Get local news delivered to your inbox!
A third of US should be considering masks, officials say
WASHINGTON (AP) — COVID-19 cases are increasing in the United States — and could get even worse over the coming months, federal health officials warned Wednesday in urging areas hardest hit to consider reissuing calls for indoor masking.
Increasing numbers of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations are putting more of the country under guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that call for masking and other infection precautions.
Right now, about a third of the U.S. population lives in areas that are considered at higher risk — mostly in the Northeast and Midwest. Those are areas where people should already be considering wearing masks indoors — but Americans elsewhere should also take notice, officials said.
“Prior increases of infections, in different waves of infection, have demonstrated that this travels across the country,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, said at a White House briefing with reporters.
For an increasing number of areas, “we urge local leaders to encourage use of prevention strategies like masks in public indoor settings and increasing access to testing and treatment,” she said.
Interrogation, uncertainty for surrendering Mariupol troops
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Nearly 1,000 last-ditch Ukrainian fighters who had held out inside Mariupol's pulverized steel plant have surrendered, Russia said Wednesday, as the battle that turned the city into a worldwide symbol of defiance and suffering drew toward a close.
Meanwhile, the first captured Russian soldier to be put on trial by Ukraine on war-crimes charges pleaded guilty to killing a civilian and could get life in prison. Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO, abandoning generations of neutrality for fear that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not stop with Ukraine.
The Ukrainian fighters who emerged from the ruined Azovstal steelworks after being ordered by their military to abandon the last stronghold of resistance in the now-flattened port city face an uncertain fate. Some were taken by the Russians to a former penal colony in territory controlled by Moscow-backed separatists.
While Ukraine said it hopes to get the soldiers back in a prisoner swap, Russia threatened to put some of them on trial for war crimes.
Amnesty International said the Red Cross should be given immediate access to the fighters. Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty's deputy director for the region, cited lawless executions allegedly carried out by Russian forces in Ukraine and said the Azovstal defenders “must not meet the same fate.”
EXPLAINER: Why is Wall Street close to a bear market?
NEW YORK (AP) — The bears are rumbling toward Wall Street.
The stock market’s skid this year has pulled the S&P 500 close to what’s known as a bear market. Rising interest rates, high inflation, the war in Ukraine and a slowdown in China’s economy have caused investors to reconsider the prices they’re willing to pay for a wide range of stocks, from high-flying tech companies to traditional automakers.
The last bear market happened just two years ago, but this would still be a first for those investors that got their start trading on their phones during the pandemic. For years, thanks in large part to extraordinary actions by the Federal Reserve, stocks often seemed to go in only one direction: up. Now, the familiar rallying cry to “buy the dip” after every market wobble is giving way fear that the dip is turning into a crater.
Here are some common questions asked about bear markets:
How Pa. GOP gov pick could turn election lies into action
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Doug Mastriano is not the only candidate who won a Republican primary on Tuesday after embracing Donald Trump's lie that the 2020 election was stolen. But no GOP contender did more to subvert that presidential election -- and no one may be better positioned to subvert the next one -- than Mastriano if he’s elected Pennsylvania's governor.
In one of the most politically competitive states in the U.S., the newly minted Republican nominee for governor was deeply involved in the former president's efforts to overturn the last election. He was at the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection.
If he's elected in November, Mastriano has pledged to end no-excuse vote by mail, a process that hundreds of thousands used in this week's primary. He also wants to force millions of registered voters to register again.
While he would have to contend with a Legislature that may not go along with his plans, he would still have significant authority over elections because Pennsylvania is one of the few states where governors have the power to appoint the secretary of state. As Pennsylvania's chief elections official, that official oversees how elections are managed, gives counties guidance on how to conduct elections and, crucially, certifies the final results.
With his far-right brand of politics, Mastriano's victory actually has been seen by some as a gift for Democrats, leaving Republicans with a candidate so out of step with Pennsylvania that he would struggle in a general election campaign. But Pennsylvania was one of the critical states that Trump won in 2016, and he lost it by just over one percentage point in 2020. With that in mind, Democrats made an urgent case for their supporters to take Mastriano seriously.
House passes domestic terrorism bill after Buffalo shooting
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House passed legislation late Wednesday night that would bolster federal resources to prevent domestic terrorism in response to the racist mass shooting in Buffalo, New York.
The 222-203, nearly party-line vote was an answer to the growing pressure Congress faces to address gun violence and white supremacist attacks — a crisis that escalated following two mass shootings over the weekend. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a member of the congressional committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol, was the lone Republican to vote in favor of the measure.
But the legislative effort by Democrats is not new. The House passed a similar measure in 2020 only to have it languish in the Senate. And since lawmakers lack the support in the Senate to move forward with any sort of gun-control legislation they see as necessary to stop mass shootings, Democrats are instead putting their efforts into a broader federal focus on domestic terrorism.
“We in Congress can’t stop the likes of (Fox News host) Tucker Carlson from spewing hateful, dangerous replacement theory ideology across the airwaves. Congress hasn’t been able to ban the sale of assault weapons. The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act is what Congress can do this week to try to prevent future Buffalo shootings," Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., who first introduced the measure in 2017, said on the House floor.
The measure seeks to prevent another attack like the one that took place in Buffalo on Saturday where police say an 18-year-old white man drove three hours to carry out a racist, livestreamed shooting rampage in a crowded supermarket. Ten people were killed, all of the victims Black.
Biden invokes Defense Production Act for formula shortage
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday invoked the Defense Production Act to speed production of infant formula and authorized flights to import supply from overseas, as he faces mounting political pressure over a domestic shortage caused by the safety-related closure of the country's largest formula manufacturing plant.
The Defense Production Act order requires suppliers of formula manufacturers to fulfill orders from those companies before other customers, in an effort to eliminate production bottlenecks. Biden is also authorizing the Defense Department to use commercial aircraft to fly formula supplies that meet federal standards from overseas to the U.S., in what the White House is calling “Operation Fly Formula.”
Supplies of baby formula across the country have been severely curtailed in recent weeks after a February recall by Abbott Nutrition exacerbated ongoing supply chain disruptions among formula makers, leaving fewer options on store shelves and increasingly anxious parents struggling to find nutrition for their children.
“I know parents across the country are worried about finding enough formula to feed their babies,” Biden said in a video statement released by the White House. ”As a parent and as a grandparent, I know just how stressful that is."
The announcement comes two days after the Food and Drug Administration said it was streamlining its review process to make it easier for foreign manufacturers to begin shipping more formula into the U.S.
Buffalo shooter let some people see plans just before attack
Shortly before he opened fire, the white gunman accused of killing 10 Black people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket allowed a small group of people to see his detailed plans for the attack, which he had been chronicling for months in a private, online diary.
Discord, the chat platform where 18-year-old Payton Gendron kept the diary, confirmed Wednesday that an invitation to access his private writings was sent to the group about a half-hour before Saturday’s attack at Tops Friendly Market, which he live-streamed on another online service. Some of them accepted.
Gendron’s diary and its racist, anti-Semitic entries dated to last November included step-by-step descriptions of his assault plans, a detailed account of a reconnaissance trip he made to Buffalo in March, and maps of the store that he drew by hand.
"What we know at this time is that a private, invite-only server was created by the suspect to serve as a personal diary chat log," a Discord spokesperson said in a written statement. "Approximately 30 minutes prior to the attack, however, a small group of people were invited to and joined the server. Before that, our records indicate no other people saw the diary chat log in this private server.”
It wasn’t clear if any of the people who accessed Gendron’s diary or saw his livestream did anything to alert the authorities or attempt to stop the attack. Discord said it removed Gendron’s diary as soon as the platform became aware of it, in accordance with the company's policies against violent extremism.
Crews slow New Mexico fires, brace for dangerous conditions
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — More than 2,000 firefighters battling the largest U.S. wildfire dug back-up fire lines and rearranged fire engines around homes in northeast New Mexico on Wednesday in anticipation of a return to windy, dangerous conditions in the days ahead.
After a break in the weather allowed for significant progress on the ground and from the air in recent days, forecasters issued warnings for high fire danger from southern Nevada through parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado starting Thursday.
“The next three days are going to be the giddy-up days,” fire behavior analyst Dennis Burns said Wednesday.
“Crews are out there working as hard as they can to get in line as quickly as possible,” he said during an afternoon briefing at the fire east of Santa Fe stretching northeast toward Taos.
Most of the large fires so far this spring have been in Arizona and New Mexico. The largest has raced across more than 471 square miles (1,220 square kilometers) of forest that many fire managers have described as “ripe and ready to burn" due to a megadrought that has spanned decades and warm and windy conditions brought on by climate change.
EU rushes out $300 billion roadmap to ditch Russian energy
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s executive arm moved Wednesday to jump-start plans for the 27-nation bloc to abandon Russian energy amid the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, proposing a nearly 300 billion-euro ($315 billion) package that includes more efficient use of fuels and faster rollout of renewable power.
The European Commission’s investment initiative is meant to help the 27 EU countries start weaning themselves off Russian fossil fuels this year. The goal is to deprive Russia, the EU’s main supplier of oil, natural gas and coal, of tens of billions in revenue and strengthen EU climate policies.
“We are taking our ambition to yet another level to make sure that we become independent from Russian fossil fuels as quickly as possible,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in Brussels when announcing the package, dubbed REPowerEU.
With no end in sight to Russia’s war in Ukraine and European energy security shaken, the EU is rushing to align its geopolitical and climate interests for the coming decades. It comes amid troubling signs that have raised concerns about energy supplies that the EU relies on and have no quick replacements for, including Russia cutting off member nations Poland and Bulgaria after they refused a demand to pay for natural gas in rubles.
The bloc’s dash to ditch Russian energy stems from a combination of voluntary and mandatory actions. Both reflect the political discomfort of helping fund Russia’s military campaign in a country that neighbors the EU and wants to join the bloc.
US case of monkeypox reported in Massachusetts man
NEW YORK (AP) — Massachusetts on Wednesday reported a rare case of monkeypox in a man who recently traveled to Canada, and health officials are looking into whether it is connected to small outbreaks in Europe.
Monkeypox is typically limited to Africa, and rare cases in the U.S. and elsewhere are usually linked to travel there. A small number of confirmed or suspected cases have been reported this month in the United Kingdom, Portugal and Spain.
U.S. health officials said they are in contact with officials in the U.K. and Canada as part of the investigation. But "at this point in time, we don’t have any information that links the Massachusetts case to cases in the UK,” said Jennifer McQuiston of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Though it's the only U.S. case the CDC is aware of, “I do think we are preparing for the possibility of more cases,” she said.
The U.S. case poses no risk to the public, and the Massachusetts resident is hospitalized but in good condition, officials said.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Get local news delivered to your inbox!
Social platforms have learned to remove violent videos of extremist shootings more quickly over the past few years. It’s just not clear they’re moving quickly enough. Police say that when a white gunman killed 10 people and wounded three others Saturday in a “racially motivated violent extremist” shooting in Buffalo, he livestreamed the attack to the gaming platform Twitch. It didn’t stay there long; a Twitch spokesperson said it removed the video in less than two minutes. While that's much faster than the 17 minutes it took Facebook to remove a similar video in 2019, copies of the video continued to circulate online Sunday.
The white man accused of killing 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket appeared in court after a grand jury indicted him on a first-degree murder charge.
The body of 17-year-old Brittanee Drexel from New York who disappeared while visiting South Carolina's Myrtle Beach on spring break 13 years ago has been found. Here's more info on that and more of today's trending topics.
The Department of Homeland Security has paused its new disinformation board criticized by Republicans, and the board's director will resign.
Right now, about a third of the U.S. population lives in areas that are considered at higher risk. Read more on what that means here.
The secret passage featured rail and ventilation systems, electricity and reinforced walls, authorities said. The tunnel is in one of the most fortified stretches of the border, illustrating the limitations of border walls.
"I've got a serious situation here," the unidentified passenger said in the audio. "My pilot has gone incoherent, and I have no idea how to fly the airplane."
Scientists say they are baffled by the recent spread of monkeypox in Europe and North America. Here's what you should know.
An election denier wins GOP primary in Pennsylvania; bad behavior dooms Cawthorn; incumbency trumps Trump in Idaho. Here are some takeaways.
Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.