North Carolina Republicans stumbling over repeal of LGBT law
North Carolina Republicans stumbling over repeal of LGBT law
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — After hours of delay Wednesday, wavering Republican legislators stumbled with pushing through the repeal of a North Carolina law dictating which bathrooms transgender people must use in government buildings and schools.
The addition of a six-month moratorium on cities passing nondiscrimination ordinances for LGBT people — like the one in Charlotte that led to House Bill 2 — caused Democrats to back away from the bill, calling it only a partial repeal. HB2 has been blasted by gay-rights groups and resulted in job losses and sporting event cancellations.
At the same time, House Republicans remained divided over supporting any repeal legislation, putting the ultimate result of the special session called by Gov. Pat McCrory in doubt.
Senate Republicans began debating the repeal measure that blocked local governments from passing ordinances regulating employment practices or public accommodations related to restrooms, showers or changing facilities for 180 days. But the GOP halted the debate after about 30 minutes and went into a private caucus to talk.
Democrats said the measure broke an agreement with Charlotte leaders who repealed its ordinance telling city restaurants and hotels to let transgender people use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity.
Germany monitored Berlin truck attack suspect for months
BERLIN (AP) — German officials deemed the Tunisian man being sought in a manhunt across Europe a threat long before a truck plowed into a Christmas market in Berlin — and even kept him under covert surveillance for six months this year before halting the operation.
Now the international manhunt for Anis Amri — considered the prime suspect in Monday’s deadly rampage — is raising questions about how closely German authorities are monitoring the hundreds of known Islamic extremists in the country.
The issue puts new pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is running for re-election next year. Critics are lambasting her for allowing hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers to enter the country, allegedly without proper security checks.
Among them was Amri, a convicted criminal in Tunisia and Italy with little chance of getting asylum who successfully evaded deportation from Germany even as German authorities rejected his asylum application and deemed the 24-year-old a possible jihadi threat.
He is suspected in the attack that left 12 people dead and 48 injured Monday evening in Berlin. Health officials said 12 of the injured had very serious wounds.
Turkey links Russian envoy’s killer to US-based cleric Gulen
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s president on Wednesday implicated a U.S.-based Muslim cleric in the killing of Russia’s envoy to Turkey, saying the policeman who carried out the attack was a member of his “terror organization.”
Ambassador Andrei Karlov was killed Monday evening by a gunman in front of stunned onlookers at a photo exhibition in Ankara. The assassin, Mevlut Mert Altintas of Ankara’s riot police squad, was killed in a police operation.
“He (Altintas) was a member of the FETO terrorist organization. There is no point in hiding this,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a joint news conference with his visiting Albanian counterpart. “From the places he was raised to his connections — that’s what they point at.”
Turkey has accused Fethullah Gulen — a former ally who has turned into Erdogan’s top foe — of trying to destabilize Turkey and says his movement is behind a failed military coup in July aimed at toppling the Turkish leader. Gulen has denied any involvement in the coup. His movement also condemned “in the strongest terms” the ambassador’s assassination.
The government however, has labeled the movement “the FETO terror organization” and has cracked down on Gulen’s followers, arresting tens of thousands of people for their alleged link to the coup and purging more than 100,000 suspected supporters from government jobs.
After worry, joy arrives for mother of quintuplets
PHOENIX (AP) — The new mother of quintuplets kept her excitement in check for the first six months of her pregnancy — even putting off setting up a nursery.
But Margaret Baudinet could finally take a sigh of relief after a team of Phoenix doctors delivered five early Christmas presents, all wrapped in hospital blankets.
Baudinet and her husband Michael welcomed four girls and one boy on Dec. 4 at Dignity Health St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center.
The Virginia couple temporarily moved to Arizona to be closer to Dr. John Elliott, a specialist in multiple-birth pregnancies.
She said it wasn’t until she was discharged from the hospital that her fear of things going wrong had lifted.
Aleppo evacuations in heavy snow end brutal war chapter
BEIRUT (AP) — Hundreds of rebel fighters and civilians, including small children swaddled in thick blankets, were bused out of war-ravaged Aleppo in heavy snow on Wednesday as the evacuation of former rebel strongholds entered its final phase.
Scenes of buses slowly driving out of Aleppo in a shroud of white offered an evocative finale to what has been one of the most brutal chapters in Syria’s civil war.
The departures from Aleppo pave the way for President Bashar Assad to assume full control there, after more than four years of fighting over Syria’s largest city. It marks the most significant victory for Assad since an uprising against his family’s four-decade rule swept the country in 2011.
The evacuations were set in motion last week after Syria’s opposition agreed to surrender its last footholds in eastern Aleppo. Since then, about 25,000 fighters and civilians have been bused out, according to the United Nations. On Wednesday, buses began evacuating the last rebels and civilians, an estimated 3,000 people.
By nightfall, 25 buses carrying hundreds of people had driven in a rare snow storm from eastern Aleppo to opposition-held areas in the countryside near the city, said opposition activist Ahmad Primo, who was monitoring arrivals at the main drop-off point in the Rashideen district.
‘Obamacare’ holding its own: 6.4M signed up so far
WASHINGTON (AP) — “Obamacare” seems to be holding its own. The administration said Wednesday that 6.4 million people have enrolled for subsidized private coverage through HealthCare.gov, ahead of last year’s pace.
Despite rising premiums, dwindling insurers and the Republican vow to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care law, about 400,000 more people signed up through Monday than for a comparable period in 2015, the Health and Human Services Department said.
“Today’s enrollment numbers confirm that doomsday predictions about the marketplace are not bearing out,” said HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell.
Still, it’s too early for supporters of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, to say “I told you so.”
It’s unclear if the administration will meet its target of 13.8 million sign-ups. That’s partly because the share of new customers is down when compared with current consumers re-upping for another year.
Economy healed under Obama, but unhappy voters chose Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) — He was a first-term senator-turned-president, a former law professor with little experience in economics or management. When he entered the White House he had one essential task: piece together the shards of a shattered U.S. economy.
It wasn’t smooth and it wasn’t fast. But President Barack Obama will leave behind, by most measures, an economy far stronger than the one he inherited. Unemployment is 4.6 percent, a nine-year low. Stocks keep setting highs. An additional 20 million Americans have health insurance coverage. The nation has shifted toward cleaner energy sources: natural gas, wind and solar.
Yet it’s also an economy that left many people feeling neglected. Polling after the November election found that nearly two-thirds of voters described the economy as “not so good” or “poor.”
The costs of housing, college and prescription drugs kept outpacing paychecks. Job options had been dwindling for workers with only high school diplomas even before Obama took office, but the downturn and slow recovery magnified the pain of that trend. Many people gave up looking for work. Struggling rural towns never enjoyed the uplift that benefited major cities.
Fueled in part by such challenges, voters chose to pass the presidency to Donald Trump, a Republican who had railed against a weak economy and promised to undo many of Obama’s policies.