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Senate launches late night votes to stave off US default, wrap up Biden-McCarthy debt ceiling deal

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 17:36:18 GMT

By LISA MASCARO, KEVIN FREKING, STEPHEN GROVES and FARNOUSH AMIRI (Associated Press)WASHINGTON (AP) — Rushing to prevent a U.S. debt default, the Senate pressed ahead Thursday night to give final passage to a debt ceiling and budget cuts package and send it to President Joe Biden’s desk to become law before the fast-approaching deadline.Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a late night floor schedule with nearly a dozen amendments up for debate to the package that Biden negotiated with Speaker Kevin McCarthy, though none was expected to be approved or change the overall deal.“Let’s finish the job,” Schumer implored his colleagues.Passage in the Senate will require cooperation between Democrats and Republicans, much the way the narrowly divided House was able to approve the compromise late Wednesday night. Fast action is vital if Washington is to meet next Monday’s deadline when Treasury has said the U.S. will start running short of cash ...

MBTA brass asks for a year to see improvements

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 17:36:18 GMT

It will be at least a year before MBTA riders start to see a major improvement in their daily commute, T board chair Thomas Glynn said.The public may experience “incremental improvements,” such as faster trip times as speed restrictions are lifted in the days and months ahead, but the groundwork new MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng is laying to turn around the embattled agency won’t translate into sweeping changes anytime soon, Glynn said.Eng is trying to fix the decision-making and organizational culture at the T. He’s also striving to get major projects like fare transformation and the Green Line Train Protection System, both of which are years late, back on schedule, Glynn told the MBTA Advisory Board at a Thursday forum.“A lot of these things need to be integrated to have a significant impact,” said Glynn, who chairs the T’s board of directors. “I think people will see a different T a year from now, but I don’t know if they’ll see a different T in two months.”Quincy Mayor Thomas...

Adam Montgomery firearm theft trial underway in New Hampshire

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 17:36:18 GMT

The delayed firearms theft trial against the father of Harmony Montgomery, who is also charged with the missing girl’s murder in a separate case, is finally underway in New Hampshire.Adam Montgomery, 32, is accused of stealing a rifle and a shotgun between Sept. 29 and Oct. 3, 2019, faces two counts each of being an armed career criminal, felon in possession of a firearm, theft by unauthorized taking or transfer and receiving stolen property. The charges were indicted in April 2022.The charges stem from the theft of two long guns — Mossburg 500 pump shotgun and the stag arms AR-15 — from Manchester resident Chris Frain, who took the stand Wednesday and said he stored the weapons in a blanket under his bed.Montgomery and his now-estranged wife, Kayla Montgomery, were living out of cars with their children, including Harmony who is not Kayla’s daughter, toward the end of 2019 after being evicted from their Manchester apartment.Harmony, age 5, went missing sometime in November or Decem...

Biden says he got ‘sandbagged’ after he tripped and fell onstage at Air Force graduation

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 17:36:18 GMT

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE (Associated Press)COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — President Joe Biden quipped that he got “sandbagged” Thursday after he tripped and fell — but was uninjured — while onstage at the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation.Biden had been greeting the graduates in Colorado Springs, Colorado, at the front of the stage with salutes and handshakes, and turned to jog back toward his seat when he fell. He was helped up by an Air Force officer as well as two members of his U.S. Secret Service detail.Onlookers, including some members of the official delegation onstage, watched in concern before Biden, who at age 80 is the oldest president in U.S. history, returned to his seat to view the end of the ceremony.“I got sandbagged,” the president told reporters with a smile when he arrived back at the White House on Thursday evening before pretending to jog into the residence. Two small black sandbags had been onstage supporting the teleprompter used by Biden and other speakers at th...

Peregrine falcon chicks ‘banded’ at Huntington Ave skyscraper

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 17:36:18 GMT

Several peregrine falcon chicks briefly took up residence in the 117 Huntington Avenue lobby Thursday afternoon with a small crowd of awed onlookers before being sent back up to their parents atop the skyscraper.Members of Mass Wildlife band peregrine chicks in Boston Staff Photo by Nancy Lane/Boston Herald (Thursday,June 1, 2023).on the Boston Common on Thursday, in Boston, MA. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald) June 1, 2023“There were three babies in the nest up here,” said Andrew Vitz, a ornithologist with MassWildlife, before being cut off by the suddenly squawking, flapping chick in his hands. “This is one of the females. So we went up and brought them down, and as you can see, we’ve got a band on each of their legs so they can be identified.”Thursday’s event, at a building known as a nesting spot for the raptors, was one of MassWildlife’s occasional banding events for species like the falcons and bald eagles. The bands help the state monitor t...

Family, attorneys criticize prosecutor’s handling of case in Ralph Yarl’s shooting

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 17:36:18 GMT

By MARGARET STAFFORD (Associated Press)LIBERTY, Mo. (AP) — The family of a Black Kansas City teenager who was shot by a white man after he mistakenly knocked on the man’s door are frustrated with the prosecutor’s handling of the case, attorneys for the family said Thursday.The complaints came after a preliminary hearing for 84-year-old Andrew Lester was set for Aug. 31-Sept. 1 and just days after a Clay County judge approved a request by Lester’s attorney to seal documents in the case.Lester has pleaded not guilty to first-degree assault and armed criminal action in the shooting of Ralph Yarl, who knocked on Lester’s door on April 13 while trying to pick up his young brothers, who were at a home a block away. Civil rights attorneys Benjamin Crump and Lee Merritt said in a Zoom news conference that they had previously asked Clay County Prosecutor Zachary Thompson to step aside and let Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker be named as a special pros...

Nebraska voter ID bill passes, despite filibuster by lawmaker

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 17:36:18 GMT

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska lawmakers passed a bill Thursday to comply with a voter ID requirement mandated by voters in November, with the lone vote against it coming from the lawmaker who led the effort to have it placed on the ballot.The 41-1 vote came on the last day of the 2023 legislative session and despite a filibuster effort by conservative Sen. Julie Slama, who chaired the referendum effort that saw the voter ID question put on last November’s ballot.Slama has railed against the bill, saying it fails to go far enough to protect the integrity of elections. Nebraska has no history of widespread voter fraud, but Slama and other supporters of the voter ID requirement say it’s needed to prevent possible future problems.The bill that passed, which was brought by fellow Republican Sen. Tom Brewer and the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee he chairs, allows a wide array of photo identification that voters could present at the polls. IDs would include passp...

Audit finds National Highway Traffic Safety Administration auto safety defect probes are too slow

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 17:36:18 GMT

DETROIT (AP) — The U.S. government agency charged with keeping the roads safe is slow to investigate automobile safety defects, limiting its ability to handle rapidly changing or severe risks, an audit made public Thursday found.In addition, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Defects Investigation doesn’t have an integrated computer system for its probes, and doesn’t consistently follow its own procedures for making problems a high priority, the audit found.The Department of Transportation’s Inspector General found that the office has made progress in restructuring and modernizing its data and analysis systems. But weaknesses in meeting its own goals for timely investigations increase possible delays in probing important safety issues, the audit found.“ODI’s lack of timeliness in completing investigations limits its ability to respond to rapidly evolving or severe risks to motor vehicle safety and ODI’s public accountability,” the ...

‘Shrink the room:’ How Biden and McCarthy struck a debt-limit deal and staved off a catastrophe

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 17:36:18 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — It was advice that Mitch McConnell had offered to Joe Biden once already: To resolve the debt-limit standoff, he needed to strike a deal with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — and McCarthy alone. But after a first meeting of the top four congressional leaders with the president in early May, the Senate minority leader felt the need to reemphasize his counsel.After returning from the White House that day, McConnell called the president to privately urge him to “shrink the room” – meaning no direct involvement in the talks for himself, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.That, McConnell stressed to Biden, was the only way to avert a potentially economy-rattling default. A week later, Biden and McCarthy essentially adopted that path, tapping a handful of trusted emissaries to negotiate a deal that would lift the debt limit. It was a turning point in an impasse that until then, seemed intractable. Having lived through the debacle...

As China cracks down on dissent, New York City gives refuge to exhibit remembering Tiananmen Square

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 17:36:18 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Fangsuo Zhou, now in his 50s, remembers all too well that dispiriting spring day in 1989 when tanks rolled into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. University students and others were beaten and bloodied when communist troops swarmed in to end a pro-democracy protest. Hundreds and possibly thousands died.For years, Zhou, who left China after the crackdown and now lives in New Jersey, has been collecting what he calls “evidence” of China’s brutality.Those items — blooded towels, blood-soaked banners that had been turned into tourniquets, newspaper clippings, letters and a tent used by student protesters during their seven-week demonstration — are now the centerpiece of the “June 4 Memorial Exhibit,” housed on the fourth floor of a New York City office building.It carries on the mission of a similar exhibit in Hong Kong shuttered by the communist government two years ago.“This is the most important legacy for China,” Zhou said during a preview of the collection, which op...