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  • Election conspiracists claim some races for local offices

    Election conspiracists claim some races for local offices

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    As voting experts cheered the losses of election conspiracy theorists in numerous high-profile races on Election Day, Paddy McGuire prepared to hand over his office to one of them.

    McGuire, the auditor of Mason County in western Washington, lost his reelection bid to Steve Duenkel, a Republican who has echoed former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Duenkel, who invited a prominent election conspiracist to the area and led a door-to-door effort to find voter fraud, defeated McGuire by 100 votes in the conservative-leaning county of 60,000.

    “There are all these stories about the election denier secretary of state candidates who lost in purple states,” said McGuire, referring to the state office that normally oversees voting. “But secretaries of state don’t count ballots. Those of us on the ground, whether we’re clerks or auditors or recorders, do.”

    Republicans who supported Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election lost bids for statewide offices that play key roles in overseeing voting in the six states that decided the last presidential election, as well as in races across the country.

    But an untold number won in local elections to control the positions that run on-the-ground election operations in counties, cities and townships across the country.

    “Without a doubt, election denial is alive and well, and this is a continuing threat,” said Joanna Lydgate of States United, a group highlighting the risk of election conspiracy theorists trying to take over election administration.

    Of the nine Republicans running for secretary of state who echoed Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election or supported his efforts to overturn its results, three won — all in Republican-dominated states.

    In Alabama, state Rep. Wes Allen isn’t even waiting to take office before making waves. Last week, he announced that once he becomes secretary of state he will withdraw from ERIC, a multistate database of voter registrations. The system is designed to notify states when voters need to be removed because they’ve relocated, but it’s become a target of election conspiracy theorists.

    Allen echoed those conspiracy theories during his campaign, but in a statement last week he instead said he was motivated by a desire to protect the privacy of Alabama voters. His call to exit ERIC drew a stark rebuke from the state’s outgoing secretary of state, John Merrill, a fellow Republican.

    “So, if Wes Allen plans to remove Alabama from its relationship with ERIC, how does he intend to maintain election security without access to the necessary data, legal authority, or capability to conduct proper voter list maintenance?” Merrill’s office said in a statement, referencing how ERIC flags when a voter has moved out of state and can be removed from Alabama’s rolls.

    In deeply conservative Wyoming, Republican Chuck Gray was the only candidate for secretary of state on the ballot. Once he won the GOP primary in August, his ascension was guaranteed.

    In Indiana, Diego Morales ousted the incumbent secretary of state, a fellow Republican, during the party’s nominating convention by echoing Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. He reined in his rhetoric during his successful general election campaign.

    Morales did not respond to a request for comment. He was the only one of 17 Republican election conspiracists in a group called the America First Secretary of State Coalition to win his general election race.

    The record is far murkier at the local level, where elections are actually run and ballots are counted.

    There are thousands of separate election offices in the U.S. In many states, elections are conducted by county offices overseen by clerks or auditors, though in some they are administered at the municipal level in cities or even townships.

    No organization tracks local election offices. The Democratic group Run for Something, alarmed at the prospect of election conspiracists occupying these posts, started an initiative to support candidates it dubbed “defenders of democracy” this year. It estimated 1,700 separate elections were being held either for posts to run elections, or for bodies such as county commissions that appoint election directors.

    Amanda Litman, co-founder of the organization, said the group was tracking 32 races where they supported candidates. Their candidate won in 17 races and lost in 12, while three have yet to be called. Most significantly, she said, they won eight races against election deniers, and lost only three.

    “It’s generally a good sign that when you’re able to make the stakes of the race about democracy, you win,” Litman said.

    Still, she added, it’s hard to track all the potential election conspiracy theorists who got into local office: “It’s a little bit unknowable.”

    Some prominent election conspiracy theorists did win local posts.

    In the Atlanta area, Bridget Thorne, who attended numerous meetings of the Fulton County Commission to talk about conspiracy theories revolving around the 2020 election, won a post on the commission. However, it’s dominated by Democrats, so she likely will have limited ability to bring pressure on the county’s elections department.

    In Washoe County, the swing area in Nevada that includes Reno, Republican Mike Clark won one of the five county commission seats. He told a local newspaper that “I don’t have any personal knowledge” of whether President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.

    And in Mason County, Duenkel spread conspiracy theories about local and national elections. He helped lead a group of volunteers who went door-to-door checking for voters who didn’t live where they were registered, and claimed they had found thousands. A local television station retraced their steps and found numerous errors by the group.

    Still, every Republican on the ballot won Mason County this election. McGuire said he called Duenkel to congratulate him and left him a voice mail, but never got a call back. Duenkel also did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

    “He got more votes than me and he won,” McGuire said. “That’s what an election professional does — respect the will of the voters and stand behind the results, whether one is happy about the outcome or not.”

    ___

    Learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections. And follow the AP’s election coverage of the 2022 elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

    ___

    Associated Press coverage of democracy receives support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Saudi prince’s new title key to dodging lawsuit over killing

    Saudi prince’s new title key to dodging lawsuit over killing

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — It raised eyebrows six weeks ago when Saudi Arabia’s aged king, Salman, named his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as prime minister. The kingdom’s laws designate the king as prime minister. King Salman had to declare a temporary exception to loan out the title, and at the same time made clear he retains key duties.

    But that move reaped dividends Thursday, when the Biden administration declared that Prince Mohammed’s standing as prime minister shielded him from a U.S. lawsuit over what the U.S. intelligence community says was his role in Saudi officials’ 2018 killing of a U.S.-based journalist. A judge will now decide whether Prince Mohammed has immunity.

    National Security Council spokesman John Kirby insisted Friday that the administration’s declaration of immunity for Saudi Arabia’s crown prince was purely a “legal determination” that “has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of the case itself.”

    Many experts in international law agreed with the administration — but only because of the king’s late September title boost for the crown prince, ahead of a scheduled U.S. decision.

    “It would have been just as remarkable for the United States to deny MBS’s head-of-state immunity after his appointment as Prime Minister as it would have been for the United States to recognize MBS’s head-of-state immunity before his appointment,” William S. Dodge, a professor at the University of California-Davis School of Law, wrote, using the prince’s initials.

    State Department spokesman Vedant Patel gave examples Friday of past instances of the U.S. recognizing immunity for heads of government or state — Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Narendra Modi of India, both in allegations of rights abuses.

    The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington by the fiancée of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi and by a D.C.-based rights group he founded. It accuses the crown prince and about 20 aides, officers and others of plotting and carrying out Khashoggi’s slaying at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

    The killing, condemned by Biden on the campaign trial in 2019 as “flat-out murder” that must have consequences for Saudi rulers, is at the core of a rift between strategic partners, the United States and Saudi Arabia.

    Before and immediately after taking office, Biden vowed to take a stand on Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, as part of a presidency that would be based on rights and values. But Biden has since offered a fist bump and other conciliatory gestures in hopes — disappointed so far — of persuading the crown prince to pump more oil for world markets.

    Biden’s administration argues that Saudi Arabia is too important to the global economy and to regional security to allow the United States to walk away from the decades-old partnership.

    But rights advocates, some senior Democratic lawmakers, and Khashoggi’s newspaper, The Washington Post, on Friday condemned the administration’s move.

    “Jamal died again today,” Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, tweeted.

    Fred Ryan, publisher of the Post, called it a “cynical, calculated effort” to manipulate the law and shield Prince Mohammed. Khashoggi wrote columns for the Post that in his last months criticized the crown prince’s rights abuses.

    “By going along with this scheme, President Biden is turning his back on fundamental principles of press freedom and equality,” Ryan wrote.

    Cengiz and Khashoggi’s rights group, Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, had argued that the crown prince’s late September title change was no more than a maneuver to escape U.S. courts, without legal standing or any change in authority or duties.

    Saudi Arabia has not commented publicly on the administration’s decision. Spokespeople with the Saudi Embassy and Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Friday.

    Saudi Arabia blames what it says were “rogue” officials for Khashoggi’s killing. It says the prince played no part.

    Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, as opposed to a constitutional one like the United Kingdom, where a prime minister rather than king or queen governs.

    “Pretty pathetic,” Sarah Leah Whitson, head of Khashoggi’s rights group, said Friday of the title change.

    “If anything, it just demonstrated how afraid Mohammed bin Salman was and has been of our lawsuit and actual accountability and actual discovery of his crimes,” Whitson said.

    The Biden administration appeared to dismiss her group’s argument that Prince Mohammed’s recent title change ran counter to Saudi Arabia’s governing law and should be disregarded.

    King Salman has continued making appointments and presiding over meetings of his council since the title change.

    But Prince Mohammed for years has been a key decision-maker and actor in the kingdom, including representing the king abroad.

    Some Western news outlets had presented the temporary transfer of the prime minister title as King Salman — who is in his late 80s — devolving responsibility to Prince Mohammed, who is 37.

    A federal judge had given the U.S. until Thursday to offer an opinion, or not, on the claim by the crown prince that his standing shields him from U.S. courts.

    Rights advocates had hoped up to the moment of filing that the administration would stay silent, offering no opinion on Prince Mohammed’s immunity either way.

    Sovereign immunity, a concept rooted in international law, holds that states and their officials are protected from some legal proceedings in other foreign states’ courts.

    Prior criminal and civil cases brought against foreign governments and leaders in which the U.S. has not intervened have generally involved countries with which the U.S. has no diplomatic relations or does not recognize their heads of state or government as legitimate.

    Cases brought against Iran and North Korea seeking damages for deaths or injuries to American citizens are two prominent examples of instances where the executive branch has not weighed in with an opinion about sovereign immunity.

    By contrast, the United States has full diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. The State Department stressed Thursday that honoring the principle for other governments’ leaders helps ensure that courts in other countries don’t seek to haul U.S. presidents before them to answer to lawsuits there.

    Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, said the U.S. decision had “absolutely nothing” to do with “tense” U.S.-Saudi relations over Saudi-led oil production cuts, and other matters.

    Biden has been “very, very vocal” about the “brutal, barbaric murder of Khashoggi,” Kirby said.

    But some of Biden’s fellow Democrats in Congress expressed disappointment at the administration’s move.

    “Is the Administration casting aside its confidence in its own intelligence community’s judgment?” Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, said in a statement. “If the friends and family of Khashoggi are denied a path to accountability in the American court system, where in the world can they go?”

    Whitson, the official for Khashoggi’s rights group, said the lawsuit would continue against the others named in the lawsuit.

    __

    Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.

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  • In Pelosi, women admire a leader with calm, cool confidence

    In Pelosi, women admire a leader with calm, cool confidence

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    PHILADELPHIA (AP) — As they watched House Speaker Nancy Pelosi step forward to wrangle an unruly Congress over the years or stare down a bombastic president, many women across the country saw a version of the calm, confident leader they hoped to be themselves.

    Pelosi, in rooms full of powerful men, was tenacious, tactical, tough. All while being a devoted mother and grandmother at home. And rarely finding the need to raise her voice.

    “The image of her coming out in the red coat was just always amusing to me because it just kind of personified how badass she is,” said Gina Lind, 61, of Phoenix, a marketing director for an airline. “It completely represented a woman in quiet control.”

    After her announcement this week that she would step down from Democratic leadership after two decades, many people reposted that meme of Pelosi confidently striding out of the Trump White House in sunglasses and a long red coat following a tense meeting. The moment was a reminder of how Pelosi, the first woman to become House speaker, redefined outdated expectations about the role of women in the highest levels of government.

    Fans of Pelosi, a California Democrat, have taped the image to their refrigerator, downloaded it as a screensaver or emblazoned it on coffee mugs. They likewise savor the photos of her confronting then-President Donald Trump in the White House Cabinet Room or ripping up his final State of the Union speech.

    “When I look at that (Cabinet Room) picture, I think, ‘Okay, stand up and say what you have to say,’” said Kelly Haggerty, 49, an engineer for the city of Syracuse, New York, who works on construction projects and often finds herself, like Pelosi, squaring off in a room full of men.

    “I mean, these guys across the table from me are not the president of the United States, but it’s not fun to always be the only woman in the room,” said Haggerty, who called the photo inspiring. “I did put it on my refrigerator because I have two teenage girls, and I want them to be the same way. I don’t want them to ever stand down,” she said.

    Like many other women of her generation, Pelosi did not formally start her career until she was in her late 40s and her five children were mostly grown. But her father had been in politics, serving first as the mayor of Baltimore and then in Congress. And Pelosi, in her leadership farewell speech from the House floor on Thursday, recalled being awed by the sight of the Capitol building at the age of 6.

    “Make no mistake, though, she’s been in politics since she was born, whether she was running for office or not,” said Rep. Karen Bass, a fellow California Democrat who is now the incoming mayor of Los Angeles.

    In her view, Pelosi embraces her power without being “heavy-handed about it.” She credits Pelosi with standing firm during the tumultuous Trump years.

    “Women do lead differently, and have to leverage their power in a way that is just different, and I think she has perfected that,” she said. “(But) if anybody has to go up against her, good luck.”

    And that female strength and tenacity are what angers people about Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and other female leaders, some women believe.

    “People expect us to be nice all the time. If and when we don’t behave in that particular ‘box,’ people can get pretty emotional and angry about that,” said Maryland state Sen. Sarah Elfreth, 34, a Democrat.

    “I think she took an undue amount of criticism for doing the job the same way and often times better than men had done that job,” Elfreth said. “And in doing so she paves the way for other women in elected office to be just as tough and just as resilient.”

    If the country has yet to see a female president, the younger generations have at least seen Pelosi and a growing number of other women in Congress working beside her. When Pelosi first came to Congress in 1987, she had only two dozen female colleagues among the 535 lawmakers. This year, there are 147 women in the House and Senate — and a growing number of female governors.

    “I think we take for granted how that (Pelosi’s leadership) has transformed what it means to be a woman in power, maybe what it means to be a woman executive, and I think that in years to come we’ll be especially grateful to her for breaking that glass ceiling,” said Cecilia Ritacco, a 22-year-old graduate student in government studies at Georgetown University.

    ___ Follow Maryclaire Dale on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Maryclairedale

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  • Shake it off? Parents come up short for Taylor Swift tickets

    Shake it off? Parents come up short for Taylor Swift tickets

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    NEW YORK (AP) — They were supposed to be birthday presents. They were supposed to be Christmas presents. They were supposed to be the most special of special treats for young fans of Taylor Swift.

    Instead, for many parents, the hours-long Ticketmaster debacle they endured Tuesday trying to score concert seats left them empty-handed and frustrated — and their kids disappointed.

    “I was trying to buy tickets so my best friend and I could take our pre-teens to their first concert and waited literally all day to finally get in to buy tickets and not one ticket was left,” Micah Woods, who lives near Little Rock, Arkansas, said Wednesday.

    Others who did battle on computers eventually scored, some after being kicked out of the online queue numerous times or struggling with error messages.

    “I was pretty worn out afterwards. Just the stress of it,” said Natasha Mitchner in Dayton, Ohio. “But it’s worth it. She puts on a good show.”

    After nearly six hours in the queue, Mitchner madly scooped up tickets for herself and her two daughters, ages 17 and 20. She sprung for a bonus fourth ticket to be used by her husband or a friend of the kids. It will be the fourth time the Swiftie family has seen her live.

    “My 20-year-old said even if you don’t get them, I still love you,” Mitchner said, laughing. “It’s kind of our thing to do together. I would have been upset. I just tried to be calm.”

    Emails to Ticketmaster spokeswomen were not immediately returned Wednesday. In a tweet Tuesday, the company called demand “historically unprecedented” with millions of people trying to buy.

    Fresh off one of the biggest album launches of her career, Swift announced earlier this month she was going on a new U.S. stadium tour starting next year, with international dates to follow. Fans who received a special code after registering had exclusive access to buy tickets Wednesday, ahead of Friday sales for the rest of the public.

    The 52-date Eras Tour kicks off March 17 in Glendale, Arizona, and wraps up with five shows in Los Angeles ending Aug. 9. It’s Swift’s first tour since 2018.

    “It was sad. It was so sad,” said Vivica Williams in Clarksville, Maryland.

    She lost out trying for her 14-year-old daughter and a friend. The girls were in gym class when tickets went on sale so mom was tasked with the job. The Philadelphia show was going to be a birthday present.

    “They were so excited. I tried to get on and I tried to get on it. It crashes and it crashes and it crashes and it crashes. And so finally, eventually I get in the queue, and I’m like yay! Then, oh, there are 2,000 plus people ahead of you in line,” Williams said.

    She was kicked off the queue four or five times, having logged on about 9:30 a.m., which was 30 minutes ahead of the sale.

    “I never got past 2,000 plus people in line. So finally around 2:30 I gave up. I’m like, forget this, I’m an adult person. I can’t sit here all day with Taylor Swift on my phone,” Williams said. “I was complaining to my daughter the whole time. Like, this is for the birds.”

    With another chance at tickets Friday, she has already informed the young ones: “It’s on you now, girls.”

    And with tickets for the pre-sale up for grabs in the middle of a school day, Williams wasn’t the only parent left with the job.

    Jonathan Hickman in Knoxville, Tennessee, managed to snag a pair of tickets for his 15-year-old daughter after performing, as his wife Katie Allison described, “some crazy crashing Ticketmaster” magic all day long.

    The tickets, for a Nashville show, were supposed to be a Christmas present — and their daughter’s first concert without parents — but they went ahead and told her now.

    “If you’ve ever wondered what the teenage girls screaming with unbelievable excitement for the Beatles sounded like, I can now describe the sound to you in what I’m sure is a pretty accurate way,” Allison wrote on Facebook. “We still aren’t sure how Jon did this. We’re kind of in shock. But boy is it fun seeing your daughter THAT excited about music.”

    ___

    Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/litalie

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  • Robert Clary, last of the ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ stars, dies at 96

    Robert Clary, last of the ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ stars, dies at 96

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    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Robert Clary, a French-born survivor of Nazi concentration camps during World War II who played a feisty prisoner of war in the improbable 1960s sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes,” has died. He was 96.

    Clary died Wednesday of natural causes at his home in the Los Angeles area, niece Brenda Hancock said Thursday.

    “He never let those horrors defeat him,” Hancock said of Clary’s wartime experience as a youth. “He never let them take the joy out of his life. He tried to spread that joy to others through his singing and his dancing and his painting.”

    When he recounted his life to students, he told them, “Don’t ever hate,” Hancock said. “He didn’t let hate overcome the beauty in this world.”

    “Hogan’s Heroes,” in which Allied soldiers in a POW camp bested their clownish German army captors with espionage schemes, played the war strictly for laughs during its 1965-71 run. The 5-foot-1 Clary sported a beret and a sardonic smile as Cpl. Louis LeBeau.

    Clary was the last surviving original star of the sitcom that included Bob Crane, Richard Dawson, Larry Hovis and Ivan Dixon as the prisoners. Werner Klemperer and John Banner, who played their captors, both were European Jews who fled Nazi persecution before the war.

    Clary began his career as a nightclub singer and appeared on stage in musicals including “Irma La Douce” and “Cabaret.” After “Hogan’s Heroes,” Clary’s TV work included the soap operas “The Young and the Restless,” “Days of Our Lives” and “The Bold and the Beautiful.”

    He considered musical theater the highlight of his career. “I loved to go to the theater at quarter of 8, put the stage makeup on and entertain,” he said in a 2014 interview.

    He remained publicly silent about his wartime experience until 1980 when, Clary said, he was provoked to speak out by those who denied or diminished the orchestrated effort by Nazi Germany to exterminate Jews.

    A documentary about Clary’s childhood and years of horror at Nazi hands, “Robert Clary, A5714: A Memoir of Liberation,” was released in 1985. The forearms of concentration camp prisoners were tattooed with identification numbers, with A5714 to be Clary’s lifelong mark.

    “They write books and articles in magazines denying the Holocaust, making a mockery of the 6 million Jews — including a million and a half children — who died in the gas chambers and ovens,” he told The Associated Press in a 1985 interview.

    Twelve of his immediate family members, his parents and 10 siblings, were killed under the Nazis, Clary wrote in a biography posted on his website.

    In 1997, he was among dozens of Holocaust survivors whose portraits and stories were included in “The Triumphant Spirit,” a book by photographer Nick Del Calzo.

    “I beg the next generation not to do what people have done for centuries — hate others because of their skin, shape of their eyes, or religious preference,” Clary said in an interview at the time.

    Retired from acting, Clary remained busy with his family, friends and his painting. His memoir, “From the Holocaust to Hogan’s Heroes: The Autobiography of Robert Clary,” was published in 2001.

    “One Of The Lucky Ones,” a biography of one of Clary’s older sisters, Nicole Holland, was written by Hancock, her daughter. Holland, who worked with the French Resistance against Germany, survived the war, as did another sister. Hancock’s second book, “Talent Luck Courage,” recounts Clary and Holland’s lives and their impact.

    Clary was born Robert Widerman in Paris in March 1926, the youngest of 14 children in the Jewish family. He was 16 when he and most of his family were taken by the Nazis.

    In the documentary, Clary recalled a happy childhood until he and his family was forced from their Paris apartment and put into a crowded cattle car that carried them to concentration camps.

    “Nobody knew where we were going,” Clary said. “We were not human beings anymore.”

    After 31 months in captivity in several concentration camps, he was liberated from the Buchenwald death camp by American troops. His youth and ability to work kept him alive, Clary said.

    Returning to Paris and reunited with his two sisters, Clary worked as a singer and recorded songs that became popular in America.

    After coming to the United States in 1949, he moved from club dates and recording to Broadway musicals, including “New Faces of 1952,” and then to movies. He appeared in films including 1952’s “Thief of Damascus,” “A New Kind of Love” in 1963 and “The Hindenburg” in 1975.

    In recent years, Clary recorded jazz versions of songs by Ira Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim and other greats, said his nephew Brian Gari, a songwriter who worked on the CDs with Clary.

    Clary was proud of the results, Gari said, and thrilled by a complimentary letter he received from Sondheim. “He hung that on the kitchen wall,” Gari said.

    Clary didn’t feel uneasy about the comedy on “Hogan’s Heroes” despite the tragedy of his family’s devastating war experience.

    “It was completely different. I know they (POWs) had a terrible life, but compared to concentration camps and gas chambers it was like a holiday.”

    Clary married Natalie Cantor, the daughter of singer-actor Eddie Cantor, in 1965. She died in 1997.

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  • Smaller food cos. get set for a high-priced holiday season

    Smaller food cos. get set for a high-priced holiday season

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Holiday celebrants in Hilo, Hawaii, might notice something different about the traditional Yule Log cake from the Short ’N Sweet bakery this year.

    Maria Short typically makes her popular $35 bûche de Noël with two logs combined to look like a branch. This year, thanks to soaring prices for eggs and butter and other items, she’s downsizing to one straight Yule log.

    “It’s the same price, but smaller,” she said. “That cuts down on size and labor.”

    Higher prices are hitting everyone this holiday, but food vendors are seeing some of the biggest increases. Small businesses that count on food-centric holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas are bracing for a difficult season.

    At the wholesale level, egg prices are more than triple what they were a year ago, milk prices are up 34% and butter is up 70%, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Businesses are also paying more for everything from packages to labor.

    Many owners are raising prices to offset the higher costs. But raising prices too much risks driving away the crucial holiday shopper. So, businesses are adapting: adjusting the way they make products, changing gift basket components and adding free gifts instead of giving discounts, among other steps.

    Maria Short says that even for Hawaii, where the cost of living is among the highest of any U.S. state, the price increases are “drastic.”

    For example, she says, the Short N Sweet Bakery is paying $123 for a case of eggs that cost $42 in October last year. A case of butter that was $91 in October ago; it’s $138 this year.

    Among the ways Short is cutting costs, she’ll use a generic box decorated with stickers instead of using a customized box for her desserts. And she ordered a cookie printer rather than having bakers hand-pipe frosting, to save on labor costs.

    Sarah Pounders, who co-owns Nashville-based Made in TN, a retailer of locally made food and gifts, says the local vendors who make the items she sells are facing higher prices. The cost of butter needed to make cookies is five times the price from a year ago and cardboard packaging is double.

    Made in TN has raised some prices and is selling other items for less profit. Customers are already paying more for things like gas, clothing and cars, as well as services like eating out and travel, so they’re not as quick to spend as they might have been in prior years. They’re noticing the price increases, she said.

    “If bread is up 50 cents you will still buy bread,” Pounders said. “But if it’s an impulse buy or luxury specialty item — if chocolate-covered cookies are up $1 — you might think twice.”

    Price increases aren’t an option for her popular gift basket business. Corporations often have a $50 cap and events at hotels like weddings can have a $20 sweet spot. So, Pounders has made adjustments. In some cases, she has replaced a $20 bag of coffee, which is up $3, with less expensive hot chocolate. Or she puts one less chocolate bar in the basket.

    She’s also buying more items that could sell throughout the year and less seasonal inventory like peppermint bark and hot chocolate on a stick.

    “Every year is a guess, and the economy makes it even more volatile,” she said.

    Eric Ludy, co-founder of Cheese Brothers, an online purveyor of Wisconsin cheese and gift baskets, faces a tricky task this holiday season as he tries to offset higher costs for packaging, labor — and cheese. Half of his business comes in the weeks between Black Friday and Christmas.

    Cheese Brothers has nominally raised prices for their cheese – a block of cheddar will cost customers $7.50 instead of $7, for example. Ludy says he’ll also rely less on discounts this year and more on gifts and other giveaways.

    A bit of a gamble that Ludy is taking is upping the spending limit for free shipping to $70 from $59.

    “People buy enough to get free shipping, it’s a huge motivator,” he said. He hopes raising the shipping price could push the average order up to $70. But it could also stop people from clicking the “Buy” button.

    “We might start to see people push back and not buy as much,” he said. “It’s a delicate balance.”

    Americans eat an estimated 40 million turkeys during the holidays, according to industry group The National Turkey Federation. But turkey purveyors are facing a double whammy this Thanksgiving: higher prices plus an avian flu epidemic that is shaping up to be one of the worst in history.

    Kevin Smith, owner of Beast and Cleaver, a butcher shop in Seattle, Washington, gets his turkeys from small, local farms. He says he’s paying $6 a pound for turkey this year, up from $3.80 to $4.20 last year. In addition, he only plans to sell 150 turkeys this year, down from 250 last year, due to shortages caused by the avian flu.

    Still, Smith doesn’t plan to charge more for turkey than he did last year: $9 a pound. He says he has a “solid base of customers” willing to pay for more local, sustainable turkeys, but there’s a limit.

    “We don’t want people to have to pay $12 a pound for turkey,” he said.

    He’s raising the price of other items, like ground sausage and pates, to offset the higher costs of poultry. And while the rush of panic-buying during the pandemic has subsided, he’s still expecting a good holiday season.

    “We’re still very busy,” he said. “It’s just a more stable busy.”

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  • Rent stabilization measures win in US midterm election

    Rent stabilization measures win in US midterm election

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    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Ballot measures in the U.S. to build more affordable housing and protect tenants from soaring rent increases were plentiful and fared well in last week’s midterm elections, a sign of growing angst over record high rents exacerbated by inflation and a dearth of homes.

    Voters approved capping rent increases at below inflation in three U.S. cities: Portland, Maine, and Richmond and Santa Monica in California. Another measure was leading in the vote count in Pasadena outside of Los Angeles. In Florida, voters in Orange County, which includes Orlando, overwhelmingly passed a rent stabilization measure but a court ruling means it’s unlikely to go into force.

    There were also dozens of proposals on the Nov. 8 ballot raising money for and authorizing construction of affordable housing, said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Many passed.

    “Housing is a winning campaign issue. It’s one that voters show up for and it’s one that should cause policymakers at all levels to act,” said Yentel, adding that even a loss can be a win.

    “The act of organizing itself builds strength, it builds power, and it builds connections and it builds momentum,” she said.

    Calls for more affordable homes and policies to keep tenants housed have been growing as homelessness increases even in places outside coastal urban centers such as San Francisco and Los Angeles. Moreover, teachers, police and other public servants say they cannot afford to live in the places where they work, resulting in nightmare commutes and staffing shortages.

    Backers say rent control policies are needed to curb sharp increases that put tenants at risk of eviction. They say protections are especially needed now as more corporations snap up rental housing for profit. As of 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau found businesses owned nearly half of rental units.

    “The market is out of whack, the government needs to step in and regulate it so there can be stability,” said Leah Simon-Weisberg, a tenants rights attorney and chair of the rent board in Berkeley, California.

    Opponents say rent control increases costs for landlords, the majority of whom are mom-and-pop operations with a handful of units each. Restricting rents will spur disinvestment in rental stock and discourage construction of affordable housing.

    “Decades of empirical research have shown this policy does not help the underlying cause of the housing shortage that we have now. If anything, it makes the housing challenge more acute,” said Ben Harrold, public policy manager at the National Apartment Association.

    Most states preempt cities and counties from enacting rent stabilization, the result of lobbying by the real estate industry in the 1970s. Still, in cities accustomed to rent regulation voters approved stronger rent caps and more tenant protections.

    The California cities of Richmond and Santa Monica easily approved measures to tighten existing rent increase maximums to 3%, significantly less than the state cap of 10%. In Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco, voters expanded eviction protections for tenants.

    In Portland, Maine, 55% of voters approved a measure to slim down an existing rent cap, from 100% of the consumer price index to 70%. The proposal also dictates a host of other tenant protections, such as limiting security deposits to one month’s rent and requiring 90 days notice for a rent increase or lease termination.

    A ballot measure in Pasadena to cap annual rent increases at 75% of the consumer price index had more than 52% of the vote late Tuesday, and the campaign declared victory. The campaign’s finance coordinator, Ryan Bell, said organizers went all out to reach voters but also, the timing was right.

    “The pandemic really made it clear that people who are renting their housing are insecure by definition. Their housing could be taken away from them in some cities for no cause and a massive rent increase is functionally an eviction,” he said. “There’s just more and more stories.”

    Meanwhile, the rent cap overwhelmingly approved by voters in Orange County, Florida, is on hold. A court ruled it didn’t meet what it acknowledged was an “extremely high bar” set by a state law that requires a housing emergency be identified before a rent cap can be put in place.

    Nearly 60% of voters approved the measure after rents that jumped 25% between 2020 and 2021 and another double-digit increase this year. The Board of County Commissioners in Orange was scheduled to meet Thursday to decide whether to appeal.

    Tenant advocates and landlords do agree on the need for more affordable housing, and cities and counties in Arizona, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas and Ohio were among those that approved bond measures for more units, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

    In Colorado, voters approved a sweeping measure to set aside roughly $300 million a year for programs that curb homelessness and promote affordable housing. But in Denver, where Zillow data shows median rental prices jumped $600 in two years, 58% of voters rejected a $12 million proposal to expand free legal counsel for all tenants facing eviction.

    The eviction fund would have been financed by a $75 annual fee on landlords.

    For Drew Hamrick, vice president of government affairs for the Apartment Association of Metro Denver, the opposing argument “that resonated the most was that this $12 million tax was going to end up being paid for by the consumer regardless of what political outlook you have.”

    ——

    Michael Casey in Boston, Patrick Whittle in Portland, Maine, and Jesse Bedayn in Denver contributed.

    ___

    Bedayn 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.

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  • G-20 summit casts spotlight on Bali’s tourism revival

    G-20 summit casts spotlight on Bali’s tourism revival

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    NUSA DUA, Indonesia (AP) — Bali wants the world to know it’s back.

    Dozens of world leaders and other dignitaries are traveling to the Indonesian island for the G-20 summit, drawing a welcome spotlight on the revival of the tropical destination’s vital tourism sector.

    Tourism is the main source of income on this idyllic “island of the gods,” which is renowned for its tropical beaches, terraced rice paddies, mystical temples and colorful spiritual offerings.

    The pandemic hit Bali harder than most places in Indonesia.

    Before the pandemic, 6.2 million foreigners arrived in Bali each year. Its lively tourism scene — fueled by hard-partying clubgoers, chilled surfers and spiritual bliss-seekers alike — faded after the first case of COVID-19 was found in Indonesia in March 2020. Restaurants and resorts shut and many workers returned to their villages to try to get by.

    Foreign tourist arrivals dropped to only 1 million in 2020, mostly in the first few months of the year, and then to a few dozen in 2021, according to government data. More than 92,000 people employed in tourism lost their jobs and the average occupancy rate of Bali hotels fell below 20%.

    The island’s economy contracted 9.3% in 2020 from the year before and shrank further in 2021.

    “The coronavirus outbreak has hammered the local economy horribly,” said Dewa Made Indra, regional secretary of Bali province. “Bali is the region with the most severe economic contraction.”

    The island is home to more than 4 million people, who are mainly Hindu in the mostly Muslim archipelago nation.

    After closing to all visitors early in the pandemic, Bali reopened to Indonesians from other parts of the country in mid-2020. That helped, but then a surge of cases in July 2021 again emptied the island’s normally bustling beaches and streets. Authorities restricted public activities, closed the airport and shuttered all shops, bars, sit-down restaurants, tourist attractions and many other places on the island.

    Monkeys deprived of their preferred food source — bananas, peanuts and other goodies given to them by tourists — took to raiding villagers’ homes in their search for something tasty.

    The island reopened to domestic travelers a month later, in August, but in all of 2021 only 51 foreign tourists visited.

    Things are looking much better now. Shops and restaurants in places like Nusa Dua, a resort area where the G-20 meeting is being held, and in other towns like Sanur and Kuta have reopened, though business is slow and many businesses and hotels are still closed or have scaled back operations.

    The reopening of Bali’s airport to international flights and now the thousands coming for the G-20 summit and other related events have raised hopes for a stronger turnaround, Dewa said.

    More than 1.5 million foreign tourists and 3.1 million domestic travelers had visited Bali as of October this year.

    Embracing a push toward more sustainable models of tourism, Bali has rolled out a digital nomad visa program, called the “second home visa” and due to take effect in December. It’s also among 20 destinations Airbnb recently announced it was partnering with for remote work, also including places in the Caribbean and the Canary Islands.

    The recovery will likely take time, even if COVID-19 is kept at bay.

    Gede Wirata, who had to lay off most of the 4,000 people working in his hotels, restaurants, clubs and a cruise ship during the worst of the pandemic, found that when it came time to rehire them many had found jobs overseas or in other travel businesses.

    The G-20 is a welcome boost. “This is an opportunity for us to rise again from the collapse,” he said.

    There’s a way to go.

    “The situation has not yet fully recovered, but whatever the case, life has to go on,” said Wayan Willy, who runs a tourist agency in Bali with some friends. Before the pandemic, most of their clients were from overseas. Now it’s mostly domestic tourists. But even those are few and far between.

    Bali has suffered greatly in the past. At times, the island’s majestic volcanos have rumbled to life, at times erupting or belching ash.

    The dark cloud of the suicide bombings in Bali’s beach town of Kuta that killed 202 mostly foreign tourists in 2002 lingered for years, devastating tourism on the island usually known for its peace and tranquility.

    Recent torrential rains brought floods and landslides in some areas, adding to the burdens for communities working to rebuild their tourism businesses.

    When the situation started to improve, Yuliani Djajanegara, who runs a business making traditional beauty items like massage oils, natural soaps and aromatherapy products under the brand name Bali Tangi, got back to work.

    She had closed her factory in 2020 when orders from hotels, spas and salons in the U.S., Europe, Russia and the Maldives dried up, taking orders for her products from more than 1,000 kilograms (1 ton) to almost nothing.

    So far, Djajanegara has rehired 15 of the 60 workers she had been obliged to lay off during the dark days of the pandemic.

    She’s hopeful, but cautious.

    “Tourism in Bali is like a sand castle,” Djajanegara said. “It is beautiful, but it can be washed away by the waves.”

    ___

    AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.

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  • Virginia students were prepared for shooting, not aftermath

    Virginia students were prepared for shooting, not aftermath

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    CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Students huddled inside laboratory closets and darkened dorm rooms across the University of Virginia while others moved far away from library windows and barricaded the doors of its stately academic buildings after an ominous warning flashed on their screens: “RUN. HIDE. FIGHT.”

    Responding to the immediate threat of an on-campus shooting was a moment they had prepared for since their first years of elementary school. But dealing with the emotional trauma of an attack that killed three members of the school’s football team late Sunday left students shaken and grasping to understand.

    “This will probably affect our campus for a very, very long time,” said Shannon Lake, a third-year student from Crozet, Virginia.

    More on the U.Va. shootings

    For 12 hours, she hid with friends and other students, much of that time in a storage closet, while authorities searched into Monday morning for the suspect before he was taken into custody.

    When Lake and the others heard someone might be right outside the business school building, they all decided to go into the closet, turn off the lights and barricade the door.

    “That was probably the most terrifying moment because it became more real to us, and reminded us of those practice school lockdowns as children. And it was just kind of a surreal moment where, you know, I don’t think any of us were really processing what was going on,” she said.

    Police charged 22-year-old student Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. with three counts of second-degree murder, saying the three victims were killed just after 10:15 p.m. as a charter bus full of students returned from seeing a play in Washington. Two other students were wounded.

    University President Jim Ryan said authorities did not have a “full understanding” of the motive or circumstances surrounding the shooting.

    Police conducted a building-by-building search of the campus while students sheltered in place before the lockdown order was lifted late Monday morning.

    Charlotte Goeb, a student who lives in an apartment about a half-mile (800 meters) away from the shooting scene, immediately checked her doors and shut off the lights after getting an alert from the school.

    “I’m having a hard time coming to terms that this was happening,” she said. “Even though you spend all of your upbringing knowing this can happen.”

    Ellie Wilkie, a fourth-year student, was about to leave her room on the university’s prestigious, historic Lawn at the center of campus when her group texts with friends began exploding with word of the shooting. But she didn’t barricade herself in right away.

    “I think our generation has been so habituated to these being drills and this being commonplace that I didn’t even think it was all that serious until I got an email that said, ‘Run. Hide. Fight,’ all caps,” she said.

    Wilkie moved a large trunk she uses for storage in front of the door and put her mattress on top of that. She turned off the lights, unplugged anything that might make noise, put her phone on do-not-disturb mode, got under the covers of her top bunk and texted her mom, who called back, terrified.

    She picked up but told her mom: “I have to get off the phone now. I can’t be making noise in here.”

    University Police Chief Timothy Longo Sr. said the suspect had once been on the football team, but he had not been part of the team for at least a year. The UVA football website listed Jones as a team member during the 2018 season and said he did not play in any games.

    It was not immediately clear whether Jones had an attorney or when he would make his first court appearance.

    Hours after Jones was arrested, first-year head football coach Tony Elliott sat alone outside the athletic building used by the team, at times with his head in his hands. He said the victims “were all good kids.”

    Elizabeth Paul was working at a desktop computer in the Clemons library when she got a call from her mom about the shooting. She thought it was probably something minor until the computer she was using lit up with a warning about an active shooter.

    She spent about 12 hours huddled with several others underneath windows in the library, hoping that if gunfire did erupt, they would be out of sight. She spent most of the night on the phone with her mom.

    “Not even talking to her the whole time necessarily, but she wanted the line to be on so that if I needed something she was there,” Paul said.

    Em Gunter, a second-year anthropology student, heard three gunshots and then three more while she was studying genetics in her dorm room.

    She told everyone on her floor to go in their rooms, shut their blinds and turn off the lights. Students know from active shooter drills how to respond, she said.

    “But how do we deal with it afterwards?” she asked. “What’s it going to be like in a week, in a month?”

    ___

    Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Ben Finley in Norfolk, Va.; Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Va.; Sarah Brumfield in Silver Spring, Md.; Hank Kurz in Charlottesville, Va.; Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire; and news researcher Rhonda Shafner; as well as videojournalist Nathan Ellegren and photographer Steve Helber in Charlottesville.

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  • Commanders end sloppy Eagles’ perfect season 32-21

    Commanders end sloppy Eagles’ perfect season 32-21

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    PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Brandon Graham took a knee at midfield as most of his Eagles teammates trudged off the field in stunned disbelief that their undefeated season had been wiped out.

    An Eagles team that romped toward the first 8-0 start in franchise history played with uncharacteristic sloppiness, failed to hit on the game-breaking plays that had defined their season, and had every flaw exposed in quite an imperfect performance.

    The Washington Commanders turned methodical drives into scores and took advantage of turnover-prone Philadelphia, stunning the Eagles 32-21 on Monday night and sending them to their first loss in nine games this season.

    Behind Jalen Hurts, the Eagles were the last team in the NFL that could make a run at Miami’s 17-0 mark in 1972 and the lone perfect season. The 2007 New England Patriots came close, going 18-0 before a Super Bowl loss.

    “We started 8-0 together, we lost this game together, we’re going to move on together,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said.

    The Eagles had their shot at perfection slip out of their hands.

    Trailing at halftime for the first time this season, Hurts seemed to have one more big play left to pull out a victory. He connected on a deep ball to wide receiver Quez Watkins on a 51-yard reception late in the fourth quarter trailing 26-21. Watkins hit the ground, popped up and took off running, only to fumble the ball and give Washington possession.

    “I was just trying to make a play. I know I didn’t get touched and I knew I had left him behind, so I just wanted to get up and get some extra yards,” Watkins said.

    That was it for the Eagles and their four turnovers, a bloated number for a team that had only three in the first eight games.

    “Flush it and move on,” Graham said.

    The defensive end was flagged for a late unnecessary roughness call on QB Taylor Heinicke that extended Washington’s drive.

    “I was just trying to touch him down, because it just looked like he was going to get up. You just never know. But that’s on me. I own that one. That’s on me,” Graham said

    NFL referee Alex Kemp told a pool reporter Graham was penalized because Heinicke “had clearly given himself up.”

    “Therefore, he is down and a defenseless player. The contact by Philadelphia No. 55 was not only late, but also to the head and neck area,” Kemp said.

    Graham wasn’t alone in making miscues that cost the Birds.

    A.J Brown had a catch knock off his hands and turn into an interception. And, Dallas Goedert fumbled in the fourth quarter when linebacker Jamin Davis grabbed the tight end by the facemask — but no penalty was called.

    Kemp told a pool reporter, “We didn’t see a face mask on the field.”

    Heinicke again started for injured QB Carson Wentz, the much-maligned former Eagles QB who did play a key role in helping them win a Super Bowl in the 2017 season. He wasn’t flashy, but efficient, going 17 for 29 and throwing 211 yards. Terry McLaurin had 128 yards receiving — including a 41-yard haul that led to a field goal. Joey Slye kicked four field goals.

    The Commanders (5-5) also spoiled Pittsburgh’s 11-0 start in 2020.

    Hurts was 17 for 26 for just 175 yards.

    “It’s the same message that’s always been delivered after our wins, same message delivered after our losses, we’re controlling the things we can,” Hurts said. “We came here today, we didn’t do that. And today it got us. It’s very important to control the things that you can. Controlling your ball security.”

    The Eagles were favored by 10 1/2 points, according to FanDuel Sportsbook, and the Commanders reveled in pulling off the upset.

    “We had a marvelous time ruining everything,” the Commanders tweeted.

    The Eagles tried to make the Commanders seem like just another bump in their bid for perfection, with the kind of early good fortune that they have enjoyed this season.

    Take, for example, a roughing-the-kicker penalty that gave Washington a first down, and new life, on the game’s opening drive. Eagles defensive end Josh Sweat simply strip-sacked Heinicke on the next play and the Eagles recovered. Hurts rushed up the middle for a 1-yard TD and a 7-0 lead.

    The Commanders then flashed their first clock-killing drive with a 16-play effort that chewed up more than seven minutes and ended with Antonio Gibson’s 1-yard rushing TD.

    Hurts hit the highlight-reel with an ode to former Florida star Tim Tebow with a jump pass to Goedert for a 6-yard score, and the QB struck the Heisman pose in celebration.

    The points off takeaways and Hurts scoring with his arms and legs had been the key ingredients in the team’s flawless start, and the Eagles certainly seemed poised to make it an easy night against a team they routed 24-8 in September.

    The Commanders showed a rare offensive spark of late and, after scoring 17 points in each of their last two games, took a 20-14 lead into halftime. Syle kicked field goals of 44 and 58 yards and Brian Robinson added a 1-yard rushing score.

    Washington converted 9 of 12 third downs in the half — it entered 26th in the NFL in third-down efficiency — and crushed the Eagles in time of possession 23:49 to 6:11 — the 17:38 TOP disparity was their best in a first half in franchise history.

    Slye kicked 32 and 55 yard field goals in the second half.

    The Eagles trailed at halftime for the first time since last season’s postseason loss at Tampa Bay, and Hurts could not rally them in their first true case of adversity.

    Hurts, who didn’t help his MVP bid, connected with wideout DeVonta Smith for an 11-yard score early in the fourth that pulled the Eagles within 23-21.

    UP NEXT

    Commanders play Sunday at Houston.

    Eagles play Sunday at Indianapolis.

    ___

    AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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  • Two aircraft collide during Veterans Day air show in Dallas

    Two aircraft collide during Veterans Day air show in Dallas

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    DALLAS (AP) — Two historic military planes collided and crashed to the ground Saturday during an air show in Dallas, exploding into a ball of flames and sending plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky. It was not clear how many people were on board the planes.

    Emergency crews raced to the crash scene at the Dallas Executive Airport, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the city’s downtown. News footage from the scene showed crumpled wreckage of the planes in a grassy area, apparently inside the airport perimeter. Dallas Fire-Rescue told The Dallas Morning News that there were no reported injuries among people on the ground.

    Anthony Montoya saw the two planes collide.

    “I just stood there. I was in complete shock and disbelief,” said Montoya, 27, who attended the air show with a friend. “Everybody around was gasping. Everybody was bursting into tears. Everybody was in shock.”

    Officials would not say how many people were on board the planes, but Hank Coates, president of the company that put on the airshow, said one of the planes, a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, typically has a crew of four to five people. The other, a P-63 Kingcobra fighter plane, has a single pilot.

    No paying customers were on the aircraft, said Coates, of Commemorative Air Force, which also owned the planes. Their aircraft are flown by highly trained volunteers, often retired pilots, he said.

    Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said the National Transportation Safety Board had taken control of the crash scene with local police and fire providing support.

    “The videos are heartbreaking,” Johnson said on Twitter.

    The planes collided and crashed around 1:20 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. The collision occurred during the Commemorative Air Force Wings Over Dallas show.

    Victoria Yeager, the widow of famed Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager and herself a pilot, was also at the show. She didn’t see the collision, but did see the burning wreckage.

    “It was pulverized,” said Yeager, 64, who lives in Fort Worth.

    “We were just hoping they had all gotten out, but we knew they didn’t,” she said of those on board.

    The B-17, an immense four-engine bomber, was a cornerstone of U.S. air power during World War II and is one of the most celebrated warplanes in U.S. history. The Kingcobra, a U.S. fighter plane, was used mostly by Soviet forces during the war. Most B-17s were scrapped at the end of World War II and only a handful remain today, largely featured at museums and air shows, according to Boeing.

    Several videos posted on social media showed the fighter plane appearing to fly into the bomber, causing them to quickly crash to the ground and setting off a large ball of fire and smoke.

    “It was really horrific to see,” Aubrey Anne Young, 37, of Leander. Texas, who saw the crash. Her children were inside the hangar with their father when it occurred. “I’m still trying to make sense of it.”

    A woman next to Young can be heard crying and screaming hysterically on a video that Young uploaded to her Facebook page.

    Air show safety – particularly with older military aircraft – has been a concern for years. In 2011, 11 people were killed in Reno, Nevada, when a P-51 Mustang crashed into spectators. In 2019, a bomber crashed in Hartford, Connecticut, killing seven people. The NTSB said then that it had investigated 21 accidents since 1982 involving World War II-era bombers, resulting in 23 deaths.

    Wings Over Dallas bills itself as “America’s Premier World War II Airshow,” according to a website advertising the event. The show was scheduled for Nov. 11-13, Veterans Day weekend, and guests were to see more than 40 World War II-era aircraft. Its Saturday afternoon schedule of flying demonstrations included the “bomber parade” and “fighter escorts” that featured the B-17 and P-63.

    Videos of previous Wings Over Dallas events depict vintage warplanes flying low, sometimes in close formation, on simulated strafing or bombing runs. The videos also show the planes performing aerobatic stunts.

    The FAA was also launching an investigation, officials said.

    ___

    Bleed reported from Little Rock, Arkansas

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  • State Supreme Court wins shaped by abortion, redistricting

    State Supreme Court wins shaped by abortion, redistricting

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    LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Republicans have claimed key victories in state Supreme Court races that will give them an advantage in major redistricting fights, while Democrats notched similarly significant wins with help from groups focused on defending abortion access.

    The expensive fights over court control in several states in Tuesday’s election highlight just how partisan the formerly low-key judicial races have become. Observers say they’re a sign of what to expect as legal battles over abortion, voting rights and other issues are being fought at the state level.

    “Nothing about this election suggests to me that we’re going to see these races quiet down anytime soon,” said Douglas Keith, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school, which tracks spending in judicial races.

    About $97 million was spent on state Supreme Court elections during the 2019-2020 election cycle, according to the Brennan Center. Once this year’s numbers are tallied, spending records are expected to be shattered in some of the 25 states that had races targeted by groups on the right and the left.

    One of the biggest players was the Republican State Leadership Committee, which focused heavily on the court races in North Carolina and Ohio.

    “Republican wins in the Tarheel State and Buckeye State ensure that the redistricting fights ahead in those states within the next decade are ruled on by strong conservatives who will follow the Constitution and don’t believe it’s their role to draw maps from the bench,” said Dee Duncan, president of the committee’s Judicial Fairness Initiative.

    North Carolina’s court flipped from a 4-3 Democrat majority to 5-2 Republican Tuesday night. The court in recent years has issued decisions favoring the Democratic majority in cases involving redistricting, criminal justice, education funding and voter ID laws.

    At least $15 million was spent on those races, with more than $8 million from two super PACS — one on the left that focused primarily on abortion and one on the right that focused on crime. Despite the outside groups’ involvement, candidates ran on a similar platform of keeping personal politics out of the courtroom.

    “Now, we’ll be watching to make sure that the justices sitting in those seats follow through on those promises,” said Ann Webb, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.

    In Ohio, Republicans maintained their 4-3 majority on the court, with two GOP justices fending off challenges and a sitting Republican winning her bid for chief justice. The state’s GOP governor, Mike DeWine, will appoint a justice to fill the resulting vacancy.

    The results may expand the conservative bent of the court even further, with cases regarding the state’s six-week abortion ban and redistricting on the horizon. Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who did not seek reelection, has sided with court’s three Democrats on high profile cases.

    But Democratic groups working to protect abortion rights ramped up efforts to defend seats after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and saw victories in several other parts of the country.

    In Illinois, which is surrounded by states with abortion bans that took effect after Roe was overturned, groups pushing to retain the state’s Democrat court majority had warned a GOP takeover could result in similar threats to access.

    “I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t think abortion was the critical issue in these races,” Terry Cosgrove, president and CEO of Personal PAC, an abortion rights group that spent nearly $3 million supporting the Democrats in the races.

    In Michigan, Democrats maintained their 4-3 majority on the Supreme Court after incumbent justices from opposing parties who had split on a key abortion ruling won reelection. Michigan’s high court races are officially nonpartisan, though the state’s political parties nominate candidates.

    Democratic-backed Justice Richard Bernstein, who voted with the court’s majority to put an abortion rights amendment on the ballot, won reelection along with Republican Justice Brian Zahra, who voted against it. Voters approved the measure Tuesday.

    “The Michigan Supreme Court election was critical especially since we didn’t know what the status of (the abortion rights amendment) would be,” said Ashlea Phenicie, communications director for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan, which spent nearly $1 million on the races.

    Kansas voters kept all six state Supreme Court justices who were on the ballot for separate yes-or-no votes on whether they remained on the bench another six years. The state’s most influential anti-abortion group, Kansans for Life, pushed to remove five of them, largely over the court’s 2019 decision declaring access to abortion a “fundamental” right under the Kansas Constitution.

    Two of the six court members on the ballot were part of the 6-1 majority in that 2019 decision. Voters also retained the court’s most conservative member, the only dissenter in the 2019 abortion decision.

    Republican bids for court seats failed in even some of the most conservative parts of the country.

    Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Michelle Keller defeated Joseph Fischer, a Republican lawmaker who sponsored the state’s “trigger law” ending abortion following Roe’s reversal. Fischer also was the lead sponsor of an anti-abortion constitutional amendment that voters rejected Tuesday.

    Supreme Court Justice Robin Wynne in Arkansas, which has had some of the most contentious judicial races over the years, fended off a challenge from District Judge Chris Carnahan, a former executive director of the state Republican Party.

    Arkansas’ court seats are nonpartisan, but Carnahan had touted himself as a conservative and had the endorsement of the state GOP. A group formed by a Republican lawmaker ran TV ads calling Wynne, who served as a Democrat in the state Legislature in the 1980s, a liberal.

    An unprecedented partisan pitch by Montana Republicans to install a party loyalist on that state’s Supreme Court also fell short, with Justice Ingrid Gustafson defeating challenger James Brown, who had the backing of Gov. Greg Gianforte and other top Republicans. The unusually expensive campaign came as the court is preparing to hear challenges over Montana’s abortion restrictions and voting access.

    Gustafson called her win a sign that voters were more interested in experience than ideology.

    “The people in Montana think our judiciary is doing a good job and it is a very, very small minority that has some sort of other agenda,” she said.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Hannah Schoenbaum in Raleigh, North Carolina; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Kentucky; Ed White in Detroit, Michigan; and Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Montana contributed to this report. ___ Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. And check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms.

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  • McMullin loss in Utah raises independent candidacy questions

    McMullin loss in Utah raises independent candidacy questions

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    SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah Democrats’ decision to back an independent rather than nominate a member of their own party to take on Republican Mike Lee transformed the state’s U.S. Senate race from foregone conclusion to closely watched slugfest.

    Independent Evan McMullin, an anti-Trump former Republican best known for his longshot 2016 presidential bid, attracted millions in outside spending in his campaign against Lee. He forced the second-term Republican to engage with voters more than in prior elections and emphasize an independent streak and willingness to buck leaders of his own party.

    Ultimately, though, it wasn’t even close. Lee is on his way to a double-digit win.

    That’s spurring a debate: Did Democrats’ strategy create a blueprint to make Republicans campaign hard, compete for moderates and expend resources in future races? Or does the sizeable loss prove that Republicans’ vice grip is impenetrable in the short term, no matter the strategy?

    The answers could contain lessons for both red and blue states unaccustomed to competitive elections.

    Some Democrats say supporting McMullin was worth it — it shifted the political conversation, made the race competitive and forced Lee to spend almost double what he spent in his 2016 campaign. But other Democrats say the strategy hurt down-ballot candidates who didn’t have a strong top-of-the-ticket contender to help boost them.

    “Building my bench in that sense is going to be so much harder. How do I convince candidates, going forward, that the Democratic Party will support them?” said Katie Adams-Anderton, Democratic Party chair in Utah’s second largest county.

    Utah is among the fastest growing states, and Democrats hope they will be able to compete as the electorate becomes younger and more urban. Yet Republicans currently hold both Senate seats and all four congressional seats, occupy every statewide office, and this week expanded their supermajorities in the Legislature.

    Four years after running for U.S. Senate herself, Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson supported Democrats’ decision to back McMullin. She credits it with making Lee sweat. Though McMullin lost, she said, coalescing behind an independent benefited voters by making the race competitive. She hopes putting Lee on his heels will influence how he governs and votes in the U.S. Senate.

    “This was a unique moment, and I actually do think we’ve lost an opportunity by not electing Evan to help break up some of the hardened partisanship,” she said, noting that whether backing an independent was a good strategy depended largely on circumstances.

    Votes remain to be counted, but Lee is on track to defeat McMullin by double digits. That’s a narrower margin than his 41 percentage-point victory in 2016 over grocery store clerk Misty Snow but wider than McMullin’s team anticipated.

    McMullin won 100,000 more votes than Utah Democrats’ four congressional candidates did collectively, but preliminary results don’t suggest his campaigning against the two-party system energized voters enough to substantially buoy turnout.

    Independents have won Senate races in Vermont and Maine, yet in deeply red states like Utah, party politics remain entrenched and important to voters.

    To put together a fragile coalition of Democrats, Republicans and independents, McMullin focused closely on threats to democracy. Rather than campaign on traditional midterm election issues, he attacked Lee’s November 2020 text messages to Trump’s White House chief of staff about ways to challenge President Joe Biden’s victory.

    Both Lee and Democrats skeptical of his candidacy criticized McMullin for being unclear on issues such as abortion or infrastructure spending.

    “You say you want to put country over party. I respect that,” Lee said at an October debate, addressing McMullin. “But parties are an important proxy for ideas. You see, because it’s ideas more than parties that tell the people how you will vote.”

    Kael Weston, the Democrat Senate candidate who lost the party’s backing when it lined up behind McMullin, acknowledged it would have been difficult for a Democrat to defeat Lee. But he said McMullin’s focus came at the expense of local concerns, such as water or the closure of rural post offices. Focusing on those kinds of issues is the path to making elections competitive in red states, not becoming “Republican lite,” he said.

    Though outside spending from Democratic-donor funded PACs and conservative groups like Club for Growth reflect how the race was more competitive than usual, Weston said, McMullin’s attempts to distance himself from Biden and Democrats hurt Democrats who were lower on the ballot.

    “If all you see for three months is, Joe Biden is evil and Democrat is a four-letter word, that has an effect,” he said, noting the anti-McMullin television ads might have hurt Democratic candidates for statehouse seats.

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  • Iranian who inspired ‘The Terminal’ dies at Paris airport

    Iranian who inspired ‘The Terminal’ dies at Paris airport

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    PARIS (AP) — An Iranian man who lived for 18 years in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport and whose saga loosely inspired the Steven Spielberg film “The Terminal” died Saturday in the airport that he long called home, officials said.

    Mehran Karimi Nasseri died after a heart attack in the airport’s Terminal 2F around midday, according an official with the Paris airport authority. Police and a medical team treated him but were not able to save him, the official said. The official was not authorized to be publicly named.

    Nasseri lived in the airport’s Terminal 1 from 1988 until 2006, first in legal limbo because he lacked residency papers and later by apparent choice.

    Year in and year out, he slept on a red plastic bench, making friends with airport workers, showering in staff facilities, writing in his diary, reading magazines and surveying passing travelers.

    Staff nicknamed him Lord Alfred, and he became a mini-celebrity among passengers.

    “Eventually, I will leave the airport,” he told The Associated Press in 1999, smoking a pipe on his bench, looking frail with long thin hair, sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. “But I am still waiting for a passport or transit visa.”

    Nasseri was born in 1945 in Soleiman, a part of Iran then under British jurisdiction, to an Iranian father and a British mother. He left Iran to study in England in 1974. When he returned, he said, he was imprisoned for protesting against the shah and expelled without a passport.

    He applied for political asylum in several countries in Europe. The UNHCR in Belgium gave him refugee credentials, but he said his briefcase containing the refugee certificate was stolen in a Paris train station.

    French police later arrested him, but couldn’t deport him anywhere because he had no official documents. He ended up at Charles de Gaulle in August 1988 and stayed.

    Further bureaucratic bungling and increasingly strict European immigration laws kept him in a legal no-man’s land for years.

    When he finally received refugee papers, he described his surprise, and his insecurity, about leaving the airport. He reportedly refused to sign them, and ended up staying there several more years until he was hospitalized in 2006, and later lived in a Paris shelter.

    Those who befriended him in the airport said the years of living in the windowless space took a toll on his mental state. The airport doctor in the 1990s worried about his physical and mental health, and described him as “fossilized here.” A ticket agent friend compared him to a prisoner incapable of “living on the outside.”

    In the weeks before his death, Nasseri had been again living at Charles de Gaulle, the airport official said.

    Nasseri’s mind-boggling tale loosely inspired 2004′s “The Terminal” starring Tom Hanks, as well as a French film, “Lost in Transit,” and an opera called “Flight.”

    In “The Terminal,” Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, a man who arrives at JFK airport in New York from the fictional Eastern European country of Krakozhia and discovers that an overnight political revolution has invalidated all his traveling papers. Viktor is dumped into the airport’s international lounge and told he must stay there until his status is sorted out, which drags on as unrest in Krakozhia continues.

    No information was immediately available about survivors.

    ___

    Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.

    ___

    This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Nasseri’s first name to Mehran, not Merhan.

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  • Twitter drama too much? Mastodon, others emerge as options

    Twitter drama too much? Mastodon, others emerge as options

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    The Mastodon site is shown on a smart phone in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, Nov. 11, 2022. Sites like Mastodon and even Tumblr are emerging as new (or renewed) alternatives to Twitter. (AP Photo/Barbara Ortutay)
    The Mastodon site is shown on a smart phone in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, Nov. 11, 2022. Sites like Mastodon and even Tumblr are emerging as new (or renewed) alternatives to Twitter. (AP Photo/Barbara Ortutay)
    The Mastodon site is shown on a smart phone in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, Nov. 11, 2022. Sites like Mastodon and even Tumblr are emerging as new (or renewed) alternatives to Twitter. (AP Photo/Barbara Ortutay)

    1 of 3

    The Mastodon site is shown on a smart phone in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, Nov. 11, 2022. Sites like Mastodon and even Tumblr are emerging as new (or renewed) alternatives to Twitter. (AP Photo/Barbara Ortutay)

    1 of 3

    The Mastodon site is shown on a smart phone in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, Nov. 11, 2022. Sites like Mastodon and even Tumblr are emerging as new (or renewed) alternatives to Twitter. (AP Photo/Barbara Ortutay)

    Twitter has been a bit of a mess since billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk took the helm, cutting the company’s workforce in half, upending the platform’s verification system, sparring with users over jokes and acknowledging that “ dumb things ” might happen as he reshapes one of the world’s most high-profile information ecosystems.

    On Thursday, amid an exodus of senior executives responsible for data privacy, cybersecurity and complying with regulations, he warned the company’s remaining employees that Twitter might not survive if it can’t find a way to bring in at least half its revenue from subscriptions.

    While it’s not clear if the drama is causing many users to leave — in fact, having a front-row seat to the chaos may prove entertaining to some — lesser-known sites Mastodon and even Tumblr are emerging as new (or renewed) alternatives. Here’s a look at some of them.

    (Oh, and if you are leaving Twitter and want to preserve your tweet history, you can download it by going to your profile settings and clicking on “your account” then “download an archive of your data.”)

    MASTODON

    Sharing a name with an extinct mammal resembling an elephant, Mastodon has emerged as a frontrunner among those curious about life beyond the blue bird. It shares some similarities with Twitter, but there are some big differences — and not just that its version of tweets are officially called “toots.”

    Mastodon is a decentralized social network. That means it’s not owned by a single company or billionaire. Rather, it’s made up of a network of servers, each run independently but able to connect so people on different servers can communicate. There are no ads as Mastodon is funded by donations, grants and other means.

    Mastodon’s feed is chronological, unlike Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or Twitter, which all use algorithms to get people to spend as much time on a site as possible.

    It can be a tad daunting to try to sign up to Mastodon. Because each server is run separately, you will need to first pick one you want to join, then go through the steps to create an account and agree with the server’s rules. There are general and interest- and location-based ones, but in the end it won’t really matter. Once you’re in, the feed is reminiscent of Twitter. You can write (up to 500 characters), post photos or videos, and follow accounts as well as see a general public feed.

    “We present a vision of social media that cannot be bought and owned by any billionaire, and strive to create a more resilient global platform without profit incentives,” Mastodon’s website says.

    Currently, the site has more than 1 million users, nearly half of whom signed up after Musk took over Twitter on Oct. 27, according to founder Eugen Rochko.

    Another option, Counter Social, also runs an ad-free, chronological social platform that’s funded by users. To prevent foreign influence operations, Counter Social says it blocks access to Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and Syria. It boasts of offering one-click translation into over 80 languages. It has over 63 million monthly users, according to its website.

    CLUBHOUSE

    Remember Clubhouse, back when we were all under lockdown and couldn’t talk in person? It’s the buzzy audio-only app that got somewhat overshadowed by copycat Twitter Spaces, which also lets people talk to each other (think conference call, podcast or “audio chat”) about topics of interest.

    Once you join, Clubhouse lets you start or listen into conversations on a host of topics, from tech to pro sports, parenting, Black literature and so on. There are no posts, photos or videos — only people’s profile pictures and their voices. Conversations can be intimate, like a phone call, or might include thousands of people listening to a talk by boldface names, like a conference or stage interview.

    SUBSTACK and MEDIUM

    For longer reads, newsletters, and general information absorption, these sites are perhaps closest to the blog era of the early 2000s. You can read both without signing up or paying, but some writers, creators and podcasters create premium content for paying subscribers.

    TUMBLR

    Tumblr, which was all but left for dead, appears to be enjoying somewhat of a resurgence. The words/photos/art/video site is known for its devoted fan base and has been home to angry posts from celebrities like Taylor Swift. It angered many users in 2018 when it banned porn and “adult content,” which made up a big part of its highly visual and meme-friendly online presence and led to a large drop in its user base.

    Onboarding is simple, and for those who miss the early years of social media, there’s a decidedly retro, comforting feel to the site.

    T2 or TBD?

    Gabor Cselle, a veteran of Google who worked at Twitter from 2014 to 2016, is determined to create a better Twitter. For now, he’s calling it T2 and says the Web domain name he purchased for it — t2.social — cost $7.16. T2, which may or may not be its final name, is currently accepting signups for its waitlist, but the site is clearly not yet functioning.

    “I think Twitter always had a problem in figuring out what to do and how to decide on what to do. And that was always kind of in the back of my mind,” Cselle told The Associated Press. “On Monday, I decided to just go for it. I didn’t see anyone else really doing it.”

    Twitter-style text and TikTok-style videos are one idea. Cselle says for this to work, the text really has to be “amped up” so it’s not drowned out by the videos.

    “My bet is that it’s going to be easier and more efficient to build a better Twitter or public square now than fix the legacy problems at Twitter,” Cselle added.

    Cselle, of course, is not the only one jumping to the opportunity. Project Mushroom, for instance, plans a “safe place on the internet — a community-led open-source home for creators seeking justice on an overheating planet” and says it has received 25,000 early signups to its yet-to-launch platform.

    “My sense is that things are going to further fragment into more ideological platforms and some will die and then we’ll see some new consolidation emerge over the next couple of years,” said Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor at Syracuse University who studies social media.

    NEWS SITES

    One of Twitter’s most valuable features has been the way it allows people to find information within seconds. Was that just an earthquake? Twitter will tell you. Or at least it did.

    While there is no perfect replacement for Twitter, staying up to date with local, national and international news is easier than ever. Apple and Google both offer news services that aggregate articles from a broad range of publication (Apple offers a premium subscription service that gets you access to more articles, while Google shows free stories first.) There’s also Flipboard, which works kind of like a personal magazine curated to your interests.

    Of course, subscribing to individual publications (or downloading a free news app such as the AP’s AP News) is also an option.

    Yes, you might have to pay for some of them and no, you won’t get a blue check mark with your subscription.

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  • Computer chip ban signals new era as Biden and Xi meet

    Computer chip ban signals new era as Biden and Xi meet

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration’s move to block exports of advanced computer chips to China is signaling a new phase in relations between the globe’s two largest economies — one in which trade matters less than an increasingly heated competition to be the world’s leading technological and military power.

    The aggressive move, announced last month, will help set the tone for President Joe Biden’s upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Asia. It’s evidence of Biden’s determination to “manage” the U.S. competition with China, whose officials were quick to condemn the export ban.

    After more than two decades in which the focus was on expansion of trade and global growth, both countries are openly prioritizing their national interests as the world economy struggles with high inflation and the risk of recessions. The U.S. and China have each identified the development and production of computer chips as vital for economic growth and their own security interests.

    “We’re going to do whatever it takes to protect Americans from the threat of China,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in an interview. “China is crystal clear. They will use this technology for surveillance. They will use this technology for cyber attacks. They will use this technology to, in any number of ways, harm us and our allies, or our ability to protect ourselves.”

    Xi responded to the export ban in his statement at last month’s congress of the Chinese Communist Party, where he secured a third term as the country’s leader. He pledged that China would move more aggressively to become self-reliant in producing semiconductors and other technologies.

    “In order to enhance China’s innovation capacity, we will move faster to launch a number of major national projects that are of strategic, big-picture and long-term importance,” Xi said.

    The Chinese government has named the development of advanced computer chips that could handle everything from artificial intelligence to hypersonic missiles as one of its top priorities. To bridge the gap until it can get there, China has been relying on imports of advanced chips and manufacturing equipment from the U.S., which imposed a series of export controls last month that block sending to China the world’s most advanced chips, factory equipment and industry experts tied to America.

    The U.S. and its allies famously deployed export controls against Russia after the February invasion of Ukraine, making it harder for Russian forces to be resupplied with weapons, ammunition, tanks and aircraft. As a result of those constraints, Russia has relied on drones from Iran and the U.S. has accused North Korea of supplying them with artillery.

    The U.S. had until recently operated from the premise that strong trade relationships would bring countries closer together in ways that made the world safer and wealthier, a post-Cold War order. Global supply chains were supposed to lower costs, boost profits and enable democratic values to seep into the terrain of oligarchies, dictatorships and autocracies.

    But after a global pandemic, the war in Ukraine and China’s own ambitions, the Biden administration and many European and Asian allies have chosen to prioritize national security and industrial strategies. Both the U.S. and European Union have provided tens of billions of dollars in incentives to spur more domestic production of computer chips.

    In a speech last month at IBM, Biden said China specifically lobbied against a law that provides $52 billion to produce and develop advanced semiconductors in the U.S., an incentive package that has been followed by a string of announcements by Intel, Micron, Wolfspeed and others about the construction of computer chip plants in the U.S..

    He said that some of the GOP lawmakers who opposed the measure had bought into the arguments made by China.

    “The Communist Party of China was lobbying in the United States Congress against passing this legislation,” Biden said. “And unfortunately, some of our friends on the other team bought it.”

    Donald Trump had fiery rhetoric on China during his presidency, imposing tariffs that the Biden administration has yet to lift. But by any qualitative measure, the export bans on computer chips are much tougher than anything imposed by Trump, said Gregory Allen, a senior fellow in the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    Allen said the Trump-era tariffs were large in terms of dollars, but they had almost no affect on the balance of trade. Nor were the import taxes strategic. The export controls imposed by the Biden administration would be a setback for Chinese technology that is already decades behind the U.S.

    “We have essentially committed ourselves to saying: China you will not achieve your number one goal,” Allen said.

    The era of China, Russia and other competitors having relatively unfettered access to U.S. and European markets appears to be ending, said Christopher Miller, a Tufts University professor and author of the book, “Chip Wars.”

    “The risks posed by these countries has grown, so Western leaders have reconsidered the wisdom of giving adversaries open access to their markets,” Miller said.

    Instead of trying to work together as a single global economy, new alliances are being formed such as the Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the U.S.) and existing partnerships such as NATO are being expanded. Economic integration among these partners has become essential, as the U.S. export controls on advanced chips need support from other producers in Japan and the Netherlands.

    “All the great powers are restructuring international economic relations in ways they hope will improve their geopolitical position,” Miller said. “Semiconductors are just one of many arenas in which trade, tech, and capital flows are being re-politicized due to great power rivalry.”

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  • Democrat Katie Hobbs keeps lead in race for Arizona governor

    Democrat Katie Hobbs keeps lead in race for Arizona governor

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    PHOENIX (AP) — The release of ballots on Saturday from Arizona’s largest county netted Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake a few thousand votes, but she’s still trailing Democrat Katie Hobbs by tens of thousands of ballots.

    Hobbs led Lake by 1.6 percentage points after the release of roughly 85,000 votes from Maricopa County. Approximately 270,000 ballots remain uncounted statewide, and Hobbs leads by about 35,000 votes.

    Data analysts from both parties believe the count will eventually shift in Lake’s favor, but it’s not yet clear whether she will pick up enough votes to overtake Hobbs. Republicans have watched anxiously since Tuesday as Hobbs has defied their expectations and increased her lead each day, including Saturday when combined with results from the rest of the state.

    About 50 conservative protesters gathered outside the fence around Maricopa County’s election tabulation center in downtown Phoenix at midday Saturday to draw attention to their concerns about the slow pace of the vote count. Protracted counts are the norm in Arizona, where a record number of people returned mail ballots on Election Day.

    A few protesters wore ballistic vests or carried handguns as a number of county sheriff’s deputies nearby guarded the complex.

    Arizona was central to former President Donald Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election and cast doubt on the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory. Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, who won his race Friday, pressed to move past false claims of a fraudulent election that have shaped the state’s politics for the past two years.

    “After a long election, it can be tempting to remain focused on the things that divide us,” Kelly said Saturday in a victory speech at a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix. “But we’ve seen the consequences that come when leaders refuse to accept the truth and focus more on conspiracies of the past than solving the challenges that we face today.”

    Kelly’s victory Friday combined with a win Saturday by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada means Democrats will retain control of the Senate for the next two years.

    Kelly won after distancing himself from Biden and building an image as an independent lawmaker not beholden to his party. He cast himself in the mold of his predecessor, the late Republican John McCain, whose seat Kelly won in a special election two years ago. His victory this year gives him a full six years starting in January.

    “Sen. McCain embodied everything it was to be a leader at a time when our state and our country remain divided,” Kelly said.

    Kelly’s opponent, Republican Blake Masters, did not concede, saying in a statement that his team will make sure every legal vote is counted.

    “If, at the end, Senator Kelly has more of them than I do, then I will congratulate him on a hard-fought victory,” Masters said. “But voters decide, not the media; let’s count the votes.”

    The AP declared Kelly the winner after the release of results from 75,000 ballots in Maricopa County made clear Masters could not make up his deficit.

    Hours earlier, Masters said on Fox News that Maricopa County, which is by far the largest in the state, should stop counting ballots and start over because election officials had inadvertently mixed counted and uncounted ballots.

    Megan Gilbertson, a spokeswoman for the county elections department, confirmed ballots were mixed at two vote centers but said there are contingencies to reconcile each batch and get an accurate count. She said that similar mistakes have been made before and that the process has been in place for decades and is overseen by observers from both parties.

    “There is no legal process in place to stop counting and start over,” Gilbertson said. “At Maricopa County, we follow the laws as they are written.”

    Outside the elections building in Phoenix, some protesters carried American flags, campaign signs for Lake or signs with slogans such as “Kari Lake Won,” “Count The Votes” and “Hobbs is a Cheat.”

    Sheriff Paul Penzone said he pulled deputies from around the county and from other assignments to protect the ballots and the people counting them. Noting the protest was prompted by a tweet from a state lawmaker, Penzone urged elected officials not to summon demonstrators to the elections building.

    Aaron Kotzbauer, a 52-year-old Republican from the Phoenix suburb of Surprise who voted for Lake and the other GOP candidates, said he protested at the elections office after Trump lost in 2020 and came again Saturday to “see if we could get some sunshine to disinfect the Maricopa County election center.”

    ___

    Associated Press writer Bob Christie contributed to this report.

    ___

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. And check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms.

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  • Trump vs. DeSantis: A simmering rivalry bursts into view

    Trump vs. DeSantis: A simmering rivalry bursts into view

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have been on a collision course from the start.

    Eyeing the Florida governor as his most formidable foe within the Republican Party, the former president has sought to keep DeSantis in his place, often noting the role his endorsement played in lifting the relatively obscure congressman to the leader of one of America’s largest states.

    DeSantis, for his part, has long praised Trump and mimicked his style, but has notably declined to put aside his own White House ambitions as the former president prepares to seek his old job again. In the clearest sign of tension, the two held dueling Florida rallies in the final days of this year’s midterm elections. At his event, Trump unveiled his new derisive nickname for DeSantis, calling him Ron DeSanctimonious.

    The simmering rivalry between the Republican Party’s biggest stars enters a new, more volatile phase after the GOP’s underwhelming performance in what was supposed to be a blockbuster election year. DeSantis, who won a commanding reelection, is increasingly viewed as the party’s future, while Trump, whose preferred candidates lost races from Pennsylvania to Arizona, is widely blamed as a drag on the party.

    That leaves Trump in perhaps his most vulnerable position since he sparked the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. As he moves forward with plans to announce a third presidential bid on Tuesday, Trump is turning to a playbook that has served him through decades of personal, financial and political turmoil: zeroing in on his enemies’ perceived weaknesses and hitting them with repeated attacks.

    “This is how President Trump fights,” said Michael Caputo, a longtime adviser who worked on Trump’s first campaign.

    In the days since Tuesday’s election, Trump has made racist remarks about Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, another potential Republican presidential candidate, saying his name sounds Chinese. He’s blasted coverage from Fox News, which, like much of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, has shifted its tone on Trump in recent days. But much of his vitriol is directed at DeSantis, a sign of the threat Trump perceives from the Florida governor.

    In a lengthy statement, Trump knocked DeSantis as an “average REPUBLICAN governor with great Public Relations” and voiced fury that DeSantis has not publicly ruled out challenging him.

    The approach recalls Trump’s strategy in 2016, when he cleared a field of nearly a dozen rivals with a scorched-earth approach that included insulting his then-rival Ted Cruz’s wife’s appearance and claiming that his father may have played a role in John F. Kennedy’s assassination. (Cruz later became a top ally in Congress.)

    His attacks only become more ruthless when he found himself against the wall. After the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump used vulgar language to brag of sexual assault, he responded by inviting the women who accused his rival Hillary Clinton’s husband, the former president, of rape and unwanted sexual advances to a presidential debate.

    “The strategy worked in 2016, no doubt about it. The difference now, and I say this with all respect for Ron DeSantis, he’s never entered the ring with a pugilist like Donald Trump,” said longtime Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski, who ran his 2016 primary campaign. “Mike Tyson has an old saying: Everyone had a plan until you get punched in the face.”

    The question is whether the insults will land differently when it comes to DeSantis. Among many of Trump’s most loyal backers, DeSantis is seen as a member of the same team. In interviews over the last year at Trump’s rallies and other conservative gatherings, Trump supporters often said they see DeSantis as Trump’s natural successor. Many voiced disbelief that the two men would ever run against each other because they seem so closely aligned.

    DeSantis’ allies expect the governor to make a presidential announcement after the state legislative session, which ends in May. Until then, they expect him to focus on governing and avoid engaging directly with Trump, as he has done this week.

    Regardless of when a formal presidential campaign is announced, DeSantis’ supporters are encouraging him to take advantage of the interest he’s generating at the moment. Some point to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as a cautionary tale, noting he generated widespread attention in 2012 as a potential presidential candidate. He demurred, and by the time he sought the White House in 2016, the energy had shifted to Trump.

    “If you want to run for president, you’ve got to take your shot when it presents itself,” said Matt Caldwell, a vocal DeSantis ally in Florida.

    DeSantis won reelection by a nearly 20-point margin, performing well even in many longtime Democratic strongholds. That victory, his supporters say, demonstrates the extent of his political appeal beyond the GOP’s hardcore base, which stands in contrast with Trump. Caldwell noted that DeSantis’ coalition included Latinos and suburban voters, voting blocs that Trump has largely alienated.

    “The coalitions he’s built, the bridges he’s built, the voting groups that never touched a Republican before have now embraced Republicans and Republicanism in the form of the DeSantis administration,” said Brian Ballard, a longtime Florida lobbyist who served as DeSantis’ inaugural chairman and also raised millions for Trump. “He is certainly a leader and someone that I think has demonstrated the type of coalition building that we need to win back the White House.”

    Above all, Republican strategists say voters are looking for a winner.

    Conservative radio host Erick Erickson, who has vacillated on Trump over the years, said many of his listeners are ready for DeSantis.

    “They love Trump, thank him, wish him well and are ready to part ways,” Erickson said. “Trump voters like Trump because they like winners who fight. That’s exactly how they perceive DeSantis. The only guy between the two who is a loser is Trump.”

    Sensing weakness, some Republican establishment insiders have begun a series of preliminary conversations about how to use their resources to stop Trump in 2024, realizing that a crowded primary field might simply divide the electorate and allow Trump an easier path to the nomination. There is little sign the Republican establishment is ready or able to unify behind DeSantis or any single Trump alternative, however, even as some prominent Republicans begin to openly decry Trump as a political liability.

    Other potential 2024 candidates, meanwhile, are waiting in the wings, with some hoping Trump and DeSantis will bloody each other so badly that voters will be eager for a less pugilistic alternative.

    Sarah Longwell, a Trump critic who leads the Republican Accountability Project, said she’s for “anybody but Trump” in 2024, but she’s not necessarily excited about DeSantis.

    “I hope there is a robust Republican primary,” Longwell said. “I certainly want every Republican to run against Trump. But I also think the Republican Party can and should do better than a cheap imitation of Trump, which is what I think Ron DeSantis is.”

    Next week, DeSantis will be among several 2024 Republican prospects gathering in Nevada for a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition. The guest list includes former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and term-limited Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. Trump declined an invitation.

    The Republican Jewish Coalition’s primary benefactor, Miriam Adelson, has vowed to stay neutral in the 2024 Republican primary, even after the group aggressively supported Trump in the last election.

    Hogan, a fierce Trump critic for years, is increasingly expected to run for the Republican presidential nomination himself.

    “Going forward, there is going to be a battle between whether we are the party that stands for common-sense conservative leadership, or whether we are the party than answers to the whims of one person,” Hogan told The Associated Press. “I am sick and tired of the losing and grifting. It’s time to get back to winning.”

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    Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. And learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections.

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  • Ethiopia, Tigray military leaders agree on peace roadmap

    Ethiopia, Tigray military leaders agree on peace roadmap

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    NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Top military commanders from Ethiopia and its embattled Tigray region have agreed to allow unhindered humanitarian access to the region and form a joint disarmament committee following last week’s truce.

    The commanders, who since Monday have been meeting in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, signed an agreement Saturday that they said calls for disengagement from all forms of military activities.

    Both parties have agreed to protect civilians and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to the region of more than 5 million people, according to a copy of the agreement seen by The Associated Press.

    The agreement states that disarmament will be “done concurrently with the withdrawal of foreign and non-(Ethiopian military) forces” from Tigray.

    The lead negotiator for Ethiopia, Redwan Hussein, told the AP that Saturday’s signing event created a conductive environment for ongoing peace efforts, noting that the next meeting of military leaders will “most likely” be held in Tigray in mid-December before a final meeting in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, in January.

    In a separate statement late Saturday, Ethiopia’s federal authorities said that “efforts are being made to deliver humanitarian assistance to most of the Tigray region which is under (Ethiopian military) command.”

    That statement noted that representatives of Ethiopian and Tigrayan militaries meeting in Kenya discussed “detailed plans for disarmament” of Tigray forces, including an agreement on the entry of Ethiopian forces into the Tigrayan capital of Mekele.

    The African Union-led talks in Nairobi followed the cessation of hostilities agreement signed by Ethiopia and Tigray leaders in South Africa last week.

    Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is helping to facilitate the talks, said Saturday that “humanitarian aid should have resumed like yesterday.” Former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta, who is also involved in the talks, thanked the commanders for their commitment to peace.

    The Tigray conflict began in November 2020, less than a year after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for making peace with Eritrea, which borders the Tigray region and whose fighters have been fighting alongside Ethiopian federal troops in Tigray.

    Eritrea is not explicitly mentioned in the peace papers, and a diplomat who attended the talks in Nairobi said the issue of Eritrea was a sticking point this week.

    The brutal fighting in Tigray, which spilled into Amhara and Afar regions as Tigrayan forces tried to break the military blockade of their region, reignited in August after months of lull that allowed thousands of trucks carrying humanitarian aid into Tigray.

    The war in Africa’s second-most populous country, which marked two years on Nov. 4, has seen abuses documented on both sides, with millions of people displaced and many near famine.

    Phone and internet connections to Tigray are still down, and foreign journalists and human rights researchers remain barred, complicating efforts to verify reports of ongoing violence in the region.

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  • NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

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    A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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    Arizona officials correct false claims about ballot issues

    CLAIM: When ballots were rejected by tabulators at some voting locations across Maricopa County on Election Day, an alternate solution for voters to drop ballots in a secure drop box onsite resulted in the ballots getting shredded, thrown in the trash, or marked for Democrats.

    THE FACTS: Ballots submitted in this way were counted just as absentee ballots or mail-in ballots are, according to county officials. They weren’t discarded or altered. When a printing problem caused tabulators to reject ballots in at least 70 of 223 polling sites in Arizona’s largest county on Tuesday, county officials offered a few alternate solutions. Voters could wait and try another machine, cancel their vote and go to another vote center, or drop their ballot in a secure drop box referred to as “door 3” or “box 3.” Some social media user falsely claimed that using this drop box would allow county officials to rig those votes by manually changing them or discarding them. However, county elections department spokesperson Megan Gilbertson explained that ballots placed in these drop boxes were machine-counted at the central tabulation center in downtown Phoenix, just as all mail-in and absentee ballots are. At the end of the voting day, a bipartisan team collected all the voted ballots from voting centers, sealed them and transported them by truck to the tabulation center for counting. This is the same process used for early voting and is the same methodology used on Election Day by most counties, including Pima County and Yavapai County, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said in a statement Tuesday.

    — Associated Press writers Josh Kelety in Phoenix and Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report.

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    Clip shows poll worker in Wisconsin, not ‘cheating’ in Philadelphia

    CLAIM: Video shows masked man at polling site “cheating” in front of cameras in Philadelphia.

    THE FACTS: The video shows a poll worker in Madison, Wisconsin, on Tuesday. He was initialing ballots to be handed out to voters, a standard procedure mandated by state law, according to the county clerk. Social media users on Election Day distorted a clip of the Madison poll worker doing his job to falsely claim it showed election fraud in Philadelphia. The video, which aired on Fox News on Tuesday, shows a man wearing a cloth face mask flipping through ballots and writing on them. “Masked man cheating in front of the cameras on the mainstream media,” read a widely shared tweet with the video. But the original footage shows the video was filmed in Madison, not Pennsylvania. Immediately before Fox News showed the clip in Madison, the network showed the exterior of Philadelphia’s East Passyunk Community Center with a graphic labeling that location. The broadcast then showed the clip of the poll worker and changed the location in the label to Madison. Social media versions of the video cropped out the location. A reverse-image search of the building’s interior revealed that the clip was filmed at Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison, which served as a polling location for Tuesday’s election. Scott McDonell, the Dane County clerk, said the man is a poll worker, and the video shows him initialing ballots before they were handed out to voters. He was also circling the ward in which the ballots were issued. It’s part of the process of preparing the ballots for voters, McDonell said. Another poll worker also initialed the ballots before they were handed to voters. “You need to have those signatures to show that two people saw the blank ballot and handed it to the voter,” McDonell said. “This is a standard operating procedure. It’s done in public so that anyone can watch it. It’s mandated by state law. It’s a check and balance on the system.” Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and the director of the Elections Research Project, agreed that the video showed standard procedures for poll workers in Madison. Wisconsin election law explains that at polling places with paper ballots, two inspectors “shall write their initials on the back of each ballot and deliver to each elector as he or she enters the voting booth.” Philadelphia’s city commissioner on Twitter debunked the false claims that the video showed a polling site in his city. Nick Custodio, deputy commissioner with Philadelphia’s elections board, told the AP that Philadelphia does not use paper voting booths such as those shown in the video, and that the “I voted” stickers in the video also do not match those used in Philadelphia.

    — Associated Press writers Arijeta Lajka and Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report with additional reporting from Amy Forliti in Minneapolis and Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia.

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    No voters turned away over Detroit absentee ballot glitch

    CLAIM: Voters in Detroit were prevented from casting ballots on Election Day after officials mistakenly said they’d already voted by absentee ballot.

    THE FACTS: No eligible voters were prevented from casting a ballot at Detroit polling locations that experienced the data glitch on Tuesday morning, state and city officials confirmed. As voters nationwide went to the polls, there was heightened focus on voting problems and irregularities. One of the places election watchers sounded the alarm early on was the battleground state of Michigan. “People are showing up to vote in Detroit only to be told that they already voted via absentee ballots and are being turned away,” wrote one Twitter user. “Citizens are being told they voted already absentee,” wrote Kristina Karamo, a Republican candidate for Michigan secretary of state, in widely shared posts on Twitter and Facebook. Former President Donald Trump also amplified the claims on Truth Social. But state and city officials said the issue stemmed from an election software problem and was quickly resolved without anyone being disenfranchised. Corwin Smidt, a political science professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing, said the situation demonstrated the voting system worked properly. “It certainly slowed down voting there, but the reasons for the slowdown were that the system caught an error, and that error was then fixed,” he wrote in an email. Liette Gidlow, a history professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who focuses on U.S. politics and voting rights, agreed. “Minor technical glitches are not unusual in any precinct because administering elections is a complex business,” she wrote in an email. Detroit’s elections department said the problem was caused by computer software used by election workers to check in voters as they entered the polling location. The agency said the program wrongly flagged some residents as having requested an absentee ballot, which would make them ineligible to cast a ballot in-person. Matthew Friedman, a department spokesperson, said the issue was resolved within an hour and all eligible residents were able to vote. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, whose office assisted the city in addressing the issue, also stressed that no voters were disenfranchised. “In all circumstances, eligible voters were able to vote,” the office said in a statement. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which observed the voting process, said it spoke with multiple city election officials and was satisfied with the response. Spokespersons for Trump and Karamo did not respond to messages seeking comment.

    — Associated Press writer Philip Marcelo in New York contributed this report.

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    CLAIM: A Pennsylvania judge ruled that ballots received up until Nov. 14 will count in the 2022 midterm elections.

    THE FACTS: Pennsylvania ballots, including mail-in and absentee ballots, must be received by county election offices by 8 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 8, to be counted, according to the state’s Department of State. As voters went to the polls on Tuesday, misleading information about Pennsylvania’s vote-counting deadlines gained traction. “This just in: Pennsylvania Judge allows ballots to count that are received up until November 14th,” read one post. “This is unconstitutional.” The message, shared in several Instagram posts, is a screenshot of a tweet that was later deleted. The Twitter user who first posted it acknowledged in a follow-up that the information was incorrect. Existing law requires that Pennsylvania voters’ ballots be received by county election workers by Nov. 8, the Department of State explains. Unlike some other states, Pennsylvania allots no extra time for mail-in ballots — what counts is the day the ballot actually made it to election officials, not when the ballot was postmarked. The Twitter user who first made the claim said in a follow-up post that the court case he was referring to was a recent decision by a Pennsylvania Common Pleas Court. However, the case in question has nothing to do with ballot submission deadlines. It concerned the cross-checking procedure that Pennsylvania uses to prevent duplicate votes from being counted, according to Kevin Feeley, spokesperson for the Philadelphia City Commissioners, which oversees elections in the city. The city had sought to delay that process until after the initial ballot count, in an effort to get ballots counted more quickly. He said that no duplicate votes had been found in the last three elections. The court granted the city the right to delay the reconciliation process, but the judge in the case was “highly critical” of the idea, Feeley said. So the City Commission opted Tuesday to revert to doing reconciliation as usual. Feeley confirmed that the case did not mean voting can occur through Nov. 14.

    — Associated Press writer Graph Massara in San Francisco contributed this report with additional reporting from Melissa Goldin in New York.

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    Large numbers of mailed ballots not evidence of election fraud

    CLAIM: A candidate winning an election with a majority of mailed ballots is proof of fraud.

    THE FACTS: There is no evidence that mail-in voting has historically caused widespread voter fraud, and fraud related to mail-in voting is exceedingly rare, the AP has reported. Some on social media have posited that if a candidate who receives a significant chunk of their votes through mail-in voting wins, their victory is inherently fraudulent. An Instagram post features results reporting that incumbent Kelly Skidmore, a Democrat, beat Dorcas Hernandez, a Republican, in the race for state representative in Florida’s 92nd House District. It shows Skidmore with 57.51% of the vote, including 31,405 mailed ballots, and Hernandez with 42.9% and 10,297 mailed ballots. “This is what textbook election theft via vote by mail ballot looks like,” the post states. The numbers in the Instagram post are from the state’s unofficial results, as published online by county boards of elections. However, the fact that some candidates are reported as having won after receiving a majority of mailed ballots does not prove election fraud. Claims that mail-in voting has caused widespread voter fraud in the past are unsubstantiated, according to reporting by the AP. After reviewing every potential case of voter fraud in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the AP found far too few to affect the outcome of the 2020 election. Additionally, an AP survey of state election officials across the U.S. found that the expanded use of drop boxes during the 2020 race did not lead to cases of fraud that could have impacted the results. Different states have different ballot verification protocols, but all states vet mailed and absentee ballots. Every state requires voters to sign their ballots. Some have additional precautions, like having bipartisan teams compare the signature on the ballot with one on file, requiring the signature on the ballot to be notarized or requiring a witness to sign the ballot. Other forms of verification can include requiring proof of voter registration, a copy of an ID, a driver’s license number or a Social Security number. Ballot security features and ballot sorting at election offices would help weed out any counterfeits. There are harsh penalties for voter fraud by mailed ballot, such as a fine, prison time or both.

    — Associated Press writers Melissa Goldin and Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report.

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    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

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    Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

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