Author: CNN

CNN
 — 

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president Dana White said he does not expect punishment after a video emerged of him in a physical altercation with his wife earlier this month. White made the comments Wednesday at a media day for UFC Fight Night 217.

Asked whether he expects there to be repercussions from the company, White said: “What should the repercussions be? You tell me. I take 30 days off? How does that hurt me?

“Me leaving hurts the company, hurts my employees, hurts the fighters. It doesn’t hurt me.

“What is my punishment? Here’s my punishment: I have to walk around for however long I live … and this is how I’m labeled now.

“The punishment is that I did it, and now I have to deal with it.”

In the video, obtained by TMZ, White and his wife, Anne, are seen arguing before exchanging slaps in a nightclub in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on New Year’s Eve. Neither White nor his wife are facing legal charges over the incident.

White claims that conversations had been held between himself, Endeavor chief executive and UFC owner, Ari Emanuel, and broadcaster ESPN over what action was appropriate.

“We’ve had plenty of discussions internally – with Ari, with ESPN – nobody’s happy,” the 53-year-old said. “Nobody’s happy about this. Neither am I. But it happened.”

White also said he was not looking to make excuses for his behavior and reiterated his stance on domestic violence.

“There’s never an excuse … There’s no defense for this and people should not be defending me over this thing, no matter what.”

On Monday, the California Legislative Women’s Caucus wrote an open letter to Emanuel and Endeavor calling for White to be replaced as UFC president.

“Given Mr White’s previous remarks against domestic partner violence, we believed that Endeavor and the UFC shared this commitment to safety, respect and accountability,” the letter reads.

“And yet, we have seen the video of UFC president Dana White, where he strikes his wife at a New Year’s Eve celebration … We were appalled. It was alarming to say the least. In the days since the video was released, you have remained silent.

“We are calling for the immediate removal of Mr White as president of UFC.”

CNN reached out to Endeavor for comment but did not immediately get a response.

When contacted for comment, ESPN gave only a short statement saying: “We have been covering the story on our platforms since it broke and will continue to do so.”

TBS has delayed the premiere of a reality series from Dana White – Power Slap: Road to the Title – by one week to January 18. TBS and CNN are part of the Warner Bros. Discovery network.

CNN
 — 

Alabama’s Republican attorney general said this week that women in the state who use prescription medication to terminate their pregnancies could be prosecuted under a chemical-endangerment law, even though Alabama’s anti-abortion law does not intend to punish women who receive abortions.

Steve Marshall made the comments in the wake of a decision earlier this month by the US Food and Drug Administration to allow certified pharmacies to dispense the abortion medication mifepristone to people who have a prescription.

“The Human Life Protection Act targets abortion providers, exempting women ‘upon whom an abortion is performed or attempted to be performed’ from liability under the law,” Marshall said in a statement to AL.com on Tuesday. “It does not provide an across-the-board exemption from all criminal laws, including the chemical-endangerment law—which the Alabama Supreme Court has affirmed and reaffirmed protects unborn children.”

The chemical endangerment law was passed in 2006 amid high drug usage in Alabama with aims of protecting children from chemicals in the home, but district attorneys have successfully applied the law to protect fetuses of women who used drugs during pregnancy.

It’s unclear if there are any pending cases against women in Alabama in the wake of the FDA’s announcement. CNN has reached out to Marshall’s office for comment.

At least one Democrat, Alabama state Rep. Chris England, argued on Twitter that the chemical endangerment law is “extremely clear” and under it, a woman could not be prosecuted for taking a lawfully prescribed medication.

“Any prosecutor that tries this, or threatens it, is intentionally ignoring the law,” England wrote on Thursday morning.

Emma Roth, an attorney with Pregnancy Justice, a nonprofit that provides legal representation for women charged with crimes related to pregnancy, said on Twitter that the effect of Marshall’s comments will be to create “a culture of fear among pregnant women.”

The comments are “extremely concerning and clearly unlawful,” Roth elaborated in a statement to CNN. “The Alabama legislature made clear its opposition to any such prosecution when it explicitly exempted patients from criminal liability under its abortion ban.”

The chemical endangerment law says it does not require reporting controlled substances that are prescription medications “if the responsible person was the mother of the unborn child, and she was, or there is a good faith belief that she was, taking that medication pursuant to a lawful prescription.”

Mifepristone can be used along with another medication, misoprostol, to end a pregnancy. Previously, these pills could be ordered, prescribed and dispensed only by a certified health care provider. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the FDA allowed the pills to be sent through the mail and said it would no longer enforce a rule requiring people to get the first of the two drugs in person at a clinic or hospital.

Marshall’s comments underscore the legal uncertainty wrought by the Supreme Court’s decision last year to end the federal right to an abortion. In the wake of the Dobbs decision, several Republican-led states passed strict anti-abortion laws, while several others, including Alabama, that had passed so-called trigger laws anticipating an eventual overturn of Roe v. Wade, saw their new restrictions go into effect.

While the anti-abortion movement seeks to prevent abortions from taking place, it has often opposed criminalizing the women who undergo the procedure.

Read a version of this article in Spanish here.

CNN
 — 

Shakira feels stronger after a recent breakup. At least, that’s what the Colombian singer says in her new song, “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53,” with Argentine producer, Bizarrap.

The Grammy-winning singer begins the song by saying she doesn’t want to be disappointed again and continues with the phrase: “women don’t cry anymore, they bill,” referring to female empowerment after a breakup.

Shakira seems to point to her ex, former football player Gerard Piqué, in a series of puns.

The singer says in Spanish, “Yo solo hago música, perdón que te sal-pique,” (I only make music, sorry that it splashes you).

Shakira and Piqué ended their 12-year relationship last year. The couple has two kids, Sasha and Milan.

The song has surpassed more than 34 million views on YouTube in less than 24 hours.

Bizarrap is known for creating viral hits like the “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 52” with Spanish singer Quevedo, which spent at least four weeks as No. 1 song on Billboard’s Global 200. The summer hit, also known as “Quedate,” topped Spotify’s Global chart.

This is not Shakira’s first hit since her separation. In October last year, she released “Monotonía” feat. Ozuna, in which she openly sang about the end of a relationship.

According to Sony Music Latin, Shakira’s label, “Monotonía” was the biggest Spanish-language female solo debut on YouTube.

In September, Shakira talked to Elle Magazine about how music helps her deal with her emotions.

“I think everyone has their own processes or their own mechanisms to process grief or stress or anxiety. We all go through stuff in life. But in my case, I think that writing music is like going to the shrink, only cheaper [laughs],” the Colombian singer said.

CNN
 — 

Over the years, Apple has added touchscreens to almost every computing device imaginable, from phones and tablets to smartwatches, but it has refrained from bringing the feature to its Mac product line – even as a long list of rivals did so with their laptops and desktops.

In 2010, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs described the concept of a computer with a touchscreen – then an emerging trend among the company’s competitors – as “ergonomically terrible.” Two years later, CEO Tim Cook reiterated the sentiment during an earnings call. And Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior VP of software engineering, said in 2018 that “lifting your arm up to poke a screen is pretty fatiguing to do.”

But now, Apple may be rethinking its stance. On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported Apple engineers are developing a touchscreen for the MacBook Pro with an expected launch date of 2025, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While it’s unclear if the touchscreen laptop will see the light of day, introducing the product could accomplish two important things for Apple: adapting to shifting consumer expectations and supercharging sales for its Mac product line.

Microsoft, HP, Samsung and Dell, have long offered computers with touchscreens, and more consumers have come to expect they can tap on a computer screen just as they do on their phones. (If you have a MacBook, you may have already had the experience of a friend or relative touching your screen reflexively thinking it would do something.)

At the same time, interest in Apple computers is booming, thanks in part to Apple’s inclusion of its new in-house processor that improved battery life and offered better performance. Mac revenue increased 14% in Apple’s 2022 fiscal year to $40.1 billion. Apple’s iPad business, on the other hand, saw sales decline from the prior year.

Apple has previously kept the touchscreen away from its Mac lineup to prevent it from cannibalizing iPad sales. Instead, Apple added a narrow touch bar to its MacBook keyboard to provide easy access to shortcuts, emoji and other features, but ultimately it did away with the tool after it was panned by users and critics.

Now, however, Apple could use a Mac touchscreen to incentivize consumers to upgrade their computers and keep Mac sales momentum growing.

David McQueen, research director at ABI Research, said the lines are increasingly blurred between higher-end iPads and Macs, thanks to new chips, battery life and slim design. He noted that when a 12.9-inch iPad Pro is attached to a Magic Keyboard with use of an Apple Pencil, there is “not much to tell it apart from a laptop experience.”

“The market has embraced 2-in-1 laptop-tablet hybrids and maybe now Apple sees the rationale for also adding one to its armory,” he added.”

Apple, for its part, has softened its stance on Mac touchscreens more recently. When asked at a conference last fall if Apple will add a touchscreen to Macs, Federighi responded: “Who’s to say?”

CNN
 — 

The Justice Department’s probe into classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s home and former private office will be overseen by Robert Hur, a former US attorney in Maryland who has “long and distinguished career as a prosecutor,” Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday.

Hur was nominated to be US attorney in Maryland by then-President Donald Trump in 2017 and he served in the role until his resignation in 2021.

He has most recently been working in private practice in Washington, DC.

“As US attorney, he supervised some of the department’s more important national security, public corruption and other high-profile matters,” Garland said Thursday. “I will ensure that Mr. Hur receives all the resources he needs to conduct his work.”

Hur also served as an assistant US attorney in Maryland before working as the principal associate deputy attorney general with the Justice Department.

Prior to his time with the DOJ, Hur was a law clerk for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and also clerked for a federal appellate judge, Alex Kozinski.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

CNN
 — 

Russia’s Defense Ministry announced yet another realignment of the commanders leading the war in Ukraine on Wednesday, as criticism mounts over its handling of the stalled campaign.

The ministry said that General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff, would become the overall commander of the campaign, with the current commander, Sergey Surovikin, becoming one of his three deputies.

Surovikin was only appointed as the overall commander of what the Kremlin euphemistically calls the “Special Military Operation” in October.

In terms of the bureaucratic hierarchy, the announcement is hardly an upheaval. Surovikin already reported to Gerasimov.

“Generals are moved, shuffled from the Front to the Headquarters. From Headquarters to the Front,” Russian television commentator Sergey Markov said Wednesday on Telegram.

“Surovikin is not punished and Gerasimov is not punished. It’s all one team. Well, of course with competition, which always happens among the top dogs.”

But the decision puts Gerasimov, who has been chief of the General Staff for more than a decade, closer to direct supervision of the campaign – and to responsibility for it. While Gerasimov was a key figure in planning the invasion, he appears to have been at arm’s length since, with just one reported visit to the command of the campaign inside Ukraine, though the Defense Ministry did not confirm that either.

Mark Galeotti, senior associate fellow with the Royal United Services Institute, said “it is a kind of demotion [for Gerasimov] or at least the most poisoned of chalices. It’s now on him, and I suspect Putin has unrealistic expectations again.”

Gerasimov has sometimes gone weeks without public appearances and was not seen at the Victory Day parade in Moscow last year, which at the time led to speculation about his position.

He now combines direct command of the Ukraine campaign with that of chief interlocutor with the United States on issues such as military “de-confliction.”

He last spoke with the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, in November after a Ukrainian air defense missile landed in Poland.

Just why the Russian Defense Ministry has made this move at this moment is unclear. It said there was a “need to organize closer interaction between the branches and arms of the Armed Forces” and improve the support and effectiveness of “command and control of groupings of troops.”

Gerasimov will have three deputies – Surovikin, the army commander Oleg Salyukov and the Deputy Chief of the General Staff Colonel-General Aleksey Kim.

The new structure implies that Gerasimov’s seniority will improve coordination in a campaign where different branches of the armed forces have frequently seemed less than synchronized.

Some analysts believe the move may also be an attempt by the ministry to exert tighter control over the campaign ahead of a critical few months in which the remainder of the reserve force mobilized in the autumn of 2022 will be deployed after training.

The Ukrainian military has said it expects a fresh Russian offensive in the early spring. The overall military commander in Ukraine, General Valery Zaluzhny, told The Economist in December: “They [Russian forces] are 100% being prepared.”

A major Russian attack could come “in February, at best in March and at worst at the end of January,” he said.

Rob Lee at King’s College London tweeted that Wednesday’s announcement “reasserts the MoD’s position overseeing the war… this may also partially be a response to Wagner’s increasingly influential and public role in the war.”

Wagner’s boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has been both vocal and visible on the front lines, as his contract fighters have been prominently involved in the assault on Soledar in the eastern Donetsk region. He has repeatedly said that Wagner mercenaries fighters are exclusively responsible for advances in the Soledar area.

Video shows shooting battle between Ukrainian and Russian forces

There’s been a long history of tension between Prigozhin and Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu. But Prigozhin has praised General Surovikin for managing an orderly withdrawal of Russian forces in the southern Kherson region, as their position became less and less tenable.

In November, Prigozhin said on his Telegram channel: “Generals have to win victory after victory every day. To whom can Surovikin be compared? Surovikin is honest and principled, he is trusted by the army.”

Some commentators wonder whether the ministry is “circling the wagons” as criticism persists of its handling of the campaign. Wednesday’s announcement follows news that the man who lost his job as commander of the Central Military District in October, Colonel-General Aleksandr Lapin, had been appointed Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces, according to state news agency TASS.

Both Prigozhin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov singled out Lapin for criticism. “It’s not just that Lapin is worthless. It’s the fact that he is covered at the top by the leaders in the General Staff,” Kadyrov wrote on his Telegram channel in October last year.

It is inconceivable that Gerasimov’s appointment would have occurred without President Vladimir Putin’s approval and more likely his order. If Gerasimov turns the tide of the war, it will look like a brilliant move. If he fails, then he will take the blame.

A Russian military analyst who blogs under the pseudonym ‘Rybar,’ and has more than a million followers on Telegram, does not expect the shake-up to be successful – suggesting it’s hoping for “a miracle in the 11th month of the special operation.”

“The sum does not change by moving around its parts,” Rybar wrote.

Dara Massicot, a senior researcher at the Rand Corporation, says the Ministry of Defense is “demoting their most competent senior commander and replacing him with an incompetent one. This is a story that has it all: infighting, power struggles, jealousy “

She says that while Surovikin committed no strategic blunders, Shoigu and Gerasimov are to blame for the poor planning of the campaign. “They flunked it. They signed off on a secret plan, multiple bad assumptions, didn’t tell the majority of their troops. [It] led to big casualties and a partially broken force,” Massicot tweeted.

Galeotti says Gerasimov is “hanging by a thread”, tweeting: “I don’t think this is intended to create a pretext to sack him as the war is too important and Putin can sack who he wants. But he needs some kind of win or a career ends in ignominy.”

Gerasimov is 67 years old and was appointed by Putin in 2012. He gained a profile among western analysts after a speech that was reported in the Russian newspaper Military-Industrial Courier.

Gerasimov said the use of propaganda and subversion meant that “a perfectly thriving state can, in a matter of months and even days, be transformed into an arena of fierce armed conflict, become a victim of foreign intervention, and sink into a web of chaos, humanitarian catastrophe, and civil war.”

The arrival of Russia’s “little green men” on the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in the spring of 2014 was seen as a successful example of this approach, sometimes dubbed “hybrid warfare.”

Galeotti says that “what Gerasimov was talking about was the use of subversion to prepare the battlefield before intervention, precisely the kind of operations used in Ukraine [in 2014]. Breaking the chain of command, stirring up local insurrections, jamming communications — these are all classic moves that hardly began in Crimea.”

But now General Gerasimov has to run a real war.

(CNN) — Officials are still trying to figure out exactly what led to the Federal Aviation Administration system outage on Wednesday but have traced it to a corrupt file, which was first reported by CNN.

In a statement late Wednesday, the FAA said it was continuing to investigate the outage and “take all needed steps to prevent this kind of disruption from happening again.”

“Our preliminary work has traced the outage to a damaged database file. At this time, there is no evidence of a cyberattack,” the FAA said.

The FAA is still trying to determine whether any one person or “routine entry” into the database is responsible for the corrupted file, a government official familiar with the investigation into the NOTAM system outage told CNN.

Another source familiar with the Federal Aviation Administration operation described exclusively to CNN on Wednesday how the outage played out.

When air traffic control officials realized they had a computer issue late Tuesday, they came up with a plan, the source said, to reboot the system when it would least disrupt air travel, early on Wednesday morning.

But ultimately that plan and the outage led to massive flight delays and an unprecedented order to stop all aircraft departures nationwide.

The computer system that failed was the central database for all NOTAMs (Notice to Air Missions) nationwide. Those notices advise pilots of issues along their route and at their destination. It has a backup, which officials switched to when problems with the main system emerged, according to the source.

FAA officials told reporters early Wednesday that the issues developed in the 3 p.m. ET hour on Tuesday.

Officials ultimately found a corrupt file in the main NOTAM system, the source told CNN. A corrupt file was also found in the backup system.

In the overnight hours of Tuesday into Wednesday, FAA officials decided to shut down and reboot the main NOTAM system — a significant decision, because the reboot can take about 90 minutes, according to the source.

They decided to perform the reboot early Wednesday, before air traffic began flying on the East Coast, to minimize disruption to flights.

“They thought they’d be ahead of the rush,” the source said.

During this early morning process, the FAA told reporters that the system was “beginning to come back online,” but said it would take time to resolve.

The system, according to the source, “did come back up, but it wasn’t completely pushing out the pertinent information that it needed for safe flight, and it appeared that it was taking longer to do that.”

That’s when the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop at around 7:30 a.m. ET, halting all domestic departures.

Aircraft in line for takeoff were held before entering runways. Flights already in the air were advised verbally of the safety notices by air traffic controllers, who keep a static electronic or paper record at their desks of the active notices.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg ordered an after-action review and also said there was “no direct evidence or indication” that the issue was a cyberattack.

The source said the NOTAM system is an example of aging infrastructure due for an overhaul.

“Because of budgetary concerns and flexibility of budget, this tech refresh has been pushed off,” the source said. “I assume now they’re going to actually find money to do it.”

“The FAA’s infrastructure is a lot more than just brick and mortar.”

Investment in the agency is set to be addressed this year by Congress when the five-year FAA Reauthorization Act signed in 2018 expires.

Top image: A traveler looks at a flight board listing delays and cancellations at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on January 11. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Fighting is still raging in Soledar, a salt mine town in eastern Ukraine, despite Russian claims that it has gained control of the region.

Should Russian troops indeed capture the town, it would mark Moscow’s first gain in the Donbas for months – potentially offering President Vladimir Putin some welcome news after a string of defeats on the battlefield since last summer.

The significance of Soledar in military terms is minimal. However, its capture would allow Russian forces, and especially the Wagner mercenary group, to turn their focus on nearby Bakhmut, which has been a target since the summer.

The town of Soledar in Donetsk has been a target for Russian forces since last May. With a pre-war population of about 10,000, it has little strategic value in itself, but is a waypoint in the Russians’ attritional slog westwards. Moscow has struggled for months to attack Bakhmut from the east, but were it to capture Soledar, Moscow would at least be able to approach the city from a different path.

The Russian armed forces have had nothing to celebrate since the beginning of July, and have had to retreat in both Kharkiv to the north and Kherson in southern Ukraine.

The capture of Soledar, despite its now-ruined state, would therefore be rare progress. But it would be symbolic rather than substantive. The Institute for the Study of War said control of Soledar “will not necessarily allow Russian forces to exert control over critical Ukrainian ground lines of communication into Bakhmut,” the larger prize.

But Soledar is of outsize significance to one man: oligarch and Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. His Wagner fighters, many of them former prison inmates, have taken heavy casualties with one wave after another of ground assaults across what has become a battlefield of trenches and mud reminiscent of World War I. After months in which the Russian Ministry of Defense has delivered nothing but retreat, Prigozhin is keen to show that his men deliver.

Read more about Soledar here.

CNN
 — 

Russian war crimes and human rights abuses during the war in Ukraine add up to a “litany of violations of international humanitarian law,” according to Human Rights Watch.

In the rights group’s annual report reviewing human rights standards in nearly 100 countries, it said that evidence of war crimes in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, are part of a pattern that “has been repeated countless times.”

HRW’s World Report 2023 also highlights the bombing of a theater in Mariupol, despite signs warning that children were sheltering there, as well as strikes on other non-military targets.

“Inflicting civilian suffering, such as the repeated strikes on the energy infrastructure that Ukrainians depend on for electricity, water, and heat, seems to be a central part of the Kremlin’s strategy,” reads the report.

And while the authors praise the response of European countries in receiving Ukrainian refugees, they also say that “governments should reflect on where the situation would be if the international community had made a concerted effort to hold Putin to account much earlier – in 2014, at the onset of the war in eastern Ukraine; in 2015, for abuses in Syria; or for the escalating human rights crackdown within Russia over the last decade.”

Elsewhere, HRW highlights the armed conflict in the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, which it notes doesn’t get anywhere near as much attention as Ukraine.

“Governments and the UN have condemned the summary killings, widespread sexual violence, and pillage, but have done little else” as an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Tigrayan population in Western Tigray resulted in many deaths, sexual violence, mass detention, and the forced displacement of thousands,” the report said.

The report also calls for more scrutiny of China after Xi Jinping secured a third term as Communist Party leader and president in October.

“Xi has surrounded himself with loyalists and doubled down on building a security state, deepening rights violations across the country,” the report said.

And as Western governments have grown increasingly uncomfortable with China’s policies, they have sought to deepen alliances with India. But HRW’s report said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party was deploying some of the same repressive practices as China.

“The seemingly careless trade-off on human rights that world leaders make, justified as the cost of doing business, ignores the longer-term implications of their compromises,” reads the report. “Deepening ties with the Modi government while avoiding its troubling rights record squanders valuable leverage to protect the precious, but increasingly endangered, civic space on which India’s democracy relies.”

Other cases highlighted by HRW include Hungary, where the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban has “continued its attacks on rule of law and democratic institutions,” declaring a state of danger over the war in Ukraine which allows it to rule by decree and avoid parliamentary scrutiny.

In addition, HRW noted that 2022 saw the UK government has introduced new laws that “violate rights and proposed significantly weakening human rights protections in domestic law.”

And the organization warned against the temptations of autocratic rule the world over.

“Autocrats benefit from the illusion they project as being indispensable to maintaining stability, which in turn seemingly justifies their oppression and widespread human-rights violations committed toward achieving that end,” reads the report.

The effort to cement this control “erodes” the pillars of a society based on the rule of law, the report added.

“The result is frequently massive corruption, a broken economy, and a hopelessly partisan judiciary,” it said. “Vital civic space is dismantled, with activists and independent journalists in jail, in hiding, or fearing retaliation.”

Hong Kong
CNN
 — 

At least five people were killed and 13 others injured when a car accelerated through pedestrians at an intersection in the southern Chinese hub of Guangzhou on Wednesday evening, state media said.

Videos circulating on social media and geolocated by CNN appeared to show the vehicle, a black SUV, plowing through pedestrians on two separate crossings in the four-way intersection in a busy, upmarket commercial district of the city of 19 million.

Another video, circulating online and cited by state media, appears to show the driver throwing handfuls of cash out of his vehicle after pulling to the side of the road.

Local authorities said police had “controlled” the driver, a 22-year-old man from Guangdong province, and further investigation was underway.

The incident occurred during rush hour at 5:25 p.m., when many scooters, cars and pedestrians could be seen on the road.

Police and medical staff were immediately dispatched, according to local authorities, which also confirmed the casualty numbers.

An eyewitness cited in a report from state-run China News Service said the vehicle plowed through pedestrians at the junction without stopping afterward.

While the incident was reported by China’s official media, it was not among trending topics on the country’s heavily controlled social media platform Weibo on Thursday morning.