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Why did Oregon GOP senators stay home? A look at the tension

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:32:39 GMT

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — FOR MOVEMENT OVERNIGHT AT 1 A.M. EASTERNPartisan tensions in Oregon skyrocketed this week because Republican state senators didn’t show up to work on Wednesday, denying Democrats who control the chamber a quorum. The move cast doubt on planned votes on legislation about gun control, abortion rights and gender-affirming health care. Here’s what to know about where Republicans and Democrats are divided and what’s at stake.WHAT’S HAPPENING AT THE OREGON LEGISLATURE?Republican state senators skipped a Senate floor session on Wednesday. According to the office of Democratic Senate President Rob Wagner, 10 Republicans and the chamber’s lone independent were absent. In Oregon, two-thirds of the state House and Senate members need to be present to conduct business — or 20 of the 30 current members. Currently, 17 senators are Democrats, 12 are Republicans and one is an independent.Two bills on gun control and access to abortion and gender-affirmi...

Artists to Russia: ‘Our Fire is Stronger Than Your Bombs’

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:32:39 GMT

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. (AP) — As Ukrainian artists Jenya Polosina and Anna Ivanenko watched missiles descend on their country, the two decided to use their creativity to push back against Russia’s invasion. Working in the early days of the war from bunkers or sometimes without electricity and water in Kyiv, they and other artists started drawing. Some of their war posters are now on display in New Hampshire. In the exhibit entitled “Our Fire is Stronger Than Your Bombs,” posters from Ivanenko show children studying in a bomb shelter and Ukrainians fleeing the country soon after the war started. Polosina’s drawings celebrate a female gymnast and a young mathematician who were killed in missile strikes.“We understood that it’s a good pill, a good medicine for not panicking, for keeping yourself together. So, we started drawing,” Ivanenko told The Associated Press from the studio in Kyiv she shares with Polosina. They are among eight artists who contributed 20 posters to the...

Taiwan trade chief warns against ‘unnecessary fear’ of China

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:32:39 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Taiwan’s chief trade representative says his country’s semiconductor makers will expand production in the U.S. as much as they can afford to do so, but he insists Taiwan remains an ideal place for that production and other U.S. trade, business and investment, despite tensions with China.John Chen-Chung Deng spoke to The Associated Press on a visit this week to Washington, where he is leading a Taiwanese trade delegation and meeting with U.S. trade officials.Deng’s visit comes at a time of intensifying efforts to harden the U.S. and Taiwanese militaries and economies against any threat from rival China. As part of this, President Joe Biden and Congress are moving to boost semiconductor production on U.S. soil in the event of any conflict disrupting exports from Asia, especially from Taiwan. Semiconductors make electronics ranging from phones to electric cars to advanced weapons run, and Taiwan produces more than 90% of the world’s more advanc...

Lula’s gun control push starts with counting Brazil’s guns

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:32:39 GMT

SAO PAULO (AP) — Jonathan Schmidt arrived at Federal Police headquarters in the center of Rio de Janeiro with a travel bag carrying a golden pistol and seven rifles, one peeking out of the zipper.“I’m in love with guns,” said Schmidt. “I’d have over 2,000 if the government allowed.” Schmidt already has his firearms registered with the army, as required by law for sport shooters like him, but experts have cast doubt on the reliability of its database, and said lax oversight has allowed such guns to fall into criminal hands. Schmidt was adding his guns to the police registry on Wednesday to comply with a push by Brazil’s new left-wing president.Over four years in office, former President Jair Bolsonaro tried to convert a country with few weapons into one where firearm ownership and lack of regulation meant personal freedom. Now, his successor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been moving to undo Bolsonaro’s pro-gun policies, and that starts with requiring gun owners to registe...

Ban social media for kids? Fed-up parents in Senate say yes

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:32:39 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Katie Britt says she hears about it constantly when she is at home in Alabama — at school track meets, basketball tournaments and on her regular morning walks with friends. And when she was running for the Senate last year, Britt says, “parent after parent” came up to her wanting to discuss the way social media was harming their kids.Britt also navigates the issue in her own home, as the mother of a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old.“Enough is enough,” says Britt, a Republican who last week introduced bipartisan legislation with three other senators — all parents of young children and teenagers — to try and better protect children online. “The time to act is now.”Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, too, deals with it firsthand as a father to an 11-year-old and 14-year-old. Murphy says he’s seen the upsides to social media, like connection during the pandemic and silly videos that bring them joy. But he’s also seen the downsides, including children he knows who he says ...

Wisconsin judge to hear first arguments in abortion lawsuit

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:32:39 GMT

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin judge was set to hear arguments Thursday in a lawsuit challenging the state’s 174-year-old abortion ban, a statute held in abeyance for nearly five decades until the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year.State Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, filed the lawsuit in Dane County circuit court last June seeking to repeal the ban. Kaul argues that the 1849 law is so old it was essentially adopted without the people’s consent; or alternately, that narrower restrictions on abortion enacted in Wisconsin in 1985 supersede the older statute. The 1985 legislation permits terminating pregnancies up until a fetus can survive outside the womb, while the older law outlawed abortion except to save the mother’s life. Kaul initially sued Republican legislators but later dropped them from the case and named three district attorneys as defendants, seeking to prohibit them from enforcing the ban. Thursday’s hearing before Circuit Judge Di...

This May the Fourth, Carrie Fisher gets Walk of Fame star

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:32:39 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Carrie Fisher is receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a May the Fourth tribute to one of the “Star Wars” franchise’s most beloved figures.On Thursday, Fisher — who died in 2016 — joins “Star Wars” co-stars Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill on the Hollywood tourist attraction that recognizes luminaries from film, television, music and other entertainment industries. The trio’s stars are all located on the 6,800 block of Hollywood Boulevard, near where the original film debuted in 1977.Fisher played Leia Organa, who over six films morphed from a princess to a general leading the forces of good in its fight against oppressive regimes aiming to control a galaxy far, far away. Billie Lourd will be accepting the star on behalf of her mother.Fans have long campaigned for her to receive a Walk of Fame star. The honor comes on May the Fourth, essentially an official holiday for Star Wars fans that’s a play on a line that Fisher said often in the fi...

New Orleans music’s old guard still star at Jazz Fest

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:32:39 GMT

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Bassist George Porter Jr. and drummer Zigaboo Modeliste played the very first New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival in 1970 with their groundbreaking funk band The Meters. More than 50 years later, The Meters are no more, but Porter and Modeliste are still among the festival’s mainstays.So are singer Irma Thomas, the renowned “Soul Queen of New Orleans,” who first played the fest in 1974; and guitarist and singer Deacon John Moore, also a regular since 1970. “Originally it was all local bands,” Porter said in a recent interview, reminiscing about days when he would close down one Jazz Fest stage with The Meters and run with Modeliste to another stage for a final set with piano legend Professor Longhair. “Local and regional bands — meaning Baton Rouge, Lafayette — those acts were always the headliners,” he said. Plenty of nationally and internationally known acts populate the roster for the 2023 festival, which includes current megastars like Lizzo a...

AP Was There: Covering the previous coronation in Britain

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:32:39 GMT

It might just be the coolest caption in newspaper history: “AP Wirephoto via jet bomber from London”On Saturday, The Associated Press will deploy a small army of writers, photographers, radio correspondents and video journalists to cover the coronation of Britain’s King Charles III.But for his mother’s crowning 70 years ago, the world’s oldest news cooperative enlisted the help of an air force as well. CONNECTING THE WORLDFounded in 1846 by competing New York City newspapers looking to share the costs of covering the Mexican War, the AP used boats, barges, trains, sleighs, ponies and pigeons to get stories to its “members.” AP was an early adopter of Samuel Morse’s and Alfred Vail’s telegraph — thus the term “wire service.” With the telegraph, communications technology severed itself permanently from transportation methods.“Innovation is in our bloodstream — and always has been,” says Valerie Komor, director of AP’s corporate archives.Another big leap came in 1935, when — afte...

Dramatic Change in Western Moisture Situation—Lake Mead levels rising

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:32:39 GMT

DRAMATIC CHANGE IN WESTERN MOISTURE SITUATION in the wake of the PARADE OF ATMOSPHERIC RIVER STORMS into the West from Pacific is beautifully summarized in a CIMSS BLOG post by Margaret Mooney out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/satellite-blog/archives/52074)Mooney has posted comparative DROUGHT MONITOR ANALYSES—both BEFORE and AFTER the dozen atmospheric storms this past winter and early this spring—and the change is stunning.But as dramatic as the changes have been, whether the improvement is a "blip"—or represents a REAL and LONGER TERM CHANGE in the Western water situation—is going to depend on the wetter pattern becoming a regular occurrence in the West.While the development of an El Niño—which is currently underway—may bode well for the precip trend over the coming cool season next fall, winter and spring (since El Niños after signal a wet pattern in the cool season in California and the southern and central Rockies), the region's water iss...