AP News in Brief 09-16-19
Trump: US locked and loaded for response to attack on Saudis
Trump: US locked and loaded for response to attack on Saudis
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A weekend drone attack on Saudi Arabia that cut into global energy supplies and halved the kingdom’s oil production threatened Sunday to fuel a regional crisis, as the U.S. released new evidence to back up its allegation that Iran was responsible for the assault amid heightened tensions over Tehran’s collapsing nuclear deal.
President Donald Trump said the U.S. had reason to believe it knew who was behind the attack — his secretary of state had blamed Iran the previous day — and assured his Twitter followers that “we are … locked and loaded” depending on verification and were waiting to hear from the Saudis as to who they believe was behind the attack and “under what terms we would proceed!”
The tweets followed a National Security Council meeting at the White House that included Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
A U.S. official said all options, including a military response, were on the table, but said no decisions had been made Sunday. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations.
Hours earlier, senior U.S. officials said satellite imagery and other intelligence showed the strike was inconsistent with one launched from Yemen, where Iranian-backed Houthi rebels had claimed responsibility.
Aramco attacks show company tangled in Saudi politics
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The weekend drone attack on one of the world’s largest crude oil processing plants that dramatically cut into global oil supplies is the most visible sign yet of how Aramco’s stability and security is directly linked to that of its owner — the Saudi government and its ruling family.
The strikes, which U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed on Iran despite staunch denials by Tehran, led to suspension of more than 5% of the world’s daily crude oil production, bringing into focus just how vulnerable the company is to Saudi Arabia’s conflicts outside the country’s borders, particularly with regional rival Iran.
That matters greatly because Aramco produces and exports Saudi Arabia’s more than 9.5 million barrels of oil per day to consumers around the world, primarily in Asia.
It also comes as the state-owned company heads toward a partial public sale. To prepare for an initial public offering, the company has recently taken steps to distance itself from the Saudi government, which is controlled by the Al Saud ruling family.
The plan to list part of Aramco is key to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s economic diversification efforts that are aimed at preparing the kingdom for a future less reliant on oil exports for revenue.
Union votes to strike at GM’s US plants
DETROIT — Roughly 49,000 workers at General Motors plants in the U.S. plan to go on strike just before midnight Sunday, but talks between the United Auto Workers and the automaker will resume.
About 200 plant-level union leaders voted unanimously in favor of a walkout during a meeting Sunday morning in Detroit. Union leaders said the sides were still far apart on several major issues and they apparently weren’t swayed by a GM offer to make new products at or near two of the four plants it had been planning to close, according to someone briefed on the matter.
“We stood up for General Motors when they needed us most,” union Vice President Terry Dittes said in a statement, referring to union concessions that helped GM survive bankruptcy protection in 2009. “Now we are standing together in unity and solidarity for our members.”
UAW spokesman Brian Rothenberg said Sunday evening that contract talks would resume at 10 a.m. Monday, but the strike was still expected to go ahead.
GM on Friday offered to build a new all-electric pickup truck at a factory in Detroit that is slated to close next year, according someone who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because that person wasn’t authorized to disclose details of the negotiations, which hadn’t been released to the public. The automaker also offered to open an electric vehicle battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, where it has a plant that has already stopped making cars. The new factory would be in addition to a proposal to make electric vehicles for a company called Workhorse, the person said.
Biden on racism: Whites ‘can never fully understand’
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Visiting a black church bombed by the Ku Klux Klan during the civil rights era, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Sunday framed current racial tensions as part of an enduring struggle that is older than the nation.
“In a centuries long campaign of violence, fear, trauma, brought upon black people in this country, the domestic terrorism of white supremacy has been the antagonist of our highest ideals since before the founding of this country,” Biden told the 16th Street Baptist Church congregation in downtown Birmingham as they commemorated the 56th anniversary of the bombing that killed four black girls in 1963.
“It’s in the wake of these before-and-after moments,” Biden added, “when the choice between good and evil is starkest.”
From wire sources
Biden’s appearance comes at an inflection point for Democrats’ 2020 leader in the polls. He is trying to capitalize on his strength among older black voters while navigating criticism from some African American and other nonwhite leaders, particularly younger ones, who take a skeptical view of the 76-year-old white man’s willingness and ability to address systemic racism.
New York moves to enact statewide flavored e-cig ban
NEW YORK — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing to enact a statewide ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes amid growing health concerns connected to vaping, especially among young people.
The Democrat announced Sunday that the state health commissioner would be making a recommendation this week to the state Public Health and Health Planning Council. The council can issue emergency regulations that would go into effect as soon as they are voted on and start being enforced in as soon as two weeks, following a short grace period for retailers, officials said.
In announcing the action, Cuomo sharply criticized the flavors that are for sale, like bubble gum and cotton candy.
“These are obviously targeted to young people and highly effective at targeting young people,” he said.
Officials pointed to a significant increase of e-cigarettes by young people, which they said was driven by the flavors.
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Rocker Ric Ocasek, frontman of The Cars, dead at 75
NEW YORK — Ric Ocasek, The Cars frontman whose deadpan vocal delivery and lanky, sunglassed look defined a rock era with chart-topping hits like “Just What I Needed,” was discovered dead Sunday afternoon in his Manhattan apartment.
The New York Police Department said that officers found the 75-year-old Ocasek at about 4 p.m. after responding to a 911 call. They said there were no signs of foul play and that the medical examiner was to determine a cause of death.
The death comes a year after The Cars were inducted into the Rock &Roll Hall of Fame, followed by an announcement by model Paulina Porizkova on social media that she and Ocasek had separated after 28 years of marriage. The pair first met while filming the music video for “Drive,” another Cars hit.
Ocasek, who sang, played guitar and wrote most of the band’s songs, and Benjamin Orr, who played bass and also sang, were ex-hippie buddies who formed The Cars in Boston in 1976. They were a decade older than many of their modern-rock compatriots but became one of the most essential American bands of the late 1970s and 1980s with their fusion of new wave, 1960s pop and 1970s glam.
Ocasek’s minimalist, half-spoken deadpan vocals set made the band’s sound, and his long, lanky appearance formed their lasting image.
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No millennial bump for Buttigieg, but hints of broad appeal
DES MOINES, Iowa — Pete Buttigieg would like to turn the fight for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination into a contest about generational change. But there’s one looming problem: He has yet to win over his own.
His lack of any ample base of support, even among his fellow millennials, is a central challenge of the 37-year-old’s long shot bid to rise from mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to the nation’s highest office. He plays well across a broad spectrum of Democratic voters, but in small fragments that have left him an intriguing candidate stuck in single digits in national polls.
“You can put groups of candidates into corners. What corner do you put Pete Buttigieg in?” said J. Ann Selzer, longtime director of the Iowa Poll, produced by The Des Moines Register and its partners. “I think that the combination of characteristics that most define Buttigieg fit him rather uniquely. He appears to be a cluster of one.”
As such, he needs to try to leverage that kind of appeal into votes against a field where candidates with clearer ideological positions, such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have more natural core constituencies.
There was hope for Buttigeig in a Register poll in June that showed his overall viability footprint — measuring Iowans listing him as their first or second choice, or merely considering him — closely trailed the survey’s top choices: former Vice President Joe Biden, Sanders and Warren.
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Dem presidential candidates call for Kavanaugh’s impeachment
WASHINGTON — Several Democratic presidential candidates on Sunday lined up to call for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the face of a new, uninvestigated, allegation of sexual impropriety when he was in college.
Kavanaugh was confirmed last October after emotional hearings in the Senate over a sexual assault allegation from his high school years. The New York Times now reports that Kavanaugh faced a separate allegation from his time at Yale University and that the FBI did not investigate the claim. The latest claim mirrors one offered during his confirmation process by Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate who claimed Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a drunken party.
When he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, Kavanaugh denied all allegations of impropriety .
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said after the new report that “Brett Kavanaugh lied to the U.S. Senate and most importantly to the American people.” She tweeted: “He must be impeached.”
A 2020 rival, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, tweeted that “Confirmation is not exoneration, and these newest revelations are disturbing. Like the man who appointed him, Kavanaugh should be impeached.”
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Precarious spot for mobile home owners as investors swoop in
ASPEN, Colorado — When the time came for her to sell the mobile home park she and her son owned near Aspen, 89-year-old Harriett Noyes had two big offers and an even bigger decision: Take nearly $30 million from a developer who would likely evict her family and friends to build luxury homes, or sell to the county for a fraction of that to preserve affordable housing in one of the most expensive areas in the United States.
She chose family and friends.
“I could see the need for the people to have a place to live, and this was their life and they had homes,” said Noyes, who has lived in the Phillips Mobile Home Park for more than four decades. “I just didn’t have the heart to just jerk it out from under ‘em.”
Carved into a red-rock hillside along the banks of the Roaring Fork River in the mountains of western Colorado, the park is one of the last bastions of affordable housing in the area, which takes pride in its world-class skiing and is a veritable playground for the rich and the famous. Noyes and her son Hyrum, 61, sold the 76-acre park to Pitkin County for $6.5 million in 2018 with the promise of upgrades and to keep the community affordable. The deal preserved as affordable housing 35 mobile homes, four cabins and an old ranch house, according to The Aspen Times.
Across the country, mobile home parks are an attractive investment. Tenants own their homes but not the land they sit on, and because the homes aren’t actually easy to move, are at the mercy of landlords, who can increase rents or sell the land out from under them.
