November 11, 2019 10:19 am
CHICAGO (AP) – A winter storm has left about 3.4 inches of snow on the ground at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport but that was enough to cancel nearly 900 flights and cause flights to be delayed an average of almost an hour and a half. Across town, at Midway International Airport, another 97 flights have been canceled. Icy conditions also caused a plane to slide off a runway at O’Hare as it came in to land Monday morning. None of the 38 passengers or three crew members on the flight from Greensboro, North Carolina, was injured. The snow all but stopped by mid-afternoon. Now the National Weather Service expects temperatures that were already unseasonably low to plummet. The forecast high of 21 degrees (-6 Celsius) at the airport on Tuesday would be a full seven degrees lower than the previous record set for Nov. 12. (Photo: CNN)
November 11, 2019 9:33 am
KANAWHA CITY, W.Va. (AP) – The last two remaining Kmart locations in West Virginia are set to close by early next year as the retailer shutters about 100 stores nationwide. The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports the Kanawha City Kmart in Charleston will close in February following the closure of the Elkview Kmart in December. The store’s parent company, Transformco, cited a “difficult retail environment” in a statement released Thursday announcing 96 Kmart and Sears stores would go out of business by early 2020. The Kanawha City location was named on the list. Transformco announced the Elkview closure in August. Another Charleston Kmart closed at the beginning of 2019. Sears’ former CEO purchased its assets out of bankruptcy in February and moved the company under the new name. Transformco will operate 182 stores after the closures.
November 11, 2019 8:18 am
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Two political supporters of U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry secured a potentially lucrative oil-and-gas exploration deal from the Ukrainian government soon after Perry proposed one of the men as an adviser to Ukraine’s new president. Perry’s efforts to influence Ukraine’s energy policy came earlier this year just as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s new government was seeking military aid from the U.S. to defend against Russian aggression and allies of President Donald Trump were ramping up efforts to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
Ukraine awarded the contract to a joint venture owned by Michael Bleyzer and Alex Cranberg, businessmen with longstanding ties to the former Texas governor. A spokeswoman for Perry denies he advocated for the business interests of any individual or company during his meetings with Ukraine’s leaders.
November 11, 2019 4:24 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – Watergate redux? Back in 1973, tens of millions of Americans tuned in to what Variety called “the hottest daytime soap opera” – the Senate Watergate hearings. They eventually led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. By some estimates, more than 80% of Americans tuned in to at least part of the Watergate telecasts. Seeing the witnesses lay out the case against Nixon moved public opinion decidedly in favor of impeachment. But this time may be different. When the House impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump begins its public phase on Wednesday, people will be watching on screens large and small. Many are likely to be watching on more than one screen, with real-time reinforcement of their views about Trump on social media platforms and other venues that didn’t exist in Nixon’s time.
November 11, 2019 4:22 am
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran’s president says a new oil field has been discovered with an estimated 50 billion barrels of crude oil in the country’s south. The announcement by President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday would mean Iran’s proven crude oil reserves would be boosted by a third. Right now, Iran says it has some 150 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves. He said the discovered field was located in Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan province. Rouhani made the announcement Sunday in a speech in the desert city of Yazd. Iran’s energy industry has been hard-hit by U.S. sanctions over its collapsing nuclear deal with world powers.
November 11, 2019 4:21 am
NEW YORK (AP) – President Donald Trump’s former U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley , alleges in her upcoming memoir that two top administration officials tried to enlist her in opposing some of Trump’s policies. Haley writes that then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and then-White House chief of staff John Kelly were following a “dangerous path.” In her book, “With All Due Respect,” Haley describes a meeting with Tillerson and Kelly, both of whom had differed with Trump on pulling out of the Paris climate accords and other decisions. Haley writes that Tillerson and Kelly believed they were trying to “save the country,” but she remembers thinking they were only trying to impose their own beliefs. “I was shocked,” she writes. Haley’s book comes out Tuesday. The Associated Press purchased an early copy.
November 11, 2019 4:18 am
HONG KONG (AP) – A man has been set on fire following an apparent dispute over national identity in Hong Kong, where police shot a protester on a day of escalating violence. The man set on fire around midday was in critical condition in a city hospital. Video posted online show him arguing with a group of young people, before someone douses him with a liquid and strikes a lighter.
The police shooting was also captured on video Monday as demonstrators blocked train lines and roads during the morning commute to push their demands for democratic reforms. The Hong Kong hospital authority said the person shot was in critical condition. The violence is likely to further inflame passions after a student died Friday from injuries suffered in an earlier fall and police arrested six pro-democracy lawmakers over the weekend.
November 11, 2019 4:15 am
HEMPFIELD, Pa. (AP) – Officials say three trains were involved in a derailment in western Pennsylvania, prompting cancellation of rail service between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, but no injuries were reported. Three Norfolk Southern Corp. trains were involved in the 2:30 p.m. Friday derailment just west of the Georges Station Road bridge in Hempfield, about three miles (five kilometers) east of Greensburg. Norfolk Southern said one westbound train struck the rear of another, and derailed cars hit part of an eastbound train. A total of 11 rail cars transporting 50 shipping containers derailed, blocking lines that carry both freight and passengers between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Norfolk Southern said in a statement Saturday that cranes, excavators, loaders and other heavy equipment are being used to clear the tracks.
November 11, 2019 4:12 am
PITTSBURGH (AP) – An elected official from Pittsburgh scheduled for trial Tuesday in Michigan says she is confident she will be cleared of wrongdoing in an altercation at a Detroit hotel earlier this year. Allegheny County Controller Chelsa Wagner, who was overwhelmingly re-elected to a third term last week, faces felony resisting and obstructing police and misdemeanor disorderly conduct counts in Wayne County Court in the March incident. Prosecutors allege Wagner interfered with Detroit police while they prepared to remove her husband, Khari Mosley, from the Westin Book Cadillac hotel on March 6. They were in Detroit for a concert. Wagner and Mosley maintain they were the victims of hotel staff and police who acted improperly. Mosley was acquitted in July of disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace counts.
November 10, 2019 8:25 am
NEW YORK (AP) – The CBD craze is leaving the war on drugs a bit dazed and confused. The extract that’s been showing up in everything from candy to coffee is legally derived from hemp plants, which look and smell a lot like marijuana. New York City police boasted this week about what seemed like a big bust: more than 100 pounds of plants that officers thought were marijuana. They also arrested the man who came to pick up the plants. The Vermont farm that grew the plants and the Brooklyn CBD shop that ordered them insist they’re legal industrial hemp. The shop owner says if they’re seized for too long, he could go out of business. Since the U.S. government removed industrial hemp last year from the list of illegal drugs, a number of similar cases have cropped up.
