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Trump and DeSantis’ rivalry intensifies as Florida governor formally enters 2024 presidential race

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:44:22 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Ron DeSantis ’ entry into the 2024 White House race against former President Donald Trump sets up a clash of the Republican Party’s two leading figures as the Florida governor attempts to topple a man who has dominated the GOP for the last seven years.Trump, who has established himself as the clear front-runner for the Republican nomination, has spent the months since he launched his own campaign working to hobble the once-ascendant DeSantis, whom he and his team have long viewed as his most serious challenger. DeSantis so far has tried to remain above the fray, ignoring Trump’s escalating attacks on everything from his record to his personality.“The campaign is about to get a lot more intense. He can’t just lay low in Tallahassee signing bills,” said GOP strategist Alex Conant of DeSantis’ strategy. “Now he has to hit the campaign trail, take media questions and punch back at his opponents.”But DeSantis, during a series of events Wednesday ni...

Air Force fighter pilot tapped by Biden to be next Joint Chiefs chairman has history of firsts

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:44:22 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Air Force fighter pilot about to be nominated as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff got his callsign by ejecting from a burning F-16 fighter jet high above the Florida Everglades and falling into the watery sludge below. It was January 1991, and then-Capt. CQ Brown Jr. had just enough time in his parachute above alligator-full wetlands for a thought to pop into his head. “Hope there’s nothing down there,” Brown said in an interview at the Aspen Security Forum last year. He landed in the muck, which coated his body and got “in his boots and everything.” Which is how the nominee to be the country’s next top military officer got his callsign: “Swamp Thing.”Brown, now a four-star general and the Air Force chief, will be nominated by President Joe Biden on Thursday. If confirmed, Brown would replace Army Gen. Mark Milley, whose term ends in October. Biden is scheduled to unveil Brown as his pick during a Rose Garden event on Thursday af...

Flying drones and chasing data, Indigenous women in Guyana join fight against climate change

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:44:22 GMT

RUBY VILLAGE, Guyana (AP) — A small group of Indigenous women in northern Guyana are the latest weapon in the fight against climate change in this South American country where 90% of the population lives below sea level.Armed with drones, the women are scanning mangrove forests for illegal cutting and expect to soon start collecting soil samples and mangrove litter to measure the carbon held in remote coastal ecosystems that have long been out of reach for scientists. Such data could nudge the government to create policies and programs to protect critical areas.“We are merging traditional knowledge and scientific research to get all this information that we need but never had before and couldn’t afford to get,” said Annette Arjoon-Martins, head of Guyana’s Marine Conservation Society.The women’s work is considered key for Guyana, a small nation about the size of Britain that has a 285-mile-long (459 kilometers) coastline whose coastal plains lie an average of 6 feet (2 meters) below...

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes faces sentencing for seditious conspiracy in Jan. 6 attack

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:44:22 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes will be sentenced Thursday after a landmark verdict convicting him of spearheading a weekslong plot to keep former President Donald Trump in power, culminating in far-right extremists attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors are seeking 25 years behind bars for Rhodes, who will be sentenced in the federal court in Washington that sits less than a mile from the Capitol. He will be the first Jan. 6 defendant convicted of seditious conspiracy to receive his punishment, which will set the standard for a slew of extremists group members’ sentencings to come. Prosecutors say Rhodes remains a threat to American democracy more than two years after he led a plot to forcibly block the transfer of power from Trump to President Joe Biden after Trump lost the 2020 election. During a court hearing on Wednesday, police officers and congressional staffers at the Capitol on Jan. 6 recounted the physical and emotional trauma t...

Timeline: How Georgia and South Carolina nuclear reactors ran so far off course

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:44:22 GMT

WAYNESBORO, Ga. (AP) — The first of two nuclear reactors in Georgia is generating electricity and could be days away from achieving full-power operation. But the new units at Georgia Power Co.’s Plant Vogtle are $17 billion over budget and running seven years late. Customers of multiple Georgia utilities are already paying billions, although state regulators haven’t yet decided how much Georgia Power ratepayers will owe.Meanwhile, two of the same model reactors that were planned for different owners in South Carolina were abandoned partway through construction. There, federal prosecutors have pursued criminal charges against utility and construction executives, saying they illegally concealed delays and cost overruns. The projects were supposed to mark a rebirth for the U.S. nuclear industry, but construction proved difficult despite consistent federal support.Here’s a timeline of the two nuclear projects:1970: Georgia Power Co., a unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co...

Stock market today: Asian shares extend losses, while Japan’s Nikkei pushes higher

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:44:22 GMT

NEW YORK — Shares were mostly lower in Asia on Thursday as worries about the U.S. economy and a possible default on U.S. government debt pulled Wall Street lower.Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index advanced 0.5% to 30,848.07, extending recent gains as investors bet on higher returns from Japanese companies. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng sank 2% to 17,739.83 as investors fretted over the trajectory for China’s economic recovery after the government relaxed pandemic restrictions late last year. The Shanghai Composite index also fell, by 0.5% to 3,188.34. Simmering tensions between China and the United States over technology and security have added to uncertainties.In Seoul, the Kospi shed 0.3% to 2,559.56, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gave up 0.9% to 7,146.50. On Wednesday, the S&P 500 lost 0.7% after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Republicans and Democrats remain far apart in talks on raising the debt ceiling to prevent a potentially disastrous default on the U.S...

McCarthy’s Republicans push debt ceiling talks to brink, lawmakers leaving town for weekend

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:44:22 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are pushing debt ceiling talks to the brink, displaying risky political bravado as they prepare to leave town Thursday for the holiday weekend just days before the U.S. could face an unprecedented default that could hurl the global economy into chaos.A defiant House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said the debt ceiling standoff was “not my fault” as Republican negotiators and the White House failed to finish out talks. He warned they need more time to try to reach a budget-slashing deal with President Joe Biden.But it’s clear the Republican speaker — who leads a Trump-aligned party whose hard-right flank lifted him to power — is now staring down a potential crisis.Lawmakers are tentatively not expected back at work until Tuesday, just two days from June 1, when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the U.S. could start running out of cash to pay its bills and face a potentially catastrophic default. Fitch Ratings agency placed the United States’ A...

Georgia nuclear rebirth arrives 7 years late, $17B over cost

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:44:22 GMT

WAYNESBORO, Ga. (AP) — Two nuclear reactors in Georgia were supposed to herald a nuclear power revival in the United States. But the project is seven years late and $17 billion over budget as Georgia Power Co. announced the first new reactor at its Plant Vogtle could reach full electrical output by Saturday.They’re the first U.S. reactors built from scratch in decades — and maybe the most expensive power plant ever. Georgia electric customers have already paid billions, and state regulators will ultimately decide if they’re on the hook for billions more.Some of the key promises of Vogtle — like building modules offsite and shipping them for cheaper on-site assembly — did not pan out. Construction delays drove Westinghouse Electric Co., a titan of American industrial history, into bankruptcy when the company couldn’t absorb overruns.And the lessons could be important because government officials and some utilities are again looking to nuclear power to alleviate climate change by gene...

Look who’s talking: Biden goes quiet in debt-limit talks, while McCarthy can’t stop chatting

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:44:22 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — There was Kevin McCarthy, saying the White House was refusing to give on spending as the speaker returned to the Capitol one morning this week. Just a few short hours later, there was McCarthy again, this time telling reporters that the sole concession that Republicans were making to the White House on the debt limit was in fact, raising the debt limit. As representatives from the White House and the GOP-controlled House race toward a deal that would pave the way for lawmakers to lift the debt limit, one side has been eager to speak publicly about the closed-door talks — trying to shape public perceptions of the negotiations. It’s not the side that typically wields the bully pulpit. President Joe Biden has made a deliberate decision to go quiet as his team gets down to the wire in the debt-limit talks, according to White House officials. It’s his deeply held view that speaking in public about negotiations does nothing to produce an outcome. The already ...

$50,000 reward offered in fatal South L.A. hit-and-run

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:44:22 GMT

Authorities with the Los Angeles Police Department are asking for the public’s help in identifying the driver of a vehicle involved in a hit-and-run that claimed the life of a 23-year-old bicyclist in South Los Angeles last month.  The deadly crash occurred on April 13, at around 10:40 p.m., at the intersection of Main and 43rd streets, according to an LAPD news release.  The 23-year-old man, identified as Inmer Samuel Cruz, can be seen in surveillance video riding his bike westbound across Main Street on 43rd Street when he's struck by a silver sedan that was going southbound on Mainstreet. The driver, who failed to stop and identify themselves or attempt to render aid to the bicyclist, continued southbound on Main Street, fleeing the scene.  The hit-and-run suspect vehicle is described as a silver 2008-2013 Mercedes Benz C230 or C330, police said. The victim, 23-year-old Inmer Samuel Cruz, seen in surveillance video riding his bike moments before the fatal hit-and-r...