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A Montana farmer with a flattop and ample lobbyist cash stands between GOP and Senate control

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:22:05 GMT

BIGFORK, Mont. (AP) — After 17 years in the U.S. Senate, Democrat Jon Tester is a well-known commodity in Montana — a plain-spoken grain farmer with a flattop and a carefully cultivated reputation as a moderate.The 67-year-old lawmaker smiled and laughed his way through the crowd at a Veterans Day event in Bigfork, a small town on Flathead Lake where the population has surged in recent years. He chatted with veterans who supported him and some who didn’t, then stood behind a lectern in the Bigfork High School gymnasium to promote his biggest recent accomplishment: expanded federal health care for millions of veterans exposed to toxic smoke at military “burn pits.”Tester has survived three close elections and a changed national political landscape to emerge as the lone Democrat still holding high office in Montana. The 2024 election brings possibly his stiffest challenge yet: Republicans, just two seats short of Senate control, are expected to spend tens of millions on attack a...

A$AP Rocky will soon learn if he’s going to trial for charges of shooting at former friend

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:22:05 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A$AP Rocky could learn Monday whether he will be ordered to trial on allegations that he fired a gun at a former friend and collaborator outside a Hollywood hotel. A Los Angeles judge is set to hear evidence Monday against the 35-year-old rap star and father of two children with Rihanna as he decides whether he should stand trial on two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm. He has pleaded not guilty.Prosecutors allege that outside the W. Hotel in Hollywood on Nov. 6, 2021, Rocky pointed a handgun at Terell Ephron, then in a confrontation soon after fired shots that grazed Ephron’s knuckles and left him with minor injuries.At the first day of the hearing earlier this month, Ephron, who once went by A$AP Relli, testified that he and Rocky were close friends as teens along with the other members of the A$AP collective, a group of New York high school students who sought to make music and pursue other art forms.He said their friendship lasted un...

Appeals court to hear arguments on whether to reinstate gag order against Donald Trump

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:22:05 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court is hearing arguments Monday on whether to reinstate a gag order against Donald Trump in the federal case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.Prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith’s team will urge a three-judge panel of the Washington-based appeals court to put back in place an order barring the former president from making inflammatory statements about lawyers in the case and potential witnesses. The prosecutors say those restrictions are necessary to prevent Trump from undermining confidence in the court system and intimidating people who may be called to testify against him. Defense lawyers have called the gag order an unconstitutional muzzling of Trump’s free speech rights and say prosecutors have presented no evidence to support the idea that his words have caused harm or made anyone feel threatened.The gag order is one of multiple contentious issues being argued ahead of...

Driving or flying before feasting? Here are some tips for Thanksgiving travelers

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:22:05 GMT

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Getting a big holiday meal on the table can be stressful for the cook (see “The Bear,” Season two, Episode six.) But for guests, just getting to the table also can be difficult, and there’s no Butterball hotline for harried travelers.The number of people traveling 50 miles (80 kilometers) or more from home for Thanksgiving is expected to reach 55.4 million this week, a slight increase over last year, according to AAA projections.And while misery loves company, there are some steps travelers can take to improve the experience:EARLY BIRDS GET THE OPEN ROADSMost travelers — more than 49 million — are expected to drive to their Thanksgiving destinations. Traffic is anticipated to peak on Wednesday, the day before the holiday. The worst time to be on the road will be between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. that day, according to INRIX, a transportation data and insights provider.Not only will traffic jams slow you down, they can result in crashes caused by distracted drivers, said...

Oxford school shooting survivor heals with surgery, a trusted horse and the chance to tell her story

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:22:05 GMT

MAYFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — For Kylie Ossege, the 19-year-old college student who survived two deadly mass school shootings in Michigan — one as a senior at Oxford High School in 2021 and another 14 months later as a freshman at Michigan State University — Blaze stands as a source of comfort in a world otherwise shattered by bullets.Ossege runs a brush along Blaze’s broad forehead, then gives him a kiss between the eyes.“I feel very at home when I’m with him,” Ossege says of the 13-year-old American Quarter Horse she has owned since 2019. “He’s my best friend.”A better friend than time, perhaps, which now gathers for Ossege like dust in a corner, a clingy bundle of haunting memories that she can neither forget nor sweep away: Fifteen minutes as she lay shot and bleeding in an Oxford High School hallway. Six weeks recovering in a hospital. Fourteen months between a deadly high school shooting and another at MSU. And daily physical pain she can never fully escape.Ossege was severe...

DC combating car thefts and carjackings with dashcams and AirTags

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:22:05 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jeff Pena contacted his father as soon as he heard that police were passing out auto tracking devices to try to stem a sharp increase in carjackings, auto thefts and other crimes in the nation’s capital. “It’s just getting crazy out there,” said Pena, whose father, Raul Pena, drives for the rideshare app Lyft. “Especially now because Christmas is coming and nobody has any money.” That’s why the pair recently sat in a line of cars winding around the block near Nationals Park, the city’s pro baseball stadium, waiting their turn for a police officer to install the tracker — literally just an Apple AirTag — and show them how to use it. The elder Pena, 58, said he generally enjoyed driving and meeting new people but had become much more cautious in recent months and stopped driving late at night. “I do get nervous sometimes,” he said. “It’s worse now because it gets dark so early in the winter. Right now I feel very unsafe.”One week l...

Right-wing populist Milei set to take Argentina down uncharted path: ‘No room for lukewarm measures’

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:22:05 GMT

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — What many deemed impossible just months ago is reality: right-wing populist Javier Milei resoundingly won Argentina’s presidency. And with his victory Sunday night, the fiery freshman lawmaker has thrust the country into the unknown regarding just how extreme his policies will be, following a campaign that saw him revving a chainsaw to symbolically cut the state down to size.With almost all votes tallied, Milei handily beat Economy Minister Sergio Massa, 55.7% to 44.3%. Milei won all but three of the nation’s 24 provinces and Massa had conceded even before the electoral authority began announcing preliminary results.Milei, 53, a self-described anarcho-capitalis t with a disheveled mop of hair, made his name by furiously denouncing the “political caste” on television programs. His pledge for abrupt, severe change resonated with Argentines weary of annual inflation soaring above 140% and a poverty rate that reached 40%. He will take power on Dec. 1...

A curious South African sea snail is a prized dish in Asia. That has meant a trail of destruction

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:22:05 GMT

HAWSTON, South Africa (AP) — Nearly every house in Hawston has a boat in its yard, sometimes two.It takes a moment to realize many are out of action, grass sprouting through holes in hulls that haven’t touched water for years. They are relics of another time, when people fished for their livelihood and the ocean provided more than enough.Thoe languishing boats and other economic problems in Hawston are the result of changes in the market to South African abalone, a curious fist-sized sea snail that is a highly prized morsel in East Asia and the unwitting instigator of 30 years of trouble for fishing communities along Africa’s southern coast. Abalone here was abundant and especially tasty, yet the demand largely put the village and its traditional fishers out of business, or made them criminals overnight.Raphael Fisher was born into fishing, as just about everyone was in Hawston. He grew up diving for the abalone that South Africans call perlemoen — or, affectionately, &#...

Biden is spending his 81st birthday honoring White House tradition of pardoning Thanksgiving turkeys

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:22:05 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Liberty and Bell are ready for their presidential pardons.The two Thanksgiving turkeys were due at the White House on Monday to play their part in what has become an annual holiday tradition: a president sparing them from becoming someone’s dinner.“We think that’s a great way to kick off the holiday season and really, really a fun honor,” Steve Lykken, chairman of the National Turkey Federation and president of the Jennie-O Turkey Store, said in an interview with The Associated Press.The event, set for the South Lawn this year instead of the Rose Garden, marks the unofficial start of the holiday season in Washington, and Monday was shaping up to be an especially busy opening day.President Joe Biden, the oldest president in U.S. history, also was celebrating his 81st birthday on Monday. In the afternoon, his wife, first lady Jill Biden, was accepting the delivery of an 18-and-a-half foot Fraser fir from Fleetwood, North Carolina, as the official White House Ch...

With the world’s eyes on Gaza, attacks are on the rise in the West Bank, which faces its own war

Published Sun, 29 Dec 2024 14:22:05 GMT

QUSRA, West Bank (AP) — When Israeli warplanes swooped over the Gaza Strip following Hamas militants’ deadly attack on southern Israel, Palestinians say a different kind of war took hold in the occupied West Bank.Overnight, the territory was closed off. Towns were raided, curfews imposed, teenagers arrested, detainees beaten, and villages stormed by Jewish vigilantes.With the world’s attention on Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there, the violence of war has also erupted in the West Bank. Israeli settler attacks have surged at an unprecedented rate, according to the United Nations. The escalation has spread fear, deepened despair, and robbed Palestinians of their livelihoods, their homes and, in some cases, their lives.“Our lives are hell,” said Sabri Boum, a 52-year-old farmer who fortified his windows with metal grills last week to protect his children from settlers he said threw stun grenades in Qaryout, a northern village. “It’s like I’m in a prison.”In six weeks, s...