Nation and World briefs for May 22

Bomb-laden drone from Yemen rebels targets Saudi airport

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Yemen’s Iranian-allied Houthi rebels attacked a Saudi airport and military base with a bomb-laden drone Tuesday, an assault acknowledged by the kingdom as Middle East tensions remained high between Tehran and Washington. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

The attack on the Saudi city of Najran came after Iran announced it has quadrupled its uranium-enrichment production capacity, though still at a level far lower than needed for atomic weapons, a year after the U.S. withdrew from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

Underlining the tensions, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is seeking expanded executive powers to better deal with “economic war” triggered by the Trump’s administration’s renewal and escalation of sanctions targeting the Islamic Republic, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.

“A person or a nation might be under pressure but the Iranian nation will not bow to bullies,” Rouhani vowed in a televised speech Tuesday night.

By increasing production, Iran soon will exceed the stockpile limitations set by the nuclear accord. Tehran has set a July 7 deadline for Europe to put forth new terms for the deal, or it will enrich closer to weapons-grade levels in a Middle East already on edge. The U.S. has deployed bombers and an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf over still-unspecified threats from Iran, which is the biggest rival in the region to the U.S.-allied Saudi Arabia.

Speedy reactor cleanups might carry risks and rewards

PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Companies specializing in the handling of radioactive material are buying retired U.S. nuclear reactors from utilities and promising to clean them up and demolish them in dramatically less time than usual — eight years instead of 60, in some cases.

Turning nuclear plants over to outside companies and decommissioning them on such a fast track represents a completely new approach in the United States, never before carried to completion in this country, and involves new technology as well.

Supporters say the accelerated method can get rid of a hazard more quickly and return the land to productive use sooner. But regulators, activists and others question whether the rapid timetables are safe and whether the companies have the expertise and the financial means to do the job.

“We were up in arms that it was 60 years,” Janet Tauro, head of the environmental group New Jersey Clean Water Action, said of the initial plans for decommissioning the Oyster Creek plant. “And then we hear it’s going to be expedited to eight years. It’s great to get it over with, but are there corners that are going to be cut?”

Once a reactor is shut down, the radioactive mess must be cleaned up, spent nuclear fuel packed for long-term storage and the plant itself dismantled. The most common approach can last decades, with the plant placed in a long period of dormancy while radioactive elements slowly decay.

At abortion clinics, new laws sow confusion, uncertainty

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Abortion clinics are facing protesters emboldened by a flurry of restrictive new state laws as they reassure confused patients that the laws have yet to take effect, abortion providers said.

“We have actually had many people calling and say, ‘Are you open? Are you still seeing patients? Is abortion now illegal? Will something happen to me if I come for care?’” said Dr. Willie Parker, one of two doctors providing abortions at the Alabama Women’s Center in Huntsville recently.

Last week, Alabama enacted the nation’s strictest abortion law, making performing abortions a felony at any stage of pregnancy with almost no exceptions.

Women who came through the doors held hands with loved ones or curled into chairs as they waited. A television set to a cable news channel aired a segment about Alabama’s abortion law.

It is one of only three abortion clinics in the state, and the only one that provides abortions when a woman is up to 20 weeks pregnant. Some patients drove from Mississippi and other neighboring states because of a shortage of clinics.

Lifer inmates excluded from Washington ‘3 strikes’ change

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Dozens of inmates, many of them black, are set to stay in Washington state prisons for life — left out of the latest in a multi-year wave of reforms easing tough-on-crime “three-strikes” laws around the U.S.

At least 24 states including Washington passed such laws during the 1990s, driven by rising violent crime rates. But nearly half have since scaled them back amid concern that habitual but less-violent offenders were being stuck behind bars for life with hard-core felons.

Washington’s 1993 three-strikes law was among the first and stands out as among the nation’s strictest. Lawmakers targeted it for reform this year with legislation removing second-degree robbery — generally defined as robbery without a deadly weapon or significant injury — from the list of crimes qualifying for cumulative life sentences.

The original reform made inmates sentenced under the old law eligible for resentencing. But an amendment pushed by a prosecutors’ group cut out the retroactivity that would have applied to those already behind bars. Washington governor and Democratic presidential contender Jay Inslee signed the changes into law April 29.

That means 62 inmates convicted of second-degree robbery will still serve life sentences, according to state records, even after judges stop “striking out” new offenders convicted of the same crimes. The racial makeup of the group is disproportionate: About half are black, despite African Americans making up only 4% of Washington’s population.

Ukraine’s president calls new parliamentary election

KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s new president on Tuesday formally ordered Ukraine’s parliament to dissolve and called an early election for July, hoping to ride the wave of his electoral success to get his supporters into parliament.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a 41-year-old TV comedian who won 73% of the presidential vote last month, announced his intention of disbanding parliament in his inauguration speech Monday, saying that current lawmakers were too focused on self-enrichment and lacked public trust.

He quickly fulfilled the promise in Tuesday’s decree, which set a parliamentary election for July 21.

Zelenskiy’s landslide victory reflected Ukrainians’ exasperation with the country’s economic woes, rampant official corruption and the country’s political elite.

The election to Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada legislature was originally scheduled for Oct. 27. That would have left Zelenskiy facing a parliament dominated by supporters of the man he beat, former President Petro Poroshenko, and unable to pursue his anti-corruption agenda for months.

Mexicans buy fake cellphones to hand over in muggings

MEXICO CITY — Armed robberies have gotten so common aboard buses in Mexico City that commuters have come up with a clever if disheartening solution: Many are buying fake cellphones, to hand over to thieves instead of their real smartphones.

Costing 300 to 500 pesos apiece — the equivalent of $15 to $25 — the “dummies” are sophisticated fakes: They have a startup screen and bodies that are dead ringers for the originals, and inside there is a piece of metal to give the phone the heft of the real article.

That comes in handy when trying to fool trigger-happy bandits who regularly attack the buses, big and small, that ferry people from the poorer outlying suburbs to jobs in the city center.

The scene is repeated over and over again, courtesy of the cameras that many buses now carry that record the assaults, often late at night or in the early morning: Sleepy passengers are seen bouncing along in the jitneys when one or two of the men aboard suddenly pull masks over their faces. One will pull out a gun while his accomplice passes down the aisle, often with his own gun, demanding valuables.

“You’re all screwed now! Don’t move or you’re dead! Cellphones and wallets!” barks a thief in one recent video. Time and again, those who resist or refuse are hit in the head with a pistol, or simply shot and left to bleed on the floor of the bus.