Nation & world news – at a glance – for Wednesday, November 8, 2023

House Republicans toil for a spending strategy with a shutdown close at hand

House Republicans on Tuesday grasped for a way to avert a government shutdown amid divides over federal spending, debating how to strike a compromise with the Democratic-led Senate and President Joe Biden just 10 days away from the funding deadline. At a meeting Tuesday, Speaker Mike Johnson presented a menu of spending strategies. It included passing a temporary measure that would extend government funding into early 2024 that contains a handful of conservative policies and negotiating a deal directly with the Senate. Some hard-right conservatives have backed an option that would fund some government agencies for only a few weeks and others for a longer period.

When a child is shot, trauma ripples through families, study finds

With each mass shooting, Americans look to one grim indicator — death toll — as a measure of the destructive impact. But damage left behind by gunshot wounds reverberates among survivors and families, sending mental health disorders soaring and shifting huge burdens onto the health care system, a new analysis of private health insurance claims shows. In 2020, gunshot wounds became the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States. Existing evidence suggests nonfatal gunshot wounds are two to three times as common as fatal ones. These wounds can be especially catastrophic in children.

City to dismiss citations issued to reporter for asking too many questions

Officials in a Chicago suburb on Monday said their city would dismiss citations it had issued to a local news reporter last month after he persistently contacted elected officials about a flooding issue. The Daily Southtown, a regional newspaper owned by the Chicago Tribune Media Group, published an article by Hank Sanders about consultants informing officials in Calumet City, Illinois, that stormwater facilities were in “poor condition” before a flood swept through the community in September. Sanders continued to inquire about flooding issues after the article was published. His calls and emails drew complaints from Calumet City officials.

As Black voters drift to Trump, Biden’s allies say they have work to do

Black voters are more disconnected from the Democratic Party than they have been in decades, frustrated with what many see as inaction on their political priorities and unhappy with President Joe Biden, a candidate they helped lift to the White House just three years ago. New polls by The New York Times and Siena College found that 22% of Black voters in six of the most important battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — said they would support former President Donald Trump in next year’s election, and 71% would back Biden.

Prosecutors assail Trump’s bid to have Federal election case dismissed

Federal prosecutors Monday asked a judge to reject a barrage of motions filed last month by former President Donald Trump that sought to toss out the indictment charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 election and said his claims were full of “distortions and misrepresentations.” In a 79-page court filing, prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith went one by one through Trump’s multiple motions to dismiss the case and accused him and his lawyers of essentially trying to flip the script of the four-count indictment filed against him in August.

How your child’s school bus might prevent blackouts

The four yellow vehicles parked at a depot in South Burlington, Vermont, have a primary job: transporting schoolchildren. But beneath their steel shells, these buses are packed with technology that could be vital in the transition to clean energy. The vehicles take on a second task while sitting idle during school hours. The local utility puts their batteries to work, storing excess renewable energy so it can be pumped back into the grid when needed. The buses are a test of the idea that electric vehicles could become a buffer that soaks up power when there is too much and provides it when demand for electricity surges.

Automakers delay electric vehicle spending as demand slows

Normally, a 50% increase in sales is considered good. But when the number of electric vehicles sold in the United States grew that much during the third quarter from a year earlier, it was a disappointment. Expectations were higher. Instead of celebrating, auto executives worried that demand for electric vehicles was dropping, raising questions about their plans to invest tens of billions of dollars to develop new models and build factories. General Motors, Ford Motor and Tesla have cited slower sales and signs that the economy was weakening in announcing that they would delay that spending. It was a blow to the Biden administration’s plan to fight climate change by promoting zero-emission vehicles.

Arab states intensify pleas for Gaza cease-fire as public anger mounts

Facing growing anger from their own people, Arab countries are intensifying their appeals to the United States to pressure Israel to implement an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip or risk sabotaging the security of the entire Middle East. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt have all implored U.S. officials to get Israel to halt its military assault. “The whole region is sinking in a sea of hatred that will define generations to come,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said this past weekend. This weekend, Arab countries will gather in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, for a summit where the conflict — and their response to it — will top the agenda.Israel Plans to Control ‘Overall Security’ of Gaza After WarPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered the clearest indication to date about what Israel may be planning for the aftermath of the war in the Gaza Strip, warning that it will need to oversee “overall security” there once the fighting is over to prevent future attacks. “Israel will — for an indefinite period — will have the overall security responsibility because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it,” Netanyahu said in an interview with ABC News that aired Monday. “When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine.”Portugal’s Prime Minister Resigns UnexpectedlyPrime Minister António Costa of Portugal resigned unexpectedly Tuesday, hours after the police raided government buildings as part of an inquiry into corruption and “influence peddling” and issued an arrest warrant for Costa’s chief of staff. Costa, who had been in power since 2015, said in televised remarks that he had been “surprised” to learn that he would be the subject of criminal proceedings and that “no illicit act weighs on my conscience.” The investigation relates to lithium exploration concessions in northern Portugal and a hydrogen-energy production plant and data center in Sines, on the country’s southern coast, a statement said.

King Charles III, climate advocate, delivers speech at odds with his beliefs

For a lifelong supporter of environmental causes, a plan to expand oil and gas drilling in the North Sea was probably not what King Charles III had hoped to announce when he opened Britain’s Parliament for the first time as monarch. But Tuesday, the new king outlined this and 20 of the government’s other legislative priorities in a tradition-steeped ceremony that required a display of the deadpan political neutrality for which his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, was famous. King Charles made his first major speech about the environment in 1970, at age 21, and in recent years has been an increasingly vocal advocate for climate action.

Orcas sink fourth boat off Iberia, unnerving sailors

The yacht Grazie Mamma II was off the coast of Morocco last week when it encountered a pod of orcas. The marine animals slammed the yacht’s rudder for 45 minutes, causing major damage and a leak, according to Morskie Mile, the boat’s Polish operators. The crew escaped, and rescuers and the Moroccan navy tried to tow the yacht to safety, but it sank near the port of Tanger Med. The account is adding to the worries of many sailors along the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula, where marine biologists are studying a puzzling phenomenon: Orcas are jostling and ramming boats in interactions that have caused at least four boats in the past two years to sink.

Italian officials question Meloni’s deal with Albania to house migrants

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy on Tuesday heralded an agreement she had struck with Albania, a non-European Union nation, to outsource the processing and containment of migrants as a breakthrough for one of the continent’s most defining challenges. But Italian politicians caught by surprise by Meloni’s announcement in Rome on Monday questioned whether the agreement — struck earlier this week with the nation across the Adriatic Sea — was legal, ethical, practical or even real. Prime Minister Edi Rama of Albania, which is a candidate for EU membership, said his country was receiving no money from Italy and had agreed to the deal out of the goodness of its heart.

By wire sources