Friday, October 20, 2017
Puerto Rico still stumbles in the dark after storm
SAN JUAN,
Puerto Rico
One man climbs 24 flights of stairs several times a day alongside dormant elevators. Street vendors hawk plastic washboards for $20. And families outstretch their hands as crews in helicopters drop supplies in communities that remain isolated.
This is life one month after Hurricane Maria slammed into the U.S. territory on Sept. 20 as a Category 4 storm that killed at least 48 people, destroyed tens of thousands of homes and left tens of thousands of people without a job. It was the strongest hurricane to hit Puerto Rico in nearly a century, with winds just shy of Category 5 force.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” retired schoolteacher Santa Rosario said as she scanned empty shelves at a supermarket in the capital of San Juan that had run out of water jugs – again.
Maria caused as much as an estimated $85 billion in damage across an island already mired in an 11-year recession. That has complicated and delayed efforts to restructure a portion of a $74 billion public debt load that officials say is unpayable.
Experts: Hard for jurors to convict when cops on trial
TULSA, Okla.
The hard-won conviction of a white former Oklahoma police officer who fatally shot his daughter’s unarmed black boyfriend shows the difficulty prosecutors have in convincing jurors to put someone who carries a badge and a gun behind bars, legal experts said Thursday.
A fourth jury convicted 57-year-old ex-Tulsa officer Shannon Kepler late Wednesday of first-degree manslaughter in the 2014 off-duty fatal shooting of 19-year-old Jeremey Lake, who had just started dating Kepler’s then-18-year-old daughter, Lisa.
The lesser charge carries a minimum sentence of four years in prison but sets no maximum term, leaving it up to the judge to decide. The jury recommended that Kepler get 15 years behind bars when he’s sentenced Nov. 20.
CIA: N. Korea months from perfecting nuclear capabilities
WASHINGTON
CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Thursday that North Korea is months away from perfecting its nuclear weapons capabilities.
“They are close enough now in their capabilities that from a U.S. policy perspective we ought to behave as if we are on the cusp of them achieving” their objective of being able to strike the United States, Pompeo told a national-security forum in Washington.
Plan to curb health premiums gets strong support
WASHINGTON
A bipartisan proposal to calm churning health insurance markets gained momentum Thursday when enough lawmakers rallied behind it to give it potentially unstoppable Senate support. But its fate remained unclear as some Republicans sought changes that could threaten Democratic backing.
Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington said their plan had 24 sponsors, divided evenly between both parties, for resuming federal subsidies to insurers. Trump has blocked the money.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said all 48 Democrats would back the measure in a vote. That meant that combined with the dozen GOP sponsors there would be 60 votes for the plan, the number needed to overcome a filibuster, a delaying tactic meant to kill legislation.
Associated Press