World
More bodies found in Tibet avalanche; death toll rises to 28
More bodies were found Friday following an avalanche that buried vehicles outside a highway tunnel in Tibet, raising the death toll to 28, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Images from the scene at the exit of the tunnel connecting the city of Nyingchi in Tibet’s southwest with an outlying county showed about half a dozen backhoes digging through deep snow. Reports said around 1,000 rescuers had joined the effort.
Tons of snow and ice collapsed onto the mouth of the tunnel on Tuesday evening, trapping drivers in their vehicles.
Read more: More bodies found in Tibet avalanche, death toll rises to 20
Many of the people were headed home for China’s Lunar New Year holiday, which starts Sunday.
Nyingchi lies at an elevation of nearly 10,000 feet (3,048 meters), about a five-hour drive from the regional capital, Lhasa, along a highway that opened in 2018.
The AP Interview: Envoy says Taiwan learns from Ukraine war
Taiwan has learned important lessons from Ukraine’s war that would help it deter any attack by China or defend itself if invaded, the self-ruled island’s top envoy to the U.S. said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press.
Among the lessons: Do more to prepare military reservists and also civilians for the kind of all-of-society fight that Ukrainians are waging against Russia.
“Everything we’re doing now is to prevent the pain and suffering of the tragedy of Ukraine from being repeated in our scenario in Taiwan,” said Bi-khim Hsiao, Taiwan’s representative in Washington.
“So ultimately, we seek to deter the use of military force. But in a worst-case scenario, we understand that we have to be better prepared,” Hsiao said.
Hsiao spoke at the quiet, more than 130-year-old hilltop mansion that Taiwan uses for official functions in Washington. She talked on a range of Taiwan-US military, diplomatic and trade relations issues shaped by intensifying rivalries with China.
No Taiwanese flag flew over the building, reflecting Taiwan’s in-between status as a U.S. ally that nonetheless lacks full U.S. diplomatic recognition. The U.S. withdrew that in 1979, on the same day it recognized Beijing as the sole government of China.
The interview came after a year of higher tensions with China, including the Chinese launching ballistic missiles over Taiwan and temporarily suspending most dialogue with the U.S. after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August.
Asked if new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy should make good on his earlier pledge to visit Taiwan as well, Hsaio said. “That will be his decision. But I think ultimately the people of Taiwan have welcomed visitors from around the world.”
Beijing’s leadership, she added, “has no right to decide or define how we engage with the world.”
Taiwan, which split from the mainland in 1949 during a civil war, is claimed by China. The decades-old threat of invasion by China of the self-governed island has sharpened since China cut off communications with the island’s government in 2016. That was after Taiwanese voters elected a government that Beijing suspected of wanting to take Taiwan from self-rule to full independence.
In Washington, Taiwan’s self-rule is one issue that has strong support from both parties.
U.S. administrations for decades have maintained a policy of leaving unsaid whether the U.S. military would come to Taiwan’s defense if China did invade. China’s military shows of force after Pelosi’s visit had some in Congress suggesting it was time for the U.S. to abandon that policy, known as “strategic ambiguity,” and to instead make clear Americans would fight alongside Taiwan.
Asked about those calls Friday, Hsiao only praised the existing policy.
“It has preserved the status quo for decades, or I should say it has preserved peace,” she said.
President Joe Biden has repeatedly volunteered in public comments that the U.S. would come to Taiwan’s defense, only to have aides walk that back with assurances that strategic ambiguity still prevails.
Read more: China renews threat against Taiwan as island holds drills
Meanwhile, after watching the Ukrainians’ successful hard-scrabble defense against invading Russian forces, Taiwan realizes it needs to load up on Javelins, Stingers, HIMARS and other small, mobile weapons systems, Hsiao said. The Taiwanese and Americans have reached agreement on some of those, she said.
Some security think tanks accuse the U.S. — and the defense industry — of focusing too much of the nation’s billions of dollars in arms deals with Taiwan on advanced, high-dollar aircraft and naval vessels. China’s mightier military could be expected to destroy those big targets at the outset of any attack on Taiwan, some security analysts say.
Taiwan is pushing to make sure that a shift to grittier, lower-tech weapon supplies for Taiwanese ground forces “happens as soon as possible,” Hsaio said. Even with the U.S. and other allies pouring billions of dollars worth of such weapons into Ukraine for the active fight there, straining global arms stocks, ”we are assured by our friends in the United States that Taiwan is a very important priority,” she said.
At home, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen announced last month the government was extending compulsory military service for men from four months to a year, and Taiwan is increasing spending on defense. Hsiao would not directly address a report by Nikkei Asia on Friday that U.S. National Guard members had begun work training in Taiwan, saying only that Taiwan was exploring ways to work with the U.S. Guard members to improve training.
Ukraine’s experience has had lessons for the U.S. and other allies as well, she said, including the importance of a united allied stand behind threatened democracies.
“It’s critical to send a consistent message to the authoritarian leaders that force is never an option ... force will be met by a strong international response, including consequences,” Hsiao said.
Hsiao also spoke on the United States’ push under the Biden administration to boost U.S. production of computer chips. Supply chain disruptions during the coronavirus pandemic have underscored semiconductors’ crucial importance to the U.S. economy and military — and the extent of U.S. reliance on chip imports.
Greater U.S. production will push the nation into more direct trade competition with Taiwan, which is a global leader, especially for advanced semiconductors. Concern that China could interfere with semiconductor shipping through the Taiwan Strait has helped drive the United States’ new production effort.
Hsiao pointed out that Taiwan’s computer chip industry took decades to develop and expressed confidence it “will continue to be an indispensable and irreplaceable contributor to global supply chains in the decades to come.”
She noted Taiwan’s investment of $40 billion in a new semiconductor plant in Arizona, a project big enough that Biden visited the site last month, and expressed frustration at what she called a continuing U.S. financial penalty for Taiwanese companies doing business in the United States.
Read more: China holds large-scale joint strike drills aimed at Taiwan
The United States’ diplomatic non-recognition of Taiwan as a country means that Taiwan – unlike China and other top U.S. trading partners – lacks a tax treaty with the U.S. and thus pays extra taxes.
Surmounting hurdles to fix that would make U.S.-Taiwan business investments “much more successful and sustainable in the long run,” she said.
German caution on Ukraine arms rooted in political culture
Germany has become one of Ukraine's leading weapons suppliers in the 11 months since Russia's invasion, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz also has gained a reputation for hesitating to take each new step — generating impatience among allies.
Berlin’s perceived foot-dragging, most recently on the Leopard 2 battle tanks that Kyiv has long sought, is rooted at least partly in a post-World War II political culture of military caution, along with present-day worries about a possible escalation in the war.
On Friday, Germany inched closer to a decision to deliver the tanks, ordering a review of its Leopard stocks in preparation for a possible green light.
There was still no commitment, however. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius rejected the suggestion that Germany was standing in the way but said, “we have to balance all the pros and contras before we decide things like that, just like that.”
It's a pattern that has been repeated over the months as Scholz first held off pledging new, heavier equipment, then eventually agreed to do so.
Most recently, Germany said in early January that it would send 40 Marder armored personnel carriers to Ukraine — doing so in a joint announcement with the U.S., which pledged 50 Bradley armored vehicles.
That decision followed months of calls for Berlin to send the Marder and stoked pressure for it to move up another step to the Leopard tank.
“There is a discrepancy between the actual size of the commitment and weapons deliveries — it’s the second-largest European supplier — and the hesitancy with which it is done,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a Berlin-based senior analyst with the German Marshall Fund of the United States think tank.
Scholz, an unshakably self-confident politician with a stubborn streak and little taste for bowing to public calls for action, has stuck resolutely to his approach. He has said that Germany won’t go it alone on weapons decisions and pointed to the need to avoid NATO becoming a direct party to the war with Russia.
As pressure mounted last week, he declared that he wouldn't be rushed into important security decisions by “excited comments.” And he insisted that a majority in Germany supports his government’s “calm, well-considered and careful” decision-making.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Scholz listed some of the equipment Germany has sent to Ukraine, declaring that it marks “a profound turning point in German foreign and security policy.”
Read more: US military's expanded combat training for Ukrainian forces begins in Germany
That is, at least to some extent, true. Germany refused to provide lethal weapons before the invasion started, reflecting a political culture rooted in part in the memory of Germany's own history of aggression during the 20th century — including the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
“No German chancellor, of no party, wants to be seen out front in pushing a military agenda — you want to try all other options before you resort to that,” Kleine-Brockhoff said. “And therefore for domestic consumption, it is seen as a positive thing for a German chancellor not to lead on this, to be cautious, to be resistant, to have tried all other options.”
Scholz does face calls from Germany's center-right opposition and some in his three-party governing coalition to be more proactive on military aid; less so from his own center-left Social Democratic Party, which for decades was steeped in the legacy of Cold War rapprochement pursued by predecessor Willy Brandt in the early 1970s.
Scholz “decided early on that he does not want to lead militarily on Ukraine assistance,” Kleine-Brockhoff said, though “he wants to be a good ally and part of the alliance and in the middle of the pack.”
But the cautious approach “drives allies crazy” and raises questions over whether they can count on the Germans, Kleine-Brockhoff acknowledged.
Berlin kept up its caution on the Leopard tank even after Britain announced last week that it would provide Ukraine its own Challenger 2 tanks.
The hesitancy isn't just an issue between Berlin and Kyiv, since other countries would need Germany's permission to send their own stocks of German-made Leopards to Ukraine. On Wednesday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Warsaw would consider giving its tanks even without Berlin's permission.
“Consent is of secondary importance here. We will either obtain it quickly, or we will do the right thing ourselves,” Morawiecki said.
British historian Timothy Garton Ash wrote in The Guardian and other newspapers this week that “to its credit, the German government’s position on military support for Ukraine has moved a very long way since the eve of the Russian invasion.”
Read more: Russia claims progress in eastern Ukraine; Kyiv craves tanks
But he argued that the tank issue has become “a litmus test of Germany’s courage to resist (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s nuclear blackmail, overcome its own domestic cocktail of fears and doubts, and defend a free and sovereign Ukraine,” and that Scholz should lead a “European Leopard plan.”
Whether that will eventually happen remains to be seen. Scholz's government has insisted on close coordination with the United States, a possible reflection in part of the fact that Germany — unlike Britain and France — relies on the U.S. nuclear deterrent.
On Friday, Scholz's spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit, denied reports that Germany had insisted it would only deliver Leopard tanks if the U.S. sends its own Abrams tanks. He rejected the notion that Berlin is trailing others and insisted it is taking the right approach.
“These are not easy decisions, and they need to be well-weighed," he said. "And this is about them being sustainable, that all can go along with them and stand behind them — and part of a leadership performance is keeping an alliance together.”
Elon Musk takes witness stand to defend Tesla buyout tweets
Elon Musk took the witness stand Friday to defend a 2018 tweet claiming he had lined up the financing to take Tesla private in a deal that never came close to happening.
The tweet resulted in a $40 million settlement with securities regulators. It also led to a class-action lawsuit alleging he misled investors, pulling him into court for about a half hour Friday to deliver sworn testimony in front of a nine-person jury and a full room of media and other spectators.
The trial was then adjourned for the weekend and Musk was told to return Monday to answer more questions.
In his initial appearance on the stand, Musk defended his prolific tweeting as “the most democratic way” to distribute information even while acknowledging constraints of Twitter's 280-character limit can make it difficult to make everything as clear as possible.
“I think you can absolutely be truthful (on Twitter),” Musk asserted on the stand. “But can you be comprehensive? Of course not,”
Musk's latest headache stems from the inherent brevity on Twitter, a service that he has been running since completing his $44 billion purchase of it in October.
The trial hinges on the question of whether a pair of tweets that Musk posted on Aug. 7, 2018, damaged Tesla shareholders during a 10-day period leading up to a Musk admission that the buyout he had envisioned wasn’t going to happen.
In the first of those those two 2018 tweets, Musk stated “funding secured” for a what would have been a $72 billion buyout of Tesla at a time when the electric automaker was still grapping with production problems and was worth far less than it is now. Musk followed up a few hours later with another tweet suggesting a deal was imminent.
After it became apparent that the money wasn't in place to take Tesla private, Musk stepped down as Tesla’s chairman while remaining CEO as part of the Securities and Exchange Commission settlement, without acknowledging any wrongdoing.
The impulsive billionaire came into court wearing a dark suit and tie on the third day of the civil trial in San Francisco that his lawyer unsuccessfully tried to move to Texas, where Tesla is now headquartered, on the premise that media coverage of his tumultuous takeover of Twitter had tainted the jury pool.
Read more: Elon Musk depicted as liar, visionary in Tesla tweet trial
The jury that was assembled earlier this week focused intently on Musk while he answered questions posed by Nicholas Porritt, a lawyer representing Tesla shareholders. At one point, Musk asked Porritt if he would speak closer to the microphone so he could hear him better. At other times, Musk craned his neck as he gazed around the courtroom.
Musk, 51, said he cares “a great deal” about investors and also railed against short sellers who make investments that reward them when a company's stock price falls. He called short selling an “evil” practice that should be outlawed, denigrating those who profit from it as “a bunch of sharks."
When shown communications from Tesla investors urging him to curtail or completely stop his Twitter habit before the 2018 buyout tweet, Musk said he couldn't remember all those interactions from years ago, especially since he gets a “Niagara Falls" of emails.
Even before Musk took the stand, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen had declared that the jurors can consider those two tweets to be false, leaving them to decide whether Musk deliberately deceived investors and whether his statements saddled them with losses.
Musk has previously contended he entered into the SEC settlement under duress and maintained he believed he had locked up financial backing for a Tesla buyout during meetings with representatives from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
An expert on corporate buyouts hired by shareholder lawyers to study the events surrounding Musk's proposal to take Tesla private spent the bulk of his three hours on the stand Friday deriding the plan as an ill-conceived concept.
“This proposal was an extreme outlier,” said Guhan Subramanian, a Harvard University business and law professor for more than 20 years. “It was incoherent. It was illusory.”
In a lengthy cross examination that delayed Musk's appearance, a lawyer for Tesla's board of directors tried to undermine Subramanian's testimony by pointing out that it relied on graduate student assistance to review some of the material related to the August 2018 tweets. The lawyer, William Price, also noted Subramanian's $1,900-per-hour fee for compiling his report for the case.
The trial over his Tesla tweets come at a time when Musk has been focusing on Twitter while also serving as the automaker's CEO and also remaining deeply involved in SpaceX, the rocket ship company he founded.
Read more: Elon Musk takes over Twitter: what to expect?
Musk’s leadership of Twitter — where he has gutted the staff and alienated users and advertisers — has proven unpopular among Tesla’s current stockholders, who are worried he has been devoting less time steering the automaker at a time of intensifying competition. Those concerns contributed to a 65% decline in Tesla’s stock last year that wiped out more than $700 billion in shareholder wealth — far more than the $14 billion swing in fortune that occurred between the company’s high and low stock prices during the Aug. 7-17, 2018 period covered in the class-action lawsuit.
Tesla’s stock has split twice since then, making the $420 buyout price cited in his 2018 tweet worth $28 on adjusted basis now. The company's shares were trading around $133.42 Friday, down from the company’s November 2021 split-adjusted peak of $414.50.
After Musk dropped the idea of a Tesla buyout, the company overcame its production problems, resulting in a rapid upturn in car sales that caused its stock to soar and minted Musk as the world’s richest person until he bought Twitter. Musk dropped from the top spot on the wealth list after the stock market’s backlash to his handling of Twitter.
When asked Friday about the challenges that Tesla faced in 2018, he recalled spending many nights sleeping at the automaker's California factory as he tried to keep the company afloat.
“The sheer level of pain to make Tesla successful during that 2017, 2018 period was excruciating," he recalled.
UK PM Rishi Sunak fined for not using a seat belt
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was fined by police on Friday (January 20, 2023) for taking off his seat belt to film a social media video in a moving car.
Sunak, 42, has apologized for making an “error of judgment” while recording a message for Instagram from the back of an official government car during a visit to northwest England on Thursday.
The Lancashire Police force said it had looked into video “circulating on social media showing an individual failing to wear a seat belt while a passenger in a moving car in Lancashire.” The force said, without naming Sunak, that it had “issued a 42-year-old man from London with a conditional offer of fixed penalty.”
Also read: UK’s Sunak vows to halve inflation, tackle illegal migration
Failing to wear a seat belt is punishable by a penalty of up to 500 pounds ($620), though fixed penalty notices for such offenses are usually 100 pounds ($124) if paid promptly.
The conditional offer means that the person fined accepts guilt but doesn’t have to go to court. Police didn’t say how much Sunak was fined.
Sunak’s office said in a statement that “the prime minister fully accepts this was a mistake and has apologized. He will of course comply with the fixed penalty.”
Read More: Sunak won’t go to UN climate conference: UK
It’s the second time Sunak has been fined during his political career. Last year, when he was Treasury chief, he was fined 50 pounds for breaching pandemic lockdown rules by briefly attending a party inside government offices. He was one of dozens of officials fined over the “partygate” scandal, including then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Sunak took office as U.K. leader in October, promising “integrity, professionalism and accountability” after a tumultuous few years that saw Johnson ousted by multiple scandals and his successor Liz Truss toppled after her policies rocked the U.K. economy.
Chris Hipkins will be the next New Zealand prime minister
Education Minister Chris Hipkins is set to become New Zealand’s next prime minister after he was the only candidate to enter the contest Saturday (January 21, 2023) to replace Jacinda Ardern.
Hipkins, 44, must still garner an endorsement Sunday from his Labour Party colleagues, but that is just a formality now. An official transfer of power will come in the days to follow.
“It’s a big day for a boy from the Hutt,” Hipkins said, referring to the Hutt Valley near Wellington where he grew up. “I’m really humbled and really proud to be taking this on. It is the biggest responsibility and the biggest privilege of my life.”
Ardern shocked the nation of 5 million people on Thursday when she announced she was resigning after five-and-a-half years in the top role.
Also read: New Zealand's Ardern has many possibilities for a second act
The lack of other candidates indicated party lawmakers had rallied behind Hipkins to avoid a drawn-out contest and any sign of disunity following Ardern’s departure.
Hipkins will have only a little more than eight months in the role before contesting a general election. Opinion polls have indicated that Labour is trailing its main opponent, the conservative National Party.
Hipkins rose to public prominence during the coronavirus pandemic, when he took on a kind of crisis management role. But he and other liberals have long been in the shadow of Ardern, who became a global icon of the left and exemplified a new style of leadership.
Just 37 when she became leader, Ardern was praised around the world for her handling of the nation’s worst-ever mass shooting and the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Also read: New Zealand's Ardern, an icon to many, to step down
But she faced mounting political pressures at home and a level of vitriol from some that previous New Zealand leaders hadn’t faced. Online, she was subject to physical threats and misogynistic rants.
“Our society could now usefully reflect on whether it wants to continue to tolerate the excessive polarization which is making politics an increasingly unattractive calling,” wrote former Prime Minister Helen Clark.
Fighting back tears, Ardern told reporters on Thursday that she was leaving the position no later than Feb. 7.
“I know what this job takes, and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It is that simple,” she said.
Read More: New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern to leave office next month, sets October election
Besides holding the education portfolio, Hipkins is also minister for police and the public service, and leader of the House. He is known as a political troubleshooter who has taken on a variety of roles to try to iron out problems created by other lawmakers.
But he’s also committed some gaffes of his own, like when he told people during a virus lockdown that they could go outside and “spread their legs,” a comment that drew plenty of mirth on the internet.
Hipkins drew a small crowd of clapping onlookers when he talked to reporters outside Parliament. He said he’d come back energized after a summer break, considered himself a hard worker and a straight shooter, and didn’t intend to lose his trademark sense of humor in his new role.
He said he wouldn’t be announcing changes to policy or ministerial roles before Sunday’s vote, other than to say Grant Robertson would remain finance minister. Hipkins said he believed he could win the election and paid tribute to Ardern.
Read More: Ardern, rival turn her hot-mic vulgarity into charity’s win
“Jacinda Ardern has been an incredible prime minister for New Zealand,” Hipkins said. “She was the leader that we needed at the time that we needed it.”
A lawmaker for 15 years, Hipkins is considered more centrist than Ardern and colleagues hope that he will appeal to a broad range of voters.
Among his biggest challenges during an election year will be convincing voters that his party is managing the economy well.
New Zealand’s unemployment rate is relatively low at 3.3%, but inflation is high at 7.2%. New Zealand’s Reserve Bank has hiked the benchmark interest rate to 4.25% as it tries to get inflation under control, and some economists are predicting the country will go into recession this year.
Read More: Study in New Zealand: Application process, cost for international students
March for Life eyes Congress for post-Roe abortion limits
A half-century after Roe v. Wade, March for Life supporters on Friday celebrated the Supreme Court's dismantling of that constitutional right to abortion and heralded the political struggle set loose by the court's decision. President Joe Biden pledged to do all in his limited power to restore core abortion rights.
The first March for Life since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June came with a new focus. Instead of concentrating their attention on the court, the marchers vowed to push for action from the building directly across the street: the U.S. Capitol.
Congress, movement leaders say, must be warned against making any attempt to curtail the multiple anti-abortion laws imposed last year in a dozen states.
Thousands spread across a section of the National Mall for the event, the Capitol Building in sight from a distance.
“For nearly 50 years, you have marched to proclaim the fundamental dignity of women, of their children and of life itself," Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, whose office argued the case that overturned Roe v. Wade, told the crowd. "But this year is different “
Biden offered his counterpoint in a proclamation recognizing Sunday — Jan. 22 — as the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. “Never before has the Court taken away a right so fundamental to Americans,” his statement said. “In doing so, it put the health and lives of women across this Nation at risk."
He said he would continue to use his executive authority in any way he can to preserve abortion protections while urging Congress to enshrine such rights in law.
The crowd appeared smaller than in past years but bore multiple hallmarks of previous marches in the enthusiasm of the gathering, the large numbers of young people from Catholic schools around the country and plenty of banners representing different churches and religious orders.
“The struggle has changed,” said Marion Landry, 68, who came from North Carolina with her husband, Arthur, 91, for the sixth time. “In some ways you don’t have that central focus anymore. Now it’s back to the states.”
Mike Miller, 59, who came from Boston, has attended at least 15 such marches over the years. “There’s still a lot of work to do," he said. “This is only one step and in the next step, education becomes the biggest thing.”
From the stage, in a move to show that the anti-abortion movement crosses political parties and racial groups, Treneé McGee, a Black Democratic state representative from Connecticut, addressed the crowd.
“I stand in place of the pro-life Black women across the globe who are suffering in silence,” she said. The crowd roared.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy offered support in a statement pledging that the new Republican majority will stand with abortion-rights opponents.
“While others raise their voices in rage and hatred, you march with prayers, goodwill, fellowship, compassion, and devotion in defense of the most defenseless in this country,” McCarthy said.
Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, said the march is “a somber reminder of the millions of lives lost to abortion in the past 50 years, but also a celebration of how far we have come and where we as a movement need to focus our effort as we enter this new era in our quest to protect life.”
Some movement leaders also hope to plant seeds in Congress for a potential federal abortion restriction down the line. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, said she envisions an eventual “federal minimum standard” cut-off line such as 13 weeks of pregnancy after which abortion would not be permitted in any state. Dannenfelser's scenario would still leave individual states free to impose their own, stricter measures, including a total ban.
That last ambition is an admitted longshot since even if it passes the newly Republican-controlled House, it would most likely fail in the Democratic-held Senate.
“We know it’s not going to happen this session, but this is the beginning,” Dannenfelser said. “It's (Congress') responsibility to listen to the will of the people.”
In the absence of Roe v. Wade's federal protections, abortion rights have become a state-by-state patchwork.
Since June, near-total bans on abortion have been implemented in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. Legal challenges are pending against several of those bans.
Elective abortions also are unavailable in Wisconsin, due to legal uncertainties faced by abortion clinics, and in North Dakota, where the lone clinic relocated to Minnesota.
Bans passed by lawmakers in Ohio, Indiana and Wyoming have been blocked by state courts while legal challenges are pending. And in South Carolina, the state Supreme Court on Jan. 5 struck down a ban on abortion after six weeks, ruling the restriction violates a state constitutional right to privacy.
But other states have witnessed unexpected pushback on the issue. Voters in Kansas and Kentucky rejected constitutional amendments that would have declared there is no right to abortion; Michigan voters approved an amendment enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution.
Biden's administration has limited options after the Supreme Court decision. Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to give a speech in Florida on Sunday, the 50th anniversary of the original Roe v. Wade ruling, to emphasize that abortion rights remain a core focus for the administration.
According to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in July, 53% of U.S. adults said they disapproved of the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe, while 30% approved. The same poll found that majorities think abortion should usually be illegal after the first trimester of pregnancy.
Anti-abortion activists also have their eye on the 2024 presidential elections and are essentially vetting prospective candidates over their views on the issue. Dannenfelser said she met recently with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential leading Republican candidate, and came away “incredibly impressed,” but said it was still too early for her organization to endorse anyone.
She predicted that there will be some “fault lines” among Republican presidential contenders over abortion rights and protections, but warned that any candidate perceived as being soft on the issue will have "disqualified him or herself as a presidential candidate in our eyes, and having done so has very little chance of winning the nomination.”
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Associated Press writer David Crary contributed from New York City.
Bombing derails passenger train in SW Pakistan, injures 15
A bomb planted by suspected militants derailed a passenger train in a remote area in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, injuring at least 15 people on board, officials said. A separatist group later claimed responsibility.
The train was passing through the district of Bolan in Baluchistan province when the bomb went off, according to a district administrator, Samiullah Agha.
The explosion was so powerful that it derailed eight train cars, Agha said. Rescuers transported the injured to a nearby hospital, and engineers were repairing the damaged rail tracks.
Some of the more seriously injured were moved to a military hospital in Quetta, the provincial capital in Baluchistan.
Read more: Suicide blast in southern Pakistan kills 3 Chinese, driver
Hours later, the separatist Baluchistan Liberation Army, which was designated a “terrorist” group by the United States in 2019, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Azad Baloch, a spokesman for the group, said their fighters targeted security forces traveling by train to the garrison city of Rawalpindi in eastern Punjab province.
Government and military officials did not immediately comment on the separatist group's claim.
For over a decade, Baluchistan has been the scene of a low-level insurgency by ethnic Baluch separatists seeking autonomy from the Islamabad government or outright independence
Pakistani militants also have a presence in the province, which borders both Afghanistan and Iran.
Read more: Suicide bombing kills 56 at Shiite mosque in Pakistan
Russia claims progress in eastern Ukraine; Kyiv craves tanks
Russia claimed Friday to have captured a village in its intense, monthslong push toward the eastern Ukraine city of Bakhmut, as military analysts cautioned that tanks that may be sent by Kyiv’s Western allies wouldn't be a magic wand in the almost 11-month war.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov told a regular media briefing that the village of Klishchiivka, nine kilometers (five miles) south of Bakhmut, had been “liberated.”
The claim couldn't be independently verified, and Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment on the claim.
Read more: Deadly missile strike adds to Ukraine war fears in Poland
Taking Klishchiivka would be only a minor breakthrough, but the Kremlin is hungry for good news from the battlefield after months of setbacks.
Bakhmut, on the other hand, would be a bigger prize. It could allow Russia to disrupt Ukrainian supply lines in the east and threaten other Ukrainian-held cities in the surrounding region.
The war has been largely static during the winter months, according to military analysts, except for some hot spots like Bakhmut and nearby Soledar.
The Kremlin’s forces have kept up their long-distance shelling of Ukrainian targets, hitting key infrastructure and civilian areas, while probing Ukrainian defenses in the east.
The Ukrainian presidential office said Friday that at least five civilians were killed over the previous 24 hours, while six others were wounded, as Russian forces shelled seven regions in the country’s south and east.
Ukrainian troops repelled Russian attacks near a number of settlements in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the Ukrainian General Staff said in a report.
Read more: Russian missiles cross into Poland during strike on Ukraine, killing 2
John Lough, an Associate Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Chatham House think tank in London, said that the Ukraine battlefield situation is “inconclusive,” with a renewed Russian push expected in the spring.
The war is “quite delicately poised,” he told The Associated Press.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pleaded with Western allies to send tanks that would help punch through Russian lines, and Western countries were discussing that possibility at a meeting in Germany on Friday. The United Kingdom said last week that it would provide Challenger 2 tanks.
Marina Miron, of the Defense Studies Department at King’s College London, said that tanks are useful, but lots of factors need to be taken into account.
Those factors include how many tanks will be sent, what condition they are in, how Ukrainian crews will be trained, when the tanks will be delivered and how the Ukrainians keep them supplied.
Sending tanks is “more of a political gesture” than something that will change the complexion of the war, Miron told the AP.
Google axes 12,000 jobs, layoffs spread across tech sector
Google is laying off 12,000 workers, or about 6% of its workforce, becoming the latest tech company to trim staff as the economic boom that the industry rode during the COVID-19 pandemic ebbs.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, the parent company of Google, informed staff Friday at the Silicon Valley giant about the cuts in an email that was also posted on the company's news blog.
It's one of the company's biggest-ever round of layoffs and adds to tens of thousands of other job losses recently announced by Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta and other tech companies as they tighten their belts amid a darkening outlook for the industry. Just this month, there have been at least 48,000 job cuts announced by major companies in the sector.
“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” Pichai wrote. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”
He said the layoffs reflect a “rigorous review" carried out by Google of its operations.
The jobs being eliminated “cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions,” Pichai said. He said he was “deeply sorry” for the layoffs.
Regulatory filings illustrate how Google’s workforce swelled during the pandemic, ballooning to nearly 187,000 people by late last year from 119,000 at the end of 2019.
Pichai said that Google, founded nearly a quarter of a century ago, was “bound to go through difficult economic cycles.”
“These are important moments to sharpen our focus, reengineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities,” he wrote.
There will be job cuts in the U.S. and in other unspecified countries, according to Pichai’s letter.
The tech industry has been forced to freeze hiring and cut jobs “as the clock has struck midnight on hyper growth and digital advertising headwinds are on the horizon,” Wedbush Securities analysts Dan Ives, Taz Koujalgi and John Katsingris wrote Friday.
Just this week, Microsoft announced 10,000 job cuts, or nearly 5% of its workforce. Amazon said this month its cutting 18,000 jobs, although that's a fraction of its 1.5 million strong workforce, while business software maker Salesforce is laying off about 8,000 employees, or 10% of the total. Last fall Facebook parent Meta announced it would shed 11,000 positions, or 13% of its workers. Elon Musk slashed jobs at Twitter after after he acquired the social media company last fall.
Read more: Job cuts in tech sector spread, Microsoft lays off 10,000
Those job cuts are hitting smaller players as well. U.K.-based cybersecurity firm Sophos laid off 450 employees, or 10% of its global workforce. Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase cut 20% of its workforce, about 950 jobs, in its second round of layoffs in less than a year.
"The stage is being set: tech names across the board are cutting costs to preserve margins and get leaner" in the current economic climate, the Wedbush analysts said.
Employment in the U.S. has been resilient despite signs of a slowing economy, and there were another 223,000 jobs added in December. Yet the tech sector grew exceptionally fast over the last several years due to increased demand as employees began to work remotely.
CEOs of a number of companies have taken blame for growing too fast, yet those same companies, even after the latest round of job cuts, remain much larger than they were before the economic boom from the pandemic began.