Nation & World briefs: 12-20-17

Triumphant Trump celebrates tax win — but some fear backlash

WASHINGTON (AP) — A triumphant President Donald Trump and jubilant fellow Republicans celebrated the passage of their $1.5 trillion tax overhaul Wednesday as a “historic victory for the American people.” The American people, however, will need some convincing.

As Trump and GOP lawmakers gathered at the White House to cheer their first major legislative achievement — and the biggest tax changes in a generation — some Republicans warned that the party could face a painful political backlash against an overhaul that offers corporations and wealthy taxpayers the biggest benefits and triggers the loss of health care coverage for millions of Americans.

There was no hint of anxiety at the White House, though, as the president and congressional Republicans pushed any qualms aside and reveled in a much-needed win at the end of a year marked by GOP infighting and political stumbles.

“We are making America great again,” Trump declared, personally thanking his “little team” of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, before lawmakers lavished praise upon a president they have often openly criticized.

“I don’t know if we’ll have bigger moments, but we hope to,” said Trump.

With shutdown clock ticking, GOP struggles for spending deal

WASHINGTON (AP) — With a shutdown clock ticking toward a midnight Friday deadline, House Republican leaders struggled on Wednesday to unite the GOP rank and file behind a must-pass spending bill.

Although a major obstacle evaporated after key GOP senators dropped a demand to add health insurance subsidies for the poor, a number of defense hawks offered resistance to a plan by GOP leaders to punt a guns-versus-butter battle with Democrats into the new year.

There’s still plenty of time to avert a politically debilitating government shutdown, which would detract from the party’s success this week in muscling through their landmark tax bill.

Some lawmakers from hurricane-hit states also worried that an $81 billion disaster aid bill was at risk of getting left behind in the rush to exit Washington for the holidays.

Lawmakers said the GOP vote-counting team would assess support for the plan and GOP leaders would set a course of action from there.

After net neutrality: Brace for internet ‘fast lanes’

NEW YORK (AP) — Now that federal telecom regulators have repealed net neutrality, it may be time to brace for the arrival of internet “fast lanes” and “slow lanes.”

The net neutrality rules just voted down by the Federal Communications Commission prohibited such “paid prioritization,” as it’s technically known. That’s when an internet provider such as Verizon or Comcast decides to charge services like YouTube or Amazon for faster access to users. Firms that decline to pay up could wind up in bumper-to-bumper slow lanes.

The Associated Press queried seven major internet providers about their post-net-neutrality plans, and all of them equivocated when asked if they might establish fast and slow lanes. None of the seven companies — Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Charter, Cox, Sprint and T-Mobile — would rule out the possibility. Three said they had “no plans” for paid prioritization, and a few declined to answer the question at all.

By contrast, several of these firms promised not to block or slow down specific internet sites and services, two other practices prohibited by the expiring net-neutrality rules. (Those rules won’t formally end until sometime in early 2018.) Any such move could set off a public uproar and might even trigger an antitrust investigation.

Here are the net-neutrality promises from the country’s biggest wireless and cable companies.

8 Americans, 2 Swedes, 1 Canadian dead in Mexican bus crash

CANCUN, Mexico (AP) — Driver negligence and speed caused a bus crash in southern Mexico that killed eight Americans, two Swedes, one Canadian and a Mexican tour guide as they traveled from cruise ships to visit nearby Mayan ruins, officials said Wednesday.

Quintana Roo state prosecutors said a preliminary manslaughter investigation indicated the driver lost control of the bus and when he tried to get back on the narrow highway, the bus flipped, struck a tree and landed in vegetation along the roadside.

“Due to a lack of care the driver lost control of the bus’ steering to the right, leaving the asphalt,” state prosecutor Miguel Angel Pech Cen said at a news conference. He said evidence found at the scene indicated the driver was going too fast.

The state government said that in addition to the 12 people killed, three Canadians, four Brazilians, four Americans and two Swedes had to be hospitalized for treatment of injuries. The two Swedes were transported to the United States for treatment. Seven other people were slightly injured in Tuesday’s accident and returned to their cruise ship.

By Wednesday afternoon, only four tourists — one Brazilian and three Americans — remained in local hospitals, the state prosecutor’s office said.

Expert: New route may have distracted engineer before crash

SEATTLE (AP) — Experts say it’s possible the engineer on an Amtrak train that derailed as it hurtled into a curve at more than twice the speed limit was distracted for an extended period of time before the train plunged off an overpass and onto a busy interstate, a key factor in the investigation.

Authorities on Wednesday reopened two southbound lanes of Interstate 5 – the Pacific Northwest’s main north-south arterial – that had been closed since Monday’s accident as federal investigators focused on whether the engineer’s attention was diverted by a second person in the cab, or by something else.

Three men were killed Monday south of Seattle when the train barreled into a 30 mph zone at 80 mph. Southbound lanes of Interstate 5 near DuPont had been closed at the accident ever since.

A conductor in training who was familiarizing himself with the new route was in the locomotive with the engineer at the time. A federal official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity said authorities want to know whether the engineer lost “situational awareness” — didn’t realize where he was.

Rail-safety experts say that while it is fairly common to have two people in a cab, investigators will look into whether that may have distracted the engineer.

Cardinal Law’s legacy: a stain of scandal on the church

When the clergy sex abuse scandal erupted in Boston in 2002, Cardinal Bernard Law had every reason to think he would survive. Law had a place among the powerbrokers of the heavily Catholic city. He was a friend of U.S. presidents, an emissary of Pope John Paul II.

But after months of disclosures about how he had protected child-molesting priests, Law was driven out as the church found itself in crisis across the U.S. and around the world.

“We’re still reeling from the catastrophic damage to the Catholic church’s credibility,” said Christopher Bellitto, an authority on church history at Kean University in New Jersey.

Law, the disgraced former archbishop of Boston who died Wednesday at age 86 in Rome, was an unlikely catalyst for this darkest chapter of American Catholicism.

He arrived in Boston in 1984 with a record of civil rights activism starting in the 1960s as a young priest in Mississippi, where he sometimes traveled in the trunks of cars for safety. He had lived in many countries and was educated at Harvard. He was devoted to building relationships with Jews and other Christians.

Israel, US team up to block UN vote on Jerusalem

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel is intensively lobbying countries around the world to oppose a U.N. resolution criticizing President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Israeli officials said Wednesday.

Thursday’s vote in the U.N. General Assembly will indicate whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has succeeded in his efforts to drum up new pockets of support in the developing world, as well as the extent to which Israel and the U.S. are — or are not — alone on the question of Jerusalem.

The Palestinians have turned to the General Assembly after the U.S. vetoed a resolution this week in the Security Council calling on Trump to rescind his decision. While General Assembly votes, unlike Security Council resolutions, are not legally binding, they serve as a barometer of international sentiment on key issues.

The U.S. and Israel are both placing great weight on Thursday’s vote. U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley threatened U.N. member states with possible retaliation if they support the resolution, saying Trump takes the vote “personally” and the U.S. “will be taking names.”

Trump went even further, telling reporters at a Cabinet meeting in Washington that opponents were likely to face a cutoff in U.S. funding. “For all these nations, they take our money and then vote against us,” Trump said. “We’re watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care.”