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Baker Mayfield, high-flying Bucs visit Chargers in matchup of teams with winning recordsWASHINGTON (AP) — One year after the Jan. 6, 2021 , U.S. Capitol attack, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department was committed to holding accountable all perpetrators “at any level” for “the assault on our democracy.” That bold declaration won't apply to at least one person: Donald Trump. Special counsel Jack Smith's move on Monday to abandon the federal election interference case against Trump means jurors will likely never decide whether the president-elect is criminally responsible for his attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 campaign. The decision to walk away from the election charges and the separate classified documents case against Trump marks an abrupt end of the Justice Department’s unprecedented legal effort that once threatened his liberty but appears only to have galvanized his supporters. The abandonment of the cases accusing Trump of endangering American democracy and national security does away with the most serious legal threats he was facing as he returns to the White House. It was the culmination of a monthslong defense effort to delay the proceedings at every step and use the criminal allegations to Trump's political advantage, putting the final word in the hands of voters instead of jurors. “We always knew that the rich and powerful had an advantage, but I don’t think we would have ever believed that somebody could walk away from everything,” said Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor and former Justice Department official. “If there ever was a Teflon defendant, that’s Donald Trump.” While prosecutors left the door open to the possibility that federal charges could be re-filed against Trump after he leaves office, that seems unlikely. Meanwhile, Trump's presidential victory has thrown into question the future of the two state criminal cases against him in New York and Georgia. Trump was supposed to be sentenced on Tuesday after his conviction on 34 felony counts in his New York hush money case , but it's possible the sentencing could be delayed until after Trump leaves office, and the defense is pushing to dismiss the case altogether. Smith's team stressed that their decision to abandon the federal cases was not a reflection of the merit of the charges, but an acknowledgement that they could not move forward under longstanding Justice Department policy that says sitting presidents cannot face criminal prosecution. Trump's presidential victory set “at odds two fundamental and compelling national interests: On the one hand, the Constitution’s requirement that the President must not be unduly encumbered in fulfilling his weighty responsibilities . . . and on the other hand, the Nation’s commitment to the rule of law,” prosecutors wrote in court papers. The move just weeks after Trump's victory over Vice President Kamala Harris underscores the immense personal stake Trump had in the campaign in which he turned his legal woes into a political rallying cry. Trump accused prosecutors of bringing the charges in a bid to keep him out of the White House, and he promised revenge on his perceived enemies if he won a second term. “If Donald J. Trump had lost an election, he may very well have spent the rest of his life in prison,” Vice President-elect JD Vance, wrote in a social media post on Monday. “These prosecutions were always political. Now it’s time to ensure what happened to President Trump never happens in this country again.” After the Jan. 6 attack by Trump supporters that left more than 100 police officers injured, Republican leader Mitch McConnell and several other Republicans who voted to acquit Trump during his Senate impeachment trial said it was up to the justice system to hold Trump accountable. The Jan. 6 case brought last year in Washington alleged an increasingly desperate criminal conspiracy to subvert the will of voters after Trump's 2020 loss, accusing Trump of using the angry mob of supporters that attacked the Capitol as “a tool” in his campaign to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence and obstruct the certification of Democrat Joe Biden's victory. Hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters — many of whom have said they felt called to Washington by Trump — have pleaded guilty or been convicted by juries of federal charges at the same courthouse where Trump was supposed to stand trial last year. As the trial date neared, officials at the courthouse that sits within view of the Capitol were busy making plans for the crush of reporters expected to cover the historic case. But Trump's argument that he enjoyed absolute immunity from prosecution quickly tied up the case in appeals all the way up to the Supreme Court. The high court ruled in July that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution , and sent the case back to the trial court to decide which allegations could move forward. But the case was dismissed before the trial court could get a chance to do so. The other indictment brought in Florida accused Trump of improperly storing at his Mar-a-Lago estate sensitive documents on nuclear capabilities, enlisting aides and lawyers to help him hide records demanded by investigators and cavalierly showing off a Pentagon “plan of attack” and classified map. But U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case in July on grounds that Smith was illegally appointed . Smith appealed to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but abandoned that appeal on Monday. Smith's team said it would continue its fight in the appeals court to revive charges against Trump's two co-defendants because “no principle of temporary immunity applies to them.” In New York, jurors spent weeks last spring hearing evidence in a state case alleging a Trump scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex. New York prosecutors recently expressed openness to delaying sentencing until after Trump's second term, while Trump's lawyers are fighting to have the conviction dismissed altogether. In Georgia, a trial while Trump is in office seems unlikely in a state case charging him and more than a dozen others with conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state. The case has been on hold since an appeals court agreed to review whether to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over her romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she had hired to lead the case. ____ Associated Press reporter Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed.
Trio leads UIC to 77-69 victory over Little Rock in OTSUZHOU: Dominant in the electric car sector, Chinese companies have been quietly consolidating their position in the lesser-watched trucking scene - but foreign tariffs and a perceived quality gap could signal roadblocks ahead, experts warn. The domestic supply chain and low-price strategy that helped make China’s EV car industry world-leading are being leveraged by established automakers and start-ups alike, aiming to similarly transform trucking. Electric trucks currently represent less than one percent of truck sales worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) - with China making up 70 percent of those sales in 2023. But the agency said it was “optimistic” policy and technology developments would see more widespread adoption in the next 10 years. “This industry, I believe, is ripe for disruption,” Han Wen, the founder of start-up Windrose, told AFP on a factory floor as the company’s first vehicles for delivery were assembled behind him. Fleets of electric heavy goods vehicles from China have been growing internationally, even as Western countries target the country’s EV cars with heavy sanctions. Chinese companies like BYD and Beiqi Foton have shipped trucks to countries including Italy, Poland, Spain and Mexico, and have opened assembly plants around the world. “China’s trucks are generally cost-competitive in emerging markets,” Stephen Dyer, from consulting firm AlixPartners, told AFP. “For mature markets, performance and durability do not yet meet the needs of most customers, but that is changing.” When it comes to emissions, “heavy-duty trucks are considered one of the more difficult to abate transport segments (after aviation and shipping)”, IEA analyst Elizabeth Connelly told AFP. Battery issues A major challenge is the trade-off between battery size and range. “The larger the battery, the longer the range. But the larger the battery, the heavier the truck... and the worse the fuel economy,” Connelly said. Chinese manufacturers have been seen as producing lower quality products than foreign counterparts. “Historically, Chinese trucks tended to have a shorter useful lifecycle than European or Japanese trucks,” AlixPartners’ Dyer told AFP. While that perception is changing, China’s flagship companies still lag rivals on factors like range and battery capacity. According to the Zero-Emission Technology Inventory, the median Chinese heavy duty truck range is 250 kilometers (155 miles), compared with 322 km in the United States. BYD - which in October beat Tesla in quarterly revenue for the first time -- says its 8TT model’s range is 200 kilometers, compared with the 800 kilometers promised by Tesla’s Semi truck. But Chinese manufacturers could close the gap quickly. Han’s Windrose says its semi-trucks can go up to 670 kilometers on a single charge. Meanwhile, battery giant CATL has rolled out truck battery-swapping facilities - where drained units can be immediately replaced, eliminating charging time altogether. China’s existing EV ecosystem is a massive advantage. “We’re very lucky to have the Chinese supply chain (for EVs),” said Han, noting Windrose was using an electric bus company’s factory to build its trucks. “There’s no doubt that China also will have an edge on the electrification of heavy-duty trucks.” More unpredictable are the testy geopolitical waters the sector risks stalling in. This year has seen important trading partners including the European Union and the United States impose hefty tariffs on Chinese EV cars, saying Beijing’s state aid to automakers undercut their own firms. China refutes this, but as its EV truck footprint grows globally, so could the risk of similar action be taken. “Governments in potential export markets want to protect their local industries,” said Sam Fiorani, at AutoForecast Solutions. US President-elect Donald Trump has promised huge tariff hikes on Chinese imports once he takes office. “Since EV truck volume is smaller than passenger EVs, there is a chance that EV trucks would fall a little under the radar in normal times,” AlixPartners’ Dyer said. But “these are not ‘normal times’ anymore and anything Chinese is high profile in the US government currently”, he added. Some companies have already taken steps that could mitigate this risk. BYD proudly touts its trucks as being “assembled by union workers in Lancaster, California”, while it has announced plans to build a factory in Mexico, and has plants in Hungary and Romania. Windrose’s Han told AFP the firm has consciously spread its operations across multiple countries, moving key headquarters to Belgium earlier this year. “We do embrace the fact that every major market would like its own domestic supply chain of EV,” he told AFP. But he added: “You have to start in China. We then try to move the supply chain globally... But you have to start in China. There’s no alternative.” — AFP
Trio leads UIC to 77-69 victory over Little Rock in OTOnline child exploitation spiked during lockdowns. Police worry it's here to stay
NEW YORK (AP) — A ransomware attack that hit a major software provider last week caused disruptions for a handful of companies over recent days, from Starbucks to U.K. grocery giant Morrisons. Blue Yonder, which provides supply chain technology to a range of brands worldwide, said that it experienced disruptions to services it manages for customers on Thursday, which the third-party software supplier determined to be “the result of a ransomware incident.” Some systems went offline, impacting clients using Blue Yonder’s software. A spokesperson for Starbucks, for example, said that the chain’s ability to manage barista schedules and track hours was disrupted — meaning store leaders across North America are currently being instructed to use manual workarounds. Starbucks maintained that the outage is not impacting how customers are served and that ensuring workers get paid for all hours worked is a top priority. While the company continues to work towards full recovery, the spokesperson added that Starbucks was able to process payroll again as of Tuesday morning. Two of the U.K.’s biggest grocers, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s, were also affected — with both over the weekend that they had turned to contingency plans to keep operations flowing. A spokesperson for Morrisons confirmed to The Associated Press that the outage “impacted our warehouse management systems for fresh and produce” and that it was continuing to operate on back up systems Tuesday. Sainsbury’s, meanwhile, said Tuesday that its service was restored. Blue Yonder declined to disclose how many of its customers were impacted by the hack. In a statement sent to the AP, a spokesperson maintained that it had notified “relevant customers” and would continue to communicate as needed. The spokesperson also maintained that recovery efforts were still underway — noting that Blue Yonder “has been working diligently together with external cybersecurity firms to make progress,” including the implementation of several defensive and forensic protocols. Blue Yonder’s touts an extensive global roster of customers — including Gap, Ford and Walgreens. Walgreens and Gap were not impacted following the ransomware attack, spokespeople for the companies said. Ford that it was investigating whether the incident affected its operations earlier this week, but had no further updates when reached Tuesday. Blue Yonder, based in Arizona, is a subsidiary of Japan’s Panasonic Corp. Panasonic the supply chain software firm in September 2021.