World
Senate control may come down to Nevada as count nears end
Control of the U.S. Senate may come down to Nevada, where a slow ballot count entered its final act Saturday in the nail-biter contest between Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt.
Saturday is the last day that mail ballots can arrive and be counted under the state's new voting law. Election officials were hustling to get through a backlog of tens of thousands of ballots to determine the race's winner, with the state's largest county saying it hoped to be effectively done by the evening.
The Nevada race took on added importance after Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly was declared the winner of his reelection campaign in Arizona on Friday night, giving his party 49 seats in the chamber. Republicans also have 49.
If Cortez Masto wins, Democrats would maintain their control of the Senate given Vice President Kamala Harris' tiebreaking vote. If Laxalt wins, the Georgia Senate runoff next month would determine which party has the single-vote Senate edge.
Cortez Masto was only a few hundred votes behind Laxalt, with most of the remaining uncounted ballots in heavily Democratic Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. Democrats were confident those ballots would vault their candidate into the lead.
Laxalt has said he expects to maintain his advantage and be declared the victor. But on Saturday he acknowledged in a tweet that the calculus has changed because Cortez Masto had performed better than Republicans expected in Clark County ballots counted over the past few days.
Read more: Democrats hold small but shrinking lead in key Arizona races
“This has narrowed our victory window,” he tweeted, acknowledging the race comes down to the final Clark County ballots.
“If they are GOP precincts or slightly DEM leaning then we can still win,” Laxalt tweeted. “If they continue to trend heavy DEM then she will overtake us.”
If a winner isn't clear by the end of the day on Saturday, attention would shift to a few thousand more ballots that could be added to the totals early next week. Mail ballots with clerical errors can be “cured” by voters until the end of the day Monday, and then added to the totals. And a few thousand provisional ballots also remain, votes that election officials must double-check are legally countable by Tuesday before they can be tallied.
“We know that this is a serious count. There are people nationwide who are looking to these results,” Joe Gloria, the registrar in Clark County, said at a press conference Saturday. “We know that people need to see that count. We're not going to delay it any further.”
Gloria said all 22,000-plus remaining ballots would be tabulated by Saturday evening. “They’re all being counted,” Gloria said. “My vaults are empty.”
Still, state law requires a relative handful of ballots to linger. In Clark County, there are also 7,100 ballots being “cured” and 5,555 provisional ballots. The county accounts for three-quarters of Nevada's population.
Gloria noted that it takes a couple of cycles to adjust ballot-counting to the all-mail system that Nevada switched to during the 2020 pandemic. He also noted that state law requires him to accept ballots until Saturday. “We couldn't be done any earlier, even if we wanted to,” Gloria said.
In another key race, Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak lost his reelection bid to his Republican challenger, sheriff Joe Lombardo, on Friday night.
Nevada, a closely divided swing state, is one of the most racially diverse in the nation, a working class state whose residents have been especially hard hit by inflation and other economic turmoil.
Roughly three-fourths of Nevada voters said the country is headed in the wrong direction, and about 5 in 10 called the economy the most important issue facing the country, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of 2,100 of the state’s voters.
Read more: GOP moves closer to winning the House; the Senate's fate may depend on a runoff
Voters viewed the economy negatively, with VoteCast finding nearly 8 in 10 saying economic conditions are either not so good or poor. Only about 2 in 10 called the economy excellent or good. And about a third of voters said their families are falling behind financially.
But that didn’t necessarily translate into anger at President Joe Biden or his party. About half considered inflation the most important issue facing the U.S., but they were evenly split over whether they think higher prices are due to Biden’s policies or factors outside his control.
According to VoteCast, 7 in 10 voters in Nevada wanted abortion kept legal in all or most cases, and Cortez Masto and other Democrats made preserving the right a centerpiece of their campaigns.
Republicans, however, relentlessly hammered the economic argument, contending it was time for a leadership change. They also sought to capitalize on lingering frustrations about pandemic shutdowns that devastated Las Vegas’ tourist-centric economy in 2020.
On Thursday morning, The Associated Press declared Republican Stavros Anthony the winner in the lieutenant governor race, while Republican Andy Mathews was elected state controller.
The state’s lone Republican congressman, Mark Amodei, easily won reelection in his mostly rural district in northern Nevada. The state’s three Las Vegas-area Democratic members of the House were also reelected.
6 killed after vintage aircraft collide at Dallas air show
Six people were killed after two historic military planes collided and crashed to the ground Saturday afternoon during a Dallas air show, officials said.
“According to our Dallas County Medical Examiner, there are a total of 6 fatalities from yesterday’s Wings over Dallas air show incident,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins tweeted Sunday. He said authorities are continuing to work to identify the victims.
Emergency crews raced to the crash scene at the Dallas Executive Airport, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the city’s downtown. News footage from the scene showed crumpled wreckage of the planes in a grassy area inside the airport perimeter. Dallas Fire-Rescue told The Dallas Morning News that there were no reported injuries among people on the ground.
Anthony Montoya saw the two planes collide.
“I just stood there. I was in complete shock and disbelief,” said Montoya, 27, who attended the air show with a friend. “Everybody around was gasping. Everybody was bursting into tears. Everybody was in shock.”
Officials did not specify how many people were inside each plane, but Hank Coates, president of the company that put on the airshow, said one of the planes, a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, typically has a crew of four to five people. The other, a P-63 Kingcobra fighter plane, has a single pilot.
No paying customers were on the aircraft, said Coates, of Commemorative Air Force, which also owned the planes. Their aircraft are flown by highly trained volunteers, often retired pilots, he said.
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said the National Transportation Safety Board had taken control of the crash scene, with local police and fire providing support.
“The videos are heartbreaking,” Johnson said on Twitter.
The planes collided and crashed around 1:20 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. The collision occurred during the Commemorative Air Force Wings Over Dallas show.
Victoria Yeager, the widow of famed Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager and herself a pilot, was also at the show. She didn’t see the collision, but did see the burning wreckage.
“It was pulverized,” said Yeager, 64, who lives in Fort Worth.
“We were just hoping they had all gotten out, but we knew they didn’t,” she said of those on board.
The B-17, a cornerstone of U.S. air power during World War II, is an immense four-engine bomber used in daylight raids against Germany. The Kingcobra, a U.S. fighter plane, was used mostly by Soviet forces during the war. Most B-17s were scrapped at the end of World War II and only a handful remain today, largely featured at museums and air shows, according to Boeing.
Several videos posted on social media showed the fighter plane appearing to fly into the bomber, causing them to quickly crash to the ground and setting off a large ball of fire and smoke.
“It was really horrific to see,” Aubrey Anne Young, 37, of Leander. Texas, who saw the crash. Her children were inside the hangar with their father when it occurred. “I’m still trying to make sense of it.”
A woman next to Young can be heard crying and screaming hysterically on a video that Young uploaded to her Facebook page.
Air show safety — particularly with older military aircraft — has been a concern for years. In 2011, 11 people were killed in Reno, Nevada, when a P-51 Mustang crashed into spectators. In 2019, a bomber crashed in Hartford, Connecticut, killing seven people. The NTSB said then that it had investigated 21 accidents since 1982 involving World War II-era bombers, resulting in 23 deaths.
Wings Over Dallas bills itself as “America’s Premier World War II Airshow,” according to a website advertising the event. The show was scheduled for Nov. 11-13, Veterans Day weekend, and guests were to see more than 40 World War II-era aircraft. Its Saturday afternoon schedule of flying demonstrations included the “bomber parade” and “fighter escorts” that featured the B-17 and P-63.
Arthur Alan Wolk is a Philadelphia aviation attorney who flew in air shows for 12 years. After watching the air show video and hearing the maneuvers described as “bombers on parade,” Wolk told The Associated Press Sunday that the P-63 pilot violated the basic rule of formation flying.
“He went belly up to the leader,” Wolk said. “That prevents him from gauging distance and position. The risk of collision is very high when you cannot see who you are supposed to be in formation with and that kind of join up is not permitted.”
He added, “I am not blaming anyone and to the greatest extent possible air shows, the pilots and the aircraft that fly in them are safe. Air shows are one of the largest spectator events in America and it is rare that a tragedy like this occurs.”
Wolk said it takes extensive training and discipline to fly in an air show setting. The air show qualifications of the P-63 pilot are not known.
The FAA was also launching an investigation, officials said.
Ukrainian police, broadcasts return to Kherson
Ukrainian police officers returned Saturday, along with TV and radio services, to the southern city of Kherson following the withdrawal of Russian troops, part of fast but cautious efforts to make the only regional capital captured by Russia livable after months of occupation. Yet one official still described the city as “a humanitarian catastrophe.”
People across Ukraine awoke from a night of jubilant celebrating after the Kremlin announced its troops had withdrawn to the other side of the Dnieper River from Kherson. The Ukrainian military said it was overseeing “stabilization measures” around the city to make sure it was safe.
The Russian retreat represented a significant setback for the Kremlin some six weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed the Kherson region and three other provinces in southern and eastern Ukraine in breach of international law and declared them Russian territory.
The national police chief of Ukraine, Ihor Klymenko, said Saturday on Facebook that about 200 officers were at work in the city, setting up checkpoints and documenting evidence of possible war crimes. Police teams also were working to identify and neutralize unexploded ordnance and one sapper was wounded Saturday while demining an administrative building, Klymenko said.
Ukraine’s communications watchdog said national TV and radio broadcasts had resumed in the city, and an adviser to Kherson’s mayor said humanitarian aid and supplies had begun to arrive from the neighboring Mykolaiv region.
But the adviser, Roman Holovnya, described the situation in Kherson as “a humanitarian catastrophe.” He said the remaining residents lacked water, medicine and food — and key basics like bread went unbaked because a lack of electricity.
Read: Russia says Kherson city withdrawal complete
“The occupiers and collaborators did everything possible so that those people who remained in the city suffered as much as possible over those days, weeks, months of waiting” for Ukraine’s forces to arrive, Holovnya said. “Water supplies are practically nonexistent.”
The chairman of Khersonoblenergo, the region’s prewar power provider, said electricity was being returned “to every settlement in the Kherson region immediately after the liberation.”
Despite the efforts to restore normal civilian life, Russian forces remain close by. The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said Saturday the Russians were fortifying their battle lines on the river’s eastern bank after abandoning the capital. About 70% of the Kherson region remains under Russian control.
Ukrainian officials from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on down have cautioned that while special military units had reached Kherson, a full deployment to reinforce the advance troops in the city still was underway. Ukraine’s intelligence agency thought some Russian soldiers may have stayed behind, ditching their uniforms to avoid detection.
“Even when the city is not yet completely cleansed of the enemy’s presence, the people of Kherson themselves are already removing Russian symbols and any traces of the occupiers’ stay in Kherson from the streets and buildings,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.
Zelenskyy said the first part of the stabilization work includes de-mining operations. He said the entry of “our defenders” — the soldiers — into Kherson would be followed by police, sappers, rescuers and energy workers, among others.
“Medicine, communications, social services are returning,” he said. “Life is returning.”
Photos on social media Saturday showed Ukrainian activists removing memorial plaques put up by the occupation authorities the Kremlin installed to run the Kherson region. A Telegram post on Yellow Ribbon, a self-described Ukrainian “public resistance” movement, showed two people in a park taking down plaques picturing Soviet-era military figures.
Moscow’s announcement that Russian forces were withdrawing across the Dnieper River, which divides both the Kherson region and Ukraine, followed a stepped-up Ukrainian counteroffensive in the country’s south. In the last two months, Ukraine’s military claimed to have reclaimed dozens of towns and villages north of the city of Kherson, and the military said that’s where stabilization activities were taking place.
Read: Ukraine fears 'city of death' as Russia withdraws troops from Kherson
Russian state news agency Tass quoted an official in Kherson’s Kremlin-appointed administration on Saturday as saying that Henichesk, a city on the Azov Sea 200 kilometers southeast of Kherson, would now serve as the region’s “temporary capital.”
Ukrainian media derided the announcement, with the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper saying Russia “had made up a new capital” for the region.
Across much of Ukraine, moments of jubilation marked the exit of Russian forces, since a retreat from Kherson and other areas on the Dnieper’s west bank would appear to shatter Russian hopes to press an offensive west to Mykolaiv and Odesa to cut off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea.
In Odesa, the Black Sea port, residents draped themselves in Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flags, shared Champagne and held up flag-colored cards with the word “Kherson” on them.
But like Zelenskyy, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba sought to temper the excitement.
“We are winning battles on the ground, but the war continues,” he said from Cambodia, where he was attending a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Kuleba brought up the prospect of the Ukrainian army finding evidence of possible Russian war crimes in Kherson, just as it did after Russian pullbacks in the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions.
“Every time we liberate a piece of our territory, when we enter a city liberated from Russian army, we find torture rooms and mass graves with civilians tortured and murdered by Russian army in the course of the occupation,” Ukraine’s top diplomat said. “It’s not easy to speak with people like this. But I said that every war ends with diplomacy and Russia has to approach talks in good faith.”
U.S. assessments this week showed Russia’s war in Ukraine may already have killed or wounded tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
Elsewhere, Russia continued its grinding offensive in Ukraine’s industrial east, targeting the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, the Ukrainian General Staff said.
Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko reported Saturday that two civilians were killed and four wounded over the last day as battles heated up around Bakhmut and Avdiivka, a small city that has remained in Ukrainian hands.
Russia’s push to capture Bakhmut demonstrates the Kremlin’s desire for visible gains following weeks of setbacks. It would also pave the way to move onto other Ukrainian strongholds in the heavily contested Donetsk region.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region west of Donetsk, Russia troops again shelled communities near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the Ukrainian regional governor said.
21 killed as bus falls into canal in Egypt’s Nile Delta
A bus fell into a canal in Egypt’s Nile River Delta region Saturday killing at least 21 people, the country’s Health Ministry said.
Dr. Sherif Makeen, a health ministry official, said three children were among the dead.
In a statement, the ministry said the accident happened in Dakahlia province, around 100 kilometers (62 miles) northeast of the capital of Cairo. Other injured passengers were transported to a local hospital.
The head of police investigations in the province, Brig. Mohamed Abdel Hadi, said the driver may have lost control of the vehicle’s steering wheel.
Read: Small plane crashes into Tanzania's Lake Victoria, 19 dead
Deadly traffic accidents claim thousands of lives every year in Egypt, which has a poor transportation safety record. Crashes and collisions are mostly caused by speeding, bad roads or poor enforcement of traffic laws.
In July, a passenger bus slammed into a parked trailer truck on a highway in the southern province of Minya, killing 23 people and injuring 30. In October, a truck slammed into a minibus in Dakahlia, killing at least 10 people, authorities said.
Out of Covid bubble, Xi faces dramatically changed world at G-20
After a lengthy absence from major international gatherings, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is leaving his country’s COVID-19 bubble and venturing abroad next week into a dramatically changed world marked by rising confrontation.
Xi will attend the G-20 meeting of industrial and emerging market nations in Indonesia followed by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Thailand. He will meet individually with other leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday in their first in-person talks since Biden took office in January 2021.
The Chinese leader has relied mainly on speeches by video to deliver China’s message at the U.N. and other forums since 2020. The period has seen a sharp deterioration in China’s relations with the West over the COVID-19 pandemic, a crackdown on civil rights in Hong Kong, military threats against Taiwan and Beijing’s tacit support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
More broadly, China and the West are moving farther apart. The U.S. and Europe are looking at China more critically, with Germany blocking investment in its companies, while China’s leaders have shown a determination to go their own route.
Bruce Dickson, a Chinese politics expert at George Washington University, described a “growing fear, concern and anxiety that China doesn’t want to be a partner with other countries. It wants to push its own agenda regardless of the opposition to it.”
More moderate voices in both Beijing and Washington advocating better relations are being pushed to the side. “It’s really an effort of who can come up with the toughest policy to resist China’s efforts,” Dickson said.
After a state visit to neighboring Myanmar in January 2020, Xi stayed in mainland China for more than two years.
He emerged first on a brief visit to Hong Kong for the 25th anniversary of its return from British rule on July 1 and a short trip to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in September for a regional summit.
Xiong Zhiyong, an international relations professor at China Foreign Affairs University, expects Chinese leaders will make more trips abroad as the pandemic eases globally.
“The current international situation is overly complex and national leaders need to have an opportunity for discussion,” he said. “Online exchanges are not enough. Meetings among leaders are important and irreplaceable.”
READ: Myanmar tops Asian summit’s agenda as global issues loom
Pakistan Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Beijing to meet Xi earlier this month. But under China’s “zero-COVID” policy, it remains difficult to travel into China, while domestic travel is restricted wherever a serious outbreak occurs.
Besides Biden, other leaders Xi will meet on this trip include Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, French President Emmanuel Macron, Senegalese President Macky Sall and Argentine President Alberto Fernández.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Friday that he would ask Xi to lift billions of dollars in trade barriers if they meet, while Biden said earlier this week he plans to discuss growing U.S.-China tensions over trade, the self-ruled island of Taiwan and China’s relationship with Russia.
China has not condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and accused the U.S. and NATO of forcing Russia’s hand. It also fired missiles over Taiwan and appeared to rehearse a military blockade of the island after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August.
China also cut off talks with the U.S. on a raft of issues following Pelosi’s trip including climate, an area where cooperation between the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases is crucial to efforts being discussed at ongoing U.N. climate talks in Egypt to limit the impact of climate change.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Friday that “the U.S. needs to work together with China to properly manage differences, advance mutually beneficial cooperation, avoid misunderstanding and miscalculation and bring China-U.S. relations back to the right track of sound and steady development.”
READ: Imran Khan far better actor than Shahrukh and Salman, says Pakistani politician
Xi is making this trip after having consolidated his hold on power in China last month at a major meeting of the long-ruling Communist Party. He was given a third five-year term as leader and the top party bodies were packed with his loyalists, signaling his approach to foreign and domestic policy will continue.
China’s doubling of its defense budget over the past two decades and militarization of islands in the South China Sea have raised questions about its stated policy of a “peaceful rise.” Southeast Asian neighbors have had to tread a thin line between maintaining relations with the U.S. and incurring China’s wrath.
At the APEC meeting in Thailand, Xi will deliver a speech on China’s proposals to deepen Asia-Pacific cooperation and promote regional and global economic growth, Zhao said.
He is also expected to tout his Global Development Initiative, a rebranding of his signature “Belt and Road Initiative,” which has been criticized for saddling poor countries with massive debts and giving China potential control over crucial ports and other infrastructure from Southeast Asia to Europe.
Though Xi has all but eliminated domestic political challenges, he faces rising threats on the economic front.
China’s growth has slumped under the pressure of strict anti-virus campaigns that have disrupted trade, travel and supply chains, along with a crackdown on massive debt in the real estate industry, which has been a driver of growth.
Dickson said the Xi-Biden meeting at the G-20 could help cool tensions. But, he added, “I’ve got to say right now that it’s hard to see any willingness coming from either country to try and stabilize things and keep the downward spiral from continuing.”
UN climate talks near halftime with key issues unresolved
As the U.N. climate talks in Egypt near the half-way point, negotiators are working hard to draft deals on a wide range of issues they’ll put to ministers next week in the hope of getting a substantial result by the end.
The two-week meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh started with strong appeals from world leaders for greater efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and help poor nations cope with global warming.
Scientists say the amount of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere needs to be halved by 2030 to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord. The 2015 pact set a target of ideally limiting temperature rise to 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, but left it up to countries to decide how they want to do so.
Read more: Climate Change: Int’l community must act with fund and solutions to help most vulnerable nations
With impacts from climate change already felt across the globe, particularly by the world’s poorest, there has also been a push by campaigners and developing nations for rich polluters to stump up more cash. This would be used to help developing countries shift to clean energy and adapt to global warming; increasingly there are also calls for compensation to pay for climate-related losses.
Here is a look at the main issues on the table at the COP27 talks and how they might be reflected in a final agreement.
KEEPING COOL
The hosts of last year’s talks in Glasgow said they managed to “keep 1.5 alive,” including by getting countries to endorse the target in the outcome document. But U.N. chief Antonio Guterres has warned that the temperature goal is on life support “and the machines are rattling.” And campaigners were disappointed that agenda this year doesn’t explicitly cite the threshold after pushback from some major oil and gas exporting nations. The talks’ chair, Egypt, can still convene discussions on putting it in the final agreement.
CUTTING EMISSIONS
Negotiators are trying to put together a mitigation work program that would capture the various measures countries have committed to reducing emissions, including for specific sectors such as energy and transport. Many of these pledges are not formally part of the U.N. process, meaning they cannot easily be scrutinized at the annual meeting. A proposed draft agreement circulated early Saturday had more than 200 square brackets, meaning large sections were still unresolved. Some countries want the plan to be valid only for one year, while others say a longer-term roadmap is needed. Expect fireworks in the days ahead.
SHUNNING FOSSIL FUELS
Last year’s meeting almost collapsed over a demand to explicitly state in the final agreement that coal should be phased out. In the end, countries agreed on several loopholes, and there are concerns among climate campaigners that negotiators from nations which are heavily dependent on fossil fuels for their energy needs or as revenue might try to roll back previous commitments.
MONEY MATTERS
Rich countries have fallen short on a pledge to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 in climate finance for poor nations. This has opened up a rift of distrust that negotiators are hoping to close with fresh pledges. But needs are growing and a new, higher target needs to be set from 2025 onward.
COMPENSATION
The subject of climate compensation was once considered taboo, due to concerns from rich countries that they might be on the hook for vast sums. But intense pressure from developing countries forced the issue of ‘loss and damage’ onto the formal agenda at the talks for the first time this year. Whether there will be a deal to promote further technical work or the creation of an actual fund remains to be seen. This could become a key flashpoint in the talks.
Interest soaring in alternatives to Twitter
Twitter has been a bit of a mess since billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk took the helm, cutting the company’s workforce in half, upending the platform’s verification system, sparring with users over jokes and acknowledging that “ dumb things ” might happen as he reshapes one of the world’s most high-profile information ecosystems.
On Thursday, amid an exodus of senior executives responsible for data privacy, cybersecurity and complying with regulations, he warned the company’s remaining employees that Twitter might not survive if it can’t find a way to bring in at least half its revenue from subscriptions.
While it’s not clear if the drama is causing many users to leave — in fact, having a front-row seat to the chaos may prove entertaining to some — lesser-known sites Mastodon and even Tumblr are emerging as new (or renewed) alternatives. Here’s a look at some of them.
(Oh, and if you are leaving Twitter and want to preserve your tweet history, you can download it by going to your profile settings and clicking on “your account” then “download an archive of your data.")
MASTODON
Named after an extinct mammal resembling an elephant, Mastodon has emerged as a frontrunner among those curious about life beyond the blue bird. It shares some similarities with Twitter, but there are some big differences — and not just that its version of tweets are officially called “toots.”
Mastodon is a decentralized social network. That means it’s not owned by a single company or billionaire. Rather, it’s made up of a network of servers, each run independently but able to connect so people on different servers can communicate. There are no ads as Mastodon is funded by donations, grants and other means.
Read more: Elon Musk takes over Twitter: what to expect?
Mastodon’s feed is chronological, unlike Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or Twitter, which all use algorithms to get people to spend as much time on a site as possible.
It can be a tad daunting to try to sign up to Mastodon. Because each server is run separately, you will need to first pick one you want to join, then go through the steps to create an account and agree with the server’s rules. There are general and interest- and location-based ones, but in the end it won’t really matter. Once you’re in, the feed is reminiscent of Twitter. You can write (up to 500 characters), post photos or videos, and follow accounts as well as see a general public feed.
“We present a vision of social media that cannot be bought and owned by any billionaire, and strive to create a more resilient global platform without profit incentives,” Mastodon’s website says.
Currently, the site has more than 1 million users, nearly half of whom signed up after Musk took over Twitter on Oct. 27, according to founder Eugen Rochko.
Another option, Counter Social, also runs an ad-free, chronological social platform that's funded by users. To prevent foreign influence operations, Counter Social says it blocks access to Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and Syria. It boasts of offering one-click translation into over 80 languages. It has over 63 million monthly users, according to its website.
CLUBHOUSE
Remember Clubhouse, back when we were all under lockdown and couldn’t talk in person? It’s the buzzy audio-only app that got somewhat overshadowed by copycat Twitter Spaces, which also lets people talk to each other (think conference call, podcast or “audio chat”) about topics of interest.
Read more: Musk says Twitter blue tick being revamped
Once you join, Clubhouse lets you start or listen into conversations on a host of topics, from tech to pro sports, parenting, Black literature and so on. There are no posts, photos or videos — only people’s profile pictures and their voices. Conversations can be intimate, like a phone call, or might include thousands of people listening to a talk by boldface names, like a conference or stage interview.
SUBSTACK and MEDIUM
For longer reads, newsletters, and general information absorption, these sites are perhaps closest to the blog era of the early 2000s. You can read both without signing up or paying, but some writers, creators and podcasters create premium content for paying subscribers.
TUMBLR
Tumblr, which was all but left for dead, appears to be enjoying somewhat of a resurgence. The words/photos/art/video site is known for its devoted fan base and has been home to angry posts from celebrities like Taylor Swift. It angered many users in 2018 when it banned porn and “adult content,” which made up a big part of its highly visual and meme-friendly online presence and led to a large drop in its user base.
Onboarding is simple, and for those who miss the early years of social media, there’s a decidedly retro, comforting feel to the site.
T2 or TBD?
Gabor Cselle, a veteran of Google who worked at Twitter from 2014 to 2016, is determined to create a better Twitter. For now, he’s calling it T2 and says the Web domain name he purchased for it — t2.social — cost $7.16. T2, which may or may not be its final name, is currently accepting signups for its waitlist, but the site is clearly not yet functioning.
“I think Twitter always had a problem in figuring out what to do and how to decide on what to do. And that was always kind of in the back of my mind,” Cselle told The Associated Press. “On Monday, I decided to just go for it. I didn’t see anyone else really doing it.”
Twitter-style text and TikTok-style videos are one idea. Cselle says for this to work, the text really has to be “amped up” so it’s not drowned out by the videos.
“My bet is that it’s going to be easier and more efficient to build a better Twitter or public square now than fix the legacy problems at Twitter,” Cselle added.
Cselle, of course, is not the only one jumping to the opportunity. Project Mushroom, for instance, plans a “safe place on the internet — a community-led open-source home for creators seeking justice on an overheating planet” and says it has received 25,000 early signups to its yet-to-launch platform.
“My sense is that things are going to further fragment into more ideological platforms and some will die and then we’ll see some new consolidation emerge over the next couple of years,” said Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor at Syracuse University who studies social media.
NEWS SITES
One of Twitter’s most valuable features has been the way it allows people to find information within seconds. Was that just an earthquake? Twitter will tell you. Or at least it did.
While there is no perfect replacement for Twitter, staying up to date with local, national and international news is easier than ever. Apple and Google both offer news services that aggregate articles from a broad range of publication (Apple offers a premium subscription service that gets you access to more articles, while Google shows free stories first.) There’s also Flipboard, which works kind of like a personal magazine curated to your interests.
Of course, subscribing to individual publications (or downloading a free news app such as the AP’s AP News) is also an option.
Yes, you might have to pay for some of them and no, you won’t get a blue check mark with your subscription.
Big races in Arizona are still undeclared while the vote count continues
Arizona's largest county on Friday will begin releasing the results of ballots dropped off at polling places on Election Day, providing clues about whether Republicans can overtake Democrats in critical races for U.S. Senate and governor.
With half a million ballots remaining to be counted statewide, Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters would need to win more than 60% of them to defeat Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly. In the race for governor, Republican Kari Lake would need to win just over half to overtake Democrat Katie Hobbs.
By Friday night, Kelly led Masters by more than 5 percentage points, while Hobbs was ahead of Lake by more than 1 point.
Republicans including Lake, who are convinced the remaining ballots strongly favor them, have been pressuring election officials in Maricopa County, which includes the majority of Arizona voters, to speed up the count. County Board of Supervisors Chair Bill Gates, a Republican, said the team is working as fast as it can, but it takes time to follow the detailed steps required under Arizona law.
“We’re doing things the right way. We’re not doing anything wrong at all,” Gates told reporters at the county elections office Friday. “That someone from here would suggest that we are doing something wrong, that’s frustrating.”
Also read: Democrats are losing ground in Arizona's Senate and governor elections
County officials have said they were inundated with far more early ballots dropped off on Election Day than they’ve ever before had to process. Voters delivered 292,000 early ballots on Election Day, an increase of 70% over the previous record from 2020.
Counting those ballots is time-consuming because officials have to verify that each one came from a legitimate voter, a process that couldn't begin until Wednesday.
Gates said that Maricopa County will release results from 80,000 ballots Friday evening and that more than half will be from the crucial group of early ballots received on Election Day. The report will also include fewer than 10,000 ballots received before Tuesday and “a good amount” of the roughly 17,000 ballots cast at vote centers on Tuesday, which could not be counted immediately because of a printing issue.
The Tucson area’s Pima County also had a sizable chunk of votes left to count. Together, the state’s two urban counties account for 90% of the remaining ballots, according to data from the secretary of state.
Also read: GOP moves closer to winning the House; the Senate's fate may depend on a runoff
Either party could clinch control of the U.S. Senate by winning Arizona and either the outstanding Nevada Senate contest, which remained too early to call Friday, or next month's runoff in Georgia.
Democrats think it's possible that the remaining ballots in Arizona are much less favorable to the GOP and will allow some or all of their candidates to maintain their leads.
By Friday afternoon, Democrats led the secretary of state contest by 5 points and the attorney general race by just under 1 point. In two of the state's uncalled House contests, the candidates were separated by 2 points or less. In a third, Democratic incumbent Greg Stanton had a much more comfortable lead of 14 points.
Global food import costs near record $2 trillion, hurting poorest
The food import costs are on course to rise to near record $2 trillion this year, around $128.6 billion more than predicted in June, as countries are facing ballooning costs for staples, the UN food agency said Friday.
Many economically vulnerable countries, with weak economic forecasts and high debt-to-GDP ratio, are paying more while receiving less food, heaping pressure on the world's poorest.
The low-income countries' food import shipments are expected to shrink by 10 percent as their food import costs for the year are expected to remain little changed, pointing to growing accessibility issues.
Read: Australia to send millions to Bangladesh, Myanmar for food, shelter
"These are alarming signs from a food security perspective, indicating importers are finding it difficult to finance rising international costs," the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in its twice-yearly Food Outlook report.
In addition to beverages and basic foods like cereals and meat, the FAO's food import costs cover a larger range of items, from fruit and vegetables to seafood, chocolate, tea, and spices.
World food prices jumped to record highs in March after the war broke out between Russia and Ukraine, the latter a key grains and oilseeds producer.
Although the UN-mediated Black Sea Grain Initiative, starting July this year, guaranteed safe sea passage to ships carrying food grains in the conflict-prone region, it was unable to significantly cut food prices in the global market.
Read: Currency depreciations risk intensifying global food, energy crisis: World Bank
Food imports will rise by $180 billion, or 10 percent, above the previous year's record high, with high- and upper middle-income countries accounting for the majority of the increase.
As the purchasing power of countries that import goods is reduced by rising prices and a stronger dollar, the rate of that bill's increase will slow, lowering volumes.
Also, import costs for agricultural inputs such as fertilisers, fuel and seeds are expected to rise 48 percent to a record $424 billion from 2021, forcing some countries to buy and use less.
Higher bills and a stronger dollar will cut input applications, threatening both productivity and food security into next year, the FAO said. "This will inevitably lead to lower productivity, lower domestic food availability and negative repercussions for global agricultural output and food security in 2023."
Russia says Kherson city withdrawal complete
Russia said its troops finished withdrawing Friday from the western bank of the river that divides Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, allowing Ukrainian forces to move cautiously toward reclaiming the country’s only Russian-occupied provincial capital in what would be a major victory.
In a statement carried by Russian state news agencies, Russia’s Defense Ministry said the withdrawal was completed at 5 a.m. and not a single unit of military equipment was left behind. The retreat, which came two months after Russian forces withdrew from eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, represents another huge setback for Moscow in its 8 1/2-month war in Ukraine.
Reports emerged of residents hoisting Ukrainian flags in places the Russians pulled out of, including the city of Kherson. A Ukrainian regional official, Serhii Khlan, said he heard the flags were “appearing en masse all over the place.” He disputed the Russian claim that retreating forces took all their equipment with them, saying he was told “a lot” of hardware got left behind.
Khlan, who spoke to journalists from outside the city, said he heard that some Russian troops also were left behind and had dressed in civilian clothes, possibly with plans to engage in acts of sabotage.” He said their exact number was unclear.
The Kremlin remained defiant Friday, insisting the development in no way represented an embarrassment for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Moscow continues to view the entire Kherson region as part of Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
He added that the Kremlin doesn’t regret holding festivities just over a month ago to celebrate the illegal annexation of Kherson and three other occupied or partially occupied regions of Ukraine. Despite abandoning their positions on the western bank, Russian forces still control about 70% of the Kherson region.
Shortly before the Russian announcement, the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the situation in the province as “difficult.” It reported Russian shelling of some of the villages and towns Ukrainian forces reclaimed in recent weeks during their counteroffensive in the Kherson region.
READ: Ukraine fears 'city of death' as Russia withdraws troops from Kherson
The General Staff of Ukraine’s army said the Russian forces also left looted homes, damaged power lines and mined roads in their wake. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak predicted Thursday the departing Russians would seek to turn Kherson into a “city of death” and would continue to shell it after relocating across the Dnieper River.
Ukrainian officials were wary of the Russian pullback announced this week, fearing their soldiers could get drawn into an ambush in Kherson city, which had a prewar population of 280,000. Military analysts also had predicted it would take Russia’s military at least a week to complete the troop withdrawal.
Without referencing events unfolding in Kherson, Zelenskyy said in a video message thanking U.S. military personnel on Veterans Day that that “victory will be ours.”
“Your example inspires Ukrainians today to fight back against Russian tyranny,” he said. “Special thanks to the many American veterans who have volunteered to fight in Ukraine and to the American people for the amazing support you have given Ukraine. With your help, we have stunned the world and are pushing Russian forces back.”
However, some quarters of the Ukrainian government barely disguised their glee at the pace of the Russian withdrawal.
“The Russian army leaves the battlefields in a triathlon mode: steeplechase, broad jumping, swimming,” Andriy Yermak, a senior presidential adviser, tweeted. Social media videos apparently filmed by soldiers on routes toward Kherson showed villagers hugging the Ukrainian troops.
Recapturing the city could provide Ukraine a strong position from which to expand its southern counteroffensive to other Russian-occupied areas, potentially including Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014.
From its forces new positions on the eastern bank, however, the Kremlin could try to escalate the war, which U.S. assessments showed may already have killed or wounded tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
A Russian S-300 missile strike overnight killed seven people in Mykolaiv, a city about 68 kilometers (42 miles) from Kherson’s regional capital, Zelenskyy’s office said Friday morning. Rescue crews sifted through the rubble of a five-story residential building in search of survivors.
READ: Russia-Ukraine War: US estimates 200,000 military deaths, injuries on both sides
Standing in front of what used to be his family’s apartment, Roman Mamontov, 16, awaited news about his missing mother.
Mamontov said he found “nothing there” when he opened an apartment door to look for his mother after the missile struck. Friday was her 34th birthday, the teenager said.
“My mind was blank at that moment. I thought it could not be true,” he said. “The cake she prepared for the celebration is still there.”
Zelenskyy called the missile strike “the terrorist state’s cynical response to our successes at the front.”
“Russia does not give up its despicable tactics. And we will not give up our struggle. The occupiers will be held to account for every crime against Ukraine and Ukrainians,” Zelenskyy said.
The Russian Defense Ministry didn’t acknowledge striking a residential building in Mykolaiv, saying only that an ammunition depot was destroyed “in the area of the city.”
The president’s office said Russian drones, rockets and heavy artillery strikes across eight regions killed at least 14 civilians between Thursday morning and Friday morning.
The state of the key Antonivskiy Bridge that links the western and eastern banks of the Dnieper in the Kherson region remained unclear Friday. Russian media reports suggested the bridge was blown up following the Russian withdrawal; pro-Kremlin reporters posted footage of the bridge missing a large section.
But Sergei Yeliseyev, a Russian-installed official in the Kherson region, told the Interfax news agency that “the Antonivskiy Bridge hasn’t been blown up, it’s in the same condition.”
Gen. Ben Hodges, former commanding general of U.S. Army forces in Europe, described the retreat from Kherson as a “colossal failure” for Russia and said Russian military commanders should have pulled all their forces out of the city “weeks ago,” to put the Dnieper River between them and Ukraine’s advancing troops.
Hodges, speaking in a phone interview with The Associated Press, said he expected Ukrainian commanders would work to keep the pressure on Russia’s depleted forces in the weeks ahead, ahead of a possible future push next year for Crimea, seized by Russia in 2014.
Russia is “going to have a very difficult time over the next several months continuing to hold back a very confident Ukrainian military that has a strong wind in their back” in the wake of the offensive for Kherson, he said.