Turkey struck suspected Kurdish militant targets in Syria and Iraq for a second day on Thursday following an attack on the premises of a key defense company which killed at least five people, the state-run news agency reported.
The National Intelligence Organization targeted numerous “strategic locations” used by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, or by Syrian Kurdish militia that are affiliated with the militants, the Anadolu Agency reported. The targets included military, intelligence, energy and infrastructure facilities and ammunition depots, the report said. A security official said armed drones were used in Thursday’s strikes.
On Wednesday, Turkey’s air force carried out airstrikes against similar targets in northern Syria and northern Iraq, hours after government officials blamed the deadly attack at the headquarters of the aerospace and defense company TUSAS, on the PKK.
Defense Minister Yasar Guler said Thursday that 47 alleged PKK targets were destroyed in Wednesday’s airstrikes — 29 in Iraq and 18 in Syria.
“Our noble nation should rest assured that we will continue with increasing determination our struggle to eliminate the evil forces that threaten the security and peace of our country and people, until the last terrorist disappears from this geography,” Guler said.
The assailants — a man and a woman — arrived at the TUSAS premises in the outskirts of Ankara in a taxi they commandeered after killing its driver, reports said. Armed with assault riffles, they set off explosives and opened fire, killing four people at TUSAS, including a security personnel and a mechanical engineer.
Security teams were dispatched as soon as the attack started at around 3:30 pm, the interior minister said. The two assailants were also killed and more than 20 people were injured in the attack.
There was no immediate statement from the PKK on the attack or the Turkish airstrikes. In Syria, the main U.S.-backed force said Turkish strikes in the north of the country killed 12 civilians and wounded 25.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said Turkish warplanes and drones struck bakeries, power stations, oil facilities and local police checkpoints.
TUSAS designs, manufactures and assembles civilian and military aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and other defense industry and space systems. Its defense systems have been credited as key to Turkey gaining an upper hand in its fight against Kurdish militants.
The Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an attempt by national and state Republicans to immediately reinstate recently passed election rules that a judge had ruled were invalid.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox last week ruled that the State Election Board didn’t have the authority to adopt the new rules, and declared them “illegal, unconstitutional and void.” The Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party had appealed that ruling to Georgia’s highest court. They asked that it be handled in an expedited manner and for the rules to be reinstated while the appeal was pending.
The Supreme Court unanimously declined the request for expedited handling and declined to put Cox’s order on hold. The court’s order says that once the appeal is docketed it will “proceed in the ordinary course,” which means it will likely take months before there’s a ruling.
The three-person Republican majority on the State Election Board, which was praised by former President Donald Trump during a rally in Atlanta in August, voted to adopt multiple rules in August and September over the objections of the board’s lone Democrat and the nonpartisan chair. The controversial new rules met resistance from the start, not least from local election officials who worried about changes so close to the general election. But Tuesday’s order may mark the end of the legal fight over election rules in this critical battleground state — at least until after the election.
The rules that Cox declared invalid included three that have gotten a lot of attention. One would require three poll workers to count ballots — not votes — by hand once polls close. The other two had to do with the process to certify county election results.
Democrats and some voting rights groups had raised concerns that the rules could be used by allies of Trump to slow or deny certification or election results, or to cast doubt on results if the former president loses the presidential election to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
While some prominent Republicans in Georgia, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, have criticized the flurry of last-minute rules the State Election Board introduced, the state and national Republican parties have been supportive. They have said the rules promote transparency and accountability in the state’s elections.
Cox’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Eternal Vigilance Action, an organization founded and led by former state Rep. Scot Turner, a Republican. The suit argued that the State Election Board overstepped its authority in adopting the seven rules. In addition to invalidating the rules, he ordered the State Election Board to immediately inform all state and local election officials that the rules are void and not to be followed.
Reached by phone Tuesday, Turner said he was glad for the election workers, who will not have to be trained on new election rules with just two weeks to go before Election Day. Many county election officials had expressed concern over the tight timeline for implementing the rules, saying they risked causing confusion for poll workers and undermining public confidence in the election results.
Seven new lawsuits have been filed against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, including one alleging the rape of a 13-year-old girl. They come as his lawyers tried again Monday to get him freed on bail, and complained that a “fresh wave of publicity” is endangering his right to a fair criminal trial.
In the lawsuits filed Sunday in state and federal courts, four men and three women, all anonymous, allege they were sexually assaulted by Combs at parties over the last two decades.
Combs, 54, has pleaded not guilty to federal sex trafficking charges contained in an indictment unsealed the day after his Sept. 16 arrest. Charges include allegations he coerced and abused women for years, aided by associates and employees, and silenced victims through blackmail and violence, including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings.
He has remained incarcerated pending a May 5 trial after two judges denied bail in rulings being appealed to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Combs’ lawyers asked a judge Sunday to order potential witnesses and their lawyers to stop making statements that could prevent a fair trial.
“As the Court is aware, Mr. Combs has been the target of an unending stream of allegations by prospective witnesses and their counsel in the press,” they wrote. “These prospective witnesses and their lawyers have made numerous inflammatory extrajudicial statements aimed at assassinating Mr. Combs’s character in the press.”
The latest lawsuits are drawn from what lawyers say are more than 100 accusers who are planning legal action against Combs. Plaintiffs’ lawyer Tony Buzbee announced the planned litigation at an Oct. 1 news conference and posted a 1-800 number for accusers to call.
As before, Combs’ representatives dismissed the latest lawsuits as “clear attempts to garner publicity.” They said Combs and his legal team “have full confidence in the facts, their legal defenses, and the integrity of the judicial process.”
Combs “has never sexually assaulted anyone — adult or minor, man or woman,” they added.
One of the lawsuits filed Sunday alleges that a 13-year-old girl who was invited to a party by a limousine driver after the Video Music Awards in Manhattan in September 2000 was raped by a “male celebrity” and then by Combs as individuals identified only as “Celebrity A,” a male, and “Celebrity B,” a female, watched.
Another lawsuit alleged that Combs sexually assaulted a 17-year-old male at a Manhattan hotel penthouse party in 2022.
In the lawsuits, it was alleged that the plaintiffs believed they had been fed drinks laced with drugs before they were assaulted.
Meanwhile, lawyers for Combs on Monday told the 2nd Circuit in a filing that he’ll renew his bail application before the lower court based on “significant changed circumstances.” They said the issues include “constitutional concerns stemming from his conditions of confinement and evidence contained in recently produced discovery.”
In a filing last week, prosecutors told the appeals court that judges denied bail after evidence showed Combs “used methodical and sophisticated means to silence and intimidate witnesses throughout the racketeering conspiracy and during the Government’s investigation.”
Arkansas voters won’t get to weigh in on a ballot initiative to expand medical marijuana after the state Supreme Court ruled the measure didn’t fully explain what it would do, tossing out the initiative just two weeks before the election.
It’s too late to remove the measure from the ballot — early voting began Monday — so the court has ordered election officials not to count any votes cast on it. The proposed constitutional amendment would have broadened the definition of medical professionals who can certify patients for medical cannabis, expanded qualifying conditions and made medical cannabis cards valid for three years.
In Monday’s 4-3 decision, the justices ruled the measure did not fully inform voters that it would have stripped the Legislature’s ability to change the 2016 constitutional amendment that legalized medical marijuana in the state.
“This decision doomed the proposed ballot title, and it is plainly misleading,” Justice Shawn Womack wrote in the majority opinion.
The court also said the measure did not inform voters that, if approved, the amendment would legalize up to an ounce of marijuana possession for any purpose if marijuana becomes legal under federal law.
In court filings, organizers noted the ballot measure had cited the number of the provision that would be repealed. The group argued that past court rulings said measures did not need to summarize the current law being changed.
In a dissent, Justice Cody Hiland said the court was ignoring decades-long precedent by ruling the measure’s wording was misleading.
“Long ago, this court established definitive standards for evaluating the sufficiency of popular names and ballot titles,” Hiland wrote. “This court has not deviated from those standards until today.”
In the same ruling, justices rejected election officials’ reasons for ruling the measure’s organizers fell short of the signatures required for putting the measure on the ballot.
Arkansans for Patient Access, the group behind the measure, said it would keep pushing to expand the medical marijuana program and that the signatures it gathered showed widespread support.
“We are deeply disappointed in the Court’s decision,” the group said in a statement. “It seems politics has triumphed over legal precedent.”
Arkansans for Patient Access sued after Secretary of State John Thurston said the group fell short of the signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. The issue over the ballot measure’s wording was raised by Protect Arkansas Kids, a group opposed to the measure that had intervened in the case.
Thurston’s office had declined to count some of the signatures submitted, asserting the group had not followed paperwork rules regarding paid signature gatherers.
The state rejected petitions submitted in favor of an anti-abortion ballot measure earlier this year on similar grounds.
The state in July determined the group had fallen short of the required signatures but qualified for 30 additional days to circulate petitions. But the state then told the group that any additional signatures gathered by paid signature gatherers would not be counted if required information was submitted by the canvassing company rather than sponsors of the measure.
The court on Monday said that decision was wrong, saying state law allows a wide range of people to be considered sponsors of the measure.
Groups had already been campaigning against the measure, even though it was uncertain whether it would be put to a vote this November. Family Council Action Committee last week announced it planned to launch a statewide tour against the measure.
“A measure this bad simply has no business being on the ballot or in the constitution,” Jerry Cox, the group’s director, said after Monday’s ruling.
About half of U.S. states allow recreational marijuana and a dozen more have legalized medical marijuana. Those numbers could grow after the November election. Voters in Florida, North Dakota and South Dakota will decide whether to legalize recreational marijuana for adults, and two medical marijuana proposals will be on Nebraska’s ballot.
Prabowo Subianto was inaugurated Sunday as the eighth president of the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, completing his journey from an ex-general accused of rights abuses during the dark days of Indonesia’s military dictatorship to the presidential palace.
The former defense minister, who turned 73 on Thursday, was cheered through the streets by thousands of waving supporters after taking his oath on the Quran in front of lawmakers and foreign dignitaries. Banners and billboards filled the streets of the capital, Jakarta, where tens of thousands gathered for festivities.
Wearing a blue Betawi traditional cloth and a dark baseball cap, Subianto stood up in the sunroof of a white van and waved, occasionally shaking people’s hands, as his motorcade struggled to pass through the thousands of supporters calling his name and chanting “Good luck Prabowo-Gibran,” filling the road leading from the parliament building to the presidential palace.
“I see a firm and patriotic figure in him,” said Atalaric Eka Prayoga, 25. “That’s a figure we need to lead Indonesia.”
Another resident, Silky Putri, said he hopes Subianto “can build Indonesia to be more advanced and improve the current gloomy economic situation.”
Subianto was a longtime rival of the immensely popular President Joko Widodo, who ran against him for the presidency twice and refused to accept his defeat on both occasions, in 2014 and 2019.
But Widodo appointed Subianto as defense chief after his reelection, paving the way for an alliance despite their rival political parties. During the campaign, Subianto ran as the popular outgoing president’s heir, vowing to continue signature policies like the construction of a multibillion-dollar new capital city and limits on exporting raw materials intended to boost domestic industry.
Subianto was sworn in with his new vice president, 37-year-old Surakarta ex-Mayor Gibran Rakabuming Raka. He chose Raka, who is Widodo’s son, as his running mate, with Widodo favoring Subianto over the candidate of his own former party. The former rivals became tacit allies, even though Indonesian presidents don’t typically endorse candidates.
But how he’ll govern the biggest economy in Southeast Asia — where nearly 90% of Indonesia’s 282 million people are Muslims — remains uncertain after a campaign in which he made few concrete promises besides continuity with the popular former president.
After decades of dictatorship under President Suharto, Indonesia was convulsed by political, ethnic and religious unrest in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since then, it has consolidated its democratic transition as the world’s third-largest democracy, and is home to a rapidly expanding middle class.
Subianto, who comes from one of the country’s wealthiest families, is a sharp contrast to Widodo, the first Indonesian president to emerge from outside the political and military elite.
Backed by Widodo, Subianto swept to a landslide victory in February’s direct presidential election on promises of policy continuity.
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The Biden administration is shelling out billions of dollars for clean energy and approving major offshore wind projects as officials race to secure major climate initiatives before President Joe Biden’s term comes to an end.
Biden wants to establish a legacy for climate action that includes locking in a trajectory for reducing the nation’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Former President Donald Trump has pledged to rescind unspent funds in Biden’s landmark climate and health care bill and stop offshore wind development if he returns to the White House in January.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told The Associated Press on Friday it would be “political malpractice” to undo clean energy incentives that are benefiting all pockets of America, with most of the investments going to counties with below-average weekly wages and college graduation rates.
“A lot of it is going to parts of America who have felt left behind. And this is giving them opportunity,” she said. “Why would we take that away? And why would we prevent counties and cities and people and families from having future-facing jobs in industries like clean energy, which young people are very excited about being a part of?”
Still, Granholm said, she’s racing to commit funding and get contracts signed.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the Democratic nominee after Biden dropped from the race this summer, has said she will pursue a climate agenda similar to Biden’s, focused on reducing emissions, deploying renewables and creating clean energy jobs.
Announcements of major environmental grants and project approvals have speeded up in recent months as White House Deputy Chief of Staff Natalie Quillian said Biden is “sprinting to the finish” and delivering on promises to promote clean energy and slow climate change:
The Environmental Protection Agency made $20 billion from a federal “green bank” available this summer for clean energy projects such as residential heat pumps, electric vehicle charging stations and community cooling centers.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved the nation’s 10th large offshore wind farm, the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, in September, reaching the halfway mark for Biden’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030. On Oct. 1, the agency gave a key approval to an offshore wind farm project in New Jersey.
In the past month alone, the Energy Department has made six announcements of a billion dollars or more, including more than $3 billion for battery manufacturing projects and a $1.5 billion loan to restart a nuclear plant in Michigan. And just last week, Biden set a 10-year deadline for cities to replace their lead pipes, with $2.6 billion available from the EPA to help communities comply.
Besides the climate law, formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden is seeking to spend billions in projects approved under the bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021 and the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act. The $1 trillion infrastructure law includes cash for roads, bridges, ports and more, while the CHIPS law aims to reinvigorate the computer chip sector in the United States through tens of billions of dollars in government support.