Price’s exit further complicates GOP health care push
Price’s exit further complicates GOP health care push
BRANCHBURG, N.J. (AP) — The ouster of Tom Price as President Donald Trump’s health secretary is yet another self-inflicted blow for Republicans wishing to put their own stamp on health care — and the latest distraction for a White House struggling to advance its agenda.
Price resigned Friday amid investigations into his use of costly charter flights for official travel at taxpayer expense.
The new setback makes it even more unlikely that Republicans will be able to deliver on their promise to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama’s health care law. Yet they control the White House and both chambers of Congress.
Price’s resignation capped a week in which the latest GOP health care bill hit another impasse in the Senate. Regaining momentum will be even harder for Republicans.
Separatists vow to defy police ultimatum over Catalan vote
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Catalan separatists vowed Saturday to ignore a police ultimatum to leave the schools they are occupying to use in a vote seeking independence from Spain. As police methodically sealed off hundreds of schools, some parents decided to send their children home and girded for pre-dawn confrontations Sunday with police.
Tensions rose across the country over the planned vote. In the Spanish capital of Madrid, thousands marched to protest the separatists’ attempt to break up their nation, demanding that Catalan leaders be sent to jail. In Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, thousands more also took to the streets to urge their prosperous region to stay united with Spain.
The police deadline of 6 a.m. Sunday for the activists, parents and children in the occupied Catalan schools is designed to prevent the vote from taking place, since the polls are supposed to open three hours later.
Spain’s Constitutional Court suspended the independence vote more than three weeks ago and the national government calls it illegal. Police have been ordered to stop ballots from being cast on Sunday and have been cracking down for days, confiscating millions of ballots and posters.
Catalonia’s defiant regional government is pressing ahead anyway, urging the region’s 5.3 million voters to make their voices heard.
Amid outcry over Confederate markers, new ones are going up
ATLANTA (AP) — While Confederate statues and monuments around the nation get removed, defaced, covered up or toppled, some new memorials are being erected, by people who insist their only purpose is to honor the soldiers who died for the South.
Supporters of these new Civil War monuments describe a determination to hold onto their understanding of history.
“What I want to get across is how much the South suffered, not only through the war but after the war, during the Reconstruction years,” said David Coggins. His Confederate Veterans Memorial Park in Brantley, Alabama, dedicated a memorial to “Unknown Alabama Confederate Soldiers” in September.
Others say race has nothing to do with these new monuments, unlike those erected in the early 20th century.
“The problem was with some of the other statues that were put up, that were basically intended to intimidate people,” said Danny Francis, commander of a Sons of Confederate Veterans unit in South Carolina. “We’re not trying to oppress anyone — we’re just historians. We welcome everybody.”
Airstrikes on IS-controlled areas in Syria kill and wound dozens
BEIRUT (AP) — Airstrikes on villages and towns held by the Islamic State group in eastern Syria have killed and wounded dozens a day after an attack by the extremists killed more than 120 pro-government fighters and briefly cut off the highway linking the capital Damascus with eastern Syria, opposition activists said Saturday.
It was not immediately clear if the airstrikes on areas including Mayadeen, Boukamal, Bouleil, Bouomar and Mushassan were carried out by the Russians or the U.S.-led coalition. Syrian troops have been advancing in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour against IS under the cover of Russian airstrikes while the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces are marching against the extremists under the cover of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition.
The airstrikes came after two days of clashes between Syrian government forces and their allies against IS fighters in central and eastern Syria that left nearly 200 dead on both sides. Syrian troops and their allies have regained most of the areas they had lost earlier.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday’s airstrikes and those the night before killed 18 people, including two children and five women.
“They burnt Bouleil overnight,” said Omar Abou Leila, of the monitoring group DeirEzzor 24, adding that 13 people were killed in Bouleil and nine others in Boukamal alone.