Senate passes stopgap funding bill, avoiding shutdown

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate passed a stopgap spending bill Thursday that avoids a short-term shutdown and funds the federal government through Feb. 18 after leaders defused a partisan standoff over federal vaccine mandates. The measure now goes to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

Earlier in the day, congressional leaders announced they had finally reached an agreement to keep the government running for 11 more weeks, generally at current spending levels, while adding $7 billion to aid Afghanistan evacuees.

Once the House voted to approve the measure, senators soon announced an agreement that would allow them to vote on it quickly.

“I am glad that in the end, cooler heads prevailed. The government will stay open and I thank the members of this chamber for walking us back from the brink of an avoidable, needless and costly shutdown," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

The Senate approved the measure by a vote of 69-28.

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'The fire that's here': US is still battling delta variant

While all eyes are on the new and little-understood omicron variant that is popping up around the country, the delta form of the coronavirus isn't finished wreaking havoc in the U.S., swamping hospitals with record numbers of patients in the Midwest and New England.

“Omicron is a spark that’s on the horizon. Delta variant is the fire that’s here today,” said Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the state Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Maine, where an unprecedented 334 people were in the hospital with COVID-19 as of midweek.

The U.S. recorded its first confirmed omicron infection on Wednesday, in a Californian who had been to South Africa, where the variant was first identified a week ago. Several more cases were reported Thursday — five in the New York City area and one each in Minnesota, Hawaii and Colorado — under circumstances suggesting the variant has begun spreading within the U.S.

But there is much that is unknown about omicron, including whether it is more contagious than previous versions, makes people sicker, thwarts the vaccine or more easily breaks through the immunity that people get from a bout of COVID-19. World health authorities have yet to link any deaths to omicron.

For now, the extra-contagious delta variant accounts for practically all cases in the U.S. and continues to inflict misery at a time when many hospitals are struggling with nurse shortages and a backlog of patients undergoing procedures that had been put off early in the pandemic.

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Roe v. Wade nearly fell 30 years ago. Can it survive again?

WASHINGTON (AP) — We've been here before, with the fate of abortion rights throughout the United States in doubt and awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court.

Nearly 30 years ago, the court came within a vote of throwing out the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion throughout the United States and returning the ability to restrict if not ban abortion to the states.

It might happen this time, after arguments Wednesday during which conservative justices suggested support for overruling Roe. The landmark decision could also emerge significantly diminished but not dead when the court decides what to do with Mississippi's 15-week ban on abortions, probably in late June.

Under Chief Justice John Roberts the court has issued several rulings over the years that resolved important cases in surprising ways. Roberts' handiwork produced the opinion that saved the Affordable Care Act in 2012 by a single vote.

But the conservatives' searing defeat in 1992, when the court unexpectedly reaffirmed Roe in its decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, has in some ways helped produce a court that appears less likely to settle on some middle ground on abortion.

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Preview of 'a post-Roe world' in Texas over abortion access

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas offers a glimpse in real time of what would be a striking new national landscape if the Supreme Court drastically curtails abortion rights: GOP-led states allowing almost no access to abortion, and women traveling hundreds of miles to end their pregnancies.

No longer a distant prospect, both sides of the ever-contentious abortion debate are actively preparing for life after Roe v. Wade.

What will happen if the Supreme Court uses its pending case from Mississippi to undo a nationwide right to an abortion that has been in place since 1973? Texas has been there for three months.

On Sept. 1, a state law took effect banning abortion at roughly six weeks, before some women even know they are pregnant. And so far, the Supreme Court has declined to block it — showing no urgency as it allows the nation's most restrictive abortion law in more than 50 years to stay on the books.

“What we've experienced the past three months in Texas is a preview of a post-Roe world," said John Seago, legislative director of Texas Right to Life, the state's largest anti-abortion group.

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AP: US military explosives vanish, emerge in civilian world

The Marine Corps demolition specialist was worried — about America, and about the civil war he feared would follow the presidential election.

And so, block by block, he stole 13 pounds (6 kilograms) of C4 plastic explosives from the training ranges of Camp Lejeune.

“The riots, talk about seizing guns, I saw this country moving towards a scary unknown future,” the sergeant would later write, in a seven-page statement to military investigators. “I had one thing on my mind and one thing only, I am protecting my family and my constitutional rights.”

His crime might have gone undetected, but authorities caught a lucky break in 2018 as they investigated yet another theft from Lejeune, the massive base on coastal North Carolina. In that other case, explosives ended up in the hands of some high school kids.

These are not isolated cases. Hundreds — and possibly thousands — of armor-piercing grenades, hundreds of pounds of plastic explosives, as well as land mines and rockets have been stolen from or lost by the U.S. armed forces over the past decade, according to an ongoing Associated Press investigation into the military’s failure to secure all its weapons of war. Still more explosives were reported missing and later recovered.

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Omicron coronavirus variant found in multiple US states

NEW YORK (AP) — The omicron variant of COVID-19, which had been undetected in the U.S. before the middle of this week, had been discovered in at least five states by the end of Thursday, showing yet again how mutations of the virus can circumnavigate the globe with speed and ease.

Just a day after the first known U.S. case was found in California, tests showed the omicron variant had infected at least five people in the New York City metropolitan area, plus a man from Minnesota who had attended an anime convention in Manhattan in late November.

A Colorado woman who had recently traveled to southern Africa, a Hawaii resident with no recent travel history, and another California resident who traveled to South Africa last month also were infected by the variant, officials said.

Much remains unknown about omicron, including whether it is more contagious, as some health authorities suspect, whether it can thwart vaccines and whether it makes people as sick as the original strain.

Health officials in each state said there was no cause for undue alarm. But the spread of the cases, some involving people who hadn't been away from home recently, meant the variant was likely already circulating domestically in some parts of the U.S.

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Lawyers allied with Trump ordered to pay $175K in sanctions

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Nine lawyers allied with former President Donald Trump were ordered Thursday to pay Detroit and Michigan a total of $175,000 in sanctions for abusing the court system with a sham lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results.

The money, which must be paid within 30 days, will cover the legal costs of defending against the suit, which were more than $153,000 for the city and nearly $22,000 for the state.

U.S. District Judge Linda Parker, who agreed to impose sanctions in August in a scathing opinion, rejected most of the attorneys' objections to Detroit's proposed award, but she did reduce it by about $29,000. Those sanctioned include Sidney Powell, L. Lin Wood and seven other lawyers who were part of the lawsuit filed on behalf of six Republican voters after Joe Biden's 154,000-vote victory over Trump.

“Plaintiffs' attorneys, many of whom seek donations from the public to fund lawsuits like this one ... have the ability to pay this sanction,” Parker wrote.

She previously ordered each of the lawyers to undergo 12 hours of legal education, including six hours in election law.

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New data suggests 1 in 44 US children affected by autism

New autism numbers released Thursday suggest more U.S. children are being diagnosed with the developmental condition and at younger ages.

In an analysis of 2018 data from nearly a dozen states, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that among 8-year-olds, 1 in 44 had been diagnosed with autism. That rate compares with 1 in 54 identified with autism in 2016.

U.S. autism numbers have been on the rise for several years, but experts believe that reflects more awareness and wider availability of services to treat the condition rather than a true increase in the number of affected children.

A separate CDC report released Thursday said that children were 50% more likely to be diagnosed with autism by age 4 in 2018 than in 2014.

“There is some progress being made and the earlier kids get identified, the earlier they can access services that they might need to improve their developmental outcome,’’ said CDC researcher and co-author Kelly Shaw.

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Charges weighed for Michigan shooting suspect's parents

OXFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — A prosecutor on Thursday repeated her criticism of the parents of a boy who is accused of killing four students at a Michigan school, saying their actions went “far beyond negligence” and that a charging decision would come by Friday.

“The parents were the only individuals in the position to know the access to weapons,” Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald said. The gun “seems to have been just freely available to that individual.”

Ethan Crumbley, 15, has been charged as an adult with two dozen crimes, including murder, attempted murder and terrorism, for a shooting Tuesday at Oxford High School in Oakland County, roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Detroit.

Four students were killed and seven more people were injured. Three were in hospitals in stable condition.

The semi-automatic gun was purchased legally by Crumbley’s father last week, according to investigators.

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Baldwin: 'Someone is responsible' for shooting, but 'not me'

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Alec Baldwin said he feels incredible sadness and regret over the shooting that killed a cinematographer on a New Mexico film set, but not guilt.

“Someone is responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who that is, but it’s not me,” Baldwin said in an ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos that aired Thursday night, the first time the actor has spoken in depth on screen about the Oct. 21 shooting on the set of the Western “Rust.” “Honest to god, if I felt I was responsible, I might have killed myself.”

Baldwin said it is essential for investigators to find out who put the bullet in the gun he fired, that was supposed to be empty, that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza.

“There’s only one question to be resolved, and that’s where did the live round come from?” Baldwin said.

Baldwin said in a clip from the interview released a day earlier that “I didn’t pull the trigger. I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them. Never.”

News from © The Associated Press, 2021