orlando, fla. — Students and teachers will be able to speak freely about sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms, provided it’s not part of instruction, under a settlement reached Monday between Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys who had challenged a state law which critics dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.”

The settlement clarifies what is allowed in Florida classrooms following passage two years ago of the law prohibiting instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades. Opponents said the law had created confusion about whether teachers could identity themselves as LGBTQ+ or if they even could have rainbow stickers in classrooms.

Other states used the Florida law as a template to pass prohibitions on classroom instruction on gender identity or sexual orientation. Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky and North Carolina are among the states with versions of the law.

Under the terms of the settlement, the Florida Board of Education will send instructions to every school district saying the Florida law doesn’t prohibit discussing LGBTQ+ people, nor prevent anti-bullying rules on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or disallow Gay-Straight Alliance groups. The settlement also spells out that the law is neutral — meaning what applies to LGBTQ+ people also applies to heterosexual people — and that it doesn’t apply to library books not being used for instruction in the classroom.

The law also doesn’t apply to books with incidental references to LGBTQ+ characters or same-sex couples, “as they are not instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity any more than a math problem asking students to add bushels of apples is instruction on apple farming,” according to the settlement.

“What this settlement does, is, it re-establishes the fundamental principal, that I hope all Americans agree with, which is every kid in this country is entitled to an education at a public school where they feel safe, their dignity is respected and where their families and parents are welcomed,” Roberta Kaplan, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said in an interview. “This shouldn’t be a controversial thing.”

In a statement, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ office described the deal as a “major win” with the law formally known as the Parental Rights in Education Act remaining intact.

“We fought hard to ensure this law couldn’t be maligned in court, as it was in the public arena by the media and large corporate actors,” said Ryan Newman, an attorney for the state of Florida. “We are victorious, and Florida’s classrooms will remain a safe place under the Parental Rights in Education Act.”

The law has been championed by the Republican governor since before its passage in 2022 by the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature. It barred instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through the third grade, and it was expanded to all grades last year.

Republican lawmakers had argued that parents should broach these subjects with children and that the law protected children from being taught about inappropriate material.

But opponents of the law said it created a chilling effect in classrooms. Some teachers said they were unsure if they could mention or display a photo of their same-sex partner in the classroom. In some cases, books dealing with LGBTQ+ topics were removed from classrooms and lines mentioning sexual orientation were excised from school musicals. The Miami-Dade County School Board in 2022 decided not to adopt a resolution recognizing LGBTQ History Month, even though it had done so a year earlier.

The law also triggered the ongoing legal battles between DeSantis and Disney over control of the governing district for Walt Disney World in central Florida after DeSantis took control of the government in what the company described as retaliation for its opposition to the legislation. DeSantis touted the fight with Disney during his run for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, which he ended earlier this year.

The civil rights attorneys sued Florida education officials on behalf of teachers, students and parents, claiming the law was unconstitutional, but the case was dismissed last year by a federal judge in Tallahassee who said they lacked standing to sue. The case was appealed to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Kaplan said they believed the appellate court would have reversed the lower court’s decision, but continuing the lawsuit would have delayed any resolution for several more years.

“The last thing we wanted for the kids in Florida was more delay,” Kaplan said.
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NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump said Monday that he still believes TikTok poses a national security risk but is opposed to banning the hugely popular app because doing so would help its rival, Facebook, which he continues to lambast over his 2020 election loss.

Trump, in a call-in interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” was asked about his comments last week that seemed to voice opposition to a bill being advanced by Congress that would effectively ban TikTok and other ByteDance apps from the Apple and Google app stores as well as U.S. web hosting services.

“Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it,” Trump told the hosts. “There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok you’re going to make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with a lot of the media.”

“When I look at it, I’m not looking to make Facebook double the size,” he added. “I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections.”

Trump has repeatedly complained about Facebook’s role during the 2020 election, which he still refuses to concede he lost to President Joe Biden. That includes at least $400 million that its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and his wife donated to two nonprofit organizations that distributed grants to state and local governments to help them conduct the 2020 election at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The donations — which were fully permitted under campaign finance law — went to pay for things like equipment to process mail ballots and drive-thru voting locations.

TikTok, a video-sharing app, has emerged as a major issue in the 2024 presidential campaign. The platform has about 170 million users in the U.S., most of whom skew younger — a demographic that both parties are desperately trying to court ahead of November’s general election. Younger voters have become especially hard for campaigns to reach as they gravitate away from traditional platforms like cable television.

Biden’s 2024 campaign officially joined TikTok last month, even though he has expressed his own national security concerns over the platform, banned it on federal devices and on Friday endorsed the legislation that could lead to its ban.

The bill passed unanimously by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee calls on China’s ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok or effectively face a U.S. ban. Top Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, support the bill. Johnson has indicated it will soon come up for a full vote in the House.

As president, Trump attempted to ban TikTok through an executive order that called “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in the People’s Republic of China (China)” a threat to “the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States.” The courts, however, blocked the action after TikTok sued, arguing such actions would violate free speech and due process rights.

Pressed on whether he still believed the app posed a national security risk, Trump said Monday: “I do believe it. And we have to very much go into privacy and make sure that we are protecting the American people’s privacy and data rights.”

“But,” he went on to say, “you have that problem with Facebook and lots of other companies, too.” Some American companies, he charged, are “not so American. They deal in China. And if China wants anything from them they will give it. So that’s a national security risk also.”

Biden in 2022 banned the use of TikTok by the federal government’s nearly 4 million employees on devices owned by its agencies, with limited exceptions for law enforcement, national security and security research purposes.

He also recently signed an executive order that allows the Department of Justice and other federal agencies to take steps to prevent the large-scale transfer of Americans’ personal data to what the White House calls “countries of concern,” including China.

Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that TikTok owner ByteDance could share user data — such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers — with China’s authoritarian government. TikTok said it has never done that and wouldn’t do so if asked. The U.S. government also hasn’t provided evidence of that happening.

Trump had first voiced support for the app in a post on his Truth Social site last week. “If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business. I don’t want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better,” he wrote. “They are a true Enemy of the People!”

Trump, in the interview, said he had not discussed the company with Jeff Yass, a TikTok investor and a major GOP donor. Trump said the two had recently met “very briefly” but that Yass “never mentioned TikTok.”

Trump also confirmed he met last week with Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX who has increasingly aligned himself with conservative politics. Trump said he didn’t know whether Musk would end up supporting his campaign, noting they “obviously have opposing views on a minor subject called electric cars,” which Trump has railed against.
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CHARLESTON, W.Va — Democrat Kayla Young and Republican Patricia Rucker frequently clash on abortion rights and just about everything else in West Virginia’s Legislature, but they agree on one thing: Too few of their colleagues are women, and it’s hurting the state.

“There are exceptions to every single rule, but I think in general, men do kind of see this as their field,” said Rucker, part of the GOP’s Senate supermajority that passed one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans while Young — the lone Democratic woman elected to the House — opposed it.

Nearly 130 years since the first three women were elected to state legislative offices in the U.S., women remain massively underrepresented in state legislatures.

In 10 states, women make up less than 25% of their state legislatures, according to Rutgers’ Center for American Women in Politics. West Virginia is at the very bottom of that list, having just 16 women in its 134-member Legislature, or just under 12%. That’s compared with Nevada, where women occupy just over 60% of state legislative seats. Similarly low numbers can be found in the nearby southern states of Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Louisiana.

“It’s absolutely wild to know that more than 50 percent of the population of West Virginia are women, and sometimes I’m the only woman that’s on a committee, period,” said Young, currently the only woman on the House Artificial Intelligence Committee and was one of just two on the House Judiciary Committee when it greenlighted the state’s near total abortion ban.

The numbers of women filling legislative seats across the U.S. have remained low despite women registering and voting at higher rates than men in every presidential election since 1980 — and across virtually every demographic, including race, education level and socioeconomic status.

For the last three decades, voters have demonstrated a willingness to cast ballots for women. But they didn’t have the opportunity to do so because women weren’t running, said Jennifer Lawless, chair of the politics department at the University of Virginia.

“The gender gap in political ambition is just as large now as it was then,” said Lawless, adding that women are much less likely to get recruited to run for office or think they’re qualified to run in what they perceive as a hostile political environment.

And those running in southern, conservative states — still mostly Democratic women, data show — aren’t winning as those states continue to overwhelmingly elect Republicans.

In 2022, 39 women ran as their party’s nominee for state legislative seats in West Virginia, and 26 were Democrats. Only two of the Democratic candidates won, compared to 11 out of 13 of the Republicans.

Debbie Walsh, director of Rutgers’ Center for American Women in Politics, said there’s more money, infrastructure and support for recruiting and running Democratic female candidates. The Republican Party often shies away from talking about what is labeled or dismissed as “identity politics,'” she said.

“It’s a belief in a kind of meritocracy and, ‘the best candidate will rise. And if it’s a woman, great.’ They don’t say, ‘We don’t want women, but if it’s a man, that’s fine, too,'” she said. “There’s no sort of value in and of itself seen in the diversity.”

Larissa Martinez, founder and president of Women’s Public Leadership Network, one of only a few right-leaning U.S. organizations solely supporting female candidates, said identity politics within the GOP is a big hurdle to her work. Part of her organization’s slogan is, “we are pro-women without being anti-man.”

In 2020, small-town public school teacher Amy Grady pulled off a huge political upset when she defeated then-Senate President Mitch Carmichael in West Virginia’s Republican primary, following back-to-back years of strikes in which school employees packed into the state Capitol.

Carmichael took in more than $127,000 in contributions compared to Grady’s self-funded war chest of just over $2,000. Still, Grady won by fewer than 1,000 votes.

“It’s just you’re told constantly, ‘You can’t, you can’t, you can’t do it,'” said Grady, who has now risen through the ranks to become chair of the Senate Education Committee. “And it’s just like, why give it a shot?”

Tennessee state Sen. Charlane Oliver says she didn’t have many resources when she first raised her hand to run for political office. She had to rely on grassroots activism and organizing to win her 2022 election.

Yet securing the seat was just part of the battle. Oliver, a 41-year-old Black Democratic woman, is frequently tasked with providing the only outside perspective inside for the Republican supermajority Legislature.

“They don’t have any incentive to listen to me, but I view my seat as disruption and give you a perspective that you may not have heard before,” she said.

Many male-dominant statehouses have enacted strict abortion bans in GOP-controlled states since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. For many female lawmakers, this trend has meant sharing deeply personal stories surrounding abortion and childbirth.

In South Carolina, the abortion debate resulted in an unlikely coalition of women banding together to filibuster a near-total abortion ban. The five female senators — three Republicans, two Democrats and one independent — quickly became known as the “sister senators” as they took turns describing pregnancy complications, the dangers surrounding limited access to contraceptives and the reproductive system.

Their actions were met with praise from national leaders, but at home, the consequences have been swift. The Republican women received censures and promises of primary challenges in this year’s elections.

Women also have championed gun policy, education, health care, and housing proposals.

Recently, some states have allowed candidates to make childcare an allowable expense for campaign finance purposes. Young was the sponsor of her state’s law — one of her priorities during her first session in the Capitol in the minority party.

During Young’s first term in office, she relied on a family member who would care for her two young children while he was at the state Capitol. But she was left without a solution last year when that caregiver passed away unexpectedly days before the session. Her husband, who works in television production, had to stay home and didn’t work for two months, meaning the family lost out on his income.

Young’s bill won the vote of Rucker, the first Hispanic woman elected to the West Virginia Senate. She too has had to juggle the challenges of being a working mom. She left her job as a teacher to homeschool her five children, and the family relied on her husband’s salary as a pediatric nurse to make ends meet.

“I ran for office because I feel like having that voice is actually really important — someone who lives paycheck to paycheck,” said Rucker, a first-generation U.S. citizen who made the difficult decision to pull her kids. “I’m not here because of a title, I’m not here because of a position, I’m here to do my job, and I want to do the best I can.”
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Los Angeles — “Oppenheimer,” a solemn three-hour biopic that became an unlikely billion-dollar box-office sensation, was crowned best picture at a 96th Academy Awards that doubled as a coronation for Christopher Nolan.

After passing over arguably Hollywood’s foremost big-screen auteur for years, the Oscars made up for lost time by heaping seven awards on Nolan’s blockbuster biopic, including best actor for Cillian Murphy, best supporting actor for Robert Downey Jr. and best director for Nolan.

In anointing “Oppenheimer,” the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences did something it hasn’t done for more than a decade: hand its top prize to a widely seen, big-budget studio film. In a film industry where a cape, dinosaur or Tom Cruise has often been a requirement for such box office, “Oppenheimer” brought droves of moviegoers to theaters with a complex, fission-filled drama about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb.

“For better or worse, we’re all living in Robert Oppenheimer’s world,” said Murphy in his acceptance speech. “I’d like to dedicate this to the peacemakers.”

As a film heavy with unease for human capacity for mass destruction, “Oppenheimer” also emerged – even over its partner in cultural phenomenon, “Barbie” – as a fittingly foreboding film for times rife with cataclysm, man-made or not. Sunday’s Oscars at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles unfolded against the backdrop of wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and with a potentially momentous U.S. election on the horizon.

The most closely watched contest of the Academy Awards went to Emma Stone, who won best best actress for her performance as Bella Baxter in “Poor Things.”

In what was seen as the night’s most nail-biting category, Stone won over Lily Gladstone of “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Gladstone would have become the first Native American to win an Academy Award.

Instead, Oscar voters couldn’t resist the full-bodied extremes of Stone’s “Poor Things” performance. The win for Stone, her second best actress Oscar following her 2019 win for “La La Land,” confirmed the 35-year-old as arguably the preeminent big-screen actress of her generation. The list of women to win best actress two or more times is illustrious, including Katherine Hepburn, Frances McDormand, Ingrid Bergman and Bette Davis.

“Oh, boy, this is really overwhelming,” said Stone.

Nolan has had many movies in the Oscar mix before, including “Inception,” “Dunkirk” and “The Dark Knight.” But his win Sunday for direction is the first Academy Award for the 53-year-old filmmaker.

In his acceptance speech, Nolan noted cinema is just over a hundred years old.

“We don’t know where this incredible journey is going from here,” said Nolan. “But to think that I’m a meaningful part of it means the world to me.”

Protest and politics intruded on an election-year Academy Awards on Sunday, where demonstrations for Gaza raged outside the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, and awards went to “Oppenheimer,” “The Zone of Interest” and “20 Days in Mariupol.”

Sunday’s broadcast, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, had plenty of razzle dazzle, including a sprawling song-and-dance rendition of the “Barbie” hit “I’m Just Ken” by Ryan Gosling, with an assist on guitar by Slash. A sea of Kens swarmed the stage.

The lead winner, as expected was “Oppenheimer,” the blockbuster biopic. Though not quite the clean sweep that some expected, “Oppenheimer” was overpowering all competition — including its release-date companion, “Barbie” — winning awards for its cinematography, editing, score and Robert Downey Jr.’s supporting performance.

Downey, nominated twice before (for “Chaplin” and “Tropic Thunder”), notched his first Oscar, crowning the illustrious second act of his up-and-down career.

“I’d like to thank my terrible childhood and the academy, in that order,” said Downey, the son of filmmaker Robert Downey Sr.

“Barbie,” last year’s biggest box-office hit with more than $1.4 billion in ticket sales, didn’t win an award until almost three hours into the ceremony. It won best song (sorry, Ken) for Billie Eilish and Finneas’ “What Was I Made For?” It’s their second Oscar, two years after winning for their James Bond theme, “No Time to Die.”

But after an awards season that stayed largely inside a Hollywood bubble, geopolitics played a prominent role. Protests over Israel’s war in Gaza snarled traffic around the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, slowing stars’ arrival on the red carpet and turning the Oscar spotlight toward the ongoing conflict. Some protesters shouted “Shame!” at those trying to reach the awards.

Jonathan Glazer, the British filmmaker whose chilling Auschwitz drama “The Zone of Interest” won best international film, drew connections between the dehumanization depicted in his film and today.

“Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel, or the the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims, this dehumanization, how do we resist?”

The war in Gaza was on the minds of many attendees, as was the war in Ukraine. A year after “Navalny” won the same award, Mstyslav Chernov’s “20 Days in Mariupol,” a harrowing chronicle of the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, won best documentary. The win, a first for The Associated Press and PBS’ “Frontline,” came as the war in Ukraine passed the two-year mark with no signs of abating.

Mstyslav Chernov, the Ukrainian filmmaker and AP journalist whose hometown was bombed the day he learned of his Oscar nomination, spoke forcefully about Russia’s invasion.

“This is the first Oscar in Ukrainian history,” said Chernov. “And I’m honored. Probably I will be the first director on this stage to say I wish I’d never made this film. I wish to be able to exchange this (for) Russia never attacking Ukraine.”

In the early going, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Frankenstein-riff “Poor Things” ran away with three prizes for its sumptuous craft, including awards for production design, makeup and hairstyling and costume design.

Kimmel, hosting the ABC telecast for the fourth time, opened the awards with a monologue that drew a few cold looks (from Downey, Sandra Hüller and Messi, the dog from best-picture nominee “Anatomy of a Fall”). But Kimmel, emphasizing Hollywood as “a union town” following 2023’s actor and writer strikes, drew a standing ovation for bringing out teamsters and behind-the-scenes workers — who are now entering their own labor negotiations.

The night’s first award was one of its most predictable: Da’Vine Joy Randolph for best supporting actress, for her performance in Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers.” An emotional Randolph was accompanied to the stage by her “Holdovers” co-star Paul Giamatti.

“For so long I’ve always wanted to be different,” said Randolph. “And now I realize I just need to be myself.”

Though Randolph’s win was widely expected, an upset quickly followed. Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” won for best animated feature, a surprise over the slightly favored “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” Miyazaki, the 83-year-old Japanese anime master who came out of retirement to make “The Boy and the Heron,” didn’t attend the ceremony. He also didn’t attend the 2003 Oscars when his “Spirited Away” won the same award.

Best original screenplay went to “Anatomy of a Fall,” which, like “Barbie,” was penned by a couple: director Justine Triet and Arthur Harari. “This will help me through my midlife crisis, I think,” said Triet.

In adapted screenplay, where “Barbie” was nominated — and where some suspected Greta Gerwig would win after being overlooked for director — the Oscar went to Cord Jefferson, who wrote and directed his feature film debut “American Fiction.” He pleaded for executives to take risks on young filmmakers like himself.

“Instead of making a $200 million movie, try making 20 $10 million movies,” said Jefferson, previously an award-winning TV writer.

The Oscars belonged largely to theatrical-first films. Though it came into the awards with 19 nominations, Netflix was a bit player. Its lone win came for live action short: Wes Anderson’s “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” based on the story by Roald Dahl.

While “Barbie” bested (and helped lift) “Oppenheimer” at the box office, it took a back seat to Nolan’s film at the Oscars. Gerwig was notably overlooked for best director, sparking an outcry that some, even Hillary Clinton, said mimicked the patriarchy parodied in the film.
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Beijing, China — Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries, or ZPMC, said on Sunday its cranes do not pose a cybersecurity threat, after U.S. congressional committees questioned the Chinese state-owned company’s work on cranes bound for the United States.

The House of Representatives’ security panels, scrutinizing ZPMC’s installation of Swiss engineering group ABB’s equipment onto U.S.-bound ship-to-shore cranes, in January invited ABB executives to public hearings to clarify its relationship with ZPMC, which they said raised “significant concerns.”

“ZPMC takes the U.S. concerns seriously and believes that these reports can easily mislead the public without sufficient factual review,” it said in a filing, referring to the probe by the Homeland Security and Strategic Competition committees.

“The cranes provided by ZPMC do not pose a cybersecurity risk to any ports,” it said.

ABB has said it sold its control and electrification equipment to many crane manufacturers, including Chinese companies, which in turn sold cranes directly to U.S. ports.

The U.S. and China, the world’s biggest economies, frequently accuse each other of cyberattacks and industrial espionage. Washington this year said it had disrupted a Chinese cyber-spying operation targeting U.S. infrastructure and was investigating Chinese vehicle imports for national security risks. It previously barred Chinese telecom companies.

ZPMC said the cranes it supplies are used in ports around the world, including the United States, and comply with international standards and applicable laws and regulations.

Listed on the Shanghai stock exchange, ZPMC is one of the largest port machinery manufacturers in the world, owning a fleet of more than 20 transportation vessels, according to its website.

ABB generates 16% of its sales from China, second only to the U.S. market at 24%.
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Kansas City, Missouri — Some of the people who attended the near-record cold Kansas City Chiefs playoff game in January had to undergo amputations after suffering frostbite, a Missouri hospital said Friday.

Research Medical Center didn’t provide exact numbers but said in a statement that it treated dozens of people who had experienced frostbite during an 11-day cold snap in January. Twelve of those people — including some who were at the Jan. 13 game — had to undergo amputations involving mostly fingers and toes. And the hospital said more surgeries are expected over the next two to four weeks as “injuries evolve.”

The University of Kansas hospital said it also treated frostbite victims after the game but didn’t report any amputations.

The temperature for the Dolphins-Chiefs wild-card playoff game was minus 20 Celsius, and wind gusts made for a windchill of minus 33 C. That shattered the record for the coldest game in Arrowhead Stadium history, which had been minus 17 C, set in a 1983 game against Denver and matched in 2016 against Tennessee.

The wild-card game was played the same day the Buffalo Bills were supposed to host the Pittsburgh Steelers, but that game was pushed back a day because a blizzard dumped more than half a meter of snow in New York and made traveling to the game too dangerous.

The game in Kansas City went on as scheduled because the frigid weather didn’t present similar problems getting to Arrowhead Stadium, even though the National Weather Service warned of “dangerously cold” windchills.

Frostbite can occur on exposed skin within 30 minutes, Dr. Megan Garcia, the medical director of the Grossman Burn Center at Research, said in a statement that answered one of the top questions she is asked. The timing can be even shorter if there is a windchill, she said.

Fans were allowed to bring heated blankets into the stadium and small pieces of cardboard to place under their feet on the cold concrete.

The coldest game in NFL history remains minus 25 C for the 1967 NFL championship, when the Packers beat the Cowboys at Lambeau Field in a game that came to be known as the Ice Bowl. The windchill that day was minus minus 44 C.

The Chiefs didn’t immediately respond to email messages from The Associated Press seeking comment.
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As U.S. voters prepare for a new round of primaries Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden and his Republican political rival Donald Trump traveled to the swing state of Georgia over the weekend to hold parallel campaign events. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has a recap of the main arguments made by each candidate, who are closer than ever to becoming their respective parties’ 2024 presidential nominees.
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The United States Army deployed a massive ship from Virginia to the eastern Mediterranean. It’s loaded with gear to begin construction of a floating pier to deliver aid to Gaza amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
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Los Angeles — Hollywood’s glitterati gather on Sunday to celebrate the best performances in film at the annual Academy Awards, a ceremony expected to turn into a toast to blockbuster atomic bomb drama “Oppenheimer.”

Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel returns for the fourth time to emcee the film industry’s highest honors from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

“Oppenheimer,” the three-hour drama directed by Christopher Nolan, leads the field with 13 nominations. The movie is the frontrunner to win the prestigious best picture prize, capping its sweep of other major awards this year.

“If the best picture isn’t ‘Oppenheimer,’ it will be one of the biggest upsets, if not the biggest upset, in the history of the Oscars,” said Scott Feinberg, executive editor for awards at The Hollywood Reporter.

After 2023 was marred by actors and writers strikes, the Oscars give Hollywood a chance to celebrate two global hits. “Oppenheimer” and feminist doll adventure “Barbie,” another best picture nominee, brought in a combined $2.4 billion in a summer box office battle dubbed “Barbenheimer.”

Oscar producers said they have planned unannounced cameos and other surprises to entertain audiences at home.

“My biggest hope is that they go through a range of emotions with us, that they feel happiness and joy, that we maybe make them shed a tear,” Executive Producer Raj Kapoor said. “And then they somehow feel connected and inspired to also live their dreams.”

Supporting actor nominee Ryan Gosling will sing the ’80s-style rock anthem “I’m Just Ken” from “Barbie.” Members of the Osage Nation will perform the nominated “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” from “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Cillian Murphy, the Irish actor who played physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer as he led the race to build the first atomic bomb, is considered the favorite for best actor. Murphy’s main competition, according to awards pundits, is “The Holdovers” star Paul Giamatti.

Best actress may go to Lily Gladstone of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the real-life story about a murder plot to take over lucrative Osage oil rights in 1920s Oklahoma. If she prevails, Gladstone would be the first Native American actress to win an acting Oscar.

Gladstone’s rivals include previous Oscar winner Emma Stone, nominated this year for playing a woman revived from the dead in the dark and wacky comedy “Poor Things.”

The supporting actor race features “Oppenheimer” star Robert Downey Jr., who played the scientist’s professional nemesis, and Sterling K. Brown from “American Fiction.”

Da’Vine Joy Randolph, praised for her role as a grieving mother in “The Holdovers,” vies for best supporting actress against Danielle Brooks from “The Color Purple” and others.

“Barbie,” last year’s No. 1 film with $1.4 billion in global ticket sales, may be shut out of the top awards. Billie Eilish’s “Barbie” ballad “What Was I Made For?” is likely to win the original song prize, Feinberg said, and could snag the awards for costumes and production design.

For Nolan, the night could bring his first directing Oscar, as well as the award for adapted screenplay. The director of “The Dark Knight” trilogy, “Inception” and other acclaimed films has never had a movie win best picture.

The ceremony may end with “the industry-wide coronation for Christopher Nolan,” Feinberg said. With “Oppenheimer,” “he has he has made his best possible argument yet for why he is worthy of this recognition.”
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Washington — The U.S. military said on Sunday it has carried out an operation in Haiti to airlift non-essential embassy personnel from the country and added U.S. forces bolster embassy security, as Caribbean nation reels under a state of emergency.

The operation was the latest sign of Haiti’s troubles as gang violence threatens to bring down the government and has led thousands to flee their homes.

“This airlift of personnel into and out of the embassy is consistent with our standard practice for embassy security augmentation worldwide, and no Haitians were on board the military aircraft,” the U.S. military’s Southern Command said in a statement.

Haiti entered a state of emergency last Sunday after fighting escalated while Prime Minister Ariel Henry was in Nairobi seeking a deal for the long-delayed U.N.-backed mission.

Kenya announced last year it would lead the force but months of domestic legal wrangling have effectively placed the mission on hold.

On Saturday, the U.S. State Department said Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Kenyan President William Ruto about the Haiti crisis and the two men underscored their commitment to a multinational security mission to restore order.

In Southern Command’s statement, it said Washington remained committed to those goals.

“Our embassy remains focused on advancing U.S. government efforts to support the Haitian people, including mobilizing support for the Haitian National Police, expediting the deployment of the United Nations-authorized Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission and accelerating a peaceful transition of power via free and fair elections,” it said.
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DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — A U.S. Army vessel carrying equipment for building a temporary pier in Gaza was on its way to the Mediterranean on Sunday, three days after U.S. President Joe Biden announced plans to ramp up aid deliveries by sea to the besieged enclave where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been going hungry.

The opening of the sea corridor, along with airdrops by the U.S., Jordan and others, showed increasing alarm over Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and a new willingness to bypass Israeli control over land shipments.

Israel said it welcomed the sea deliveries and would inspect Gaza-bound cargo before it leaves a staging area in nearby Cyprus. The daily number of aid trucks entering Gaza by land over the past five months has been far below the 500 that entered before the war because of Israeli restrictions and security issues.

Meanwhile, Biden stepped up his public criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden said he believes Netanyahu is “hurting Israel more than helping Israel” in how he is approaching its war against Hamas in Gaza, now in its sixth month.

Speaking Saturday to MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart, the president expressed support for Israel’s right to pursue Hamas after the militants’ October 7 attack on southern Israel but said that Netanyahu “must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken.” He added that “you cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead.”

In Gaza, Palestinian casualties continued to rise.

The Civil Defense Department said at least nine Palestinians, including children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City late Saturday.

Footage shared by the civil defense showed first responders pulling out the dead and injured trapped in the collapsed house. One rescuer was seen holding a dead infant, before placing the limp body on a sofa amid the wreckage.

Elsewhere, the bodies of 13 people, including women and children, were taken to the main hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah on Sunday, according to an Associated Press journalist. Relatives said the 13 were killed by Israeli artillery fire toward a large tent camp for displaced Palestinians in the coastal area east of the southern city of Khan Younis.

Israel rarely comments on specific incidents during the war. It has held that Hamas is responsible for civilian casualties because the militant group operates from within civilian areas.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said Saturday that at least 30,960 Palestinians have been killed since the war began. It doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government, and its figures from previous wars have largely matched those of the U.N. and independent experts.

Meanwhile, U.S. efforts got under way to set up the temporary pier in Gaza for the sea deliveries. U.S. Central Command said a first U.S. Army vessel, the General Frank S. Besson, left a base in Virginia on Saturday and was on its way to the Eastern Mediterranean with equipment for pier construction.

United States officials said it will likely be weeks before the pier is operational.

The sea corridor is backed by the EU together with the United States, the United Arab Emirates and other countries. The European Commission has said that U.N. agencies and the Red Cross will also play a role.

A ship belonging to Spain’s Open Arms aid group was expected to make a pilot voyage to test the corridor as early as this weekend. The ship has been waiting at Cyprus’s port of Larnaca.

Open Arms founder Oscar Camps has said the ship, which is pulling a barge with 200 tons of rice and flour, would take two to three days to arrive at an undisclosed location.

A member of the charity World Central Kitchen, which is also involved in the test run, said in a post on X that once the barge reaches Gaza, the aid would be off-loaded by a crane, be placed on trucks and driven to northern Gaza, which has been largely cut off from aid shipments.

Senior aid officials have warned that air and sea deliveries can’t make up for a shortage of supply routes on land.

The new push for getting more aid in came on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which follows a lunar calendar and could start as early as Sunday evening, depending on the sighting of a crescent moon.

Israel declared war on October 7 after Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians and taking 250 hostages. Israel’s blistering air and ground offensive has devastated large parts of Gaza, displaced about 80% of the population of 2.3 million and set off a worsening humanitarian crisis.

The U.S. and regional mediators Egypt and Qatar had hoped to have a six-week cease-fire in place by the start of Ramadan, but talks appeared to be stalled, with Hamas holding out for assurances that a temporary truce will lead to an end of hostilities.

Mediators had hoped to alleviate some of the immediate crisis with the temporary cease-fire, which would have seen Hamas release some of the Israeli hostages it’s holding, Israel release some Palestinian prisoners and aid groups be given access for a major influx of assistance into Gaza.
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NEW YORK — Fear of crime on subways and buses is back as a top concern in some U.S. cities, and so are efforts to persuade the public officials take the issue seriously.

New York’s governor said Wednesday she would task 750 members of the National Guard with helping patrol the nation’s busiest subway system, saying she felt New York City police needed reinforcements after a shooting on a train platform and a conductor getting slashed in the neck.

In Pennsylvania, legislators created a special prosecutor to go after crimes committed in the transit system that serves the southeast of the state. Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker on Thursday promised to beef up police patrols and use “every legal and constitutional tool” after a spate of transit-related shootings left three dead and 12 wounded, many of them schoolchildren.

“Enough is enough,” she said on WURD radio.

It remains to be seen whether such moves will have any effect on reducing crime in these massive public transit systems.

At least in New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul acknowledged that calling in the National Guard was as much about soothing fears and making a political statement as it was about making mass transit safer. The city’s subways, the Democrat said, were quite safe already. And felony crime hasn’t risen significantly. But a show of force might help dispel anxieties more than any statistic, she reasoned.

“If you feel better walking past someone in a uniform to make sure that someone doesn’t bring a knife or a gun on the subway, then that’s exactly why I did it. I want to change the psychology around crime in New York City,” Hochul said Thursday on MSNBC. “It is safe. But I’m going to make sure people feel safe.”

“I’m also going to demonstrate that Democrats fight crime as well,” she added. “So this narrative that Republicans have said that we’re soft on crime, that we defund the police — no.”

Major crimes in the New York City transit system dropped nearly 3% from 2022 to 2023 — with five killings last year, down from 10 the year prior, according to police. Overall, violent crime in the subway system is rare, with train cars and stations being generally as safe as any other public place.

In Pennsylvania, overall crime has declined on the transit system in recent years, though the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or SEPTA, reported six killings in 2023, up from a total of seven during the previous three years.

Still, the issue of safety on buses and trains is one that keeps resonating with voters — particularly as some systems recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, when passengers stayed away.

“Recently yeah, it’s been a little unsafe. So I think they should kind of, like, control it before it gets out of hand,” said New York City resident Alan Uloa, 43. “Just people, the way people react to stuff. People just fighting over seats. The other day they slashed the conductor, and that’s not cool.”

In New York, Republicans hammered Democrats on crime during the 2022 midterms, a message that helped the GOP capture suburban congressional seats.

Alex Piquero, a criminology professor at the University of Miami and the former director of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, said the heightened law enforcement presence can be a double-edged sword.

“For some people, they’d like to see the added security. They feel safer simply because there’s an officer there,” he said. “And for other people, they’ll say we’re overreacting.”

Vincent Del Castillo, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former chief of New York City’s transit police, said the political tough talk glosses over the reality that transit crime accounts for just a tiny percentage of all crime.

“You can have 10 to 12 murders in the system when there are literally hundreds across the city, but because it’s so rare, it gets a lot of attention,” he said.

The four shootings on or linked to public transit facilities in Philadelphia began Sunday, when a man was fatally shot by another passenger shortly after they got off a bus. The next day, a teenager was killed and four people injured in gunfire at a bus stop. On Tuesday, police said, someone who had gotten off a bus fired back inside, killing a man.

And on Wednesday, eight teenagers waiting to take a city bus home after school were shot in an attack that also riddled a bus with bullet holes.

SEPTA police Chief Charles Lawson has promised transit officers will take an aggressive approach, using “every criminal code on the book” in order to crackdown on illegal gun possession on the transit system.

“We’re going to target individuals concealing their identity. We’re going to target fare evasion. We’re going to target open drug use,” he said this week.

The National Guard troops in New York City won’t be that active. They have been tasked with helping police conduct random searches of people’s bags as they enter the subway system, a practice in place for nearly two decades.

Passengers have the right to refuse the search, though if they do they are asked to leave the subway system.

The National Guard troops can’t make arrests, but if they witness a crime, they can detain someone until police arrive, just as any civilian can do.

Even though the Guard troops were deployed Thursday, New York City transit passengers might not have noticed. The troops weren’t widely visible at stations or in trains, though some were seen patrolling major hubs including Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station, where they have been a regular presence since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Riders have long been split over the police bag checks, which are infrequent, but can hold someone up as they race for the train. They have also long been a subject of concerns about racial profiling, though the NYPD says it takes steps to avoid it.

“Sometimes when I’m in a hurry and I have a bag, I don’t like to be stopped,” said Jerome Brooks Jr., 44, an actor and musician. “So then I try to see, do they stop me if they’re going to stop somebody else that doesn’t look like me? But in general, I hope they do what’s right.”

Cheryl Ann Harper, 46, said she welcomed the precaution.

“Yes, it is random and we need it,” she said, noting that similar checks are common at theaters. “I do it all the time. OK? Not a big deal. You know, if you don’t have anything to hide, why you can’t open up your bag?”
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Wilmington, delaware — U.S. President Joe Biden said Saturday that he believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “hurting Israel more than helping Israel” in how he is approaching its war against Hamas in Gaza.

Biden expressed support for Israel’s right to pursue Hamas after the October 7 terror attack but said Netanyahu “must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken.”

For months, Biden has warned that Israel risks losing international support over mounting civilian casualties in Gaza, and the latest remarks in an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart pointed to the increasingly strained relationship between the two leaders.

Biden said of the death toll in Gaza, “it’s contrary to what Israel stands for. And I think it’s a big mistake.”

Biden said a potential Israeli invasion of the Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 1.3 million Palestinians are sheltering, is “a red line” for him, but said he would not cut off weapons such as the Iron Dome missile interceptors which protect the Israeli civilian populace from rocket attacks in the region.

“It is a red line,” he said, when asked about Rafah, “but I’m never going to leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical, so there’s no red line I’m going to cut off all weapons, so they don’t have the Iron Dome to protect them.”

Biden said he was willing to make his case directly to the Israeli Knesset, its parliament, including by making another trip to the country. He traveled to Israel weeks after the October 7 attack. He declined to elaborate on how or whether such a trip might materialize.

The U.S. leader had hoped to secure a temporary cease-fire before Ramadan begins this week, though that appears increasingly unlikely as Hamas has balked at a deal pushed by the U.S. and its allies that would have seen fighting pause for about six weeks, the release of additional hostages held by Hamas and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, and a surge in humanitarian aid into Gaza. Biden noted CIA Director Bill Burns is in the region currently trying to resurrect the deal.
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atlanta, georgia — U.S. President Joe Biden said Saturday that he regretted using the term “illegal” during his State of the Union address to describe the suspected killer of Laken Riley. His all-but-certain 2024 GOP rival, Donald Trump, blasted the Democrat’s immigration policies and blamed them for her death at a rally attended by the Georgia nursing student’s family and friends. 

Biden expressed remorse for the use of the term to describe people who arrived or are living in the U.S. illegally. 

“I shouldn’t have used illegal, it’s undocumented,” he said in an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart taped in Atlanta, Georgia, where the president was meeting with small business owners and holding a campaign rally. 

Trump, campaigning in Rome, Georgia, at the same time, blasted Biden for the comments. 

“Joe Biden went on television and apologized for calling Laken’s murderer an illegal,” he said to jeers and boos. “Biden should be apologizing for apologizing to this killer.” 

Death becomes rallying cry

The back-and-forth underscored how Riley’s killing has become a flashpoint in the 2024 campaign and a rallying cry for Republicans who blame the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S-Mexico border for a record number of migrants entering the country. An immigrant from Venezuela who entered the U.S. illegally has been arrested and charged with Riley’s murder. 

Trump was joined at his rally by Riley’s parents, sister and friends and met with them before he took the stage.  

Trump, in a speech that lasted nearly two hours, hammered Biden on the border and for mispronouncing Riley’s name during his State of the Union address this past week. 

“What Joe Biden has done on our border is a crime against humanity and the people of this nation for which he will never be forgiven,” Trump charged, alleging that Riley “would be alive today if Joe Biden had not willfully and maliciously eviscerated the borders of the United States and set loose thousands and thousands of dangerous criminals into our country.” 

Biden earlier this year bucked activists within his party by agreeing to make changes to U.S. immigration law that would have limited some migration. The deal that emerged would have overhauled the asylum system to provide faster and tougher enforcement, as well as given presidents new powers to immediately expel migrants if authorities become overwhelmed. It also would have added $20 billion in funding, a huge influx of cash. 

The changes became part of a short-lived bipartisan compromise in the Senate that was quickly killed by Republican lawmakers after Trump made his opposition known. 

Since then, Biden has insisted that Congress take up the measure again, arguing Republicans are more interested in being able to talk about the issue in an election year than taking action to fix it. 

Georgia considered pivotal again

Earlier Saturday, both Biden and Trump warned of dire consequences for the country if the other wins another term in the White House as the pair held dueling rallies in Georgia. 

The state was a pivotal 2020 battleground — so close four years ago that Trump has been indicted here for asking election officials to “find 11,780 votes” and overturn Biden’s victory. Both parties are preparing for another closely contested race in the state this year.  

Biden opened his speech at a rally in Atlanta by noting that Trump hosted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban — who has rolled back democracy in his country — at his Florida club the day before.  

“When he says he wants to be a dictator, I believe him,” Biden said of Trump. “Our freedoms are literally on the ballot this November.”  

Biden hosted the rally at Pullman Yards, a 27-acre arts and entertainment venue in Atlanta, and received the endorsement of Collective PAC, Latino Victory Fund and AAPI Victory Fund, a trio of political groups representing, respectively, Black, Latino, and Asian Americans and Pacific Island voters. The groups were announcing a $30 million commitment to mobilize voters on Biden’s behalf.  

Crowd shows support for Jan. 6 insurrection

Trump’s rally opened by asking attendees to rise to support the hundreds of people serving jail time for their roles in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when thousands of pro-Trump supporters tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election by halting the counting of Electoral College votes.  

The intensity of the rhetoric presaged a grueling eight months of campaigning ahead in the state.  

“We’re a true battleground state now,” said U.S. Representative Nikema Williams, an Atlanta Democrat who doubles as state party chairwoman.  

Once a Republican stronghold, Georgia is now competitive with a path to victory for both Biden and Trump. 
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Dallas, Texas — Once again, most Americans will set their clocks forward by one hour this weekend, losing perhaps a bit of sleep but gaining more glorious sunlight in the evenings as the days warm into summer.

Where did this all come from, though?

How we came to move the clock forward in the spring, and then push it back in the fall, is a tale that spans over more than a century — one that’s driven by two world wars, mass confusion at times and a human desire to bask in the sun for as long as possible.

There’s been plenty of debate over the practice, but about 70 countries — about 40% of those across the globe — currently use what Americans call daylight saving time.

World wars

Germany began using daylight saving time during World War I with the thought that it would save energy. Other countries, including the United States, soon followed. During World War II, the U.S. once again instituted what was dubbed “war time” nationwide, this time year-round.

After World War II, a patchwork of timekeeping emerged across the United States, with some areas keeping daylight saving time and others ditching it.

To stem the confusion, in 1966 the U.S. Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which says states can either implement daylight saving time or not, but it has to be statewide. The act also mandates the day that daylight saving time starts and ends across the country.

In the United States today, every state except Hawaii and Arizona observes daylight saving time. Around the world, Europe, much of Canada and part of Australia also implement it, while Russia and Asia don’t.

Switching and grumbling

Changing the clocks twice a year leads to a lot of grumbling, and pushes to either use standard time all year, or stick to daylight saving time all year often crop up.

During the 1970s energy crisis, the U.S. started doing daylight saving time all year long, and Americans didn’t like it.

With the sun not rising in the winter in some areas until around 9 a.m. or later, people were waking up in the dark, going to work in the dark and sending their children to school in the dark, said David Prerau, author of the book “Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time.”

“It became very unpopular very quickly,” he added.

He noted that using standard time all year would mean losing that extra hour of daylight for eight months in the evenings in the United States.
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WASHINGTON — Emerging from their near-clean sweeps of Super Tuesday contests, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump head to Georgia, where they’ll campaign for votes in Tuesday’s presidential primary in a state that will play a pivotal role in deciding their fates in November.

For Trump, the day will likely have additional significance, as voters in Georgia and three other states may award him enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination for president. Biden’s first possible date to clinch has also moved up to March 12.

Aside from that, Georgia’s presidential primary will be largely anti-climactic. Trump’s main rival for the GOP nomination, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, suspended her campaign this week after a rout on Super Tuesday, when she won the Vermont primary but lost 14 other contests. Biden also will face fewer challengers in the primary after U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota ended his campaign, although neither Phillips nor self-help author Marianne Williamson has had much of an impact on primary and caucus vote totals so far this campaign.

On Saturday, Biden will hold a campaign event in Atlanta, while about 70 miles (112 kilometers) away, Trump will hold a rally in Rome in northwest Georgia. It’s the second time in a little over a week the two will hold dueling events in a state about to hold a primary while eyeing the general election campaign to come. Biden and Trump were in Texas on Feb. 29 ahead of its presidential primary to hold immigration-themed events along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Georgia is likely again to play a key role in the general election as it did in 2020, when Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since Bill Clinton in 1992. Biden narrowly defeated Trump in Georgia by less than a quarter of a percentage point, a margin of 11,779 votes. Trump’s efforts to overturn those results are at the heart of an ongoing criminal case in Fulton County, although the judge is considering a motion to have District Attorney Fani Willis removed from the case.

Trump’s actions in Georgia and other swing states also play a role in a federal prosecution of his attempt to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, but that case is on hold as the Supreme Court prepares to consider the Trump defense team’s argument that the former president is immune from prosecution.

Georgia is the biggest delegate prize and the only swing state among the contests taking place Tuesday. Super Tuesday put both Biden and Trump on the brink of having enough delegates to clinch their parties’ presidential nominations. Tuesday is the earliest either could reach that milestone.

The Associated Press allocated delegates from Delaware and Florida to Biden on Friday, as both states have canceled their Democratic presidential primaries, with all their delegates going to the sitting president. With that allocation, Biden’s first possible date to clinch moves up to March 12, when he needs to win just 40% of the available delegates to do so.

Here’s a look at what to expect on election night:

Primary day

The Georgia presidential primary will be held Tuesday. Polls close at 7 p.m. ET.

What’s on the ballot

The Associated Press will provide coverage for the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. The candidates listed on the Democratic ballot are Biden, Phillips and Williamson. Besides Trump and Haley, the Republican ballot will list Florida businessman David Stuckenberg and former candidates Ryan Binkley, Doug Burgum, Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Asa Hutchinson, Perry Johnson, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott.

Who can vote

Any registered voter may participate in either primary. Voters in Georgia do not register by party.

Delegate allocation rules

There are 108 pledged Democratic delegates at stake in Georgia, and they’re awarded according to the national party’s standard rules. Twenty-three at-large delegates are allocated in proportion to the statewide vote, as are 14 PLEO delegates, or “party leaders and elected officials.” The state’s 14 congressional districts have a combined 71 delegates at stake, which are allocated in proportion to the vote results in each district. Candidates must receive at least 15% of the statewide vote to qualify for any statewide delegates, and 15% of the vote in a congressional district to qualify for delegates in that district.

Georgia has 59 Republican delegates at stake in the primary. The 14 at-large delegates are awarded in proportion to the statewide vote to candidates who receive at least 20%. A combined 42 delegates are at stake in the 14 congressional districts, with three delegates per district. The candidate who wins a majority of the vote in a district wins that district’s three delegates. If no candidate wins a vote majority in a district, the top vote-getter wins two delegates, and the second-place finisher wins one. The state’s three Republican National Committee members, the state chair and the Republican National Committeeman and Committeewoman, are bound to the statewide winner.

Decision notes

Unlike the general election, Tuesday’s primaries in Georgia are not likely to be competitive, as Biden and Trump face no major opposition in their campaigns for renomination. In both races, the first indications that Biden and Trump are winning statewide on a level consistent with the overwhelming margins seen in most other contests held so far this year may be sufficient to determine the statewide winners.

What do turnout and advance voting look like

Turnout in 2022 was about 11% of registered voters in the Democratic primaries for U.S. Senate and governor. It was 17% in the GOP U.S. Senate primary and 18% in the gubernatorial primary. There were nearly 8 million registered voters in Georgia as of Feb. 13.

As of Thursday, nearly 359,000 ballots had been cast before Election Day, about 66% in the Republican primary and about 34% in the Democratic primary. In 2022, pre-Election Day voting made up about 51% of the total vote in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary and about 41% in the GOP gubernatorial primary.

Are we there yet?

As of Tuesday, there will be 125 days until the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, 160 days until the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and 238 until the November general election.
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BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS — Microsoft said Friday it’s still trying to evict the elite Russian government hackers who broke into the email accounts of senior company executives in November and who it said have been trying to breach customer networks with stolen access data.

The hackers from Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service used data obtained in the intrusion, which Microsoft disclosed in mid-January, to compromise some source-code repositories and internal systems, the software giant said in a blog and a regulatory filing.

A company spokesperson would not characterize what source code was accessed and what capability the hackers gained to further compromise customer and Microsoft systems. Microsoft said Friday that the hackers stole “secrets” from email communications between the company and unspecified customers — cryptographic secrets such as passwords, certificates and authentication keys — and that it was reaching out to them “to assist in taking mitigating measures.”

Cloud-computing company Hewlett Packard Enterprise disclosed on January 24 that it, too, was an SVR hacking victim and that it had been informed of the breach — by whom it would not say — two weeks earlier, coinciding with Microsoft’s discovery it had been hacked.

“The threat actor’s ongoing attack is characterized by a sustained, significant commitment of the threat actor’s resources, coordination and focus,” Microsoft said Friday, adding that it could be using obtained data “to accumulate a picture of areas to attack and enhance its ability to do so.”

Cybersecurity experts said Microsoft’s admission that the SVR hack had not been contained exposes the perils of the heavy reliance by government and business on the Redmond, Washington, company’s software monoculture — and the fact that so many of its customers are linked through its global cloud network.

“This has tremendous national security implications,” said Tom Kellermann of the cybersecurity firm Contrast Security. “The Russians can now leverage supply chain attacks against Microsoft’s customers.”

Amit Yoran, the CEO of Tenable, also issued a statement, expressing alarm and dismay. He is among security professionals who find Microsoft overly secretive about its vulnerabilities and how it handles hacks.

“We should all be furious that this keeps happening,” Yoran said. “These breaches aren’t isolated from each other, and Microsoft’s shady security practices and misleading statements purposely obfuscate the whole truth.”

Microsoft said it had not yet determined whether the incident is likely to materially affect its finances. It also said the intrusion’s stubbornness “reflects what has become more broadly an unprecedented global threat landscape, especially in terms of sophisticated nation-state attacks.”

The hackers, known as Cozy Bear, are the same hacking team behind the SolarWinds breach.

When it initially announced the hack, Microsoft said the SVR unit broke into its corporate email system and accessed accounts of some senior executives as well as employees on its cybersecurity and legal teams. It would not say how many accounts were compromised.

At the time, Microsoft said it was able to remove the hackers’ access from the compromised accounts on or about January 13. But by then, they clearly had a foothold.

It said they got in by compromising credentials on a “legacy” test account but never elaborated.

Microsoft’s latest disclosure comes three months after a new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rule took effect that compels publicly traded companies to disclose breaches that could negatively affect their business.
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The commander overseeing U.S. military operations in the Middle East is warning that deterrence of Iranian proxies is temporary and that Iran is not paying the price for its role in violence across the Middle East. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has details.
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WASHINGTON — Some U.S. states restrict Native American access to voting

Congress granted Indigenous Americans citizenship 100 years ago, but some states are passing laws making it hard for them to register to vote or access polling places. Human Rights Watch on Monday urged U.S. states to take active steps to ensure that Native Americans and other voters of color can cast their ballots this election year.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 23 states have enacted 53 voting laws making it easier to vote. That said, at least 14 states in 2023 passed restrictive voter laws, and at least six states enacted election interference laws.

Read more:

Chippewa attorney seeks to overturn ICWA

Imprint News this week profiles a Native American attorney who spent years supporting the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, and is now working to see the law overturned.

Congress passed the ICWA in 1978 to stop states from placing Native American children in the welfare system with non-Native American families — a long-term practice Native Americans decried as an extension of historic assimilation policies.

Attorney Mark Fiddler, a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in Minnesota, was an avid supporter of the law — until, that is, a case he argued back in 1994: After arguing a case against an Indigenous girl’s adoption into a white home, he was troubled to see she was later cycled through dozens of Indigenous foster homes.

“In my heart of hearts, I knew that was probably not the right thing for the child. And it always nagged me,” he said. “My personal opinion is that ICWA has outlived its usefulness and causes more problems than it solves.”

Now, he is arguing a case in the Minnesota appeals court involving a pair of toddler twins who were removed from a white foster family and placed with their mother’s cousin.

Read more:

Seminole Nation attorney named to missing and murdered cases team

The U.S. Justice Department has appointed Bree R. Black Horse, an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation in Oklahoma, as an assistant United States attorney in the department’s new Missing and Murdered Indigenous People, or MMIP, regional program, assigned to prosecute such cases throughout the Northwest region — Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho and California.

Black Horse, a 2013 graduate of the Seattle University School of law, most recently served as an associate on the Native American Affairs team of the multinational law firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton. Prior to that, she was a public defender for the Yakama Nation in Washington state.

“For far too long Indigenous men, women and children have suffered violence at rates higher than many other demographics,” Black Horse said in a statement. “As I step into this role, I look forward to working with our local, state and tribal partners to identify concrete ways of reducing violence and improving public safety in Indian country and elsewhere.”

In June 2023, the Justice Department announced it would dedicate five MMIP assistant U.S. attorneys and five MMIP coordinators to provide specialized support to U.S. attorneys’ offices addressing and fighting MMIP by investigating unsolved cases and related crimes, boosting communication, coordination and collaboration among federal, tribal, state and local law enforcement and nongovernmental partners.

Black Horse will be attached to the Yakima, Washington, field office.

Read more:

Arizona hoop dancer wins top prize

Josiah Enriquez, a 21-year-old hoop dancer from the Pueblo of Pojoaque in New Mexico, has won the Heard Museum’s 2024 Hoop Dance World Championship, held in Phoenix, Arizona, beating out more than 100 other contestants.

Although its exact origin is unclear, Indigenous peoples have practiced the dance for centuries.

Dancers incorporate circular hoops into their movements and are judged for their grace and style.

Enriquez began dancing at the age of 3, and as the video below shows, he has mastered the art.
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Houston, Texas — The Republican National Committee voted Friday to install Donald Trump’s handpicked leadership team, completing his takeover of the national party as the former president closes in on a third straight presidential nomination.

Michael Whatley, a North Carolina Republican who has echoed Trump’s false theories of voter fraud, was elected the party’s new national chairman in a vote  in Houston, Texas. Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, was voted in as co-chair.

Trump’s team is promising not to use the RNC to pay his mounting personal legal bills. But Trump and his lieutenants will have firm control of the party’s political and fundraising machinery with limited, if any, internal pushback.

“The RNC is going to be the vanguard of a movement that will work tirelessly every single day to elect our nominee, Donald J. Trump, as the 47th president of the United States,” Whatley told RNC members in a speech after being elected.

Whatley will carry the top title, replacing longtime chair Ronna McDaniel after she fell out of favor with key figures in the former president’s “Make America Great Again” movement. But he will be surrounded by people closer to Trump.

Lara Trump is expected to focus largely on fundraising and media appearances.

The functional head of the RNC will be Chris LaCivita, who will assume the committee’s chief of staff role while maintaining his job as one of the Trump campaign’s top two advisers.

With Trump’s blessing, LaCivita is promising to enact sweeping changes and staffing moves at every level of the RNC to ensure it runs seamlessly as an extension of the Trump campaign.

In an interview Thursday, LaCivita sought to tamp down concerns from some RNC members that the cash-strapped committee would help pay Trump’s legal bills. Trump faces four criminal indictments and a total of 91 counts as well as a $455 million civil fraud judgment, which he is appealing. His affiliated Save America political action committee has spent $76 million over the last two years on lawyers.

People speculating about the RNC paying for legal bills, LaCivita said, do so “purely on the basis of trying to hurt donors.” Trump’s legal bills are instead being covered largely by Save America, a separate political entity.

“The fact of the matter is not a penny of the RNC’s money, or for that matter, the campaign’s money, has gone or will go to pay legal fees,” he said.

The RNC was paying some of Trump’s legal bills for New York cases that started while he was president, The Washington Post reported, but McDaniel said in November 2022 that the RNC would stop paying once Trump became a candidate again and joined the 2024 presidential race.

When Trump announced his plans to replace the party’s leadership, it raised fresh questions about whether the committee would pay his bills. Those questions intensified after Lara Trump said last month that she wasn’t familiar with the party’s rules about paying her father-in-law’s legal fees, but she thought the idea would get broad support among Republican voters.

Facing such mixed messages, some RNC members remain skeptical.

Republican committeeman Henry Barbour of Mississippi proposed a nonbinding resolution explicitly stating that RNC funds could not be used for Trump’s legal bills. Yet the resolution died when Barbour failed to earn the support of RNC members from at least 10 states.

“People I’ve talked to on the committee privately all agree that donor money needs to be devoted to winning elections, not legal fees,” said Republican committeeman John Hammond of Indiana.

The new leadership team is also expected to more fully embrace Trump’s focus on voter fraud and his debunked claims about the election he lost to President Joe Biden. Multiple court cases and Trump’s own Justice Department failed to reveal any evidence of significant voting irregularities.

Whatley, an attorney, has largely avoided using Trump’s characterization of Biden’s victory and said in one 2021 interview that Biden “absolutely” was legitimately elected and won the majority of the Electoral College votes. But he said in another interview in the weeks after the 2020 election that there was “massive fraud.” He has also made focusing on “election integrity” a top priority for his state party in the years since.

In a letter announcing her candidacy for co-chair, Lara Trump wrote to members of the committee telling them she intends to focus on battleground states, getting out the vote in close races and to comb through the RNC’s finances, including all of its contracts and agreements, and cut spending “that doesn’t directly go to winning elections.”

A key priority, she wrote, is working to ensure that the election is secure, something her father-in-law has made a chief focus.

“The goal on November 5 is to win, as my father-in-law says, ‘bigly,’ ” she said Friday.
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