In Brief: Nation & Workd: 12-8-16

‘Obamacare’ repeal-olny would make 30 million uninsured

WASHINGTON — Repealing President Barack Obama’s health care law without a replacement risks making nearly 30 million people uninsured, according to a study released Wednesday.

Separately, a professional group representing benefit advisers warned congressional leaders of the risk of “significant market disruption” that could cause millions of Americans to lose their health insurance.

Republicans dismiss such dire scenarios, saying that they are working on replacement legislation for a President Donald Trump to sign. Nonetheless, the complex two-stage strategy the GOP Congress is contemplating has raised concerns not only among supporters of the law, but also industries like hospitals and insurers.

The plan is for Congress to first use a special budget-related procedure to repeal major portions of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, next year. The effective date of that repeal would be delayed by months or even years to give lawmakers time to write replacement legislation.

The replacement law would presumably do many of the same things that “Obamacare” does, such as subsidizing coverage and protecting people with health problems. But it would not involve as much federal regulation, and it would eliminate a highly unpopular requirement that most Americans get health insurance or face fines.

Frantic rescue underway in Indonesia as quake kills at least 97

MEUREUDU, Indonesia — A strong earthquake rocked Indonesia’s Aceh province early on Wednesday, killing nearly 100 people and sparking a frantic rescue effort in the rubble of dozens of collapsed and damaged buildings.

Maj. Gen. Tatang Sulaiman, chief of the army in Aceh province, said at least 97 died while four people were pulled from the rubble alive. Another four or five are known to be buried, but he didn’t say if they are dead or alive.

“Hopefully we would be able to finish the evacuation from the rubble before sunset,” said Sulaiman.

The rescue effort involving thousands of villagers, soldiers and police is concentrated on Meureudu, a severely affected town in Pidie Jaya district. Excavators were trying to remove debris from shop houses and other buildings where people were believed buried. TV footage showed rescuers in orange uniforms shining flashlight into the interiors of broken buildings as they searched for signs of life.

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency said 273 people were injured, about a quarter of them seriously. Some 245 buildings were seriously damaged or destroyed, mostly in Pidie Jaya, including 14 mosques and the remainder largely dwellings and shop houses. Roads also cracked and power poles toppled over.

Panel looks at ATT-Time Warner deal

WASHINGTON — Senators scrutinizing the proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner homed in on brass tacks with the companies’ CEOs. OK, you say this $85.4 billion mega-deal will enhance, not quash, competition and benefit consumers. Will it actually reduce prices that consumers pay?

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson assured the members of a Senate antitrust panel Wednesday that yes, “We will bring the consumers better price options than what they have today.” He said, though, that it wasn’t possible at this point to separate how much of the anticipated savings would go to customers of the company’s DirectTV, broadband and mobile phone services.

Stephenson and Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes made the case that the combined company would push technology forward and lead to more choices for customers. “Together, AT&T and Time Warner will disrupt the entrenched pay-TV models, giving customers more options, creating more competition for cable TV providers and accelerating deployment of 5G wireless broadband,” Stephenson testified.

Trump chooses hardliners but talks softer on immigration

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump embraced new Cabinet officers Wednesday whose backgrounds suggest he’s primed to put tough actions behind his campaign rhetoric on immigration and the environment, even as he seemed to soften his yearlong stance on immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

It’s clearer by the day, underscored by Trump’s at-times contradictory words, that his actual policies as president won’t be settled until after he takes his seat in the Oval Office.

Retired Marine Gen. John Kelly has been selected to head the Department of Homeland Security, and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a climate-change denier whose policies have helped fossil fuel companies, is to be announced as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Separately, Trump named the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, Linda McMahon, to head the Small Business Administration.

Trump’s long presidential campaign was in large part defined by searing rhetoric and his steadfast promises to build an impenetrable wall on the border with Mexico and crack down on immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. But he struck a softer tone in an interview published Wednesday after he was named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”

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Ships, jets, giant crowd mark Pearl Harbor anniversary event

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — Thousands observed a moment of silence before fighter jets streaked across the sky during a ceremony Wednesday at Pearl Harbor marking the 75th anniversary of the attack that plunged the United States into World War II and left more than 2,300 service people dead.

The crowd bowed their heads at the precise moment decades ago when Japanese planes began their assault on the U.S. naval base at the harbor. And they stood and clapped when survivors joined active-duty servicemen and women and National Park Service rangers in dedicating wreaths to those killed.

Attendees also gave a lengthy ovation to Adm. Harry Harris of the U.S. Pacific Command when he spoke in favor of standing for the national anthem.

The anniversary is a tribute to “what freedom does when it is faced with fascism,” said Paul Hilliard of the National World War II Museum.

“America went abroad to gain freedom for millions of other people,” said Hilliard, a Marine veteran and one of several dignitaries and officials who presented wreaths for the fallen at a memorial over the sunken hull of USS Arizona. “We are kind of unique. We are an exceptional nation.”

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AP source: Trump to tap Oklahoma AG Pruitt to head EPA

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is expected to nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, a source close to Pruitt said Wednesday.

Pruitt, a 48-year-old Republican, has been a reliable booster of the fossil fuel industry and an outspoken critic of what he derides as the EPA’s “activist agenda.”

The person close to Pruitt who provided the information was unauthorized to speak publicly about Trump’s pick and did so on condition of anonymity.

Environmental groups quickly denounced Trump’s choice on Wednesday as a puppet of polluters, with the Sierra Club likening Pruitt’s selection as EPA administrator to “putting an arsonist in charge of fighting fires.”

Representatives of the nation’s mining and oil interests, however, cheered Pruitt’s selection.

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Trumps taps retired Marine general John Kelly for DHS

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has chosen retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, whose last command included oversight of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, to run the Department of Homeland Security, people close to the transition team said Wednesday.

Kelly, who joined the Marine Corps in 1970, retired earlier this year, wrapping up a final, three-year post as head of U.S. Southern Command, which spanned some of the more fractious debate over the Obama administration’s ultimately failed pledge to close Guantanamo.

He served three tours in Iraq, and holds the somber distinction of being the most senior military officer to lose a child in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan. His son, Marine 1st Lt. Robert Kelly was killed in November, 2010, in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

That makes Kelly a member of a so-called Gold Star family, those who lost a relative in combat. Trump verbally attacked the Khan family, Pakistani immigrants who lost a son in U.S. Army combat in Iraq, after they criticized him at the Democratic National Convention last summer.

Highly respected, often outspoken, and known as a fierce, loyal commander, Kelly will take over the nation’s newest federal agency, with responsibilities from airport security and terrorism to immigration and the Coast Guard. The department was formed after the Sept. 11 terror attacks to get the U.S. government better-positioned to prevent and respond to future attacks.

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Syrian government advances despite rebel cease-fire offer

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria’s government ignored a rebel cease-fire proposal for Aleppo on Wednesday as its forces captured new neighborhoods around the city center and squeezed some 200,000 tired and frightened civilians into a shattered and rapidly shrinking opposition enclave.

Facing a punishing and brutal defeat, rebel factions proposed a five-day cease-fire for the eastern parts of the city to evacuate the wounded and civilians wishing to flee.

“The artillery shelling is non-stop,” a resident told The Associated Press by messaging service. He asked to conceal his name out of fear for his safety.

“The humanitarian situation is really tough. There are corpses on the streets. … There is very little food. Bread is distributed every two or three days, six pieces per family. That’s small, not enough for breakfast,” he said.

Government officials had not directly addressed the rebel proposal by the evening.

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Church attack survivor recalls loud noise, then darkness

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A survivor of last year’s massacre at a black South Carolina church testified Wednesday that her Bible study group had just closed their eyes and started praying when a loud sound shattered the stillness. The basement room went dark.

When Felicia Sanders opened her eyes, she saw a young white man the parishioners had welcomed to the study only a half-hour earlier. Dylann Roof was mowing down the pastor and eight others with gunfire and hurling racial insults.

Sanders, the first witness in Roof’s death penalty trial, fought back tears as she recalled sheltering her granddaughter under a table and telling her to play dead. She watched in horror as her son Tywanza and her 87-year-old aunt, Susie Jackson, were killed in the fusillade.

At one point, she looked across the courtroom toward Roof and called him “evil, evil, evil.”

The gunman had planned the attack for months and traveled about 100 miles to Charleston on June 17, 2015, to attack Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest black church in the South, because of what it represented, prosecutors said. He told the parishioners he was killing them because blacks were raping white women and taking over the country. In a manifesto found later, he said he hoped to start a race war.

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Nightclub victims’ kin: Oakland fire families face long road

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Authorities investigating the California warehouse party fire that killed 36 people have said they are considering a criminal case — even murder charges. But as relatives learned after a nightclub fire killed 100 people in Rhode Island, any prosecution would be a long and complicated road that may not end with a feeling of justice.

The 2003 fire at The Station in West Warwick was started by pyrotechnics for the rock band Great White, which set fire to foam that lined the walls as soundproofing. It was actually highly flammable packing foam, never approved for such a use, and the crowded club became an inferno in seconds.

In Oakland, investigators have said they’re looking at electrical appliances as possible causes in the Friday night fire in the warehouse packed with wooden structures, where electricity was provided by cords that snaked through the space.

Relatives of those killed and lawyers involved in the Rhode Island case said they see troubling parallels.

In both fires, there was a lack of proper permits and loads of highly flammable material inside. In both, the operators were accused of ignoring safety standards, such as providing adequate fire exits. As in Rhode Island, there are suggestions that officials in Oakland didn’t do enough to inspect and monitor the building, leading to the deadliest fire in the U.S. since the 2003 blaze.

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Renzi quits; search on for new leader to guide Italy to vote

ROME (AP) — Italian Premier Matteo Renzi resigned Wednesday evening, his self-inflicted penalty for staking his job on constitutional changes voters resoundingly rejected earlier in the week. He will stay in a caretaker’s role at the request of Italy’s president until a new government can be formed.

Renzi had first offered his resignation on Monday, shortly after voters rejected the constitutional reforms his center-left government had championed. President Sergio Mattarella, Italy’s head of state, told him to stay in office until Parliament completed approval of the 2017 national budget.

A few hours after the budget was passed on Wednesday, Renzi returned to the Quirinal presidential palace. This time, Mattarella accepted the resignation of the man who in February 2014 became Italy’s youngest premier at age 39.

A presidential palace official, Ugo Zampetti, told reporters that Mattarella would begin consultations Thursday with the heads of Parliament’s two chambers, as well as with former President Giorgio Napolitano.

After hearing out minor parties on Friday, Mattarella on Saturday plans to take proposals from the major players, including the Democratic Party that Renzi leads and the populist 5-Star Movement, Parliament’s No. 1 and No. 2 parties respectively.

Trump on the attack against ‘SNL’ again

NEW YORK (AP) — The chief critic-elect of “Saturday Night Live,” Donald Trump, is bashing the show and impersonator Alec Baldwin again — this time prodded into action Wednesday by NBC’s own Matt Lauer.

The president-elect called the late-night institution unfunny and Baldwin’s portrayal of him mean-spirited, suggesting “Saturday Night Live” wasn’t long for the world. Trump — who appeared as guest host on “SNL” in November 2015 — has grumbled in tweets about the show three times since October, most recently last weekend after Baldwin and Kate McKinnon appeared in a skit about his Twitter habit.

Trump’s frequent tweeting was raised by Lauer in a telephone interview on the “Today” show following Time magazine’s selection of the president-elect as its Person of the Year.

“Can we agree, President-elect Trump, that it would be better for you to simply stop watching ‘SNL’ as opposed to watching and then complaining about it?” Lauer said.

His question was no ad-lib, since NBC quickly aired clips of the Baldwin-McKinnon sketch as Trump replied.

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Former astronaut, US Sen. John Glenn is hospitalized in Ohio

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio State official says former astronaut and U.S. Sen. John Glenn has been hospitalized for more than a week.

Hank Wilson with Ohio State University’s John Glenn College of Public Affairs said Wednesday that the 95-year-old Glenn is at the James Cancer Hospital, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he has cancer.

Wilson said he didn’t have other information about Glenn’s condition, illness or prognosis.

Glenn apologized for his poor eyesight this year at the renaming of Columbus’ airport after him. He said then he’d lost some of his eyesight because of macular degeneration and a small stroke. Glenn had a heart valve replacement in 2014.

Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. He served as a U.S. senator from Ohio from 1974 to 1999.