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AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EST
Ryan pushes for unity as House panels debate GOP health bill
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Paul Ryan labored to rally divided fellow Republicans behind their high-stakes drive to overhaul the nation’s health care system Wednesday, praising his party’s legislation as “what good, conservative health care reform looks like” as lawmakers cast Congress’ first votes.
Republican leaders wanted to push their measure through two House committees by week’s end — Ways and Means, and Energy and Commerce. But they hit a torrent of resistance from Democrats who oppose the seven-year GOP effort to unravel former President Barack Obama’s health care law.
Outnumbered Democrats used the panels’ sessions for political messaging Wednesday, futilely offering amendments aimed at preventing the bill from raising deficits, kicking people off coverage or boosting consumer’s out-of-pocket costs. They even tried, unsuccessfully, to insert language pressuring President Donald Trump to release his income tax returns.
The pivotal challenge for Republican leaders was coming not from Democrats but from rebellion in their own ranks and potent outside groups. If that upheaval should snowball and crush the legislation, it would be a shattering defeat for Trump and the GOP, so leaders were hoping passage by both House committees this week would bolster them with momentum.
Just as ominous as GOP unrest was hostility from three organizations instrumental in the 2010 enactment of Obama’s overhaul: The American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and AARP, the nation’s largest advocacy group for older people.
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Will WikiLeaks work with tech firms to defeat CIA hacking?
WASHINGTON (AP) — The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks raised the prospect Wednesday of sharing sensitive details it uncovered about CIA hacking tools with leading technology companies whose flagship products and services were targeted by the government’s hacker-spies.
If that sharing should take place, the unusual cooperation would give companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung and others an opportunity to identify and repair any flaws in their software and devices that were being exploited by U.S. spy agencies and some foreign allies, as described in nearly 9,000 pages of secret CIA files WikiLeaks published on Tuesday.
The documents, which the White House declined anew Wednesday to confirm as authentic, describe clandestine methods for bypassing or defeating encryption, antivirus tools and other protective security features for computers, mobile phones and even smart TVs. They include the world’s most popular technology platforms, including Apple’s iPhones and iPads, Google’s Android phones and the Microsoft Windows operating system for desktop computers and laptops.
“This is the kind of disclosure that undermines our security, our country and our well-being,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said. “This alleged leak should concern every single American.”
Spicer defended then-candidate Donald Trump’s comment in October 2016 — “I love WikiLeaks!” — after it published during the presidential campaign private, politically damaging emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager. Spicer said there was a “massive, massive difference” between WikiLeaks publishing stolen, personal emails of a political figure and files about national security tools used by the CIA.
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Women go on strike in US to show their economic clout
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Many American women stayed home from work, joined rallies or wore red Wednesday to demonstrate how vital they are to the U.S. economy, as International Women’s Day was observed with a multitude of events around the world.
The Day Without a Woman protest in the U.S. was put together by organizers of the vast women’s marches that drew more than 1 million Americans the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The turnout on the streets this time was much smaller in many places, with crowds often numbering in the hundreds. There were no immediate estimates of how many women heeded the call to skip work.
“Trump is terrifying. His entire administration, they have no respect for women or our rights,” said 49-year-old Adina Ferber, who took a vacation day from her job at an art gallery to attend a demonstration in New York City. “They need to deal with us as an economic force.”
The U.S. event — inspired in part by the Day Without an Immigrant protest held last month — was part of the U.N.-designated International Women’s Day.
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Probe sought after AP report on church abuse allegations
A district attorney has asked the state to investigate two assistant prosecutors after an Associated Press story that quoted former congregants of a North Carolina church as saying the men derailed criminal probes into allegations of abuse by sect leaders.
David Learner said Wednesday that he wants the State Bureau of Investigation to look into the accusations against his employees, who are members of the evangelical Word of Faith Fellowship church.
The AP story, released Monday, cited nine former Word of Faith members who said Frank Webster and Chris Back provided legal advice, helped at strategy sessions and participated in a mock trial for four congregants charged with harassing a former member.
The ex-congregants also said that Back and Webster, who is sect leader Jane Whaley’s son-in-law, helped derail a social services investigation into child abuse in 2015 and attended meetings where Whaley warned congregants to lie to investigators about abuse incidents.
“This is long overdue,” said Rick Cooper, a U.S. Navy veteran who spent more than 20 years as a congregant at Word of Faith and raised nine children in the church. “I’m glad they’re finally taking this seriously.”
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IS gunmen in white lab coats kill 30 in Kabul hospital
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Gunmen wearing white lab coats stormed a military hospital in Afghanistan’s capital on Wednesday, killing at least 30 people and wounding dozens in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.
The attack on the 400-bed military facility, located near two civilian hospitals in Kabul’s heavily-guarded diplomatic quarter, set off clashes with security forces that lasted several hours.
The brazen assault reflected the capability of militant groups in Afghanistan to stage large-scale and complex attacks in the heart of Kabul, underscoring the challenges the government continues to face to improve security for ordinary Afghans.
Gen. Dawlat Waziri, a Defense Ministry spokesman, said there were “more than 30 killed and more than 50 wounded” in the attack. Afghan forces battled the attackers floor by floor, he added. The ministry said the attackers were dressed like health workers.
According to Waziri, four gunmen were involved, including two suicide bombers who detonated their explosives vests once the group was inside the hospital.
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In her words: Casey Anthony talks to AP about Caylee’s death
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Casey Anthony — the Florida woman accused, then acquitted, of killing her 2-year-old daughter — spoke with The Associated Press five times over a weeklong period. During the interviews, she talked about her love for her daughter, Caylee Marie, and showed photos of her and artwork she finger-painted. Anthony maintains her innocence in the death and insists she doesn’t know how the last hours of Caylee’s life unfolded.
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THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: “You were convicted of one thing.”
ANTHONY: “Lying to the cops. People lie to the cops every day. Cops lie to people every day; I’m just one of the unfortunate idiots who admitted that they lied. “
AP: “Was the lying out of panic?”
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FBI’s Comey: ‘You’re stuck with me for another 6 1/2 years’
BOSTON (AP) — FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday he plans to serve his entire 10-year term, even as controversy swirls over his attempt to rebut President Donald Trump’s claim that the Obama administration tapped his phones during the election.
“You’re stuck with me for another 6½ years,” Comey said during a cybersecurity conference at Boston College.
Comey was appointed 3½ years ago by then-President Barack Obama.
Controversy erupted last weekend after Trump tweeted that Obama had tapped his phones at Trump Tower during the election. Trump offered no evidence of his claim. Comey asked the Justice Department to publicly reject the allegation as false.
Comey did not reference the wiretapping controversy during his speech to law enforcement officials and private-sector business leaders.
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‘Fearless Girl’ statue stares down Wall Street’s iconic bull
NEW YORK (AP) — A new statue of a resolute young girl now faces Wall Street’s famous Charging Bull, erected by a major asset managing firm for International Women’s Day to make a point: There’s a dearth of women on the boards of the largest U.S. corporations.
State Street Global Advisors, the Boston-based investment giant, had the statue created to push companies to increase the number of women directors.
Artist Kristen Visbal’s “Fearless Girl” drew crowds Wednesday that initially came to pose for pictures with the bull, but the novelty quickly became a New York hot spot.
The girl, sculpted in bronze, appears to be staring down the bronze bull, her hands firmly planted on her waist, ponytailed head held high.
“Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference,” reads a plaque at her feet.
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Study: Climate change goosed odds of freakishly hot February
WASHINGTON (AP) — A freakishly balmy February broke more than 11,700 local daily records for warmth in the United States, but it didn’t quite beat 1954 for the warmest February on record, climate scientists said.
The average temperature last month was 41.2 degrees — 7.3 degrees warmer than normal but three-tenths a degree behind the record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Wednesday.
It was unseasonably toasty for most of the country east of the Rockies, but a cool Pacific Northwest kept the national record from falling, said NOAA climate scientist Jake Crouch.
Chicago had no snow. Oklahoma hit 99 degrees. Texas and Louisiana had their hottest February. NOAA said local weather stations broke or tied warm temperature records 11,743 times but set cold records only 418 times.
An international science team’s computer analysis of causes of extreme weather calculated that man-made global warming tripled the likelihood for the nation’s unusually warm February. The mostly private team of researchers, called World Weather Attribution, uses accepted scientific techniques to figure if climate change plays a role in extreme events based on computer simulations of real world conditions and those without heat-trapping gases.
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Caveman menu: Woolly rhino in Belgium, mushrooms in Spain
WASHINGTON (AP) — Eating like a caveman meant chowing down on woolly rhinos and sheep in Belgium, but munching on mushrooms, pine nuts and moss in Spain. It all depended on where they lived, new research shows.
Scientists got a sneak peek into the kitchen of three Neanderthals by scraping off the plaque stuck on their teeth and examining the DNA. What they found smashes a common public misconception that the caveman diet was mostly meat. They also found hints that one sickly teen used primitive versions of penicillin and aspirin to help ease his pain.
The dental plaque provides a lifelong record of what went in the Neanderthals’ mouths and the bacteria that lived in their guts, said study co-author Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA in Adelaide.
“It’s like a fossil,” he said.
While past studies showed varied Neanderthal diets, genetic testing allowed researchers to say what kind of meat or mushrooms they ate, Cooper said. The 42,000-year-old Belgian Neanderthal’s menu of sheep and woolly rhino reflected what roamed in the plains around the Neanderthal’s home, he said. The research is in Wednesday’s journal Nature .