Trump lifts sanctions on Turkey, says cease-fire permanent
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday he will lift sanctions on Turkey after the NATO ally agreed to permanently stop fighting Kurdish forces in Syria and he defended his decision to withdraw American troops.
“We’re getting out,” Trump said at the White House, asserting that tens of thousands of Kurdish lives were saved as the result of his actions.
“Let someone else fight over this long, blood-stained sand,” he said.
The president, who campaigned on a promise to cease American involvement in “endless wars,” took a victory lap as he lopped the American presence inside Syria in less than a year from about 2,000 troops to a contingency force in southern Syria of 200 to 300.
Lawmakers on both sides of aisle chastised the president for turning on the Syrian Kurds, whose fighters battled side by side with American troops to beat back the Islamic State group They also questioned whether the move has opened up the region to a resurgence of IS.
California utility begins another blackout amid fire fears
SAN FRANCISCO — Lights went out across large portions of Northern California on Wednesday, as the state’s largest utility began its second massive blackout in two weeks, citing the return of dangerous fire weather.
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. said the rolling blackouts that initially stretched from the Sierra foothills to north of the San Francisco Bay Area would ultimately impact a half-million people — or nearly 180,000 customers — in 17 counties.
The outages will last about 48 hours, the utility said ,but its seven-day forecast shows an elevated likelihood of a shut-off across a much larger portion of Northern California for the weekend, when heavy winds are expected to return.
Southern California Edison said it could cut power Thursday to more than 308,000 customers in seven counties, and San Diego Gas & Electric was warning of power shutoffs to about 24,000 customers.
Two weeks ago, a PG&E blackout affected nearly 2 million people, prompting feelings of frustration and resignation among some residents and business owners and renewing rushes to stock up on batteries and other emergency supplies.
Grim find: 39 dead in one of UK’s worst trafficking cases
GRAYS, England — Authorities found 39 people dead in a truck in an industrial park in England on Wednesday and arrested the driver on suspicion of murder in one of Britain’s worst human-smuggling tragedies.
Police were reconstructing the final journey of the victims as they tried to piece together where they were from and how they came to be in England.
“To put 39 people into a locked metal container shows a contempt for human life that is evil,” said Jackie Doyle-Price, a member of Parliament who represents the area where the truck was found. “The best thing we can do in memory of those victims is to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice.”
The truck and the trailer with the people inside apparently took separate circuitous journeys before ending up on the grounds of the Waterglade Industrial Park in Grays, 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of London on the River Thames.
British police said they believe the container went from the port of Zeebrugge in Belgium to Purfleet, England, where it arrived early Wednesday. Police believe the tractor traveled from Northern Ireland to Dublin, where it took a ferry to Holyhead in Wales before picking up the trailer at the dockside in England.
Most states not giving driver’s license data to Washington
ORLANDO, Fla. — An effort by the U.S. Census Bureau to collect state driver’s license records as part of President Donald Trump’s order to gather citizenship information has been a bust so far.
As of Wednesday, the vast majority of state motor vehicle agencies had not agreed to share their records with the bureau, according to an Associated Press survey of the 50 states. The effort over the past couple of months has alarmed civil rights groups, which see it as part of a backdoor move by the Trump administration to reduce the political power of minorities.
In August, the bureau began requesting five years’ worth of driver’s license records, promising the information would be kept confidential. The effort began after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Trump’s administration plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, and the president instead ordered citizenship data compiled through federal and state administrative records.
At least 13 states have refused to share the driver’s license data, 17 are still deciding what to do, and 17 haven’t yet received a request, according to the AP survey. Three states didn’t respond to multiple AP queries.
Republican and Democratic states alike have said no, citing privacy concerns and prohibitions in state law.
Rose McGowan sues, alleging intimidation by Weinstein, others
LOS ANGELES — Actress Rose McGowan filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday alleging that Harvey Weinstein and two of his former attorneys engaged in racketeering to silence her and derail her career before she accused him of rape.
The suit filed in Los Angeles names as defendants Weinstein, attorneys David Boies and Lisa Bloom and their law firms, and Black Cube, an Israeli intelligence firm hired by Weinstein.
The lawsuit alleges that the defendants conspired to defraud, smear and marginalize McGowan as she was preparing to name Weinstein during the run-up to the explosion of the #MeToo movement late in 2017. The suit comes on the heels of a pair of recent books that detail Weinstein and his team’s efforts to keep his accusers quiet.
“Harvey Weinstein was able to perpetrate and cover up decades of violence and control over women because he had a sophisticated team working on his behalf to systematically silence and discredit his victims,” McGowan said in a statement. “My life was upended by their actions, and I refuse to be intimidated any longer.”
Weinstein’s attorney Phyllis Kupferstein said McGowan is “a publicity seeker looking for money” and her suit is meritless.
