ReportWire

Tag: AP Top News

  • ‘A very hard road ahead’ for China as COVID-19 cases spiral

    ‘A very hard road ahead’ for China as COVID-19 cases spiral

    [ad_1]

    BAZHOU, China (AP) — Nearly three years after it was first identified in China, the coronavirus is now spreading through the vast country. Experts predict difficult months ahead for its 1.4 billion people.

    China’s unyielding “zero-COVID” approach, which aimed to isolate all infected people, bought it years to prepare for the disease. But an abrupt reopening, which was announced without warning on Dec. 7 in the wake of anti-lockdown protests, has caught the nation under-vaccinated and short on hospital capacity.

    Experts have forecast between a million and 2 million deaths next year. Predicting deaths has proven tricky throughout the pandemic, since it is influenced by varied factors and China presents an especially complicated case because of opaque information sharing.

    It’s not clear exactly how large the current outbreak is, as China has reduced testing and stopped reporting most mild cases. But in cities and towns around Baoding and Langfang, in Hebei province, an area that was among the first to face an unchecked outbreak, Associated Press reporters saw hospital intensive care units overwhelmed by patients, and ambulances being turned away. Across the country, widespread reports of absences from work, shortages of fever-reducing medicine, and staff working overtime at crematoria suggest the virus is widespread.

    China belongs to a small club of countries that managed to stop most domestic transmission of the virus in 2020, but it’s the last to end restrictions. Experiences of ending vary: Singapore and New Zealand achieved high vaccination rates and bolstered medical systems during restrictions, and reopened relatively smoothly. Hong Kong, where omicron overcame defenses while many elderly people were unvaccinated, suffered a disruptive COVID-19 wave in 2022. Nearly 11,000 people died of the illness this year in the city of 7.4 million, with 95% of them older than 60, according to Hong Kong’s department of health. Data from the city showed a 15% fatality rate for those older than 80 and unvaccinated, said Jin Dong-yan, a virology expert at Hong Kong University.

    ___

    AN UNDER-VACCINATED POPULATION

    China has higher vaccination rates than Hong Kong did at the time of its omicron outbreak, but many people are vulnerable to infection, especially the elderly.

    The country has exclusively used domestically made vaccines, which rely on older technology than the mRNA vaccines used elsewhere that have shown the best protection against infection.

    A study conducted in Hong Kong, which has administered both an mRNA vaccine and Sinovac’s CoronaVac, suggested that CoronaVac requires a third shot to provide comparable protection, especially for the elderly. An ordinary course of the vaccine is two shots, with an optional booster later.

    Most people vaccinated in China have received either CoronaVac or a similar vaccine produced by SinoPharm, but the country has administered at least five other vaccines. Comparable real-world data isn’t available for these vaccines.

    While China counts 90% of its population vaccinated, only around 60% have received a booster. Older people are especially likely to have not had a booster vaccine. Over 9 million people older than 80 have not had the third vaccine, according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency.

    Vaccination rates have increased over 10-fold, to over a million doses administered a day, since the start of the month. But Dr. Gagandeep Kang, who studies viruses at India’s Christian Medical College in Vellore said prioritizing the elderly would be key. Unlike other countries, China prioritized vaccinating the more mobile young to prevent the virus from spreading, said Ray Yip, the founding director of the U.S. CDC office in China. A campaign targeting those older than 60 started in December, but it is unclear how successful it has been.

    They “did not pay enough attention to assure everyone gets full vaccine protection,” Yip said. “How well do they perform this particular catch up effort might determine some of the outcome.”

    ___

    OVERWHELMED HOSPITALS

    Around Baoding and Langfang, hospitals have run out of intensive care beds and staff as severe cases surge. Patients lay on the floor, while others drove from hospital to hospital searching for beds for relatives Wednesday.

    The National Health Commission said China had 10 intensive care beds for every 100,000 people on Dec. 9, a total of 138,000 beds, up from 4 for every 100,000 people on Nov. 22. That means the reported number of beds more than doubled in just under three weeks. But this number “might be wrong,” said Yu Changping, a doctor at the Department of Respiratory Medicine of People’s Hospital of Wuhan University. “It is impossible that the number could have jumped sharply within such a short time,” Yu said.

    Even taken at face value, the increase in intensive care beds doesn’t mean the health system is prepared for a surge in cases since the pressure point, as seen globally, is often the availability of specialized doctors and nurses who can treat patients who need intensive care, said Chen. China only has 80,050 doctors and 220,000 nurses for its critical care facilities, and another 177,700 nurses who the National Health Commission says could potentially work in those units.

    “If you look at intensive care unit beds, China is… in a great shortage,” he said.

    Yu said he’s seen growing numbers of COVID-19 patients in recent weeks, and that almost all the doctors in the department have been infected. “We’re under pressure because we are receiving a large number of patients within a short time,” said Yu.

    China has also not announced a clear triage plan, a system where hospitals prioritize giving treatments to the very sick to ration limited resources. Moreover, China’s health system is focused on large hospitals, which typically treat even the mildly ill, said Chen.

    Potential shortages would depend on how quickly cases increase, and if those with mild symptoms don’t stay at home to ration resources for the very sick hospitals could still get overwhelmed, said Chen.

    “That could easily crash the system,” he said.

    To try to protect its health system, Beijing has converted temporary hospitals and centralized quarantine facilities to increase the number of fever clinics from 94 to 1,263. But rural areas may suffer, as the vast majority of China’s ICU beds are in its cities.

    The use of digital tools and telemedicine may offer some breathing room to hospitals: Over a third of hospitals use some form of telemedicine, and around 31% used digital tools in their health care, found a nationwide survey of 120 public and private hospital executives in urban areas conducted by LEK Consulting in Shanghai.

    China approved Pfizer’s drug Paxlovid for COVID-19 earlier this year, and two domestic therapies: an antiviral used for AIDS made by Genuine Biotech that has been repurposed for COVID-19 and a cocktail of virus-blocking antibodies made by BriiBio. But it is unclear how widely available these drugs are.

    ___

    HOW BAD WILL IT GET?

    Scientists aren’t sure, since mortality depends on factors like vaccination rates, how people behave and efforts to bolster hospitals.

    The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle predicts deaths could reach a million by the end of 2023 if the virus spreads unchecked. But Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the institute, said the government would likely be able to reduce this toll with renewed social distancing measures.

    Another study, from Hong Kong University, also predicts nearly a million deaths in a scenario in which the virus spreads throughout the country and authorities can’t provide vaccine boosters and antiviral treatments. Bill Hanage, co-director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health estimated 2 million deaths in a Dec. 14 call with reporters.

    “China has got a very, very hard road ahead of it in the coming months,” Hanage said. “But in the absence of vaccination, it would be much, much worse.”

    Will a surge in China spill over into the rest of the world? Neighboring India has asked its state governments to remain alert, and not let genomic sequencing efforts wane. Jeremy Luban of University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School said large surges in infections increase the potential for a more dangerous mutation to arise. Luban has seen “no specific reason to be concerned” about any alarming variants already simmering in China, “except for the fact that a lot of infections are bad.”

    Luban added: “The more the rate of transmission could be controlled in China the better.”

    ___

    Ghosal reported from New Delhi, and Wu reported from Taipei, Taiwan. Associated Press journalist Carla K. Johnson in Seattle and video producer Olivia Zhang in Beijing contributed to this report.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • High court temporarily blocks lifting of asylum restrictions

    High court temporarily blocks lifting of asylum restrictions

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is temporarily blocking an order that would lift pandemic-era restrictions on asylum seekers but the brief order leaves open the prospect that the restrictions in place since the coronavirus pandemic began and have been used to turn back hundreds of thousands of prospective asylum seekers could still expire on Wednesday.

    The court’s decision comes as officials and aid groups along the border are trying to prepare for whatever changes may or may not come Wednesday.

    In the city of El Paso, Mayor Oscar Leeser said they’ve received information from Border Patrol and shelters just across the border in Mexico indicating that up to 20,000 migrants might be waiting to cross into El Paso. The Red Cross has brought 10,000 cots to help with the increase, he said.

    The order Monday by Chief Justice John Roberts — who handles emergency matters that come from federal courts in the nation’s capital — comes as conservative states are pushing to keep the limits on asylum seekers that were put in place to stem the spread of COVID-19. The states appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in a last-ditch effort before the restrictions are set to expire Wednesday, saying that lifting the limits on asylum seekers would cause irreparable harm to their states.

    In the one-page order, Roberts granted a stay pending further order and asked the government to respond by 5 p.m. Tuesday. That is just hours before the restrictions are slated to expire on Wednesday.

    The order by Roberts means the high-profile case that has drawn intense scrutiny at a time that the Republicans are set to take control of the House and make immigration a key issue will go down to the wire.

    The immigration restrictions, often referred to as Title 42, were put in place under then-President Donald Trump in March 2020 and have prevented hundreds of thousands of migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. in recent years. But as they’re set to expire, thousands more migrants are packed in shelters on Mexico’s border with the U.S.

    Conservative-leaning states have argued that lifting Title 42 will lead to a surge of migrants into their states and take a toll on government services like health care or law enforcement. They also charge that the federal government has no plan to deal with an increase in migrants.

    “This Court’s review is warranted given the enormous national importance of this case. It is not reasonably contestable that the failure to grant a stay will cause an unprecedented calamity at the southern border,” the states wrote in their request Monday.

    Immigration advocates have said that the use of Title 42 goes against American and international obligations to people fleeing to the U.S. to escape persecution. And they’ve argued that things like vaccines and treatments for the coronavirus have made the policy outdated. They sued to end the use of Title 42; a federal judge in November sided with them and set the December 21 deadline.

    Immigration advocates weighed in on Roberts’ order. In a statement, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the President and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, called the decision “deeply regrettable.”

    “The Biden administration must make a full-throated defense of our humanitarian obligations in the face of politically motivated litigation. Title 42 has never been grounded in any public health rationale,” Vignarajah said in a statement late Monday. “Title 42 has only driven up repeat attempts to cross the border and lined the pockets of cartel smugglers who prey on vulnerable asylum seekers.”

    In a statement late Monday the Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for enforcing border security, said as Title 42 is still in effect people who try to enter the U.S. “unlawfully” will be expelled to Mexico.

    “While this stage of the litigation proceeds, we will continue our preparations to manage the border in a safe, orderly, and humane way when the Title 42 public health order lifts,” the statement read.

    In the leadup to the end of Title 42, administration officials said they have surged more resources to the southern border, including more border patrol processing coordinators, more surveillance and increased security at ports of entry. About 23,000 agents are currently deployed to the southern border, according to the White House.

    Before the Supreme Court weighed in, White House officials stressed Monday that the administration was bound by a court order to lift the pandemic-era border policy, despite urging from Republicans and some Democrats in Congress to extend it.

    “The removal of Title 42 does not mean the border is open,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

    Jean-Pierre said the administration has “additional robust planning underway” and pushed Congress to approve $3.5 billion in more funding for DHS as lawmakers continue to haggle over details for a massive year-end spending bill.

    That money for DHS would expand transportation capabilities so migrants can either be moved to less crowded border facilities, or be quickly removed if they have no legal grounds to stay. It would also fund more holding facilities, help speed up the processing of asylum claims and hire 300 more additional border patrol agents.

    In the border communities, officials and aid groups have been preparing for the end of Title 42 as well and doing so at a time when temperatures are expected to drop as an Arctic blast sweeps south.

    The top elected official in Hidalgo County, Judge Richard Cortez, said in the Texas border community of McAllen Border Patrol agents have been meeting with city and county officials, including in Mexico, to prepare for an influx of migrants crossing the border once the Title 42 policy ends. He’s concerned about where migrants will be able to sleep or get a warm meal and making sure the bridge connecting the U.S. and Mexico remains open to commercial traffic.

    “If they get overwhelmed at the ports of entry, they’re just going to turn them loose … and so where are they going to sleep at night, where are they going to eat? It just puts us in an unknown situation. What do we prepare for?” he said. “We’re going to do the very best we can. To me, I don’t know why Congress has not sat down and tried to improve the situation.”

    __

    Associated Press reporters Seung Min Kim in Washington and Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City contributed to this report

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Peru Congress opens door to early elections amid unrest

    Peru Congress opens door to early elections amid unrest

    [ad_1]

    LIMA, Peru (AP) — Peru’s Congress tentatively endorsed a plan on Tuesday to hold early elections in an attempt to defuse a national political crisis marked by deadly unrest after lawmakers ousted President Pedro Castillo.

    The proposal, approved by 91 of the legislature’s 130 members, would push up to April 2024 elections for president and congress originally scheduled for 2026. The plan — which seeks to add one article to Peru’s constitution — must be ratified by another two-thirds majority in the next annual legislative session for it to be adopted.

    The measure has the backing of caretaker President Dina Boluarte, who took over from Castillo after the former schoolteacher tried to dissolve Congress on Dec. 7 — a move widely condemned by even his leftist supporters though it touched off deadly nationwide protests that continue. After the failed move, Castillo was swiftly arrested.

    The early elections proposal failed to muster enough votes last week after leftist lawmakers abstained, conditioning their support on the promise of a constitutional assembly to overhaul Peru’s political charter — something that conservatives denounce as putting Peru’s free market economic model at risk. On Tuesday, they dropped that demand.

    “Don’t be blind,” Boluarte said over the weekend, slamming lawmakers for not listening to voters’ demands. “Look at the people and take action in line with what they are asking.”

    But even as Boluarte seeks to restore order, her caretaker government is being buffeted by fellow leftists. Chief among them is Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has sharply critized Peru’s conservative media and business establishment for the classist, sometimes bigoted way it portrayed Castillo during his 17-month presidency.

    On Tuesday, Boluarte’s government expelled Mexico’s ambassador, giving him 72 hours to leave the country, in protest of what it said was López Obrador’s repeated and “unacceptable interference” in Peru’s internal affairs.

    “The statements by the Mexican president are especially grave considering the violence in our country, which is incompatible with the legitimate right of every individual to protest peacefully,” Peru’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

    The Peruvian statement was issued hours after López Obrador’s government said it was granting asylum to Castillo’s family, which took refuge at Mexico’s embassy in Lima and is awaiting safe passage out of the country.

    Castillo, a political novice who lived in a two-story adobe home in the Andean highlands before moving to the presidential palace, eked out a narrow victory in elections last year that rocked Peru’s political establishment and laid bare the deep divisions between residents of the vibrant capital, Lima, and the long-neglected countryside.

    Castillo’s attempts to break a stalemate with hostile lawmakers by trying to dissolve Congress only deepened those tensions. Within hours of his attempted power grab, he was ousted by Congress and jailed facing a criminal investigation, accused of trying to usurp power in violation of the constitution.

    Mexico’s president has reiterated his willingness to grant asylum to Castillo, who was intercepted by protesters and security forces while trying to flee to the Mexican Embassy in Lima after his bid to shutter Congress backfired.

    On Monday, he said that if lawmakers reject early elections and cling to power, and the president stays, then “everything will have to be achieved by force and repression, leading to a great deal of suffering an instability for the people.”

    Boluarte, who has the backing of U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration and fluently speaks the native Quechua language of many protesters, has struggled to restore order since Castillo’s arrest.

    In several parts of the country, protesters who voted for her and Castillo’s ticket last year have defied a 30-day state of emergency and taken to the streets to demand her immediate resignation.

    The death toll from the unrest rose to 26 on Monday after security forces firing tear gas dispersed thousands of wildcat miners who cut off the Pan-American Highway at two vital chokepoints for more than a week, forcing truckers to dump spoiled food and fish bound for market. Hundreds have been injured.

    Should lawmakers decide to push up elections, they would in essence be throwing themselves out of work. Under Peru’s constitution, the 130 members of Congress are entitled to serve only a single term.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Joshua Goodman in Miami and Fabiola Sanchez in Mexico City contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • US asks court to end asylum limits, with a short delay

    US asks court to end asylum limits, with a short delay

    [ad_1]

    EL PASO, Texas (AP) — Texas dispatched National Guard troops to the border, and San Diego businesses anticipated a wave of Christmas shoppers from Mexico, as tens of thousands of asylum-seekers at the border waited for a Supreme Court ruling that could allow them to enter the United States.

    The U.S. government asked the Supreme Court not to lift the limits before Christmas, in a filing a day after Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary order to keep the pandemic-era restrictions in place. Before Roberts issued that order, they had been slated to expire Wednesday.

    Under the restrictions, officials have expelled asylum-seekers inside the United States 2.5 million times, and turned away most people who requested asylum at the border, on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19 under a public health rule called Title 42. Both U.S. and international law guarantee the right to claim asylum.

    The federal government also asked the court to reject a last-minute effort by a group of conservative-leaning states to maintain the measure. It acknowledged that ending the restrictions will likely lead to “disruption and a temporary increase in unlawful border crossings,” but said the solution is not to extend the rule indefinitely.

    With the decision on what comes next going down to the wire, pressure is building in communities along both sides of the U.S-Mexico border.

    In El Paso, Democratic Mayor Oscar Leeser warned that shelters across the border in Ciudad Juárez were packed to capacity, with an estimated 20,000 migrants prepared to cross into the U.S.

    At one point late Tuesday, some migrants were allowed to enter in batches through a gate in the border wall between two bridges that connect downtown El Paso with Ciudad Juarez, which is not uncommon at this spot on the border. Word that the gate was opening sent hundreds of people scrambling along the concrete banks of the Rio Grande, leaving smoldering campfires behind.

    The city rushed to expand its ability to accommodate more migrants by converting large buildings into shelters, as the Red Cross brings in 10,000 cots. Local officials also hope to relieve pressure on shelters by chartering buses to other large cities in Texas or nearby states, bringing migrants a step closer to relatives and sponsors in coordination with nonprofit groups.

    “We will continue to be prepared for whatever is coming through,” Leeser said.

    Texas National Guard members, deployed by the state to El Paso this week, used razor wire on Tuesday to cordon off a gap in the border fence along a bank of the Rio Grande that became a popular crossing point for migrants who waded through shallow waters to approach immigration officials in recent days. They used a loudspeaker to announce in Spanish that it’s illegal to cross there.

    Texas said it was sending 400 National Guard personnel to the border city after local officials declared a state of emergency. Leeser said the declaration was aimed largely at protecting vulnerable migrants, while a statement from the Texas National Guard said the deployment included forces used to “repel and turn-back illegal immigrants.”

    In San Diego, a sense of normalcy returned to the nation’s busiest border crossing despite uncertainty leading up to Roberts’ decision. The San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce said it learned from U.S. Customs and Border Protection that the more modern, western half of the airport-sized pedestrian crossing would reopen to U.S.-bound travelers Wednesday at 6 a.m. The lanes, which lead to an upscale outlet mall, have been closed to almost all migrants since early 2020 to accommodate Title 42 processing.

    The reopening comes “just in time for last-minute shoppers, visiting family members and those working during the holidays,” the chamber wrote to members. It said it didn’t know when the area would reopen to travelers going to Mexico from the United States.

    Immigration advocates have said that the Title 42 restrictions, imposed under provisions of a 1944 health law, go against American and international obligations to people fleeing to the U.S. to escape persecution, and that the pretext is outdated as coronavirus treatments improve. They sued to end the use of Title 42; a federal judge sided with them in November and set the Dec. 21 deadline.

    Conservative-leaning states appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that an increased numbers of migrants would take a toll on public services such as law enforcement and health care and warned of an “unprecedented calamity” at the southern border. They said the federal government has no plan to deal with an increase in migrants.

    The federal government opposed the appeal, and told the court Tuesday that it has marshaled more resources to the southern border in preparation for the end of Title 42. That includes more Border Patrol processing coordinators, more surveillance and increased security at ports of entry, according to President Joe Biden’s administration.

    About 23,000 agents are currently deployed to the southern border, according to the White House.

    “The solution to that immigration problem cannot be to extend indefinitely a public-health measure that all now acknowledge has outlived its public-health justification,” the Biden administration wrote in its brief to the Supreme Court.

    Yet the government also asked the court to give it some time to prepare if it decides to allow the restrictions to be lifted. Should the Supreme Court act before Friday, the government wants the restrictions in place until the end of Dec. 27. If the court acts on Friday or later, the government wants the limits to remain until the second business day following such an order.

    At a church-affiliated shelter in El Paso a few blocks from the border, the Rev. Michael Gallagher said local faith leaders have been trying to pool resources and open up empty space. On Tuesday, a gym at Sacred Heart Church gave shelter to 200 migrants — mostly women and children.

    Title 42 allows the government to expel asylum-seekers of all nationalities, but it’s disproportionately affected people from countries whose citizens Mexico has agreed to take: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and, more recently Venezuela, in addition to Mexico.

    ___

    Santana reported from Washington, D.C. Juan Lozano in Houston and Alicia Fernández in Ciudad Juárez contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Trump tax audits required by IRS were delayed, panel says

    Trump tax audits required by IRS were delayed, panel says

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The IRS failed to pursue mandatory audits of Donald Trump on a timely basis during his presidency, a congressional panel found on Tuesday, raising questions about statements by the former president and leading members of his administration who claimed he could not release his tax filings because of the ongoing reviews.

    A report released by the Democratic majority on the House Ways and Means Committee indicated the Trump administration may have disregarded an IRS requirement dating back to 1977 that mandates audits of a president’s tax filings. The IRS only began to audit Trump’s 2016 tax filings on April 3, 2019, more than two years into Trump’s presidency and just months after Democrats took control of the House. That date coincides with Rep. Richard Neal, the panel chairman, asking the IRS for information related to Trump’s tax returns.

    There was no suggestion that Trump, who has announced a third presidential run, sought to directly influence the IRS or discourage the agency from reviewing his tax information. But the report found that the audit process was “dormant, at best.”

    The 29-page report was published just hours after the committee voted along party lines to release Trump’s tax returns in the coming days, raising the potential of additional revelations related to the finances of the onetime businessman who broke political norms by refusing to voluntarily release his returns as he sought the presidency. The vote was the culmination of a yearslong fight between Trump and Democrats that has played out everywhere from the campaign trail to the halls of Congress and the Supreme Court.

    Democrats on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee argued that transparency and the rule of law were at stake, while Republicans countered that the release would set a dangerous precedent with regard to the loss of privacy protections.

    “This is about the presidency, not the president,” Neal, D-Mass., told reporters.

    Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the panel’s top GOP member, said, “Regrettably, the deed is done.”

    “Over our objections in opposition, Democrats in the Ways and Means Committee have unleashed a dangerous new political weapon that overturns decades of privacy protections,” he told reporters. “The era of political targeting, and of Congress’s enemies list, is back and every American, every American taxpayer, who may get on the wrong side of the majority in Congress is now at risk.”

    Trump spent much of Tuesday evening releasing statements on his social media platform that were unrelated to his tax returns. The IRS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    But an accompanying report released by Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation also found repeated faults with the IRS’s approach toward auditing Trump and his companies.

    IRS agents in charge of the audits repeatedly did not bring in specialists with expertise assessing the complicated structure of Trump’s holdings. They frequently determined that a limited examination was warranted because Trump hired a professional accounting firm that they assumed would make sure Trump “properly reports all income and deduction items correctly.”

    “We must express disagreement with the decision not to engage any specialists when facing returns with a high degree of complexity,” the tax committee report states. “We also fail to understand why the fact that counsel and an accounting firm participated in tax preparation ensures the accuracy of the returns.”

    The reports released Tuesday renewed scrutiny on one of the biggest questions that has surrounded Trump since he shifted from a reality television star to an unlikely presidential candidate: Why did he abandon the post-Watergate tradition of White House hopefuls releasing their tax returns? Trump and those around him have consistently said that IRS audits prevented him from doing so.

    “I would love to give them, but I’m not going to do it while I’m under audit,” Trump said on April 10, 2019, before boarding the presidential helicopter.

    There are no laws that would have barred Trump from voluntarily releasing his returns even if they were being audited. But when Trump spoke of being audited, it’s unclear whether he was referring to the mandatory process specifically aimed at presidents or prior reviews that are more typical for wealthy individuals.

    The New York Times found that before he entered the White House, Trump was facing an IRS audit potentially tied to a $72.9 million tax refund arising from $700 million in losses he claimed in 2009. The documents released Tuesday indicate that Trump continued to collect tax benefits from those losses through 2018.

    “What happened?” said Steven Rosenthal, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “If it was not resolved, the IRS stalled. If it was resolved in Trump’s favor, then maybe the IRS rolled over and played dead. That’s what we have to find out.”

    The report raised multiple red flags about aspects of Trump’s tax filings, including his carryover losses, deductions tied to conservation and charitable donations, and loans to his children that could be taxable gifts.

    In response to the findings, the Ways and Means Committee is proposing legislation to beef up the IRS’s approach, requiring an initial report no later than 90 days from the filing of a president’s tax returns. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the chamber would “move swiftly” to advance the legislation.

    Democrats argue that the IRS is ill-equipped to audit high-income, complex tax returns, and instead targets filers in lower-income brackets — something they have tried to remedy with their work on the panel.

    “Because of the dismantling of funding to the IRS, they have not been able to do their job,” said Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev. “They did not have the specialized staff to do it for that high-income category — not just this person, but people who fall into that category.”

    But Republicans have vowed to cut a recent influx of funding for more IRS agents. That’s the first bill they will consider upon taking the House majority in less than two weeks.

    The committee’s move represents yet another challenge for Trump. Just a day earlier, the House Jan. 6 committee voted to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department for Trump’s role in sparking the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He’s also facing an intensifying investigation in Atlanta for efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. And he’s the subject of growing criticism from fellow Republicans for contributing to the party’s underwhelming performance in last month’s midterms.

    Trump’s family business, The Trump Organization, was convicted earlier this month on tax fraud charges for helping some executives dodge taxes on company-paid perks such as apartments and luxury cars.

    Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg told The Associated Press in an interview last week that his office’s investigation into Trump and his businesses continues.

    “We’re going to follow the facts and continue to do our job,” Bragg said.

    Trump has argued there is little to learn from his tax returns even as he has fought to keep them private.

    “You can’t learn much from tax returns, but it is illegal to release them if they are not yours!” he complained on his social media network last weekend.

    ___

    Kinnard reported from Columbia, South Carolina. Associated Press writers Paul Wiseman contributed from Washington and Michael R. Sisak and Jill Colvin in New York contributed this report.

    ___

    This story was first published on Dec. 20, 2022. It was updated on Dec. 21, 2022 to correct that Horsford said IRS agents haven’t been “able,” not “unable,” to do their job.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • GOP’s usual embrace of Trump muted after criminal referral

    GOP’s usual embrace of Trump muted after criminal referral

    [ad_1]

    NEW YORK (AP) — The Republican Party quickly and forcefully rallied behind Donald Trump in the hours after federal agents seized classified documents from his Florida estate this summer.

    Four months later, that sense of intensity and urgency was missing — at least for now — after the Jan. 6 House committee voted to recommend the Justice Department bring criminal charges against him. Leading Republicans largely avoided the historic criminal referral Monday, while others pressed to weigh in offered muted defenses — or none at all.

    Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell called for “an immediate and thorough explanation” after the FBI executed the August search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. On Monday, he told reporters he had only one “immediate observation” about the criminal referral: “The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day.” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who called for Attorney General Merrick Garland’s resignation in the wake of the search, was silent on the committee’s referral, focusing instead on alleged FBI missteps.

    Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Trump critic who suggested the former president likely benefited — politically, at least — from the FBI’s summertime search, said Trump was at least partly responsible for the deadly attack on the Capitol.

    “No man is above the law,” Hogan told The Associated Press shortly before the committee’s vote.

    The divergent responses are a sign of how quickly the political landscape has shifted for Trump as he faces a new legal threat and mounts a third bid for the presidency. It’s a marked change for a party that has been defined, above all, by its unconditional loyalty to Trump under any and all circumstances for the last six years.

    Monday’s hearing of the Jan. 6 House committee, composed of seven Democrats and two Republican Trump critics, likely marks Congress’ final attempt to hold the former president accountable for the attack on the U.S. Capitol by hundreds of his loyalists as elected officials worked to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory. The criminal referral, which is nonbinding, is the culmination of a yearlong investigation that included more than 1,000 witnesses, 10 televised public hearing and over 1 million documents.

    The committee, which Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy boycotted and dismissed as a “sham process,” will formally disband on Jan. 3 as Republicans take over the House majority.

    Ever defiant, Trump predicted the criminal referral would ultimately help him.

    “These folks don’t get it that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me. It strengthens me. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” Trump said in a statement posted on his social network, condemning the criminal referral as “a partisan attempt to sideline me and the Republican Party.”

    This week’s vote comes just one month after Trump formally launched his 2024 White House campaign. He had hoped that his status as an announced candidate might give him new leverage in his many legal entanglements while warding off potential Republican primary challengers.

    Such hopes have yet to materialize. Early polls suggest the 76-year-old former president is no lock to win the 2024 nomination as emboldened Republican rivals prepare to line up to run against him.

    Already weakened, Trump is also bracing for the potential release of his tax returns, which he has worked for years to keep out of the public eye. The House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday was scheduled to consider the release of six years of Trump’s taxes, as well as those related to his businesses, although it wasn’t immediately clear when any documents might be available to the public.

    Trump’s greatest liability heading into the next presidential election may have little to do with his legal challenges, however. Republicans are increasingly worried about his ability to win.

    The GOP’s concerns about Trump’s electability intensified after the November midterm elections, when Trump’s hand-picked candidates in several high-profile contests were defeated. The setbacks followed deeper Republican losses in the two previous national elections under Trump’s leadership.

    Indeed, the initial weeks of Trump’s third presidential campaign are going so poorly that some Trump allies are privately wondering whether he’s serious about his 2024 ambitions at all.

    Trump faced Republican demands to apologize for his decision last month to share a private meal with noted white supremacist Nick Fuentes. Days later, Trump called for the “termination” of parts of the Constitution over his lie that the 2020 election was stolen. And days after that, his hand-picked candidate in Georgia’s high-stakes Senate race, former football star Herschel Walker, lost his runoff election.

    Trump has not held a campaign event. Last week, after previewing a “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT,” he unveiled a line of digital trading cards depicting him as a superhero.

    At the same time, Trump’s legal challenges are mounting.

    Garland last month appointed a special counsel to oversee the Department of Justice’s investigation into the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election. The Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney is separately investigating attempts to overturn that state’s 2020 election results.

    It’s impossible to predict how much longer the investigations will last or whether the DOJ will take the unprecedented step of indicting a former president and current candidate. But Trump is no longer shielded from prosecution the way he was as president.

    And his party is becoming less willing to stand behind him.

    The Republican National Committee announced it would stop paying some of Trump’s legal bills after he launched his 2024 presidential campaign.

    Former Vice President Mike Pence, a 2024 presidential prospect himself who aggressively condemned the FBI after it seized classified documents from Trump’s estate, offered somewhat muted criticism of the Jan. 6 committee when given the chance.

    “As I wrote in my book, the president’s actions and words on Jan. 6 were reckless. But I don’t know that it’s criminal to take bad advice from lawyers,” Pence told Fox News Channel. He added, “When it comes to the Justice Department’s decision about bringing charges in the future, I would hope that they would not bring charges against the former president.”

    Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is also considering a 2024 White House campaign, acknowledged Trump’s role in Jan. 6 but said the criminal referral “isn’t helpful” to the DOJ’s investigation.

    “The record is clear that former Pres. Trump is responsible for what happened on January 6, but accountability is most likely to come from the American people who are ready for our country to move beyond the events of January 6,” he tweeted.

    So far, only a handful of members of Congress have endorsed Trump’s 2024 bid.

    One of them, No. 3 House Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, called the Democratic-led committee “unconstitutional and illegitimate.” She said Trump was well positioned heading into the 2024 presidential contest.

    “As of today — he announced a few weeks ago at this point — the only candidate is Donald Trump, and he is winning significantly against the field,” Stefanik told The Associated Press on Monday. “So, we’ll see what happens. But I think he’s in a very strong position.”

    ___

    Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Michelle L. Price in New York; Brian Witte in Annapolis, Md.; and Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • What Trump promised, Biden seeks to deliver in his own way

    What Trump promised, Biden seeks to deliver in his own way

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump pledged to fix U.S. infrastructure as president. He vowed to take on China and bulk up American manufacturing. He said he would reduce the budget deficit and make the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.

    Yet after two years as president, it’s Joe Biden who is acting on those promises. He jokes that he’s created an “infrastructure decade” after Trump merely managed a near parody of “infrastructure weeks.” His legislative victories are not winning him votes from Trump loyalists or boosting his overall approval ratings. But they reflect a major pivot in how the government interacts with the economy at a time when many Americans fear a recession and broader national decline.

    Gone are blanket tax cuts. No more unfettered faith in free trade with non-democracies. The Biden White House has committed more than $1.7 trillion to the belief that a mix of government aid, focused policies and bureaucratic expertise can deliver long-term growth that lifts up the middle class. This reverses the past administration’s view that cutting regulations and taxes boosted investments by businesses that flowed downward to workers.

    With new laws in place, Biden is taking the gamble that the federal bureaucracy can successfully implement and deliver on his promises, including after he leaves office.

    That is a tricky spot, as Trump himself learned that global crises such as a pandemic can quickly ruin the foundations of an economic agenda, causing businesses and voters to shift priorities. There are few guarantees that the economy behaves over 10 years as government forecasts expect, while Biden’s policies will likely be challenged by the new Republican majority in the House.

    Biden and his team say Americans are already seeing the upside with announcements for new computer chip plants and some 6,000 infrastructure projects under way.

    “There’s an industrial strategy that actually uses public investments to drive more private capital and more innovation in the historical tradition of everybody from Alexander Hamilton to Abraham Lincoln to John F. Kennedy,” said Brian Deese, director of the White House National Economic Council. “The outcomes speak for themselves.”

    Trump’s supporters see little overlap with Biden, even though the funding for infrastructure, computer chip production and scientific research was passed along bipartisan lines.

    “The Biden administration agenda is 180 degrees different,” said James Carter, a policy director at the America First Policy Institute. “More regulation, higher taxes, no border control and a war on fossil fuels. It’s two different administrations with two different approaches. One is free market, the other is big government.”

    The current and former president seem almost bound together in the public arena. On the August eve of Biden signing into law $280 billion for semiconductors and research, FBI agents raided Trump’s home to retrieve classified documents, overshadowing the White House event. Similarly, Biden called out Trump as a threat to democracy ahead of November midterm elections, while Republicans campaigned by hammering the president for troubling levels of inflation.

    Biden aides are quick to say that the president is fulfilling his own campaign promises, rather than honoring pledges made by Trump. But one of Biden’s first moves as president in 2021 was to provide $1,400 in direct payments to Americans as part of his coronavirus relief package. Along with the $600 in payments in a pre-Biden relief package, the sum matched the $2,000 that Trump called for in the twilight of his presidency, though he could not get it through Congress.

    “I would want to avoid the premise that somehow what Joe Biden has done was take Donald Trump’s ideas and enact them into law,” Deese said. “What President Biden has done is taken the campaign agenda that he campaigned on and actually delivered on it.”

    For all of that, Americans are giving Biden low marks on the economy. Inflation has come down from a 40-year peak this summer, but consumer prices are still 7.1% higher from a year ago. The Federal Reserve is raising its benchmark interest rate to lower inflation, something that its own projections show will cause unemployment to rise in the next year.

    Three in four Americans describe the economy as poor, with nearly the same percentage saying the U.S. is on the wrong track, according to a new poll by The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

    Biden is asking for patience.

    “I know it’s been a rough few years for hardworking Americans and for small businesses as well,” Biden said in Tuesday remarks about inflation. “But there are bright spots all across America where we’re beginning to see the impact of our economic strategy, and we’re just getting started.”

    Trump supporters blame Biden’s separate $1.9 trillion in coronavirus relief for sparking the inflation, although it contained roughly $400 billion worth of the direct payments that former president said Americans should receive. They argue that the U.S. economy would be stronger if Biden took steps such as allowing all businesses to fully expense their investments in new equipment, instead of providing targeted support to the technology and clean energy sectors.

    But even excluding the recession induced by the pandemic, Trump’s economic record was far from sterling as the promised growth never materialized. Manufacturers began to slash jobs in 2019 before the coronavirus spread, instead of the steady resurgence promised by Trump. Annual budget deficits worsened under Trump, but they have improved under Biden as pandemic aid has wound down.

    Biden is telling Americans that his policies will strengthen the U.S. economy over the next decade. His $52 billion for computer chip production has led to a series of factory groundbreakings in Arizona, Idaho, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas that will take years to complete. The idea is that government aid reduces risk and makes it easier for these companies to invest in areas where global demand exceed available supplies.

    Chris Miller, a Tufts University professor and author of the book “Chip War,” said the incentives are only a fraction of the cost of building the plants. Miller said the benefits of the investments will spill over to the companies that sell raw materials to chipmakers as well as possibly for the makers of autos, electronics and household appliances that increasingly rely on chips.

    “The chips funding makes clear that there will be meaningfully more fab construction and chip output in the U.S.,” he said, “so for suppliers to the chip industry, they have more clarity that demand for their products will be larger than it otherwise would have been, incentivizing them to invest too.”

    For all the economic concerns, manufacturing has improved under Biden as factory employment totals 12.9 million jobs, the most since December 2008. Just as Biden has boosted domestic investment, he also expanded the Trump administration’s efforts to compete with China and kept his predecessor’s tariffs.

    The Biden administration has restricted the export of advanced computer chips and semiconductor equipment, arguing on national security grounds that China is using this technology for surveillance and hypersonic missiles. It’s also formed deeper partnerships with Australia, Japan, South Korea and several European countries to counter China’s rising influence.

    Kurt Campbell, Biden’s “Asian tsar” on the White House National Security Council, said that many of the initiatives pursued by Trump’s State Department on China have been “followed on” during Biden’s presidency, saying at an April panel that “in many respects, that’s the highest tribute” to the previous administration.

    But Steve Yates, a senior fellow at the America First Policy Institute and former president of Radio Free Asia, said that Biden has not shown that he’s placed the same emphasis on China as Trump.

    Yates cited as evidence that Biden’s national security strategy identifies the U.S. as having a shared interest with China in addressing climate change. He said that China will exploit that priority to their advantage as Biden’s willingness to cooperate on climate change will prevent him from confronting Beijing as Trump did.

    “We just have a weakened hand,” Yates said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Oppenheimer wrongly stripped of security clearance, US says

    Oppenheimer wrongly stripped of security clearance, US says

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration has reversed a decades-old decision to revoke the security clearance of Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist called the father of the atomic bomb for his leading role in World War II’s Manhattan Project.

    U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the 1954 decision by the Atomic Energy Commission was made using a “flawed process” that violated the commission’s own regulations.

    “As time has passed, more evidence has come to light of the bias and unfairness of the process that Dr. Oppenheimer was subjected to while the evidence of his loyalty and love of country have only been further affirmed,” Granholm said in a statement on Friday.

    Oppenheimer, who died in 1967, led the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The theoretical physicist was later accused of having communist sympathies and his security clearance was revoked following a four-week, closed-door hearing.

    In stripping Oppenheimer of his clearance, the Atomic Energy Commission did not allege that he had revealed or mishandled classified information, nor was his loyalty to the country questioned, according to Granholm’s order. The commission, however, concluded there were “fundamental defects” in his character.

    Years later, an Atomic Energy Commission lawyer concluded after an internal review that “the system failed” and a “substantial injustice was done to a loyal American,” according to the secretary’s order.

    Granholm said the commission’s decision was driven by a desire among its political leadership to “discredit Oppenheimer in public debates over nuclear weapons policy.”

    “Such political motives must have no place in our personnel security process,” she wrote.

    U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont applauded the reversal, saying the 1954 decision followed a “manifestly unjust and unethical hearing that would be resoundingly condemned today.”

    “This decision reaffirms that government scientists, whether renowned like Oppenheimer or a technician doing his or her daily job — including those willing to raise safety concerns or to express unpopular opinions on matters of national security — can do so freely and that their cases will be fairly reviewed based on facts, not personal animus or politics,” Leahy said in a statement.

    The decision comes as the story of Oppenheimer is headed to the big screen. Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” film is expected to be released in theaters in July. It’s based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” and stars Cillian Murphy in the title role.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • AP Breakthrough Entertainer: Tenoch Huerta, a global hero

    AP Breakthrough Entertainer: Tenoch Huerta, a global hero

    [ad_1]

    By BERENICE BAUTISTA

    December 16, 2022 GMT

    MEXICO CITY (AP) — The opening credits of “Wakanda Forever” fittingly say “introducing Tenoch Huerta.”

    What an introduction it’s been.

    Huerta’s role as Namor in the “Black Panther” sequel has wowed audiences, catapulting him onto the global stage and sparking conversations about race and identity, both in his native Mexico and abroad. It’s also led to Huerta being named one of The Associated Press’ Breakthrough Entertainers of 2022, joining the ranks of Sadie Sink, Daryl McCormack and his fellow Marvel standout, Iman Vellani.

    Like many of the Breakthrough Entertainer honorees, Huerta isn’t a newcomer. He’s appeared in numerous films such as “The Forever Purge” and series like “Mozart in the Jungle” and “Narcos: Mexico.” But “Wakanda Forever” has given him a new level of global exposure, which he’s using to advance several causes like inclusivity and social justice.

    Huerta grew up in Ecatepec, a suburban area of Mexico City, infamous for its high levels of delinquency and often referred with prejudice by the people in the capital.

    “It’s not easy to come from there,” said Huerta in a recent interview in Mexico City during the promotion of “Wakanda Forever.” The area is close to the capital, but “you can spend a couple of hours to reach the nearest subway station, there’s violence.”

    Huerta, 41, acknowledged that the fact that he didn’t see “brown skin people” like him on screen or theater, and definitively not in advertisements, made him believe that acting wasn’t a serious possibility. “You can’t dream of something that you can see,” he said.

    He spent many years playing American Football, and it wasn’t until his father prodded him that he considered acting. “When I was 16 my father insisted to me to become an actor, he pushed me to take workshops,” said Huerta. “The workshop was for two or three weeks, and I spent nine months. I liked it a lot but, (it) never was my life plan, it was just a hobby.”

    He kept going to casting calls and was selected to play a gardener who entertains white rich youngsters in Gael García Bernal’s debut feature “Deficit” (2007). That took him to the Cannes Film Festival for the first time, a journey he repeated in 2011 with Everardo Gout’s “Days of Grace,” for which he won the Ariel, the Mexican equivalent to the Oscars, as best actor.

    “Until that moment I assumed, I understood I was an actor, but it takes a long time and a nomination to the Ariel, many awards around the world and in Mexico, and finally in that moment I thought, ‘Ok I’m an actor.’ It was a process,” said Huerta.

    Huerta said he was a fan of Marvel movies and was really pleased when he received a videocall from the director Ryan Coogler who was explaining the plot of “Wakanda Forever.” The story included a shaman and a potion that people drank before jumping into the ocean.

    “The communication was frozen for about five minutes so when he is back, he says ‘So what do you think?’” recalled Huerta. “I never understood clearly what was about this offer and then I told my agents, and they found out that he (Coogler) was offering me Namor. I assumed it was the shaman, but they said, ‘No its Namor.’”

    His character is the leader of Tlalokan, the subaquatic world where Namor lives. It is a vibrant world inspired by pre-Hispanic architecture and culture, created with help from Mayan experts.

    “They grew up in Mayan communities, they are Mayan speakers and they have degrees and all the credentials to work in this movie,” said Huerta. “I just can say that Marvel and Disney they’re making a really great job of inclusion and representation and finally people like us, we’re able to see ourselves in this movie, so proud, so beautiful and so powerful, that’s a gift.”

    Huerta said the second-best part, after the reassurance of collaborating with experts in the film, was to do all the training and battles, learning to hold his breath for minutes underwater and use wires to simulate the flights of Namor.

    “In real life … my knees hurt, my back and everything. I’m a simple human, and I’m getting old by the way,” said Huerta smiling. “But in the movie it’s such a great experience.”

    In Mexico Huerta has become a symbol of the fight for racial justice, winning acclaim but also facing criticism from people who consider him problematic because as a person with dark skin, Huerta denounces prejudice against those who look like him.

    Huerta recently published “Orgullo prieto” (which loosely translates as Dark Skinned Pride) a book in which he recalls his own experiences facing racism and classism in his country.

    “For me this book is a way to say we need to learn, we need to change and then try to have a better society. I specially wrote this book for the kids for the young people,” said the father of two girls. “I try to create, as much as I can, a better place to live for them.”

    Seeing himself as a breakthrough artist brings Huerta hope.

    “I don’t know how my life is gonna be changed from this point on, but I hope this movie affects the people, affects the kids and if the kids are able to look at themselves on the mirror and feel proud,” he said. “If they are able to look at them and feel proud of themselves, for me, that’s perfect.”

    ___

    For more on AP’s 2022 class of Breakthrough Entertainers, please visit: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-breakthrough-entertainers

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • How the Fed’s rate hikes could affect your finances

    How the Fed’s rate hikes could affect your finances

    [ad_1]

    NEW YORK (AP) — The Federal Reserve’s move Wednesday to raise its key rate by a half-point brought it to a range of 4.25% to 4.5%, the highest level in 14 years.

    The Fed’s latest increase — its seventh rate hike this year — will make it even costlier for consumers and businesses to borrow for homes, autos and other purchases. If, on the other hand, you have money to save, you’ll earn a bit more interest on it.

    Wednesday’s rate hike, part of the Fed’s drive to curb high inflation, was smaller than its previous four straight three-quarter-point increases. The downshift reflects, in part, the easing of inflation and the cooling of the economy.

    As interest rates increase, many economists say they fear that a recession remains inevitable — and with it, job losses that could cause hardship for households already badly hurt by inflation.

    Here’s what to know:

    WHAT’S PROMPTING THE RATE INCREASES?

    The short answer: Inflation. Over the past year, consumer inflation in the United States has clocked in at 7.1% — the fifth straight monthly drop but still a painfully high level.

    The Fed’s goal is to slow consumer spending, thereby reducing demand for homes, cars and other goods and services, eventually cooling the economy and lowering prices.

    Fed Chair Jerome Powell has acknowledged that aggressively raising interest rates would bring “some pain” for households but that doing so is necessary to crush high inflation.

    WHICH CONSUMERS ARE MOST AFFECTED?

    Anyone borrowing money to make a large purchase, such as a home, car or large appliance, will take a hit, according to Scott Hoyt, an analyst with Moody’s Analytics.

    “The new rate pretty dramatically increases your monthly payments and your cost,” he said. “It also affects consumers who have a lot of credit card debt — that will hit right away.”

    That said, Hoyt noted that household debt payments, as a proportion of income, remain relatively low, though they have risen lately. So even as borrowing rates steadily rise, many households might not feel a much heavier debt burden immediately.

    “I’m not sure interest rates are top of mind for most consumers right now,” Hoyt said. “They seem more worried about groceries and what’s going on at the gas pump. Rates can be something tricky for consumers to wrap their minds around.”

    HOW WILL THIS AFFECT CREDIT CARD RATES?

    Even before the Fed’s latest move, credit card borrowing rates had reached their highest level since 1996, according to Bankrate.com, and these will likely continue to rise.

    And with prices still surging, there are signs that Americans are increasingly relying on credit cards to help maintain their spending. Total credit card balances have topped $900 billion, according to the Fed, a record high, though that amount isn’t adjusted for inflation.

    John Leer, chief economist at Morning Consult, a survey research firm, said its polling suggests that more Americans are spending down the savings they accumulated during the pandemic and are using credit instead. Eventually, rising rates could make it harder for those households to pay off their debts.

    Those who don’t qualify for low-rate credit cards because of weak credit scores are already paying significantly higher interest on their balances, and they’ll continue to.

    As rates have risen, zero percent loans marketed as “Buy Now, Pay Later” have also become popular with consumers. But longer-term loans of more than four payments that these companies offer are subject to the same increased borrowing rates as credit cards.

    For people who have home equity lines of credit or other variable-interest debt, rates will increase by roughly the same amount as the Fed hike, usually within one or two billing cycles. That’s because those rates are based in part on banks’ prime rate, which follows the Fed’s.

    HOW ARE SAVERS AFFECTED?

    The rising returns on high-yield savings accounts and certificates of deposit (CDs) have put them at levels not seen since 2009, which means that households may want to boost savings if possible. You can also now earn more on bonds and other fixed-income investments.

    Though savings, CDs, and money market accounts don’t typically track the Fed’s changes, online banks and others that offer high-yield savings accounts can be exceptions. These institutions typically compete aggressively for depositors. (The catch: They sometimes require significantly high deposits.)

    In general, banks tend to capitalize on a higher-rate environment to boost their profits by imposing higher rates on borrowers, without necessarily offering juicer rates to savers.

    WILL THIS AFFECT HOME OWNERSHIP?

    Last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported that the average rate on the benchmark 30-year mortgage dipped to 6.33%. That means the rate on a typical home loan is still about twice as expensive as it was a year ago.

    Mortgage rates don’t always move in tandem with the Fed’s benchmark rate. They instead tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note.

    Sales of existing homes have declined for nine straight months as borrowing costs have become too high a hurdle for many Americans who are already paying much more for food, gas and other necessities.

    WILL IT BE EASIER TO FIND A HOUSE IF I’M STILL LOOKING TO BUY?

    If you’re financially able to proceed with a home purchase, you’re likely to have more options than at any time in the past year.

    WHAT IF I WANT TO BUY A CAR?

    Since the Fed began increasing rates in March, the average new vehicle loan has jumped more than 2 percentage points, from 4.5% to 6.6% in November, according to the Edmunds.com auto site. Used vehicle loans are up 2.1 percentage points to 10.2%. Loan durations for new vehicles average just under 70 months, and they’ve passed 70 months for used vehicles.

    Most important, though, is the monthly payment, on which most people base their auto purchases. Edmunds says that since March, it’s up by an average of $61 to $718 for new vehicles. The average payment for used vehicles is up $22 per month to $565.

    Ivan Drury, Edmunds’ director of insights, says financing the average new vehicle with a price of $47,000 now costs $8,436 in interest. That’s enough to chase many out of the auto market.

    “I think we’re actually starting to see that these interest rates, they’re doing what the Fed wants,” Drury said. “They’re taking away the buying power so that you can’t buy a vehicle anymore. There’s going to be fewer people that can afford it.”

    Any rate increase by the Fed will likely be passed through to auto borrowers, though it will be slightly offset by subsidized rates from manufacturers. Drury predicts that new-vehicle prices will start to ease next year as demand wanes a little.

    HOW HAVE THE RATE HIKES INFLUENCED CRYPTO?

    Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin have dropped in value since the Fed began raising rates. So have many previously high-valued technology stocks.

    Higher rates mean that safe assets like Treasuries have become more attractive to investors because their yields have increased. That makes risky assets like technology stocks and cryptocurrencies less attractive.

    Still, bitcoin continues to suffer from problems separate from economic policy. Three major crypto firms have failed, most recently the high-profile FTX exchange, shaking the confidence of crypto investors.

    WHAT ABOUT MY JOB?

    Some economists argue that layoffs could be necessary to slow rising prices. One argument is that a tight labor market fuels wage growth and higher inflation. But the nation’s employers kept hiring briskly in November.

    “Job openings continue to exceed job hires, indicating employers are still struggling to fill vacancies,” said Odeta Kushi, an economist with First American.

    WILL THIS AFFECT STUDENT LOANS?

    Borrowers who take out new private student loans should prepare to pay more as as rates increase. The current range for federal loans is between about 5% and 7.5%.

    That said, payments on federal student loans are suspended with zero interest until summer 2023 as part of an emergency measure put in place early in the pandemic. President Joe Biden has also announced some loan forgiveness, of up to $10,000 for most borrowers, and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients — a policy that’s now being challenged in the courts.

    IS THERE A CHANCE THE RATE HIKES WILL BE REVERSED?

    It looks increasingly unlikely that rates will come down anytime soon. On Wednesday, the Fed signaled that it will raise its rate as high as roughly 5.1% early next year — and keep it there for the rest of 2023.

    ___

    AP Business Writers Christopher Rugaber in Washington, Tom Krisher in Detroit and Damian Troise and Ken Sweet in New York contributed to this report.

    ___

    The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Bethlehem welcomes Christmas tourists after pandemic lull

    Bethlehem welcomes Christmas tourists after pandemic lull

    [ad_1]

    BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) — Business is bouncing back in Bethlehem after two years in the doldrums during the coronavirus pandemic, lifting spirits in the traditional birthplace of Jesus ahead of the Christmas holiday.

    Streets are bustling with tour groups. Hotels are fully booked, and months of deadly Israeli-Palestinian fighting appears to be having little effect on the vital tourism industry.

    Elias Arja, head of the Bethlehem hotel association, said that tourists are hungry to visit the Holy Land’s religious sites after suffering through lockdowns and travel restrictions in recent years. He expects the rebound to continue into next year.

    “We expect that 2023 will be booming and business will be excellent because the whole world, and Christian religious tourists especially, they all want to return to the Holy Land,” said Arja, who owns the Bethlehem Hotel.

    On a recent day, dozens of groups from virtually every continent posed for selfies in front of the Church of the Nativity, built on the grotto where Christians believe Jesus was born. A giant Christmas tree sparkled in the adjacent Manger Square, and tourists packed into shops to buy olive wood crosses and other souvenirs.

    Christmas is normally peak season for tourism in Bethlehem, located in the Israeli-occupied West Bank just a few miles southeast of Jerusalem. In pre-pandemic times, thousands of pilgrims and tourists from around the world came to celebrate.

    But those numbers plummeted during the pandemic. Although tourism hasn’t fully recovered, the hordes of visitors are a welcome improvement and encouraging sign.

    “The city became a city of ghosts,” said Saliba Nissan, standing next to a manger scene about 1.3 meters (4 feet) wide inside the Bethlehem New Store, the olive wood factory he co-owns with his brother. The shop was filled with Americans on a bus tour.

    Since the Palestinians don’t have their own airport, most international visitors come via Israel. The Israeli Tourism Ministry is expecting some 120,000 Christian tourists during the week of Christmas.

    That compares to its all-time high of about 150,000 visitors in 2019, but is far better than last year, when the country’s skies were closed to most international visitors. As it has done in the past, the ministry plans to offer special shuttle buses between Jerusalem and Bethlehem on Christmas Eve to help visitors go back and forth.

    “God willing, we will go back this year to where things were before the coronavirus, and be even better,” said Bethlehem’s mayor, Hanna Hanania.

    He said about 15,000 people attended the recent lighting of Bethlehem’s Christmas tree, and that international delegations, artists and singers are all expected to participate in celebrations this year.

    “Recovery has begun significantly,” he said, though he said the recent violence, and Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank, always have some influence on tourism.

    Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war. The internationally recognized Palestinian Authority has limited autonomy in parts of the territory, including Bethlehem.

    The Christmas season comes at the end of a bloody year in the Holy Land. Some 150 Palestinians and 31 Israelis have been killed in Israeli-Palestinian fighting in the West Bank and east Jerusalem this year, according to official figures, making 2022 the deadliest year since 2006. Israel says most of the Palestinians killed were militants, but stone-throwing youths and some people not involved in the violence have also been killed.

    The fighting, largely concentrated in the northern West Bank, reached the Bethlehem area earlier this month, when the Israeli army killed a teenager in the nearby Deheishe refugee camp. Palestinians held a one-day strike across Bethlehem to protest the killing.

    Residents, however, seem determined not to allow the fighting to put a damper on the Christmas cheer.

    Bassem Giacaman, the third-generation owner of the Blessing Gift Shop, founded in 1925 by his grandfather, said the pandemic was far more devastating to his business than violence and political tensions.

    Covered in sawdust from carving olive-wood figurines, jewelry and religious symbols, he said it will take him years to recover. He once had 10 people working for him. Today, he employs half that number, sometimes less, depending on demand.

    “The political (situation) does affect, but nothing major,” Giacaman said. “We’ve had it for 60-70 years, and it goes on for a month, then it stops, and tourists come back again.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • India’s visa temples attract devotees aspiring to go abroad

    India’s visa temples attract devotees aspiring to go abroad

    [ad_1]

    CHENNAI, India (AP) — Arjun Viswanathan stood on the street, his hands folded, eyes fixed on the idol of the Hindu deity Ganesh.

    On a humid morning, the information technology professional was waiting outside the temple, the size of a small closet – barely enough room for the lone priest to stand and perform puja or rituals for the beloved elephant-headed deity, believed to be the remover of obstacles.

    Viswanathan was among about a dozen visitors, most of them there for the same purpose: To offer prayers so their U.S. visa interviews would go smoothly and successfully. Viswanathan came the day before his interview for an employment visa.

    “I came here to pray for my brother’s U.K. visa 10 years ago and for my wife’s U.S. visa two years ago,” he said. “They were both successful. So I have faith.”

    The Sri Lakshmi Visa Ganapathy Temple is a few miles north of the airport in Chennai (formerly Madras), a bustling metropolis on the Coromandel Coast in southeast India — known for its iconic cuisine, ancient temples and churches, silk saris, classical music, dance and sculptures.

    This “visa temple” has surged in popularity among U.S. visa seekers over the past decade; they can be found in almost any Indian city with a U.S. consulate. They typically gain a following through word of mouth or social media.

    A mile away from the Ganesh temple is the Sri Lakshmi Narasimha Navaneetha Krishnan Temple, where an idol of Hanuman – a deity who has a human body and the face of a monkey — is believed to possess the power to secure visas. Also known as “Anjaneya,” this god stands for strength, wisdom and devotion. In this temple, he has earned the monikers “America Anjaneya” and “Visa Anjaneya.”

    The temple’s longtime secretary, G.C. Srinivasan, said it wasn’t until 2016 that this temple became a “visa temple.”

    “It was around that time that a few people who prayed for a visa spread the word around that they were successful, and it’s continued,” he said.

    A month ago, Srinivasan said he met someone who got news of his visa approval even as as he was circumambulating the Anjaneya idol — a common Hindu practice of walking around a sacred object or site.

    On a recent Saturday night, devotees decorated the idol with garlands made of betel leaves. S. Pradeep, who placed a garland on the deity, said he was not there to pray for a visa, but believes in the god’s unique power.

    “He is my favorite god,” he said. “If you genuinely pray – not just for visa – it will come true.”

    At the Ganesh temple, some devotees had success stories to share. Jyothi Bontha said her visa interview at the U.S. Consulate in Chennai went without a hitch, and that she had returned to offer thanks.

    “They barely asked me a couple of questions,” she said. “I was pleasantly surprised.”

    Bontha’s friend, Phani Veeranki, stood nearby, nervously clutching an envelope containing her visa application and supporting documents. Bontha and Veeranki, both computer science students from the neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh and childhood friends, are headed to Ohio.

    Both learned about the visa temple on the social media platform Telegram.

    Veeranki said she was anxious because she had a lot riding on her upcoming visa interview.

    “I’m the first person in my family to go the United States,” she said. “My mother is afraid to send me. But I’m excited for the opportunities I’ll have in America.”

    Veeranki then handed over the envelope to the temple’s priest for him to place at the foot of the idol for a blessing.

    “We’ve been hearing about applications being rejected,” she said, her hands still folded in prayer. “I’m really hoping mine gets approved.”

    If she and Bontha make it to Ohio, they want to take a trip to Niagara Falls.

    “I’ve always wanted to see it,” Bontha said.

    Mohanbabu Jagannathan and his wife, Sangeetha, run the temple, which Jagannathan’s grandfather built in 1987. Their house is on a cul-de-sac, which is considered bad luck in several Asian cultures. In Chennai, it is common to find a Ganesh temple outside cul-de-sac homes due to the belief that the deity has the power to ward off evil. At first, only neighbors came to the temple, Jagannathan said.

    “But over the years it started earning a quirky reputation,” he said. “A lot of visa applicants who came to the temple spread the word that they found success after praying here.”

    In 2009, his father, Jagannathan Radhakrishnan, reconstructed the temple and added the word “visa” to the temple’s name. Jagannathan said the success stories are heartwarming; visitors sometimes stop by his home to thank his family for keeping the temple open.

    “I’ve never been bothered by it,” Jagannathan said. “We offer this as a service to the public. It’s a joy to see how happy people are when they come back and tell us they got their visa.”

    His wife said she was touched by the story of a man who came all the way from New Delhi to pray for a visa to see his grandchild after eight years apart. She remembers another time when a woman called her in tears, saying her visa application was rejected.

    “Sure, some don’t get it,” she said. “God only knows why.”

    Padma Kannan brought her daughter, Monisha, who is preparing to pursue a master’s degree in marketing analytics in Clark University. Kannan believes her daughter got her visa because of this powerful deity.

    “I found this temple on Google,” she said. “I was so nervous for her, and so I prayed here.”

    Monisha Kannan said she is not so sure she got her visa because of this temple, but she said she came to support her mom.

    “I’m skeptical,” she said. “I’m just someone who goes with the flow.”

    Her mother takes a more philosophical stance.

    “We pray for our children and things happen easily for them,” she said. “I think when they go through the rigors of life themselves, they will start believing in the power of prayer.”

    Viswanathan said he is not someone “who usually believes in such things.” When his brother got his British visa a decade ago after offering prayers here, Viswanathan chalked it up to coincidence. He became a believer when his wife got her U.S. visa two years ago, he said.

    The day after he visited the temple this time, Viswanathan’s employment visa was approved. He’ll head to New Hampshire in a few months.

    “It’s all about faith,” he said. “If you believe it will happen, it will happen.”

    ___

    Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • In Dallas suburbs, Friday Night Lights make way for cricket

    In Dallas suburbs, Friday Night Lights make way for cricket

    [ad_1]

    FRISCO, Texas (AP) — With the ornate spires of the Karya Siddhi Hanuman Temple anchoring the skyline behind them, a cricket batsman and bowler eyed each other across a brown grass field. Amid gusty winds, players waiting to bat watched intently from nearby bleachers.

    No, this is not a scene in India, where cricket became a national obsession after arriving on the wings of British colonialism. Try North Texas, where Friday Night Lights have made way for weekend afternoons on the pitch.

    Welcome to the new Lone Star State, where cricket matches, a Hindu temple and Indian grocery stores co-exist with Christian churches, cattle ranches and Jerry Jones’ Dallas Cowboys empire. More than a decade of expansion has given the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex the largest Asian growth rate of any major U.S. metro area, in the nation’s fastest growing state. According to U.S. Census Bureau figures, Indians account for more than half the region’s Asian population boom, with the Dallas suburb of Frisco alone experiencing growth to rival Seattle and Chicago.

    While some Texans still bleed football, these days a growing number bleed cricket.

    “In ’98, I came to the U.S. Then I stopped playing cricket because I didn’t have any availability here. Down the road four or five years later, I saw somebody playing cricket in Plano,” said Kalyan “K.J.” Jarajapu, a temple volunteer watching the Frisco-sponsored cricket league match. “I never imagined that there would be cricket for sure or there would be a cricket world like I saw back home in India here in (metro) Dallas.”

    The share of Asians among the foreign-born in the U.S. has risen recently, from 30.1% during the 2012-to-2016 period to 31.2% in the 2017-to-2021 period, as the share of immigrants from Latin America and Europe has fallen, according to the American Community Survey.

    Immigrants from South Asia believe they’ve found the best of East meets West in Frisco and other Dallas suburbs. They’re living a new and improved American dream, with access to their preferred houses of worship, authentic food and a community radio station. But the dream also comes with painful realities about racism, pressure to balance two cultures and the mental health challenges of finding your way in an unfamiliar world.

    Named in 1904 after the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway, Frisco, 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of downtown Dallas, started as a train stop and an agricultural hub. Today, it’s a global technology force. Companies including Toyota, FedEx and Goldman Sachs have drawn job seekers from afar, including a pipeline of IT workers from the tech hub of Hyderabad, India.

    Combine good jobs with reputable schools, affordable housing and warm weather, and the formula for growth is set.

    Texas-based disciples of Sri Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji came together in 2008 to purchase a 10-acre (4-hectare) plot in Frisco and build a modest Hindu temple. Within three years, it was hosting hundreds of worshippers.

    Jayesh Thakker, a temple trustee and joint treasurer for the India Association of North Texas, said they raised enough money to build a 33,000-square-foot (3,065-square-meter) temple in 2015. Nearly 30 artisan workers came on special visas to ensure every detail honored Indian Hindu architecture.

    “They built it first as an American structure and then they ‘Indianized’ it,” Thakker said.

    New housing and schools soon followed. Laxmi Tummala, trustee and temple secretary, is also a realtor. Many of her clients settle for less just to live nearby.

    ″‘All that other stuff I wanted, it doesn’t matter if it’s going to put me 25 minutes or 30 minutes away. I want my kids to have this exposure,’” Tummala said.

    Immigrants aren’t the only newcomers. Between 2015 and 2019, more than 17,000 people flocked to Frisco and surrounding Collin County from Dallas County and more than 8,000 from nearby Denton County, according to the Census Bureau.

    Outside Texas, the biggest sources of new Collin County residents were Los Angeles and Orange counties in California, with 1,600 residents and 1,000 residents respectively.

    But almost 6,000 new residents in the area came from Asia.

    The Islamic Center of Frisco has benefited, too. Its board is planning to more than double the size of the 18,000-square-foot (1,672-square-meter) mosque by 2024. With more than 3,500 people attending prayers and 460 children attending Sunday School, the board moved to acquire more space in 2019.

    Azfar Saeed, the center’s president, remembers that nearly two decades ago only 15 people came to pray in a 400-square-foot (37-square-meter) shopping center suite on any given day.

    “At that time, nobody knew Frisco. People were like, ‘Where are you going?’” said Saeed, who was born in Pakistan. By 2010, “people just started moving right and left here.”

    The pandemic brought another shift. Suddenly, people from California or Chicago were able to work remotely but live elsewhere. Houston saw a tremendous influx of Asians in the last decade, with the second-highest growth rate after Dallas among major U.S. metros.

    “The moment people went remote it felt like people were like, ’OK, I have a tiny house in California for $800,000 and I can buy a mansion here in Texas. Let’s go,’” Saeed said, chuckling.

    Where there is a large Asian population in the U.S., anti-Asian hate seems inevitable. In August, a woman’s racist rant against four Indian American women in Plano was caught on video. The unprovoked attack escalated as she hit and threatened to shoot them. She was later arrested.

    The incident caught the attention of people in India thanks to social media. South Asian groups here attended meetings with local law enforcement.

    “It was very sad and it was surprising,” said Tummala, the temple’s secretary. “But we definitely don’t take that and say ‘OK, everybody in Texas is like that.’”

    Some have found outlets for talking about their struggles, including on the region’s only South Asian radio station.

    The app-based Radio Azad, in Irving, was started by Azad Khan in 2011, five years after he immigrated from Pakistan. The station broadcasts music and current affairs. Multiple languages are represented, including Urdu, Hindi, Arabic, Farsi and Telugu.

    As the area population has grown, so has Radio Azad’s listenership, which numbers in the hundreds of thousands.

    The anonymity of call-in radio shows on Azad — which means freedom in Hindi and Urdu — has allowed for difficult questions. Nearly three years ago, CEO Ayesha Shafi started monthly mental health segments, and listeners embraced them. They’ve tackled assimilation, bipolar disorder and domestic abuse.

    “You can talk about issues that you’re facing and actually hear somebody who’s like you, who understands where you’re coming from and will actually listen,” Shafi said.

    Depression rose to the forefront after the murder-suicide of a Bangladeshi family in April 2021 in Allen, roughly 10 miles (16 kilometers) east of Frisco. Two adult brothers fatally shot their parents, sister and grandmother before taking their own lives. One brother had written on Instagram of dealing with depression since 2016.

    “As parents, we find that anxiety has become so common and it’s not happening to just anybody’s kids,” Shafi said. “As we created awareness, as we shared our shows … they would realize, ‘Omigod, this is happening to our kids.’”

    Reena Yalamanchili dealt with the feeling of not belonging as a child, despite being born in the U.S. The 17-year-old, whose family lives in nearby Coppell and attends the Frisco temple, remembers kids making fun of the lunch her mother made.

    “It kind of made me feel embarrassed about my mom’s cooking, or like Indian food or my culture in general,” Yalamanchili said. “Obviously, I don’t feel like that anymore.”

    She thinks most children grow out of those attitudes, and there is strength in numbers.

    “There’s a lot of people in the same boat as me,” she said. “There’s a lot of shared traditions.”

    Everywhere you look, South Asian cultures are merging into the Texas zeitgeist. The movie theater in Frisco shows films in Telegu, Tamil and Hindi, while at Tikka Taco in Irving, diners can get tacos stuffed with tandoori chicken, lamb or paneer tikka.

    Sometimes Indian politics spill into the Dallas suburbs. Scores of people joined protests this week outside Frisco’s City Hall on behalf of Christians in India who claim a Frisco-based group supports Hindu nationalists threatening their churches.

    On a more festive front, Hanuman Temple now collaborates with the City of Frisco for Holi, an annual Hindu festival also known as the Festival of Colors. Celebrants daub each other with vividly colored powders. The temple also organizes food donations, health fairs and other community services.

    “We don’t want to just be here and be isolated,” Tummala said.

    You can find a Diwali celebration in several Dallas suburbs around October or November. The biggest holiday of the year in India, the commemoration of light over darkness was celebrated by more than 15,000 people in Southlake’s town square. Police even wrote a script for officers doing security to explain its significance if anyone asked.

    “Five years ago, they wouldn’t have known what it was at all,” Shafi said.

    Southlake Mayor John Huffman, who spoke at the event dressed in traditional Indian clothing, believes close to a fifth of the crowd were non-Asians. He credits its success to the Southlake Foundation, a nonprofit started in 2019 by Kush Rao, who immigrated from India. The organization oversees cultural events and community service activities such as trash clean-up and free lunches for city staff.

    “I feel like they’re setting the bar in a lot of ways and saying, ‘We’re going to give back to the Public Works Department not because we’re getting anything in return but because we appreciate what they do for the city,’” Huffman said. “They have been very intentional about telling their fellow South Asians to get out and engage in the community.”

    Back in Frisco during Diwali, blocks of homes near Hanuman Temple twinkled with lights through the pouring rain. Hanuman Temple’s majestic pyramidal gateway glowed red. And dozens of families didn’t let the wet weather stop them from worshipping and chanting mantras to deities.

    Cricket fan Jarajapu, directing cars in the water-logged parking lot, wasn’t surprised so many came.

    “I have seen the transformation of Frisco city,” Jarajapu said. “It has become very vibrant with diversity, culture and especially a lot of Asians. I’m very proud to be living in Frisco.”

    ___

    Associated Press video journalist Noreen Nasir contributed to this story.

    ___

    Terry Tang is a member of The Associated Press’ Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter: @ttangAP

    ___

    Schneider reported from Orlando, Florida. Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter: @ MikeSchneiderAP

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Report: Executions continued decline but many ‘botched’

    Report: Executions continued decline but many ‘botched’

    [ad_1]

    HOUSTON (AP) — Public support and use of the death penalty in 2022 continued its more than two-decade decline in the U.S., and many of the executions that were carried out during the year were “botched” or highly problematic, an annual report on capital punishment says.

    There were 18 executions in the U.S. in 2022, the fewest in any pre-pandemic year since 1991. There were 11 executions last year. Outside of the pandemic years, the 20 death sentences handed out in 2022 were the fewest in any year in the U.S. in a half-century, according to the report by the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center.

    “All the indicators point to the continuing decline in capital punishment and the movement away from the death penalty is durable,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the nonprofit, which takes no position on capital punishment but has criticized the way states carry out executions.

    In the U.S., 37 states have abolished the death penalty or not carried out an execution in more than a decade. On Tuesday, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown commuted the sentences of all 17 of the state’s death row inmates to life in prison without parole. Oregon last executed a prisoner in 1997. There have been no federal executions since January 2021 following a historic use of capital punishment by the Trump administration. In July 2021, the Justice Department imposed a moratorium on federal executions.

    The report called 2022 the “Year of the Botched Execution” as seven of the 20 execution attempts in the U.S. were visibly problematic or took an inordinate amount of time. That prompted some states to put them on hold so processes and protocols could be reviewed.

    Significant problems were reported with all three of Arizona’s executions as corrections officers struggled to find suitable veins for IV lines to deliver the lethal injection.

    In Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey ordered a “top-to-bottom” review of the state’s capital punishment system last month after three failed lethal injections, including two in 2022 involving problems with intravenous lines used to administer the drugs.

    Other concerns with executions included a South Carolina judge’s ruling in September that called unconstitutional the state’s newly created execution firing squad, as well as its use of the electric chair. The state’s Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the issue next month.

    In April, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee halted lethal injections in his state because the drugs used in executions hadn’t been tested. The oversight had forced Lee to abruptly halt plans to execute inmate Oscar Smith, an hour before he was to die last April.

    Dunham said he believes ongoing issues with botched executions or reviews of execution protocols by states is helping to erode public support of capital punishment. Gallup polling shows public support of the death penalty has steadily dropped in the last 28 years, falling from 80% in 1994 to 55% this year.

    “There are very few states that are trying to carry out the death penalty. But they are acting in ways that … their conduct is undermining public confidence that states can be trusted with the death penalty,” Dunham said.

    While five of the 18 executions that took place in 2022 were in Texas, that is well below what the nation’s busiest capital punishment state has seen historically. In 2000, Texas executions reached a high of 40, according to this year’s annual report by the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

    Kristin Houlé Cuellar, the coalition’s executive director, said she believes Texas’ “era of excessive use of the death penalty is gone” as prosecutors will continue to instead use lengthy prison sentences to hold people accountable.

    Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University in New York, said she’s not surprised by the declining use and public support of capital punishment. She cites as reasons: more people learning about the various problems in carrying out executions, doubts about whether it deters crime and a growing number of exonerations of inmates.

    “Any sort of prediction about the future would suggest the death penalty is going to be limited to a few states. With time, there will be growing pressure in those states to abolish the death penalty,” Denno said.

    Dunham said he believes the number of botched executions has contributed significantly to the movement among lawmakers, particularly conservatives, to express doubts about the death penalty.

    In Oklahoma, GOP state Rep. Kevin McDugle, a self-described death-penalty supporter, became one of the strongest advocates for death row inmate Richard Glossip after concerns were raised about lost or destroyed evidence and police bias. Glossip’s execution was delayed last month.

    In Texas, GOP state Rep. Jeff Leach helped lead a bipartisan group of lawmakers who believe new evidence shows death row inmate Melissa Lucio didn’t fatally beat her daughter. Leach and some of the lawmakers visited Lucio on death row before her execution was delayed in April.

    In an interview with The Associated Press earlier this year, Leach said he hopes lawmakers can work to make sure “there’s no chance that we’re executing an innocent Texan.”

    “To say I’m wrestling with the very existence of the death penalty in Texas would be a dramatic understatement,” Leach said.

    Michael Benza, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said the shifting political environment around the death penalty has made it easier for policymakers to have meaningful discussions about capital punishment.

    “And they have trouble with it when they really do look at what is happening. I think politicians are wondering whether or not this is in fact the right thing to be doing,” Benza said.

    ___

    Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: twitter.com/juanlozano70

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • California approves roadmap for carbon neutrality by 2045

    California approves roadmap for carbon neutrality by 2045

    [ad_1]

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California air regulators voted unanimously Thursday to approve an ambitious plan to drastically cut reliance on fossil fuels by changing practices in the energy, transportation and agriculture sectors, but critics say it doesn’t go far enough to combat climate change.

    The plan sets out to achieve so-called carbon neutrality by 2045, meaning the state will remove as many carbon emissions from the atmosphere as it emits. It aims to do so in part by reducing fossil fuel demand by 86% within that time frame.

    California had previously set this carbon neutrality target, but Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation making it a mandate earlier this year. The Democrat has said drastic changes are needed to position California as a global climate leader.

    “We are making history here in California,” Newsom said in a statement Thursday.

    But the plan’s road to approval by the California Air Resources Board was not without criticism. Capturing large amounts of carbon and storing it underground is one of the most controversial elements of the proposal. Critics say it gives the state’s biggest emitters reason to not do enough on their part to mitigate climate change.

    In a meeting that lasted several hours, activists, residents and experts used their last chance to weigh in on the plan ahead of the board’s vote. Many said the latest version, while not perfect, was an improvement from earlier drafts, committing the state to do more to curb planet-warming emissions.

    Davina Hurt, a board member, said she was proud California is moving closer to its carbon neutrality goal.

    “I’m glad that this plan is bold and aggressive,” Hurt said.

    The plan does not commit the state to taking any particular actions but sets out a broad roadmap for how California can achieve its goals. Here are the highlights:

    RENEWABLE POWER

    The implementation of the plan hinges on the state’s ability to transition away from fossil fuels and rely more on renewable resources for energy. It calls for the state to cut liquid petroleum fuel demand by 94% by 2045, and quadruple solar and wind capacity along that same timeframe.

    Another goal would mean new residential and commercial buildings will be powered by electric appliances before the next decade.

    The calls for dramatically lowering reliance on oil and gas come as public officials continue to grapple with how to avoid blackouts when record-breaking heat waves push Californians to crank up their air conditioning.

    And the Western States Petroleum Association took issue with the plan’s timeline.

    “CARB’s latest draft of the Scoping Plan has acknowledged what dozens of studies have confirmed — that a complete phase-out of oil and gas is unrealistic,” said Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the group’s president, in a statement. “A plan that isn’t realistic isn’t really a plan at all.”

    At the beginning of Thursday’s meeting, California Air Resources Board Chair Liane Randolph touted the latest version of the plan as the most ambitious to date. It underwent changes after public comments earlier this year.

    “Ultimately, achieving carbon neutrality requires deploying all tools available to us to reduce emissions and store carbon,” Randolph said.

    TRANSPORTATION

    Officials hope a move away from gas-powered cars and trucks reduces greenhouse gas emissions while limiting the public health impact of chemicals these vehicles release.

    In a July letter to the air board, Newsom requested that the agency approve aggressive cuts to emissions from planes. This would accompany other reductions in the transportation sector as the state transitions to all zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035.

    The plan’s targets include having 20% of aviation fuel demand come from electric or hydrogen sources by 2045 and ensuring all medium-duty vehicles sold are zero-emission by 2040. The board has already passed a policy to ban the sale of new cars powered solely by gasoline in the state starting in 2035.

    CARBON CAPTURE

    The plan refers to carbon capture as a “necessary tool” to implement in the state alongside other strategies to mitigate climate change. It calls for the state to capture 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and store it underground by 2045.

    Connie Cho, an attorney for environmental justice group Communities for a Better Environment, called the plan “a huge step forward” to mitigate climate change and protect public health.

    “Our communities have been suffering from chronic disease and dying at disproportionate rates for far too long because of the legacy of environmental racism in this country,” Cho said.

    But Cho criticized its carbon capture targets, arguing they give a pathway for refineries to continue polluting as the state cuts emissions in other areas.

    AGRICULTURE

    One of the goals is to achieve a 66% reduction in methane emissions from the agriculture sector by 2045. Cattle are a significant source for releasing methane — a potent, planet-warming gas.

    The plan’s implementation would also mean less reliance by the agriculture sector on fossil fuels as an energy source.

    ___

    This story has been updated to correct the plan’s target for aviation fuel demand from electric or hydrogen sources. It is 20%, not 10%.

    ___

    Sophie Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on Twitter: @sophieadanna

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Tennis legend Becker freed from prison, returns to Germany

    Tennis legend Becker freed from prison, returns to Germany

    [ad_1]

    LONDON (AP) — German tennis legend Boris Becker has returned to Germany after serving eight months in prison in Britain, his lawyer said Thursday.

    The 55-year-old German, who has lived in Britain since 2012, was released on Thursday morning and traveled back to Germany shortly thereafter.

    Becker “has thus served his sentence and is not subject to any penal restrictions in Germany,” his lawyer, Christian-Oliver Moser, said in a statement. He did not give additional details about Becker’s location in Germany.

    The three-time Wimbledon champion ​​had been sentenced to 30 months in prison in April for illicitly transferring large amounts of money and hiding assets after he was declared bankrupt. He would normally have had to serve half of his sentence before being eligible for release, but was released early under a fast-track deportation program for foreign nationals.

    He had been convicted by London’s Southwark Crown Court on four charges under the Insolvency Act, including removal of property, concealing debt and two counts of failing to disclose estate.

    Becker rose to stardom in 1985 at the age of 17 when he became the first unseeded player to win the Wimbledon singles title.

    The former world number one was declared bankrupt in June 2017.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • US blizzard expected to impact millions in Rockies, Midwest

    US blizzard expected to impact millions in Rockies, Midwest

    [ad_1]

    SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — A massive winter storm blew toward the center of the U.S. on Monday, threatening millions of people with heavy snow, freezing rain and flooding.

    The National Weather Service warned that there would be “numerous, widespread, and impactful weather hazards in the heart of the country this week.” Across the Rockies and into the northern Plains and parts of the Midwest, people were warned to prepare for blizzard-like conditions. Those farther south in Texas and Louisiana could get heavy rains with flash flooding, hail and tornadoes by Tuesday. The storm will continue southeast into Florida later in the week, forecasters said.

    “It will be a busy week while this system moves across the country,” said Marc Chenard, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s headquarters in College Park, Maryland.

    Officials in western South Dakota told residents to brace for 6 inches (15 centimeters) or more of snow: “Get your shovels handy, get your groceries, and check other needed supplies. The roads will be hard to travel.”

    A swath of country stretching from Montana into western Nebraska and Colorado was under blizzard warnings Monday, and the National Weather Service said that as much as 2 feet (61 centimeters) of snow was possible in some areas of western South Dakota and northwestern Nebraska. Meanwhile, ice and sleet were expected in the eastern Great Plains.

    National Weather Service warned that up to about half an inch (2.5 centimeters) of ice could form and winds could gust up to 45 miles per hour (72 kilometers per hour) in parts of Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota. Power outages, tree damage, falling branches and hazardous travel conditions all threatened the region.

    “This is a ‘we are not kidding’ kind of storm,” the South Dakota Department of Public Safety said in a tweet urging people to stock up on essentials, then stay home once the storm hits.

    Thousands of students from Native American communities across Wyoming, Nebraska and the Dakotas were traveling to Rapid City, South Dakota, for this week’s Lakota Nation Invitational, a high school athletic event. Brian Brewer, one of the organizers, said he had urged schools and participants to travel early.

    “We told them with this storm coming — if you leave tomorrow, there’s a good chance you might not make it,” he said Monday.

    In northern Utah, a tour bus crashed Monday morning as snow and frigid temperatures blanketed the region. The bus flipped onto its side in Tremonton after the driver lost control while switching lanes, the Highway Patrol said in a statement. The Highway Patrol said 23 passengers were injured, including some seriously.

    The weather is part of the same system that dumped heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada over the weekend.

    In Northern California, most mountain highways had reopened Monday. Remaining warnings in Southern California mountains were expected to expire late Monday night, the National Weather Service said.

    With winter still more than a week away, it was the latest fall storm to bring significant precipitation to California, which is dealing with the impacts of years of drought that have spurred calls for water conservation.

    The UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab northwest of Lake Tahoe reported that the storm dropped 54.5 inches (138.5 centimeters) of snow.

    The Sierra snowpack, which on average is at its peak on April 1, is normally a significant source of water when it melts in the spring. Throughout the drought experts have cautioned about optimism over early season storms as climate change makes what were once average conditions rare.

    Last year, a powerful atmospheric river dumped huge amounts of rain on California in October and a wet stretch in December left parts of the Sierra Nevada buried in snow. Then the state experienced its driest January through April on record.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Sam Metz in Salt Lake City, Trisha Ahmed in Minneapolis and John Antczak in Los Angeles contributed reporting.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Scientists lower alert for Mauna Loa, say eruption could end

    Scientists lower alert for Mauna Loa, say eruption could end

    [ad_1]

    HONOLULU (AP) — Scientists lowered the alert level for the Mauna Loa volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island from a warning to a watch on Saturday and said the mountain’s first eruption in nearly 40 years may soon end.

    The U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said in a bulletin that the eruption on the mountain’s northeast rift zone was continuing, but lava output and volcanic gas emissions were “greatly reduced.”

    “High eruption rates will not resume based on past eruptive behavior and current behavior suggests that the eruption may end soon,” the observatory said. “However, an inflationary trend of Mauna Loa’s summit is accompanying the decreased activity and there is a small possibility that the eruption could continue at very low eruptive rates.”

    Meanwhile, it said, a lava flow front had “stagnated” nearly 2 miles from Saddle Road, the vital highway that residents and tourists alike use to travel between the city of Hilo on the east side of the island and coastal resorts to the west.

    Scientists said earlier this week that the road was no longer under imminent threat from the lava, allaying fears previously that it could be cut off.

    Mauna Loa began spewing molten rock Nov. 27 after being quiet for 38 years, drawing onlookers to take in the incandescent spectacle and setting some nerves on edge early on among people who’ve lived through destructive eruptions. For many Native Hawaiians, the phenomenon has a deep yet very personal cultural significance.

    The observatory said its scientists were continuing to monitor the volcano closely, and flight restrictions remained in place in the area up to 1,500 feet (457 meters) above ground level.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 3 dead in Louisiana as US storm spawns Southern tornadoes

    3 dead in Louisiana as US storm spawns Southern tornadoes

    [ad_1]

    KEITHVILLE, La. (AP) — A vast and volatile storm system ripping across the U.S. killed at least three people in Louisiana, spinning up tornadoes that battered the state from north to south, including the New Orleans area where memories of 2021′s Hurricane Ida and a tornado in March linger.

    Elsewhere, the huge system hurled blizzard-like conditions at the Great Plains.

    Several injuries were reported around Louisiana by authorities, and more than 40,000 power outages statewide as of Wednesday night.

    The punishing storms barreled eastward Wednesday after killing a mother and son in the northwestern part of the state a day earlier. The system spun off a suspected tornado that killed a woman Wednesday in southeast Louisiana’s St. Charles Parish and another that pummeled parts of New Orleans and neighboring Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes — including areas badly damaged by a March tornado.

    A tornado struck New Iberia, Louisiana, slightly injuring five people and smashing out windows of a multistory building at Iberia Medical Center, the hospital said. As night drew on, tornado threats eased in Mississippi, although some counties in Florida and Alabama remained under a severe weather threat.

    New Orleans emergency director Collin Arnold said business and residences in the city suffered significant wind damage, largely on the Mississippi River’s west bank. One home collapsed. Four people were injured there, he said, adding, “The last word we had is that they were stable.”

    Similar damage was reported nearby.

    “Several homes and businesses have suffered catastrophic damage,” the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office said in a statement from that large suburb west of New Orleans. Among the heavily damaged buildings was the sheriff’s office’s training academy building.

    In St. Bernard Parish — where the March twister caused devastation — Sheriff Jimmy Pohlman said the latest tornado damage covered a roughly 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) stretch. Parish President Guy McInnis said the damage was less than in the March tornado though numerous roofs were blown away or damaged.

    Authorities in St. Charles Parish, west of New Orleans, said a woman was found dead there after a suspected tornado on Wednesday struck the community of Killona along the Mississippi River, damaging homes. Eight people were taken to hospitals with injuries, they said.

    “She was outside the residence, so we don’t know exactly what happened,” St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne said of the woman killed. ”There was debris everywhere. She could have been struck. We don’t know for sure. But this was a horrific and a very violent tornado.”

    About 280 miles (450 kilometers) away in northern Louisiana, it took hours for authorities to find the bodies of a mother and child missing after a tornado swept away their mobile home Tuesday in Keithville, south of Shreveport.

    “You go to search a house and the house isn’t even there, so where do you search?” Gov. John Bel Edwards told reporters, noting the challenge faced by emergency responders as he toured a mile-long (1.6-kilometer) path of destruction in rural Keithville. He had issued an emergency declaration earlier in the day.

    The Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office said the body of 8-year-old Nikolus Little was found late Tuesday night in some woods and the body of his mother, Yoshiko A. Smith, 30, under storm debris early Wednesday.

    Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Sgt. Casey Jones said the boy’s father had gone for groceries before the storm. “He just went to go shopping for his family, came home and the house was gone,” said Jones.

    The storms battered Louisiana from north to south. In Union Parish, near the Arkansas line, Farmerville Mayor John Crow said a tornado Tuesday night badly damaged an apartment complex where 50 families lived, wiping out a neighboring trailer park with about 10 homes. “It happened quick,” Crow said Wednesday, adding about 30 homes also were damaged along nearby Lake D’Arbonne.

    A suspected tornado reported Wednesday in New Iberia in southwest Louisiana damaged several buildings of the New Iberia Medical Center, hospital officials said, with five people reporting minor injuries.

    In neighboring Mississippi’s Rankin County, a suspected tornado destroyed four large chicken houses, one containing 5,000 roosters, Sheriff Bryan Bailey said. Mobile homes at a park in Sharkey County, Mississppi, were reduced to shredded debris.

    The storm began its cross-country journey by dumping heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada. Damage followed Tuesday when thunderstorms from the storm swept through Texas. At least five people were injured In the Dallas suburb of Grapevine, police spokesperson Amanda McNew said.

    Forecasters now expect the vast system to hobble the upper Midwest with ice, rain and snow for days, and also move into the central Appalachians and Northeast. The National Weather Service issued a winter storm watch from Wednesday night through Friday afternoon, depending on the timing of the storm. Residents from West Virginia to Vermont were told to watch for a possible significant mix of snow, ice and sleet.

    “This system is notable for the fact that it’s going impact areas all the way from California to eventually the Northeast,” said meteorologist Frank Pereira with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland.

    In the Black Hills of western South Dakota, snow piled up to nearly 2 feet (60 centimeters) in some s(pts. “They shovel for hours on end,” said Vicki Weekly, who manages a historic hotel in the tourist and gambling city of Deadwood. where some visitors still ventured out to the casinos.

    A roughly 320-mile (520-kilometer) span of Interstate 90 in South Dakota was closed Wednesday, and state officials warned drivers there to stay off most highways.

    In northern Minnesota, wet, heavy snow left tree limbs sagging and made driving treacherous Wednesday. Weather Service meteorologist Ketzel Levens in Duluth said 6 to 8 inches (15-20 centimeters) of snow had accumulated in some areas.

    ___

    McGill reported from New Orleans. Associated Press writers Stephen Groves in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Jamie Stengle in Dallas; Ken Miller in Oklahoma City; Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas; Julie Walker in New York; Sam Metz in Salt Lake City; Trisha Ahmed in Minneapolis; Jesse Bedayn in Denver; Margery Beck in Omaha, Nebraska; and Robert Jablon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

    ___

    This story has been corrected to fix the spelling of Keithville.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • US scientists set to announce fusion energy breakthrough

    US scientists set to announce fusion energy breakthrough

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was set to announce a “major scientific breakthrough” Tuesday in the decades-long quest to harness fusion, the energy that powers the sun and stars.

    Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California for the first time produced more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it, something called net energy gain, according to one government official and one scientist familiar with the research. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the breakthrough ahead of the announcement.

    Granholm was scheduled to appear alongside Livermore researchers at a morning event in Washington. The Department of Energy declined to give details ahead of time. The news was first reported by the Financial Times.

    Proponents of fusion hope that it could one day produce nearly limitless, carbon-free energy, displacing fossil fuels and other traditional energy sources. Producing energy that powers homes and businesses from fusion is still decades away. But researchers said it was a significant step nonetheless.

    “It’s almost like it’s a starting gun going off,” said Professor Dennis Whyte, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a leader in fusion research. “We should be pushing towards making fusion energy systems available to tackle climate change and energy security.”

    Net energy gain has been an elusive goal because fusion happens at such high temperatures and pressures that it is incredibly difficult to control.

    Fusion works by pressing hydrogen atoms into each other with such force that they combine into helium, releasing enormous amounts of energy and heat. Unlike other nuclear reactions, it doesn’t create radioactive waste.

    Billions of dollars and decades of work have gone into fusion research that has produced exhilarating results — for fractions of a second. Previously, researchers at the National Ignition Facility, the division of Lawrence Livermore where the success took place, used 192 lasers and temperatures multiple times hotter than the center of the sun to create an extremely brief fusion reaction.

    The lasers focus an enormous amount of heat on a small metal can. The result is a superheated plasma environment where fusion may occur.

    Riccardo Betti, a professor at the University of Rochester and expert in laser fusion, said an announcement that net energy had been gained in a fusion reaction would be significant. But he said there’s a long road ahead before the result generates sustainable electricity.

    He likened the breakthrough to when humans first learned that refining oil into gasoline and igniting it could produce an explosion.

    “You still don’t have the engine and you still don’t have the tires,” Betti said. “You can’t say that you have a car.”

    The net energy gain achievement applied to the fusion reaction itself, not the total amount of power it took to operate the lasers and run the project. For fusion to be viable, it will need to produce significantly more power and for longer.

    It is incredibly difficult to control the physics of stars. Whyte said it has been challenging to reach this point because the fuel has to be hotter than the center of the sun. The fuel does not want to stay hot — it wants to leak out and get cold. Containing it is an incredible challenge, he said.

    Net energy gain isn’t a huge surprise from the California lab because of progress it had already made, according to Jeremy Chittenden, a professor at Imperial College in London specializing in plasma physics.

    “That doesn’t take away from the fact that this is a significant milestone,” he said.

    It takes enormous resources and effort to advance fusion research. One approach turns hydrogen into plasma, an electrically charged gas, which is then controlled by humongous magnets. This method is being explored in France in a collaboration among 35 countries called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor as well as by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a private company.

    Last year the teams working on those projects in two continents announced significant advancements in the vital magnets needed for their work

    ___

    Mathew Daly reported from Washington. Maddie Burakoff reported from New York, Michael Phillis from St. Louis and Jennifer McDermott from Providence, R.I.

    ___

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

    [ad_2]

    Source link