AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT
Protesters storm Swedish Embassy in Baghdad after man threatens to burn Quran in Stockholm
BAGHDAD (AP) — Protesters angered by an Iraqi man in Sweden who threatened to burn a copy of the Quran stormed the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad early Thursday, overrunning the diplomatic compound and starting a fire.
Hours later, Iraq’s prime minister cut diplomatic ties with Sweden in protest over the desecration of the Islamic holy book.
Protesters occupied the diplomatic post for several hours, waving flags and signs showing the influential Iraqi Shiite cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr, and setting a small fire. The embassy staff had been evacuated a day earlier.
The attack came ahead of a protest by an Iraqi asylum-seeker who burned a copy of the Quran during a demonstration last month in Stockholm. He threatened to do the same thing again but ultimately stopped short of setting fire to the book.
After protesters left the Swedish Embassy, diplomats closed it to visitors without specifying when it would reopen.
Commanders’ Dan Snyder fined $60 million for sexually harassing employee, financial improprieties
Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder sexually harassed a team employee and oversaw team executives who deliberately withheld millions of dollars in revenue from other clubs, and he has agreed to pay a $60 million fine, the league announced Thursday.
The NFL released a 23-page report detailing the findings of an independent investigation into Snyder’s conduct just minutes after its owners unanimously approved the sale of the Commanders to Josh Harris for a record $6.05 billion. The fine represents 1% of the sale price; Snyder bought the team, then known as the Redskins, for $800 million.
The investigation was led by former Securities and Exchange Commission chair Mary Jo White and conducted by her law firm, Debevoise & Plimpton. The league had pledged to make the findings of the probe public.
Investigators concluded that Washington withheld $11 million in revenue that should have been shared with other teams, an amount the report suggests may have been far greater. White’s firm was unable to reach a conclusion about tens of millions of additional dollars that may have been withheld in part because Snyder and the team did not cooperate fully with the investigation, according to the report.
The report concluded that Snyder sexually harassed former team employee Tiffani Johnston, allegations that Johnston first made last year in front of a House committee. Snyder placed his hand on Johnston’s thigh at a team dinner and pushed her toward his car as they were leaving the restaurant, the report said.
Grassley releases full FBI memo with unverified claims about Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley released an unclassified document Thursday that Republicans claim is significant in their investigation of Hunter Biden as they delve into the financial affairs of the president and his son, and revive previously debunked claims of wrongdoing.
Grassley of Iowa has been working alongside House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., as Republicans deepen their probe of President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, ahead of the 2024 election. Comer had issued a subpoena for the document from the FBI.
While lawmakers on the Oversight Committee have already been able to partly review the information, this is the first time the full document — which contains raw, unverified information — is being made public. Called an FD-1023 form, it involves claims a confidential informant made in 2020 about Hunter Biden’s alleged business dealings when he served on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Top Republicans have acknowledged they cannot confirm whether the information is true.
“The American people can now read this document for themselves,” Grassley said.
The document adds to information that had widely aired during Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, which involved Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to dig up dirt on the Bidens ahead of the 2020 election. It was also the subject of a subsequent Department of Justice review that Trump’s Attorney General William Barr launched in 2020 and closed later that year.
Senate committee approves legislation to impose stronger ethics standards on Supreme Court justices
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court would have to abide by stronger ethics standards under legislation approved on Thursday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, a response to recent revelations about donor-funded trips by justices. The bill faced united opposition from Republicans, who said it could “destroy” the court.
The panel voted along party lines to set ethics rules for the court and a process to enforce them, including new standards for transparency around recusals, gifts and potential conflicts of interest. Democrats first pushed the legislation after reports earlier this year that Justice Clarence Thomas participated in luxury vacations and a real estate deal with a top GOP donor — and after Chief Justice John Roberts declined to testify before the committee about the ethics of the court.
Since then, news reports also revealed that Justice Samuel Alito had taken a luxury vacation with a GOP donor. And The Associated Press reported last week that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, aided by her staff, has advanced sales of her books through college visits over the past decade.
The ethics legislation has little chance of passing the Senate — it would need at least nine GOP votes, and Republicans have strongly opposed it — or the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. But Democrats say the spate of revelations means that enforceable standards on the court are necessary.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin said the legislation would be a “crucial first step” in restoring confidence in the court. He said that if any of the senators sitting in the room had engaged in similar activities, they would be in violation of ethics rules.
Police seized laptops, memoir from Vegas-area home of witness to Tupac Shakur’s 1996 killing
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A home that Las Vegas police raided this week in connection with the 1996 drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur is tied to one of the only surviving witnesses to the crime, a man long known to investigators whose nephew was seen as a suspect shortly after the rapper’s killing.
Detectives sought items “concerning the murder of Tupac Shakur” from Duane “Keffe D” Davis, according to warrant documents obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
Davis, now 60, is a self-described “gangster” and the uncle of Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, one of Shakur’s known rivals. Anderson denied involvement in Shakur’s killing, and died two years later in a shooting in Compton, California.
Police reported collecting multiple computers, a cellphone and hard drive, “documentary documents,” a Vibe magazine that featured Shakur, “purported marijuana,” several .40-caliber bullets, two “tubs containing photographs” and a copy of Davis’ 2019 tell-all memoir, “Compton Street Legend.”
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed it served a search warrant Monday in the neighboring city of Henderson. The department hasn’t said whether investigators expect to make a first-ever arrest in the slaying of the rapper nearly 27 years ago.
CLIMATE GLIMPSE: Here’s what you need to see and know today
A landslide triggered by torrential rains in India’s western Maharashtra state killed at least 10 people, with many others feared trapped under piles of debris, officials said Thursday. In this image captured by Associated Press photographer Rafiq Maqbool, a woman holds the hand of her relative as family members of people trapped under rubble wail after a landslide washed away houses.
In Greece, a huge fire was contained west of Athens, but authorities braced Thursday for a new round of extreme weather. Searing heat across Europe’s Mediterranean south has maintained a high or very high risk of fires in Spain, Italy and Greece. And in the Balkans, a storm that followed an intense heat wave left six dead, including a Coatian firefighter.
Here’s what’s happening related to extreme weather and the climate right now:
-In a refugee camp in Kenya, food shortages left kids hungry amid a drought even before Russia ended the grain deal. One farmer was forced to give most of his produce as tax to al-Qaida-linked extremists who have controlled parts of Somalia for years, and the little that remained wasn’t enough to feed his family during Somalia’s worst drought in decades, Evelyne Musambi reports.
__A study found that the exclusion of race from a federal climate justice tool could worsen air pollution exposure disparities along racial lines in the U.S., Drew Costley reports.
As temperatures rise, mosquitoes are also on the move. Scientists worry that could mean more malaria
As the planet warms, mosquitoes are slowly migrating upward.
The temperature range where malaria-carrying mosquitoes thrive is rising in elevation. Researchers have found evidence of the phenomenon from the tropical highlands of South America to the mountainous, populous regions of eastern Africa.
Scientists now worry people living in areas once inhospitable to the insects, including the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro and the mountains of eastern Ethiopia, could be newly exposed to the disease.
“As it gets warmer at higher altitudes with climate change and all of these other environmental changes, then mosquitoes can survive higher up the mountain,” said Manisha Kulkarni, a professor and researcher studying malaria in sub-Saharan Africa at the University of Ottawa.?
Solar panels on water canals seem like a no-brainer. So why aren’t they widespread?
DENVER (AP) — Back in 2015, California’s dry earth was crunching under a fourth year of drought. Then-Governor Jerry Brown ordered an unprecedented 25% reduction in home water use. Farmers, who use the most water, volunteered too to avoid deeper, mandatory cuts.
Brown also set a goal for the state to get half its energy from renewable sources, with climate change bearing down.
Yet when Jordan Harris and Robin Raj went knocking on doors with an idea that addresses both water loss and climate pollution — installing solar panels over irrigation canals — they couldn’t get anyone to commit.
Fast forward eight years. With devastating heat, record-breaking wildfire, looming crisis on the Colorado River, a growing commitment to fighting climate change, and a little bit of movement-building, their company Solar AquaGrid is preparing to break ground on the first solar-covered canal project in the United States.
“All of these coming together at this moment,” Harris said. “Is there a more pressing issue that we could apply our time to?”
Russia bombards Odesa and other southern Ukraine port cities for third night since end of grain deal
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia pounded Ukraine’s southern cities with drones and missiles for a third consecutive night Thursday, keeping Odesa in the Kremlin’s crosshairs after a bitter dispute over the end of a wartime deal that allowed Ukraine to send grain through the key Black Sea port.
The strikes killed at least two people in Odesa. In the nearby city of Mykolaiv, which is close to the Black Sea, at least 19 people were injured, including a child, Ukrainian officials said.
Russia has targeted Ukrainian critical grain export infrastructure since it vowed “retribution” this week for an attack that damaged a crucial bridge between Russia and the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula. Russian officials blamed that strike on Ukrainian drone boats.
The strikes on Ukraine’s grain export infrastructure have helped drive up food prices in countries facing hunger. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the end of the deal Monday would result in more human suffering, with potentially millions of people affected.
The grain deal provided guarantees that ships would not be attacked entering and leaving Ukrainian ports, while a separate agreement facilitated the movement of Russian food and fertilizer.
Australian castaway recounts comfort he felt adrift at sea, thanks to meditation, swimming and dog
MANZANILLO, Mexico (AP) — He quit his corporate job and moved to Mexico to pursue his dream of sailing solo across the ocean.
Australian Timothy Shaddock, 54, bought his 30-foot catamaran two years ago in the Mexican Pacific resort of Puerto Vallarta. He needed a place to live and he liked the isolation.
“Of course, living on a boat and sailing on a boat is two different things and that was more of a challenge,” Shaddock told The Associated Press Wednesday after stepping onto land for the first time in months.
As his training ground Shaddock chose the Sea of Cortez, a narrow finger of water between the Baja California Peninsula and the Mexican mainland.
“I was aware and the only preparation that you can really do is take the boat out to sea and test the boat at sea,” Shaddock said. He would take short journeys, noting what was working on the boat and what wasn’t, but was conscious that, in late April, hurricane season was coming.