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Want a place on the UN stage? Leaders of divided nations must first get past this gatekeeper

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:05 GMT

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — It’s one of the United Nations’ more obscure bodies, with no space to call its own within the riverside headquarters. And there is scant insight into how it decides a question of far-reaching impact: Who gets let through the door?With an anodyne name, the U.N. Credentials Committee has long gone unnoticed; it doesn’t even appear on the U.N.’s own organizational chart of its many agencies, councils, committees and departments. But when it comes to countries riven by political divisions or coups, the nine-member body is the gatekeeper to the world’s stage at the U.N. General Assembly’s annual meeting.Credentialing is a mere formality for universally recognized governments. But leaders of factions within divided nations know that the committee’s decision stands to withhold or bestow some much-desired legitimacy — especially when their claims aren’t necessarily the strongest. So how does the committee decide who speaks for member state...

US education chief considers new ways to discourage college admissions preference for kids of alumni

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:05 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s education chief said he’s open to using “whatever levers” are available — including federal money — to discourage colleges from giving admissions preference to the children of alumni and donors.In an interview with The Associated Press, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said legacy admissions must be revisited for the sake of diversity on campuses following the recent Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action. In a step beyond his previous comments, Cardona said he would consider taking stronger action to deter the practice.“I would be interested in pulling whatever levers I can pull as secretary of Education to ensure that, especially if we’re giving out financial aid and loans, that we’re doing it for institutions that are providing value,” Cardona said Wednesday. He made the remark when asked about using federal money as a carrot or rod on legacy admissions.Legacy admissions, long seen as a perk for the white and wealthy at selective...

Top warming talks official hopes for ‘course correction’ and praises small steps in climate efforts

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:05 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — A top official helping to oversee upcoming international climate negotiations hopes to prove critics wrong — and surprise them with a “course correction” for an ever-warming world.But don’t expect that big a turn.Adnan Amin, the CEO and No. 2 official at the upcoming Conference of Parties (COP28) in Dubai in late November and December, said he also knows what activists, critics and the head of the United Nations really want — a phase-out of fossil fuels that cause climate change. He said it looks unlikely. Yet Amin said that while an agreement ridding the world of fossil fuels doesn’t look likely, a “phase-down of fossil fuels is inevitable.” In an interview with The Associated Press, Amin demonstrated how the leadership of the climate talks is trying to thread a moving diplomatic needle and praised steps in a decarbonizing direction, however small. Amin’s boss, the COP28 president, is an oil executive; Amin was the founding director of the U.N.’s r...

A rare Truman Capote story from the early 1950s is being published for the first time

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:05 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Along with such classics as “In Cold Blood” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Truman Capote had a history of work left uncompleted and unpublished.Capote, who died in 1984 shortly before his 60th birthday, spent much of his latter years struggling to write his planned Proustian masterpiece “Answered Prayers,” of which only excerpts were released. As a young man, he wrote a novel about a love affair between a socialite and a parking lot attendant that was published posthumously under the title “Summer Crossing.”Shorter work, too, was sometimes abandoned, including a piece released this week for the first time.Capote was in his mid-20s and a rising star when he moved from New York City to Taormina, Sicily, in 1950 and settled in a scenic villa named Fontana Vecchia, once occupied by D.H. Lawrence. Acclaimed for his debut novel, “Other Voices, Other Rooms,” and for his eerie short story “Miriam,” Capote would describe the move to Europe as a needed escape from the Ame...

Back at old job, Anthony Mackie lends star power to New Orleans’ post-Ida roof repair effort

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:05 GMT

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Movie star Anthony Mackie was back in his home town — and back at an old job — as he took part in a program to repair roofs damaged by natural disasters for people who aren’t financially or physically able to get the work done themselves.The New Orleans-born Mackie, perhaps best known as the new Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, pitched in earlier this month with members of the nonprofit Rebuilding Together New Orleans and roofing manufacturer GAF at the home of 81-year-old veteran Joe Capers.Blue-tarped roofs are still part of the landscape in New Orleans more than two years after Hurricane Ida struck in 2021. The work on Capers’ property marked the ongoing program’s 500th home roof repair in the Gulf of Mexico region, according to GAF. “It takes a lot of pressure off of me, because it’s been a hard road,” Capers said outside his home, where Mackie and the GAF workers had gathered on Sept. 12. Capers said his applications for hel...

Tropical storm warning issued for US East Coast with landfall expected in North Carolina on Friday

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:05 GMT

MIAMI (AP) — A storm churning in waters off the eastern U.S. has increased to tropical storm strength and is forecast to reach the North Carolina coast Friday morning, the National Hurricane Center said.The storm was off the coast of South Carolina and North Carolina late Thursday with top sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph). A storm surge watch was in effect, with surges between 3 and 5 feet (91 centimeters to 1.5 meters) forecast for parts of North Carolina, the center reported.As of Thursday night, the storm was located about 355 miles (570 kilometers) southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, and about 395 miles (635 kilometers) south Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and moving north at 3 mph (6 kph), the center said.Though the system had reached tropical storm strength, it was yet to be given a name and the center was still referring to it as Potential Tropical Cyclone Sixteen on Thursday night. The hurricane center defines a potential tropical cyclone as a disturbance posing a thr...

From an old-style Afghan camera, a new view of life under the Taliban emerges

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:05 GMT

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The odd device draws curious onlookers everywhere. From the outside, it resembles little more than a large black box on a tripod. Inside lies its magic: a hand-made wooden camera and darkroom in one. As a small crowd gathers around the box camera, images of beauty and of hardship ripple to life from its dark interior: a family enjoying an outing in a swan boat on a lake; child laborers toiling in brick factories; women erased by all-covering veils; armed young men with fire in their eyes. Sitting for a portrait in a war-scarred Afghan village, a Taliban fighter remarks: “Life is much more joyful now.” For a young woman in the Afghan capital, forced out of education because of her gender, the opposite is true: “My life is like a prisoner, like a bird in a cage.” The instrument used to record these moments is a kamra-e-faoree, or instant camera. They were a common sight on Afghan city streets in the last century — a fast and easy way to make portraits, especi...

Nevada Republicans brace for confusion as party eyes election rules that may favor Trump

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:05 GMT

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump’s push to bend state Republican parties to his will — and gain an advantage in his effort to return to the White House — is coming to a head in Nevada.The state GOP, which is led by Trump allies, is insisting on moving forward with a presidential caucus on Feb. 8 despite a new state law that set a primary election two days earlier. Caucuses, which typically reward grassroots support and organizing, are expected to benefit Trump given his solid grip on the GOP’s most loyal voters.But the party is poised to go further on Saturday when it’s expected to approve plans that some Nevada Republicans and Trump rivals argue would confuse and anger voters and further tilt the caucus for the former president. The proposed rules, copies of which were obtained by The Associated Press, include provisions to bar any candidate from the caucus if they’re on the primary ballot. They would also restrict super PACs, like the one Flo...

A flamethrower and comments about book burning ignite a political firestorm in Missouri

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:05 GMT

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A longshot candidate for Missouri governor and his supporters describe his use of a flamethrower at a recent “Freedom Fest” event outside St. Louis as no big deal. They said it was a fun moment for fellow Republicans who attended, and that no one talked about burning books as he torched a pile of cardboard boxes. But after the video gained attention on social media, State Sen. Bill Eigel said he would burn books he found objectionable, and that he’d do it on the lawn outside the governor’s mansion. He later said it was all a metaphor for how he would attack the “woke liberal agenda.” “From a dramatic sense, if the only thing in between the children in the state of Missouri and vulgar pornographic material like that getting in their hands is me burning, bulldozing or launching (books) into outer space, I’m going to do that,” Eigel said in an interview with The Associated Press. “However, I would I make the point that I don’t believe it’s going t...

A fire at an Iranian defense ministry’s car battery factory has been extinguished, report says

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:57:05 GMT

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A fire in a storage area of an Iranian defense ministry’s car battery factory north of the capital has been extinguished, state TV reported Friday.The fire happened around midnight in a 2-square-kilometer (about 500-acre) storage area of plastic items in the factory north of Tehran. The TV footage showed a black column of smoke rising in the nighttime sky.Firefighters were able to put out the fire with no casualties and the cause is under investigation, the report said.It did not mention any potential damage from the fire. Iran’s defense ministry has long owned the biggest and oldest car battery factories in Iran.Incidents at the country’s defense industry sites have increased in recent years, and Iran has blamed Israel for attacks or sabotage.In August, Iran accused Israel of trying to sabotage its ballistic missile program through faulty foreign parts that could explode, damaging or destroying the weapons before they could be used. In 2022, an explosion a...