nation & World News- At a glance – for Saturday, April 8, 2023

Judge Invalidates FDA Approval of the Abortion Pill Mifepristone

A federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary ruling invalidating the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, an unprecedented order that — if it stands through court challenges — could make it harder for patients to get abortions in states where abortion is legal, not just in those trying to restrict it. Less than an hour after the ruling, a judge in Washington state issued a ruling that directly contradicted the Texas decision. The conflicting orders by two federal judges appear to create a legal standoff likely to escalate to the Supreme Court.

Outrage at GOP Could Propel Expelled Democrats Right Back to House

Expelled by their Republican colleagues for an act of protest, Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson were no longer members of the Tennessee House of Representatives on Friday. They could not advocate for their constituents in Nashville and Memphis or take to the floor again to push for gun control legislation. But instead of sidelining the Democratic lawmakers, the expulsions have sparked outrage and galvanized national support within their party, and the two young Black lawmakers are poised to return to the state Legislature — as soon as next week — with a platform and profile far surpassing what they had just days ago.

U.S. Prosecutors Face Challenges in Georgia

The Fulton County district attorney’s investigation into former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia is nearing a decision point, posing fresh challenges for federal prosecutors considering charging him in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The long-running investigation by Fani Willis in Atlanta substantially overlaps with the broader inquiry into Trump’s conduct by the special counsel, Jack Smith, in Washington. That creates complications for two aggressive investigative teams pursuing some of the same witnesses, increasing the possibility of discrepancies in testimony that Trump’s lawyers could exploit.

Biden’s High-Stakes Sprint to an Electric Future

Inside a government laboratory, engineers have been dissecting the innards of the newest all-electric vehicles with a singular goal: Rewrite tailpipe pollution rules to speed up the nation’s transition to electric cars. The work taking place in the Environmental Protection Agency’s automotive research laboratory puts it at the center of one the most complex balancing acts faced by President Joe Biden. He has pledged to fight climate change, and gas-burning cars are a major source of planet-warming pollution. But automobile manufacturing is one of the nation’s most important industries, and a rapid switch to electric vehicles has the potential to displace thousands of autoworkers.

Stabbing of Cash App Creator Raises Alarm, and Claims of ‘Lawless’ San Francisco

The fury erupted within hours, as word spread that the 43-year-old man who had been stabbed to death this week in an enclave of high-rise condominiums near the Bay Bridge was Bob Lee, a well-known tech executive. The leaders of “lawless” San Francisco had Lee’s “literal blood on their hands,” Matt Ocko, a tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist in Palo Alto, California, tweeted. The drumbeat has built since then. While city officials agree that the murder is a signal that San Francisco has work to do on public safety, they’re also clashing with powerful figures in the tech sector over the severity of the city’s problems with crime.

Biden Plan for Transgender Title IX Protections Began on Inauguration Day

As President Joe Biden signed an executive order in his first hours in office to strengthen prohibitions against gender and sexual discrimination, a team of officials in the Department of Education began assessing an important question: How could the administration protect transgender athletes? The issue has divided activists who view barring transgender athletes as necessary to protecting fairness in sports, and others who ardently believe that blocking those athletes is part of a larger assault on the civil liberties of transgender people. The administration’s latest proposal to protect transgender people, released Thursday, is seen by those who have studied Title IX issues as something of a compromise.

New Batch of Classified Documents Appear on Social Media Sites

A new batch of classified documents that appear to detail U.S. national security secrets from Ukraine to the Middle East to China surfaced on social media sites Friday, alarming the Pentagon and adding turmoil to a situation that seemed to have caught the Biden administration off guard. The scale of the leak — more than 100 documents may have been obtained — along with the sensitivity of the documents themselves, could be hugely damaging, U.S. officials said. A senior intelligence official called the leak “a nightmare for the Five Eyes,” in a reference to the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the so-called Five Eyes nations that broadly share intelligence.

Tensions Subside in South Lebanon but Rise Again in West Bank and Israel

After a rare outbreak of violence along the Israel-Lebanon border, the situation across the region remained volatile Friday, when two Israelis were killed in a drive-by shooting in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and at least one other civilian was killed during a car-ramming in Tel Aviv. But fears of a wider escalation on multiple fronts involving Israel, Lebanon and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip subsided, at least temporarily, as all sides signaled they were not seeking an immediate escalation. Palestinian militias stopped firing rockets toward Israel, tensions cooled at a sensitive Jerusalem holy site and the Israeli military ended its counterattacks on Lebanon and Gaza.

Baptist Minister in Myanmar Gets 6 Years in Prison for Opposing Junta

Hkalam Samson, a Baptist minister in Myanmar who once called attention to his country’s human rights abuses at the White House, was sentenced to six years in prison Friday on charges of terrorism, unlawful association and inciting opposition to the regime in Myanmar. Samson, 65, former head of the Kachin Baptist Convention in Myanmar, has denied the charges. His supporters, including international human rights groups, said the charges were manufactured by the military-led regime to silence him and called for his immediate release. The military junta, which seized power in a coup more than two years ago, is battling an increasingly well-armed alliance of ethnic armies and pro-democracy forces.

Sentencing in China’s ‘Chained Woman’ Trafficking Case Revives Online Outrage

A Chinese court Friday sentenced six people to prison for human trafficking and abuse of a woman found chained to a wall in a shack last year. The case has provoked public outrage, dealt a blow to government credibility and reopened debate about the status of women in China. Many questions remain about the woman and her situation, in part because the government has offered conflicting explanations and censored many people raising doubts about the official narrative. The punishments, ranging from eight to 13 years, revived public fury. On Chinese social media, where hashtags related to the case topped the list of topics, commenters criticized them as too lenient.

Taliban Bar Women From U.N., Threatening a Lifeline

The Afghan government this week barred female Afghan employees at the United Nations from working in Afghanistan, according to U.N. officials, a move threatening one of the last lifelines of badly needed aid in a country where millions risk starvation and restrictions on women have hampered aid operations in recent months. The decision this week comes just over three months after the Taliban administration issued a decree barring women from working in local and international aid organizations, many of which are involved in carrying out U.N. programs in Afghanistan. That decision led many organizations to suspend or scale back their programs across the country.

A Cobra Appeared Midflight. The Pilot’s Quick Thinking Saved Lives.

A South African pilot is being hailed as a hero this week after he unexpectedly came face-to-face with a venomous snake 11,000 feet in the air. The pilot, Rudolf Erasmus, 30, laughed about the incident in an interview Friday, but he and his four passengers, all colleagues, were not hurling any “Snakes on a Plane” jokes on Monday, when he noticed a Cape cobra, one of South Africa’s most dangerous snakes, slithering around the cockpit. He estimated it to be between 4 and 5 feet long. It didn’t take long for Erasmus to make arrangements to land at the nearest airport. After landing, Erasmus was the last to leave.

By wire sources