Last-minute voting changes are rejected
Last-minute voting changes are rejected
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has allowed Texas to use its strict voter ID law in the November election even after a federal judge said the law was the equivalent of a poll tax and threatened to deprive many blacks and Latinos of the right to vote this year.
Like earlier orders in North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin, the justices’ action before dawn on Saturday, two days before the start of early voting in Texas, appears to be based on their view that changing the rules so close to an election would be confusing.
Of the four states, only Wisconsin’s new rules were blocked, and in that case, absentee ballots already had been mailed without any notice about the need for identification.
Texas has conducted several low-turnout elections under the new rules — seven forms of approved photo ID, including concealed handgun licenses, but not college student IDs. The law has not previously been used in congressional elections or a high-profile race for governor.
US-led strike kills 8 in IS-held Syria town
MURSITPINAR, Turkey (AP) — A U.S.-led coalition airstrike on a gas distribution facility in a stronghold of the Islamic State group set off a series of secondary explosions and killed at least eight people in eastern Syria, activists said Saturday.
The airstrike targeted a distribution station in the town of Khasham in the oil-rich province of Deir el-Zour late Friday, Deir el-Zour Free Radio, an activist collective, said on its Facebook page.
The collective named four of those killed and said another four charred bodies were placed in a nearby mosque. It said the slain men were mostly fuel tanker drivers.
Another activist group, the Deir el-Zour Network, described “long tongues of flames” from the strike. The incident was also reported by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria.
The U.S.-led coalition has aggressively targeted IS-held oil facilities in Syria, which provide a key source of income for the militants. But such strikes also endanger civilians, which could undermine long-term efforts to destroy the group.
Other airstrikes late Friday targeted oil wells in the Deir el-Zour province, the activists said.
There was no immediate comment by the U.S. military.
Gay-rights group backs HIV-prevention pill
NEW YORK (AP) — The largest U.S. gay-rights organization Saturday endorsed efforts to promote the use of a once-a-day pill to prevent HIV infection and called on insurers to provide more generous coverage of the drug.
Some doctors have been reluctant to prescribe the drug, Truvada, on the premise that it might encourage high-risk, unprotected sexual behavior. However, its preventive use has been endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and many HIV/AIDS advocacy groups
The Human Rights Campaign, which recently has been focusing its gay-rights advocacy on same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination issues, joined those ranks with the release of a policy paper strongly supporting the preventive use of Truvada.