Jan. 6 panel issues subpoena to Secret Service in hunt for text messages
The House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol issued a subpoena to the Secret Service late Friday seeking text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, that were said to have been erased. The development came after the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security told lawmakers that many of the texts were erased as part of a device replacement program even after the inspector general had requested them as part of his inquiry into the events of Jan. 6. The agency said that the project was underway before it received notice from the inspector general and that it did not “maliciously” delete text messages.
Did nature heal during the pandemic ‘anthropause’?
The pandemic remains a global human tragedy. But for ecologists, it has been an opportunity to learn more about how people affect the natural world by documenting what happened when we stepped back from it. A growing body of literature paints a complex portrait of the slowdown of human activity known as the “anthropause.” Some species benefited from our absence. But other species struggled without human protection or resources. The research has actionable lessons for conservation, scientists say, suggesting even modest changes in human behavior can have outsize benefits for other species. Those shifts could be important to consider as the human world roars back to life.
2 kids among 6 dead in Montana highway pileup, 8 others hurt
Two children are among the six people who died Friday evening in a massive crash after a Montana dust storm caused blackout conditions on Interstate 90. Montana Highway Patrol Sgt. Jay Nelson said investigators so far have found no other factors that contributed to the pileup that also sent eight others to area hospitals with varying degrees of injuries. The incident happened just west of Hardin, though additional ambulances had to be called in from Billings to help. The identities of the dead and conditions of the survivors are not yet being released. Gov. Greg Gianforte said on Twitter that he was deeply saddened by the news of a mass casualty crash.
Biden aims to push US leadership
in Arab world
Meeting with Arab leaders Saturday, President Joe Biden aimed to reassert U.S. leadership in the region even as his administration has focused most of its foreign policy energy since he took office on the geopolitical competition with China and the Russian war in Ukraine. Biden sat down separately with the leaders of Iraq and Egypt and met with the president of the United Arab Emirates before joining a group session of nine leaders from the region. With energy markets roiled by the war in Ukraine, the president hoped to encourage increased oil production to bring down gasoline prices back home.
Moscow signals a shift to a more aggressive phase of Ukraine war
In an indication Russian forces were ending what they called an operational pause in their invasion of Ukraine, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Saturday ordered his forces to intensify attacks “in all operational sectors” of the war. As the Ukrainian government disclosed modest new ground attacks by Russian forces, the Russian defense ministry said Shoigu had instructed that combat be intensified to stop Ukraine from shelling civilian areas in Russian-occupied territory. After deadly Russian missile strikes across Ukraine in recent days that killed civilians, the statement was a new signal from Moscow that its invasion may be entering a more aggressive phase.
UN decries rising death toll, rights violations in Haiti
U.N. agencies are again warning of rising violence around Haiti’s capital, saying 99 people have been reported killed in recent gang fighting in the Cite Soleil district alone. Saturday’s warning came hours after the Security Council approved a resolution renewing the mandate of a U.N. office in the troubled Caribbean nation. U.N. humanitarian agencies say they’re ready to help once it’s safe to do so. The spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency described those dangers: 934 killings, 684 injuries and 680 kidnappings across the capital in the first half of the year, with hundreds more killed or injured in one neighborhood alone this month.
Parroting Trump, GOP primary losers cast doubt on elections
Republican primaries this year have revealed a new political strategy for numerous candidates. They’re running on a platform that denies President Donald Trump’s loss in 2020. And as some of those same candidates lose their own primaries, they’re insisting without evidence that their races were rigged, too. The primary losers have a role model in Trump himself. After he lost the Iowa caucuses in 2016, Trump baselessly claimed fraud and demanded an investigation. When he was elected president later that year, he claimed that fraud was the reason Democrat Hillary Clinton won more votes than he did. Trump set up a commission to try to prove that. That commission was disbanded when it failed to produce any evidence.
Texas Man Charged in Four Decades-Old California Murders
DNA evidence helped to crack the unsolved murders, some dating to 1980, of three women and a teenage girl in California, leading to the arrest of a 75-year-old man in Texas, authorities said Friday. Detectives from the Los Angeles and Inglewood, California, police departments traveled to Fort Worth, Texas, to arrest the man, Billy Ray Richardson, whom police linked to the murders of Kari Lenander, Beverly Cruse, and her sister, Debra Cruse, in 1980 in Los Angeles, as well as Trina Wilson in 1995 in Inglewood. All the victims had been raped, prosecutors said.
Mexico’s capture
of drug kingpin
could be signal to US
The United States’ motivation to find infamous drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero was never in doubt. It offered a $20 million reward for information leading to his capture. There was less certainty about the commitment of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had made clear his lack of interest in pursuing drug lords. Yet the man allegedly responsible for the murder of a DEA agent more than three decades ago is now in Mexican custody awaiting possible extradition to the U.S. Friday’s capture came three days after López Obrador and U.S. President Joe Biden met in the White House.
Cargo plane operated by Ukraine carrier crashes in Greece
An Antonov cargo plane operated by a Ukrainian airline has crashed near the city of Kavala in northern Greece. Local residents reported seeing a fireball and hearing explosions for two hours after the crash. Greek Civil Aviation authorities said the flight was heading from Serbia to Jordan. The An-12, a Soviet-built turboprop aircraft, was operated by cargo carrier Meridian, according to state broadcaster ERT. Greek media reported there were eight people on the plane and that it was carrying 12 tons of “dangerous materials,” mostly explosives. But local officials said they had no specific information on the cargo and provided varying numbers of people on board.
By wire sources