggling to persuade the public.\n\nIn August, the President said, “What interest do we have in Afghanistan at this point, with al Qaeda gone?” Al Qaeda had been degraded in Afghanistan, but it wasn’t “gone” – as a Pentagon spokesman acknowledged on camera that same day. In an interview that week, Biden defended the US withdrawal in part by claiming that the concept of nation-building in Afghanistan “never made any sense to me” – though, in fact, he had explicitly advocated nation-building in the early years of the war, both in Afghanistan and more broadly.\n\nIn July, when Biden was under pressure to quickly relocate Afghans who had assisted US troops, he said “the law doesn’t allow” Afghan translators to come to the US to await the processing of their visa applications. But experts in immigration law immediately said this wasn’t true, given the administration’s authority to grant “parole,” and, indeed, the Biden administration ended up using parole later in the summer to do what Biden had claimed wasn’t permitted.\n\nIn December, Biden said in another interview that “I’ve been against that war in Afghanistan from the very beginning.” While he eventually grew opposed to the war, he was not against it from the start – as fact-checkers pointed out when he had made similar remarks during his presidential campaign.\n\nFalse claims about the economy\n\nThe state of the economy was a key rhetorical battleground between Biden and his critics: He argued it was thriving; they argued it was failing. And although both sides often cited valid data points, the President also made some false claims to bolster his case.\n\nBiden occasionally overstated progress and understated problems. Asked at a CNN town hall in July about inflation in automobile prices, he claimed that the cost of a car was “kind of back to what it was before the pandemic”; the cost had actually increased substantially since late 2019 and early 2020. In an economic speech in November, he greatly exaggerated the extent of the decline in the unemployment rate during his tenure.\n\nTo try to sell his economic policies, Biden sometimes made inaccurate statements about what experts had said about them. In May alone, he falsely claimed that there was a consensus among economists about how many jobs his American Jobs Plan would create, significantly overstated how many jobs the firm Moody’s Analytics in particular predicted the plan would create and falsely claimed that the last five leaders of the Federal Reserve had said the plan would produce economic growth – wrongly describing both the contents and the authorship of an article that was actually written by five former Internal Revenue Service chiefs.\n\nLater in the year, Biden misleadingly framed another Moody’s jobs estimate. And he repeatedly omitted the key phrase “longer-term” from an assertion by Nobel-winning economists that his $1.9 trillion Build Back Better agenda would “ease longer-term inflationary pressures” – leaving Americans to believe that these economists might have said his agenda would reduce the inflation hurting their bank accounts today.\n\nFalse claims about the Covid-19 pandemic\n\nMany of Biden’s first-year speeches were devoted to the Covid-19 pandemic. Biden was almost incomparably more accurate on this subject than Trump was, tending to factually convey the severity of the situation rather than match his predecessor’s fantastical rhetoric about how bad numbers were not actually bad numbers and how the virus would just disappear.\n\nBut Biden made a smattering of false claims on this topic, too.\n\nAt the CNN town hall in July, Biden made the inaccurate categorical promise that “you’re not going to get Covid” if you’re vaccinated. It was clear even before the emergence of the Omicron variant that vaccinated people were still getting infected with the virus, though the vaccines made them much less likely to get seriously ill; vaccinated people on the President’s own staff had been infected. Biden also went too far at the town hall when he categorically pledged that “if you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the ICU unit and you’re not going to die”; these outcomes happen, too, though they are much less common among vaccinated people.\n\nBiden sometimes exaggerated on the subject of his administration’s work to get Americans vaccinated – misleadingly playing down the Trump administration’s own vaccine purchases and, in May, overstating how the US vaccination rate compared with those of the rest of the world. And he made various errors in discussing pandemic-related facts and figures.\n\nIn February, Biden claimed that “suicides are up” amid the pandemic; experts said at the time that the claim was premature, and it turned out to be wrong (though suicide rates did increase for some specific demographic groups). In October, the President wrongly told Americans that there were “over 800,000” vaccination sites in the country; he had added an extra 0 to the correct figure he usually used, 80,000.\n\nFalse claims in unscripted settings\n\nWhen Biden stuck to prepared speeches vetted by his staff, he tended to be factual (though certainly wasn’t perfect). When he ad-libbed or participated in unscripted exchanges with journalists and citizens, he was more likely to sprinkle in inaccuracies – making false or misleading claims about everything from his handling of the situation at the southern border to Virginia political history to gun laws to the size of a tax break for people who own racehorses.\n\nDuring Biden’s first 100 days in the Oval Office, he was repeatedly incorrect or misleading in describing the actions of the Trump administration.\n\nAnd he made one particularly notable misleading claim during that early period. At a heated moment of the national debate over Georgia Republicans’ new elections law, Biden did a television interview in which he criticized the law in part by misstating what it says.", "authors": ["Daniel Dale"], "publish_date": "2022/01/20"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/12/10/bob-doles-funeral-mexico-tragedy-5-things-know-friday/6447633001/", "title": "Bob Dole's funeral, tragedy in Mexico, Biden on late-night TV: 5 ...", "text": "Editors\n\nUSA TODAY\n\n'Hero of democracy': Funeral for Bob Dole at National Cathedral, followed by WWII Memorial service\n\nThe funeral for Sen. Bob Dole will be held at the Washington National Cathedral on Friday, a day after President Joe Biden and congressional leaders honored the Senate’s longest-serving GOP leader as he lay in state at the U.S. Capitol. Biden hailed Dole as “a hero of democracy\" during Thursday's memorial service. Dole, a Kansas lawmaker and decorated World War II veteran who left an indelible mark on the nation’s history, died on Sunday at 98. Biden, former Sens. Pat Roberts and Tom Daschle and Dole's daughter, Robin Dole, are expected to give tributes at his funeral. Following the service, Dole's motorcade and casket will head to the National World War II Memorial on the National Mall to honor his life and service.\n\nPrefer to listen? Check out the 5 Things podcast:\n\nDozens dead, scores injured in truck crash in southern Mexico\n\nA cargo truck carrying up to 200 people tipped over and crashed into the base of a steel pedestrian bridge in southern Mexico on Thursday, killing at least 53 people and injuring at least 54 others, authorities reported. Survivor Celso Pacheco of Guatemala said there were migrants mostly from Guatemala and Honduras aboard and estimated there were eight to 10 young children. He said he was trying to reach the United States, but now expected to be deported to Guatemala. Rescue workers who first arrived said that some people who had been aboard the truck when it crashed – some bloodied or bruised – had fled into surrounding neighborhoods for fear of being detained by immigration agents. The number of people aboard is not unusual for migrant smuggling operations in Mexico, and the sheer weight of the load — combined with speed and a nearby curve — may have been enough to throw the truck off balance, authorities said.\n\nTributes paid to former NFL wide receiver Demaryius Thomas\n\nTributes were being paid Friday to former NFL wide receiver Demaryius Thomas, who was found dead in his suburban Atlanta home on Thursday evening. He was 33 years old. \"Preliminary information is that his death stems from a medical issue, and our investigators currently have no reason to believe otherwise,\" Roswell, Georgia, police spokesman Tim Lupo wrote in an email to USA TODAY Sports early Friday. Thomas earned five straight Pro Bowls and a Super Bowl ring during a prolific receiving career spent mostly with the Denver Broncos. Family members were notified by the Roswell police at about 9 p.m. EST that they had found Thomas in a shower at his home. LaTonya Bonseigneur, a first cousin who grew up with Thomas, told The Associated Press the family believes he died from a seizure.\n\nGhislaine Maxwell's sex-abuse trial could resume after attorney falls sick\n\nThe sex-abuse trial of Ghislaine Maxwell could resume Friday after the judge sent jurors home Thursday because an attorney on the case had gotten sick. U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan told the jury in Manhattan federal court that an attorney was \"ill and has to get care.\" She did not identify the attorney, but said there was no reason to believe the illness was related to the coronavirus. The government had been expected to finish presenting its case by the end of the week and the judge suggested that closing arguments might occur on Dec. 20 if the defense presentation next week only lasts a day or two.\n\nBiden to make first late-night TV appearance as president\n\nPresident Joe Biden is getting ready for his first late-night TV appearance since taking office. He'll appear virtually on NBC’s \"The Tonight Show\" with comedian Jimmy Fallon on Friday. Biden has made two previous appearances on the show, bantering with Fallon a week before he became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president and toward the end of his eight years as vice president in 2016. The president is suffering from a steep drop in the polls and has been under pressure to engage more with the media. He has been traveling around the country to promote a $1 trillion infrastructure law and rallying public support for a separate social welfare and climate bill that has stalled in the Senate.\n\nContributing: The Associated Press", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/12/10"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/30/politics/white-house-correspondents-dinner/index.html", "title": "Biden jokes Trump was a 'horrible plague' in remarks at White ...", "text": "CNN will air special coverage of the White House Correspondents' Dinner from 7-11 p.m. ET anchored by John Berman and Brianna Keilar in Washington, DC.\n\n(CNN) President Joe Biden took a dig at his predecessor Saturday at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, while also joking about the press, the GOP and the continued existence of the event altogether.\n\n\"I'm really excited to be here tonight with the only group of Americans with a lower approval rating than I have,\" Biden said during his initial comments.\n\n\"We had a horrible plague followed by two years of Covid,\" he said. \"Just imagine if my predecessor came to this dinner this year, now that would really have been a real coup if that occurred.\"\n\nThe event marked Biden's first appearance at the widely attended Washington event since taking office. As the first President to address the dinner's attendees in six years, he stressed his support for democracy and the free press.\n\nSaturday night's dinner, which took place inside the Washington Hilton and was expected to host more than 2,500 guests, returned in full force after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic. The event's program was headlined by \"Daily Show\" host Trevor Noah and featured Biden delivering comedic remarks. The White House Correspondents' Association, which hosts the annual black tie event, honored several journalists for their contributions.\n\nBiden also poked fun at his age, joking that he remembers when the annual dinner began, with President Calvin Coolidge speaking in 1924. \"I had just been elected to the United States Senate,\" he said.\n\nThe President said that when he was elected, Noah on his show called Biden \"America's New Dad,\" to which he said, \"Let me tell you something pal, I'm flattered anybody would call me a 'new' anything.\"\n\nPhotos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner US President George W. Bush, left, waves with impressionist Steve Bridges at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2006. Hide Caption 1 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner The White House Correspondents' Dinner is held in 1923. It was started two years earlier by the White House Correspondents' Association, the organization of journalists who cover the president. In 1924, Calvin Coolidge became the first president to attend the dinner. Hide Caption 2 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner President Franklin D. Roosevelt, seated, shakes hands with Raymond P. Brandt, chief of the Washington bureau of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, at the 1945 dinner. Roosevelt was congratulating Brandt for winning the first Raymond Clapper Memorial Award, which was given by the White House Correspondents' Association for distinguished reporting. Hide Caption 3 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner President Harry Truman, second from left, presents a $500 check to Peter Edson, second from right, for winning the Raymond Clapper Memorial Award in 1949. Hide Caption 4 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner Legendary golfer Bobby Jones, left, presents a duplicate of his famous putter, Calamity Jane, to President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the dinner in 1959. In the center is Felix Belair Jr. of The New York Times. Hide Caption 5 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner President Richard Nixon shakes hands with US Navy Lt. Cmdr. John McCain at the dinner in 1973. Just a month earlier, McCain had been released from a Vietnamese prison after being a prisoner of war for over five years. Hide Caption 6 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner Until 1962, the correspondents' dinner was open to just men. President John F. Kennedy, center, refused to attend until it was opened to women. Hide Caption 7 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner President Gerald Ford, right, speaks with comedian Chevy Chase, left, in 1976. Chase famously portrayed Ford as clumsy on \"Saturday Night Live.\" Between the two, from left, are \"Saturday Night Live\" creator Lorne Michaels and cast members Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. Hide Caption 8 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner Ford laughs with Helen Thomas, a White House correspondent with United Press International, at the 1975 dinner. Thomas was the first female president of the White House Correspondents' Association. Hide Caption 9 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner President Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter chat with Paul Healy, right, of the New York Daily News and Lawrence O'Rourke, left, of the Philadelphia Bulletin as they arrive to the dinner in 1977. Healy was the new president of the White House Correspondents' Association, and O'Rourke was its outgoing president. Hide Caption 10 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner At the 1987 dinner, President Ronald Reagan called up his wife, Nancy, to say a few kind words to the press. After a pause she responded, \"I'm thinking.\" Hide Caption 11 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner President George H.W. Bush laughs while watching Jim Morris do an impression of him at the 1989 dinner. Hide Caption 12 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner President Bill Clinton holds a placard proclaiming, \"Don't blame me. I voted for me,\" at the dinner in 1996. Clinton was auditioning some potential slogans for bumper stickers. Hide Caption 13 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner Clinton high-fives a \"clone\" of him played by actor Darrell Hammond in 1997. Hide Caption 14 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner President George W. Bush conducts the Marine Corps Band during the dinner in 2008. Hide Caption 15 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner Comedian Keegan-Michael Key plays President Barack Obama's \"anger translator\" Luther in 2015. Hide Caption 16 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, attend the correspondents' dinner in 2015. They didn't attend any of the dinners while he was President. Hide Caption 17 of 18 Photos: The history of the White House Correspondents' Dinner Obama drops the mic after speaking at his last correspondents' dinner in 2016. \"Obama out,\" he said. Hide Caption 18 of 18\n\nCovid anxieties\n\nInside the gala, negative Covid-19 tests were required for entry and masks were voluntary -- just as they are throughout most of Washington.\n\nBut there had been growing concerns that Saturday night's event could lead to Covid cases among partygoers, after dozens of attendees -- including some of Biden's Cabinet officials -- who attended a different Washington party, the Gridiron Dinner, tested positive weeks ago.\n\nCases of Covid in Washington are now steady after rising following the decline of the Omicron variant's wave, but Dr. Anthony Fauci, the President's chief medical adviser, decided to bow out of Saturday's dinner after a personal risk assessment.\n\n\"In general, the risk is low, but I made a personal assessment. I'm 81 years old, and if I get infected, I have a much higher risk,\" Fauci said earlier this week.\n\nSaturday's event also came after two top Biden officials recently tested positive for Covid-19.\n\nVice President Kamala Harris tested positive on Tuesday and remains asymptomatic. And the White House's top communications official, Kate Bedingfield, tested positive on Friday and is experiencing mild symptoms. The President was not considered a close contact in either case.\n\nBut Biden's decision to still attend the dinner, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said earlier this week, was \"a risk assessment and a decision he made on a personal basis.\" And Biden was intent on going, she said, to express his support for a free press. First lady Jill Biden also attended.\n\nThe White House said before the event that the President would be taking extra precautions to prevent catching Covid-19, including skipping the meal portion of the program. Biden sat on the dais, away from the crowded dining room, and wasn't expected to attend receptions before or afterward.\n\nDuring his speech, Biden also poked fun at Fox News and made note of the Covid-related requirements to attend the event.\n\n\"If you're at home watching this and you're wondering how to do that, just contact your favorite Fox News reporter. They're all here. Vaccinated and boosted. All of them,\" he said to resounding applause.\n\nAdjusting the tone for Biden's comedic set\n\nThe President had a rare chance for his comedic chops to shine Saturday night during remarks at the dinner, but the opportunity arguably came at a tough moment for the country to have a laugh.\n\nThe economic recovery from Covid-19 has stumbled in the first quarter of 2022 , with numbers revealing this week that gross domestic product declined at an annual rate of 1.4% during the first three months of the year -- marking the worst quarter for the American economy since the spring of 2020. Russia is continuing to wage war with Ukraine. And as his party heads into a highly consequential midterms season, Biden's approval rating has stagnated -- with a recent CNN Poll of Polls average on Biden's handling of the presidency finding that 41% of Americans approve of the job he's doing, with 54% disapproving.\n\nBiden on Saturday acknowledged the difficulty he's had in getting his agenda across, while also touching on his grand promises of being able to reach across the aisle, saying, \"I came to office with an ambitious agenda, and I expected it to face stiff opposition in the Senate. I just hoped it would be from Republicans.\"\n\nThe speech also took place at a time when the American political environment remains extremely polarized, arguably more divided than in 2016 -- the last time a president delivered a speech at the dinner.\n\nWhile more partisan gridlock is possible, Biden said he was confident he could sort it out in a second term.\n\n\"We may end up with more partisan gridlock,\" he said. \"But I'm confident we can work it out during my remaining six years in the presidency.\"\n\nOn Republicans' use of the phrase \"Let's go Brandon\" against Biden, he said, \"Republicans seem to support one fella. Some guy named Brandon. He's having a really good year, and I'm kind of happy for him.\"\n\nBiden's speech had been in the works for a few weeks, officials said, and wasn't finished as of Friday. But at the outset of the writing process , the President told his team he envisioned an address that went beyond just an amalgamation of one-liners, wisecracks and gags.\n\nThe White House sourced a long list jokes from across his staff to craft Saturday night's set. Officials said the chief of staff Ron Klain, members of the communications team and others inside the White House sent jokes to Biden's speechwriters for consideration. Rob Flaherty, the director of digital strategy, and Dan Cluchey, a senior speechwriter -- both said to be among Biden's funniest staffers -- sent material.\n\nBiden was expected to do a few practice runs to get a feel for the delivery and timing, a person familiar with the matter said.\n\nBiden used the appearance to loudly affirm his belief in a free press after his predecessor -- who skipped the yearly dinner throughout his time in office -- labeled reporters the \"enemy of the people.\"\n\n\"At home, poison is running through our democracy,\" he said, but \"What's clear ... You, the free press, matter more than you ever did in the last century.\"\n\nAs he yielded the mic to Noah, Biden said to him, \"Now you get to roast the President of the United States. And unlike in Moscow, you won't go to jail.\"\n\nThis story has been updated with additional information Saturday.", "authors": ["Maegan Vazquez", "Sarah Fortinsky"], "publish_date": "2022/04/30"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/02/22/kim-reynolds-state-union-2022-address-republican-response-joe-biden-iowa-governor/6894536001/", "title": "Kim Reynolds to deliver State of the Union Republican rebuttal", "text": "Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds will deliver the Republican Party's rebuttal to President Joe Biden's State of the Union address next week.\n\nSenate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy made the announcement in a release Tuesday morning.\n\n“While Washington Democrats fail working Americans, Republican governors are fighting and winning for families,\" McConnell said in a statement. \"Gov. Kim Reynolds’ brave, bold, and successful leadership for Iowans has put her right at the front of that pack.\"\n\nReynolds has been on the front lines of Republican governors pushing back against what they call government overreach throughout the pandemic, and it's garnered her national attention.\n\nGet more politics news:The Register's free politics newsletter is delivered daily!\n\nIn the early days of the pandemic, Reynolds was one of only a few governors who did not order a statewide \"stay at home\" order, and she refused calls for a statewide mask mandate until hospital admissions reached their height. Unlike in other states, bars and restaurants remained mostly open. She has said moving K-12 classes online for several months was her biggest regret of the pandemic, and she has signed legislation requiring schools to offer a 100% in-person learning option.\n\nBiden, a Democrat, has faced plummeting approval ratings in Iowa. According to a November Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll, 62% of Iowans disapproved of the job Biden was doing as president. Another third, 33%, approved, and 6% were not sure.\n\n\"Republican governors across America are leading the charge in defending liberty and securing unmatched economic prosperity in our states,\" Reynolds said in a statement. \"The Biden administration is governing from the far-left, ignoring the problems of working-class Americans while pushing an agenda that stifles free speech, free thought, and economic freedom. The American people have had enough, but there is an alternative and that's what I look forward to sharing on Tuesday evening.\"\n\nReynolds is widely expected to seek reelection in 2022, though she has not formally announced a campaign.\n\nMore:Can Deidre DeJear mount a credible campaign for governor? Iowa Democrats are panicking\n\nReynolds is not the first Iowan to enjoy the national honor. Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst delivered the rebuttal to President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech in 2015. She called for changing the direction of the country, but the Internet remembered her for her viral reference to the folksy tradition of wearing bread bags over shoes in the winter.\n\nBiden's State of the Union Speech will be at 8 p.m., March 1.\n\nBrianne Pfannenstiel is the chief politics reporter for the Register. Reach her at bpfann@dmreg.com. Follow her on Twitter at @brianneDMR.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/02/22"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_9", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:36", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/12/liz-cheney-live-vote-updates-gop-house-leadership/5031048001/", "title": "Liz Cheney vote updates: House GOP removes Cheney from ...", "text": "Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who was ousted from her role as House Republican Conference chair Wednesday told the Today Show's Savannah Guthrie on Wednesday that she will be a leader \"to restore\" the Republican Party.\n\n\"I intend to be the leader — one of the leaders — in a fight to help to restore our party, in a fight to bring our party back to substance and principle and in a fight to make clear that we won't participate in the really dangerous effort that's under way,\" she said in a clip of the interview expected to air Thursday.\n\nWhen asked about a potential primary challenger in 2022, Cheney told Guthrie: \"Bring it on.\"\n\n– Sean Rossman\n\nNancy Pelosi: Cheney 'a leader of great courage'\n\nShortly after House Republicans voted to strip Rep. Liz Cheney of her leadership post, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighed in.\n\n\"Congresswoman Liz Cheney is a leader of great courage, patriotism and integrity. Today, House Republicans declared that those values are unwelcome in the Republican party,\" reads a statement issued by Pelosi, D-Calif.\n\n“The Republican denial of the truth presented by Congresswoman Cheney is reflected in their denial of the need to seek the truth in a January 6th commission and to repair the damage of January 6th with a security supplemental immediately.\"\n\nCheney's speech:'I will not sit back': In fiery speech, Rep. Liz Cheney calls Trump a 'threat'\n\nCheney defenders: Vote was too quick and a display of 'fake unity'\n\nDespite the slow buildup, the meeting to determine Rep. Liz Cheney’s fate in House Republican leadership lasted just a few minutes. Cheney spoke briefly as did House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. But it featured no secret ballots or long speeches. And its shortness pleased some members while angering others.\n\nThat’s how several GOP lawmakers described the caucus gathering Wednesday morning that ended with the ouster of Cheney as chair of the House GOP Conference.\n\nRep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a Cheney supporter, told USA TODAY afterwards there were “people ready to go to battle for her.” So, having a voice vote rather than a roll call or ballots was a show of “fake unity,” he said.\n\n“There were a lot of people who wanted to defend Liz,” said Kinzinger, adding that people who wanted to defend her didn’t realize they had little opportunity to do so.\n\nRep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., who also did not support removing Cheney, told reporters there was a question of “whether we could do a recorded vote” but it was not agreed to.\n\n“To me” a debate is what “the Republican Party is all about,” Buck continued. “This discussion is all about disagreement and coming to the best solution … I just think that we are healthier as a party, by having disagreements on issues.”\n\n– Savannah Behrmann and Ledyard King\n\nDemocrats react to Liz Cheney ouster from GOP House leadership\n\nShortly after House Republicans voted to remove conference chair Rep. Liz Cheney from her post over her opposition to former President Donald Trump, Democrats reacted.\n\nSenate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Republicans had \"reached a new and very dangerous low” in their removal of Cheney, while Rep. Ilhan Omar — a fierce critic of Cheney’s politics — said the reason Republicans are removing her from leadership is \"shameful.”\n\nRep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., similarly condemned Cheney’s ouster. “Political parties that promote lies and propaganda are setting their countries up for authoritarianism and fascism. The cancellation of Liz Cheney by Trump and the GOP is a flashing red danger sign for our democracy,” he wrote on Twitter.\n\nThe chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said Wednesday at a hearing about the Capitol riot Jan. 6 that no member of Congress should be punished for speaking the truth. Maloney quoted Cheney, R-Wyo., that remaining silent and ignoring the lie about whether the election was stolen would only embolden the liar.\n\n“No member of Congress, whether a freshman representative or a House conference chair should face punishment for speaking the truth about what happened that day,” Maloney said. “It is time for the American people and this Congress to look at the events of Jan. 6 and say never again.”\n\n– Matthew Brown and Bart Jansen\n\nElise Stefanik makes formal push to replace Cheney\n\nShortly after Rep. Liz Cheney was removed from her position in House Republican leadership Wednesday, Rep. Elise Stefanik announced a formal effort to replace her as the chamber’s third-ranking Republican.\n\nIn a two-page letter to House Republicans, Stefanik did not mention Cheney, former President Donald Trump or his election fraud claims. Cheney’s ouster came after she repeatedly slammed the former president’s debunked claims the election was stolen from him.\n\nInstead she railed against the media and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.\n\n“I know firsthand the discipline and message it takes to fight back against the biased national media and the entire Democrat and Far-Left infrastructure. I know what it takes to flip a district and grow the Republican Party,” she wrote. “I look forward to working with you as we share our unified conservative vision, regain the Majority, fire Speaker Pelosi once and for all, and fight on behalf of the American people to save our country.”\n\n– Sean Rossman\n\nCheney’s replacement expected to be chosen Friday\n\nRepublicans will reconvene Friday to decide who will replace Rep. Liz Cheney in House GOP leadership, according to several lawmakers leaving the vote.\n\nRep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., told USA TODAY following Wednesday's vote he expects Rep. Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican who formally announced her bid for the House GOP Conference chair post Cheney held, to visit the Freedom Caucus and others tonight to lobby for support.\n\nThe Freedom Caucus is comprised of hard-right members of the party who are most loyal to former President Donald Trump.\n\nHouse GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., already has endorsed Stefanik. But some more conservative members are not sold on her yet.\n\nOn Thursday, the conference will hold a candidate forum, but several lawmakers were skeptical that someone besides Stefanik would emerge successful.\n\n– Savannah Behrmann and Ledyard King\n\nElise Stefanik:Who is Elise Stefanik, the congresswoman Trump and Scalise want to replace Liz Cheney in GOP leadership?\n\nWhat does the chair do?:Liz Cheney has been removed as House GOP Conference chair. What does the chair do?\n\nLiz Cheney spoke before the vote about hewing to “truth”\n\nRep. Liz Cheney made one last pitch to her fellow Republicans before they voted to oust her as chair of the House GOP Conference on Wednesday.\n\nSpeaking to the assembled lawmakers in a closed-door meeting at the Capitol, the Wyoming Republican told reporters assembled outside the meeting room that she reiterated what she has been saying for weeks: “That we must go forward based on truth. We cannot both embrace the ‘big lie’ and embrace the Constitution.”\n\nThe “big lie” is what Cheney calls former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the November election was stolen from him due to widespread voter fraud.\n\nColorado GOP Rep. Ken Buck told reporters after the meeting that Cheney received a standing ovation after she spoke from some members of the caucus.\n\n– Ledyard King and Savannah Behrmann\n\nAfter vote, Trump says Cheney is 'bad' for Republicans\n\nAfter House Republicans voted to oust Rep. Liz Cheney from her House GOP leadership role, former President Donald Trump denounced her as \"bad for the Republican Party.\"\n\n“She is a talking point for Democrats, whether that means the Border, the gas lines, inflation, or destroying our economy,\" he said in a statement issued through his Save America PAC\n\nPrior to the meeting, Trump had exhorted Republicans to demote her from her post as chair of the GOP House Conference.\n\n“The Republicans in the House of Representatives have a great opportunity today to rid themselves of a poor leader, a major Democrat talking point, a warmonger, and a person with absolutely no personality or heart,” Trump said in a statement issued through his PAC. “As a representative of the Great State of Wyoming, Liz Cheney is bad for our Country and bad for herself. Almost everyone in the Republican Party, including 90% of Wyoming, looks forward to her ouster—and that includes me!”\n\nTrump’s statements came only hours after Cheney was on the House floor imploring colleagues not to buy into the former president's “big lie” that the election was stolen from him due to baseless claims of wide voter fraud.\n\n– Ledyard King\n\nFrequent Trump critic Rep. Adam Kinzinger calls Cheney’s removal ‘sad'\n\nRep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a frequent critic of former President Donald Trump said Rep. Liz Cheney's removal from House Republican leadership Wednesday was \"sad.\"\n\n“What happened today was sad,” the congressman told reporters staking out the closed-door meeting.\n\n“Liz has committed the only sin of being consistent and telling the truth. The truth is the election was not stolen,” he said, rebutting the former president’s claims of widespread election fraud in November. “Seventy-four million voters were not disenfranchised, they were outnumbered. And it’s important our party take inventory of that and go out and win the next election instead of continuing the big lie.\"\n\n– Ledyard King\n\nCheney removed by voice vote, not secret ballot\n\nRep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., said Rep. Liz Cheney had “a lot” of supporters in the House Republican Conference on Wednesday, but it was unclear how many there were because she was ousted form her leadership position by a voice vote, not a secret ballot as the caucus rules usually dictate.\n\n“I stand with Liz. I’m proud of her. There’s a lot of people who are proud of her for what she’s done and a lot of people who feel threatened by her,” he said. “It was a sad day.”\n\n– Ledyard King\n\n'I will not sit back':In fiery speech, Rep. Liz Cheney calls Trump a 'threat'\n\nCheney ousted from leadership position in closed-door vote\n\nHouse Republicans stripped Liz Cheney of her leadership post Wednesday after GOP House members said her public sparring with former President Donald Trump became a distraction to the party hoping to regain the House in 2022. The vote, cast by secret ballot and behind closed doors.\n\nAs chair of the GOP House Conference, the three-term Wyoming congresswoman had been the third most powerful Republican member of the House. Her ouster leaves a vacancy GOP officials expect to fill in the coming weeks.\n\nCheney is a staunch conservative from a red state and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. But her willingness to push back against Trump's \"big lie\" about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election led to a break with other House Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who remain loyal to the former president and his baseless claims of a stolen election.\n\n– Ledyard King\n\nWhat is a House GOP Conference chair?:Liz Cheney is set to be removed from her post as House GOP Conference chair. What does the chair do?\n\nCheney's Tuesday night speech:'I know the topic is cancel culture.' What Rep. Liz Cheney said in her House floor speech about Trump\n\nMeeting begins\n\nA closed-door meeting of House Republicans in which they expect to vote on whether to remove Rep. Liz Cheney from House GOP leadership has begun.\n\nSome House Republicans want to remove Cheney from her post as House Republican Caucus chair after she repeatedly criticized former President Donald Trump's debunked election fraud claims.\n\nThe members are meeting behind closed doors in the Capitol, where they'll vote by secret ballot.\n\n– Savannah Behrmann and Sean Rossman\n\nMembers seem confident in a Cheney ouster\n\nSeveral House GOP lawmakers walking into the Capitol seemed confident Rep. Liz Cheney would be ousted as House Republican Conference chair in a closed-door vote expected Wednesday morning.\n\nRep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told USA TODAY he expects there to be “strong support” to remove her, but couldn’t give an estimated number of how many lawmakers may vote to oust her.\n\n– Savannah Behrmann\n\nGOP lawmakers arrive for meeting to decide Cheney’s leadership future\n\nRepublican lawmakers have begun to arrive this morning for their closed-door meeting at the Capitol to decide whether Rep. Liz Cheney should remain in House GOP leadership. The meeting is scheduled to start at 9 a.m.\n\nThe Wyoming Republican, who has forcefully pushed back against former President Donald Trump’s widely discredited claims of rampant voter fraud in the 2020 election, faces the loss of her seat as the chair of the GOP House Conference.\n\nOn the House floor Tuesday night, Cheney urged her GOP colleagues not to bend to the former president. House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has recommended GOP lawmakers remove Cheney, saying she’s distracting from the party’s effort to win back Congress in next year’s elections.\n\n– Ledyard King and Savannah Behrmann\n\nEffort to remove Rep. Liz Cheney has been building\n\nThe opposition to Rep. Liz Cheney began building after she voted to impeach former President Donald Trump after the Capitol riot in January – one of 10 House Republicans to do so.\n\nSupporters of the 45th president called for her to be removed, and she survived an attempt to remove her from leadership in a secret ballot vote in February. But she has since remained firm in her belief that Trump's rhetoric led to the violence.\n\nAfter Trump recently insisted the presidential election was stolen, Cheney tweeted \"The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”\n\nHer position on Trump in February was backed up by other prominent Republicans like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who soon after the riot said, \"The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters.\" He has now walked back those remarks, and has publicly signaled he supported removing Cheney following her recent comments against Trump, highlighting a fracture within the Republican party.\n\n– Savannah Behrmann\n\nWho is Elise Stefanik?\n\nThe person emerging as a potential replacement for Liz Cheney’s position as House GOP Conference chair, should she be ousted Wednesday, is Rep. Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican who in the last years of the Trump administration emerged as a loyal and vocal defender of the 45th president.\n\nStefanik, 36, gained support from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise, and Trump over the last few weeks as being able to unify and represent the message of the caucus.\n\nStefanik, when she was elected in 2014 at age 30, was then the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. Prior to being a member of Congress, she attended Harvard University before joining the George W. Bush administration as an aide. She also advised then-vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan in 2012.\n\nShe rose to GOP prominence during Trump’s first impeachment, after Trump called Stefanik a “new Republican star” as she defended him against Democrats.\n\n– Savannah Behrmann\n\nWhat’s with the secret ballot?\n\nHouse Republicans have debated about Rep. Liz Cheney's future in public. The actual vote will be conducted in private.\n\nWhen the meeting starts around 9 a.m. Wednesday, the doors will close to the press. Members will have a chance to say something and then they will cast a secret ballot to decide whether she should remain chair of the GOP Conference.\n\nThat means no one will really know how each of the 212 Republicans vote on whether to keep Cheney even if they make public pronouncements about her. The vote will be decided by a simple majority of the caucus.\n\nWhen the votes are cast and the tabulation is complete, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is expected to come out of the meeting and announce the results to the press.\n\n– Ledyard King\n\n'I will not sit back':In fiery speech, Rep. Liz Cheney calls Trump a 'threat'\n\nCheney's speech:'I know the topic is cancel culture.' What Rep. Liz Cheney said in her House floor speech about Trump\n\nWho is Liz Cheney, the third most-powerful House Republican?\n\nRep. Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney — who served alongside former President George W. Bush — has been widely respected in conservative politics and was considered one of the next in line to lead House Republicans.\n\nBut she was one of 10 Republicans in the House to vote for Trump's impeachment over his alleged incitement of the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, and has since remained firm in her belief that Trump's rhetoric led to the violence.\n\nShe has headed the House Republican Conference since 2019 and is the third-ranking Republican in the House. Cheney, Wyoming's only representative, faces a vote to remove her from her leadership position Wednesday morning.\n\n– Savannah Behrmann\n\nLiz Cheney: 'I will not sit back'\n\nRep. Liz Cheney, who on Wednesday faces a vote to remove her from House Republican leadership, tore into former President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening in a fiery speech on the House floor.\n\nCheney, the third most-powerful House Republican, has angered some in the party for her repeated criticism of Trump and his claim the 2020 election was stolen from him. A vote behind closed doors and by secret ballot is scheduled for Wednesday morning.\n\n\"This is not about policy. This is not about partisanship. This is about our duty as Americans,\" she said. \"Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar. I will not participate in that. I will not sit back and watch in silence, while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president's crusade to undermine our democracy.\"\n\n– Phillip M. Bailey and Ledyard King\n\nHouse GOP expected to vote on Liz Cheney Wednesday\n\nHouse Republicans meet behind closed doors on Capitol Hill Wednesday to make a major decision likely to highlight a deepening rift in a party hoping to retake control of Congress in 2022.\n\nWill they keep Rep. Liz Cheney as the chamber's third-ranking Republican, or toss her out to make way for a leader more supportive of former President Donald Trump?\n\nLawmakers will vote by secret ballot whether to oust Cheney as chair of the House Republican Conference, the result of weeks of drama within the House GOP.\n\nThe three-term congresswoman from Wyoming and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney has drawn anger from her GOP colleagues in recent weeks as her vocal pushback against Trump's false claims of a stolen 2020 election aggravated party leaders loyal to the former president.\n\n'I will not sit back':In fiery speech, Rep. Liz Cheney calls Trump a 'threat'\n\nWhat is a House GOP chair?:Liz Cheney is set to be removed from her post as House GOP Conference chair. What does the chair do?\n\nSecret ballot:Liz Cheney's future in Republican leadership to be decided by secret ballot in closed-door meeting\n\nThey've said Cheney has become a distraction from the mission to take back the House in next year's mid-term races.\n\n\"Having heard from so many of you in recent days, it's clear that we need to make a change,\" House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., wrote in a letter Monday to fellow Republican lawmakers.\n\nHigh-ranking Republicans including Trump, are backing New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, a fierce defender of the former president, to replace Cheney.If Cheney is removed Wednesday, a vote on her replacement is expected to take place at a later time.\n\nShould the House GOP purge Cheney from leadership, it would be the latest evidence of a deep split in the Republican Party, in which some see Trump as its best path to electoral victory while some, like Cheney, say it should move beyond the former president.\n\nDemocrats hold slim majorities in the House and Senate and Republicans are eager to pick up seats in 2022 to regain majorities in both chambers.\n\nIn a fiery Tuesday evening speech on the House floor, Cheney ripped into Trump and his fraud claims, calling him a \"threat.\"\n\n\"This is not about policy. This is not about partisanship. This is about our duty as Americans,\" she said. \"Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar. I will not participate in that. I will not sit back and watch in silence, while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president's crusade to undermine our democracy.\"\n\nKevin McCarthy:Vote to oust Liz Cheney puts spotlight on House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, a Trump loyalist\n\nMore:GOP takes sides on Cheney's ouster, with one congressman calling party 'basically the Titanic'\n\nUtah Sen. Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, believes ousting Cheney will hurt Republican efforts to win back Congress.\n\n\"I think we're better trying to expand the number of people who want to vote for Republicans as opposed to shrink that number,\" he told reporters on Capitol Hill Monday. \"I think she's a person of integrity who follows her conscious and speaks the truth. And I think it will do nothing but drive some people away from our party.\"\n\nHouse Republicans will meet at 9 a.m. ET Wednesday behind closed doors to hold a secret-ballot vote on Cheney. She can be removed by a simple majority of the 212-member Republican caucus.\n\nMore:Sen. Joe Manchin says Trump ‘called me all the time.’ Senator said he was ready ‘to stay and fight’ during Capitol riots\n\nIn the letter to Republican House members Monday, McCarthy wrote the party's \"driving focus would be taking back the House in 2022\" and \"internal conflicts need to be resolved so as to not detract from the efforts of our collective team.\"\n\nTrump issued a statement last week through his Save America PAC in which he slammed Cheney as a \"warmongering fool who has no business in Republican Party Leadership\" and threw his support behind Stefanik.\n\n\"We want leaders who believe in the Make America Great Again movement, and prioritize the values of America First,\" the former president said.\n\nCheney angered many of her GOP colleagues in January when she not only led a group of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump on a charge he incited the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol but also publicly called the former president out for his unfounded election fraud claims.\n\nAdam Kinzinger:Kinzinger claims McCarthy ignored warning that Jan. 6 events could turn violent\n\nIn February, Cheney retained her post in the party during a tumultuous, hours-long, closed-door meeting. Her fellow Republicans voted 145-61 (with one abstention) by secret ballot to keep her as chair.\n\nAfter the meeting, Cheney told reporters the vote made clear \"that we're not divided and that we're not going to be in a situation where people can pick off any member of leadership. It was a very resounding acknowledgment that we need to go forward together, and we need to go forward in a way that helps us push back the really dangerous and negative Democratic policies.\"\n\nRepublicans, including Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, who chairs the Republican Study Committee within the GOP caucus, insist her removal has less to do with her ongoing skirmish with Trump and more about the distraction she had become.\n\n\"Any leader who is not focused on pushing back against the radical and dangerous Biden agenda needs to be replaced,\" he told \"Fox News Sunday.\"\n\nOpinion:Trump Republicans have had it with Liz Cheney and the democracy she chooses to defend", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/05/12"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/06/uk/boris-johnson-confidence-vote-snap-analysis-mcgee/index.html", "title": "Confidence vote: Even if Boris Johnson survives, his premiership is ...", "text": "London (CNN) Boris Johnson will face the darkest moment of his premiership on Monday evening, after it was finally announced after days of speculation that enough letters had been submitted by his own Conservative Party lawmakers to hold a confidence vote in his leadership.\n\nThe letters come after months of Johnson being dogged by the so-called \"Partygate\" scandal and after he was booed in public during the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations.\n\nDespite the obvious stress of facing a vote that could ultimately end his time in office, Johnson will to some extent be relieved for more than one reason.\n\nFirst, the rebels who had been plotting in secret to get rid of him have finally been forced to show their hand. In order for him to lose the vote, 180 -- 50% plus one -- of Johnson's Conservative MPs would need to vote against him.\n\nThat is a tall order. Any MP currently deemed to be on the government payroll is expected to support the government position, and it is obviously the position of Johnson's government that he remain in power. There are thought to be around 180 MPs on the government payroll -- among them ministers, parliamentary private secretaries and party vice chairs -- though due to the murky arrangement of people who serve in non-public facing jobs it is hard to get an exact number.\n\nRead More", "authors": ["Analysis Luke Mcgee"], "publish_date": "2022/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/18/politics/democrats-republicans-supreme-court-states-congress-white-house/index.html", "title": "With help from Manchin and Sinema, a Republican revolution from ...", "text": "(CNN) Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country are approving a wave of new voting restrictions on virtually party-line votes that require only a simple majority to pass. The US Supreme Court has likewise decided the key voting rights rulings that helped trigger this surge of state legislation on a party-line, majority-vote basis over the past decade.\n\nBut the announcements last week by Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona that they will not support exempting voting rights legislation from the filibuster means Congress can respond to these moves only with a bipartisan supermajority of 60 votes.\n\nTheir decision effectively provides Senate Republicans a veto on whether Congress can undo the restrictions on voting advanced by their fellow Republicans in the states and GOP-appointed justices on the Supreme Court. And that means Democrats have little chance through this decade of preserving a national floor of voting rights.\n\nVoting rights is the most dramatic example of how the axis of Republican-controlled state governments, the GOP-appointed majority on the Supreme Court and filibusters mounted by Senate Republicans is limiting Democrats' ability to set the national agenda, even as they hold unified control of the White House, House and Senate for the first time since 2010. The same combination threatens to roll back other civil rights and liberties, most prominently the nationwide right to abortion, which has prevailed since the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, but also including transgender rights and the First Amendment rights of public school teachers over the discussion of race in the classroom.\n\nWith the filibuster severely limiting the prospects for legislation on those fronts that imposes any mandates on business or individuals, President Joe Biden is turning to unilateral regulatory action. But the Catch-22 he faces is that the Republican-appointed Supreme Court majority, often in cases brought by red-state attorneys general, has signaled its willingness to aggressively block those regulations, most recently by striking down the administration's vaccine-or-test mandate for large employers.\n\nTaken together, the offensive and defensive maneuvers by this axis amount to a revolution from below -- a powerful attempt by Republican-controlled institutions to drive national policy even while Democrats hold the executive branch and Congress, the traditional levers of federal policy-making. By upholding the filibuster, Manchin and Sinema have effectively neutralized the most powerful tool Democrats have to push back: their capacity, through that unified control of the White House and Congress, to pass legislation setting new national standards in all the areas under siege from the Republican axis. And with history suggesting Democrats face a high risk of losing control of one, or both, congressional chambers in November, it may be years before they get another chance to respond.\n\nThe forceful move from the GOP-appointed Supreme Court majority and Republican red state officials to retrench previously guaranteed national rights \"really magnifies the significance of this filibuster fight,\" says Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, a nonpartisan group that advocates for voting rights. That struggle, he continues, represents \"a major question of what the shape of the country is going to look like, because if Congress can't act to protect voting rights, can't act to protect abortion rights, unless there are 60 [Senate] votes as well as a president, then states have an open field to abuse the rights of their people and the extreme conservatives have nothing in their way.\"\n\nBattles over elections\n\nThe conflict around voting rights over roughly the past decade clearly illuminates the interlocking action-reaction dynamics of the new GOP axis.\n\nThough intermittent skirmishes over voting rights had already erupted, the first decisive step in this modern struggle came in 2013. In the Shelby County v. Holder ruling that year, the GOP-appointed majority on the Supreme Court lit the fuse for the current confrontation by overturning the central provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act: the requirement that states and local governments with histories of discrimination against minorities receive \"preclearance\" from the Justice Department before changing their voting laws. The landmark decision was rendered on a party-line and majority-rule basis, with the five justices (at that point) appointed by Republican presidents outvoting the four appointed by Democrats.\n\nThat ruling had the immediate impact of freeing from preclearance the 15 states covered in whole or part under the law (a list that includes Alabama, Georgia, Texas and Arizona in whole and Florida and North Carolina in part). It also encouraged other Republican-controlled states to pursue new restrictions by signaling \"that this is a Supreme Court that doesn't really give a blank about your voting rights,\" as Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Marymount Law School who specializes in election law, recently told me.\n\nIn Shelby's aftermath, red states erected an array of new barriers to voting, including imposing tighter voter-identification requirements, intensifying voter purges and closing hundreds of polling places in urban and minority neighborhoods. These actions enormously escalated after former President Donald Trump's false claims of fraud in the 2020 election: In 2021, 19 Republican-controlled states passed 34 laws making it more difficult to vote, according to a Brennan Center roundup\n\nFor all the Republicans who say we ought to keep the filibuster, should we also do that in the state senates? Well, maybe the Texas voting law should have required a 60% threshold? Maybe the Georgia law should have required a 60% threshold? Lee Drutman, senior fellow, New America\n\nAs I quantified last year with data from the Brennan Center, the most restrictive state laws approved in 2021 have divided state legislatures almost entirely along party lines: Apart from one law in Arkansas that mixed provisions restricting and expanding access, Brennan calculated that just three of 816 state legislative Democrats had voted for any of the major bills approved by last summer, while just 19 of 1,601 state legislative Republicans had voted against any of them. Almost all of these bills faced uniform opposition from every state legislative Democrat.\n\nYet these bills advanced into law anyway on virtually party-line, majority-rule votes because no state legislature has a filibuster rule that requires a supermajority to approve legislation.\n\n\"Not a single state requires a 60% threshold for passing legislation,\" says Lee Drutman, a senior fellow in political reform at the center-left think tank New America. \"For all the Republicans who say we ought to keep the filibuster, should we also do that in the state senates? Well, maybe the Texas voting law should have required a 60% threshold? Maybe the Georgia law should have required a 60% threshold?\"\n\nDemocrats don't have the votes to stop these laws in the red state legislatures. And the Supreme Court has clearly signaled it is unlikely to impose meaningful limits on the red states: Since John Roberts became chief justice in 2005, it has never struck down a state voting-law restriction , and in 2021 the GOP-appointed majority issued another sweeping ruling (in the Brnovich vs. Democratic National Committee case) severely weakening the remaining section of the Voting Rights Act that the Justice Department and civil rights advocates are using to challenge the state laws.\n\nOperating on the same rules as the state legislatures (and effectively as the Supreme Court), Democrats in the House of Representatives last year passed two bills, on a party-line, majority-rule basis, to counter the GOP moves. Those bills, respectively, reversed the court's decisions eviscerating the Voting Rights Act and established a new nationwide floor of voting rights, including access to mail and early voting and same-day voter registration.\n\nBut the refusal of Manchin and Sinema to exempt voting rights from the filibuster means that for the only time in this long sequence of events, Democrats must reach a bipartisan, supermajority of support to pass voter protections through the Senate and into law. The two senators' decision means Congress can respond to the new voting restrictions only on the dim chance that Republicans in the Senate agree to override what Republicans in the states and on the Supreme Court have already done.\n\n\"If Congress is now going to be held hostage by the 60-vote supermajority requirement and be unable, even with a majority, to protect democratic rights in the states, then the national government has disarmed and leaves people unprotected from the abuses of partisans or White backlash in their own states,\" says Waldman.\n\nStates' divergence on rights widening\n\nThe voting rights struggle most clearly demonstrates the leverage of the new Republican axis. But the same pattern is coming into view on abortion. Republican-controlled states, including Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Oklahoma, have passed a torrent of laws in recent years severely tightening or virtually eliminating access to abortion, typically over preponderant opposition from Democratic legislators. Courts have blocked most of those laws from taking effect because they violate the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which established a nationwide right to abortion. In other cases, the laws are \"triggered\" to go into effect only if the high court overturns Roe. That day may be coming: In oral arguments during a challenge to the Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks (as well as the decision not to temporarily block an even more restrictive Texas statute), the GOP-appointed Supreme Court majority has signaled it may overturn or severely weaken Roe in a decision next summer. The odds are near zero that any of the three Democratic-appointed justices would join in such a ruling.\n\nThe House of Representatives has already responded: Again on a majority-rule, near party-line basis, the Democratic majority approved legislation last September codifying a national right to abortion. But because of the filibuster rule that requires a bipartisan supermajority, that legislation is doomed in the Senate.\n\nMultiple Republican-controlled states also are squeezing First Amendment rights by limiting how public school teachers can talk about race . The filibuster likely precludes any federal legislative pushback against those moves, and it's unclear whether this Supreme Court will constrain those state laws (though some civil rights advocates hope that libertarian impulses might lead at least some GOP-appointed justices toward opposition). Likewise, multiple red states have passed laws targeting transgender young people (for instance, by barring them from competing in high school sports). The House, on another majority-rule, near-party line vote, last year passed legislation that would override those laws , but that bill too is blocked by the Senate filibuster.\n\nAgain it's unclear whether this Supreme Court will intervene against the states in the lawsuits brought by LGBTQ rights groups ; to the contrary, some legal analysts believe that if the GOP-appointed court majority overturns Roe, it might eventually use similar logic to reverse the 2015 Obergefell decision establishing the national right to same-sex marriage. (If that happens, it would allow red states to again bar same-sex unions, while the filibuster would almost certainly prevent Congress, as on abortion, from restoring the national right through legislation.)\n\nWhether or not your children can attend integrated schools, whether or not you enjoy full First Amendment rights, your right to vote ... access to your right to choose ... should not depend on whether you are in Texas or New York, whether you are in Georgia or in California. Deborah Archer, president, American Civil Liberties Union\n\nAll of this points toward a widening divergence in the basic rights available in red and blue states. That's an America that looks more like it did before Congress and the Earl Warren-led Supreme Court engineered the \"rights revolution\" of the 1960s and 1970s, which established a broad array of common national rights in area from voting to abortion to discrimination based on race or gender.\n\nRepublican elected officials and conservative thinkers who support these trends argue that permitting states more freedom to diverge on questions such as abortion and voting rights reduces political tensions by allowing policies to reflect local sentiments. And they uniformly insist that the voting laws states are passing will merely buttress election integrity without curtailing citizens' right to vote. Reversing the accusation that the Republican axis is gutting long-standing national rights, many conservatives argue it is Democrats who are seeking to undermine political institutions by eliminating the filibuster or enlarging the Supreme Court, two ideas that have surfaced as possible responses to the GOP axis.\n\n\"There is almost no appetite on the right for changing the fundamental institutions of our democracy,\" conservative policy analyst John C. Goodman, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Independent Institute, wrote earlier this month. \"But there is on the left.\"\n\nBut civil rights advocates almost uniformly consider the new state voting laws harmful to minority participation. And they argue that state leeway should end at the point where it endangers basic civil rights and liberties, like voting or abortion access.\n\n\"These are constitutional rights, and your ability to enjoy those constitutional rights should not depend on what state you live in,\" says Deborah Archer, a New York University law professor who's the president of the American Civil Liberties Union. \"Whether or not your children can attend integrated schools, whether or not you enjoy full First Amendment rights, your right to vote ... access to your right to choose ... should not depend on whether you are in Texas or New York, whether you are in Georgia or in California.\"\n\nWhen it comes to how far the GOP-appointed Supreme Court majority may go in allowing red states to roll back previously shared national rights, she adds, \"I don't think we have seen the line, and I think that's really scary.\"\n\nTo come: Backlash or a new tilt?\n\nCompounding the frustration of Democrats and civil rights advocates is how this axis is rooted in the structural imbalances of our political system that amplify the influence of the smaller, conservative, preponderantly White states least touched by demographic and cultural change . Five of the six Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices were chosen by presidents who had lost the national popular vote in their first races but won Electoral College majorities: George W. Bush and Donald Trump. (Clarence Thomas, appointed by George H.W. Bush, is the only exception).\n\nFour of the six were approved by senators who represent less than half of the US population (if you assign half of each state's population to each senator). Roberts is the only one of the six GOP-appointed justices who received at least 60 Senate votes, the threshold still required under the filibuster to preserve any of the national rights that court majority is targeting. (Senate Democrats did not filibuster Thomas or Roberts and mounted only a half-hearted, easily overcome filibuster against Samuel Alito. The GOP Senate majority eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees in 2017, which prevented Democrats from applying the tool against Trump's three appointees.)\n\nJUST WATCHED MLK shares view on the filibuster in 60-year-old interview clip Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH MLK shares view on the filibuster in 60-year-old interview clip 01:10\n\nBrian Fallon, a former senior Democratic Senate aide who's the executive director of Demand Justice, a group that advocates for enlarging the Supreme Court and reducing the influence of federal courts, says Democrats share the blame for the success of the GOP axis by failing to place sufficient priority on federal judicial appointments or winning state legislative races. But he also argues that Republicans are seeking to roll back rights in areas such as voting and abortion through the combination of federal court and state legislative action because they don't want to trigger highly visible nationwide debates. \"Their best strategy is to strangle the elected branches of the federal government and to work their will through federal judiciary ... and state legislatures, where they have eaten our lunch in the last several years,\" he says.\n\nFallon says he believes a strategy centered on Supreme Court rulings from justices appointed and confirmed by Republicans who did not receive support from public majorities carries the seeds of its own destruction. That approach, he argues, will eventually produce a backlash by undoing rights with broad popular support -- for instance, the right to abortion. \"I do not think that strategy can long endure,\" he says. \"When a critical mass of rulings emanate from that court that is the product of all those counter-majoritarian steps upon each other, I think you end up with front-page news that shocks the public.\"\n\nA backlash is one possibility. But others point to the prospect that this GOP revolution from below could change the political equation enough to shift the national balance of power.\n\nThe GOP-appointed Supreme Court majority and Republican senators wielding the filibuster are, in effect, providing air cover for the ground offensive from Republican legislatures and governors to tighten voting restrictions, impose extreme partisan gerrymanders and enhance partisan influence over the counting of ballots. The combined effect may be not only to entrench GOP control over those state governments but also to reduce Democrats' chances of winning those states in presidential or congressional elections.\n\nIf Republicans can tilt the playing field that way in enough states, they will increase their odds of controlling the White House and Congress, with or without majority support. So long as Manchin and Sinema uphold the filibuster, they are blocking Democrats' best, and maybe only, chance to disrupt the Republicans' tightening red state/Supreme Court/Senate axis -- and to resist the political system's growing bent toward minority rule.", "authors": ["Analysis Ronald Brownstein", "Lee Drutman", "Senior Fellow", "New America", "Deborah Archer", "President", "American Civil Liberties Union"], "publish_date": "2022/01/18"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/05/politics/biden-economy-analysis/index.html", "title": "Biden is close to the point of no return with Americans on the ...", "text": "(CNN) President Joe Biden and his administration appear perilously close to an irreversible severing of public confidence in his capacity to deliver prosperity and financial security as stiff economic challenges balloon into huge political liabilities.\n\nThe main culprit is inflation , a corrosive force that the White House initially underestimated and has failed to tame. It's been decades since Americans have experienced this demoralizing cycle of spiraling costs for basic goods and services. That shock is twinned with punishing gasoline prices that also hammer family budgets and spread pain across the population -- in a way that a regular recession, which can destroy millions of jobs but not hurt everyone -- may not.\n\nThe result is a looming political disaster for Democrats, with voters in a disgruntled mood ahead of midterm elections that were already historically tough for a first-term President.\n\nThe depth of voter disquiet about the economy also suggests that a potential backlash against the Supreme Court possibly overturning the nationwide right to abortion may not save Democrats in November.\n\nThe party seems stuck in a dangerous political position of insisting the economy is doing well while voters think it's in the tank.\n\nThe CNN poll, conducted by SSRS from April 28 to May 1, showed that a majority of Americans think Biden's policies have hurt the economy, while 8 in 10 say the government is not doing enough to combat inflation. It was released on the same day the Federal Reserve made its biggest swing against the rising cost of living in 22 years.\n\nWhite House economic adviser Jared Bernstein admitted on CNN on Thursday that some households are \"experiencing extreme discomfort\" because of inflation, but said some were in a better position because of the strong job market.\n\n\"So I think you have to be more nuanced when you're trying to assess the economy ... we're doing all we can to try to help ease these inflationary pressures,\" Bernstein told Brianna Keilar on \"New Day.\" He pointed to White House efforts to end supply chain blockages, to tackle port congestion, to lower energy prices and the release of millions of barrels of oil from strategic reserves among other measures.\n\nBernstein is right about the external factors pushing inflation. But the problem for the White House is that nuance is the first thing that goes missing in political campaigns and voter anguish offers an easy opening for Republicans.\n\nThe Federal Reserve raised interest rates by half a percentage point, but it triggered a stocks rally by indicating that despite adjustments to come, it did not anticipate further huge spikes in the price of borrowing.\n\n\"I'd like to take this opportunity to speak directly to the American people,\" Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said at the start of a news conference. \"Inflation is much too high, and we understand the hardship it is causing. We are moving expeditiously to bring it back down.\"\n\nYet the strikingly direct moment may not quell concerns that the Fed and the White House have acted too slowly to tackle inflation, are not using sufficiently aggressive methods to ease it and may still be overtaken by global factors, including the war in Ukraine and the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, which clogged supply chains, sent energy prices soaring and triggered other rising prices.\n\nJUST WATCHED Fed raises interest rates as it tries to catch up with inflation Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Fed raises interest rates as it tries to catch up with inflation 02:00\n\nWhat the interest rate hike means\n\nThe rate increase will make new home and car loans and payments on credit card balances more expensive. But in the process, it could cool the housing market, making it easier to buy a home and taking the heat out of rising prices.\n\nJustin Wolfers, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan, explained that Americans could see results from the rate hikes in their daily lives, as inflation simmers at the highest levels since Ronald Reagan's 1980s presidency.\n\n\"What the Fed is hoping to do is cool inflation a little so your paycheck will go a little further, although that will mean slowing the economy and that might mean a little less bargaining power for workers and fewer prospects of a wage rise anytime soon,\" Wolfers said on CNN's \"Newsroom.\"\n\nThe White House is showing clear signs of frustration that inflation is overshadowing the strong aspects of an economy that appears in remarkably robust shape -- despite a small contraction of 1.4% in the first quarter -- given the cataclysm of a two-year pandemic and the worst war in Europe since 1945.\n\nBiden, for example, on Wednesday touted cuts in the federal budget deficit and an unemployment rate that is approaching 50-year lows in a speech that appeared to be an attempt to get ahead of the Fed announcement and to signal resolve.\n\nYet his political plight is underscoring why inflation remains a force that is dreaded by political leaders everywhere.\n\nJUST WATCHED Home buyers aren't using a realtor. Here's what they're doing instead Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Home buyers aren't using a realtor. Here's what they're doing instead 02:42\n\nDespite Republican claims in midterm campaign ads that Biden's public spending policies are the sole cause of inflation, the President is correct to identify outside factors, including the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, as the main drivers of rising prices.\n\nBut the reality doesn't mean voters will give Biden a pass. It's the nature of the job that when the country is in a grim mood, the President gets the blame. And when the White House's efforts to explain the problems and fix them have sometimes been muddled and too late, the political damage mounts. Biden may never shake off the initial White House line that high inflation was a \"transitory\" phase coming out of the pandemic. And while the economy is strong in many areas, voters' perception is often more important politically than the data that tells the real story.\n\nA daunting poll for the White House\n\nThe CNN poll, for example, says that only 23% of Americans rate economic conditions as even somewhat good, down from 37% in December. The last time public perception of the economy was this poor in CNN's polling was November 2011. Only 34% approve of Biden's management of the economy. And his approval rating on helping the middle class -- 36% -- is devastating for a President who has made that issue the foundation of his political career.\n\nThe question of public perception versus the true state of the economy is also borne out in the poll. Americans said by nearly 4 to 1 that they were more likely to hear bad news than good news about the economy.\n\nSome 94% of Republicans rate economic conditions as poor. This suggests that views of the economy may be shaped by partisan leanings as much as a neutral judgment of conditions. Conservative news channels keep a constant drumbeat of horror stories about rising prices, and Republicans have made the issue an effective campaign tool while hyping the strength of ex-President Donald Trump's economic performance.\n\nYet 81% of independents and 54% of Democrats also think the economy is poor, suggesting that Biden has taken a hit among some of the voters who put him in office.\n\nAmericans are more positive about their own finances than about the national economic situation, with 53% saying they're satisfied with their personal financial situations. That could again indicate that a wider sense of malaise is coloring views of the economy. Still, that figure is down from 66% in 2016.\n\nGiven this catalog of gloom, Biden's tone and topic on Wednesday were a little surprising.\n\nHe claimed credit for a $1.5 trillion cut in the federal deficit by the end of the year. This compares with the profligacy of the debt-laden Trump years and exposes the hypocrisy of Republican deficit hawks who forget their supposed principles when one of their own is in the Oval Office.\n\nYet how many Americans stretching their weekly budgets care that much about deficits -- even if, as Biden said, lowering them could bring down inflation in the long term?\n\nThe White House event also exposed the President's frustration that he's not getting credit for what's good about the economy.\n\nWhen a reporter asked him about Ukraine and the Supreme Court's abortion drama, he replied: \"No one asked about deficits, huh? ... You want to make sure this doesn't get covered.\"\n\nWhat happens next\n\nJUST WATCHED Here's why stocks could rebound after a volatile month Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Here's why stocks could rebound after a volatile month 02:00\n\nThe best hope for Biden, other Democratic politicians and all Americans facing an economic crunch is that the Fed's approach works and prices fall. And some perspective here: The economy isn't facing the full-blown disaster of 2008 or even the inflationary nightmares of 40 years ago.\n\n\"I don't think we have the economy of the 1980s or the 1970s,\" Betsey Stevenson, who was a member of President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, said on \"The Lead with Jake Tapper\" on Wednesday.\n\nBut it's hard to see how things get better quickly -- or anywhere near in time to make a difference to Biden before the midterms.\n\nEven if the war in Ukraine ends soon, the fundamental shifts it has unleashed in the global economy will play out for years. More pressure on food prices is certain if the harvest in Europe's breadbasket -- a major source of grain and sunflower oil -- is disrupted by the war. New Covid-19 lockdowns in China could revive supply chain chaos that helped push up inflation in the first place. Some observers think the Fed has moved too slowly. Others think that its assault on inflation will cause a recession.\n\nJPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon , appearing on Bloomberg TV on Wednesday before the Fed's announcement, said that although the economy is strong and consumers are in good shape, vulnerabilities are everywhere. He sees, for instance, a 1 in 3 chance of a \"mild recession\" that spans six to nine months but warned there's \"a chance it's going to be much harder than that.\"\n\nSo for the country, and for Biden especially, there's more frustration to come.", "authors": ["Analysis Stephen Collinson"], "publish_date": "2022/05/05"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/05/trump-impeachment-trial-senate-poised-vote-acquittal/4655192002/", "title": "Trump acquitted in Senate impeachment trial over Ukraine charges", "text": "WASHINGTON - The Senate acquitted President Donald Trump for his dealings with Ukraine on Wednesday, culminating months of bitter partisan clashes over accusations he tried to cheat in the 2020 election by pressuring the U.S. ally to investigate political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.\n\nThe Republican-led Senate voted to acquit Trump on two articles of impeachment - abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, was the only senator to cross party lines by voting to convict for abuse of power.\n\nHere is how the day and events played out. Refresh for updates.\n\nProtest gathers outside Capitol following acquittal vote\n\nA group of about 200 protestors, organized by progressive groups like Common Cause, Indivisible, Greenpeace, and the Women's March, gathered outside the Capitol following the Senate’s votes to acquit Trump.\n\nProtestors shouted “Moscow Mitch,” “shame,” and “November is too late” as they rallied against Trump. Kim Shyman, a 59-year-old candy company owner from Maryland, said she joined in the protest because she “could not sit at home with this going on.”\n\nThe trial was a “sham,” she said and the acquittal was “awful.” Sara Anzalone from New York, 21, told USA TODAY she met the group at the Women’s March.\n\n“I think that, you know, getting a foreign power to interfere with our country is just completely against the constitution and completely out of his power,” Anzalone said. “And I really think that he should be held responsible and it really kind of makes me pissed off that he could have been held accountable today. So, I'm coming out here to show my support for other people who are agreeing with me and agree that he should have removed from office today.”\n\nRep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., addressed the crowd to cheers, and shouts of “fascist” when she said Trump’s name.\n\nTrump has been “committing crimes and cover-ups in broad daylight,” she said. “I will focus my ire on Senate Republicans. Shame on you, Mitch McConnell. We will not forget this betrayal.\"\n\nA man pulled a “roaming anti-Trump bandwagon” around the perimeter of the protest, giving out anti-Trump paraphernalia.\n\n-Nicholas Wu and Savannah Behrmann, USA TODAY\n\nPelosi highlights bipartisan trial vote against Trump\n\nHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., issued a statement saying the Senate vote to acquit Trump “normalized lawlessness and rejected the system of checks and balances in our Constitution.”\n\nTrump and Senate Republicans who acquitted the president had criticized the two articles of impeachment for being supported by only Democrats in the House. GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah joined Senate Democrats in voting to convict Trump of abuse of power, but they fell short of the two-thirds majority required to remove Trump or even a majority. But Pelosi noted that Trump got the first bipartisan trial vote in history.\n\n“The president will boast that he has been acquitted,” Pelosi said. “There can be no acquittal without a trial, and there is no trial without witnesses, documents and evidence. By suppressing the evidence and rejecting the most basic elements of a fair judicial process, the Republican Senate made themselves willing accomplices to the president’s cover-up.”\n\n- Bart Jansen\n\nSchumer calls Trump, GOP trial victory temporary\n\nSenate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said history would view Trump’s acquittal as a temporary win, while Republicans will face questions as additional evidence dribbles out.\n\n“History will view this as a Pyrrhic victory for Senate Republicans and the Republican Party and for President Trump,” Schumer said. “They’re afraid to hear the other side. They’re afraid to hear the truth. They’re afraid to talk about what was right.”\n\nSchumer complained against that the Senate voted largely along party lines to reject his proposals to subpoena witnesses and documents for additional evidence in the trial.\n\n“I believe the American people will realize this is one of the largest coverups in the history of our nation,” Schumer said. “I believe the American people will know who stood in the way of truth.”\n\nSchumer said the bipartisan vote for conviction, with GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah joining Democrats in voting unsuccessfully to convict Trump for abuse of power, would go down in history.\n\n“No one had illusions that the president would be convicted,” Schumer said. “But we made the fight for truth and we made the fight for facts and it created a bipartisan impeachment that can never be erased from history.”\n\n- Bart Jansen\n\nMcConnell said impeachment is net win for GOP\n\nSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell focused his political commentary after the Senate acquittal on surmising that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been dragged into the impeachment inquiry against her better political judgment and then tried to get it over with as quickly as possible.\n\n“I think this was a thoroughly political exercise from the beginning to the end,” said McConnell, R-Ky.\n\nMcConnell said he had observed Pelosi, D-Calif., carefully over the years because their leadership terms overlapped and they worked on appropriations bills together earlier in their careers.\n\n“I’m pretty sure she didn’t want to do this,” McConnell said. “But the fact that she was pulled into this direction against what appeared to be her political instincts a year ago underscores that this was a purely political exercise.”\n\nPelosi resisted declaring an impeachment inquiry after special counsel Robert Mueller announced the results of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. But after revelations about Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, she declared a formal inquiry Sept. 24 that produced articles of impeachment before the end of the year.\n\n“Having been dragged into something she instinctively felt was a mistake, then the second impulse was to get it over with as quickly as possible,” McConnell said of what he called an “abbreviated, truncated, rush job over in the House.”\n\nMcConnell then guessed that House Democrats would make the case a fight over witnesses in the Senate. But his staff counted 60 times when House managers had declared during the trial that they had already proved their case.\n\n“I’m proud of my colleagues for seeing through that,” McConnell said of the nearly party-line votes to reject additional witnesses in the trial.\n\nHe also said it was right to avoid having Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts resolve a tie over witnesses, if a vote had come to that.\n\n“It’s pretty clear that would have dragged the Supreme Court into the maelstrom,” McConnell said.\n\nHe concluded that impeachment was a political loser for Democrats because Trump enjoyed the highest approval ratings of his presidency.\n\n“Right now this is a political loser for them,” McConnell said. “At least for the short term it has been a colossal political mistake.”\n\n- Bart Jansen\n\nPresident Trump acquitted on both impeachment charges\n\nWASHINGTON - The Senate acquitted President Donald Trump for his dealings with Ukraine on Wednesday, culminating months of bitter partisan clashes over accusations he tried to cheat in the 2020 election by pressuring the U.S. ally to investigate political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.\n\nThe Republican-led Senate voted to acquit Trump on two articles of impeachment - abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, was the only senator to cross party lines by voting to convict for abuse of power. Conviction was always unlikely in the GOP-led Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority because it required the support of at least two-thirds of the Senate or 67 senators.\n\nTrump was just the third president to face a Senate impeachment trial in U.S. history. Former Presidents Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton 1999 were both acquitted.\n\nMore:What we learned (and still don't know) after the Trump impeachment saga\n\nThe thrust of the accusations from House Democrats was that Trump invited foreign influence in the 2020 election by pressuring Ukraine to gather dirt on Biden, and then stonewalled the investigation after getting caught. The lead House manager who prosecuted the case, Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said the misconduct was part of a pattern, which included invitations to Russia and China to investigate his rivals, that would continue if left unchecked.\n\n“You can’t trust this president to do the right thing, not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of the country,” Schiff said. “A man without character or ethical compass will not find his way.”\n\nMore:Sen. Mitt Romney will vote to convict President Trump on abuse of power charge\n\nBut Trump’s defense lawyers and congressional Republicans argued the president’s conduct didn’t warrant removal from office and amounted to a policy dispute. Trump’s defiance of subpoenas during the investigation was to protect the executive privilege, to keep advice from top aides confidential, according to his defenders.\n\n“The president has done nothing wrong, and these types of impeachments must end,” said White House counsel Pat Cipollone.\n\nThe main allegation was that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, while withholding $391 million in military aid and a White House meeting.\n\nHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced the inquiry Sept. 24, after revelations about Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. During the call, Trump urged his counterpart to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter, who worked at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings. Trump has claimed Biden strong-armed the Ukrainian government to fire its top prosecutor in order to thwart an investigation into Burisma.\n\n\"Pelosi disgraced herself':GOP outraged by Pelosi ripping up Trump State of the Union speech\n\nHouse Democrats impeached Trump on Dec. 18 after taking depositions from 17 current and former federal officials and gathering more than 28,000 pages of evidence. Senators asked 180 questions during the trial.\n\nThrough testimony and depositions, Democrats pieced together what they have argued is a chronology of Trump’s effort to pressure Ukraine’s government into announcing investigations into the Bidens.\n\nGordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, testified that he assured Ukraine officials at the White House July 10 that a meeting would be arranged between Trump and Zelensky in exchange for investigations.\n\n“Mr. Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky,” Sondland said.\n\nA staffer from the White House Office of Management and Budget announced the suspension of the aid to Ukraine during a July 18 National Security Council conference call. “I and others sat in astonishment,” testified Bill Taylor, the former top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine. “I also said I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Taylor later told other diplomats.\n\nA whistleblower filed a complaint Aug. 12 with the inspector general for the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, about Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky. Atkinson said the complaint “appeared credible.”\n\nHouse committees announced an investigation on Sept. 9. And Trump released the aid Sept. 11.\n\n“President Trump tried to cheat, he got caught, and then he worked hard to cover it up,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., one of the House managers.\n\nBut Trump’s defenders argued the president had the sole authority to conduct foreign affairs and that the request stemmed from longstanding concerns about corruption in Ukraine. Trump repeatedly called the investigation a partisan “witch hunt” and a “hoax.”\n\nAlan Dershowitz, who represented Trump, cited arguments from scholars from the period 150 years ago – around Johnson’s impeachment – that the “high crimes and misdemeanors” of impeachment should be based on criminal statutes such as treason and bribery described in the Constitution.\n\n“It is inconceivable that the framers would have intended so politically loaded and promiscuously deployed a term as abuse of power to be weaponized as a tool of impeachment,” Dershowitz said.\n\nTrump’s defense focused on the House procedures and called the inquiry illegitimate because it began with Pelosi’s announcement rather than the House vote authorizing it on Oct. 31. Patrick Philbin, a deputy White House counsel, called the impeachment “defective” and “half-baked” because 23 subpoenas were issued before the House vote and because the Democrats decided not to fight in court for testimony from witnesses such as former national security adviser John Bolton.\n\n-Bart Jansen\n\nMitt Romney will vote to convict Trump on the first article of impeachment\n\nWASHINGTON – Republican Sen. Mitt Romney said he’ll vote to convict President Donald Trump on the first article of impeachment – abuse of power – in the Senate trial.\n\nRomney's office said he will not vote to convict on the second article of impeachment - obstruction of Congress.\n\n“The president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust,” he said. “A president can indeed commit acts against the public trust that are so egregious that while they are not statutory crimes they would demand removal from office.\"\n\nRomney’s decision makes him the first and perhaps only Republican to announce he would vote to convict the president.\n\nThe 2012 Republican nominee for president choked up at times as he discussed his decision- making process. Calling it the “most difficult decision” he ever faced, Romney said the question before senators was whether Trump’s actions rose to the level of a “high crime and misdemeanor.”\n\n“Yes, he did,” Romney said.\n\nMitt Romney:a solitary GOP voice battling Trump for the soul of the Republican Party\n\nTrump’s alleged actions - pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political rival - amounted to “a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security interests, and our fundamental values,” Romney said.\n\n“Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine,” he argued.\n\nRomney acknowledged he would face a backlash from within his party, and “abuse” from Trump and his supporters, but he had an “inescapable conviction” that his oath demanded he adhere to the facts of the case.\n\n“We’re all footnotes at best in the annals of history. But in the most powerful nation on earth, the nation conceived in liberty and justice, that is distinction enough for any citizen,” he concluded.\n\n- Nicholas Wu\n\nSen. Gardner, a swing-state Republican, will vote to acquit\n\nSen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., who faces a tough re-election race this year, announced on the Senate floor he would vote to acquit President Donald Trump on both articles of impeachment.\n\n“What we did not see over the last two weeks was a conclusive reason to remove the President of the United States,” he said.\n\nGardner said removal would “nullify the 2016 election” and “rob half the country of their preferred candidate for the 2020 election.”\n\nThe House had not proved its case, he said, so “it’s time to move forward with the people’s business” beyond impeachment.\n\n- Nicholas Wu\n\nSen. Feinstein says nearly 90,000 constituents contacted her office\n\nSen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said calls, emails and letters were pouring into her office supporting the conviction of President Donald Trump at a rate “seldom seen” in her 27 years in the chamber.\n\n“Nearly 90,000 constituents have contacted my office in support of impeachment, compared to 20,000 in opposition,” said Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “I’m heartened to see an engaged American public at such a difficult time for our country. It’s clear to me where Californians stand on this issue and I thank everyone who took the time to contact my office with their views.”\n\n- Bart Jansen\n\nSen. Jones announces he'll vote to convict Trump\n\nFollowing a speech on the Senate floor announcing his decision to convict President Donald Trump on two articles of impeachment, Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., told reporters his reelection was not a major concern for him.\n\n“No, did y'all hear that speech? Did anybody hear that speech? It has never crossed my mind,” he said when asked if he was concerned about reelection.\n\nAsked about Republican challenger Jeff Sessions’ attacks on him, Jones smiled, shrugged, and said, “So?\" Sessions served as Trump's attorney general.\n\nJones said his decision had been made consulting with his staff, who “put in a lot of time and a lot of hours,” rather than with his Democratic colleagues.\n\nThe Alabama Democrat said he made up his mind “just a couple of days ago\" adding that, \"I did what I thought was the right thing.”\n\nThe Senate Leadership Fund, a political campaign committee aimed at electing Republicans to the Senate, predicted that Jones would be voted out of office for his position on impeachment.\n\n\"The Senate Leadership Fund would like to be the first to congratulate Doug Jones on his impending retirement from politics,” said Jack Pandol, communications director for the fund. “From voting against Justice Kavanaugh, to opposing the border wall, to repeatedly supporting abortion, Jones hasn't made an effort to hide his far-left stripes.”\n\n- Nicholas Wu\n\nSen. Jones announces he'll vote to convict Trump\n\nSen. Doug Jones, an Alabama Democrat who has previously not said how he'd vote in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, announced Wednesday he would vote to convict the president because his misconduct reflected an abuse of power rather than simply being inappropriate.\n\n“In this case, the evidence clearly proves the president used the weight of his office and that of the United States government to seek to coerce a foreign government to interfere in our election for his personal political benefit,” Jones said a statement. “With impeachment as the only check on such presidential wrongdoing, I felt I must vote to convict on the first charge of abuse of power.”\n\nJones said he was sensitive to protecting presidential powers, giving him pause about the charge of obstruction of Congress. But he said it was critical for Congress to retain its powers, too.\n\n“In this matter it was clear from the outset that the President had no intention whatsoever of any accommodation with Congress when he blocked both witnesses and documents from being produced,” Jones said.\n\nThe vote comes as Jones faces a challenging campaign this year in a conservative state. Jones beat Republican Roy Moore with 50% of the vote in a special election in 2017 to succeed Jeff Sessions, who became Trump’s first attorney general. Jones could face Moore or Sessions this year.\n\nJones said in December that he hadn’t watched all of the testimony and debate in the House inquiry, saying he was still “trying to see if the dots get connected.”\n\nJones said he tried to cut through the partisan fog by reading thousands of pages of transcripts, watching videos of testimony, taking copious notes, reviewing history and discussing precedents with colleagues.\n\n“Senators are elected to make tough choices,” Jones said. “The gravity of this moment, the seriousness of the charges, and the implications for future presidencies and Congresses all contributed to the difficulty with which I have arrived at my decision.”\n\n- Bart Jansen\n\nSen. Kamala Harris: Senate trial is 'miscarriage of justice'\n\nSen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said the Senate impeachment trial has been a \"miscarriage of justice,\" claiming President Donald Trump is getting away with abusing his power.\n\n“The Senate trial of Donald Trump has been a miscarriage of justice,” said Harris, a former prosecutor. “Donald Trump is going to get away with abusing his position of power for personal gain, abusing his position of power to stop Congress from looking into his misconduct.”\n\n“He’s going to escape accountability because a majority of senators have decided to let him,” Harris said.\n\n- Bart Jansen\n\nHawley: impeachment is a 'circus.' Alexander calls it 'shallow'\n\nSen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., gave a fiery speech blasting House Democrats for initiating an unauthorized inquiry that resulted in the first partisan impeachment in history.\n\n“Animating it all has been the bitter resentment of a professional political class that cannot accept the verdict of the people in 2016, that cannot accept the people’s priorities and that now seeks to overturn the election and entrench themselves in power,” Hawley said during a speech on the Senate floor. “We must leave this impeachment circus behind us.”\n\nSenators will vote today on whether to acquit or convict President Donald Trump of two articles of impeachment – abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.\n\nSen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., called Trump’s conduct pressuring Ukraine to investigate his rival “inappropriate,” but said the decision about whether to remove him from office should be left to the voters.\n\n“If this shallow, hurried and wholly partisan impeachment were to succeed, it would rip the country apart, pouring gasoline on the fire of cultural divisions that already exist,” Alexander said. “It would create a weapon of permanent impeachment to be used against future presidents whenever the House of Representatives is of a different political party.”\n\n- Bart Jansen\n\nTrump to meet with Venezuela's opposition leader before vote\n\nAs senators await to vote on the impeachment verdict, President Donald Trump will engage in some foreign policy Wednesday by meeting with the opposition leader in Venezuela.\n\nThe session with Juan Guaido is an opportunity for Trump \"to reaffirm the commitment of the United States to the people of Venezuela and to discuss how we can work with President Guaido to expedite a democratic transition in Venezuela,\" said White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.\n\nGuaido declared himself interim president in 2019 after President Nicholas Maduro was sworn into office for a second term. Maduro’s re-election was marred by accusations of fraud and election rigging.\n\nTrump also welcomed Guaido to Tuesday's State of the Union speech, hailing him as Venezuela's rightful leader denied power by the socialist government in Caracas.\n\nGuaido is scheduled to arrive at the White House at 2 p.m. EST, two hours before the Senate impeachment vote.\n\nTrump, who expects to be acquitted by the Senate, is planning to address impeachment later in the day – after the vote.\n\n- David Jackson and Deirdre Shesgreen\n\nSen. Cornyn: impeachment is 'nuclear option'\n\nSen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said when it comes resolving policy disputes between Congress and the White House, impeachment is the “nuclear option.\"\n\nCornyn said he would vote to acquit Trump because House Democrats failed to provide enough evidence of a high crime or misdemeanor.\n\n“Impeaching the president of the United States is simply the gravest undertaking we can pursue in this country,” Cornyn said. “It is a choice of last resort when a president has committed a crime so serious that Congress must act rather than leave the choice to the voters in the election.”\n\nCornyn argued said House Democrats failed to prove evidence of a crime and also argued the accusation of obstruction of Congress, stemming from Trump's defiance of subpoenas, would make future presidents subservient to the legislative branch if enforced.\n\n“They channeled personal, policy and political grievances, and attempted to use the most solemn responsibility of Congress to bring down a political rival in a partisan process,” Cornyn said of House Democrats.\n\n- Bart Jansen\n\nMerkley urges GOP to remove Trump from office\n\nSen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., was the first of dozens of senators expected to speak in the chamber Wednesday before voting on the verdict in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.\n\nMerkley made no secret of where he stood in supporting conviction of Trump. He recited how the president directed his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to work with U.S. government officials to withhold an Oval Office meeting and $391 million in military aid for Ukraine unless that country investigated former Vice President Joe Biden.\n\n“When our president invites and pressures a foreign government to smear a political opponent and corrupt the integrity of our 2020 presidential election, he must be removed from office,” Merkley said.\n\nTrump is expected to be acquitted because removal would require a two-thirds majority in a chamber with 53 Republicans and 47 members of the Democratic caucus. Merkley directed his comments to Republicans, some of whom have acknowledged inappropriate behavior by Trump but said it didn’t warrant removal from office.\n\n- Bart Jansen\n\nSenate poised to acquit Trump, end trial\n\nIt's decision day for the Senate – and a pivotal day for President Donald Trump.\n\nThe Senate impeachment trial will end Wednesday when senators, who have served as jurors through weeks of arguments and debate, vote on whether to acquit Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, or to convict him and remove him from office.\n\nThe historic vote at 4 p.m. EST culminates months of investigations and debate over Trump's alleged efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden by withholding $391 million in security aid. For senators, the vote will be one of the most-remembered of their careers and will surely play a role in 2020 congressional campaigns.\n\nOn Monday and Tuesday, senators spent hours explaining their positions in 10-minute speeches on the Senate floor and Trump gave his annual State of the Union address . The speeches will continue Wednesday.\n\n‘He shouldn’t have done it':GOP senator who scolded Trump on Ukraine explains why he backs acquittal\n\nBut the result of the final vote has been anticipated for months, even before the House voted Dec. 18 to impeach Trump on two articles of impeachment: abuse of power for the alleged Ukraine pressure campaign and obstruction of Congress for directing his administration to defy subpoenas for witnesses and documents. That's because a two-thirds majority of the Senate is required to convict and remove a president from office, which is unlikely in a chamber with 53 Republicans and 47 members of the Democratic caucus.\n\nThe trial has hinged on whether the seven impeachment managers, all Democratic House members prosecuting the case, could make a convincing enough case against Trump to persuade enough Senate Republicans to vote with Democrats on the president's conviction.\n\nThe managers argued that Trump tried to cheat in the 2020 election and then tried to cover it up.\n\n“You can’t trust this president to do the right thing, not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country,\" said the lead manager, Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif. “A man without character or ethical compass will not find his way.”\n\nRep. Jason Crow:Democrat reads from his children's Constitutions during the Trump impeachment trial\n\nBut Trump's defense team argued that Democrats' accusations were unproven and that impeachment would threaten future presidents with removal over policy disputes if he were convicted. The defense lawyers argued that neither of the two articles alleged violations of criminal statutes, as was customary in previous impeachments. And they argued that if the obstruction charge were upheld, confidential advice to future presidents would be at risk.\n\n“We have an impeachment that is purely partisan and political. It’s opposed by bipartisan members of the House,\" said White House counsel Pat Cipollone. “It is wrong. There is only one answer to that, and the answer is to reject those articles of impeachment, to have confidence in the American people, to have confidence in the result of the upcoming election, to have confidence and respect for the last election and not throw it out.\"\n\nThe vote will end only the third Senate trial of a president, after the acquittals of Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1999. Pelosi announced the inquiry Sept. 24. The House voted to authorize it Oct. 31. No House Republicans joined Democrats to impeach Trump in December.\n\nThe House provided the Senate with 28,578 pages of evidence in the trial, including 17 depositions of current and former government officials. Senators asked 180 questions of House managers and Trump's defense team.\n\nNancy Pelosi:It was 'sad' for Mitch McConnell to 'humiliate' Chief Justice John Roberts with witness vote\n\nBut congressional Democrats wanted to hear from more witnesses, most notably former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton after excerpts from his forthcoming book surfaced during the trial and appeared to counter the president's defense. The debate over whether to hear witnesses became a heated issue and was a crucial test of whether Democrats could bring Republicans to their side.\n\nA Democratic push to subpoena additional witnesses or documents failed Friday. Only two Republicans – Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah – joined Democrats in an unsuccessful effort to call Bolton. Broader proposals to subpoena more witnesses and documents were rejected in party-line votes.\n\nSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the impeachment was a partisan effort by Democrats and must be rejected.\n\n‘He shouldn’t have done it':GOP senator who scolded Trump on Ukraine explains why he backs acquittal\n\n“We must vote to reject the House abuse of power,” McConnell said Tuesday on the Senate floor. “Vote to protect our institutions. Vote to reject new precedents that would reduce the framers’ design to rubble. Vote to keep factional fever from boiling over and scorching our republic. Vote to acquit the president of these charges.”\n\nSen. John Thune, R-S.D., said the House managers failed to meet the “high bar” set by the nation’s founders to remove a president from office.\n\n“Removing the president from office – and from the ballots for the upcoming election – would almost certainly plunge the country into even greater political turmoil,” he said.\n\nA handful of Republicans said Trump's conduct was inappropriate but said it wasn't worthy of removing him from office.\n\nSen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said that it was inappropriate for Trump to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent but that \"the Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate.\"\n\n\"The president’s behavior was shameful and wrong,\" said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, but the foundation of the House case \"was rotten.\"\n\n'We’ll find the right time':Pompeo demurs on White House visit for Ukraine's Zelensky\n\nDemocrats argued that Trump should be removed or his misconduct would continue. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said House managers made a compelling case, and Republican opposition to gathering more evidence \"fails the laugh test.\"\n\n“The Republicans refused to get the evidence because they were afraid of what it would show, and that’s all that needs to be said,\" Schumer said.\n\nSen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said failure to convict Trump would send a terrible signal \"that this president and any future president can commit crimes against the Constitution and the American people and get away with it.\"\n\nSen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., whose state Trump won narrowly in 2016, said the White House engaged in a “systematic and unprecedented effort to cover up the scheme” in Ukraine.\n\n\"A vote against the articles of impeachment will set a dangerous precedent, and will be used by future presidents to act with impunity,” he argued.\n\nTensions high at State of the Union\n\nThe vote will come just a day after the president gave his State of the Union address, an event that put on display the country's divisions and between the president and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who led her caucus to impeach him.\n\nThe president refused to shake her hand after she introduced him. Pelosi ripped up his speech after he concluded his remarks. The two slights left many stunned and wondering whether the tensions between political parties would ever mend.\n\n\"I'm not sure I've ever seen the Speaker do something so disrespectful,\" Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said after watching Pelosi rip up the address just inches behind Trump's head.\n\nState of the Union:Fact-checking Trump's claims on jobs, wealth and wages\n\nMany Democrats said Pelosi's actions stemmed from frustration but others noted that the American public is counting on Congress to move forward and try to come together.\n\n\"Our Congress is a representative body and we represent a very divided country,\" said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., noting some of the topics touted by Trump were divisive. \"I think it's our job to try and bridge the divides even when they're very sharp and very difficult.\"\n\nRep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said he hadn't seen Pelosi ripping apart Trump's speech but caught Trump withholding a handshake with the speaker.\n\nSusan Page:From a snub to a ripped speech to campaign messaging, this was not your typical address\n\n\"The speaker extended the invitation to President Trump to deliver the speech on behalf of the House of Representatives. She was gracious enough to extend her hand,\" he said. \"Notwithstanding the nasty personal comments that he's continuously directed at her. And he behaved like a petulant child.\"\n\nThe speech, in the House chamber where Trump was impeached just weeks ago, did not mention impeachment or the president's almost certain-acquittal Wednesday in the Republican-dominated Senate.\n\nWhat happened Tuesday:Sen. Susan Collins said she'll vote to acquit Trump", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2020/02/05"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/azdc/2014/08/03/goldwater-rhodes-nixon-resignation/13497493/", "title": "In 1974, Goldwater and Rhodes told Nixon he was doomed", "text": "Dan Nowicki\n\nThe Republic | azcentral.com\n\nSaturday is the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's resignation.\n\nThursday, however, marks the anniversary of a related incident that has since become legendary in Arizona political lore. On Aug. 7, 1974, U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., U.S. House Minority Leader John Rhodes, R-Ariz., and U.S. Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, R-Pa., made it clear to the embattled Nixon that he faced all-but-certain impeachment, conviction and removal from office in connection with the Watergate scandal.\n\nNixon announced his resignation the next evening, effective at noon on Aug 9, 1974.\n\nOver the years, Goldwater, Rhodes and Scott have been lionized for their often exaggerated role in precipitating Nixon's exit.\n\nIn his 2006 book \"Conservatives Without Conscience,\" former Watergate figure John W. Dean wrote that the Capitol Hill trio \"traveled to the White House to tell Nixon it was time to resign.\" A Los Angeles Times headline over Rhodes' 2003 obituary recalled that the longtime representative from Mesa \"helped persuade Nixon to resign.\" A 2007 Politico column recalled the episode as \"When the GOP Torpedoed Nixon.\"\n\nActually, Goldwater, Rhodes and Scott did not try to persuade or urge Nixon to resign in their meeting in his \"working office\" in the Old Executive Office Building. They just confirmed to the doomed president the extent to which his support on the Hill had evaporated.\n\n\"My dad kind of bristled at the idea that he and Goldwater talked Nixon into doing what he did,\" son Tom Rhodes told The Arizona Republic. \"I don't think any one of the three of them took any pride in that moment.\"\n\nContemporary news reports and later retellings of the meeting by Goldwater and Rhodes indicate that they didn't lobby Nixon to quit, although both were disillusioned by the Watergate scandal and cover-up.\n\nGoldwater, who had been the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, told Arizona reporters in a conference call shortly after the meeting that resignation \"never came up\" during the conversation.\n\n\"I don't think it would be proper for me to say what I think,\" Goldwater said, according to an account of his media call in the Aug. 8, 1974, edition of the Tucson Daily Citizen. \"And, anyway, I'm not sure the president would pay much attention.\"\n\nIn his 1988 autobiography, Goldwater wrote that after hearing their grim assessment, Nixon \"knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished.\"\n\n\"None of us doubted the outcome. He would resign,\" Goldwater wrote.\n\nRhodes, who served in the U.S. House from 1953 to 1983, also recounted the meeting in his 1995 memoir \"I Was There,\" but noted, \"I got the very strong impression that he had already decided to resign when he talked to us.\"\n\nJack August, Jr., an Arizona political historian and author, agreed that Nixon probably \"had already seen the writing on the wall,\" but said that doesn't diminish the fact that Goldwater and Rhodes were important players at a time of national crisis, even if they were just messengers.\n\n\"This is part of Arizona's historical brand at the national level,\" August said. \"These two guys played a significant role during a critical period of transition.\"\n\nIn other developments:\n\n* U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., is dismissing suggestions that the GOP-controlled House is angling to impeach President Barack Obama. National Democrats have been using the prospect to raise money.\n\n\"It's a non-starter,\" Gosar, a conservative Obama critic, said Friday. \"Even if you could get it out of the House, you're never going to have it work in the (Democrat-controlled) Senate. A wise man said that if you beat your head against the wall, and it hurts, stop beating it. Find a different remedy.\"\n\n* U.S. Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz., has reserved $818,000 in campaign advertising time in Tucson's local and cable TV market for Sept. 2 through Nov. 4. Barber's re-election race in the state's 2nd Congressional District is viewed as one of the toughest in the country. He will face the winner of the Aug. 26 Republican primary: either Shelley Kais, Martha McSally or Chuck Wooten.\n\nNowicki is The Republic's national political reporter. Follow him on Twitter at @dannowicki.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2014/08/03"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/11/politics/joe-biden-donald-trump-inflation-2022-midterms/index.html", "title": "Analysis: A grim portrait of Biden's unhappy America - CNNPolitics", "text": "U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, center, before a State of the Union address by U.S. President Joe Biden at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Biden's first State of the Union address comes against the backdrop of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions placed on Russia by the U.S. and its allies.\n\nWASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 06: Pro-Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol following a rally with President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Trump supporters gathered in the nation's capital today to protest the ratification of President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College victory over President Trump in the 2020 election. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)\n\nWASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 20: House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) talks with reporters during a news conference with House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) (L) following a House Republican caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center on October 20, 2021 in Washington, DC. The GOP members of Congress were critical of the entire Democratic slate of legislation and accused them of being unwilling to compromise. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)\n\nFormer President Donald Trump speaks on May 28, 2022 in Casper, Wyoming. The rally is being held to support Harriet Hageman, Rep. Liz Cheneys primary challenger in Wyoming.\n\nAttorney General William Barr participates in a press conference at the Department of Justice along with DOJ officials on February 10, 2020 in Washington, DC.\n\nCNN —\n\nPresident Joe Biden often says America’s best days are ahead. It just doesn’t feel that way right now.\n\nA nation exhausted by a two-year pandemic, struggling against rising food and gas prices, driven to distraction by school closures and torn apart by a political schism that erupted into violence is far from at ease with itself.\n\nThe sense of turmoil was captured in a new CNN/SSRS poll released Thursday that showed waning faith in US elections and found that most of the nearly 60% of Americans who disapprove of how Biden is handling his presidency were unable to name one single thing they like that he has done. “He’s not Donald Trump. That’s pretty much it,” one despondent respondent said. Another answered: “I really like his new cat, Willow Biden.”\n\nAlso on Thursday there was news that a key measure of inflation had climbed to a near-40-year high last month. Rising prices have a kind of strange magic that not only spooks voters, but also seeds the kind of political derangement in which extremists like former President Donald Trump can prosper. His assault on facts – aided by pliant right-wing media – has his fans yearning for his authoritarian return to power 13 months after he incited the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol. The country no longer has a common understanding of the truth, with 37% of Americans saying Biden did not legitimately win enough votes to be president, according to CNN’s new poll.\n\nThis foul national mood is primarily a disaster in the making for Democrats in November’s midterm elections, but it’s been a long time coming.\n\nThe first two decades of this century have delivered morale-busting military defeats, a generational economic crisis and an age of political turmoil, including sweeping social and demographic change and an equally intense backlash.\n\nRising violent crime rates are making a nation awash in guns feel less safe.\n\nTalk of a new civil war in some media outlets is overblown. But divided blocs of conservatives and liberals genuinely seem to believe that the other is determined to rip away their vision of America. A powerful force on the right is the idea that a country that is becoming more racially diverse (partly through immigration), more socially liberal on gender issues and more secular, is being stripped of its quintessential, White identity. Up-and-coming Republicans have seized on public health guidelines and masks, meanwhile, to conjure a wave of fury based on the notion that Americans’ individual freedoms are being eroded.\n\nThere’s also angst on the left, where people are furious the Covid-19 pandemic was prolonged by vaccine holdouts. And there’s rising alarm among liberals that a conservative Supreme Court, starting to make radical shifts on social, racial and other issues, is set on turning a cosmopolitan nation into an idealized right-wing version of the 1950s.\n\nA Republican Party wielding the filibuster in the Senate, meanwhile, is thwarting Biden’s power to rescue the country’s democracy from a flurry of new laws in GOP-led states that make it harder to vote and easier to politicize election results.\n\nTrump has weaponized the nation’s divides for his own political ends. His lie that the last election was stolen from him has captivated his followers and made Biden an illegitimate leader in the eyes of millions of people – an impression it will be impossible for the President to mend.\n\nAmerican dominance under siege\n\nThe sense of national unease is being exacerbated by events abroad. The unipolar world led by America at the end of the 20th century has evolved into multiple challenges to US dominance from a rising China to a revanchist Russia that threatens the democratic world order. Their mission to destroy democracy is, remarkably, being aided by Trump acolytes inside the United States, in a scenario that would have been impossible to believe a few years ago.\n\nMuch of this catalog of woes is impossible to quantify. But everyone sees the strain and emotional toll in their friends and families of a once-in-a-100-year public health crisis. Even if average new daily cases are currently on their way down, the pandemic will bequeath trauma that will take years to heal.\n\nThe psychological impact of the way America is feeling will be for history to describe. But it is having political consequences in real time.\n\nA grungy mood in a nation divided in multiple ways is translating to ever-diminishing confidence in political leaders and the system itself. It also helps to explain why a summer economic spurt, a dip in inflation and more legislative success on Capitol Hill are unlikely to rescue Biden’s presidency.\n\n“We have to keep it going. And I think our best days are ahead of us,” Biden said last month at an event highlighting a push to increase the semiconductor supply. But the President’s attempt to buck up the national psyche and his own political prospects rang rather hollow.\n\nThere has been some mystification in Washington as to why administration successes have not registered more. The unemployment rate is near 50-year lows following a bumper monthly jobs figure last week. America’s economy is recovering more quickly than many other developed nations’ after the pandemic. A huge vaccine rollout saved thousands of lives. A massive Covid-19 relief bill that passed early in Biden’s presidency made significant reductions in child poverty. And while an audacious multitrillion-dollar climate and social spending bill is stalled in the Senate, Biden did what all of his recent predecessors had failed to do – pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill.\n\nA terrible poll for Biden\n\nBut Biden is getting little credit, and CNN’s latest polling is simply brutal for the President.\n\nJust 41% of those asked approve of the way Biden is handling his job. His approval rating on the economy has dropped to 37% – down 8 points since early December alone. Only 45% approve of his handling of the pandemic he was elected to end. When those who disdain Biden’s overall performance were asked to name a single thing he’d done that they approved of, 56% had nothing positive to say. “I’m hard pressed to think of a single thing he has done that benefits the country,” wrote one respondent.\n\nIt is true that no modern president has faced the confluence of crises that Biden did when he was sworn in nearly 13 months ago. And any commander in chief might have struggled. But Biden has rarely reached the heights of empathy and rhetoric he showed in an inaugural address meant to bring the nation back together after the pandemonium of the Trump years.\n\n“Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear and demonization have long torn us apart,” Biden said after he was sworn in.\n\nA year on, the second half of that equation appears to be dominating the first, not least because of the pernicious influence of his predecessor, who seems to be plotting a 2024 comeback attempt.\n\nBut Biden may also have done too little to rally the nation behind him. He lacks the steadying and sunny confidence of President Franklin Roosevelt, who piloted his nation through the great crises of the Great Depression and World War II. Some Americans also saw the ambition of Biden’s social spending plan as a betrayal of the moderate image he had cultivated on the campaign trail. The pandemic’s refusal to loosen its grip over the first year of his presidency hammered his reputation for competence. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which should have been a political winner, was instead a parable of presidential incompetence when it descended into bloody chaos. High inflation has been responsible for ending countless political careers in the last century, and the White House’s repeatedly wrong comments downplaying the seriousness of price hikes for basic goods haven’t helped.\n\nBiden has restored decency and decorum to the White House. But a President nearing 80 may lack the galvanizing power to inspire much younger Americans. And Biden admitted last month that he had not fully mastered the role of the presidency after decades in the US Senate.\n\n“One of the things that I do think that has been made clear to me – speaking of polling – is the public doesn’t want me to be the ‘President Senator.’ They want me to be the President and let senators be senators,” he said.\n\nRepublicans are deepening the national malaise\n\nSo entrenched are America’s divides that it’s hard to see how Biden will get his approval rating up the 10 or 15 points or so that history suggests is a safer zone for the party of first-term presidents in midterm elections. Even sudden deliverance from Covid-19 and an economic spurt might not alter perceptions of a country in crisis, especially given the lack of a common national reality.\n\nGiven the circumstances, the midterm elections ought to be some of the easiest on record for Republicans hoping to win the Senate and the House of Representatives. But the party is tearing itself apart, split between lawmakers fully bought into Trump’s personality cult – either by conviction or political cowardice – and an apparently smaller, more traditional bloc of conservatives. The feud erupted afresh this week when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized a Republican National Committee censure resolution that described the January 6 insurrection as “legitimate political discourse.” Trump and his acolytes quickly hit back, raising the possibility of internecine GOP strife that could detract from its midterm message and once again alienate the suburban voters who helped eject Trump from the presidency after a single term.\n\nThe widespread appeasement of Trump and efforts by his partisans to whitewash the truth about the Capitol insurrection, which are being revealed by the House select committee, have raised questions of whether the GOP has now become an anti-democratic movement that sees violence as a legitimate form of political expression. Trump has, for instance, recently issued racially explicit threats against prosecutors probing his election-stealing efforts and his business empire. While he retains a hold over the party, the GOP’s course only seems more certain to tear the country further apart.\n\nIn previous eras, an election might have been seen as a cathartic device to ease divides and frustration. But the fury of recent months may have rendered that traditional, democratic balm less powerful. In the CNN poll, 56% of respondents said they have little or no confidence that elections reflect the will of the people and about half think it’s likely that a future election will be overturned for partisan reasons.", "authors": ["Stephen Collinson"], "publish_date": "2022/02/11"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/04/11/russia-sends-u-s-dire-warning-tiger-woods-future-5-things-podcast/7273782001/", "title": "Russia sends U.S. dire warning, Tiger Woods' future: 5 Things podcast", "text": "On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Russia warns of 'direct military confrontation' with US\n\nThe war in Ukraine continues. Plus, a Texas DA will file a motion dismissing a murder charge in a 'self-induced' abortion case, Golfweek's Adam Woodard looks at Tiger Woods' future, wellness reporter Jenna Ryu talks about vanilla sex shaming and you can now put an 'X' for gender on your passport.\n\nPodcasts:True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here.\n\nHit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.\n\nTaylor Wilson:\n\nGood morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Monday, the 11th of April 2022. Today, Russia's offensive in Ukraine's east, plus the changing conversation around sex, and more.\n\nHere are some of the top headlines:\n\nImran Khan has been pushed out of office as Prime Minister of Pakistan. His political opponents ousted him with a no confidence vote yesterday. The new Prime Minister is expected to be Shehbaz Sharif, brother of disgraced former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after a parliament vote later today. Incumbent Emmanuel Macron will face far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen in a winner takes all runoff for the French presidency. They both advanced yesterday in the first round of voting. And Scottie Scheffler is the 2022 Masters champion. It was the 25 year old golfer's first major win.\n\n♦\n\nRussia is warning of a direct military confrontation with the United States. Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov told Newsweek that the West is provoking Russia. And he added, \"We warn that such actions are dangerous. They can lead the US and the Russian Federation onto the path of direct military confrontation.\" His comments come as Russia's invasion of Ukraine stretches into a seventh week. The Russian diplomat also told Newsweek that the invasion came because Ukraine would not stop what he called the genocide of Russians, and that the invasion has its roots eight years earlier when an uprising toppled a Ukrainian government with close ties to Moscow and put a pro-West administration in charge. He said that was particularly problematic because the government has sought closer ties with NATO and the European Union.\n\nMeanwhile, Russia's new offensive in Eastern Ukraine could be a decisive chapter in the conflict. Russia has given up most of its military positioning in Northern and Western parts of the country, but looks determined to take control of the mostly Russian speaking Donbas region in the east. Western military analysts though say Russia is focusing on a larger region stretching from Kharkiv in the north, Ukraine's second largest city, to Kherson in the south. Russian forces shelled Kharkiv yesterday and also continued their assault on Mariupol, the Southern coastal city that's seen some of the war's worst and most consistent violence. In Kharkiv, resident Natalia described how she narrowly survived an attack on her residential building.\n\nTaylor Wilson translating for Natalia:\n\n\"I got hit on the head and the shockwave threw me back. The stairs collapsed, the windows and doors were knocked out. Miraculously, I survived.\"\n\nUkrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said yesterday in his nightly address that the coming week would be crucial in the war. He also accused Russia of trying to avoid responsibility for war crimes in Ukraine. Officials in Ukraine and around the west have accused Russia of war crimes for attacks on civilians. Zelenskyy said, \"When people lack the courage to admit their mistakes, apologize, adapt to reality and learn, they turn into monsters. And when the world ignores it, the monsters decide that it is the world that has to adapt to them. The day will come when they will have to admit everything except the truth.\"\n\n♦\n\nA Texas district attorney will file a motion today to dismiss a murder charge against a woman who was arrested in the death of an individual by self-induced abortion. 26-year-old Lizelle Herrera was arrested last week, but it's not clear whether she was accused of having a self-induced abortion or whether she helped someone else get an abortion. The Sheriff's Office didn't say which law Herrera was charged under. In Starr County, District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez ruled that under Texas law, Herrera should not be prosecuted. The case comes in the same state where a bill last year banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.\n\n♦\n\nTiger Woods returned to the Masters this week. The golf legend's status at the tournament was up in the air until the week of, but he played and made the cut to compete into the weekend. After his comeback, Tiger also announced when we'll be seeing him again, at least once later this summer. Producer PJ Elliott spoke with Golfweek's Adam Woodard about Tiger's future and how he performed this week at Augusta National.\n\nAdam Woodard:\n\nLook, a couple of years ago, when Tiger came back and won for the first time in the Masters in 2019, I kind of learned that you can't doubt this guy. He's always going to be able to have a trick up his sleeve. But then 14 months ago, he has that crash. We're not sure is he ever going to be able to walk again. And then let alone, he comes out here, plays four consecutive rounds, beats about five or six people, makes the cut. I mean, it's truly remarkable. Not enough can be said about what he's able to accomplish this week. He's not going to be happy about the result where he finished, but if anything, it's going to motivate him even more. And then today, he said he's going to play The Open Championship in July. He's going to try and play The PGA Championship in May. I mean, he's back and he's coming back, and he's only going to get better. And this week was a huge step forward for him.\n\nPJ Elliott:\n\nDid he talk about how he felt after four days of playing in the tournament without playing in one since the accident?\n\nAdam Woodard:\n\nTired, exhausted. I mean, his body was broken down. I mean, you could tell he had a hitch in his giddy up the entire second nine when he was walking today. He was telling us the other day that it's going to be a lot of ice baths, a lot of recovery. I mean, and that's a guy who's already had multiple back surgeries. He's had a spinal fusion, let alone the fact that he's got a bunch of rods, screws, and plates holding his ankle and right leg together. And the fact that he was able to walk Augusta National, which is a very hilly terrain, a very hilly course, for four days and then even shoot under par the first day was just truly incredible. But I think when you kind of saw him struggling the last few days, that was all his body fatigue and not being able to clear a few shots. But I mean, if anything, this was a great test for what's to come later this year.\n\nTaylor Wilson:\n\nFor more, head to golfweek.com.\n\n♦\n\nThe conversation around sex is changing, and there's a new trend on social media around the topic of vanilla sex shaming. Wellness Reporter Jenna Ryu has more.\n\nJenna Ryu:\n\nYeah. So vanilla sex shaming is a trend on TikTok, mostly among younger people, but it's basically ridiculing or mocking people who enjoy conventional sex. So, kind of devoid of kinks and fetishes. Obviously, shaming people of any sort is not acceptable, but experts have said that it's interesting that this trend of vanilla shaming is showing how people are kind of opening up about their views on what healthy sex looks like. So for example, talking about sex has usually been something that's uncomfortable or considered taboo. And when we do talk about it, the only kind of permissible form of sex we talk about is vanilla sex. So kind of seeing people rejecting that with vanilla shaming and instead embracing more unconventional methods like consensual BDSM, swinging with other couples, threesomes, role play, sex toys, et cetera, kind of shows how people are expanding their views on a once taboo topic.\n\nI think a lot of people try to avoid talking about sex, just one, because it can be an uncomfortable and private topic. But also because they assume that if you don't talk about sex, people just won't have sex which isn't true. And experts say that it doesn't stop people from having sex, it stops people from having safe sex. So for example, it doesn't give them the opportunity to openly talk about STD transmission, or for example, how to have of safe sex, pleasurable sex, knowing when you're comfortable, when you're not. So that's why it's important to kind of have these healthy conversations about sex that go beyond this one dimensional view we used to have of what is healthy and what isn't, because the reality is that sex is not a monolith and there's a lot of ways you can have healthy sex even if it's not conventional.\n\nTaylor Wilson:\n\nYou can find Jenna's full story in today's episode description.\n\n♦\n\nAn update has arrived for some US passports. Beginning today, US citizens will be able to select the letter X as the gender marker on their passport application instead of M or F. The State Department announced the move last year and added that transgender travelers would no longer have to provide medical certification if their gender identity doesn't line up with the marker on their birth certificate or other documents. A human rights campaign said more than 1.2 million non-binary adults in the US, 2 million transgender people, and 5.5 million people born intersex could be affected by the changes.\n\nThanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us on whatever your favorite podcast app is seven mornings a week. Thanks to PJ Elliott for his great work on the show, and I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/04/11"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/02/10/kim-reynolds-covid-live-stream-mask-rules-iowa-governor-poor-vaccine-distribution/4449134001/", "title": "Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds defends lifting limited mask mandate.", "text": "Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Wednesday defended her decision to rescind a limited mask mandate and related restrictions, saying Iowans don’t need a government order to protect themselves from the coronavirus.\n\n\"Iowans know what to do. We've been telling them for a year what they need to do. And they're doing it,\" Reynolds said in her first news conference since she announced Friday she was lifting the state's mask mandate and social distancing rules.\n\nUnlike many other governors, Reynolds did not implement a mask mandate during the initial wave of coronavirus infections in the spring. She issued her mandate in November, when infections and hospitalizations were surging throughout the state. The rule she put in place required Iowans to wear masks when indoors and unable to socially distance for 15 minutes or more.\n\nAt the time, more than 1,500 Iowans were hospitalized with the disease. More than half of the more than 5,170 Iowans killed by COVID-19 died in November and December, state reports show.\n\nReynolds said Wednesday that Iowa’s hospitalizations for COVID-19 have dropped 80% since November, and deadly outbreaks in nursing homes have plummeted from a peak of 166 to 39 on Wednesday.\n\nMore:'We're dialing down, we're opening up': Gov. Kim Reynolds explains why she dropped mask rules\n\nOnline appointment system expected within two weeks\n\nIowa and other states are now working to vaccinate their most vulnerable populations, including more than 500,000 seniors, plus school staffers, child care workers, police and firefighters. The state has been receiving fewer than 50,000 doses per week for all those people, leaving many eligible Iowans scrambling to find open appointments at county health departments, pharmacies and clinics.\n\nThe governor announced last week that she was seeking proposals from private companies to centralize and streamline the appointment process. Microsoft, a winner of that bidding process, will have a new online system up and running within two weeks, Reynolds said. Another company will be chosen to launch a centralized call center, she said.\n\nSeveral other states are also looking for such help from private companies, Reynolds said when asked Wednesday why Iowa hadn't set up a centralized registration system before vaccinations began in December. She said Iowa faced additional complications because of the large number of nursing homes in the state, and because of antiquated computer systems.\n\n“We've been working with local public health. We've been working with our hospitals. We've been working with our clinics. But that doesn't mean every day that we don't learn something new and there's not a way that we can be more efficient and effective in what we're doing,” Reynolds said.\n\nWest Des Moines resident Diane Freeman, who watched the governor's news conference from home Wednesday, said she was unimpressed with Reynolds' answer on why the state did not have a vaccination scheduling system ready in December.\n\n\"They should have had a plan in place,\" Freeman said in an interview after the news conference. \"I see it as derelict.\"\n\nFreeman, 75, spent many hours during the previous three weeks online, searching for a vaccination appointment. She would wake up in the middle of the night to check the websites of multiple pharmacies and clinics. She struck out repeatedly, and was feeling dejected until this week, when a friend snagged an appointment for her at a CVS pharmacy.\n\nFreeman, a retired computer sales executive, considers herself fairly savvy with technology. But she knows many other seniors aren't capable of searching online for appointments.\n\n\"I just wonder how many people aren't even trying — or can't even try,\" she said.\n\nPublic Health Association: Removing mask mandate 'detrimental'\n\nReynolds also drew criticism from the Iowa Public Health Association, which represents public health officials around the state. The association shared a letter that it sent to the governor, calling her decision to rescind the mask mandate and other precautions \"actively detrimental to our pursuit to end the pandemic.\"\n\nThe letter was signed by the association's executive director, Lina Tucker Reinders, and its board president, Jeremy Whitaker, who directs the public health program at Allen College in Waterloo.\n\nWhitaker and Tucker Reinders acknowledged that COVID-19 statistics reported by the Iowa Department of Public Health have been heading down. But they contended those numbers are a cause for cautious optimism — not reason to lift mitigation efforts.\n\n\"The mandate that was in place until last Sunday reinforced the correct message that masks and social distancing are critical to reducing the spread of COVID,\" the letter states. \"The new message from you is that it is no longer necessary to be conscientious in protecting ourselves and our communities. This is wrong, and for many, will be dead wrong.\"\n\nReynolds emphasized at her news conference that she still encourages Iowans and Iowa businesses to take steps to prevent the virus's spread.\n\n\"I'm not saying, 'Go out there and be carefree and not be responsible,'\" she said. \"I'm saying, 'I trust Iowans to do the right thing.' And I know our businesses will do the right thing, too. They're doing it every day. Our schools are doing the right thing.\"\n\nAt a news conference last week, the governor said she was unhappy with the quantity of vaccine being provided by the federal government. She said then that Iowa was ranked 47th in vaccine supply, and she said she was pressing federal officials to find out why the state was being shorted.\n\nOn Wednesday, the governor said she spoke to top federal officials recently who told her vaccine amounts were being determined by population size.\n\nAlthough she said she still has questions, she said she was pleased to hear the supply is steadily increasing. Among other things, she noted that the Biden administration is bumping up states' allocation by 5% this week, which should translate to enough to give a total of 49,900 Iowans their first of two doses required for full protection.\n\nFederal officials also plan to start sending some vaccine directly to pharmacies next week, which will be on top of allocations sent to states. In Iowa, such shipments are expected to go to more than 40 Hy-Vee stores and 30 other pharmacies, she said.\n\nReynolds also said she spoke to the president of Walgreens, who pledged to offer 10,000 more coronavirus shots this week to Iowa seniors.\n\nThat would be on top of 32,000 such shots that CVS and Walgreens stores made available last week to Iowa seniors. Those doses are coming from leftover vaccine from the CVS and Walgreens campaign to vaccinate residents and staff at long-term care facilities, which hasn't drawn as much interest as expected from staffers.\n\nFor subscribers:Not every Iowan eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine is eager to take it — though many teachers are\n\nTony Leys covers health care for the Register. Reach him at tleys@registermedia.com or 515-284-8449.\n\nNick Coltrain is a politics and data reporter for the Register. Reach him at ncoltrain@registermedia.com or at 515-284-8361.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/02/10"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/tigers/2020/09/08/mlb-commissioner-fay-vincent-doesnt-watch-baseball-anymore/5683053002/", "title": "Why Ex-MLB commissioner Fay Vincent doesn't watch baseball ...", "text": "Bill Dow\n\nSpecial to Detroit Free Press\n\nFree Press special writer Bill Dow continues his \"where are they now\" series about former Detroit Tigers players, coaches and managers.\n\nToday's profile is on former Major League Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent:\n\nHow we remember him\n\nElected as the eighth MLB commissioner on Sept. 1, 1989, the attorney and Yale Law School graduate succeeded his close friend, Bart Giamatti, who died just five months into his term. As Giamatti’s deputy, the first in baseball history, Vincent played a pivotal role in the investigation of gambling allegations against Pete Rose, baseball’s all-time hits leader who agreed to a lifetime ban from the game. A month into his term, he was present on Oct. 17, 1989, during the massive San Francisco Bay area earthquake right before Game 3 of the World Series at Candlestick Park. The following year, he helped settle the labor dispute between MLB owners and players that ensured a full regular season. He later suspended Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for spying on his player, Dave Winfield, and oversaw the addition of two new National League teams, the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies.\n\nVincent resigned as commissioner on Sept. 7, 1992, precluding a potentially bitter legal battle with a majority of owners who wanted to remove him.\n\nAfter his tenure\n\nHe became a private investor and the president of the New England Collegiate Baseball League and wrote his memoir, \"The Last Commissioner: A Baseball Valentine,\" published in 2002. He spearheaded the Baseball Oral History Project, and his countless videotaped interviews of former players from the 1930s to the 1980s can be viewed at the Baseball Hall of Fame. he also authored three books that contain highlights of the interviews.\n\nToday\n\nVincent, 82, lives in Vero Beach, Florida, with his wife, Christina. He has three children and five grandchildren.\n\nOn the Pete Rose scandal\n\n“As Peter Ueberroth was finishing his term as commissioner, he was tipped off by Sports Illustrated that they were doing a story about a bookie who claimed Rose had bet on baseball. Bart and I were waiting in the wings to take over, so Peter asked us to get involved. He asked what we should do and I said, ‘ we can’t have SI do a story and not investigate it.' I suggested we hire John Dowd, who I knew from his work at the Justice Department and who had investigated the mob. We called Rose to our office and he was present with his lawyer. There was a lot of jocular talk about baseball. Finally, I said, ‘Mr. Rose, everyone is having fun talking about baseball but I have a very important question to ask you. And no matter what your answer is we will have to investigate this. Have you ever bet on baseball as a manager or player?’ He said, ‘I’m not stupid. I’ve bet on horses, basketball and football, but I don’t bet on baseball.’ He was very convincing and we all believed him.\n\n\"John Dowd took off to Cincinnati to investigate. He called me and said, ‘Fay, I’ve only been here three days and the evidence is overwhelming that he bet on baseball.' We were shocked. Rose was always in debt, borrowed money from the mob and was mobbed up, which was very scary. He was very vulnerable and there’s no telling what could have happened. They could have really squeezed him. The evidence was overwhelming and Rose accepted without a hearing that he be permanently ineligible with the right to apply for reinstatement. Eight days later, Bart Giamatti died of a massive heart attack and I took over as commissioner. I’m sure the Rose investigation helped play a role in Bart’s death with all the stress around that, but the central reality is that Bart was a five-pack-a-day smoker and did not take care of himself.”\n\nThe 1989 World Series\n\n\"I was standing, holding the railing to my field box before the game, and I heard this enormous roar. I looked up and thought somebody had engaged the Air Force to do a F-52 squadron flyover. I learned that when the ground moves it makes an enormous roar. I held onto the railing with both hands because I have a physical disability and felt the ground shake. Suddenly, a squad car came screaming out of the center field gate to me. This handsome, Black, 6-foot 2 man with high boots steps out and says, ‘Mr. Commissioner, I’m Commander Isiah Nelson in charge of security. We’ve had a major disaster so you need to cancel the game immediately because we need to get the people out of here safely. You need to stay right here and I am going to go around an announce to the crowd that you have canceled the game and to leave quietly. They will be looking at you and you have to stay visible. If you go into the dugout people will think you are running for the hills.’\n\n\"This was the first Bay series ever and people suggested it be moved to Anaheim. The Mayor of San Francisco gave me a lot of grief because he felt the Series should be delayed for weeks. I knew we couldn’t do that. I said if we stayed, it would provide the biggest message that the area was making a comeback. The safety people determined in just a few days that the ballparks and area were safe. Ten days later, we were able to resume the Series.”\n\n1990 labor dispute\n\n“The bigger franchises wanted to settle but the smaller market clubs like Bud Selig’s Brewers were hopeful that the union would give back concessions given to them over the years. I told them that the union does not trust you because you cheated the players by your collusion in agreeing not to sign free agents a few years ago. They did it and were given a $280 million judgment by an arbitrator (during Ueberroth’s tenure). I told them, 'you wanted to break the union when you engaged in your price-fixing operation. You violated the collective bargaining agreement because you cheated. The Union has the upper hand and you’re stuck.’ To this day, Bud Selig says collusion never took place. But it was proven. The key evidence were notes taken by Phillies owner Bill Giles that were subpoenaed and turned over. Giles had written in his notes that White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf had called him and told him not to sign Tigers free agent Lance Parrish. I said on my watch that I will not allow the owners to collude. I was sitting in the stands one day and two owners were sitting behind me. These guys were talking about what a particular free agent should be paid. I turned around and said, ‘you dumb son of a bitches, here I am, the commissioner, and you are colluding literally right behind my back.’ I left baseball 28 years ago and the central reality of baseball’s current problems goes back to collusion.”\n\nHis resignation\n\n“The owners gave me an 18-9 no-confidence vote. Jerry Reinsdorf and Bud Selig were primarily behind it. The only time a no-confidence vote occurs is when an organization is reluctant to fire somebody. They voted no confidence because they didn’t have the balls to fire me because they knew I would beat them in court. I had a five-year agreement whose terms dates back to the first commissioner, Judge Landis. In essence, the contract says you cannot fire a commissioner during their term. I had hired Edward Bennett Williams and Brendan Sullivan to represent me and they assured me that I would win a case all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. Ultimately, I told them I would not pursue the lawsuit because I would have to work every day for people who don’t want me. Essentially, they didn’t like me because they wanted to break the union and I told them that wasn’t going to happen because of collusion and that I was firmly committed to building a better relationship with the union over a long period of time. They tried to break the union two years later in 1994 with replacement players and it backfired. They also didn’t like my realignment plans.”\n\nWhat he's most proud in his tenure\n\n“Not necessarily in this order, but I tried to represent the best parts of baseball to the best of my ability as commissioner and that I recognized the Black players from the Negro Leagues for the first time. We provided them with a pension, and health plan but they were dying at a very high rate. I also chaired the Committee with the Hall of Fame to start having the Black stars of that period inducted.”\n\nThe steroids era\n\n“It was very unfortunate but, in some respects, I think Bud Selig gets a bad rap because the (players') union simply would not allow any form of testing. On the other hand, the Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa home run title chase had a lot to rejuvenate baseball after the disaster of 1994 that was caused by Selig and Reinsdorf. The union knew that Sen. John McCain had the votes to pass legislation to straighten out the mess in baseball, so they gave in and that made the difference.”\n\nThe game today\n\n“I’m not watching baseball now. I’m very disappointed. There are a number of players not playing and it is all geared to television. The absence of fans eliminates a lot of the excitement of the game. I like the sound of baseball. I don’t think silent movies are very attractive. I hope it passes quickly. I think the bigger concern is that the union and owners are still at loggerheads.\"\n\nChanges he'd like to see\n\n“Baseball has to change. I like the idea of seven-inning games. Shorter is better. Given the pace of the game these days, I think starting a game at 7 or 9 and have it go until 11 p.m. is ridiculous. I also am concerned that young people are less engaged in large part because of the pace. I would take the union and some owners and go to MIT or Cal Tech and come up with a game that young people are going to be excited about. Who could be played at the same time the old fashioned game is being played. Kids could be at home and play against the real game and perhaps interact with the manager in the dugout. The future of baseball cannot be the technology of wooden bats, baseballs and leather gloves that came together in the 1900s. Technology is the key to the future of entertainment.”", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2020/09/08"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_10", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:37", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2022/06/07/kamila-valieva-saga-prompts-figure-skating-age-limit-raise-17/7542467001/", "title": "Kamila Valieva saga prompts figure skating age limit raise to 17", "text": "Four months after the Kamila Valieva saga, the age limit in figure skating is being raised.\n\nMembers of the sport's governing body voted Tuesday to gradually increase the minimum age for senior competition from 15 to 17 in the leadup to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan – a significant shift on the heels of Valieva's positive drug test and subsequent collapse earlier this year in Beijing.\n\nThe International Skating Union said in a news release that the change is intended to protect \"the physical and mental health, and emotional well-being of the Skaters,\" without referring to Valieva's specifically.\n\nJan Dijkema, the governing body's president, called it \"a very historic decision.\"\n\nUnder the new rule, the age limit for senior competition will remain at 15 for the upcoming season, then rise to 16 for 2023-24 and 17 for all subsequent years. ISU members approved the change by an overwhelming margin at its regular biennial meeting, held this year in Thailand.\n\nThough the new rule has not been directly linked by the ISU to Valieva, the Russian teen undoubtedly served as its impetus.\n\nAfter helping lead the Russians to team gold at the Beijing Olympics, organizers abruptly canceled the medal ceremony for the event after learning that Valieva, the heavy favorite to win individual gold, had tested positive for a banned substance in December. Following a frantic legal battle at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, she was allowed to compete individually at the Games, despite the positive test, but fell repeatedly in her long program and slipped out of medal contention, finishing fourth.\n\nBRENNAN: What a slap in the face the Valieva decision is for athletes who don't cheat\n\nNEVER MISS A MOMENT: Follow our sports newsletter for daily updates\n\nThe saga prompted international media scrutiny and questions about whether Valieva, then 15 and often seen carrying a stuffed animal to the practice rink, was too young to compete. It also largely overshadowed the rest of the figure skating competition in Beijing, with the sport's age limit becoming the dominant talking point.\n\nMultiple skaters said during the Games that they would be in favor of raising the age limit in their sport, in part because it might help extend skaters' careers.\n\n\"When you look at the era of Michelle Kwan or Sasha Cohen, those are people you could cheer for for several years,\" U.S. skater Mariah Bell said. \"It was such a great representation of the sport. So I think to have more athletes like that would be amazing and having an age limit would aid in that happening.\"\n\nThe new rule will most significantly impact the women's competition, where 15- and 16-year-olds have regularly challenged for world titles and Olympic medals in recent years. Two of the top seven finishers at the 2022 Beijing Games – Valieva and American Alysa Liu – would have been too young to compete under the new rule, as would 2018 Olympic gold medalist Alina Zagitova.\n\nContributing: The Associated Press\n\nContact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on Twitter @Tom_Schad.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/07"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_11", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:37", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/07/politics/summit-of-the-americas-joe-biden/index.html", "title": "Snubs from key leaders over Summit of the Americas reveal Biden's ...", "text": "CNN —\n\nThe decision by Mexico’s President to boycott this week’s summit for regional leaders in Los Angeles rendered futile months of work by President Joe Biden and other top officials to convince him to attend.\n\nNow, key nations in Central America are following President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s lead, dispatching only lower-level delegates instead of their leaders. And by the time Biden arrives to the summit Wednesday, questions over the event’s invitation list and attendees will have obscured its larger purpose, a source of frustration to administration officials who didn’t necessarily expect the mess.\n\nThe decision by several countries to stay away from the southern California gathering, a protest of Biden’s decision not to invite three regional autocrats, has underscored the struggle to exert US influence in a region that has become fractured politically and is struggling economically.\n\nAnd it has exposed the difficulties and contradictions in Biden’s vow to restore democratic values to American foreign policy. Even as he takes a stand against inviting dictators to a summit on US soil, prompting anger and boycotts from those key regional partners, his aides are simultaneously planning a visit to Saudi Arabia — seen as a necessity at a moment of a global energy crisis, despite the kingdom’s grave human rights record. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday the kingdom is an “important partner,” though Biden once said it must be made a “pariah.”\n\nIn the end, the White House announced Tuesday that 23 heads of state will attend this week’s Summit of the Americas, which administration officials said was in line with past iterations of the triennial confab. One leader who was on the fence, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, will attend and meet Biden for the first time.\n\nYet the absences of the presidents of Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are still notable since the United States has worked to cultivate those leaders as partners on immigration, an issue that looms as a political liability for Biden.\n\nAdministration officials on Monday dismissed concerns about attendance at the summit, saying they did not believe lower-level delegates from certain countries will alter the outcome.\n\n“We really do expect that the participation will not be in any way a barrier to getting significant business done at the summit. In fact, quite the opposite, we are very pleased with how the deliverables are shaping up and with other countries commitment to them,” one senior administration official said, adding the commitments will range from short term to long term.\n\nAnd the White House insisted the President was firm in his view that the autocratic leaders of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua should not be invited to participate — even if it means widening rifts with other countries in the region.\n\n“At the end of the day, to your question, we just don’t believe dictators should be invited. We don’t regret that, and the President will stand by his principle,” Jean-Pierre said.\n\nTroubles have been on the horizon for months\n\nBiden, who arrives in Los Angeles on Wednesday, is expected announce a new partnership with countries in the Western Hemisphere during the gathering as part of a broader effort to stabilize the region, according to the officials.\n\nHe and his administration have been working since last year to organize the summit, which was formally announced last August. The city of Los Angeles was selected as the venue in January. Biden named former Sen. Chris Dodd, his friend and former colleague on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as the special adviser for the event.\n\nDodd traveled in the region to muster support, one of a number of administration envoys to Central and South America that included Vice President Kamala Harris and even first lady Jill Biden. Yet as the summit approached, it became evident an event designed to reassert American leadership in the region was facing serious hurdles.\n\nFor weeks before the summit began, López Obrador hinted that he would boycott unless all leaders from the region were invited – including those from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, each of whom has faced US opposition because of their human rights records. Other, mostly leftist leaders signaled they, too, may not attend if invitations did not go to everyone.\n\nAdministration officials privately cast doubt those leaders would follow through on their threats, suggesting they were instead attempts to play to domestic audiences that are often skeptical of the United States.\n\nDuring an April telephone call between Biden and López Obrador, the subject of the summit arose. In a readout, the White House said the men “looked forward to meeting again at the June Summit of the Americas,” a sign the administration believed then the Mexican president would attend.\n\nOver the past weeks, Dodd spent lengthy virtual sessions lobbying López Obrador to reconsider his threat of a boycott. Members of Congress – including Sen. Bob Menendez, Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – began to publicly agitate against inviting any leaders from Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua. And frustration mounted among administration officials that questions over the invitations and attendees were clouding out the summit’s intended goals.\n\n“The biggest problem is that the focus on attendance takes us away from the focus on substance, but that is the logical thing that happens ahead of a summit. It’s like the sausage-making period. We don’t talk much about the substance because the summit hasn’t started yet, we talk only about who might be there,” said Roberta Jacobson, the former US ambassador to Mexico who also served as an adviser to Biden on southern border policy.\n\nUltimately, the weeks of speculation were put to rest — but not in the way the White House had hoped.\n\n“There cannot be a Summit of the Americas if all countries of the Americas cannot attend,” López Obrador said at a news conference in Mexico City. “This is to continue the old interventionist policies, of lack of respect for nations and their people.”\n\nMexican President’s absence not a part of a larger rift, officials say\n\nMexican officials had conveyed their President’s decision to the White House beforehand, and Biden was made aware before the news became public. Instead of meeting at the summit, Biden and López Obrador will meet in Washington next month.\n\n“The fact that they disagree about this issue is now very clear,” a senior administration official said.\n\nOfficials sought to emphasize the decision to boycott was rooted in a specific disagreement over the invite list and was not indicative of a larger rift.\n\n“What we have done in recent weeks, going back almost a month now, is consulted – consulted with our partners and friends in the region so that we understood the contours of their views,” the senior administration official said. “In the end, the President decided and very much made this point in all of the engagements that we had … which is that we believe the best use of this summit is to bring together countries that share a set of democratic principles.”\n\nBiden is turning his focus to the Americas after a series of foreign policy crises in other parts of the world, including the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He completed his first visit to Asia at the end of last month.\n\nThat region is one where his animating message of “autocracy versus democracy” is playing out in real time, as China works to make inroads and economically challenged nations look for support from abroad.\n\nIn opening remarks Wednesday, Biden will unveil the so-called “Americas partnership” that will focus on five issues, including economic recovery, mobilizing investments, supply chains, clean energy and trade – all with the hopes of strengthening US partnerships in a region many US leaders have been accused of ignoring.\n\nDuring the summit, Biden is also expected to announce more than $300 million in assistance to fight food insecurity, in addition to other private sector commitments, as well as health initiatives and a partnership on climate resilience.\n\nBiden to unveil new initiatives at summit\n\nWhile at the summit, the President and his team will be unveiling a series of new initiatives.\n\nHarris, who arrived in Los Angeles earlier in the week, on Tuesday announced two updates to her work in addressing the root causes of migration to the southern border. First, she announced that through her “Call to Action,” which aimed to promoting economic opportunity, she has now secured more than $3.2 billion in private investment for the region.\n\nCNN previously reported the new commitments come from 10 companies totaling more than $1.9 billion, including the Gap Inc. which has pledged $150 million by 2025 to increase their sourcing from Central America, according to a fact sheet from the White House. Other companies include Millicom, Yazaki, Unifi, San Mar, Pantaleon and Fundación Terra.\n\nHarris also said she will be launching “In Her Hands,” a new private sector program aimed at empowering, training and protecting men in the northern Central America region and across the Western Hemisphere.\n\nAnd on Wednesday the Biden administration will unveil an “Action Plan on Health and Resilience in the Americas,” which is aimed at helping partner nations “prevent, prepare for, and respond to future pandemic threats and other public health emergencies while also expanding the equitable delivery of healthcare and public health services to remote, vulnerable, and marginalized populations,” a senior administration official said. The senior administration official said the plan is expected to be fully implemented by 2030.\n\nHealth and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra is expected to announce the initiative at the CEO Summit Plenary Session as well..\n\nAs part of Wednesday’s announcement, the administration is slated to announce roughly $100 million in funding, in concert with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), to provide basic and specialized training for 500,000 public health, health science and medical professionals through the next five years through the newly launched Americas Health Corps, or Fuerza de Salud de las Americas.\n\nCaravan highlights need to work fast on migration\n\nAs the summit was getting underway, the imperative to make progress on immigration was being starkly illustrated in southern Mexico. A new migrant caravan there set out on foot Monday, timed to bring attention to the issue as leaders were gathering in Los Angeles.\n\nAn official with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said a group of about 2,300 people left the southern Mexican city of Tapachula on Monday heading north. The official said the group is comprised mostly of Venezuelans, but also includes migrants from Nicaragua, Cuba, El Salvador and Honduras.\n\nA regional immigration group, Colectivo de Observación y Monitoreo de Derechos Humanos en el SE Mexicano, said in a bulletin that the group included principally families and children “who demand access to migration procedures and dignified treatment by the authorities.” Tapachula, located just across the border from Guatemala, is a popular way station for migrants traveling from Central America.\n\nUnder Mexican immigration laws, migrants and asylum-seekers are often made to wait in the area for several months with limited opportunities for work. Northward caravans of migrants have left Tapachula regularly in the past year, although this week’s appears to be one of the largest. This caravan gathered partially in protest to immigration policies and it would be weeks before they arrived to the US southern border, assuming they all do.\n\nIn Los Angeles, Biden and other leaders are expected to agree to a new migration document, dubbed the Los Angeles Declaration, during their Friday meetings. It’s meant to spell out how countries in the region and around the world should share responsibility for taking in migrants.\n\nOfficials said they were confident Mexico would sign on.", "authors": ["Kevin Liptak"], "publish_date": "2022/06/07"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/06/politics/lopez-obrador-summit-of-the-americas/index.html", "title": "Mexican President won't attend US-hosted Summit of the Americas ...", "text": "(CNN) Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Monday he won't be attending the Summit of the Americas , hosted later on this week by the United States, due to the exclusion of several countries in the region.\n\nCuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela were not invited to the summit because of the \"lack of democratic space and the human rights situations\" in the countries, a senior Biden administration official said in a statement to CNN on Monday.\n\nThe White House press secretary was more blunt later in the day.\n\n\"We just don't believe dictators should be invited. We don't regret that and the President will stand by his principle,\" Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters after López Obrador announced his boycott.\n\nLópez Obrador had previously threatened to boycott the summit, which is traditionally attended by leaders from North, Central and South America and the Caribbean and is convened every few years.\n\n\"I am not going to the summit because not all American countries are invited and I believe the need to change the policy that has been in place for centuries: The exclusion, the desire to dominate without any reason, the disrespect of countries' sovereignty (and) the independence of each country,\" López Obrador said at a news conference in Mexico City. He said the country's foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, will attend instead.\n\nThe move is a significant snub to President Joe Biden and his administration and threatens to undermine the gathering.\n\nStill, the White House insisted Mexico's absence would not prevent progress. Jean-Pierre said it expected 23 heads of government to attend the gathering, which is being held in Los Angeles.\n\nAfter announcing he would not attend this week's summit, López Obrador said on Monday he would visit the White House next month and hopes to discuss the inclusion of all leaders from the Americas with Biden.\n\n\"We have had candid engagement with President López Obrador as well with other regional partners for more than a month regarding the issue of invitations to the summit,\" Jean-Pierre said. \"It is important to acknowledge that there are a range of views on this question in our hemisphere, as there are in the United States. The President's principal position is that we do not believe that dictators should be invited.\"\n\nLópez Obrador's decision is culmination of weeks of speculation about whether the Mexican leader would be able to convince the Biden administration to invite Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.\n\nAs the White House scrambled to secure attendees for the summit, there had been some frustrations among officials that what was meant to be a centerpiece event highlighting renewed US leadership in the region had been obscured by a fight over invitations.\n\nThe decision by López Obrador to boycott came after a concerted effort by the United States to get him to come, including lengthy virtual meetings with former Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who is serving as Biden's special adviser for the summit.\n\nDuring an April telephone call between Biden and López Obrador, the subject arose again. In a readout, the White House said the men \"looked forward to meeting again at the June Summit of the Americas.\"\n\nBut those efforts were not enough to convince the Mexican leader to attend.\n\nIn public, US officials have sought to downplay the importance of López Obrador attending, insisting that the event could still be successful even with the absence of the leader of one of the largest countries in the Americas.\n\nOfficials have also suggested privately that López Obrador is playing to a domestic audience by refusing to attend. And they have said important agreements on migration, climate change and the economy are still in the works.\n\nStill, the unsuccessful efforts to secure the attendance of important leaders in the United States' own neighborhood speak to a messier-than-planned process of organizing this week's summit. Several officials said privately the refusal of some leaders to attend had not been fully anticipated when organizing for the summit began last year.\n\nLast week, the White House seemed to acknowledge the questions about attendance had subsumed some of the summit's objectives\n\n\"There's always questions about who is coming and who is not, but we should also talk about and focus on what the purpose of this meeting is,\" White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.\n\nShe shrugged off questions about why everything seemed to be coming together -- or not -- at the last minute.\n\n\"I think if you've been following this administration for the past year and a half, one week is not the eleventh hour when it comes to how things move. And so that is a lifetime away for us as a White House,\" she said.\n\nThis story has been updated with additional information.", "authors": ["Kate Sullivan", "Kevin Liptak", "Jeremy Diamond", "Ana Cucalon", "Mia Alberti"], "publish_date": "2022/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/24/politics/summit-of-the-americas-biden-administration/index.html", "title": "Biden administration scrambles to avoid embarrassing boycott from ...", "text": "(CNN) The participation of Latin American countries in a high-profile regional summit is still in flux , just weeks from when it's scheduled to take place in California amid record migration throughout the Western Hemisphere.\n\nThe so-called Summit of the Americas is set to be hosted by the United States in early June, marking the ninth meeting of countries in the region and the first time the US has hosted the gathering since 1994.\n\nBut the lead up has already been embroiled in controversy over the guest list, forcing US officials to try to smooth over relations and throwing into question the outcome of the meeting at a critical time in the hemisphere.\n\nEarlier this month, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Mexico's participation will not be confirmed until the US invites every country in the hemisphere, arguing that no country should be excluded from the summit. US officials have repeatedly said the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela will not be invited to the summit due to their human rights records.\n\nBut in recent days, the administration has reversed some Trump policies related to Cuba and eased some energy sanctions on Venezuela, signaling the importance of attendance at the summit -- and the importance of avoiding an embarrassing boycott by key countries at a tough political moment for President Joe Biden.\n\n\"We are in dialogue, with the purpose of inviting everyone,\" López Obrador said at a news conference Monday. \"At least, they (United States) have acted in a respectful manner, there has not been a total, cutting rejection.\"\n\n\"There are still days to go, I hope that this week we will be able to inform, so as not to be speculating, or with conjectures, leaks; once we have all the elements, we are going to establish our position here,\" Lopez Obrador added.\n\nAn administration official told CNN the Biden administration is evaluating options on incorporating \"the voices of the Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan people into the Summit process.\"\n\nIf López Obrador skips the gathering and others follow, it would be a snub to the Biden administration, which has stressed relationships with Latin America and has sought to strengthen ties as China makes inroads in the region.\n\nLast week, the US and Mexico held talks about options specific to Mexico for attending the summit, according to a source familiar with the discussions. Talks are ongoing and a decision has not yet been made, the source said.\n\nFormer Sen. Christopher Dodd, who's serving as special adviser for the summit, led discussions for the US by phone last Wednesday, according to a White House official. The discussions, the official said, were wide-ranging and included talks about Mexico's attendance\n\nThe first wave of invitations for the Summit of the Americas went out last week, according to the White House official, adding the administration is considering additional invites. The White House hasn't released the list of invitees.\n\nThe ongoing back-and-forth, though, has sown doubt among US partners in the region over the summit's effectiveness.\n\n\"It's a summit that is organized around conversations among presidents or prime ministers,\" a senior Guatemalan official told CNN. \"The summit is important in itself that it happens, but it would be less of a success if it's not at the highest level.\"\n\nPrior to the invitations being sent out, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said he wouldn't attend the summit after the United States criticized the reappointing of his nation's attorney general. It's unclear whether he'll change his position following the release of invites.\n\nLatin American countries other than Mexico have taken issue with invites not being extended to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Honduran President Xiomara Castro de Zelaya said on Twitter, \"If not all nations are present, it's not a Summit of the Americas.\"\n\nGuatemala and Honduras have been part of Vice President Kamala Harris' portfolio tackling root causes of migration. In late January, Harris also attended the presidential inauguration of Castro de Zelaya. But she has not reached out to either country in the lead up to the summit.\n\nArgentinian President Alberto Fernandez, meanwhile, said he'll attend the summit but echoed concerns about excluding nations. It's unclear, though, whether Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro -- one of the largest countries in the hemisphere -- will attend.\n\nBolivian President Luis Arce went a step further, saying he wouldn't participate if countries were excluded.\n\nMatthew Rooney, director of Institute Outreach and Strategic Partnerships at the George W. Bush Presidential Center, noted that it's not out of character for the summit to only invite democratic leaders but the pushback of the last few weeks speaks to the shifting dynamics in the region.\n\n\"The United States should be able to invite who it wants to invite to its home and the other guests should be happy to be invited,\" Rooney told CNN. \"It sends a political signal that the drawing power of the United States is not what it used to be and the force of the summit's commitment to democracy is not what it used to be.\"\n\nThe summit comes at a time of massive migration in the Western Hemisphere. According to the Department of Homeland Security, more than 6 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants have fled the country. Nicaraguans have also increasingly been migrants, as well as Haitians who had moved to the region years ago.\n\nElements of a migrant protection pact are being circulated and discussed among countries ahead of the summit, the senior Guatemalan official said.\n\nFirst lady Jill Biden visited Ecuador, Costa Rica and Panama in recent days to \"emphasize the importance of the US partnership\" ahead of the June summit.\n\nUpon departing her trip to Latin America, Biden answered a question as to whether she was reassured the countries she visited would be attending the Summit of the Americas.\n\n\"All of the countries I've visited said that they would be there. I'm looking forward to it. It's in like 10 days,\" she said.\n\nAsked if she was concerned about threats of boycott from certain countries, she said, \"I'm not worried. I think that they'll come.\"", "authors": ["Priscilla Alvarez"], "publish_date": "2022/05/24"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/06/07/summit-of-the-americas-biden-mexican-president/7505725001/", "title": "Summit of the Americas 2022 shadowed by Mexico boycott. What to ...", "text": "WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden’s Summit of the Americas will get off to a rocky start this week after Mexico's president announced he would not attend the gathering, a major snub for a high-profile event that seeks to convene leaders from North, Central and South America.\n\nThe summit, which kicks off Wednesday in Los Angeles, comes as the Biden administration faces record levels of migration to the USA and increasing effects from climate change.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/07"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/06/06/mexico-president-summit-americas-biden/7533052001/", "title": "Mexico President won't attend Summit of the Americas in snub to ...", "text": "WASHINGTON – Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced Monday that he is skipping this week's Ninth Summit of the Americas, a blow to President Joe Biden as he tries to unite the region to address migration.\n\n“There cannot be a summit if all countries are not invited,” López Obrador said at a press conference Monday after the United States refused to invite Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to the summit.\n\nHe said Mexico's foreign affairs secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, will attend the summit instead. López Obrador said he will meet with Biden in July.\n\nLópez Obrador has been threatening to boycott the summit if the United States didn't invite every country in the region, including the autocratic leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.\n\nThe Biden administration said they do not want to invite countries that have not upheld democratic principles.\n\nMore:Why immigration and the border are taking a backseat in Tuesday's primary races\n\nLópez Obrador's absence is likely to be seen as a snub to Biden as the U.S. prepares to host the summit for the first time since its inception in 1994. The summit is scheduled to begin Wednesday.\n\nThe White House has said climate change, COVID-19 and the economy aregoing to be among some of the issues discussed.\n\nBut a priority for the administration is migration. The United States has seen record levels of migrants coming to the U.S.-Mexico border over the past year. In April, the United States saw a record number of border encounters for that month in more than two decades.\n\nThe Biden administration has tried to work with key countries in the region, including Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, to address the root causes of migration.\n\nRussia-Ukraine explained:Inside the crisis as US calls Russian movements an invasion\n\nLópez Obrador might not be the only key official who is skipping out on the summit.\n\nNewly-elected Honduras President Xiomara Castro previously indicated that she would not attend the summit if some countries were excluded from the event.\n\nSen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., criticized López Obrador's decision to skip out on the summit, saying it \"will unfortunately set back efforts to continue repairing the relationship and to cooperate on issues pertinent to the well-being of both our nations.\"\n\nMenendez said the Mexican leader is standing \"dictators and despots over representing the interests of the Mexican people in a summit with his partners from across the hemisphere.\"\n\nContributing: Associated Press\n\nReach Rebecca Morin at Twitter @RebeccaMorin_\n\nMore:\n\nWho is Andrés Manuel López Obrador?\n\nApril saw record encounters at the southern border, but some data points dipped. Here’s what that means.\n\nBiden revises some Cuba travel restrictions, restarts family reunification program Trump ended", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/02/politics/summit-of-the-americas-scramble/index.html", "title": "Potential for a high-profile flop looms over Biden administration's ...", "text": "(CNN) Administration officials are still scrambling to secure attendees and prepare announcements for President Joe Biden to make just one week before he hosts Western Hemisphere leaders in Los Angeles for an important regional summit.\n\nIt's an unusually last-minute attempt to salvage what officials once described as a top-priority event for relations in the United States' own neighborhood. Absences from critical leaders -- most notably the President of Mexico, who is threatening a boycott -- risk undermining the gathering, even as Biden and his team look to make progress on politically sensitive issues like migration to the US' southern border and economic growth.\n\nOfficials say the summit will proceed and have downplayed any anxieties about who might show up. They have begun finalizing the agenda and Biden's schedule for the multi-day gathering.\n\nYet even before it begins, the summit's organizational squabbling has exposed rifts in a region where Biden once hoped to reassert US leadership.\n\nNext week's Summit of the Americas will mark the ninth meeting of countries in the region and the first time the US has hosted the gathering since it was inaugurated in Miami in 1994. The gathering of nations, stretching from Canada in the north to Chile in the south, offers an opportunity to strengthen ties at a moment of historic migration and as China works overtime to make inroads in the region\n\nBoth are critically important issues for Biden, who has framed competition with Beijing as the principal challenge for the coming decades and has struggled to get a handle on illegal border crossings.\n\nBut the summit's success may be contingent on who attends.\n\nUS officials have repeatedly said the autocratic governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela will not be invited to the summit due to their human rights records. But Mexico and other nations in the region have closer ties to those countries, and have called the invite decision exclusionary.\n\nSenior administration officials on Wednesday dismissed concerns about attendance to the upcoming Summit of the Americas, stressing instead the ongoing coordination among countries to tackle regional issues.\n\n\"We still have some final considerations, but we will inform people publicly soon about the final invitation list,\" said Juan Gonzalez, senior director for the Western Hemisphere at the National Security Council, adding: \"We've not been so focused on the who is and who isn't invited and more really on the outcomes that we want to achieve at the summit.\"\n\nKevin O'Reilly, the national coordinator for the Summit of the Americas, told lawmakers last week that Venezuela and Nicaragua have not been invited, but deferred to the White House on whether anyone from the Cuban regime has been invited.\n\n\"That will be a decision for the White House to make,\" O'Reilly told Sen. Marco Rubio, who asked about the guest list.\n\nThe White House had been mulling an invitation to a Cuban representative , though has yet to confirm any decision. Cuba was not invited to early iterations of the Summit of the Americas in the 1990s but has participated in the last several versions. Then-President Barack Obama held a historic handshake and meeting with Raul Castro at the summit Panama hosted in 2015.\n\nThe White House has refused to disclose an invite list, even in the days before the summit is due to begin. Pressed on whether weak attendance would hinder the summit's impact, Gonzalez maintained that the gathering will be \"well attended\" and the relationship with Mexico will \"remain positive.\"\n\nThe White House shrugged off questions about why details were being nailed down a week before the summit begins.\n\n\"I think if you've been following this administration for the past year and a half, one week is not the eleventh hour when it comes to how things move. And so that is a lifetime away for us as a White House,\" press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday.\n\nStill, she seemed to acknowledge the questions about attendance had subsumed some of the summit's objectives.\n\n\"I know there's always questions about the invites, there's always questions about who is coming and who is not, but we should also talk about and focus on what the purpose of this meeting is,\" she said.\n\nThe back-and-forth over attendance at the summit is indicative of the shifting dynamics in Western Hemisphere as some countries distance themselves from the US.\n\nSome US officials have downplayed the reluctance of some leaders to attend as attempts to appeal to their political base and have cautioned against reading into the decisions a sign of waning US influence.\n\nThe administration has worked to maintain US influence in the region, including through recent high-level visits by first lady Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.\n\nFormer Sen. Christopher Dodd, who's serving as special adviser for the summit, traveled to South America and met with officials in Brazil, Chile and Argentina. After Dodd's visit, Brazil's Foreign Ministry confirmed Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will attend the summit and plans to hold his first bilateral meetings with Biden.\n\nUS-Brazil relations have been strained since former President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro's political ally, failed in his bid for reelection. The Brazilian President was one of the last world leaders to congratulate Biden after the 2020 US election and is publicly critical about US pressure to curb the rising Amazon deforestation in Brazil.\n\nHe was initially skeptical of traveling to Los Angeles for the summit and has complained Biden ignored him when they encountered each other at the G20 last year. But he consented to attend when assured he wouldn't be subjected to just a photo-op.\n\nDodd has held similar conversations with other leaders in the region, including lengthy discussions with López Obrador, though hasn't yet secured the Mexican leader's commitment to attend.\n\nEven the attendance of countries working directly with the US government -- and more specifically, Harris -- remains in question. The leaders of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador have also not yet committed to going to the summit next week, even though Harris has worked to cultivate relationships in the region, including attending the Honduran President's inauguration in January. Harris spoke with Honduras President Xiomara Castro last week, but the readout did not mention the summit.\n\nOther nations, including Chile and Argentina, have criticized Washington's decision to exclude certain countries.\n\nLatin American countries have been discussing attendance amongst themselves, according to a senior Guatemalan official.\n\n\"Each country has its own decision-making process and arguments in order to say we go, or we don't go,\" the senior Guatemalan official said. Guatemala is expected to send a delegation to the summit, though it's unclear whether the President will attend.\n\nThe Biden administration is preparing a declaration on migration for countries to sign on to that provides a framework for migrant protection.\n\n\"This declaration is going to allow us to focus on promoting stabilization in communities that are hosting migrants, helping those communities and the migrants that they are hosting, ensuring things like access to legal documentation and public services,\" Brian Nichols, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the State Department, told reporters Wednesday.\n\nOfficials also expect to deliver outcomes on boosting economic growth, coordinating on pandemic recovery and combating climate change.\n\nDemocratic Rep. Joaquin Castro expressed optimism about the summit, even if some countries don't attend. \"We can make it work. We have a day-to-day relationship with these countries, but the summit is a chance for the countries to come together and plan ahead,\" he told CNN.\n\nBut, Castro added, countries who have yet to commit \"would be missed' if they didn't attend.\n\nYet without assurances of who will attend, it remained unclear what weight the summit's statements would hold.\n\nTraveling in Latin America last week, first lady Jill Biden — who will join her husband in Los Angeles for an opening ceremony and leaders' dinner — said she was reassured the countries she visited, including Ecuador, Panama and Costa Rica, would be attending the Summit of the Americas.\n\nThe first lady waved off concerns of a boycott.\n\n\"I'm not worried,\" she said. \"I think that they'll come.\"", "authors": ["Kevin Liptak", "Priscilla Alvarez"], "publish_date": "2022/06/02"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/09/politics/biden-summit-of-the-americas-day-two/index.html", "title": "Biden watches as Latin American leaders criticize his decision to ...", "text": "(CNN) President Joe Biden on Thursday watched on as Latin American leaders lambasted his decision to exclude autocratic leaders from the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, just moments after the President had delivered remarks underscoring his belief that the future of the Western Hemisphere should be a democratic one.\n\nBelize's prime minister, John Briceño, said on the stage of a summit plenary Thursday afternoon, \"The future of the Western Hemisphere is a question for all of the countries of this hemisphere. Irrespective of our size, our GDP, our system of governance -- we all have a shared interest in a sustainable, resilient and equitable future.\"\n\nAs Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris watched Briceño speak from mere feet away, he added that it is \"inexcusable that all countries of the Americas are not here and the power of the summit (is) diminished by their absence.\"\n\nBriceño called the isolation of certain countries who were not invited \"incomprehensible\" and specifically called on Biden to end its blockade on Cuba, calling it \"un-American\" and \"an affront to humanity.\" And he called Venezuela's absence \"unforgivable.\"\n\nArgentine President Alberto Fernández said during a speech later in the program that rules of future summits should be changed to prevent nations from being excluded. He also criticized measures taken against Cuba and Venezuela, such as the embargo.\n\n\"I am sorry that all of us, who should have been here, are not present,\" Fernández said.\n\n\"We definitely would have wished for a different Summit of the Americas. The silence of those who were absent is calling to us,\" he added.\n\nThe direct criticism from some of the Biden's fellow heads of state contradicted days of statements from the administration that the summit would be unaffected by the absences of the leaders of Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Bolivia, and the exclusion of three autocratic nations. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador boycotted the summit over the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, all autocratic nations. The snubs from key leaders have loomed over the summit, despite the administration's attempts to downplay their significance.\n\nEarlier, Biden opened the plenary telling leaders and delegates at the summit that the conference has already produced \"a lot of strong and constructive diplomacy.\"\n\n\"(Over) the next few days, we have an opportunity to find ways we can do better for all of our people by working together -- and I emphasize together, together. That's what our people expect of us. And it's our duty to show them the power of democracies to deliver when democracies work together,\" Biden said.\n\nBut in a short closing speech, Biden noted the disapproval in room by other leaders, but said there were more agreements on \"substantive things.\"\n\n\"I think we're off to a strong start,\" Biden said, adding that he believed the countries had many things they agreed on, \"notwithstanding some of the disagreements with regard to participation.\"\n\nEarlier Thursday, Biden told executives that he sees \"no reason why\" the region \"does not develop into the most democratic hemisphere in the world\" over the next decade.\n\n\"We have everything,\" the President said in remarks at the CEO Summit of the Americas. \"We have the people, we have the resources, and we have more democracies in this hemisphere than any other hemisphere. There's a lot we can do.\"\n\nHe also urged executives to \"step up\" and \"play a bigger role\" in driving \"inclusive, sustainable and equitable\" economic growth in the 21st century, calling for both the private sector and government to work together to \"deliver real improvement for people's lives.\" That growth, he argued, is in their \"own overwhelming economic self-interest.\" He called for building more resilient supply chains, an issue he said had affected everyone in the room, and argued that the region was \"filled with dynamic energy\" ready for the future.\n\nBiden has said throughout his presidency that the world is at a historical inflection point as to whether nations will choose democracy or autocracy. On Thursday, he told executives in the room that \"our challenge is to shape the outcomes so the future reflects the democratic values of our region.\"\n\nThe President struck a broadly optimistic tone throughout Thursday's events, despite a rocky start to the Los Angeles summit -- which has included nearly two dozen leaders from Latin America.\n\nThrough new economic and migration announcements, Biden has aimed to demonstrate a level of cohesion across the two continents' politics, but boycotts by leaders of several nations -- including Mexico and three Central American countries -- has put a damper on the summit.\n\nThe four leaders refused to attend because Biden declined to extend invitations to the three autocratic leaders.\n\nFollowing his speech to executives, Biden held a bilateral meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and met with the leaders of Caribbean nations alongside Vice President Kamala Harris.\n\nIn his meeting with leaders from the Caribbean, Biden told CNN he was not concerned about boycotts by other heads of state deciding not to attend the summit.\n\nBiden also held a bilateral meeting Thursday with Jair Bolsonaro, during which the Brazilian President emphasized the need for reliable elections in his country.\n\n\"In Brazil ... we do wish to have honest, clean, transparent, auditable, reliable elections, so there'll be no shadow of a doubt whatsoever following the elections,\" Bolsonaro said sitting alongside Biden.\n\n\"I'm quite certain that the elections will very much be carried out in this democratic spirit. I came to office through democracy, and I am quite certain that when I leave office, it will also be through democratic means,\" he added.\n\nThe White House had indicated that the two Presidents would discuss \"free, fair, transparent democratic elections\" in their talks, after Bolsonaro, a far-right populist, made comments casting doubt on Biden's 2020 election victory. He has also questioned the reliability of Brazil's election systems.\n\nLater Thursday, Biden will meet with other heads of state for dinner at the Getty Villa.\n\nBiden on Wednesday launched the summit by calling for cooperation and a renewed focus on democracy -- an urgent appeal after his exclusion of autocratic leaders at the conference.\n\nHe said at the start of the three-day summit that it was now critical to \"demonstrate to our people the power of democracies to make life better for everyone.\"", "authors": ["Maegan Vazquez"], "publish_date": "2022/06/09"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/08/politics/biden-summit-of-the-americas/index.html", "title": "Biden arrives at Summit of the Americas intent on demonstrating ...", "text": "Los Angeles (CNN) President Joe Biden arrived here Wednesday to play host to nearly two dozen leaders from Latin America, hoping to use new economic and migration announcements to demonstrate cohesion in a region of fractured politics and, at times, entrenched skepticism of the United States.\n\nHis mission has been made more difficult by the decision of several leaders to boycott, including the top officials from Mexico and three Central American countries the US has worked to cultivate. They refused to attend because Biden declined to extend invitations to three autocratic leaders.\n\nThe drama over the invitation list dampened the prospect of major shows of unity. Yet Biden remained intent Wednesday on showing his commitment to a part of the world often overlooked in American foreign policy.\n\nBiden launched the summit calling for cooperation and a renewed focus on democracy, an urgent appeal after his exclusion of autocratic leaders at the conference drew protests and boycotts.\n\n\"At a moment we need more cooperation, common purpose and transformative ideas. There's never been a greater need than today,\" Biden said as he opened the three-day event.\n\n\"Democracy has been a hallmark of our region,\" Biden went on, calling on nations to \"renew our conviction that democracy is not only the defining feature of American histories\" but the \"essential ingredient.\"\n\nHe said it was now critical to \"demonstrate to our people the power of democracies to make life better for everyone.\"\n\nAnd as China makes inroads in Latin America, Biden said \"we have all the tools we need right here in our own hemisphere\" to provide security and economic advancement.\n\nThe President spelled out in broad terms a new economic framework that Washington hopes other countries will sign on to in the coming months. He also previewed a migration declaration that countries have agreed to that details the responsibilities of nations amid historic migrant flows.\n\nThose are among the most serious challenges for the Western Hemisphere, and also amount to some of the most potent political liabilities for Biden as he suffers in the polls ahead of this year's midterm elections.\n\nThe President and his team had once hoped to use the summit to make major progress of those issues with players in the region. And US administration officials say they have secured participation even from countries whose leaders are refusing to attend.\n\n\"The substantive work of the summit has in no way, shape or form been touched or adjusted or reduced by the participation question,\" national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One as Biden was flying west. \"These two things are operating in entirely distinct lanes, and we're happy to have senior level participation from each of these countries, even though the leaders each for their own reason has chosen not to come to Los Angeles.\"\n\nStill, the boycott undercuts the picture of unity that might have emerged from the summit had all of the region's leaders been present.\n\n\"I think if they had to do it over again, they might have considered postponing it. But now, I think they're just going to go ahead with it, make the best of it,\" said John Negroponte, a former US ambassador to Mexico who has held several other high-ranking national security posts.\n\n\"This is an opportunity to put the spotlight on issues that are important to us in the hemisphere, and I'm sure the administration will have some success in doing that and I'm sure there will be useful meetings, useful conversations on a whole host of issues,\" he said.\n\nIt wasn't only the region's dictators who were denied invites to this week's summit. The opposition leader of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, was also left off the list, even though the United States recognizes him as the interim president. Extending an invitation to Guaidó could have further aggravated tensions with countries who still recognize the dictator Nicolás Maduro, who was among the autocrats Biden barred from participating.\n\nBiden did speak with Guaidó by telephone as he flew to Los Angeles.\n\nBiden's first day in California was intended to highlight American economic commitments to a region that has increasingly looked to China for investments in infrastructure. During the summit, Biden is expected to announce more than $300 million in assistance in food insecurity, in addition to other private sector commitments, as well as health initiatives and a partnership on climate resilience.\n\nThe President was planning to unveil a new economic partnership with Latin American nations, though it stops short of a full-blown trade agreement that would expand market access in ways many countries are seeking.\n\nThe \"Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity\" is instead a framework meant to reinvigorate regional economic institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank, make supply chains more resilient, create more clean energy jobs and ensure sustainable trade.\n\n\"The best antidote to China's inroads in the region is to ensure that we are forging our own affirmative vision for the region economically,\" a senior administration official told reporters. \"We think that that's why it's so important that we do lay down a really ambitious, regionally updated vision.\"\n\nAt the same time, officials acknowledged the partnership does not amount to a trade agreement that would require approval from Congress, where protectionist sentiments have largely forestalled any new free trade agreements.\n\n\"We're not negotiating a trade agreement that would go to Congress, but rather building on existing agreements to actually promote a race to the top,\" a second administration official said.\n\nIn Los Angeles, Biden was expected to meet for the first time with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was contemplating a boycott of his own before being promised a one-on-one with the American leader.\n\nThe far-right populist leader, who was a close ally of President Donald Trump, has been mostly ignored by the White House until this point. Earlier this week, he even echoed Trump by casting doubt on Biden's 2020 election victory in comments from Sao Paulo. He has also questioned the reliability of Brazil's election systems.\n\nSullivan said he expected the two Presidents to discuss \"free, fair, transparent democratic elections\" in their talks.\n\n\"There are no topics off limits in any bilateral the President does, including with President Bolsonaro,\" Sullivan said.", "authors": ["Kevin Liptak"], "publish_date": "2022/06/08"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/10/americas/mexico-president-summit-of-americas-us-intl/index.html", "title": "Mexico's President threatens to skip Americas summit unless US ...", "text": "Mexico City (CNN) Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador threatened to boycott next month's Summit of Americas, saying Tuesday that his participation will not be confirmed unless host country United States invites Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.\n\n\"Participation in the Los Angeles Summit has not yet been resolved because we are proposing that no one is excluded because we seek the unity of all America,\" López Obrador said during his daily briefing in Mexico City.\n\n\"We feel that there should be no confrontation. Even with the differences, we must dialogue, all Americans, then we are yet to resolve this issue; we have a very good relationship with the government of President Biden. We want everyone to be invited. That's the position of Mexico,\" he added.\n\nUS officials have repeatedly said the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela will not be invited to the summit due to their human rights records.\n\nAs host country, the US has the privilege of selecting leaders to be invited to the summit.\n\nRead More", "authors": ["Karol Suarez", "Stefano Pozzebon"], "publish_date": "2022/05/10"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/23/americas/mexico-president-boycott-summit-of-americas-intl-latam/index.html", "title": "Will Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela attend Summit of Americas ...", "text": "(CNN) A growing number of countries are threatening to snub the US-hosted Summit of the Americas next month, amid controversy over its guest list.\n\nThe summit, organized this year by US President Joe Biden's administration, was intended to convene leaders from across the Americas in Los Angeles to discuss common policy issues. As host country, the United States has the right to draw up its guest list.\n\nIn April, US Assistant Secretary of State Brian Nichols told reporters that authoritarian Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela were unlikely to be invited. The high-level conference would instead focus on the Western Hemisphere's democracies, Nichols said.\n\nWhile White House officials emphasize that the guest list is not yet finalized, even democratically elected leaders in the region are now warning that they won't attend the summit if not all countries are invited.\n\nNotably, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of neighboring Mexico has said that if other countries in the Americas are excluded, he would stay home in solidarity. \"If they're excluded, if not all are invited, a representative from the Mexican government would go, but I wouldn't,\" Lopez Obrador said during his regular news conference last Tuesday.\n\nRead More", "authors": ["Patrick Oppmann", "Hande Atay Alam"], "publish_date": "2022/05/23"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_12", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:37", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/08/entertainment/jurassic-world-dominion-review/index.html", "title": "'Jurassic World: Dominion' review: The old and new DNA come ...", "text": "CNN —\n\nThere’s something unfortunately symbolic about “Jurassic World: Dominion,” which combines old and new DNA from the near-three-decade-old franchise and generates a pretty mindless mess. The nostalgia factor gives the movie an initial jolt, and there are, of course, some dino-sized thrills, but not enough to lift this XL-sized mediocrity out of the gene pool’s shallow end.\n\nEven the marketing campaign comes across as a rather conspicuous fib, billing this as the saga’s “epic conclusion,” which is questionable in terms of the first half and hard to swallow in the latter, since, like dinosaur DNA, while the blueprint might be altered, these kind of box-office attractions are too enticing to leave dormant for long.\n\nWith Colin Trevorrow back in the director’s chair (having also kicked off this trio of “Jurassic World” movies) and sharing script credit with Emily Carmichael, the story brings back Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, picking up where “Fallen Kingdom” left off in terms of their oversight of Maisie (Isabella Sermon), now a restless teenager.\n\nYet the emotional core comes from reuniting the stars of the 1993 original – Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum – with the years having been kind to them, even if the writing hasn’t.\n\nIndeed, the convoluted plot operates on parallel tracks that only gradually begin to intersect, with giant prehistoric locusts sweeping across the land, creating an existential threat to the food chain. All signs rather transparently point to a classic corporate villain, Biosyn Genetics, whose bespectacled CEO (Campbell Scott) seems to have been unceremoniously plucked from one of the later Bond movies.\n\n“Jurassic Park” (both Michael Crichton’s book and the movie) contained an underlying “Don’t fool with Mother Nature” warning, and “Dominion” overtly incorporates what anyone paying attention will recognize as an environmental message.\n\nChris Pratt and a Parasaurolophus in 'Jurassic World: Dominion.' Universal Pictures/Amblin Entertainment\n\nStill, any more serious themes and ideas are overshadowed not just by the size of the supporting characters, but the absurdity necessary to eventually assemble everyone in the same place. As for some of the nail-biting escapes, let’s just say checking one’s brain at the door, reptilian or otherwise, certainly helps.\n\nThe two existing groups pick up a few key additions, perhaps most significantly DeWanda Wise (Netflix’s “She’s Gotta Have It”) as a fearless pilot somewhat reluctantly drawn into the adventure. But other than a kinetic chase with Pratt keeping his motorcycle one step ahead of rampaging raptors, the action proves too scattered and repetitive to deliver much sense of jeopardy, despite the customary technical wizardry at work.\n\nThe most pleasing elements thus reside in the occasional quieter moments, from unexpected interactions to snippets of John Williams’ original theme to Goldblum’s chaos-theory-spouting Ian Malcolm’s “Life finds a way” snideness, reminding those around him that what they’re doing is dangerous and stupid. He’s right, but to the extent that the second critique often applies to the script, his admonitions come with a heavy side of irony.\n\nGiven that this is the sixth “Jurassic” movie – with a 14-year gap in the middle – it’s not like Universal Pictures has thoroughly exhausted the title (although there have been other offshoots, such as an animated series). Based on past performance, it’s hard to see “Dominion” as the end of anything, particularly if the movie can tap into the renewed jet-propelled life that movie-going is exhibiting this summer, currently fueled by another sequel.\n\nLike many a monstrosity concocted in the lab, “Jurassic World: Dominion” falls short of its potential, which doesn’t mean it won’t be a success. Because just as life finds a way, when it comes to a title with this level of built-in name recognition, sequels somehow find a way, too.\n\n“Jurassic World: Dominion” premieres June 10 in US theaters. It’s rated PG-13.", "authors": ["Review Brian Lowry"], "publish_date": "2022/06/08"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2022/05/25/summer-movies-columbus-ohio-new-releases-classic-film-series/9751560002/", "title": "Summer movies in Columbus: New releases, classic film series", "text": "Peter Tonguette\n\nSpecial to The Columbus Dispatch\n\nDuring the summertime, many of us head outdoors to pools, parks or campgrounds. Others, though, find it the perfect time of year to head inside and go back to the movies.\n\nThis summer, Greater Columbus multiplexes will be chock-full of potential blockbusters, including the long-delayed sequel to “Top Gun,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” a thrilling new installment in the “Jurassic Park” franchise, “Jurassic World Dominion,” and the latest episode in the ever-unfolding Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Thor: Love and Thunder.”\n\nColumbus Summer Fun 2022: Our comprehensive events guide to concerts, festivals, theater, arts and more\n\nFor audiences whose taste in film runs toward the classics, the CAPA Summer Movie Series will return to the Ohio Theatre, and for those who want to catch a great flick and feel the summer breeze, checking out one of numerous outdoor film series may be the best bet.\n\nBlockbusters opening at theaters throughout Greater Columbus\n\n• “Top Gun: Maverick,” May 27: Nearly four decades since the original film — not to mention three full years since the sequel was first scheduled for release — the long-anticipated “Top Gun: Maverick” will make its way to multiplexes. Tom Cruise resumes his role of Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, joined by Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly and Jon Hamm.\n\n• “Jurassic World Dominion,” June 10: In the latest movie in the series that kicked off with Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster “Jurassic Park,” dinosaurs and people commingle on the Earth — and the cast of the original “Jurassic Park” films (including Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum) is blended with the cast of the more recent “Jurassic World” films (including Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard).\n\n• “Lightyear,” June 17: You thought that the saga of Buzz Lightyear wrapped up with “Toy Story 4.” Not so fast: The new computer-animated family film features the voice of Chris Evans as the “real” (not the toy) Buzz Lightyear. Also contributing vocal performances are Uzo Aduba, Peter Sohn and Keke Palmer.\n\n• “Elvis,” June 24: Previous actors to play the King of Rock ’n’ Roll include Kurt Russell and Bruce Campbell. Now, in director Baz Luhrmann’s new biopic, up-and-coming actor Austin Butler — known for his supporting turn in “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood” — will take on the role. Tom Hanks appears as Elvis’ manager and all-around guru, Colonel Tom Parker.\n\n• “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” July 1: The miniscule yellow life forms are back in the computer-animated sequel. Vocal talent featured include Steve Carell, Pierre Coffin and Taraji P. Henson.\n\n• “Thor: Love and Thunder,” July 8: As the Marvel Cinematic Universe rolls on . . . and on . . . .and on, Chris Hemsworth returns to the title role of the Norse god superhero. Incarnating other superhuman figures are Tessa Thompson, as Valkyrie; Natalie Portman, as Jane Foster/Mighty Thor; and Christian Bale, as Gorr the God Butcher.\n\n• “DC League of Super-Pets,” July 29: The DC Comics universe of films will go to the dogs (and other animals) with this computer-animated feature boasting a menagerie of superhero pets, including Krypto the Superdog (voiced by Dwayne Johnson), Ace the Bat-Hound (Kevin Hart) and PB, a potbellied pig belonging to Wonder Woman (Vanessa Bayer).\n\n• “Salem’s Lot,” Sept. 9: To usher in the autumn, “It Chapter Two” screenwriter Gary Dauberman writes and directs a fresh adaptation of Stephen King’s vampire novel. Lewis Pullman, Alfre Woodard and William Sadler star in the horror film reboot.\n\nMarvel exhibit:'This is epic': COSI extends 'Marvel Universe of Super Heroes' exhibit to Labor Day\n\nSummer movie series venues\n\nMany of the screenings take place outdoors starting at sunset.\n\nJohn F. Wolfe Columbus Commons\n\nEast Rich and South High streets\n\n• Free movie nights, 8:15 p.m. select days in May, June and July: The Commons will be the site of showings of the movies “Encanto” (May 28), “Frozen 2” (June 11), “The Lion King” (June 24) and “Sing 2” (July 22).\n\nContact: www.columbuscommons.org\n\nColumbus Zoo and Aquarium\n\n4850 Powell Road, Delaware County\n\n• “Zoombezi Bay Summer Nights,” 5-10 p.m. Fridays in July: Zoombezi Bay will keep its gates open late to host live entertainment as well as movie screenings at 8 p.m. The family-friendly lineup of flicks includes “The Incredibles 2” (July 1), “Iron Man 2” (July 8), “Sing 2” (July 15), “The Santa Clause 2” (July 22) and “Frozen 2” (July 29).\n\nContact: www.columbuszoo.org\n\n'Doctor Strange':'Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness' is showing; here's where to see the flick\n\nGenoa Park\n\n303 W. Broad St., Downtown\n\n• 21+ Outdoor Movie Series, at sunset on select Thursdays from June-October: The park will host screenings for a mature crowd. Most films are rated R, and highlights include “The Big Lebowski” (June 2), “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” (July 28) and “Remember the Titans” (Aug. 25). Food trucks will be on-site, and wine will be for sale.\n\nContact: www.nightlight614.com\n\n'Private Property':Area native takes a gamble on rewriting obscure '60s thriller 'Private Property'\n\nHinson Amphitheater\n\n170 W. Dublin-Granville Road, New Albany\n\n• “Family Flick Nights,” 7:30 p.m. select Tuesdays in June, July and August: The family-friendly movies “A Bug’s Life” (June 28), “Monsters, Inc.” (July 26) and “Finding Nemo” (Aug. 16) will be shown at the amphitheater.\n\nContact: www.newalbanyfoundation.org\n\nGoodale Park\n\n120 W. Goodale St., Victorian Village\n\n• “Screen on the Green,” at sunset on select Fridays in July, August and September: Outdoor screenings of the movies “Labyrinth” (July 15), “Moulin Rouge” (Aug. 19) and “Coco” (Sept. 16) will take place on the softball field.\n\nContact: www.shortnorthcivic.org\n\nEaston Town Center\n\n160 Easton Town Center\n\n• “Movies by Moonlight,” Tuesdays in June: The shopping complex will be the site of four outdoor film screenings: “Encanto” (June 7), “Inside Out” (June 14), “Trolls World Tour” (June 21) and “The Wizard of Oz” (June 28).\n\nOhio Theatre\n\n39 E. State St., Downtown\n\n• CAPA Summer Movie Series, June 16-Aug. 4: Following two summers with shortened schedules, the classic film series returns for nine weeks and some 25 feature films, including the opening weekend lineup of the Robin Williams-Nathan Lane comedy “The Birdcage” (June 16) and Francis Ford Coppola’s mafia masterpiece “The Godfather” (June 17-19). Other films include “Airplane!” (June 23-24), “My Fair Lady” (June 25-26), “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope” (July 8-9), Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious” (July 30-31) and “The Wrong Man” Aug. 11-12) and the Michael Keaton version of “Batman” (Aug. 5-6). Two programs of Saturday morning cartoon capers will take place on June 25 and July 30.\n\nContact: www.capa.com\n\nSouth Drive-In\n\n3050 S. HIGH ST.\n\n• Screenings throughout the summer and into the fall: The summer movie season’s biggest new releases are sure to turn up at this drive-in landmark in southwestern Columbus.\n\nContact: www.drive-inmovies.com\n\nUpper Arlington Parks system\n\n• “Movies in the Parks”: Assorted parks in the community will host outdoor movie screenings through August, including “Free Willy” at Thompson Park, 2020 McCoy Road (June 24) and “Raya and the Last Dragon,” Sunny 95 Park, 4395 Carriage Hill Lane (July 8).\n\nContact: www.upperarlingtonoh.gov\n\nWexner Center for the Arts\n\n1871 N. High St., OSU campus\n\n• “Federico Fellini,” July 7-Aug. 18: The arts center on the campus of Ohio State University will mark the centennial of Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini (1920-1993) two years after the fact: This major retrospective of Fellini’s much-admired films — including masterpieces succh as “La strada” (July 7), “8 1/2” (July 14) and “Juliet of the Spirits” (Aug. 4) — was originally slated for 2020, when Fellini would have turned 100, but was delayed due to the pandemic.\n\nContact: www.wexarts.org", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/25"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2022/06/12/jurassic-world-dominion-ousts-top-gun-maverick-box-office/7603314001/", "title": "'Jurassic World Dominion' overtakes 'Top Gun: Maverick' at box office", "text": "Lindsay Bahr\n\nThe Associated Press\n\nMove over, Maverick: The dinosaurs have arrived to claim their throne.\n\n“Jurassic World Dominion” took a mighty bite out of the box office with $143.4 million in North American ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday. Including earnings from international showings — the film opened in various markets last weekend — “Jurassic World Dominion,” released globally by Universal Pictures, has already grossed $389 million. And it’s just getting started.\n\n“We couldn’t be happier,” says Jim Orr, Universal’s head of domestic distribution. “‘Jurassic World Dominion’ had a very broad and ridiculously enthusiastic audience.”\n\nThe hefty haul is yet another sign that the box office is continuing to rebound this summer. With the blockbuster successes of films like “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” “Top Gun: Maverick” and now “Jurassic World 3,” audiences are coming back to movie theaters more consistently.\n\nGet it, girl! An ode to the T. rex, the true unsung hero of the 'Jurassic World' franchise\n\nReview:How 'Jurassic Park' stars, new 'Dominion' dinosaurs wrap up 'Jurassic World' trilogy\n\nThe film, which had a reported $185 million price tag not accounting for marketing and promotion costs, opened on 4,676 screens in the U.S. and Canada, starting with preview showings Thursday. Audiences were 56% male and 54% over the age of 25, according to Universal.\n\nCritics were not kind to the dino extravaganza, but audiences seem to be enjoying themselves, based on exit polls. Moviegoers gave it an A- CinemaScore and an 81% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, suggesting that word of mouth will be strong in the coming weeks.\n\n“You want to see dinosaurs on the big screen, it doesn’t matter what critics thought,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore.\n\nLike father, like daughter:'Jurassic World' star Bryce Dallas Howard is also a filmmaking force\n\nAnd many moviegoers did opt for the biggest screens possible. Globally, IMAX showings of “Jurassic World Dominion” represented $25 million of the total. The 3D format also accounted for around 25% of worldwide ticket sales.\n\n“The appetite for the colossal creatures in this franchise is still voracious, and the way audiences want to experience this movie is in 3D,” says Travis Reid, CEO and president of Cinema for RealD, in a statement.\n\nBoth “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Jurassic World Dominion” are an important caveat for an industry that continues to learn new lessons about pandemic-era moviegoing every week. Although both films are legacy sequels, neither are of the superhero variety, which, for a long time, had seemed like the only pandemic-proof genre.\n\nWhat to watch this weekend:'Jurassic World Dominion,' Adam Sandler in Netflix's 'Hustle'\n\n“Top Gun: Maverick” is still coasting in rarefied skies, too: It fell only 44% in its third weekend with an estimated $50 million to take second place, bringing its North American total north of $393.3 million. “Doctor Strange 2,” in its sixth weekend, was a distant third with $4.9 million.\n\nThis weekend is only the third of the pandemic era in which the total domestic box office surpassed $200 million, according to box office tracker Comscore. The others were “Spider Man: No Way Home,” in December, and “Doctor Strange 2,” in May. But this is the first time there has been space for two movies to do well.\n\n“Pretty much all the big blockbuster weekends that we’ve had over the pandemic have been dominated by one movie,” Dergarabedian says. “In this case, we have two big blockbusters in theaters at once. This is the recipe for success that theater owners have been waiting for over the course of the pandemic. It’s an important milestone.”\n\nLegal trouble:‘Top Gun: Maverick’ slapped with lawsuit by family of pilot who inspired original film\n\n“Dominion” is the third film in the “Jurassic World” trilogy, which began in 2015 and introduced characters played by Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. The newest installment brings back actors Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum from Steven Spielberg’s 1993 “Jurassic Park.”\n\nColin Trevorrow, who stewarded the “World” trilogy and directed the first film, returned to direct “Dominion,” in which dinosaurs are no longer contained and locusts are threatening the world’s food supply.\n\nThe filmmakers have said “Dominion” is intended to be the last of the “Jurassic World” films, which have been enormously profitable with more than $3 billion in ticket sales. The first earned more than $1.7 billion globally alone. Including the original “Jurassic Park” trilogy, that number skyrockets to $5 billion.\n\n“This is a tremendous start to our summer,” Orr says.\n\n'Top Gun: Maverick' throwbacks:All the best, including that jet-fueled ending (spoilers!)", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/12"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/08/media/jurassic-park-box-office/index.html", "title": "Which Jurassic Park film has roared loudest at the ticket booth? - CNN", "text": "Watch: New footage from the 'Game of Thrones' prequel 'House of the Dragon'\n\nWatch: New 'Avatar: Way of Water'' trailer just dropped\n\nNetflix just released the first 8 chilling minutes of 'Stranger Things'\n\n'American Idol' winner says he wants to 'stay in the house for a bit'\n\nThis ventriloquist surprised the judges on 'America's Got Talent'\n\nJake Tapper identifies key change in new 'Top Gun' movie that could anger China\n\nNew York CNN Business —\n\n“Jurassic World: Dominion,” the latest film in the Jurassic Park franchise, stomps into theaters this weekend. The sixth film in the dinosaurs-run-amok series could be one of the biggest of the summer — if not the entire year.\n\nThis shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Jurassic Park franchise has been one of the most popular brands in Hollywood since the 1993 original, notching roughly $5 billion at the global box office.\n\nBut which film has had the most deafening roar at the ticket booth?\n\nHere’s a list of the franchise’s biggest blockbusters at the domestic box office, adjusted for inflation, according to Comscore (SCOR).\n\n5. Jurassic Park III\n\n\"Jurassic Park III\" couldn't live up to the success of its two predecessors. Universal Pictures/Moviepix/Getty Images\n\nYear: 2001\n\nBox office haul: $181.1 million\n\nAdjusted for inflation: $293.7 million\n\nDespite the return of Sam Neill’s Dr. Alan Grant (and a cameo from Laura Dern’s Dr. Ellie Sattler), “Jurassic Park III” couldn’t live up to the box office success of its two predecessors.\n\nWhy not? For starters, this was the first film in the franchise that wasn’t directed by Steven Spielberg, and it wasn’t based on a Michael Crichton best seller, either.\n\nThe film, in which Grant returns to the dinosaur island to save a lost boy, also received bad reviews notching a 48% score on Rotten Tomatoes.\n\nEven so, it still managed to come in at No. 7 at the North America box office that year.\n\n4. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom\n\n\"Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom\" may have had the worst review score of the series, but was still a hit. Universal Pictures/Moviestore/Shutterstock\n\nYear: 2018\n\nBox office haul: $417.9 million\n\nAdjusted for inflation: $420.2 million\n\n“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” may have the lowest review score of the entire series (47% on Rotten Tomatoes), but that didn’t stop audiences from lining up. It was the fourth highest-grossing film of 2018.\n\nIt had the benefit of coming after 2015’s “Jurassic World,” one of the biggest blockbusters of all time. Also, it starred Chris Pratt, who was arguably hitting his zenith as a movie star in both the Jurassic World and Marvel franchises in the same year.\n\n“Fallen Kingdom,” in which Pratt and co-star Bryce Dallas Howard save dinosaurs from an active volcano, is the second film in the series to make over $1 billion worldwide.\n\n3. The Lost World: Jurassic Park\n\n\"The Lost World: Jurassic Park\" had a record opening at the time of its release. Universal/Amblin/Kobal/Shutterstock\n\nYear: 1997\n\nBox office haul: $229 million\n\nAdjusted for inflation: $457.1 million\n\nIt’s hard to overstate just how much anticipation swirled around “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” when it opened in 1997. The film, the franchise’s first sequel, brought back Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm, and was simply everywhere from Burger King to comic books. It even had its own cereal, “Jurassic Park Crunch,” whose cereal shapes were meant to resemble dinosaur footprints.\n\nBut the film was a letdown with critics, garnering lackluster reviews and it failed live up to the original “Jurassic Park.” Still, it was a huge hit, opening to $72 million in North America — a record at the time.\n\n2. Jurassic World\n\n\"Jurassic World\" rebooted the franchise to massive success at the box office. Universal Pictures/Amblin Entertainment via AP\n\nYear: 2015\n\nBox office haul: $654.1 million\n\nAdjusted for inflation: $710.7 million\n\n“Jurassic World” may have had the hardest task of all the films in the series: rebooting the franchise for a new generation of fans. It pulled it off.\n\nThe film, which imagined what Jurassic Park would look like if the theme park was operational, had a potent mixture for blockbuster success. Pratt, its star, was coming off the very popular Marvel film “Guardians of the Galaxy” and audiences were ready to embrace the nostalgia from the original film.\n\nThe film opened to a then-record $208 million in North America before going on to be the seventh highest-grossing film of all time with a $1.6 billion box office haul.\n\n1. Jurassic Park\n\n\"Jurassic Park\" is one of the biggest blockbusters of all time. Universal Pictures/Murray Close/Moviepix/Getty Images\n\nYear: 1993\n\nBox office haul: $350.8 million\n\nAdjusted for inflation: $776.2 million\n\nThere are blockbusters, and then there’s “Jurassic Park.”\n\nThe original 1993 film directed by Steven Spielberg changed cinema thanks to its use of special effects. But “Jurassic Park” is far more than CGI dinosaurs tearing up a theme park and terrifying the humans there. It’s a cinematic classic with nonstop thrills, wonder and even heart.\n\nThis is what made the film the highest-grossing film ever at the time. The film’s stature has only grown since, creating a new franchise that continues to dominate the box office today.", "authors": ["Frank Pallotta"], "publish_date": "2022/06/08"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/10/media/jurassic-world-dominion-box-office-opening/index.html", "title": "'Jurassic World: Dominion' looks to roar at the box office with the ...", "text": "Watch: New footage from the 'Game of Thrones' prequel 'House of the Dragon'\n\n'American Idol' winner says he wants to 'stay in the house for a bit'\n\nNew York CNN Business —\n\nAn adventure 65 million years in the making comes to a conclusion this weekend when “Jurassic World: Dominion” stomps into theaters.\n\nThe Universal film explores a world in which dinosaurs are not just running amok on a remote island, but all over Earth. That concept — alongside a brand that has raked in about $5 billion worldwide over five films — could be enough to pull viewers into theaters.\n\nBut dinosaurs and name recognition aren’t the only things “Dominion” has working for it.\n\n“Dominion” brings back the three stars from the original “Jurassic Park,” Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, alongside the younger characters of the series played by Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard.\n\nIf the cast from the original — one of the highest-grossing films of all time — wasn’t enough, “Dominion” is also billed as the final movie of “the Jurassic era.”\n\nThe film is expected to take in roughly $125 million domestically in North America this weekend, and has already made more than $55 million overseas after opening internationally last week. It notched $18 million domestically in preview screenings on Thursday night.\n\n“What has always made the Jurassic films special is the age-old trope: man vs beast,” Jeff Bock, senior analyst at entertainment research firm Exhibitor Relations, told CNN Business. “It’s a horror film. It’s an adventure film. It’s an action film. It’s a drama. It’s an existential comedy at times. It’s all the things.”\n\nAnd it’s yet another film that’s banking on nostalgia to bring in older moviegoers — an important demographic that has been mostly absent from theaters since the pandemic’s onset.\n\n“You’re really trying to get everybody”\n\n\"Jurassic World: Dominion\" is trying to break the box office this weekend. Universal Pictures\n\nNot many films have changed the course of cinema. “Jurassic Park” did.\n\nThe 1993 film directed by Steven Spielberg transformed the movie industry with its unprecedented use of special effects. Its impact — much like the film’s famous scene where reverberations in a glass of water signal the potentially deadly approach of a T-Rex — are still felt today.\n\nSo bringing back the cast from that film is a smart box office strategy for Universal.\n\nBut “Dominion” isn’t trying to specifically reach those over the age of 35 who watched the first film in theaters.\n\n“With the movie of this size, you’re really trying to get everybody,” according to Michael Moses, the chief marketing officer for Universal Pictures. “It is at once both meant to attract audiences who have been with us from the very beginning, but also ones who joined along the way.”\n\nAnd having the legacy cast members join in the adventure is not just a gimmick to pull in an older audience.\n\n“They’re not in the movie as window dressing or in a single scene. They are actually fully integrated into the narrative of the movie,” Moses said. “It really is trying to honor the entirety of the franchise.\n\nThat said, reaching out to an older audience has been a successful move at the box office lately.\n\nParamount’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” another film built on nostalgia from a film made decades ago, broke records when it opened over Memorial Day. The film’s numbers were boosted largely thanks to moviegoers over 35, who represented 55% of the US total that weekend.\n\n“‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ is not only trying to bridge the gap between trilogies, but also between demographics,” Bock said. “The hope here is that the same audiences that have returned to theaters for perhaps the first time since the pandemic began with ‘Top Gun’ are now ready to frequent theaters on a more regular basis.”\n\nThe end of the Jurassic era… maybe\n\nThe film is hoping that bringing back the original cast of \"Jurassic Park\" could boost ticket sales. Universal Pictures\n\nThere is one menace, however, that “Dominion” still faces: it could get eaten alive by bad reviews. The film currently has a 34% score on Rotten Tomatoes — the worst score in the series.\n\n“The nostalgia factor gives the movie an initial jolt, and there are, of course, some dino-sized thrills, but not enough to lift this XL-sized mediocrity out of the gene pool’s shallow end,” Brian Lowry, CNN’s media critic, wrote in his review.\n\nThen again, only two films in the series have had positive review scores on Rotten Tomatoes (the 1993 original and 2015’s “Jurassic World”), and that hasn’t stopped the series from selling tickets.\n\nSo a film like “Dominion” may be review-proof — this weekend, at least — especially if audiences want to get one last glimpse at the series.\n\nBecause if this really, really is the end of the Jurassic series (don’t forget, the 9-film “Fast & Furious” franchise has been doing “one last ride” over multiple films) the films’ legacy will be its status as a pop culture touchstone as well as a huge moneymaker.\n\n“When you picture a dinosaur, or when you imagine what a dinosaur sounds like, it’s almost certain that that memory is formed by the Jurassic movies more than anything else,” Moses said. “And so, that’s a very powerful thing to reach that kind of cultural status beyond just a cinematic moment.”", "authors": ["Frank Pallotta"], "publish_date": "2022/06/10"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2022/06/08/jurassic-world-dominion-movie-review/7535848001/", "title": "'Jurassic World Dominion' review: Best since first 'Jurassic Park'", "text": "After so many “Jurassic Park” and “Jurassic World” movies spent trying to keep dinosaurs isolated in poorly executed high-tech sanctuaries, it’s nice to see a thunder lizard drop by a drive-in movie theater for a bite.\n\nDirector Colin Trevorrow’s “Jurassic World Dominion” (★★★ out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters now) is a globe-trotting action adventure that awesomely imagines a world having to come to grips with rampaging dinos big and small living among humans – at least until the movie shifts its focus to yet another sanctuary full of cloned creatures, another shady tech company and another climactic primal showdown.\n\nAlthough overly familiar, “Dominion” boasts everything you’d ever want in a “Jurassic” film and is the best in the series since the original 1993 movie. (That said, apart from Steven Spielberg's wondrous opener, this is not exactly a high bar.) The plot brings together the original ���Park” heroes – a joy to meet again – and the newer “World” crew to essentially wrap up the current trilogy and the franchise so far.\n\n'It's truly remarkable':'Jurassic World' dads Chris Pratt, Jeff Goldblum on witnessing childbirth\n\nAll those warnings in the first “Jurassic Park” about playing with science come to fruition at the beginning of “Dominion,” which deftly uses an internet video to show how life on Earth has been affected by an influx of dinosaurs.\n\nThe new film picks up four years after the beasts escaped the destruction of Isla Nublar (see: 2018’s “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom\"), and returning characters Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) are now a couple living in the Sierra Nevada as adoptive parents to Maisie (Isabella Sermon), the clone girl who released the dinos into the wild in the previous film. Much to her tween angst, the adults keep her hidden away from people who’d want to capture her for scientific purposes, but she gets kidnapped anyway alongside Beta, the spawn of Owen’s Velociraptor pal Blue.\n\nMeanwhile, evolved dino-locusts are doing a number on crops in the Midwest. Fearing a worldwide famine on the horizon, paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) reaches out to old paleontologist friend – and fellow OG Jurassic Park survivor – Alan Grant (Sam Neill) for help. During their investigation, they get an invite to the remote Italian mountain headquarters of Biosyn Genetics, where dinos from all over the world are taken. Mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) is the in-house philosopher, and he gives Ellie and Alan the lowdown on the corporation and the morally and ethically questionable practices of its CEO (Campbell Scott).\n\n'Appropriate at the time':Laura Dern, Sam Neill reflect on 'Jurassic Park' romance's age gap\n\nIt takes a while, but the parallel story lines in Trevorrow and Emily Carmichael’s screenplay do come together for a “Jurassic” super team-up that’s pretty nifty to see, especially the long-awaited reunion between Dern and Neill’s characters. The coolest new character joining the bunch is Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), a cargo pilot – and fun, swagger-filled twist on the Indiana Jones/Han Solo archetype – who helps Owen and Claire on their rescue mission. If the next trilogy ends up being “Jurassic Space,” let’s hope she’s at the wheel.\n\nIf you come to the “Jurassic” movies for the dinos (and let’s face it, that’s a lot of folks), there are plenty of species to be had – 27, in fact. The T. rex is back, naturally, although it gets a large new foe on the block with the debuting Giganotosaurus. Atrociraptors are used as precision killing machines in a spectacular motorcycle chase scene set in Malta – think something out of “Mission: Impossible,” but replacing Tom Cruise with speedy reptiles – and a winged Quetzalcoatlus does a number on Kayla’s plane. The creature effects are all top notch, especially the eerie mega-locust swarms.\n\nOther than a T. rex getting loose in San Diego for a little while in the second “Jurassic Park,” the franchise hasn’t really leaned into dinos wrecking stuff in the real world – and mankind being thrown by having to share the Earth – so those moments early on in “Dominion” feel inventive. Yet the science veers pretty wonky and, while still mostly exciting, the film tends back toward the romping-and-stomping template we’ve seen previously.\n\nIn that vein, the new “Jurassic World” is more “Return of the Jedi” than “Empire Strikes Back,” giving fans a comfort-food finale that plays a few fresh numbers, but mainly sticks to the hits.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/08"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/12/media/jurassic-world-dominion-box-office/index.html", "title": "'Jurassic World: Dominion' roars to big opening weekend at the box ...", "text": "New York (CNN Business) The end of the Jurassic era arrived with a deafening roar at the box office.\n\nThe opening for \"Dominion\" roughly falls in line with the debut of the prior film in the series, \"Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,\" which opened to $148 million in 2018. That's impressive considering how different the box office marketplace is compared to just five years ago.\n\nAnother impressive feat is that the film found an audience despite some pretty awful reviews . \"Dominion\" notched the lowest critics score of the series on review site Rotten Tomatoes, bringing in a 30% rating.\n\nThe big weekend adds to the film's worldwide haul of $389 million since opening overseas last week.", "authors": ["Frank Pallotta", "Cnn Business"], "publish_date": "2022/06/12"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2022/06/11/jurassic-world-dominion-spoilers-tyrannosaurus-rex-unsung-hero/7568801001/", "title": "'Jurassic World Dominion' spoilers: Why the T. rex is an unsung hero", "text": "Spoiler alert: The following post discusses the end of \"Jurassic World\" (and some past \"Jurassic\" flicks), so beware if you haven't seen it yet.\n\nThe “Jurassic Park” and “Jurassic World” movies have sported some big names onscreen since 1993, from Chris Pratt and Samuel L. Jackson to Julianne Moore and Oscar winner Laura Dern.\n\nBut only one is the true unsung hero of this mega-franchise: Tyrannosaurus rex.\n\nA mighty mawed wind beneath our wings, the T. rex has rescued people (OK, usually by accident) and saved the day quite a few times in the “Jurassic” series. It happens again in “Jurassic World Dominion,” where the original beast from the first “Jurassic Park” faces fellow carnivore Giganotosaurus for all the marbles. As the humans scramble to escape Biosyn’s exploding headquarters in the film's climax, the T. rex tag-teams with an impressively clawed Therizinosaurus to take down the huge new dino on the block.\n\nReview:Dino delight 'Jurassic World Dominion' is the best since the first 'Jurassic Park'\n\nWhile the “Jurassic” films have brought in more massive creatures every time – and even invented new hybrid species – the T. rex has always had an intriguing part to play. For kids fascinated by dinosaurs, before Steven Spielberg set them loose in theaters, there has always been something inherently cool and dangerous about the T. rex: Brontosaurus was the cute one, Triceratops had the horns, Stegosaurus sported the nifty armor plates, but the T. rex was both supremely awesome and the one you were most glad went extinct.\n\n“Jurassic Park” presented the original female T. rex as an antagonist on Isla Nublar, chasing Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum and trying to eat them. But at the end of Spielberg's '93 blockbuster, she fights off a pack of vicious Velociraptors as part of an inadvertent rescue and stands tall as a roaring lady boss in the iconic shot where the “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth” banner comes tumbling down.\n\n'Jurassic World Dominion':How 'Jurassic Park' stars, new 'Dominion' dinosaurs wrap up trilogy with a bang\n\nThe other “Jurassic Park” films focused on T. rexes but it wasn’t quite the same. The 1997 sequel “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” centered on a family of them with mixed results, though one adult T. rex getting loose in San Diego (it was looking for its kid so there was some reason for the rampage) and drinking out of a suburban swimming pool was a nice touch. (Let’s not talk about what happened to the family pooch.) And 2001’s “Jurassic Park III” did the T. rex dirty, as a Spinosaurus murders that one way too quickly.\n\nDirector Colin Trevorrow brought back the OG T. rex in 2015’s “Jurassic World” and presented her as a Rocky type who gets knocked down by genetically engineered big bad Indominus rex but always gets back up. She helps Owen Grady (Pratt) and park manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) in the main square of the theme park by teaming up with Owen’s trained Velociraptor, Blue, and getting the Indominus close to the lake so it can get eaten by a Mosasaurus. The T. rex even gives Blue a tiny nod of mutual respect before her exit.\n\nShe appears sporadically through 2018’s “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” saving Owen’s butt from a hungry Carnotaurus and telling a lion what’s what when the dinos get into the wild. But Trevorrow gave the T. rex a low-key intriguing story arc in “Dominion”: In the movie's prologue released online in November and set 65 million years ago, the T. rex is murdered by a Giganotosaurus and a mosquito drinks its blood – the same mosquito found in amber and whose dino DNA is used to clone the T. rex who later stands victorious at the end of “Dominion.”\n\n'It's truly remarkable':'Jurassic World' dads Chris Pratt, Jeff Goldblum on witnessing childbirth\n\n“You realize at the end that it's kind of a revenge picture. It's just ‘Death Wish,’ ” Trevorrow tells USA TODAY with a laugh. “I really wanted to create a moment where you weren't sure: Is this the beloved character that they're going to kill in this movie? Because it's possible. We could have done that. And I know how much that would've deeply upset a lot of people and yet playing on that emotional fear is something I'm OK doing.”\n\nHere’s hoping the T. rex comes back like a returning champ in the next “Jurassic” trilogy. Not all heroes wear capes – some have little arms, big teeth and an unsurmountable will to survive.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/11"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/09/media/jurassic-world-chris-pratt/index.html", "title": "How Chris Pratt went from 'Parks and Recreation' to 'Jurassic World ...", "text": "Watch: New footage from the 'Game of Thrones' prequel 'House of the Dragon'\n\n'American Idol' winner says he wants to 'stay in the house for a bit'\n\nNew York CNN Business —\n\n“Jurassic World: Dominion” hits theaters this weekend, and it features one of the most successful movie stars in Hollywood today: Chris Pratt.\n\nPratt — who plays dinosaur handler Owen Grady — has transformed himself from an actor best known for playing chubby goofballs into a ripped and bankable action star who leads two major franchises. His film work, which include lead roles in the Jurassic World and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy series, have notched more than $11.6 billion at the global box office, according to Comscore (SCOR).\n\nPratt got his break in Hollywood in 2009 as lovable doofus Andy Dwyer on the NBC sitcom, “Parks and Recreation.” After playing supporting roles in films such as “Moneyball” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” Pratt had a massive year at the cineplex in 2014.\n\nThe actor starred as the voice of Emmet Brickowski in “The Lego Movie,” an animated film set in the world of Legos, which went on to make $469 million worldwide. Then Pratt took off as cocky space avenger Peter “Star-Lord” Quill in Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy.” That film went on to make $773.3 million globally and changed the trajectory of Pratt’s career.\n\nBut that role almost didn’t happen. Pratt was overweight and mainly played comedic roles, and James Gunn — the director of “Guardians” — didn’t even want to see him audition.\n\n“I thought it was an insane idea to cast the fat guy from ‘Parks and Rec’ as the lead of our superhero movie,” Gunn told GQ in 2014. He changed his mind once he met Pratt.\n\n“I thought, ‘Well, hell, he’s overweight, but if that means we have the world’s first overweight superhero, I’m okay with it,’” Gunn added. Pratt famously lost 60 pounds in six months for the role and has been in action hero shape ever since.\n\nAnd that’s a good thing, since Pratt had to believably outrun dinosaurs the next year.\n\n“Jurassic World,” which rebooted the Jurassic Park franchise with Pratt in the leading role, went on to become one of the biggest films ever. It opened to a then record $208 million before raking in $1.6 billion worldwide and is currently the seventh highest-grossing film ever.\n\nPratt has since starred in hit sequels for “Jurassic” and “Guardians” as well as other Marvel movies. His last film, “The Tomorrow War,” which streamed exclusively on Amazon Prime Video, had “the best opening for an Amazon original tentpole,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.\n\nPratt has had some misses at the box office, too, such as “The Lego Movie: The Second Part” and the big-budget, sciene fiction film “Passengers.”\n\nHe’s also faced some controversy. Earlier this year, Gunn defended Pratt over the actor’s alleged association with a church that has supported gay conversion therapy, a claim Pratt denied in 2019.\n\nNow, Pratt is set for what could be a huge year. After “Dominion” he returns as Star-Lord in Marvel’s next big film, July’s “Thor: Love and Thunder.”\n\n“Dominion” is being sold with some nostalgia by bringing back the stars of the original 1993 “Jurassic Park” — Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum — and could prove to be the last in the series. That kind of buzz could lead to another blockbuster for Pratt.\n\n“It’s 30 years in the making,” Pratt told NBC’s “Today” show earlier this month. “You’ve got the legacy cast coming back … Our story lines converge in a way that is very much a finale.”\n\n– CNN’s Lisa Respers France contributed to this report.", "authors": ["Frank Pallotta"], "publish_date": "2022/06/09"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2022/04/27/jurassic-world-dominion-jeff-goldblum-replies-fan-thirst-tweet/9561345002/", "title": "'Jurassic World Dominion': Jeff Goldblum replies to fan's thirst tweet", "text": "LAS VEGAS – Jeff Goldblum is just being modest.\n\nThe internet heartthrob and “Jurassic Park” favorite returns along with original castmates Laura Dern, Sam Neill and BD Wong for “Jurassic World Dominion\" (in theaters June 10), which premiered new footage at CinemaCon Wednesday.\n\nTaking the stage with current franchise star Bryce Dallas Howard, Goldbum bemoaned how the “Dominion” stunts “felt more taxing” on his body than they did 30 years ago. But Howard was having none of it from the actor, who at 69, looks as youthful and fit as he did in 1993.\n\n“I’m not taking that from you,” Howard said, pointing Goldbum to a fan tweet that reads, “Jurassic World Dominion, a movie about the original cast being hotter than ever.”\n\n“No, I think that’s my social media interns,” Goldblum joked. “They really earned their paycheck that day. That’s what happened.”\n\nMore CinemaCon:Michael Keaton returns as Batman in first look at 'The Flash' movie with Ezra Miller\n\nTeeing up the new \"Dominion\" footage, Goldblum credited the original film's director, Steven Spielberg, for helping create a franchise that \"does what no other movie series can do. It's uniquely wondrous.\"\n\nThe actors explained how everyone has a \"special memory\" of watching one of the \"Jurassic\" movies.\n\n\"I remember seeing the first 'Jurassic Park' in theaters opening weekend when I was 12 years old and totally crushing on you,\" Howard told Goldblum, earning laughs from the audience at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace.\n\nFirst look: Margot Robbie's 'Barbie,' Timothée Chalamet's 'Wonka' reimagine classic characters\n\nGoldblum plans to create memories with his own family with \"Dominion.\" The actor shares two sons with his wife, dancer Emilie Livingston: Charlie, 7, and River, 5.\n\nDue in part to the pandemic, the boys \"have never seen a movie in a movie theater,\" Goldbum said. \"But I've already promised that this is going to be the first movie that we take them to. I can't wait.\"\n\n\"Dominion,\" which also stars Chris Pratt, is the third film in Colin Trevorrow's \"Jurassic World\" trilogy and finds dinosaurs living alongside humans all over the world.\n\nThe action-packed CinemaCon reel featured new footage of raptors and a T. rex, as well as a timely warning from Dern's Dr. Ellie Sattler: \"If we're going to survive, what matters is what we do now.\"\n\n'Avatar 2':Breathtaking first teaser trailer, official title revealed at CinemaCon", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/04/27"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_13", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:37", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/06/tech/apple-wwdc-2022/index.html", "title": "Apple unveils iOS 16 with revamped lock screen and big changes to ...", "text": "(CNN) Apple kicked off its annual developer conference by unveiling its next-generation mobile software, iOS 16, with new features that will let users personalize their iPhone lock screens, change how they text friends through iMessage and deepen how its smartphones integrate with cars.\n\nThese and other updates, which were unveiled at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, show how Apple continues to push to ensure its devices -- the iPhone in particular -- remain central to our daily lives and the many products we interact with. But while these updates will likely appeal to many Apple device users, the event was also notable for what was not announced: a new product.\n\nIn recent days, some industry watchers had held out hope that Apple could offer an early look at a platform thought to be called RealityOS. The system, according to rumors, could power a mixed reality headset -- a wearable device that's said to be capable of both VR and AR -- which Apple has been rumored to be working on for years.\n\nInstead, the focus was on a number of functional, if not sexy, product updates: more multi-tasking features on Mac software, the introduction of Apple's Weather app on iPad and the unveiling of the company's next-generation M2 chip.\n\n\"While some may be disappointed at the lack of radical new hardware in areas such as AR, Apple's investment in silicon will play a defining role in future product categories, such as a head-worn device, where power and performance must be finely balanced,\" said Ben Wood, chief analyst at market research firm CCS Insight.\n\nRead More", "authors": ["Samantha Murphy Kelly", "Cnn Business"], "publish_date": "2022/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/05/tech/wwdc-2022-what-to-expect/index.html", "title": "WWDC 2022: What to expect at this week's Apple conference - CNN", "text": "(CNN) Apple is about to hold its annual developer conference this week where it's expected to show off new software coming to its most popular devices and possibly offer the biggest hint yet about a new product long rumored to be in development.\n\nAt its Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off virtuallyon Monday and runs through Friday, Apple is expected to show off its latest operating system, iOS 16, which could reportedly include a revamped notification center and lock screen for iPhones as well as new health features and social featuresfor iMessage. Other rumors point to new TV OS features, which could tie into the smart home; an upgrade to Apple Watch OS that would boost the battery life; and a new MacBook Air.\n\nSome analysts arealso holding out hope thatcould offer an early look at a platform thought to be called RealityOS.The system could power the mixed reality headset — a wearable device that's said to be capable of both virtual and augmented reality — which Apple has been rumored to be working on for years.\n\nDaniel Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, has taken to calling the rumored hardware product \"Apple Glasses,\" in an apparent nod to Google's early and failed foray into smart glasses. In an investor note this week, Ives said he expects Apple to \"hit on a number of AR/VR technologies to developers that the company plans to introduce.\"\n\n\"Ultimately this strategy is laying the breadcrumbs to the highly anticipated AR headset Apple Glasses set to make its debut likely before holiday season or latest early 2023,\" he said.\n\nCook has long been vocal about Apple's vision to dive deeper into AR, calling it \"the next big thing\" and \"a critically important part of Apple's future.\" Whether this is the year Apple finally shows its cards for that future, however, is anyone's guess.\n\nApple's event will be livestreamed on its website, YouTube and other social media platforms. It is set to start at 10:00 a.m. PT/1:00 p.m. ET. Here's a closer look at what to expect:\n\nThe iPhone lock screen gets a refresh\n\niOS 16 features aren't expected to be game changers, but a few additions could breathe new life into the user experience. Similar to last year iOS 16 features aren't expected to be game changers, but a few additions could breathe new life into the userexperience.\n\nApple is expected to make messages more social and interactive and to rework the notification system and lock screen with a greater focus on widgets, according to Bloomberg\n\nRamon Llamas, research director at IDC Research, said Apple could create a valuable opportunity for developers by rethinking the real estate on the lockscreen to move away from static notifications of texts and emails and toward interactive experiences like schedules, weather and news.\n\n\"Think of all the things and widgets you could see just at a glance without having to open your iPhone,\" Llamas said. \"Now tie them to your homescreen. It's a part of the iPhone experience that has been mostly the same and would benefit from a refresh.\"\n\nUpdates to iPad and Mac software\n\nmore like a laptop and less like a phone. With iPadOS, meanwhile, Apple is expected to double down on multitasking features to play up its powerful in-house M1 processor. According to Bloomberg , the update could make the iPad feelmore like a laptopand less like a phone.\n\nApple is also expected to unveil its latest Mac OS, with the rumored name Mac Mammoth. It could offer refreshes to apps such as Mail, Notes and Safari, and similar social functionality in Messages to what's rumored to be coming to iPhones.\n\nApple may add home automation improvements to both its HomePod speaker and Apple TV, as well as its broader HomeKit ecosystem. It's also possible Apple could announce a refresh to Apple Watch OS, with the promise of new health features, workouts and watch faces.\n\nHardware improvements\n\nIf Apple's prior developer conferences are any indication, it's unlikely the company will unveil any major new hardware products at the event this year. But it's possible Apple could shine a spotlight on its next-generation M2 chip and discuss some developer opportunities around it. For example, Apple could unveil a new MacBook Air by showing what the system would be capable of with its latest in-house processor.\n\n\"Usually, new hardware comes out later in the year, so don't be disappointed if you don't see something,\" Llamas said. \"But even if Apple does, I think the bigger news is not the hardware itself, but Apple's own silicon that powers them.\"\n\nA look at the future of AR/VR\n\nThe big wild card at WWDC is whether Apple makes a splashy announcement around augmented reality or focuses on more incremental updates.\n\nRather than unveiling a mixed reality headset now, Apple may outline how developers could use its existing ARKit platform and its programming language, Swift, to create content for AR and VR broadly. (Apple's tagline for the event is \"Swiftly approaching.\" The company often hides clues in images and taglines of its events' invites.)\n\n\"It's quite possible the company will tease new AR/VR features without outright revealing a new device,\" said Eric Abbruzzese, research director at ABI Research. But, as he notes, it would be unusual for Apple to reveal a new software system for a hardware line it has yet to unveil.\n\n\"It'd be like revealing iOS before the iPhone was revealed,\" Abbruzzese added.\n\nWhile it's unclear if Apple will be laying the framework for a bigger push around AR/VR hardware in the pipeline, it's quite likely Apple executives will dedicate a good portion of its keynote presentation to software around those technologies.\n\n\"Apple's been building ARKit on the mobile device side for years,\" Abbruzzese said. \"Much of that will absolutely translate to their headsets.\"", "authors": ["Samantha Murphy Kelly", "Cnn Business"], "publish_date": "2022/06/05"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2022/06/01/ios-16-roundup-iphone-ipad/7454531001/", "title": "iOS 16: What will Apple announce at WWDC? What you need to know", "text": "Next week's Worldwide Developers Conference will provide a first glimpse of how the iPhone will change this fall.\n\nOn Monday, Apple will host a virtual keynote for WWDC from its headquarters in California, where it will likely share details on the latest software updates for iPhones, iPads and MacBook computers.\n\nTentatively called iOS 16, the next software update will introduce a new look and feel to all iPhones. Apple will also likely unveil new version of its iPadOS and WatchOS for iPads and Apple Watches.\n\nLast year, the launch of iOS 15 added major upgrades to video calling tool FaceTime, including a grid view to see multiple people on a call at once, a Focus mode to help minimize distracting notifications, and the option to add your state identification or driver's license to your iPhone.\n\nWhat can iPhone owners expect this year? Let's round up what Apple may reveal.\n\n'I exhausted my savings':Inflation has Americans turning to loans, credit cards to cope. Does it pose big risks?\n\nJust graduate?:Clean up your social (media) life before you get to campus or your new job\n\nAn always-on iPhone screen\n\nThe lock screen could undergo a radical transformation, according to a report from Bloomberg. iOS 16 would include support for an always-on display which would provide basic information to users, said the report. For context, some models of Samsung smartphones feature an always-on display with info such as date, time, and notifications.\n\nThe lock screen would also support wallpapers capable of offering information like widgets to iPhone owners, the report said.\n\nMessages to get an upgrade\n\nThe iPhone's Messages app could see some changes, too. Bloomberg reports Messages could support more social network-style functionality but didn't specify exactly how it could change.\n\nAn updated Health app\n\nThe Health app is also expected to add new features available for both the iPhone and Apple Watch, Bloomberg reports.\n\nLast year, The Wall Street Journal reported Apple was working on several new additions for Apple Watch that could launch this year, including a tool to alert users when their blood pressure is rising and a thermometer to help with fertility planning.\n\nWhen will iOS 16 launch?\n\nTypically, the arrival of the latest version of iOS lands just before the launch of a new iPhone in the fall. Last year, Apple launched iOS 15 on Sept. 20, four days before the debut of the iPhone 13.\n\nWill my iPhone support iOS 16?\n\nThe most recent releases of the iPhone will almost certainly support iOS 16. The question is whether much older models going back to the iPhone 6S, which launched nearly seven years ago, will still run the latest version of iOS. If you're clinging to one of those models, it might be time to consider an upgrade.\n\nFollow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/01"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnists/2022/06/09/apple-macbook-air-macbook-pro-preview/7573499001/", "title": "MacBooks: What we know about Apple's new M2 MacBook Air ...", "text": "Bob O'Donnell\n\nSpecial to USA TODAY\n\nCUPTERTINO, Calf. — How do you make something both a surprise and not a surprise at the same time? Well, if you’re Apple, you announce something most everyone expects you to do at a much different time than most people thought you would.\n\nNo, I’m not talking about the highly anticipated (but still only rumored) AR headset (that’s likely something for next year). This week’s announcement belonged to the new M2 chip-based MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops, which the company unveiled at its annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). The WWDC event is usually focused almost exclusively on software advancements with things like feature updates to iOS, MacOS, watchOS, and iPadOS taking center stage.\n\nWWDC 22 recap: Apple unveils the MacBook Air 2022, iOS 16 during keynote\n\nIn fact, the company did address software updates this year, with iOS 16 promising features like lock screen customization and text message recall or post-send editing, iPadOS 16 offering significantly more Mac-like productivity features for collaboration and multi-app windowing, and MacOS Ventura (the next version’s name) scheduled to enable things like Continuity Camera for using a paired iPhone as a high-quality webcam and passwordless log-ins via new Passkeys.\n\nSo long, passwords? Portable digital identities may replace them\n\nIn addition to the expected software refinements, however, Apple also took the wraps off its highly anticipated second-generation M2 chip for Mac and the first two machines to support it – updated versions of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Even casual Apple observers all figured the company would eventually do this, but most everyone tracking the news from WWDC was surprised it happened now.\n\nWhat it illustrates is that Apple is moving forward even more aggressively on its roadmap for making custom Arm-based chip designs (at the heart of the M series processors) than many realized. At the same time, it’s becoming clear that Apple’s M line of silicon is quickly becoming a more complex and nuanced set of offerings than many had originally thought.\n\nAs you would expect based on the name alone, the M2 is a more advanced version of the original M1 chip first introduced about 20 months ago in previous versions of the MacBook Air, 13” MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini. It is not, however, expected to be faster or more capable than the M1 Ultra, M1 Pro, or M1 Max processors the company has debuted over the past year.\n\nWhat does it all mean?\n\nConfused? Well, what Apple is clearly signaling is that it will have a tier of performance levels within each generation of its M series line and, from generation to generation, those tiers are going to overlap. So, M2-based computers are expected to be 18% faster for computation and 35% faster for graphics than M1 machines, but not necessarily faster than something based on the M1 Pro or M1 Ultra. At the same time, it’s now fairly safe to bet that we’ll see an M2 Pro and M2 Ultra and that they will be faster than their predecessors.\n\niOS 16 release details: These are the six biggest updates coming to iPhones this fall\n\nWhat this also suggests is that, in some ways, Apple is using a page from an old Intel chip manufacturing strategy called “tic toc.” With this approach, one generation of chips provides refinements from an existing design as the M2 – seems to be doing versus the M1– and then the generation after that uses what’s called a different process node to manufacture the chip with small transistors.\n\nTech talk\n\nPractically speaking, what this means is that the M1 and M2 were made with 5 nm (nanometer) transistors, but the M3 is expected to be shrunk down to using 3 nm components. The only reason you should care is that these process node changes typically offer even greater performance boosts than design changes, meaning we could see even bigger performance jumps when Apple eventually moves to the M3.\n\nThe M2 looks to bring solid improvements versus the first generation M1 MacBooks. Even bigger news for the new M2-powered MacBook Air is a refined, slimmed down design that brings back the Magsafe power connector, improves the webcam to 1080P resolution and ups the screen size to 13.6 inches.\n\nAs I was able to witness first hand at the event, it’s a beautiful machine to see and hold, and it also now comes in four different metallic colors. The new design does come at a price, however, with the M2-based MacBook Airs starting at $1,199 when they’re available sometime next month, according to Apple. That’s $200 more than the M1 MacBook Air, which the company will continue to sell for $999.\n\nNew Apple Pay Later feature:Now you can buy that MacBook on the installment plan\n\nThe M2-based MacBook Pro starts at the same $1,299 price as the M1-based MacBook Pro (which it is replacing), though it maintains the same design and 13” screen size of the original.\n\nThe bottom line\n\nAs Apple likes to point out, the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro are the world’s two best- selling laptops (in part, because Apple offers significantly fewer different models than any other PC vendor), so changes and upgrades to them are going to impact and be noticed by a lot of people.\n\nThe M2 versions, particularly the newly designed MacBook Air, offer a lot of what most potential buyers will want in a notebook, including up-to-date performance, solid battery life and good designs. More importantly, they are clear representations of where Apple wants its computing business to go – full steam ahead.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/09"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2022/06/12/all-things-apple-latest-tech-giant-after-wwdc/7593221001/", "title": "All things Apple: The latest from the tech giant after WWDC", "text": "On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast:\n\nApple's World Wide Developers Conference wrapped up on Friday with the announcement of new software (I.O.S. 16) and new features to Imessage. But are these changes enough to keep people devoted to the tech giant and it's ecosystem? Or is the thrill gone?\n\nThe team at 5 Things sat down with USA TODAY tech guru Brett Molina to get his take on what's new with Apple. He talks about what he liked, what was meh and what he didn't like from the WWDC.\n\nTo read more from Brett Molina about the WWDC, click here.\n\nTo follow James Brown on Twitter, click here.\n\nTo follow Brett Molina on Twitter, click here.\n\nPodcasts:True-crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here.\n\nHit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.\n\nJames Brown: Hello, and welcome to Five Things. I'm James Brown. It's Sunday, June 12th, 2022. On Sundays. We do things a bit differently focusing on one topic instead of five. And this week we're talking about Apple with USA Today's tech guru, Brett Molina. Hi Brett.\n\nBrett Molina: Hey there. Thanks for having me.\n\nJames Brown: So I wanted to start by sharing something with you. I've been an Apple fan for a long time. I bought an iBook when I was in college. I named it Banana.\n\nBrett Molina: Nice.\n\nJames Brown: I have an iPad Mini. I had at least three or four iPod Nanos. I think the last one was stolen out of an old car of mine. I have four iPhones in my life. I've bought two MacBook Pros. I'm recording this on a MacBook Pro, but honestly for me, the thrill is gone. And I know that Apple sales have stagnated over the last few years. And I think part of it for me is, and I think this fits in with the announcements, is this ever-changing battery of, \"We must change the port. We must change the cord. We must force you to buy all this extra stuff.\"\n\nI guess my point is with so many changes constantly with the product, I feel a bit gouged. I feel like Apple is taking advantage of their seamless one operating system, one manufacturer advantage to leverage me into spending more and more money on products that they choose me to spend it on. I can't help but think it's a bit greedy at this point. What are your thoughts on that?\n\nBrett Molina: They certainly have the walled garden concept down to a tee, which is all their products obviously work seamlessly together. I remember back in the day before I had bought a Mac, I was on a PC and I was trying to use iTunes and trying to do stuff with that and it was a huge pain and it was not pleasant. And it's funny how once you get all the Apple products, they work obviously so perfectly together. But yeah, if you even try to introduce something that's non Apple it can be a headache. It's not necessarily the most seamless process.\n\nIt's also interesting too, because they're really big on accessories. They're really big on adapters. I feel like they do really well with adapters and stuff, like with the MacBook, for example, where they had few reports on newer models and how you had to buy the adapter just to be able to use things like a monitor or anything else. And that was, again, extra money you had to pay.\n\nYou have the lightning cable stuff and we recently saw the EU talk about how they're trying to require a uniform charging cord for all portable devices, which is significant because if that's the case that changes up a lot of what Apple does, because they're pretty much the only ones that have, or they're one of the few that have their own proprietary charging system with lightning. And that means a lot of people in the EU with iPhones, iPads, everything else, what do you do?\n\nBut again, that gets back to now Apple can sell you another adapter, the adapter that allows you to charge with USBC and stuff like that. Obviously people with lightning connectors, they'll still be able to charge their phones and stuff like that so it's not going to be an issue there. But it is going to be interesting to see how this all changes. And whether, again, we get to a point where in the US, do we see the same thing?\n\nBecause honestly, I would love the idea of having one cord that charges everything because it's perfect. And again, how many people in their house have a drawer or somewhere in their house with dozens and dozens of cords that are wrapped up in a ball or something else? I know I have. I'm sure a lot of people do. And so the thought of that's great, but again, back to Apple. I feel like that's always been their thing where it's like you're not just buying the product, you're buying that plus a handful of accessories, because it's got to work with this and work with something else. And yeah, it just feels like a never ending cycle sometimes.\n\nJames Brown: What is the Worldwide Developers Conference and why should we care? How long has it been around?\n\nBrett Molina: Oh, this has been around for several years now. This is an annual event that Apple has hosted where they bring together developers from all across their different platforms. Obviously it started with the Mac and it's since expanded. Obviously iPhone came out in '07s, so we've seen the huge ecosystem of developers and apps that has created. And then you have iPad. You have Apple Watch.\n\nIt's really just a place for developers to get together, to talk, just talk about Apple, app development, learn the new tools that Apple's going to introduce that will allow them to either make their apps better or maybe create new experiences.\n\nIt's taken on importance of the last few years among consumers because Apple's had this keynote where every year they've introduced the latest iOS and they talk a lot about, 'here's what your phone's going to look like in the fall. Here's what your tablet's going to look like in the fall.\" Back early on when the iPhone first came out, we saw this just fascinating consumer response. People were waiting in line for days. And so Apple's had this really unique position where, when they announce a software update, people really pay attention to it. And so that's why we've seen WWDC become bigger and not just, yeah, this is a place for developers to get together, but consumers can actually learn a lot about how's my phone going to look in September? What new things can I do with it?\n\nJames Brown: What are your takeaways about the conference? The big change apparently is with text messages. Well, it's not really text messages. It's iMessages, right?\n\nBrett Molina: Absolutely. I think that's an important distinction that it's about iMessage. And there are a couple caveats to this. If you are messaging with someone that's using the Messages app on iPhone and they are both on iOS 16, then those features like edit a message or unsend something, those are available. If, say, I have an iPhone with iOS 16 and you have an iPhone with iOS 15 and I want to edit a message You won't see it because you're not up to date. And it's also important too, if you are messaging someone on an Android phone, they don't get the message. And it's the reason why you see that green bubble all the time. It's being sent as an SMS text message, which means, again, as it is now, once you send it's sent and that's it.\n\nJames Brown: So in order to enact such a change across platforms, it would take everybody using the same system I would imagine. And I don't think that will happen.\n\nBrett Molina: Well, see, that's the thing. It's how widely will people adopt this new version of iOS? I think it feels like most iPhone owners are pretty quick to update to the latest version, so it is likely. It could take a couple years too, before this becomes more widespread. Obviously as people upgrade their phones, they're going to be on whatever the latest version of iOS is. So it could be a thing where over time, maybe in a year or two, we see a lot more people on those later versions of iOS and then that edit message, undo send becomes a lot more widespread.\n\nJames Brown: Do you think it's necessary?\n\nBrett Molina: I do, just because especially if you accidentally send a text to someone. Maybe you send a text to someone you regret in a you send it spur in the moment. You're like, \"Oh, I shouldn't have sent that.\" You pull it back. Or again, one of the first things I thought of when they talked about editing your messages was the auto correct phenomenon where your phones love to auto correct you.\n\nAnd sometimes you're sending out a text or a message in a blur and it auto corrects and it sends you the wrong word. And so maybe it's an awkward message or it's just an annoying typo. It's nice to be able to pop in and say, \"Oh, let me just edit it real quick,\" and it's all set instead of sending five messages like, \"Oh, I meant to say this,\" and this whole thing. So yeah, I definitely do see a benefit to it.\n\nJames Brown: When you look at the other announcements, what did you like? What was meh and what did you hate?\n\nBrett Molina: I think the one that jumped out to me was the lock screen stuff. I like the fact that they have finally caught on in a starting point with personalizing the way your phone looks. We've seen hints of this because there are apps like Widgetsmith, I believe that's the name, where you can customize the actual icons on your phone and have a style that you prefer. I'm hoping it's a step toward that. I like the fact that you can really personalize this.\n\nThey've borrowed a lot from Apple Watch in how you have these smaller widgets. You know on your Apple Watch, if you have an Apple Watch, you might see the little icons in the corner that take you to the weather or to activity or things like that. Same thing on your iPhone. You can do that too, where you have custom fonts for the time, for the date, you can lay it out however you want. And then also you have these little mini widgets that give you information. I think that's really great. It's a really nice change to that experience.\n\nThe meh stuff. I mean, I always go back to Apple Maps only because frankly, I just feel like Waze and Google are so far ahead in that space that it's going to take a lot of convincing for me to feel like, \"Oh wow, Apple Maps has finally made it.\" Waze just feels so way ahead of everybody else, and Google Maps as well, that it's hard for me to get honestly excited about anything related to Apple Maps.\n\nI won't say I hate it, but it's kind of a downside to the lock screen stuff. So if you've ever put a photo on your phone, the thing that drives me nuts is if you have faces on your lock screen wallpaper. The time blocks it, like you're trying to hide their identity in some form. And they had a really cool feature where, if you take a photo in portrait mode, it actually brings the photo to the front. So the time can be in the background and the photo's in front. It works with photos in portrait mode, or if there is a singular person that's the center or the focus of a photo. If you have a group photo, you still have the same problem. It's one of those things that's always annoyed me. Again, it's a downside kind of thing, but at some point I just want them to figure that out.\n\nThe one thing I wish they had done too, is related to the lock screen, is have some kind of always on function. We've seen this with Android phones where it just shows you the time and you can see the time, the date, whatever, and it's just on and it doesn't seem to require as much battery life, but instead of having to pick up your phone or do anything like that, you just look over and now you know what time it is. So that's what I took away, I think, from the keynote this year.\n\nJames Brown: Big picture. What's the biggest challenge that you see down the pike for Apple?\n\nBrett Molina: Oh boy. I think what's going to be interesting is all the services they have and bringing that all together, because we've talked about this with the whole ecosystem and wanting to keep everyone within their realm. I'm going to be interested to see with the way the iPhone goes. One thing they've done, to their credit, is they have offered a wider range of iPhones at different models and ages. So your iPhone presumably lasts much longer. It almost feels like a laptop in a way. Even still to this day, in some respect with smartphones, people are so used to that two year cycle where every two years it's get a new phone. It feels like though you can hold onto your phone, almost like you do with a computer, where you can hold onto it for several years, for the most part, and it's still a really good phone and it's really functional. Even older versions. You can get four, five years out of it and it's still a really solid smartphone. So I'm be interested to see how that all plays out and also just to see what else they do with services.\n\nThe other thing I'm fascinated by too, is all the stuff with Apple Wallet, where you can have your driver's license on your phone, you can have your keys in your, phone. You can do that. I'm going to be real interested to see how quickly that's adopted. I know Apple and a lot of these companies are very big on data and protecting your privacy and things like that. At the same time, I also feel like that's a lot to put on one device. I already put quite a bit of info and data about myself on one device and obviously with other apps like health and things like that. Everything about you can be on your phone. I feel like we're also getting to a point where it just feels like a lot.\n\nJames Brown: We may be approaching the creepy line.\n\nBrett Molina: Kind of. And again, I think they see it as obviously convenience and making your life easier, but there's also, for me, the skeptical side of do I really want all this info about me on one device? I don't know.\n\nJames Brown: To that point, I went to a grocery store, I don't know, six weeks ago maybe and I didn't realize I forgot my wallet, but I have an iPhone and I have Apple Pay, so I was able to go to that. And I wonder if how close are we to like, man, are people just not going to carry a wallet at all?\n\nBrett Molina: And again, that's the way I felt once Apple started talking about being able to put your driver's license on your phone. For now, it's a very specific use case where, if you're at the airport and you want to just verify who you are, you can use your phone and it has your basic information. But we are getting to that point where, how long before you need to bring a purse or a wallet or anything else, because it's pretty much all there on your phone? And then what are the ramifications for that? If I get a speeding ticket and I get pulled over, do I just hand my phone over? How does that work? I think there's so many layers of the way we use different things and there is convenience, but I also think there are other real world applications where it's like, so what does it mean for me when I use it in this particular situation?\n\nAnd that's obviously stuff that a lot of these companies are going to think about down the road, but again, it's a lot of data on one device. Not to mention if you're backing it up on different cloud services and things like that if you lose your phone. Because that's the other thing. If you lose your phone, again, you can remotely wipe, erase, reset your phone if that ever happens. But again, it's just that feeling of, \"I've lost this device that has pretty much everything in my life.\"\n\nJames Brown: Well, Brett Molina, thank you for joining me.\n\nBrett Molina: Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.\n\nJames Brown: If you liked the show, write us a review on Apple Podcast or wherever you're listening and do me a favor. Share it with a friend. What do you think of the show and of Apple? Let me know at James Brown's TV on Twitter, or email me at jabrown@usatoday.com. Thanks to Brett Molina for joining me and Alexis Gustin for her production assistance. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with five things you need to know from Monday and for all of us at USA today, thanks for listening. I'm James Brown and as always, be well.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/12"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/usanow/2014/06/02/apple-wwdc-ios-8-os-x-yosemite/9868139/", "title": "With iOS 8, Apple entices 'Android switchers'", "text": "Jefferson Graham, and Jessica Guynn\n\nUSATODAY\n\nSAN FRANCISCO — Welcome to the iUniverse.\n\nApple is ramping up competition for the hearts and wallets of consumers with slick new software and services including a new mobile operating system that will be available this fall.\n\nThe announcements were made at Apple's developer conference in San Francisco, an annual event that is playing an increasingly important role in the company's bid to stanch global market share losses to Google's Android operating system.\n\nApple CEO Tim Cook said 130 million customers bought an iOS device for the first time in the past 12 months, many of them switching from Android.\n\nIn a jab at Android, he said they were seeking a better experience and a better life and had bought Android \"by mistake.\"\n\nLongtime Apple analyst Tim Bajarin predicted new features such as family sharing will not only appeal to Apple diehards but could persuade some consumers to ditch their Android and Windows phones and make Apple the digital hub of their lives.\n\nResearch firm Canalys says of the 279.4 million smartphones shipped worldwide in the first quarter of 2014, Android accounted for 81% and Apple for 16%.\n\n\"Apple delivered a lot of new features for consumers that they will embrace,\" said Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies. \"These will be a big hit with those who are iOS and Mac users and will also entice more people who have not been in the Apple camp to come over.\"\n\nThe new features include mobile health tracking software which lets people monitor their vital signs and fitness, and easier ways to store and exchange files.\n\nApple also introduced an updated version of its Mac operating system called Yosemite, after the national park.\n\nMany changes that Apple introduced Monday were designed to help Mac computers work more seamlessly with iPhones and iPads.\n\nA new system called Continuity makes it easier to jump from device to device. For example, you can start an email on an iPad and then finish it on a Mac.\n\nApple also introduced iCloud Drive, which will let users store files online and access them from different devices, a service that is very similar to Dropbox.\n\nSome Apple fans held out hope for a major announcement, a smart watch, new iPhone with a bigger screen, an iPad refresh or even a newfangled Apple TV. But Apple typically introduces new hardware in the fall and winter to take advantage of back to school and holiday shopping seasons.\n\nEddy Cue, the company's senior vice president of Internet software and services, built anticipation for new gadget releases last week at the Code Conference when he said Apple had \"the best product pipeline\" he had ever seen in his 25 years at Apple.\n\nApple stock closed at $628.65 in regular trading Monday, down just under one percent.\n\nA lot was riding on the splashy event attended by about 5,000 Apple developers. The annual conference helps build excitement for Apple's future products. Apple mobile software launches — maps, photos and text messaging — have had a mixed track record.\n\nThe event came on the heels of last week's announcement that Apple is buying music streaming and headphones company Beats Electronics for $3 billion, bringing aboard music industry veteran Jimmy Iovine and music artist Dr. Dre.\n\nIovine attended Monday's event, and Apple exec Craig Federighi used new software that lets you make a phone call from a Mac to call Dr. Dre. \"What time should I get in to work?\" Dr. Dre asked during the call.\n\nHere's a look at what's new in both iOS 8 and OS X Mavericks:\n\niOS 8:\n\n• Health. Building on the popularity of standalone health and fitness products such as the Fitbit and Jawbone Up, Apple unveiled a new app, HealthKit, to bring all the various health activities into one place. Apple is working with hospitals and doctors to sync health information directly to health providers.\n\n• Family Sharing: A new tool to share privately among family members — photos, calendars and other information — will be a key feature in iOS 8. Additionally, parents will get notifications when their kids want to buy new apps, and will need their approval before the sale can go through.\n\n• Messages: When creating text messages, users can also create audio messages on the fly.\n\n• Keyboard: In a move to catch up to Google, Apple is adding predictive text to suggest words you might want to use as you're typing.\n\n• Siri: The digital personal assistant gets upgraded — it can now be used to access songs with the Shazam song search and to purchase songs on iTunes.\n\nApple also announced HomeKit, a hub for controlling various apps for automating lights, garage doors, thermostats and the like.\n\nOS X Yosemite:\n\nApple is looking to one of the world's premiere national parks for its latest operating system upgrade, Yosemite.\n\nThe OS, which will be available for free in the fall, will see several key improvements.\n\n• Spotlight search. The internal search now expands beyond what's on your computer to also include the Web, with tabs for Wikipedia, Yelp and Microsoft's Bing search.\n\n• Phone calls. Folks who own iPhones will see caller ID show up on Mac computers when the phone rings. You can now answer iPhone calls on the Mac, or place calls on the computer by clicking the phone number on the Safari browser.\n\n• Bigger attachments for mail. The new attachment limit is 5 GB.\n\n• iCloud drive. A new folder on Apple computers will include iCloud drive, for saving files into the cloud, accessible via multiple computers and Apple mobile devices.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2014/06/02"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/baig/2018/06/04/ios-12-takeaways-how-latest-software-change-your-iphone/669223002/", "title": "Apple WWDC iOS 12 takeaways: How your iPhone will change", "text": "Bravo, Apple is finally tackling smartphone addiction. And adding group video chats to FaceTime.\n\nThese are the two key standout features that will be coming to the iPhone as part of an iOS 12 software upgrade that Apple unveiled Monday at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose. iOS 12 will be at the core of the next new iPhone(s) that likely will be announced in September. The software will also freshen up the iPhone (and iPad) you already own.\n\nSuch models could be as ancient as the iPhone 5s, or the same handsets supported by iOS 11.\n\nIt wasn’t much of a surprise that this latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system arrives without a ton of fancy new consumer features — unless your idea of “fancy” is “tongue detection” for Animojis and new cartoonish characters called “Memojis.”\n\nThat’s OK. A lot of the important stuff comes under the hood, where Apple promises to make your devices perform faster and be more responsive. The company got into a pickle for slowing down iPhones with aging batteries, so everyone is expecting, or at least hoping, that even those older phones will zip right along.\n\nAnd at least during the company's WWDC keynote, Apple didn't say much about any iOS impact on batteries.\n\nMore:Apple's next iPhone and iOS 12: Here's what Apple should change\n\nThe new operating system likely will arrive around the same time new iPhones show up in the fall. Here are my key takeaways:\n\nScreen time\n\nJust about everyone can relate to screen addiction, especially if you have kids for whom you need a crowbar to remove them from their devices.\n\nThat’s where the new Screen Time feature comes in. For starters, Apple is promising a weekly summary that details how you or your kids use an iPhone or iPad.\n\nWhat apps are you/they spending your time on? What’s the breakout, say by games, social networking, etc.? Which apps are drawing you guys in? Where are notifications most coming from? The summary is meant to answer such questions.\n\nArmed with such information you can make informed decisions in setting app time limits for you or your youngsters. You can set such limits by category or by individual app.\n\nYou might reward kids a time allowance for good behavior, or for that matter give him or her access to an app all the time, maybe age-appropriate educational apps or the Phone app so they can always call you. Such limits are account-based through Family Sharing, so they apply across all the iOS devices in your household.\n\nDo Not Disturb During Bedtime\n\nThis is another potentially useful variation on the screen addiction theme. The idea behind Do Not Disturb during Bedtime mode is to get a better night’s sleep. How so? When this mode kicks in, the iPhone display is dimmed and notifications go into hiding, at least until a designated wake-up time or when you tap the screen. You can set Do Not Disturb During Bedtime in Control Center and select an automatic end time based on the time or even location, such as a movie or at a playground.\n\nGroup FaceTime\n\nApple delivers another feature that had been on my wish list, the ability to go beyond one-on-one video calls and use FaceTime with multiple people at once. And multiple people it is — you’ll be able to FaceTime with up to 32 people simultaneously.\n\nThird-party CarPlay apps\n\nUp to now you have had to use Apple Maps for directions while using CarPlay in your vehicle. iOS 12 will give you the ability to employ CarPlay with third-party mapping apps. And that means Waze and Google Maps, or your other navigational app of choice.\n\nSiri Shortcuts\n\nSo many of us have wanted wanted to see Siri get smarter, certainly compared to its brainier rivals, Amazon’s Alexa or the Google Assistant. How much smarter Siri has or will get via iOS 12 remains to be seen, but Apple is adding a feature called Siri Shortcuts that I think will help. Essentially such shortcuts give you the ability to customize actions for Siri based on an app, time of day or routines. And yes, Apple appears to be playing catch-up next to Alexa and the Google Assistant since both let you set a series of multistep actions based on your own routines.\n\nYou might set up a Siri Shortcut around a trip you are taking. You record a custom voice command — “Hey Siri, travel plans”— and Siri might chime in with address of your hotel and the time you can check in.\n\nApple is opening up Siri Shortcuts to third-party developers.\n\nI look forward to testing Siri Shortcuts once iOS 12 is available to see how easy they are to set up and use and how well they compare to Alexa and the Google Assistant.\n\nPrivacy and security\n\nPrivacy and security have always been a hot topic and of the upmost concern, but maybe never more than now. So I’m pleased that as part of the Safari browser, Apple will prevent you by default from getting tracked without your permission when you tap a “Like,”or “Share” social media button or a comment widget at a site.\n\nAnimojis and Memojis\n\nApple introduced animated emojis or “Animojis” for its Messages app last year, initially just for users of the iPhone X. Depending on your point of view they were either addictive or a complete waste of time.\n\nFor the record, I thought they were silly but fun, even the pile of pooh Animoji that, um, made the biggest stink last year.\n\nApple is now expanding the Animoji roster with ghost, koala, tiger and T. rex characters, and if you stick out your tongue, such characters will do so in kind.\n\nBut as part of iOS 12, you’ll also be able create your own personal avatars, which Apple calls Memojis. These are supposed to resemble your own mug. You can customize your Memoji by adding freckles or eyeglasses, altering your hairstyle and so on. Rival Samsung offered a roughly similar feature on the Galaxy S9 months ago, which in turn followed Apple’s own introduction of animojis. I did not think the Samsung avatars looked much like me; I’ll have to wait to see if Apple does better here.\n\nEither way, I don’t know what it suggests about all of us, but it seems that a large part of the smartphone wars have come down to our cartoonish alter-egos.\n\nEmail: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2018/06/04"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/07/tech/europe-uscb-requirement/index.html", "title": "Apple will be required to support USB-C charger under new EU ...", "text": "Washington (CNN Business) Apple and other smartphone makers will be required to support USB-C as part of a single charging standard for mobile devices across the European Union by as early as the fall of 2024 under a new law announced Tuesday by EU officials.\n\nThe legislation is aimed at reducing e-waste and eliminating \"cable clutter,\" said Margrethe Vestager, European Commission Vice President. Under the legislation, according to a release, \"mobile phones, tablets, e-readers, earbuds, digital cameras, headphones and headsets, handheld videogame consoles and portable speakers that are rechargeable via a wired cable will have to be equipped with a USB Type-C port, regardless of their manufacture.\"\n\nThe coming rules will apply to new small and medium-sized electronics sold in the EU.\n\nChargers that support fast charging will also be required to adopt the same charging speeds. The measure does not affect wireless charging technologies, and consumers would have to be able to buy a device without a bundled charger if they choose.\n\nApple AAPL The new rule stands to bring major changes forusers. Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. But during the legislative process, Apple told EU officials that the proposed rule would render obsolete as many as a billion devices and accessories that use the company's proprietary Lightning connector, according to an EU Parliament report\n\nRead More", "authors": ["Brian Fung"], "publish_date": "2022/06/07"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2019/06/03/apple-wwdc-itunes-yesterday-model-ios-13-focuses-mobile-today/1333229001/", "title": "Apple WWDC 2019: iTunes is yesterday; today's all about swifter ...", "text": "SAN JOSE, Calif. – When word leaked over the weekend that Apple was planning to shut down iTunes in the next version of its desktop software, there was an outcry and talk of an end of an era.\n\nThat era actually ended quite some time ago. Remember when iPhones were tied to the desktop for updates? Now, most of us just back everything up wirelessly.\n\nSo when Apple confirmed Monday that its next desktop operating system upgrade would split up iTunes into three separate apps, for music, TV shows and movies and podcasts, it seemed like an afterthought.\n\n\"It's a rounding error,\" something that should have been done a long time ago, says Gene Munster, an analyst and investor with Loup Ventures, who added that iTunes \"had gotten way too big.\"\n\nWe live in a mobile world. We listen to music on our phones and have no need to manage our collections since most of us stream songs from the cloud now, whether on a subscription service like Spotify or Apple's Music or via free radio from the likes of Pandora or TuneIn.\n\nThe focus at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday was on the future. A new, rebuilt operating system for the iPhone that makes the device quicker and more useful. Apple put a final nail in the coffin of the iPad being less useful than a computer by finally, after nine years, allowing consumers to insert USB flash drives and move files back and forth. Now the tablet can truly be a PC replacement.\n\nApple WWDC 2019:Goodbye, iTunes. Hello, iOS 13 and iPadOS\n\nBusiness questions:DOJ may launch antitrust investigation of Apple, report says\n\nAlong the way, Apple introduced what it says is the “world’s most powerful” Mac computer and monitor (cost: only $11,000), and new (free) watch faces for the Apple Watch.\n\nBut since the iPhone is the world's most popular consumer device, used by over 1.5 billion people, it's the iOS update that will get the most attention when it's released in the fall.\n\nWhat we like\n\nSpeed\n\nApple says launching and signing into apps will be a quicker experience, which is great, but even better is a new tool that will reduce download sizes for apps. There are still millions of iPhones in the world that max out at 16 gigabyte and many people run out of room with a 32 GB phone as well. So anything Apple can do to help consumers manage their ever-growing media collection without being forced to download 500 megabyte and higher apps is a good thing. \"The speed issue feels like a first-world 'who cares' problem, but consumers notice speed and latency even if they don’t articulate it well.\" says Julie Ask, an analyst with Forrester Research.\n\nInstant sign-on\n\nMany apps and websites offer us the ability to bypass registering with them, and instead sign in with Facebook and Google, which has a big drawback. Those sites track your every move. Apple is launching an alternative, one it says won't track us and, in fact, will let us sign in anonymously via FaceID. This sounds great. But as someone who has moved back to Touch ID because of the many, many times FaceID didn't recognize me, let's hope this sign-in approach actually works. Also, readers should know that Apple faces a long, hard row to hoe in getting websites and apps to sign on to this. Facebook and Google have been at this game for over a decade, so it will take some time for Apple to get traction here.\n\nMessages\n\nOne of my biggest gripes with iMessages is getting texts from phone numbers that aren't associated with a name because I never put them into my Contacts. Who is 408-555-1212, and why are they texting me anyway? Now, Apple promises to change that, and \"automatically share a user’s name and photo, or customized Memoji or Animoji,\" for identification. Thank you, Apple!\n\nWhat we're skeptical about\n\nMaps\n\nGoogle Maps is the gold standard of mapping, and Apple Maps has long been, well, not everyone's first choice. As Lynette Luna, an analyst with GlobalData Technology noted on Twitter, Apple Maps \"has brought me on some wild goose chases lately.” Now, Apple says it has spent the last year driving 4 million miles to \"rebuild the base map from the ground up,\" and that the redesigned app will have way more information with \"better pedestrian data, more precise addresses and more detailed landcover.\"\n\nStill, this isn't the first time Apple has told us about a more competitive Maps app. One interesting tidbit from Apple's announcement. It says its mapping is as useful, while also \"protecting user privacy,\" which, of course, is a dig at Google, which tracks our every move.\n\nSiri\n\nThe personal assistant promises a new, easier-to-understand voice, Apple says, but in the demo Monday, it wasn't exactly night and day. And besides, the bigger complaint about Siri is that it doesn't understand us. From the lack of attention given to Siri at WWDC (about five minutes out of a two-hour-plus presentation), it sounds like Siri is still on the backburner for Apple, as Amazon and Google continue to invest massive resources (new things we can do) for Alexa and the Google Assistant.\n\n(To be fair, Apple did announce one other welcome Siri feature, but you'll need the $159 AirPod Bluetooth accessory to make it work. Siri will read aloud your incoming text messages and send your replies.)\n\nThe iOS 13 software is traditionally released a few days before the release of the new iPhone. Apple will also offer iOS 13 as a beta release in July.\n\nThe new iOS will be available on phones going back to the iPhone 6S, which was first released in 2015.\n\nFinally, for those who still use iTunes to sync and backup their iPhones and iPads, here's how it will work in macOS Catalina, the new Mac operating system.\n\nBackup, restore, sync and transfer documents will be done by connecting the device to the computer and performing these functions via new tools in the Finder. And Windows users, iTunes will remain on your computers, and nothing will change – at least for now.\n\nFollow USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham (@jeffersongraham) on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2019/06/03"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2017/06/05/apple-wwdc-live-blog-apple-unveil-its-siri-speaker/369804001/", "title": "Live: Apple unveils $349 smart speaker HomePod", "text": "Hey Siri, ready to meet the HomePod?\n\nOn Monday, Apple introduced the smart speaker HomePod during its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose. The speaker will ship this December in the U.S. for $349.\n\nAlso, Apple revealed the first details of iOS 11, the latest version of its operating system for the iPhone, iPad, and other mobile devices.\n\nFor a recap of Apple's WWDC keynote, scroll down below:\n\n3:25 p.m.: Former first lady Michelle Obama will appear at WWDC this week. Cook finishes the keynote. Thanks for joining us!\n\n3:23 p.m.: Cook steps on stage to wrap up. Not surprising, the HomePod costs more than rivals Echo or Google Home. Is the quality worth that price? Siri might help decide that in December.\n\n3:21 p.m.: Schiller says privacy is an important part of HomePod. All communications are encrypted and queries are sent anonymously. HomePod is priced at $349. It will ship this December.\n\n3:19 p.m.: Siri on HomePod will cover other areas like news, reminders, timers, traffic information, or send text messages. The big question: how will this compare to Alexa or Google Assistant?\n\n3:16 p.m.: Schiller says the HomePod works great when paired together. The speaker also includes a musicologist to suggest new tunes. The prompt \"hey Siri\" works on HomePod, to call up new music.\n\n3:13 p.m.: HomePod features a 4-inch Apple designed woofer, and features an A8 chip, which also powers the iPhone. \"It sounds incredible,\" says Schiller. Music arrives wirelessly, and the speaker appears smaller compared to Echo, but closer to the size of Google Home.\n\n3:11 p.m.: Schiller returns to discuss a \"breakthrough home speaker,\" combining smarts with really good sound. Apple's answer? HomePod, available in black or white.\n\n3:08 p.m.: Time for Apple's \"one last thing.\" Cook starts with iTunes, then the iPod and iPhone. \"We have such a great portable experience, but what about our homes?\" Speaker time. \"We want to reinvent home music,\" says Cook.\n\n3:06 p.m.: iOS 11 will be available to all developers Monday. It's available as a free upgrade this fall.\n\n3:02 p.m.: Other features on iOS 11: the ability to take screenshots and mark them up, plus the ability to search handwritten text within Notes.\n\n2:58 p.m.: Drag and drop seems to work nicely on iPad. Federighi shows how you can drag one image, then tap on others to add to that drop. Very cool.\n\n2:56 p.m.: Apple is also introducing the app Files, which brings all files on iPads together. It's clear Apple really wants you to use the iPad as a potential replacement for a desktop or laptop computer.\n\n2:54 p.m.: Federighi says iOS 11 will be a big release for iPad, starting with a dock of recommended apps. There's also a new app switcher to remember how you have paired apps organized. The iPad will also include drag-and-drop with iOS 11.\n\n2:52 p.m.: The new iPad Pros will now start with 64 GB of memory. The 10.5-inch model starts at $649, while the 12.9-inch starts at $799.\n\n2:45 p.m.: The new iPads will add ProMotion, which will lead to a much smoother scrolling experience, as well as a better experience with Apple Pencil.\n\n2:42 p.m.: Tim Cook is back, now to talk iPad. There's the iPad Pro, and the recently unveiled, lower cost iPad. Apple will introduce an iPad Pro with 10.5-inch screen. It's 20% larger than the standard iPad, but only weighs 1 pound. It also supports a full-size, on-screen keyboard, as well as a full-size physical keyboard.\n\n2:37 p.m.: Alasdair Coull of Wingnut AR appears to show off a demo of his app. Using the table as a surface, users see a dilapidated building with airships landing. The airships fly back and forth around the table, firing at enemies on the ground. It's really remarkable.\n\n2:33 p.m.: Augmented reality time. Federighi introduces ARKit to let developers add AR elements to their apps. In a demo, Federighi views a table through the iPhone camera, and adds a digital cup and lamp he turns on and off.\n\n2:31 p.m.: Federighi returns to talk about the inclusion of machine learning for iOS. Apple will add new APIs for developers to leverage machine learning in their apps.\n\n2:29 p.m.: On to the Games tab, you can watch game videos, check out the hottest game out that week, or top rankings. The redesign is aiming to make discovery a lot easier, a big win if you're a developer.\n\n2:27 p.m.: The app pages bring up certain elements more prominently, such as review ratings, and App Store rankings. Another interesting feature: how-to guides, such as tips for using the photo app VSCO. There are also App of the Day, Game of the Day, or Daily Lists.\n\n2:25 p.m.: Schiller says phased releases will roll out later this year, letting developers release their apps over a prolonged period. The App Store will also undergo a major redesign, starting with a tab called Today, to discover the latest apps. There's also a new tab called Games, which will include featuring in-app purchases.\n\n2:22 p.m.: Phil Schiller is up next to talk App Store, which turns 9 years old this year. Schiller says users have downloaded 180 billion apps to date. Apple has paid $70 billion to developers to date.\n\n2:20 p.m.: Federighi says Apple Music now has 27 million paid subscribers. Users will be able to see what your friends are listening to, if they opt to share that information. With Nike's app, you can create playlists, while Shazam lets you automatically add songs you select.\n\n2:19 p.m.: HomeKit adds a Speaker feature to allow users to control their smart speakers. Directly from Music, users can send tunes right to the speakers.\n\n2:18 p.m.: An interesting safety feature tied to iPhone: the ability to detect when you're driving and shut down. However, users will be able to still contact you if it's urgent.\n\n2:14 p.m.: Federighi demonstrates Apple Pay via iMessage, and it works seamlessly. Just add a payment as a message and it's set. Apple Maps will also get big upgrades, including lane guidance.\n\n2:10 p.m.: Federighi says Live Photos will also support looping, essentially letting users create their own GIFs. Users can also create their own clips similar to Instagram's Boomerang.\n\n2:08 p.m.: The Photos app will use machine learning to manage images based on events. Users will also have more features to edit videos. Control Center, the menu you access by swiping up on iPhone, now falls onto one page, with the ability to access a lot more controls than before.\n\n2:06 p.m.: Federighi says iOS device owners take 1 trillion photos a year. Videos will switch to HEVC, which means you can capture better videos while taking up less space. No more stressing about storage, hopefully.\n\n2:05 p.m.: Federighi says Siri will understand how you use your device as well as context. He says it will suggest topics of interest in News, or make a calendar appointment based on an event you book on Safari. But Federighi notes it is all completely private.\n\n2:03 p.m.: As for Siri, Federighi says they're using deep learning to give her voice a little more personality. There's also a new visual interface, and Siri will be able to translate languages.\n\n2:02 p.m.: On to Apple Pay, Federighi is opening up the service for person-to-person payments. It'll be integrated into Messages as an iMessage app.\n\n2:00 p.m.: Federighi breaks down iOS 11, starting with Messages. It'll be easier to find apps within Messages to use stickers. Also, all conversations will sync to cloud, which is great if you switch devices.\n\n1:59 p.m.: Cook returns on stage to talk iOS. He says it has a 96% customer satisfaction, noting 86% of iOS device owners are running iOS 10. Cook also takes a swipe at the \"horrible fragmentation\" on Android.\n\n1:55 p.m.: Apple plans to launch an iMac Pro with up to an 18 core Xeon processor. Basically, it'll be super fast, and super expensive.\n\n1:47 p.m.: John Knoll of Industrial Light and Magic appears to talk about how the new iMacs will better support the creation of virtual reality content. Lauren Ridge of Epic Games steers the VR demo, taking place on the planet Mustafar from the Star Wars universe. Ridge adds new items to the world such as a squadron of TIE Fighters.\n\n1:42 p.m.: Apple is rolling out new iMacs, with displays capable of displaying up to 1 billion colors. They'll also feature seventh-generation Intel Core processors and support for up to twice as much memory. Solid state drives will be 50% faster and up to 2 terabytes or storage.\n\n1:40 p.m.: No surprise here, but High Sierra will also deliver a big uptick in graphics power. The next version will support stuff such as Steam VR and Unreal Engine's VR games. Federighi also hints at hearing more from Apple on this topic. AR news, perhaps? High Sierra will be a free upgrade this fall.\n\n1:36 p.m.: The Mac will also add a more modern file system to keep your data more secure and easier to organize. It's a lot faster to perform basic tasks like duplicating items.\n\n1:34 p.m.: Federighi says it will open up photo projects to third-party printing services such as Shutterfly.\n\n1:33 p.m.: It also features intelligent tracking prevention, which Federighi says will protect your privacy. In Mail, users will be able to use full-screen split view to see your inbox on one side, and the compose screen on the other side.\n\n1:32 p.m.: Federighi says with High Sierra, Safari is the world's fastest desktop browser. He describes the browsing experience as \"serene.\" Among the features: autoplay blocking, which stops videos from automatically playing.\n\n1:30 p.m.: Federighi confirms the name of the next macOS: High Sierra. \"They assured us this name is fully baked,\" Federighi said, because no one can resist a good marijuana joke.\n\n1:28 p.m.: Cook moves on to the Mac, \"the heart and soul of Apple\" as he describes it. Craig Federighi is up next to discuss macOS.\n\n1:27 p.m.: The Watch will also add a new flashlight serving as a blinking light for safety purposes. The Bluetooth will also improve, allowing the Watch to interact better with other devices such as glucose monitors. The upgrade to WatchOS launches this fall.\n\n1:26 p.m.: The Siri face can add lots of different content, such as news, movie tickets, and HomeKit functions to control smart home technology. On the Workout app, users can pick playlists that start as soon as you begin your workout. Swiping right on the Watch lets users control the music.\n\n1:24 p.m.: The Watch has an upgraded Music app to sync better with AirPods, Apple's wireless ear buds.\n\n1:23 p.m.: Apple pushing the fitness capabilities of the watch pretty hard. Users will be able to do a variety of workouts through their watch, including high-intensity interval training. The next version of WatchOS will allow the two-way exchange of information between the watch and gym equipment.\n\n1:20 p.m.: The watch will add more faces, including a kaleidoscope and characters from the Disney franchise Toy Story.\n\n1:18 p.m.: The Apple Watch will leverage machine learning to push forward important notifications based on the time of day. When you raise your wrist, you'll see updated notifications.\n\n1:17 p.m.: Apple Watch time. Cook says the device has had \"incredible growth\" this year.\n\n1:16 p.m.: Cook says Amazon is finally coming to Apple TV. It will launch on all Apple TVs later this year. It's about time.\n\n1:14 p.m.: The keynote will focus on four platforms: TV, Apple Watch, Mac and iOS, says Cook. \"Apple is doing great,\" he says, opting to skip all the sales highlights, noting six big announcements during this keynote.\n\n1:13 p.m.: Cook says Apple hosts 16 million registered developers around the world, adding 3 million in the last year alone. Developers hail from 75 countries. One of their youngest developers is 10 years old, and he already has five apps on the App Store. Their oldest developer published her first app at 82 years old.\n\n1:12 p.m.: Cook discusses Apple's commitment to the development community. \"This is going to be the best and biggest WWDC ever,\" Cook says.\n\n1:11 p.m.: Now for the CEO of the hour, Apple's Tim Cook. \"I'm so glad that really can't happen,\" Cook jokes.\n\n1:09 p.m.: The servers in the data center shut down, followed by global panic as apps on Apple devices slowly lose their apps. Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. It's an \"appocalypse.\" Sadly, I could see this actually happening.\n\n1:07 p.m. ET: After a late start (looks like someone needed a Siri calendar reminder), Apple finally kicks things off with a video montage, showing Apple's data center in Cupertino. Clearly teasing the new Apple Park campus.\n\nORIGINAL STORY\n\nA Siri-powered smart speaker would be similar to Amazon's Echo and Google Home, capitalizing on intense consumer interest for talking devices.\n\nRelated:\n\nSiri gets another shot at getting it right\n\nApple's iPhone could make AR tech more of a reality\n\nApple's Siri speaker to challenge Google, Amazon\n\nApple will also stream the keynote on its website, but you can only watch on an Apple device running Safari, or a PC running Microsoft Edge on Windows 10.\n\nThe speaker will reportedly include virtual surround sound, and deeper integration with Apple services including HomeKit, allowing users to control smart home technology.\n\nAs with previous years, Apple will also use the keynote to reveal the first details of iOS 11, the latest version of its mobile operating system launching this fall for the next iPhone, as well as current models of the iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices.\n\nOne potential app launching along with iOS 11, as reported by multiple outlets, is Files, although no details have surfaced yet on the app's key features.\n\nFollow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2017/06/05"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_14", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:37", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2022/06/08/top-pga-tour-golfers-compete-liv-invitational-series-london/10000187002/", "title": "LIV Golf: Top PGA Tour golfers who will compete in London this week", "text": "The LIV Golf Invitational Series, a controversial new league designed to compete with the PGA Tour, will start play Thursday at the Centurion Golf Club in London.\n\nThe eight-tournament golf series, founded by two-time British Open winner Greg Norman, is supported financially by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. Saudi Arabia has been criticized for human rights abuses, and crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has been accused of sanctioning the 2018 murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.\n\nThe Official Golf World Ranking will not recognize the event, meaning competitors will not earn any points from participating. This has not stopped more than 40 players from committing to play for the $255 million prize money, which is the richest in golf history. Bryson DeChambeau will join the league starting July 1-3 for the event in North Plains, Oregon, his agent said Wednesday.\n\nThe London tournament can be streamed on the company’s website, as well as YouTube and Facebook. Here’s a look at the top players set to compete in this new golf league teeing off Thursday, at 9 a.m. ET (2 p.m. local).\n\nLIV GOLF:Controversial new tour begins Thursday. What you should know.\n\nOPINION: USGA fails game by allowing LIV golfers to compete at US Open\n\nLIV GOLF:Press conference gets heated before inaugural London event\n\nOPINION: Bashing golfers taking Saudi cash ignores realites of complicated world\n\nDON'T MISS OUT: Sign up now to get top sports headlines delivered daily\n\nDustin Johnson\n\nAge: 37\n\nWorld ranking: 15\n\nPGA Tour victories: 24\n\nCareer money: $74,276,710\n\nOn Tuesday, Johnson announced that he was resigning from the PGA Tour and intends to participate only in LIV Golf events and major championships in the future. Johnson, the 2016 U.S. Open champion and 2020 Masters winner, ranks third on the PGA Tour career money list and tied for 26th on the all-time wins list. The South Carolina native, who is married to Paulina Gretzky, daughter of legendary NHL star Wayne Gretzky, reportedly received $125 million from the LIV to leave the PGA Tour.\n\nJOHNSON:Resigns his PGA Tour membership to play in Saudi league\n\nPhil Mickelson\n\nAge: 51\n\nWorld ranking: 72\n\nPGA Tour victories: 45\n\nCareer Money: $94,955,060\n\nMickelson, who became oldest player to win a major when he triumphed at the 2021 PGA Championship, will return to golf at the LIV series after a four-month hiatus. He took time away from the sport after making contentious comments about the PGA Tour's \"obnoxious greed.\" He also said he would join a Saudi-funded series because it was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.” Mickelson, who ranks second on the career money list and eighth in career wins, has not resigned his membership on the PGA Tour.\n\nMICKELSON:Opens up about 'reckless' gambling addiction\n\nKevin Na\n\nAge: 38\n\nWorld ranking: 34\n\nPGA Tour victories: 5\n\nCareer Money: $37,819,638\n\nNa announced on social media Saturday that he was resigning from the PGA Tour to pursue the LIV series. He said he disagreed with the PGA’s stance on disallowing players to participate with rival series and said he desired the “freedom to play wherever I want and exercising my right as a free agent gives me that opportunity.\" Out of 12 starts on tour this season, Na had six finishes in the top 25 and two in the top 10.\n\nSergio Garcia\n\nAge: 42\n\nWorld ranking: 57\n\nPGA Tour victories: 11\n\nCareer Money: $54,400,870\n\nGarcía, who ranks 10th all time on the PGA Tour money list, has 36 international tournament victories in his career. A month prior to committing to the LIV series, the 2017 Masters winner from Spain voiced his displeasure with the PGA Tour ruling on a lost ball in the first round of the Wells Fargo Championship. “I can't wait to leave this tour,\" Garcia said. \"I can't wait to get out of here, my friend.”\n\nLouis Oosthuizen\n\nAge: 39\n\nWorld ranking: 21\n\nPGA Tour victories: 1\n\nCareer Money: $28,124,759\n\nOosthuizen resigned his PGA Tour membership to play in the LIV on Tuesday. The South African native who resides in Ocala, Florida, has finished as a runner-up in six major championships and won the 2010 British Open.\n\nTalor Gooch\n\nAge: 30\n\nWorld ranking: 35\n\nPGA Tour victories: 1\n\nCareer Money: $9,084,193\n\nGooch, who turned professional in 2014 after playing at Oklahoma State, said Tuesday during the LIV news conference that assertions the series participates in sportswashing – using sport to sanitize a political regime or organization – are unfair. \"Also, I'm a golfer. I'm not that smart,\" he added. \"I try to hit a golf ball into a small hole. Golf is hard enough.”\n\nIan Poulter\n\nAge: 46\n\nWorld ranking: 92\n\nPGA Tour victories: 3\n\nCareer Money: $28,176,072\n\nOver the past weekend, the English pro who has won 12 times on the European Tour, made a hole-in-one in the 17th hole of a practice round at the Centurion Golf Club. Poulter won the British Open in 2008 an ranked as high as fifth in the world in 2010.\n\nMartin Kaymer\n\nAge: 37\n\nWorld ranking: 215\n\nPGA Tour victories: 3\n\nCareer Money: $11,412,311\n\nKaymer, who hails from Germany, explained that the additional money to be earned at the LIV series is not the singular motivator for joining the new league. \"If you see where I'm at in my career, I don't have a full PGA Tour card. I would love to play the best in the world but at the moment I can't. ... So this is a great opportunity to play a different kind of golf, different kind of golf tournaments.\" Kaymer, who won the 2010 PGA Championship and 2014 U.S. Open, was ranked No. 1 in the world for eight weeks in 2011.\n\nGraeme McDowell\n\nAge: 42\n\nWorld ranking: 374\n\nPGA Tour victories: 4\n\nCareer Money: $19,099,776\n\nMcDowell lost his sponsorship with the Royal Bank of Canada because he joined the LIV series. On Tuesday, the 2010 U.S. Open winner from Northern Ireland, said he accepts that it is \"incredibly polarizing\" to be involved with Saudi Arabia-sponsored league. He also said that he views golf as a “force of good in the world.”\n\nLee Westwood\n\nAge: 49\n\nWorld ranking: 78\n\nPGA Tour victories: 2\n\nCareer Money: $23,795,344\n\nWestwood has received some backlash from fans after sharing a video of himself on Twitter offering the first 100 people to follow his instructions free tickets for the LIV Golf Invitational Series event in London. A native of England, Westwood became the No. 1 ranked golfer in the the world in 2010 and held the top ranking for 22 weeks.\n\nCharl Schwartzel\n\nAge: 37\n\nWorld ranking: 126\n\nPGA Tour victories: 2\n\nCareer Money: $20,912,493\n\nSchwartzel, who broke out in 2011 after winning The Masters, resigned from the PGA Tour to compete in the LIV Series. The Johannesburg, South Africa native achieved his highest world ranking of sixth in 2012.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/08"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2022/06/08/liv-golf-invitational-series-what-you-need-know/7543893001/", "title": "LIV Golf tour: What to know about controversial Saudi-backed league", "text": "The Saudi-backed LIV Golf league will hold its inaugural event June 9-11 in London\n\nA 48-person field, broken into 12 teams of four people each, will compete in seven regular season events\n\nNotable names to join the LIV Golf tour include Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Sergio García\n\nThe Saudi-backed LIV Golf Invitational Series will make its debut this weekend in London.\n\nThe league announced a field of 48 players, including Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Louis Oosthuizen. The league is already disrupting the dynamics in professional men's golf and could continue to do so as its season continues. Yet, hanging above the shifting balance of power in the business of golf are the questions of ethics and morals facing players and executives who have joined the league, in light of multiple accusations against the Saudi Arabian government of alleged human rights violations.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/08"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2022/06/10/liv-golf-membership-impact-majors-british-pga-us-open-masters/7570446001/", "title": "LIV Golf membership may impact fields at British Open, PGA, Masters", "text": "The PGA Tour announced on Thursday that it's suspending membership privileges for golfers who join the LIV Golf Invitational Series. However, that decision by itself has no impact on the four major tournaments in men's golf because they're all run by separate entities.\n\nThe USGA, for example, has already said Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and others will be allowed to compete in next week's U.S. Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts.\n\nHere's a look at what the USGA, R&A, PGA of America and the Masters have publicly said (or not said) about LIV Golf players taking part in their events:\n\nOpinion:The PGA Tour is right to suspend Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, LIV golfers\n\nMore:Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy support PGA Tour suspensions of LIV Golf players\n\nUSGA (U.S. Open)\n\nThe U.S. Open is set to begin one week after the inaugural LIV Golf event outside London. As several prominent players announced their intentions to compete in the Saudi-backed circuit, the United States Golf Association remained silent.\n\nOn June 7, the USGA finally made its position public:\n\n“We pride ourselves in being the most open championship in the world and the players who have earned the right to compete in this year’s championship, both via exemption and qualifying, will have the opportunity to do so.\n\n“Our field criteria were set prior to entries opening earlier this year and it’s not appropriate, nor fair to competitors, to change criteria once established.”\n\nR&A (British Open)\n\nOnce the U.S. Open concludes, the focus will turn to the final major of the 2022 calendar year, the 150th British Open at St. Andrews, Scotland.\n\nThe tournament will be played at the legendary Old Course from July 14-17.\n\nIn response to a question about how it will handle LIV-affiliated golfers, a spokesman for the R&A told GOLF.com last week, “We haven’t commented on it and don’t plan to as it stands.”\n\nHowever, the R&A did decide in December not to grant a spot in the Open to the winner of the Asian Tour's Order of Merit. That move came just a few months after the LIV group announced a multimillion dollar investment in the Asian Tour.\n\nPGA of America (PGA Championship)\n\nTo compete in the PGA Championship, golfers must be part of a recognized tour. At this year's tournament at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last month PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh questioned whether the LIV setup qualified.\n\n“We think the structure of – I don't know if it's a league, it's not a league at this point – but the league structure is somewhat flawed,” he said.\n\nThe 2023 PGA Championship will be played May 18-21 at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, New York.\n\nAugusta National Golf Club (Masters)\n\nThe Masters has the most control over which players can participate because the field is filled by invitation only.\n\nAugusta National also has a special reverence for its former champions, which would include LIV participants Phil Mickelson (2004, 2006, 2010), Charl Schwartzel (2011), Sergio Garcia (2017) and Dustin Johnson (2021).", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/10"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/07/sport/phil-mickelson-liv-golf-intl-spt/index.html", "title": "Dustin Johnson resigns from PGA Tour to play in LIV Golf series, as ...", "text": "(CNN) Six-time golf major champion Phil Mickelson will participate in the inaugural LIV Golf tournament at the Centurion Club near London, along with two-time major winner Dustin Johnson, who on Tuesday resigned from the PGA Tour ahead of headlining the controversial series.\n\nMickelson, who won the last of three Masters green jackets in 2010, has not played since controversial comments about the Saudi Arabian-funded events were published earlier this year by his biographer.\n\nHe was quoted from a 2021 interview with author Alan Shipnuck for his upcoming book, \"Phil: The Rip-Roaring (and Unauthorized!) Biography of Golf's Most Colorful Superstar,\" as saying that he would consider joining the proposed Super League because it is a \"once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.\"\n\nShipnuck quoted Mickelson as saying disparaging things about Saudi Arabia's human rights record and asserting that the kingdom killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi . Mickelson said in February he would take \"some time away\" from golf after being criticized for the comments.\n\nMickelson tweeted a statement Monday, \"I am thrilled to begin with LIV Golf and I appreciate everyone involved. I also intend to play the majors.\"\n\nGreg Norman , CEO of LIV Golf, stated in part on Monday, \"(Mickelson) strengthens an exciting field for London where we're proud to launch a new era for golf. Our International Series qualifiers have earned an incredible opportunity to compete in LIV Golf's new format, and I'm eager to watch all of them tee it up...\"\n\nMickelson was apologetic in Monday's statement saying \"I want to again apologize to the many people I offended and hurt with my comments a few months ago. I have made mistakes in my career in some of the things I have said and done ... I have been engaged and intentional in continued therapy and feel healthy and much more at peace. I realize I still have a long way to go, but I am embracing the work ahead.\"\n\nCNN reached out to LIV Golf about how much money Mickelson will earn for participating.\n\nJohnson quits PGA Tour\n\nMeanwhile, Johnson announced he had resigned from the PGA Tour to compete in the LIV Golf event.\n\nHe is set to play along with 2017 Masters winner Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, two-time major winner Martin Kaymer and Kevin Na among others.\n\n\"It's hard to speak on what the consequences might be, but I've resigned my membership of the Tour and that's the plan for now,\" he said at a press conference at the Centurion Club, outside London, the venue for the inaugural Saudi-backed event which tees off on Thursday.\n\nThe 37-year-old American will no longer be eligible for the Ryder Cup but remains optimistic about featuring in future events of the biennial competition against Europe, having been on the winning side twice in five appearances.\n\n\"The Ryder Cup is unbelievable and has meant a lot to me, but ultimately I decided this was best for me and my family,\" he said.\n\n\"All things are subject to change and hopefully, at some point, it will change and I will get a chance to do that again,\" he added.\n\nIn a statement released later on Tuesday, the United States Golf Association (USGA) says it will welcome all golfers who have earned the right to play in the US Open, including players who have decided to participate in the LIV Golf series.\n\nThe USGA, citing its aim to be \"the most open championship in the world,\" says it would not be appropriate or fair to change the tournament's established field criteria. The association also clarified that its decision should not be viewed as a show of support for the Saudi-backed LIV Golf series or its players.\n\nJohnson is the second golfer to resign from the PGA Tour in order to play in the controversial breakaway lead, after American Na announced his decision last week.\n\nCNN reached out to the PGA Tour for comment about Johnson's resignation.\n\nLast week, the PGA Tour threatened \"disciplinary action\" for PGA Tour golfers who participate in the new Saudi-backed series.", "authors": ["David Close", "Amy Woodyatt", "Sammy Mngqosini"], "publish_date": "2022/06/07"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/09/sport/pga-tour-liv-golf-series-spt-intl/index.html", "title": "LIV Golf: PGA Tour officially suspends golfers participating in ...", "text": "(CNN) Following the start of the inaugural LIV Golf event near London on Thursday, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan announced that all golfers playing in the breakaway series have been notified that they are suspended and otherwise no longer eligible to participate in PGA Tour tournaments.\n\n\"As you know, players listed below did not receive the necessary conflicting event and media rights releases -- or did not apply for releases at all -- and their participation in the Saudi Golf League/LIV Golf event is in violation of our Tournament Regulations,\" Monahan said in a memo.\n\n\"The same fate holds true for any other players who participate in future Saudi Golf League events in violation of our Regulations.\"\n\nPlayers who have resigned their memberships will be removed from the FedEx Cup points list when the RBC Canadian Open scores are posted on Sunday.\n\nThe 17 golfers listed, including past major winners Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Sergio Garcia, will not be permitted to play in PGA Tour tournaments as a non-member via a sponsor exemption or any other eligibility category, the memo reiterated.\n\nRead More", "authors": ["Homero De La Fuente", "Cnn Sports Staff"], "publish_date": "2022/06/09"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2022/06/09/liv-golf-series-participants-suspended-pga-tour/7561580001/", "title": "PGA Tour suspends LIV Golf Series participants for unspecified period", "text": "Seventeen golfers who are currently playing in the LIV Golf Series have been suspended for an unspecified period, the PGA Tour announced Thursday, saying the players made their choice to play in the Saudi-backed league for \"financial-based reasons.\" Those who choose to participate in the future will also be suspended.\n\nThe announcement came roughly 30 minutes after the LIV teed off in London for its first 54-hole, team-oriented tournament.\n\nPlayers who have resigned their PGA Tour membership won't be eligible for the FedEx Cup Playoffs and will not be allowed to play in PGA Tour events as \"a non-member via a sponsor exemption or any other eligibility category.\"\n\nLIV GOLF INVITATIONAL SERIES:Controversial new tour begins Thursday. What you should know.\n\nFAQ:How to watch the inaugural tournament in London on live stream\n\nMORE:Phil Mickelson will not cede PGA Tour membership as he sets to play in the Saudi-backed LIV Series\n\n\"I am certain our fans and partners — who are surely tired of the all this talk of money, money and money — will continue to be entertained and compelled by the world-class competition you display each and every week, where there are true consequences for every shot you take and your rightful place in history whenever you reach that elusive winner's circles,\" PGA Tour president Jay Monahan said in a statement.\n\n\"We have followed the Tournament Regulations from start to finish in responding to those players who have decided to turn their backs on the PGA Tour by willfully violating a regulation,” Monahan added. “Simultaneous to you receiving this memo, the players are being notified that they are suspended or otherwise no longer eligible to participate in PGA Tour tournament play, including the Presidents Cup.\"\n\nThe LIV Golf Series responded Thursday with a statement saying the suspensions were \"vindictive\" and that it \"deepens the divide between the Tour and its members.\"\n\n\"This certainly is not the last word on this topic. The era of free agency is beginning as we are proud to have a full field of players joining us in London and beyond,\" LIV Golf said.\n\nThe LIV Golf tour was formed in 2020, backed by the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has been accused of wide-ranging human rights abuses, including politically motivated killings, torture, forced disappearances and inhumane treatment of prisoners. And members of the royal family and Saudi government were accused of involvement in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist.\n\nLIV Golf — whose name is derived from the Roman numeral for 54 — plans to run eight events between June and October in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Each event will consist of 54 holes (three 18-hole days), where 48 players will compete on 12 different teams.\n\nThe LIV Tour also said there won't be any cuts and each round will be a shotgun start in hopes to speed up the pace of play. LIV Golf will dole out a combined $250 million in prize money across events, individual winners, and winning teams.\n\nThe tour has already landed a number of big names. Phil Mickelson, one of the first known PGA Tour players to support the league, says he doesn't plan to resign his PGA Tour membership.\n\nDustin Johnson announced this week that he resigned from the PGA Tour and intends to participate only in LIV Golf events and majors in the immediate future. He reportedly received $125 million to join the tour. He joins Kevin Na, Sergio Garcia, Talor Gooch, Ian Poulter and others for the tour’s inaugural event at the Centurion Golf Club outside of London.\n\nWhile 2020 U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau won't play in the inaugural event, his agent announced Wednesday that he will join the league, starting July 1-3 for the tour’s event in North Plains, Oregon.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/09"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2022/06/06/phil-mickelson-play-london-liv-golf-invitational/7535764001/", "title": "Phil Mickelson to play in first LIV Golf Invitational event in London", "text": "Phil Mickelson’s name wasn’t on the initial list of players for this week’s LIV Golf Invitational Series opener in London, but did you really think Lefty would miss out?\n\nOn Monday, hours after announcing its plans to stream the inaugural event at Centurion Club outside London, June 9-11, it was also announced that Mickelson would be ending his self-imposed hiatus and teeing it up alongside Dustin Johnson, Kevin Na and the rest of the LIV Golf field.\n\nMickelson released a statement on Twitter where he started by apologizing to people he offended with his comments and praised his “humbling” time away.\n\n“I realize I still have a long way to go but I’m embracing the work ahead. I’m ready to come back to play the game I love but after 32 years, this new path is a fresh start, one that is exciting for me at this stage of my career and is clearly transformative, not just for myself, but ideally for the game and my peers,” wrote Mickelson. “I also love the progressive format and I think it will be exciting for fans. Just as importantly, it will provide balance, allowing me to focus on a healthier approach to life and on and off the course. I am incredibly grateful for what this game and the PGA Tour has given me. I would like to think that I have given back as well but now I’m excited about this new opportunity. I’m thrilled to begin with LIV Golf and I appreciate everyone involved.”\n\nMickelson added that he intends to play major championships, despite missing out on his title defense at the PGA Championship, and realizes and respects that some may disagree with this decision.\n\n“I have a renewed spirit and excitement for the game. I am incredibly grateful for the support of my fans, partners, friends, and peers and I hope in time, those sentiments, relationships, and support continue.”\n\nNORMAN:Suggests McIlroy has been 'brainwashed,' calls Nicklaus a 'hypocrite'\n\nOPINION: Why won't golf's leaders players for bolting to Saudi event?\n\nNEVER MISS A MOMENT: Subscribe to our Sports Newsletter now!\n\nMickelson last competed on the PGA Tour in January, where he missed the cut at the Farmers Insurance Open. He then finished T-18 a week later at the Saudi International. He has largely avoided the public after making controversial comments about the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia.\n\n“Phil Mickelson is unequivocally one of the greatest golfers of this generation. His contributions to the sport and connection to fans around the globe cannot be overstated and we are grateful to have him. He strengthens an exciting field for London where we’re proud to launch a new era for golf,” said Greg Norman, CEO and Commissioner of LIV Golf.\n\nFive additional players were added to the field, qualifying via the Asian Tour International Series following last week’s International Series England competition at Slayley Hall: Itthipat Buranatanyarat, Viraj Madappa, Travis Smyth, Ian Snyman and Kevin Yuan.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2022/06/07/liv-golf-invitational-series-london-dustin-johnson-reporter-removed/7543831001/", "title": "LIV Golf Invitational Series: Press conference gets heated", "text": "The inaugural LIV Golf Invitational Series event will tee off starting Thursday with players such as Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and other notable names joining the venture.\n\nTo preview the three-day event the circuit held an opening news conference at Centurion Golf Club in St. Albans, England on Tuesday.\n\nJohnson resigned from the PGA Tour. Players among the 48-person field were asked about LIV Golf being financed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia and its role in the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, among other atrocities.\n\nHere are some highlights from the news conference, which included abbreviated explanations and reporters being removed.\n\nOPTING OUT: Dustin Johnson resigns his PGA Tour membership to play in Saudi league\n\n'I'LL BE THERE:' Mickelson plans on playing US Open, all LIV Golf Invitational Series events\n\nGraeme McDowell: 'Really hard question'\n\nAccording to ESPN, McDowell was one of the lone golfers to provide a response to a question about working on behalf of Saudi Arabia.\n\n\"I wish I had the ability to be able to have that conversation with you,\" McDowell said. \"You know, I think as golfers, if we tried to cure geopolitical situations in every country in the world that we play golf in, we wouldn't play a lot of golf. It's a really hard question to answer. You know, we're just here to focus on the golf and kind of what it does globally for the role models that these guys are and that we are, and yeah, that's a really hard question to get into.\n\n\"I mean, this has been incredibly polarizing. I think we all agree, the Kashoggi situation, that was reprehensible.\"\n\nTalor Gooch: 'I'm not that smart'\n\nPosed with a question about participating in \"sportswashing\" – using sports to present a sanitized version of a political regime or operation – Talor Gooch had this to say:\n\n\"I don't think that's fair,\" he said, via ESPN. \"Also ... I'm a golfer. I'm not that smart. I try to hit a golf ball into a small hole. Golf is hard enough. I try to worry about golf, and I'm excited bout this week.\"\n\nKevin Na confident he can play Ryder Cup\n\nAs of now, players must be PGA Tour members to play in the Ryder Cup. By participating in LIV Golf, they risk being banned for playing with a non-sanctioned competitor.\n\nKevin Na thinks it won't come down to that, though. \"I honestly don't think it's going to happen.\"\n\nHis thinking?\n\n\"Rules can be changed,\" he said.\n\nDustin Johnson resigns from PGA Tour\n\nWhile McDowell opted to not resign from the PGA Tour yet, Johnson took the preemptive step.\n\n“I'm excited about (LIV),\" he said. \"Obviously the Ryder Cup is unbelievable and something that has meant a lot to me. ... Hopefully I’ll get a chance to do that again, but I don’t make the rules.”\n\nReporter removed before returning\n\nAccording to ESPN, Associated Press reporter Rob Harris was removed after a LIV spokesman cut him off while trying to answer a question. Players began to leave as LIV officials reprimanded the reporter for not being \"polite.\"\n\nSecurity led Harris out after that. Harris was allowed back into the media center about 10 minutes later, per ESPN.\n\nAri Fleischer runs LIV Golf news conference\n\nThe emcee of the news conference was former White House press secretary and Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer.\n\nThe spokesman was held to the same standard as the players and asked to square his employment with LIV Golf compared to his past Twitter posts that criticized the government.\n\nFleischer also does media consulting for the College Football Playoff.\n\nContributing: Associated Press\n\nFollow Chris Bumbaca on Twitter @BOOMbaca.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/07"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2022/05/10/pga-tour-denies-releases-for-players-in-saudi-funded-event/50212869/", "title": "PGA Tour denies releases for players in Saudi-funded event", "text": "AP\n\nThe PGA Tour is denying releases to golfers who asked to play in the first of a series of Saudi-funded tournaments next month in England, a bold move by Commissioner Jay Monahan in trying to quash Greg Norman’s latest bid to start a lucrative rival league.\n\nThe first LIV Golf Invitational is scheduled for June 9-11 at Centurion Golf Club outside of London, with a 48-man field competing for a $20 million purse over 54 holes. The winner gets $4 million — to date the richest prize in golf — and last place gets $120,000.\n\nThe tour informed the players who are seeking releases late Tuesday afternoon, and then notified all players of the decision in a short memo, which was obtained by The Associated Press.\n\n“We have notified those who have applied that their request has been declined in accordance with the PGA Tour Tournament Regulations. As such, Tour members are not authorized to participate in the Saudi Golf League’s London event under our regulations,” the memo said.\n\n“As a membership organization, we believe this decision is in the best interest of the PGA Tour and its players.”\n\nWhile the names of players who have signed up has not officially been released, Phil Mickelson said through his agent he has asked for a conflicting event release to the London event. Lee Westwood confirmed last week he asked the PGA Tour and European tour for a release.\n\nThe Daily Telegraph reported that Sergio Garcia, Martin Kaymer and Ian Poulter also were among those who sought releases.\n\nNorman is the CEO of LIV Golf Investments, funded primarily by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. He told Sky Sport earlier Tuesday he would have six of the top 50 players in the world at the London event and 19 of the top 100.\n\nNow that Monahan has staked his position, it’s up to the players to decide if they still want to go and risk losing PGA Tour membership.\n\n“Sadly, the PGA Tour seems intent on denying professional golfers their right to play golf, unless it’s exclusively in a PGA Tour tournament,\" Norman said in a statement, calling the decision “anti-golfer, anti-fan, and anti-competitive.”\n\nHe also said “no matter what obstacles the PGA Tour puts in our way, we will not be stopped” and will “continue to give players options.”\n\nWhen asked the tour’s next step, Monahan said, “I can tell you what we’re going to do — keep hosting the best events with the best players, with the world’s greatest fans and partners.”\n\nThe first LIV event, one week before the U.S. Open, is scheduled for the same week as the RBC Canadian Open, the fourth-oldest national open in golf. Norman won it twice.\n\nPGA Tour guidelines typically allow for players to get three releases to play in tournaments around the world.\n\nMonahan granted releases to about two dozen players for the Saudi International on Feb. 3-6 — the same week as Pebble Beach — with the caveat that players going to the event would be required to play Pebble Beach as many as two times over the next three years.\n\nBut his decision Tuesday painted the LIV Golf Invitational in a different light as the first of eight such events with $20 million purses, along with a $5 million prize fund for a team component.\n\nNorman has postponed the league concept of 12 four-man teams for a few years after the top players said they were not interested.\n\nHe has presented the LIV Golf Invitational series this year as separate tournaments in which players could compete as often as they liked.\n\nFive of the tournaments are scheduled for the United States, a direct challenge to the PGA Tour because its regulations do not allow for any releases for tournaments held in North America. The first one is scheduled for July 1-3 near Portland, Oregon. Others are for suburban Chicago and suburban Boston, as well as two courses owned by former President Donald Trump in New Jersey and Miami.\n\nThe U.S. events, particularly the Portland one, was seen as the first real test of the PGA Tour stating where its players could compete.\n\nInstead, Monahan fired the first shot in denying releases to London. The next step is whether players will challenge him by playing the LIV Golf Invitational, anyway. Monahan has said that would lead to players being disbarred.\n\nThe move was not entirely surprising. Monahan had said in late February that he told players the PGA Tour was moving on “and anyone on the fence needs to make a decision.”\n\nThe tour denied the releases on the same day Norman announced an additional $2 billion investment to expand the LIV Golf series to 10 tournaments next year, and a full season of 14 tournaments in 2024 and 2025. He said details of those additional tournaments would be disclosed later.\n\n\"We have a long-term vision and we’re here to stay,” said Norman, who tried to start a World Golf Tour in 1994.\n\nThe latest effort suffered a big hit in February when the top 10 players in the world all said they were sticking with the PGA Tour. Rory McIlroy, a staunch opponent to the Saudi league, referred to it as a “pre-Champions tour” noting that most of those interested were in the twilight of their careers.\n\n___\n\nMore AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/10"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2022/04/18/robert-garrigus-seeks-waiver-saudi-backed-liv-invitational/7363017001/", "title": "Golfer Robert Garrigus seeks waiver for Saudi-backed LIV Invitational", "text": "Eamonn Lynch\n\nGolfweek\n\nA career journeyman has become the first PGA Tour member to apply for permission to compete in a controversial tournament funded by the Saudi Arabian government in England this summer.\n\nMultiple people told Golfweek that Robert Garrigus has requested a release from the PGA Tour to play in the LIV Golf Invitational, scheduled for June 9-11 at the Centurion Club in London. PGA Tour members are required to obtain a waiver to compete in events held on other circuits. Such applications must be submitted at least 45 days before the first round of the tournament, which means the deadline for players to request a green light to play for Saudi cash in London is Monday, April 25.\n\nThe people, who requested anonymity, say Garrigus is the only Tour player who has filed for a waiver so far, though others are expected to do so. The Tour must decide on applications 30 days before the event begins, or by May 10.\n\nA spokesperson for the PGA Tour declined to comment on Garrigus or on releases for the Saudi event. Kevin Canning, the agent for Garrigus, also declined comment.\n\nRBC HERITAGE:Dylan Frittelli thought he pulled off 'greatest par of my life,' then got hit with two-stroke penalty\n\nRBC HERITAGE:Jordan Spieth beats Patrick Cantlay in playoff for first win as a father\n\nTHE MATCH:Event will return with only quarterbacks playing this time\n\nThe tournament in London is the first of eight scheduled events announced by Greg Norman, who has been the public face of LIV Golf, an organization financed by the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund. The lucrative tournaments — $25 million purses with $4 million for first place — have been widely criticized as a blatant attempt by the Saudi regime to “sportswash” its human rights abuses.\n\nThe Saudis originally planned an 18-event breakaway tour featuring only the best players in the world but that plan faltered when almost every top player rejected offers to join and pledged to remain on the PGA Tour. LIV Golf has since abandoned any immediate hope of launching a rival league and is instead trying to gain traction by staging individual tournaments, four of which are scheduled in the U.S., the first being July 1-3 at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club in Portland, Oregon.\n\nIt’s expected that fields for the LIV Golf events will largely be made up of journeymen from the PGA Tour and DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour). Norman recently conceded that amateurs may also be invited to compete, and that his strategy is to make elite players jealous at seeing also-rans win enormous sums of money, hoping that envy will eventually draw top-tier talent to his events.\n\nGarrigus, 44, joined the PGA Tour in 2006. He has one career victory, the Children’s Miracle Network Classic in 2010, and has not made the field in a major championship since 2013. He has made just four starts this season, with his best finish a tie for 16th at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. He last played a full season on Tour in 2017-18. His last top-10 finish came at the Farmers Insurance Open four years ago. Since then, he has earned $320,597.\n\nIn 2020-21, Garrigus played 20 events on the Korn Ferry Tour, recording two top 25s and missing the cut 13 times, ending the season ranked 190th in earnings. He currently has limited status on the PGA Tour as a veteran and past champion. His career earnings on the PGA Tour total $14.9 million.\n\nGarrigus is in the field for this week’s team event, the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, with Tommy Gainey.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/04/18"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_15", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:37", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2022/06/06/d-day-photos-1944-normandy-invasion/7502281001/", "title": "D-Day photos: Historical images on anniversary of invasion", "text": "Monday marks the 78th anniversary of the historic D-Day operation.\n\nIn the midst of World War II on June 6, 1944, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy in Nazi-occupied France. More than 156,000 troops, notably from the United States, Britain and Canada, confronted Nazi forces on D-Day forever reshaping the war, according to the Department of Defense.\n\nD-Day began the assault phase (codenamed Operation Neptune) of the wider Allied invasion of northwest Europe led by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, known as Operation Overlord. According to Britannica, by the end of August 1944, all of northern France was liberated from Nazi control.\n\nFact check:Image does not show WWII paratroopers in D-Day plane\n\n'Forgotten Army':Remember the 2.5M vital Indian soldiers who fought for the Allies\n\nThe exact number of people killed in the fighting is unknown, but research by the U.S. National D-Day Memorial Foundation estimates that there were over 4,000 Allied deaths and between 4,000 and 9,000 German losses on D-Day.\n\nMore than 100,000 Allied and German soldiers died during the full Battle at Normandy and around 20,000 French civilians were reportedly killed in the bombings.\n\nHere are some D-Day photographs from all those years ago.\n\nWhat's everyone talking about?:Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day\n\nContributing: Ryan Miller", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2022/06/06/tropical-storm-alex-d-day-nhl-western-conference-finals-5-things-know-monday/7470949001/", "title": "Tropical Storm Alex, D-Day anniversary, NHL Western Conference ...", "text": "Editors\n\nUSA TODAY\n\nRussia tightens pressure on Donbas region\n\nRussia is continuing what British officials have called a \"creeping advance\" on Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on Monday. Russian troops blew up bridges and shelled apartments in Sievierodonetsk and neighboring Lysychansk, the last two major cities of the Luhansk province still held by Ukraine. If captured, Russian President Vladimir Putin would take control of the contested area. The British Defense Ministry said Sunday that Ukrainian forces counterattacked Sieverodonetsk, likely blunting Russia’s momentum there. Military analysts say Russia hopes to overrun Ukraine’s embattled industrial Donbas region, where Russia-backed separatists have fought the Ukrainian government since 2014, before the arrival of any U.S. weapons that might turn the tide. The U.S. is sending a new security package to Ukraine that will include four sophisticated, medium-range rocket systems and ammunition, the Pentagon said Wednesday. The Pentagon said it would take at least three weeks to get the precision weapons and trained troops onto the battlefield.\n\nPrefer to listen? Check out the 5 Things podcast:\n\nTropical Storm Alex heads toward Bermuda\n\nTropical Storm Alex, which became the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season Sunday, is forecast to pass just north of Bermuda on Monday, after killing three people in Cuba and causing flooding in parts of Florida. Forecasters said it could drop 1 to 2 inches of rain from late Sunday into Monday. Alex reached tropical storm force after strengthening off Florida's east coast early Sunday, and was centered about 245 miles west of Bermuda late Sunday, with maximum sustained winds at around 70 mph, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Bermuda's National Security Minister Michael Weeks said emergency services were monitoring the storm. Alex partially emerged from the remnants of Hurricane Agatha, which made landfall on Mexico’s southern Pacific Coast last week, killing at least nine people as it moved overland.\n\n78th anniversary of the historic D-Day operation of World War II\n\nMonday marks the 78th anniversary of the historic D-Day operation. In the midst of World War II on June 6, 1944, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy in Nazi-occupied France. More than 156,000 troops, notably from the United States, Britain and Canada, confronted Nazi forces, forever reshaping the war, according to the Department of Defense. D-Day began the assault phase (codenamed Operation Neptune) of the wider Allied invasion of northwest Europe led by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, known as Operation Overlord. The exact number of people killed in the fighting is unknown, but research by the U.S. National D-Day Memorial Foundation estimates that there were over 4,000 Allied deaths and between 4,000 and 9,000 German losses on D-Day. More than 100,000 Allied and German soldiers died during the full Battle at Normandy and around 20,000 French civilians were reportedly killed in the bombings.\n\nApple expected to unveil iOS 16 changes at WWDC\n\nTech giant Apple will host a virtual keynote for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, and iPhone users are likely to get a first glimpse of how their device will change this fall. The next software update, tentatively called iOS 16, will introduce a new look and feel to all iPhones. Bloomberg reported the Messages and Health apps could see changes, along with enhancements to the lock screen. It's an open question whether much older models going back to the iPhone 6S, which launched nearly seven years ago, will still run the latest version of iOS. Apple will also likely unveil new versions of its operating systems for iPads and Apple Watches.\n\nNHL's Western Conference final Game 4 on Monday\n\nThe Colorado Avalanche could become the first team to clinch a spot in the NHL's Stanley Cup Final when they visit the Edmonton Oilers in Game 4 on Monday. The Avalanche, who haven’t been to the Final since winning the Cup in 2001, lead the best-of-seven Western Conference final 3-0. The Avalanche will be without No. 2 center Nazem Kadri, who was injured on a boarding penalty by Edmonton’s Evander Kane in Game 3 and has been ruled out for the rest of the series. The Oilers will be without Kane, the league's leading playoff goal scorer, on Monday after he was suspended for one game. If the Oilers fail to advance, it would extend Canada’s futility in the playoffs. The 1993 Montreal Canadiens were the last Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup. The winner of the Western final will face either the two-time defending champion Tampa Bay Lightning or the New York Rangers in the championship round. The Rangers lead the Eastern final 2-1.\n\nWestern Conference final: Avalanche beat Oilers to go up 3-0\n\nContributing: The Associated Press", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/06/06/d-day-trump-west-point-and-marcia-cross-thursdays-top-news/1349252001/", "title": "D-Day, Trump, West Point and Marcia Cross: Thursday's top news", "text": "World War II remembrances commemorated D-Day's 75th anniversary. And in another 75 years, humanity may not be here. It's Thursday. Here's the top news.\n\nBut first, a five-star flight: Uber will launch \"Uber Copters\" in New York City this summer, lifting passengers from Manhattan to John F. Kennedy International Airport. No word on whether the choppers will have USB ports for your phone.\n\nA 97-year-old D-Day veteran parachutes into Normandy again\n\nTributes abound on the 75th anniversary of the D-Day operation, when Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy in Nazi-occupied France in World War II. From Bedford, Virginia, home of the National D-Day Memorial, to Normandy, where President Donald Trump offered remarks along with French President Emmanuel Macron, the legacy of D-Day carries on. Not to be outdone, a 97-year-old veteran parachuted into Normandy again to commemorate. \"You are among the very greatest Americans who will ever live,\" Trump told 170 WWII veterans at a ceremony at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial. To mark the historic day, here are 17 photos that show how D-Day went down.\n\nApocalypse now – well, in 31 years\n\nThe end of the world might start sooner than we expected. According to an alarming Australian policy paper, if humans don’t get their act together and start handling climate change and stop emitting greenhouse gasses, we could see irreversible damage by 2050. If the temperature rises the way the report imagines, the globe could shift into catastrophic changes in weather patterns, agriculture and habitability, resulting in constant political panic – or an end-of-days type of situation. To stop it, we need to stop burning fossil fuels. Luckily, renewable energy prices are dropping, and the conversation is shifting.\n\nAn accidental death at West Point\n\nAt West Point, on the 75th anniversary of D-Day, one cadet was dead and 21 others were injured after a training exercise. The accident occurred early Thursday near Camp Natural Bridge, a site not far from the military academy's main campus, when a tactical vehicle rolled. It's not the first death for West Point this year: Cadet Peter Zhu died after a skiing accident in March. His story made headlines when his parents won the right to his frozen sperm in court.\n\nReal quick:\n\n'Desperate Housewives' star: A rectal exam saved my life\n\n\"Desperate Housewives\" star Marcia Cross on Wednesday detailed her shocking anal cancer diagnosis a year and a half ago, which she recently discovered could be linked to her husband's battle with throat cancer in 2009. The revelation came during an exam at a regular gynecologist visit, Cross told CBS, when the doctor found a cancerous mass in her anus. She said doctors think her anal cancer and husband Tom Mahoney's throat cancer came from the same type of human papillomavirus, commonly called HPV, which can be transferred through sexual intercourse or skin-to-skin contact. Cross and Mahoney are both in remission.\n\nNews flash: The HPV vaccine helps prevent cervical, anal, penile, vulvar, throat and esophageal cancers. Here's what you need to know about it.\n\nFCC says buh-bye to robocallers\n\nGet ready to cut robocallers out of your life, period. The Federal Communications Commission passed a bill Thursday that lets phone companies block bot calls before they get to your home phone or mobile device. The bill comes after a proposal that would drastically raise the amount of robocalls. It's gotten a lot of flak from senators, who called on the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau to reconsider the proposal that would let debt robocalls run wild with unlimited e-mails and texts and seven calls a week.\n\nThis is a compilation of stories from across the USA TODAY Network. Want this snappy news roundup in your inbox every night? Sign up for \"The Short List\" newsletter here.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2019/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/06/06/d-day-victory-dominated-front-page-news-journal-75-years-ago/1354500001/", "title": "D-Day victory dominated front page of News Journal 75 years ago", "text": "MANSFIELD - There was no doubt in readers' minds when they picked up their newspapers on June 6, 1944, that the Allied forces had been successful on the beaches of Normandy.\n\nThursday marks the 75th anniversary of that fateful day, which saw nearly 20,000 combined casualties from both sides.\n\n\"Allies invade France,\" the front page of the Mansfield News Journal screamed. \"Allies secure beachheads in Normandy, slash inland.\"\n\nNewspaper staffers placed a large map of northern Europe on the front page that day, showing the allied progress through France. The image noted that more landings were expected along the beach throughout the week.\n\n\"Readers will undoubtedly find the map a good one to save to check the progress of the invasion,\" a caption below read.\n\nReaders quickly learned that 4,000 planes and 11,000 ships had been used in the attack, which was history's largest combined invasion by air, sea and land. More than 150,000 soldiers from the United States, Canada and Britain stormed the Nazi-occupied beaches of France, pushing German troops back to their homeland to form a clear turning point in the World War II.\n\nReports of Allied success in the war dominated headlines the entire week.\n\nAlthough there were victories, they were solemn.\n\n\"City takes invasion with calm, prayer, determination,\" one local headline read. It was written by Virgil Stanfield, then a News Journal reporter.\n\nStanfield wrote that Mansfield residents took the news calmly that morning, \"then went back to work with a new determination to do more at home to make the task less difficult for their sons, husbands, and brothers who are swarming the French coast under Nazi fire.\"\n\n\"There was none of the cheering and bell-ringing that will herald the victory every American knows will come,\" Stanfield wrote. \"Certainly every Mansfielder thought 'This is the beginning of the end for the Nazis,' but he knew victory will be costly in lives.\"\n\nHe wrote that since the news broke before dawn, \"thousands of Mansfielders didn't know about it until they went to work and bought a News Journal extra.\"\n\nThe day was one filled with prayer, the paper explained. The doors of churches throughout town were open that day, allowing anyone to visit and pray.\n\nThe day's news included a report that Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned his troops against forcing a premature uprising.\n\n\"The day will come when I shall need your united strength,\" Eisenhower said. \"Until that day, I shall call on you for the hard task of discipline and restraint... follow the instructions of your leaders... be patient. Prepare.\"\n\nMany of the day's articles did their best to set up the day's events for readers. They made clear that the 17-mile German front was broken and confused.\n\n\"In a blasting herald of the invasion, the British bomber command sent more than 1,300 of its biggest ships roaring across the channel last night and early today in the heaviest aerial attack ever aimed at German batteries along the French coast,\" one article explained.\n\nThe newspaper even left a little room to report the invasion weather: \"Slightly showery weather prevailed in the Dover Straits today, followed by sunshine. Heavy cloud banks later developed and the outlook was unsettled. The sea was moderate with visibility good and improving. The temperature hovered around 60 degrees.\"\n\nztuggle@gannett.com\n\n419-564-3508\n\nTwitter: @zachtuggle", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2019/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/04/d-day-world-war-ii-allies-invasion-normandy/1191207001/", "title": "D-Day World War II: 5 things about the allies' invasion of Normandy", "text": "The 75th anniversary of World War II’s D-Day is June 6, commemorating the largest invasion by air, land and sea in history.\n\nMore than 5,000 ships, 11,000 airplanes and 150,000 soldiers from the United States, Britain and Canada stormed the Nazi-occupied French beaches of Normandy in a surprise attack.\n\nMajor events are planned to commemorate the anniversary of the invasion, including at the Normandy beaches and cliffs where the battles took place.\n\nHere are five things you should know:\n\nWho led the mission?\n\nGen. Dwight D. Eisenhower commanded the Allied Expeditionary Forces during D-Day, known then as Operation Overlord. The highly coordinated and secretive mission included a last-minute weather delay and attempts to throw Germans off course. Eisenhower would go on to become the 34th president of the United States.\n\n“You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months,” Eisenhower wrote in an encouraging message to his troops. “The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.”\n\n75th D-Day anniversary a special one:The Pieper twins are finally together in Normandy\n\nHow long did it last?\n\nFollowing the mass casualties of D-Day, the battles of Normandy continued for roughly three more months, until Allied troops had pushed all the way to the Seine River and liberated Paris from Nazi control. Less than a year after D-Day, Adolf Hitler committed suicide and Nazi Germany surrendered.\n\n'Woo-hoo!':D-Day veteran, 97, parachutes into Normandy again – 75 years later\n\nHow many people were killed?\n\nMore than 4,000 Allied soldiers, most of them younger than 20 years old, died in the June 6, 1944 invasion. Up to 20,000 French civilians were reportedly killed in the bombings. More than 4,000 German troops died, and ultimately, the invasion is credited with changing the course of the war and ultimately pushing Nazi troops back to Germany.\n\nHow many WWII veterans are left?\n\nAbout 496,777 of the 16 million Americans who served in WWII were still living as of September 2018, according to projections by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. An estimated 348 WWII veterans die every day in the U.S. A decade from now, it’s estimated that fewer than 20,000 WWII veterans will remain.\n\nMore:Restored WWII aircraft from the U.S. to commemorate 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy\n\nWhat does the ‘D’ stand for?\n\nThe ‘D’ in D-Day simply stands for ‘day.’ The term D-Day is used to identify the start date of a military invasion, according to the National D-Day Memorial Foundation. H-Hour represents the hour an operation is set to begin.\n\nAccording to a reconstructed timeline of veteran accounts, thousands of paratroopers dropped in just after midnight. As aircraft continued bombing targets, Navy ships started firing just before 6 a.m., and troops invaded on foot soon after.\n\nDonovan Slack contributing. This is an updated version of a story originally published in June 2018.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2019/06/04"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/green-sheet/2017/06/06/day-history-june-6/369055001/", "title": "This day in history — June 6", "text": "Associated Press\n\nToday’s highlight in history\n\nOn June 6, 1944, during World War II, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, on “D-Day” as they began the liberation of German-occupied Western Europe.\n\nOn this date\n\nIn 1844, the Young Men’s Christian Association was founded in London.\n\nIn 1925, Walter Percy Chrysler founded Chrysler Corp.\n\nIn 1933, the first drive-in movie theater was opened by Richard Hollingshead in Camden County, N.J. (The movie shown was “Wives Beware,” starring Adolphe Menjou.)\n\nRELATED:Looking back at the rise, and fall, of Milwaukee's first drive-in movie theater\n\nIn 1966, black activist James Meredith was shot and wounded as he walked along a Mississippi highway to encourage black voter registration.\n\nIn 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law imposing an automatic death sentence on defendants convicted of the first-degree murder of a police officer.\n\nIn 1982, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon to drive Palestine Liberation Organization fighters out of the country. (The Israelis withdrew in June 1985.)\n\nIn 1994, President Bill Clinton joined leaders from America’s World War II allies to mark the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy.\n\nTen years ago: Bob Barker taped his last episode as host of CBS’ “The Price Is Right.”\n\nFive years ago: Business social network LinkedIn reported that some of its users’ passwords had been stolen and leaked onto the Internet.\n\nOne year ago: A jury in Los Angeles returned a death sentence for Lonnie Franklin Jr., the serial killer known as the “Grim Sleeper” who murdered nine women and a teenage girl over several decades.\n\nAssociated Press\n\nQUOTE UNQUOTE\n\n\"I call upon all who love freedom to stand with us.\"\n\nDwight D. Eisenhower,\n\nSupreme commander of the Allied forces landing on the coast of France on June 6, 1944, in a speech broadcast to Western Europe", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2017/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/06/06/d-day-photos-normandy-mark-75th-anniversary-d-day-invasion/1365312001/", "title": "D-Day: Photos from Normandy to mark 75th anniversary of D-Day ...", "text": "On June 6, 1944, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, forever reshaping the progress of the war and history during the D-Day operation.\n\nThousands of ships, planes and soldiers from the United States, Britain and Canada surprised Nazi forces.\n\nMore than 4,000 Allied soldiers, most of them younger than 20, as well as more than 4,000 German troops died in the invasion. Up to 20,000 French civilians were also reportedly killed in the bombings.\n\nIn 2019, veterans and world leaders gathered to honor the soldiers who took part in the invasion, led by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and known then as Operation Overlord.\n\nTo mark the historic day, here are 17 photos that show how the battle unfolded.\n\nContributing: Shelby Fleig, USA TODAY. Follow USA TODAY's Ryan Miller on Twitter: @RyanW_Miller", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2019/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/04/d-day-squadron-travels-us-normandy-invasion-anniversary/3747530002/", "title": "World War II planes fly to D-Day Normandy invasion 75th anniversary", "text": "A contingent of World War II-era aircraft left the United States on May 19 to make the trek to Normandy for the 75th D-Day anniversary on June 6.\n\nA group of more than a dozen aircraft from the D-Day Squadron – which includes restored Douglas DC-3 and C-47 planes – is expected to fly in formation with counterparts from across Europe in a historic crossing of the English Channel into Normandy, France.\n\nEric Zipkin, a founder of the squadron who spoke to USA TODAY before the trip began, said the effort has been five years in the making. He said the contingent that will participate in \"Daks Over Normandy\" includes 15 planes with pilots and crew from across the United States.\n\nThey flew from Connecticut to Canada, then over to Greenland, Iceland and Scotland before making their way to England on what's known as the Blue Spruce Route across the Atlantic. The journey was expected to cost roughly $150,000 per aircraft for fuel and other support expenses.\n\nZipkin, whose father served in World War II, is piloting a C-47 named “Placid Lassie.” He said flying the plane, which was flown in the Normandy invasion and has been restored, is how he connects with the sacrifices veterans and their families made and make every day.\n\n“You know, the important lesson to me about World War II is that so much of our country was involved with the war effort,” Zipkin said. “Today it's a much, much smaller percentage of our population that are involved in the military.\n\nRelated:Veterans struggle to save World War II ships\n\n“And as a result, there's a large swath of our country that does not understand,” he said. “And myself included, not being a veteran myself, it's taken this experience for me to really understand and appreciate the sacrifices.”\n\nThe D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944, was the largest by air, land and sea in history and involved more than 150,000 troops from the United States, Britain and Canada who stormed the Nazi-occupied French beaches of Normandy. The invasion is credited with changing the course of the war and ultimately pushing Nazi troops back to Germany.\n\n75th D-Day anniversary a special one:The Pieper twins are finally together in Normandy\n\nWorld War II D-Day:Five things to know on the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings\n\nZipkin and some of the other pilots expected for the anniversary flights in Normandy participated in a flyover in Frederick, Maryland, before embarking on the trip. Joe Fisher, pilot of the C-47 “Flabob Express,” said at the event that he has been “flying warbirds” for 25 years but had never been to Normandy and jumped at the chance when learned two years ago about the formation heading there for the 75th D-Day anniversary.\n\n“I think we were the first airplane to say, ‘yes, we’re going,’” he said. “At that point we started working on the airplane to prepare it. (It’s) just truly an honor to go to Normandy and honor our D-Day veterans. They were truly the greatest generation.”\n\nThe pilots were joined in Frederick by a parachuting demonstration team from the United States that will jump from the vintage planes in Normandy with period gear and uniforms in a tribute to the D-Day paratroopers.\n\nRetired Lt. Col. David Accetta, a 25-year Army veteran who served with the 82nd Airborne Division, has been jumping with the Liberty Jump Team since its inception in 2006.\n\nHe said more than 100 members will make the Normandy jump, ranging in age from the 20's to their 70's, many of whom were not military veterans, but are “qualified, adventurous people…who are dedicated and are willing to help us with our mission of honoring the veterans,” Accetta said.\n\nFor Accetta, making the magnitude of the WWII victory real for Americans today is his mission with the team.\n\n“This is the 75th anniversary, so you've got to expect that a lot of these veterans are well into their 80's and 90's now, so there's not that many of them left, especially who are able to travel, but what they did was so important for the world and for the free world as we know it today, that we want to make sure that people understand how they helped win World War II,” he said.\n\n“You go to France and you go to Holland and the countries that the allies liberated and the people there, they remember the sacrifices and they remember the service of these paratroopers who came to liberate them from the Nazis, but you don't get that same appreciation here in the United States,” Accetta said. “So we want to make sure that we can help educate the American public on how important a role these great Americans played in history.”", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2019/06/04"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/06/06/5-things-know-d-day/1344945001/", "title": "Code name for D-Day? Facts about the invasion", "text": "The 75th anniversary of World War II’s D-Day is June 6, commemorating the largest invasion by air, land and sea in history.\n\nMore than 5,000 ships, 11,000 airplanes and 150,000 soldiers from the United States, Britain and Canada stormed the Nazi-occupied French beaches of Normandy in a surprise attack.\n\nMajor events are planned to commemorate the anniversary of the invasion, including at the Normandy beaches and cliffs where the battles took place.\n\nHere are five things you should know:\n\nFact about D-day\n\nD-Day was the largest amphibious (land and water) invasion in history. More than 13,000 aircraft and 5,000 ships supported the operation.\n\nWhat was the code name for the D-day invasion?\n\nThe code name for the invasion was Operation Overlord.\n\nMore:An El Paso World War II veteran who took part in D-Day, will be honored with a monument\n\nGeneral Dwight D. Eisenhower commanded the operation\n\nPlans were made to land in Normandy June 5, 1944, but bad weather delayed the launch date of the invasion to June 6.\n\nThe \"D\" stands for Day, btw\n\nD-Day is code for the day the attack was to begin. One reason was to keep the actual date out of the hands of the enemy; another was to serve as a placeholder until a date was chosen. They also used H-Hour for the time of the invasion..\n\nCodename for D-day\n\nCode names for the five beaches where the Allies landed: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword.\n\nMore:Macron helps veteran to his feet, Trump gets a salute: Key moments from Trump's D-Day address in Normandy\n\nTrish Long is the El Paso Times' librarian and spends her time in the morgue, where the newspaper keeps its old clippings and photos. She may be reached at 546-6179 or tlong@elpasotimes.com.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2019/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/06/06/mass-shootings-continue-apple-unveil-iphone-updates-5-things-podcast/7528289001/", "title": "Mass shootings continue, Apple to unveil iphone updates; 5 Things ...", "text": "On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: 6 dead, 25 wounded in Philadelphia, Chattanooga shootings\n\nReporter Ryan Miller also talks about this year's wave of gun violence. Plus, we look back at D-Day, investigative reporter Rachel Axon tells producer PJ Elliott about some schools' failures to live up to Title IX and Apple is set to unveil its latest iPhone software.\n\nMore:True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here.\n\nHit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.\n\nTaylor Wilson:\n\nGood morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Monday, the 6th of June, 2022. Today, more mass shootings, plus 78 years since D-Day, and more.\n\nHere are some of the top headlines:\n\nBritish defense authorities say Russia is tightening its advance on Ukraine's Eastern Donbas region, and most recently blew up bridges and shelled apartments in the city of Severodonetsk. The US is sending a new security package to Ukraine with four sophisticated medium-range rocket systems. Tropical storm Alex became the first named storm of this year's Atlantic hurricane season yesterday. It's forecast to pass just north of Bermuda today after killing three people in Cuba. The NBA finals are now all tied up at one game apiece. The Golden State Warriors smashed the Boston Celtics 107 to 88 last night. Game three shifts to Boston on Wednesday.\n\n♦\n\nPolice were hunting for multiple gunman yesterday after a shooting rampage on a crowded Philadelphia street killed three people and injured eleven. This witness described the scene.\n\nWitness to Philadelphia Shooting:\n\nI just saw people running, and so my main job was to make sure that nobody ran into the establishment.\n\nTaylor Wilson:\n\nHours later, a shooting at a Tennessee nightclub left three dead and fourteen injured in Chattanooga. One of the deaths involved a person hit by a vehicle during a scramble after the shooting started just before 3:00 AM. And in Socorro, Texas, police are investigating a shooting that left five injured at a graduation party.\n\nIn Philadelphia, authorities said there appeared to be multiple gunmen, and that a physical altercation may have led to gunfire. And in Tennessee, authorities also believe there were multiple shooters, but police said there was not an ongoing public-safety threat.\n\n♦\n\nThis year has already seen a wave of high-profile, deadly mass shootings across the country. 5 Things producer PJ Elliott spoke with reporter Ryan Miller about what we've learned from America's latest gun violence.\n\nRyan Miller:\n\nThere was a shooting on Wednesday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which marked what was the 12th mass killing in the United States in 2022. That's according to a database that USA TODAY, the Associated Press, and Northeastern University keep. That database tracks what are defined as 'mass killings', which mean four or more people have been killed, and that includes all forms of violence, not only guns. So, it's more restrictive of a definition in some senses, but less restrictive in others.\n\nWhen it comes specifically to mass shootings, which the Gun Violence Archive tracks and defines as four or more people shot or killed, 2021 saw the highest number of mass shootings of any year since 2014. That was 692. The Gun Violence Archive has been tracking this stat for several years now. It's essentially only been increasing in recent years.\n\nIn 2020, there were 610 mass shootings. In 2019, there were 417 mass shootings, but between 2014 and 2018, it was averaging around 334 mass shootings a year. So, the data shows that these mass shooting incidents, in which four more people are shot or killed, are rising, but the mass killing database that USA TODAY, and the AP, and Northeastern keep has largely remained constant at about 30 or so a year.\n\nPJ Elliott:\n\nWhat can you tell us about what we're learning about these mass shootings? Are they pre-planned? Are they spontaneous? What have we learned over the course of time?\n\nRyan Miller:\n\nYeah. Professor James Alan Fox who's with Northeastern University, he's a criminologist and he's been helping keep this database. According to him, most of these shootings are not spontaneous acts. Often, shooters have a deliberate plan in mind.\n\nThere is another database maintained by The Violence Project, which tracks the details around the mass shooters themselves. In more than 80% of cases, they found that mass shooters had some noticeable form of crisis before their attacks. In most cases, that manifested in some form of increased agitation. The other thing that they found, which has been widely reported before, but just reaffirming, is that the vast majority of mass shooters are men. They found only four instances in which a mass shooter was a woman.\n\nTaylor Wilson:\n\nUSA TODAY subscribers can find a link to Ryan's full story in today's episode description.\n\n♦\n\nToday marks 78 years since D-Day.\n\nRadio Announcer in 1944:\n\nThe procession of surface vessels of the invasion fleet... battleships, cruisers, destroyers, transports... stretches for miles.\n\nTaylor Wilson:\n\nIn the midst of World War II, on June 6th, 1944, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy in Nazi occupied France. More than 156,000 troops - notably from the US, Britain, and Canada - confronted Nazi forces, reshaping the rest of the war. D-Day set the stage for the assault phase of a wider Allied invasion of Northwest Europe.\n\nThe exact number of people killed in D-Day fighting is unknown, but research from the US National D-Day Memorial Foundation estimates there were more than 4,000 Allied deaths and between 4,000 and 9,000 German losses on D-Day. Additionally, more than a 100,000 Allied and German forces died during the Battle of Normandy, and some 20,000 French civilians were killed in associated bombings. On the 75th anniversary, Frank DeVita told the AP about his experience on D-Day.\n\nFrank DeVita:\n\nAt four o'clock in the morning, they dropped our boats, so we started towards the beach for two hours. Then when we got probably, I would say, 200 to 300 yards from the beach, the Germans opened up with their big guns.\n\nTaylor Wilson:\n\nFrank died this past March at the age of 96. For more, search 'D-Day' on USATODAY.com.\n\n♦\n\nTitle IX. The landmark law bans sexual discrimination in education, but a USA TODAY investigation has found that colleges and universities are still failing to live up to the law's promise. Producer PJ Elliott caught up with USA TODAY's sports investigative reporter, Rachel Axon, to find out more.\n\nRachel Axon:\n\nYeah, what we found in our reporting is consistent with trends people had told us about. The undergraduate enrollment at the biggest colleges, and most colleges actually, skews more female than the athletic department, which tends to be the opposite. So, one way that schools can measure compliance with Title IX is by proportionality, which means your share of the athletic opportunities should be roughly close to the share of your undergraduate enrollment. If your school is 55% female undergrads, then your athletic opportunities should look something like that.\n\nWe sought to examine the biggest college programs athletically. So, we did Division 1 Football Bowl Subdivision schools. And of the 127 we reviewed, we found that 87% of those could not meet the proportionality standard, and that 110 schools collectively would need to add 11,501 opportunities for women to get there.\n\nPJ Elliott:\n\nHow long has this been going on, and what can be done to fix it?\n\nRachel Axon:\n\nWell, there's a couple of things. We're working... this is part of a series of stories that we're doing in the lead-up to the anniversary of Title IX. The 50th anniversary is later this month in June. It's gone on for so long, it's a trend that's happened over time. There's been years and whole decades where there's not much enforcement of the law. This is one of three ways that schools can show compliance regarding participation opportunities. Although we found, on the other two, there's some difficulty there as well. This is the status quo of what it's been. Athletic departments before Title IX were made for men's sports, and have grown to expand to include women's sports. But if you look at the priorities of these athletic programs, it's typically the most on one or two sports for men, football and basketball. Then, some women's sports are among their top-tier ones, but not nearly the same numbers. As that focus has remained there in athletic departments, the trends in enrollment have shifted to where women used to be, when Title IX passed, a minority of students, as in less than 50%, but now are often above 50%. Some of the schools we looked at, they were 60%.\n\nWhat could fix this? That's part of our ongoing reporting, but from the people that we talked to, greater enforcement. Unfortunately for some of these women, the Department of Education is not well-resourced, or able to very quickly respond to these problems. So, litigation has been a more successful avenue. So, enforcement by some means maybe something that would help with this.\n\nTaylor Wilson:\n\nYou can find the full investigation with a link in today's show description.\n\n♦\n\nApple is hosting a virtual keynote for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference today, and iPhone users will likely get a first glimpse of how their device will change this fall. The next software update, tentatively called iOS 16, will introduce a new look and feel to the phones, according to the company. Bloomberg reported that the messages and health apps will see changes, along with upgrades to the lock screen, though it's still not clear whether much older models, dating back to the iPhone 6s which launched nearly seven years ago, will still run the latest version of iOS. Apple will likely also unveil new versions of operating systems for iPads and Apple Watches. You can watch on Apple.com or YouTube at 1:00 PM Eastern, 10:00 AM Pacific.\n\nAnd you can find 5 Things seven mornings a week right here, wherever you're listening right now. Thanks to PJ Elliott for his great work on the show, and I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/06"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_16", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:37", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/06/06/uk-four-day-workweek-trial/7536237001/", "title": "UK: Four-day workweek trial begins after pushes in California, Iceland", "text": "Do you and your co-workers feel like the weekend is always too short?\n\nThousands of workers in the United Kingdom are testing out a four-day workweek as part of a pilot program.\n\nThe trial includes more than 3,300 workers in 70 companies and organizations in sectors ranging from financial services to health care, retail and even a fish and chip shop.\n\nIt is being coordinated by the nonprofit groups 4 Day Week Global and 4 Day Week UK Campaign and the progressive think tank Autonomy, and the results of the trial will be analyzed by researchers from Cambridge University and Oxford University in the U.K. and Boston College in the United States, according to multiple reports.\n\nThe workers “are receiving (100%) of the pay for (80%) of the time, in exchange for a commitment to maintain at least (100%) productivity,” according to the pilot program’s site. It will include workshops and other training for participants, in addition to “wellbeing and productivity assessment.”\n\n“We’ll be analyzing how employees respond to having an extra day off, in terms of stress and burnout, job and life satisfaction, health, sleep, energy use, travel and many other aspects of life,” said Juliet Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College and the lead researcher on the project, The New York Times reported.\n\nTexas:Facing teacher shortages and burnout, school district to adopt a 4-day week\n\nCalifornia:Officials pushing for 32-hour workweek at larger companies as part of pandemic-driven shift\n\nJoe Ryle, the campaign director for the 4 Day Week Campaign, told the Times data on the program will be collected through interviews and surveys, in addition to measures the individual companies use to document productivity among staff.\n\nThe U.K. is not the first country where workers have tested out a four-day workweek. A study on workers in Iceland published by Autonomy last year found that \"Worker wellbeing increased across a range of indicators, from perceived stress and burnout, to health and work-life balance.\" Productivity also either remained the same or improved for a majority of employers.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/06/business/four-day-week-trial-uk/index.html", "title": "The world's biggest four-day work week pilot starts in the UK - CNN", "text": "London (CNN Business) Thousands of UK workers are starting a four-day work week from Monday with no cut to their pay in the largest trial of its kind.\n\nto a The pilot, which will last for six months, involves 3,300 workers spanning 70 companies, ranging from providers of financial servicesto a fish-and-chip restaurant\n\nDuring the program, workers receive 100% of their pay for working only 80% of their usual week, in exchange for promising to maintain 100% of their productivity.\n\nThe program is being run by not-for-profit 4 Day Week Global, Autonomy, a think tank, and the 4 Day Week UK Campaign in partnership with researchers from Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College.\n\nSienna O'Rourke, brand manager at Pressure Drop Brewing, an independent brewery in London, told CNN Business that the company's biggest goal was to improve the mental health and well-being of its employees.\n\nRead More", "authors": ["Anna Cooban", "Cnn Business"], "publish_date": "2022/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/06/business/four-day-week-trial-uk/index.html/", "title": "The world's biggest four-day work week pilot starts in the UK | CNN ...", "text": "What companies are doing to attract workers\n\nPedestrians walk by a \"Now Hiring\" sign outside a store on August 16, 2021 in Arlington, Virginia.\n\nSlack CEO: 'Days of 9 to 5, Monday to Friday are over'\n\nEmployers can now be fined in this country for after hour calls\n\nThis was the moment CEO fired hundreds over Zoom\n\nWhere are all the workers? Here are four reasons behind the labor shortage\n\nPeople walk by a Help Wanted sign in the Queens borough of New York City on June 04, 2021 in New York City.\n\nA Now Hiring sign is displayed at a restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, on March 16, 2022. - The US unemployment rate has fallen to below four percent, but many companies have continued to report challenges finding staff. Some 11.3 million jobs remained open in January, according to Labor Department figures. (Photo by Stefani Reynolds / AFP) (Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)\n\nAre you considering going back to your old job? Watch this first\n\nWatch what this Kawasaki factory in Nebraska did to attract workers\n\nWorkers consider cost of commute: 'It doesn't make sense for me'\n\nScott Galloway predicts what the workplace will look like post-pandemic\n\nGRUENHEIDE, GERMANY - MARCH 22: Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during the official opening of the new Tesla electric car manufacturing plant on March 22, 2022 near Gruenheide, Germany. The new plant, officially called the Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg, is producing the Model Y as well as electric car batteries. (Photo by Christian Marquardt - Pool/Getty Images)\n\nScott Galloway: Before you start collecting 'dogs and kids' get back into the office\n\nThe UK is testing out 4-day work weeks. Here's why it matters\n\nLondon CNN Business —\n\nThousands of UK workers are starting a four-day work week from Monday with no cut to their pay in the largest trial of its kind.\n\nThe pilot, which will last for six months, involves 3,300 workers spanning 70 companies, ranging from providers of financial services to a fish-and-chip restaurant.\n\nDuring the program, workers receive 100% of their pay for working only 80% of their usual week, in exchange for promising to maintain 100% of their productivity.\n\nThe program is being run by not-for-profit 4 Day Week Global, Autonomy, a think tank, and the 4 Day Week UK Campaign in partnership with researchers from Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College.\n\nSienna O’Rourke, brand manager at Pressure Drop Brewing, an independent brewery in London, told CNN Business that the company’s biggest goal was to improve the mental health and well-being of its employees.\n\n“The pandemic [has] made us think a great deal about work and how people organize their lives,” she said. “We’re doing this to improve the lives of our staff and be part of a progressive change in the world.”\n\nGiven the company manufactures and ships products, workers have less flexibility about when and where they work, O’Rourke said. But any difficulties in navigating holiday and sick leave would be tackled as a team.\n\nUntil now, Iceland had conducted the biggest pilot of a shorter working week between 2015 and 2019, with 2,500 public sector workers involved in two large trials. Those trials found no corresponding drop in productivity among participants, and a dramatic increase in employee well-being.\n\nVideo Ad Feedback 03:31 - Source: CNNBusiness Slack CEO: 'Days of 9 to 5, Monday to Friday are over'\n\nCalls to shorten the working week have gathered steam in recent years in several countries. As millions of employees switched to remote work during the pandemic — cutting onerous commuting time and costs — calls for greater flexibility have only grown louder.\n\nGovernment-backed trials are set to take place in Spain and Scotland later this year, the 4 Day Week Campaign said in a press release.\n\nJoe O’Connor, CEO of 4 Day Week Global, said that the workers have shown they can work “shorter and smarter.”\n\n“As we emerge from the pandemic, more and more companies are recognizing that the new frontier for competition is quality of life, and that reduced-hour, output-focused working is the vehicle to give them a competitive edge,” he said in the statement.\n\nResearchers will measure the impact the new working pattern will have on productivity levels, gender equality, the environment as well as worker well-being.", "authors": ["Anna Cooban"], "publish_date": "2022/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/12/26/flights-delayed-fauci-warns-omicron-fuel-infections-covid-updates/9018556002/", "title": "Flights canceled; Fauci says omicron to fuel infections: COVID updates", "text": "More than 7,300 flights were delayed or canceled across the nation Sunday amid the latest omicron-driven coronavirus surge.\n\nAbout 1,400 flights entering, leaving or flying within the United States were canceled and about 5,900 were delayed Sunday, according to the tracking website FlightAware. More than 4,000 flights were delayed or canceled Christmas Day as days of scheduling nightmares left holiday travelers scrambling.\n\nDelta, United and JetBlue have blamed the omicron variant for staffing problems that led to flight cancellations. “This was unexpected,” United spokesperson Maddie King said of omicron’s impact on staffing.\n\nFlight delays and cancellations have been a recurring theme this year as airlines have ramped up schedules. Thousands of workers were driven from the industry last year when air travel collapsed, and staffing has not kept up with the resurgence in demand.\n\nDr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease doctor, said Sunday on ABC's \"This Week\" he supports a vaccine mandate for domestic air travel. But, he said, wearing a mask with proper filtration should keep air travelers reasonably safe.\n\nSuch a mandate would be another \"mechanism that would spur them to get vaccinated,\" he said. \"Anything that could get people more vaccinated would be welcome.\"\n\nMany U.S. airlines require their employees to be fully vaccinated, sparking controversy among some staff, but it's not yet required of most domestic passengers. International travelers entering the United States must show proof of a negative COVID-19 test within a day of their departure.\n\nAlso in the news:\n\n► Even with testing and reporting interrupted by the Christmas holiday, the United States' case counts grew – 1.29 million in a week, or an average of about 184,000 per day, Johns Hopkins University data shows. Hospitalizations were up and deaths rose slightly, to an average of over 1,300 per day.\n\n► Vice President Kamala Harris declined to blame the unvaccinated for the latest surge. \"But it is clear that everyone has the ability to make a choice to save their lives and to prevent hospitalization if they get vaccinated and if they get the booster,\" she said on CBS' \"Face the Nation.\"\n\n► Mastercard SpendingPulse reported Sunday that U.S. holiday sales rose 8.5% from a year earlier, the biggest annual gain in 17 years. The results cover Nov. 1 through Dec. 24.\n\n► Vermont Everyone Eats, a food assistance program helping state residents, restaurants and farmers get through the pandemic, has been extended through April 1.\n\n► France has recorded more than 100,000 virus infections in a single day for the first time since the pandemic struck. COVID-19 hospitalizations have doubled over the past month.\n\n► More than 160 nonprofits in Rhode Island are sharing $5.4 million in federal coronavirus relief funding for housing, behavioral health services, health care, job training, food pantries and child care for those hardest hit by the pandemic.\n\n📈Today's numbers: The U.S. has recorded more than 52 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 816,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Global totals: More than 279.9 million cases and 5.3 million deaths. More than 204 million Americans – 61.7% – are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.\n\n📘 What we're reading: The omicron variant has thrown America's great return to the office into disarray, perhaps for months. Many companies who had notified employees they would need to come back to the office at least part-time early next year have pushed back those plans or are considering doing so. Read more.\n\nKeep refreshing this page for the latest news. Want more? Sign up for USA TODAY's free Coronavirus Watch newsletter to receive updates directly to your inbox and join our Facebook group.\n\nSome states report jumps in hospitalizations\n\nThe latest wave of COVID-19 is pounding hospitals in some parts of the country, according to Department of Health and Human Services data reported Sunday.\n\nWashington, D.C., reported 77% more COVID-19 patients in hospital beds, and 42% more in intensive-care beds, than a week earlier.\n\nFlorida's hospital admissions are up 64%. Hawaii's are up 44%.\n\nAnd in Louisiana, COVID-19 hospitalizations doubled in the last week. The Louisiana Department of Health said 449 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Sunday. That's the highest since mid-October, which at the time was the state's worst surge.\n\nStatewide, 80% of people hospitalized with COVID-19 are not fully vaccinated, the health department reported.\n\nBut the wave is moving unevenly across the country. Nearly half of the states report lower COVID-19 admissions and fewer people in ICU beds.\n\nFauci expects daily infections to rise 'much higher'\n\nThe \"extraordinarily contagious\" omicron variant will continue to drive daily coronavirus infections higher across the nation, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday.\n\n\"Every day it goes up and up. The last weekly average was about 150,000 (per day) and it likely will go much higher,\" Fauci said on ABC's \"This Week.\"\n\nPresident Joe Biden's chief medical adviser warned that while studies show omicron is less severe in terms of hospitalizations, more cases still could overwhelm hospitals. He defended the administration's efforts to provide more tests amid a shortage, and said he wished he had thought about ordering 500 million at-home tests two months ago.\n\n\"I think things will improve greatly as we get into January,\" he said. \"But that doesn't help us today and tomorrow.\"\n\nFenway Bowl, Military Bowl shelved as surge cripples college football\n\nThe Fenway Bowl and the Military Bowl were canceled due to the pandemic on Sunday as coronavirus outbreaks at the University of Virginia and Boston College forced the schools to call off postseason plans. The game, scheduled Wednesday at Fenway Park in Boston, was to pit the Cavaliers against Southern Methodist University. The Military Bowl, scheduled Monday in Annapolis, Maryland, between Boston College and East Carolina University, was canceled because of positive COVID-19 tests at BC.\n\n“This is not the way we wanted to see this season come to an end,” BC coach Jeff Hafley said. “We just do not have enough players to safely play a game.\"\n\nThe Hawaii Bowl was canceled last week after Hawaii withdrew from the game against the University of Memphis. And Rutgers will replace Texas A&M in the Gator Bowl against Wake Forest on New Year’s Eve after the Aggies pulled out because of a lack of available players.\n\nFlorida sets infection records two days in a row\n\nFlorida hit a record in the pandemic for the second day in a row, with 32,850 new cases reported Saturday. The 31,758 cases reported Friday had broken the state's previous record of more than 27,000, set in August during the height of the delta wave. The current surge is driven by the highly contagious omicron variant, public health experts say.\n\nThe swelling number of cases increased demand for COVID-19 tests, even on Christmas Day. Hours before a testing site opened at Tropical Park in Miami, dozens of cars lined up outside the entrance. The testing site was open from mid-morning to mid-afternoon; two other sites in Miami-Dade County were open on Christmas Day.\n\nNBA urges booster shots for players\n\nThe NBA’s Christmas message to its teams was a refrain it has been using for weeks: Get boosted.\n\nWith the number of players on the league’s health and safety protocols list hovering around 100 – and with Chicago coach Billy Donovan now dealing with those protocols as well, calling into question his availability for the next few Bulls games – the league and the National Basketball Players Association continue to hammer home the importance of booster shots.\n\nBy Dec. 31, every NBA team must arrange a booster-shot event for players, staff and family members, the latest mandate from the league in its quest to get its skyrocketing infections under control. The NBA has told teams its data shows that boosters substantially reduce a person’s risk of being infected, but one out of every three players hasn't gotten a booster shot. About 97% of the league is vaccinated.\n\nThat comes as the league’s Jan. 5 booster mandate looms for all eligible scorer’s table personnel, team attendants and other staff who interact in person with players or referees. In almost all cases, if people in those positions don’t have boosters by Jan. 5, they won’t be allowed to continue in those jobs.\n\nPositive COVID test? Here’s what to do.\n\nTesting positive for COVID-19 starts a confusing, disruptive and at times frightening process – one that millions of Americans will likely go through in the coming weeks as the omicron variant rapidly spreads this holiday season.\n\nFirst, you need to isolate. That’s a more intense version of quarantining – it means cutting off contact with other people as much as possible so you reduce the chance of infecting them. This also means forgoing travel, not going to work and even limiting contact with people in your own household who aren't infected.\n\nThe CDC says isolating is a necessary step whether you’re vaccinated or unvaccinated, and whether you have symptoms or feel fine.\n\nEveryone who tests positive for COVID-19 should monitor their symptoms. And people who are unvaccinated or at high risk for severe disease should be extra vigilant for symptoms that might require emergency care. Call your doctor for early treatment options.\n\nHow long should you isolate? How long will I be contagious? What if you are a close contact with someone who tested positive? Here’s what you should know about omicron and COVID this holiday season.\n\nContributing: Mike Stucka, USA TODAY; Associated Press", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/12/26"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/02/06/denver-sent-mental-health-help-not-police-hundreds-calls/4421364001/", "title": "Denver sent mental health help, not police, to hundreds of calls", "text": "Another U.S. city is reporting early success with a program that replaces traditional law enforcement responders with health care workers for some emergency calls.\n\nPreviously, Denver 911 operators only directed calls to police or fire department first responders. But the Support Team Assistance Response (STAR) pilot program created a third track for directing emergency calls to a two-person team: a medic and a clinician, staffed in a van from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays.\n\nThe STAR program, which launched in June, reported promising results in its six-month progress report. The program aims to provide a \"person-centric mobile crisis response\" to community members who are experiencing problems related to mental health, depression, poverty, homelessness, or substance abuse issues.\n\nDenver is among several U.S. cities working to develop an alternative emergency responder model for people who are experiencing mental health crises, as police officers fatally shoot hundreds of people experiencing mental health crises every year, according to a Washington Post database of fatal shootings by on-duty police officers. Since 2015, police have fatally shot nearly 1,400 people with mental illnesses, according to the database.\n\nOver the first six months of the pilot, Denver received more than 2,500 emergency calls that fell into the STAR program's purview, and the STAR team was able to respond to 748 calls. No calls required the assistance of police, and no one was arrested.\n\nDenver police responded to nearly 95,000 incidents over the same period, suggesting that an expanded STAR program could reduce police calls by nearly 3%, according to the report.\n\n\"Overall, the first six months has kind of been a proof of concept of what we wanted,\" said Vinnie Cervantes, a member of Denver Alliance for Street Health Response, one of the organizations involved with the STAR program. \"We've continued to try to work to make it something that is truly a community-city partnership.\"\n\nData collected during the pilot program found that STAR calls were focused in certain areas of the city, and most were calls for trespassing and welfare checks. Approximately 68% of people contacted were experiencing homelessness, and there were mental health concerns in 61% of cases – largely schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder – with 33% of people having co-occurring conditions, according to the report.\n\nCarleigh Sailon, a social worker with the Mental Health Center of Denver who works out of the STAR van, said she takes a \"non-judgmental, client-centered, supportive\" approach to assisting people in crisis.\n\n\"The intent of STAR is to send the right response, not a one-size fit all response. People call 911 for an array of reasons and it’s not always something that involves risk or a criminal element,\" Sailon said in a statement. \"If the STAR van can handle someone in crisis and that frees up police to handle a robbery or domestic violence call, then that’s an incredible success.\"\n\nThe report comes on the heels of a year that saw thousands of protests nationwide in response to the killings of several Black men and women, as well as a series of high-profile police killings of people experiencing mental health crises, including Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York, and Walter Wallace, Jr. in Philadelphia. Many protesters called on their local governments to redirect funding away from police departments.\n\nIn recent years, some police departments, such as in Los Angeles and San Antonio, have partnered with mental health professionals to work as \"co-responders,\" assisting street cops responding to incidents involving a mental health crisis. In the wake of Breonna Taylor's killing in Louisville last year, the city increased its police budget and put money toward exploring co-responder models. And Chicago is expected to begin piloting a co-responder program this year.\n\nBut other cities rely on emergency response models that do not involve police. The Denver program is modeled after the Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (CAHOOTS) in Eugene, Oregon. White Bird Clinic, a health care center in the city, launched the program as a community policing initiative in 1989.\n\nLike the Denver program, CAHOOTS responds to a range of mental health-related crises and relies on techniques that are focused on harm reduction. With a budget of about $2.1 million annually, CAHOOTS answered 17% of the Eugene Police Department's overall call volume in 2017, according to the program.\n\nIn 2019, Cervantes traveled with a group from Denver to Eugene to study the CAHOOTS model. Cervantes said his organization, the Denver Alliance for Street Health Response, is working with about ten other cities in Colorado to draft co-responder models. Aurora – where 23-year-old Elijah McClain died after officers stopped him on the street in 2019 – is expected to launch its pilot in about a month, Cervantes said.\n\nJan. 15:Family of man fatally shot by Texas officer responding to mental health call want arrest\n\nOn the East Coast, New York City announced plans in November to launch a similar pilot program in two neighborhoods.\n\nFor the coming year, Denver has allocated $1.4 million in the city's budget to continue the STAR program, according to the report. The funding would be enough to purchase four additional vans and fund six new two-person teams, as well as a full-time supervisor, the report said. The program is also transitioning from the city's safety department to its public health department.\n\nCervantes said that, as the program goes forward, he hopes to see more complete data on who the program is serving. Current data does not list race or ethnicity for a third of people served by the program, Cervantes said.\n\n\"That's something that surprises me,\" Cervantes said. \"How do we really understand the impact of the most marginalized communities in Denver if we don’t have the data there?\"\n\nCervantes said the STAR program set out to connect residents in crisis with social services in the city, as well as identify the gaps in many of the services. When the coronavirus pandemic shut down many of the existing services, it made STAR's task more difficult.\n\n\"With COVID, some of the services that would typically be available weren’t quite in full service. That’s something the STAR program had to adapt to,\" he said.\n\nThe STAR program is organized through a coalition of city agencies and organizations, including the Denver Police Department, Denver Health Paramedic Division, Denver 911, the Caring for Denver Foundation, the Mental Health Center of Denver and community supporters.\n\nFollow breaking news reporter Grace Hauck on Twitter @grace_hauck.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/02/06"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/12/27/omicron-airlines-cancel-flights-covid-updates/9021308002/", "title": "CDC cuts isolation time for Americans who test positive from 10 days ...", "text": "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has cut the amount of time it recommends people should isolate after testing positive for the coronavirus, reducing the number of days from 10 to five.\n\nHealth officials similarly reduced the amount of time a person should quarantine after coming into contact with someone who tests positive.\n\nThe changes come amid a surge in cases spurred by the omicron variant and concerns about staffing shortages at hospitals, airlines and businesses across the country. Research has suggested omicron, while more infectious, causes milder illness. CDC officials say the new guidance is in keeping with growing evidence that people with the coronavirus are most infectious in the two days before and three days after symptoms develop.\n\nCDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the country is about to see a lot of omicron cases.\n\n“Not all of those cases are going to be severe. In fact many are going to be asymptomatic,” she said Monday. “We want to make sure there is a mechanism by which we can safely continue to keep society functioning while following the science.”\n\nLast week, the agency loosened rules that had called on health care workers to stay out of work for 10 days if they test positive. The new recommendations said workers could go back to work after seven days if they test negative and don’t have symptoms. And the agency said isolation time could be cut to five days, or even fewer, if there are severe staffing shortages.\n\nThe CDC’s guidance on isolation and quarantine has seemed confusing to the public, and the new recommendations are “happening at a time when more people are testing positive for the first time and looking for guidance,” said Lindsay Wiley, an American University public health law expert.\n\nIsolation recommendations are for those who are infected with the coronavirus and start on the day a person tests positive. The agency recommends isolating for five days and going back to normal activities if a person is not showing any symptoms after that period.\n\nQuarantines are defined differently, because the term refers to those who are in close contact with someone who tests positive. The CDC had recommended that unvaccinated people who come into close contact with someone who tested positive should quarantine for 10 days. The agency had said those who were vaccinated could skip a quarantine.\n\nThe CDC is now recommending those who are vaccinated and received a booster shot can skip quarantining if they wear a face mask for at least 10 days. If a person is vaccinated and has not gotten a booster, or if they are partly vaccinated or not vaccinated at all, the CDC recommends a five-day quarantine, then wearing a mask in public for an additional five days.\n\nAlso in the news:\n\n► Apple is temporarily not allowing customers to shop inside its retail stores in New York City as COVID-19 cases surge.\n\n► Minnesota has become the 18th state to report at least 1 million coronavirus cases, Johns Hopkins University data shows.\n\n► Up to 300 Massachusetts National Guard members started fanning out across the state Monday to provide much-needed help to dozens of understaffed hospitals facing a surge of COVID-19 patients.\n\n► The state of Connecticut plans to distribute 3 million at-home COVID-19 rapid tests and 6 million N95 masks to residents beginning as soon as Thursday, Gov. Ned Lamont announced Monday.\n\n📈Today's numbers: The U.S. has recorded more than 52.5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 817,700 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Global totals: More than 281.1 million cases and 5.4 million deaths. More than 204 million Americans – 61.7% – are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.\n\n📘 What we're reading: In some counties in the U.S., only half of the spike in deaths during the pandemic has been attributed to COVID-19. Researchers say that points to a massive undercount.\n\nKeep refreshing this page for the latest news. Want more? Sign up for USA TODAY's free Coronavirus Watch newsletter to receive updates directly to your inbox and join our Facebook group.\n\nTexas runs out of monoclonal antibody treatment to fight omicron\n\nTexas has run out of a key treatment to fight the omicron COVID-19 variant, which now makes up 90% of the virus cases in the state.\n\nOn Monday, the Texas Department of State Health Services announced that its regional infusion centers in Austin, El Paso, Fort Worth, San Antonio and The Woodlands have run out of the monoclonal antibody sotrovimab.\n\nThat antibody has been shown to be effective against the omicron variant. Other monoclonal antibodies have not been shown to be effective against omicron.\n\nThe state does not expect to receive another shipment of sotrovimab from the federal government until January.\n\n– Nicole Villalpando and Roberto Villalpando, Austin American-Statesman\n\nDr. Anthony Fauci warns against big New Year's Eve parties\n\nA little champagne and a kiss are fine, but Americans should stay away from big parties this New Year's Eve, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday.\n\nFauci said in an interview on CNN that people should avoid the gatherings where they don’t know the vaccination status of all the guests. The omicron variant is fueling another infection surge, and crowded indoor parties could accelerate spread.\n\n“When you are talking about a New Year's Eve party, where you have 30, 40, 50 people celebrating, you do not know the status of the vaccination – I would recommend strongly, stay away from that this year,\" Fauci said. \"There will be other years to do that, but not this year.\"\n\nBiden promises to ramp up access to testing\n\nPresident Joe Biden conceded Monday that his administration has not done enough to provide access to coronavirus testing and promised to step up the effort. Earlier this month the Biden administration touted a plan to combat the latest surge that included 500 million free tests. But those test haven't begun rolling out yet, and demand for tests before holiday gatherings set off a rush that depleted stocks in most pharmacies and other locations.\n\n\"Seeing how tough it was for some folks to get a test this weekend shows that we have more work to do,\" Biden said during a call with the White House COVID-19 Response Team and several governors. \"We're doing it.\"\n\nHe said that starting in two weeks private insurance will reimburse people for the cost of at home test, and that the government will provide access to free tests for people without insurance.\n\nThousands more flights canceled, delayed\n\nAirlines canceled and delayed thousands more flights Monday amid a staffing crisis caused by the nationwide surge in COVID-19 cases fueled by the omicron variant. This after more than 1,500 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were canceled Sunday and over 6,000 delayed, the tracking website FlightAware reported. Several airlines said the scheduling issues were caused by staffing problems tied to COVID-19.\n\nJetBlue spokesperson Derek Dombrowski said the airline has seen an \"increasing number\" of sick calls because of the fast-spreading omicron variant. The company entered the holiday season with the highest staffing levels since the start of the pandemic, he said. He warned that additional cancellations and delays “remain a possibility.”\n\nThe omicron variant is proving to be much more contagious than the delta variant; omicron now accounts for more than 70% of new cases in the U.S., according to the CDC.\n\nFLIGHT CANCELED? What airlines owe you when flights are canceled, delayed\n\nCOVID testing becoming more popular at child care locations\n\nLarge-scale, regular testing remains rare in the child care world, but the idea is gaining traction as omicron works its way into communities. Families are fighting to keep their kids in classrooms, which at the early learning level often stay open during winter break. The upside to regular testing extends far beyond the classrooms and teachers, experts say. Read more here.\n\n“Every time a classroom of 12 kids has to close down because of an outbreak, that’s at least 12 parents who can’t go to work,” said Sarah Muncey, co-president and chief innovation officer of Neighborhood Villages, an organization that advocates for early education reform. If “we have multi-pronged testing strategies … we can live through this winter and keep child care and, therefore, the economy open.”\n\n– Alia Wong\n\nUS should consider vaccine mandate for US air travel, Dr. Anthony Fauci says\n\nDr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said the U.S. should consider a vaccination mandate for domestic air travel, signaling a potential embrace of an idea the Biden administration has previously eschewed, as COVID-19 cases spike.\n\nFauci, the president's chief science adviser on the pandemic response, said such a mandate might drive up the nation’s lagging vaccination rate as well as confer stronger protection on flights, for which federal regulations require all those age 2 and older to wear a mask.\n\n“When you make vaccination a requirement, that’s another incentive to get more people vaccinated,” Fauci told MSNBC. “If you want to do that with domestic flights, I think that’s something that seriously should be considered.”\n\nThe Biden administration has thus far balked at imposing a vaccination requirement for domestic air travel. Two officials said Biden’s science advisers have yet to make a formal recommendation for such a requirement to the president.\n\nThe U.S. currently mandates that most foreign nationals traveling to the U.S. be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, though citizens and permanent residents only need to show proof of a negative test taken within a day of boarding.\n\nNew York City begins requiring vaccinations for private-sector businesses\n\nPrivate employers operating in New York City must require COVID-19 vaccinations for their workers beginning Monday under a sweeping mandate aimed at curbing a spike in the virus. The order affects an estimated 184,000 businesses, and those that do not comply could face fines starting at $1,000. But Mayor Bill de Blasio has said imposing penalties would be a last resort. Unvaccinated workers need not be fired but must be kept out of the workplace.\n\nEmployers have to verify and keep a record of each worker’s proof of vaccination. Workers who have only gotten one shot will have to get a second one within 45 days. Companies must display a sign affirming they are complying with the rule “in a conspicuous location,” under the city’s mandate.\n\nFueled by omicron, new infections rise 47% in 1 week\n\nEven with testing disruptions from the Christmas holiday, America still reported dramatically worse COVID-19 numbers on Sunday.\n\nIn just the most recent 17 days the country has reported more new coronavirus cases than it had in all of November, a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the week ending Sunday, the country reported 1.39 million cases – nearly 200,000 per day.\n\nThat number is up 47% from a week earlier, and up 65% from two weeks earlier. Christmas disruptions and limited access to testing mean the real number is likely worse.\n\nNew case records were set in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Puerto Rico.\n\n– Mike Stucka, USA TODAY\n\nCOVID-19 continues to spread on cruise ships\n\nCOVID-19 cases are continuing to emerge on cruise ships. Carnival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean International and MSC Cruises are among the companies dealing with clusters of cases on board, spurring itinerary changes and protocols to mitigate spread.\n\nThe CDC has been working with global public health experts and industry partners to learn about omicron, spokesperson Dave Daigle told USA TODAY last week. \"We are still learning how easily it spreads, the severity of illness it causes, and how well available vaccines and medications work against it,\" he said.\n\nThe likelihood of contracting the coronavirus on a cruise is \"high because the virus spreads easily between people in close quarters aboard ships,\" Daigle said.\n\nMSC Seashore, which was scheduled to disembark passengers Thursday, sailed with 28 passengers who tested positive for COVID-19. The CDC is investigating Royal Caribbean's Odyssey of the Seas ship as it sails with more than 50 cases of coronavirus onboard.\n\n– Morgan Hines, USA TODAY\n\nContributing: The Associated Press", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/12/27"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/science-health/953517/inside-government-plan-to-track-and-trace-pinging-epidemic", "title": "Inside the plan to end the track-and-trace epidemic | The Week UK", "text": "Some of the individuals contacted by the app are “being forced to self-isolate for ten days despite never having come into face-to-face contact with a positive Covid case”, the paper reports, with a source close to the track-and-trace team saying that the Bluetooth signal used is powerful enough to penetrate walls.\n\nSuggestions that many people are being made to quarantine unnecessarily have also been raised after reports that “neighbours are being told to self-isolate because the NHS app is ‘pinging’ people through walls”, The Telegraph says.\n\nGovernment figures also show the number of school children forced into isolation because others in their school “bubble” tested positive for Covid-19 stood at 624,000 in the week of 2-8 July.\n\nChris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, has warned that hospital bosses are finding staff isolations are already “impacting on their ability to deliver care”, adding: “They’re particularly worried about the growth in numbers of staff isolating as the rate of Covid community infections rises.”\n\n“One in five workers in hospitality and retail are self-isolating” at the moment, the paper adds, with NHS hospitals already “reporting staff absences of up to 25% and bus and train services are frequently cancelled or delayed due to driver shortages”.\n\nThe number of people being told to self-isolate is raising fears of a summer “pingdemic”, The Telegraph says, “with businesses, transport and schools brought to a standstill”.\n\nThe number of new UK coronavirus infections hit 48,553 yesterday, the highest since mid-January and the start of the third lockdown , with the number of people contacted by the NHS app “likely to rise as infections increase”, The Times says.\n\nNHS bosses have “warned that mass isolation of staff is harming patient care”, The Times reports, with businesses and factories “also said to be on the verge of shutting down” amid the sudden spike in people being warned to quarantine.\n\nThe NHS app sent a record 520,194 alerts last week, telling users to quarantine for up to ten days because of close contact with someone who tested positive for Covid-19. An additional 337,695 people were told to isolate by NHS test and-trace, while 194,005 tested positive, meaning more than 1.6 million people went into self-isolation across the week.\n\nFears are rising of a “summer of chaos” after hundreds of thousands of Brits were forced into self-isolation by the NHS track-and-trace app, closing down businesses and affecting healthcare services.\n\nNHS boss Hopson has called for the issue of mass self-isolation to be treated “as a matter of urgency”, warning that providing daily care and dealing with the NHS backlog caused by the pandemic “is becoming increasingly difficult with large numbers of staff unable to work”.\n\nMeanwhile, Steve Turner, assistant general secretary of Unite, told the Daily Mirror that “it is not an exaggeration to say factories are on the verge of shutting and that at some sites hundreds of staff are off work”, adding: “There will be public health consequences if test and trace becomes seen as a nuisance rather than an infection control measure.”\n\nA Department of Health spokesperson defended the NHS app, saying that it “is doing exactly what it was designed to do - informing close contacts of someone who has tested positive for Covid-19 that they are at risk and advising them to isolate.\n\n“As cases continue rising it is vital people are aware of their personal risk so they can make informed decisions on their behaviour to protect those around them.”\n\nBut ministers are understood to be mulling options to avoid outbreaks of mass isolation, with some suggesting that the app, “which monitors users’ closeness to each other and pings them if they have spent more than 15 minutes within two metres of someone who later tested positive”, should have its sensitivity tuned down as vaccination rates increase, The Guardian says.\n\n‘Test to release’\n\nFrom mid-August, anybody who has received two vaccine doses will be exempt from self-isolation. However, “ministers have reportedly been looking at bringing this forward, and at the option of making the app less sensitive”, says Politico’s London Playbook.\n\nSources told the site that any changes to the app are “unlikely to happen any time soon”, with focus instead turning to a Public Health England pilot that is looking into the impact of a “test to release” scheme.\n\nUnder the plan, those told to self-isolate are sent two PCR tests and enough lateral flow tests to last throughout their quarantine period. The PCR tests are taken on the first and last day, while the lateral flow tests are used every day. Test negative with the lateral flow test and you are able to leave the house.\n\nCabinet Office minister Michael Gove is known to be taking part in the study, which is using 40,000 volunteers across the country who were contacted by test and trace and told to self-isolate.\n\nTo the backdrop of concern over mass self-isolation, Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty has warned that England could be “plunged back into lockdown within five weeks as Covid cases surge during the third wave”, The Sun reports.\n\nSpeaking during a Science Museum webinar yesterday, Whitty said: “I don't think we should underestimate the fact that we could get into trouble again surprisingly fast. We are not by any means out of the woods yet on this, we are in much better shape due to the vaccine programme, and drugs and a variety of other things.”\n\nCautioning that the pandemic “has got a long way to run in the UK, and it's got even further to run globally”, he added: “We’ve still got over 2,000 people in hospital, and that number is increasing.\n\n“If we double from 2,000 to 4,000, from 4,000 to 8,000, to 8,000 and so on, it doesn’t take many doubling times till you’re into very very large numbers indeed.”\n\nThe intervention will put pressure on ministers looking to reduce self-isolation numbers, especially Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who has been in post for just a few weeks and immediately “threw his weight” behind the 19 July unlocking, Politico says.\n\nBoris Johnson has said the country must “learn to live with Covid”. But the end of regulations set to take place this Monday may mean the “pingdemic” is just beginning.", "authors": ["Joe Evans"], "publish_date": "2021/07/16"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/09/30/fact-check-no-driving-tax-8-cents-mile-infrastructure-bill/5928257001/", "title": "Fact check: No driving tax of 8 cents per mile in infrastructure bill", "text": "The claim: A 'driving tax' proposed by President Joe Biden would cost Americans 8 cents per mile\n\nThe timing of a vote on a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package divided House Democrats this week, with some lawmakers arguing the bill should move in tandem with a larger package of social welfare programs.\n\nBut online, one popular narrative in opposition to the bipartisan public works bill, one of the largest in history, centers on a purported \"driving tax.\"\n\n\"Biden's new driving tax is expected to cost you about 8 cents/mile,\" reads text in a Sept. 29 Instagram post. \"Average person drives 15k miles/year. Get ready to pay an extra $1,200 a year (or about 1 month's rent).\"\n\nThe source of the text is a Sept. 28 tweet from Kyle Hooten, a former speechwriter in the Trump administration and an editor at a website called Alpha News. The post accumulated more than 940 retweets in two days.\n\nSimilar claims have racked up thousands of interactions on Facebook and Instagram, according to CrowdTangle. Many of the posts cite a screenshot of a broadcast from Newsmax, a conservative news organization, about \"Biden tax increases.\"\n\nMore:Here's what's in the infrastructure bill as it nears a vote in the House\n\n\"You guys tired of your boy yet?\" one Facebook user wrote Sept. 28. \"Now were (sic) going to have to pay to drive to work. Then pay to drive home.\"\n\nThat's wrong – the infrastructure bill does not include a \"driving tax.\"\n\nAs other independent fact-checking organizations have noted, the legislation includes a voluntary pilot program to study the viability of a per-mile user fee to improve roads and maintain the Highway Trust Fund.\n\n\"There is no new vehicle tax in the infrastructure bill,\" Joshua Sewell, a senior policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a federal budget watchdog group, said in an email.\n\nUSA TODAY reached out to the Instagram user who shared the claim for comment.\n\nBill would create pilot program\n\nIf passed, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act would create a voluntary \"national motor vehicle per-mile user fee pilot.\" The legislation does not include a new \"driving tax,\" as the social media posts claim.\n\nHooten told USA TODAY in an email that his tweet \"doesn't mention anything about the infrastructure bill.\"\n\n\"Nor did I claim the tax is imminent or that any plans are set in stone – thus the word 'expected,'\" he said. \"I simply echoed analysis aired by Newsmax about how this tax might evolve.\"\n\nBut the Newsmax broadcast mentioned \"Biden's Build Back Better plan,\" an apparent reference to the infrastructure package. (The Build Back Better Act is a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, which is separate from the infrastructure package and does not mention the user fee.)\n\n\"The infrastructure bill directs the Secretary of Transportation, in consultation with the Treasury Secretary and an advisory board, to establish a voluntary per-mile user fee pilot project,\" Sewell said.\n\nIf passed, pilot participants would record how many miles they drive and pay fees based on those miles. Enrollment would be voluntary, and participants would be reimbursed for any charges they pay.\n\nFact check:$3.5 trillion reconciliation bill doesn't include 'animal agriculture tax'\n\nThe goal, according to the bill, is to test whether such a user fee could help \"restore and maintain the long-term solvency of the Highway Trust Fund\" and \"improve and maintain the surface transportation system.\"\n\nThe Highway Trust Fund finances most federal spending for highways and mass transit, according to the Tax Policy Center. The fund gets most of its revenue from taxes on gas and diesel.\n\nHowever, since 2008, those taxes alone have not sustained the fund. Congress has transferred billions of dollars in general revenues into the fund to meet its spending obligations.\n\n\"The gas tax is an eroding source of revenue because more and more cars are fuel-efficient or electric,\" Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director at the nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told USA TODAY. \"I think almost everybody understands, even the opponents of doing it now, that at some point we're going to have to transition from charging people based on gas used to miles traveled.\"\n\nIn addition to the potential federal pilot, which would run from fiscal year 2022 to 2026, several states are exploring road usage charges.\n\nWill McBride, vice president of federal tax and economic policy at the Tax Foundation, said in an email that a user fee is \"not a bad idea as a way to fund expenditures on roads.\" A 2020 analysis from the right-leaning think tank found that a federal tax averaging 1.7 cents per mile could cover the highway fund's expenditures.\n\nOur rating: False\n\nBased on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that a \"driving tax\" proposed by Biden would cost Americans 8 cents per mile. The $1.2 trillion infrastructure package in Congress would not levy a new mileage-based tax. The legislation includes a voluntary pilot program to study whether a per-mile user fee could help improve roads and maintain the Highway Trust Fund.\n\nOur fact-check sources:\n\nThank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.\n\nOur fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/09/30"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2021/03/03/universal-basic-income-andrew-yang-guaranteed-more-cities-test-monthly-check/6890858002/", "title": "What is UBI? More cities test monthly checks for residents", "text": "Despite working two jobs, Lorrine Paradela, 46, of Stockton, California, endured unrelenting stress over whether she could pay her bills every month.\n\n“Sometimes you get child support, sometimes you don’t,” says Paradela, who lives with her 17-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter and doesn’t qualify for public assistance. “My mind kept going all the time. It wouldn’t stop. I didn’t sleep right.”\n\nIn early 2019, she began receiving $500 a month as part of a Stockton pilot program that gave a similar amount to 125 residents for two years. She used the money to pay bills, buy her kids gifts, fix her 2003 Chevy Trailblazer and buy a 2015 Honda Accord that allowed her to keep working.\n\n“I was able to breathe better,\" she says. \"I was able to sleep.”\n\nAndrew Yang’s call for a \"universal\" basic income – handing every American adult $1,000 a month – was deemed a fanciful curiosity when he made the idea the linchpin of his 2020 Democratic presidential run.\n\nChild tax credit boost:Biden's COVID-19 relief plan includes a child tax credit boost popular with Democrats but a 'nightmare' to Republicans\n\n'Bleak future':Warren Buffett: Retirees face challenges as fixed-income investments struggle\n\nYet his vision is playing out in a growing number of cities, such as Stockton, that are conducting “guaranteed income” pilot programs, giving groups of mostly lower-income residents a few hundred dollars to $1,000 monthly with no strings attached for up to two years. It’s also taking shape in Congress through a variety of proposed tax credits or allowances.\n\nThe movement, started by Stockton, has gained currency amid the economic carnage wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has left 10 million Americans unemployed despite a solid jobs recovery, and heightened awareness of racial inequities after the death of George Floyd in police custody.\n\n“I think COVID made it more urgent and more politically feasible,” says Jonathan Morduch, an economist and professor of public policy at New York University who helped design a pilot in Compton, California.\n\nGuaranteed income has become more critical in the longer-term as the nation’s gig economy spawns a growing population of freelance and contract workers who don’t receive benefits and whose income fluctuates from week to week, Morduch says.\n\nProponents say the initiatives provide households financial stability during sharp economic swings, alleviate stress and broaden recipients’ horizons. They come without the scrutiny and work requirements of programs such as welfare and food stamps.\n\n“The social safety net is frayed,” says Halah Ahmad, a vice president of PR and policy communications for the Jain Family Institute, which helps design guaranteed income programs and researches their effects. “It’s not meeting people’s needs, and people are falling through the cracks.” She says those failings exact a huge cost on society.\n\nGuaranteed income supporters say it can fill the gap for people who don’t qualify for public assistance because they earn too much. It serves as a supplement for those who do meet the requirements for assistance, because many of those individuals are barely scraping by.\n\nCritics say the social safety net is the proper remedy for poverty, which afflicts 10.5% of Americans. Guaranteed income, they say, offers a disincentive to work and, since there are no strings attached, opens the door to misuse of the money for drugs or alcohol.\n\n“If there’s a crack (in existing programs), we can fill the crack without giving away free money,” says Jon Coupal, head of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.\n\nFindings from the Stockton trial, released Wednesday, bolster the case for guaranteed income.\n\nThe $500 monthly stipend allowed more participants to find jobs, reduced income volatility, eased stress and helped them pay unexpected expenses and meet basic needs. Less than 1% of the money was spent on alcohol or tobacco, according to the results of the two-year pilot, which ended in January.\n\nAbout a half-dozen cities – including Compton; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Richmond, Virginia – launched guaranteed income pilots. A similar number – including Oakland, California; Pittsburgh; and Patterson, New Jersey – plan trials this year. Los Angeles, Atlanta and Newark, New Jersey, are among more than 25 cities seriously weighing programs as part of a coalition called Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. The initiatives are funded by private donations or a mix of private and public dollars.\n\nLeaders of the efforts say the goal is a national guaranteed income for low- and even middle-income Americans that would be funded by the federal government, which has the finances and infrastructure to dole out monthly payments.\n\nThe personal checks sent to most Americans as part of congressional COVID-19 relief packages paved the way for a broader public acceptance of unconditional government money, Ahmad of the Jain Family Institute says. Their drawback, some Democratic lawmakers say, is that they’re one-time windfalls even as many households continue to suffer from COVID-19-induced unemployment or reduced hours.\n\nProposals in Congress would provide some form of recurring guaranteed income that does away with work mandates, which can pose an undue burden when parents are taking care of kids or sick relatives, supporters say. A $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan passed by the House late last week would increase a child tax credit from $2,000 to up to $3,600 for a year, and Democrats will probably seek to make the change permanent. Even Americans with little or no income could get a refund, and the credit could be drawn in monthly installments of $250 to $300.\n\nBills by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Vice President Kamala Harris would give tax credits of $3,000 yearly to individuals and $6,000 to married couples even if they don’t have children and aren’t working. The Harris proposal would cost about $3 trillion over a decade. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, wants to provide a $3,000 to $4,200 yearly per-child benefit, even for stay-at-home parents, offsetting the cost by scrapping other programs and tax deductions.\n\nMatt Weidinger, a research fellow in poverty studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, says the proposals largely reverse 1990s-era welfare changes that imposed work requirements on recipients and shrank welfare rolls.\n\n“It’s paying people a check to not be working,” says Weidinger, who worked on the changes for a Republican-controlled House committee.\n\nThat may be just the ticket to a more just society, argues Stephen Nunez, lead researcher on guaranteed income for the Jain institute. Estimates show the Romney bill, for example, would cost $230 billion but cut child poverty by a third, generating $267 billion to $367 billion in benefits, Nunez says.\n\nPaine, MLK sought guaranteed income\n\nGuaranteed income, or universal basic income, isn’t new. Philosopher Thomas Paine called for a basic income in the USA in the late 1770s. Martin Luther King Jr. backed the idea to wipe out poverty in the 1960s. Negative income tax trials were conducted in Seattle and New Jersey starting in the 1960s. In recent years, countries such as Iran, Kenya and Finland have rolled out basic-income programs.\n\nFormer Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs says he was inspired by King to launch his city’s pilot to address its 22% poverty rate.\n\n“It makes so much sense that if the issue is cash, the solution is cash, not legislating how to use the cash,” as do federal programs such as food stamps, he says.\n\nMany households that receive public aid have no leeway for unexpected expenses, such as a car repair, a rent increase or making up for a late COVID-19 unemployment check, Morduch and Ahmad say.\n\n'People should be trusted'\n\nEven more critical, Morduch says, is that guaranteed income accepts that “people should be trusted to use the money efficiently and be smart and thoughtful,” knowing how best to meet their own needs.\n\nBy contrast, Ahmad says, public assistance programs are rooted in distrust and racism that have hurt Black Americans, in particular. Doling out the money unconditionally relieves stress and affords recipients the money and time to forge a better life, seek higher-paying jobs or train for a new career, Morduch says.\n\nNunez says studies show guaranteed income recipients work less but just modestly, and the additional time is typically spent with their families. He says there’s no evidence they spend the money on drugs or alcohol.\n\nIn the Stockton trial, 37% of the funds were spent on basic needs such as food; 22% on merchandise such as clothing and home goods; and 11% on utilities.\n\nA year into the trial, 40% of the participants were employed full-time, up from 28% when the trial started. More than half were able to pay for unexpected expenses with cash or cash equivalents, up from 25% a year earlier.\n\nBefore she got her stipend, Paradela, the Stockton participant, says she sometimes paid only part of her bills to leave more cash for food and sought payday loans. After she received the money, she bought her son video games and paid for both her children to visit their uncle in Seattle.\n\nParadela, who works full-time with autistic adults and delivers food part-time, says the money allowed her to take time off if she got sick.\n\nParadela says she applied for subsidized housing but was turned down because her $33,000 salary exceeded the $28,000 cap. Under the Stockton program, “you don’t have no one looking over your shoulder and into your personal business. You do what you need to do.”\n\nShe plans to earn a bachelor’s degree in business, so she can help her brother run a home for people with disabilities.\n\nSince Stockton residents simply had to live in neighborhoods where median income was below the city’s median to qualify, some middle-income residents with salaries as high as $80,000 took part, Tubbs says. Middle-class families are also struggling to pay bills, he says, especially in pricey cities such as San Francisco, and they should be included in guaranteed income initiatives.\n\nThat makes the pilot look a bit more like Yang’s universal basic income idea.Morduch says programs should be geared to lower-income people, and more affluent families should pay higher taxes to fund them.\n\nYang, who is proposing a basic income for poor New York City residents as part of his mayoral campaign there, told USA TODAY \"the pandemic exposed how many New Yorkers live on the edge of ruin... Getting more money directly into people’s pockets was once radical and is now mainstream.\"\n\nOne emergency away'\n\nIn December, Compton, which has a 20% poverty rate, launched the nation’s largest guaranteed income pilot, giving 800 residents varying amounts of money. Ex-offenders and undocumented immigrants were eligible.\n\n“Like most Americans, my family was only one emergency away from financial disaster, and now I am working to ensure this is no longer the case,” says Compton Mayor Aja Brown. The money, she says, lets participants “take more risks, tailor government assistance to their needs and ultimately accumulate wealth.”\n\nGeorgia Horton, a Compton resident who was incarcerated, couldn’t find a job when she left prison, then began speaking to groups about her experiences for hefty fees. The pandemic temporarily squashed her budding career, leaving her struggling to pay bills. The $3,000 annual payment she received from the city a month ago allowed her to buy materials for her new cleaning business, as well as a laptop so she could revive her speaking tours online.\n\n“It puts you out of the panic mode, so you can start making decisions,” Horton says.\n\nSome programs target certain demographic groups. In Jackson, Mississippi, Springboard to Opportunities, a nonprofit group, has provided 130 Black mothers $1,000 a month in two trials since 2018, and a third is set to begin.\n\n“Those who have been harmed the most (by discrimination) are Black mothers,” Springboard CEO Aisha Nyandoro says.\n\nDuring the first round, the number of participants with a high school equivalency education rose from 63% to 85%. Some participants moved out of subsidized housing.\n\n“If (public assistance) isn’t working, why not try something different?” Nyandoro asks.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/03/03"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/08/11/fact-check-false-claim-vaccine-rules-caused-flight-cancellations/5553567001/", "title": "Fact check: False claim that vaccine rules caused flight cancellations", "text": "The claim: U.S. flights are backed up because pilots and crew members are refusing vaccine mandates\n\nWith a surge in summer domestic air travel and passenger volumes at pre-pandemic levels, some U.S. airlines have struggled to meet the demand, resulting in a wave of flight cancellations and delays.\n\nAirlines say the disrupted flights are due to bad weather, staffing issues and operational challenges, among other factors. But, of course, some social media users see something more nefarious at play.\n\n“BREAKING! FLIGHTS ACROSS AMERICA ALL BACKED UP BC PILOTS/CREW ARE WALKING OFF BOARDED FLIGHTS!” reads an Aug. 9 Facebook post, which gained more than 2,000 shares within a few days. “THEY ARE REFUSING THE MANDATED JAB.”\n\nAccompanying the text is an image of a flight information display board on Aug. 1 at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport. The screens show delayed or canceled flights by Spirit Airlines.\n\nThis claim is wrong on several fronts. The flight cancellations and delays have nothing to do with vaccine mandates, and a majority of major U.S. airlines do not have vaccine requirements in place.\n\nFact check:Workers fired for refusing a vaccine are unlikely to qualify for unemployment\n\nThe Facebook user who shared the post did not return a request for comment.\n\nAirlines cite weather, operational challenges\n\nSpirit, American and other airlines have been canceling hundreds of flights a day, but it has nothing to do with vaccine mandates.\n\nAmerican spokeswoman Sarah Jantz said the airline experienced prolonged weather issues on the weekend the Facebook photo was captured.\n\n\"The nine-hour weather event resulted in flight delays, cancellations and almost 100 diversions,\" Jantz said via email.\n\nSpirit CEO Ted Christie told USA TODAY weather, technology issues and crew shortages have caused disrupted flights. Similarly, American spokesman Curtis Blessing told USA TODAY the airline's cancellations are due to \"prolonged and severe\" weather that started on Aug. 1, which temporarily delayed flights and closed two ramps at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, its home base.\n\nMeanwhile, Dennis Tajer, spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, said a majority of flight cancellations that took place on Aug. 2 were due to a pilot shortage and scheduling issues.\n\nAt the start of the coronavirus pandemic, many airlines let go of pilots and flight attendants. Bloomberg reported in July 2020 that about 400,000 airline workers were fired, furloughed or told they may lose their job.\n\nAs a result, airlines are scrambling to hire back workers, who are required to undergo extensive training and security clearances.\n\nAdditionally, a majority of airline carriers retired older planes from their fleets in an effort to save cash, but the travel demand returned sooner than airlines expected.\n\nData from the Transportation Security Administration shows 10.1 million people were screened nationwide between July 1 and July 5, setting a new pandemic-era record.\n\nOn top of weather and labor shortages, some U.S. airports are running into fuel shortages, which are expected to last through mid-August, the Associated Press reported.\n\nFact check: Pfizer CEO fully vaccinated, canceled Israel trip in March\n\nMany US airlines don't have vaccine mandates\n\nThe post claims pilots are refusing vaccine mandates, but only a few major airlines have implemented policies requiring all employees get vaccinated. And some of those have not yet taken effect.\n\nUnited Airlines recently announced that employees in the U.S. must be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Oct. 25. United spokeswoman Leslie Scott said more than 90% of its pilots and 80% of flight attendants are already vaccinated.\n\n\"We’ve received overwhelmingly supportive feedback from other workgroups across the company since announcing the vaccine requirement last week,\" Scott said via email.\n\nHawaiian Airlines has said it will also require vaccination, while Frontier Airlines said all employees must be vaccinated by Oct. 1 or provide proof of a negative test on a regular basis.\n\nOther U.S. airlines have encouraged that their staff get vaccinated, however, they have not mandated it.\n\nAmerican CEO Doug Parker told The New York Times he would not be imposing a vaccine mandate for staff or passengers, saying it \"wouldn’t be physically possible to do without enormous delays in the airline system.\"\n\nIn May, Delta announced new hires in the U.S. would be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and that current employees are strongly encouraged to get vaccinated. Southwest and Spirit have announced they are encouraging employees to get vaccinated but not requiring it.\n\nClaims that British Airways was concerned about the risk posed by vaccinated pilots, along with claims that airlines are banning vaccinated people from flying, have been previously debunked.\n\nFact check: COVID-19 vaccine mandates don't violate Nuremberg Code\n\nOur rating: False\n\nBased on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that flights in the U.S. are being canceled because airline employees are refusing the COVID-19 vaccine. Airlines say the recent flight cancellations are due to labor shortages, bad weather, fuel shortages, operational issues and scheduling troubles. United and Hawaiian are the only major U.S. airlines so far to implement a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all employees.\n\nOur fact-check sources:\n\nThank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app, or electronic newspaper replica here.\n\nOur fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/08/11"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_17", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:37", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/07/politics/matthew-mcconaughey-white-house/index.html", "title": "Matthew McConaughey tells the story of those killed in Uvalde in ...", "text": "U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, center, before a State of the Union address by U.S. President Joe Biden at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Biden's first State of the Union address comes against the backdrop of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions placed on Russia by the U.S. and its allies.\n\nWASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 06: Pro-Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol following a rally with President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Trump supporters gathered in the nation's capital today to protest the ratification of President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College victory over President Trump in the 2020 election. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)\n\nWASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 20: House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) talks with reporters during a news conference with House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) (L) following a House Republican caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center on October 20, 2021 in Washington, DC. The GOP members of Congress were critical of the entire Democratic slate of legislation and accused them of being unwilling to compromise. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)\n\nFormer President Donald Trump speaks on May 28, 2022 in Casper, Wyoming. The rally is being held to support Harriet Hageman, Rep. Liz Cheneys primary challenger in Wyoming.\n\nAttorney General William Barr participates in a press conference at the Department of Justice along with DOJ officials on February 10, 2020 in Washington, DC.\n\nCNN —\n\nActor Matthew McConaughey delivered impassioned and at-times emotional remarks at the White House press briefing on Tuesday, telling the stories of those who died in the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and urging more action on gun control.\n\nMcConaughey, a Uvalde native, said he and his wife, Camila Alves, spent most of the past week with the families of those who were killed in his hometown. He showed pictures of their artwork and brought to the briefing room green Converse shoes like the ones that one girl wore every day that were used to identify her body after the shooting. She had drawn a heart on one of the shoes.\n\nHe said he needed to tell their stories to show how action needed to be taken to honor the lives of the 19 children and two teachers killed at Robb Elementary School last month.\n\n“You know what every one of these parents wanted, what they asked us for? What every parent separately expressed in their own way to Camila and me? That they want their children’s dreams to live on. That they want their children’s dreams to continue, to accomplish something after they are gone. They want to make their loss of life matter,” McConaughey said.\n\nHe said there was now a “window of opportunity” to enact meaningful gun legislation reform and called for universal background checks, raising the minimum age for purchasing an AR-15 to 21, a waiting period for purchasing AR-15s and the implementation of red flag laws.\n\n“These are reasonable, practical, tactical regulations to our nation, states, communities, schools and homes. Responsible gun owners are fed up with the Second Amendment being abused and hijacked by some deranged individuals. These regulations are not a step back – they’re a step forward for a civil society and, and the Second Amendment,” McConaughey said in a roughly 20-minute speech from the podium.\n\nThe Academy Award-winning actor met briefly with President Joe Biden before appearing at the podium, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.\n\nMcConaughey spoke in great detail about the children and what dreams they held before they were killed – one wanted to be a marine biologist, one had been preparing to read a Bible verse at church the next week, another wanted to go to art school in Paris.\n\n“You could feel the shock in the town. You could feel the pain, the denial, the disillusion, anger, blame, sadness, loss of lives, dreams halted,” he said.\n\nMcConaughey said, “Due to the exceptionally large exit wounds of an AR-15 rifle, most of the bodies so mutilated that only DNA test or green Converse could identify them. Many children were left not only dead but hollow. So, yes, counselors are going to be needed in Uvalde for a long time.”\n\n“We got to take a sober, humble, and honest look in the mirror and rebrand ourselves based on what we truly value. What we truly value. We got to get some real courage and honor our immortal obligations instead of our party affiliations,” McConaughey said.\n\nHe continued, “Enough with the counterpunching. Enough of the invalidation of the other side. Let’s come to the common table that represents the American people. Find a middle ground, the place where most of us Americans live anyway. Especially on this issue. Because I promise you, America, you and me, we are not as divided as we are being told we are.”\n\nMcConaughey held meetings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill earlier in the day to discuss gun reform legislation\n\nThe “Dallas Buyers Club” actor publicly weighed a run for governor in Texas last year but ultimately ruled one out – for now. He said it was “a path that I’m choosing not to take at this moment.”\n\nMcConaughey told reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday he hoped he was making progress in his meetings with lawmakers. He had left a meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and was heading to another meeting with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.\n\nThe President earlier on Tuesday met with Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who is leading bipartisan negotiations on gun reform. Murphy told reporters at the White House he met with the President for about half an hour and spoke about the outlines of the ongoing gun reform negotiations. Murphy emphasized how much he appreciated Biden and the White House giving senators “space” to try and reach a deal, and said his goal remains to reach a deal by the end of this week.\n\nWhile the odds of any sweeping reforms remain very steep, lawmakers have expressed optimism that a deal for narrow and targeted bill could be reached as soon as the end of this week. Jean-Pierre said Monday Biden was “encouraged” by the Senate negotiations on gun control measures.\n\nThe President delivered an impassioned speech from the White House after the mass shooting at the Uvalde elementary school last month and ratcheted up the pressure on Congress to act. He has called on Congress to implement stricter gun laws, including a ban on assault weapons, tougher background check laws and a higher minimum age of purchase.\n\nCLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to clarify that the green Converse shoes that Camila Alves held in the briefing room were replicas of the ones worn by a victim of the Uvalde shooting.", "authors": ["Kate Sullivan"], "publish_date": "2022/06/07"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2022/06/07/matthew-mcconaughey-white-house-gun-violence/10001065002/", "title": "Matthew McConaughey White House speech calls for end to gun ...", "text": "WASHINGTON – Actor Matthew McConaughey on Tuesday used the megaphone of the White House and his own star power to urge leaders in Washington to address gun violence in honor of the young victims of the mass shooting in his hometown of Uvalde, Texas.\n\nAfter meeting with President Joe Biden, McConaughey choked up as he shared the victims' stories and pressed for action.\n\n“This moment is different. We’re in a window of opportunity right now that we have not been in before, a window where it seems like real change – real change – can happen,\" he said during an appearance at the White House briefing room.\n\nMcConaughey was born in Uvalde, Texas, the town where he said he was taught \"to revere the power and the capability of the tool that we call a gun\" – and where 19 children and two teachers were massacred at an elementary school last month.\n\n“They want to make their loss of life matter,” he said of the victims' families he's met with.\n\nMcConaughey, who also spent time on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, said he came to Washington to share stories of his hometown, meet with leaders and urge them to speak with each other.\n\n\"Responsible gun owners are fed up with the Second Amendment being abused and hijacked by some deranged individuals,\" said the actor, who has starred in numerous movies, including \"Dallas Buyers Club\" and \"The Wolf of Wall Street.\" \"This should not be a partisan issue.\"\n\nWearing a black suit with a Texas pin stuck through a lapel, McConaughey spoke for 20 minutes, at one point slamming the lectern so hard it shook.\n\nHis wife, Camilla, held in her lap a pair of green, high-top Converse sneakers, with a heart on the right toe, that belonged to one of the students. The shoes, he said, were “the only clear evidence that could identify her after the shooting.”\n\nUSA TODAY/Ipsos poll:Half of Republicans support stricter gun laws, a double-digit jump in a year\n\nAlso happening:Still facing nightmares, Uvalde survivor Miah Cerrillo, 11, will testify at House hearing on guns\n\nRelated:Matthew McConaughey launches fund for his hometown of Uvalde following school shooting\n\nMcConaughey's visit to the White House came on the same day that Biden met with Sen. Chris Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat leading negotiations with Senate Republicans on gun measures.\n\nMurphy, who hopes he can reach an agreement by the end of the week, said he wanted to keep the president apprised on the talks to ensure he will sign off on any deal.\n\nBiden has signaled he will support legislation that can pass the narrowly divided Senate, even if it doesn't include everything he wants.\n\nOPINION:Matthew McConaughey: There's a difference between gun control and gun responsibility\n\n\"He believes any step is a step forward,\" White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday.\n\nSenate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Tuesday said he’s encouraging the talks to continue.\n\n\"Senator Murphy has asked for some space to have the bipartisan talks continue, and I have given him that space,\" Schumer said on the Senate floor.\n\nMcConaughey appears on Fox News following White House visit\n\nFollowing his White House appearance, McConaughey opened up to Bret Baier on Fox News about his \"penetrating\" experience visiting his hometown in the wake of the shooting.\n\n\"I’m not some other someone from the entertainment industry who decided to swing by (the White House),\" he said. \"It happened in the town I was born in, so it got pretty personal for me.\"\n\nWhen asked if he harbors political ambitions, the actor replied he's \"not running for political office.\"\n\nMcConaughey also outlined what he sees as sensible gun control policies, including waiting period after somebody purchases a gun, and said he believes Americans are not as politically divided as they may think.\n\n\"I think we're being told we're more divided than we are,\" he said. \"I believe that the people I talk to on both sides are much more reasonable about things than we're being told we are.\"\n\n'Aggressively centric': What party does McConaughey belong to?\n\nLast year, McConaughey toyed with the possibility of running for governor of Texas, but he eventually dropped the idea. He has not identified with either the Democratic or Republican party but has instead described himself as “aggressively centric.”\n\n\"Look, I’m a 'Meet You in the Middle' man,” he said in an interview last year with the Austin Statesman, part of the USA TODAY Network.\n\n“When I say “aggressively centric,” that sometimes gets parceled over there with 'Oh, that’s a shade of grey, a compromise’.”\n\nOn Monday, The Austin American-Statesman, published an essay by McConaughey calling on leaders to make \"bipartisan compromises on a few reasonable measures to restore responsible gun ownership in our country.\"\n\nHe said those measures include universal background checks, a national waiting period to purchase assault rifles and raising the minimum to buy an assault rifle to 21. He also backed \"red flag\" laws which allow courts to remove firearms from those deemed a danger to themselves or others.\n\n\"Is this a cure all? Hell no. But people are hurting,\" McConaughey said Tuesday. \"We've got to get some real courage and honor our immortal obligations instead of our party affiliations. Enough of the counter punching.\"\n\nContributing: Charles Trepany", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/07"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2022/06/08/matthew-mcconaughey-talks-gun-violence-white-house-read-speech/7551975001/", "title": "Read Matthew McConaughey's full White House speech on gun ...", "text": "Actor Matthew McConaughey took his star platform to the White House Tuesday to encourage lawmakers to take action on gun violence, citing stories of the young victims of the mass shooting in his hometown of Uvalde, Texas.\n\nMcConaughey delivered a passionate 20-minute speech, after meeting with President Joe Biden, at the podium of the White House press briefing room while wearing a black suit with a Texas pin stuck through the lapel as he spoke of May's shooting leaving 19 children and two teachers dead.\n\nIn early June the actor traveled to his hometown to visit victims' families during the aftermath and afterward he and his wife Camilla announced the launch of their Just Keep Livin Foundation's Uvalde Relief Fund to help support the reeling community.\n\nAftermath:Matthew McConaughey launches fund for his hometown of Uvalde following school shooting\n\nTuesday, during his speech Camilla held a pair of green high-top Converse sneakers in her lap which the actor said were the same pair one of the victims was wearing and that they were “the only clear evidence that could identify her after the shooting” as he emotionally hit the lectern.\n\n“This moment is different. We’re in a window of opportunity right now that we have not been in before, a window where it seems like real change – real change – can happen,\" McConaughey said.\n\nBelow is McConaughey's full speech according to the official transcript from The White House.\n\nMcConaughey: To make the loss of these lives matter.\n\nMy wife and I -- my wife and I -- Camila -- we spent most of last week on the ground with the families in Uvalde, Texas, and we shared stories, tears, and memories.\n\nThe common thread, independent of the anger and the confusion and sadness, it was the same: How can these families continue to honor these deaths by keeping the dreams of these children and teachers alive?\n\nAgain, how can the loss of these lives matter?\n\nSo while we honor and acknowledge the victims, we need to recognize that this time it seems that something is different. There is a sense that perhaps there is a viable path forward. Responsible parties in this debate seem to at least be committed to sitting down and having a real conversation about a new and improved path forward -- a path that can bring us closer together and make us safer as a country, a path that can actually get something done this time.\n\nCamila and I came here to share my stories from my hometown of Uvalde. I came here to take meetings with elected officials on both sides of the aisle. We came here to speak to them, to speak with them, and to urge them to speak with each other -- to remind and inspire them that the American people will continue to drive forward the mission of keeping our children safe, because it's more than our right to do so, it's our responsibility to do so.\n\nI'm here today in the hopes of applying what energy, reason, and passion that I have into trying to turn this moment into a reality. Because as I said, this moment is different. We are in a window of opportunity right now that we have not been in before, a window where it seems like real change -- real change can happen.\n\n'This moment is different':Matthew McConaughey urges leaders to address gun violence in White House speech\n\nUvalde, Texas, is where I was born. It’s where my mom taught kindergarten less than a mile from Robb Elementary. Uvalde is where I learned to master a Daisy BB gun. I took that -- that took two years before I graduated to a 410 shotgun. Uvalde is where I was taught to revere the power and the capability of the tool that we call a gun. Uvalde is where I learned responsible gun ownership.\n\nAnd Uvalde called me on May 24th, when I learned the news of this devastating tragedy. I had been out of cellular range working in the studio all day when I emerged and messages about a mass shooting in the town I was born in began flooding my inbox.\n\nIn a bit of shock, I drove home, hugged my children a bit tighter and longer than the night before, and then the reality of what had happened that day in the town I was born in set in.\n\nMore:Matthew McConaughey calls for 'gun responsibility' in op-ed after Uvalde school shooting\n\nSo the next morning, Camila, myself, and the kids, we loaded up the truck and drove to Uvalde. And when we arrived a few hours later, I got to tell you, even from the inside of our vehicle, you could feel the shock in the town. You could feel the pain, the denial, the disillusion, anger, blame, sadness, loss of lives, dreams halted.\n\nWe saw ministries. We saw first responders, counselors, cooks, families trying to grieve without it being on the frontpage news.\n\nWe met with the local funeral director and countless morticians who -- who hadn’t slept since the massacre the day before because they’d been working 24/7 trying to handle so many bodies at once -- so many little, innocent bodies who had their entire lives still yet to live.\n\nAnd that is there that we met two of the grieving parents, Ryan and Jessica Ramirez. Their 10-year-old daughter, Alithia -- she was one of the 19 children that were killed the day before.\n\nNow, Alithia -- her dream was to go to art school in Paris and one day share her art with the world. Ryan and Jessica were eager to share Alithia’s art with us, and said if we could share it, then somehow maybe that would make Alithia smile in heaven. They told us that showing someone else Alithia’s art would in some way keep her alive.\n\nNow, this particular drawing is a -- is a self-portrait of Alithia drawing, with her friend in heaven looking down on her drawing the very same picture. Her mother said, of this drawing -- she said, “You know, we never really talked to her about heaven before, but somehow she knew.”\n\nAlithia was 10 years old.\n\n'You could feel the pain':Matthew McConaughey on his visit to Uvalde after mass shooting\n\nHer father, Ryan -- this man was steady. He was uncommonly together and calm. When a frazzled friend of his came up and said, “How are you so calm? I'd be going crazy,” Ryan told him -- he said, “No, you wouldn't. No, you wouldn't. You’d be strong for your wife and kids, because if they see you go crazy, that will not help them.”\n\nJust a week prior, Ryan got a full-time line job stringing powerlines from pole to pole. And every day since landing that well-paying, full-time job, he reminded his daughter, Alithia -- he said, “Girl, Daddy going to spoil you now.” Told her every single night. He said, “Daddy is going to take you to SeaWorld one day.\n\nBut he didn’t get to -- he didn't get to spoil his daughter, Alithia. She did not get to go to SeaWorld.\n\nWe also met Ana and Dani- -- Danilo, the mom and the stepdad of nine-year-old Maite Rodriguez. And Maite wanted to be a marine biologist. She was already in contact with Corpus Christi University of A&M for her future college enrollment. Nine years old.\n\nMaite cared for the environment so strongly that when the city asked her mother if they could release some balloons into the sky in her memory, her mom said, “Oh no, Maite wouldn't want to litter.”\n\nMaite wore green high-top Converse with a heart she had hand-drawn on the right toe because they represented her love of nature.\n\nCamila has got these shoes. Can you show these shoes, please?\n\nWore these every day. Green Converse with a heart on the right toe. These are the same green Converse on her feet that turned out to be the only clear evidence that could identify her after the shooting. How about that?\n\nMaite wrote a letter. Her mom said if Maite’s letter could help someone accomplish her dream, that then her death would have an impact, and it would mean her dying had a point and wasn’t pointless -- that it would make the loss of her life matter.\n\nThe letter reads: “Marine biologist. I want to pass school to get to my dream college. My dream college is in Corpus Christi, by the ocean. I need to live next to the ocean because I want to be a marine biologist. Marine biologists study animals and the water. Most of the time, I will be in a lab. Sometimes, I will be on TV.”\n\nThen there was Ellie Garcia, a 10-year-old, and her parents, Steven and Jennifer.\n\nEllie loved to dance, and she loved church. She even knew how to drive tractors and was already working with her dad and her uncle mowing yards.\n\n“Ellie was always giving of her gifts, her time, even half-eaten food on her plate,” they said. They said, “Around the house, we’d call her the ‘great re-gifter.’” Smiling through tears, her family told us how Ellie loved to embrace. Said she was the biggest hugger in the family.\n\nNow, Ellie was born Catholic, but had been going to Baptist church with her uncle for the last couple of years. Her mom and dad were proud of her because, they said, “She was learning to love God, no matter where.”\n\nThe week prior to her passing, she had been preparing to read a verse from the Bible for the next Wednesday night's church service. The verse was from Deuteronomy 6:5. “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”\n\nThat's who Ellie was becoming. But she never got to read it. Service is on a Wednesday night.\n\nThen there was the fairytale love story of a teacher named Irma and her husband, Joe. What a great family this was. This was an amazing family.\n\nCamila and I, we -- we sat with about 20 of their family members in the living room, along with their four kids. They were -- the kids were 23, 19, 15, and 13. They -- they shared all these stories about Irma and Joe -- served the community and would host all these parties, and how Irma and Joe were planning on getting a food truck together when they soon retired.\n\nThey were humble, hardworking people. Irma was a teacher, who, her family said, “went above and beyond, and just couldn't say no to any kind of teaching.” Joe had been commuting to and from work 70 miles away in Del Rio for years.\n\nTogether, they were the glue of the family. Both worked overtime to support their four kids. Irma even worked every summer when school was out. The money she had made two summers ago paid to -- paid to paint the front of the house. The money she made last summer paid to paint the sides of the house. This summer’s work was going to pay to paint the back of the house.\n\nMore:Matthew McConaughey explains why he's staying out of politics 'at this point' in his life\n\nBecause Irma was one of the teachers who was gunned down in the classroom, Joe, her husband, literally died of heartache the very next day when he had a heart attack.\n\nThey never got to paint the back of the house, they never got to retire, and they never got to get that food truck together.\n\nWe also met a cosmetologist. All right? She was well versed in mortuary makeup. That's the task of making the victims appear as peaceful and natural as possible for their open-casket viewings.\n\nThese bodies were very different. They needed much more than makeup to be presentable. They needed extensive restoration. Why? Due to the exceptionally large exit wounds of an AR-15 rifle. Most of the bodies so mutilated that only DNA tests or green Converse could identify them. Many children were left not only dead, but hollow.\n\nSo yes, counselors are going to be needed in Uvalde for a long time. Counselors are needed in all these places where these mass shooters have been for a long time.\n\nI was told by many that it takes a good year before people even understand what to do next. And even then, when they become se- -- secure enough to take the first step forward, a lifetime is not going to heal those wounds.\n\nAgain, you know what every one of these parents wanted, what they asked us for? What every parent separately expressed in their own way to Camila and me? That they want their children's dreams to live on. That they want their children's dreams to continue to accomplish something after they are gone. They want to make their loss of life matter.\n\nLook, we heard from -- we heard from so many people, all right? Families of the deceased -- mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. Texas Rangers, hunters, Border Patrol, and responsible gun owners who won't give up their Second Amendment right to bear arms. And you know what they all said? “We want secure and safe schools, and we want gun laws that won't make it so easy for the bad guys to get these damn guns.”\n\nSo, we know what's on the table. We need to invest in mental healthcare. We need safer schools. We need to restrain sensationalized media coverage. We need to restore our family values. We need to restore our American values. And we need responsible gun ownership -- responsible gun ownership.\n\nWe need background checks. We need to raise the minimum age to purchase an AR-15 rifle to 21. We need a waiting period for those rifles. We need red-flag laws and consequences for those who abuse them.\n\nThese are reasonable, practical, tactical regulations to our nation, states, communities, schools, and homes.\n\nResponsible gun owners are fed up with the Second Amendment being abused and hijacked by some deranged individuals.\n\nThese regulations are not a step back; they’re a step forward for a civil society and -- and the Second Amendment.\n\nLook, is this a cure-all? Hell no.\n\nBut people are hurting -- families are, parents are. And look, as -- as divided as our country is, this gun responsibility issue is one that we agree on more than we don't. It really is. But this should be a nonpartisan issue. This should not be a partisan issue.\n\nThere is not a Democratic or Republican value in one single act of these shooters. It's not.\n\nBut people in power have failed to act. So we're asking you and I'm asking you, will you please ask yourselves: Can both sides rise above? Can both sides see beyond the political problem at hand and admit that we have a life preservation problem on our hands?\n\nBecause we got a chance right now to reach for and to grasp a higher ground above our political affiliations, a chance to make a choice that does more than protect your party, a chance to make a choice that protects our country now and for the next generation.\n\nWe got to take a sober, humble, and honest look in the mirror and re- -- rebrand ourselves based on what we truly value. What we truly value.\n\nWe got to get some real courage and honor our immortal obligations instead of our party affiliations.\n\nEnough with the counterpunching. Enough of the invalidation of the other side. Let's come to the common table that represents the American people. Find a mil- -- middle ground, the place where most of us Americans live anyway, especially on this issue.\n\nBecause I promise you, America -- you and me, who -- we are not as divided as we're being told we are. No.\n\nHow about we get inspired? Give ourselves just cause to revere our future again. Maybe set an example for our children, give us reason to tell them, “Hey, listen and watch these men and women. These are great American leaders right here. Hope you grow up to be like them.”\n\nAnd let's admit it: We can't truly be leaders if we're only living for reelection.\n\nLet’s be knowledgeable and wise, and act on what we truly believe.\n\nMore:Half of Republicans support stricter gun laws, a double-digit jump in a year, USA TODAY/Ipsos poll says\n\nAgain, we got to look in the mirror, lead with humility, and acknowledge the values that are inherent to but also above politics. We’ve got to make choices, make stands, embrace new ideas, and preserve the traditions that can create true -- true progress for the next generation.\n\nWith real leadership, let's start giving us -- all of us, with real leadership -- let's start giving all of us good reason to believe that the American Dream is not an illusion.\n\nSo where do we start? We start by making the right choices on the issue that is in front of us today.\n\nWe start by making laws that save innocent lives and don't infringe on our Second Amendment rights. We start right now by voting to pass policies that can keep us from having as many Columbines, Sandy Hooks, Parklands, Las Vegases, Buffaloes, and Uvaldes from here on.\n\nWe start by giving Alithia the chance to be spoiled by her dad.\n\nWe start by giving Maite a chance to become a marine biologist.\n\nWe start by giving Ellie a chance to read her Bible verse at the Wednesday night service.\n\nWe start by giving Irma and Joe a chance to finish painting their house, maybe retire and get that food truck.\n\nWe start by giving Makenna, Layla, Maranda, Nevaeh, Jose, Xavier, Tess, Rojelio, Eliahna, Annabell, Jackie, Uziyah, Jayce, Jailah, Eva, Amerie, and Lexi -- we start by giving all of them our promise that their dreams are not going to be forgotten.\n\nWe start by making the loss of these lives matter.\n\nThank you. Thank you.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/08"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/06/08/house-hearing-guns-uvalde-buffalo-live-updates/7546473001/", "title": "Recap: House to vote after Uvalde, Buffalo survivors testify", "text": "Lawmakers are facing mounting pressure to respond to a scourge of mass shootings and gun violence.\n\nAt least nine witnesses will testify Wednesday.\n\nWASHINGTON – House lawmakers voted to raise from 18 to 21 the minimum age to buy semi-automatic rifles, following a day of poignant testimony from survivors of mass shootings, including a fourth-grader, a mother taking care of her wounded son and parents who lost a 10-year-old daughter.\n\nThe House approved raising the age from 18 to 21 as part of a package of gun reform measures that also would clamp down on gun trafficking, ban bump stocks and require safe storage of firearms. The bill, known as the Protecting Our Kids Act, heads to the Senate where it's not expected to pass because Republicans have enough votes to block gun legislation.\n\nThe measure passed the House 223-204, largely on a party-line vote.\n\nThe vote came after a full and emotional push from advocates – even actor Matthew McConaughey – who urged Congress to tighten the nation's gun laws after recent massacres in Buffalo, N.Y. and Uvalde, Texas.\n\nMiah Cerrillo, an 11-year-old who smeared herself with her slain friend's blood to play dead during the May 24 mass shooting in Uvalde, was one of a dozen witnesses who testified Wednesday morning during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing to address gun violence.\n\nIn a pre-recorded video, she told lawmakers how she stayed alive for 78 minutes before help arrived and that she's afraid to go to school after surviving a mass shooting.\n\n“I don’t want it to happen again.”\n\nWhen asked if she thinks it will happen again, she shook her head up and down and said “yes.”\n\nHer testimony, no matter how stirring, is unlikely to move lawmakers from their entrenched positions. Democrats supporting gun restrictions as a way to prevent mass shooting while most Republicans argued that such steps would undermine constitutional protections guaranteed by the Second Amendment.\n\nDemocrats, who have majority leadership in the House, also want to ban assault weapons, boost background checks and pass \"red flag\" laws, which allow courts to remove firearms from those deemed a threat to themselves or others.\n\nTheir bills are expected to hit a roadblock in the Senate, where Democrats do not have the 10 Republican votes needed for their bills to overcome a filibuster.\n\nA bipartisan group of senators is negotiating a narrower gun-control package, focusing on red-flag laws, mental health and school safety.\n\nLawmakers are facing mounting pressure to respond to gun violence, particularly after mass shootings in Texas and New York gripped the nation last month. But few believe anything beyond modest gun reforms has a chance of passing.\n\nWhy she's testifying:Still facing nightmares, Uvalde survivor Miah Cerrillo, 11, will testify at House hearing on guns\n\nBiden: Voters want action on crime, guns\n\nPresident Joe Biden said Wednesday voters sent a clear message they are worried about crime in primary elections this week which saw a progressive district attorney in San Francisco removed from office amid fears that his policies had made the city less safe.\n\n“I think the voters sent a clear message last night: Both parties have to step up and do something about crime, as well as gun violence,” Biden told reporters before boarding Air Force One for a trip to Los Angeles.\n\nBiden called again for more states and local governments to use funds from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to hire police officers and reform their police departments.\n\n– Michael Collins\n\nQuinnipiac Poll shows 3 in 4 Americans support raising the age limit to buy a gun\n\nA Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday shows nearly 3 in 4 Americans support raising the minimum legal age to buy a gun to 21. Among Democrats there is 91% support behind raising the age limit. Among independents there is 76% and among Republicans, there is 59% support.\n\nThere is overwhelming support for background checks for all gun buyers at 92%. There is also strong support among Americans behind red flag laws at 83%.\n\nWhen respondents were asked what they thought were the main causes of mass shootings, 40% cited mental health issues while 19% believed the cause to be the availability of guns. Forty-five percent of Republicans and 41% of independents said they mental health issues caused mass shootings while 46% of Democrats said they thought the availability of guns was behind mass shootings.\n\n– Kenneth Tran\n\nKimberly Rubio, mom of Uvalde victim, haunted by last goodbye with daughter\n\nKimberly Rubio, whose daughter Lexi died in the Uvalde massacre, described her final moments with her daughter as she and her husband Felix attended an awards ceremony at Robb Elementary School on May 24. Lexi had earned all As and won a \"good citizen award.\"\n\nThe Rubios promised to take Lexi out for ice cream that night to celebrate. They parted ways at around 11 a.m., after a picture-taking session.\n\n\"I told her we loved her and we would pick her up after school,\" said Rubio, who testified via video. \"I could still see her walking with us towards the exit. In the reel that keeps scrolling across my memories, she turns her head and smiles back at us to acknowledge my promise. And then we left.\"\n\n\"I left my daughter at that school and that decision will haunt me for the rest of my life,\" Rubio said.\n\nAt 11:33 a.m. that same morning, the 18-year-old shooter arrived at Robb Elementary School. Lexi Rubio was among 19 children killed. Two teachers were killed.\n\nKimberly and Felix Rubio testified about their increasingly desperate search for their daughter that afternoon.\n\n“Bus after bus arrived, but she wasn’t onboard,” Kimberly testified.\n\nShe and other family members drove to different hospitals looking for her. “At this point, some part of me must have realized that she was gone,” said Kimberly. Her worst fear was later confirmed.\n\nTearing up, she pleaded for lawmakers to not “want to think of Lexi as just a number. She was intelligent, compassionate and athletic. She was quiet and shy unless she had a point to make.”\n\nClosing her testimony, Kimberly said: “Somewhere out there there's a mom listening to our testimony, thinking I can't even imagine their pain. Not knowing our reality will one day be hers, unless we act now.”\n\n– Kenneth Tran\n\nGOP lawmaker accuses Dems of traumatizing survivors\n\nRep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., accused his Democratic colleagues of traumatizing mass shooting survivors, and their families, by inviting them to testify before the House committee.\n\nHe particularly called them out for having Miah Cerrillo, an 11-year-old Uvalde survivor, submit a pre-recorded video testimony, in which she relived her experience during the shooting.\n\nMiah’s father told USA TODAY earlier in the week his daughter was testifying to “make safer schools.”\n\nBiggs said she was forced to relive trauma “for political purposes.”\n\n“If we’re talking about PTSD, you just prolonged it,” he said.\n\n– Candy Woodall\n\n‘Violent people’ – not guns – are the problem: GOP lawmaker\n\nRep. Jody Hice, a Georgia Republican and member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said Congress can’t fix the gun violence epidemic without addressing “violent people.”\n\n“Guns are not the issue,” he said. “We have a people-violence problem, who misuse guns and other means whenever they intend to harm individuals.”\n\nHice said the solution lies in teaching “moral absolutes” and “respecting one another and respecting life.”\n\n“We’ve got to, in the midst of this conversation, I believe, embrace religious beliefs.”\n\n– Candy Woodall\n\nAOC: Volume of mass shootings ‘delegitimizing’ to the U.S.\n\nAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez used her time to compare the number of mass shootings from 2009 through 2018 in the United States (288) to the total committed in the country’s G-7 partners - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom (five).\n\n“Two hundred eighty-eight versus five. This is not normal,” the New York Democrat and liberal firebrand said. “Not only is it not normal, it is internationally embarrassing and delegitimizing to the United States.”\n\nOcasio-Cortez called the situation abhorrent.\n\n“Because for all the billions and trillions that this body authorizes in the name of national security, we can't even keep our kids safe from their schools being turned into a war zone,” she said.\n\n-Ledyard King\n\nDemocratic Rep. Mfume blasts NRA – and Congress – for gun industry immunity\n\nRep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., recalled his efforts to sue the gun industry for gun-related deaths when he was head of the NAACP.\n\nThe NRA spent 18 months lobbying Congress to win “absolute immunity on the gun industry and unfortunately was able to get this Congress to pass and sign into law,” he said, referencing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which grants immunity to gun manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits related to gun crimes.\n\n“It is just unbelievable that we will give absolute immunity to any industry in this country particularly when there’s harm and personal injury.”\n\n- Kenneth Tran\n\nTexas Rep. Pat Fallon: Smartphones, breakdown of family partly to blame for rise in mass shootings\n\nGOP Rep. Pat Fallon from Texas said after mass shootings, “It is natural to want to focus blame.\"\n\n“We need to do something effective that will keep our children safer,” said Fallon. “Some people want to blame guns, some people want to blame gun manufacturers, some people want to blame believe it or not, the Constitution, some people want to blame an entire political party.”\n\nFallon said “the shooter is the only one to blame.”\n\nBut he also said there are other factors at play.\n\nFallon claimed mass shootings are in some measure due to “a noticeable breakdown of the family, there’s been an erosion of faith.”\n\nCell phones, Fallon said, also shared culpability for mass shootings.\n\n“There’s been a seismic drop in social interactions in large measure of these dang smartphones and the proliferation of social media which is better described as anti-social media,” he said.\n\n- Kenneth Tran\n\nBuffalo police commissioner calls photo of child with AR-15 ‘disturbing’\n\nRep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Illinois, asked Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia whether he thinks gun manufacturing companies should market weapons to children after Daniel Defense, a gun manufacturing company, posted a picture of a young boy holding an AR-15 on Twitter.\n\nGramaglia called the picture \"disturbing\" and asked, \"how many children in our country\" have taken their own lives and the lives of others because of the lack of “storage of weapons?\"\n\nShortly after the shooting, Daniel Defense took down the picture from its Twitter account, and the account was made private, according to Krishnamoorthi.\n\n-Merdie Nzanga\n\n'Will we be recorded as such a society that accepts the sacrifice of innocents?’: Rep. Jamie Raskin\n\nRep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, opened his remarks by comparing the United States’ history of mass shootings to human sacrifices.\n\n“In the history of our species, a number of civilizations have practiced or allowed human sacrifice, including the sacrifice of children,” said Raskin. “Will we be recorded as such a society that accepts the sacrifice of innocents?”\n\nRaskin said the United States is “globally unique” from other countries in terms of gun violence and gun deaths. “No other nation comes close to what we see here.”\n\n“Will we continue to accept the slaughter of innocents, including innocent children, as acceptable collateral damage for loyalty to a completely bogus and distorted misreading of the Second Amendment and what the Supreme Court has said about it?” he said.\n\n- Kenneth Tran\n\n‘I buried six young children’: Rep. Gerald Connolly\n\nRep. Gerald Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, told the House Committee about his experience during the Virginia-Tech shooting.\n\n“I was the chairman of Fairfax County when the Virginia-Tech massacre occurred,” said Connolly.\n\n“I buried six young children, students that week. Six. I’m still in touch with many of the families years later. And the emptiness in their hearts, souls, cannot be filled. It is a tragedy that lives with them forever.”\n\n- Kenneth Tran\n\n‘Evil deeds do not transcend constitutional rights’: GOP Rep. Andrew Clyde\n\nRep. Andrew Clyde, a Republican from Georgia who is also a gun dealer, said “no one should weaponize or politicize these abhorrent acts to punish law abiding citizens.”\n\n“Evil deeds do not transcend constitutional rights, it’s the other way around. Constitutional rights are the ones that transcend evil deeds,” he said.\n\nSpeaking about the Uvalde massacre, Clyde said he believes the shooting was “mostly preventable.”\n\nInstead of stricter gun control policies. Clyde criticized President Joe Biden for being “uninterested in pursuing tighter security of schools.” He cited his military service, saying “the harder the target you are, the less likely you will be engaged by the enemy.”\n\nHe said schools should have “sensible security measures,” such as single points of entry and “a volunteer force of well trained and armed staff in addition to a school resource officer.”\n\n- Kenneth Tran\n\nWhat are ghost guns?:In town hall, Biden brings up worries about the untraceable weapons\n\nUvalde native Matthew McConaughey meeting with lawmakers about gun control\n\nAfter making an appearance and delivering an emotional speech about gun control at Tuesday's White House Press briefing, actor and Uvalde native Matthew McConaughey is on Capitol Hill meeting with lawmakers, according to a reporter who spotted him.\n\n- Kenneth Tran\n\n‘No match’: Buffalo police commissioner says slain ex-officer had no chance against AR-15\n\nJoseph Gramaglia, the police commissioner of Buffalo, New York, praised retired police officer Aaron Salter Jr, who was fatally shot trying to protect customers at the Buffalo supermarket that left 10 people dead.\n\n\"It is often said that a good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun. Aaron was a good guy and was no match for what he went up against: a legal AR-15 with multiple high-capacity magazines. He had no chance,\" Gramaglia said.\n\nThe shooter \"should have never been able to have access to the weapons he used,\" the police commissioner said, uring Congress to act on gun reform. \"Congress must act immediately to close the loopholes in our current system and the caps that allow easy access to military-style weapons.\"\n\n-Merdie Nzanga\n\nDeadliest weekend in the US for mass shootings this year: 3 days, many guns, 17 fatalities\n\nNYC Mayor Adams pushes for federal gun laws: “It’s more than what we do locally.”\n\nNew York City Mayor Eric Adams told lawmakers federal action is needed, as guns coming from out of state are out of local government’s control. Adams also emphasized the impact one gun can have.\n\nOne of the 3,000 illegal guns the New York Police Department seized “was stolen in July 27, 2020. It was used in six acts of violence. Individual cases shooting individuals, shooting into a random crowd, the gun found its way on the streets of New York.”\n\n“It’s more than what we do locally. We need the assistance of the federal government to stop the flow of guns in our cities.”\n\n-- Kenneth Tran\n\nA community in pain:Uvalde forever changed after tragic shooting\n\n'We are a nation of gun violence survivors'\n\nNick Suplina, Senior Vice-President of Law and Policy for Everytown for Gun Safety, told the House Committee the latest string of mass shootings shows it is “a uniquely American problem.”\n\nHe pointed out to lawmakers that mass shootings only make up a small fraction of gun deaths compared to “homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings.”\n\n“We estimate that one half of all Americans have been touched by gun violence either directly or through someone they care for. In other words, we are a nation of gun violence survivors,” said Suplina.\n\nSuplina directed criticism towards the gun industry. “The gun industry is using fear to sell guns and it believes that mass shootings are great for gun sales. They are making money on these tragedies,” said Suplina.\n\n- Kenneth Tran\n\nDinosaurs, Spider-Man, TikTok:Texas man donates custom caskets for Uvalde shooting victims\n\n'The same debates'\n\nGreg Jackson Jr, executive director for the Community Action Fund, a gun violence advocacy group, was shot near the Capitol while walking home in 2013.\n\nJackson Jr said Wednesday he \"didn't feel welcomed at the hospital\" and instead was met by police who \"treated him as a suspect first, and patient second.\"\n\n\"I was watching members of Congress have the same debates that we're having right now., that was 9 years. ago.\"\n\n-- Merdie Nzanga\n\nMore:Teacher closed door gunman used to enter school, authorities say; Uvalde community lays first victims to rest\n\n‘Our God-given right to defend ourselves’: Mother of DC victim\n\nLucretia Hughes' life changed forever in April 2016 when she learned her 19-year-old son Emmanuel was shot in the head at a party while playing dominoes.\n\n\"My ex-husband answered the phone and let out a blood-curdling scream, a scream of pain from the depths of his soul,\" she said.\n\nHughes, a member of D.C. Project - Women for Gun Rights, said that her organization \"believes education is the key to safety\" regarding guns and \"not ineffective legislation.\"\n\nHughes wants Congress to act on stricter gun control measures but believes in the right for people to defend themselves.\n\n\"Despite living with the heartache of losing my son daily, I believe it is our God-given right to defend ourselves from any act of violence.\"\n\n-- Merdie Nzanga\n\nMore:Matthew McConaughey calls for 'gun responsibility' in op-ed after Uvalde school shooting\n\n‘Frustrated, heartbroken’: Former teacher says inaction is acceptance\n\nBecky Pringle, now president of the National Education Association, spoke to the House Committee about her time as a teacher watching mass shootings unfold.\n\n“As a teacher with three decades of experience, I am frustrated, I am heartbroken, I am angry, that this is where we are 23 years after Columbine,” said Pringle. She and her fellow teachers had been falsely comforted “by the belief that this society would never let it happen again,” she said.\n\n“But the list continued to grow didn’t it? Virginia-Tech, Sandy Hook, Marjorie Stoneman Douglass, and now Robb Elementary.”\n\n“Is this who we are? Is it?” asked Pringle. “Our country has already experienced nearly 240 mass shootings in 2022 alone.” If trends continue, Pringle says there will be 22,255 more gun-related deaths this year.\n\n“Inaction equals acceptance of the unacceptable,” said Pringle.\n\n-Kenneth Tran\n\nGun violence 'killing more Americans than war': New York City Mayor Eric Adams pleads for action\n\nNew York City Mayor Eric Adams testified to members of Congress in support of stronger gun control policies\n\n“We are facing a crisis that is killing more Americans than war. A crisis that is now the number one cause of death for our young people. A crisis that is flooding our cities faster than we can take them off the street,” said Adams.\n\nAdams told the House committee the New York Police Department so far this year has seized over 3,000 illegal guns and said there is no indication the flow of illegal weapons will stop.\n\n- Kenneth Tran\n\nWhat is a mass shooting?:There's no consensus definition, but here's what you should know\n\nArmed man arrested near Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh's home\n\nEven as the House hearing was underway, news emerged that an armed man, who allegedly made threats against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, was arrested early Wednesday near the justice's Maryland home, according to a court spokesperson.\n\nThe suspect, who was not immediately identified, was arrested about 1:50 a.m., and transported to a local Montgomery County, Maryland Police district.\n\nArmed man arrested near Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh's home; made threats against the justice\n\n'Something needs to change': Miah Cerrillo’s father testifies\n\nSpeaking through tears, Miguel Cerrillo implored Congress to act on gun reform.\n\nThe father of 11-year-old Uvalde survivor Miah Cerrillo cried as he talked about nearly losing her in the mass shooting.\n\n“I wish something will change not only for kids, but every single kid in the world because schools are not safe anymore,” he said. “Something needs to change.”\n\n-Candy Woodall\n\n‘I don't want it to happen again,' Miah Cerrillo testifies\n\nThe most powerful voice in the hearing came from fourth-grader Miah Cerrillo, an 11-year-old who survived the Uvalde mass shooting with unbearable ingenuity.\n\nShe smeared her murdered friend’s blood on herself to play dead and stay alive. She called 911 for help, though help didn’t arrive for more than an hour.\n\nMiah told members of Congress Wednesday about her fears and why she wants change.\n\n“I don’t feel safe at school,” she said in a pre-recorded video. “I don’t want it to happen again.”\n\nWhen asked if she thinks it will happen again, she shook her up and down and said “yes.”\n\n-Candy Woodall\n\nUvalde pediatrician haunted by memories\n\nDr. Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician at Uvalde Memorial Hospital, said he is haunted by memories of screams and bloodshed from the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.\n\n“I will never forget what I saw that day,” he said.\n\nHe saw parents sobbing – the mothers’ cries he will never get out of his head.\n\nHe saw fourth-grader Miah Cerrillo in the hallway, her white shirt covered in blood and her shoulder bleeding from shrapnel.\n\nGuerrero knew her as the girl who survived liver surgery as a baby. On May 24, she was a survivor of a mass shooting.\n\nSchool was almost out in two days. He expected to be treating sprained ankles from summer camp. Instead, he treated wounds from an assault rifle and saw the children who were “decapitated” in the massacre.\n\n-Candy Woodall\n\nBuffalo shooting victim’s mother: Lawmakers who don’t support stricter gun laws ‘should be voted out’\n\nZeneta Everhart, the mother of Zaire Goodman, a survivor of the Buffalo shooting delivered impassioned testimony to the House committee.\n\n\"Parents who provide their children with guns should be held accountable,\" Everhart said. She said lawmakers need to pass stricter gun laws, saying those who do not support such changes are allowing mass shootings to continue and “should be voted out.\"\n\nAs Buffalo victims testify:Race and history circle us\n\nEverhart described her son’s injuries in detail and said lawmakers who don't support change should come to her house and clean his bullet wounds.\n\n“My son Zaire has a hole in the right side of his neck, two on his back, and another on his left leg, caused by an exploding bullet by an AR-15,\" she told the committee. \"As I cleaned his wounds, I could feel pieces of that bullet in his back. Shrapnel will be left inside of his body for the rest of his life.\"\n\nShe added: \"If after hearing from me and the other people testifying here today, does not move you to act on gun laws, I invite you to my home to help me clean Zaire's wounds.\"\n\n-Merdie Nzanga and Kenneth Tran\n\nMiah Cerrillo speaks in video, father speaks at hearing\n\nMiah Cerrillo is sharing her testimony with Congress in a pre-recorded video that will be aired Wednesday morning during the hearing.\n\nHer father, Miguel Cerrillo, will share additional brief remarks in person, committee Chair Maloney said.\n\n-Candy Woodall\n\n‘A uniquely American tragedy’\n\nRep. Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, launched Wednesday’s hearing by saying she wanted to “examine the destruction and heartbreak” gripping the nation after the recent series of mass shootings, including one in her home state of New York.\n\nOn May 14, in a Buffalo supermarket, an 18-year-old killed 10 Black shoppers in what the FBI described as a racially motivated mass shooting.\n\nTen days later, an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.\n\n“We are failing our children, and we are failing each other,” Maloney said in her opening remarks.\n\nShe said gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and “a uniquely American tragedy.”\n\nMaloney emphasized that she supports the Second Amendment, but she doesn’t support outdated gun laws that allow 18-year-olds to get weapons of war and carry out violent crimes.\n\n-Candy Woodall\n\nHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi, advocates holding rally\n\nAs gun violence survivors and victims’ families testify before the committee, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leaders will join gun-safety advocates Wednesday morning outside the Capitol to rally for tighter gun laws.\n\nThe chairman of the House Gun Violence Taskforce, Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., will attend the event along with Pelosi, gun violence survivors and hundreds of gun safety advocates. They plan to gather at 11 a.m. Wednesday in front of the Capitol reflecting pool.\n\nAlso in attendance will be: Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Ga., who lost a son to gun violence; Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser; Art Acevedo, former police chief in Houston, Austin and Miami; and others.\n\n-Candy Woodall\n\nThree GOP witnesses added to hearing\n\nThe Republicans are adding two witnesses to deliver testimony during Wednesday morning’s House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on gun control.\n\nLucretia Hughes, of the DC Project and Women for Gun Rights, will be part of the first panel of witnesses, along with with Miah Cerrillo and families of victims. Amy Swearer, a legal fellow with the Heritage Foundation, will speak during the second panel, which also includes gun-safety advocates and the Buffalo police commissioner.\n\nDemocrats have also added New York Mayor Eric Adams to the second panel. He has been calling for reform, as his city grapples with an uptick in gun violence.\n\n-Candy Woodall\n\nWhat we know about the House hearing\n\nThe hearing Wednesday comes during an emotionally charged week on Capitol Hill. It began with a rally Monday for gun safety laws and has included tense negotiations in the Senate, heated debate in the House and passionate hearings in both chambers.\n\nMcConaughey, a native of Uvalde, has been meeting with members of both parties to encourage them to work together, he said during a White House briefing Tuesday.\n\nLawmakers are facing mounting pressure to respond to the scourge of violence, particularly after mass shootings in Texas and New York gripped the nation last month.\n\nMembers of the House Oversight and Reform Committee will hear from a young survivor, victims' parents, a community pediatrician, advocates and others who are reeling from trauma after the mass killings on May 24 at Robb Elementary in Uvalde and the May 14 racially motivated massacre of 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket in a Black neighborhood.\n\nThe committee said the hearing will examine \"the urgent need for Congress to pass commonsense legislation that a majority of Americans support.\"\n\nDemocrats who have majority leadership on the committee want to ban assault weapons, boost background checks and pass \"red flag\" laws, which allow courts to remove firearms from those deemed a threat to themselves or others.\n\nHearing details:Uvalde and Buffalo survivors, families to testify before House Oversight committee on mass shootings\n\nWhat we know about the witnesses\n\nThe hearing is expected to be lengthy and emotional, with two panels of witnesses.\n\nMiah is part of the first panel, which includes Zeneta Everhart, the mother of Buffalo shooting victim Zaire Goodman; Felix and Kimberly Rubio, the parents of Uvalde shooting victim Lexi Rubio; and Dr. Roy Guerrero, the sole pediatrician in Uvalde.\n\nThose panelists will offer their stories, experiences and trauma just weeks after the mass shootings. They will not field questions from lawmakers, according to a spokesperson for the committee.\n\nThe second panel of witnesses includes Greg Jackson, Jr., executive director of Community Justice Action Fund; Joseph Gamaglia, Buffalo police commissioner; Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association; and Nick Suplina, senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety.\n\nThe other side:Everyone knows the NRA. Who's on the other side? These groups lobby for curbs on firearms\n\nWhat we know about the House Oversight and Reform Committee\n\nThe large committee that will hear the testimony includes 25 Democrats and 19 Republicans.\n\nDemocratic members include Maloney, who is in an intense primary battle with fellow New York Democrat Jerry Nadler; Jamie Raskin, who is also busy this week on the Jan. 6 committee this week investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive who has been calling for reform; Cori Bush, Ayanna Pressley and others.\n\nRepublican members include Jim Jordan, an outspoken Republican member of the GOP Freedom Caucus who opposes most gun restrictions; Andy Biggs of Arizona; Nancy Mace of South Carolina; Byron Donalds and Scott Franklin of Florida, where reform measures have passed, and others.\n\nA push for reform\n\nThe House Oversight and Reform committee is the latest panel to examine the gun violence epidemic.\n\nHouse Judiciary members last week passed a package of six bills, dubbed the Protecting Our Kids Act, that passed along party lines.\n\n'Shame on us!':House committee passes gun bills that are likely to die in Senate\n\nSenate committees this week are holding hearings on gun laws and white nationalism, which the FBI said was a factor in the Buffalo shooting.\n\nThe full House will vote on the Protecting Our Kids Act, a \"red flag\" bill and an assault weapons ban this week, according to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But all those measures are expected to hit a roadblock in the Senate, where Democrats do not have the 10 Republican votes needed for their bills to survive a filibuster.\n\nSens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., are leading a bipartisan group of senators in negotiations on a narrower gun-control package than House Democrats.\n\nThe senators' plans focus on red-flag laws, mental health and school safety.\n\nAs of Tuesday night, those Senate negotiations were ongoing.\n\nHalf of Republicans support stricter gun laws, poll shows\n\nAs lawmakers hash out bipartisan negotiations on Capitol Hill, an exclusive USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds half of Republicans support stricter gun laws.\n\nThe increase in GOP support – from 35% last year to 50% this month – marks a double-digit increase after a series of horrific mass shootings at schools, stores, streets and houses of worship.\n\nA party shift \"could boost the prospects for Congress to tighten federal gun laws, an effort that has failed for decades,\" according to previous coverage.\n\nGOP senator now open to reform\n\nRepublican Sen. Cynthia Lummis, of Wyoming, who has rigidly supported Second Amendment rights and earned a \"lifetime A-plus\" rating from the National Rifle Association,doesn't seem to be an obvious choice to support bipartisan efforts to reforming the nation's gun safety laws.\n\nBut the number of constituents calling her office have made her rethink her position.\n\n\"I've been a little surprised at the phone calls we've been getting and how receptive Wyoming callers seem to be to address guns in some manner,\" she told CNN. \"I am of the opinion that it's more of a mental health issue than a gun issue. But, you know, I'm listening to what people from Wyoming are saying.\"\n\nShe is considering voting for bipartisan measures in the Senate that would change \"red flag\" laws, open juvenile criminal records, and boost mental health programs and school security.\n\n\"That's something that I'd be inclined to want to look at,\" Lummis told CNN.\n\nCandy Woodall is a Congress reporter for USA TODAY. She can be reached at cwoodall@usatoday.com or on Twitter at @candynotcandace.\n\nThis coverage is only possible with support from our readers. Sign up today for a digital subscription.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/08"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/02/politics/joe-biden-guns-speech/index.html", "title": "Biden makes fervent plea for stricter gun laws: 'How much more ...", "text": "(CNN) President Joe Biden issued a fervent appeal Thursday for stricter gun laws -- including a ban on assault weapons, tougher background check laws and a higher minimum age of purchase -- as a spate of gun massacres have left the nation shaken and prompted new discussions on Capitol Hill about how to prevent them.\n\nSpeaking from the White House Cross Hall, where somber lines of candles had been lit as a backdrop, Biden ratcheted up pressure on Congress to act after previous shootings failed to produce any meaningful new laws.\n\n\"How much more carnage are we willing to accept?\" Biden asked, demanding Republicans in particular end their blockade of gun control votes.\n\nIt was the President's most forceful and specific call for gun control since recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas , and Buffalo, New York . In his speech, Biden sought both to encourage action and threaten opponents of new gun laws with the wrath of voters, majorities of whom support some type of new action to prevent mass shootings.\n\nIn addition to reinstating a ban on assault weapons, Biden urged Congress to expand background check requirements for gun purchases, create new rules for safely storing weapons, enact new \"red flag\" laws that would prevent gun sales to those with criminal records, repeal liability shields for gun manufacturers and provide more mental health services for students.\n\nMost, if not all, of those items currently appear unlikely to gain approval in the evenly divided Senate, where a bipartisan group of senators is currently determining where action might be possible.\n\nStill, Biden sought to use the moment -- with Americans rattled by a seemingly unending spree of killings -- to rally the nation behind a plan that most Republicans oppose.\n\n\"My God, the fact that the majority of the Senate Republicans don't want any of these proposals even to be debated or come up for a vote, I find unconscionable,\" Biden said in his remarks, a rare evening address meant to reach the largest number of viewers.\n\n\"We can't fail the American people again,\" he continued.\n\nFifty-six candles burned behind him to represent victims of gun violence in all US states and territories.\n\nThe remarks amounted to Biden's most fulsome speech about guns since a massacre at a Texas elementary school last week. He said the recent spate of horrific mass shootings must impel the nation to take action to prevent further massacres by passing gun restrictions.\n\nAfter meeting families mourning their slain loved ones in Buffalo and Uvalde, Biden said the message from them was clear: \"Do something.\"\n\n\"Nothing has been done,\" Biden said. \"This time that can't be true. This time we must actually do something.\"\n\nIn the little more than a week since the Uvalde shooting , a string of additional mass shootings have unfolded in states across the country, including in Tulsa on Wednesday. That shooting left five dead, including the gunman.\n\nIt was the second time Biden has delivered an emotional evening speech at the White House on mass shootings, also speaking in the wake of the Robb Elementary School assault. Since then, however, Biden has only selectively waded into the debate over gun control, stopping short of endorsing any specific legislative action to prevent further carnage.\n\nHe offered more specific calls Thursday, including saying the age to purchase assault weapons must be raised from 18 to 21 if lawmakers cannot agree on an outright ban on those firearms.\n\n\"We must at least raise the age to be able to purchase one to 21,\" the President said.\n\n\"For the children we've lost, the children we can save, for the nation we love, let's hear the call and the cry. Let's meet the moment. Let us finally do something.\"\n\nJUST WATCHED 'A big change': Bash reacts to Biden's shift in response to recent mass shootings Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH 'A big change': Bash reacts to Biden's shift in response to recent mass shootings 02:18\n\nBoth Biden and his advisers have suggested they have exhausted their options on executive action to address guns, though continue to explore avenues for unilateral action.\n\nSpeaking a day after consoling families in Texas, Biden expressed limited hope that certain Republicans, like Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and one of his top allies, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, could be convinced to support some type of new gun laws.\n\nMcConnell has deputized Cornyn to begin talks with Democrats on some type of legislation to prevent further mass shootings, though the discussions are still in their preliminary stages.\n\nSen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who participated in a Wednesday bipartisan meeting on gun safety, said he and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham are in talks over changes to red flag laws and there still is \"significant\" work to do.\n\nSenators are looking at strengthening state laws allowing authorities to take away weapons from individuals deemed a risk, known as red flag laws.\n\nBlumenthal called the conversation \"productive and encouraging\" and said negotiators are \"all speaking multiple times a day.\"\n\nMeanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would bring legislation to ban military-style assault weapons to the floor next week as the chamber moves to address gun violence.\n\nThis story has been updated with additional developments on Thursday.", "authors": ["Kevin Liptak", "Kaitlan Collins"], "publish_date": "2022/06/02"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2022/06/07/novavax-matthew-mcconaughey-midterm-elections-adoption-scams-its-tuesdays-news/7525667001/", "title": "Novavax, Matthew McConaughey, midterm elections, adoption ...", "text": "An FDA panel recommended Novavax's COVID-19 vaccine be the fourth allowed for use in the USA. Matthew McConaughey urged an end to gun violence during a speech at the White House. And do male mice really hate bananas?\n\n👋 What's up? Besides gas prices. Laura Davis here, comin' in hot with bad jokes and Tuesday's news.\n\nBut first, why are gas prices up again? Another week, another record high. We're breaking down what's driving the surge in prices – and it might not be what you think.\n\nThe Short List is a snappy USA TODAY news roundup. Subscribe to the newsletter here or text messages here.\n\nNew COVID-19 vaccine could be coming soon\n\nA federal advisory committee recommended Tuesday that a fourth COVID-19 vaccine be authorized for use in the USA, this one from Novavax, a Maryland-based company. The vaccine, which was supported by $1.8 billion in taxpayer funding, relies on a more traditional approach than those from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, which have been used by more than three-quarters of Americans. Before the vaccine can become available, the head of the FDA must agree with the advisory panel that the benefits of Novavax's vaccine outweigh its risks. Then, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel and the CDC's director must sign off. That process is likely to take a few weeks at least. Novavax said it has millions of doses available and ready to be shipped once it receives authorization.\n\nAnother summer COVID-19 wave? Here's why this one is different.\n\nMatthew McConaughey urges end to gun violence in White House speech\n\nActor Matthew McConaughey used the megaphone of the White House and his own star power Tuesday to urge leaders in Washington to address gun violence in honor of the young victims of the mass shooting in his hometown of Uvalde, Texas. After meeting with President Joe Biden, McConaughey choked up as he shared the victims' stories and pressed for action. “This moment is different. We’re in a window of opportunity right now that we have not been in before, a window where it seems like real change – real change – can happen,\" he said. McConaughey was born in Uvalde, the town where he said he was taught \"to revere the power and the capability of the tool that we call a gun\" and where 19 children and two teachers were massacred at an elementary school last month.\n\nWhat everyone's talking about\n\nThe Short List is free, but several stories we link to are subscriber-only. Consider supporting our journalism and become a USA TODAY digital subscriber today.\n\n2022 midterms: Seven states hold primary elections\n\nVoters in seven states make their choices Tuesday in primary elections that will set fall matchups for House and Senate seats, governorships and a host of other offices. California, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota hold primaries. The races aren't likely to offer huge drama, but congressional contests in several states feature politicians facing ethical hurdles or former President Donald Trump's disapproval. The roster of those running includes a California congressman who voted to impeach Trump, a party switcher in New Jersey who angered Trump by supporting an infrastructure bill and the last Democrat in Iowa's congressional delegation. Based on the results of primaries in May, many voters are concerned about the economy, abortion rights and gun control, and immigration and the border generally take a back seat. Here's USA TODAY's cheat sheet on what races to watch.\n\nWhy do bananas stress out male mice?\n\nThey're tasty. They're healthy. But apparently, bananas are pretty stressful for male mice. Scientists at McGill University accidentally discovered that bananas create stress in male mice because of a compound inside the fruit, according to an article published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances. Jeffrey Mogil, E. P. Taylor chair in pain studies at McGill University, said his team was doing experiments with male and female mice when a student noticed the male mice were doing something odd: When late-pregnant or lactating female mice were near the male mice, the males showed signs of stress and ran around their cages more than normal. Where do bananas come in? A compound called pentyl acetate is found in the urine of late-pregnant and lactating female mice, Mogil said, and a similar chemical compound is found in bananas. When the scientists tested the mice with banana oil, sure enough: stressed-out mice. Read more from the study here.\n\nReal quick\n\n👉 Tuesday's Ukraine news: US officials sail away with $325M Russian-owned superyacht; Zelenskyy says Ukraine troops \"not capable of advancing\" without more long-range weapons. Read the latest from Ukraine.\n\nNow trending: Instagram adoption scams\n\nSocial media platforms are a relatively new frontier for those seeking to adopt – particularly now that the demand for newborns exceeds the supply. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter are taking on the liaison role traditionally played by adoption agencies. They live outside the bounds of most oversight and regulation, which can lead to financial scams, emotional damage and a lack of support services for birth mothers and adoptive families alike. A USA TODAY investigation found breakdowns at every point in the adoption process, including flawed home studies and a lack of mental health services. Keep reading: How social media has influenced the way people adopt kids.\n\nA break from the news\n\n👨‍🍳 Treat the grillmaster: 15 Father’s Day gifts for dads who grill.\n\n15 Father’s Day gifts for dads who grill. 🤷‍♀️ Ask HR: Fired after a manic episode at work. Do I have any recourse?\n\nFired after a manic episode at work. Do I have any recourse? 🎶 Still listening to the same music you did in high school? Me, too. How to see it all on your Spotify Pie Chart.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/07"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/23/politics/biden-taiwan-china-japan-intl-hnk/index.html", "title": "Biden says US would respond 'militarily' if China attacked Taiwan ...", "text": "Tokyo (CNN) President Joe Biden said Monday that the United States would intervene militarily if China attempts to take Taiwan by force, a warning that appeared to deviate from the deliberate ambiguity traditionally held by Washington.\n\nThe White House quickly downplayed the comments, saying they don't reflect a change in US policy. It's the third time in recent months -- including during a CNN town hall in October -- that Biden has said the US would protect Taiwan from a Chinese attack, only to have the White House walk back those remarks.\n\nDuring a joint news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, Biden was asked if the US would be willing to go further to help Taiwan in the event of an invasion than it did with Ukraine.\n\n\"You didn't want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons. Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?\" a reporter asked.\n\n\"Yes,\" Biden replied. \"That's the commitment we made.\"\n\n\"We agree with the One China policy. We signed on to it, and all the attendant agreements made from there, but the idea that it can be taken by force, just taken by force, is (just not) appropriate,\" he said.\n\nUnder the \"One China\" policy, the US acknowledges China's position that Taiwan is part of China, but has never officially recognized Beijing's claim to the self-governing island of 23 million. The US provides Taiwan defensive weapons, but has remained intentionally ambiguous on whether it would intervene militarily in the event of a Chinese attack.\n\nJUST WATCHED Biden's balancing act amid tensions between mainland China and Taiwan Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Biden's balancing act amid tensions between mainland China and Taiwan 02:41\n\nBiden's strong warning was made right on China's doorstep during his first trip to Asia as President. The visit is aimed at uniting allies and partners to counter China's rising influence. It also came a day before Biden is scheduled to attend the second in-person summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) -- an informal grouping between the US, Japan, Australia and India that has alarmed Beijing.\n\nSeveral of Biden's top administration officials were caught off-guard by the remarks, several aides told CNN, adding that they were not expecting Biden to be so unequivocal.\n\nIn a statement following Biden's comments, a White House official said the US' official position remained unchanged.\n\n\"As the President said, our policy has not changed. He reiterated our One China policy and our commitment to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. He also reiterated our commitment under the Taiwan Relations Act to provide Taiwan with the military means to defend itself,\" the official said.\n\nChina expresses 'firm opposition' to comments\n\nWithin hours, China had expressed its \"strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition\" to Biden's comments, saying it will not allow any external force to interfere in its \"internal affairs.\"\n\n\"On issues concerning China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and other core interests, there is no room for compromise,\" said Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.\n\n\"We urged the US side to earnestly follow the One China principle ... be cautious in words and deeds on the Taiwan issue, and not send any wrong signal to pro-Taiwan independence and separatist forces — so it won't cause serious damage to the situation across the Taiwan Strait and China-US relations.\"\n\nChina's Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Zhu Fenglian added, \"We urge the US to stop saying or doing anything in violation of the one-China principle and the three China-US Joint Communiqués. ... Those who play with fire will certainly burn themselves.\"\n\nTaiwan lies fewer than 110 miles (177 kilometers) off the coast of China. For more than 70 years the two sides have been governed separately, but that hasn't stopped China's ruling Communist Party from claiming the island as its own — despite having never controlled it.\n\nChinese leader Xi Jinping has said that \"reunification\" between China and Taiwan is inevitable and refused to rule out the use of force. Tensions between Beijing and Taipei are at the highest they've been in recent decades, with the Chinese military sending record numbers of war planes near the island.\n\nJoanne Ou, a spokesperson for Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told CNN that it \"expresses sincere welcome and gratitude to President Biden and the United States government for reiterating its rock solid commitment to Taiwan.\"\n\nBiden compares potential invasion of Taiwan to Ukraine war\n\nBiden on Monday compared a potential invasion of Taiwan by China to Russia's invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, warning, \"It will dislocate the entire region,\" and emphasizing \"Russia has to pay a long-term price for its actions.\"\n\n\"And the reason I bother to say this, not just about Ukraine -- if, in fact, after all (Russian President Vladimir Putin has) done, there's a rapprochement ... between the Ukrainians and Russia, and these sanctions are not continued to be sustained in many ways, then what signal does that send to China about the cost of attempting, attempting to take Taiwan by force?\"\n\nBiden said that China is \"already flirting with danger right now by flying so close and all the maneuvers they're undertaking.\"\n\n\"But the United States is committed, we made a commitment, we support the One China policy, we support all we've done in the past, but that does not mean, it does not mean that China has the ability, has the, excuse me, jurisdiction to go in and use force to take over Taiwan,\" he added.\n\nAt the press conference, Kishida also reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.\n\n\"Attempts to change the status quo by force, like Russia's aggression against Ukraine, should never be tolerated in the Indo-Pacific, above all, in East Asia,\" he said.\n\n\"As the regional security environment becomes increasingly severe, I reaffirmed with President Biden that we need to speedily strengthen the deterrence and response of the Japan-US alliance,\" he said, adding that he conveyed his determination to \"fundamentally strengthen Japan's defense capability.\"\n\nThis story has been updated with additional reporting and reaction.", "authors": ["Kevin Liptak", "Donald Judd", "Nectar Gan"], "publish_date": "2022/05/23"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/25/sport/steve-kerr-texas-shooting-gun-violence-spt-intl/index.html", "title": "Steve Kerr: 'I'm tired of the moments of silence,' says Warriors coach ...", "text": "Marco Reus: 'Haaland can be one of the best strikers in the world'\n\nDortmund's Norwegian forward Erling Braut Haaland (L) celebrates with Dortmund's German forward Marco Reus scoring during the German Cup (DFB Pokal) final football match RB Leipzig v BVB Borussia Dortmund, in Berlin on May 13, 2021. - RESTRICTIONS: ACCORDING TO DFB RULES IMAGE SEQUENCES TO SIMULATE VIDEO IS NOT ALLOWED DURING MATCH TIME. MOBILE (MMS) USE IS NOT ALLOWED DURING AND FOR FURTHER TWO HOURS AFTER THE MATCH. == RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE == FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT DFB DIRECTLY AT +49 69 67880 (Photo by ANNEGRET HILSE / POOL / AFP) / RESTRICTIONS: ACCORDING TO DFB RULES IMAGE SEQUENCES TO SIMULATE VIDEO IS NOT ALLOWED DURING MATCH TIME. MOBILE (MMS) USE IS NOT ALLOWED DURING AND FOR FURTHER TWO HOURS AFTER THE MATCH. == RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE == FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT DFB DIRECTLY AT +49 69 67880 / RESTRICTIONS: ACCORDING TO DFB RULES IMAGE SEQUENCES TO SIMULATE VIDEO IS NOT ALLOWED DURING MATCH TIME. MOBILE (MMS) USE IS NOT ALLOWED DURING AND FOR FURTHER TWO HOURS AFTER THE MATCH. == RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE == FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT DFB DIRECTLY AT +49 69 67880 (Photo by ANNEGRET HILSE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)\n\nMercedes' British driver Lewis Hamilton (L) and and NFL quarterback Tom Brady attend the Big Pilot Charity Challenge at the Miami Beach Golf Club, in Miami Beach, Florida on May 4, 2022. (Photo by Giorgio VIERA / AFP) (Photo by GIORGIO VIERA/AFP via Getty Images)\n\nMADRID, SPAIN - MAY 08: Carlos Alcaraz of Spain poses for photographs with the troph after his straight sets victory during the Men's Singles final match against Alexander Zverev of Germany during day eleven of Mutua Madrid Open at La Caja Magica on May 08, 2022 in Madrid, Spain (Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)\n\nIs Haaland the 'last piece in the jigsaw puzzle' for City's UCL hopes?\n\nMMA champion Yaroslav Amosov speaks out against Russian invasion of Ukraine: 'This is not saving, this is destruction'\n\nDORTMUND, GERMANY - MARCH 26: Borussia Dortmund's coach Juergen Klopp and Marco Reus after the 0-0 result in the Bundesliga match between Borussia Dortmund and FC Schalke 04 at Signal Iduna Park on March 26, 2014 in Dortmund, Germany. (Photo by Alexandre Simoes/Borussia Dortmund via Getty Images)\n\nRed Bull Paper Wings is the official paper plane world championship and the 2022 edition saw a record number of pilots competing in the categories of Distance, Airtime and Aerobatics. The national finalists participating at the sixth-ever World Final at Hangar-7 in Salzburg were the elite of more than 61,000 hopefuls from over 60 countries who'd taken part in more than 500 Qualiflyer events and, in the case of Aerobatics, submitted videos online. // Lazar Krstic of Serbia performs in the Longest Distance discipline during the Red Bull Paper Wings World Finals 2022 in Salzburg, Austria on May 14, 2022. // Philipp Carl Riedl / Red Bull Content Pool via AP Images // For more content, pictures and videos like this please go to http://www.redbullcontentpool.com\n\nAurélien Tchouaméni lifts the lid on his future: 'It's a good situation to be in [...] But at the end it's just social media'\n\nMonaco's midfielder Aurelien Tchouameni celebrates after scoring during the French L1 football match between Lille OSC and AS Monaco at the Pierre Mauroy Stadium in Villeneuve d'Ascq, northern France on May 6, 2022. (Photo by DENIS CHARLET / AFP) (Photo by DENIS CHARLET/AFP via Getty Images)\n\nDALLAS, TX - MAY 24: Damion Lee #1 of the Golden State Warriors speaks to the media after Game 4 of the 2022 NBA Playoffs Western Conference Finals on May 24, 2022 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2022 NBAE (Photo by Noah Graham/NBAE via Getty Images)\n\n'Maybe we are alone': Jude Bellingham questions whether authorities 'care' about racist abuse directed at Black footballers\n\nDORTMUND, GERMANY - MAY 14: Jude Bellingham of Dortmund is seen during the Bundesliga match between Borussia Dortmund and Hertha BSC at Signal Iduna Park on May 14, 2022 in Dortmund, Germany. (Photo by Lars Baron/Getty Images)\n\nCNN —\n\nGolden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr made an impassioned plea to take stronger action against gun violence in the United States after 19 children and two adults were killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.\n\nKerr refused to speak about basketball ahead of Game 4 of the Warriors’ series against the Dallas Mavericks, instead raising his voice as he railed against gun violence in the wake of Tuesday’s shooting.\n\n“In the last 10 days, we’ve had elderly Black people killed in a supermarket in Buffalo, we’ve had Asian churchgoers killed in Southern California, now we have children murdered at school,” Kerr told reporters at the start of the press conference.\n\n“When are we going to do something? I’m tired. I’m so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there … I’m tired of the moments of silence. Enough.\n\n“There’s 50 senators right now who refuse to vote on H.R. 8, which is a background check rule that the House passed a couple years ago. It’s been sitting there for two years. There’s a reason they won’t vote on it: to hold onto power.”\n\nLast year, the House passed H.R. 8 to expand background checks on all commercial gun sales – the first congressional move on significant gun control since the Democrats won the White House.\n\nCurrently, background checks are not required for gun sales and transfers by unlicensed and private sellers.\n\n“I’m fed up. I’ve had enough,” continued Kerr, whose father was serving as the president of the American University of Beirut when he was assassinated by gunmen in 1984.\n\nKerr stands for a moment of silence following Tuesday's mass shooting. Tom Pennington/Getty Images North America/Getty Images\n\n“We’re going to play the game tonight. But I want every person here, every person listening to this, to think about your own child or grandchild, mother or father, sister, brother. How would you feel if this happened to you today?”\n\nTuesday’s shooting by a lone, 18-year-old gunman, who was killed by law enforcement, was the second mass shooting in the US in less than two weeks after a different 18-year-old gunman trafficking in White supremacist theories killed 10 Black Americans in Buffalo.\n\nTonight we held a moment of silence for those who lost their lives in multiple tragedies in TX.\n\n\n\nWe play tonight’s game for Coach Michael Coyne, who lost his life on Sunday returning home from our game, & the victims of the horrific shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas. pic.twitter.com/cqMF5RoMbW — Dallas Mavericks (@dallasmavs) May 25, 2022\n\nAhead of Tuesday’s game in Dallas, which was preceded by a moment of silence, Warriors guard Damion Lee joined Kerr in calling for gun reform.\n\n“It’s just sad,” Lee told reporters. “Obviously, everyone saw Steve’s pregame presser. Those are my exact same sentiments. It’s sad the world that we live in. We need to reform that.\n\n“Guns shouldn’t be as easily accessible. Like, it’s easier to get a gun than baby formula right now. That’s unbelievable in this country that we live in.”\n\nThe NBA said in a statement that it is “devastated by the horrific shooting that took place today in Uvalde, Texas,” while Mavs head coach Jason Kidd said ahead of the game that his team would play “with heavy hearts.”\n\n“We’re going to try to play the game. We have no choice. The game is not going to be canceled. But we have to find a way to be pro, find a way to win and move forward,” said Kidd.\n\n“But the news of what’s happening, not just here in Texas but throughout our country, is sad.”\n\nThe Mavs won the game 119-109 and trail the Warriors 3-1 in the Western Conference Finals.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/25"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/18/politics/biden-xi-call-russia-ukraine-importance/index.html", "title": "Biden-Xi call: 5 reasons it is so important amid Russia-Ukraine war ...", "text": "Washington (CNN) When President Joe Biden spoke Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping, it wasn't just another phone call in an ongoing flurry of telephone diplomacy.\n\nThis call -- which went nearly two hours, according to the White House -- comes at a potential turning point for ties between the United States and China. White House officials are watching with growing concern the budding partnership between Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and China's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine has proved troubling to western observers. Beijing appears to be neither fully supportive nor directly opposed , making for an uncertain stance Biden hopes both to decipher and influence in the call.\n\nThe White House said after the call that Biden \"described the implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia.\"\n\n\"The President underscored his support for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis,\" the White House said. The White House said Biden and Xi agreed to maintain \"open lines of communication.\"\n\nConflict and confrontation is not in anyone's interest, Xi told Biden at the start of the call, according to Chinese state media.\n\n\"Peace and security are the most cherished treasures of the international community,\" CCTV quoted Xi as saying on the call.\n\nWhite House officials said ahead of the call that they expected it could turn intense; a preliminary meeting between the two leaders' aides stretched for seven hours earlier this week . And Biden upped the stakes when he alluded to his call a day beforehand, declaring his Chinese counterpart \"does not believe democracies can be sustained in the 21st century.\"\n\n1. The call came at a critical moment in the Russia-Ukraine war\n\nBiden spoke to Xi at a key juncture. According to US officials, China is weighing whether to provide military or financial assistance to Russia, which has requested it as its military sustains major losses in Ukraine. If China agrees, it could dampen its relationship with the West for decades to come.\n\n\"We're concerned that they're considering directly assisting Russia with military equipment to use in Ukraine,\" Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday, confirming what other US officials had been warning for days.\n\nAlready, the United States has conveyed to some NATO allies it believes China has some willingness to support Russia, though Moscow denies asking for it and Beijing says it's not providing any help.\n\nAmerican officials say they believe Xi has been unsettled by Russia's invasion and the performance of Russia's military, which has experienced logistical and strategic setbacks since the invasion began more than two weeks ago.\n\nWatching from Beijing, Xi was caught off-guard that his own intelligence had not been able to predict what would happen, even though the United States had been warning of an invasion for weeks, the officials said.\n\n2. China could provide Russia with a range of support\n\nUS officials don't believe China would be willing to provide Russia with large offensive equipment like tanks or jets. Instead, officials said they believed it more likely China would send smaller items like meals, ammunition, spare parts or surveillance equipment -- if they send anything at all.\n\nOfficials said it was still possible China helps Russia alleviate the effect of withering Western sanctions through financial support, though it's unlikely the country would be able to completely blunt the effects of the US and European measures.\n\nOn their phone call, Biden hoped to make clear to Xi the downsides of assisting Russia's war, either through military or financial assistance. He was set to \"make clear that China will bear responsibility for any actions it takes to support Russia's aggression and we will not hesitate to impose costs,\" Blinken said ahead of the call.\n\nIt is widely assumed Xi will secure a historic third term in power during the Communist Party's 20th National Congress in Beijing this fall. During such an important year, western experts believe Xi will be particularly mindful of the economic risks posed by secondary-sanctions. Trade between the European Union and China topped $800 billion last year and US-China trade was over $750 billion, according to China's official data, while its trade with Russia was just under $150 billion.\n\nYet there remains an ongoing debate within the administration about what steps to take against China should it decide to assist Russia. Biden and his administration have declined to publicly discuss exactly what options they are considering, but have warned that there will be \"consequences\" for China if they support Russia.\n\n3. US must manage a 'cold-blooded' partnership between Russia and China\n\nEven before Russia invaded Ukraine, US officials were watching warily as Putin and Xi grew closer. CIA Director Bill Burns said last week the partnership was rooted in \"a lot of very cold-blooded reasons.\"\n\nThe two leaders declared their relationship had \"no limits\" in a lengthy document in February, when Putin visited Beijing for talks and to attend the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. The document saw China back Russia's central demand to the West, with both sides \"opposing further enlargement of NATO.\"\n\nSince then, the partnership without limits has been tested as Xi weighs how to respond to Russia's war in Ukraine. Beijing's evolving response -- from denying an invasion would happen to attempting to avoid Western condemnation by presenting itself as willing to participate in mediation -- has been closely monitored by the White House.\n\nUS officials have seen mixed signals. When China abstained from a United Nations reprimand vote against Russia, it was viewed as a sign of Beijing distancing itself. And a top Chinese official said last month that Ukraine's sovereignty must be respected.\n\nBut other signs have pointed toward a more accommodating stance, including China's amplification of Russian disinformation. And top US officials have said a lack of denunciation is enough indication of where China's allegiance lies.\n\n\"We believe China in particular has a responsibility to use its influence with President Putin and to defend the international rules and principles that it professes to support,\" Blinken said Thursday. \"Instead, it appears that China is moving in the opposite direction by refusing to condemn this aggression while seeking to portray itself as a neutral arbiter.\"\n\n4. American allies in Asia are watching China's reaction to Ukraine war closely\n\nRussia's invasion of Ukraine -- breaching its sovereignty and sending Europe into its worst conflict in decades -- has sent ripples of anxiety across the world. One place watching closely is Taiwan, the self-governing island claimed by China.\n\nBeijing has recently stepped-up military flights close to the island there and warned against American support. In the early days of the Ukraine conflict, there were fears Russia's invasion could portend a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, even though it did not appear one was imminent.\n\nAmerican officials have since downplayed the parallels, saying if anything, the united response to Russia may cause China to rethink whatever plans it had for Taiwan. Russia's invasion has galvanized not only the West and NATO but also countries in the Asia-Pacific -- an outcome American intelligence believed Xi was unprepared for, supposing instead that economic interests would prevent countries there from imposing severe sanctions.\n\nEven some on Biden's own national security team were surprised at how quickly some US allies in Asia, including Japan and Australia, were willing to slap sanctions on Russia following its invasion.\n\n5. Biden and Xi have a long history -- and very different worldviews\n\nBiden is fond of citing the long hours he spent with Xi when both were serving as their country's vice president. He has claimed to have spent more time with Xi than any other world leader.\n\nYet they haven't met face-to-face since Biden took office and Xi has not left China during the Covid pandemic. That has left them to meet in web conferences or speak on the phone, a dynamic Biden has said that he does not find ideal.\n\nHe and his team have worked to establish a policy of managed competition with China. They have left in place the tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump and criticized China for not upholding its commitments from a Trump-era trade deal.\n\nBefore the conflict in Ukraine, Biden appeared intent on refocusing American foreign policy toward Asia, where he views the competition between the US and China as a defining challenge of the next century.\n\nAnd while the Ukraine crisis has preoccupied the White House in recent weeks, officials insist they are still able to maintain their overriding vision.", "authors": ["Kevin Liptak"], "publish_date": "2022/03/18"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/25/politics/national-rifle-association-annual-meeting-what-to-know/index.html", "title": "NRA convention 2022: What to know about the annual meeting in ...", "text": "FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2021 photo, Donald Trump supporters participate in a rally in Washington, near the White House. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)\n\n'I can feel pieces of that bullet in his back': Survivor's mom testifies before Congress\n\nAttorney General William Barr participates in a press conference at the Department of Justice along with DOJ officials on February 10, 2020 in Washington, DC.\n\nDemonstrators join the \"March for Our Lives\" rally in Los Angeles, California, on June 11, 2022. Protesters are demonstrating across the US for tighter firearms laws to curb devastating gun violence plaguing the country.\n\nWhy adviser to four presidents says he's worried about a Biden vs Trump rematch\n\nWashington CNN —\n\nThe National Rifle Association is set to hold its 2022 annual meeting in Houston on Friday, bringing together its top brass and several notable conservatives, including former President Donald Trump, for the first time in three years.\n\nThe NRA’s annual meeting was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, but this year, the organization is moving ahead with its plans, holding the meeting at a time when both gun rights and the organization itself have come under intense scrutiny, especially after a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, left 21 dead.\n\nHere’s what we know about the 2022 annual meeting.\n\nWho is participating?\n\nDespite the controversy surrounding this year’s convention, a number of high-profile Republicans are set to participate in the event, with some scheduled to deliver speeches:\n\nTrump\n\nTexas Sen. Ted Cruz\n\nSouth Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem\n\nNorth Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson\n\nNRA members were also expecting to hear from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, but the Republican canceled his in-person appearance to instead attend a news conference in Uvalde, with his spokesperson telling the Dallas Morning News Thursday evening that the governor will address the convention “through prerecorded video.”\n\nFriday’s meeting will feature remarks from NRA head Wayne LaPierre and Jason Ouimet, the executive director of the group’s lobbying arm, according to the event website.\n\nThe former President, who maintained a close relationship with the gun lobby and its activists throughout his presidency, spoke at the 2019 event, which marked his fifth consecutive speech to the annual meeting.\n\nWho has backed out?\n\nTexas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who appeared alongside Abbott during a press conference Wednesday, said in a statement he was canceling his appearance, “after prayerful consideration and discussion with NRA officials.”\n\n“While a strong supporter of the Second Amendment and an NRA member, I would not want my appearance today to bring any additional pain or grief to the families and all those suffering in Uvalde,” Patrick said Friday.\n\nOn the federal level, two GOP lawmakers have backed out of the convention, though neither cited the deadly shooting in Uvalde as the reason for their cancellations:\n\nTexas Rep. Dan Crenshaw\n\nTexas Sen. John Cornyn\n\nNotably, at least four musicians who were set to sing in a concert at this weekend’s convention have canceled their performances, citing the shooting in Uvalde:\n\nDon McLean\n\nLee Greenwood\n\nLarry Gatlin\n\nLarry Stewart\n\n“I just did not believe it was the right thing to do,” Gatlin told CNN’s Pam Brown on Thursday. “It would have been kind of a classy move on the NRA’s part, and they need some good PR right now, if they’d cancel the whole thing and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to go in here for one big moment and say a prayer for those folks or have a moment of silence, and we’ll come back and do this later. We can always have our big convention.’”\n\nHe emphasized that he still supports the NRA and believes in the Second Amendment, but that he “didn’t think it was a good time to go down to Houston and have a party.”\n\nWhen is the meeting?\n\nThe NRA’s 2022 Annual Meeting & Exhibits is scheduled to take place from May 27-29, according to the event website. The leadership forum, which the organization bills as “one of the most politically significant and popular events in the country,” will take place Friday afternoon.\n\nWhere is the meeting?\n\nThe leadership forum will be held in Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center, the same location it was going to be at last September for the 2021 annual meeting.\n\nWho can attend the meeting?\n\nThe annual meeting is only open to NRA members. The organization currently has over five million members, according to its website.\n\nWhat are the security measures?\n\nThe NRA said that because Trump will be at the event, the US Secret Service “will take control of the General Assembly Hall and have magnetometers in place before entry.”\n\nAttendees are prohibited from bringing “firearms, firearm accessories, knives, and other items,” including backpacks and selfie sticks.\n\nWhat has happened since the 2019 meeting?\n\nFriday’s annual meeting will take place at a time when gun rights and the NRA have come under intense scrutiny, with supporters of gun control turning their attention to the organization this week after an 18-year-old gunman fatally shot 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, before he was killed by law enforcement, officials said.\n\nThe NRA condemned the shooting in a statement Wednesday, calling it a “horrific and evil crime.”\n\n“Although an investigation is underway and facts are still emerging, we recognize this was the act of a lone, deranged criminal,” the group said. “As we gather in Houston, we will reflect on these events, pray for the victims, recognize our patriotic members, and pledge to redouble our commitment to making our schools secure.”\n\nThe massacre is the deadliest shooting at a school since the Sandy Hook massacre in Connecticut in 2012 that left 26 people dead, including 20 children aged between 6 and 7 years old.\n\nThe NRA has also been in a fight to remain afloat after New York Attorney General Letitia James sued to dissolve the NRA for allegedly misusing charitable funds. In March, a New York State Supreme Court justice blocked James’ attempt to dissolve the organization but allowed her suit against it to move forward.\n\nAnd observers are also awaiting a decision from the US Supreme Court in the biggest Second Amendment case it has taken up in more than a decade. The justices are considering whether to strike down a New York gun law enacted more than a century ago that places restrictions on carrying a concealed gun outside the home.\n\nWhat happened at the last annual meeting?\n\nAt 2019’s annual meeting, Trump announced that he would not ratify a United Nations arms trading treaty and then signed a message to the Senate in front of an audience of NRA leaders.\n\nThe meeting was also notable because then-NRA President Oliver North told members during it that he would not be renominated president of the group following a dispute with LaPierre. The announcement was made in a letter in which North said he hoped he would be renominated for a second term but, “I am now informed that will not happen.”\n\nAlready a controversial figure due to his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, North joined the NRA at a critical juncture for it as it responded to renewed calls for gun control in the wake of the 2017 school shooting in Parkland, Florida.\n\nThis story has been updated with additional information Friday.", "authors": ["Devan Cole"], "publish_date": "2022/05/25"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_18", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:37", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/06/07/abortion-activists-strip-underwear-joel-osteen-church-service/7542303001/", "title": "Three abortion activists strip to underwear in protest during Joel ...", "text": "Three abortion activists stripped down to their underwear in protest to interrupt a Sunday service at pastor Joel Osteen's Texas megachurch.\n\nAfter Osteen had finished leading a prayer and congregants began to sit down, the women stood up and began chanting, \"my body, my (expletive choice).\" Two of the women removed their dresses, with one shouting, \"Overturn Roe, hell no!\"\n\nThe video footage of the protest quickly went viral over Twitter and the 11 a.m. service's live stream has since been taken down.\n\nThe activists, a trio from Texas Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, were wearing white sports bras with green hand prints on them to symbolize the color representing the pro-choice movement. Security promptly escorted the three women out of the church as many congregants began to cheer at their dismissal.\n\n'Catastrophic': Women in the military could face huge obstacles to abortion if Roe is over\n\nArkansas governor:Abortion law 'could be revisited' for rape and incest exceptions\n\nThe women said they opted to protest in Osteen's megachurch, which draws upwards of 50,000 people regularly, arguing that anti-abortion protesters show up in their safe spaces – doctors' offices and clinics – to make them feel uncomfortable.\n\n\"I know it seems very outrageous to do it in a church in a private space,\" activist Julianne D'Eredita told local Houston television station KPRC 2 of the protest, which continued outside the Lakewood Church afterwards. \"However, the people who are enforcing these laws have no qualms coming up to women in private spaces such as doctors' offices and medical clinics to harass them and call them murderers.\n\n\"Joel Osteen has an international audience and silence is violence when it comes to things like these. We have a very unprecedented and very short amount of time to garner the attention that we need to get millions of people on the streets, millions of people doing actions like we were today.\"\n\nThe protests come in light of a leaked draft from the Supreme Court opining to overthrow Roe v. Wade, a ruling that would rescind the federal law protecting abortion rights and instead allowing states to set their own laws.\n\nLakewood Church did not immediately respond to a Tuesday morning request from USA TODAY for comment.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/07"}, {"url": "http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/12/09/paula-cooper-executioner-within/93650408/", "title": "Indiana killer Paula Cooper: The Executioner Within", "text": "Robert King\n\nrobert.king@indystar.com\n\nThis 13-chapter story, told as a real-life novel, raises questions about race, justice, poverty and abuse. But it is also the story about the human capacity for forgiveness and a young woman’s struggle to find peace.\n\nStill shrouded in darkness, she sat alone in her car, parked between night and day, between this world and the next.\n\nBehind her, a family of teddy bears sat strapped in by a seat belt. In the front seat next to her was a digital recorder. And a gun.\n\nShe picked up the recorder and clicked it on.\n\n\"This is Paula Cooper.\"\n\nA short introduction, a simple statement. Even though nothing had been simple about being Paula Cooper.\n\n\"I believe today is the 26th; 5:15 will be my death.\"\n\nShe saw it clearly now, even in the pre-dawn gloom. She'd spent so much of her life searching for peace. But early on the morning of May 26, 2015, the end was in sight. She would reach it before sunrise.\n\nShe just had a few things left to say.\n\n—\n\n\"My sister. My queen. My everything.\"\n\nEvery morning she spoke to Rhonda. Why should this morning be different?\n\n—\n\n\"My mother, I felt like you didn't love me. You didn't care about me. You cut me off. You judged me. You didn't want me at your church. You hurt me about the man I loved. But I still love you.\"\n\nOthers had forgiven Paula. Yet she never felt it from the woman who mattered most.\n\n—\n\n\"To Monica, I'm so sorry. This pain that I feel every day. I walk around. I'm so miserable inside. I can't deal with this reality.\"\n\nMonica had been like a godmother in the fairy tales — someone to fill the void in the absence of a mother's love.\n\n—\n\n\"LeShon, I love you. … You showed me how to love.You showed me how to be a woman.\"\n\nLeShon looked beyond Paula's past. As if it had never occurred.\n\n—\n\n\"Michael, I'm so proud of you. And thank you for apologizing.\"\n\nMichael was her first love. She wanted a life with him; he wanted something else.\n\n—\n\n\"Meshia … you helped me when I was down, but I explained to you better than anybody how I feel.\"\n\nMeshia knew Paula's pain; she'd just been unable to stop it.\n\n—\n\nThese were the people Paula loved most. And to each one she had revealed part of herself, but never the whole. It was a select list from a life populated by characters: Her brutal father and her innocent victim; the judge who condemned her and the man who forgave her. There were friars and a bishop and a pope; jailers and journalists; people who were zealous to save her life and people eager to end it. There were too many to consider, really. And the sun would be up soon. She could wait no longer.\n\n\"Forgive me,\" she said in a recording that would soon become part of a police investigation. \"I must go now.\"\n\nHer coda finished, Paula stepped out of the car and into the shadows. She took a seat against a blighted tree. She felt the breeze in her hair. She felt the gun in her hand.\n\nShe was familiar with death. She'd seen it up close. She'd been condemned to it, resigned to it and reprieved from it. She had debated its merits and come to terms with it. Never had she stopped thinking of it.\n\nBut the question that would vex those she was leaving behind was maddeningly simple.\n\nWhy, after all she had endured and all she had survived, after all she had done and seemed capable of doing, had she chosen to die now?\n\nTo empower the journalism behind IndyStar, please consider a subscription.\n\nThe garden spot in the woods — where her father grew vegetables and beat his daughters — was only an occasional venue of torture.\n\nMore often, for Paula Cooper, it happened at home.\n\nAs a child, Paula went to bed night after night next to her sister, listening to their parents argue, listening to her father make threats to come after them. Sometimes her mother would talk him out of it. Sometimes the man's wrath ebbed and they fell asleep. Sometimes they would be jarred awake at 3 o'clock in the morning, her father standing over them, ready to beat them.\n\nPaula believed there were other kinds of families out there. She watched the people on \"The Cosby Show,\" and they seemed to have such a nice family. But that was television. This was real. This was her family. And it looked as if there was no escaping it.\n\n—\n\nPaula was born in Chicago to Herman and Gloria Cooper on Aug. 25, 1969. Her sister, Rhonda, was three years older. Early on, the family lived in Michigan City, but by the time Paula was old enough for school they had moved to Gary.\n\nThe girls attended Bethune Grade School, a stone's throw from home. They went to nearby New Testament Baptist Church, where Paula sang in the choir and helped with the little children's Bible classes.\n\nBy the late 1970s, Gary's downward spiral from a midcentury boomtown was picking up speed. Manufacturing jobs were disappearing. White families were fleeing to the suburbs. Crime was rising. Like many black families still in the city, the Coopers were left in the wake of all this.\n\nGloria worked as a lab tech at a hospital. She had an assortment of health problems, none of them helped by the drugs and booze she added to the mixture.\n\n\"One day my mother be nice, the next day she be angry,\" Paula would tell Woman's Day, years later, when her story was national news. \"And the next day she be real strange-acting.\"\n\nHerman worked for U.S. Steel and worked construction, but his employment was sporadic. He had a girlfriend on the side and would be gone for long stretches. When he returned, chaos followed. Herman and Gloria were a volatile pair, drinking hard and arguing often, creating an atmosphere that was not just unstable, but dangerous.\n\nThe result, as Paula would say later, was that the girls had to \"fend for themselves.\" Sometimes, on evenings when Herman was gone and Gloria worked late, Paula took meals with the next-door neighbors, who allowed her to stick around and watch TV. Most of the time the girls had food and nice clothing. But, as Rhonda would say later, \"we hardly ever had any love.\"\n\nExcept from each other.\n\nIn the middle of all the darkness, Paula and Rhonda clung tightly to each other. They found moments to giggle together, play pranks together and share secrets.\n\nMore than just a sister, Rhonda became Paula's caregiver. Yet, through their early years, they were unaware of an important family secret: Rhonda was the child of a different father. It was a secret Gloria took great pains to hide, even though she allowed Rhonda's father, Ronald Williams, to visit occasionally. She said he was her uncle.\n\nBefore Herman came along, Ronald and Gloria were engaged. They broke it off, as Williams would later tell a courtroom, because he felt Gloria had a \"split personality.\" In short, he thought she was crazy.\n\nLiving with Herman Cooper didn't help.\n\nHerman beat everyone in the house. He beat Gloria in front of the girls. He beat the girls together. He beat them separately, sometimes in front of their mother. Sometimes Gloria seemed to egg on the violence.\n\n\"We did everything we was supposed to do, but it just wasn't never good enough for her,\" Paula told Woman's Day many years later. \"… She get mad at us and he'd beat us. 'Be a man,' she'd tell him. 'Take care of it,' she'd say. And he'd take care of it.\"\n\nThe girls grew up unable to remember a time before the abuse. When they were little, Paula would later say, Herman beat them \"for the things little kids do.\" When they were older, Rhonda remembered, he beat them for forgetting to take out the trash, for not doing the dishes and for skipping school.\n\nHerman employed an assortment of tools for punishment, whatever he could get his hands on — shoes, straps, sticks, a broom. Sometimes he used an electrical cord from an air conditioner.\n\n\"He'd triple it up and go to work,\" Paula would say later. \"It got to the point I was so used to it I didn't cry anymore.\"\n\nTo heighten the pain, Herman sometimes ordered the girls to remove their clothes before a beating. Questioned later, he denied that he ever abused the girls at all.\n\n—\n\nThis stark picture of Paula Cooper's childhood emerges from several sources; the courtroom testimony from Rhonda and her father; testimony from Dr. Frank Brogno, a clinical psychologist who discussed what he learned from examining Paula. Some of the glimpses into the darkness come from now-yellowed news clippings. Others come from anecdotes Paula shared with friends and loved ones and the few journalists she favored. Finally, there's the freshest source of insight into Paula's world — more than 100 personal letters she wrote to a treasured friend that were reviewed by IndyStar.\n\nTaken together, they amount to a catalog of horrors. Her father's beatings, Paula said, left her \"close to death so many times.\" With no apparent means of escape, she seemed to stop fearing death at all. \"I just cried,\" she wrote, \"until all my tears were gone away.\"\n\n—\n\nIn 1978, when Paula was 9, the tears were still flowing. Her parents separated, but it was often fuzzy as to when they were back together and when they were apart. Once, when Herman returned home to find the doors locked, he forced his way in. According to testimony Rhonda gave in court, Herman entered their home, beat up their mother and raped her in front of the two girls.\n\nThe incident seems to have been a tipping point. Not long after, Gloria began telling her daughters the world had nothing to offer them. Instead, she said, they'd all be better off going to heaven. On this point, Rhonda would say later, Gloria began pressuring her daughters. Eventually, the girls came to believe, like their mother, they had nothing to live for.\n\nGloria phoned Ronald Williams, Rhonda's father and steady friend. It was late. She'd been drinking and taking pills. She was crying. Herman had been giving her problems, she said, and things weren't good at work.\n\nShe was thinking of killing herself.\n\nWilliams had heard this kind of talk from Gloria before. Always, he had been able to console her, to talk her back from the precipice. He reminded her that she had Paula and Rhonda to think about. What would happen to them? His question made Gloria think. But only for an hour.\n\nShe called Williams back. Between her tears and her wailing, Gloria said: \"I finally found out what I'm going to do with the kids.\"\n\nWilliams was alarmed. He demanded to know what she meant.\n\n\"I'm going to take them with me,\" she replied. \"I'm going to let you speak to your daughter and Paula for the last time.\"\n\nThe girls took the phone in turns. They were crying, too. Rhonda said they were going to heaven with their mother.\n\n\"Don't do nothing drastic,\" Williams told them. \"Let me speak to your mother, OK.\"\n\nThe phone went dead.\n\nWilliams panicked. Gloria and the girls had recently moved. She hadn't shared their new address. He didn't know where to find them, how to stop her.\n\nHe called the operator and asked for his last call to be traced; it was no good. He called Gary police. Without an address, they could do nothing.\n\nThere was nothing anyone could do. Williams waited. For three weeks, he waited. He feared what had become of them.\n\nHad Gloria killed them all?\n\n—\n\nAfter she hung up the phone, Gloria decided not to act right away; she'd wait until morning. When she awoke, Gloria took the girls out to the car in the garage. She put them in the back seat and started the engine. The garage door remained closed.\n\nFrom there, accounts differ. Williams testified that a friend told him neighbors noticed something and called the fire department. Rhonda testified that, as the fumes gathered, the girls drifted off to sleep. They thought they were going to heaven; instead, they woke up in bed. How they got there isn't clear. Rhonda said Gloria had changed her mind. When the girls awoke, she said, their mother was coughing on the lawn.\n\nFrom then on, Williams tried to coax Gloria into letting him have the girls. Rhonda was his daughter, and he was fond of Paula, too. Gloria would have none of it.\n\n\"I'd rather see them both dead,\" she said.\n\n—\n\nThe girls survived their first brush with death. But Paula and her sister were being shaped in a world without hope. And now their mother had planted a seed: The ultimate escape was death.\n\nRhonda looked around at this nihilist world and began seeking a way out. Several times she tried to run. Soon, she began taking Paula with her. \"I couldn't take it no more in that house,\" she would say, \"and I didn't want her to, either.\"\n\nBy 1982, when both girls were teenagers, they made an unsuccessful attempt to run and were sent — together — to the Thelma Marshall Children's Home in Gary. Within a short time, they were returned to the Coopers. For Paula, it was the beginning of a cycle — of running and being returned home. For Rhonda, that cycle ended only when she learned Ronald Williams was her biological father. At her first opportunity, she left the Coopers to live with him.\n\nIf the move helped Rhonda, it had grievous consequences for Paula, then 13. Her sister had been the most stable person in her home. Now she was gone. Paula came to believe her parents blamed her for Rhonda's departure. Now that her father's anger had one less target, Paula's beatings grew more frequent and more brutal. Even as her parents divorced, Herman never quite left the picture. And his handiwork began to show.\n\nAt school, Paula revealed to an administrator a rash of injuries — a bruise on her thigh, a welt on her arm, a rug burn on her elbow.\n\nWhen a welfare caseworker visited the Cooper home, Herman and Gloria cursed at her. They blamed Paula's problems on interference from the courts, from the school psychologist and from the welfare department itself. When the caseworker recommended family counseling, Gloria said she'd rather go to jail.\n\nAt various times, Gloria and Herman seemed to vacillate between wanting Paula and considering her a curse. Paula began running away on her own. After one attempt, welfare officials wanted to send Paula home, but her mother objected. If Paula returned, Gloria vowed to leave.\n\nOn another occasion, when Rhonda made a rare visit to spend a weekend with Paula and her mother, arguments ensued and Williams returned for Rhonda. He couldn't find her there, but he found Paula. She was crying so loudly he heard her without going in. Gloria, who stood in front of the house fuming about Paula, simply said: \"I'm going to kill that bitch.\"\n\nPaula emerged and, seeing Williams, ran to him and jumped into his arms. He asked her if her mother would really hurt her.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nWilliams told her to get in the car. Gloria charged out toward them and began to threaten Paula. \"I'm going to kill you and if I don't (Herman) will.\"\n\nWilliams considered it serious business to take Paula. He lived in Illinois and assumed it would be a crime to take a child across the state line without permission of the parents. He took her anyway. Gloria and other family members threatened to phone the police.\n\nAt his home, Williams asked Paula what she wanted to do. They talked about the logistics of her staying with him without her mother's permission. It would be impossible for her to go to school. Then there was the trouble Williams might face. With tears, Paula looked at Williams and said, \"It's best for me to go home … I don't want to get you in no trouble.\" Paula's respite lasted only a few hours.\n\nEven though he wasn't keeping Paula, Williams couldn't fathom returning her home. Instead, he just let her walk away. She was young, no more than 13, but Williams believed she was safer on the streets of Chicago than at home. Under scrutiny for making such a choice, Williams later told a courtroom he thought Paula was in danger there. \"I would rather see her in the street as a slut than for her mother to blow her brains out.\"\n\nFor several days, Paula survived on her own. Inevitably, she wound up back home.\n\n—\n\nBy 1983, when Paula turned 14, she stayed away from home as much as possible. She was smoking cigarettes and drinking. She smoked marijuana almost daily. Tall, but heavy, she took speed to lose weight. She tried cocaine. She skipped school routinely. She was sexually active. Years later, she would warn others against making similar choices. But for the moment, it was her life.\n\nAnd it was a rootless life. She spent six months at a children's home in Mishawaka and three months in a juvenile detention center. She was removed from one home after only six days after she threatened a staff member and another resident — with a knife.\n\nWith each new address, Paula changed schools. She attended four high schools without ever finishing the 10th grade. Her schoolwork, decent at first, nosedived. She called a teacher \"crazy,\" resulting in a suspension. She struggled to keep friends. She developed a reputation as a bully. All the while, Paula struggled to wake up in the mornings. When she was evaluated for the problem, a doctor at a local hospital asked if she ever thought of killing herself.\n\n\"Yes,\" she replied.\n\nFor that answer, she was sent to a mental hospital. Released four days later, she returned home.\n\n\"I told people I needed help and to talk, but all they did was move me from home to home,\" Paula would write a few years later. \"I didn't care about life or trouble or consequences at all.\"\n\n—\n\nPerhaps the pinnacle of Paula's abuse came, ironically, after her father visited Gary police seeking advice on how to deal with a wayward child. Paula was 14, and Herman Cooper couldn't keep her reined in. Frustrated, he asked the police what he should do with her. It was a family matter, they said; he should do what he thought was right.\n\nFor Herman Cooper, that meant one thing: another beating. But for what he had in mind this time, he'd need some privacy. He took Paula to a woody patch near a spot where he kept a garden. Paula had been there before; so had Rhonda.\n\n\"If you scream where I take you,\" he told Paula, \"no one will hear you.\"\n\nSeveral times in her life, Paula thought her father was going to beat her to death. This was one of them. \"He just kept beating me and beating me,\" she would tell the clinical psychologist, for what seemed like half an hour. Instead of the cord or a broom or a stick, this time Herman beat her with his bare hands.\n\nWhen he was done, Herman put Paula in the car to take her home. But as they drove through the darkening streets of Gary, Paula knew she couldn't go back there. Not when the possibility of more punishment lay ahead in the Cooper house of horrors.\n\nAs Herman pulled the car up to the house, Paula jumped out and took off running into the night. Running and screaming. Herman gave chase, but porch lights began to click on. Up and down the street, neighbors stepped out to investigate the commotion. The neighbors had seen this show before; it never seemed to end. This time, though, Herman retreated.\n\nPaula ran until she wound up where the night had begun — at the police station. She told officers there about the beating, told them she couldn't go home. At least not while Herman was around. The state pulled her away from the Coopers. It isn't clear from the record where she was placed. But soon, she was sent back home.\n\n—\n\nIn the summer of 1984, when Paula turned 15, she felt as lonely as ever.\n\nAdrift, Paula briefly took up with a guy she hoped might offer her a haven. Later, she would tell others he was a rough character who dealt drugs and treated her poorly. The one thing he did for Paula was leave her pregnant.\n\nMany teenage girls would consider pregnancy a tragedy; Paula saw it as a blessing. She had almost forgotten how to care about anyone. She wanted a family, wanted someone to belong to. The child growing inside her represented someone she could love, someone who would love her in return.\n\nAnd then it was gone.\n\nGloria had been dead set against the pregnancy; she wanted Paula to end it. Paula refused and ran off — perhaps to seek help from a woman she knew in Chicago. Her mother tracked her down and, as Paula would write years later in a letter and tell friends, forced her to have an abortion.\n\nPaula was several months into the pregnancy; the procedure nearly killed her. \"She took something that would have completed my life,\" Paula would write later, \"and after that I felt I had no one.\"\n\nTo empower the journalism behind IndyStar, please consider a subscription.\n\nRuth Pelke was gentle, an old woman with silvery hair and horn-rimmed glasses. As her stepson Robert and his wife pleaded for her to leave Gary, she listened.\n\nRobert pledged to do everything necessary to make her house ready for sale — the legal stuff, the touch-up jobs, whatever. She listened as they talked to her about how dangerous her neighborhood had become.\n\nBut Ruth didn't really need reminding. Her Glen Park neighborhood was still one of the better places to live in Gary, although that wasn't saying much, given the city's downward lurch. There were abandoned houses now. There were burglaries. Her own home had been hit five times in recent years, including when her husband, Oscar, was still alive. Now, at 78, she was widowed and alone, and things were only getting worse. But Ruth had been in Glen Park for 41 years; it was home. She still had some good neighbors. Just as important, she had a mission.\n\nFor decades, she'd opened her home and heart to the neighborhood children. She'd taught them the Bible using felt cutouts of Bible characters that she stuck to a flannel board. She'd given the kids candy when they memorized Scripture. She'd driven them to church. She believed these were children who needed hope, and they could find it in Jesus. No, she finally said that night after her stepson's plea — she wouldn't be leaving the home in her neighborhood.\n\n\"I'll stay here until I go there,\" she said.\n\nRuth Pelke was pointing a finger to heaven.\n\n—\n\nThe next day, Tuesday, May 14, 1985, Ruth's doorbell rang.\n\nShe answered it and found three teenage girls standing on her porch. She didn't recognize them, but she opened her door. One of the girls said, \"My auntie would like to know about Bible classes. When do y'all hold them?\"\n\nRuth wasn't up to teaching anymore, but she wanted to help the girls. \"Come back on Saturday,\" she said. And closed the door.\n\n—\n\nThe girls — Karen Corder, Denise Thomas and Paula Cooper — walked back across the alley. Sitting on a porch, April Beverly was waiting.\n\nThe foursome — all ninth- and 10th-graders at Lew Wallace High School — left school at lunchtime that afternoon with no intention of going back. The girls walked the 10 blocks or so to an arcade near 45th and Broadway where they spent what little money they had on games and candy. When their money was gone, they headed back to the house where April was staying with her sister.\n\nThey were a ragtag bunch.\n\nAt 16, Karen Corder — known to her friends as \"Pooky\" — was the oldest. More than two years earlier, she'd given birth to a baby boy whom she'd delivered in a toilet. She'd managed to keep the pregnancy secret from her parents until the child was born, according to court records.\n\nAt 15, April Beverly was seven months pregnant. She was part of a divided family with 11 children, and she bounced between two homes, her father's and her sister's. Her mother was dead, her father had remarried. On occasion, April benefited from the kindness of the old lady across the alley. She'd listened to Ruth Pelke's Bible lessons. And the old woman had brought food over to April and her siblings when she was concerned they might be hungry.\n\nAt 14, Denise Thomas was the youngest of the four and the smallest. The others were mature young women — at different places on the spectrum of teen motherhood. Denise still looked very much like a little girl. In the context of this group, some would later describe her as a tag-along.\n\nAnd, of course, there was Paula Cooper. At 15, she was only months removed from an unwanted abortion that had nearly killed her. She was tall, somewhat heavy and had the bearing of a girl beyond her years. She would be described as the \"prime mover\" of the quartet — the ringleader. But it was a label she'd never cop to.\n\n—\n\nTo date, the sum total of their illicit behavior was strictly small-time. Karen had tried her hand at shoplifting. Paula, Karen and April had pulled off a burglary a few days before that netted them $90. Mostly, the girls were truants. And on this Tuesday afternoon away from school, their immediate priority was to raise some money so they could go back to the arcade.\n\nTheir first attempt was a harebrained scheme April cooked up to get some cash from a woman up the street. All four girls had gone to the woman's door. April introduced Denise, the small one, as her daughter. April claimed the woman's husband had taken $20 from Denise and they'd come to collect it. For added zest, April threw in this detail: The woman's husband had been naked when he stepped into the street to take Denise's money.\n\nThe woman didn't go for it.\n\nAfter that failure, April turned her focus to Ruth Pelke. She seemed to recall the lady keeping a jar of $2 bills. She thought the woman might even have some jewelry. The question was how to get to it all.\n\nAs they sat on the porch at her sister's house, April asked Paula to come inside — she might know where there was a gun. For the girls, a gun crime would be a considerable step up the criminal ladder. But the gun wasn't where April thought it was; she couldn't find it. Then it occurred to April: Something else might do.\n\n\"I have a knife you could scare the lady with,\" she said.\n\nSoon, April produced a 12-inch butcher knife. It was sharp and had a curving blade that graduated to a fine point. It was a cooking tool, but also a potentially lethal instrument. Paula took the knife and hid it in her light jacket. Out on the porch, she and April explained to the other girls: This was their new weapon of choice. And Karen came up with another approach to getting inside the old lady's home: They would ask her to write down the time and place where the Bible classes would be.\n\nIn all this planning, Paula and the other girls would forever swear, the subject of killing the old woman never came up. The most they would admit, according to Corder, was that they'd knock out the woman and rob her. Still, the reality of what they were planning — to con their way into her house, pull a knife and take the old woman's valuables — was fraught with danger.\n\nAs their scheme unfolded, April stayed back again, resting on her sister's porch; she didn't want the old woman to recognize her. Karen, Paula and Denise crossed the alley.\n\nThey rang the bell, and soon Ruth Pelke appeared at the door. This time, when she answered, Karen said: \"My auntie wants to know where the Bible classes are held at. Could you write it down for me?\"\n\nRuth said she no longer taught the classes, but she knew of a lady. \"I'll look up her telephone number for you.\" She invited the girls to come in. And she turned to walk to the desk on the far side of the room.\n\n—\n\nRuth Pelke looked for all the world like the kindly grandmother drawn up in children's books. She was also a woman whose Christian faith was essential to who she was. She went to church on Wednesday nights and twice on Sundays. She visited church members who were too old or too sick to get out. She sang in the choir. She hosted missionaries in her home on their trips back from foreign lands. She took her own missionary journeys, going deeper into the heart of Gary to share her faith with children.\n\nWhat followed — recorded in statements to police, testified to in court, reported in newspaper accounts and, in brief instances, described in letters Paula would write years later — was a scene that would shock Northwest Indiana and the rest of the state.\n\nAs Ruth Pelke crossed her living room to the desk where she kept phone numbers, she felt a pair of arms wrap around her neck.\n\nPaula had put her jacket on the couch and run up on Ruth, grabbing her from behind. For a moment, the teenager and the old woman struggled. Ruth still tended a garden and did a little work outside the house to keep fit, but she was in no shape for a chunky 15-year-old girl who now had her in a headlock.\n\nPaula threw Ruth to the floor.\n\nOn a table nearby sat an item some would describe as a vase but others likened more to a triangular snow globe. One of the girls picked it up and hit Ruth Pelke over the head. Prosecutors would allege it was Denise Thomas; Paula took the blame.\n\nPaula demanded to know where Ruth kept her valuables. She threatened to cut her with the knife. \"Give me the money, bitch,\" she said.\n\nRuth looked up and said simply: \"You aren't going to kill me.\" She began hollering for help. Paula's anger rose now. Then she looked at Ruth's head. Blood was streaming from the place where she'd been hit with the vase. Paula saw the blood and reacted in a way she would struggle to explain for the rest of her life.\n\nTo police investigators, she would say she entered \"a blackout stage.\"\n\nTo a judge, she would say, \"Something clicked in on me.\"\n\nTo a psychologist, she said the sight of the blood altered her perception of whom she was attacking: \"I saw somebody else inside of that body.\"\n\nSeveral friends and supporters who heard similar explanations from Paula concluded that, in this moment, Paula no longer saw the meek and mild Bible teacher in front of her. They believed Paula saw the woman who watched her suffer so many beatings and did nothing to stop them, the woman who took away the baby she'd wanted to love. They were convinced that, in the defenseless woman pinned to the floor, Paula saw her mother.\n\nWhatever she saw, Paula reached for the knife. She grabbed it by the handle and began slashing. She sliced open the old woman's cheek. She stabbed at her head, without deep penetration. Ruth fell back, flat on the floor. And Paula went to work, cutting her arms and legs.\n\nThe other girls stood by in disbelief.\n\nKaren Corder, the oldest, told Paula to stop.\n\nDenise Thomas, the youngest, cried and screamed for Paula to quit. Later, she would claim she yelled, \"I'm getting out of here,\" only to be met with a withering threat from Paula: \"Leave and you're dead.\"\n\nPaula's barrage was relentless. She stabbed the old woman in the belly and, finally, thrust the blade deep into the side of Ruth's chest. With that, Paula stopped; she pulled back from the carnage.\n\n\"I can't take it no more,\" she said.\n\nPaula looked at Denise; she told her to come hold the knife. But Denise refused. She looked at Karen, communicating the same message. Karen knelt beside the wounded woman. The blade remained lodged in her chest. And Karen held it in place.\n\nApril Beverly, who concocted the robbery scheme, initially held back. After the others went inside, she had come up to Ruth's porch and acted as lookout. Now she entered the house. The old woman was lying on her back, her dress covered in blood, her arms and legs still moving. Karen, she noticed, held the knife as it protruded from the woman's side. To April, it appeared that Karen wasn't just holding it: She was wiggling the knife back and forth. Out of some morbid curiosity, she would tell police later, Karen pushed the blade farther into the hole to see how deep it would go. At one point, she concluded, \"The bitch won't die.\"\n\nKaren estimated she held the knife in Ruth Pelke's side for upwards of 15 minutes; Paula thought it closer to 30.\n\nRuth Pelke moaned through most of this. The old woman's torn and tortured face was too much for the girls to bear. One of them went to the bathroom and got a towel to cover Ruth's face — and try to smother the last breaths of life from her. Paula and Denise said it was Karen; Karen said it was Paula.\n\nIn her dying moments, Ruth Pelke managed to share a few last words. Denise heard her saying the Lord's Prayer.\n\n\"Our Father, which art in heaven …\"\n\nPaula had stalked in and out of the room, and the last words she heard from Ruth were something else. Words that would haunt her the rest of her life.\n\n\"If you kill me,\" she heard Ruth say, \"you will be sorry.\"\n\nTo empower the journalism behind IndyStar, please consider a subscription.\n\nPaula and Denise began tearing the house apart, rifling through drawers, ripping items off shelves and upending furniture.\n\nFor Paula, it was a mad search for some reward for the awful business she'd just concluded. There had to be some money somewhere. Maybe some jewelry. But as she continued her desperate search, a nervousness began to grow inside her. Whether it was regret for the killing or the chilling final words of her victim, she felt uneasy. And she didn't like it. As they were going through the upstairs rooms, Paula tried to pull herself away. But the only place to go was back downstairs, where the source of her angst lay dead on the floor. She resumed the treasure hunt and soon managed to turn up some cash — all of $10. She came across a key and thought it might start the old woman's Plymouth in the garage. She ran out to give it a try. Nothing.\n\nApril joined in the search and quickly turned up another key. This time when Paula tried it, the engine stirred to life. April went inside to fetch the other girls.\n\nBy then, Karen and Denise were alone with Ruth Pelke's body. Karen had watched the rise and fall of the old woman's chest until it grew shallower. Finally, it stopped. Maybe April sensed some new panic; she sternly warned the other girls: \"If you tell anyone, I'll kill you.\"\n\nThe girls had spent roughly an hour in the old woman's house. They hadn't found a jar of $2 bills. They hadn't found a trove of jewelry. But it was time to go. Someone might come looking. Before they could leave, Karen grabbed one last item.\n\nShe knelt down again beside Ruth. The butcher knife was planted firmly in the left side of her chest, just below her breast. Karen grabbed the handle. She pulled it out. As they headed out to the car, Karen carried the knife at her side. She climbed into the back of the car and dropped it to the floor. The blade was still coated in blood.\n\n—\n\nPaula Cooper was 15. She was too young to drive. But with her three accomplices as passengers, she managed to steer Ruth's car out of the neighborhood and onto 45th Avenue. They were just down the street from Lew Wallace High School. School was out now and, almost immediately, they saw a classmate walking along the street. Almost reflexively, they waved to Beverly Byndum. And Beverly waved back.\n\nThis was the paradox they now faced. They were teenagers in possession of a car, the apex of adolescence. Yet they had acquired it in the most horrific way imaginable. Years later, Paula would say things just \"got out of control.\" But here she was — a killer. Now that the deed was done, now that they had a few bucks, Paula and the others seemed in no mood to enjoy it.\n\nBefore they arrived at the video arcade, Karen asked Paula to let her out of the car; she wanted to go back to April's house. Paula let her go, but not before asking her to perform a little task: Go back to the old lady's house and get the jacket Paula had left inside.\n\nNext, Denise said she wanted to go home. She asked Paula to let her out at a convenience store and she would make her way from there.\n\nWhen Paula and April pulled up to Candyland Arcade, they were alone. For a few minutes, they just sat there, talking about what they'd done. April hadn't witnessed everything that went on inside the house. It's not clear how many of the missing details Paula shared.\n\nPaula said she needed to use the restroom, and she ventured into the arcade. When she returned, five girls from school were standing around the car. One of them was Beverly Byndum, whom they had passed on the street. Her sister, Latesha, asked where they had come by the car. Paula said it was her sister's.\n\nWithin minutes, Karen walked up to the arcade out of breath, as if she had been running to catch up with the crew. Wherever she had been, she hadn't stayed long. Paula pulled her aside and asked if she'd gone back to the house, if she'd picked up the jacket. No, Karen replied. It was probably the last place on Earth she wanted to go. And she didn't hang around long enough to talk further about it. In a few minutes, she caught a bus for home.\n\nWhether Paula remembered it or not, she had left more than her jacket in the house. Inside one of its pockets was a newly filled prescription for birth control pills — her pills. She had picked them up earlier that morning before school. It was just one of the clues she had left for investigators to find.\n\nPaula and April looked around at the girls and asked if anyone wanted a ride home. Eagerly, their friends piled into the Plymouth. Latesha Byndum was among those who jumped into the back. As she did, she felt her foot brush across something on the floor. She reached down to pick it up. It was a knife. And there was blood on it. There was also blood on her shoe. Latesha looked at Paula and April in the front seat and asked, \"What you all do? Just kill somebody?\"\n\nThe girls looked back at Latesha.\n\nNo, they replied.\n\nAnd, in a response that would reverberate across the community, Paula and April laughed.\n\n—\n\nPaula and April dropped off their passengers at various addresses around Gary. But details about where and how they spent their next two days are choppy and imprecise.\n\nProsecutors would characterize their time in the car as a joy ride. But from this point on, Paula and April seemed to have a different sense of what to do next.\n\nApril wanted to go to a park in Hammond; she wanted to see her brother Tony; she wanted to see her boyfriend. When she found $40 in Ruth Pelke's glove box, she wanted to spend it. When they picked up April's boyfriend and he brought some alcohol, she drank it.\n\nPaula wanted to go to a girl's home where she had lived for a time; she wanted to pick up some friends there. But she quickly decided she and April needed some time to focus on what to do next. When April found the money, Paula thought they should save it for gas. While April got drunk, Paula wanted nothing to drink. She was too nervous.\n\nMost symbolic of their division, perhaps, is what happened to the money from Ruth's glove box. The girls wrestled over it, and one of the $20 bills was torn. Paula gave up the fight. April could keep the money and do with it what she wanted.\n\n—\n\nOn Wednesday morning, the day after the crime, Robert Pelke phoned Ruth's house to check up on her. She didn't pick up the phone, and he decided to check on her in person. Just three days before, he and a large portion of the extended Pelke family had taken Ruth out for a Mother's Day dinner. Just two days earlier, Robert and his wife had pushed Ruth to think about selling her house and leaving Gary. Robert rang the doorbell, with no idea how prescient that conversation had been.\n\nThere was no answer, so Robert opened the mail slot on the door and called inside. There was only silence. But through the mail slot, something caught Robert's eye: The dining room was torn apart. He went to fetch a spare key Ruth kept hidden outside. Looking around the place, he noticed Ruth's car was missing from the garage, and he assumed Ruth must be gone, too.\n\nHe found the key, unlocked the door and stepped into the house. The place appeared to have been ransacked. Pictures that had adorned the walls were now scattered about the floor. Cushions from the couch had been pulled up and cast about. And then his eyes turned to the dining room floor.\n\nThe cloaked figure of a woman lay there motionless. Her dress was caked in blood. Her arms were slashed. A towel masked her face.\n\nRobert knelt down next to her. He pulled the towel away and called her name. Still, there was no movement. He touched her, and the body was cold. He knew she was dead.\n\nRobert got up and went for the phone. In an age when every phone was a landline, Ruth's had been ripped from its place on the wall. He stepped outside and began going door to door, looking for someone who would let him use their phone. But at house after house, he found nobody. Finally, Robert looked farther up the street and saw a man and a woman getting out of a car. He approached them and asked them to call the police.\n\nHis stepmother had been murdered.\n\n—\n\nRobert's son, Bill Pelke, arrived home just after 3 o'clock from his shift at Bethlehem Steel and soon received a phone call. It was one of his uncles. Nana, he said, was dead.\n\nNana was the term of endearment everyone in the family used for Ruth. Bill had grown up listening to her Bible stories. He'd loved her flannel board tales of the three men in the fiery furnace, of Noah and the ark and his favorite — Joseph and the coat of many colors.\n\nEven as a 37-year-old man, he still loved to go to Nana's house for the holidays, to warm himself beside her fireplace and congregate there with the rest of the family. His grandfather had passed almost two years before, but Nana was still a magnet. She could still bring the family together. And now, suddenly, she was gone.\n\nAt such moments of shock, the brain's processor goes into hyperdrive. And some key facts rushed through Bill's head: Nana had been 78; she was the oldest Pelke; she'd had a good life; it must have been her time. But that instant of comfort evaporated quickly. He sensed something else in his uncle's voice that was borne out in his next words: There'd been a break-in at Nana's house. He didn't know if there was a connection.\n\nBill hung up and turned on the television, wondering if there might be some news about it. Sure enough, his father appeared on camera. He was saying something about it being a terrible murder. For Bill, everything else was a blur; he had to go. He had to be with his family.\n\nAs it turned out, Ruth Pelke had been dead for a full day.\n\n—\n\nBy that spring of 1985, crime was a painful reality in Gary. Its murder rate was among the highest in the country. It was on its way to becoming the murder capital of the United States.\n\nGary was a city in decline; poverty was growing like a cancer. But the violence was being spread through an influx of gangs with names such as The Family and the Black Gangster Disciples.\n\nYet as accustomed to crime as the city had become, the murder of Ruth Pelke shocked and angered people in a whole new way. There was the innocence of Ruth herself — the elderly Bible teacher. As one observer put it, she was a grandma to the neighborhood. The killing's effect also might have been amplified because it happened in Glen Park, which a prosecutor later described as a \"last bastion\" of the white population in a city from which white residents had disappeared.\n\nOn the day after the discovery of Ruth's body, The Post-Tribune in Gary devoted two front-page columns to the story: \"Bible teacher, 77, murdered in her home.\" It had her age wrong, but the dominant image on the page was a picture of Ruth — silver-haired and smiling behind her horn-rimmed glasses from another era.\n\nThe newspaper reported that neighborhood children \"were visibly upset and shaken by the murder.\" They spoke of Pelke as \"meek and mild,\" serving cookies during summer Bible classes and giving out boxes of candy to the children who memorized Scripture.\n\nAs for who might be responsible, the initial story carried some important nuggets: Police were searching for a 15-year-old girl who'd been seen driving Pelke's blue Plymouth. They weren't releasing her name, but the girl was a student at Lew Wallace High and lived in Gary's Marshalltown neighborhood.\n\n—\n\nPaula Cooper lived in Marshalltown.\n\nAs they combed through Ruth's house, police found the jacket with the prescription in the pocket. Eyewitnesses had seen Paula and the other girls in a car that matched the description of Ruth's missing Plymouth. And on the day Ruth's body was discovered, Gloria Cooper phoned police to report her 15-year-old daughter missing; she'd been missing since the day before.\n\nThe ink was barely dry on the newspaper stories when Karen Corder, walking around school on Thursday, two days after the crime, began looking for someone on whom she could unload her conscience. She had opted out of the joy ride and gone home and had a couple of restless nights' sleep. She found a gym teacher who'd been nice to her and said they needed to talk; she'd witnessed a murder. Soon, police were at the school. They took Karen and Denise into custody. And Karen was telling her story about the crime.\n\nIn the two days since the killing, Paula and April — with April's brother, Tony — had driven aimlessly from Gary to Hammond and to various parts of Chicago's South Side. They'd had no real sense of direction.\n\nTony pressed on in Ruth's Plymouth until the gas needle dropped well below empty. Then he pushed it some more. Finally, the car died. Their money gone, they found a phone and called April's sister. Thursday night, with the police dragnet closing around them, she took the girls to see the Gary police.\n\n—\n\nDetective William Kennedy Jr. had been looking for Paula Cooper and April Beverly for the better part of two days. When his phone rang around midnight, the news was good: They'd turned themselves in.\n\nIn addition to being a cop, Kennedy worked security at Lew Wallace High School. He'd seen Paula Cooper walking the halls. He never knew her name, but they'd exchanged hellos. Now, he was tidying up the loose ends of a case for murder against her.\n\nWhen he arrived at the station, Paula's parents were waiting. Kennedy asked Herman and Gloria Cooper if Paula could make a formal statement about the crime. Herman, speaking for everyone, declined. They were interested in talking to a lawyer, and he seemed annoyed at the article in the morning paper, which he felt pointed a finger at Paula even if it didn't name her.\n\nThe Coopers met briefly with Paula, then returned to the waiting room. Soon, Rhonda arrived at the station. She'd read the papers. She knew Paula was in jail. And she was upset. She wanted to see her sister.\n\nGloria was OK with that but urged her to persuade Paula to talk about what she'd done. When the police wouldn't let Rhonda see her sister without a parent, Gloria agreed to go with Rhonda.\n\nAfter so many years of turmoil and strife, Gloria and her two daughters were together again — for a moment alone in a police interrogation room. What they said isn't clear. But when Kennedy, the detective, rejoined them, Gloria gave Paula a nudge.\n\n\"Say something,\" she said.\n\nPaula hesitated. She said she didn't want anyone looking at her. So Kennedy turned 45 degrees and looked at a wall. Paula began to speak. She kept speaking for 15 minutes. She laid out the essential elements of Ruth Pelke's murder, described the girls' desire for money and a car, described how they came up with the Bible class as their way in. She described how she got the knife and stabbed the old woman more times than she could remember. She talked about the aftermath, when they took the car and gave rides to their friends. At one point, according to the account the detective would later make from his \"mental notes,\" Gloria Cooper asked Paula in front of the detective: Were you and Karen basically responsible for the lady's death?\n\nPaula's answer: \"Yeah, you could say that.\"\n\nWhen Paula was done, Kennedy left the room. Her mother and her sister left, too. As Paula stood alone in the interrogation room, April Beverly was giving a statement in a room nearby. When Kennedy returned to Paula, she was newly animated. She began unloading a rapid-fire addendum to her confession to the detective.\n\n\"April is lying. She's lying on me, so I'm going to tell you where the murder weapon is. It's at the McDonald's in Hammond on Calumet Avenue, next to the police station. Her brother threw it out the car right by the drive-thru window side. It was by a tree right there.\"\n\nFor Paula, this was the start of one of the great grievances of her life — her claim that the other girls lied. A few details aside, their stories largely matched up. But in the discrepancies, Paula saw injustice. And correcting the narrative to fit her exact version of the truth would become an obsession.\n\nThe legal ramifications of what she'd shared, in her two statements, were that Paula had essentially confessed to the key elements of the murder. She had gift-wrapped a case for the authorities. She also had put herself in the cross hairs of a zealous prosecutor. She had no idea just how precarious her own life had become.\n\nTo empower the journalism behind IndyStar, please consider a subscription.\n\nJack Crawford — with a swooping, blow-dried haircut that gave him an appearance not unlike the televangelists of the era — came before a bank of reporters with material certain to make a splash.\n\nA rising star in Indiana's Democratic Party, Crawford had swept into the Lake County prosecutor's job years before, having pledged to get tough on crime. Since then, he had pursued the death penalty more than any other prosecutor in the state. In the first five months of 1985, he'd already won four death penalty convictions.\n\nNow, flanked by a pair of cops, Crawford came before the gathered media with an announcement sure to make headlines: For the first time in Lake County, his office was charging four girls with murder. He would seek the death penalty against the oldest — 16-year-old Karen Corder — and if the other girls were moved out of juvenile court, he'd likely seek death for them, too.\n\n\"I've been a prosecutor for seven years,\" Crawford told the media, \"and we've never had a case like this before.\"\n\nAs zealous as he was, Crawford privately acknowledged that same day that his chance for death sentences had already taken a big hit. That's because the clerk's office announced that the judge handling the Ruth Pelke cases was Superior Court Judge James C. Kimbrough Jr.\n\nKimbrough was a former public defender and NAACP lawyer who'd grown up in the civil rights heartland of Selma, Ala. More important than all of that, everyone around the courts — from prosecutors and public defenders to reporters and clerks — knew Kimbrough hated the death penalty. Hated it for its unfairness. Hated it for its inability to deter crime. And in a county where other judges had shown themselves willing to brandish the ultimate weapon, Kimbrough hadn't sent anyone to the electric chair during 12 years on the bench. Only once had he come close: Kimbrough sentenced a man to death who had been convicted of a double murder. Soon, though, the judge reversed himself and gave the man a new trial. Eventually, he was set free.\n\nSo, at word of Kimbrough's assignment, Jack Crawford and his team murmured that the path to a death sentence was a steep one. \"We certainly thought we had an uphill climb,\" he would say later.\n\n—\n\nIn the Lake County Juvenile Detention Center, Paula Cooper's life behind bars was getting off to a rough start.\n\nShe was no stranger to jail, having spent three months in the same detention center two years earlier after she ran away from home. She was a bit weepy then, even tender, the guards remembered. But this 15-year-old version of Paula Cooper was angrier, explosive and cocky. She acted as if she owned the place. She was a handful.\n\nTwo weeks after the crime, Paula took a seat next to two of her friends in the jail during \"quiet hour.\" Soon they grew noisy. A guard told them to shut up and disperse; Paula refused. The guard ordered her back to her cell. But as she stepped into the hall, Paula struck the guard across the bridge of the nose. She fought until reinforcements arrived to pull Paula off. As they were dragging her away, Paula issued a warning: They'd better transfer the guard or she would get a knife and come after her.\n\nThe dust-up prompted a transfer for the girls — from the juvenile center to the Lake County Jail. It also made the local papers, which didn't help the cause of saving their lives.\n\nBy the end of July 1985, the cases against all four girls were formally moved to adult court. Crawford, after sifting through the ample evidence, made his purpose clear: He would seek the death penalty against all four.\n\nThe case had pricked the public's consciousness of crime at a new level.\n\nCrawford's decision made news on the Chicago television stations; it made headlines across Indiana. The public defender assigned to represent Paula, Kevin Relphorde, was incredulous. \"They must be the youngest females in the country facing the death penalty,\" he told reporters.\n\nBy then, Paula and Karen, sharing a cell in the Lake County Jail, had been locked up two months. They began telling jail staff they were considering suicide. On cards they were given to report health problems, they wrote things such as \"Give me the electric chair\" and \"Give me that shock. I want to die.\"\n\nAs a precaution, jail officers took their personal belongings and stripped them to their underwear; they were on suicide watch.\n\nPaula and Karen responded by banging on the bars and making noise. To calm them, a nurse broke out the oral sedatives. Karen took hers; Paula refused. The guards teamed up to hold down Paula so the nurse could give her a shot. But as they tried to restrain her, Paula jumped up and hit one guard in the shoulder.\n\n\"Oh you tough, huh?\" the guard replied. \"You stabbed an old lady.\" It was less than professional, but it was a gut reaction.\n\n\"Yeah, I stabbed an old lady,\" Paula replied. \"And I'd stab that bitch again. I'd stab your fucking grandmother.\"\n\nThe jail incidents were part of a pattern to be repeated in years to come. Paula didn't respond well to restraints; she bucked authority. In such instances, she could be aggressive and hostile. A psychologist noted her tendencies and something else plain to see: Battered and badgered as a girl, she was now mistrustful and suspicious.\n\nSoon, Paula's interaction with the jail staff would grow more complicated. By August 1985, about the time she turned 16, Paula began receiving a series of private visitors. Two were male corrections officers. Another was a male recreational therapist. They weren't visiting just because of their jobs.\n\nThey were coming for sex.\n\n—\n\nOutside the jail, the stories about the angry young prisoners seemed only to add to the public's contempt. And as the details of their crime emerged, they were already easy to hate. Especially the girl who had wielded the knife — Paula Cooper.\n\nPaula had not just killed Ruth Pelke; she had stabbed her 33 times, according to the coroner. Some of the cuts on her arms looked like saw marks, as if the knife had been pulled back and forth. In other instances, the 12-inch knife had been wielded with such ferocity that the tip of the blade went through Ruth's body, pierced the carpet on which she lay and chipped the wood flooring beneath. Worst of all, it appeared Ruth Pelke survived the torturous assault for more than 30 minutes. The Post-Tribune called it \"possibly the most brutal killing in Gary history.\"\n\nIf all that wasn't bad enough, two of the girls had bragged about the killing at school. As defendants go, they were about as unsympathetic as they come. With guilt hardly in doubt, letters began appearing in the Gary newspaper debating the punishment. Some asked for mercy; others wanted severe justice. One letter directed at Paula appeared under the headline, \"She should pay.\"\n\nAll of it left Kevin Relphorde, Paula's lawyer, searching for a viable strategy to save Paula's life. The evidence was overwhelming, and the prosecutor was determined, which made a plea deal unimaginable. Paula's childhood had been bad, but it didn't seem to add up to an insanity plea. Her youth and relatively clean prior record were assets, but they looked meager compared to the brutality of the crime. Then there was the jury. Any panel drawn from across Lake County would be mostly white. And Paula was a black teenager who had killed an old white woman. All of it added up to a grim outlook.\n\nAs best as Relphorde could figure, the only thing Paula had going for her was the judge. Relphorde knew of Kimbrough's opposition to the death penalty. Ultimately, he suggested to Paula a stomach-churning strategy: Plead guilty.\n\nRelphorde was a part-time public defender who'd never handled a death penalty case. But he figured Paula's chances were better in the hands of a liberal judge than with 12 angry jurors.\n\nAs risky as it sounded, Relphorde wasn't the only person who sized things up the same way. David Olson, who was Karen Corder's attorney, came to a similar conclusion. He'd had a nightmare about Karen, he told the Post-Tribune in March 1986, and awoke fearful of \"losing her.\" His fears were amplified when he attended the trial of Denise Thomas, the first suspect to answer for the death of Ruth Pelke.\n\nJust before the case against Thomas went to trial, in November 1985, prosecutors withdrew the death penalty charge, concluding she'd been more of a bystander to the crime.\n\nBut that didn't stop the jurors from reacting strongly to the horrific details of Pelke's death. They quickly found Denise guilty. Olson didn't want to risk that with death on the line for his client. So in March, 10 months after the crime, Karen went before Kimbrough with a guilty plea. Her sentencing would follow two months later.\n\nHow well Paula understood the risks of her plea — and how much say she had in it — is now a matter of dispute. Relphorde said he met with Paula regularly to talk strategy and that the plea was ultimately her decision. Years later, Paula would recall only three brief meetings with her attorney, who she said assured her the judge opposed the death penalty and would be sympathetic to a black girl. If she pleaded guilty, she said she was told, she wouldn't get a death sentence.\n\nOn April 21, 1986, Paula appeared in court to plead guilty to murder.\n\nHerman Cooper came to the courtroom that day; so did Paula's sister, Rhonda. But Gloria Cooper, Paula's mother, was nowhere to be found. She had moved to Georgia and stopped answering the calls of Paula's attorney.\n\nWhen the hearing began, Kimbrough asked Paula more than once if she knew she could be sentenced to death. Each time, Paula answered yes. To the most important question — How do you plead? — she never hesitated: Guilty.\n\nFor the record, Paula retold the story of the crime — the scheme to get into the house; what she did to Ruth; how the girls took the car.\n\n\"We went to commit a robbery, you know,\" she told the judge.\n\nWas there any discussion in advance about what you'd do with Mrs. Pelke? he asked.\n\n\"No. It wasn't a discussion to go and kill anyone, you know.\"\n\nKimbrough accepted the plea. Paula's life was now in his hands. But she would have to wait months for an answer. Relphorde left convinced Paula had made her best play: \"We were basically throwing ourselves on the mercy of the court.\"\n\nPaula's strategy seemed to appear sound when, in May 1986, Kimbrough spared Karen Corder's life, giving her 60 years in prison. In fact, three of the girls had escaped with their lives. Denise Thomas, found guilty at trial, received a 35-year sentence. April Beverly, who conceived the robbery but waited outside during the killing, pleaded guilty in exchange for a 25-year prison term.\n\nOnly Paula's fate remained unresolved.\n\nLost in the news of Corder's reprieve, perhaps, was some language the judge used in reference to Paula. It seemed ominous. Kimbrough said it had been \"conceded by all that Paula Cooper was the leader of this group of four young ladies. That Paula Cooper was the dominant factor in the crime.\" He said Corder was \"operating under the substantial domination of Paula Cooper.\" Despite such words, the prevailing view in legal circles was that Kimbrough would spare Paula's life.\n\n—\n\nAs her judgment approached, there were hints that Paula Cooper's case was starting to resonate beyond Indiana. Jack Crawford's first clue came when his secretary stepped into his office with an unusual message: \"There's a man outside who says he's from the Vatican. He's dressed like a monk and wants to talk to you about Paula Cooper's case.\"\n\nCrawford took a look. Sure enough, in a brown tunic bound at the waist with a cord, there stood a Franciscan friar. He told Crawford he was from Rome. He offered a letter validating his credentials. And he brought a simple message: Pope John Paul II and the Vatican weren't pleased with Crawford's decision to seek the death penalty.\n\nCrawford was Roman Catholic. He'd gone to Notre Dame. He knew the church's opposition to the death penalty. But, as he explained to the friar, this was a legal decision, not a religious one. The friar left unsatisfied. He would not be the last Franciscan to stand with Paula.\n\nMore surprising than the friar's appearance was the visit Crawford received in June 1986 from Paula's attorney, Kevin Relphorde.\n\nIt was just weeks before Paula's sentencing, and Relphorde had few cards to play in Paula's defense. This time, though, it appeared he might have a game changer.\n\n\"You can't execute Paula Cooper,\" he said.\n\n\"Well, why is that, Kevin?\" Crawford asked.\n\n\"She's pregnant.\"\n\n—\n\nThe sex scandal at the Lake County Jail erupted in June 1986.\n\nFor months, corrections officers Vernard Rouster, 25, and Parmaley Rainge, 27, had been coming to see Paula for sex, officials discovered. So, too, had Michael Dean Lampley, a recreational therapist from a mental health center. Their encounters occurred even as a 40-year-old female corrections officer and a police patrolman were supposed to be maintaining security for the state's highest-profile murder suspect.\n\n—\n\nOne of the guards admitted the sex began when Paula was still a week shy of 16 — the age of consent in Indiana. That people working in the jail were having sex with a captive wasn't illegal in Indiana in 1986. After the revelation, the jail workers resigned their jobs and the therapist was fired, but no one was prosecuted. Supervisors on the jail floor were suspended — for 15 days.\n\nFor all of its tawdriness, the scandal had the potential to affect Paula's case. State law prohibited the execution of a pregnant woman; punishment would have to wait. And while a death penalty appeal was certain to outlast a pregnancy, the strange episode raised the possibility of a sentencing delay.\n\nKimbrough ordered a medical exam for Paula. Quickly, the matter was put to rest: She wasn't pregnant. But, in a sign of the times, public discussion about the scandal seemed to focus less on the culpability of the jailers than on the promiscuity of the 16-year-old girl in jail.\n\nJames McNew, a deputy in Crawford's office who prosecuted the case, told the Post-Tribune he suspected Paula Cooper tried to get pregnant to stir up sympathy and avoid death.\n\nHowever it came about, the sex scandal prompted a change in state law: It became a crime for jailers to have sex with their prisoners. Soon, though, the jailhouse sex scandal would become little more than a footnote before a judgment heard around the world.\n\nTo empower the journalism behind IndyStar, please consider a subscription.\n\nBill Pelke sat on the wrong side of the courtroom.\n\nHis grandmother was the murder victim. Unwittingly, Bill took a seat on the side of the murderer. He was unfamiliar with the trappings of the courtroom. And unlike some in the community — in his own family — Bill carried no blood lust into the chamber. He thought people who committed murder should die. And Paula Cooper had killed his beloved Nana. But he wasn't fuming about it.\n\nBill had stayed away from the previous court hearings, but decided this was one he shouldn't miss. It was July 11, 1986. And for Paula Cooper, it was judgment day.\n\nCourtroom 3 of Lake Superior Court was a small space. The gallery, oriented outside a circle where the business of the court was conducted, had seats for just 43 onlookers. This day, it was packed to overflowing. People stood, straining to hear, just outside the public entrance. Lawyers and other court personnel did the same just outside the doors normally used by the judge and juries. All wanted to know the fate of a 16-year-old girl who faced a potential death sentence.\n\nInto this cauldron, Paula Cooper entered under the escort of a jail matron. She didn't need to look around to see she had few friends in the room. Her sister and her grandfather were there, but neither of her parents was present. Her mother had moved to Georgia, her father to Tennessee. As Paula entered, the matron said something that made the young defendant smile. The gesture surprised Bill Pelke; it struck him as unbefitting for the moment. When this day is done, he thought to himself, she's not going to be smiling.\n\nDeputy Prosecutor James McNew began the proceedings by calling Bill's father to testify. Robert Pelke hadn't missed a hearing — for Paula or any of the other girls. He had been the family spokesman, and he wanted a death sentence for Paula. He described going to Ruth Pelke's home when she hadn't answered the phone, finding her home in disarray and her body on the floor. He described her bloody dress and the towel wrapped around her head. When the attorneys finished questioning him, Robert asked to read a statement to the court.\n\nThis, Robert Pelke said, was a crime that deserved the maximum sentence the law would allow. He quoted the Bible about submitting to authorities and God's vengeance and punishing evildoers. He said Paula gave Ruth no second chance, and he saw no reason to give Paula one.\n\n\"Paula reveled in her doings and enjoyed it,\" he said. He spoke of ridding society of those who would prey upon the innocent. \"This is a tragedy that should never have happened,\" he said, \"and a tragedy that family and friends will never forget.\"\n\nNext, one of the girls from Lew Wallace High School testified about seeing Paula and the others on their joy ride and about finding the bloody knife on the floor of the car.\n\nA crime lab technician discussed grisly photos from the scene — pictures of Ruth Pelke, of the knife-torn carpet and the gouge marks in the hardwood floor.\n\nThe prosecution introduced into evidence the autopsy report, which expressed the damage done by the 33 stab wounds. There was also an anatomical diagram noting the points where Ruth had been wounded — so many it looked like a star chart.\n\nJailers who had been attacked and threatened by Paula detailed her bad behavior; they recounted her admission about stabbing \"an old lady.\"\n\nEntering into evidence the grisly details of the crime and the accounts of Paula's callous behavior was part of the prosecution's effort to build a case that the only just punishment was death.\n\nIn Paula's defense, only three witnesses spoke.\n\nRhonda Cooper gave a picture of how she and Paula grew up terrorized in the home of Herman Cooper. She testified to the beatings, to their father's raping their mother in front of them, to their mother's suicide attempt and to their attempts to run away.\n\nRonald Williams, Rhonda's biological father, testified that he wanted to take Paula away from the misery, but her mother refused. He spoke of Gloria's threats against Paula and of the suicide attempt.\n\nDr. Frank Brogno, a Gary psychologist who examined Paula, described how Paula's abuse left her angry and confused, depressed and hostile. He said she was prone to confusion and bizarre thinking, even drifting into fantasies. Still, he said, Paula knew right from wrong. There was still hope for her, but also a real danger she could become a sociopath.\n\nMcNew, on cross-examination, ripped into the doctor. He pointed out how Brogno had testified in Karen Corder's case that Paula was the \"prime mover\" in the crime.\n\n—\n\nRelphorde made a plea for Paula's life, saying she had gone to Ruth Pelke's home to rob, not kill. He said the other girls were intensely involved in the crime and their lives had been spared. The death penalty, he said, was applied at the whim of prosecutors. He said Ruth Pelke, a woman of faith, wouldn't want Paula to die. In the end, he said, Paula was the handiwork of an abusive home and a system that failed her.\n\n\"I don't think Paula was born violent,\" he said. \"I think Paula was a product of what was done to her.\"\n\nMcNew, closing the prosecution's case, checked all the boxes needed for a death sentence: Paula wasn't crazy. She wasn't doing someone else's bidding. She'd struck the death blows. She had a criminal record, as far as a juvenile goes, for skipping school and running away from home. And Paula's abusive childhood? To use that for an excuse, McNew said, was to insult everyone who has endured similar treatment and found a way to overcome the horrors. Giving Paula the death penalty, McNew said, would have a sobering effect on others who might be considering crime. But McNew said there was one reason, above all, for a death sentence.\n\n\"I am not seeking a deterrence to crime when I ask the death penalty on Paula Cooper. I seek justice for the family of Ruth Pelke.\"\n\n—\n\nWith the attorneys done, Kimbrough asked Paula if she had anything to say. And Paula did not shrink from the moment.\n\nShe hadn't wanted a trial, Paula began; she only wanted to tell the truth. \"Now my family life, it hasn't really been good. … Nobody understand how I feel.\"\n\n\"This man,\" she said, pointing to the prosecutor, \"sit here and say he want to take my life. Is that right? I didn't go to Mrs. Pelke's house to kill her. It wasn't planned. I didn't go there to take somebody's life. It happened. It just happened. Something. It wasn't planned. We didn't sit up and say we was going to go and kill this innocent old lady. I didn't even know the lady. But everybody put the blame on me.\"\n\nShe said Jack Crawford had described her in the newspaper as the ringleader. \"I wasn't the ringleader. I didn't make those girls go,\" she said. \"They went on their own.\"\n\nLooking around at the people in the courtroom, Paula seemed disgusted. \"Well, where was all these people at right here when I needed somebody? Where was they at? They turned their backs on me and took me through all this. All I can say is now, look where I am now, facing a possible death sentence.\"\n\nShe pointed at the Pelke family and repeated her plea that killing wasn't her intention. \"I hope you all could find some happiness in your hearts to forgive me. And I know your mother was a Christian lady, and she is in heaven right now. I read my Bible. How do you think I feel? I can't sit here and tell you I understand how you feel because I don't.\"\n\nShe acknowledged that \"sorry\" would never be good enough.\n\nPaula looked to Judge Kimbrough. But, as Bill Dolan would report in the Post-Tribune the next day, the judge \"didn't return her gaze.\" \"I don't know what the decision is going to be today, or whenever you make your decision. I know justice must be done. And whatever the circumstances, or whatever your decision is, I will accept it, even if it is death.\" She acknowledged she couldn't change what happened: She hoped to get out one day and start life over, maybe even finish school.\n\n\"Will I have a chance?\" she asked. \"Will I get a chance?\"\n\nFor a couple of minutes, Paula rambled. She repeated that she hadn't forced the other girls to act; she felt it important everyone know she wasn't a gang member. Then she reined it back in for one final thought: \"I am sorry for what I did. And I know my involvement in this case is very deep. But all I can ask you is not to take my life. That is all I can ask you. That is all I can ask is to spare my life.\"\n\nSuddenly, a commotion broke out in the courtroom. There was shouting in the gallery. \"My grandbaby, my grandbaby.\"\n\nBill Pelke looked at the wailing man near him and saw the tears run down his cheeks; the visage burned into Bill's memory. He watched the man as the bailiff escorted him out of the courtroom.\n\nIt was Paula's grandfather, making one final plea on Paula's behalf.\n\nNow it was up to the judge.\n\n—\n\nJudge James C. Kimbrough had been wading through the sordid details of Ruth Pelke's murder for more than a year. He'd parsed the depressing narrative, and people had speculated whether he had a death penalty in him, especially for a girl. Now they were about to get their answer.\n\nThere was no doubt about Paula Cooper's guilt. Kimbrough dispatched that with his first breath. The murder had been disturbing: Paula had inflicted the 33 stab wounds in the body of 78-year-old Ruth Pelke.\n\nThose were the strikes against her.\n\nBut the defendant had no prior criminal history, and she was 15 at the time of the crime.\n\nThose were factors to consider on her behalf.\n\nThe other requirements for the death penalty, Kimbrough said, didn't work in the defendant's favor. She acted of her own free will. She wasn't under the influence of drugs. Her mental problems didn't rise to the level of incompetence. But all those things, Kimbrough said, were legalities. Ultimately, he said, death penalty cases boil down to a \"political utterance.\"\n\n\"This case has received an unusual amount of publicity,\" Kimbrough said. \"There is worldwide interest in the outcome of these proceedings today. And the court is certainly aware of that interest.\"\n\nWhen he left law school in 1959, Kimbrough said, he had been \"totally against\" the death penalty — and most of the country shared the view.\n\nNearly 30 years later, he said, public sentiment had changed, perhaps because of the violent activities of people such as Paula Cooper. Now, the vast majority of the public favors the death penalty, Kimbrough said, Normally, he wrote out his sentences in advance. But this case had challenged him to the point he'd been unable to do so.\n\nKimbrough praised the deputy prosecutor for speaking \"eloquently\" — he said McNew brought the matters into focus \"better than all of the turmoil that I have been through in the last several months.\"\n\nHe criticized state law for being too general when it came to giving minors the death penalty. It left him unsure what to do on that fundamental question. \"I don't know what the right political answer to that question is.\"\n\nThen Kimbrough, in a moment of vulnerability judges don't always reveal, showed some insight into his restless mind. \"I don't believe I am ever going to be quite the same after these four cases. They have had a very profound effect on me. They have made me come to grips with the question of whether or not a judge can hold personal beliefs which are inconsistent at all with the law as they were sworn to uphold. And for those of you who have no appreciation of it, it is not a simple question. It is not a simple question for me.\"\n\nKimbrough interrupted his confessional to take issue with something Robert Pelke said: \"I do not believe the failure to impose the death penalty today would be unbiblical. … I don't profess to be an expert in religion. But I know the Bible has passages which are merciful, and do not demand or mandate an eye for an eye.\"\n\nReturning to his inner turmoil, Kimbrough said he'd concluded that a judge must decide a case based on facts, regardless of whether it satisfies him. \"I will tell you, very frankly now, on the record, that I do not believe in the death penalty.\"\n\nThis seemed to launch Kimbrough on a rant. \"Maybe in 20 years, after we have had our fill of executions, we will swing back the other way and think they are unconstitutional. Maybe.\"\n\nAt about this point, Jack Crawford, sitting at the prosecutor's table, was ready to give up hope for a death penalty. He turned to McNew, he remembered later, and whispered into his ear.\n\n\"He's not going to give it.\"\n\nThen Kimbrough directed his eyes to the girl awaiting his judgment.\n\n\"Stand up, Paula.\"\n\nShe had stabbed Ruth Pelke 33 times, he said. He was concerned about her background. She had been \"born into a household where your father abused you, and your mother either participated or allowed it to happen. And those seem to be explanations or some indication of why you may be this type of personality that you are.\"\n\n\"They are not excuses, however.\"\n\nHowever.\n\nThat word caught Crawford's attention. So did the fact that Kimbrough's shoulders seemed to slump, as if the weight of the moment was getting to the judge. Crawford leaned in and whispered again to McNew.\n\n\"I think he's going to give it. I think he's going to give it.\"\n\nKimbrough continued.\n\n\"You committed the act, and you must pay the penalty,\" Kimbrough said. Briefly, he trailed into some legalese about the charge. Then he gathered himself for the final judgment.\n\n\"The law requires me, and I do now impose, the death penalty.\"\n\n—\n\nThe courtroom erupted.\n\n\"What did he say?\"\n\nPaula Cooper looked at Kevin Relphorde for help; amid the chaos, she wasn't sure what had just happened. She looked back for the judge; he had already left the bench. She asked Relphorde what had happened. He delivered the verdict again: He gave you the death penalty.\n\nThe smile Paula wore into the courtroom was gone, indeed. Bill Pelke took note of that. Instead, he saw a river of tears streaming down her cheeks. As she was led from the courtroom, the tears soaked the top of her blouse.\n\nJust like that, Paula Cooper — at 16 years, 10 months and 16 days — became the youngest person ever sentenced to death in Indiana; she was now the youngest female on death row anywhere in the United States. In this age before the cellphone, news reporters from national outlets raced out of the courtroom to the nearest bank of pay telephones. It took a few hours, but the verdict soon circled the globe.\n\nIn the hallway outside the courtroom, Rhonda Cooper yelled in anguish at members of the Pelke family and the prosecutors nearby.\n\n\"Are you satisfied now?\"\n\nThey seemed satisfied.\n\nStrangely, one of the most unsatisfied people in the building was the source of the commotion: Judge Kimbrough.\n\nAfter delivering the verdict, he darted out of the courtroom and into the hallway leading to his chambers. There, between the two rooms, he spotted William Touchette, a public defender who handled appeals. Kimbrough told Touchette to follow him.\n\nTouchette (pronounced TOO-shay) had been among those outside the courtroom straining to hear the proceedings. Like so many local lawyers, he was friendly with the judge; they'd socialized outside of work. He followed Kimbrough into his chambers.\n\nThe judge was angry. As angry as Touchette had ever seen him. Angry that the defense hadn't given him enough to spare Paula Cooper's life. Then Kimbrough uttered seven words Touchette would never again hear from a judge.\n\n\"I want you to get me reversed.\"\n\nTo empower the journalism behind IndyStar, please consider a subscription.\n\nPaula Cooper's death sentence was one of Indiana's biggest news stories in 1986. It garnered network television news coverage. Once it hit the international news wires, it was picked up by newspapers in Europe, where it inspired protests.\n\nBut Monica Foster, working for a nonprofit death penalty defense group in Downtown Indianapolis, somehow missed all that. To her, it was as if the Paula Cooper case had never happened.\n\nIt wasn't that Foster was uninterested in current events or that she was dull. In fact, Foster was a wunderkind. She'd graduated from high school at 16, college at 19 and law school at 22. She'd come to work for the Indiana Public Defender Council, researching and offering advice to lawyers with death penalty cases, even before finishing her law degree. But at 27, she had a tendency to get absorbed in her work. And when that happened, the outside world ceased to exist.\n\nSo when William Touchette, the Lake County attorney preparing Paula Cooper's appeal, called the council looking for some help, Foster knew nothing of the case. Without hesitation, Foster agreed to be Touchette's local connection to Paula, who was being held at the Indiana Women's Prison on the city's east side. Foster even said she'd donate her time, seeing the client on evenings and weekends, as a sideline.\n\nFoster didn't realize she'd just signed on to the case that would become the most noteworthy of her career.\n\nWhen the case file arrived in her office, Foster began reading about Paula Cooper. Right away, she was puzzled.\n\nHere was a black girl from Gary who had been sentenced to death by a black judge whom even Foster knew to be one of the most liberal, anti-death penalty jurists in the state. The girl had brutally murdered an elderly woman during a robbery, but Foster told the people in her office that to get a death sentence from this judge Paula Cooper had to be some kind of rabid animal.\n\n\"She must be frothing at the mouth.\"\n\nFoster decided to go to the prison and see Paula Cooper for herself.\n\n—\n\nPaula had arrived at the Indiana Women's Prison — America's oldest women's prison — five days after her sentencing.\n\nEstablished shortly after the Civil War, it was originally in the countryside east of Indianapolis. Over time, brick storefronts and wood-frame houses sprang up around the prison's series of boxy brick buildings — situated around a grassy courtyard — and now the prison was landlocked in the middle of an urban neighborhood.\n\nAwaiting Paula was a cell tucked away on the second floor of the segregation unit. It was stark: block walls and tile floor; aluminum sink and toilet; a desk and a chair; all of it packaged in a space slightly bigger than a walk-in closet.\n\nShe had one window to the outside world. Depending on which side of the hallway she was assigned at the time, it featured either a view of the courtyard or, just beyond a fence topped by razor wire, the backside of a row of decaying houses.\n\nPaula's cell had two metal doors. One was made of bars, the other was solid. Most of the time, the solid door remained open, allowing her to talk through the bars to passing guards and nearby prisoners. But when the solid door was closed, it was as if she was locked in a vault. Worse, the prison had no air conditioning. As summer temperatures outside climbed into the 90s, the only air moving through the wing was pushed by a floor fan at the end of the hall. Most of the time, the place felt like the inside of a cook stove.\n\nHere, Paula Cooper spent 23 hours a day. In the remaining hour, she had 30 minutes to shower and 30 minutes for recreation, which meant a short walk to a larger room where she could play Ping-Pong or cards with other prisoners. Meals were delivered to her cell.\n\nShe was 16 years old and, in the grand scheme of things, set apart from the rest of the human race.\n\nThe treatment was harsher than what Paula's three co-defendants in the murder of Ruth Pelke faced. They were housed elsewhere in the prison, with the general population. They had greater freedom of movement, time outdoors and an ongoing interaction with other people. Paula was allotted 10 hours of visits per month, but she wasn't sure who would fill the time. Her sister had moved to Minnesota. Her mother had moved to Georgia. Her father had moved to Tennessee. Paula was as alone as she could be.\n\nYet she faced a struggle greater than isolation and heat. She lived in fear that the executioner was coming for her any minute. Whatever she'd been told about the appeals process hadn't registered. She thought she was about to be taken away and killed. She existed moment to moment, in dread the guards were about to drag her away to the electric chair. In letters, she would describe her situation in the bleakest of terms — \"a mental hell.\" Paula needed hope. She needed a friend. But who?\n\n—\n\nMonica Foster entered the security checkpoint at the Indiana Women's Prison and was shown to the glass-walled consultation room. In short order, she watched as a guard escorted her client in to meet her.\n\nPaula Cooper was nothing like she expected. Monica came looking for the heartless killer who had murdered an old woman in cold blood, fought the guards at the county jail and been given a ticket to the chair by the most liberal judge in Lake County.\n\nInstead, Foster found a girl, sobbing uncontrollably, who had been on suicide watch. Foster tried to calm her. After some questioning, she gathered the reason for the emotional meltdown: Paula thought they were coming any time now. To kill her.\n\nFoster's blood boiled. She realized that, since the sentencing, no one had explained to Paula the years of appeals; the good chance for a reprieve; and, should all else fail, the notice she would receive well ahead of an execution. Foster felt sorry for Paula. She explained the process. Above all, she told Paula she'd never be ambushed by the executioner.\n\nPaula went back to her cell in a little better shape, but Foster left the prison rattled. She couldn't believe how she had misjudged her client. She realized that her role in this case was about more than legal counsel. She would need to offer her client a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen.\n\nFoster began going to the prison on weekends, sitting and talking with Paula for hours. She listened to Paula talk about being depressed, and she tried to buck her up. She listened to Paula's troubles with the prison administration and offered advice on ways to get along. She listened to Paula describe the abuses of her childhood, and Foster shared some of the tougher aspects of her own. The conversation wasn't always heavy. Sometimes they talked about places they dreamed of going and about men Foster was dating. Paula, in particular, was quick with a jab about Foster's romantic failures. Even in a maximum security prison, with one of them facing death, they spent a good deal of time laughing. And Foster found Paula's laugh to be infectious. That she could laugh at all impressed Foster. The girl seemed to have some kind of resiliency. After a while, Foster could deny it no longer: She liked Paula Cooper.\n\n—\n\nBill Pelke felt no such affection.\n\nIn the 18 months since Paula Cooper killed his grandmother, Bill had lost the ability to think of Ruth Pelke as the sweet person she'd been; he could only see the murder victim. He couldn't remember the warmth of Ruth's home; he could only think of it as a crime scene. When Paula Cooper received her sentence, Pelke felt justice had been served. His father, Robert Pelke, warned him that the justice wouldn't last. On a trip to Florida they took to get away from it all, Robert Pelke said Paula would probably never see the electric chair. \"Some do-gooder will probably come along and help get her off death row,\" he'd said. Bill struggled to imagine it; he just tried to get on with his life.\n\nBut moving on wasn't easy. And at 39, Bill already had other things on his mind that bothered him. He'd dropped out of college and wound up in Vietnam during the height of the war. As a radio operator, he was supposed to take cover during the fighting and call in air support. But he still carried shrapnel in his side from the wounds he suffered. Worse than that, he carried memories of the Army buddies who'd never come back. The experience left him sick of death. When he returned home, he'd married and started a family, but his marriage failed. So many things in his life hadn't gone as he'd planned. One afternoon in November 1986, all of this seemed to coalesce in Bill's mind.\n\nBill worked in a steel mill as a crane operator. He sat 50 feet above the manufacturing floor in the cab of his crane, moving heavy loads as the need arose. But on this Sunday night shift, things were slow; his mind began to drift. He wondered why life was so hard, why God had allowed Ruth to suffer such a horrendous death. He wondered why his family — his good family — was made to suffer in the wake of the crime. It was an unlikely perch for prayer, but Bill closed his eyes and began seeing images in his mind. He saw the courtroom where Paula had been sentenced to death. He remembered the outburst of her grandfather and the tears streaming down the man's face. He remembered Paula's reaction and the tears streaming down hers, how they soaked her blouse.\n\nA hard realization hit Bill: Ruth wouldn't have wanted these things. She had invited Paula and the girls into her home to help them find faith. It occurred to Bill that Ruth would be more interested in Paula's salvation than her execution. He was certain, too, that Ruth would have hated seeing Paula's grandfather in anguish.\n\nBill thought of the Bible stories Ruth had taught and the lessons he'd learned from a lifetime in church. He remembered Jesus taught that you shouldn't forgive someone just seven times, but 70 times seven — in other words, forgiveness should be a habit. He remembered being taught that the measure of forgiveness we show others is the measure by which we shall be judged. He remembered hearing about Jesus on the cross, offering salvation to the man dying next to him, offering grace to those who sought his death. \"Forgive them,\" Jesus had said, \"for they know not what they do.\"\n\nAnd then Bill realized something: Paula hadn't known what she was doing. Nobody in their right mind would take a 12-inch butcher knife and stab someone 33 times. It was crazy. Senseless.\n\nIn his mind, Bill began to see a new image: It was the picture of Ruth, the one published countless times since her death — silver hair, horn-rimmed glasses, sweet smile. Except now, he saw her face in the picture with tears running down her cheeks. Bill felt certain Ruth wanted someone from her family to show love to Paula and hers. Bill wasn't capable of it right then, but he thought he should try. He was a blue collar guy — a steelworker — and now he was at work crying a river of his own tears. From his seat in the cab of the crane, Bill prayed: \"God, give me love and compassion for Paula Cooper and her family.\" In return, he promised God two things. First, Bill would give credit to God for giving him the ability to forgive Paula whenever success came his way. Second, he'd walk through whatever door opened as a result of forgiving Paula.\n\nEventually, the sweet memories of Ruth would come back to Bill. He would be able to put aside the horror story. First, though, he felt he had to take a greater leap of faith. He had to get in touch with his grandmother's killer. He had to reach out to Paula Cooper.\n\nTo empower the journalism behind IndyStar, please consider a subscription.\n\nThe next day, Bill phoned Paula's attorney. He wanted her prison address, and he was willing to do whatever it took to help save Paula's life. Kevin Relphorde's response wasn't encouraging: \"It's kind of late for that.\"\n\nUndeterred, Bill took the address and sat down at a desk in his Portage home to write perhaps the most intense letter of his life. He told Paula he had forgiven her; he wanted to visit her; there were Bible verses his grandmother would want him to share. He also wanted to meet her grandfather, he of the tearful courtroom outburst.\n\nBill dropped the letter in his mailbox and, at some level, thought that would be the end of it. But in the days following, he found himself checking his mailbox almost daily. Ten days after he sent his letter, an envelope showed up. The return address said: \"Ms. Paula Cooper.\"\n\nThe envelope was thick. Inside, he found a letter dated Nov. 10, 1986, six pages of a teenage girl's loopy cursive, written in pencil, on pink stationery. The contents were far from a schoolgirl's bubble gum dreams. It was a snapshot of Paula's mind on death row. Her thoughts darted back and forth — between apologies and self-pity, between empathy for those who hated her and preachiness about why they should forgive her. Much of the letter was frenetic. Sentences ran on and on like the transcriptions of a nervous talker. Her misspellings and limited punctuation seemed to reflect the erratic schooling of someone who'd been on the run since eighth grade. But it also bore the hallmarks of a mind in overdrive, overloaded with conflicting emotions. Here are some excerpts. Periods have been added for clarity.\n\nBill 11/10/86\n\nHello how are you? fine I truly hope. me I'll survive, I received your letter today & it was nice of you to write me. one of Ms Pelkes friends wrote me also, I answered it back also. Im not the mean type of person your family thinks I am but I can except that. I really do. your cousin Robert was something else & what he said about not knowing if Ms Pelke would forgiving me. Ive read my bible & I know it says the way you judge others the Lord will judge you the same way. Ive prayed for your family. a lady in a wheel chair use to visit me at the jail. she said God would be pleased if I prayed for all of you, I am doing fine. They treat me ok & I am always isolated 23 hrs a day. thats how it is on death row, it is a mental hell because no one cares except for themselves. I am thankful to the Lord for them letting the others have a little time, because I've had hell all my life. so it really doesnt matter if I live or die because Im ready any time they come …\n\nIn his initial letter, Bill expressed a desire to save Paula from her death sentence. But in her reply, Paula told Bill he need not write, travel or speak on her behalf; she just wanted his forgiveness. She seemed proud of her performance in court — how she looked his family in the face and apologized. She seemed to excuse her parents for missing her sentencing. Although they had beaten and neglected her, Paula said, her actions affected them, too.\n\nAt various times, her words ranged from fatalistic to self-pitying:\n\nI cant stay here like this & I don't want to be here, I deserve a chance one that Ive never had before. but one day Ill be free even if its when Im dead…\n\nI cry every time I think of your grand mom. the others think it's a joke because you all let them be free. Im not an evil person, or what ever you think of me to be, Im just some one who is real angry, angry with life & all the people around me …\n\nIve never done anything wrong before except ask for help, I was turned away & introduced into a life of drugs, sex & crime, but now its too late for help. Im dying inside because of this but I only hope for the best for others.\n\nIn closing, she made it clear she wanted more interaction with Bill, even if she was passive about it. She would put him on her list of allowable prison visitors; she would write him whenever he wrote her; she offered her grandfather's phone number and address. In a dark world, it was as if she had seen a flicker of light.\n\nWell, Ill go now, Ill continue to pray for all of you.\n\nTake care\n\nPaula\n\nTheir first exchange was the start of a surprising correspondence that would span years and delve into the core themes of Paula's life — searching for forgiveness; grappling with remorse; her closeness with death; her search for peace.\n\nThe letters also chart the course of a relationship that many people would struggle to understand, especially Bill Pelke's father.\n\n—\n\nAfter a second exchange of letters with Paula, Bill felt compelled to share with his parents the news of his surprising correspondence: His father had once warned of a do-gooder who would get Paula off death row. Now it appeared Bill wanted to be that do-gooder.\n\nAt first, his parents were speechless. \"We don't understand why you are doing this,\" his mother, Lola, said. Surprisingly, his father acquiesced.\n\n\"Do what you got to do,\" Robert said.\n\nBill wrote Clarence Trigg, the superintendent of the Indiana Women's Prison, a letter that spent most of a page describing Ruth Pelke's faith and her commitment to sharing it. He concluded with a request:\n\nClarence, if Ruth Pelke could speak with you right now, I am sure she would say, \"Please let Billy see Paula.\"\n\nThank you for your consideration\n\nIn the name of Jesus and His Love\n\nWilliam R. Pelke\n\nBut the prison doors weren't about to open to Bill anytime soon. Corrections officials didn't know what to make of his request — a murder victim's grandson seeking an audience with her killer. They suspected he had another motive, such as revenge.\n\n—\n\nThe aftermath of Paula's case was confounding in other ways. Since giving Paula a death sentence, Judge James C. Kimbrough had been very public about his discomfort with his own ruling. Based on the law and the case in court, he said Paula qualified for the death penalty. But he hadn't been able to square it with his own opposition to capital punishment. The decision was costing him sleep. In an interview with the (Gary) Post-Tribune, published Aug. 4, 1986, a reporter noted the judge's nervous appearance.\n\nHe fidgeted in his chair. His gaze varied — at times less steady and slanted toward the desktop. He removed his glasses, toying with them.\n\nFriends who knew Kimbrough said the judge was different than he'd been before the Paula Cooper sentencing. The man they knew as friendly and jovial, even gregarious, was more reclusive, less outgoing. \"It weighed heavily on his mind,\" said Earline Rogers, a state legislator and a friend. \"That was something he felt legally he had to do but, personally, he would not have taken that path.\"\n\nSome in the legal community began to think there was a good chance Paula's death sentence would be overturned. But Kimbrough wouldn't live to find out.\n\nOn April 30, 1987, less than a year after his judgment of Paula, Kimbrough drove his car into the back of a semi and was killed. He had been drinking. The tragedy cast a pall over the Lake County courts, but it also landed hard at the Indiana Women's Prison. When Monica Foster told Paula her judge was dead, Paula was inconsolable. Days later, in a letter to Bill Pelke, she shared her thoughts about the judge.\n\n\"all I could do was cry, even though Kimbrough sentenced me to die. I felt a closeness to him as if he were my father. I have been sentenced to die many times by a lot of people and it's only words. We are all on Death Row and the last day of April his death sentence was completed & it should teach a lot of people we all have a date that is already planned & the way it will happen.\"\n\nPaula's own father had been cruel; at least Kimbrough had agonized over the punishment he gave.\n\nThe letter about Kimbrough was the 20th she'd written to Bill Pelke in less than six months. She was surprising herself at her output: \"I didn't even know I had a good handwriting or a great vocabulary until I was locked up.\"\n\nBy then, she was 17 and a condemned killer with hours to contemplate her past, present and future. Several themes recurred in her writing.\n\nLife on death row. She struggled to sleep, to breathe, to deal with the noise. \"To be on death row is worst than when I was in a mental hospital. At least it was quiet.\" She had ailments from toothaches to a bad back. Mostly, she was confused and on edge. Life on the row made her feel like \"a walking time bomb.\"\n\nMemories of the murder. Her thoughts were plagued by it. She described what she did to Ruth Pelke as \"awful.\" She wished she could erase it. \"Every day,\" she said, \"I see my nightmare.\"\n\nDeath. It was constantly on her mind, whether by execution or by her own hand. She alternated between dread of the electric chair — \"I hope it never happens to me\" ­— and anticipation of it — \"sometimes I wish they would just go ahead & do it. They continue to put this death threat on my life and I'm tired of it.\"\n\nSuicide. She seemed to ponder the merits of killing herself. She wasn't sure what it would solve but, in words that seemed to echo from her mother, she said, \"there isn't anything here for me.\" She talked about hanging herself but acknowledged she couldn't follow through. \"I know that if I do that I might go to hell (and) I don't want that to happen.\"\n\nMeanwhile, people from across the country wrote her. Some, including a death row inmate in North Carolina, wanted a romantic relationship. Some wanted answers to the plague of juvenile crime. Others sent her Bibles and tried to save her soul. Yet her faith — another frequent topic — had grown cold. As a child, she read her Bible often, she said, but \"my faith started to shatter because of a lot of feelings, hopes and unanswered prayers. I love the Lord but we aren't rea", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2016/12/09"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_19", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:37", "search_result": []}
+{"question_id": "20220610_20", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:37", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/955210/next-tory-leader-odds-the-favourites-to-replace-boris-johnson", "title": "Next Tory leader odds: the favourites to replace Boris Johnson | The ...", "text": "We will use the details you have shared to manage your registration. You agree to the processing, storage, sharing and use of this information for the purpose of managing your registration as described in our Privacy Policy.\n\nWould you like to receive The WeekDay newsletter ?\n\nThe WeekDay newsletter provides you with a daily digest of news and analysis.\n\nWe will use the details you have shared to manage your newsletter subscription. You agree to the processing, storage, sharing and use of this information for the purpose of managing your subscription as described in our Privacy Policy.\n\nWe will use the information you have shared for carefully considered and specific purposes, where we believe we have a legitimate case to do so, for example to send you communications about similar products and services we offer. You can find out more about our legitimate interest activity in our Privacy Policy.\n\nIf you wish to object to the use of your data in this way, please tick here.\n\n'We' includes The Week and other Future Publishing Limited brands as detailed here.", "authors": ["The Week Staff"], "publish_date": "2021/12/20"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/07/uk/boris-johnson-confidence-vote-what-next-uk-gbr-intl/index.html", "title": "What's next for Boris Johnson? Here's what you need to know - CNN", "text": "London (CNN) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has survived a vote of confidence triggered by discontented lawmakers in his own Conservative Party, but his troubles are far from over.\n\nJohnson won the ballot on Monday with a significantly smaller margin than he and his allies had hoped for, suggesting that his leadership of the party -- and by extension the country -- has been shaken\n\nHere's what that means, and what's next for him:\n\nWhat happened on Monday?\n\nThe vote of confidence was triggered after at least 54 of Johnson's own MPs -- or 15% of Conservative lawmakers in the House of Commons -- submitted a confidential letter of no confidence to the chair of the 1922 Committee, a group of backbench lawmakers who do not hold government posts.\n\nAs a result, a secret ballot was held on Monday evening, where 211 Conservative MPs voted to keep Johnson as the party leader, while 148 voted for his removal.\n\nWhy is he facing so much pressure?\n\nJohnson's premiership has been shaken by the so-called \"Partygate\" scandal , with months of allegations of alcohol-fueled parties and gatherings at the heart of his government during pandemic lockdown restrictions eroding support in his leadership.\n\nBut the scandal is just one reason for the rebellion.\n\nJohnson has also been criticized for his response to a cost-of-living crisis , his inability to deliver on promises to boost the economy in northern England by creating new transport links, as well as his attitude toward the Northern Ireland protocol and the ongoing effects of Brexit.\n\nWas the result a surprise?\n\nYes and no. Johnson was expected to win the vote, especially given that around 180 MPs are thought to be on the government payroll and thus directly connected to the Prime Minister -- among them ministers, parliamentary private secretaries and party vice chairs.\n\nBut while Johnson and his allies tried to spin the vote's result as a \"convincing\" and \"decisive\" number, the final count of lawmakers who rebelled against him was far higher than his supporters expected.\n\nBefore the ballot, some analysts said that if the number of MPs voting against him exceeded 100, he'd be in serious trouble.\n\nDoes it mean he is safe?\n\nTechnically and for now, yes.\n\nUnder current Conservative Party rules, a leader who survives a confidence vote is safe from another such challenge for 12 months. These rules, however, can change at any time -- as many pointed out on Monday and Tuesday.\n\nPhotos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson British Prime Minister Boris Johnson waves from the steps of No. 10 Downing Street after giving a statement in London in July 2019. He had just become prime minister. Hide Caption 1 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson A 21-year-old Johnson speaks with Greek Minister for Culture Melina Mercouri in June 1986. Johnson at the time was president of the Oxford Union, a prestigious student society. Hide Caption 2 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson started his career as a journalist. He was fired from an early job at The Times for fabricating a quote. He later became a Brussels correspondent and then an assistant editor for The Daily Telegraph. From 1994 to 2005, he was editor of the weekly magazine The Spectator. Hide Caption 3 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson In 2001, Johnson was elected as a member of Parliament. He won the seat in Henley for the Conservative Party. Hide Caption 4 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson looks apologetic after fouling Germany's Maurizio Gaudino during a charity soccer match in Reading, England, in May 2006. Hide Caption 5 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson is congratulated by Conservative Party leader David Cameron, right, after being elected mayor of London in May 2008. Cameron later became prime minister. Hide Caption 6 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson, left, poses with a wax figure of himself at Madame Tussauds in London in May 2009. Hide Caption 7 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson poses for a photo in London in April 2011. He was re-elected as the city's mayor in 2012. Hide Caption 8 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson and his wife, Marina, enjoy the atmosphere in London ahead of the Olympic opening ceremony in July 2012. The couple separated in 2018 after 25 years of marriage. Hide Caption 9 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson gets stuck on a zip line during an event in London's Victoria Park in August 2012. Hide Caption 10 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson poses with his father, Stanley, and his siblings, Rachel and Jo, at the launch of his new book in October 2014. Stanley Johnson was once a member of the European Parliament. Hide Caption 11 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson takes part in a charity tug-of-war with British military personnel in October 2015. Hide Caption 12 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson kisses a wild salmon while visiting a fish market in London in June 2016. A month earlier, he stepped down as mayor but remained a member of Parliament for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Hide Caption 13 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson arrives at a news conference in London in June 2016. During the Brexit referendum that year, he was under immense pressure from Prime Minister Cameron to back the Remain campaign. But he broke ranks and backed Brexit at the last minute. Hide Caption 14 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson sits next to Prime Minister Theresa May during a Cabinet meeting in November 2016. Johnson was May's foreign secretary for two years before resigning over her handling of Brexit. Hide Caption 15 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson As foreign secretary. Johnson meets with US House Speaker Paul Ryan in April 2017. Johnson was born in New York City to British parents and once held dual citizenship. But he renounced his US citizenship in 2016. Hide Caption 16 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson launches his Conservative Party leadership campaign in June 2019. Hide Caption 17 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt take part in the Conservative Leadership debate in June 2019. Hide Caption 18 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson speaks in July 2019 after he won the party leadership vote to become Britain's next prime minister. Hide Caption 19 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Britain's Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Johnson at Buckingham Palace, where she invited him to become Prime Minister and form a new government. Hide Caption 20 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson poses with his dog Dilyn as he leaves a polling station in London in December 2019. Hide Caption 21 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson appears on stage alongside Bobby Smith during the count declaration in London in December 2019. Johnson's Conservative Party won a majority in the UK's general election, securing his position as Prime Minister. Hide Caption 22 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson and his partner, Carrie Symonds, react to election results from his study at No. 10 Downing Street. Hide Caption 23 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson speaks on the phone with Queen Elizabeth II in March 2020. Hide Caption 24 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson In March 2020, Johnson announced in a video posted to Twitter that he tested positive for the novel coronavirus. \"Over the last 24 hours, I have developed mild symptoms and tested positive for coronavirus. I am now self-isolating, but I will continue to lead the government's response via video conference as we fight this virus. Together we will beat this,\" Johnson said. He was later hospitalized after his symptoms had \"worsened,\" according to his office. Hide Caption 25 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson After recovering from the coronavirus, Johnson returned to work in late April 2020. Hide Caption 26 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson and staff members are pictured together with wine at a Downing Street garden in May 2020. In January 2022, Johnson apologized for attending the event, which took place when Britons were prohibited from gathering due to strict coronavirus restrictions. Hide Caption 27 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson wears a face mask as he visits the headquarters of the London Ambulance Service NHS Trust in July 2020. Hide Caption 28 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sits across from Johnson in the garden of No. 10 Downing Street in July 2020. Hide Caption 29 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson holds a crab in Stromness Harbour during a visit to Scotland in July 2020. Hide Caption 30 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson is seen with his wife, Carrie, after their wedding at London's Westminster Cathedral in May 2021. The ceremony, described by PA Media as a \"secret wedding,\" was reportedly held in front of close friends and family, according to several British newspaper accounts. Hide Caption 31 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson and US President Joe Biden speak at Carbis Bay in Cornwall, England, after their bilateral meeting in June 2021. Biden and Johnson were participating in the G7 summit that weekend. Hide Caption 32 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Queen Elizabeth II greets Johnson at Buckingham Palace in June 2021. It was the Queen's first in-person weekly audience with the Prime Minister since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Hide Caption 33 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson delivers his keynote speech on the final day of the annual Conservative Party Conference in October 2021. Hide Caption 34 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson speaks in the House of Commons in January 2022. He apologized for attending a May 2020 garden party that took place while the UK was in a hard lockdown to combat the spread of Covid-19. Johnson told lawmakers he believed the gathering to be a work event but that, with hindsight, he should have sent attendees back inside. Hide Caption 35 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Johnson attends the National Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul's Cathedral in London on Friday, June 3, as part of Platinum Jubilee celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II. Hide Caption 36 of 37 Photos: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson\n\n\n\nThe vote, triggered by disgruntled Conservative MPs, is the latest blow against Johnson's premiership, derailed by the \"Partygate\" scandal, criticism over his response to a cost of living crisis and a series of local election defeats. \"I think it's an extremely good, positive, conclusive, decisive result which enables us to move on to unite,\" Johnson said on Monday, June 6, in an interview shortly after a confidence vote where 148 of Johnson's own lawmakers turned against him on Monday, and 211 voted in support of him.The vote, triggered by disgruntled Conservative MPs, is the latest blow against Johnson's premiership, derailed by the \"Partygate\" scandal, criticism over his response to a cost of living crisis and a series of local election defeats. Hide Caption 37 of 37\n\nWhat are the next big challenges?\n\nThe large rebellion by his lawmakers will leave Johnson's reputation diminished. It could also damage his ability to push through legislation.\n\n\"The number of rebels who voted to oust Johnson far exceeds the Conservative Party's working majority of 75 seats in the House of Commons. If the rebels are determined, they could threaten to stall the government's legislative agenda which would further weaken the Conservatives' standing in the polls and heap further pressure on Johnson,\" Kallum Pickering, senior economist at Berenberg bank, wrote in a note to clients.\n\nThe Conservatives are also facing two difficult parliamentary by-elections in late June after two of their backbenchers were forced to resign amid their own scandals. Losses in those polls could heap more pressure on Johnson ahead of a national general election expected in 2024.\n\nWhat are Johnson's options now?\n\nJudging by his comments so far, the Prime Minister will aim to continue to cling on. In a statement Tuesday morning, Downing Street said Johnson will gather his Cabinet on Tuesday and \"pledge to continue delivering on what matters to the British people.\"\n\nJohnson won on Monday, but the fate of his predecessor Theresa May will still be fresh in his memory.\n\nMay also faced a no-confidence vote -- again, triggered by Conservative lawmakers. She survived that vote -- with a larger margin than Johnson -- but ultimately resigned a few months later. If it turns out Johnson's standing has been damaged beyond repair, he might opt for a voluntary exit rather than face the humiliating demise that she endured, which ultimately led to Johnson becoming Prime Minister.\n\nA nuclear option, which Johnson on Monday said he had no interest in, would be to call a snap election. Johnson was keen to remind his lawmakers on Monday that it was he who led the party to its biggest electoral win in 40 years in 2019.\n\nWhat are the options for the opposition?\n\nLabour Party leader Keir Starmer predicted to LBC radio that Monday's ballot would mark \"the beginning of the end\" of the Prime Minister's political career -- no matter which way it went.\n\nFollowing the vote, Starmer said Johnson was \"utterly unfit for the great office that he holds\" and accused Conservative lawmakers of ignoring the British public. \"The Conservative government now believes that breaking the law is no impediment to making the law,\" he added.\n\nJohnson became the first UK premier in history to be found to have broken the law in office when he attended a gathering to celebrate his birthday in breach of Covid-19 restrictions.\n\nStarmer's deputy, Angela Rayner, told the BBC on Tuesday that the opposition would \"consider all options\" when asked if the Labour Party was thinking about triggering another vote of confidence in Johnson, this time across the whole of Parliament.\n\nScotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon called Johnson an \"utterly lame duck\" following the vote.\n\n\"That result is surely the worst of all worlds for the Tories. But much more importantly: at a time of huge challenge, it saddles the UK with an utterly lame duck PM,\" Sturgeon said in a tweet on Monday night.", "authors": ["Ivana Kottasová"], "publish_date": "2022/06/07"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/31/uk/boris-johnson-sue-gray-report-gbr-intl/index.html", "title": "Sue Gray: Boris Johnson condemned over 'failures of leadership' in ...", "text": "London (CNN) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was fighting to save his flailing premiership on Monday after a damning investigation uncovered multiple parties, a culture of excessive drinking and a \"failure of leadership\" in his government while the rest of the country was living under strict Covid-19 lockdown rules.\n\nThe long-awaited report by senior civil servant Sue Gray condemned \"a serious failure\" to observe the standards of government, and said a string of mass gatherings were \"difficult to justify\" while millions were unable to meet their friends and relatives.\n\nIt also revealed that the police are investigating at least 12 events -- including at least two Johnson attended, and a third held in his flat that he previously told lawmakers did not happen.\n\nGray's report was heavily neutered due to a simultaneous police investigation, but its general findings were strong enough to leave Johnson's leadership on the precipice. He insisted in Parliament that he \"will fix it\" and pledged a number of relatively modest reforms of his operation, but faced calls from all quarters that he should resign and publicly lost the support of more of his own backbenchers.\n\n\"There were failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of No 10 and the Cabinet Office at different times,\" the report said. \"Some of the events should not have been allowed to take place. Other events should not have been allowed to develop as they did.\"\n\n\"At least some of the gatherings in question represent a serious failure to observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of Government but also of the standards expected of the entire British population at the time,\" she wrote.\n\nJohnson initially denied a party had taken place in Downing Street, but commissioned the report after a string of media stories revealed several gatherings had. A separate police investigation was launched last week, which prevented Gray from including details in her findings.\n\nFacing furious MPs on Monday after the stripped-down report was published, Johnson said: \"I'm sorry for the things we simply didn't get right.\" He then attempted to draw a line under the scandal, saying he is \"getting on with the job.\"\n\nBut in a bruising appearance in the House of Commons that lasted almost two hours he was skewered by lawmakers from all sides. Labour leader Keir Starmer called Johnson \"a man without shame,\" urged him to resign, and told MPs: \"There can be no doubt that the Prime Minister himself is now subject to criminal investigation.\"\n\nIn a dramatic intervention, Johnson's predecessor as Prime Minister and fellow Conservative Theresa May addressed him and said: \"Either (he) had not read the rules, or didn't understand what they meant, or they didn't think the rules applied to Number 10. Which was it?\" And the leader of the Scottish National Party was removed from Parliament for saying the Prime Minister had lied to the chamber.\n\nJohnson appeared defensive and off point; at one stage he attacked Starmer -- a former chief prosecutor in England -- for failing to prosecute a notorious pedophile, a critique that was dismissed by leading lawyers . He repeatedly ducked questions about which events he had attended and when, saying lawmakers should wait for the police inquiry to conclude.\n\nIt remains to be seen whether he will last until then; if enough Conservative MPs trigger a vote of no-confidence, they will have the chance to oust him from office.\n\nAnd there was yet more bad news for Johnson on Monday, when the Metropolitan Police revealed that officers investigating \"Partygate\" have been handed more than 300 photographs and 500 pages of information to review.\n\n\"I'm deeply concerned by these events,\" Conservative backbencher Andrew Mitchell said in Parliament. \"He no longer enjoys my support.\"\n\nA report more damaging than thought\n\nGray's report has had Westminster on tenterhooks for weeks, given its implications for Johnson's political fortunes. But by the time it was handed to Downing Street in its stripped-back format on Monday morning, some had expected its impact to be dimmed.\n\nInstead, Gray's 12-page document listed a series of damning shortcomings. \"Against the backdrop of the pandemic, when the Government was asking citizens to accept far-reaching restrictions on their lives, some of the behaviour surrounding these gatherings is difficult to justify,\" it said.\n\nA total of 16 events on 12 different days were probed, and all but four are also the subject of the police investigation.\n\nGray hinted at a drinking culture in Downing Street during the pandemic and added that \"the excessive consumption of alcohol is not appropriate in a professional workplace.\"\n\nIn introducing her findings, Gray wrote: \"Every citizen has been impacted by the pandemic. Everyone has made personal sacrifices, some the most profound, having been unable to see loved ones in their last moments or care for vulnerable family and friends.\"\n\nShe finished her report by writing that the police probe \"unfortunately\" meant she was \"extremely limited in what I can say about those events.\"\n\nIn Parliament, Johnson repeatedly declined to say that the full Gray report would be published when the police investigation was complete, even when pressed by lawmakers from his own side. But Downing Street later backtracked and said Gray would be asked to provide an update to her report once the legal process is over. That update would be published, a spokesman said.\n\nEven following the shortened findings, Johnson struggled to bat back angry interventions in Parliament on Monday afternoon.\n\nHe told lawmakers that \"yes, we can be trusted,\" and listed perceived achievements on Brexit and the vaccine rollout. He also said he was \"making changes\" to Downing Street and the Cabinet Office, creating an Office of the Prime Minister with a permanent secretary, a senior civil servant, to lead Number 10. But he failed to provide answers to dozens of questions about the string of parties he once declined to acknowledge ever happened.\n\n\"Whatever your politics, whichever party you vote for, honesty and decency matter,\" Starmer said. He added that many of Johnson's colleagues \"knew in their hearts that we would inevitably come to this one day. And they know that as night follows day, continuing his leadership will mean further misconduct, cover-up, and deceit.\"\n\nJohnson is scheduled to visit Ukraine on Tuesday to respond to fears that Russia is mounting an invasion. But he will first scrap to maintain the support of his backbenchers, who now hold his fate in their hands.", "authors": ["Rob Picheta", "Ed Upright"], "publish_date": "2022/01/31"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/politics/954049/will-breaking-national-insurance-pledge-define-boris-johnson-premiership", "title": "Will breaking his National Insurance pledge 'define' Boris Johnson's ...", "text": "We will use the details you have shared to manage your registration. You agree to the processing, storage, sharing and use of this information for the purpose of managing your registration as described in our Privacy Policy.\n\nWould you like to receive The WeekDay newsletter ?\n\nThe WeekDay newsletter provides you with a daily digest of news and analysis.\n\nWe will use the details you have shared to manage your newsletter subscription. You agree to the processing, storage, sharing and use of this information for the purpose of managing your subscription as described in our Privacy Policy.\n\nWe will use the information you have shared for carefully considered and specific purposes, where we believe we have a legitimate case to do so, for example to send you communications about similar products and services we offer. You can find out more about our legitimate interest activity in our Privacy Policy.\n\nIf you wish to object to the use of your data in this way, please tick here.\n\n'We' includes The Week and other Future Publishing Limited brands as detailed here.", "authors": ["The Week Staff"], "publish_date": "2021/09/07"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/953564/boris-johnson-timeline-prime-minister-highs-and-lows", "title": "The highs and lows of Boris Johnson's time as prime minister | The ...", "text": "We will use the details you have shared to manage your registration. You agree to the processing, storage, sharing and use of this information for the purpose of managing your registration as described in our Privacy Policy.\n\nWould you like to receive The WeekDay newsletter ?\n\nThe WeekDay newsletter provides you with a daily digest of news and analysis.\n\nWe will use the details you have shared to manage your newsletter subscription. You agree to the processing, storage, sharing and use of this information for the purpose of managing your subscription as described in our Privacy Policy.\n\nWe will use the information you have shared for carefully considered and specific purposes, where we believe we have a legitimate case to do so, for example to send you communications about similar products and services we offer. You can find out more about our legitimate interest activity in our Privacy Policy.\n\nIf you wish to object to the use of your data in this way, please tick here.\n\n'We' includes The Week and other Future Publishing Limited brands as detailed here.", "authors": ["The Week Staff"], "publish_date": "2021/07/21"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/science-health/955146/will-omicron-variant-trigger-another-lockdown", "title": "Will the Omicron variant trigger a lockdown before Christmas? | The ...", "text": "We will use the details you have shared to manage your registration. You agree to the processing, storage, sharing and use of this information for the purpose of managing your registration as described in our Privacy Policy.\n\nWould you like to receive The WeekDay newsletter ?\n\nThe WeekDay newsletter provides you with a daily digest of news and analysis.\n\nWe will use the details you have shared to manage your newsletter subscription. You agree to the processing, storage, sharing and use of this information for the purpose of managing your subscription as described in our Privacy Policy.\n\nWe will use the information you have shared for carefully considered and specific purposes, where we believe we have a legitimate case to do so, for example to send you communications about similar products and services we offer. You can find out more about our legitimate interest activity in our Privacy Policy.\n\nIf you wish to object to the use of your data in this way, please tick here.\n\n'We' includes The Week and other Future Publishing Limited brands as detailed here.", "authors": ["The Week Staff"], "publish_date": "2021/12/14"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/955437/red-meat-and-save-big-dog-what-is-boris-johnsons-next-move", "title": "Red Meat and Save Big Dog: what is Boris Johnson's next move ...", "text": "We will use the details you have shared to manage your registration. You agree to the processing, storage, sharing and use of this information for the purpose of managing your registration as described in our Privacy Policy.\n\nWould you like to receive The WeekDay newsletter ?\n\nThe WeekDay newsletter provides you with a daily digest of news and analysis.\n\nWe will use the details you have shared to manage your newsletter subscription. You agree to the processing, storage, sharing and use of this information for the purpose of managing your subscription as described in our Privacy Policy.\n\nWe will use the information you have shared for carefully considered and specific purposes, where we believe we have a legitimate case to do so, for example to send you communications about similar products and services we offer. You can find out more about our legitimate interest activity in our Privacy Policy.\n\nIf you wish to object to the use of your data in this way, please tick here.\n\n'We' includes The Week and other Future Publishing Limited brands as detailed here.", "authors": ["Sorcha Bradley"], "publish_date": "2022/01/17"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/955598/sue-gray-report-published-boris-johnson", "title": "Sue Gray report published: can Boris Johnson hang on? | The Week ...", "text": "We will use the details you have shared to manage your registration. You agree to the processing, storage, sharing and use of this information for the purpose of managing your registration as described in our Privacy Policy.\n\nWould you like to receive The WeekDay newsletter ?\n\nThe WeekDay newsletter provides you with a daily digest of news and analysis.\n\nWe will use the details you have shared to manage your newsletter subscription. You agree to the processing, storage, sharing and use of this information for the purpose of managing your subscription as described in our Privacy Policy.\n\nWe will use the information you have shared for carefully considered and specific purposes, where we believe we have a legitimate case to do so, for example to send you communications about similar products and services we offer. You can find out more about our legitimate interest activity in our Privacy Policy.\n\nIf you wish to object to the use of your data in this way, please tick here.\n\n'We' includes The Week and other Future Publishing Limited brands as detailed here.", "authors": ["Sorcha Bradley"], "publish_date": "2022/01/31"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_21", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:37", "search_result": []}
+{"question_id": "20220610_22", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:37", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/956853/rail-strikes-how-much-chaos-will-walkouts-bring", "title": "Train strike: unions plan to 'shut down the rail system' | The Week UK", "text": "Unions have been branded selfish by Downing Street after rail workers were told to “shut down the rail system” with strikes in late June after talks over pay and redundancies fell through.\n\nThe National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) has told members to prepare for strikes on 21, 23 and 25 June, after a ballot of members resulted in staff voting overwhelmingly for full-scale industrial action.\n\nIf industrial action goes ahead, more than 40,000 staff from Network Rail and 13 train operators are expected to join what is dubbed the “biggest rail strike in modern history,” said the BBC.\n\nThe dates of the planned strikes include some of the busiest days for rail travel since pandemic rules eased, coinciding with large cultural events, including the Glastonbury festival, the UK Athletics Championships in Manchester, and a Rolling Stones concert in London’s Hyde Park.\n\nDowning Street said the plans would inflict pain on passengers and cause disruption but RMT hit back, saying the government itself was being selfish. The union said rail staff who worked through the pandemic were facing pay freezes and hundreds of job cuts, noted ITV News.\n\nRMT general secretary Mick Lynch said the union “is open to meaningful negotiations with rail bosses and ministers, but they will need to come up with new proposals to prevent months of disruption on our railways”.\n\nThe Tory MP Huw Merriman, the chair of parliament’s transport select committee, said the government should put through legislation that requires a minimum rail service to run even during strikes, as proposed in the party’s 2019 election manifesto.\n\n“That legislation has not been put in place, so without that it will be difficult to negotiate with the unions if the trains grind to a halt,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.\n\nRail passengers whose journeys are affected by the planned strikes will receive refunds for tickets they have bought, said The Guardian.\n\n“If we cannot provide a service to our customers due to strike action then we will refund customers,” said Steve Montgomery, the chair of the Rail Delivery Group.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/24"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/20/europe/ukraine-russia-tensions-explainer-cmd-intl/index.html", "title": "Ukraine-Russia crisis: As tensions rise on the border, here's what ...", "text": "Kyiv, Ukraine (CNN) Tensions between Ukraine and Russia are at their highest in years, with a Russian troop build-up near the two nations' borders spurring fears that Moscow could launch an invasion.\n\nUkraine has warned that Russia is trying to destabilize the country ahead of any planned military invasion. Western powers have repeatedly warned Russia against further aggressive moves against Ukraine.\n\nThe Kremlin denies it is planning to attack and argues that NATO support for Ukraine -- including increased weapons supplies and military training -- constitutes a growing threat on Russia's western flank.\n\nThe picture is complicated -- but here's a breakdown of what we know.\n\nWhat's the situation on the border?\n\nThe United States and NATO have described the movements and concentrations of troops in and around Ukraine as \"unusual.\"\n\nAs many as 100,000 Russian troops have remained amassed at the Ukrainian border, despite warnings from US President Joe Biden and European leaders of serious consequences should Putin move ahead with an invasion. And US intelligence findings in December estimated that Russia could begin a military offensive in Ukraine \"as soon as early 2022.\"\n\nSpeaking alongside his Ukrainian counterpart in Kyiv on January 19, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Russia had \"ratcheted up its threats and amassed nearly 100,000 forces on Ukraine's border, which it could double on relatively short order.\"\n\nIn late 2021, satellite photos revealed Russian hardware -- including self-propelled guns, battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles -- on the move at a training ground roughly 186 miles (300 km) from the border.\n\nThe Ukrainian Defense Ministry's latest intelligence assessment says Russia has now deployed more than 127,000 troops near Ukraine, including some 21,000 air and sea personnel, transferred more Iskander operational-tactical missiles to the border, and increased its intelligence activity against the country.\n\nThe assessment came after three rounds of diplomatic talks between Russia and the West aimed at de-escalating the crisis failed to produce a resolution.\n\nUS officials have said a Russian invasion of Ukraine could happen at any point in the next month or two.\n\nMany of Russia's military bases are to the west of the vast country -- the direction from which history suggests any threats are most likely to come. Russia's Defense Ministry has said it is conducting \"regular\" winter military drills in its southern region, parts of which border Ukraine.\n\nMeanwhile, Ukraine's eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions bordering Russia, an area known as Donbas, have been under the control of Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Russian forces are also present in the area, referred to by Ukraine as \"temporarily occupied territories,\" although Russia denies it.\n\nThe front lines of the conflict have barely moved in five years, but there are frequent small-scale clashes and sniper attacks. Russia was angered when Ukrainian forces deployed a Turkish-made combat drone for the first time in October to strike a position held by the pro-Russian separatists.\n\nRussia also has forces numbering in the tens of thousands at its massive naval base in Crimea, the Ukrainian territory it annexed in 2014. The Crimean peninsula, which lies to the south of the rest of Ukraine, is now connected by a road bridge to mainland Russia.\n\nRussian tanks take part in a military drills at Molkino training ground in the Krasnodar region, Russia, on December 14, 2021.\n\nWhat's the history of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia?\n\nTensions between Ukraine and Russia, both former Soviet states, escalated in late 2013 over a landmark political and trade deal with the European Union. After the pro-Russian then-President, Viktor Yanukovych, suspended the talks -- reportedly under pressure from Moscow -- weeks of protests in Kyiv erupted into violence.\n\nThen, in March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea , an autonomous peninsula in southern Ukraine with strong Russian loyalties, on the pretext that it was defending its interests and those of Russian-speaking citizens. First, thousands of Russian-speaking troops, dubbed \"little green men\" and later acknowledged by Moscow to be Russian soldiers, poured into the Crimean peninsula. Within days, Russia completed its annexation in a referendum that was slammed by Ukraine and most of the world as illegitimate.\n\nRussian soldiers patrol the area surrounding the Ukrainian military unit in Perevalnoye, outside Simferopol, Crimea, on March 20, 2014.\n\nShortly afterwards, pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions declared their independence from Kyiv, prompting months of heavy fighting. Despite Kyiv and Moscow signing a peace deal in Minsk in 2015, brokered by France and Germany, there have been repeated ceasefire violations.\n\nAccording to UN figures , there have been more than 3,000 conflict-related civilian deaths in eastern Ukraine since March 2014.\n\nThe European Union and US have imposed a series of measures in response to Russia's actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, including economic sanctions targeting individuals, entities and specific sectors of the Russian economy.\n\nThe Kremlin accuses Ukraine of stirring up tensions in the country's east and of violating the Minsk ceasefire agreement.\n\nUkrainian soldiers prepare to support the withdrawal of troops on February 19, 2015 in Artemivsk, Ukraine.\n\nWhat's Russia's view?\n\nThe Kremlin has repeatedly denied that Russia plans on invading Ukraine, insisting Russia does not pose a threat to anyone and that the country moving troops across its own territory should not be cause for alarm.\n\nMoscow sees the growing support for Ukraine from NATO -- in terms of weaponry, training and personnel -- as a threat to its own security. It has also accused Ukraine of boosting its own troop numbers in preparation for an attempt to retake the Donbas region, an allegation Ukraine has denied.\n\nRussian President Vladimir Putin has called for specific legal agreements that would rule out any further NATO expansion eastwards towards Russia's borders, saying the West has not lived up to its previous verbal assurances.\n\nPutin has also said that NATO deploying sophisticated weapons in Ukraine, such as missile systems, would be crossing a \"red line\" for Russia, amid concern in Moscow that Ukraine is being increasingly armed by NATO powers.\n\nKremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in November that weapons and military advisers were already being supplied to Ukraine by the US and other NATO member states. \"And all this, of course, leads to a further aggravation of the situation on the border line,\" he said.\n\nJUST WATCHED Analysis: Would Putin get away with invading Ukraine again? Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Analysis: Would Putin get away with invading Ukraine again? 04:38\n\nIf the US and its NATO allies do not change course in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned that Moscow has the \"right to choose ways to ensure its legitimate security interests.\"\n\nWhat is Ukraine's view?\n\nUkraine's government insists that Moscow cannot prevent Kyiv from building closer ties with NATO if it chooses.\n\n\"Russia cannot stop Ukraine from getting closer with NATO and has no right to have any say in relevant discussions,\" the Foreign Ministry said in a statement to CNN, in response to Russian calls for NATO to halt its eastward expansion.\n\nJUST WATCHED Ukraine intelligence shows 127K Russian troops poised to invade Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Ukraine intelligence shows 127K Russian troops poised to invade 03:17\n\n\"Any Russian proposals to discuss with NATO or the US any so-called guarantees that the Alliance would not expand to the East are illegitimate,\" it added.\n\nUkraine insists Russia is seeking to destabilize the country with the country's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, recently saying a coup plot , involving Ukrainians and Russians, had been uncovered.\n\nUkrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned that a planned coup could be part of Russia's plan ahead of a military invasion. \"External military pressure goes hand in hand with domestic destabilization of the country,\" he said.\n\nTensions between the two countries have been exacerbated by a deepening Ukrainian energy crisis that Kyiv believes Moscow has purposefully provoked.\n\nAt the same time, Zelensky's government faces challenges on many fronts. The government's popularity has stagnated amid multiple domestic political challenges, including a recent third wave of Covid-19 infections and a struggling economy.\n\nMany people are also unhappy that the government hasn't yet delivered on benefits it promised and ended the conflict in the country's east. Anti-government protests have taken place in Kyiv.\n\nIn a January 19 video address, Zelensky urged the Ukrainian people to \"calm down\" amid mounting unease over a possible Russian invasion. \"We are aware of everything, we are ready for everything,\" he said, before adding that he \"sincerely believes\" this year \"will pass without a war\" with Russia.\n\nKuleba also sought to reassure Ukrainians who fear the US, its NATO allies and Russia could leave Kyiv out of discussions. \"No decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine is a principle that we adhere to,\" he said.\n\nPro-Russian fighters arrive on February 20, 2015 in Debaltseve, eastern Ukraine.\n\nWhat does NATO say?\n\nNATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said \"there will be a high price to pay for Russia\" if it once again invades Ukraine, a NATO partner.\n\n\"We have a wide range of options: economic sanctions, financial sanctions, political restrictions,\" said Stoltenberg, in a December 1 interview with CNN.\n\nJUST WATCHED Opinion: These maps show why Putin might invade Ukraine Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Opinion: These maps show why Putin might invade Ukraine 03:24\n\nAfter Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, NATO increased its defenses \"with combat-ready battlegroups in the eastern part of the alliance, in the Baltic countries, in Latvia ... but also in the Black Sea region,\" Stoltenberg said.\n\nUkraine is not a NATO member, and therefore doesn't have the same security guarantees as NATO members.\n\nBut Stoltenberg left the possibility of Ukraine becoming a NATO member on the table, saying that Russia does not have the right to tell Ukraine that it cannot pursue NATO membership.\n\nHigh-stakes talks between Russia and NATO in Brussels in mid-January were \"not an easy discussion,\" according to Stoltenberg, who added that \"differences will not be easy to bridge.\" However, NATO allies and Russia \"expressed the need to resume dialogue,\" he said.\n\nWhat does the United States say?\n\nPresident Joe Biden told Zelensky earlier this month in a phone call that the US and its allies \"will respond decisively if Russia further invades Ukraine.\"\n\nBut Biden appeared to undermine that message when he subsequently suggested during a White House news conference that a \"minor incursion\" by Russia would elicit a lesser response than a full-scale invasion of the country.\n\nWhile Biden vowed harsh economic consequences on Russia should Putin send his troops over the border, including restricting its financial transitions in US dollars, he suggested Western nations were not in sync on what to do should a lesser violation occur. \"There are differences in NATO as to what countries are willing to do, depending on what happens,\" he said.\n\nHis remarks prompted a swift White House clarification. \"President Biden has been clear with the Russian President: If any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border, that's a renewed invasion, and it will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our Allies,\" press secretary Jen Psaki wrote in a statement.\n\nOne Ukrainian official told CNN he was \"shocked that the US President Biden would distinguish between incursion and invasion\" and suggest that a minor incursion would not trigger sanctions. \"This gives the green light to Putin to enter Ukraine at his pleasure,\" the official added.\n\nThe diplomatic kerfuffle came as Blinken prepared for further talks with European allies on the Ukraine-Russia crisis and to meet with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov. Blinken has previously warned Russia that \"any renewed aggression can trigger serious consequences.\"\n\nTwo defense officials told CNN on January 3 that the Defense Department has developed military options for Biden if he decides to increase capabilities in eastern Europe to further deter potential Russian aggression against Ukraine. Both officials emphasized that this part of routine planning the military does and that for now, the focus remains on diplomacy and potential economic sanctions.\n\nUS Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov held meetings in Geneva on January 10, as the US sought to de-escalate the threat of a Russian advance.\n\nThe Obama administration was taken by surprise when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and backed an insurgency in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region. US officials say they are determined not to be caught out by another Russian military operation.\n\n\"Our concern is that Russia may make a serious mistake of attempting to rehash what it undertook back in 2014, when it amassed forces along the border, crossed into sovereign Ukrainian territory and did so claiming falsely that it was provoked,\" Blinken said late last year.\n\nWhat other factors are at play?\n\nUnrest in the former Soviet state of Kazakhstan was unwelcome news for Putin at the beginning of 2022.\n\nDeadly protests in early January saw the Kazakh government resign, a state of emergency be declared and troops from a Russia-led military alliance deployed to help contain the unrest.\n\nBut experts have warned that Russia's intervention is unlikely to be the end of the story . Blinken said that \"once Russians are in your house, sometimes it is very difficult to get them to leave.\"\n\nAnother issue revolves around energy supply. Ukraine views the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline -- connecting Russian gas supplies directly to Germany -- as a threat to its own security.\n\nNord Stream 2 is one of two pipelines that Russia has laid underwater in the Baltic Sea in addition to its traditional land-based pipeline network that runs through eastern Europe, including Ukraine.\n\nKyiv views the pipelines across Ukraine as an element of protection against an invasion by Russia, since any military action could potentially disrupt the vital flow of gas to Europe.\n\nAnalysts and US lawmakers have raised concerns that Nord Stream 2 will increase European dependence on Russian gas and could allow Moscow to selectively target countries such as Ukraine with energy cut-offs, without broader disruption to European supplies. Bypassing eastern European countries also means those nations would be deprived of lucrative transit fees Russia would otherwise pay.\n\nIn May 2021, the Biden administration waived sanctions on the company behind Nord Stream 2, effectively giving it the green light. US officials say the move was in the interest of US national security as it sought to rebuild frayed relations with Germany.\n\nIn November, the US imposed new sanctions on a Russian-linked entity and a vessel linked to Nord Stream 2. Some US senators have called for further sanctions to be imposed to prevent Russia using the pipeline as a weapon; Ukraine too has called for tougher measures.", "authors": ["Matthew Chance", "Laura Smith-Spark"], "publish_date": "2022/01/20"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/03/europe/russia-victory-day-explainer-intl/index.html", "title": "Why May 9 is a big day for Russia, and what a declaration of war ...", "text": "(CNN) Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, and since then President Vladimir Putin has insisted that his troops are carrying out a \"special military operation\" instead of a war .\n\nBut speculation is growing that this could change in the coming days. Western officials believe Putin could formally declare war on Ukraine as soon as May 9, a symbolic day for Russia, paving the way for him to step his campaign.\n\nWhat is May 9?\n\nMay 9, known as \"Victory Day\" inside Russia, commemorates the Soviet Union's role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II.\n\nVictory Day is marked by a military parade in Moscow, and Russian leaders traditionally stand on the tomb of Vladimir Lenin in Red Square to observe it.\n\n\"May 9 is designed to show off to the home crowd, to intimidate the opposition and to please the dictator of the time,\" said James Nixey, director of the Russia-Eurasia Programme at Chatham House told CNN.\n\nWestern officials have long believed that Putin would leverage the symbolic significance and propaganda value of the day to announce either a military achievement in Ukraine, a major escalation of hostilities -- or both.\n\nThe Russian president has a keen eye for symbolism, having launched the invasion of Ukraine the day after Defender of the Fatherland Day, another crucial military day in Russia.\n\nRussian military vehicles at a parade rehearsal on April 28.\n\nPreparing for mobilization?\n\nPutin has many options on the table, according to Oleg Ignatov, senior analyst for Russia at Crisis Group. \"Declaring war is the toughest scenario,\" he said.\n\nMeanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky -- who has not formally declared war on Russia -- imposed martial law in Ukraine when the Russian invasion began in late February.\n\nAnother option for Putin is to enact Russia's mobilization law, which can be used to start a general or partial military mobilization \"in cases of aggression against the Russian Federation or a direct threat of aggression, the outbreak of armed conflicts directed against the Russian Federation.\"\n\nThat would allow the government not just to assemble troops but also to put the country's economy on a war footing.\n\nRussian servicemen at a parade rehearsal on April 28.\n\nRussian forces have lost at least 15,000 soldiers since the beginning of the war, according to Nixey, and reinforcements will be needed if Moscow is to achieve its goals in Ukraine.\n\nMobilization could mean extending conscription for soldiers currently in the armed forces, calling on reservists or bringing in men of fighting age who have had military training, said Ignatov.\n\nBut it would also represent a big risk for Putin.\n\n\"It would change the whole Kremlin narrative,\" said Ignatov, noting that the move would force Putin to admit that the invasion of Ukraine has not gone to plan. Full-scale mobilization could also damage the struggling Russian economy, he said.\n\nIn addition, it could diminish support for Putin at home, as some Russians support the invasion of Ukraine without wanting to personally go and fight, the analyst said.\n\n\"If they declare full-scale mobilization, some people wouldn't like it,\" said Ignatov.\n\nIt could still be possible for Putin to enact the mobilization law without officially declaring war on Ukraine, he said.\n\nPutin could also impose martial law in Russia, suspending elections and further concentrating power in his hands, Ignatov said.\n\nThis would impose rules such as restrictions on men of fighting age leaving the country, which could also prove unpopular, he added.\n\nOn Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said there was \"no chance\" Putin would declare war on May 9.\n\nWhat else could happen?\n\nIf Putin doesn't declare war, he may look elsewhere to make a statement to mark Victory Day.\n\nOther options include annexing the breakaway territories of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, making a major push for Odesa in the south, or declaring full control over the southern port city of Mariupol.\n\nThere are also indications that Russia could be planning to declare and annex a \"people's republic\" in the southeastern city of Kherson.\n\n\"He (Putin) will be able to declare that the Russian army had some victories in Ukraine,\" said Ignatov. \"He can try to use this date to solidify his support.\"\n\nHowever it is hard to predict what Russia and its president will do, the analyst added.\n\n\"All the decisions are made by one man and a couple of his advisers,\" said Ignatov.\n\nYet US State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday there is \"good reason to believe that the Russians will do everything they can to use\" May 9 for propaganda purposes.\n\n\"We've seen the Russians really double down on their propaganda efforts, probably, almost certainly, as a means to distract from their tactical and strategic failures on the battlefield in Ukraine,\" Price said at a State Department briefing on Monday.", "authors": ["Jack Guy", "Anna Chernova"], "publish_date": "2022/05/03"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/science-health/955146/will-omicron-variant-trigger-another-lockdown", "title": "Will the Omicron variant trigger a lockdown before Christmas? | The ...", "text": "Sajid Javid has refused to rule out a “circuit breaker” banning household mixing to prevent the Omicron variant’s rapid spread.\n\nSpeaking on the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show yesterday, the health secretary acknowledged that data on the new Covid strain was incomplete but said: “If we wait until the data is perfect, it may be too late.”\n\nBoris Johnson, at the “most vulnerable point of his premiership”, is once again facing a momentous decision “that will shape the lives of many and potentially dictate the future smooth running of the NHS”, said Rob Powell at Sky News.\n\nThe Sage argument\n\nNearly 920 people were admitted to hospital with Covid on 14 December, the latest date recorded on the government's Coronavirus Dashboard. Scientific advisers have warned that this could reach 3,000 a day without further restrictions. Leaked minutes from a meeting on Thursday of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), seen by the BBC, said: “If the aim is to reduce the levels of infection in the population and prevent hospitalisations reaching these levels, more stringent measures would need to be implemented very soon.”\n\nThe resistance\n\nAccording to The Times, ten ministers – comprising a third of the cabinet – are resisting stricter measures and “have cast doubt on the accuracy of the modelling, given the limited information available”. This is said to include Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, while Javid and Levelling-Up Secretary Michael Gove are said to back further restrictions.\n\n“Hobbled by a thumping loss in the North Shropshire by-election and dogged by scandals that seem unwilling to shift, the prime minister is hardly in a position to drive through politically unpalatable changes,” said Powell at Sky News. Johnson is facing a “depressingly familiar” decision: act early without a full picture of data or risk taking action too late.\n\nThe options\n\nThe PM has been presented with three options by civil servants ranging in levels of intervention, the lowest of which would see families asked to limit indoor contacts, reported The Telegraph. Option two would “mandate curbs on household mixing, the return of social distancing and an 8pm curfew on pubs and restaurants”, said the paper. “Option three is the return to full lockdown.”", "authors": ["The Week Staff"], "publish_date": "2021/12/14"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/24/europe/ukraine-russia-conflict-explainer-2-cmd-intl/index.html", "title": "What does Putin want in Ukraine? The conflict explained - CNN", "text": "(CNN) Russia's multi-pronged invasion of Ukraine has thrust the country into a conflict that many on the European continent had thought was one for the history books. Now the country is in the throes of war, with a humanitarian disaster unfolding.\n\nAfter months of military buildup and brinkmanship on Russia's side of the border, Ukraine's 44 million residents woke up to an all-out conflict on Thursday. Fighting has erupted in several cities across the country, including in the capital, Kyiv, and nearly a half a million people have fled to neighboring countries, according to the United Nations.\n\nRussia had been tightening its military grip around Ukraine since last year, amassing tens of thousands of soldiers, as well as equipment and artillery, on the country's doorstep.\n\nBlack smoke rises from a military airport in Chuguyev near Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine, on Thursday.\n\nFrenzied diplomatic efforts early this year failed to avert the worst-case scenario. Now those troops are engaged in combat with Ukrainians for control of the country.\n\nThe escalation in a years-long conflict between the nations has now triggered the greatest security crisis in Europe since the Cold War. Russia's attack on the country has also sparked an intense showdown between Western powers and Moscow.\n\nSo how did we get here? The picture on the ground is shifting rapidly, but here's a breakdown of what we know.\n\nHow did Russia invade Ukraine?\n\nSeveral areas across Ukraine came under attack on Thursday morning after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the start of a \"special military operation\" and warned of bloodshed unless Ukrainian forces lay down their arms.\n\nThe move came after months of speculation about what Moscow's intentions were with the troops it had massed on the Ukrainian border. At least 150,000 Russian troops encircled the country on three sides, like a sickle, according to estimates from US and Ukrainian intelligence officials.\n\nIn late 2021 and early 2022, fears heightened as satellite images revealed new Russian deployments of troops, tanks, artillery and other equipment cropping up in multiple locations, including near eastern Ukraine, Crimea and Belarus, where its forces were participating in joint drills with Moscow's closest international ally.\n\nSome of those forces began pouring across the border, crossing into Ukraine from the north in Belarus and to the south from Crimea, according to the Ukrainian State Border Service. Elsewhere, explosions rang out in multiple cities, including the capital Kyiv.\n\nMissile strikes and street fighting have raged in the days since. Military aged men have been ordered to stay in Ukraine, while countless others have fled westwards towards Poland or Romania.\n\nRussia's larger and far better-equipped military has, faced determined resistance across the country, as ordinary Ukrainians and reservists have joined efforts to defend their families and homes, frustrating Moscow's attempts.\n\nThat resistance has been \"stiffer than expected\" and Russia has had unexpected difficulties supplying its forces, two senior US officials with direct knowledge told CNN. On the battlefield, Russia is suffering heavier losses in personnel and armor and aircraft than expected. This is due in part to the fact that Ukrainian air defenses have performed better than pre-invasion US intelligence assessments had anticipated.\n\nBut US intelligence and defense officials closely tracking the Russian campaign say that Putin still holds a number of moves in reserve that could devastate the Ukrainian resistance.\n\nThe US and its allies have said they have no intention of sending troops into Ukraine, which is not a NATO member. But Ukraine has received assistance in other forms from Europe, the US and beyond, as the West united in condemnation of Putin's move. NATO's Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg condemned the Russian attack as a \"grave breach of international law, and a serious threat to Euro-Atlantic security.\"\n\nAnd a raft of heavy sanctions have threatened to cripple Russia's economy; Moscow has been virtually cut off from the Western financial apparatus and the value of its currency, the ruble, has tanked.\n\nThe coordinated assault came days after Putin announced that Moscow would officially recognize the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (DNR and LNR), in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region, ordering the deployment of Russian troops there in what was widely believed to be the opening salvo to a broader military confrontation.\n\nThe territory recognized by Putin extended beyond the areas controlled by pro-Russian separatists, raising red flags about Russia's intended creep into Ukraine.\n\nWhat set the stage for the conflict?\n\nUkraine was a cornerstone of the Soviet Union until it voted overwhelmingly for independence in a democratic referendum in 1991, a milestone that turned out to be a death knell for the failing superpower.\n\nAfter the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO pushed eastward, bringing into the fold most of the Eastern European nations that had been in the Communist orbit. In 2004, NATO added the former Soviet Baltic republics Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Four years later, it declared its intention to offer membership to Ukraine some day in the distant future -- crossing a red line for Russia.\n\nPutin has seen NATO's expansion as an existential threat, and the prospect of Ukraine joining the Western military alliance a \"hostile act\" -- a view he invoked in a televised speech on Thursday, saying that Ukraine's aspiration to join the military alliance was a dire threat to Russia.\n\nIn interviews and speeches, Putin has previously emphasized his view that Ukraine is part of Russia, culturally, linguistically and politically. While some of the mostly Russian-speaking population in Ukraine's east feel the same, a more nationalist, Ukrainian-speaking population in the west has historically supported greater integration with Europe.\n\nIn early 2014, mass protests in the capital Kyiv known as Euromaidan forced out a Russia-friendly president after he refused to sign an EU association agreement. Russia responded by annexing the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and fomenting a separatist rebellion in Ukraine's east, which seized control of part of the Donbas region. Despite a ceasefire agreement in 2015 , the two sides have not seen a stable peace, and the front line has barely moved since. Nearly 14,000 people have died in the conflict, and there are 1.5 million people internally displaced in Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian government.\n\nIn the eight years since, Moscow has been accused of engaging in hybrid warfare against Ukraine, using cyberattacks, economic pressure and propaganda to whip up discord. Those tactics have escalated in recent months, and in early February the State Department claimed Putin was preparing a false-flag operation to create \"a pretext for an invasion.\"\n\nWhat does Putin want?\n\nIn a lengthy essay penned in July 2021, Putin referred to Russians and Ukrainians as \"one people,\" and suggested the West had corrupted Ukraine and yanked it out of Russia's orbit through a \"forced change of identity.\"\n\nThat type of historical revisionism was on full display in Putin's emotional and grievance-packed address to the nation last Monday announcing his decision to recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, while casting doubt on Ukraine's own sovereignty.\n\nBut Ukrainians, who in the last three decades have sought to align more closely with Western institutions like the European Union and NATO, have pushed back against the notion that they are little more than the West's \"puppet.\"\n\nIn fact, Putin's efforts to bring Ukraine back into Russia's sphere have been met with a backlash, with several recent polls showing that a majority of Ukrainians now favor membership of the US-led transatlantic military alliance.\n\nIn December, Putin presented the US and NATO with a list of security demands. Chief among them was a guarantee that Ukraine will never enter NATO and that the alliance rolls back its military footprint in Eastern and Central Europe -- proposals that the US and its allies have repeatedly said are non-starters.\n\nPutin indicated he was not interested in lengthy negotiations on the topic. \"It is you who must give us guarantees, and you must do it immediately, right now,\" he said at his annual news conference late last year. \"Are we deploying missiles near the US border? No, we are not. It is the United States that has come to our home with its missiles and is already standing at our doorstep.\"\n\nHigh-level talks between the West and Russia wrapped in January without any breakthroughs. The standoff left Europe's leaders to engage in a frenzy of shuttle diplomacy, exploring whether a negotiating channel established between France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine to resolve the conflict in Ukraine's east -- known as the Normandy Format talks -- could provide an avenue for calming the current crisis.\n\nIn a news conference with the new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on February 16, Putin repeated unsubstantiated claims that Ukraine is carrying out a \"genocide\" against Russian speakers in the Donbas region and called for the conflict to be resolved through the Minsk peace progress -- echoing similar rhetoric that was used as a pretext for annexing Crimea.\n\nBut less than a week later, after Russia's upper house of parliament approved the deployment of military forces outside the country on February 22, Putin told reporters that the Minsk agreements \"no longer exist,\" adding: \"What is there to implement if we have recognized these two entities?\"\n\nThe agreements, known as Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 -- which were hammered out in the Belarusian capital in a bid to end a bloody in eastern Ukraine -- have never been fully implemented, with key issues remaining unresolved.\n\nMoscow and Kyiv have long been at odds over key elements of the peace deal, the second of which was inked in 2015 and lays out a plan for reintegrating the two breakaway republics into Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently stated that he did not like a single point of the Minsk accords , which require dialogue on local elections in the Russian-backed separatist regions and -- although unclear in what sequence -- would also restore the Ukrainian government's control over its eastern borders. Critics say the agreement could give Moscow undue sway over Ukrainian politics.\n\nPutin previously responded in blunt terms by saying that regardless of whether Zelensky likes the plan, it must be implemented. \"Like it or don't like it, it's your duty, my beauty,\" Putin said in a news conference alongside French President Emmanuel Macron. Zelensky, a former comedian and TV star, won a 2019 election in a landslide on promises to end the war in Donbas, but little has changed. Responding to a question about Putin's stark, undiplomatic language, Zelensky responded in Russian, saying bluntly: \"We are not his.\"\n\nHow has Ukraine responded?\n\nPresident Zelensky previously downplayed the danger of all-out war with Russia, noting that the threat has existed for years and that Ukraine is prepared for military aggression. But on Thursday, as Russia launched an assault on his country, Zelensky made an emotional address directly to the Ukrainian people, declaring martial law in the country.\n\n\"Russia began an attack on Ukraine today. Putin began war against Ukraine, against the entire democratic world. He wants to destroy my country, our country, everything we've been building, everything we are living for,\" Zelensky said in a video message posted on his official Facebook page.\n\nAcross the country, residents have been preparing for the worst -- packing emergency evacuation kits and taking time out of their weekends to train as reservists\n\nUkraine's government insists that Moscow cannot prevent Kyiv from building closer ties with NATO, or otherwise interfere in its domestic or foreign politics. \"Russia cannot stop Ukraine from getting closer with NATO and has no right to have any say in relevant discussions,\" the Foreign Ministry said in a statement to CNN.\n\nZelensky has since requested Ukraine be admitted \"urgently\" to the European Union, and has implored Western leaders to help boost Ukrainian forces on the ground.\n\nDelegates from Ukraine and Russia held talks on Monday near the border of Belarus, a country which has assisted Putin's invasion, and which Ukrainian officials fear could soon put its own boots on the ground in support of Russia.\n\nUkraine demanded a full Russian withdrawal in advance of those talks, but it is unclear whether the meetings will result in a Russian retreat. Zelensky downplayed the significance of the talks, which he did not attend in person. \"I do not really believe in the result of this meeting, but let them try, so that no citizen of Ukraine would have any doubt that I, as president, did not try to stop the war when there was even a small chance,\" he said Sunday,\n\nPhotos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine People in Quezon City, Philippines, light candles in the shape of a peace sign February 28 as they protest Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Hide Caption 1 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine A woman from Ukraine takes part in an anti-war protest in Bangkok, Thailand, on February 28. Hide Caption 2 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine An anti-war protest takes place outside the Russian Embassy in Mexico City on February 28. Hide Caption 3 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine A boy holds a Ukrainian flag with a heart drawn on it as he attends a protest with his mother in Sydney on February 28. Hide Caption 4 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine Thousands of protesters gather in Berlin's Tiergarten park on February 27. Hide Caption 5 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine Lidiya Zhuravlyova, a Ukrainian performance artist, takes part in an anti-war protest in Bangkok on February 27. Hide Caption 6 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine A \"Football Stands Together\" message is displayed in Ukrainian colors ahead of the League Cup final between Chelsea and Liverpool on February 27 The match was played at Wembley Stadium in London. Hide Caption 7 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine Silhouettes are seen through a Ukrainian flag during a demonstration in Madrid on February 27. Hide Caption 8 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine People gather for a demonstration in Prague, Czech Republic, on February 27. The event in Prague was particularly poignant given that many of its attendees experienced a Russian invasion firsthand. In 1968, Soviet-led armies of the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia, crushing the so-called Prague Spring democratic reform movement and restoring the totalitarian communist regime. The troops stayed in Czechoslovakia for over two decades, with the last leaving in 1991. Hide Caption 9 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine Thousands of people show solidarity with Ukraine at Dam Square in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on February 27. Hide Caption 10 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa meets with demonstrators outside Belem Palace in Lisbon, Portugal, to show his support on February 26. Hide Caption 11 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine A protester holds a sign that says \"help before it's too late\" during a rally in Brussels, Belgium, on February 26. Hide Caption 12 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine New York's Empire State Building is illuminated in the colors of the Ukrainian flag on February 25. Hide Caption 13 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine People gather to protest outside the Russian Consulate in Istanbul on February 25. Hide Caption 14 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine People photograph Paris' Eiffel Tower as it is lit with Ukraine's colors on February 25. Hide Caption 15 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine A child holds smoke bombs at a protest in Buenos Aires on February 25. Hide Caption 16 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine A demonstrator against the invasion is led away by police in Moscow on February 24. Hundreds of protesters in Russia have been detained in anti-war protests, independent protest monitoring site OVD-Info said. Russia's Investigative Committee warned that participation in any anti-war protest was illegal. It also said that offenses could be entered on participants' criminal records which would \"leave a mark on the person's future.\" Hide Caption 17 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine Ukraine supporters march through the streets of New York with flags and signs on February 24. Hide Caption 18 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine Members of the Ukrainian community demonstrate outside the Federal Building in Los Angeles on February 24. Hide Caption 19 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine People protest in Rome on February 24. Hide Caption 20 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine Flinders Street Station in Melbourne is lit in yellow and blue on February 24 as public buildings were lit up in the national colors of Ukraine. Hide Caption 21 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine A demonstrator in Barcelona, Spain, cries during a protest on February 24. Hide Caption 22 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine People protest in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on February 24. Hide Caption 23 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine Protesters gather outside the Massachusetts State House in Boston on February 24. Hide Caption 24 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine Demonstrators rally at Times Square in New York on February 24. Hide Caption 25 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine A Ukraine supporter in Minneapolis attends a prayer service inside the St. Constantine Ukrainian Catholic Church on February 24. Hide Caption 26 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine Protesters chant and gather in front of the Texas State Capitol in downtown Austin on February 24. Hide Caption 27 of 28 Photos: The world rallies in support of Ukraine A vigil for Ukraine takes place in Montclair, New Jersey, on February 24. Hide Caption 28 of 28\n\nTensions between the two countries had been exacerbated by a deepening Ukrainian energy crisis that Kyiv believes Moscow has purposefully provoked. Ukraine views the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline -- connecting Russian gas supplies directly to Germany -- as a threat to its own security.\n\nNord Stream 2 is one of two pipelines that Russia has laid underwater in the Baltic Sea -- in addition to its traditional land-based pipeline network that runs through eastern Europe, including Ukraine. Kyiv views the pipelines across Ukraine as an element of protection against invasion by Russia, since any military action could potentially disrupt the vital flow of gas to Europe.\n\nAfter requests from Zelensky and the US administration, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday that he would halt the certification of the pipeline following Putin's decision to order troops into parts of eastern Ukraine.\n\nNord Stream 2 was just one of myriad challenges facing Zelensky's government; the former actor, who played a president on Ukrainian television, had experienced a brutal baptism of fire into real-world politics since assuming office in 2019, thanks in part to the pandemic and ongoing tensions with Russia.\n\nBut in the days since the invasion, admiration for him has soared both inside and outside Ukraine; Zelensky refused to leave the country and has instead posted frequent videos from the streets of Kyiv, where he has been encouraging his fellow countrymen to resist Russian forces.", "authors": ["Eliza Mackintosh"], "publish_date": "2022/02/24"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/world-news/asia-pacific/954343/what-would-happen-china-attempt-invade-taiwan", "title": "What could happen if China invaded Taiwan? | The Week UK", "text": "We will use the details you have shared to manage your registration. You agree to the processing, storage, sharing and use of this information for the purpose of managing your registration as described in our Privacy Policy.\n\nWould you like to receive The WeekDay newsletter ?\n\nThe WeekDay newsletter provides you with a daily digest of news and analysis.\n\nWe will use the details you have shared to manage your newsletter subscription. You agree to the processing, storage, sharing and use of this information for the purpose of managing your subscription as described in our Privacy Policy.\n\nWe will use the information you have shared for carefully considered and specific purposes, where we believe we have a legitimate case to do so, for example to send you communications about similar products and services we offer. You can find out more about our legitimate interest activity in our Privacy Policy.\n\nIf you wish to object to the use of your data in this way, please tick here.\n\n'We' includes The Week and other Future Publishing Limited brands as detailed here.", "authors": ["The Week Staff"], "publish_date": "2021/10/05"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/transport/81688/crossrail-elizabeth-line-opening-date", "title": "When will the Elizabeth line open and what is the route map? | The ...", "text": "London’s long-awaited Elizabeth line is finally due to open this month, four years late and billions over budget.\n\nIn the year that the Queen marks her Platinum Jubilee, passengers are also set to celebrate the opening of the new railway line that takes her name. But the £18.9bn Crossrail project, now known as the Elizabeth line, has suffered major delays and was originally scheduled for completion in December 2018.\n\nNow the new line – or at least part of it – is set to begin operating in a matter of days, with the monarch herself making a surprise visit to Paddington Station to officially open it.\n\nThe Elizabeth line has been billed as the capital’s “biggest and most important transport upgrade since the expansion of the Tube network over 100 years ago”, the Evening Standard said. And it promises to “change the lives of millions of Londoners and commuters”.\n\nRoyal visit\n\nJust two weeks shy of her Platinum Jubilee, the Queen joined her youngest son Prince Edward to mark the completion of the new line after “episodic mobility problems” prevented her from attending last week’s State Opening of Parliament.\n\nBut in recent days the monarch has “rallied”, managing a trip to the Royal Windsor Horse Show over the weekend, before making an official visit yesterday to the new station at Paddington, which is set to open in time for her jubilee weekend. It was her first engagement “outside of the Windsor area since she attended the Duke of Edinburgh’s memorial service in Westminster Abbey” last month, reported the BBC.\n\nDressed in “sunshine yellow” and holding a walking stick, she was welcomed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and TfL commissioner Andy Byford, said the broadcaster.\n\nThe monarch was also “given an Oyster card and shown how to use it on a ticket machine” before she unveiled a plaque commemorating the official opening.\n\nWhen will the Elizabeth line open?\n\nThe Elizabeth line is set to open to passengers on 24 May, but will initially operate as “three separate railways”, reported the Evening Standard. A “central section” between Paddington and Abbey Wood will run, with the first trains departing from Paddington and Abbey Wood at 6.30am next Tuesday.", "authors": ["The Week Staff"], "publish_date": "2017/02/17"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/955517/licence-fee-threat-how-else-could-the-bbc-be-funded", "title": "BBC funding row: the alternatives to a licence fee | The Week UK", "text": "Calls to scrap the BBC licence fee have been gathering pace in recent years amid the rapid rise of streaming services and complaints from across the political spectrum over alleged bias.\n\nUnder the current funding model, the majority of the BBC’s income comes from the mandatory fee, although a “significant amount” is generated by its commercial operations, according to Full Fact.\n\nIn 2020, the BBC’s income was £4.943bn, of which £3.5bn came from the licence fee. More than £1.3bn came from BBC Studios, a commercial operation that “generates money by selling BBC content to international distributors”.\n\nThe latest\n\nCabinet divisions have broken out after Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries was forced to backtrack on a January announcement that the licence fee would be frozen for the next two years.\n\nIn an interview with The Spectator this week, Dorries reiterated that ministers are “looking very seriously about how we fund the BBC”, pledging that the government would “very soon announce” a “new way of funding” the national broadcaster.\n\nHer comments coincided with the release of a government white paper that outlined the government’s “intention to explore alternatives to the licence fee”, The Telegraph reported.\n\n“An increasing number of households are choosing not to hold a TV licence, as fewer people choose to watch live TV or other activities that require a licence,” the white paper said. “Should this trend continue as expected there are clear challenges on the horizon to the sustainability of the licence fee.”\n\nBut the culture secretary’s plans for the broadcaster could face pushback from her cabinet colleagues. Pensions minister Teresa Coffey, who is a former BBC journalist, has previously “led the charge” against her plans, the Daily Express said.\n\nChancellor Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss have also previously voiced concerns over a “lack of consultation” ahead of Dorries public statements, according to the i news site.\n\nVoluntary subscription fee\n\nThe BBC could take its lead from the likes of streaming giant Netflix and transform itself into a voluntary subscription service, with users paying a monthly or annual fee to view BBC programming.\n\nA subscription fee could end up being more costly for users than the current £159 TV licence, however, as “fewer people may opt in to pay the sum”, said Sky News. And the broadcaster could face major losses “if a significant proportion of households who currently have a BBC licence do not sign up to the subscription service”.", "authors": ["The Week Staff"], "publish_date": "2022/01/24"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/world-news/952525/what-is-donald-trump-doing-now", "title": "What is Donald Trump doing now? | The Week UK", "text": "Donald Trump hit out at the House of Representatives committee investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol following its first public hearing yesterday evening, repeating falsehoods about the 2020 election and declaring committee members “political hacks”. In a statement posted on his social media network Truth Social – the social network he created after he was banned from Twitter in the wake of the January 6 riot – the former president said “Our Country is in such trouble!” “So the Unselect Committee of political HACKS refuses to play any of the many positive witnesses and statements, refuses to talk of the Election Fraud and Irregularities that took place on a massive scale, and decided to use a documentary maker from Fake News ABC to spin only negative footage” he wrote. Trump was making reference to former ABC News television executive James Goldston, whom the panel brought in to produce the televised hearings which are being broadcast live across all the major news networks in the US except Fox News. Before the hearing began, Trump “attacked the House Committee,” Newsweek reported, while “repeating his long dismissed claims of voter fraud” in a series of Truth Social posts, one of which declared the hearings to be run by an “Unselect Committee of political Thugs.” Trump has also used the platform to defend the deadly riot at the US Capitol, which saw thousands of his supporters storm the building in an attempt to halt the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. “January 6th was not simply a protest, it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again,” he said, also on his Truth Social platform. Challenging Joe Biden’s success Following the announcement of Joe Biden’s electoral victory on 7 November 2020, Trump set out on a tireless campaign to overturn the election results and challenge the new Democratic administration The former president has “made clear he is still irked at his inability to hang on to the White House”, said The Telegraph. Skip advert A phone call leaked to The Wall Street Journal in March revealed Trump had told an election investigator that “she would be praised if she came up with the ‘right answer’ after insisting that he was the true winner” of Georgia’s count.\n\nBy the time Biden was marking two months in office, Trump and others had gone to court in six states with allegations of voting fraud, misallocation of votes and manipulation of signature-verification machinery among other claims, “and lost more than 60 cases, including at the Supreme Court”, The Washington Post reported. It is these activities that Carter said were “more likely than not” to have broken the law. His “ruling has no influence on whether Trump will face criminal charges stemming from January 6”, The Times said, “but it is the first time a judge has stated that the former president probably broke the law to try to stay in power”. Taking on the tech giants The suspension of Trump’s social media accounts in January has not deterred the former president from taking on the digital world. Launching the TRUTH Social platform in October, Trump said it would “stand up to the tyranny of big tech”, accusing them of silencing opposing voices in the US. “We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favourite American president has been silenced,” he added. BBC North America technology reporter James Clayton said Trump “clearly wants his megaphone back” and “thinks this might be his ticket”. But the new site “simply won’t” rival the big technology giants, he added. Trump also experienced problems when he launched 45Office.com in March, a website commemorating his time in the White House. The site features what The Guardian’s Martin Belam considered to be “a very selective retelling of the history of his time in office”. Visitors can submit event invitations to the former president and his wife Melania Trump, as well as requesting special-occasion greetings from the pair. In May, the former US president launched a communications platform - or “glorified blog”, as The Guardian described donaldjtrump.com. A short video on the web page described it as “a space to speak freely and safely” which would publish content “straight from the desk of Donald J. Trump”. Skip advert The blog proved “so unpopular Trump shuttered it in less than a month”, said Politico’s Jack Shafer. Its simplistic design hadn’t impressed critics: “I was like ‘2002 is calling and it wants its blog back’”, The New York Times technology columnist Kara Swisher told the BBC’s Today programme. Stirring up a literary storm The first volume of Barack Obama’s memoir, A Promised Land, quickly ranked in bestseller lists following its publication last year, and now it seems his successor is readying for a shot at the literary world too.", "authors": ["The Week Staff"], "publish_date": "2021/04/14"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/952958/what-is-likely-to-change-on-21-june", "title": "What is likely to change on 21 June? | The Week UK", "text": "Lockdown restrictions are set to be eased yet further on 21 June as ministers aim to keep to the government roadmap on emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic.\n\nThe fourth step in the plan should go ahead next month, provided hospitalisations, deaths and infection rates remain low, although local lockdowns have not yet been ruled out to combat the Indian variant.\n\nDespite fears over the spread of the variant, a spokesperson for Boris Johnson has said that ministers wanted to “stick to the approach” set out in the government’s roadmap out of lockdown, reports The Telegraph.\n\nAnd thankfully there are signs that the growth in the Indian variant may be “levelling off”, reports The Times. Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, said she was “increasingly confident” existing vaccines work well against the mutation.\n\nJohnson is likely to give a press conference on 14 June confirming the plans will go ahead, although some reports suggest this may be delayed. All being well, however, here are the changes to lockdown restrictions you can expect in England.\n\nWorking from home\n\nJohnson has told the House of Commons it was his “intention” to end the work from home guidance from 21 June, says Sky News.\n\nWith workers returning to the office, the government hopes to give towns and city centres a much-needed boost, with Johnson adding the “dynamism” of London and “our great cities” depends on people having the “confidence to go to work”.\n\nThose keen to continue working remotely, however, won’t be put under pressure to return to the office, with Johnson telling The Telegraph that people can “exercise their own judgement” on whether to return to the office.\n\n“At the moment, I’m feeling very positive about it, but we’ve got to be guided by the data,” he said.\n\nChief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance has also reportedly warned Johnson not to encourage people back to the office too quickly and suggested working from home could continue until the winter.\n\nFace coverings\n\nIt’s less certain that the use of facemasks will be dropped entirely and their use is likely to remain in place in some limited public settings.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/05/27"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_23", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:38", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/04/tennis/iga-swiatek-coco-gauff-french-open-final-spt-intl/index.html", "title": "Iga Swiatek wins second grand slam title with victory against Coco ...", "text": "(CNN) Iga Swiatek has been nearly unstoppable this year -- and now she has a second grand slam title to prove it.\n\nThe Polish star won the French Open for the second time on Saturday as she defeated Coco Gauff 6-1 6-3 in Paris, extending her unbeaten run to 35 matches.\n\nThat equals Venus Williams' 21st century record for consecutive wins set back in 2000 and cements Swiatek's status as the best player in women's tennis at the moment.\n\n\"Two years ago, winning this title was something amazing, I wouldn't expect it ever,\" the 21-year-old said during her on-court interview after the match.\n\n\"But this time I feel like I worked hard and did everything to get here even though it was pretty tough and the pressure was big.\"\n\nSwiatek plays a backhand in the French Open final.\n\nSwiatek dropped just one set on the way to the final and was largely untroubled by Gauff in the American's first grand slam singles final.\n\nAfter breaking Gauff twice at the start of the first set, Swiatek raced into a 4-0 lead before wrapping up the set in just 32 minutes.\n\nThe world No. 1 found herself under pressure for the first time in the match at the start of the second set when Gauff converted her first break point and held her serve to take a 2-0 lead.\n\nIt was only a glimmer of hope for the 18-year-old, however, as Swiatek quickly shut the door by taking the next five games in a row.\n\nGauff was able to hold, but so too did Swiatek -- taking the set, the match, and another French Open title.\n\nShe has now won six consecutive tournaments in a winning run that stretches back to February 16 when she lost to Jelena Ostapenko in Dubai.\n\n\"I felt the pressure, I felt baggage on my shoulders, I wasn't the underdog anymore,\" she told NBC about entering the tournament as the top-ranked player on a winning streak.\n\n\"I'm even more proud of that -- that I could do it and make it for the second time.\"\n\nAs for Gauff, she struggled for consistency against Swiatek, hitting 23 unforced errors over the course of the match, 14 of which came in the first set.\n\nGauff cuts a frustrated figure against Swiatek.\n\nShe was visibly emotional at the conclusion of the match, but in time will be able to reflect on a successful tournament, during which she didn't drop a set until the final.\n\nAnd from Monday, Gauff will rise to a career-high position of 13th in the world rankings.\n\n\"I know that I'll get this opportunity again and I hope that I can come on top next time,\" she told NBC.\n\n\"Today, I really tried my best to win. Obviously, I would change the result but the decisions that I made I thought were the right decisions in the moment and I can't really change that.\"\n\nThe focus of the women's tour now turns to the grass court swing ahead of Wimbledon, which starts on June 27.\n\nSwiatek, who plays her best tennis on clay, has never progressed further than the fourth round of Wimbledon in her two appearances there, but now looks likely to better that record in the coming weeks.", "authors": ["George Ramsay"], "publish_date": "2022/06/04"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/sport/tennis/956969/iga-swiatek-unstoppable-superstar-womens-tennis", "title": "Iga Swiatek: the unstoppable superstar of women's tennis | The ...", "text": "Iga Swiatek is a two-time grand slam champion after a dazzling display in the French Open final against Coco Gauff. The Pole, 21, beat the American teenager 6-1, 6-3 to win her second title in three years at Roland Garros.\n\nNot since “Serena Williams in her prime” had there been “as strong a favourite for a grand slam women’s singles title” as Swiatek, said Jonathan Jurejko on BBC Sport. The top seed, who also won Roland Garros in 2020, “underlined why she was the red-hot favourite” by winning in straight sets for her sixth successive title.\n\nFor 68 minutes on Saturday, the women’s world No.1 “captivated the tennis world”, said D’Arcy Maine on ESPN.com. Swiatek showed “blistering, athletic play” to dismantle “teenage phenom” Gauff, winning the “first four games of the match – and never looked back”. It was her 35th straight victory and she leaves Paris as the “dominant force in women’s tennis, and one who is poised for future greatness”.\n\n‘It’s something special’\n\nTaking her career title count to nine overall, Swiatek has “cemented her status at the top of the women’s game”, said Courtney Nguyen on WTATennis.com. She has “amassed a longer winning streak” than 23-time major champion Serena Williams, “who ran off 34 wins in 2013”, and has tied with Venus Williams for the longest streak in the 2000s.\n\nAfter going 5-0 to win Doha, 6-0 to win Indian Wells, 6-0 to win Miami, 2-0 in the Billie Jean King Cup, 4-0 to win Stuttgart, 5-0 to win Rome and now 7-0 to win Roland Garros, Swiatek “joins some very rare company”, said John Berkok on Tennis.com. She is just the “eighth woman in the entire Open Era to have a winning streak of 35 or more matches in a row”.\n\nIt may seem “pretty weird”, but “having that 35th win and kind of doing something more than Serena did, it’s something special”, Swiatek said. “Because I always wanted to have some kind of a record. In tennis, it’s pretty hard after Serena’s career. So basically that really hit me.”\n\nAt the top of the WTA rankings the gap has widened between her and the rest of the field, Berkok added on Tennis.com. After capturing her second slam title on the “terre battue”, she now has a 4,305-point lead over new world No.2 Anett Kontaveit – 8,631 to 4,326.\n\n4.7 - Iga #Swiatek has lost 4.7 games on average per match in her 10 WTA-level finals: she is the player with the lowest games-lost ratio in finals since 2000 (min. 10 finals). Unbelievable.@WTA @WTA_insider https://t.co/SG6u4JRXvA pic.twitter.com/oVGN67B3hg — OptaAce (@OptaAce) June 4, 2022\n\nNeeding a ‘plan B’ in case tennis didn’t work out\n\nSwiatek has beaten the odds to become the next “tennis superstar”, said Tumaini Carayol in The Guardian. She “displayed her early promise as a junior”, but it took a long time for her to “believe that she could achieve the career that she is currently building”. Reflecting on her journey from a junior to world No.1, Swiatek admitted that even in 2020, when she won the French Open for the first time, she still felt like she “needed a plan B in case tennis is not gonna work out”.\n\nWhen Swiatek arrived in Paris two years ago, “she was a virtual unknown”, said Maine on ESPN.com. Now, it seems as though the WTA has found the “elusive superstar talent who can consistently contend for major titles on different surfaces – and do what so few have been able to do since Serena Williams was in her prime”.", "authors": ["Mike Starling"], "publish_date": "2022/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/tennis/2022/06/04/french-open-final-iga-swiatek-dominates-coco-gauff/7512238001/", "title": "Iga Swiatek dominates Coco Gauff, takes second French Open title", "text": "Iga Swiatek continued her destruction of the women's tennis field this year, routing American Coco Gauff 6-1, 6-3 in a little more than an hour in the French Open women's final on Saturday.\n\nThe 21-year old Swiatek from Poland sprinted out to a 4-0 lead in the first set and continued her dominance from there, breaking Gauff, who was appearing in her first Grand Slam final, and her serve time and again with her powerful forehand, finishing the set in a swift 32 minutes.\n\nIn the second set, Gauff broke Swiatek in the first game, thanks to four unforced errors by Swiatek and held serve in the second. Swiatek evened it at 2, breaking Gauff for the fourth time, winning 10 of 11 points and turned it on from there.\n\nGauff had 23 unforced errors and three double faults, most coming off her forehand, which was wide at times, including on match point, which sent Swiatek to her knees in celebration after the victory.\n\nSwiatek has won 35 straight matches, the longest this century, a run equaled by Venus Williams in 2000 and her victory broke a streak of six straight winners at Roland Garros who won their first Grand Slam title.\n\nShe has not lost since Feb. 16, when Jelena Ostapenko beat her in three sets in the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships quarterfinals.\n\nSwiatek, who is 42-3 this year, gained the No. 1 ranking on April 4, a week after three-time Grand Slam winner Ashleigh Barty suddenly announced her retirement and has now won each of the last six tournaments she has entered.\n\nSwiatek added to her trophy haul in Paris, having won her first Grand Slam title at Roland Garros in 2020, as the tournament was held in September due to the coronavirus pandemic.\n\nGauff, 18, has another chance to leave Paris a champion, as she vies for the women's doubles title with Jessica Pegula against Caroline Garcia and Kristina Mladenovic on Sunday.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/04"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/tennis/2022/05/26/french-open-updates-swiatek-puts-29-match-streak-on-line/50284797/", "title": "French Open updates | Cornet beats former champion Ostapenko", "text": "AP\n\nPARIS (AP) — The Latest on the French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament (all times local):\n\n11 p.m.\n\nAlizé Cornet beat 2017 champion Jelena Ostapenko 6-0, 1-6, 6-3 to advance to the third round at the French Open.\n\nThe 32-year-old French player had plenty of support under the lights at Court Philippe Chatrier in the final match of the day.\n\nOstapenko made 48 unforced errors to Cornet's five. The Latvian beat Simona Halep for the Roland Garros title five years ago.\n\nThe veteran Cornet reached her first Grand Slam quarterfinal this year at the Australian Open.\n\n___\n\n9:55 p.m.\n\nStefanos Tsitsipas advanced to the third round after another slugfest for the No. 4 seed at Roland Garros.\n\nThe 2021 French Open runner-up defeated Czech qualifier Zdenek Kolar 6-3, 7-6 (8), 6-7 (3), 7-6 (7) at Court Suzanne Lenglen.\n\nThe 134th-ranked Kolar had four set points but couldn't force a fifth set as Tsitsipas fought back to even the last tiebreaker at 6-6 before closing out the match just past the 4-hour mark.\n\nTsitsipas went past midnight in his marathon five-set win over Lorenzo Musetti in the first round, a year after blowing a two-set lead in the final against Novak Djokovic.\n\nNo. 11 Jannik Sinner advanced by beating Roberto Carballes Baena 3-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-3.\n\nThis is the first time since 2009 that the top 12 men's seeds at Roland Garros all reached the third round.\n\n___\n\n7:05 p.m.\n\nAryna Sabalenka needed just 62 minutes to beat Madison Brengle 6-1, 6-3 and advance to the third round at Roland Garros for the third straight year.\n\nNo. 7 Sabalenka is one of just three top-10 women's seeds remaining. No. 1 Iga Swiatek and No. 3 Paula Badosa are the others.\n\nThe 24-year-old Belarusian reached the semifinals of both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open last year.\n\n___\n\n6:45 p.m.\n\nAustralian Open runner-up Danielle Collins is the latest top-10 women's seed to exit the French Open.\n\nIn a battle of Americans, Shelby Rogers upset 9th-seeded Collins 6-4, 6-3 to reach the third round at Roland Garros for the first time since 2017.\n\nCollins is the seventh top-10 seed to lose.\n\n___\n\n6:10 p.m.\n\nTwo-time Grand Slam champion Simona Halep is out of the French Open in the second round.\n\nChinese teenager Qinwen Zheng pulled off the 2-6, 6-2, 6-1 upset of the 2018 Roland Garros champion at Court Simonne-Mathieu.\n\nThe 74th-ranked Zheng amassed 27 winners to Halep's nine to earn a trip to the third round on her French Open debut.\n\nThe 19th-seeded Halep was looking for her 21st win of the season. The 2019 Wimbledon champion had beaten Zheng in Melbourne in January.\n\n___\n\n5:20 p.m.\n\nMake that 30 in a row for Iga Swiatek.\n\nThe top-ranked Swiatek routed Alison Riske 6-0, 6-2 to reach the third round of the French Open.\n\nIt's the longest winning streak in women’s tennis since Serena Williams won 34 in a row in 2013.\n\nThe 2020 French Open champion compiled a 23-6 edge in winners over her 43rd-ranked American opponent.\n\nThe 20-year-old Polish player hasn't lost in more than three months.\n\nOn the men's side, 12th-seeded Hubert Hurkacz beat Marco Cecchinato 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 to reach the third round.\n\n___\n\n4:45 p.m.\n\nMadison Keys advanced to the third round at Roland Garros after beating Caroline Garcia 6-4, 7-6 (3).\n\nThe 2017 U.S. Open runner-up relied on her dominant serve to get past her French opponent on Court Philippe Chatrier.\n\nThe 22nd-seeded American will next face 16th-seeded Elena Rybakina, the only woman with more aces than Keys this season.\n\nKeys at one point got her necklace stuck in her hair so chair umpire Jaume Campistol helped her untangle it.\n\nKeys is making her 10th appearance at the French Open and reached the semifinals four years ago.\n\n___\n\n4:10 p.m.\n\nNo. 8 Casper Ruud has reached the third round of the French Open for the third year in a row.\n\nThe 23-year-old Norwegian beat Emil Ruusuvuori of Finland 6-3, 6-4, 6-2.\n\nRuud won the Geneva Open last Saturday for his seventh career title on clay courts.\n\n___\n\n3 p.m.\n\nDaniil Medvedev keeps getting more comfortable on red clay and his 6-3, 6-4, 6-3 victory over Laslo Djere means the U.S. Open champion now has made it to the third round at Roland Garros two years in a row.\n\nMedvedev started his French Open career with an 0-4 record by losing his opening matches in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.\n\nHe snapped that skid by getting to the quarterfinals in 2021 and has won all six sets he has played so far this week and dropped a total of only 16 games.\n\nThe second-seeded Russian will play No. 28 Miomir Kecmanovic of Serbia for a berth in the fourth round.\n\n___\n\n1:40 p.m.\n\nNo. 3 Paula Badosa has become the first woman seeded in the top 10 to reach the third round at Roland Garros this year.\n\nBadosa went down a break to open the third set of her match against 68th-ranked Kaja Juvan before regrouping to grab four games in a row and was on her way to a 7-5, 3-6, 6-2 victory at Court Suzanne Lenglen that took more than two hours.\n\nBadosa’s best showing at a Grand Slam tournament was a quarterfinal appearance at the 2021 French Open.\n\nShe will face No. 29 Veronika Kudermetova next.\n\nAll five of the women seeded in the top 10 and placed on the bottom half of the draw are already out of the field. Badosa is in the top half, where No. 8 Karolina Pliskova lost earlier Thursday.\n\nNo. 1 Iga Swiatek, No. 7 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 9 Danielle Collins play later.\n\nThe woman seeded 11th, American Jessica Pegula, reached the third round by beating Anhelina Kalinina 6-1, 5-7, 6-4.\n\n___\n\n12:35 p.m.\n\nTwo-time major finalist Karolina Pliskova has lost in the second round at Roland Garros to a French wild-card entry making her debut in any Grand Slam tournament.\n\nThe 227th-ranked Leolia Jeanjean’s 6-2, 6-2 victory over the eighth-seeded Pliskova means that six of the top 10 women in the seedings at the French Open already are gone before the second round is completed.\n\nPliskova joins No. 2 Barbora Krejcikova, No. 4 Maria Sakkari, No. 5 Anett Kontaveit, No. 6 Ons Jabeur and No. 10 Garbiñe Muguruza on the way out.\n\nThe remaining four women in the top 10 are scheduled to play Thursday: No. 1 Iga Swiatek, No. 3 Paula Badosa, No. 7 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 9 Danielle Collins.\n\nPliskova has been ranked No. 1 and was the runner-up at Wimbledon last year and the U.S. Open in 2016. She also has reached the semifinals at the other two major tournaments. That includes at the French Open in 2017.\n\nJeanjean is a 26-year-old from Montpellier. She trailed 2-1 at the start Thursday before winning nine consecutive games to take the opening set and grab a 4-0 lead in the second.\n\nPliskova made 28 unforced errors and was broken in half of her eight service games.\n\n___\n\n11 a..m.\n\nIga Swiatek is ranked No. 1 and seeded No. 1 at the French Open and she is putting her 29-match winning streak on the line in the second round on Day 5 of the clay-court Grand Slam tournament.\n\nSwiatek's run is the longest in women's tennis since Serena Williams won 34 in a row in 2013.\n\nThe 20-year-old Polish player faces 43rd-ranked Alison Riske of the United States on Thursday.\n\nOther women in action as the second round concludes include No. 3 seed Paula Badosa, two-time major champion Simona Halep and two-time major finalist Karolina Pliskova.\n\nReigning U.S. Open champion Daniil Medvedev and 2021 French Open runner-up Stefanos Tsitsipas are the top men on Thursday's schedule on a cloudy, chilly day in Paris.\n\n___\n\nMore AP Tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/26"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/tennis/2020/10/10/polands-iga-swiatek-beats-sofia-kenin-for-french-open-title/114255512/", "title": "Just 19, ranked 54th, Swiatek wins French Open for 1st Slam", "text": "AP\n\nPARIS (AP) — Minutes after suddenly becoming a Grand Slam champion at age 19, while ranked just 54th, Iga Swiatek held a microphone during the French Open trophy presentation and was hesitant for pretty much the only time over the past two weeks.\n\n“First of all, I'm not very good at speeches,” Swiatek began, haltingly, “so, sorry, because I won my last tournament like two years ago, and I really don't know who to thank.”\n\nWhen she's got a racket in her hand, it's a whole different story. With the poise of a veteran and the shots of a champion, Swiatek wrapped up a dominating run at Roland Garros, grabbing the last six games to beat Sofia Kenin 6-4, 6-1 in Saturday's final.\n\n“Two years ago, I won a junior Grand Slam, and right now I’m here. It feels like such a short time,” Swiatek said, her voice cracking. “I’m just overwhelmed.”\n\nSwiatek (pronounced shvee-ON'-tek) is the first Polish tennis player to win a major singles trophy and said, “I know it’s pretty crazy back home” — where one newspaper's front page was splashed with the headline “Poland Garros” ahead of the final.\n\nWhen she smacked one last heavy-topspin forehand winner to claim her first tour-level title of any sort, Swiatek placed her right hand over her mouth and crouched, shaking her head.\n\nHard to believe? Maybe. This was, after all, only her seventh major tournament; she'd never been past the fourth round.\n\n“It’s, like, a life-changing experience,” Swiatek said. “Yeah, I just feel like I kind of made history.\"\n\nThe way she played these two weeks — with those great groundstrokes, the occasional drop shot, terrific returning and impressive court coverage — made this outcome less of a surprise.\n\nKenin said Swiatek's “spinny forehand up the line\" bounces high enough to make things difficult for opponents.\n\nSwiatek lost 28 games across seven matches and is the first woman to triumph in Paris without ceding a set since Justine Henin in 2007. She's the first teen to win the women's title there since Iva Majoli in 1997.\n\n“She’s, like, really hot right now,” said Kenin, who was hampered by an injury to her upper left leg, an issue that first cropped up during a practice session last weekend.\n\nSwiatek beat both 2018 champion Simona Halep and 2019 runner-up Marketa Vondrousova 6-1, 6-2.\n\nSo it made sense that Swiatek would handle the fourth-seeded Kenin, even if the 21-year-old from Florida won the Australian Open in February and entered Saturday 16-1 in Grand Slam play this year.\n\nShe had yet to face the composed Swiatek, who only recently completed her high school studies and listens to “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N' Roses through her black headphones before walking on court.\n\nSwiatek travels with a sports psychologist and meditates during changeovers, breathing slowly with her eyes closed.\n\nThat helped her deal with the stage and the stakes.\n\n“Everybody is stressed when they’re playing Grand Slam finals. I just knew that Sofia may also be stressed, that she’s not a machine. I was aware that we can both, like, struggle, and we’re probably not going to play our best tennis, because it’s hard with so much pressure,” Swiatek said. \"But I just did everything I’ve done in the previous rounds. I focused on technique and tactics. I tried to get rid of expectations, you know — just play one ball after another.\"\n\nThis weekend is the culmination of an unusual two weeks, to say the least. The tournament was postponed form May-June to September-October because of the coronavirus pandemic; the recently rising number of COVID-19 cases in France led the government to limit the number of spectators allowed on the grounds to 1,000 each day.\n\nSome top women, including 2019 major champions Ash Barty, Naomi Osaka and Bianca Andreescu, didn’t enter the event at all; 23-time Slam winner Serena Williams withdrew before the second round with an injury.\n\nThe temperature was in the mid-50s (low teens Celsius), with a slight breeze, and the hundreds of fans scattered in Court Philippe Chatrier were mostly subdued — other than a group shouting Swiatek’s first name, stretching it out to sound like “Eeeeeeeeeee-gah.”\n\nShe took 12 of the first 15 points, thanks to four winners and zero unforced errors.\n\n“I guess it was nerves or something,” said Kenin, who occasionally dropped or kicked her red-white-and-blue racket. “But I found my groove.”\n\nSoon enough, it was 3-all.\n\nBut Swiatek is nothing if not resilient. She served for the set at 5-3, and got broken, but responded right away by stealing yet another one of Kenin's service games.\n\nSame thing happened to begin the second set: Kenin broke for a 1-0 edge, and Swiatek broke right back.\n\nAt the changeover at 2-1, Kenin left the court for a medical timeout, then returned with her left thigh wrapped. While Kenin was gone, Swiatek stayed warm by pulling on a white jacket and hitting some serves.\n\nWhen play resumed, Swiatek needed 12 minutes to close it out, finishing with a 25-10 edge in winners.\n\nAll that remained was to hear the Polish anthem — never before played after a major singles final — and kiss her shiny trophy.\n\nAfter addressing the crowd for a bit, Swiatek asked, “Should I say something else?”\n\nThe emcee responded that she could if she wanted.\n\n“I have no idea,” Swiatek said. “Sorry.”\n\nBetter practice up, Iga. The tennis world expects to see you at more such ceremonies in the future.\n\n___\n\nAP Tennis Writer Fendrich reported from Washington; AP Sports Writer Pugmire reported from Paris.\n\n___\n\nMore AP tennis: https://apnews.com/apf-Tennis and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2020/10/10"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/tennis/2022/06/04/french-open-lookahead-nadal-seeks-22nd-major-ruud-his-1st/50327749/", "title": "French Open lookahead: Nadal seeks 22nd major, Ruud his 1st", "text": "AP\n\nPARIS (AP) — LOOKAHEAD TO SUNDAY\n\nRafael Nadal and Casper Ruud will play each other in the French Open men's final. Nadal seeks his 14th title at Roland Garros and 22nd Grand Slam trophy overall. Both would add to records he already owns. At 36, Nadal would be the oldest champion in French Open history. Ruud is 23 and appearing in his first major final, the first man from Norway to get that far in singles at any Grand Slam tournament. The two have never met in an official match but have played many practice sets against each other at Nadal's tennis academy in Mallorca because Ruud has been training there for a few years. Ruud considers Nadal his idol and recalls watching the Spaniard's past French Open finals on TV.\n\nSUNDAY'S FORECAST\n\nChance of rain. High of 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 Celsius).\n\nSATURDAY'S RESULTS\n\nWomen’s Singles Final: No. 1 Iga Swiatek beat No. 18 Coco Gauff 6-1, 6-3.\n\nMen's Doubles Final: Marcelo Arevalo and Jean-Julien Rojer beat Ivan Dodig and Austin Krajicek 6-7 (4), 7-6 (5), 6-3.\n\nSTAT OF THE DAY\n\n35 — Consecutive victories for Iga Swiatek, surpassing Serena Williams' best unbeaten run of 34 and equaling Venus Williams for the longest this century.\n\nQUOTE OF THE DAY\n\n“The best thing I can learn from him is how he’s cool about what’s going on around him. Because sometimes in our heads, I think many players are overanalyzing everything. We treat those finals as something that ... if we are going to lose, suddenly our life is bad. I feel like all these great champions, they kind of accept that they may lose.” — Iga Swiatek, two-time French Open champion, discussing what she can learn from Rafael Nadal, who will try to win his 14th title at Roland Garros on Sunday.\n\n___\n\nMore AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/04"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/tennis/2022/06/04/french-open-updates-gauff-18-to-face-swiatek-for-title/50325661/", "title": "French Open updates | Arevalo, Rojer win men's doubles title", "text": "AP\n\nPARIS (AP) — The Latest on the French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament (all times local):\n\n___\n\n8:30 p.m.\n\nMarcelo Arevalo of El Salvador and Jean-Julien Rojer of Netherlands won the French Open men's doubles championship by beating Ivan Dodig of Croatia and Austin Krajicek of the U.S. 6-7 (4), 7-6 (5), 6-3 in the final.\n\nThe 40-year-old Rojer is the oldest Grand Slam men's doubles champion in the Open era. He won the 2017 U.S. Open title with Horia Tecau.\n\nAccording to the International Tennis Federation, Arevalo is the first man from Central America to win a Grand Slam title.\n\nArevalo and Rojer were seeded 12th. Dodig and Krajicek were not seeded.\n\nDodig and Krajicek held three championship points at 6-5 in the second set but were unable to convert any.\n\n___\n\n5:30 p.m.\n\nLucie Havlickova and Gabriel Debru have won the French Open junior singles titles.\n\nThe 17-year-old Havlickova is the second Czech player in a row to be the female junior champion at Roland Garros. She beat Solana Sierra of Argentina 6-3, 6-3 on Saturday.\n\nThe 16-year-old Debru, who is French, defeated Gilles Arnaud Bailly of Belgium 7-6 (5), 6-3 for the boys' title.\n\nDebru joins 2021 winner Luca van Assche to give the host country consecutive French Open boys’ singles champions for the first time since 1974-75.\n\n___\n\n4:20\n\nTop-ranked Iga Swiatek has beaten 18-year-old American Coco Gauff 6-1, 6-3 in the French Open final to collect her second title at Roland Garros and stretch her winning streak to 35 matches.\n\nSwiatek’s unbeaten run equals one by Venus Williams in 2000 as the longest this century.\n\nSwiatek's victory over Gauff on Saturday allowed her to add to the 2020 trophy she won in Paris. That made her the first player from Poland to win a Grand Slam singles title.\n\nSwiatek has now won her past six tournaments and is 42-3 this season.\n\nSwiatek’s last loss came in February to 2017 Roland Garros champion Jelena Ostapenko.\n\n___\n\n3:45 p.m.\n\nIga Swiatek has taken the opening set of the French Open women's final against Coco Gauff by a 6-1 score.\n\nSwiatek raced to a 4-0 lead as Gauff had trouble getting her shots to land where she wanted them.\n\n___\n\n3:10 p.m.\n\nThe French Open women's final between No. 1 Iga Swiatek and 18-year-old American Coco Gauff has started under a partly cloudy sky with a temperature of 82 degrees Fahrenheit (28 Celsius).\n\nSwiatek enters Saturday on a 34-match winning streak as she seeks her second title at Roland Garros. She won the tournament in 2020.\n\nGauff is appearing in a Grand Slam final for the first time.\n\nThe chair umpire is Damien Dumusois.\n\n___\n\n1 p.m.\n\nCoco Gauff is getting ready to face Iga Swiatek in the French Open women's singles final.\n\nGauff is an 18-year-old from Florida who is ranked No. 23 and participating in her first Grand Slam title match.\n\nSwiatek is a 21-year-old from Poland who is ranked No. 1. She won the 2020 French Open and enters Saturday on a 34-match winning streak.\n\nThat is the longest in women's tennis since a 35-match run by Venus Williams in 2000.\n\nGauff and Swiatek have played each other twice before. Both matches were won by Swiatek in straight sets — last year on clay in Rome and this year on a hard court in Miami.\n\nGauff can extend a recent trend at Roland Garros: The past six women's title winners at the clay-court tournament were first-time Grand Slam champions.\n\nThe final is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. local time.\n\nThe men's singles final is Sunday, with 13-time champion Rafael Nadal playing 23-year-old Casper Ruud of Norway.\n\n___\n\nMore AP Tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/04"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/tennis/french/2020/10/10/iga-swiatek-19-beats-american-sofia-kenin-french-open-title/5953249002/", "title": "Iga Swiatek, 19, knocks off American Sofia Kenin for French Open title", "text": "Associated Press\n\nPARIS (AP) — Minutes after suddenly becoming a Grand Slam champion at age 19, while ranked just 54th, Iga Swiatek held a microphone during the French Open trophy ceremony and was hesitant for pretty much the only time over the past two weeks.\n\n“First of all, I'm not very good at speeches,” Swiatek began, haltingly, “so, sorry, because I won my last tournament like two years ago, and I really don't know who to thank.”\n\nWhen she's got a racket in her hand, it's a whole different story. With the poise of a veteran and the shots of a champion, Swiatek wrapped up a dominating run at Roland Garros, grabbing the last six games to beat Sofia Kenin 6-4, 6-1 in Saturday's final.\n\n“Two years ago, I won a junior Grand Slam, and right now I’m here. It feels like such a short time,” Swiatek said, her voice cracking. “I’m just overwhelmed.”\n\nSwiatek (pronounced shvee-ON'-tek) is the first Polish tennis player to win a major singles trophy and said, “I know it’s pretty crazy back home” — where one newspaper's front page was splashed with the headline “Poland Garros” ahead of the final.\n\nWhen she smacked one last forehand winner to the corner to end things, Swiatek placed her right hand over her mouth then crouched, shaking her head.\n\nHard to believe? Maybe. This was, after all, only her seventh major tournament; she'd never been past the fourth round at one.\n\nBut the way she played these two weeks — with powerful groundstrokes sent to corners, the occasional drop shot, terrific returning and impressive court coverage — made this outcome less of a surprise.\n\nSwiatek lost only 28 games across seven matches and is the first woman to triumph in Paris without ceding a set since Justine Henin in 2007. She also is the first teen to win the women's title there since Iva Majoli in 1997.\n\nAnd Swiatek did it with victories over such opponents as 2018 champion Simona Halep and 2019 runner-up Marketa Vondrousova, both by scores of 6-1, 6-2.\n\nSo it made sense that Swiatek would be able to get past the fourth-seeded Kenin, even if the 21-year-old American was trying to claim her second major title of 2020 after winning the Australian Open.\n\n“A great tournament,\" Kenin told Swiatek. \"A great match.”\n\nKenin was 16-1 in Grand Slam matches this year. But she dealt with a leg issue in the second set and showed frustration by kicking her red-white-and-blue racket after lost points.\n\nAnd then there was this: She ran into the composed Swiatek, who only recently completed her high school studies and listens to “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N' Roses before walking on court.\n\n“I was just mentally consistent,” said Swiatek, who travels with a sports psychologist and meditates during changeovers, breathing slowly with her eyes closed. “I felt like today was really stressful for me, so it was kind of hard.”\n\nThis weekend is the culmination of an unusual two weeks, to say the least. The tournament was postponed form May-June to September-October because of the coronavirus pandemic; the recently rising number of COVID-19 cases in France led the government to limit the number of spectators allowed on the grounds to 1,000 each day.\n\nSome top women, including 2019 champion Ash Barty and three-time major champ Naomi Osaka didn’t enter the event; 23-time Slam winner Serena Williams withdrew before the second round with an injury.\n\nThe temperature was in the mid-50s (low teens Celsius), with a slight breeze, and the hundreds of fans scattered in Court Philippe Chatrier were mostly subdued — other than a group that would shout Swiatek’s first name, stretching it out over several seconds each time to sound like “Eeeeeeeeeee-gah.”\n\nSwiatek began with a 3-0 run, taking 12 of the first 15 points, delivering four winners and zero unforced errors.\n\nNo one expected Kenin — self-described as “feisty” — to go quietly. She got on the board with a hold, then broke when Swiatek double-faulted, the first sign that the magnitude of the moment might be hitting her. Soon enough, it was 3-all.\n\nBut Swiatek is nothing if not resilient. She served for the set at 5-3, and got broken, but responded right away by stealing yet another one of Kenin's service games.\n\nSame thing happened to begin the second set: Kenin broke for a 1-0 edge, and Swiatek broke right back. She wouldn't lose another game on her way to her first tour-level title.\n\nAt the changeover at 2-1, Kenin left the court for a medical timeout, then returned with her left thigh wrapped.\n\nWhile Kenin was gone, Swiatek stayed warm by pulling on a white jacket and hitting some serves, earning applause from spectators.\n\nWhen play resumed, Swiatek needed only 12 more minutes to wrap up the victory, finishing with a 25-10 edge in winners.\n\nAll that was left was to hear the Polish anthem — never before played after a major singles final — ring out in the stadium, check out her shiny trophy and go through the speeches and interviews.\n\nAfter speaking for a bit, Swiatek asked, “Should I say something else?”\n\nShe was told by the emcee that she could if she wanted.\n\n“I have no idea,” Swiatek said. “Sorry.”\n\nBetter practice up, Iga. The tennis world expects to see more such speeches in the future.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2020/10/10"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/tennis/2020/10/10/the-latest-stricker-wins-french-open-boys-title/114254810/", "title": "The Latest: Australian champ Kenin cries after French loss", "text": "AP\n\nPARIS (AP) — The Latest from the French Open (all times local):\n\n___\n\n7:30 p.m.\n\nSofia Kenin found out what it feels like to win a Grand Slam final at the Australian Open in February. Now she knows how it feels to lose one.\n\nWhile French Open champion Iga Swiatek was doing a TV interview right after Saturday’s title match, Kenin said, “I was just sitting on the bench and crying. Obviously I had a lot of emotions. I tried my best to not cry in the speech and everything.”\n\nKenin, a 21-year-old who lives in Florida, went a tour-best 16-2 in Grand Slam play in 2020, with a fourth-round showing at the U.S. Open in addition to getting to the last matches at Melbourne Park and Roland Garros.\n\nBut she was hampered by her upper left leg during her 6-4, 6-1 loss to 19-year-old Swiatek.\n\nKenin initially hurt herself during practice last weekend and the leg acted up again Saturday.\n\n“After the first set, I just felt it was so tight, I couldn’t move,” Kenin said.\n\nShe left the court for a medical timeout to get the leg wrapped while trailing 2-1 in the second set and wouldn't win another game.\n\n“I wish I would have held that beautiful trophy,” she said afterward. “Yeah, it’s not easy standing (there) when you were so close to win the title and you lost it.”\n\n___\n\n7:10 p.m.\n\nAndreas Mies and Kevin Krawietz succewssfully defended their French Open doubles title by beating U.S. Open champions Mate Pavic of Croatia and Bruno Soares of Brazil 6-3, 7-5.\n\nThe eighth-seeded German pair won on their second match point when Soares scooped a forehand into the net.\n\nKrawietz’s forehand winner put the Germans up 6-5 and a break against the No. 7 seeds.\n\nWith Mies serving for the match, the duo missed one match point and saved two break points before closing out the win on Court Philippe Chatrier.\n\nMies fell onto his back and Krawietz sank to his knees in celebration.\n\n___\n\n6:10 p.m.\n\nNo. 1 seed Dylan Alcott of Australia beat No. 2 Andy Lapthorne of Britain 6-2, 6-2 to win the French Open men’s quad wheelchair title for the second time.\n\nAlcott broke Lapthorne’s serve six times on the way to his 11th major title.\n\nBut another meeting between the top two seeds was much closer.\n\nNo. 1-seeded Dutch pair Diede de Groot and Aniek van Koot beat No. 2s Yui Kamiji of Japan and Jordanne Whiley of Britain 7-6 (2), 3-6, 10-8 on their third match point to win the women’s wheelchair doubles title for the third straight year.\n\nKamiji won her fourth French Open title in the wheelchair singles on Friday.\n\n___\n\n5:40 p.m.\n\nDominic Stephan Stricker won the boys’ doubles title to clinch a French Open double after earlier winning the singles.\n\nHe teamed with Flavio Cobolli of Italy and the third-seeded pair won against eighth-seeded Bruno Oliveria and Natan Rodrigues of Brazil 6-2, 6-4.\n\nThe 18-year-old left-handed Stricker is the first Swiss player to win a boys’ singles major title since 2003 when Stan Wawrinka prevailed at Roland Garros.\n\nThere was another success for Italy as Eleonora Alvisi and Lisa Pigato won the girls' doubles.\n\nThe unseeded pair beat fifth-seeded Russians Maria Bondarenko and Diana Shnaider 7-6 (3), 6-4.\n\n___\n\n5 p.m.\n\nTeen Iga Swiatek has become the first Polish player to win a Grand Slam title after beating fourth-seeded Sofia Kenin 6-4, 6-1 in the French Open final.\n\nThe 19-year-old Swiatek did so without dropping a set.\n\nKenin was looking to win her second major title of the year after winning the Australian Open. She left the court for a few minutes to take a medical timeout at 2-1 down and came back with her left thigh heavily strapped.\n\nSwiatek broke her for a 3-1 lead and secured a love hold for 4-1.\n\nShe won on her first match point with a forehand winner down the left of court which flew past Kenin.\n\n___\n\n4 p.m.\n\nPolish teen Iga Swiatek won the first set 6-4 against fourth-seeded Sofia Kenin in the French Open final.\n\nThe 19-year-old Swiatek raced into a 3-0 lead in sunny but somewhat chilly conditions on Court Philippe Chatrier before Kenin rallied back for 3-3.\n\nBoth are in the final at Roland Garros for the first time.\n\nKenin is looking to win her second major title of the year after winning the Australian Open.\n\nSwiatek is bidding to become the first Polish player to win a Grand Slam title.\n\nOne of her drop shots in the seventh game was so good that Kenin turned her back and didn't even bother chasing it.\n\n___\n\n3:15 p.m.\n\nThe women’s French Open final between fourth-seeded American Sofia Kenin and unseeded teen Iga Swiatek has begun on Court Philippe Chatrier.\n\nKenin is looking to win her second major title of the year after winning the Australian Open.\n\nThe 19-year-old Swiatek is bidding to become the first Polish player to win a Grand Slam title.\n\nThe 54th-ranked Swiatek is the second lowest-ranked woman to reach the final in Paris since the WTA rankings were introduced in 1975.\n\n___\n\n3 p.m.\n\nThird-seeded Elsa Jacquemot beat Alina Charaeva 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 to win the girls’ title at the French Open.\n\nThe 17-year-old Jacquemot is the first French girl to win a junior title since Kristina Mladenovic also won at Roland Garros in 2009.\n\nJacquemot sealed victory on her first match point after a double fault from the unseeded Russian.\n\n“To win Roland Garros as a French player is something crazy. I don't have the words,” Jacquemot said.\n\nCharaeva's voice cracked with emotion when she spoke after the match.\n\n“I hope next year I can come back as a professional,\" she said.\n\n___\n\n2 p.m.\n\nBritain's Alfie Hewett beat Joachim Gerard of Belgium 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 to win the French Open wheelchair title for the second time.\n\nThe 22-year-old Hewett now has four major titles after twice winning the U.S. Open.\n\n“I'd like to say congratulations to Jo and your team. I know it wasn’t to be today but congrats. It was a tough final,\" Hewett said after winning in 2 hours, 36 minutes on Court Suzanne Lenglen. “I hope to get a good pizza tonight to celebrate ... I think me and my left shoulder are ready for a break.\"\n\nThe top-ranked Hewett has reached the semifinals at both the Australian Open and Wimbledon.\n\nThe 31-year-old Gerard was playing in his second major final after losing in the Australian Open final four years ago.\n\n___\n\n1:30 p.m.\n\nDominic Stephan Stricker beat Leandro Riedi in an all-Swiss final to win the boys’ title at the French Open.\n\nHe is the first Swiss player to win a boys' title at any major tournament since three-time Grand Slam champion Stan Wawrinka at Roland Garros in 2003.\n\nThe seventh-seeded Stricker broke No. 8 seed Riedi's serve five times.\n\nThe 18-year-old left hander is on line for a double triumph.\n\nHe is playing the boys’ doubles final alongside Flavio Cobolli of Italy later Saturday.\n\nThey are seeded third against eighth-seeded Bruno Oliveria and Natan Rodrigues of Brazil.\n\n___\n\nMore AP tennis: https://apnews.com/apf-Tennis and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2020/10/10"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/tennis/2022/05/19/djokovic-nadal-alcaraz-on-same-half-of-french-open-bracket/50253457/", "title": "Naomi Osaka gets rematch as she returns to French Open", "text": "AP\n\nPARIS (AP) — Naomi Osaka will not have the luxury of easing into her return to the courts of the French Open, facing a tough foe in her very first match.\n\nWeek 2 at Roland Garros, meanwhile, could be quite fascinating for Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz — the three leading favorites for the men's title ended up on the same side of the bracket for the clay-court Grand Slam tournament, meaning only one can reach the final.\n\nThursday’s draw at Roland Garros also set up two tantalizing possibilities in the fourth round for No. 1-ranked Iga Swiatek, the 2020 champion who is currently on a 28-match winning streak. She might need to go up against 2018 champion Simona Halep at that stage or 2017 champion Jelena Ostapenko — who just so happens to be the last woman to defeat Swiatek.\n\nThe tournament begins Sunday.\n\nOsaka is a four-time Grand Slam champion who used to be No. 1 in the rankings but has slipped to No. 38 in part because of a lack of activity. That included time off for a mental health break after she withdrew from Roland Garros ahead of her second-round match last year, revealing that she has dealt with anxiety and depression.\n\nBecause she is not seeded at the French Open, she was not safe from facing a seeded opponent right away, so that’s what will happen against No. 27 Amanda Anisimova, a 20-year-old American who was a 2019 semifinalist in Paris.\n\nAnisimova won their third-round encounter at the Australian Open in January by a score of 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (5). Osaka was the defending champion at Melbourne Park.\n\nThe possible women’s quarterfinals in Paris are Swiatek against two-time major runner-up Karolina Pliskova, and No. 3 seed Paula Badosa against No. 7 Aryna Sabalenka on the top half of the field, and defending champion Barbora Krejcikova against No. 5 Anett Kontaveit, and No. 4 Maria Sakkari against No. 6 Ons Jabeur on the bottom half.\n\nLast year, in her first time in the main draw of singles at the French Open, Krejcikova won both that trophy — the player she beat in the final, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, announced this week her season is done because of an injured knee — along with women's doubles.\n\nSo it makes sense that Krejcikova used phrases such as “extremely amazing” and “something incredible\" while discussing what happened in 2021 during a brief appearance at the draw ceremony and noted with a smile: “This clay suits me.”\n\nNadal, he of the 13 titles on the red stuff in Paris, and Djokovic, a two-time champion, could say the same, of course.\n\nDjokovic, who is the defending champion and seeded No. 1, could meet Nadal in the quarterfinals. A year ago, Djokovic beat Nadal in the semifinals, before erasing a two-set deficit against Stefanos Tsitsipas to win the final.\n\n“I am very motivated to play my best tennis,” Djokovic said in French on Thursday, as he marked his chance to get back on the Grand Slam stage after missing the Australian Open because he is not vaccinated against COVID-19 (the French Open has no such requirement).\n\n“Last year in Paris was the perfect result. Roland Garros was maybe the hardest of my career — of all the Grand Slams I have won,” he said. “Very emotional, tiring, but at the end, the result arrived.”\n\nNadal leads the Grand Slam title standings among men with 21, one ahead of Djokovic and Roger Federer.\n\nIf the Djokovic-Nadal showdown happens, the winner could face No. 6 seed Alcaraz in the semifinals. Alcaraz is just 19, recently won the Madrid Open on clay and became the youngest man to break into the top 10 in the rankings since Nadal in 2005.\n\nAlcaraz could meet No. 3 seed Alexander Zverev in quarterfinals.\n\nThe potential quarterfinals on the other half of the bracket are No. 2 Daniil Medvedev against No. 7 Andrey Rublev — two Russians who will not be allowed to compete at Wimbledon because of that country's invasion of Ukraine — and No. 4 Tsitsipas against No. 8 Casper Ruud.\n\n___\n\nMore AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/19"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_24", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:38", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/956998/the-pros-and-cons-of-right-to-buy", "title": "The pros and cons of Right to Buy | The Week UK", "text": "Boris Johnson is planning to revive the Thatcher-era Right to Buy scheme that will give people the chance to buy the properties they rent from housing associations at a discounted price.\n\nThe idea is designed to help “generation rent” get on the property ladder, as well as “prove the government is still committed to its Conservative principles” as Johnson faces an increasingly unhappy parliamentary party following Monday’s confidence vote, reported The Guardian.\n\nThe prime minister is expected to give more details about the policy in a speech in Lancashire today.\n\nIntroduced in 1980, the first iteration of the Right to Buy scheme was one of the flagship policies of Margaret Thatcher’s government. It allowed council house tenants to buy the homes they lived in and forced local authorities to sell their properties on request at a discount.\n\nUnder the policy as it stands today, council tenants can get up to 70% off the market price, depending on how long they have lived there – but the scheme is much more restrictive when it comes to housing associations.\n\nRight to Buy has proved to be a controversial policy in the intervening years, leading some to wonder if it should be revived.\n\nPro: more on the housing ladder Between 1980 and 2021, 1.8 million households in England purchased a home from their local authority using the Right to Buy scheme. The Telegraph said it “achieved its goal of getting more people on the housing ladder in its former years” but its “popularity has waned since”. The BBC estimated that 2.4 million people rent from housing associations, so would now be eligible for the scheme. It added that Johnson will also “suggest allowing housing benefit to count towards a mortgage”. However, some experts have warned that it ignores the needs of private tenants.\n\nCon: fewer affordable homes Housing experts have warned the policy could significantly reduce the number of affordable homes available to renters amid a cost-of-living crisis, and have instead called for an increase in house building. Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, told The Guardian: “There could not be a worse time to sell off what remains of our last truly affordable social homes.” She added that “more people are on the brink of homelessness than homeownership”. Other experts have warned that the Thatcherite policy “left a trail of destruction in its wake” after the government failed to ensure houses that were being sold to tenants were replaced, leaving little housing stock left for those who relied on social housing, said The Telegraph. Since the launch of Right to Buy, “just 358,350 new local authority properties were built – a replacement rate of less than 20%”. The government is expected to mitigate this when it launches the scheme.\n\nPro: historically popular policy For Thatcher, the policy was a “resounding success”, transforming her political fortunes and becoming one of the most popular policies of the era, according to the Daily Mail. It said that in the first year alone, the government received up to 1,000 applications to buy each day. In the first two years of the scheme, more than 107,000 properties were sold to council tenants. Michael Heseltine, who as environment secretary was in charge of turning the policy into law, said at the time that “no single piece of legislation has enabled the transfer of so much capital wealth from the state to the people”. Even now, the idea of home ownership is a popular one, with 62% of Britons without property saying they would like to own their own home in the future, according to a YouGov poll last year. When Labour came to power in 1997, it reduced the discount available to tenants in local authorities, which put severe pressure on their housing stock, including almost the whole of London. But, as the Daily Mail noted: “Tony Blair’s government never actually attempted to abolish Right to Buy – perhaps wary of the huge backlash that could result.”\n\nCon: lack of good rental stock Critics have said that many of the “decent” housing association properties have already been sold off, leaving current housing association tenants with few tempting options if they were seeking to buy, said The Guardian. Toby Lloyd, a housing consultant and former special adviser, told The Telegraph that the new policy could also prove “extraordinarily expensive” for the government. “The Conservative party has been promising to extend Right to Buy to housing associations for years, but the reason it has not been successful is because it is much harder,” he said. “The whole point of housing associations is they are independent charities and not part of the state, and so the Government cannot just help itself to their assets. It will be extraordinarily expensive to persuade them to sell houses off.”\n\nPro: prevents social exclusion One argument for proponents of Right to Buy is that it helps create communities of different social classes, and in neighbourhoods where Right to Buy has been taken up it is argued that “the presence of economically active households reduces the social exclusion of an area”. It is also argued that people with a financial stake in their neighbourhood and property have “more incentive to look after it and the neighbourhood around it”, said The Guardian.", "authors": ["Sorcha Bradley"], "publish_date": "2022/06/08"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/956608/ten-things-you-need-to-know-today-2-may-2022", "title": "Ten Things You Need to Know Today: 2 May 2022 | The Week UK", "text": "Falklands conflict an ‘open wound’\n\nThe Falklands War is an “open wound” in Argentina, the country’s ambassador to the UK has said on the 40th anniversary of the war. Javier Figueroa compared the disagreement over the islands’ sovereignty to the relationship between North and South Korea. Speaking to the PA News agency, the ambassador explained that, despite the war ending four decades ago, in Argentina it remains a “deeply emotional issue”. Meanwhile, he added, most young people in the UK do not know “Britain has a beef with Argentina regarding the South Atlantic”.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/05/02"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/science-health/955560/the-pros-and-cons-of-compulsory-vaccination", "title": "The pros and cons of compulsory vaccination | The Week UK", "text": "Ministers are meeting today to decide whether or not to scrap plans to mandate Covid vaccinations for frontline NHS staff, with the deadline for health workers to have their first jab just days away.\n\nUnless they have a medical exemption, patient-facing health and care workers in England “risk being redeployed or losing their jobs altogether” if they have not had two doses of the vaccine by April, reported Nursing Times.\n\nWith the final date for the first dose on 3 February, nursing leaders and unions have urged the government to delay the policy “amid concerns of the impact it will have on the workforce”, said the magazine.\n\nLast week, Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the principle of patient safety remains “unchanged” but revealed that the government is “reflecting” on its policy of compulsory Covid vaccination for NHS staff now that the Omicron variant has taken hold in the country.\n\n“No jab, no job” rules have become commonplace in some parts of the world as countries fight Covid-19, said the i news site. Vaccine passports are also being used for international travel or for access to large events and public spaces in different nations.\n\nBoris Johnson has previously acknowledged that there are “moral complexities, ethical problems that need to be addressed” around compulsory vaccination and certification. Here are just some of those key issues.\n\nPro: reducing risk of infection More than 11,600 people caught Covid in hospital and died after being admitted for a different reason, according to an exclusive report in The Telegraph last November. Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative chairman of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, said the “truly shocking” data “surely strengthens the case for mandatory vaccination for frontline healthcare staff”. An NHS spokesperson said staff had “rigorously” followed infection prevention guidance and blamed the infection rates in hospitals on the rates in the community. While vaccinated people can still spread Covid, a jab provides “some protection” against infection and transmission, according to the UK Health Security Agency. For some, this is not enough to justify enforced vaccination.\n\nCon: unnecessary interference One of the biggest arguments against any form of compulsory inoculation is the idea that it represents government encroachment on personal freedoms. Human rights campaign group Liberty has urged the government to support people using education and wider access to vaccination rather than through “pressure and punishment”. Its director, Gracie Bradley, warned that a “coercive approach” will “damage trust between employers, patients and key workers”, while Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron said mandatory shots were “utterly illiberal, utterly wrong and a challenge to our freedoms”.\n\nPro: protecting the vulnerable Sajid Javid has said compulsory vaccination for NHS frontline workers is imperative to “avoid preventable harm and protect patients in the NHS”. Announcing the policy in November last year, he told the House of Commons: “The weight of the data shows our vaccinations have kept people safe and they have saved lives. This is especially true for vulnerable people in health and care settings.” Care home workers and volunteers are already required to show proof of full vaccination against Covid-19 unless they have a medical exemption. Johnson has previously said the idea should not feel “alien”, pointing out that surgeons are expected to have a vaccination against hepatitis B. In the BMJ, Daniel Sokol, a medical ethicist and clinical negligence barrister, said that for healthcare workers refusing the vaccine would be “contrary to the ethics of their profession”.\n\nCon: staff shortages Health bosses are “increasingly concerned about the risk of losing a large number of staff when the NHS is struggling with both the Omicron variant and backlogs”, reported The Times. The Royal College of GPs, the Royal College of Nursing and Royal College of Midwives have called for a delay in the deadline for NHS staff to be vaccinated. The newspaper estimated that nearly 80,000 NHS staff are yet to be vaccinated, 5.4% of the total. However, in the BMJ, Sokol argued that unvaccinated healthcare workers “can also cause indirect harm from staff absences and disruption to the health service caused by severe disease”.\n\nPro: a route to normality Vaccine passports have been touted as one way to revive sectors where it is harder to keep a social distance, such as travel and hospitality. Israel was one of the first countries to use a vaccine passport system. Its “Green Pass” permits fully vaccinated individuals to access indoor venues. Meanwhile, Emmanuel Macron’s decision in July to bring in a vaccine passport scheme in France was a “jaw-dropper”, Politico said. But it proved to be the “best moment” in the president’s handling of the coronavirus crisis – “maybe even of his tenure”, said public health consultant Martin Blachier. France, “one of the most vaccine-sceptical nations on earth”, became “one of the most vaccinated countries in the world” over the summer, said Wired. Similarly, since the consultation on the vaccine mandate for NHS staff last September, around 100,000 unvaccinated health staff have come forward for their jabs, said Nursing Times.\n\nCon: the Omicron factor Last week Javid said that although the principle of patient safety remained “unchanged”, the NHS mandate was announced when Delta was the dominant variant. Now that the typically “less severe” Omicron variant accounts for “almost all cases” across the country, it is right that “we reflect on all this and keep all Covid policies properly under review”, Javid told MPs. Another argument related to Omicron is that two vaccines are now less effective than they were against Delta, although some argue that this is a reason to expand the NHS vaccine mandate to three doses.\n\nPro: conflict of freedoms Alberto Giubilini, an ethics researcher from the University of Oxford, suggested that there is a “conflict of freedoms” when it comes to mandatory vaccination. While people should be free to choose whether or not they receive medical intervention such as an inoculation, vulnerable people who are unable to have a jab should also have the freedom to live a normal life. “Which infringement of freedom is the largest burden and which one is justified? That’s what we should ask,” he wrote for The Conversation.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/01/27"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/environment/953876/does-boris-johnsons-green-agenda-go-far-enough", "title": "Does Boris Johnson's green agenda go far enough? | The Week UK", "text": "The message from climate scientists in last week’s landmark report was clear, said The Observer: humanity must wean itself off fossil fuels now. While every nation must play its part, there’s a particular onus on Britain. It was here, after all, that the Industrial Revolution began, and it is Britain that is hosting the UN’s critical climate summit, COP26, in November. Many nations at the event in Glasgow will be looking to the UK for leadership, but it will be in little position to offer it. The Government has not only failed to set out a clear strategy for achieving net-zero emissions in the near future; it’s also continuing to support measures that directly undermine that goal. This “list of incompatibilities” includes the recent closing of the Green Homes Grant insulation scheme; freezing fuel duty; encouraging airport expansion; and delaying the phasing out of gas boilers beyond the planned date of 2035.\n\nBoris Johnson has committed to cutting the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions by 78% of 1990 levels by 2035, and achieving net zero by 2050, said Elliot Chappell on LabourList.org. But based on its current trajectory, the UK is, according to government advisers, on course to cut only a fifth of the emissions needed to meet the 2035 target. To make matters worse, the PM is also facing a backlash from “reactive elements” in his party over his green agenda, such as it is. Among those warning that it risks alienating voters is Bassetlaw MP Brendan Clarke-Smith, who described it as a “hard sell asking people to make sacrifices when the rest of the world, China/Russia etc, are carrying on as usual”.\n\nThe “awkward squad” are threatening to make trouble over net zero, said Peter Franklin on UnHerd, but Johnson has “more allies than enemies” in this battle. The climate agenda appeals to the southern voters the Tories risk losing to the Lib Dems and Greens, and to voters in the North and Midlands who want investment in clean energy to revive local economies. The PM must stick to his targets, said The Times. We’ve already seen how economies of scale can reduce the cost of green technologies: wind is now a cheaper source of electricity than coal; experts expect the price of new electric cars to fall below that of petrol and diesel vehicles as soon as 2025. The price of other green technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells, heat pumps and solar energy should likewise fall over time. The costs of net zero should in any case be kept in perspective. The Office for Budget Responsibility reckons that decarbonising our economy will cost us some £1.4trn over 30 years. “That is less than the Government has spent on the pandemic in 18 months.”", "authors": ["The Week Staff"], "publish_date": "2021/08/19"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/23/world/coronavirus-newsletter-intl-02-23-22/index.html", "title": "As Britain scraps free mass testing, Hong Kong will swab its entire ...", "text": "This is the weekly edition of CNN's coronavirus newsletter. Look out for your roundup every Wednesday. If you haven't subscribed yet, sign up here\n\n(CNN) At the start of the pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) had one very clear message for countries around the world: \"Test, test, test.\"\n\nTwo years later, the advice remains the same, but not all governments are listening to it.\n\nThis week, Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson hailed England's new \"living with Covid\" strategy, dropping its remaining pandemic restrictions despite the reality that tens of thousands of people are still testing positive each day — including, on Sunday, Queen Elizabeth II\n\nThe plans unveiled by Johnson, who says the next phase is all about \"encouraging personal responsibility,\" include an end to England's free coronavirus testing scheme. At the program's peak, more than 2 million swabs per day were being carried out and logged in the United Kingdom — yielding arguably the most robust data set in the world.\n\nThe UK's move to axe free mass testing after March was met with backlash from public health experts, who fear it could have major consequences on global efforts to track Covid-19. The WHO's special envoy for Covid, David Nabarro, said on BBC radio over the weekend that he worried Britain's decision to drop all rules and adopt \"a line that is against the public health consensus,\" could \"create a bit of a domino effect around the world.\"\n\nThe dismantling of these surveillance systems would have a dire impact on our understanding of the virus as it continues to evolve and spread, WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said during an online question-and-answer sessio n on Tuesday. Though global infections have fallen about 20% this week, compared to the previous week, she warned that the decline \"may not be real\" due to reduced testing. \"We are very concerned about a reduction in testing around the world. We need to continue to test for SARS-CoV-2. We cannot abandon our testing practices,\" Van Kerkhove added.\n\nStill, some countries and regions are hanging on to testing as a major strand of their pandemic strategy.\n\nA temporary Covid-19 testing site in Hong Kong.\n\nHong Kong's chief executive, Carrie Lam, announced a massive mandatory testing drive Tuesday as the territory grapples with its worst coronavirus outbreak yet, spurred by Omicron. The entire population — nearly 7.5 million people — will undergo three rounds of compulsory Covid-19 testing in March, and testing capacity is expected to increase to 1 million a day or more, according to Lam. Hong Kong has largely stayed in lockstep with mainland China's \"zero-Covid-19\" policy, which has meant that as other countries like Britain have shifted their approach to treating the virus as endemic, the city has been stuck in a never-ending cycle of lockdowns to quell outbreaks.\n\nThe extremely transmissible Omicron variant put a massive strain on testing programs around the world earlier this year, making rapid tests even more scarce. As cases surged, vaccinated and boosted people trying to ensure they were not positive before contact with vulnerable individuals or attending gatherings found themselves scrambling to find available test kits.\n\nThe United States poured billions into scaling up test manufacturing capacity, but still failed to avert a shortfall amid the Omicron spike. In a briefing by the White House Covid-⁠19 response team last week, Dr. Tom Inglesby, senior adviser to the task force, said that the administration was seeking to address supply chain challenges and expand domestic testing capacity, to \"be ready if we face a new variant or surge in the future.\" The US government said it has secured 1 billion tests, 200 million of which have already been shipped free of charge to Americans across the country.\n\n\"Testing will remain a critical part of our overall COVID response strategy. We're making investments now for whatever this virus brings in the time ahead,\" Inglesby said.\n\nYOU ASKED. WE ANSWERED\n\nQ: How can we keep kids safe as Covid-19 rules change? Our expert weighs in\n\nA: After two years of pandemic restrictions, several states have announced they will end indoor mask mandates, including at some schools. Against this backdrop, the US Food and Drug Administration has said that it will delay authorization for the Covid-19 vaccine for children under 5.\n\nThat has left many parents wondering whether it is safe or not to allow their kids to resume indoor activities such as playdates, going to the movies and attending extracurricular activities.\n\n\"Just because restrictions are being lifted doesn't mean that suddenly everything's safe. Covid-19 infection levels are still quite high in many communities. Government-required measures are ending, but that doesn't mean that individuals should make every risky choice,\" CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen says\n\nBut nearly everything we do carries some level of risk when it comes to contracting Covid-19. The question families should ask is: How much do we want to keep avoiding the coronavirus? And what's the price we're willing to pay to do so?\n\nSend your questions here . Are you a health care worker fighting Covid-19? Message us on WhatsApp about the challenges you're facing: +1 347-322-0415.\n\nREADS OF THE WEEK\n\nQueen Elizabeth experiencing mild Covid symptoms\n\nBritain's Queen Elizabeth II canceled her planned virtual engagements on Tuesday as she continued to suffer from mild Covid-19 symptoms, Buckingham Palace has said. The palace announced Sunday that the 95-year-old monarch had contracted the virus.\n\n\"As Her Majesty is still experiencing mild cold-like symptoms she has decided not to undertake her planned virtual engagements today, but will continue with light duties,\" the palace said. Light duties likely refer to her head of state responsibilities such as reading and answering documents and letters, which she receives daily in her famous red dispatch boxes, Max Foster and Lauren Said-Moorhouse explain\n\nThe Queen's diagnosis is the latest Covid case to hit the royal household. Her eldest son and heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, contracted the virus for a second time on February 10, and had seen his mother \"recently.\" Days later, his wife, Camilla, also tested positive. Additionally, a royal source told CNN Sunday that there had recently been \"a number of cases ... diagnosed in the Windsor Castle team.\" UK media have reported that the Queen is fully vaccinated.\n\nAs the US looks to move on from Covid-19, high-risk and disabled Americans feel forgotten\n\nTasha Nelson's 10-year-old son Jack, who has cystic fibrosis, a progressive genetic disease that causes persistent, damaging lung infections, held back tears when he heard the news. The two were in the car when the announcement came through the radio: Virginia's freshly sworn-in governor had signed an order attempting to ban mask mandates in schools. \"My son looked up at me and he had tears in his eyes because he knew what it meant. He said, 'Mom, does that mean I can't go to school anymore?'\" Nelson said. \"He said, 'Can't we let the governor know about kids like me? I want to go to school too.'\"\n\nAs local and state leaders across the US remove mask and vaccination rules, immunocompromised, disabled and chronically ill Americans say that doing away with protections will leave them more vulnerable — especially as they, or family members, return to in-person work or school. And for some, Covid-19 vaccines are not as effective in staving off a severe bout with the virus, Christina Maxouris writes\n\nThe high-risk people CNN spoke to said as the country eagerly looks to move on from the pandemic, they feel forgotten — and worse, like they don't matter to the rest of the American public. Some say they feel like they've been left to adapt to a more dangerous reality, while others are now mapping out a permanently isolated lifestyle.\n\nReinfections of Omicron subvariants are possible, but rare\n\nA WHO advisory group met to discuss the latest evidence on Omicron, including subvariants BA.1 and BA.2, on Tuesday, after reports that the latter was not only spreading faster than its distant cousin, but may also cause more severe disease . Based on available data on transmission, severity, reinfection and impacts of vaccines, the group advised that that BA.2 should continue to be considered a variant of concern and remain classified as Omicron.\n\nWHO's experts considered real-world data on clinical severity from Denmark, where BA.2 is currently the dominant cause of Covid-19. A new Danish study found that getting reinfected with two different Omicron subvariants was possible, but that it was a rare occurrence, largely afflicting those who are unvaccinated and resulting in mostly mild infections. The group also received a briefing from Japanese scientists, who recently conducted lab and animal studies with BA.2. The new lab experiments from Japan show that BA.2 may have features that make it as capable of causing serious illness as older variants of Covid-19, including Delta. And like Omicron, it appears to largely escape the immunity created by vaccines.\n\nTOP TIP\n\nYou might need a fourth shot. As the world approaches the second anniversary of the declaration of the Covid-19 pandemic by the WHO, on March 11, more nations are rolling out — or considering — fourth doses of coronavirus vaccine for their most vulnerable.\n\nIsrael was the first nation to roll out fourth doses, and Sweden and the UK have recently said they would follow suit. In the US, leading public health officials say they are \"very carefully\" monitoring if or when fourth doses might be needed, with signs that it might be recommended as we move into fall — coinciding with the administration of flu shots.\n\nHere's why Dr. Anthony Fauci and other public health experts say boosting will be critical\n\nLISTEN TO OUR PODCAST", "authors": ["Eliza Mackintosh", "Isabelle Jani-Friend"], "publish_date": "2022/02/23"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/952130/ten-things-you-need-to-know-today-3-march-2021", "title": "Ten Things You Need to Know Today: 3 March 2021 | The Week UK", "text": "Parents ‘blackmailed’ over tests\n\nParents say they have been “blackmailed” by schools into giving consent for Covid tests after being told their children will be banned from face-to-face lessons if they refuse. They say they are “gobsmacked” after headteachers wrote to explain that any pupils who do not agree to take lateral flow tests at the start of term will be segregated from their peers. The Department for Education says the tests are voluntary.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2021/03/03"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_25", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:38", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2022/06/08/british-15-years-iraq-prison-smuggling-artifacts/7551372001/", "title": "British man sentenced to 15 years for smuggling artifacts out of Iraq", "text": "Samya Kullab\n\nThe Associated Press\n\nJim Fitton, a British retired geologist, was sentenced to 15 years in prison by an Iraqi court on Monday.\n\nFitton had been convicted of attempting to smuggle artifacts out of Iraq.\n\nA German national tried with Fitton, Volker Waldman, was found not to have had criminal intent in the case and will be released.\n\nBAGHDAD — A British citizen was sentenced Monday by an Iraqi court to 15 years in prison after being convicted of attempting to smuggle artifacts out of the country, in a case that has attracted international attention.\n\nThe verdict handed down to retired geologist Jim Fitton, shocked the court in Baghdad, including his defense attorney. He and his family have argued that Fitton, 66, had no criminal intent.\n\n“I thought the worst case scenario would be one year, with suspension,” Fitton’s lawyer Thair Soud, visibly shocked, told The Associated Press.\n\nSoud said Fitton would appeal the verdict.\n\nA German national tried with Fitton was found not to have had criminal intent in the case and will be released.\n\nJudge Jabir Abd Jabir found that, according to the government's investigation, Fitton had criminal intent to smuggle the artifacts that he had picked up and intended to transport them out of the country.\n\nLibyan artifacts:US returns smuggled ancient artifacts, some thousands of years old, to Libya\n\nThe trial has grabbed international attention at a time when Iraq seeks to open up its nascent tourism sector. The two men first appeared in court on May 15 wearing yellow detainees' uniforms, telling judges they had not acted with criminal intent and had no idea they might have broken local laws.\n\nFitton said he “suspected” the items he collected were ancient fragments, but that “at the time I didn’t know about Iraqi laws,” or that taking the shards was not permitted. Fitton said as geologist he was in the habit of collecting such fragments as a hobby and had no intention to sell them.\n\nIn his defense, Soud said Fitton waited for weeks while in custody before hiring him as his legal counsel, arguing that this makes the point that the Briton had no idea of the severity of the case or the value of the goods found in his possession.\n\nThe judge, however, did not consider Soud’s arguments that laid out Fitton’s ignorance of Iraqi laws and the value of the items he picked up. Fitton and the German national, Volker Waldman, were arrested at Baghdad's airport on March 20 after airport security discovered the items in their luggage. They had been part of a tourism expedition around the country’s ancient sites.\n\nVideo:S.S. Central America Artifacts\n\nTheir tour guide, also a British citizen who was in his 80s and in poor health, died in police custody for reasons unrelated to his detention. He was found with over 20 archaeological fragments in this possession.\n\nFitton’s family grew worried when he did not arrive on a scheduled flight back to Kuala Lumpur, where he resides with his wife, on March 20. They later learned that Fitton, a well-traveled geologist for oil and gas companies, had been taken to an airport holding cell where he was still being detained, Fitton’s daughter Leila told The Associated Press last month.\n\nFitton missed his daughter's wedding in Malaysia, which took place in early May. Leila said at the time she was “heartbroken” by his absence.\n\nHer hope for her father's return home has been a near-daily fixture on her social media. Nineteen hours before Fitton was sentence she posted a photo of her parents to mark their wedding anniversary. In another, at a family hiking trip she wrote she hoped her father would be able to join them on the next venture.\n\nFrustrated by perceived inaction on the part of the British Foreign Office to intervene and assist in Fitton’s case, his family started a petition that has garnered over 100,000 signatures. The British diplomatic mission in Baghdad has not commented on its involvement in the case and the British consul in Iraq, who attended the court session Monday, left following the sentencing without making any comments.\n\nWhat's everyone talking about?:Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day\n\nIn total, 12 fragments of pottery and other shards were found in Fitton’s possession by Iraqi authorities, all of them collected as souvenirs, Fitton’s family says, during a group tourism expedition to Eridu, an ancient Mesopotamian site in what is now Dhi Qar province. The site is said to be among the oldest sites belonging to that civilization.\n\nControversy, however, remains about the items that Fitton had picked up. A report by the Iraqi Culture Ministry stated they were over 200 years old, without offering any further explanation about their provenance. But any item less than 1,500 years old disqualifies it from being from antiquity, a period from the beginnings of Western civilization to about 450 A.D.\n\nThe trial has also divided Iraqi public opinion. Some see the punishment as just, saying Iraq has long been a looting ground for invaders and foreigners with impunity. Others said Iraq lacked proper site management to inform tourists of the laws.\n\nMore:Museums must return stolen artifacts, experts say. That requires an 'institutional transformation.'\n\n“Eridu is a UNESCO world heritage site in Iraq and it requires a better site management plan,” said Ali Makhzomy, the founder of BilWeekend, a touring company. “It is the Iraqi government's responsibility to do that.\"\n\nThe items were not shown in court. Amir Abdul Razaq, an archaeologist in the southern province of Nassriyah, said he believed the items in Fitton's possession dated back to 1,800 B.C. after The Associated Press shared images of the shards shared by his family. Government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.\n\nWaldman’s defense team has said the German tourist had been carrying two pieces for Fitton but that he did not pick them up from the site. Both men were charged with smuggling based on the country’s antiquities laws, and could have potentially faced the death penalty. However, officials had said that was only a remote possibility.\n\nIt wasn't clear if Fitton can serve out his sentence in his home country. In 2017, Iraq signed a prisoner swap agreement with the U.K.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/08"}, {"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/956979/ten-things-you-need-to-know-today-7-june-2022", "title": "Ten Things You Need to Know Today: 7 June 2022 | The Week UK", "text": "US cops ‘watched man drown’\n\nThree police officers in the US have been placed on leave after they failed to rescue a homeless man from drowning. Bodycam footage and transcripts show 34-year-old Sean Bickings getting into Tempe Town Lake, Arizona, and warning police he was “going to drown”. None of the officers attending the scene intervened to save him and one is heard telling him: “I’m not jumping in after you.” Bickings was later declared dead. A human rights group told The New York Times that the incident was another reminder of excessive policing in the city.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/07"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/06/middleeast/india-islam-comments-gulf-mime-intl/index.html", "title": "Why India is in damage-control mode with Arab nations - CNN", "text": "A version of this story first appeared in CNN's Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region's biggest stories. Sign up here .\n\nAbu Dhabi, UAE and New Delhi, India (CNN) It took India less than 24 hours to discipline two politicians after a controversy that had been brewing at home for over a week caught the attention of its Arab trade partners.\n\nIndia's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday suspended a spokesperson and expelled another official after derogatory comments they made about Islam's prophet led to an outcry in Arab countries.\n\n\"India was taken aback by the response,\" said Kabir Taneja, a fellow with the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank in New Delhi. \"Communal issues are not new in India and in previous cases, we have not had such a response [from Arab states].\"\n\nOn May 26, BJP spokeswoman Nupur Sharma made comments on an Indian news channel about Prophet Mohammad that were deemed offensive and Islamophobic. Qatar, Kuwait and Iran summoned India's ambassadors, and the Gulf Cooperation Council, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation issued statements of condemnation. At least 14 countries have so far condemned the remarks.\n\nSharma said on Twitter she had \"said some things\" in response to comments made about a Hindu god but it was \"never my intention to hurt anyone's religious feelings.\"\n\n\"If my words have caused discomfort or hurt religious feelings of anyone whatsoever, I hereby unconditionally withdraw my statement,\" she said.\n\nMost Indian news outlets reporting on the story didn't directly quote Sharma's original comments.\n\nNaveen Jindal, a BJP leader, was expelled from the party over comments he made about Islam on social media, the BJP office said.\n\nAnalysts said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has walked a tight rope between keeping his Muslim international allies happy while pushing his party's Hindu nationalist agenda at home.\n\n\"Modi has tried very hard to prevent his party's domestic political agenda from spilling over and poisoning India's relations with the Gulf states,\" said Hasan Alhasan, a Bahrain-based fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies who researches Indian foreign policy in the Gulf. \"The extent to which Sharma's comments have clouded India's relations with the Gulf states is unprecedented, and that's of course because she is, or was, the spokesperson of the BJP.\"\n\nTaneja said the Indian government has realized that a lot of religious rhetoric \"has been taking place for a while and has been going unnoticed, but it will not go so anymore.\"\n\nThe hashtag \"Anyone but the prophet, oh Modi\" was trending on Twitter in all six Gulf countries, and as far away as Algeria, with residents in Muslim nations calling for a boycott of Indian products. Oman's outspoken Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Al-Khalili, the chief religious figure in the country, called Sharma's comments \"a war on all Muslims\" and a matter that \"calls for all Muslims to rise as one nation.\"\n\nOffending depictions of Islam's prophet have in the past led to mass boycotts , diplomatic crises, riots and even terror attacks.\n\nThe controversy comes as Gulf states and India look to significantly enhance their economic partnership. India, the world's third-biggest importer of oil, looks to the Middle East for 65% of its crude imports . On the other hand, the Asian nation sends millions of workers to the Gulf states who send home billions of dollars in remittances.\n\n\"There are over 8 million non-resident Indians across the Gulf . The Gulf states are key sources of India's oil and gas imports, and bilateral trade is over $100 billion,\" said Alhasan. \"So it is a very important set of relationships from the Indian perspective.\"\n\nThe UAE alone, where some 3.5 million Indians live, accounts for 33% of remittances to India, at more than $20 billion a year.\n\nThe UAE has singled out India among seven other nations as its future economic partner . India's Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal has said the Gulf nation plans to invest $100 billion in his country, in part for manufacturing and infrastructure.\n\nThis year, India signed a free trade agreement with the UAE, its first in more than a decade, and has eyed the rest of the Gulf states for similar agreements, according to news reports. The UAE pact aims to see annual trade rise to $100 billion in five years and contribute to the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs in India.\n\nAbdulaziz Sager, chairman and founder of the Gulf Research Center in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, said that nature of India-Saudi relations gives Riyadh political and economic leverage over the Indian government.\n\n\"I don't think that will have a jeopardizing effect in terms of the economic or political relations because India is still an important country,\" said Sager. \"It is an important relationship but Saudi Arabia is not going to accept any sort of insult to the Prophet or undermining of religious Islamic issues,\" said Sager.\n\nThere are more than 2.2 million Indians in Saudi Arabia, according to Indian officials.\n\nTaneja said India knows the clout Gulf states have over it because of the diaspora in those countries. \"That is why we saw such a brisk response from the government.\"\n\nCNN's Esha Mitra contributed to this report.\n\nThe digest\n\nBiden's meeting with Saudi crown prince pushed back to July\n\nmeeting between US President Joe Biden and Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), is now expected to happen next month, according to an administration official.\n\nBackground: CNN reported earlier that Biden and the crown prince were planning to meet at the end of June as part of a broader summit of Gulf countries. Officials said the July trip would allow for more time to plan and set a schedule and agenda. Biden on Friday defended the prospect of meeting with MBS.\n\nWhy it matters: An in-person meeting with MBS would mark the first time Biden directly engages with the de facto Saudi leader since taking office. Biden has so far opted instead to speak directly with King Salman, the crown prince's father. The meeting would represent a turnabout for Biden, who once suggested that Saudi Arabia be made a \"pariah.\" Two key deals were also reached last week -- OPEC announcing it would increase oil production and the extension of a truce in Yemen -- that laid the groundwork for the meeting between Biden and the crown prince.\n\nIran's Khamenei says unrest caused by foreign 'enemies' trying to overthrow Islamic Republic\n\nIranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday that recent protests across the country are caused by foreign \"enemies\" seeking to overthrow the Iranian regime.\n\nBackground: Protests have in recent weeks erupted across Iran over skyrocketing inflation. Anti-government demonstrations also broke out last month after a 10-story commercial building located in the city of Abadan collapsed and killed at least 37. \"Today, the enemies' most important hope for striking a blow at the country is based on popular protests,\" Khamenei said in a televised speech on the 33rd anniversary of the death of the leader of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.\n\nWhy it matters: Iran has suffered one economic blow after another amid a strong budget deficit, rising food prices, and uncertainties about its main oil buyer China amid looming sanctions on Russia's oil after its invasion of Ukraine. Protesters have accused the government of negligence and have repeatedly chanted slogans against the Islamic Republic and its rulers.\n\nBriton sentenced to 15 years in prison in Iraq for artifact smuggling\n\nA retired British geologist was sentenced to 15 years in prison by an Iraqi court on Monday for attempting to smuggle ancient artifacts out of the country.\n\nBackground: 66-year-old James Fitton was arrested in March by Iraqi authorities at Baghdad airport for carrying small fragments and ancient pottery in his luggage. Fitton's lawyer said that he did not know that the fragments were artifacts, and that he will appeal the verdict on the grounds that there was no criminal intent.\n\nWhy it matters: Iraq's ancient heritage has been hurt by years of conflict, and many of the country's artifacts were looted amid the fighting, especially after the US invasion of 2003. The Iraqi government has been on a quest to locate and retrieve its many lost treasures, including those previously smuggled out of the country.\n\nAround the region\n\nExtreme drought has wreaked havoc in Iraq, causing sandstorms that have sent thousands of people to the hospital . But for some archaeologists it has been a temporary blessing.\n\nAs water levels in the Mosul reservoir dropped late last year, an ancient city emerged, and scientists rushed to study it before it disappeared underwater again.\n\nA team of German and Iraqi-Kurdish archeologists was in a race against time after the 3400-year-old city under the Tigris River in Iraq's Kurdistan region was uncovered this year.\n\nAs the water levels began to rise again, scientists rushed to excavate and document what is believed to be the urban center of the Mittani Empire, which stretched from northern Iraq through Syria and into Turkey.\n\nThe researchers, who announced their findings last week, were able to map a massive fortification of walls, storage facilities and an industrial complex. The team was stunned at how well preserved the city walls were, made from sun-dried mud bricks.\n\n\"This good preservation is due to the fact that the city was destroyed in an earthquake around 1350 BC, during which the collapsing upper parts of the walls buried the buildings,\" the researchers said in a statement.\n\nTo prepare for the city's looming reflooding, excavated buildings were covered with plastic sheeting and gravel fill. The city is once again underwater, waiting to be rediscovered.\n\nBy Mohammed Abdelbary\n\nPhoto of the day\n\nSamaritan worshippers lift up Torah scrolls as they gather at dawn on June 5 to pray on top of Mount Gerizim near the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Worshippers celebrated Shavuot, which according to Samaritan tradition marks the giving of the Torah to the Israelites at Mount Sinai seven weeks after their biblical exodus from Egypt. Samaritans are a community of a few hundred people living in Israel and in the Nablus area, who trace their lineage to the biblical ancient Israelites.\n\nThis article has been updated to correct the spelling of Kabir Taneja's name.", "authors": ["Nadeen Ebrahim", "Abbas Al Lawati", "Swati Gupta"], "publish_date": "2022/06/06"}, {"url": "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/50-states/2019/09/27/scrambled-eggs-pa-road-stolen-golden-coffin-chocolate-university-news-around-states/40208517/", "title": "50 states", "text": "From USA TODAY Network and wire reports\n\nAlabama\n\nMontgomery: The Alabama Forestry Commission issued a statewide fire alert Wednesday because of extremely dry weather. It was an upgrade from a previously issued fire danger advisory. The extremely dry weather means any fire can quickly spread out of control. The commission said over the last week firefighters responded to 182 wildfires across the state, burning about 2,608 acres. Those included a 470-acre fire in Talladega County and a 39-acre fire in DeKalb County. The commission said permits for outdoor burning will be restricted and issued on an individual basis at the discretion of the state forester. Anyone who burns a field, grassland or woodland without a permit could face prosecution.\n\nAlaska\n\nAnchorage: Two pilots have been fined $3,000 apiece for flying airplanes low over walruses on the shore near Point Lay two years ago. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Andrea Medeiros said names of the pilots who disturbed walruses can’t be released, but didn’t explain why. Residents of Point Lay in September 2017 saw two airplanes flying near resting walruses. Cameras that monitor the marine mammals captured photos of the airplanes and walruses leaving the remote beach in response. Low-flying aircraft can cause stampedes that crush young animals. Walruses’ preferred habitat is sea ice. Ice since 2007 has retreated beyond the shallow continental shelf to water too deep for walruses to dive for clams. Walruses this year began showing up on shore in July. On Saturday, about 40,000 walruses were near Point Lay.\n\nArizona\n\nPhoenix:A miniature pig “craze,” paired with a lack of education on how to raise them, has led to owners surrendering or releasing them into the desert at an alarming rate, said Danielle Betterman, owner and director of Better Piggies Rescue, a pig sanctuary in Phoenix. The overflow of miniature pigs is so bad, she said, that her sanctuary has had to stop accepting owner surrenders. The Ironwood Pig Sanctuary in Marana has more than 100 pigs on its surrender waitlist to date, said Mary Schanz, its president and co-founder. Most of them aren’t spayed or neutered. Schanz, who has been in the pig rescue business for 18 years, said her sanctuary has largely been able to keep up with the incoming pigs, “but now, it’s just beyond our capability.” The problem, she said, is that there are no regulations for pig breeding. Backyard breeders rear too many pigs and then sell them to people who mistakenly think they will stay small. The Arizona Department of Agriculture saw an increase in pickups of stray pigs in the last year. There have already been 17 pig pickups in 2019, compared to 15 in all of 2018, said Cody Egnor, an assistant state veterinarian for the agriculture department.\n\nArkansas\n\nHot Springs: Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort is raising the minimum wage for its nearly 1,000 employees. The racetrack and casino said it would increase the minimum wage for nontipped employees from $9.25 an hour to $13 an hour starting at the end of the month. Tipped employees will see their minimum wage increase from $2.76 an hour to $6 an hour. Oaklawn said the change affects about 970 full-time, part-time and seasonal employees. Oaklawn is expanding after voters legalized casino gambling in four counties in 2018. Construction is underway on a $100 million expansion, which includes adding a hotel and event center. In 2018, Arkansas voters approved an initiative to gradually raise the state’s minimum wage to $11 an hour by 2021.\n\nCalifornia\n\nSan Francisco: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said California is falling short on preventing water pollution, largely because of its problem with homelessness in big cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler outlined the complaints Thursday in a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Wheeler is demanding a detailed plan for fixing the problems within 30 days. The letter said “piles of human feces on sidewalks and streets” could cause water contamination. It criticized San Francisco for routinely discharging inadequately treated sewage into the Pacific Ocean. Wheeler said if the state doesn’t meet its responsibilities, the EPA will have to take action. The letter escalated a feud between the Trump administration and California, a predominantly Democrat state that has fought the administration’s efforts to weaken environmental regulations.\n\nColorado\n\nDenver: A flight was diverted to Denver after a passenger was found trapped inside the airplane’s bathroom. KUSA-TV reported that Denver International Airport spokeswoman Emily Williams said the door to one of the airplane’s bathrooms got stuck, but could not confirm why or how. Officials said United Flight 1554 was scheduled to travel from the District of Columbia to San Francisco before it made an emergency landing Wednesday in Denver. Williams said the flight crew called for assistance and the Denver Fire Department responded to the airport and helped open the door. Williams said there were no calls for medical assistance. United Airlines confirmed that someone was in the bathroom.\n\nConnecticut\n\nHartford: A service dog that was the subject of several books by an Iraqi war veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder has died. Tuesday, a golden retriever, was 13 when he died Tuesday in Burlington, according to Educated Canines Assisting with Disabilities, a service dog training organization that places dogs with veterans. Tuesday gained fame touring the country with former U.S. Army Cpt. Luis Carlos Montalvan, who wrote the memoir “Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him.” The book, the first of four written by Montalvan about his life with Tuesday, became a bestseller in 2011. It was credited with helping raise awareness of PTSD and the availability of service dogs for veterans. Montalvan, who was wounded in Iraq, earned two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart. Montalvan became a leading advocate for military veterans’ mental health and increasing access to more service animals. Montalvan took his own life in 2016. He had left Tuesday with family members and the dog was not with him at the time. Tuesday was later placed as a service dog with a Connecticut cancer patient. He died in the arms of that man, Gordon Schafer, at their home after being diagnosed with a mass in his abdomen.\n\nDelaware\n\nSeaford:The Seaford School District issued an apology for a mix-up and is investigating why a parody version of the national anthem sung by Rosanne Barr was used before a volleyball match Tuesday between Seaford and Milford high schools. In a letter to the district and community, Superintendent David Perrington said pregame proceedings will be improved to prevent it from happening again. Called “disgraceful and disrespectful” by parents on social media, the incident sparked uproar from spectators wondering how it was allowed to happen, and whether not it was an honest mistake made by students. “The district plays the National Anthem prior to sporting events to honor our country and in support for the men and women who serve in the nation’s armed forces,” Perrington wrote in the apology. “In the future, the district will utilize our district-approved version at athletic events.” The school district also reached out to Milford School District on Tuesday night to apologize. Performed in 1990 before a San Diego Padres game, Barr’s screeching rendition rocked the country before there was such thing as a viral video. Complete with spitting and midsong laughter, Barr’s off-key shrieks often are ranked among the worst performances the anthem.\n\nDistrict of Columbia\n\nWashington: A technology developer who filed a lawsuit against the District’s $215 million no-bid sports gambling contract has requested a temporary restraining order to stop the district from upholding it. WTOP-FM reported that Dylan Carragher filed the motion Tuesday, stating the single-source contract awarded to Intralot violates the city’s procurement laws that ensure competitive bidding. Carragher’s attorney, Donald Temple, said if the contract is illegal, and the government shouldn’t be allowed to execute it. Carragher’s lawsuit said the contract illegally bars him and other potential vendors from participating in the “potentially lucrative enterprise.” The D.C. Attorney General’s Office declined to comment. Court documents said the order, if granted, will block Intralot from receiving a $30 million payment due Oct. 1.\n\nFlorida\n\nMelbourne:A local zoo assisted 39 green and loggerhead sea turtle “washbacks” that were pushed ashore when heavy waves disrupted their habitat. Brevard Zoo’s sea turtle manager Shanon Gann said in a news release that the washbacks were found on Brevard County’s beaches over the last week. Gann said staff members and volunteers cared for the turtles, which were then sent to Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton. They were expected to be taken by boat to the weed line and released on Thursday. Sea turtles rely on energy stored in their yolk sac upon hatching to make the multimile swim to offshore weed lines. If the seaweed is disrupted by strong winds or waves, they might get washed back onshore.\n\nGeorgia\n\nSavannah: A Georgia sheriff’s employee has been fired over a video that showed him confronting a 19-year-old Latina for speaking Spanish at a McDonald’s and then admitting to being a racist. Chatham County Sheriff John Wilcher told reporters that the man has been fired from the department, but declined to identify the man or provide his job title. The expletive-filled video shared on Twitter showed the white man confronting Cristina Riofrio for speaking Spanish to her friends, saying she probably came over on a boat. At one point, Riofrio said“I’m videoing this. You’re a racist,” to which the man replies, “I know I am.” Riofrio said the man shouldn’t be proud of that fact just before an off-screen employee told the man he needs to leave.\n\nHawaii\n\nHonolulu: Wildlife officials on Tuesday euthanized two emaciated, sick dolphins that stranded on a Maui beach less than a month after another mass stranding in the same area. The two animals were breathing heavily and had abnormal heart rates, said David Schofield, the regional stranding coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They also had critically low levels of an enzyme called alkaline phosphatase, which in dolphins and whales indicates inflammation, illness or poor nutrition, Schofield said. Veterinarians who examined the animals determined the most humane thing to do would be to euthanize them, he said. The two were among six pygmy killer whales, a species of deep-ocean dwelling dolphin, that agency officials had been monitoring for about 10 days in shallow waters off Maui. The remaining four were still in the area off Sugar Beach in the coastal town of Kihei. Pygmy killer whales are often confused with false killer whales and melon-headed whales. The species is found primarily in deep waters throughout tropical and subtropical areas of the world. Eleven pygmy killer whales stranded on the same beach on Aug. 29. One calf died and officials euthanized four adults after that stranding. Dorsal fin marks showed different individuals were involved in the two stranding events.\n\nIdaho\n\nBoise: Idaho Humane Society officials said they’re seeing an increase in the number of people surrendering their pets because of housing issues. Kristine Schellhaas with the Idaho Humane Society told KBOI-TV in Boise that some owners can’t afford pet insurance or the higher rental rates they must pay with pets. So far this year, the shelter has taken in more than 1,500 owner-surrendered cats and dogs. Schellhaas said it’s heartbreaking because the families love their animals even though they need to rehome them. For pets needing temporary help, the Idaho Humane Society has a pet food pantry. Owners facing financial issues can get six months of access to the pantry. The shelter’s animal clinic also provides veterinary care to low-income pet owners.\n\nIllinois\n\nSpringfield: The Illinois State Museum has agreed to return 42 culturally significant objects to Australia. The gesture comes nearly a century after they were brought to the United States. The museum said in a news release that it’s the first institution in the world to repatriate artifacts as part of the Australian government’s Return of Cultural Heritage Project. It’s an attempt to bring back indigenous materials taken from the country. Boomerangs, necklaces, shields, spears and other items that will be returned were collected in Australia between 1929 and 1931 by University of Chicago linguistic anthropologist Gerhardt Laves. They were transferred by the university to the state museum in 1942 for incorporation into its rotating exhibit series on international cultures. They haven’t been exhibited by the museum since 1981.\n\nIndiana\n\nIndianapolis: Marketing research firm J.D. Power released its 2019 North America Airport Satisfaction Study, and Indianapolis International Airport ranked highest in customer satisfaction for medium-size airports, which service 4.5 million to 9.9 million passengers a year. This is the second time the airport received this honor, topping the list in 2016. Indianapolis International earned 833 points, ranking first in the cleanliness of terminal concourses, hallways and restrooms, as well as comfort in the terminal, ambiance, Wi-Fi service and clarity of signs and directions. Jacksonville International Airport in Florida was second with 831 points and Buffalo Niagara International Airport in New York came in third with 829 points. Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport topped the satisfaction list for mega airports and Portland International Airport in Oregon earned the title for large airports. Indianapolis International Airport first earned a top J.D. Power ranking in 2010 for the best small airport in North America. It landed in the top three each year except for 2011 through 2014, when no study was published. In July, the airport landed at No. 2 on the Travel + Leisure Top 10 Domestic Airports list. In April, construction began on a refresh of the airport’s dining and retail options. The three-year plan will see new restaurants, including Shake Shack and Bub’s Burgers. At an Indianapolis Airport Authority Board meeting this month, officials said some restaurants would start to close in October, replaced by temporary food and beverage vendors.\n\nIowa\n\nDes Moines:Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a proclamation Wednesday naming Sept. 28, 2019, as “Carson King Day” in Iowa to honor the 24-year-old Altoona resident who has raised more than $1 million for charity. “Individuals like Carson King demonstrate how ‘Iowa Nice’ isn’t just a slogan, but our way of life,” the proclamation reads. Reynolds, joined by King, read it aloud and signed it in her formal office in the Capitol on Wednesday afternoon. She also signed a proclamation designating September as “Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.” King rose to prominence after hoisting a sign on ESPN’s “College GameDay” in Ames that read “Busch Light Supply Needs Replenished,” and requesting beer money be sent to his Venmo account. When he received several hundred dollars, King said he would donate it to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital, a move that prompted more donations to start pouring in, along with matching donations from Busch Beer and Venmo. King now is hoping to raise $2 million for the hospital by the end of the month.\n\nKansas\n\nLawrence: A couple from Emporia, Kansas, has committed $1 million to the internal medicine program at the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Wichita. The university on Wednesday announced the gift from Scott and Julie Smiley. The money will be divided into three funds. One will benefit the Department of Internal Medicine, another will support residents in the internal medicine program, and the third will fund student scholarships, with preference given to students interested in internal medicine. Scott Smiley, a native of Newton, Kansas, who graduated from the school of medicine in Wichita, is a physician in Emporia. Julie Smiley is a veterinarian who also practices in Emporia.\n\nKentucky\n\nMammoth Cave: A historic Baptist church at a state park has been vandalized with orange spray paint. WBKO-TV reported graffiti now covers parts of Mammoth Cave Baptist Church’s exterior and interior, along with its windows and benches. One wall now reads “I heart Satan,” with a drawing of a heart. Mammoth Cave National Park Superintendent Barclay Trimble said the church is one of only three that remain from the time before the park was established in 1941. Park officials said the process of removing graffiti can destroy the historic wood, making the graffiti’s complete removal nearly impossible. Repairs are estimated to cost at least $10,000. The station said those caught spray painting surfaces in the park can face up to six months in jail and fines of up to $5,000.\n\nLouisiana\n\nFort Polk: A helicopter crashed on an Army base, killing one person and injuring three others, military officials said Thursday. The Army chopper crashed early Thursday in the Fort Polk training area, Fort Polk officials said in a statement. There were four crew members on board, authorities said. Their names weren’t being released until relatives are notified. The fort said the cause of the crash is under investigation, and no further details were immediately released. About 8,000 soldiers are stationed at Fort Polk, its website states. The base is in central Louisiana, about 150 miles northwest of Baton Rouge.\n\nMaine\n\nCastine: A referee who was hit in the face by a cannon blast during a Maine Maritime Academy football game is recovering from his injuries. The referee was taken to a hospital with nonlife-threatening injuries Saturday. The Hancock County Sheriff’s Department told WCSH-TV that an academy alumnus brought the cannon to the game in Castine. The alumnus reportedly loaded the cannon with black powder and a substance that had been made into a wad. It is a tradition for a cannon to be fired with a blank shotgun shell when the academy scores.\n\nMaryland\n\nBaltimore: A Baltimore official said the city is still looking for an organization that wants to acquire the Confederate monuments it removed in the middle of the night two years ago. The Baltimore Sun reported the statues have been hidden in a city-owned lot since their August 2017 removal. Historical and Architectural Preservation official Eric Holcomb told the newspaper a museum expressed interest in the bronze statues but they were too large. He said the commission is looking for any organization that will provide a “historically accurate interpretation” of them. Former Mayor Catherine Pugh ordered the monuments taken down following violent clashes over similar statues in Charlottesville, Virginia. Since then, suggestions have ranged from destroying them to adding contextual markers, to melting them and turning them into statues of civil rights figures.\n\nMassachusetts\n\nBoston: State public health officials said a fourth Massachusetts resident has died of the mosquito-borne eastern equine encephalitis virus. The state Department of Public Health announced Wednesday that the latest victim was an Essex County resident. No additional information about the person was disclosed. Officials also said they have confirmed an 11th human case of the virus, a Worcester County man in his 70s. As a result, the communities of Auburn, Charlton, Dudley, Leicester, Southbridge and Spencer have been elevated to high risk for the disease. There are now 35 communities in the state at critical risk, 46 at high risk and 122 at moderate risk. State epidemiologist Dr. Catherine Brown said residents should continue to protect themselves from mosquito bites until the first hard frost.\n\nMichigan\n\nHolland: High water along a west Michigan river has forced Hope College to move its annual tug-of-war contest for the first time in more than a century. The Holland Sentinel reported the Pull traces its roots back to 1898 and the 122nd installment is Saturday. But instead of being held across the Black River, the competition between the freshman and sophomore classes will take place along a Holland street. The newspaper said the Pull has only been held in two locations, with teams competing across a stream in the early years. The Pull’s staff adviser, Richard Frost, said “students agonized over this.” He said they’re dedicated to tradition but “mindful of the safety of the participants.” Frost said the competition is expected to return to the Black River.\n\nMinnesota\n\nAlbany: Officials are monitoring a farm near Holdingford where about 20,000 gallons of liquid manure leaked from an above-ground storage tank. The Stearns County sheriff’s office said the farmer, Mark Leukam of Albany, reported Wednesday that he had a manure leak from a tank that holds 400,000 gallons. An estimated 20,000 gallons leaked out and drained into a low area, which contains an intermittent stream that flows through several miles of swampy area before connecting with a creek. The leak was stopped with a temporary fix. A trench and dirt berm were dug to contain any future leaks until the tank can be fixed. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency will continue to monitor the spill and pumping efforts, and work with the farm owner to mitigate the impact.\n\nMississippi\n\nGulfport: A heating, ventilation and air conditioning technician found a slithering surprise while repairing an outdoor unit at a home. WLOX-TV reported that what started as a typical day for technician Conner Smith quickly turned into an episode on National Geographic after Smith found a ball python inside the HVAC unit. Homeowner Steve Ramos said he heard Smith say “whoa,” but he thought Smith was shocked by the repair work. Smith told Ramos he found the homeowner’s snake. But Ramos doesn’t own a ball python. Smith said it’s not uncommon to find animals, especially reptiles, inside AC units. Ramos said finding the snake explained a few household mysteries, such as why his dogs were barking at a nearby tree.\n\nMissouri\n\nSpringfield:A homegrown program that mixes international business, entrepreneurship, community development – and chocolate – will mark its 10th year by taking another crop of area high school students to Tanzania. Chocolate University, a partnership between Askinosie Chocolate and Drury University, is now accepting applications for the immersive program that includes an overseas trip next summer. The deadline to apply is Monday. Missy Gelner, chief kinship officer for Askinosie Chocolate, said students from Greene and Christian counties – who will graduate in 2020 or 2021 – are eligible to apply for one of 14 spots. Founded in 2009, Chocolate University completed its first immersion program with a trip in 2010. The trips are offered every other summer and the 2020 trip will be the sixth in the history of the program. The selected students will participate in a 10-day immersion of entrepreneurship, craft chocolate and cacao agronomy during a trip to rural Tanzania, where they will meet with farmers who provide raw ingredients for Askinosie Chocolate. They will also learn about leadership, the Tanzanian culture and the Swahili language. Before the trip, the students gather for learning sessions regarding direct trade and the ways a local business can give back and invest in the people of another culture. Shawn Askinosie, the founder of Askinosie Chocolate, said students get to know farmers that partner with the Springfield-based company and help harvest cacao. The 2018 trip cost $4,000 per traveler with scholarships available through grants and private donations. To apply, visit www.chocolate university.org. The online application process requires an essay and recommendation letters, from which a narrowed pool of applicants are chosen for in-person interviews.\n\nMontana\n\nBozeman: State wildlife officials have been unable to locate a grizzly bear that mauled an Ohio hunter in southwestern Montana. Fish, Wildlife and Parks wardens began investigating Tuesday, shortly after the attack was reported in the Gravelly Mountains. FWP spokesman Morgan Jacobsen said Thursday the hunter reported he was walking through blown-down timber when he was attacked by a bear at close range. The hunter said he fired several shots at the bear until it left. Investigators did find evidence the bear was injured. The Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest has posted signs warning visitors of bear activity. Tuesday’s mauling happened about 8 miles south of where three hunters were injured in two separate attacks on Sept. 16. The bear or bears involved in those attacks were not found.\n\nNebraska\n\nLincoln: The Nebraska Capitol Commission has approved spending $181,000 on emergency repairs, in part to keep gold tiles from falling off the dome. Work will begin soon to protect the dome from moisture and winter’s freeze-thaw cycles now that the state’s Capitol Commission voted to shift around funding. A July inspection discovered caulking applied to expansion joints in 2001 had deteriorated so much that water was getting inside the inner dome structure. Some exterior tiles had been moved out of place, raising the risk they could fall off, Ripley said. The caulking had been replaced as part of a masonry restoration project completed in 2010. But current caulking products don’t last as long as previous formulations, which contained more toxic ingredients, he said. Recaulking of joints in the lower parts of the building has been done every year, but budget limitations prevented the commission from checking the dome previously, Ripley said. To inspect the dome, contractors use rope harnesses and rappel down from the base of the Sower statue. He decided this year that the dome inspection could wait no longer. Plans for the emergency repairs call for workers to rappel down the dome and temporarily seal the expansion joints to keep the tiles in place. The longer-term solution will require scaffolding so workers can remove the tiles, fix the underlying structure and put the tiles back in place, he said. Caulking work also will be needed on the tower.\n\nNevada\n\nLas Vegas: Officials said that the number of passengers using McCarran International Airport was up in August compared with the same month a year ago. The Clark County Department of Aviation on Wednesday reported 4.4 million arriving and departing travelers last month. That’s a 3.1% increase from August 2018. The airport has handled nearly 34.2 million passengers this year, keeping it on pace to surpass 50 million for the year for the first time. McCarran handled a record 49.7 million passengers in 2018. It’s one of the 10 busiest airports in the U.S. based on passenger count. Southwest Airlines was the busiest carrier at McCarran in August. Spirit overcame Delta for second, followed by American and United.\n\nNew Hampshire\n\nConcord: The New Hampshire Office of the Child Advocate has started a review of how restraint and seclusion are being used on about 400 children in behavioral health settings. The review will look at children placed in private residential facilities and the Sununu Youth Services Center by the Division for Children, Youth and Families. Child Advocate Moira O’Neill said the patterns of how restraint and seclusion are used in New Hampshire are poorly understood. She said the only statewide data available is an aggregate number that shows the total incidents of restraint and seclusion across all facilities. Since 2014, there have been more than 20,000 incidents of restraint and seclusion across all residential facilities. But it’s not clear what that means.\n\nNew Jersey\n\nAtlantic City: New Jersey horsemen could get millions of dollars in damages after a federal appeals court ruled that the horsemen were financially harmed while the legality of sports betting was being litigated. In a ruling Tuesday, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals said that the New Jersey Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, representing owners and trainers, is entitled to damages. The association has sought the payment, with interest, of a $3.4 million bond that the four major pro sports leagues and the NCAA posted in 2014. It was intended to secure losses that might be suffered during the month that a restraining order was in effect, prohibiting the horsemen from offering sports betting at Monmouth Park Racetrack. A lower court ruled against them, but the appeals court reversed that ruling, kicking the case back to U.S. District Court in New Jersey to determine the appropriate amount of damages. New Jersey ultimately won a U.S. Supreme Court case in May year clearing the way for legal sports betting in all 50 states. The horsemen also are seeking economic damages over not being able to offer sports betting from the time the restraining order expired in Oct. 2014 until the Supreme Court ruling in an amount Drazin estimated at $150 million. That amount was not covered in Tuesday’s ruling. When the association returns to court, it will seek to prove it should receive the $3.4 million from the bond. But it also will seek extended damages, intending to argue that the leagues acted in bad faith, something the leagues have denied in previous court filings. No hearing date has yet been set.\n\nNew Mexico\n\nCarlsbad: New Mexico’s U.S. senators want the Trump administration to defend the state’s pecan growers from tariffs during ongoing trade negotiations with India. U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, both Democrats, recently signed on to a bipartisan letter from 12 senators urging U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to negotiate the lifting of a trade barrier, the Carlsbad Current-Argus reported. The senators argued that rising imports from Mexico, Chinese tariffs and tree loss after Hurricane Michael strained U.S. pecan prices, and India’s growing middle class represented a market that could help minimize the economic damage. Records show India charges a 36% tariff on pecan imports, while other tree nuts such as pistachios and almonds are charged tariff rates of 10% or less. New Mexico became the largest pecan-producing state last year after Hurricane Michael ravaged Georgia’s crop. New Mexico was estimated to have produced about 90 million pounds of pecans in 2018, down about 2 million from 2017.\n\nNew York\n\nNew York City: A gilded coffin that was featured at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is on its way back to Egypt after it was determined to be a looted antiquity. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and Egypt’s foreign minister Sameh Hassan Shoukry held a repatriation ceremony in New York on Wednesday for the Coffin of Nedjemankh. The Met bought the piece from a Paris art dealer in 2017 for about $4 million and made it the centerpiece of an exhibition. It was removed last February. The Met has apologized to Egypt. Investigators said the coffin was smuggled from Egypt through the United Arab Emirates, Germany and France. They said the museum was given fraudulent documents, including a forged 1971 Egyptian export license. Prosecutors said they’ve found evidence of hundreds more antiquities thefts.\n\nNorth Carolina\n\nRaleigh: Officials said nearly half of North Carolina’s counties are experiencing a moderate drought because of a lack of rainfall. Klaus Albertin, chairman of the N.C. Drought Management Advisory Council, said in a news release issued by the Department of Environmental Quality on Thursday that water supplies, agriculture, fire threat and stream-flows statewide are beginning to reflect the lack of precipitation. Forty-five counties in the western and central parts of the state are in moderate drought stage, the least detrimental of four categories used in federal drought maps. Twenty-two counties are experiencing abnormally dry conditions, which means a drought could emerge without adequate rainfall. Albertin said although Hurricane Dorian left heavy rainfall along the coast, almost none fell west of Interstate 95. He said conditions could worsen before they improve.\n\nNorth Dakota\n\nBismarck: The flags of North Dakota’s five tribal nations will be on permanent display outside the governor’s office at the state Capitol. Republican Gov. Doug Burgum announced the decision to display the flags during his State of the State address in January. The bipartisan Legislative Procedure and Arrangements Committee approved making the display permanent on Thursday. They represent the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation; the Standing Rock Sioux; the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa; the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate; and the Spirit Lake Nation. The relationship between North Dakota officials and tribes has been strained in the past, especially during protests three years ago against the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. Burgum said the tribal flag display was done “in the spirit of mutual respect.”\n\nOhio\n\nReynoldsburg: The Ohio Department of Health has confirmed the first human death in the state this year from the West Nile virus. Authorities said Wednesday that a 68-year-old Lucas County man hospitalized with encephalitis also was the first human case in the state this year. Health officials said Ohio had six fatalities among 65 human West Nile cases in 2017, after five deaths among 34 human cases in 2016. On Tuesday, Agriculture Department officials reported two confirmed West Nile cases among horses in the state. Most West Nile cases are transmitted by mosquitoes. Authorities urge using repellant and protective clothing and eliminating standing water and other potential mosquito breeding areas. Most infected people don’t have symptoms, but some get flu-like symptoms. A few will develop a serious neurologic illness.\n\nOklahoma\n\nStillwater: The life of Oklahoma State University alumnus and benefactor T. Boone Pickens has been celebrated on the campus where the late energy industry billionaire donated hundreds of millions of dollars to support academic and athletic programs. Pickens, who died in Dallas on Sept. 11 at age 91, was lauded at a memorial service Wednesday for his legacy of philanthropy and inspiration that university President Burns Hargis has encouraged other donors to transform the university. During his lifetime, Pickens donated $652 million to the university, including a $165 million gift in 2005 that at the time was the largest athletic gift in NCAA history. Since then, the university has raised $2 billion in cash and pledges. Pickens was a 1951 graduate of the university’s School of Geology, now known as the Boone Pickens School of Geology.\n\nOregon\n\nPortland: The pregnancy of a 26-year-old elephant known as Chendra at the Oregon Zoo has ended in miscarriage. The Oregonian/OregonLive reported veterinarians at the zoo grew concerned earlier this month when they noticed a drop in some of the Asian elephant’s reproductive hormones. Last week, more definitive tests showed that she was no longer pregnant, said Bob Lee, who oversees the elephant program at the zoo. Chendra was around eight months along, which would correspond to the first trimester in humans. The gestation period for elephants is around 22 months. Chendra came to Oregon in 1999. She was found as a young calf wandering alone near a palm oil plantation in Borneo. Twenty-five elephants have been born at the Oregon Zoo since 1962.\n\nPennsylvania\n\nHegins Township: Police said more than 136,000 eggs splattered on a road when they shifted and fell out of a tractor-trailer driving through Pennsylvania. The Republican Herald reported that 11,340 dozen eggs and 2,260 gallons of egg product were ruined when a 66-year-old driver lost control of the rig Tuesday. Hegins Township police said driver Joseph Miles had just picked the eggs up at Carl Faus Farm and was on his way to Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Police said Miles was driving north on Route 125 uphill. As he approached the Route 25 intersection, the load shifted causing the eggs and egg products to fall and roll down the hill. Miles reportedly did not realize the eggs had fallen and continued his drive. A section of Route 125 was closed for several hours after the incident. An investigation into the unsecured load is ongoing.\n\nRhode Island\n\nProvidence: Several models and actresses have sued a Rhode Island strip club they said used their images in social media and advertising campaigns without permission. The models, including Tara Leigh Patrick, who is better known as Carmen Electra, said by using their images, the Cadillac Lounge in Providence made it appear as if they either worked at, endorsed or were otherwise affiliated the club. The plaintiffs are alleging misleading advertising, violation of privacy, defamation and unjust enrichment. The suit filed last week in federal court in Rhode Island seeks unspecified damages, an end to the use of their images and a jury trial. No attorney for was listed for the club or owner Nancy Shappy in court records. A listed number for the club was not in service.\n\nSouth Carolina\n\nColumbia: A national organization said Gov. Henry McMaster is violating the Constitution by holding prayers before news conferences. News outlets reported the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter to the governor’s office concerning two prayers earlier this month before news conferences regarding Hurricane Dorian. Foundation attorney Ryan Jayne said the practice violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from favoring one religion over others. A spokesperson for the governor, Brian Symmes, said as long as McMaster is governor and the state has to prepare for dangerous storms, there will be a chaplain saying prayers before news conferences. The foundation also sent McMaster a letter in January concerning prayers before news conferences for Hurricane Florence last September.\n\nSouth Dakota\n\nSioux Falls:An incident that prompted Southeast Technical Institute officials to alert students of a police investigation on campus Wednesday morning was determined to not be an immediate threat. Sioux Falls police officers investigated a “potential incident” on the campus after a suspicious item was found in the Technology Center on the west side of campus, STI president Robert Griggs said. The Technology Center is home to the New Tech High School, which is where the item was found, said Capt. Mike Walsh with the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Office, which provides security for the STI campus. Walsh did not say what the found item was that caused the incident. The initial release, sent to students at 10:29 a.m., read “The Sioux Falls Police Department is on campus to investigate a potential incident. Reminder: If you see something, say something!” At 10:57, an all-clear was sent: “The Sioux Falls Police Department has investigated the situation and it has been determined there is no immediate threat to safety or security.” Southeast Technical Institute serves more than 2,000 students and offers more than 60 programs as one of two technical colleges in the region. The school is overseen by the Sioux Falls School District’s school board.\n\nTennessee\n\nChattanooga: The guardian of an autistic kindergartener said the 5-year-old boy was for punished for hugging a classmate. Chattanooga resident Summery Putnam told WTVC-TV a teacher accused the boy of sexual activities after he hugged one child and kissed another on the cheek. Putnam said the teacher told her the child was overstepping boundaries and she said a report was filed with the state Department of Child Services. Hamilton County Department of Education spokesman Tim Hensley released a statement that said school personnel are required to report concerns regarding children. Putnam said the child doesn’t understand normal social cues and boundaries. She said he has now switched classrooms and teachers and is enrolled in special education services.\n\nTexas\n\nCaddo Mills: Emergency officials said several airplanes have been destroyed in a hangar fire at a small airport in North Texas. Fire officials said no one was injured in Wednesday’s blaze at Caddo Mills Municipal Airport, about 35 miles northeast of Dallas. Authorities are trying to determine what sparked the fire, which was brought under control after about two hours. Hunt County Fire Marshal Richard Hill said no foul play is suspected in the fire that destroyed three aircraft, an automobile and a motorcycle. Caddo Mills is a town of about 1,600.\n\nUtah\n\nSalt Lake City: State officials said they have shaved $100 million off the estimated price of a proposed pipeline that would pull water from Lake Powell. The Utah Division of Water Resources said in a news release Wednesday the cost savings come from scrapping plans for two reservoirs that would have generated hydropower at peak demand times. Division spokeswoman Marcie Larson said the project is estimated to cost $1 billion to 1.7 billion, down from as much as $1.8 billion. It would be repaid over 50 years. A legislative audit found it will require a large fee, rate and tax increases in Washington County in southern Utah to pay for the project. Critics call the pipeline an unnecessary use of funds and said the emphasis should be on getting residents to use less water. The project is pending regulatory reviews.\n\nVermont\n\nMontpelier: An after-school active shooter drill at an elementary school has raised concerns from several parents who were upset that some children heard words like “intruder” and “active shooter.” A school resource officer said the children, who were on the playground during the drill, were not meant to hear what was happening, but direct language is needed to avoid confusion in a real crisis. Several parents complained on social media about the terms that were broadcast at Union Elementary School during the drill Monday, the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus reported. Superintendent Libby Bonesteel said the drill was part of state-mandated training for all four schools in the Montpelier-Roxbury Public Schools District. The drill was meant to train faculty and staff, so students in an after-school program were sent to the playground, school administrators said. But some students could still hear the public address system, they said. Cpl. Matthew Knisley, a Montpelier Police Department school resource officer, said it was a standard drill that uses direct words to describe the threat. But he said children were not meant to be a part of the drill, which is why they were sent outside.\n\nVirginia\n\nRichmond: A Canadian-owned timber company is spending $32 million to expand sawmill and wood drying operations at two lumber mills. Gov. Ralph Northam announced Wednesday that Teal-Jones Group will create a total of 126 new jobs with expansions in Martinsville and Kinsale. The company will receive various state grants worth $650,000 to secure the project. Northam’s office said Virginia beat out Oklahoma and Washington for the projects. Northam said the company plans to buy more than $100 million in timber from Virginia sources in the next four years.\n\nWashington\n\nBremerton:U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have arrested multiple people in Kitsap County, a move critics said was based on racial profiling. The Kitsap Sun reported Tuesday that immigration advocates have criticized ICE activity in Kitsap County for racial profiling during targeted operations. Two immigrant advocacy organizations have urged residents to know their rights. American Civil Liberties Union officials said a judge-signed search warrant is required to give police and immigration officers’ access to search property. Officials said there are some exceptions, but people should assert their rights under the Constitution, including the right to remain silent. Some county officials say increasing immigration operations in the state are inflicting fear in families and pushing communities into economic crisis when a friend or relative is detained.\n\nWest Virginia\n\nCharleston: The Appalachian Queer Film Festival is making its way back to screens in West Virginia after a short hiatus. The Charleston Gazette-Mail reported the festival will be from Friday to Sunday at the Floralee Hark Cohen Cinema in Charleston. Organizer Jon Matthews said the festival opened successfully in Lewisburg in 2015, but lost funding after a 2016 study by the Koch Brothers on government waste was critical of the festival. The newspaper reported that the study said taxpayers would find the films “objectionable.” Matthews said the festival was targeted for its use of the word “Queer.” He said the festival fought to stay afloat as it opens minds in and about Appalachia. He said it took time off to gather support. Matthews said everyone is welcome.\n\nWisconsin\n\nMishicot: The season for hunting ruffed grouse in the northwestern two-thirds of Wisconsin has been shortened by more than three weeks. The state Department of Natural Resources board voted Wednesday to make the change over concerns about a dwindling population. The ruffed grouse season currently runs from mid-September through Jan. 31 in that part of the state. The season will now end on Jan. 5. Hunters in Wisconsin took only 173,347 birds last year, the lowest total in 35 years of hunter surveys. The reason for the decline is unknown.\n\nWyoming\n\nCasper: The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $5 million to multiple Wyoming-based research initiatives to advance alternative uses for coal beyond energy generation. The Casper Star-Tribune reported that the federal government selected Ramaco Carbon, a coal technology company in Sheridan, for four research and development grants to delve deeper into the material science behind coal. The research grants come at a time when depressed demand for coal from the electricity generation sector becomes a new normal. Ramaco will partner with two other organizations to look into using coal for products like carbon fiber, a hearty material used to build aircraft, cars and more. Ramaco also received a federal Energy Department grant about a year ago.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2019/09/27"}]}
+{"question_id": "20220610_26", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:38", "search_result": []}
+{"question_id": "20220610_27", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:38", "search_result": []}
+{"question_id": "20220610_28", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:38", "search_result": []}
+{"question_id": "20220610_29", "search_time": "2022/06/13/03:38", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/world-news/957001/ukrainian-bakery-names-croissant-after-boris-johnson", "title": "Ukrainian bakery names croissant after Boris Johnson | The Week UK", "text": "A bakery in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv has named a croissant after the UK’s prime minister. “Boris Johnson is not just a prime minister but is also now a croissant,” announced Cafe Zavertailo on Instagram this week. The accompanying photograph features row of pastries with meringue toppings, crowned with a scoop of vanilla ice cream to represent the PM’s chaotic locks. “We sell loads of them,” a spokeswoman told The Telegraph. “We can only make 42 at a time, three times a day, but we sell all we make within hours.”\n\nRandom Instagrammer offers to marry Heard\n\nA stranger has offered to marry Amber Heard after she lost her case with Johnny Depp. The Saudi man sent a voice note to Heard’s official Instagram account and called himself better than “old man” Depp, News 18 reported. “Amber since all doors are closing on you, you have no one except me to take care of you,” he said. “I’ve noticed that some people hate and bully you, therefore, I decided to marry you. May Allah bless us both. You are a blessing, but people don’t appreciate that.”\n\nDel Boy is a literary work\n\nDerek “Del Boy” Trotter, the market trader in the TV sitcom Only Fools and Horses, has been deemed a “literary work” following a high court copyright ruling. The Guardian noted that the character’s new status was legally defined after a company, set up by the creator of the BBC comedy, won its copyright battle with the operators of an “interactive theatrical dining experience”, Only Fools the (Cushty) Dining Experience. The judge said that the character of Del Boy was a literary work, and that each script of the series was a dramatic work.", "authors": [], "publish_date": "2022/06/09"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/05/business/russian-tea-room-ukraine-invasion/index.html", "title": "The Russian Tea Room in New York City suffers as Ukraine ...", "text": "New York (CNNBusiness) The Russian Tea Room is a 100-year-old New York City icon that has long drawn in locals and tourists alike. In its heyday, the restaurant hosted such luminaries as choreographer George Balanchine, artist Salvador Dali and composer Leonard Bernstein, and it was featured in the movies \"Tootsie\" and \"Manhattan.\"\n\nIt drew crowds who attended concerts at nearby Carnegie Hall, only steps away, or dined there after a Broadway show. But at lunchtime Thursday, the eatery was almost vacant, with a handful of customers sitting at only two of its 30 or so red leather banquettes.\n\nDespite its name, the Russian Tea room isn't Russian at all. It's actually owned by a financial group incorporated in New York state. It was opened in 1927 by, perhaps apocryphally, \"White Russian expatriates who had fled the Bolsheviks,\" according to the restaurant's website. It has had a succession of US owners ever since.\n\nBut that hasn't stopped protesters looking to boycott all things Russian, even if it's only a name and a cuisine.\n\nOn Thursday, the Russian Tea Room's restaurant's manager and its staff members all declined to comment when visited by a reporter. But the restaurant's owners are clearly aware that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is hurting its business.\n\nRead More", "authors": ["Kunyi Yang", "Cnn Business"], "publish_date": "2022/03/05"}]}