Wilkes County deadly head-on highway crash

Wilkes County deadly head-on highway crash

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  • Mexican leader says Biden offers $4B for Central America

    President Joe Biden's first calls to foreign leaders went to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at a strained moment for the U.S. relationship with its North American neighbors. Mexico's president said Saturday that Biden told him the U.S. would send $4 billion to help development in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — nations whose hardships have spawned tides of migration through Mexico toward the United States.

  • Priest who attended pro-Trump rally ahead of Capitol insurrection is suspended from post and may be defrocked

    Reverend Mark Hodges described event as ‘joyful, positive and orderly’

  • Navalny's wife detained amid mass arrests as protests sweep across Russia

    Russian police detained Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, at a protest in Moscow on Saturday as demonstrations in support of the opposition leader swept across Russia. Authorities detained at least 1,600 people at unauthorised rallies in Moscow and dozens of cities across the country, with some reports of violent clashes between protesters and riot police. At least 10,000 people joined protests in Moscow, according to estimates, in a test to Vladimir Putin. Protests began in Russia’s Far East and Siberia on Saturday morning. Seven time zones east of Moscow, about 3,000 people marched across the city of Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean, chanting “Navalny!” In Novosibirsk, chants “Putin is a thief” rang out in freezing minus 19 C temperatures as opposition supporters walked across the city to the main square.

  • Turkish appeals court overturns acquittal in Gezi trial

    A Turkish appeals court on Friday overturned the acquittal of nine people, including philanthropist Osman Kavala, in a case related to nationwide protests in 2013, according to court documents seen by Reuters. The case had ended with the surprise acquittal of nine defendants last February due to insufficient evidence. The trial was followed closely by Turkey's Western allies and rights groups, who said it was symbolic of what they saw as a crackdown on dissent under President Tayyip Erdogan.

  • Biden, Johnson talk about pandemic, NATO and trade in first phone call

    President Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson discussed issues including trade, NATO and the coronavirus pandemic in their first phone call since the U.S. leader's inauguration. Why it matters: A new trade agreement with the U.S. is a priority for Johnson, whose country completed its economic split with the European Union at the end of last year, AP noted. Support safe, smart, sane journalism. Sign up for Axios Newsletters here.What they're saying: Biden "conveyed his intention to strengthen the special relationship between our countries and revitalize transatlantic ties, underscoring the critical role of NATO to our collective defense and shared values," a White House readout of the call said. * "President Biden also noted the importance of cooperation, including through multilateral organizations, on shared challenges such as combatting climate change, containing COVID-19, and ensuring global health security," the readout added. A statement from Downing Street said that Biden and Johnson also "discussed the benefits of a potential free trade deal between our two countries, and the Prime Minister reiterated his intention to resolve existing trade issues as soon as possible." * "The Prime Minister warmly welcomed the President’s decision to re-join the Paris Agreement on climate change, as well as the World Health Organization and the COVAX programme to ensure equitable access for vaccines," the statement added. The big picture: Biden's conversation with Johnson came a day after the U.S. president spoke to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexico's Andrés Manuel López Obrador in separate phone calls. Be smart: sign up FREE for the most influential newsletter in America.

  • Ohio restaurant owner on how Biden’s $15 minimum wage impacts his business amid pandemic

    President of Adornetto’s Family of Restaurants, Adrian Adornetto, joins ‘Fox and Friends Weekend.’

  • Maduro sent letter to Iran's leader accrediting US fugitive

    A Colombian businessman was carrying a letter from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accrediting him to Iran's supreme leader when he was arrested on a U.S. warrant last year, according to a new court filing in a politically charged corruption case ratcheting up tensions with the South American nation. Attorneys for Alex Saab made the filing in Miami federal court Thursday just hours after prosecutors in the African nation of Cape Verde said they granted the 49-year-old Colombian house arrest as he fights extradition to the U.S. to face money laundering charges. U.S. officials believe Saab holds numerous secrets about how Maduro, his family and top aides allegedly siphoned off millions of dollars in government contracts amid widespread hunger in the oil-rich nation.

  • 3,000 arrested at protests demanding Navalny's release

    Russian police arrested more than 3,000 people Saturday in nationwide protests demanding the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin's most prominent foe, according to a group that counts political detentions. The protests in scores of cities in temperatures as low as minus-50 C (minus-58 F) highlighted how Navalny has built influence far beyond the political and cultural centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg. In Moscow, an estimated 15,000 demonstrators gathered in and around Pushkin Square in the city center, where clashes with police broke out and demonstrators were roughly dragged off by helmeted riot officers to police buses and detention trucks.

  • Lucas Interior Embraces Color to Modernize Palm Springs Spanish Revival Home

    “The materials and colors took center stage,” said David Lucas when it came to the design of the home.Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • Germany expects AstraZeneca to deliver 3 million COVID-19 vaccine doses in February

    Germany expects British drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc to deliver 3 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine in February despite the company's latest production problems, Health Minister Jens Spahn told Bild am Sonntag newspaper. AstraZeneca informed European Union officials on Friday it would cut deliveries of its COVID-19 vaccine to the bloc by 60% to 31 million doses in the first quarter of the year due to production problems, a senior official told Reuters. The decrease deals another blow to Europe's COVID-19 vaccination drive after Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech slowed supplies of their vaccine to the bloc this week, saying the move was needed because of work to ramp up production.

  • Sean Hannity denounces Biden’s first week as ‘disastrous’ before the president completed a full day of work

    ‘The Biden administration is off to a very rocky start,’ Fox News host says

  • 10 Republicans Voted to Impeach Trump. The Backlash Has Been Swift.

    It’s been less than two weeks since Reps. Peter Meijer, Tom Rice and Liz Cheney broke with nearly all of their Republican colleagues in the House and voted to impeach President Donald Trump, but in their home states, the backlash is already growing. In Michigan, a challenger to Meijer received a boost when Steve Bannon promoted him on his podcast. In South Carolina, a local Republican is getting so many calls urging him to run against Rice that he can’t keep his phone charged. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times And in Wyoming, a state senator called Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House, “out of touch” with her home state as he announced his primary campaign against her. The 10 House Republicans who voted for impeachment are already facing a fleet of primary challengers, censures and other rebukes from their hometown Republican Party organizations, an indication that the battle over Trump will play a defining role in shaping the direction of the party during the next two years. “Trump might be gone, but Trumpism is virtually guaranteed to be a part of the 2022 elections,” said Ken Spain, a former senior official at the National Republican Congressional Committee. “The tectonic plates have shifted within the GOP, and now members are trying to figure out how to straddle the fault lines.” The impeachment votes are not only being framed as a loyalty test to Trump, they are also being used to tie the incumbents to Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who for more than a decade has been the central bogeywoman in Republican congressional campaigns, with mixed results. While some senior Republican officials in Washington, like Sen. Mitch McConnell, now the minority leader, have begun trying to create some distance between the party and Trump, there is little indication that would-be Republican primary voters are interested in a political divorce. Nearly all of the House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump have either already been formally censured by local branches of the GOP, face upcoming censure votes or have been publicly scolded by local party leaders. Efforts across the country to punish these lawmakers offer vivid illustrations of the divisions cleaving a party that has been shut out of power. There are already multiple Republicans in South Carolina angling to challenge Rice, a conservative from a Trump-friendly district whose vote to impeach shocked his colleagues and drew a rebuke from the chair of the South Carolina Republican Party. “I am 100% sure that Tom Rice is going to be primaried,” said Ken Richardson, school board chair in Horry County, who is leaning toward running against Rice himself. He said he has had to charge his phone three times a day to keep up with the nonstop calls and texts urging him to enter the race. “I don’t know what he was thinking. I’m sure he’s got his reasons for why he voted the way he voted,” Richardson added. “If there’s ever been a Trump country, we live in Trump country.” Another potential challenger to Rice, former Mayor Mark McBride of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, said he believed Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 election (he is not), and has collected several hundred signatures on a petition calling for Rice’s resignation. “The president didn’t instigate it,” McBride said of the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6. “The idea of the impeachment trial going to the Senate, Tom Rice created a foundation for it to continue on.” Tom Norton, a Michigan businessman and Army veteran who lost a 2020 primary to Meijer, said the congressman called him to give him a heads-up the day he voted to impeach Trump. Norton immediately filed paperwork to mount another campaign against Meijer in 2022. Norton said he believed Meijer made a mistake in blaming Trump for inciting the riot. “We have a lot of people with a lot of passion, and we can’t control everybody,” he said, before going on to exaggerate the pockets of unrest that took place alongside last year’s largely peaceful protests for racial justice. “Blaming President Trump is the same thing as blaming Kamala Harris and Joe Biden for all the riots that antifa did last summer.” Rep. John Katko of Central New York, who was the first GOP lawmaker to back impeachment, is one of the few remaining Republicans who represents a Democratic-leaning district. Some Republicans in his district were outraged by his vote. “‘Not very happy’ would be the politest way to say it,” said Fred Beardsley, chair of the Oswego County Republican Committee. “We’re very upset. I’m tremendously upset.” “I think Mr. Katko crossed a line,” he continued. “He double-crossed us.” For Katko and Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, David Valadao of California, and Fred Upton and Meijer of Michigan, all Republicans who voted for impeachment and hail from states likely to lose seats in this year’s redistricting process, the shapes of the districts they may seek to represent in 2022 have yet to be determined. Democratic state legislators in New York and Illinois could draw Katko and Kinzinger into districts represented by fellow incumbent Republicans, potentially cutting off a path for a Trumpian insurgent, while commissions will determine district lines in California, Michigan and Ohio. Gene Koprowski, a conservative filmmaker who filed to run against Kinzinger, said he did so to start raising money but he is waiting for the Illinois Legislature to redraw its congressional district maps before formally beginning a campaign. Challengers to Cheney, who represents the single at-large Wyoming district, don’t face the same calculation. Anthony Bouchard, a state senator, announced his campaign Wednesday as President Joe Biden was being inaugurated. By Thursday night, he was a guest on Newsmax TV and Laura Ingraham’s program on Fox News. “Liz Cheney’s longtime opposition to President Trump and her most recent vote for impeachment shows just how out-of-touch she is with Wyoming,” Bouchard said in his announcement. “Wyoming taxpayers need a voice in Congress who will stand up to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, and not give them cover.” Many of the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment have survived challenging races before. In California, Valadao won his 2016 race by 13 percentage points while Hillary Clinton carried his district by 16 points. He lost to a Democrat by less than 1,000 votes in 2018 before winning the seat back in November, even though Biden won the district by 10 points. Indeed, a number of those Republicans have strong personal brands at home, which may complicate the efforts of potential primary challengers. Gonzalez, for example, was a star on the Ohio State University football team. And at least some party leaders, shaken by the violence at the Capitol, say the lawmakers who voted to impeach should be granted leeway. “If he was here with us now I’d probably shake his hand and congratulate him for his conviction,” Jim Dicke, Republican national committeeman for Ohio, said of Gonzalez. “There’s a lot to criticize in the process, but if you’re an elected official and you’re asked to vote, you can either say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or abstain. You’re not allowed to say, ‘Wait, I don’t like the process.’” In New York, Katko has twice survived being the target of Democrats trying to oust him from a Democratic-leaning district. “We can’t be doing our own form of ‘cancel culture,’ whether it’s Liz Cheney or Katko,” said former Rep. Peter King, a moderate Republican who represented a Long Island district for 28 years before retiring last year. King floated the idea that Katko run for governor. “It would be so foolish to go after John Katko,” he said. “He’s one of the best we have. And if we can’t accept difference of opinion, then we’re no different than the other guys.” In fact, Republicans have long battled one another over perceived purity tests, and in recent years the most powerful litmus test in the eyes of primary voters has centered on fealty to Trump. “President Trump enjoys a high approval rating within the Republican Party, and his supporters are loyal,” said Joel Mattila, Republican chair in Clark County, Washington. His committee has already issued a warning to Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican who voted to impeach. “She’s going to face a primary challenge, based on what I’m hearing,” he said. “It seems like, as people are stewing on it and as time is passing, the intensity level is definitely increasing.” Spain, the former House Republican campaign official, said it would fall to the corporate donors that typically support Republicans to provide financial support to the 10 who voted to impeach Trump. Michael McAdams, the NRCC’s communications director, said that the committee does not engage in primaries. That applies to incumbents in contested races, too. “I would hope,” Spain said, “that members of the business community who are standing on principle and refusing to support Republicans who voted against certifying the election results would focus their energy and resources toward helping those members who did stand up on behalf of the American democratic process.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company

  • UN agency: Libyan navy intercepts over 80 EU-bound migrants

    Libya’s coast guard intercepted on Friday more than 80 Europe-bound migrants in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the North African country, the U.N. migration agency said. The migrants were returned to Libyan soil, said the International Organization for Migration. “So far this year, some 300 people, including women and children, were returned to the country and ended up in detention,” said the IOM.

  • The Bidens were reportedly left waiting outside the White House on Inauguration Day because Trump sent the staff home

    The Trumps sent the butlers home "so there would be no-one to help the Bidens when they arrived," a source told The National Journal.

  • Greek foreign minister hopes for 'positive' spirit from Turkey in talks

    Greece's foreign minister said he hoped Turkey would have a positive approach towards a meeting next week aimed at reviving long-stalled efforts to open negotiations over disputed territorial claims. The neighbouring countries held 60 rounds of talks between 2002 and 2016, but plans last year for discussions to be resumed foundered over a survey vessel sent by Ankara into disputed waters and disagreements over the topics to be covered. He said the exploratory talks, which were halted in March 2016, were not negotiations but aimed to discover whether there was enough convergence for possible future negotiations on just one specific issue.

  • Biden's next executive order will let people stay on unemployment if they quit an unsafe job

    President Biden has issued another two executive orders aimed at the coronavirus pandemic's economic fallout.Millions of Americans have claimed unemployment insurance as they lost their jobs amid the pandemic, not to mention thousands of noncitizen workers who haven't been eligible for the benefits. Congress has so far passed two relief bills aimed at helping those who have lost their jobs, though many families are still struggling. Biden is pushing Congress to pass another $1.9 trillion stimulus program, but took initial and immediate relief steps Friday with another round of executive orders.The first order would increase how much families are given through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program each week. About 12 million families rely on the program, and this order would boost food stamp benefits for a family of four by 15 percent, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese tells The New York Times. And while Biden has called for another round of $1,400 stimulus checks, this order would direct the IRS to ensure Americans are getting their $600 payments as well. Notably, the order will also let people claim unemployment benefits even if they quit their job because they feel unsafe working it during the pandemic, among other economic benefits aimed at low-income Americans.The second order meanwhile lays the groundwork for ensuring federal workers and contractors are paid at least $15 per hour and can access paid leave, CNN reports. It also undoes some of former President Donald Trump's orders that let a president hire and fire employees for political reasons and limited federal workers' bargaining rights.Biden has spent the first two days of his presidency issuing executive orders to combat Trump's policies on immigration, climate, the pandemic, and more.More stories from theweek.com 7 brutally funny cartoons about Trump's White House exit McConnell is already moving to strangle the Biden presidency 'No way' McConnell has had a post-Trump 'epiphany,' political scientist says

  • Iran, pressured by blackouts and pollution, targets Bitcoin

    Iran's capital and major cities plunged into darkness in recent weeks as rolling outages left millions without electricity for hours. With toxic smog blanketing Tehran skies and the country buckling under the pandemic and other mounting crises, social media has been rife with speculation. Within days, as frustration spread among residents, the government launched a wide-ranging crackdown on Bitcoin processing centers, which require immense amounts of electricity to power their specialized computers and to keep them cool — a burden on Iran's power grid.

  • Russia arrests 350 protesters demanding Alexei Navalny's release

    Russian police arrested hundreds of protesters who took to the streets to demand the release of Alexei Navalny, the country's top opposition figure.

  • Former police officer who climbed over fences to get into Capitol during riot claims he was there to see art

    Regular phone camera roll shows no images from January 6 but ‘deleted’ folder filled with images and videos of officer inside Capitol building during riot

  • Diplomats contact Canadian held for over 2 years in China

    Canada said its officials have met online with former diplomat Michael Kovrig, who has been held in China for more than two years in a case related to an executive of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei. Canada’s Foreign Ministry said officials led by Ambassador Dominic Barton were given “on-site virtual consular access” to Kovrig on Thursday. Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor have been confined since Dec. 10, 2018, just days after Canada detained Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, who is also the daughter of the founder of the Chinese telecommunications equipment giant.