We got an inside look at how Army combat medics are trained at Fort Sam Houston and Camp Bullis in San Antonio, Texas.
Gov. Tony Evers plans to appoint a former Democratic legislator to lead Wisconsin’s parole commission.
The governor’s office said Friday that he plans to pick former state Sen. Jon Erpenbach to serve as chairman of the commission. Erpenbach will replace Christopher Blythe. Evers’ spokesperson, Britt Cudaback, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking details about why Blythe is leaving the position and when Erpenbach would take over.
Erpenbach will inherit a commission that was rocked by Republican criticism last year over then-chairman Jon Tate’s decision to parole a convicted murderer who had served less than half his sentence.
CONSERVATIVE WISCONSIN NEWS OUTLET SUES FOR PAROLE RECORDS
Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has appointed Jon Erpenbach, a former Democratic state senator, to chair the state’s embattled parole commission.
(Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Douglas Balsewicz was convicted in 1997 of stabbing his 23-year-old wife to death and had served less than 25 years of his 80-year sentence when Tate decided to release him.
GOP GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE TIM MICHELS WANTS TO CHANGE THE PAROLE SYSTEM IN WISCONSIN
Evers, who was in the middle of a reelection campaign, asked Tate to rescind Balsewicz’s parole. Tate complied just days before Balsewicz was set to be released. Tate resigned in June at Evers’ request and the governor picked Blythe to replace him.
Erpenbach was first elected to the state Senate in 1999 and represented the Middleton area for 23 years. He decided not to seek reelection last year and retired from the body on Jan. 3.
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Erpenbach said in a statement released by the governor’s office that the commission’s success depends on balancing the law, public safety and keeping dangerous people off the streets while supporting victims, survivors and their families.
Thought your winter was cold? Temperatures in the world’s coldest city have plunged to minus 50 degrees Celsius (minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit).
“You can’t fight it,” one resident dressed in two scarves and multiple layers of gloves, hats and hoods told Reuters. “You either adjust and dress accordingly or you suffer.”
Layering, according to another resident selling frozen fish at a local market, was the key. “Just dress warmly. In layers, like a cabbage,” she said.
Fish vendors Marina Krivolutskaya and Marianna Ugai pose for a picture at an open-air market on a frosty day in Yakutsk, Russia, January 15, 2023.
Roman Kutukov/Reuters
Home to fewer than 1 million residents, Yakutsk winters can be extreme — even by Russian standards.
Scientists expressed grave concerns about the increasing frequency of the fires brought about by climate change in the Siberian arctic.
This is gallium. It’s shiny, and can be turned into jello like liquid. You can also play with it, without being harmed. But what would …
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday it recommended that China monitor excess mortality from COVID-19 to gain a fuller picture of the impact of the surge in cases there.
China said on Saturday that nearly 60,000 people with COVID-19 had died in hospital since it abandoned its zero-COVID policy last month, a big jump from the figures it reported prior to facing international criticism over its COVID-19 data.
“WHO recommends the monitoring of excess mortality, which provides us with a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of COVID-19,” the U.N. agency told Reuters in a statement when asked about China.
CHINA ACTS AGAINST COVID POLICY CRITICS, SUSPENDS SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended China monitor excess COVID-19 mortality to gauge the severity of its latest surge in cases.
(REUTERS/Staff/File Photo)
“This is especially important during periods of surges when the health system is severely constrained.”
WHO added that there was no fixed time for another meeting with Chinese officials after WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus spoke with Ma Xiaowei, director of China’s National Health Commission, at the weekend, but that it would continue working with China to provide advice and support.
NEARLY 90% OF PEOPLE IN ONE OF CHINA’S MOST POPULOUS PROVINCES INFECTED WITH COVID: REPORT
After criticising Beijing for not being forthright about the scale of the outbreak, WHO said on Saturday that Chinese authorities had provided it with information on hospital deaths and outpatient care that allowed for a better understanding of the situation.
Lawrence Gostin, a professor at Georgetown Law in Washington, D.C., who closely follows WHO, said China’s decision to reveal more data had been down to “WHO prodding”.
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“Getting more accurate death tolls is refreshing,” he said. “But it would be even more important to get full GSD (genetic sequence data) of circulating virus in China. That’s the really big global concern.”
You can honor him on Martin Luther King Jr. Day (Monday, January 16) — or any other time of year — by walking in his footsteps figuratively or literally.
Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church is one of Atlanta’s most cherished sites.
Raymond Boyd/Getty Images
Georgia’s busy capital city is King’s birthplace and his final resting place. As such, it probably has the biggest claim on his legacy and MLK-related sites.
Some of the highlights include:
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. CNN’s Dana Bash traveled to Memphis to the sites where Martin Luther King Jr. spent his final hours.
For a city of its size, Memphis has an outsized influence on the nation’s musical, cultural and political history. The United States was deep in turmoil and scarred by violence when King came to Memphis in March 1968 in support of striking sanitation workers.
King and his group were booked at the Lorraine Motel, a safe and welcoming place to stay for black travelers at the time. On April 4, King was standing on the balcony outside of room 306 when he was shot and killed.
Today, Montgomery has numerous must-see civil rights attractions, including:
The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute has the jail door from King’s incarceration.
Raymond Boyd/Getty Images
The industrial powerhouse of the South and a bedrock of integration opposition in the mid-20th century, Birmingham also figured prominently in King’s life.
You’ll find the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.
Al Drago/Getty Images
It now seems inevitable that King’s march for justice took him beyond the Deep South to the nation’s capital. Here are some places you can visit:
Coretta Scott King unveils a bas relief of her late husband at the Mugar Memorial Library on the Boston University campus.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
While several cities in the South claim part of the King legacy, it may surprise some folks to know that Boston, that bastion of New England, also was a key place in shaping his life.
Did you know you can combine a Bahamas getaway with an MLK Jr. history tour?
Josh Noel/Chicago Tribune/TNS/Getty Images
Combine a gorgeous island getaway with some MLK history on Bimini, the western most outpost of the Bahamas and just 50 miles off the coast of Florida.
King would come here to relax and craft his speeches, including notes for his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech he gave in Oslo, Norway, in 1964.
CNN Travel’s Lilit Marcus reported in a 2018 article that “there are two busts of King on the island — one in front of the Straw Market in the center of Alice Town and one among the very mangroves where King spent so many peaceful afternoons.”
A visit to the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana is a painful but necessary reminder of the Atlantic slave trade that went on for centuries.
Rita Funk/picture-alliance/dpa/AP
The civil rights struggles in the United States and the end of colonialism in Africa came at the same time and naturally the movements dovetailed.
If you visit Mani Bhavan, the museum that was once Mahatma Ghandhi’s center of operations, you’ll have once again walked in the footstepls of MLK Jr.
Shutterstock
Mahatma Gandhi’s crusade of nonviolent resistance to liberate India from British rule deeply influenced King.
Eventually he made his way to Calcutta (now called Kolkata), India’s intellectual center. Martin Luther King Sarani, a street named for him in the heart of the city, is not far from the Victoria Memorial.
CNN
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For years, residents in the northern Indian city of Joshimath have complained to local officials that their homes are sinking. Now authorities are being forced to take action, evacuating nearly 100 families in the last week and expediting the arrival of experts to determine the cause.
Cracks running through the city are now so wide that hundreds of homes are no longer habitable, and some fear that India could lose a key gateway to religious pilgrimages and tourist expeditions on nearby mountain trails.
Located in the northeastern state of Uttarakhand, Joshimath is bordered by two rivers and nestled on the slopes of the Himalayas, which environmental experts say makes it particularly susceptible to earthquakes, landslides and erosion.
“Joshimath, and many other towns in the Himalayas, are geologically prone to subsidence,” otherwise known as the sinking or settling of the Earth’s surface, said Sameer Kwatra, policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council’s India program.
Kwatra added that the natural factors which put Joshimath, home to around 25,000 people, at risk of sinking are “being exacerbated by large scale construction projects as well as climate induced flash floods and extreme rainfall.”
In August 2022, a team of scientists, geologists and researchers organized by the state government of Uttarakhand conducted a geological survey of Joshimath and noted that local residents reported an accelerated pace of land erosion that year, caused in large part by heavy rainfall in October 2021 and devastating flash flooding earlier that year, sparking concerns about the impact of climate change on the region.
The survey found extensive damage to houses in Joshimath, stating that some houses were “unsafe for human habitation” and posed a “grave risk” to their inhabitants.
The report pointed to visible cracks in walls, floors and along various roads as evidence that the city was sinking and recommended construction in certain areas be curtailed, with “further developmental activities in the area … restricted to the extent possible.”
Despite the recommendation, construction in the region continued until just last week. On January 5, the district administration temporarily shut down all construction work in Joshimath, including work on a bypass road and the National Thermal Power Corporation’s (NTPC) Tapovan Vishnugad hydropower project. The hydropower plant is being constructed on the Dhauliganga river which partially borders the eastern side of Joshimath. Construction on the project involves tunneling, which some residents and environmental experts believe may have worsened the land erosion.
According to local news outlets, NTPC issued a statement on January 5, the day construction was stopped, stating “NTPC wants to inform with full responsibility that the tunnel has nothing to do with the landslide happening in Joshimath city.”
In an emailed statement to CNN, NTPC said the tunnel was completed more than a decade ago, and there are no recent signs of sinking on the surface near the tunnel, which is around 1 kilometer from the town and about 1 kilometer deep.
Suraj Kaparuwan, a 38-year-old businessman who runs a small hotel in Joshimath, told CNN cracks began appearing in his field and in the walls of his home a year ago, but the situation has worsened in recent months.
“Hairline cracks in the field started appearing about a year back. They’ve been widening over time, especially in the last two months. They’re now about 3-feet wide,” Kaparuwan told CNN.
Last Wednesday evening, Kaparuwan’s family wife and two sons left Joshimath for Srinagar Garhwal, another city further south in the same state.
Kaparuwan initially stayed behind to join what he said were thousands of Joshimath residents and allies from nearby villages protesting in front of local administrative buildings, calling for an end to the construction and requesting proper compensation for those who have had to leave their homes.
On Monday, Kaparuwan was told by local officials that his home was in the “danger zone” and he had to move out. With upcoming bookings for the hotel canceled, Kaparuwan told CNN he plans to take all his household belongings to the hotel and wait to see what the future holds for Joshimath.
“We’ll hope for the new beginning of all things, but it will depend on the government, what steps they take,” he said.
As of Thursday, cracks were present in 760 buildings and 589 people had been evacuated, according to a bulletin issued by the district administration.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami visited the affected areas last Saturday, inspecting the homes of residents who fear the structures may collapse.
“It is our priority is to keep everyone safe,” Dhami told reporters after touring the area.
Joshimath’s land subsidence is “not a new problem,” Ranjit Sinha, secretary of disaster management for the state of Uttarakhand, told CNN last week, elaborating in a news conference a few days later: “The soil is very loose. The land cannot bear the load.”
A two-year study by the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, conducted between July 2020 and March 2022, found that Joshimath and its surrounding areas have been sinking at the rate of 6.5 centimeters (2.5 inches) per year.
However, local officials say the current cracks are more prevalent and wider than ones they’ve seen in the past.
Himanshu Khurana, magistrate of the Chamoli district, which includes Joshimath, says the cracks that appeared a year ago “were widening very slowly and gradually,” but “what happened in the past one month particularly from around December 15 was a different phenomena in different locations.”
When asked, Khurana could not say what caused the sudden spread of cracks in December, but he said he hopes experts will find out and come up with a solution “very quickly.”
Experts from the National Disaster Management Authority, National Institute of Disaster Management, Geological Survey of India, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, National Institute of Hydrology and the Central Building Research Institute have been tasked with studying the situation in Joshimath.
As of Friday, some of those teams had already arrived in the city to begin work, according to Khurana.
Their findings could help not only Joshimath and nearby towns in the Himalayan region but also other towns with similar terrain that might put them at risk of sinking in the future.
Kwatra, from the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Joshimath’s problems aren’t unique and are likely to become more common if the world fails to slow the rise in global temperatures.
“What is happening in Joshimath is yet another reminder that climate change is already causing severe impacts that will only continue to worsen unless we act urgently, boldly, and decisively to curb emissions,” he said.
Kaparuwan, whose family has lived in Joshimath for decades, said his dreams for the future are “shattered.”
“I don’t know what will happen next,” he said. “It is a very dark situation for me right now.”
Researchers have discovered a method for modifying the function of an enzyme crucial to fat production.
The find could lead to more effective treatments for childhood obesity and cancer.
While the research was in fruit fly larvae, being able to speed up or slow down lipid metabolism could have significant implications for human health, says Hua Bai, an associate professor of genetics, development and cell biology at Iowa State University.
“We’ve identified what’s basically a metabolic switch. It’s like the accelerator on a car,” he says.
The focus of Bai’s research lab is the cellular and molecular mechanisms that cause animals to age. That was the initial intent of studying fatty acid synthase, an enzyme that plays a role in de novo lipogenesis, which is the process of turning excess dietary carbohydrates into fat. Typically, levels of fatty acid synthase rise and fall based on an animal’s cellular needs and diet.
Surprisingly, the researchers noticed that early in a fruit fly’s development, de novo lipogenesis increases without an accompanying boost in the expression of fatty acid synthase. That suggested there must be some other factor at play, Bai says.
After proteins such as fatty acid synthase are created based on genetic code, their function can be altered by one of several different types of post-translational modification. Bai’s team found one of those processes, acetylation, affected one of the 2,540 amino acids that combine to make fatty acid synthase, changing how effective it was at producing fat.
The research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In addition to its role in obesity, elevated levels of de novo lipogenesis are linked to cancer, so controlling it through a single amino acid could lead to highly targeted treatments, Bai says.
“Fine tuning the acetylation levels of fatty acid synthase would be a much more precise treatment than blocking the entire protein,” he says.
It’s not certain that the processes Bai’s team studied will work the same in humans, but the two species’ genomes are similar, which is part of the reason fruit flies are a common research subject. Still, capitalizing on the discovery to treat human disease is many years away, he says.
“The potential is high, but further testing is needed in other animals,” he says.
Source: Iowa State University
Sam Hubbard may have saved the Cincinnati Bengals’ season at the goal line.
Baltimore Ravens quarterback Tyler Huntley was rolling in the fourth quarter. He had a touchdown pass to Demarcus Robinson to tie the game at 17 and appeared to be getting ready to give his team the lead after a 25-yard run that got the team to within 2 yards of a touchdown.
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Sam Hubbard #94 of the Cincinnati Bengals recovers a fumble by Tyler Huntley #2 of the Baltimore Ravens to score a 98 yard touchdown during the fourth quarter in the AFC Wild Card playoff game at Paycor Stadium on January 15, 2023 in Cincinnati, Ohio.
(Dylan Buell/Getty Images)
However, Logan Wilson and Hubbard had different ideas.
Huntley went over the top of the line of scrimmage to try and get a touchdown but Wilson knocked the ball out of the quarterback’s hands and Hubbard recovered. The defensive lineman ran the ball 98 yards for a touchdown for one of the wildest touchdowns of the 2022-23 postseason so far.
Sam Hubbard #94 of the Cincinnati Bengals lines up for a play during the game against the Baltimore Ravens at Paycor Stadium on January 8, 2023 in Cincinnati, Ohio.
(Kirk Irwin/Getty Images)
The play lit up social media.
RAVENS’ JOHN HARBAUGH HAS CRINGEY SIDELINE INTERVIEW AFTER FIRST QUARTER
It was the longest fumble return in postseason history.
Hubbard had four tackles and a quarterback hit before he returned the ball for a touchdown. Wilson had nine tackles and a forced fumble as the play was over.
The play put Cincinnati up a touchdown and an extra point with about 11:39 to play in the game.
Baltimore Ravens quarterback Tyler Huntley throws in the first half of an NFL wild-card playoff football game against the Cincinnati Bengals in Cincinnati, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023.
(AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
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The Bengals are the defending AFC champions and were looking to get past a tough division rival in the Ravens.
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More House Republicans on Sunday stopped short of calling on embattled New York Rep. George Santos to resign, while two Democrats made a fresh push for more information from GOP leaders.
Republicans back home in the GOP freshman’s Long Island district, however, doubled down Sunday on calls for him to step down.
Santos is facing growing pressure to resign after he lied and misrepresented his educational, work and family history, including falsely claiming he was Jewish and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. He also faces federal and local investigations into his campaign finances. Santos has admitted to “embellishing” his resume but has maintained he is “not a criminal.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer called Santos “a bad guy” in an interview Sunday with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
“He’s not the first politician, unfortunately, to make it to Congress to lie,” the Kentucky Republican said. “But, look, George Santos was duly elected by the people. He’s going to be under strict ethics investigation, not necessarily for lying, but for his campaign finance potential violations. So I think that Santos is being examined thoroughly.”
“It’s his decision whether or not he should resign. It’s not my decision. But, certainly, I don’t approve of how he made his way to Congress,” Comer said. “Now, if he broke campaign finance laws, then he will be removed from Congress.”
GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said Sunday he would resign if he were in Santos’ position but said that was a decision for the New York Republican’s constituents.
“If it was me, I would resign. I wouldn’t be able to face my voters after having gone through that,” Bacon told “This Week” on ABC. “But this is between him and his constituents, largely. They elected him in, and he’s going to have to deal with them on that. I don’t think his reelection chances will be that promising, depending on how he handles this.”
Rep. Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican, also declined to say if Santos should resign from his Long Island seat.
“He clearly lied to his constituents, and … it’s going to be very, very difficult for him to gain the trust of his colleagues,” Stewart said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “The reality is you can’t expel a member of Congress. At the end of the day, it really is up to the voters in Nassau County. I can tell you this – if I were in that situation, I don’t know how I could continue to serve and I suppose he needs to ask that same question.”
Several House Republicans have called for Santos to resign, including five of his fellow New York Republican colleagues in the House. Leaders of the Nassau County GOP have also called for the congressman to step down.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters Thursday that Santos has “a long way to go to earn trust” and that concerns could be investigated by the House Ethics Committee, but he emphasized that the congresman is a part of the House GOP Conference. Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, of New York, who chairs the House GOP Conference, told CNN on Thursday that the process “will play itself out.”
“He’s a duly elected member of Congress. There have been members of Congress on the Democrat side who have faced investigations before,” she said.
Meanwhile, two Democrats are calling on McCarthy and Stefanik to cooperate with any House Ethics Committee investigation into Santos.
In a letter sent to the two Republican leaders and to Dan Conston, president of the Congressional Leadership Fund – the super PAC affiliated with House GOP leadership – New York Reps. Dan Goldman and Ritchie Torres cite new reporting “indicating that each of you had at least some knowledge of lies used by Congressman George Santos to deceive his voters long before they became public.”
“We urge you to inform the American people about your knowledge of Mr. Santos’s web of deceit prior to the election so that the public understands whether and to what extent you were complicit in Mr. Santos’s fraud on his voters,” Goldman and Torres said in the letter.
CNN has reported that Conston expressed concerns about Santos’ background prior to the election and contacted lawmakers and donors about those concerns. Goldman and Torres cite reporting by The New York Times in their letter, which also indicated that associates of Stefanik were made aware of issues regarding Santos’ background ahead of the election.
In an interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Goldman called Santos a “complete and total fraud” and pushed back on attempts by some Republicans to equate the allegations against him to ethics complaints against some Democrats.
“This is a scheme to defraud the voters of the 3rd District in New York, and this needs to be investigated intensively,” he said.
Goldman and Ritchie said last week that they were filing a formal complaint with the House Ethics Committee requesting an investigation related to Santos’s financial disclosure reports. A campaign watchdog group filed a complaint last week with the Federal Election Commission accusing Santos of concealing the source of more than $700,000 that he put into his successful 2022 bid.
CNN’s KFILE also reported that Santos had said a company later accused of running a “Ponzi scheme” was “100% legitimate” when it was accused by a potential customer of fraud in 2020, more than a year before it was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Joseph Murray, an attorney for Santos, told CNN in an email that Santos was unaware of wrongdoing at that company.
Murray also previously defended the Santos campaign’s actions, saying in a statement, “The suggestion that the Santos campaign engaged in any unlawful spending of campaign funds is irresponsible, at best.”
Nassau County Republicans were ready Sunday in case Santos showed up at a morning fundraiser on Long Island.
“Had he shown up, we were ready to greet him,” Nassau County GOP Chair Joseph Cairo said. “We would have said, ‘You’re really not welcome. You deceived us, you lied to us.’”
Over 900 people turned out for the annual “kickoff brunch” featuring a who’s-who of Nassau County Republicans, with most wanting to distance themselves from the freshman lawmaker.
“People say he should serve out his term,” Cairo said. “He didn’t get elected. The fictional character he created got elected.”
Cairo said the topic of Santos came up at times during public speeches made by various Republicans at the fundraiser but not in a supportive way.
“Virtually everyone is done with George Santos,” said Cairo. “We’ve told him he’s not welcome at our events. We don’t invite him to our meetings.”
Former New York Rep. Peter King, who represented a different Long Island seat in Congress for nearly three decades, said no one had anything positive to say about Santos.
“I made it a point to sort of mingle in the crowd beforehand. Everyone says we’ve got to get rid of this guy,” said King, a onetime chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. “He’s dangerous to the party and dangerous to the country.”
King said local Republicans would now move to ostracize Santos as much as possible.
“That’s not to punish him but to send the signal to everyone, including Washington, that he has to go,” the former congressman said. “They can’t be slow-walking it in Washington, waiting for something to happen in Washington.”
Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, a freshman lawmaker from a neighboring Long Island district, said Santos won’t have support from the party if he opts to stay put and run for reelection next year.
“We’ve all called for George Santos’ resignation. If that’s not something that’s going to happen, then I think it’s clear … that we are ready to do what we need to do when it comes to the polls in two years,” he said.
“One of the things that I think is really bothering people the most is the fact that he claimed he was of the Jewish faith and that his grandparents survived the Holocaust,” D’Esposito said. “In the district that I run in, we have a very large population of Orthodox and a large Jewish population. It’s not something that we could stand for.”
