Jan. 6 committee setting its sights on Pence, Ginni Thomas
Members of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot say they may subpoena former Vice President Mike Pence. And they are waiting to hear from Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, about her role in the illegal plot to overturn the 2020 election. In interviews on the Sunday news shows, committee members pledged to provide pertinent material to the Justice Department by the end of the month for its criminal investigation. Rep. Adam Schiff says the committee is “not taking anything off the table in terms of witnesses who have not yet testified.” He describes a Pence subpoena as “certainly a possibility.”
Arizona wildfire destroys observatory buildings
Astronomers watched in fear over the past week as a growing wildfire crept up an Arizona mountainside toward the Kitt Peak National Observatory, forcing 40 people to evacuate days before the blaze destroyed four buildings early Friday. The Contreras fire has scorched more than 18,000 acres, twisting among Indigenous-populated areas in the state near Tucson, and scientists might not be able to return to the observatory for weeks. But its telescopes, which number in the dozens, remained safe as of Sunday afternoon, officials said. Firefighters have contained 40% of the fire’s perimeter.
Heat wave to shift East
Heat continues to build in the northern and central Plains of the United States, with more than 15 million people there under heat alerts Sunday. Temperatures in Minnesota and Nebraska were expected to climb to the triple digits. The National Weather Service said that heat indexes could top 100 degrees Sunday, from the Gulf Coast to near the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Starting Monday, the heat dome is expected to move across the Mississippi Valley and the mid-South, the weather service said. By Tuesday, it will shift to the Great Lakes and the Ohio and Tennessee valleys.
Russian forces tighten noose around important cities in Ukraine’s east
Russian forces appeared poised to tighten the noose around thousands of Ukrainian troops near two strategically important cities in the fiercely contested Donbas region of eastern Ukraine on Sunday, mounting an assault on Ukrainian front lines that forced Ukraine to rush reinforcements to the area. On a day of fighting that put territory thought to be securely in Ukrainian hands in play, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned the war could grind on for years. They urged Ukraine’s Western allies to settle in for the long haul as Russia moved aggressively to wear Ukraine down through what Johnson called a “campaign of attrition.”
State Department says it has seen videos that appear to show 2 missing Americans
The U.S. State Department said Saturday it had reviewed photos and videos appearing to show two Americans captured in Ukraine, although it declined to comment on the authenticity of the images or on the men’s conditions. American officials were in contact with the men’s families, Ukrainian authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross, a State Department spokesperson said. Alex Drueke, 39, and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, were reported missing last week by their families, and the State Department described them Saturday as “reportedly captured by Russia’s military forces in Ukraine.” Both are U.S. military veterans who volunteered to fight in Ukraine.
Petro wins the election, becoming Colombia’s first leftist leader
For the first time, Colombia will have a leftist president. Gustavo Petro, a former rebel and a longtime legislator, won Colombia’s presidential election Sunday, galvanizing voters frustrated by decades of poverty and inequality under conservative leaders, with promises to expand social programs, tax the wealthy and move away from an economy he has called overly reliant on fossil fuels. His victory sets the third largest nation in Latin America on a sharply uncertain path, just as it faces rising poverty and violence that have sent record numbers of Colombians to the United States border.
More than 200 feared dead in Ethiopia massacre
An Ethiopian rebel group massacred more than 200 members of the Amhara ethnic group Sunday, according to officials and news reports, the latest atrocity amid a civil war that threatens to tear apart Africa’s second-most-populous nation. Witnesses and officials told The Associated Press that at least 230 people were killed when members of the Oromo Liberation Army attacked Tole, a village in Oromia, Ethiopia’s largest region. The Oromo Liberation Army, a rebel group that is designated as a terror organization by the Ethiopian government, denied carrying out the killings and said they were committed by a militia aligned with the regional government supporting Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
Macron loses absolute majority as opposition surges
Voters in France’s legislative elections dealt President Emmanuel Macron a serious blow Sunday as his centrist coalition lost its absolute majority in the lower house of parliament to a resurgent far-right and a defiant alliance of left-wing parties, complicating his domestic agenda for his second term. Macron’s centrist coalition won 245 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, the lower and more powerful house of parliament. That was more than any other political group, but less than half of all the seats, and far fewer than the 350 seats Macron’s party and its allies won when he was first elected in 2017.