Wednesday, May 11, 2022
Inflation persists, primary election results, Al Jazeera journalist killed, investigation into Indian boarding schools, Senate to vote on abortion rights and farewell to the iPod.
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Happy Wednesday. Here’s a quick look at what’s happening:
CNBC: Inflation barreled ahead at 8.3% in April from a year ago, remaining near 40-year highs:
Inflation rose again in April, continuing a climb that has pushed consumers to the brink and is threatening the economic expansion, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.
The consumer price index, a broad-based measure of prices for goods and services, increased 8.3% from a year ago, higher than the Dow Jones estimate for an 8.1% gain. That represented a slight ease from March’s peak but was still close to the highest level since the summer of 1982.
Removing volatile food and energy prices, so-called core CPI still rose 6.2%, against expectations for a 6% gain, clouding hopes that inflation had peaked in March.
The month-over-month gains also were higher than expectations — 0.3% on headline CPI versus the 0.2% estimate and a 0.6% increase for core, against the outlook for a 0.4% gain.
The price gains also meant that workers continued to lose ground. Real wages adjusted for inflation decreased 0.1% on the month despite a nominal increase of 0.3% in average hourly earnings. Over the past year, real earnings have dropped 2.6% even though average hourly earnings are up 5.5%.
CNBC: Stocks rose Wednesday, as investors tried to look past the latest U.S. inflation data.
The AP with election results from Tuesday: Republican voters in Nebraska picked Jim Pillen as their nominee for governor, siding with the University of Nebraska regent backed by the state’s outgoing governor over a rival supported by former President Donald Trump and accused of groping multiple women:
AP: In an early victory for a Donald Trump-endorsed candidate at the start of midterm season, Rep. Alex Mooney on Tuesday beat fellow incumbent Rep. David McKinley in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District Republican primary:
BBC News: A veteran Palestinian-American correspondent for Al Jazeera has been killed while covering a raid by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank:
The Qatar-based network said Shireen Abu Aqla was shot "deliberately" and "in cold blood" by Israeli troops in Jenin. Her producer was also wounded.
Israel's prime minister said it was "likely" they were shot by Palestinian gunmen during an exchange of fire.
But his military chief said it was not yet able to determine what happened.
The Palestinian president said he held the Israeli government fully responsible for what he described as a "crime of execution".
Ukraine updates:
NBC News: The House passed legislation Tuesday night that would provide $40 billion in new military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, as the United States looks to step up its support for Kyiv in its defensive fight against Russia.
BBC News: The war with Russia would have been prevented if Ukraine had been a member of the NATO alliance, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
CBS News: Russia's war in Ukraine is unlikely to end even if its forces are successful in taking the country's eastern Donbas region, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said Tuesday, as President Putin banks on diminishing Western resolve to achieve goals extending past the Donbas and across the coast to neighboring Moldova.
The Guardian: Three Russian prisoners of war accused of targeting or murdering civilians, and a soldier who allegedly killed a man before raping his wife, are set to be in the dock in the first war crimes trials of the Ukraine conflict, the Ukrainian prosecutor general has revealed.
Reuters: An Interior Department investigation into the dark history of Indian boarding schools has found ‘marked or unmarked burial sites’ at some 53 schools, Secretary Deb Haaland said on Wednesday.
"The consequences of federal Indian boarding school policies ... are heartbreaking and undeniable," Haaland said in a statement. "It is my priority to not only give voice to the survivors and descendants of federal Indian boarding school policies, but also to address the lasting legacies of these policies so Indigenous Peoples can continue to grow and heal."
Conditions at former Indian boarding schools gained global attention last year when tribal leaders in Canada announced the discovery of the unmarked graves of 215 children at the site of the former Kamloops residential school for indigenous children, as such institutions are known in Canada.
Unlike the United States, Canada carried out a full investigation into its schools via a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Until Wednesday, the U.S. government had yet to provide any true accounting of the legacy of such schools, including never acknowledging how many children attended them, how many children died or went missing from them or even how many schools existed.
A New York judge on Wednesday lifted the civil contempt finding against former President Donald Trump, assuming certain conditions are met, and ordered him to pay $110,000 in fines, CNN reports:
The judge said all of the conditions -- including providing a description of the Trump Organization's document retention and destruction policy and reviewing the remaining five of 17 boxes tied to Trump and located in on off-site storage facility -- must be completed by May 20.
Judge Arthur Engoron also agreed to have Trump place the fine in an escrow account until Trump's appeal of the contempt ruling is completed.
But he told Trump's attorney: "I want the fine paid. That fine is now $110,000."
CNN also reports the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack is still finalizing its witness list and preparing to reach out to people it wants to testify publicly.
CBS News reports that the Senate will vote Wednesday on whether to advance legislation that would enshrine the right to an abortion into federal law:
Democratic leaders are pressing ahead with the procedural vote even though it is almost certain to fail to garner the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster, arguing the need to bolster abortion rights at the federal level is too urgent to ignore.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced last week the Senate would vote to proceed to the bill, called the Women's Health Protection Act, days after the draft majority opinion was leaked and published. But all 50 GOP senators are expected to vote against ending debate on the bill and at least one Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, will join them.
Manchin was the sole Democrat to join Republicans in blocking the measure when it was taken up by the Senate in February, and he told reporters ahead of Wednesday's vote that he would support legislation that solely enshrines Roe's protections into law, which he said would be the "reasonable, rational thing to do."
"Make no mistake, it is not Roe v. Wade codification," he said of the Women's Health Protection Act. "It is an expansion, it wipes 500 state laws off the books, it expands abortion, and with that, that's not where we are today. We should not be dividing this country further than we're already divided, and it's really the politics of Congress that's dividing the country."
More headlines:
AP: Pilot down, passenger takes over with ‘no idea how to fly.’
Arizona Republic: Arizona is set to execute Clarence Dixon at the state prison in Florence on Wednesday morning for the 1978 murder of 21-year-old ASU student Deana Bowdoin.
AP: Two people were shot and wounded after someone fired at a church in North Carolina, and shots were fired into a car while it was at a police station.
NBC News: A massive wildfire in New Mexico surpassed 200,000 acres of burned brush Tuesday as high winds and warm temperatures stoked renewed growth and kept further containment at bay.
NBC News: More than 107,600 Americans died from drug overdoses last year, the highest annual death toll on record, the CDC said Wednesday.
CBS News: With Casey White and Vicky White manhunt over, new details emerge about search for escaped murder suspect and jail official.
AP: Hyundai is recalling more than 215,000 midsize cars in the U.S. — most for a second time — because fuel hoses can leak in the engine compartment and cause fires.
NBC News: Two beachfront homes in North Carolina’s Outer Banks collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean Tuesday, brought down by the rush of powerful waves, high tides and whipping winds.
The New York Times: Farewell to the iPod.
The iPod began with a modest goal: Let’s create a music product that makes people want to buy more Macintosh computers. Within a few years, it would change consumer electronics and the music industry and lead to Apple becoming the most valuable company in the world.
First arriving in October 2001, the pocket-size rectangle with a white face and polished steel frame weighed 6.5 ounces. It came packaged with white earbuds in a custom color, moon gray, and held 1,000 songs.
It exploded in popularity in the years that followed, creating what became known as the iPod generation. Throughout much of the 2000s, people wandered the world, headphones dangling from their ears. The iPod was ubiquitous.
On Tuesday, Apple officially said goodbye to all that. The company announced it had phased out production of its iPod Touch, bringing an end to a two-decade run of a product line that inspired the creation of the iPhone and helped turn Silicon Valley into the epicenter of global capitalism.