Trump bridge-building overshadowed by false voter fraud line
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Even as President Donald Trump starts reaching out to lawmakers and business and union leaders to sell his policies, he’s still making false claims about election fraud.
During a bipartisan reception with lawmakers at the White House Monday evening, Trump claimed the reason he’d lost the popular vote to his Democratic rival was that 3 million to 5 million immigrants living in the U. S. illegally had voted. That’s according to a Democratic aide familiar with the exchange who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.
There is no evidence to support Trump’s claim.
The assertion appeared to be part of a developing pattern for Trump and his new administration in which falsehoods overshadow outreach efforts.
After a contentious weekend, Trump began his first full week as president bounding from one ornate room of the White House to another as he played host to business, labor and Congressional leaders. Again and again, he ordered aides to summon journalists from their West Wing workspace at a moment’s notice for unscheduled statements and photo opportunities.
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Trump overshadows young migrants‘ emotional trip to Mexico
MOLCAXAC, Mexico (AP) \u2014 Tamara Alcala Dominguez sobbed, barely able to speak, as she buried her face in the sweater of the woman who cared for her when she was a toddler.
„My little girl, I hugged you so much,“ Petra Bello Suarez told her now 23-year-old granddaughter, tears dampening her own creased cheeks. „I have you in my arms, my girl. … You found me still alive. “
Alcala’s mother left her with Bello at age 2 when she went to seek a better life in the United States. A year later, the little girl joined her mother \u2014 and for two decades Alcala’s undocumented status prevented her from returning to Mexico to see her grandmother and other relatives.
Then she became one of the hundreds of thousands protected from deportation under an Obama administration program known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which gave work permits to immigrants brought to the U. S as children and living in the country illegally.
Alcala burst out of the shadows. In her American home of Everett, Washington, she got an officially sanctioned job and pursued an education with dreams of becoming a doctor. And last year she enrolled in a special program that allowed her to make this, her first journey back to Mexico, and then return safely again to the United States.
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UK government loses Brexit case, must consult Parliament
LONDON (AP) \u2014 Britain’s government must get parliamentary approval before starting the process of leaving the European Union, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, potentially delaying Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans to trigger negotiations by the end of March.
The ruling forces the government to put a bill before Parliament, giving pro-EU politicians a chance to soften the terms of Brexit \u2014 Britain’s exit from the EU. „Leave“ campaigners had objected, saying Parliament shouldn’t have the power to overrule the electorate, which voted to leave the bloc in a June 23 referendum.
May had said she would use centuries-old powers known as royal prerogative to invoke Article 50 of the EU treaty and launch two years of exit talks. The powers \u2014 traditionally held by the monarch \u2014permit decisions about treaties and other issues to be made without a vote of Parliament.
„The referendum is of great political significance, but the act of Parliament which established it did not say what should happen as a result, so any change in the law to give effect to the referendum must be made in the only way permitted by the U. K. Constitution, namely by an act of Parliament,“ the president of the Supreme Court David Neuberger said in reading the judgement.
„To proceed otherwise would be a breach of settled constitutional principles stretching back many centuries,“ he said.
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After rocky start, second day of Syria talks in Kazakhstan
ASTANA, Kazakhstan (AP) \u2014 The U. N. envoy for Syria pressed on with efforts Tuesday to shore up a shaky cease-fire between the Damascus government and its allies and rebel factions, as he shuttled between delegates from the two sides on the second day of peace talks in Kazakhstan.
Staffan de Mistura said there were reasons for „optimism“ and promised an „outcome“ for later in the day. The talks in Astana on Monday saw only a brief face-to-face meeting between the government and rebel representatives \u2014 their first since the Syrian war began in 2011 \u2014 that was quickly followed by harsh exchanges.
The U. N. envoy told reporters outside the venue in Astana’s Rixos Hotel on Tuesday that discussions were underway to finalize a declaration to ensure that the cease-fire „becomes more solid. “ He did not elaborate.
„We are not far from a final declaration,“ he said. „There has been a lot of work done on it. If the one we are seeing is going to take place, there is some optimism. “
„There are very intense discussions because this is not about a paper but about a cessation of hostilities, and that means saving lives,“ de Mistura added.
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‚Get up. We’ve got to get out‘: Storms kill 20 in the South
ADEL, Ga. (AP) \u2014 Bonnie and Wayne Collier were jolted awake in their mobile home by a cellphone weather alert early Sunday. They jumped up, turned on the TV, saw a tornado warning and decided to run.
„We heard the Code Red,“ said Bonnie Collier, 65. „He told me, ‚Get up. We’ve got to get out. “
Quickly, they headed to a friend’s nearby building just down the road from their mobile home near Cecil, Georgia. There they met up with their son, daughter-in-law and three grandchildren \u2014 ages 5, 7 and 9 \u2014 who they awoke at their mobile home.
They arrived just ahead of a tornado.
„My husband yelled, ‚Get under the tables!‘ and then it just came right over the top of us like a freight train. “
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Philadelphia bars employers from requesting salary history
PHILADELPHIA (AP) \u2014 Despite a threat from cable giant Comcast to take legal action, Philadelphia has banned employers from asking potential hires to provide their salary history, a move supporters say is a step toward closing the wage gap between men and women.
Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney signed the measure on Monday, and said he’s confident the bill can withstand legal challenges.
„I know that Comcast and the business community are committed to ending wage discrimination, and I’m hopeful that moving forward we can have a better partnership on this and other issues of concern to business owners and their employees,“ he said. „This doesn’t need to be an either\/or argument \u2014 what is good for the people of Philadelphia is good for business, too. “
Comcast and the city’s Chamber of Commerce have said the law goes too far in dictating how employers can interact with potential workers.
The City Council unanimously passed the ordinance in December. Supporters contend that since women have historically been paid less than men, the practice of asking for a salary history can help perpetuate a cycle of lower salaries for women, continuing throughout their careers.
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Israel mulls more administrative detentions, as numbers rise
SILWAD, West Bank (AP) \u2014 High school student Hamza Hamad spent 10 months in an Israeli jail for alleged links to the Islamic militant Hamas group, but was never charged with a crime.
The 16-year-old is one of the youngest among thousands of Palestinians who have been held in so-called administrative detention in half a century of Israeli military occupation.
The teen’s case spotlights one of Israel’s perhaps most contested policies, under which it can hold suspects for months or sometimes several years without charges. Israel says the policy is a key tool in preventing attacks on civilians, but rights activists say it violates due process.
Numbers of detainees have fluctuated, from a few dozen to hundreds at any given time, with spikes during violent periods. Detainee figures are up again since October 2015, when Palestinians, mostly acting on their own, began stabbing or ramming cars into Israelis in a series of deadly attacks.
Israeli officials also indicated they would expand the use of administrative detentions to deter possible attacks inspired by the extremist Islamic State group. Israel’s security Cabinet approved the idea after a Palestinian, with purported sympathies for the group, rammed his truck into soldiers earlier this month, killing four.
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Banned from boats in Myanmar, Rohingya fish on rafts of junk
THA PYAY TAW, Myanmar (AP) \u2014 Every day before sunrise, dozens of fishermen, shivering against the cold, shove out onto the Bay of Bengal on makeshift rafts made out of plastic jugs, bamboo and twine, just steps away from the sturdy and much safer wooden boats they had used for years.
They were barred from using their boats three months ago by Myanmar authorities who say they’re trying to prevent insurgents from entering or leaving the country by sea. The ban is one small part of a sweeping and violent counter-insurgency campaign in Rakhine state, home to the long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority, where authorities have been accused of widespread abuses.
Desperate to feed their families, Rohingya fishermen in the coastal villages that dot Rakhine’s Maungdaw district skirt the ban by setting out on dangerous, jerry-rigged rafts that use yellow cooking oil jugs to keep them afloat. The vessels are not technically boats, and therefore not technically illegal.
„What is the difference for us? “ asks 35-year-old Mohammed, a Rohingya fisherman and the father of four children in Tha Pyay Taw village. „We will die in the village from starvation if we don’t go out, or we can risk our lives to get some fish and fill our stomachs. We have nothing to eat. “
The Associated Press is identifying Mohammed only by his first name out of security concerns.
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Toll from Italy avalanche climbs to 14 as hopes diminish
FARINDOLA, Italy (AP) \u2014 The death toll from an avalanche in central Italy climbed to 14 on Tuesday as hopes began to fade that any of the 15 people still missing might be found alive under a mountain resort buried by tons of snow and rubble.
Firefighters located half a dozen bodies within a few hours Tuesday, doubling the death toll six days after the disaster. Rescue crews had been buoyed by the discovery of three of the Hotel Rigopiano’s resident puppies, though they stressed that the sheepdogs were found in a boiler room far from where the missing were thought to be.
Firefighter spokesman Alberto Maiolo said search crews aided by excavators were finally able to penetrate the snow-covered central part of the hotel \u2014 the bar and kitchen area \u2014 for the first time and found the bodies. He said there were no signs of life.
„Logically, hopes fade as time passes, but we are continuing to search and trying to do it as quickly as possible,“ he said.
The first funerals were held Tuesday, with crowds gathering under a steady rain outside the hilltop church in Farindola to pay their respects to Alessandro Gincaterino. The chief waiter at the hotel was among the first victims pulled from the rubble.
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Diversity and ‚La La Land‘ ready for their Oscar close-ups
After two straight years of all-white acting nominees and an overhauling of the motion picture academy, the Oscars were poised to trend in a different direction Tuesday.
Barry Jenkin’s luminous coming-of-age tale „Moonlight,“ the crowd-pleasing African-American mathematician drama „Hidden Figures“ and Denzel Washington’s fiery August Wilson adaption „Fences“ are set to lead a notably more diverse group of contenders when nominations for the 89th annual Academy Awards are announced Tuesday morning, beginning at 8:18 a.m. EST.
Whether fairly or not, the nominations will be seen as a test for the revamped film academy. It will be the first Oscars voted on since academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs ushered in new membership rules and added 683 new members as a way to diversify a predominantly white, male and elderly group, which now numbers 6,687.
Change will be in the air Tuesday morning, regardless of the outcome. Gone will be the traditional pre-dawn reading of nominations before a throng of bleary-eyed reporters and publicists. Instead, the academy has digitized the process and will now stream the nominations on Oscars.com or Oscars.org in a pre-produced program featuring Isaacs, Jennifer Hudson, Brie Larson, Emmanuel Lubezki, Jason Reitman and Ken Watanabe.
One of the morning’s big questions is just how many nominations „La La Land“ will land. Damien Chazelle’s exuberant love letter to musicals is expected to lead all films and could rival the record 14 nods received by „All About Eve“ and „Titanic. “ It has already set a Golden Globes record with seven wins.<\/p>\n

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