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  • Authorities say 5 dead in Maryland murder-suicide

    Authorities say 5 dead in Maryland murder-suicide

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    LA PLATA, Md. (AP) — A 28-year-old man is suspected of killing his ex-girlfriend, two of her relatives and another man inside a Maryland home before fatally shooting himself, authorities said Saturday.

    The five deceased individuals were found inside the La Plata residence Friday afternoon when an unidentified homeowner arrived after work, the Charles County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release Saturday afternoon.

    According to a preliminary investigation, the sheriff’s office said Andre Sales, 28, entered the home and killed his ex-girlfriend, 21-year-old Sara Mann; her brother, Kai Mann, 18; their mother, Sommaly Mann, 48; and another man who was inside, Javon Watson, 23 of White Plains.

    Sales, who lived at a different residence, then shot himself with a gun that was later recovered, according to the sheriff’s office.

    Two young children were initially unaccounted for but were located a short time later unharmed at a different location, the sheriff’s office said. La Plata is about 35 miles (56 kilometers) south of Washington, D.C.

    Investigators and forensic personnel were still processing evidence Saturday and interviewing family and friends to establish a motive, the news release said. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore will perform autopsies to confirm the cause of death for each person.

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  • Christian monastery possibly pre-dating Islam found in UAE

    Christian monastery possibly pre-dating Islam found in UAE

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    SINIYAH ISLAND, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An ancient Christian monastery possibly dating as far back as the years before Islam spread across the Arabian Peninsula has been discovered on an island off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, officials announced Thursday.

    The monastery on Siniyah Island, part of the sand-dune sheikhdom of Umm al-Quwain, sheds new light on the history of early Christianity along the shores of the Persian Gulf. It marks the second such monastery found in the Emirates, dating back as many as 1,400 years — long before its desert expanses gave birth to a thriving oil industry that led to a unified nation home to the high-rise towers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

    The two monasteries became lost to history in the sands of time as scholars believe Christians slowly converted to Islam as that faith grew more prevalent in the region.

    Today, Christians remain a minority across the wider Middle East, though Pope Francis arrived in nearby Bahrain on Thursday to promote interfaith dialogue with Muslim leaders.

    For Timothy Power, an associate professor of archaeology at the United Arab Emirates University who helped investigate the newly discovered monastery, the UAE today is a “melting pot of nations.”

    “The fact that something similar was happening here a 1,000 years ago is really remarkable and this is a story that deserves to be told,” he said.

    The monastery sits on Siniyah Island, which shields the Khor al-Beida marshlands in Umm al-Quwain, an emirate some 50 kilometers (30 miles) northeast of Dubai along the coast of the Persian Gulf. The island, whose name means “flashing lights” likely due to the effect of the white-hot sun overhead, has a series of sandbars coming off of it like crooked fingers. On one, to the island’s northeast, archaeologists discovered the monastery.

    Carbon dating of samples found in the monastery’s foundation date between 534 and 656. Islam’s Prophet Muhammad was born around 570 and died in 632 after conquering Mecca in present-day Saudi Arabia.

    Viewed from above, the monastery on Siniyah Island’s floor plan suggests early Christian worshippers prayed within a single-aisle church at the monastery. Rooms within appear to hold a baptismal font, as well as an oven for baking bread or wafers for communion rites. A nave also likely held an altar and an installation for communion wine.

    Next to the monastery sits a second building with four rooms, likely around a courtyard — possibly the home of an abbot or even a bishop in the early church.

    On Thursday, the site saw a visit from Noura bint Mohammed al-Kaabi, the country’s culture and youth minister, as well as Sheikh Majid bin Saud Al Mualla, the chairman of the Umm al-Quwain’s Tourism and Archaeology Department and a son of the emirate’s ruler.

    The island remains part of the ruling family’s holdings, protecting the land for years to allow the historical sites to be found as much of the UAE has rapidly developed.

    The UAE’s Culture Ministry has sponsored the dig in part, which continues at the site. Just hundreds of meters (yards) away from the church, a collection of buildings that archaeologists believe belongs to a pre-Islamic village sit.

    Elsewhere on the island, piles of tossed-aside clams from pearl hunting make for massive, industrial-sized hills. Nearby also sits a village that the British blew up in 1820 before the region became part of what was known as the Trucial States, the precursor of the UAE. That village’s destructions brought about the creation of the modern-day settlement of Umm al-Quwain on the mainland.

    Historians say early churches and monasteries spread along the Persian Gulf to the coasts of present-day Oman and all the way to India. Archaeologist have found other similar churches and monasteries in Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

    In the early 1990s, archaeologists discovered the first Christian monastery in the UAE, on Sir Bani Yas Island, today a nature preserve and site of luxury hotels off the coast of Abu Dhabi, near the Saudi border. It similarly dates back to the same period as the new find in Umm al-Quwain.

    However, evidence of early life along the Khor al-Beida marshlands in Umm al-Quwain dates as far back as the Neolithic period — suggesting continuous human inhabitance in the area for at least 10,000 years, Power said.

    Today, the area near the marshland is more known for the low-cost liquor store at the emirate’s Barracuda Beach Resort. In recent months, authorities have demolished a hulking, Soviet-era cargo plane linked to a Russian gunrunner known as the “Merchant of Death” as it builds a bridge to Siniyah Island for a $675 million real estate development.

    Power said that development spurred the archaeological work that discovered the monastery. That site and others will be fenced off and protected, he said, though it remains unclear what other secrets of the past remain hidden just under a thin layer of sand on the island.

    “It’s a really fascinating discovery because in some ways it’s hidden history — it’s not something that’s widely known,” Power said.

    ___

    Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

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  • Hundreds of elephants, zebras die as Kenya weathers drought

    Hundreds of elephants, zebras die as Kenya weathers drought

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    NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Hundreds of animals, including elephants and endangered Grevy’s zebras, have died in Kenyan wildlife preserves during East Africa’s worst drought in decades, according to a report released Friday.

    The Kenya Wildlife Service and other bodies counted the deaths of 205 elephants, 512 wildebeests, 381 common zebras, 51 buffalos, 49 Grevy’s zebras and 12 giraffes in the past nine months, the report states.

    Parts of Kenya have experienced four consecutive seasons with inadequate rain in the past two years, with dire effects for people and animals, including livestock.

    The worst-affected ecosystems are home to some of Kenya’s most-visited national parks, reserves and conservancies, including the Amboseli, Tsavo and Laikipia-Samburu areas, according to the report’s authors.

    They called for an urgent aerial census of wildlife in Amboseli to get a broader view of the drought’s impact on wild animals there.

    Other experts have recommended the immediate provision of water and salt licks in impacted regions. Elephants, for example, drink 240 liters (63.40 gallons) of water per day, according to Jim Justus Nyamu, executive director of the Elephant Neighbors Center.

    For Grevy’s zebras, experts urge enhancing provisions of hay.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the climate and environment: https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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  • Suspect in assault at Pelosi home had posted about QAnon

    Suspect in assault at Pelosi home had posted about QAnon

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    The man accused of breaking into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s California home and severely beating her husband with a hammer appears to have made racist and often rambling posts online, including some that questioned the results of the 2020 election, defended former President Donald Trump and echoed QAnon conspiracy theories.

    David DePape, 42, grew up in Powell River, British Columbia, before leaving about 20 years ago to follow an older girlfriend to San Francisco. A street address listed for DePape in the Bay Area college town of Berkeley led to a post office box at a UPS Store.

    DePape was arrested at the Pelosi home early Friday. San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said she expected to file multiple felony charges, including attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary and elder abuse.

    Stepfather Gene DePape said the suspect had lived with him in Canada until he was 14 and had been a quiet boy.

    “David was never violent that I seen and was never in any trouble although he was very reclusive and played too much video games,” Gene DePape said.

    He said he hasn’t seen his stepson since 2003 and tried to get in touch with him several times over the years without success.

    “In 2007, I tried to get in touch but his girlfriend hung up on me when I asked to talk to him,“ Gene DePape said.

    David DePape was known in Berkeley as a pro-nudity activist who had picketed naked at protests against local ordinances requiring people to be clothed in public.

    Gene DePape said the girlfriend whom his son followed to California was named Gypsy and they had two children together. DePape also has a child with a different woman, his stepfather said.

    Photographs published by The San Francisco Chronicle on Friday identified DePape frolicking nude outside city hall with dozens of others at the 2013 wedding of pro-nudity activist Gypsy Taub, who was marrying another man. Taub did not respond Friday to calls or emails.

    A 2013 article in The Chronicle described David DePape as a “hemp jewelry maker” who lived in a Victorian flat in Berkeley with Taub, who hosted a talk show on local public-access TV called “Uncensored 9/11,” in which she appeared naked and pushed conspiracy theories that the 2001 terrorist attacks were “an inside job.”

    A pair of web blogs posted in recent months online under the name David DePape contained rants about technology, aliens, communists, religious minorities and global elites.

    An Aug. 24 entry titled “Q,” displayed a scatological collection of memes that included photos of the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and made reference to QAnon, the baseless pro-Trump conspiracy theory that espouses the belief that the country is run by a deep state cabal of child sex traffickers, satanic pedophiles and baby-eating cannibals.

    “Big Brother has deemed doing your own research as a thought crime,” read a post that appeared to blend references to QAnon with George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”

    In an Aug. 25 entry titled “Gun Rights,” the poster wrote: “You no longer have rights. Your basic human rights hinder Big Brothers ability to enslave and control you in a complete and totalizing way.”

    The web hosting service WordPress removed one of the sites Friday afternoon for violating its terms of service.

    On a different site, someone posting under DePape’s name repeated false claims about COVID vaccines and wearing masks, questioned whether climate change is real and displayed an illustration of a zombified Hillary Clinton dining on human flesh.

    There appeared to be no direct posts about Pelosi, but there were entries defending former President Donald Trump and Ye, the rapper formally known as Kayne West who recently made antisemitic comments.

    In other posts, the writer said Jews helped finance Hitler’s political rise in Germany and suggested an antisemitic plot was involved in Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine.

    In a Sept. 27 post, the writer said any journalists who denied Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election “should be dragged straight out into the street and shot.”

    ___

    AP Global Investigative Reporter Michael Biesecker reported from Washington and Breaking News Investigative Reporter Bernard Condon from New York. Reporters Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles, Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco and news researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.

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  • Intruder attacks Pelosi’s husband, calling, ‘Where is Nancy’

    Intruder attacks Pelosi’s husband, calling, ‘Where is Nancy’

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    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was attacked and severely beaten with a hammer by an assailant who broke into the couple’s San Francisco home early Friday, searching for the Democratic leader and shouting, “Where is Nancy, where is Nancy?”

    The assault on the 82-year-old Paul Pelosi injected new uneasiness into the nation’s already toxic political climate, just 11 days before the midterm elections. It carried chilling echoes of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, when rioters chanted menacingly for the speaker as they rampaged through the halls trying to halt certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.

    Speaker Pelosi, who was in Washington at the time of the California attack, arrived in San Francisco late Friday. Her motorcade was seen arriving at the hospital where her husband was being treated for his injuries.

    “This was not a random act. This was intentional. And it’s wrong,” said San Francisco Police Chief William Scott.

    At an evening news conference, Scott hailed a 911 dispatcher’s work — after Paul Pelosi called for help — as “lifesaving.” The chief appeared to hold back tears, his voice breaking at times, as he strongly rejected violence in politics.

    “Our elected officials are here to do the business of their cities and their counties and their states. Their families don’t sign up for this,” Scott said. “Everybody should be disgusted about what happened this morning.”

    Forty-two-year-old David DePape was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, elder abuse and burglary, and remained in the hospital late Friday, police said. Paul Pelosi underwent surgery to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands, and his doctors expect a full recovery, the speaker’s office said.

    Biden quickly called Speaker Pelosi with support and later delivered a full-throated condemnation of the “despicable” attack that he said had no place in America.

    “There’s too much violence, political violence. Too much hatred. Too much vitriol,” Biden said Friday night at a Democratic rally in Pennsylvania.

    “What makes us think it’s not going to corrode the political climate? Enough is enough is enough.”

    Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell tweeted he was “horrified and disgusted” by the assault.

    The nation’s political rhetoric has become increasingly alarming, with ominous threats to lawmakers at an all-time high. The House speaker and other congressional leaders are provided 24-hour security, and increasingly more other members now receive police protection. This, as crime and public safety have emerged as top issues for voters in the election.

    In San Francisco on Friday, police were called at about 2.30 a.m. to the Pelosi residence to check on Paul Pelosi, said Scott.

    Scott confirmed that the intruder gained entry through the rear door of the home, which is in the upscale Pacific Heights neighborhood. Investigators believe the intruder broke through glass-paneled doors, according to two people familiar with the situation.

    Paul Pelosi called 911 himself after telling the intruder he had to use the restroom, where his phone was charging, according to another person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it. The person said the intruder confronted the speaker’s husband shouting, “Where is Nancy?”

    Scott said the dispatcher figured out there was “something more” than she was being told, resulting in a priority dispatch and faster police response. “I think this was lifesaving,” he noted.

    Inside, police discovered the suspect, DePape, and Paul Pelosi struggling over a hammer, and told them to drop it, Scott said. DePape yanked the hammer from Pelosi and began beating him with it, striking at least one blow, before being tackled by officers and arrested, Scott said. The FBI and Capitol Police are also part of the joint investigation.

    Police said a motive for Friday’s intrusion was still to be determined, but three people with knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press that DePape targeted Pelosi’s home. Those people were not authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing probe and spoke on condition of anonymity.

    The speaker had returned to Washington this week after being abroad and had been scheduled to appear with Vice President Kamala Harris at a fundraising event Saturday night for the LGBTQ group Human Rights Campaign. Pelosi canceled her appearance.

    On Friday, Harris said, “I strongly believe that each one of us has to speak out against hate, we have to speak out against violence obviously, and speak to our better selves.”

    An address listed for DePape in the Bay Area college town of Berkeley led to a post box at a UPS Store.

    He was known locally as a pro-nudity activist who had picketed naked at protests against laws requiring people to be clothed in public

    Gene DePape, the suspect’s stepfather, said the suspect lived with him in Canada until he was 14 and was a quiet boy.

    “He was reclusive,” said Gene DePape, adding, “He was never violent.”

    The stepfather said he hadn’t seen DePape since 2003 and tried to get in touch with him several times over the years without success.

    Lawmakers from both parties reacted with shock and expressed their well-wishes to the Pelosi family.

    “What happened to Paul Pelosi was a dastardly act,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “I spoke with Speaker Pelosi earlier this morning and conveyed my deepest concern and heartfelt wishes to her husband and their family, and I wish him a speedy recovery.”

    House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy reached out privately to the speaker “to check in on Paul and said he’s praying for a full recovery,” spokesman Mark Bednar said.

    But some Republicans declined to pause from politics.

    Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin, at a campaign stop for a congressional candidate, said of the Pelosis, “There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her back to be with him in California.”

    In 2021, Capitol Police investigated around 9,600 threats made against members of Congress, and several members have been physically attacked in recent years. Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was shot in the head at an event outside a Tucson grocery store in 2011, and Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., was severely injured when a gunman opened fire on a Republican congressional baseball team practice in 2017.

    Members of Congress have received additional money for security at their homes, but some have pushed for yet more protection as people have shown up at their residences.

    Nancy Pelosi, who is second in line of succession to the president, has been viciously lampooned in campaign ads by Republicans and outside groups this election cycle. Her protective security detail was with her in Washington at the time of Friday’s attack in California.

    Often at her side during formal events in Washington, Paul Pelosi is a wealthy investor who largely remains on the West Coast. They have been married for 59 years and have five adult children and many grandchildren.

    Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor driving under the influence charges related to a May crash in California’s wine country and was sentenced to five days in jail and three years of probation.

    The Pelosi home in the wealthy neighborhood has been the scene of several protests in the past few years. After Nancy Pelosi was seen on video getting her hair done at a salon while many were shut down during the coronavirus pandemic, stylists protested outside with curling irons. Members of the Chinese community protested recently before Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.

    During debates over the federal stimulus package, protesters scrawled anarchy signs in black paint across the garage door, along with “cancel rent,” and “we want everything.” They left a pig’s head on the driveway.

    Yet the dominant feelings Friday were of support and concern.

    “We have been to many events with the Pelosis over the last 2 decades and we’ve had lots of occasions to talk about both of our families and the challenges of being part of a political family. Thinking about the Pelosi family today,” tweeted Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

    At the Capitol, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Senate president pro tempore and third in the presidential line of succession, said he had known Paul Pelosi “forever.” He said, “It’s just horrible.”

    ___

    Congressional correspondent Lisa Mascaro and Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Michael Balsamo reported from Washington. AP writers Kevin Freking and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed from Washington, Juliet Williams from San Francisco, Stefanie Dazio from Los Angeles, Bernard Condon and News Researcher Jennifer Farrar from New York, and Seung Min Kim from Philadelphia. Michelle Smith and Ali Swanson also contributed.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

    Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections.

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  • ‘Marxist environmentalist’ and author Mike Davis dies at 76

    ‘Marxist environmentalist’ and author Mike Davis dies at 76

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    SAN DIEGO (AP) — Mike Davis, an author, activist and self-defined “Marxist environmentalist” whose greatest fears drove him to anticipate riots, fires and disease in such bestsellers as “City of Quartz” and “The Ecology of Fear,” has died at age 76.

    Davis died Tuesday after a long battle with esophageal cancer, his friend Jon Wiener announced this week in an online posting for The Nation, a progressive magazine. Wiener, a historian who with Davis wrote “Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties,” told The Associated Press that Davis died in San Diego.

    Davis, dubbed by the Los Angeles Times as the prophet Jeremiah of Southern California, had announced over the summer that he was terminally ill.

    “Although I’m famous as a pessimist, I really haven’t been pessimistic,” he told the Times in July. “You know,(my writing has) more been a call to action. An attempt to elicit righteous anger against those whom we should be righteously angry against. But now, there is a certain sense of doom. This is not the time or history that my kids should inherit, you know?”

    As noted in Wiener’s tribute, Davis was “a 1960s person” whose background was not privileged, but working class and conservative. Raised in San Diego County, he was a onetime member of the military oriented Devil Pups youth program, radicalized by the civil rights movement. He volunteered for the Congress of Racial Equality, burned his draft card to protest the 1965 U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic, joined the Communist Party and became an organizer for the left-wing Students for a Democratic Society.

    “I was like Zelig in the events of the period,” Davis told The New Yorker in 2020. “I was at every demonstration and several riots, just there in the crowd, rank and file.”

    He was faulted for ideological bias and for various errors and fabrications — some acknowledged — but his dark takes on Los Angeles and broader subjects often proved justified. “City of Quartz,” published in 1990, condemned the race and class divides of Los Angeles and labeled the city a “carceral” society, prison-like and overseen by an oppressive police force. The police beating of Rodney King in 1991 and the riots following the 1992 acquittal of his attackers made his book seem like prophecy.

    Davis’ “Ecology of Fear” foresaw the growing catastrophe of wildfires in California and “The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu,” published in 2005, warned that a deadly pandemic was increasingly likely. During his New Yorker interview, Davis called capitalism unfit to handle public health and environmental disaster, but still believed a better world was possible.

    “This seems an age of catastrophe, but it’s also an age equipped, in an abstract sense, with all the tools it needs,” he said. “Utopia is available to us. If, like me, you lived through the civil-rights movement, the antiwar movement, you can never discard hope.”

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  • Thai transgender activist buys Miss Universe org for $20M

    Thai transgender activist buys Miss Universe org for $20M

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    BANGKOK (AP) — A Thai business tycoon and transgender activist has purchased the Miss Universe Organization for $20 million, her company announced Wednesday.

    Chakrapong “Anne” Chakrajutathib, who controls JKN Global Group Public Co. Ltd., is a celebrity in Thailand who has starred in reality shows and is outspoken about being a transgender woman. She helped establish a nonprofit group, Life Inspired For Transsexual Foundation, to promote trans rights.

    JKN said it acquired the rights to the Miss Universe pageant from IMG Worldwide LLC, a sports, talent and events marketing company which has held the Miss Universe Organization since 2015. Former U.S. President Donald Trump was part owner of the pageant rights from 1996 until IMG’s purchase.

    JKN said it has established a subsidiary in the United States, JKN Metaverse Inc., to own the Miss Universe Organization. The Miss Universe pageant is broadcast in 165 countries, according to IMG.

    In a statement, Chakrapong described the purchase as “a strong, strategic addition to our portfolio.” JKN, which is involved in content distribution, beverages, food supplements, beauty and consumer products, said the Miss Universe name will be used to promote its consumer products.

    A profile of Chakrapong in the Bangkok Post newspaper earlier this year said in her youth, she studied at an all-male school where she was harassed for identifying as female. After attaining financial success, she spent 40 million baht ($1 million) on sex reassignment surgery and other procedures, the newspaper reported.

    While Thailand enjoys a positive international reputation when it comes to the rights and lifestyles of LGBTQ communities, the absence of a procedure for transgender people to change their legal gender, coupled with insufficient legal protections and social stigma, limits transgender people’s access to services and exposes them to daily indignities, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report last year.

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  • Once key, US newspaper editorial endorsements fade away

    Once key, US newspaper editorial endorsements fade away

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Newspaper endorsements are fading away as prizes to be nabbed by political campaigns, the practice a victim of both the news industry’s troubles and the era’s bitter politics.

    Earlier this month, newspapers controlled by Alden Global Capital said they would no longer endorse candidates for president, governor and the U.S. Senate. The newspapers in the hedge fund’s portfolio include dozens of dailies like the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Boston Herald, Orlando Sentinel and San Jose Mercury News.

    They’re not alone. The days when a prominent endorsement would quickly make it way into a campaign ad or voters would clip out an editorial to take into the voting booth seem destined for history.

    “I do think you can make the argument in many cases that they’ve outlived their usefulness because of the increased polarization and the skepticism of media in general,” said Carol Hunter, executive editor of the Des Moines Register. “I don’t think that’s a healthy trend. But I think that’s reality.”

    For all the effort that news organizations have made in crafting compelling endorsements, there have always been questions about whether those arguments have much influence, particularly in high-profile races.

    At no time was that more evident than 2016, when 57 of the biggest newspapers endorsed Hillary Clinton and two picked Donald Trump, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “None of the above,” with five, did better than the eventual president.

    At a time when newspapers are scratching for readers, executives wonder whether they should bother.

    “Picking a candidate in this environment may alienate more readers than it persuades,” the New York Daily News wrote in announcing the new policy, which means the tabloid will sit out the governor’s race between Democrat Kathy Hochul and Republican Lee Zeldin.

    Of the country’s 100 biggest newspapers by circulation, 92 endorsed a presidential candidate in 2008. By 2020, only 54 made a choice, according to UCSB. There’s no such reliable accounting in smaller races. But given that there are 2,500 fewer newspapers in the U.S. than there were in 2005, it stands to reason there are a lot fewer endorsements.

    That absence “is yet another loss for grassroots democracy,” said Penelope Muse Abernathy, a Northwestern University professor who catalogs the decline in local news.

    At a time of unpopularity for the press, many people don’t like being told what to do, said Poynter Institute media business analyst Rick Edmonds.

    For the newspapers, “there’s a little bit of ‘don’t rock the boat’ there,” Edmonds said. “There are ways to be respectful in a formal editorial. Make a point, but not in a condescending or dismissive way.”

    In an internal memo earlier this year, leaders of the Gannett newspaper chain noted that editorials were frequently cited as a reason people canceled subscriptions. Surveys said opinion pages were among their least-read content, and tied to problems in credibility and trust.

    Some readers have difficulty distinguishing between news and opinion, or flat-out don’t believe that a paper’s editorial stance doesn’t affect its news coverage, said Hunter, whose Iowa newspaper is owned by Gannett.

    Gannett didn’t ban political endorsements, but strongly advised its more than 220 newspapers to cut back on national opinion and focus on local issues. The Des Moines Register’s opinion pages, for example, now run twice a week. The Register is being selective in its choices this fall, weighing in on the Iowa governor’s race and a referendum on guns. But the state’s top newspaper won’t endorse in federal races, including U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley’s bid for an eighth term.

    The McClatchy newspaper chain also didn’t ban presidential endorsements. But it said the newspapers would not make a choice in races where its editors could not interview candidates — effectively putting it out of the business of presidential endorsements.

    One of its newspapers, the Charlotte Observer, said it would make endorsements in “competitive and notable” races where it could conduct extensive research and interviews, North Carolina Opinion Editor Peter St. Onge wrote in a column.

    Many news organizations simply have fewer people to do the work. Sixty percent of journalists working at newspapers in the United States have lost jobs since 2005, Abernathy said.

    Staffing is indeed an issue at the Register, Hunter said. The newspaper is unable to cover the state’s federal delegation the way it used to, and wants to devote resources to local news, she said.

    Many politicians view the dwindling state of endorsements with a collective shrug. News organizations were once seen as objective, but Republican consultant Alex Conant said many voters his candidates are trying to reach consider newspapers as partisan as politicians.

    “Editorial boards used to be an important validator,” Conant said. “But they’re not that important any more.”

    When he was running Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign in 2016, Conant encouraged his client to meet with the editorial board at the Register, the dominant newspaper in the crucial early caucus state of Iowa.

    If Rubio were running for president now, Conant said, he wouldn’t bother with it.

    Hunter said it hasn’t been decided whether the Register would endorse anyone running for president in the 2024 caucuses. A lot will depend on access to the candidates, she said.

    In the book “News Hole,” University of Virginia professor Jennifer Lawless and George Washington University’s Daniel Hayes show how congressional candidates are getting much less news coverage than they used to.

    That’s also the case for many elections further down the ballot, for local judge or school board, where endorsements had been one of the few places to learn about candidates. In many cases, these races are now nationalized: Voters are left to evaluate candidates as extensions of national parties instead of as neighbors, Abernathy said.

    Advertisements — often filled with disinformation — become the primary source of information, she said. By contrast, American Presidency Project co-director John Woolley said, newspaper endorsements “are a good thing in that they model how to think, and clarify to people what the big issues are.”

    “I still think that’s the case,” he said, “and I don’t think we can get too much of that in our lives.”

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  • Ye kicked out of Skechers’ headquarters in California

    Ye kicked out of Skechers’ headquarters in California

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    MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. (AP) — The rapper formerly known as Kanye West was escorted out of the California-based headquarters of athletic shoemaker Skechers after he showed up unannounced Wednesday, a day after Adidas ended its partnership with the artist following his antisemitic remarks.

    The Grammy winner, who legally changed his name to Ye, “arrived unannounced and without invitation” at Skechers corporate headquarters in Manhattan Beach, southwest of Los Angeles, the company said.

    “Considering Ye was engaged in unauthorized filming, two Skechers executives escorted him and his party from the building after a brief conversation,” according to a company statement.

    “Skechers is not considering and has no intention of working with West,” the company said. “We condemn his recent divisive remarks and do not tolerate antisemitism or any other form of hate speech.”

    The rapper’s Instagram account — which had been suspended over antisemitic comments — resumed posting Tuesday night. A new message showing a screen grab of a text message that appeared to be from a contact at a high-profile law firm spelled out when Ye could resume making apparel and new shoe designs.

    Details of the message could not be verified; email messages sent to representatives for Ye weren’t immediately returned.

    For weeks, Ye has made antisemitic comments in interviews and social media, including a Twitter post earlier this month that he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” an apparent reference to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale known as DEFCON. His posts led to his suspension from both Twitter and Instagram.

    He apologized for the tweet on Monday.

    On Tuesday, sportswear manufacturer Adidas announced that it was ending a partnership with Ye that helped make him a billionaire, saying it doesn’t tolerate antisemitism and hate speech.

    The German sneaker giant said it expected that the decision to immediately stop production of its Yeezy products would cause a hit to its net income of up to 250 million euros ($246 million).

    The company had stuck with Ye through other controversies after he suggested slavery was a choice and called the COVID-19 vaccine the “mark of the beast.”

    Other companies also have announced they were cutting ties with Ye, including Foot Locker, Gap, TJ Maxx, JPMorgan Chase bank and Vogue magazine. An MRC documentary about him was also scrapped.

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  • ‘It’s about time’: Celebrations of Diwali illuminate NYC

    ‘It’s about time’: Celebrations of Diwali illuminate NYC

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    By MALLIKA SEN

    October 24, 2022 GMT

    NEW YORK (AP) — The week dawned gloomily in New York, but the drab mist was little match for the holiday at hand: Diwali, the festival of lights that symbolizes the triumph over darkness.

    Celebrated across South Asia in some fashion by Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists, the multi-day festival has secured a sturdy foothold far from the subcontinent in places with significant diaspora populations — like New York.

    “One thing I would say — the whole country celebrates, right? So it’s lit up,” fashion designer Prabal Gurung said of celebrations in Nepal, where Diwali is better known as Tihar. He sees signs of Diwali’s increased popularity in New York. But, he said, the whole city “is not celebrating yet — so I’m just giving them a year or two.”

    Gurung was one of the hosts of Diwali New York, a glitzy soiree held Saturday at The Pierre, fittingly a Taj Hotel. The party, now in its third year, highlights Diwali by bringing together high-powered South Asians with other New York luminaries — people who “the world saw as leaders and role models,” said host Anita Chatterjee, CEO of A-Game Public Relations.

    Five miles east of the five-star hotel, those already familiar with the holiday were embarking on preparations for their personal celebrations. Earlier Saturday, the first of the five-day celebration, the streets of Jackson Heights were replete with reminders of the festivities.

    The many sweets shops of the Queens neighborhood, known for its South Asian community, were packed to the gills with little room for movement. In the stands outside Apna Bazaar, a grocery store, a sea of small clay pots and wicks for Diwali lamps lay alongside fresh bunches of cilantro and above bags of onions. Handwritten blue signs advertised Diwali specials for everything from 40-pound bags of rice to ghee, tea and pitted dates.

    Every year, Sapna Pal comes to Butala Emporium to do her Diwali shopping. Carrying a basket brimming with tea lights and other decorations, the Delhi native said her Diwali celebrations in the United States are usually intimate family affairs because most people prefer to pray in their own homes.

    When asked if she misses Diwali in India, Pal — who has lived in Queens for almost 25 years — responded: “Yes! Every day, every year, every year.” But she nonetheless still enjoys Diwali here, looking forward to the sweets — gulab jamun, rasmalai and different types of barfi are among her favorites — and the puja ceremonies.

    Outside a Patel Brothers grocery store branch, Bhanu Shetty has run a pop-up Diwali stall for two decades. Her son Pratik says the temporary Flowers by Bhanu stall typically draws around 3,000 customers over three days. She is more circumspect: “People come.”

    “We’ve always been known for flowers, but just for these three days we showcase all the temple offerings,” Pratik Shetty said, motioning to 3D stickers, garlands, stencils for the colored powder designs known as rangoli, pictures and, naturally, flowers. Most of the flowers are locally sourced, but the Diwali specialty is the $5 lotus imported from India.

    Ratan Sharma, a manager at India Sari Palace, says sweet shops and grocery stores are the biggest beneficiaries of the Diwali shopping. But his clothing store does well, too: “Once a year we give a benefit to the customers,” she said, “and they take advantage of it.” Sharma said the silk saris — typically on the more expensive end — are the most popular item during the annual Diwali sale.

    Jackson Heights is a multiethnic, multi-religious neighborhood, and some stores still featured signs offering Eid sales. Suneera Madhani, the Pakistani American founder of Stax, attended the Diwali party at The Pierre as a gesture of South Asian solidarity. She says she would love to heighten Eid’s profile in New York in a similar manner.

    The Diwali gala was certainly high-profile: Host Radhika Jones, the top editor at Vanity Fair, mingled with Ronan Farrow and Kelly Ripa, all clad in South Asian fashions. Chatterjee said her firm helped connect some non-South Asian attendees to designers, including fellow hosts Falguni and Shane Peacock.

    The party was at time raucous, with several bear hugs that lifted grown men clear off the ground. Gurung, clad in a glittering Abu Jani-Sandeep Khosla ensemble, tore up the dance floor to the 2014 hit “Baby Doll.” He was subsequently handed blotting paper by a pink salwar kameez-clad Ripa, whose husband, actor Mark Consuelos, pat the table to the beat. Padma Lakshmi and Sarita Choudhury embraced for the camera, with the former demonstrating some hip-shaking thumkas.

    “Our generation has really embraced our culture and the expression of it,” said another host, Anjula Acharia, Priyanka Chopra Jonas’ manager.

    Normally, she’d be spending the holiday with her illustrious client. But, marveling at the progress Diwali has made outside of South Asia and its diaspora, she said she’s spending it this year with President Joe Biden.

    “A few years ago, it really occurred to me: Diwali is not on the New York social scene in a way that I felt like it deserved to be, needed to be and I wanted it to be,” said restaurateur Maneesh Goyal, another host and the mastermind of the event.

    While he said that Diwali is “personally” a day of reflection, it’s also about celebrations and “happiness, positivity, bringing people together.”

    For Diwali to really permeate American culture, Gurung said, it will take “just us showing up consistently, constantly in the most graceful, beautiful, thoughtful way.” The resonance of the holiday’s themes alone — the victory of good over evil, light over dark — should do the rest of the work.

    “It’s the right time,” he said. “And also, it’s about time.”

    ___

    Mallika Sen is the entertainment news editor for The Associated Press. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mallikavsen

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  • No one hit Powerball jackpot, new drawing an estimated $800M

    No one hit Powerball jackpot, new drawing an estimated $800M

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    DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — No one won an estimated $700 million Powerball jackpot, meaning the big prize will grow to an estimated $800 million for the next drawing.

    The numbers drawn Wednesday night were: 19, 36, 37, 46 and 56. The Powerball was 24.

    No one has matched all six numbers and won the Powerball jackpot since Aug. 3, allowing the prize to grow to the fifth-largest in U.S. history. That amounts to 36 consecutive drawings without a jackpot winner. The next drawing is Saturday.

    The lack of a winner reflects the long odds of winning the grand prize, which are one in 292.2 million.

    The new $800 million jackpot amount is for winners who take their winnings through an annuity, paid annually over 29 years. Nearly all winners actually choose the cash option, however, which would be $383.7 million after taxes.

    The biggest lottery jackpot to date was a $1.586 billion Powerball prize that three ticket holders won in 2016.

    Powerball is played in 45 states, as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

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  • Editors at Bartlett’s work to keep up with what’s quotable

    Editors at Bartlett’s work to keep up with what’s quotable

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Books and speeches, lyrics and interviews, impulsive tweets and sworn testimony: Keeping up with all the words issued over the past decade might overwhelm anyone, but even more so if it’s your job to keep up.

    “Clearly, the speed of events meant that no matter when we went to press, we would be cutting off in the middle of the story,” says Geoffrey O’Brien, the general editor of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.

    The 19th edition of the 170-year old reference work has just been published. It’s the first volume since 2012 and the second under the guidance of O’Brien, an author, poet and cultural historian and the former editor-in-chief of the Library of America. The new book welcomes thousands to the unofficial canon of quotability, including author Ta-Nehisi Coates, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elon Musk and President Joe Biden.

    “With the Internet and cable news, you have the constant manufacturing of statements of one kind or another,” O’Brien says, identifying his challenge as to choose quotations that have staying power beyond ephemeral news cycles.

    Among the current class, none were more obvious, more problematic and more representative than former President Donald Trump, listed straightforwardly in the index as “Trump, Donald J(ohn), 1946-”.

    Trump became a kind of test case for the proliferation of quotes in the 24/7 age and for the difficulty of sorting them. From launching his presidential campaign in 2015 through the end of his presidency and beyond, Trump has been an unending source of newsmaking words, spoken or tweeted at all hours.

    “It became clear a certain amount of culling would be involved to pick out things that seemed crucial or sufficiently memorable,” O’Brien says. “It’s guesswork at best since nobody knows how anything is going to turn out. That’s why Bartlett’s has evolved over time.”

    Trump’s quotes originate everywhere from a speech in Nevada (“I love the poorly educated!”) to one of his debates with Hillary Clinton (“Such a nasty woman”). One selection originates not directly from him, but from a conversation with then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions as documented in the Mueller Report: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m f—ked.”

    Bartlett’s was founded in the 1850s by Cambridge, Massachusetts, bookstore owner John Bartlett. It has always been a subjective, even eccentric project. The initial editions were almost entirely dedicated to white, male English-language poets, statesmen and prose writers. The choices were unpredictable even within those limited boundaries: Bartlett included Benjamin Franklin, but not Thomas Jefferson; Thomas Paine, but not John Adams; John Keats, but not Percy Bysshe Shelley; the editor and translator “Mrs. Sarah Austin,” but not Jane Austen.

    In recent decades, O’Brien and his immediate predecessor, Justin Kaplan, have opened up Bartlett’s to voices from around the world and from a broad range of backgrounds. Bartlett’s now includes words from Beyoncé, Usain Bolt, climate activist Greta Thunberg and writer Azar Nafisi. Bartlett’s also features Russian proverbs (“Live with wolves, howl like a wolf”), sea shanties and a Navajo hunting song (“Blessed am I/In the luck of the chase”).

    O’Brien and his editorial team faced the challenge of broadening Bartlett’s while keeping its length around 1,400 pages. Some older entries — from Alfonso the Wise to Anthony Burgess — had to go and O’Brien said he was personally sorry to reduce the space for a favorite writer, English poet John Dryden.

    Former Vice President Dan Quayle’s mangling of a United Negro College Fund advertising slogan, “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind,” has, perhaps mercifully, been dropped. So has best actress winner Sally Field’s seemingly immortal soundbite from the 1985 Academy Awards: “You like me!”

    Fame does not guarantee quotability, and infamy does not lead to exclusion.

    Bob Hope, a name once seemingly universally known, is not included. Neither is Johnny Carson, a U.S. cultural touchstone for decades. Contemporary celebrities left out include Oprah Winfrey, Jimmy Fallon, Trevor Noah, Howard Stern and the late Rush Limbaugh. At the same time, Woody Allen, Garrison Keillor and others whose standing has fallen during the #MeToo era remain. Kanye West and his unusual praise for Trump (“We are both dragon energy,” he told Time magazine in 2018) make the new edition.

    O’Brien expressed regret over some of those left out, notably the late Rep. John Lewis. He explained that the goal was to be representative, but not encyclopedic. Among contemporary songwriters, for instance, Merle Haggard is in, but not Willie Nelson; Leonard Cohen, but not Randy Newman or John Prine. Dolly Parton is cited for the first time, although not for “Jolene” or any other song, but for her tagline, “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.”

    Not all of those newly included were satisfied with how the editors represented them. The longtime music critic Robert Christgau now joins such peers as Greil Marcus and Lester Bangs in Bartlett’s but personally would not have chosen a passage which begins “Punk nostalgia … is a grotesque oxymoron.”

    “I’m not crazy about that sentence, there are hundreds if not thousands better,” he told The Associated Press, preferring a sentence he wrote for the Village Voice in 1969: “In the worst of times, music is a promise that times were meant to be better.”

    Author and essayist Leslie Jamison was pleasantly surprised by the two excerpts Bartlett’s selected, calling them “central concepts” for her: one in which she refers to empathy as not “just something that happens to you” but a “choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves,” and another in which she writes ”Unconditional love was insulting, but conditional love was terrifying.”

    Author Rachel Kushner likes the idea of Bartlett’s ongoing evolution, saying to the AP that it’s a way of converting “writing into both a conversation and people talking over one another, which is true to what people do.” Her novel from 2013, “The Flamethrowers,” is listed for a passage about love and how “People who want their love easy don’t really want love.”

    For future editions, should she be included, Kushner suggested a quote from a 2021 essay: “To become a writer is to have left early no matter what time you got home.”

    She also mentioned a more urgent priority, that her “birthdate be followed in the biographical index by an em dash, and then a blank space.”

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  • More kids to ride in ‘clean’ school buses, mostly electric

    More kids to ride in ‘clean’ school buses, mostly electric

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 400 school districts spanning all 50 states and Washington, D.C., along with several tribes and U.S. territories, are receiving roughly $1 billion in grants to purchase about 2,500 “clean” school buses under a new federal program.

    The Biden administration is making the grants available as part of a wider effort to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles and reduce air pollution near schools and communities.

    Vice President Kamala Harris and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan announced the grant awards Wednesday in Seattle. The new, mostly electric school buses will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save money and better protect children’s health, they said.

    As many as 25 million children ride yellow buses each school day, and they will have a healthier future with a cleaner fleet, Harris said.

    “We are witnessing around our country and around the world the effects of extreme climate,” she said. “What we’re announcing today is a step forward in our nation’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gases, to invest in our economy … to invest in building the skills of America’s workforce. All with the goal of not only saving our children, but for them, saving our planet.″

    Only about 1% of the nation’s 480,000 school buses were electric as of last year, but the push to abandon traditional diesel buses has gained momentum in recent years. Money for the new purchases is available under the federal Clean School Bus Program, which includes $5 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law President Joe Biden signed last year.

    The clean bus program “is accelerating our nation’s transition to electric and low-emission school buses while ensuring a brighter, healthier future for our children,” Regan said.

    The EPA initially made $500 million available for clean buses in May but increased that to $965 million last month, responding to what officials called overwhelming demand for electric buses. An additional $1 billion is set to be awarded in the budget year that began Oct. 1.

    The EPA said it received about 2,000 applications requesting nearly $4 billion for more than 12,000 buses, mostly electric. Some 389 applications worth $913 million were accepted to support purchase of 2,463 buses, 95% of which will be electric, the EPA said. The remaining buses will run on compressed natural gas or propane.

    School districts identified as priority areas serving low-income, rural or tribal students make up 99% of the projects that were selected, the White House said. More applications are under review, and the EPA plans to select more winners to reach the full $965 million in coming weeks.

    Districts set to receive money range from Wrangell, Alaska, to Anniston, Alabama, and Teton County, Wyoming, to Wirt County, West Virginia. Besides the District of Columbia, big cities that won grants for clean school buses include New York, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and Los Angeles.

    White House adviser Mitch Landrieu said he expects many buses to be delivered by the start of the next school year, with the remainder likely to be in service by the end of 2023. The billion dollars being spent this year — along with an additional $4 billon expected over the next four years — should “supercharge” a domestic manufacturing boom for electric school buses, said Landrieu, a former New Orleans mayor tapped by Biden to oversee spending in the massive infrastructure law.

    “These buses will be made in America — real jobs with real wages,″ Landrieu said in an interview. “We are going to ramp up manufacturing in this country.″

    Environmental and public health groups hailed the announcement, which comes after years of advocacy to replace diesel-powered buses with cleaner alternatives.

    “It doesn’t make sense to send our kids to school on buses that create brain-harming, lung-harming, cancer-causing, climate-harming pollution,″ said Molly Rauch, public health policy director for Moms Clean Air Force, an environmental group. “Our kids, our bus drivers and our communities deserve better.″

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  • Naomi Alderman novel ‘The Future’ scheduled for next fall

    Naomi Alderman novel ‘The Future’ scheduled for next fall

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Novelist Naomi Alderman is a “what if” kind of writer, as in: What if women were able to release electricity through their fingers, the premise of her acclaimed bestseller “The Power ”?

    For her upcoming book, simply and descriptively titled “The Future,” she imagined a handful of rogues — including an unhappy spouse and a deposed executive — overthrowing the masters of Silicon Valley and running the tech world themselves.

    “I’ve seen the rise of these companies that started off with people tooling around on the internet and now look at them. How have we gotten to this point,” the British author said in a recent telephone interview. “A lot of them seem be using their companies for nefarious purposes, like destabilizing democracies and radicalizing people in all sorts of directions. So I was thinking about whether there was a way for them to work better.”

    Simon & Schuster announced the novel Tuesday, calling it a blend of “intelligence and storytelling, marrying white-knuckle narrative propulsion with an intellectually dazzling critique of the world we have made, in which a few billionaires profit on the lives of many and lead us willingly to our doom.”

    “The Future” is scheduled for publication in fall 2023.

    Alderman, 48, is also known for “The Liars’ Gospel” and “Disobedience,” adapted into a movie starring Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. An Amazon Prime Video series based on “The Power” is expected next year after an extended delay caused in part by the pandemic and by the departure of actors Leslie Mann and Tim Robbins. They were replaced by Toni Collette and Josh Charles.

    The pandemic also disrupted her own writing. Alderman had been working on a novel — tentatively called “The Survivals” — about tech billionaires fleeing from a deadly plague but altered it after a real one spread early in 2020. The tech leaders remain, but the pandemic has been decentralized and the “book definitely got less dark,” mostly because Alderman wanted “to find some hope,” she explained.

    “The Future” is her first novel since “The Power,” published in 2016 and written under the mentorship of Margaret Atwood. Alderman’s books have expressed a kind of alternative vision to that of Atwood, who has imagined the worst in “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Oryx and Crake” among others.

    “Margaret has very much covered how bad it can get, so we don’t need a lesser writer doing that,” Alderman says. “I’m interested in the most radical ideas about how we can make things better, and what are the avenues we can pursue.”

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  • Norway intel agency takes over probe into drone sightings

    Norway intel agency takes over probe into drone sightings

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    COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Norway’s domestic security agency on Wednesday took over investigations of drone sightings near key infrastructure sites hours after the airport in the country’s second-largest city briefly closed due to area residents spotting at least one drone nearby.

    Bergen Airport, which is near Norway’s main naval base, shut down at around 6:30 a.m. when the area’s air space was closed and reopened 2½ hours later. Bergen police spokesman Ørjan Djuvik said several drone sightings were reported near the airport.

    “There can also be observations that could be other phenomenon, for instance weather,” Djuvik said. “We are sure that there is at least one.”

    North of Bergen, a drone was reported near the small, domestic Foerde airport, which also closed temporarily, Norwegian news agency NTB said.

    Numerous drone sightings have been reported near offshore oil and gas platforms and other Norwegian infrastructure in recent months, Hedvig Moe, deputy chief of the Norwegian Police Security Service, said.

    “We believe (the drone flights are) carried out in a way that makes it difficult to find out who is really behind it,” but Norwegian authorities suspect Russian involvement in operating unmanned aerial vehicles that “can be used for espionage or simply to create fear,” Moe said.

    “Russia simply has more to gain and less to lose by conducting intelligence activities in Norway now compared to the situation before the war,” she said during a news conference. “It is simply because Russia is in a pressed situation as a result of the war (in Ukraine) and is isolated by sanctions.”

    ”We are in a tense security-political situation, and at the same time a complex and unclear threat picture that can change in a relatively short time,” she said.

    At least seven Russian citizens were detained over the past few weeks for flying drones or taking photographs of sensitive sites in Norway.

    A 47-year-old man with dual Russian and British citizenship was jailed Wednesday for two weeks on suspicion of flying drones on Norway’s Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, NTB reported. He is accused of breaching sanctions which came into force after Russia went to war against Ukraine, Moe said, declining to elaborate.

    Under Norwegian law, it is prohibited for aircraft operated by Russian companies or citizens “to land on, take off from or fly over Norwegian territory.” Norway is not a member of the European Union but mirrors its moves.

    “It is not acceptable that foreign intelligence is flying drones over Norwegian airports. Russians are not allowed to fly drones in Norway,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said, according to Norwegian broadcaster NRK. “We do not want anyone to fly this type of craft over important installations in Norway.”

    Airport operator Avinor told NRK on Tuesday that 50 possible drone observations have been reported at Norway’s civilian airports so far this year, 27 of them since July.

    NTB said 17 and 14 drone sightings were reported in 2021 and 2020, respectively, while the number was 44 in 2019.

    The Norwegian Police Security Service, known by the acronym PST, plans to work closely with local police agencies which have conducted investigations, Moe said.

    Other European nations heightened security around key energy, internet and power infrastructure following last month’s underwater explosions that ruptured two natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea that were built to deliver Russian gas to Germany.

    The damaged Nord Stream pipelines off Sweden and Denmark discharged huge amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the air.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Hurricane Roslyn heads for weekend hit on Mexico’s coast

    Hurricane Roslyn heads for weekend hit on Mexico’s coast

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    MEXICO CITY (AP) — Hurricane Roslyn moved off Mexico’s Pacific coast Friday night, with forecasters predictng a weekend landfall between the resorts of Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan.

    The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Roslyn became a Category 1 hurricane in the evening and its maximum sustained winds increased to 85 mph (140 kph) late Friday.

    The storm was centered about 255 miles (410 kilometers) south of Cabo Corrientes — the point of land jutting into the Pacific south of Puerto Vallarta — and moving west-northwest at 7 mph (11 kph).

    Forecasters said Roslyn could become a strong Category 2 hurricane before curving northward Saturday, brushing Cabo Corrientes and then reaching the coast Saturday night or early Sunday.

    Hurricane Orlene made landfall in roughly the same region, about 45 miles (75 kilometers) southeast of Mazatlan, on Oct. 3.

    The hurricane center said hurricane-force winds extended out 15 miles (30 kilometers) from Roslyn’s core, while tropical storm-force winds extended out to 70 miles (110 kilometers).

    Mexico issued a hurricane warning covering a stretch of coast from Playa Perula south of Cabo Corrientes north to El Roblito and for the Islas Marias.

    The National Water Commission said rains from Roslyn could cause mudslides and flooding. and the U.S. Hurricane Center warned of dangerous storm surge along the coast.

    Jalisco state Gov. Enrique Alfaro said on Twitter that any school activities in the region would be cancelled Saturday and he urged people to avoid touristic activities at beaches and in mountainous areas over the weekend.

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  • Hurricane Roslyn makes landfall in Mexico, avoids resorts

    Hurricane Roslyn makes landfall in Mexico, avoids resorts

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    MEXICO CITY (AP) — Hurricane Roslyn slammed into a sparsely populated stretch of Mexico’s Pacific coast between the resorts of Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan Sunday morning and quickly moved inland.

    By Sunday morning, Roslyn had winds of 90 mph (150 kph), down from its peak of 130 mph. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Roslyn was about 95 miles (150 kms) east-southeast of the resort of Mazatlan.

    The hurricane was moving north-northeast at 20 miles per hour (31 kph) and was expected to lose force as it moves further inland.

    While it missed a direct hit, Roslyn brought heavy rain and high waves to Puerto Vallarta, where ocean surges lashed the beachside promenade.

    Roslyn came ashore in Nayarit state, in roughly the same area where Hurricane Orlene made landfall Oct. 3.

    The hurricane made landfall around the village of Santa Cruz, near the fishing village of San Blas, about 90 miles (150 kilometers) north of Puerto Vallarta.

    In Tepic, the Nayarit state capital, Roslyn blew down trees and flooded some streets; authorities asked residents to avoid going out Sunday, as crews worked to clear a landslide that had blocked a local highway.

    Meanwhile, beachside eateries in Puerto Vallarta where tourists had lunched unconcerned Saturday were abandoned Sunday, and at some the waves had carried away railings and small thatched structures that normally keep the sun off diners.

    The head of the state civil defense office for the Puerto Vallarta area, Adrián Bobadilla, said authorities were patrolling the area, but had not yet seen any major damage.

    “The biggest effect was from the waves, on some of the beachside infrastructure,” said Bobadilla. “We did not have any significant damage.”

    The state civil defense office posted video of officers escorting a large sea turtle back to the water, after it had been thrown up on the beach by the large waves.

    The National Water Commission said rains from Roslyn could cause mudslides and flooding and the U.S. hurricane center warned that heavy rains could cause flash flooding and landslides over the rugged terrain inland.

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  • At Georgia debate, Abrams and Kemp clash on abortion, crime

    At Georgia debate, Abrams and Kemp clash on abortion, crime

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    ATLANTA (AP) — Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams painted different visions for the future of Georgia, clashing on the economy, crime, voting and education as they debated Monday night after more than 100,000 Georgians swarmed to the polls of the first day of early voting.

    Kemp issued perhaps his clearest commitment yet that he won’t pursue any new restrictions on abortion or birth control, clarifying his position on an issue he’s sometimes avoided as he seeks a second term.

    Abrams, pushing uphill to unseat the incumbent four years after she narrowly lost to Kemp, told voters his record of accomplishments was scant.

    “This is a governor who for the last four years has beat his chest but delivered very little for most Georgians,” she said. “He’s weakened gun laws and flooded our streets. He’s weakened … women’s rights. He’s denied women the access to reproductive care. The most dangerous thing facing Georgia is four more years of Brian Kemp.”

    Kemp, though, reminded voters that he had delivered billions in tax relief and rebates to millions of Georgians, crediting his decision to reopen Georgia’s economy amid the pandemic for the state’s financial strength and repeatedly blaming Democrats for economic difficulties.

    “My desire is to continue to help them fight through 40-year-high inflation and high gas prices and other things that our Georgia families are facing right now financially because of bad policies in Washington, D.C., where President Biden and the Democrats have complete control,” he said.

    Kemp said he “would not” go beyond the “heartbeat bill” he signed in 2019 to ban nearly all abortions at six weeks of pregnancy, a point that comes before many women know they’re pregnant. The law took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned a constitutional right to abortion services. The Georgia law includes exceptions in cases of rape, incest and health risks to pregnant women.

    Abrams has criticized the Republican incumbent as an extremist on abortion, leaving him trapped between moderates who want more permissive abortion laws and activists who want the governor to completely ban abortion or restrict Plan B, an over-the-counter contraceptive that can prevent pregnancy even after an egg is fertilized.

    The debate question came after Kemp was captured on tape by a voter pressing Kemp to commit to more restrictions. Kemp sought to quell concerns. “That’s not my desire” to push any new abortion or birth control legislation, he said.

    Libertarian Shane Hazel, who was also on the debate stage, interrupted the other candidates several times to get his point across because he wasn’t asked as many questions.

    Beyond abortion, Kemp and Abrams rekindled their long-standing feud over voting rights, with Abrams accusing Kemp as governor and previously as secretary of state of trying to make it harder for some Georgians to vote.

    Abrams said, however, that she would accept the outcome of the November election after Republicans criticized her for acknowledging Kemp’s 2018 victory but refusing to use the word “concede.”

    “I will always acknowledge the outcome of elections, but I will never deny access to every voter, because that is the responsibility of every American to defend the right to vote,” she said.

    Kemp urged voters to remember that he was among the Republican governors who relaxed public restrictions early in the COVID-19 pandemic, including resisting widespread mask mandates and school closures during the nation’s worst public health crisis in a century.

    “Our economy is incredible … we are the ones that’s been fighting for you when Ms. Abrams was not,” Kemp said.

    Still, he found himself on the defensive from Hazel, who blasted Kemp for ever going along with any restrictions and for endorsing the government-distributed COVID-19 vaccine. Abrams defended her criticism of the reopening as showing prudent caution in a pandemic that killed tens of thousands of Georgians.

    Abrams and other Democrats have steamed as Kemp has used the power of the governor’s office to spend heavily, noting much of the spending is underwritten by a Democratic COVID-19 relief bill that Kemp opposed. Abrams argues she has a better longer-term vision for Georgia’s economy, pledging a much larger teacher pay raise than the $5,000 Kemp delivered, an expanded Medicaid program, increased access to state contracts for small and minority-owned businesses and broader access to college aid paid for by gambling.

    Perhaps the old rivals’ most personal clash came on crime and public safety. Kemp, as he has with his campaign ads, spent considerable effort painting Abrams as an enemy of law enforcement, arguing she has no support from Georgia sheriffs and police. She retorted that it’s possible to support “justice and safety” at the same time and said Kemp has made Georgia more dangerous by making it legal to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.

    Earlier Monday, Kemp rolled out a fresh set of anti-crime proposals, including increasing mandatory prison sentences for recruiting juveniles into a gang to at least 10 years and making it harder for judges to release people who have been arrested without cash bail. “That’s what we’re doing, going after street gangs,” Kemp said.

    Abrams recalled a 2021 gun massacre at Asian-owned massage parlors in metro Atlanta. “Street gangs did not shoot six Asian women, going into a gun store, getting a weapon and murdering six women,” she said. “Street gangs aren’t the reason people are getting shot in parking lots and grocery stores and in schools.”

    Monday’s debate took place as Georgians began flooding the polls for 19 days of early in-person voting. Herb McCaulla, who owns a business selling pop culture memorabilia, praised Kemp on the economy.

    “He’s doing a great job,” McCaulla said in Lilburn in suburban Atlanta. “He kept this state afloat during the COVID craziness.”

    Democrats said they opposed Kemp over abortion restrictions and loosened gun laws.

    “I want Kemp out,” Chalmers Stewart said.

    More than 4 million people could vote in the state’s elections this year, and more than half are likely to cast ballots before Election Day. Gabriel Sterling, an official with the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said more than 100,000 people cast early votes Monday. Sterling said that surpassed a previous record of 72,000 for a midterm cycle.

    More than 200,000 people have requested mail ballots already, with an Oct. 28 deadline to request them. Early in-person voting will run through Nov. 4.

    Kemp and Abrams are scheduled to meet for a second debate on Oct. 30.

    ___

    Follow Jeff Amy at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.

    ___

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

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  • Iran’s celebrities face reprisals for supporting protests

    Iran’s celebrities face reprisals for supporting protests

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    BAGHDAD (AP) — Singers, actors, sports stars — the list goes on. Iranian celebrities have been startlingly public in their support for the massive anti-government protests shaking their country. And the ruling establishment is lashing back.

    Celebrities have found themselves targeted for arrest, have had passports confiscated and faced other harassment.

    Among the most notable cases is that of singer Shervin Hajipour, whose song “For …” has become an anthem for the protest movement, which erupted Sept. 17 over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody after she was arrested for not abiding by the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code.

    The song begins with a soft melody, then Hajipour’s resonant voice starts, “For dancing in the streets,” “for the fear we feel when we kiss …” — listing reasons young Iranians have posted on Twitter for why they are taking to the streets against the ruling theocracy.

    It ends with the widely chanted slogan that has become synonymous with the protests: “For women, life, freedom.”

    Released on his Instagram page, the song quickly went viral. Hajipour paid the price: The 25-year-old was arrested and held for several days before being released on bail on Oct. 4.

    Since the protests took off — and expanded from anger at Amini’s death to a complete challenge to the 43-year-old rule by conservative Islamic clerics — a string of celebrities have faced reprisals, from singers and soccer players to news anchors.

    At least seven public figures have been detained inside the country, most of whom were released on bail and could face charges, according to Iranian news outlets. Others were questioned and released.

    But their popularity has also made it difficult to crack down too hard on them — in contrast to protest activists whom security forces have arrested in large numbers. Iran has a vibrant scene of singers and actors, as well as sports stars, who are closely followed by the public.

    Holly Dagres, an Iranian-American non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the attempts to intimidate public figures were no surprise.

    “Celebrities — be it athletes, actors, singers or artists — have a large following inside Iran, particularly on social media, and their support gives life to these protests,” she said.

    Their support has helped invigorate protesters struggling with widespread internet outages that limit their ability to have their voices heard and facing a brutal government crackdown. There have been widespread arrests, dozens have died and many more wounded. Still, protests have spread to dozens of cities, drawing broad segments of Iranian society, from schoolgirls to oil workers.

    One of Iran’s most beloved singers of classical Persian music, Homayoun Shajarian, projected a large photo of Amini behind him on stage as he sang a traditional song, “Dawn Bird,” during a tour in Australia in September.

    The audience joined him in singing one of the song’s most iconic lines: “The tyrant’s oppression like a hunter has blown away my nest. God, Sky, Nature, bring dawn to our dark night.”

    When Shajarian returned to Iran, his passport and that of actress Sahar Dolatshahi, who was traveling with him, were seized at the airport. He later said on his Instagram account that they had been barred from travel.

    Similarly, a soccer legend in Iran, Ali Daei, had his passport confiscated at the airport when he returned from abroad. He had urged the government on social media to “solve the problems of the Iranian people rather than using repression, violence and arrests.”

    A few days later, the passport was returned to him, he told the press.

    Two well known former soccer players, Hossein Mahini and Hamidreza Aliasgari, were arrested and released on bail. Mona Borzoui, a female songwriter and Mahmoud Shahriari, a former state TV showman, have also been arrested and face charges.

    Iranian leaders blame foreign governments for fanning the protests. Iranian Deputy Interior Minister Majid Mirahmadi said celebrities in particular have had a “steering role” in the unrest.

    Mirahmadi said celebrities who have backed the protests will be allowed to atone for their “mistaken actions.”

    He denied any athletes had been arrested but said some had received “guidance.” He said Mahini, for example, had been released and given “the chance to make good on his mistakes,” according to the Mehr News Agency.

    Public figures have not been deterred.

    Amirhossein Esfandiar, a national volleyball player, reposted a video of violent confrontations between security forces and protesters, writing, “You have no sense of humanity, why do you beat and kill innocent people?”

    Qasim Haddadifar, a veteran sportsman and former soccer captain, published photos of girls protesting and wrote he was proud of them in an Instagram story.

    Some players on the soccer team Persepolis F.C. reportedly wore black armbands during a Wednesday match in solidarity with the protest movement and were later summoned by security, reported British-based Iran International.

    Actress Hediye Tehrani said Iranian security had warned her about her posts to her nearly 1 million Instagram followers. Still, she continues to share images in support of the protests. “Millions of girls are now Mahsa Amini,” she wrote in a recent post.

    Celebrities outside of Iran have also raised their voices, from Dua Lipa and Shakira to the fashion house Balenciaga. On Instagram, Angelina Jolie posted a photo of a protester holding up an image of Amini and wrote, “To the women of Iran, we see you.”

    The ruling establishment clearly sees danger in celebrities’ wide reach. Ali Saaedi Shahroudi, a former representative of the Supreme Leader of Revolutionary Guards, called for an organization to oversee the behavior of musicians, actors and sports stars, similar to institutions regulating professional groups.

    But the damage may have already been done.

    Although Hajipour was forced to remove his song from Instagram, it continues to reverberate, sung by everyone from Iranian school girls to protesters in European capitals.

    A campaign is under way to nominate the song for a Grammy, in the best song for social change category.

    “While using #MahsaAmini might seem like keyboard activism, Iranians see the world’s attention is on them and they appreciate it,” said Dagres. “The solidarity invigorates protesters to keep braving batons and bullets to make a change in their country. It gives them hope.”

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  • Mel Gibson can testify at Harvey Weinstein trial, judge says

    Mel Gibson can testify at Harvey Weinstein trial, judge says

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    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mel Gibson can testify about what he learned from one of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers, a judge ruled Friday in the rape and sexual assault trial of the former movie mogul.

    The 66-year-old actor and director was one of many witnesses, and by far the best known, whose identities were revealed in Los Angeles Superior Court. The judge and attorneys had taken a break from jury selection for motions on what evidence will be allowed at the trial, and who can testify. The witness list for the trial is sealed.

    Judge Lisa B. Lench ruled that Gibson can testify in support of his masseuse and friend, who will be known as Jane Doe #3 at the trial. Weinstein is accused of committing sexual battery by restraint against the woman, one of 11 rape and sexual assault counts in the trial against the 70-year-old.

    Prosecutors said that after getting a massage from the woman at a California hotel in Beverly Hills in May of 2010, a naked Weinstein followed her into the bathroom and masturbated. Weinstein has pleaded not guilty, and denied any non-consensual sexual activity.

    Weinstein’s attorneys argued against allowing Gibson to testify, saying that what he learned from the woman while getting a massage from her does not constitute a “fresh complaint” by the woman under the law by which Gibson would take the stand. A “fresh complaint” under California law allows the introduction of evidence of sexual assault or another crime if the victim reported it to someone else voluntarily and relatively promptly after it happened.

    Prosecutors said that when Gibson brought up Weinstein’s name by chance, the woman had a traumatic response and Gibson understood from her that she had been sexually assaulted. Gibson did not remember the timing of the exchange, but the prosecution will use another witness, Allison Weiner, who remembers speaking to both Gibson and the woman in 2015.

    Judge Lench said Gibson’s testimony will depend on how the accuser describes the exchange with him when she takes the stand, and she may choose to rule against it at that time.

    Weinstein attorney Mark Werksman then argued that if Gibson does take the stand, the defense should be allowed to cross-examine him about widely publicized antisemitic remarks Gibson made during an arrest in 2006, and about racist statements to a girlfriend that were recorded and publicized in 2010.

    Lench said a wider discussion of Gibson’s racism was not relevant to the trial, but she would allow questioning of whether he had a personal bias and animus toward Weinstein.

    Werksman argued that Gibson had such a bias both because Weinstein is Jewish, and because Weinstein published a book that criticized the depiction of Jews in the Gibson-directed 2004 film, “The Passion of the Christ.”

    “Any evidence of Mr. Gibson’s racism or antisemitism would give rise to a bias against my client, who challenged him,” Werksman said.

    The lawyer briefly, and mistakenly, said he thought the movie won a best picture Academy Award, but Weinstein, whose films once dominated the Oscars, shook his head as he sat at the defense table.

    “Sorry, my client would know better than I would,” Werksman said. “But it was an award-winning movie.”

    The defense also argued that Gibson was trying to whitewash his image by focusing on Weinstein’s wrongdoing and asserting himself as a champion of the #MeToo movement.

    The prosecution argued that Gibson had made no such suggestions about himself, and that at the time of the conversation with his masseuse he said he was discussing getting into a business deal with Weinstein, showing there was no such bias.

    Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez called Gibson’s past comments “despicable,” but said they had no relevance for the narrow purposes he would be called to the stand for.

    Gibson’s testimony raises the prospect of two of Hollywood’s once most powerful men, who have undergone public downfalls, facing each other in court.

    An email seeking comment from a representative for Gibson was not immediately returned.

    In one of several similar rulings Friday, Lench also found that “Melrose Place” actor Daphne Zuniga could testify in a similar capacity for a woman known at the trial as Jane Doe #4, whom Weinstein is accused of raping in 2004 or 2005.

    The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused.

    Weinstein is already serving a 23-year sentence for a 2020 conviction for rape and sexual assault in New York. The state’s highest court has agreed to hear his appeal in that case.

    He was subsequently brought to Los Angeles for a trial that began Monday, five years after women’s stories about him gave massive momentum to the #MeToo movement.

    Friday’s arguments came a day after the premiere of the film “She Said,” which tells the story of the work of the two New York Times reporters whose stories brought Weinstein down.

    Weinstein’s attorneys previously sought to have the Los Angeles trial delayed because publicity from the film might taint the jury pool, but the judge denied their motion.

    The trial is expected to last eight weeks. The judge and attorneys will return to the jury selection process on Monday morning, and opening statements are expected to begin on Oct. 24.

    ___

    Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: twitter.com/andyjamesdalton

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