Britain mourns Queen Elizabeth as Charles becomes king
LONDON (AP) — Britain’s new king is preparing to meet with the prime minister and plans to address a nation mourning Queen Elizabeth II. The queen was only British monarch most of the world had known and was a force of stability in a volatile age. The country began a 10-day mourning period Friday. Bells tolled around Britain and 96 gun salutes were planned in London. That’s one for each year of the queen’s long life. People around the globe gathered at British embassies to pay homage to the queen. She died Thursday in Scotland. In Britain and across its former colonies, the widespread admiration for Elizabeth herself was sometimes mixed with scorn for the institution and the imperial history she represented.
Biden is 13th and final US president to meet Queen Elizabeth
WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden has the distinction of being the 13th and final American president to meet with Queen Elizabeth II. Biden first met the queen in 1982. He was a U.S. senator and visiting the United Kingdom with a congressional delegation. Their third and final meeting happened in 2021. Biden, as president, was in southwestern England for a summit of world leaders. He and his wife, Jill, later had a private audience with the queen at Windsor Castle near London. The queen had met every U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower, except Lyndon Johnson, since ascending to the throne in 1952. Johnson did not visit Britain when he was president.
UN chief appeals to world to help badly flood-hit Pakistan
ISLAMABAD (AP) — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is appealing to the world for massive help for Pakistan after arriving in the country to see deadly flood damage. The record floods have killed hundreds and left more than half a million people homeless and living in tents under the open sky. His trip comes less than two weeks after Guterres appealed for $160 million in emergency funding to help those affected by the floods that have caused at least $10 billion in damages and 1,391 deaths. He posted on Twitter before dawn that he had arrived to “express my deep solidarity with the Pakistani people after the devastating floods.” Last week, he sternly warned that the world should “stop sleepwalking toward the destruction of our planet by climate change.”
N. Korea says it will never give up nukes to counter US
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is stressing his country will never abandon the nuclear weapons and missiles it needs to counter hostilities from the United States. He accuses the U.S. of pushing a pressure campaign aimed at weakening the North’s defenses and eventually collapsing his government. State media said Friday that North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament also passed a law that requires North Korea’s military to “automatically” execute nuclear strikes against enemy forces if its leadership comes under attack. Kim also addressed domestic issues in his speech, saying North Korea would begin its long-delayed rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in November. He didn’t give specifics.
Biden to tell Ohioans his policies will revive manufacturing
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden wants to put the spotlight on a rare bipartisan down payment on U.S. manufacturing. He visits Ohio on Friday for the groundbreaking of a new Intel computer chip facility. Biden heads to suburban Columbus just as voters in the state are starting to tune in to a closely contested Senate race between Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan and Republican author and venture capital executive JD Vance. They’re competing in a former swing state that has trended Republican over the last decade. Intel had delayed groundbreaking on the $20 billion plant until Congress passed the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act.
Slain Las Vegas reporter spent career chasing corruption
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Investigative reporter Jeff German took on the powerful in four decades of writing about the Las Vegas underworld and government corruption. But police say it was one of his latest targets, a county administrator, who fatally stabbed German last weekend. The killing came months after German had written about bullying, favoritism and an inappropriate relationship within an obscure public office. Authorities said Thursday that DNA at the crime scene linked Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles to the killing. Police arrested him Wednesday after a brief standoff at his home. Telles was the focus of German’s reporting in the Las Vegas Review-Journal as he sought reelection.
Shaken and stirred: Ukraine war hits James Bond’s glassmaker
LA CHAPELLE-SAINT-MESMIN, France (AP) — Iconic French tableware brand Duralex is joining a growing array of European firms that are reducing and halting production because of soaring energy costs provoked by Russia’s war in Ukraine. At the glassmakers’ plant in central France, workers are preparing to put the furnace into a slumber for at least four months. The 77-year-old company counts generations of French schoolchildren, Mongolian yak herders and Afghan diners among worldwide users of its glasses, bowls and plates. Actor Daniel Craig drank from one its “Picardie” tumblers when playing James Bond in “Skyfall.” Duralex’s thunderous machines that turn incandescent blobs of molten glass into hundreds of thousands of tableware items each day will fall silent on Nov. 1.
Queen Elizabeth II, a monarch bound by duty, dies at 96
LONDON (AP) — Buckingham Palace says Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, has died at 96. Elizabeth spent seven decades on the throne — since Feb. 6, 1952 — as the U.K. rebuilt from war, lost an empire, transformed its economy and both entered and left the European Union. Upon the queen’s death, her 73-year-old son Charles automatically became monarch. He will be known as King Charles III, even though his coronation might not happen for months. Elizabeth was a constant presence, the only monarch most Britons have ever known. Her image, which adorned stamps, coins and bank notes, was among the most reproduced in the world. But her inner life and opinions remained largely an enigma.
GOP candidates in Georgia split over Trump’s election lies
ATLANTA (AP) — The shadow of Donald Trump’s tampering with the 2020 election in Georgia lands differently for the various Republicans running for office in 2022. Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has little choice but to defend his decision to defy the former president. Burt Jones, a lieutenant governor hopeful who signed on as a fake elector for Trump, must defend his role. But the Georgia GOP’s headliner candidates don’t say much about Trump at all. Gov. Brian Kemp is spared having to testify before a grand jury about 2020 until after the Nov. 8 elections. Senate nominee Herschel Walker insists he doesn’t think much about Trump, his close friend and key supporter.
Chief Justice John Roberts to speak at Colorado conference
DENVER (AP) — U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is set to make his first public appearance since the court overturned Roe v. Wade, speaking Friday night at a judicial conference in Colorado. Roberts is scheduled to be interviewed by two judges from the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is hosting the conference in Colorado Springs. The “fireside chat” with a current or previous justice usually focuses on the historic view of their career, not current events. Roberts did not vote to overturn Roe in June’s ruling but did vote to uphold Mississippi’s restrictive abortion law.
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