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.
November 10, 2019 8:24 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump is on a sports kick, taking in baseball, a mixed martial arts tournament and college football in recent days. Even his re-election campaign made the most of sporting events by airing a pricey television ad during the World Series. Presidents have long used sporting events to woo support, but it’s also a venue for fans to express their own political leanings. Trump was booed at Game 5 of the World Series but he’s heading to friendlier turf Saturday to watch the two highest-ranked college football teams. Louisiana State University and the University of Alabama face off in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
November 10, 2019 8:21 am
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) – A caravan of more than a dozen vehicles holding Mormon families escaping after a violent attack in Mexico has arrived in Arizona. The families crossed the border into the state Saturday afternoon, the Arizona Daily Star reports. They came nearly a week after an attack Monday in which nine women and children were killed by what authorities said were people from drug cartels. The families had lived in two hamlets in Mexico’s Sonora state: La Mora and Colonia LeBaron. The attack occurred as the women traveled with their children to visit relatives. Other residents of the hamlets planned to depart in the coming days. The spread-out community traces its origins to the end of polygamy more than a century ago by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, forcing Mormon families in the U.S. with multiple wives to establish offshoots elsewhere.
