Critics say voter panel could create target for hackers

Critics say voter panel could create target for hackers

CHERRY HILL, N.J.

Officials from both major political parties had a consistent answer last year when asked about the security of voting systems: U.S. elections are so decentralized that it would be impossible for hackers to manipulate ballot counts or voter rolls on a wide scale.

But the voter fraud commission established by President Donald Trump could take away that one bit of security.

The commission has requested information on voters from every state and recently won a federal court challenge to push ahead with the collection, keeping it in one place.

By compiling a national list of registered voters, the federal government could provide one-stop shopping for hackers and hostile foreign governments seeking to wreak havoc with elections, critics say.

Senate leader scolded for crash of health repeal

WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump scolded his own party’s Senate leader Wednesday for the crash of the Republican drive to repeal and rewrite the Obama health care law, using Twitter to demand of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, “Why not done?”

Trump fired back at the Kentucky Republican for telling a home-state audience this week that the president had “not been in this line of work before, and I think had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the democratic process.”

The exchange came less than two weeks after Senate rejection of the GOP effort to scuttle President Barack Obama’s health care law, probably McConnell’s most jolting defeat as leader and Trump’s worst legislative loss.

The House approved its version in May, but its Senate failure – thanks to defecting GOP senators – marked the collapse of the party’s attempt to deliver on vows to erase Obama’s statute it’s showcased since the law’s 2010 enactment.

Man ambushes French soldiers in car attack

LEVALLOIS-PERRET, France

A man rammed his car into a group of soldiers near Paris, injuring six of them, and then was cornered by police in a highway manhunt – the latest in what’s become a disturbingly familiar pattern of attacks targeting French security forces.

It’s unclear what motivated the driver, who was hospitalized with bullet wounds after the calculated morning ambush and an hourslong police chase. Authorities said he deliberately accelerated his BMW into a cluster of soldiers in what prosecutors are investigating as a potential terrorist attack.

President Emmanuel Macron went to Twitter to express his “congratulations to the forces of order that apprehended the perpetrator of the attack,” and also to urge continued vigilance across the country.

Record dry streak hits soggy Seattle

SEATTLE

Soggy Seattle clocked the wettest winter on record just months ago. Now, the city known for its Gore-Tex and overcast days has gone in the other extreme: it’s in its longest dry streak in more than six decades.

As of Tuesday, 52-consecutive dry days have been measured at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and there’s no rain in the forecast for the next few days, said Gary Schneider, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle.

The previous record was set in 1951.

Associated Press