In Brief: Nation & World: 1-19-17

Obama defends decision to commute Chelsea Manning’s sentence

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama firmly defended his decision to cut nearly three decades off convicted leaker Chelsea Manning’s prison term Wednesday, arguing in his final White House news conference that the former Army intelligence analyst had served a “tough prison sentence” already.

Taking questions on many topics two days before his presidency ends, Obama also warned that the “moment may be passing” for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, pushing back on criticism over his recent move to put pressure on the Jewish state over settlement-building. Turning his attention to President-elect Donald Trump, Obama said he reserves the right to speak out as ex-president if Trump violates America’s “core values.”

Obama said he granted clemency to Manning because she had gone to trial, taken responsibility for her crime and received a sentence that was harsher than other leakers had received. He emphasized that he had merely commuted her sentence, not granted a pardon, which would have symbolically forgiven her for the crime.

“I feel very comfortable that justice has been served,” Obama said.

Manning was convicted in 2013 of violating the Espionage Act and other crimes for leaking more than 700,000 classified documents while working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad. Formerly known as Bradley Manning, she declared as transgender after being sentenced to 35 years in prison. She had served more than six years before Obama commuted her sentence on Tuesday, with a release date set for May.

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Price tries to reassure on health care; Dems not buying it

WASHINGTON (AP) — Offering reassurances, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary said Wednesday the new administration won’t “pull the rug out” from those covered by “Obamacare.” Democrats were unimpressed, noting a lack of specifics.

Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., also told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that Trump is “absolutely not” planning to launch an overhaul of Medicare as he tries to revamp coverage under President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. He acknowledged that high prescription drug costs are a problem, but did not endorse the idea of government directly negotiating prices.

Throughout the nearly four-hour hearing, Democrats peppered Price with questions about his stock trades. The sometimes confusing exchanges involved different transactions under distinct circumstances. Price, who has signed a government ethics agreement to sell his stock, was clearly annoyed by the suggestion that he profited from his official position. “I’m offended by that insinuation,” he told Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., lauded Price’s performance, but ranking Democrat Patty Murray of Washington said she remains deeply concerned. No Democrats offered support for the 62-year-old nominee, an orthopedic surgeon-turned-legislator.

Price said he wants to reopen a bipartisan dialogue on health care centered on practical solutions.

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In break with Trump, EPA pick says climate change isn’t hoax

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday that climate change is real, breaking with both the president-elect and his own past statements.

In response to questions from Democrats during his Senate confirmation hearing, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt said he disagreed with Trump’s earlier claims that global warming is a hoax created by the Chinese to harm the economic competitiveness of the United States.

“I do not believe climate change is a hoax,” Pruitt said.

The 48-year-old Republican has previously cast doubt on the extensive body of scientific evidence showing that the planet is warming and man-made carbon emissions are to blame. In a 2016 opinion article, Pruitt suggested that the debate over global warming “is far from settled” and he claimed that “scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.”

At the hearing before the Senate Energy and Public Works Committee, Pruitt conceded that human activity contributes “in some manner” to climate change. He continued, however, to question whether the burning of fossil fuels is the primary reason, and refused to say whether sea levels are rising.

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Former President George H.W. Bush and wife hospitalized

HOUSTON (AP) — Former President George H.W. Bush was admitted Wednesday to the intensive care unit of a Houston hospital with pneumonia, and his wife, Barbara, was hospitalized as a precaution after suffering fatigue and coughing, a spokesman said.

The 92-year-old former president, who had been hospitalized since Saturday, underwent a procedure “to protect and clear his airway that required sedation,” family spokesman Jim McGrath said in a statement.

Bush was stable and resting comfortably at Houston Methodist Hospital, where he was to stay for observation, the statement said.

The 41st president was placed in the ICU to address “an acute respiratory problem stemming from pneumonia,” McGrath said. He later told The Associated Press that doctors were happy with how the procedure went. Bush was first admitted to the hospital for shortness of breath.

“I don’t think there’s a whole lot of money to be gained betting against George Bush,” McGrath said. “We’re just kind of in a wait-and-see mode.”

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West African bloc vows Gambia intervention at midnight

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — After more than two decades in power, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh faced the prospect of a midnight military intervention by regional forces, as the man who once pledged to rule the West African nation for a billion years clung to power late Wednesday.

A military commander with the regional bloc known as ECOWAS announced that Jammeh had only hours to leave or face troops already positioning along Gambia’s borders.

“We are waiting so that all political means have been exhausted. The mandate of the president is finished at midnight,” declared Seydou Maiga Moro, speaking on Senegalese radio station RFM.

“All the troops are already in place,” he added, saying they were merely waiting to see whether Jammeh would acquiesce to international pressure to cede power to President-elect Adama Barrow.

As midnight approached, Jammeh was meeting with Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz on the crisis. The two leaders have had good relations.

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Trump’s America: Rural-urban divide in Georgia

LULA, Ga. (AP) — Patti Thomas owns a flower shop in the north Georgia town of Lula. Xavier Bryant runs an independent pharmacy just outside Atlanta. Looking toward the inauguration of an entrepreneur as president, the two share this expectation: Donald Trump will be good for business.

“He’s already proven he can turn things around,” the 52-year-old Thomas says, crediting Trump with Ford Motor Co.’s recent announcement that it would scrap a planned Mexico plant while expanding in Michigan. “Just his business enthusiasm, we’ve been lacking that.”

“My intuition,” the 33-year-old Bryant agrees, “is telling me that small business owners will win” in Trump’s economy.

But beyond that commonality, Thomas and Bryant — a white baby boomer from a tiny town and a black millennial from the big city — illuminate widening cultural fissures that help explain Trump’s rise and may well define his presidency.

Trump draws his strength from places like Lula, a railroad town with 2,800 residents and no stoplight in the central business district. He won almost 3 out of 4 votes cast in surrounding Hall County, which abuts the multi-county cluster that makes up metro Atlanta. Even with a growing Hispanic population, Hall is whiter than Georgia and the United States as a whole, and conservatism carries the day.

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Earth sets hottest year record for third-straight time,

WASHINGTON (AP) — Earth sizzled to a third-straight record hot year in 2016, with scientists mostly blaming man-made global warming with help from a natural El Nino that’s now gone.

Two U.S. agencies and international weather groups reported Wednesday that last year was the warmest on record. They measure global temperatures in slightly different ways, and came up with a range of increases, from minuscule to what top American climate scientists described as substantial.

They’re “all singing the same song even if they are hitting different notes along the way. The pattern is very clear,” said Deke Arndt of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

NOAA calculated that the average global temperature for 2016 was 58.69 degrees (14.84 degrees Celsius) — beating the previous year by 0.07 degrees (0.04 Celsius).

NASA’s figures , which include more of the Arctic, are higher at 0.22 degrees (0.12 Celsius) warmer than 2015. The Arctic “was enormously warm, like totally off the charts compared to everything else,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, where the space agency monitors global temperatures.

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In inaugural speech will Trump call on our better angels?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tradition suggests it’s time for Donald Trump to set aside the say-anything speaking style and rise to the inaugural moment.

But bucking tradition or ignoring it altogether, is what got Donald Trump to his inaugural moment.

When Trump stands on the west front of the Capitol on Friday and delivers his inaugural address, all sides will be waiting to see whether he comes bearing a unifying message for a divided nation or decides to play up his persona as a disrupter of the established order.

How Trump tends to that balancing act, in both style and content, will be a telling launch for his presidency.

“The inaugural is an address that is meant for the ages,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications professor and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “In particular, it’s important when you’ve had a divisive election. You need to become president of all of the people, including those who vehemently opposed your election.”

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Denver starts work on allowing pot in public, a first in US

DENVER (AP) — Denver is starting work Wednesday on becoming the first city in the nation to allow marijuana clubs and public pot use in places such as coffee shops, yoga studios and art galleries.

Voters narrowly approved the “social use” measure last November. But the ballot proposal didn’t spell out many rules for how the marijuana could be consumed, beyond saying that the drug can’t be smoked inside and that patrons must be over 21.

A workgroup made up of Denver business owners, city pot regulators and marijuana opponents starts work on suggesting regulations in the afternoon.

The state Liquor Control Board already has decreed that no businesses with a liquor license can allow marijuana use. That leaves it to restaurants that don’t serve alcohol and other event spaces.

There’s no deadline for Denver to finalize rules. Supporters hope to see the city start accepting applications by this summer.

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For driverless cars, a moral dilemma: Who lives or dies?

BOSTON (AP) — Imagine you’re behind the wheel when your brakes fail. As you speed toward a crowded crosswalk, you’re confronted with an impossible choice: veer right and mow down a large group of elderly people or veer left into a woman pushing a stroller.

Now imagine you’re riding in the back of a self-driving car. How would it decide?

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are asking people worldwide how they think a robot car should handle such life-or-death decisions. Their findings so far show people prefer a self-driving car to act in the greater good, sacrificing its passenger if it can save a crowd of pedestrians. They just don’t want to get into that car.

The findings present a dilemma for car makers and governments eager to introduce self-driving vehicles on the promise that they’ll be safer than human-controlled cars.

“There is a real risk that if we don’t understand those psychological barriers and address them through regulation and public outreach, we may undermine the entire enterprise,” said Iyad Rahwan, an associate professor at the MIT Media Lab. “People will say they’re not comfortable with this. It would stifle what I think will be a very good thing for humanity.”