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Official: Afghanistan earthquake kills at least 920 people
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A powerful earthquake struck a rural, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, killing at least 920 people and injuring 600 others in the deadliest temblor in two decades, authorities said. Officials warned that the already grim toll would likely rise.
Information remained scarce on the magnitude 6.1 temblor near the Pakistani border, but quakes of that strength would be expected to cause severe damage in the remote area, where homes and other buildings are poorly constructed and landslides are common.
Rescue efforts are likely to be complicated since many international aid agencies left Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover of the country last year and the chaotic withdrawal of the U.S. military from the longest war in its history. Rescuers rushed to the area by helicopter.
Neighboring Pakistan’s Meteorological Department said the quake's epicenter was in Afghanistan's Paktika province, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) southwest of the city of Khost. Buildings were also damaged in Khost province. The U.S. Geological Survey, which recorded the magnitude at slightly lower at 5.9, put the depth at just 10 kilometers (6 miles) — another factor that could increase the damage.
Footage from Paktika showed people being carried into helicopters to be airlifted from the area. Others were treated on the ground. One resident could be seen receiving IV fluids while sitting in a plastic chair outside the rubble of his home and still more were sprawled on gurneys. Some images showed residents picking through clay bricks and other rubble from destroyed stone houses.
1/6 panel: Local 'heroes' rebuffed Trump, then faced threats
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House 1/6 committee heard chilling, tearful testimony Tuesday that Donald Trump's relentless pressure to overturn the 2020 presidential election provoked widespread threats to the “backbone of our democracy"— election workers and local officials who fended off the defeated president’s demands despite personal risks.
The panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol focused on Trump’s efforts to undo Joe Biden’s victory in a most local way — by repeatedly leaning on public officials in key battleground states with shocking proposals to reject ballots outright or to submit alternative electors for the final tally in Congress.
The high-profile pressure, described as potentially illegal, was fueled by the president’s false claims of voter fraud — which, the panel says, spread dangerously in the states and ultimately led directly to the deadly insurrection at the Capitol.
“A handful of election officials in several key states stood between Donald Trump and the upending of American democracy,” Chairman Bennie Thompson said, praising them as heroes and the “backbone of our democracy.”
The hearing was punctuated throughout with accounts of the personal attacks faced by state and local officials.
'Heightened alert': Abortion providers brace for ruling
In her first week on the job at a Philadelphia abortion clinic, Amanda Kifferly was taught how to search for bombs. About a year later, protesters blocked the entrances and exits of the The Women’s Centers, at one point pulling Kifferly into something resembling a mosh pit, where they surrounded her and shoved her around.
And on the night of last winter's arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case that could end the nationwide right to abortion, people gathered outside a clinic in New Jersey with lawn chairs, a cooler and a flaming torch — a sight that brought to mind lynchings and other horrors of the country's racist past, says Kifferly, who now serves as vice president for abortion access.
Such scenes have become familiar for providers and patients across the country over the decades since the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion. At times the violence has been far more severe, including bombings, arson and murders — from the 1993 killing of Dr. David Gunn outside a Florida abortion clinic to the 2015 fatal shooting of three people inside a Colorado Planned Parenthood.
Now providers and some in law enforcement worry what will come next. They're preparing for an increase in violence once the Supreme Court rules, saying there has historically been a spike when the issue of abortion gets widespread public attention, such as after a state approves new restrictions. If the decision ends Roe v. Wade — as a leaked draft opinion indicates may happen — they also anticipate protests, harassment and other violence to be more concentrated and intensify in states where abortion remains legal.
“We know from experience, it’s not like the people protesting clinics in banned states just pack up and go home," said Melissa Fowler, chief program officer for the National Abortion Federation.
Takeaways: Trump's conditional loyalty, new warning for left
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican who was backed by Donald Trump at the last minute prevailed on Tuesday in an Alabama Senate runoff. But in neighboring Georgia, the former president's losing streak deepened.
Meanwhile, moderate Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser won her Democratic primary, offering a fresh warning to progressives.
Takeaways from the latest round of midterm primary elections:
Throughout his life in business, entertainment and, eventually, politics, Trump demanded loyalty from those around him. And over the decades, he's repeatedly shown that he's less eager to return the favor.
Biden to call for 3-month suspension of gas and diesel taxes
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday will call on Congress to suspend federal gasoline and diesel taxes for three months — a move meant to ease financial pressures at the pump that also reveals the political toxicity of high gas prices in an election year.
The Democratic president will also call on states to suspend their own gas taxes or provide similar relief, according to administration officials who previewed his proposals on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
At issue is the 18.4 cents-a-gallon federal tax on gas and the 24.4 cents-a-gallon federal tax on diesel fuel. If the gas savings were fully passed along to consumers, people would save roughly 3.6% at the pump when prices are averaging about $5 a gallon nationwide.
But many economists and lawmakers from both parties view the idea of a gas tax holiday with skepticism.
Barack Obama, during the 2008 presidential campaign, called the idea a “gimmick” that allowed politicians to “say that they did something.” He also warned that oil companies could offset the tax relief by increasing their prices.
Sri Lanka PM says economy 'has collapsed,' unable to buy oil
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s prime minister says its debt-laden economy has “collapsed” after months of shortages of food, fuel and electricity, and the South Asian island nation cannot even purchase imported oil.
“We are now facing a far more serious situation beyond the mere shortages of fuel, gas, electricity and food. Our economy has completely collapsed. That is the most serious issue before us today,” Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told Parliament.
Wickremesinghe is also the finance minister tasked with stabilizing the economy, which is foundering under the weight of heavy debts, lost tourism revenue and other impacts from the pandemic and surging costs for commodities.
“Currently, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation is $700 million in debt," he told lawmakers. “As a result, no country or organization in the world is willing to provide fuel to us. They are even reluctant to provide fuel for cash,” he said.
Wickremesinghe said the government had failed to act in time to turn the situation around, as Sri Lanka's foreign reserves dwindled.
Press group: Ukraine journalist, soldier 'coldly executed'
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian photojournalist and a soldier who was accompanying him when they were killed in the first weeks of Russia’s invasion appear to have been “coldly executed” as they were searching Russian-occupied woodlands for the photographer’s missing image-taking drone, Reporters Without Borders said Wednesday, citing its findings from an investigation into their deaths.
The press freedom group said it went back to the spot where the bodies of Maks Levin and serviceman Oleksiy Chernyshov were found April 1 in woods north of the capital, Kyiv. The group said it counted 14 bullet holes in the burned hulk of their car still at the scene.
The group said disused Russian positions, one of them still booby-trapped, were found close by. Also found were the remains of food rations, cigarette packets and other litter seemingly left by Russian soldiers.
Some of Levin and Chernyshov’s belongings, including the soldier’s ID papers and parts of his bulletproof vest and the photographer’s helmet, were also recovered, it said.
A Ukrainian team with metal detectors also uncovered a bullet buried in the soil where Levin’s body had lain, it said. The group said that finding suggests “he was probably killed with one, perhaps two bullets fired at close range when he was already on the ground."
Yellowstone park reopening after changes wrought by flood
WAPITI, Wyo. (AP) — Visitors will return to a changed landscape in Yellowstone National Park on Wednesday as it partially reopens following record floods that reshaped the park’s rivers and canyons, wiped out numerous roads and left some areas famous for their wildlife viewing inaccessible, possibly for months to come.
Park managers are raising the gates at 8 a.m. Wednesday at three of Yellowstone’s five entrances for the first time since June 13, when 10,000 visitors were ordered out after rivers across northern Wyoming and southern Montana surged over their banks following a torrent of rainfall that accelerated the spring snowmelt.
Some of the premier attractions at America’s first national park will again be viewable, including Old Faithful — the legendary geyser that shoots towering bursts of steaming water almost like clockwork more than a dozen times a day.
But the bears, wolves and bison that roam the wild Lamar Valley and the thermal features around Mammoth Hot Springs will remain out of reach. The wildlife-rich northern half of the park will be shuttered until at least early July, and key routes into the park remain severed near the Montana tourist towns of Gardiner, Red Lodge and Cooke City.
It’s unknown how many visitors will show up in the flooding’s immediate aftermath. Park managers had been bracing for throngs as the park celebrated its 150th anniversary a year after it tallied a record 4.9 million visits.
Climate change a factor in 'unprecedented' South Asia floods
SYLHET, Bangladesh (AP) — Scientists say climate change is a factor behind the erratic and early rains that triggered unprecedented floods in Bangladesh and northeastern India, killing dozens and making lives miserable for millions of others.
Although the region is no stranger to flooding, it typically takes place later in the year when monsoon rains are well underway.
This year's torrential rainfall lashed the area as early as March. It may take much longer to determine the extent to which climate change played a role in the floods, but scientists say that it has made the monsoon — a seasonable change in weather usually associated with strong rains — more variable over the past decades. This means that much of the rain expected to fall in a year is arriving in a space of weeks.
The northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya received nearly three times its average June rainfall in just the first three weeks of the month, and neighboring Assam received twice its monthly average in the same period. Several rivers, including one of Asia's largest, flow downstream from the two states into the Bay of Bengal in low-lying Bangladesh, a densely populated delta nation.
With more rainfall predicted over the next five days, Bangladesh's Flood Forecast and Warning Centre warned Tuesday that water levels would remain dangerously high in the country's northern regions.
Europe wildfire risk heightened by early heat waves, drought
MADRID (AP) — Extended drought conditions in several Mediterranean countries, a heat wave last week that reached northern Germany and high fuel costs for aircraft needed to fight wildfires have heightened concerns across Europe this summer.
“Much of the continent is in drought,” said Cathelijne Stoof, an environmental science professor at the Netherlands’ Wageningen University, who called the wildfire outlook “very challenging across Europe.”
Fires last summer blackened more than 11,000 square kilometers (4,250 square miles) of land — an area more than four times the size of Luxembourg. About half of the damage was in the European Union.
And, experts say, Europe’s wildfires aren't just a problem for the southern, hotter countries.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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