AP News in Brief at 11:04 pm EDT | National | benningtonbanner.com - Bennington Banner

panggilansaja.blogspot.com

Iran calls Natanz atomic site blackout 'nuclear terrorism'

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran on Sunday described a blackout at its underground Natanz atomic facility an act of “nuclear terrorism,” raising regional tensions as world powers and Tehran continue to negotiate over its tattered nuclear deal.

While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, suspicion fell immediately on Israel, where its media nearly uniformly reported a devastating cyberattack orchestrated by the country caused the blackout.

If Israel was responsible, it further heightens tensions between the two nations, already engaged in a shadow conflict across the wider Middle East. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who met Sunday with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, has vowed to do everything in his power to stop the nuclear deal.

Details remained few about what happened early Sunday morning at the facility, which initially was described as a blackout caused by the electrical grid feeding its above-ground workshops and underground enrichment halls.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the American-educated head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, who once served as the country's foreign minister, offered what appeared to be the harshest comments of his long career, which included the assassination of nuclear scientists a decade ago. Iran blames Israel for those killings as well.

---

Brazil's virus outlook darkens amid vaccine supply snags

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — April is shaping up to be Brazil’s darkest month yet in the pandemic, with hospitals struggling with a crush of patients, deaths on track for record highs and few signs of a reprieve from a troubled vaccination program in Latin America's largest nation.

The Health Ministry has cut its outlook for vaccine supplies in April three times already, to half their initial level, and the country’s two biggest laboratories are facing supply constraints.

The delays also mean tens of thousands more deaths as the particularly contagious P.1 variant of COVID-19 sweeps Brazil. It has recorded about 350,000 of the 2.9 million virus deaths worldwide, behind only the U.S. toll of over 560,000.

Brazil's seven-day rolling average has increased to 2,820 deaths per day, compared with the global average of 10,608 per day, according to data through April 8 from Johns Hopkins University.

The death toll is forecast to continue rising in the next two weeks to an average of nearly 3,500 per day before receding, according to the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

---

Andrew: Philip's death has left 'huge void' in queen's life

LONDON (AP) — The death of Prince Philip has left a “huge void” in Queen Elizabeth II’s life, their son Prince Andrew said Sunday, as Princess Anne paid tribute to her father as “my teacher, my supporter and my critic.”

As hundreds well-wishers continued to leave floral tributes outside the gates of royal residences in memory of the monarch's husband, Anne — Philip and the queen's only daughter — said her father “leaves a legacy which can inspire us all.”

“You know it’s going to happen but you are never really ready,” Anne said of Philip's death on Friday, at the age of 99.

In a message released by Buckingham Palace, Anne praised Philip’s “ability to treat every person as an individual in their own right with their own skills," a nod to the many charities and other organizations he was involved with.

“I would like to emphasize how much the family appreciate the messages and memories of so many people whose lives he also touched,” she said. “We will miss him, but he leaves a legacy which can inspire us all.”

---

For Chauvin's trial attorney, it's all about raising doubt

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Derek Chauvin's defense attorney was questioning George Floyd's girlfriend about the couple buying drugs when he abruptly shifted gears for what seemed an innocuous question: He presumed the couple had pet names for each other. Under what name, he asked, did she appear in Floyd's phone?

Courteney Ross first smiled at the question, then paused before replying: “Mama.”

The fleeting exchange called into question the widely reported account that Floyd was crying out for his deceased mother as he lay pinned to the pavement. And it appeared to be one in a series of moves aimed at undermining a dominant narrative of Floyd's death — established through bystander video and saturation news coverage and commentary — of a reckless, arrogant cop ignoring a man's “I can't breathe” cries as his life is snuffed out.

At another moment in the trial, Nelson asked a paramedic if he had responded to “other” overdose calls before quickly correcting himself to say “overdose calls” — perhaps a simple mistake, or an attempt to plant the idea that Floyd's death was an overdose.

Expert witnesses for the prosecution have asserted drugs did not kill Floyd.

---

Officer accused of force in stop of Black Army officer fired

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — One of two police officers accused of pepper-spraying and pointing their guns at a Black Army officer during a traffic stop has since been fired, a Virginia town announced late Sunday, hours after the governor called for an independent investigation into the case.

The town of Windsor said in a statement that it joined calls from election officials, including Gov. Ralph Northam, in requesting an investigation by Virginia State Police into the December 2020 encounter in which two Windsor officers were accused of drawing their guns, pointing them at U.S. Army second lieutenant Caron Nazario and using a slang term to suggest he was facing execution.

Nazario, who is Black and Latino, was also pepper-sprayed and knocked to the ground by the officers, Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker, according to the lawsuit he filed earlier this month against them.

The two sides in the case dispute what happened, but Crocker wrote in a report that he believed Nazario was “eluding police” and he considered it a “high-risk traffic stop.” Attorney Jonathan Arthur told The Associated Press that Nazario wasn’t trying to elude the officer, but was trying to stop in a well-lit area.

In the statement Sunday, Windsor officials said an internal investigation opened at the time into the use of force determined that department policy wasn’t followed. Officials said disciplinary action was taken and Gutierrez has since been fired.

---

Matsuyama becomes first Japanese in Masters green jacket

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — The pressure was even more than Hideki Matsuyama could have imagined when he stood on the first tee Sunday at Augusta National. So was the emotion when he walked off the 18th green as the first Masters champion from golf-mad Japan.

His arms securely inside the sleeves of the green jacket, he thrust them in the air.

Ten years after he made a sterling debut as the best amateur at the Masters, the 29-year-old Matsuyama claimed the ultimate prize and took his place in history.

Whether he's Japan's greatest player is not his concern.

“However, I'm the first to win a major,” he said through his interpreter. “And if that's the bar, then I've set it.”

---

Business faces tricky path navigating post-Trump politics

WASHINGTON (AP) — For more than a half-century, the voice emerging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s monolithic, Beaux Arts-styled building near the White House was predictable: It was the embodiment of American business and, more specifically, a shared set of interests with the Republican Party.

The party's bond with corporate America, however, is fraying.

Fissures have burst open over the GOP’s embrace of conspiracy theories and rejection of mainstream climate science, as well as its dismissal of the 2020 election outcome. The most recent flashpoint was in Georgia, where a new Republican-backed law restricting voting rights drew harsh criticism from Delta Air Lines and Coca Cola, whose headquarters are in the state, and resulted in Major League Baseball pulling the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta.

Republicans were furious. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky warned that their actions were “quite stupid,” alienating "a lot of Republican fans.” GOP strategists argued that they no longer needed corporate America’s money to win elections as they try to rebrand as a party of blue-collar workers.

That extends an opportunity to President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats to find an ally in an unlikely place when the party has unified control of the federal government for the first time in a decade. Biden is pushing an ambitious $2.3 trillion infrastructure package that includes corporate tax increases — which the White House is characterizing to CEOs as upfront investments that will ultimately make companies more profitable.

---

Top official admits Chinese vaccines have low effectiveness

BEIJING (AP) — In a rare admission of the weakness of Chinese coronavirus vaccines, the country's top disease control official says their effectiveness is low and the government is considering mixing them to get a boost.

Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates,” said the director of the China Centers for Disease Control, Gao Fu, at a conference Saturday in the southwestern city of Chengdu.

Beijing has distributed hundreds of millions of doses abroad while trying to promote doubt about the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine made using the previously experimental messenger RNA, or mRNA, process.

“It’s now under formal consideration whether we should use different vaccines from different technical lines for the immunization process,” Gao said.

Officials at a news conference Sunday didn’t respond directly to questions about Gao’s comment or possible changes in official plans. But another CDC official said developers are working on mRNA-based vaccines.

---

Trump goes after Pence, McConnell in speech to party donors

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — It was supposed to be a unifying weekend for a Republican Party at war with itself over former President Donald Trump’s divisive leadership. But Trump himself shattered two days of relative peace in his closing remarks to the GOP’s top donors when he insulted the party’s Senate leader and his wife.

Ahead of the invitation-only speech at Trump’s new home inside his Mar-a-Lago resort, the former president’s advisers said he would emphasize his commitment to his party and Republican unity.

Trump veered sharply from prepared remarks Saturday night and instead slammed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as a “stone-cold loser” and mocked McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who was Trump’s transportation secretary.

Trump also said he was “disappointed” in his vice president, Mike Pence, and used a profanity in assessing McConnell, according to multiple people in attendance who were not authorized to publicly discuss what was said in a private session. He said McConnell had not thanked him properly for putting Chao, who was labor secretary under President George W. Bush, in his Cabinet.

McConnell's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.

---

'Nomadland' wins 4 BAFTAs including best picture, director

LONDON (AP) — Gig-economy Western “Nomadland” won four prizes including best picture on Sunday at the British Academy Film Awards, which were handed out during a pandemic-curbed ceremony that recognized a diverse array of screen talent.

“Nomadland” filmmaker Chloe Zhao became only the second woman, and the first woman of color, to win the BAFTA for best director, and star Frances McDormand was named best actress. “Nomadland” also took the cinematography prize.

Emerald Fennell’s revenge comedy “Promising Young Woman” was named best British film, while the best actor trophy went to 83-year-old Anthony Hopkins for playing a man grappling with dementia in “The Father.”

An event that was criticized in the recent past with the label #BAFTAsSoWhite rewarded a diverse group of talents, including Black British star Daniel Kaluuya, newcomer Bukky Bakray — who shone as a London teenager in “Rocks” — and veteran Korean actress Yuh-Jung Youn.

The fact that Britain remains under coronavirus lockdown measures, with its movie theaters still closed, gave the evening a poignant tone, as did the death on Friday of Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, a long-time patron of the British film academy.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

"in" - Google News
April 12, 2021 at 09:03AM
https://ift.tt/3g6ufE6

AP News in Brief at 11:04 pm EDT | National | benningtonbanner.com - Bennington Banner
"in" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2MLa3Y1
https://ift.tt/2YrnuUx

Bagikan Berita Ini