January 18, 2025 4:12 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — TikTok says it will have to “go dark” this weekend unless the outgoing Biden administration assures the company it won’t enforce a shutdown of the popular app after the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the federal law banning the app unless it’s sold by its China-based parent company. The court ruled Friday the risk to national security posed by TikTok’s ties to China overcomes concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the U.S. The court’s decision means new users won’t be able to download the app and updates won’t be available, but it won’t disappear from users’ phones.
January 18, 2025 4:06 am
CAIRO (AP) — Qatar’s foreign ministry says the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will go into effect at 8:30 a.m. (0630 GMT) on Sunday. Early Saturday morning Israel’s Cabinet approved the deal for a ceasefire in Gaza that would release dozens of hostages and pause the 15-month war with Hamas, bringing the sides a step closer to ending their deadliest and most destructive fighting ever. Under the deal, 33 hostages are set to be released over the next six weeks, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. The remainder, including male soldiers, are to be released in a second phase that will be negotiated during the first.
January 18, 2025 4:08 am
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia attacked the Ukrainian capital with a barrage of drones and missiles Saturday, leaving at least four people dead, while industrial sites in Russia were set ablaze by Ukrainian strikes. Four people were killed in the Shevchenkivskyi district, said Kyiv City Military Administration head Timur Tkachenko on Saturday. The city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, also said that windows were broken and there was smoke at the entrance of a residential building. He also said the Lukyanivska metro station was shuttered after the attacks damaged its glass entrance.
January 18, 2025 3:59 am
Freedom Transit is announcing that its Washington Transit Center will be closed on Monday, January 20, 2025, in observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. All fixed route and shared ride services will operate on a normal schedule.
January 18, 2025 1:54 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court will again consider whether voters should have to write the accurate date by hand on return envelopes used to send their completed mail-in ballots to be counted. The justices said Friday they will decide whether the dating rule for absentee and mail ballot return envelopes violates a state constitutional provision that elections must be free and equal. The exterior envelope dates aren’t used to verify whether a ballot has been received before the deadline. The case involves 69 mail-in ballots from two state House special elections that a Philadelphia judge had said should be counted even though they lacked the handwritten return envelope dates.
January 17, 2025 12:54 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump will take the oath of office from inside the Capitol Rotunda on Monday due to forecasts of intense cold weather. The Republican president-elect says the weather forecast for Washington, D.C., with the windchill factor, could take temperatures into severe record lows. Trump says there’s an Arctic blast sweeping the country and he doesn’t want to see people hurt. The Rotunda is prepared as an alternative for each inauguration in the event of inclement weather. The swearing-in was last moved indoors in 1985, when President Ronald Reagan began his second term. Monday’s forecast calls for the lowest inauguration day temperatures since that day. (Photo: AP)
January 17, 2025 5:02 am
The super-rich have long played a role in U.S. politics but have an unusually prominent spot in incoming President Donald Trump’s new administration. President Joe Biden’s farewell warning about a tech-fueled “oligarchy” is due to that. Biden and his fellow Democrats have also long been supported by billionaires, but not in the same direct way or with the same dynamics of threats and demands for loyalty that come from Trump. The use of the term “oligarchy” harkens to Russian politics.
January 17, 2025 4:59 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has upheld the federal law banning TikTok beginning Sunday unless it’s sold by its China-based parent company, holding the risk to national security posed by its ties to China overcomes concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the U.S. A sale does not appear imminent. The court’s decision Friday means new users won’t be able to download the app and updates won’t be available, but it won’t disappear from users’ phones. President-elect Donald Trump had called on the court to keep the ban on hold until after he takes office Monday. The Republican has said he’ll “save” TikTok, but it’s unclear what he’d do.
January 17, 2025 4:54 am
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s security Cabinet has recommended approval of a ceasefire deal after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed an agreement had been reached that would pause the 15-month war with Hamas in Gaza and release dozens of hostages held by militants there. Mediators Qatar and the U.S. announced the ceasefire on Wednesday, but the deal hung in limbo for more than a day as Netanyahu insisted there were last-minute snags. After the recommendation Friday, the deal now goes to the full Cabinet of ministers for final sign-off. It is expected to OK the ceasefire. It could start as soon as Sunday.
January 17, 2025 10:16 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is commuting the sentences of almost 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. Friday’s clemency actions give Biden the presidential record for most individual pardons and commutations issued. The Democrat says he’s seeking to undo “disproportionately long sentences compared to the sentences they would receive today.” Biden also says he’ll use the time before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on Monday to “continue to review additional commutations and pardons.” That could potentially include preemptive pardons for officials and allies who the White House fears could be unjustly targeted by Trump’s Republican administration. Advocates cheer the prisoners’ clemencies, saying Biden is leaving a “lasting legacy on criminal justice reform.”
