January 7, 2023 4:25 am
BEIJING (AP) – China has suspended or closed the social media accounts of more than 1,000 critics of the government’s policies on the COVID-19 outbreak, as the country moves to further open up. The popular Sina Weibo social media platform said it had addressed 12,854 violations including attacks on experts, scholars and medical workers and issued temporary or permanent bans on 1,120 accounts. The ruling Communist Party has largely relied on the medical community to justify its harsh lockdowns, quarantine measures and mass testing, almost all of which it abruptly abandoned last month, leading to a further surge in cases that have stretched medical resources to the limit. The party allows no direct criticism and imposes strict limits on free speech.
January 6, 2023 4:21 am
MEXICO CITY (AP) – Mexico’s capture of a son of the imprisoned drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman thrust Sinaloa’s state capital into a day of terror unlike any its residents had experienced since October 2019 – the last time authorities tried to capture Ovidio Guzmán. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has railed against his predecessors’ aggressive efforts to capture drug lords, but his administration bagged the high-profile cartel figure just days before hosting U.S. President Joe Biden. At least in the short term, locals were paying the price. The arrest came in a pre-dawn military operation Thursday outside Culiacan, a stronghold of the Sinaloa drug cartel in western Mexico.
January 6, 2023 4:19 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – America’s employers added a solid 223,000 jobs in December, evidence that the economy remains healthy yet also a sign that the Federal Reserve may still have to raise interest rates aggressively to slow growth and cool inflation. áThe December job growth, though a decent gain, amounted to the lowest monthly increase in two years. The unemployment rate remained fell to 3.5%, matching a 53-year low. áLast month’s job growth capped a second straight year of robust hiring. Yet the rapid hiring and the hefty pay raises that accompanied it likely contributed to a spike in prices that catapulted inflation to its highest level in 40 years.
January 6, 2023 4:19 am
(AP) – Authorities say a key piece of evidence in the case of four University of Idaho students stabbed to death in November turned out to be surveillance footage showing a white sedan driving past the victims’ home. According to a police affidavit unsealed Thursday, the car drove past three times before the stabbings early on Nov. 13 and was recorded speeding away afterwards. Investigators said they later tracked the car – and eventually, DNA evidence – to Bryan Kohberger, a 28-year-old graduate student in criminology at Washington State University, just across the state border. Kohberger made an initial appearance in an Idaho courtroom Thursday after being extradited from Pennsylvania, where he was arrested last week.
January 6, 2023 4:17 am
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his armed forces to observe a 36-hour unilateral cease-fire in Ukraine this weekend for the Orthodox Christmas holiday. Kyiv indicates it won’t follow suit. Putin does not appear to make his cease-fire order conditional on a Ukrainian acceptance. It isn’t clear whether hostilities would actually halt. Ukrainian officials have previously dismissed Russian peace moves as playing for time to regroup their forces. At various points in the war that started Feb. 24, Putin has ordered limited and local truces to allow evacuations of civilians or other humanitarian purposes. Thursday’s order was the first time Putin directed his troops to cease fire throughout Ukraine.
January 6, 2023 4:15 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – House leader Kevin McCarthy is getting closer to victory in the grueling, hard-fought struggle to become speaker of the new Congress. On the fourth day of voting, 15 of the 20 conservative holdouts switched to him on the 12th and 13th rounds of balloting. But he was still short of the majority he needs to win. McCarthy told reporters as he arrived at the Capitol, “We’re going to shock you.” The new effort is taking place against the backdrop of the second anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Republicans voted to adjourn, resuming at 10 p.m.
January 6, 2023 4:12 am
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) – Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s agent says the player is breathing on his own and able to talk after having his breathing tube removed. It comes four days after he went into cardiac arrest and was resuscitated on the field. Hamlin also joined the team’s morning meeting by videoconference and told them “love you guys.” The 24-year-old Hamlin was listed Thursday in critical condition in the intensive care unit of the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
January 6, 2023 2:20 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Pennsylvania’s newly minted state House speaker is moving to make his major policy goal regarding victims of child sexual abuse to be the chamber’s urgent priority. Speaker Mark Rozzi on Friday backed Gov. Tom Wolf’s announcement of an immediate special session to consider a constitutional amendment that would give victims of child sexual abuse a two-year window in which to file otherwise time-barred lawsuits. Rozzi says no other legislation will be considered until the proposal passes. House Republican Leader Bryan Cutler of Lancaster County says a special session devoted to that single topic isn’t warranted. Cutler says consideration of the amendment can be done as regular legislative business.
January 5, 2023 10:42 am
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Moscow’s armed forces to hold a 36-hour cease-fire in Ukraine this weekend for the Russian Orthodox Christmas holiday. The order follows a proposal by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill. Putin’s order said: “Based on the fact that a large number of citizens professing Orthodoxy live in the combat areas, we call on the Ukrainian side to declare a cease-fire and give them the opportunity to attend services on Christmas Eve, as well as on the Day of the Nativity of Christ.”
January 5, 2023 4:18 am
BOISE, Idaho (AP) – Authorities say the DNA of the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students was found on a knife sheath recovered at the crime scene. In court documents unsealed Thursday, Brett Payne, a police corporal in Moscow, Idaho, also says cellphone data shows that 28-year-old Bryan Kohberger had visited the area near the home where the Nov. 13 attack occurred about a dozen times since June. He says a woman who lived at the home and who wasn’t harmed awoke to the sound of crying that night to find a masked man in black clothing who walked past her and toward a sliding glass door. Kohberger is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and felony burglary.
