UNITED NATIONS — The U.S. president may deride it, but other countries are pinning hopes on the International Criminal Court to tackle one of today’s deepest crises: Six nations took the unprecedented move Wednesday of asking the U.N. court to investigate Venezuela for possible crimes against humanity.
The move came as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was en route to the U.N. General Assembly, where his leadership has elicited sharp criticism and widespread concern.
Canada was among nations referring Venezuela to the ICC, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seized the moment to defend the idea of global justice the court represents — the day after President Donald Trump attacked it in a stinging speech that challenged multilateral organizations.
Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Paraguay and Canada formally asked the ICC to investigate Venezuela on a range of possible charges, from murder to torture and crimes against humanity.
Venezuelan officials did not immediately respond to the action but have widely rejected international criticism, saying they’re driven by imperialist forces led by the U.S. to justify launching an invasion.
WASHINGTON — Could it be, years from now, that you will remember where you were and what you were doing when Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford came to Washington to relive their conflicting high school memories?
Are we on the verge of one of those moments — like, for those old enough, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated? Or when the space shuttle Challenger exploded? Or the twin towers fell?
Do such indelible moments even happen anymore?
For more than two years American political life has been a rough and ugly storm of debate over gender, power, ego and truth. “#MeToo” swept through the culture. “Me,” says President Donald Trump. “Me.”
For a few hours on Thursday, all these crosscurrents will blow into a single, small hearing room on Capitol Hill where the fate of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee — and much more — is at stake. The judge and the professor will endure the gaze of senators, the questions of a prosecutor, and the court of public opinion. Their performances may tilt the outcome of November elections that will determine control of Congress. They could affect the direction of the high court for a generation.
CHICAGO — Uber will pay $148 million and tighten data security after the ride-hailing company failed for a year to notify drivers that hackers had stolen their personal information, according to a settlement announced Wednesday.
Uber Technologies Inc. reached the agreement with all 50 states and the District of Columbia after a massive data breach in 2016. Instead of reporting it, Uber hid evidence of the theft and paid ransom to ensure the data wouldn’t be misused.
“This is one of the most egregious cases we’ve ever seen in terms of notification; a yearlong delay is just inexcusable,” Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan told The Associated Press. “And we’re not going to put up with companies, Uber or any other company, completely ignoring our laws that require notification of data breaches.”
Uber, whose GPS-tracked drivers pick up riders who summon them from cellphone apps, learned in November 2016 that hackers had accessed personal data, including driver’s license information, for roughly 600,000 Uber drivers in the U.S. The company acknowledged the breach in November 2017, saying it paid $100,000 in ransom for the stolen information to be destroyed.
The hack also took the names, email addresses and cellphone numbers of 57 million riders around the world. After significant management changes in the past year, Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer, said the decision by current managers was “the right thing to do.”
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve signaled its confidence Wednesday in the U.S. economy by raising a key interest rate for a third time this year, forecasting another rate hike before year’s end and predicting that it will continue to tighten credit into 2020 to manage growth and inflation.
The Fed lifted its short-term rate — a benchmark for many consumer and business loans — by a modest quarter-point to a range of 2 percent to 2.25 percent. It was its eighth hike since late 2015. The central bank also stuck with a previous forecast for three more rate hikes in 2019.
In a statement after its latest policy meeting, the Fed dropped phrasing it had long used that characterized its policy as “accommodative” — that is, favoring low rates. The Fed had used variations of that pledge in the seven years that it kept its key rate at a record low near zero and over the past nearly three years in which it’s gradually tightened credit.
By removing that language, the Fed may be signaling its resolve to keep raising rates. In a news conference after its meeting, though, Chairman Jerome Powell said the removal of the “accommodative” language did not amount to a policy change.
“Our economy is strong,” Powell declared at the start of his news conference. “Growth is running at a healthy clip, unemployment is low. The number of people working is rising steadily, and wages are up. Inflation is low and stable, all of these are very good signs.”
NEW YORK — An estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last winter — the disease’s highest death toll in at least four decades.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, revealed the total in an interview Tuesday night with The Associated Press.
Flu experts knew it was a very bad season, but at least one found the size of the estimate surprising.
“That’s huge,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert. The tally was nearly twice as much as what health officials previously considered a bad year, he said.
In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12,000 to 56,000, according to the CDC.
From Associated Press