IOC recommends upholding ban of Russia through Winter Games
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — The International Olympic Committee executive board has recommended upholding the ban of Russia from the Pyeongchang Winter Games.
The full membership will vote on the proposal Sunday ahead of the closing ceremony.
IOC President Thomas Bach says a condition for Russia’s reinstatement is no further positive drug tests at these Olympics. Two of the four athletes who tested positive in Pyeongchang were competing as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.”
Russia was banned from the Olympics because of a massive doping scandal at the 2014 Sochi Games.
Damascus strikes kill scores, UN votes for cease-fire
BEIRUT — A new wave of airstrikes and shelling on eastern suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus left at least 22 people dead and dozens wounded Saturday, raising the death toll of a week of bombing in the area to 500, as the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution demanding a 30-day cease-fire across Syria.
The weeklong bombardment has overwhelmed rescuers and doctors at makeshift hospitals, many of which have also been bombed. Activists say that terrified residents have been hiding in underground shelters where dozens of people can be crammed into small places.
The latest wave of bombings came after the U.N. Security Council delayed a vote on a resolution demanding a 30-day humanitarian cease-fire for two days to try to get Russia on board.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia had repeatedly called an immediate cease-fire unrealistic.
In a bid to get Russian support, sponsors Kuwait and Sweden amended the draft resolution late Friday to drop a demand that the cease-fire take effect 72 hours after the resolution’s adoption.
Admirers salute Billy Graham funeral motorcade
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Admirers took photos on their phones, fire trucks parked on freeway overpasses and police officers saluted as a motorcade carrying the body of the Rev. Billy Graham crossed the evangelist’s beloved home state of North Carolina for four hours Saturday from his mountain chapel to namesake library in the state’s largest city.
Residents in some of Graham’s most cherished places paid tribute to “America’s Pastor,” starting at the training center operated by his evangelistic association in Asheville. The motorcade rolled through Black Mountain, where he shopped and caught trains, and Montreat, where he lived.
Well-wishers lined sidewalks and medians as the motorcade reached Charlotte. Pallbearers, followed by family, carried the coffin into the Billy Graham Library, which will serve as a backdrop for the funeral.
Franklin Graham said he was fulfilling a promise to his father to bring the body to Charlotte. He said he was overwhelmed by “the outpouring of love.”
Leighton Ford, the evangelist’s brother-in-law, said the procession brought gratitude and tinge of sadness.
As Olympics wrap up, still no coverage in North Korea
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — While hundreds of millions of the world’s people get ready to watch the closing ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics on Sunday, North Koreans are still waiting to see the first event.
The lack of news at home is a stark contrast with how North Korea’s made-for-the-cameras delegation at the games, replete with hundreds of cheerleaders and even one of the country’s most popular singers, has been a big hit with the South Korean media and some of the hottest Internet clickbait of the entire games.
North Korea’s state-run media has never been especially devoted to covering international news events. Their job is more about hailing Kim Jong Un and whatever the ruling regime’s latest propaganda message might be. On that front they have stayed true to form: The only reports from Pyeongchang as of Saturday afternoon were about the visit of Kim’s younger sister and North Korea’s nominal head of state to attend the opening ceremony.
Even taking into account the North’s reluctance to portray South Korea in a positive light, the blackout is a bit mysterious.
Kim Jong Un himself used his annual televised New Year’s address to wish for the games’ success and announce the North’s plan to participate, prompting officials from both Koreas to make a major effort so that Pyongyang could send more than 500 people, including 22 athletes and 21 reporters (none of whose work has been seen).
From wire sources
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After years of dejection, proponents of gun laws see hope
PARKLAND, Fla. — The progression has become numbingly repetitive — mass bloodshed unleashed by a gunman, followed by the stories of the fallen, the funerals, the mourning, the talking heads and the calls for change that dwindle into nothingness.
The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, though, has some pondering the improbable: Could this latest carnage actually lead to gun reforms?
Alongside the familiar refrains stemming from earlier shootings, the Feb. 14 attack in Parkland, Florida, came with something else: young survivors immediately pleading for nationwide action. They have led walk-outs, confronted politicians and garnered the support of celebrities, linking their sorrowful, eloquent, outraged voices to the gun debate.
“Our kids have started a revolution,” Stoneman Douglas teacher Diane Wolk Rogers said during a CNN-sponsored forum Wednesday.
In the aftermath of the violence that claimed 17 lives, students have piled into buses and crashed a meeting of lawmakers in Tallahassee. They’ve relentlessly badgered Florida Sen. Marco Rubio about his support from the National Rifle Association. They’ve rejected President Trump’s condolences, calling for action over words.
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Trump officials fight eviction from Panama hotel they manage
PANAMA CITY — One of President Donald Trump’s family businesses is battling an effort to physically evict its team of executives from a luxury hotel in Panama where they manage operations, and police have been called to keep the peace, The Associated Press has learned. Witnesses told the AP they saw Trump’s executives carrying files to a room for shredding.
Representatives of the hotel owners’ association formally sought to fire Trump’s management team Thursday by hand-delivering termination notices to them at the Trump International Hotel and Tower, according to a Panamanian legal complaint filed by Orestes Fintiklis, who controls 202 of the property’s 369 hotel units. Trump’s managers retreated behind the glass walls of an office where they were seen carrying files to an area where the sounds of a shredding machine could be heard, according to two witnesses aligned with the owners. The legal complaint also accused Trump’s team of improperly destroying documents.
The witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity over concerns they would be drawn into an expensive and protracted legal fight.
Elsewhere in the building, the hotel owners’ team and its allies were barred by Trump Hotel staff from entering the room containing the building’s closed-circuit TV system as well as key computer servers for the hotel and apartments that share the property. In response, they shut off power to the room — temporarily bringing down phone lines and internet connections within the building.
According to the legal complaint, Trump’s chief of security and six security guards “pushed and shouted at” Fintiklis when he came to deliver the termination notices. The complaint said the hotel employees then called the police.
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Who ran the Olympics? Volunteer corps of mostly young women
GANGNEUNG, South Korea — She had always rooted only for Koreans. That was her home team and she believed they, exclusively, deserved her cheers.
She stood on the sidelines in the speedskating oval in her gray and red uniform, the ubiquitous getup of Pyeongchang’s army of volunteers that allowed her closer to the action than most ordinary people. The Korean skater trailed in fourth place with little chance to make it to the podium. Until: a skater in front from a country 5,000 miles away crashed into the wall, and the Korean sped across the finish line in third place.
She thought she would be ecstatic. But in the fallen skater’s face she saw, up close, a million emotions — defeat, pain, regret.
“I’m not sure I should say this,” Shin Ha-eun says. “But I felt bad for the person who fell more than I was happy about my athlete from Korea winning the bronze.”
In that moment, she felt what Olympic organizers always describe the Olympic spirit to be.
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Governors skeptical of Congress, but welcome new gun debate
WASHINGTON — Governors assessing the fallout from the latest school shooting said Saturday that the gun control debate has changed after the sorrow in Florida, a shift helped driven by public outrage and student activists.
But they are skeptical Congress can seize the moment, overcome its partisan divide and enact measures intended to prevent more tragedies, so governors are preparing to take the lead and have states push ahead with new gun restrictions.
The Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that claimed 17 lives is drawing much of the attention at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington. School safety and gun violence are expected to dominate the governors’ discussions Monday with President Donald Trump at the White House.
“There’s no question we’re in a different environment,” said Gov. Bill Haslam, R-Tenn. “There’s a lot of folks looking like, is it common sense to rule out someone to buy a beer at 20, but we’ll let him buy an assault rifle?”
Trump has not made any proposals to Congress. He spent much of the past week voicing support for strengthening federal background checks of gun buyers, banning “bump stock” type devices like the ones used in last year’s Las Vegas massacre, and keeping assault weapons out of the hands of anyone under age 21.