Kentucky tornado toll in dozens; less than feared at factory

MAYFIELD, Ky. (AP) — Workers on the night shift at Mayfield Consumer Products were in the middle of the holiday rush, cranking out candles, when a tornado closed in on the factory and the word went out: "Duck and cover.”

Autumn Kirks pulled down her safety goggles and took shelter, tossing aside wax and fragrance buckets to make room. She glanced away from her boyfriend, Lannis Ward, and when she looked back, he was gone.

Gov. Andy Beshear initially said Saturday that only 40 of the 110 people working in the factory at the time were rescued, and that “it’ll be a miracle if anybody else is found alive in it.” But on Sunday, the candle company said that while eight were confirmed dead and eight remained missing, more than 90 others had been located.

Dozens of people in several Kentucky counties are still believed to have died in the storms, but Beshear, after saying Sunday morning the state’s toll could exceed 100, said that afternoon it might be as low as 50.

“We are praying that maybe original estimates of those we have lost were wrong. If so, it’s going to be pretty wonderful,” the governor said.

___

Satellite images, expert suggest Iranian space launch coming

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran appears to be preparing for a space launch as negotiations continue in Vienna over its tattered nuclear deal with world powers, according to an expert and satellite images.

The likely blast off at Iran's Imam Khomeini Spaceport comes as Iranian state media has offered a list of upcoming planned satellite launches in the works for the Islamic Republic's civilian space program, which has been beset by a series of failed launches. Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard runs its own parallel program that successfully put a satellite into orbit last year.

Conducting a launch amid the Vienna talks fits the hard-line posture struck by Tehran's negotiators, who already described six previous rounds of diplomacy as a “draft,” exasperating Western nations. Germany's new foreign minister has gone as far as to warn that “time is running out for us at this point.”

But all this fits into a renewed focus on space by Iran's hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, said Jeffrey Lewis, an expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies who studies Tehran's program. With Iran's former President Hassan Rouhani who shepherded the nuclear deal out of office, concerns about alienating the talks with launches that the U.S. asserts aids Tehran's ballistic missile program likely have faded.

“They’re not walking on eggshells,” Lewis said. “I think Raisi's people have a new balance in mind.”

___

Fox anchor Chris Wallace makes his own news with move to CNN

NEW YORK (AP) — Veteran anchor Chris Wallace has left Fox News after 18 years for CNN, dealing a significant blow to Fox's news operation at a time that it has been overshadowed by the network's opinion side.

Wallace delivered the surprising news that he was leaving at the end of the “Fox News Sunday” show he moderates, and within two hours CNN announced he was joining its new streaming service as an anchor. CNN+ is expected to debut in early 2022.

“It is the last time, and I say this with real sadness, we will meet like this,” Wallace, who is 74, said on his show, which airs on the Fox network and is later rerun on Fox News Channel. “Eighteen years ago, the bosses here at Fox promised me they would never interfere with a guest I booked or a question I asked. And they kept that promise.”

Wallace was a veteran broadcast network newsman, working at both ABC and NBC News, before the late Roger Ailes lured him to Fox with the promise of his own Sunday show. Methodical and never showy — in contrast to his father Mike, the legendary “60 Minutes” reporter — Chris Wallace was known for his willingness to ask hard questions of all guests no matter their politics.

He was the first Fox News personality to moderate a presidential debate, doing it in 2016 and 2020. The debate he moderated last year went off the rails when then-President Donald Trump repeatedly interrupted Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

___

Inflation is painfully high, but some relief may be coming

NEW YORK (AP) — Inflation is painfully high, but this hopefully is close to as bad as it gets.

Consumer prices rose 6.8% for the 12 months ending in November, a 39-year high. Many economists expect inflation to remain near this level a few more months but to then moderate through 2022 for a variety of reasons. And they don't see a repeat of the 1970s or early 1980s, when inflation ran above 10% for frighteningly long stretches.

Households could even see relief in some areas within weeks. Prices have dropped on global markets for crude oil and natural gas, which is filtering into lower prices at the pump and for home heating. That should keep inflation somewhat in check, even if prices keep rising elsewhere in the economy.

To be sure, economists say inflation will likely stay higher than it was before the pandemic, even after it eases through 2022. More often than not in the last 10 years, inflation was below 2%, and it even scraped below zero during parts of 2015. The bigger danger then was too-low inflation, which can also lead to a weak economy.

“This is not going to be an easy fix,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP. “Just because inflation will eventually moderate doesn’t mean that prices are going to go down. They’re up. We’re just lowering the rate of change, not the level of prices.”

___

North Korea's Kim at critical crossroads decade into rule

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Too young. Too weak. Too inexperienced.

Since taking power following his father’s sudden death 10 years ago, Kim Jong Un has erased the widespread doubts that greeted his early attempts to extend his family’s brutal dynastic grip over North Korea.

Early predictions about a regency, a collective leadership or a military coup were crushed by an estimated hundreds of executions and purges targeting family members and the old guard. That ruthless consolidation of power, together with a larger-than-life personality seemingly made for carefully packaged TV propaganda, has allowed Kim to make clear that his authority is absolute.

But as North Korea’s first millennial dictator marks a decade in rule this Friday, he may be facing his toughest moment yet, as crushing sanctions, the pandemic and growing economic trouble converge. If Kim can't uphold his public pledge to develop both nukes and his moribund economy, something many experts see as impossible, it could spell trouble for his long-term rule.

The modest economic growth he achieved for several years through trade and market-oriented reforms was followed by a tightening of international sanctions since 2016, when Kim accelerated his pursuit of nuclear weapons and missiles targeting the United States and its Asian allies.

___

Will new bacon law begin? California grocers seek delay

ELLIOTT, Iowa (AP) — A coalition of California restaurants and grocery stores has filed a lawsuit to block implementation of a new farm animal welfare law, adding to uncertainty about whether bacon and other fresh pork products will be much more expensive or in short supply in the state when the new rules take effect on New Year's Day.

The lawsuit is the latest step in a tumultuous three-year process of enacting rules overwhelmingly approved by voters but that remain in question even as the law is set to begin. Since voters approved Proposition 12 by a 2-to-1 ratio in November 2018, state officials have missed deadlines for releasing specific regulations covering the humane treatment of animals that provide meat for the California market.

Most hog producers haven't made changes to comply with the law. And now a coalition of business owners is seeking more than a two-year delay.

“We’re saying this is not going to work,” said Nate Rose, a spokesman for the California Grocers Association.

While groups are working to delay the measure, the state has eased the transition to the new system. It has allowed pork processed under the old rules and held in cold storage to be sold in California in 2022, which could prevent shortages for weeks or even months.

___

Planning questions emerge at tornado-destroyed candle plant

MAYFIELD, Ky. (AP) — The Mayfield Consumer Products factory was the third-biggest employer in this corner of western Kentucky, an important economic engine that churned out candles that lined the shelves of malls around the U.S.

But why its workers kept making candles Friday night as a tornado bore down on the region remains unclear as rescuers continue scouring the factory wreckage for signs of life.

Kentucky’s governor said Sunday the ferocity of the storm was so great that there was nowhere safe to hide inside the plant.

“It appears most were sheltering in the place they were told to shelter,” Gov. Andy Beshear said. "I hope that area was as safe as it could be, but this thing got hit directly by the strongest tornado we could have possibly imagined.”

A company spokesperson said Sunday that eight of the 110 workers on the overnight shift Friday are confirmed dead and another eight are missing. More than 90 have now been accounted for, making the death toll lower than some had feared hours earlier.

___

Photo from tornado-damaged home lands almost 130 miles away

When Katie Posten walked outside Saturday morning to her car parked in her driveway, she saw something that looked like a note or receipt stuck to the windshield.

She grabbed it and saw it was a black and white photo of a woman in a striped sundress and headscarf holding a little boy in her lap. On the back, written in cursive, it said, “Gertie Swatzell & J.D. Swatzell 1942." A few hours later, Posten would discover that the photo had made quite a journey - almost 130 miles (209 kilometers) on the back of monstrous winds.

Posten had been tracking the tornadoes that hit the middle of the U.S. Friday night, killing dozens of people. They came close to where she lives in New Albany, Indiana, across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky. So she figured it must be debris from someone's damaged home.

“Seeing the date, I realized that was likely from a home hit by a tornado. How else is it going to be there?" Posten said in a phone interview Sunday morning. “It’s not a receipt. It’s well-kept photo."

So, doing what any 21st century person would do, she posted an image of the photo on Facebook and Twitter and asked for help in finding its owners. She said she was hoping someone on social media would have a connection to the photo or share it with someone who had a connection.

___

Tornado survivor: 'Not knowing is worse than knowing'

MAYFIELD, Ky. (AP) — Autumn Kirks said she and her boyfriend, Lannis Ward, had been dating for about a year and were saving money to buy a house. They were both working the night shift at the candle factory for extra money when the tornado struck.

Then Ward, described by Kirks as “a big teddy bear," disappeared — and all she could do was wait.

“Not knowing is worse than knowing right now," she said early Sunday as she stood outside His House Ministries, a nondescript prefabricated building on the edge of Mayfield where people have been told to go to wait for word about the missing.

Later in the day, she got the terrible news — that Ward had been killed in the storm.

In the aftermath of the massive tornado that roared through the western Kentucky darkness early Saturday morning, the chances for good news seem to diminish by the hour.

___

Rain, snow fall as California braces for brunt of storm

The Western U.S. is bracing for the brunt of a major winter storm expected to hit Monday, bringing travel headaches, the threat of localized flooding and some relief in an abnormally warm fall.

Light rain and snow fell in Northern California on Sunday, giving residents a taste of what’s to come. The multiday storm could drop more than 8 feet (2.4 meters) of snow on the highest peaks and drench other parts of California as it pushes south and east before moving out midweek.

“This is a pretty widespread event,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Anna Wanless in Sacramento. “Most of California, if not all, will see some sort of rain and snow.”

The precipitation will bring at least temporary relief to the broader region that’s been gripped by drought caused by climate change. The latest U.S. drought monitor shows parts of Montana, Oregon, California, Nevada and Utah in exceptional drought, which is the worst category.

Most reservoirs that deliver water to states, cities, tribes, farmers and utilities rely on melted snow in the springtime.

News from © The Associated Press, 2021