Tag: continents and regions

A man is convicted of attempted murder in shooting of 2 Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in 2020 | CNN

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A jury on Thursday convicted a man on charges relating to a series of crimes, including attempted murder in the shooting of two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies outside a transit station in September 2020, prosecutors said.

Deonte Murray, 39, was found guilty on 10 charges, including three counts of attempted murder, carjacking, robbery, assault with a semi-automatic firearm and illegal possession of firearms, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said Thursday.

Murray shot two sheriff’s deputies while they were sitting in their car outside a Metro station in Compton, California, on September 12, 2020, authorities said. He was arrested three days after the shooting triggered a massive manhunt as the officers underwent surgery and recovery.

Days before the officers’ shooting, Murray carried out other crimes, authorities said. In Compton on September 1, 2020, he shot the owner of a Mercedes-Benz in the leg with a high-powered rifle before stealing the car, prosecutors said.

Police initially identified Murray as a suspect in the carjacking and arrested him September 15, 2020, authorities said. As police pursued him that day, Murray tossed a firearm from his car, and the weapon was later found to be the same gun used to shoot the deputies, Los Angeles County sheriff’s Capt. Kent Wegener said at the time. The firearm was a ghost gun, Wegener said, using a term for a weapon that is typically challenging to trace because it’s made from assembled parts.

Police identified him as a suspect in the deputies’ shooting after his arrest in the carjacking, authorities said.

The deputies’ shooting was caught on surveillance video, which showed a gunman walking up to the passenger door of their squad car parked outside the Martin Luther King Jr. Transit Center and opening fire and running away.

Murray faces a life sentence in prison, the district attorney said in a news release Thursday. Murray’s attorney declined to comment on the conviction.

“This verdict reaffirms our commitment to protecting those who serve and sends a clear message that acts of violence will not go unpunished,” Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon said.

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September 28, 2023
Detained WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich’s parents describe what it was like seeing him in Russia | CNN Business

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New York
CNN
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Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich remains “defiant” six months after he was detained in Russia on spying charges, which he and the Journal strenuously deny, his mother told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Thursday night.

“He’s smiling. He understands what’s going on,” Ella Milman said. “And I have to say, under all the circumstances, he’s doing really well.”

Gershkovich’s parents have been able to go to Russia twice. They saw him in June and were able to talk to him, though Cooper noted he was essentially in a glass box.

“Being there, it was like having him back,” his father, Mikhail Gershkovich, said. “Just the physical presence and his voice made you very happy.”

Gershkovich was arrested in March during a reporting trip. The FSB, Russia’s main security service, accused him of trying to obtain state secrets — a charge Gershkovich and his employer have extensively denied.

If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.

Gershkovich’s parents left the Soviet Union to come to the United States. Evan’s initial reporting trips in the country didn’t worry the two of them.

“He came to Russia in 2017. Things were a lot different at the time,” Milman said.

The family keeps in touch with Gershkovich through letters, which are up to 10 pages long and include printed pictures. His sister, Danielle Gershkovich, says they can hear his voice through his writing — fitting, Cooper noted, as he’s a print journalist.

“It’s like sitting on the couch,” Milman said. “The only thing is that the answer comes the following week.”

Those who want to help need to keep the focus on Evan, Danielle said, whether it’s people posting on social media or reading his reporting.

From a young age, Gershkovich was curious and easily connected with people, Milman said.

“He always would come home after his fancy trips and wanted to have a hamburger and buffalo wings and watch baseball and watch American football,” Milman said. “He’s an American boy who has roots in Russian culture.”

The journalist’s detention is a source of tension between Washington and Moscow.

“The US position remains unwavering. The charges against Evan are baseless. The Russian government locked Evan up for simply doing his job. Journalism is not a crime,” US ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy said to reporters earlier this month.

In September, a Moscow court refused to hear an appeal against his pre-trial detention, leaving Gershkovich behind bars. His pre-trial detention has been extended twice since his arrest, once in May and again in August. An appeal against his first pre-trial detention was also denied.

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September 28, 2023
Takeaways from President Biden’s first impeachment hearing by House Oversight panel | CNN Politics

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CNN
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House Republicans kicked off their first impeachment inquiry hearing Thursday laying out the allegations they will pursue against President Joe Biden, though their expert witnesses acknowledged Republicans don’t yet have the evidence to prove the accusation they’re leveling.

Thursday’s hearing in the House Oversight Committee didn’t include witnesses who could speak directly to Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealing at the center of the inquiry, but the hearing offered Republicans the chance to show some of the evidence they’ve uncovered to date.

None of that evidence has shown Joe Biden received any financial benefit from his son’s business dealings, but Republicans said at Thursday’s hearing what they’ve found so far has given them the justification to launch their impeachment inquiry.

Democrats responded by accusing Republicans of doing Donald Trump’s bidding and raising his and his family’s various foreign dealings themselves, as well as Trump’s attempts to get Ukraine to investigate in 2019 the same allegations now being raised in the impeachment inquiry.

Here’s takeaways from Thursday’s first impeachment inquiry hearing:

While Republicans leveled accusations of corruption against Joe Biden over his son’s business dealings, the GOP expert witnesses who testified Thursday were not ready to go that far.

Forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky, one of the GOP witnesses, undercut Republicans’ main narrative by saying there wasn’t enough evidence yet for him to conclude that there was “corruption” by the Bidens.

“I am not here today to even suggest that there was corruption, fraud or wrongdoing,” Dubinsky said. “More information needs to be gathered before I can make such an assessment.”

He said there was a “smokescreen” surrounding Hunter Biden’s finances, including complex overseas shell companies, which he said raise questions for a fraud expert about possible “illicit” activities.

Conservative law professor Jonathan Turley also said that the House does not yet have evidence to support articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, but argued that House Republicans were justified in opening an impeachment inquiry.

“I want to emphasize what it is that we’re here today for. This is a question of an impeachment inquiry. It is not a vote on articles of impeachment,” Turley said. “In fact, I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment. That is something that an inquiry has to establish. But I also do believe that the House has passed the threshold for an impeachment inquiry into the conduct of President Biden.”

Turley said that Biden’s false statements about his knowledge of Hunter Biden’s business endeavors, as well as the unproven allegations that Biden may have benefited from his son’s business deals, were reason for the House to move forward with the impeachment inquiry. (CNN has previously reported that Joe Biden’s unequivocal denials of any business-related contact with his son have been undercut over time, including by evidence uncovered by House Republicans.)

Turley, a George Washington University Law School professor, has repeatedly backed up Republican arguments on key legal matters in recent years, including his opposition to Trump’s first and second impeachments.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, pushed Turley further on his comments, asking whether he would vote “no” today on impeachment.

“On this evidence, certainly,” Turley said. “At the moment, these are allegations. There is some credible evidence there that is the basis of the allegations.”

House Republicans opened their first impeachment hearing Thursday with a series of lofty claims against the president, as they try to connect him to his son’s “corrupt” business dealings overseas.

House Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer claimed the GOP probes have “uncovered a mountain of evidence revealing how Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain,” even though he hasn’t put forward any concrete evidence backing up that massive allegation.

Two other Republican committee chairs further pressed their case, including by citing some of the newly released Internal Revenue Service documents, which two IRS whistleblowers claim show how the Justice Department intervened in the Hunter Biden criminal probe to protect the Biden family. However, many of their examples of alleged wrongdoing occurred during the Trump administration before Joe Biden took office.

Ahead of the hearing, the Republican chairs released a formal framework laying out the scope of their probe, saying it “will span the time of Joe Biden’s Vice Presidency to the present, including his time out of office.”

The document outlines specific lines of inquiry, including whether Biden engaged in “corruption, bribery, and influence peddling” – none of which Republicans have proved yet.

The memo included four questions the Republicans are seeking to answer related to whether Biden took any action related to payments his family received or if the president obstructed the investigations into Hunter Biden.

At the close of the hearing Thursday, Comer announced that he was issuing subpoenas for the bank records of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and brother, James Biden.

The subpoenas will be for Hunter and James Biden’s personal and business bank records, a source familiar with the subpoenas confirmed.

The subpoenas are not a surprise, as Comer has been signaling his intention to issue the subpoenas for the personal bank records. They show where Republicans will head next in their investigation as they continue to seek evidence to substantiate their unproven allegations about the president.

Some inside the GOP expressed frustration to CNN in real time with how the House GOP’s first impeachment inquiry hearing is playing out, as the Republican witnesses directly undercut the GOP’s own narrative and admit there is no evidence that Biden has committed impeachable offenses.

“You want witnesses that make your case. Picking witnesses that refute House Republicans arguments for impeachment is mind blowing,” one senior GOP aide told CNN. “This is an unmitigated disaster.”

One GOP lawmaker also expressed some disappointment with their performance thus far, telling CNN: “I wish we had more outbursts.”

The bar for Thursday’s hearing was set low: Republicans admitted they would not reveal any new evidence, but were hoping to at least make the public case for why their impeachment inquiry is warranted, especially as some of their own members remain skeptical of the push.

But some Republicans are not even paying attention, as Congress is on the brink of a shutdown – a point Democrats hammered during the hearing.

“I haven’t watched or listened to a moment of it,” said another GOP lawmaker. There’s a shutdown looming.”

Democrats repeatedly pointed out that the Republican allegations about foreign payments were tied to money that went mostly Hunter Biden – but not the to the president.

“The majority sits completely empty handed with no evidence of any presidential wrongdoing, no smoking gun, no gun, no smoke,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight committee.

Raskin’s staff brought in the 12,000 pages of bank records the committee has received so far, as Raskin said, “not a single page shows a dime going to President Joe Biden.”

Raskin also had a laptop open displaying a countdown clock for when the government shuts down in a little more than two days – another point Democrats used to bash Republicans for focusing on impeachment and failing to pass bills to fund the government. The Democrats passed the laptop around to each lawmaker as they had their five minutes to question the witnesses.

Their arguments also previewed how Democrats intend to play defense for the White House as Republicans move forward on their impeachment inquiry.

The Democrats needled Republicans for not holding a vote on an impeachment inquiry – one Democrat asked Turley whether he would recommend a vote, which Turley said he would.

House Democrats’ 2019 impeachment of Trump was sparked by Trump’s attempts to push Ukraine to investigate allegations involving Biden and his son’s position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company – some of the same allegations now being probed by the House GOP.

That led Democrats Thursday to push for testimony from Rudy Giuliani, who as Trump’s personal lawyer sought to dig up dirt on Biden in Ukraine in 2019.

Twice, the Democrats forced the Oversight Committee to vote on Democratic motions to subpoena Giuliani, votes that served as stunts to try to hammer home their argument that Giuliani tried and failed to corroborate the same allegations at the heart of the Biden impeachment inquiry.

“I ask the question: Where in the world is Rudy Giuliani?” said Rep. Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, one of the Democrats who forced the procedural vote. “That’s how we got here, ladies and gentlemen. And this committee is afraid to bring him before us and put him on the record. Shame! And the question was raised. What does this have to do with it? It has everything to do with it.”

In addition to Giuliani, Raskin sought testimony from Lev Parnas, an associate of Giuliani’s who was indicted in 2019. Parnas subsequently cooperated with the Democratic impeachment inquiry, including providing a statement from a top official at Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company, stating, “No one from Burisma had any contacts with VP Biden or people working for him.”

Several Democrats also raised Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who worked in the White House, receiving $2 billion from Saudi Arabia through a company he formed after leaving the White House.

The Democrats charged that Kushner’s actions were far worse than Hunter Biden’s, because Kushner worked in government, while Biden’s son did not.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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September 28, 2023
US mortgage rates climb to 7.31%, hitting their highest level in nearly 23 years | CNN Business

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Washington, DC
CNN
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US mortgage rates surged to their highest level in nearly 23 years this week as inflation pressures persisted.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 7.31% in the week ending September 28, up from 7.19% the week before, according to data from Freddie Mac released Thursday. A year ago, the 30-year fixed-rate was 6.70%.

“The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has hit the highest level since the year 2000,” said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist, in a statement. “However, unlike the turn of the millennium, house prices today are rising alongside mortgage rates, primarily due to low inventory. These headwinds are causing both buyers and sellers to hold out for better circumstances.”

The average mortgage rate is based on mortgage applications that Freddie Mac receives from thousands of lenders across the country. The survey includes only borrowers who put 20% down and have excellent credit.

Mortgage rates have spiked during the Federal Reserve’s historic inflation-curbing campaign — and while a good deal of progress has been made since June 2022, when inflation hit 9.1%, Fed officials say there is still a ways to go.

The Fed’s preferred inflation measure, the core Personal Consumption Expenditures index, is currently 4.2%, which is more than double the Fed’s target of 2%. Economists expect it to drop to 3.9% when the latest reading is released on Friday.

This week’s mortgage rate surge followed last week’s small move higher, as investors settled in for “higher-for-longer” interest rates after last week’s Fed policy meeting, said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com.

Hale said the takeaway from the meeting was that the upward adjustments from the Fed haven’t ended.

“Revised economic projections show that another rate hike this year is definitely on the table, and the expected policy rate in 2024 and 2025 was also higher than previously forecast,” she said. “Market participants are still playing catchup.”

While the Fed does not set the interest rates that borrowers pay on mortgages directly, its actions influence them.

Mortgage rates tend to track the yield on 10-year US Treasuries, which move based on a combination of anticipation about the Fed’s actions, what the Fed actually does and investors’ reactions. When Treasury yields go up, so do mortgage rates; when they go down, mortgage rates tend to follow.

The yield on 10-year Treasuries rose from 4.3% on September 20 to 4.6% as of September 27.

Mortgage applications continued to drop last week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, as mortgage rates went higher.

“Rates over 7% and low for-sale inventory continue to create affordability challenges for prospective buyers,” said Bob Broeksmit, MBA president and CEO. “Until rates start to come back down, we anticipate housing market activity will remain slow.”

Markets are experiencing an extraordinarily low number of homes for sale as homeowners stay put with ultra-low mortgage rates that are several percentage points lower than the current rate.

There has been a small uptick in newly listed homes coming to market over the past few weeks, according to Realtor.com, which is seasonally atypical, said Hale.

The first week in October tends to be an ideal week to buy a home, she said, since home prices tend to fall relative to summer highs, and fewer buyers contend for homes. Yet housing inventory remains higher than a typical week, Hale said.

But, she added, mortgage rates will continue to be a wild card, which could make it impossible for some buyers to get in the market now.

Even as demand is dropping, with so few homeowners selling, the market is pushing up prices as those few buyers who remain tussle over the handful of available houses, Hale said.

This combination of higher prices and higher mortgage rates contrasts with easing rents over the past few months. This may cause would-be first-time buyers to wait for home prices and mortgage rates to stabilize and rent instead.

“Buying a starter home is more expensive than renting in all but three major US markets [Realtor.com] studied,” said Hale, “which explains why buyer demand is likely to remain relatively low.”

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September 28, 2023
Nagorno-Karabakh will cease to exist from January 2024, president declares | CNN

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The president of the self-declared separatist state in Nagorno-Karabakh, Samvel Shahramanyan, signed a decree Thursday to dissolve all state institutions from January 1, 2024 following its defeat by Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani victory last week following a brief military offensive triggered a a huge exodus of ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh and marked the end of decades of conflict.

President Samvel Shahramanyan’s decree called for all institutions and organizations of the Republic of Artsakh – which is not recognized internationally – to dissolve by the start of next year.

“The Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) ceases its existence,” read the decree, which was shared on Facebook by the Artsakh government.

Shahramanyan said the decision had been made “due to the current difficult military-political situation.”

Azerbaijan’s campaign lasted 24 hours, before both sides agreed to a Russia-brokered ceasefire which saw Karabakh’s armed forces disband. But the Azerbaijani presidency insisted that the Artsakh government also dissolve itself, warning that, if they did not do so, the offensive would continue “until the end.”

The decree called on Azerbaijan to observe the “free, unconstrained, and unhindered passing of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, including the militants who laid down their weapons, with their property and transportation means through Lachin corridor.”

More than half of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh has fled for Armenia over the past week, after Azerbaijan lifted the blockade of the Lachin corridor – the only road connecting the enclave to Armenia – to allow people to leave.

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September 28, 2023
Convicted felon suspected of killing Baltimore tech CEO has been arrested, police say | CNN

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CNN
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A convicted felon suspected of killing tech executive Pava LaPere in Baltimore this week has been arrested, Baltimore police said early Thursday.

Jason Dean Billingsley was wanted on first-degree murder and other charges in connection with the death of LaPere, the 26-year-old CEO of Baltimore-based startup EcoMap Technologies, according to police.

Police did not immediately provide details about the arrest.

LaPere was found dead in a downtown Baltimore apartment building on Monday with apparent blunt force trauma to her head, police said. The killing prompted a dayslong manhunt for Billingsley, who officials warned should be considered armed and dangerous.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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September 27, 2023
Ireland seizes largest ever drugs haul worth over $165M | CNN

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The biggest-ever drug seizure in the history of Ireland was intercepted off the coast of Cork in the southeast of the country on Tuesday, Irish police said.

Cocaine weighing 2,253 kg, worth an estimated 157 million euros ($165 million), was seized from the vessel “MV Matthew” traveling from South America, Director General of Revenue and Customs Gerry Harrahill said at a news conference in Dublin Wednesday.

“It is the largest drug seizure in the history of the State,” Justin Kelly, Assistant Commissioner of An Garda Síochána, Ireland’s police force, said at the same conference.

“This is a hugely significant operation and it shows our unrelenting determination to disrupt and dismantle networks which are determined to bring drugs into our country,” Kelly added.

Three men, aged 31, 50 and 60, have been arrested on suspicion of organized crime and are currently being questioned at Garda stations in County Wexford, according to a Garda press release.

Officers said the drugs originated from South America and were bound for crime groups in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Europe.

A task force made up of members of the Irish Revenue Customs Service, the navy, and An Garda Síochána coordinated to detain the Panamanian registered bulk cargo vessel in the early hours of Tuesday, according to the Garda press release.

Video shared by the Irish Defence Forces on X, formerly Twitter, shows the army fast-roping from a helicopter onto the deck amid challenging weather conditions as the vessel attempted to make its way back out of Irish waters.

After the army secured the vessel, members of the task force were transferred on board and escorted by a naval ship to Cork harbor, where it is currently being forensically examined.

“Yesterday was an extremely complex day from a military perspective and the defense forces ran an extremely complex military operation,” Tony Geraghty, fleet commander of the Irish Naval Service, said at the Dublin press briefing.

“It was (made) even more complex by environments that we had no control over. The weather was extremely poor and also we were trying to predict the actions of a number of crime gangs and how that would impact on us. But it was very successful from a defense force point of view.”

The intelligence-led operation was conducted in collaboration with the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre – Narcotics (MAOC-N) based in Lisbon, according to a Garda press release. The MAOC-N is an initiative by seven EU member countries, including France, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal, and the UK, with financial support from the European Union.

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September 27, 2023
North Korea to ‘expel’ US soldier Travis King, who crossed from South, state media reports | CNN

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North Korea has decided “to expel” US Army Private Travis King, who crossed into the North from South Korea during a tour of the joint security area in July, state media KCNA reported on Wednesday.

“The relevant organ of the DPRK decided to expel Travis King, a soldier of the U.S. Army who illegally intruded into the territory of the DPRK, under the law of the Republic,” KCNA said. The report said the investigation into King “has been finished.”

It is unclear from KCNA’s report where, when and how King would be expelled.

King crossed the military demarcation line from South Korea into North Korea in July during a tour of the Joint Security Area inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ). King, a junior enlisted soldier assigned to US Forces Korea, had faced assault charges in South Korea and was due to return to Fort Bliss, Texas, and be removed from the military just one day before he crossed into North Korea, CNN previously reported.

North Korea claimed on Wednesday that King has “confessed that he illegally intruded into the territory of the DPRK as he harbored ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. army and was disillusioned about the unequal U.S. society.”

CNN cannot verify whether these are King’s own words.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said last month that it “would not be out of character” for North Korea to use US soldier Travis King as a propaganda tool or bargaining chip.

“They certainly could. … We haven’t seen any indication that that’s exactly what’s afoot here, but certainly would not be out of character for them,” Kirby told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead.” “What we’re focused on is trying to make sure we can get information about him.”

Kirby added at that time that King’s location was unclear, as well as “the conditions he’s being held” and information about his health.

This is a developing story. It will be updated…

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September 27, 2023
More than a dozen people were arrested after multiple stores were looted around Philadelphia, police say | CNN

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More than a dozen people were arrested after stores were looted when a large crowd gathered in Philadelphia’s Center City district Tuesday night, police said.

The looting began shortly after the conclusion of peaceful protests against a judge’s decision to dismiss all charges against a former Philadelphia police officer, Mark Dial, in the fatal shooting of 27-year-old Eddie Irizarry on August 14, authorities said. The city’s police commissioner said he believes the looters were “opportunists” that were not directly connected to the protests.

“This had nothing to do with the protests. What we had tonight was a bunch of criminal opportunists take advantage of a situation,” Commissioner John Stanford in a late-night news conference.

Police started getting calls around 8 p.m. from businesses reporting they were being broken into or getting ransacked, Stanford said.

The protest over the Irizarry case ended around 7:30 p.m., and though the police department had begun moving officers out of the area, enough were around to respond quickly when 911 calls about break-ins began, Stanford said.

Officers responded to the stores, arresting around “15 to 20 people” and working to disperse growing crowds of “juveniles and young adults,” Stanford said.

“We were told at one point that crowd got as large as maybe 100 or so that were just making their way through Center City area,” the commissioner said.

Reports of looting began in the Center City area, then continued in other neighborhoods, according to Stanford.

“We’re investigating that there was possibly a caravan of a number of different vehicles that were going from location to location,” the commissioner told reporters.

It appears looters came from different parts of the city, Stanford said, adding that officers still were determining where they came from and how the different vehicles may be connected.

Stanford said it was unclear how many businesses were hit Tuesday, but that targeted stores included clothing and sneaker shops, high-end stores, wine and spirit stores and pharmacies.

Cell phone video obtained by CNN shows several people in hooded sweatshirts running in and ransacking an Apple store Tuesday night. Different video captured officers detaining several people outside a Lululemon store, where items of clothing could be seen littering the ground.

Elsewhere, officers were seen outside a Foot Locker store, where the window was smashed and merchandise was strewn around the floor, video from CNN affiliate KYW showed.

Police still were responding to 911 calls related to the looting as Stanford briefed the media Tuesday night, but the commissioner said he believes officers “have it contained.”

Investigators will be looking through video from the area to make additional arrests, Stanford said.

“We made arrests and we will continue to make arrests until we have all of the individuals, or a number of the individuals, that have been responsible for what we’ve seen tonight in custody,” he said.

The reports lootings in Philadelphia come as a wave of retailers – both large and small – say they’re struggling to contain store crimes that have hurt their bottom lines.

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September 27, 2023
Ukraine ‘clarifying’ whether Russian commander was killed in strike, after video purportedly shows him alive | CNN

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Ukraine’s military has said it is “clarifying” information received about the alleged assassination of Russian commander Viktor Sokolov, after Moscow released a video that appears to show him alive and well.

Kyiv claimed on Monday it killed Sokolov, the commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, in an attack on the fleet’s headquarters in occupied Crimea last Friday.

But the Russian Ministry of Defense published a video on Tuesday that appears to show Sokolov participating in a meeting with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other Russian military leaders.

In the footage, a man resembling Sokolov appears to join the meeting via video conference. The nametape on his uniform reads Sokolov V. N. and his screen shows the Cyrillic letters “ЧФ,” the abbreviation for the Black Sea Fleet. CNN cannot confirm this is Sokolov, when the meeting took place or where his video appearance was filmed.

“Since the Russians were urgently forced to publish a response with Sokolov allegedly alive, our units are clarifying the information,” Ukraine Special Operations Forces said on Telegram Tuesday.

“Available sources claim that the Black Sea Fleet Commander is among the dead. Many have not yet been identified due to the fragmentation of body fragments,” the statement added.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier on Tuesday refused to comment on the Ukrainian claim that Sokolov had been killed.

The Ukrainian Special Operations Forces had earlier said Friday’s attack – the latest in a string of bold strikes on the occupied peninsula of Crimea – killed 34 people, including Sokolov.

Ukrainian Defense Intelligence spokesperson Andrii Yusov said Russia was using Crimea as a “logistics hub” and that “the ultimate goal, of course, is the de-occupation of Ukrainian Crimea.”

Ukraine has increasingly been hitting strategic Russian targets in Crimea, the Black Sea region of southern Ukraine that has been occupied by Moscow since 2014.

Before Friday’s attack, Ukrainians had already carried out a series of strikes on Crimea. They hit a Russian military airfield at Saky, degraded Russian air defenses on the northwest coast, and carried out a missile attack on the main dry-dock and ship-repair facility in Sevastopol, crippling an attack submarine and a landing ship.

Russia appointed Sokolov as its new commander for its Crimea-based Black Sea fleet in August 2022, according to reports from state media outlet TASS at the time.

Sokolov had been serving as the Naval Academy chief since 2020. He served as the Northern Fleet deputy commander from 2013 until 2020. The change of command came amid heavy losses and a string of explosions at Russian military facilities in Crimea.

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September 26, 2023
Filipino diver with a knife helps remove floating barrier installed by China in South China Sea | CNN

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CNN
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A floating barrier installed by China to prevent Filipino boats from fishing in a disputed area of the South China Sea has been removed, Philippine authorities said Monday, the latest flashpoint between Manila and Beijing over their competing maritime claims.

Video released by the Philippine Coast Guard on Monday showed a Filipino diver cut what it said earlier was a 300-meter (984-feet) long string of buoys near Bajo de Masinloc, also known as Scarborough Shoal, a small but strategic reef and fertile fishing ground 130 miles (200 kilometers) west of the Philippine island of Luzon.

The footage showed the diver with a simple mask and snorkel slipping below the waves to use a small knife to cut through rope after reaching the barrier on a rickety fishing boat with a small crew.

The video is a vivid illustration of a fraught power struggle that has been playing out for years in the South China Sea as Manila tries to push back against increasingly assertive claims to the disputed strategic waterway by Beijing.

Philippine authorities claimed Sunday that three Chinese Coast Guard boats and a Chinese maritime militia service boat had installed the barrier following the arrival of a Philippine government vessel in the area.

“The barrier posed a hazard to navigation, a clear violation of international law,” the Philippine Coast Guard said in a statement Monday, adding that it also infringed on Philippine sovereignty.

Beijing on Monday defended its actions saying it has “indisputable sovereignty over Huangyan Island and its adjacent waters,” using the Chinese name for the disputed shoal, and accusing the Filipino vessel of “intruding” without permission.

“The Chinese Coast Guard took the necessary measures in accordance with the law to stop and drive away the other vessel and the operation in question was conducted with professional restraint,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said during a regular press briefing.

Beijing claims “indisputable sovereignty” over almost all of the 1.3 million square miles of the South China Sea, as well as most of the islands and sandbars within it, including many features that are hundreds of miles away from China’s mainland.

Over the past two decades China has occupied a number of reefs and atolls across the South China Sea, building up military installations, including runways and ports, which have not only challenged the Philippines’ sovereignty and fishing rights but have also endangered marine biodiversity in the highly contested resource-rich waterway.

In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines in a landmark maritime dispute, which concluded that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea.

Beijing has ignored the ruling.

Western marine security experts, along with officials from the Philippines and the United States, have increasingly accused Beijing of using ostensibly civilian fishing vessels as a maritime militia that acts as an unofficial – and officially deniable – force that China uses to push its territorial claims both in the South China Sea and beyond.

The situation comes days after the Philippine Coast Guard accused China’s maritime militia of turning vast patches of coral near the Palawan island chain into a bleached and broken wasteland.

China’s foreign ministry dismissed those allegations as “false and groundless.”

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September 25, 2023
3M agrees to pay almost $10 million to settle apparent Iran sanctions violations | CNN Business

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CNN
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3M has agreed to pay almost $10 million to settle apparent violations of Iranian sanctions, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control said last week.

The agency said 3M had 54 apparent violations of OFAC sanctions on Iran. It said between 2016 and 2018, a 3M subsidiary in Switzerland allegedly knowingly sold reflective license plate sheeting through a German reseller to Bonyad Taavon Naja, an entity which is under Iranian law enforcement control.

It’s the latest of a stream of high-publicity and high-dollar settlements that 3M — which makes Post-It notes, Scotch Tape, N95 masks and other industrial products — has made this year.

3M has not replied to a request for comment regarding last week’s settlement announcement.

One US person employed by 3M Gulf, a subsidiary in Dubai, was “closely involved” in the sale, OFAC said.

The alleged sales occurred after an outside due diligence report, which flagged connections to Iran’s Law Enforcement Forces.

OFAC notes Iranian law enforcement stands accused of human rights violations both in Iran and Syria.

The Switzerland subsidiary, known as 3M East, sent 43 shipments to the German reseller even though it knew the products would be resold to the Iranian entity, according to the OFAC.

OFAC said senior managers at 3M Gulf “willfully violated” sanctions laws and that other employees were “reckless in their handling” of the sales.

“These employees had reason to know that these sales would violate U.S. sanctions, but ignored ample evidence that would have alerted them to this fact,” OFAC wrote.

3M voluntarily self-disclosed the apparent violations after discovering the sale hadn’t been authorized, according to OFAC. It said it fired or reprimanded “culpable” employees involved, hired new trade compliance counsel, revamped sanctions trainings and stopped doing business with the German reseller.

In June, 3M agreed to pay up to $10.3 billion over 13 years to fund public water suppliers in the United States that have detected toxic “forever chemicals” in drinking water.

3M has faced thousands of lawsuits through the last two decades over its manufacturing of products containing polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which have been found in hundreds of household products.

3M said that the multi-billion-dollar settlement over PFAS is not an admission of liability.

A few months later, in August, the company agreed to pay $6 billion to resolve roughly 300,000 lawsuits alleging that the manufacturing company supplied faulty combat earplugs to the military that resulted in significant injuries, such as hearing loss.

3M also said its earplug agreement was not an admission of liability.

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September 25, 2023
Rich, white communities most likely to oppose wind farms, study finds | CNN

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CNN
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Wealthy and white communities in the US and Canada were much more likely to oppose wind energy projects, according to a new study from University of California Santa Barbara researchers.

The study looked at more than 1,400 onshore wind projects across the US and Canada between 2000 and 2016, and analyzed the factors that made some communities more likely than others to oppose them.

“One of the maybe more surprising findings, at least for me going into it, was that it was more likely to happen in overwhelmingly white communities,” said Leah Stokes, the study’s lead researcher and an associate professor of environmental politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Stokes added the study also found that in Canada, wealthier communities in particular were more likely to oppose the projects.

In the US, 17% of wind projects faced significant opposition, while 18% of Canadian projects faced opposition over the 16-year period, according to the study, with rates in both countries growing over time.

“Anti-wind opposition has only grown in the last decade, and you can see that very clearly in the trend line of the paper,” Stokes told CNN.

“In the early periods, it really wasn’t that common,” she said, noting the study found about one in 10 projects in both countries were opposed in the early 2000s. “By the end of this period, before the Trump era, the average rate is more like one in five.”

In the US, opposition was especially concentrated in the Northeast, comprising New England states, plus New York and New Jersey. In Canada, opposition to wind was strongest in Ontario.

Opposition to wind energy has only been sporadically tracked and documented across the US and Canada, Stokes said, and “we really wanted to get a sense of how common this was.”

To do so, researchers combed through thousands of newspaper articles. They cross-referenced the places where wind opposition was popping up and used a social science technique called name classification to understand geographically and demographically where it was happening.

“This is really the first time that’s ever been done at this scale,” Stokes said.

Notably, the research found the politics of a state didn’t necessarily predetermine how receptive or opposed communities were to wind projects. Pockets of opposition in the US were stronger in liberal Northeast states, while there is greater acceptance and a bigger wind boom in some traditionally Republican states like Texas and Oklahoma.

“Party ID doesn’t matter for opposition” in the US, Stokes said. “You’ve got places like Texas, for example, that are building a lot of wind, and then you have places like the Northeast that are opposing a lot of wind, [who] are Democrats.”

Stokes added, however, that there is a noticeable partisan split around wind in Ontario, Canada, because the country’s Liberal Party proposed a lot of wind projects and is associated with them.

John Rogers, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists who wasn’t involved in the study, said part of the reason opposition in the Northeast is so high could be the higher population density and comparatively less space for wind turbines.

“If you think about the wind belt in the Midwest down to the lower Great Plains in Texas, it’s a lot of land and a lot fewer people,” Rogers said. “If you think about where wind would typically have to go in New England, it’s on ridgelines.”

Stokes and Rogers said communities of color who are situated closer to power plants running on coal or gas can end up bearing the brunt of the choices of these white and wealthy communities who reject wind power.

“We have coal plants, gas plants, that operate in these communities,” Stokes said. “If you stop building clean energy resources because you don’t want it, what you are doing is imposing pollution onto other people’s backyards.”

Rogers said that while wind projects need to get buy-in from the communities they’re developing in, the study shows that white and richer communities have more power to approve or kill projects.

“We need to be thinking about the way that energy privilege and whiteness and wealth come into decision-making,” Rogers said. “There are lots of people in lots of communities that see real value in wind power development, we shouldn’t allow whiteness or wealth to dictate how much of that gets to happen or doesn’t get to happen.”

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September 25, 2023
Missing toddler found sleeping in woods using her dog as a pillow after walking 3 miles barefoot | CNN

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CNN
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A 2-year-old girl who walked barefoot more than three miles with her family’s two dogs was found sleeping off a wooded Michigan trail using the smaller dog as a pillow, authorities said.

Troopers were called to a house in rural Faithorn, Michigan, around 8 p.m. on Wednesday after the toddler, Thea Chase, had wandered away from the home, Michigan State Police Lt. Mark Giannunzio told CNN on Friday.

Faithorn is a small town about a mile east of Wisconsin’s border in northern Michigan.

Brooke Chase, Thea’s mother, said she had an instinct to check on her daughter who had been playing in the yard, and learned the toddler’s uncle told Thea to go inside because she had no shoes on.

When Chase and her brother-in-law realized Thea wasn’t in the house, she said she began to yell. They searched for about 20 minutes before calling Chase’s husband and police.

“When we get a call like that, everything else stops,” Giannunzio said.

Michigan State Police put out requests for drones, search-and-rescue and canine teams, while members of the close-knit community formed their own search party to help locate the child, who was assumed to be somewhere in the heavily wooded area near the home, Giannunzio said.

Around midnight, four hours after police were first notified, a family friend searching for Thea on an all-terrain vehicle came across the Chase family’s rottweiler, Buddy, who started barking as he approached, according to Chase.

The 2-year-old was discovered a short way off the trail, sleeping on the ground with her head atop Hartley, the family’s English Springer. When the ATV driver tried to get near the toddler to wake her up, the smaller dog growled, Chase said.

“She has those dogs wrapped around her finger,” the mother said.

Chase added she was “in a fog” for the roughly four hours that search teams looked for her daughter. While she stayed in the home with Thea’s younger brother, troopers searched the house multiple times and tried to comfort the mother.

When Thea was returned home on the back of the ATV, the child was giggling and saying, “Hi, Mommy,” Chase said.

The outdoor temperature was about 60 degrees when the toddler was found. Thea was determined to be fine after a medical evaluation, according to Giannunzio.

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September 23, 2023
Mexico makes agreement with US to deport migrants from its border cities amid ongoing surge in illegal migration | CNN

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CNN
—

Mexico has made an agreement with the United States to deport migrants from its border cities to their home countries and take several actions to deter migrants as part of a new effort to combat the recent surge in border crossings.

Mexican officials met with US Customs and Border Protection officials on Friday in Ciudad Juárez,, Mexico, which is across the border from El Paso, Texas, following the recent spike in illegal crossings into the US, which temporarily closed an international bridge and paused Mexico’s main cargo train system.

As part of the agreement, Mexico agreed to “depressurize” its northern cities, which border the El Paso, San Diego and Eagle Pass, Texas, where the mayor has declared a state of emergency. They will also implement more than a dozen actions to prevent migrants from risking their lives by using the railway system to reach the US-Mexico border, according to Mexico’s National Migration Institute.

The US Department of Defense is ramping up resources at the US-Mexico border, sending at least 800 new active-duty personnel to the border, where 2,500 National Guard members are already servicing, Department of Homeland Security officials announced Wednesday night in a call with reporters.

The move comes as migrant crossings along the border are rising, surpassing 8,600 over a 24-hour period this week, according to a Department of Homeland Security official. It is up from around 3,500 daily border arrests after the expiration in May of Title 42 triggered new consequences for those who cross the border illegally. There were more than 8,000 apprehensions on Monday.

The busiest sectors are Del Rio, El Paso, Lower Rio Grande Valley and Tucson; each facing more than 1,000 encounters over the last 24 hours, according to the official. Eagle Pass is in the Del Rio sector.

Friday’s meeting was attended by Customs and Border Protection’s Acting Commissioner Troy Miller, the commissioner of Mexico’s National Migration Institute, the governor of the Mexican state of Chihuahua, members of Mexico’s national defense and national guard and representatives of Ferromex, a Mexican railroad operator, according to the institute.

Mexican officials vowed to carry out a series of 15 actions as part of the agreement, some in coordination with Customs and Border Protection and Ferromex, which includes deporting migrants to their home countries by land and air.

The country said it will carry out negotiations with the governments of Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia and Cuba to confirm receipt of their citizens deported from the US-Mexico border. It will also allow US border patrol agents to expel migrants through the Ciudad Juárez international bridge, which connects to El Paso.

Other terms of the agreement include submitting a daily report of the number of migrants on the train system to Customs and Border Protection’s El Paso sector, establishing checkpoints along the Ferromex rail route and conducting interventions on railways and highways, according to Mexico’s National Migration Institute.

The institute said Mexico had deported more than 788,000 migrants to their home countries from January 1 to September.

The agreed-upon actions by Mexican officials raise questions about the country doing work typically designated for the US – from the south of the border – to manage the influx of migrants in recent weeks, which have has strained federal resources and overwhelmed already-crowded facilities, CNN previously reported.

Many who leave their homes for the United States face long and dangerous treks in hopes of finding better, safer lives. Some may flee violence, while others may immigrate for economic opportunities or to reunite with family, experts say. Deteriorating conditions in Latin America exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic also have contributed to the influx of migrants into the US.

It is likely the number of border crossings will continue to increase, as more Mexican nationals are making plans to come to the US, Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in Washington, told CNN.

US government data show more Mexican families coming to the border, likely to seek asylum, Ruiz said. In July 2022, for example, Customs and Border Protection figures indicate 4,000 Mexican family encounters at the border. A year later, the number had more than quadrupled, reaching nearly 22,000.

“These are the three levers that are in play right now. … And regardless of what the Biden administration does today or tomorrow,” he says, “the people that are on the way already are going to continue, unless something else happens in the region.”

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September 23, 2023
Tropical Storm Ophelia makes landfall in North Carolina and will now trek up the East Coast | CNN
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CNN
—

Tropical Storm Ophelia is heading up the East Coast after making landfall near Emerald Isle, North Carolina, early Saturday, delivering heavy rain, strong winds and coastal flooding well beyond its center.

Here are the storm’s latest impacts:
70,000-plus homes and businesses lost power across North Carolina and the mid-Atlantic Saturday morning, according to utility tracking site PowerOutage.us.

Storm surge flooding of more than 3 feet hit coastal North Carolina where water was seen covering roadways

States of emergency were declared in Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland

Two MLB games have been postponed: Braves-Nationals in Washington, D.C., and Diamondbacks-Yankees in New York
The tropical storm roared ashore around 6:15 a.m. with 70 mph sustained winds – just shy of hurricane strength. Tropical-storm force winds extend up to 320 miles from Ophelia’s core, the National Hurricane Center said.

The storm had 50 mph winds as of 11 a.m. and will continue to weaken as it moves farther inland, but power outages could grow as it affects more areas.

TRACK THE STORM

Ophelia is on track to move across eastern North Carolina and then travel through southeastern Virginia, before heading farther north across the Delmarva Peninsula on Saturday and Sunday, the hurricane center said.

The threat of rain postponed two Major League Baseball games scheduled for Saturday. The Atlanta Braves and the Washington Nationals will replay their game on Sunday, while the Arizona Diamondbacks and New York Yankees have yet to announce when they will take to the diamond.

The storm’s shield of rain extends hundreds of miles from its center and is already dumping heavy rain across a large swath of the mid-Atlantic, including Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and New York.

But coastal areas in North Carolina are bearing the brunt of impacts as the center of the expansive storm barges into the state.

Storm surge flooded coastal areas and inlets in North Carolina overnight and winds gusting to 73 mph hit Cape Lookout, along the state’s Outer Banks.

The flooding began on Friday, when roads were submerged in communities along North Carolina’s coast. In coastal Cedar Island, water collected on Highway 12, though it was open and passable, the state transportation department said.

“But please don’t go out tonight unless you absolutely have to. There is sand and water on the roadway, and it’s dark and stormy,” the department said in a social media post.

In New Bern, which sits along two rivers in North Carolina about 120 miles east of Raleigh, roads were flooded and water creeped inland as the levels rose in the downtown area, city officials said on Facebook. Photos posted on the city’s page show a flooded children’s park and ducks floating down the street on floodwaters.

Water levels also rose overnight in the Chesapeake Bay, along the coasts of Virginia and Maryland.

“If you can avoid driving or being out during the storm please do so. We are expecting an extended period of strong winds, heavy rainfall, and elevated tides,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said.

Ophelia will deliver several key threats through the weekend:

Heavy Rainfall: Some places in eastern North Carolina and southeast Virginia could see between 3 and 5 inches of rain, with locally higher amounts. Other states in the Mid-Atlantic could pick up 2 to 4 inches on rain Saturday night through Sunday. Meanwhile, 1 to 3 inches of rain are forecast across southern New York through southern New England beginning Saturday into Monday.

Coastal Threats: One to 5 feet of storm surge is possible in some coastal areas, particularly in inlets and rivers from around Surf City, North Carolina, to the Virginia Tidewater. Storm surge flooding could peak Saturday afternoon with another high tide, particularly in the lower Chesapeake Bay.

The storm will also bring dangerous surf and rip currents along East Coast through the weekend, the hurricane center warned.

Strong and Gusty winds: Tropical-storm-force wind gusts – between 39 and 73 mph – will impact a wide area of the East Coast throughout the day Saturday. Winds will lessen with time, but stronger gusts could down trees and power lines.

Severe weather: A few tornadoes also are possible in parts of the coastal mid-Atlantic and North Carolina.
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September 23, 2023
Clinging to hope in Derna, as grief turns to anger | CNN

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Derna
CNN
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In the days that followed the devastating floods in the Libyan city of Derna, reports emerged of survival – a six-year-old boy plucked from the water from a third-floor balcony, a father saving his daughter by putting her in the fridge, an infant found alive floating in the water. Such stories are impossible to verify but are a glimmer of hope people want to cling to.

Torrential rainfall and the collapse of two dams flooded the coastal city, sweeping entire neighborhoods into the Mediterranean on September 10. Close to 4,000 people died in the floods and 9,000 more are still unaccounted for, according to the World Health Organization. While the missing are presumed dead, their bodies still trapped under debris or in the sea, many still hope their loved ones could still be alive.

Abu Bakr thought his relatives perished in the catastrophic flood, until he saw a picture on social media of a child rescued from the water that looks like his nephew. It set him on a search mission that took him to field hospitals and shelters for the displaced.

Schools-turned-shelters in Derna list the names of their inhabitants on their doors to help people like Abu Bakr. A stream of people go from one to another to go through the lists every day, hoping to find a familiar name.

In the mayhem of the first few days, survivors, the injured and the displaced were taken to other cities in eastern Libya. People lost their phones and mobile networks were down, making it difficult for survivors to reach their families. Hundreds of bodies were buried in mass graves without visual identification, and officials only managed to take DNA samples of recovered bodies days after the floods hit. Officials say it could take up to a year before these bodies are exhumed for identification.

“My family thought I was dead and started taking condolences,” Karima El-Kilany, 62, tells CNN. Water flooded her house and her husband clung to a collapsed ceiling until neighbors rescued them. It took days for her to get on Facebook and read the eulogies written for her and her husband, she says.

She sits on a mattress in a school theater-turned-shelter for the displaced. Next to her, Salma, a teacher and mother of four, is tending to her 17-year-old daughter, who’s ill and shell-shocked.

Salma, who only gave her first name and agreed to be filmed covering her face, finds it difficult to accept her new reality. “Maybe I’m too paranoid. There are 30 families in this room,” she says, describing how she struggles to sanitize the mattresses her kids sleep on. “It’s difficult to suddenly find all your neighbors inside your house. Imagine that. If you make problems, then you become suspicious.”

“I hope to wake up one day (and) find the city still standing. Find the people. Find my mother,” Salma says. “I lost my mother, my brother, my sisters. I went back to search for my mother, I went through the names, but nothing. But, I’m hopeful,” she adds.

At a nearby shelter, Salem el-Na’as of the Libyan Red Crescent scrolls through the strangers’ messages on his phone. They are all from people looking for loved ones, sending him names, pictures and details. “The messages don’t stop. I have to put the phone on flight mode just to be able to write down the information I get,” he says.

These efforts were hampered by another drop in mobile network coverage earlier this week. While the two-day blackout started hours after hundreds of protesters called for accountability on Monday, officials said it was due to infrastructure failure when excavators hit a fiber optics cable.

Grief has morphed into anger. Like the sea slowly regurgitating the houses and lives thrown into its belly, more residents were questioning the negligence and mismanagement that led to the collapse of the two dams. Protesters chanted against Agilah Saleh, the speaker of the eastern-based parliament that also supports the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) that controls the city.

This week ushered a waning of the solidarity that briefly united a country divided by a decade of war. Officials of the eastern-based government were increasingly expressing concerns about “infiltrators” from the western-based and internationally recognized government and “extremist groups” taking advantage of the aid convoys arriving in the city. Several LNA officials told CNN at least a dozen men were arrested in Derna.

Activists said that several residents and protesters were arrested.

“Political division still exist but what’s important (is) that all the relevant institutes are on the ground regardless of where they are based,” Mohamed Eljarh, spokesman of the Supreme Committee of Emergency and Response, said in a press conference Friday. “We should overcome the political divide on the ground,” he told CNN.

The emergency committee held a meeting with Derna representatives after disbanding the municipal council to include them in the decision making, Eljarh announced on Friday.

“This is one of the ways to deal with the anger, grievances and concerns,” he told CNN.

The city that was buzzing with rescuers, journalists, visiting diplomats and volunteers bringing aid from across Libya, got a lot quieter by the time the CNN team left on Wednesday. Officials said they were worried about the spread of infections especially in areas where dead bodies are believed to be trapped under mud and rubble.

Close to 60 local recovery workers were hospitalized on Tuesday suffering from diarrhea and vomiting, which the minister of health of the eastern-based government said were infections common in such situations. He said at this stage there are no signs of an endemic spreading in the city.

Throughout this week, excavators cleared paths for vehicles through the rubble. Local health workers were spraying the damaged buildings and streets with strong disinfectants.

While officials denied giving city-wide evacuation orders, several areas were cordoned off. Access to the city was restricted and only a handful of regional and international networks, including CNN, were allowed to stay for a few more days.

Yet, in streets ravaged by the floods, residents of the buildings still standing were adamant on staying in their homes. Those who lost their homes, like Salma, want to stay in the city, hoping international aid groups would provide temporary housing.

“We tried evacuation in 2018. I was displaced from my home and neighborhood for two years. I experienced the destitution that comes with displacement. I paid a high price and there was no compensation,” Moftah Al-Hanshiry says. His building still holds the scars of previous wars and battles that Derna witnessed in the past decade.

Fueled by endemic distrust of local politicians and leaders, he says he would only leave his home if a responsible entity like the World Health Organization issues the order. Otherwise, he says, “I’d rather die than leave.”

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September 23, 2023
Ukraine says strike on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet HQ left dozens dead and wounded ‘including senior leadership’ | CNN

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CNN
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Ukraine said Saturday its bold strike on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters in the Crimean city of Sevastopol had left dozens dead and wounded “including senior leadership.”

The attack on Friday is perhaps the most dramatic example yet of the confidence with which Ukraine is going after Russian facilities in occupied Crimea – and shows the vulnerability of critically important infrastructure on the peninsula.

In a statement on Telegram, Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said a special op dubbed “Crab Trap” was timed to strike while senior members of Russia’s Navy were meeting, and that the attack left dozens of dead and wounded “including the senior leadership of the fleet.” No names have been given and CNN has not independently verified the claim.

Sevastopol is the largest city in Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. Ukraine has not given up hope of reclaiming it.

“The daring and painstaking work of the Special Operations Forces enabled them to hit the Black Sea Fleet headquarters ‘on time and with precision’ while the Russian Navy’s senior staff was meeting in the temporarily occupied city of Sevastopol,” it said in the statement.

“The data was transmitted to the Air Force for strike. The details of the attack will be revealed once it is possible. The result is dozens of dead and wounded occupiers, including the senior leadership of the fleet,” the statement read.

It added, “We are moving further!”

Attacks have strategic and symbolic importance

No further details or any evidence as to specific casualties among Russia’s Black Sea Fleet have so far been provided by Ukraine.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense has to date only said that a Russian soldier was missing after Friday’s missile attack, which local authorities said left the naval HQ damaged scattered debris hundreds of meters away.

The incident was the latest in a string of attacks targeting Russian facilities in Crimea.

The Ukrainians have hit a Russian military airfield at Saky, degraded Russian air defenses on the north-west coast, and carried out a missile attack on the main dry-dock and ship-repair facility in Sevastopol, crippling an attack submarine and a landing ship.

The attack on Saky caused unspecified but “serious damage” at the airfield, according to sources in Ukraine’s Security Services (SBU).

In the wake of Friday’s attack, Ukraine’s Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksii Danilov warned that the Russian Black Sea Fleet could be “sliced up like a salami” in potential future strikes.

There are plenty of reasons for Ukraine to target Crimea. It’s politically a sign that despite the slow progress on the front lines in its counteroffensive, Ukraine can still inflict serious damage on the Russian military. Targets such as the Crimea bridge have considerable symbolic value as well as strategic purpose.

It’s also part of a broader effort – in Crimea, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk – to hit Russian logistics, fuel, maintenance and command centers, in order to disrupt their ability to supply the front lines.

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September 23, 2023
Want to live in London or New York? Good luck if you’re renting | CNN Business

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London
CNN
—

In May, Viveca Chow hurriedly transferred $3,700 over her phone while standing in the lobby of a building in Queens, New York. She made the upfront payment to secure an apartment minutes after seeing it.

It was a moment the 28-year-old lifestyle influencer — forced to leave her previous accommodation after the landlord increased her monthly rent by $1,000 — described to CNN as “dystopian.”

Yet it is something that Chow, along with millions of renters in big cities, has come to expect as part of the fight for affordable housing. Her realtor urged her to pay the holding deposit on the spot to secure the one-bedroom unit.

In many urban centers, an influx of workers and students after the pandemic has collided with a lack of accommodation for rent, high levels of inflation, and rising interest rates that are trapping some people in the rental market when they would otherwise be buying a home.

Average rents in New York and Sydney grew by an inflation-busting 4.7% and 6.9% respectively in the year to August, according to real estate firm Knight Frank. While growth in rental costs in both cities has slowed compared with its pandemic peaks, average rents are still at all-time highs.

In other places, rents are rising even faster. In London, the average annual rise in the cost of a rental property exceeded 17% in April and again last month, the biggest jumps since real estate agency Hamptons started collecting the data in 2014.

That runaway growth far exceeds both inflation and pay raises in the United Kingdom.

Many are struggling to meet the costs.

According to property website Realtor.com, affordability in the New York metropolitan area deteriorated the most out of the 50 largest US metro areas in the year to July. The share of median household income in the New York area eaten up by the median rent rose from 35% to 37% in that time.

Based on one approach, housing costs are judged affordable if they account for no more than 30% of the typical household income, Realtor.com said. This is also the benchmark used by the UK Office for National Statistics when assessing private rents.

In London, the destination for many UK college students looking for work after graduating, renting has become “entirely unaffordable” for that cohort, said SpareRoom, the UK’s biggest room search site, in a recent analysis.

The platform used the ONS’s measure of affordability in its study and the average graduate starting salary of £29,000 ($36,000) a year. According to SpareRoom’s latest Quarterly Rental Index, average monthly room rent reached £971 ($1,190) in the second quarter, up by almost a fifth compared with the same period in 2022.

Barnaby Scudds is feeling the pain. The public relations executive moved to London in March after graduating last year and now pays £975 ($1,195) a month to rent a room, which gobbles up more than half of his monthly paycheck.

“I’m paid well for the work that I do, and yet it’s still difficult,” he told CNN.

Even at those prices, rooms get snapped up fast.

“It is very difficult because properties come on at about six o’clock in the morning generally, and they are normally gone by six o’clock in the evening,” he said.

Matt Hutchinson, communications director at SpareRoom, told CNN that the UK’s chronic lack of supply of rental properties was to blame.

Beyond problems afflicting most global cities, such as a proliferation of short-term rentals offered through platforms like Airbnb, the shortage of places for long-term rent in London is exacerbated by local factors.

Since 2016, the UK government has increased taxes on purchases of second homes and cut the amount of tax landlords can claim back. Put simply, being a landlord in the UK isn’t as lucrative as it used to be.

“[It] is a much more tight-margin experience than it was six, seven years ago. And a lot of people are just selling up and leaving the market,” Hutchinson said, adding that rising interest rates, as well as higher costs for labor and materials, had discouraged many from investing in rental properties.

In a recent note about rental markets in 10 cities worldwide, Liam Bailey, global head of research at Knight Frank, concluded: “Affordability of housing is set to become the leading political issue within the next 12 months.”

London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, last month reiterated his call for rent control, urging the UK government to impose a two-year rent freeze for the capital’s 2.7 million private tenants. It is a version of a policy proposed by politicians and campaigners over the years as a way out of the affordability crisis.

But rental caps, while instinctively appealing, are generally “a bad idea,” Nikodem Szumilo, director of the Bartlett Real Estate Institute at University College London, told CNN.

“It benefits people who live in the rent control unit and maybe the politicians who impose the policy, but nobody else,” Szumilo said, noting that rental caps discouraged home builders from investing in new units, which in turn limited supply growth in places where demand might be rising.

A better way, Szumilo argues, is to simply make it easier to build more homes. Tokyo, the world’s most populous city, housing more than 37 million people, has a “very deregulated market” where rents are “relatively stable,” he said.

Policies that help people become homeowners — for example, offering subsidies on down payments or on mortgages for first-time buyers, as the UK government has done — are also effective, Szumilo said, because they help ease demand in the rental market.

Still, Chow in New York is grateful for rent control.

She and her partner live in one of the city’s coveted rent-stabilized units, which means the $3,700 they pay each month can’t increase by more than 3.75% if they renew the lease for another year. That’s below the 4.7% annual increase in rental costs in the city recorded by Knight Frank at the start of August.

That “doesn’t necessarily mean it’s cheap,” Chow said, but the cap provides a welcome safety net after the instabilities — and indignities — of her last place.

“We didn’t even have a kitchen, a proper kitchen. It was like a kitchen nailed to the wall. So I was like, you’re not raising $1,000 on me!”

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September 22, 2023
Dallas mayor switches parties to join GOP | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
—

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson announced Friday that he is switching parties and will serve as a Republican-affiliated mayor of the blue-leaning city.

While the Dallas mayoral office is nonpartisan, Johnson previously served as a Democrat in the Texas legislature. He slammed his former party in an op-ed for Wall Street Journal published Friday, blaming Democratic policies for “exacerbated crime and homelessness.”

“The future of America’s great urban centers depends on the willingness of the nation’s mayors to champion law and order and practice fiscal conservatism,” Johnson wrote. “Our cities desperately need the genuine commitment to these principles (as opposed to the inconsistent, poll-driven commitment of many Democrats) that has long been a defining characteristic of the GOP.”

He added: “In other words, American cities need Republicans—and Republicans need American cities.”

Johnson’s announcement makes him the only Republican among the mayors of the 10 most populous cities in the US.

Johnson was reelected for a four-year term in May with 93% of the vote after being first elected in 2019. President Joe Biden won Dallas County by more than 30 points in the 2020 election.

The Texas Democratic Party issued a scathing statement Friday, accusing Johnson of being dishonest with Dallas voters.

“[T]he voters of Dallas deserved to know where he stood before he ran for reelection as Mayor,” the chair and vice-chair of the party said. “He wasn’t honest with his constituents, and knew he would lose to a Democrat if he flipped before the election.”

“This feeble excuse for democratic representation will fit right in with Republicans — and we are grateful that he can no longer tarnish the brand and values of the Texas Democratic Party,” they added.

On the other hand, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott welcomed Johnson’s new party affiliation.

“Texas is getting more Red every day,” Abbott said in a post on X, the platform previously known as Twitter. “He’s pro law enforcement & won’t tolerate leftist agendas.”

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September 22, 2023