Federal judge says San Francisco can’t clean up homeless encampments
A federal judge temporarily banned San Francisco from cleaning up a homeless encampment, saying the city violated its own policies. On Friday night, a judge issued an emergency order. The move comes amid a lawsuit filed on behalf of homeless plaintiffs seeking to prevent San Francisco from dismantling homeless encampments until it has thousands of additional shelter beds. Evidence showed the city often illegally withheld shelter from residents until the encampments were cleared and improperly confiscated or discarded their belongings, including medication and even prosthetics, the judge said. London Mayor Breed said in a statement that the decision would hamper the city’s efforts to help people get indoors and keep the community safe.
Lake loses lawsuit over losing Arizona gubernatorial race
A judge rejected Republican Carrie Lake’s challenge to her losing bid for Arizona governor against Democrat Katie Hobbs. The judge rejected her claim that problems with some ballot printers were the result of willful misconduct. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson said in a ruling Saturday that there was no clear or convincing evidence that Lake’s alleged widespread misconduct affected the election outcome. Lake said Saturday she would appeal the ruling. She’s one of the most outspoken Republicans to promote former President Donald Trump’s election lies in 2022. Lake didn’t join most of the other election deniers across the country who threw in the towel after losing the race in November.
$600 million earmarked for Mississippi’s struggling water system
The federal government will spend $600 million to fix the Mississippi state capital’s troubled water system — a project the mayor has said could cost billions of dollars. Funding for Jackson water is included in a $1.7 trillion federal spending bill that President Joe Biden is expected to sign into law. About 25 percent of Jackson, a majority-black city of nearly 150,000 people, live in poverty. In late August, heavy rains exacerbated problems at the main water treatment plant, and the water supply system nearly collapsed. Much of Jackson went without running water for several days. People had to wait in line to drink water, cook food, shower and flush toilets.
The Jan. 6 report hits Amazon’s bestseller list
The Jan. 6 report went from public release to the bestseller list on Amazon.com in less than a day. Three versions of a congressional investigation into the 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump were among the top 30 on Amazon by late Friday. The 814-page document, released late Thursday, has no copyright. It can be published by anyone and is freely available on various government and media sites. Previous government publications have been bestsellers, including the September 11 report.
Overcrowded ICUs, crowded crematoria: Coronavirus sweeps Chinese towns
Emergency rooms in a small town southwest of Beijing are overwhelmed as China grapples with its first-ever nationwide wave of COVID-19. Intensive care units are turning away ambulances, relatives of patients are searching for empty beds, and patients are slumped on benches in hospital corridors or lying on the floor for lack of beds. While young people are returning to work and queues at fever clinics are shrinking, many elderly people in Hebei are dying. As they fill ICUs and funeral homes, it could be a harbinger of what’s to come in the rest of China.
Taliban bans women from working for domestic and foreign NGOs
The Afghan Taliban government has ordered all domestic and foreign NGOs to stop hiring women. It is the latest curb on women’s rights and freedoms by Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers. The order came in a letter from the economy minister on Saturday. Any NGO found not complying with the order will have its license to operate in Afghanistan revoked, it said. The ministry said it had received “serious complaints” that female staff of NGOs were not wearing the “correct” headscarves or headscarves. It was unclear whether the order would apply to all women in NGOs or just Afghan women. On Saturday, the Taliban also separately banned women from attending religious classes at mosques in the capital, Kabul.
Tunisia’s political experiment threatens economic collapse
Tunisia’s political crisis has brought an already struggling economy closer to collapse. The IMF froze a much-needed loan deal for the government to deal with the budgetary fallout from the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine. Foreign investors are pulling out of Tunisia, and ratings agencies are on alert. Inflation and unemployment are rising. Many Tunisians, once proud of their country’s relative prosperity, are now struggling to make ends meet. But Tunisia’s increasingly authoritarian president appears determined to upend the country’s political system, once held up as a model for the Arab world. An electoral defeat a week earlier made matters worse: only 11% of voters turned out.
via wired source