AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EST
Cries and candle scents: Scores feared dead after twisters
MAYFIELD, Ky. (AP) - Workers on the night shift at Mayfield Consumer Products were in the middle of the holiday rush, cranking out candles, when a tornado closed in on the factory and the word went out: "Duck and cover."
Autumn Kirks pulled down her safety goggles and took shelter, tossing aside wax and fragrance buckets to make room. She glanced away from her boyfriend, Lannis Ward, and when she looked back, he was gone.
On Sunday, he was among scores of people feared dead in the rubble of the factory and elsewhere across the state.
Gov. Andy Beshear initially warned Sunday that the state´s overall death toll from the outbreak of twisters Friday night in Mayfield and other communities could exceed 100. But later in the day, he said the number might turn out to be half that, citing details from the candle company.
"We are praying that maybe original estimates of those we have lost were wrong. If so, it´s going to be pretty wonderful," the governor said.
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Satellite images, expert suggest Iranian space launch coming
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Iran appears to be preparing for a space launch as negotiations continue in Vienna over its tattered nuclear deal with world powers, according to an expert and satellite images.
The likely blast off at Iran's Imam Khomeini Spaceport comes as Iranian state media has offered a list of upcoming planned satellite launches in the works for the Islamic Republic's civilian space program, which has been beset by a series of failed launches. Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard runs its own parallel program that successfully put a satellite into orbit last year.
Conducting a launch amid the Vienna talks fits the hard-line posture struck by Tehran's negotiators, who already described six previous rounds of diplomacy as a "draft," exasperating Western nations. Germany's new foreign minister has gone as far as to warn that "time is running out for us at this point."
But all this fits into a renewed focus on space by Iran's hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, said Jeffrey Lewis, an expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies who studies Tehran's program. With Iran's former President Hassan Rouhani who shepherded the nuclear deal out of office, concerns about alienating the talks with launches that the U.S. asserts aids Tehran's ballistic missile program likely have faded.
"They´re not walking on eggshells," Lewis said. "I think Raisi's people have a new balance in mind."
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Fox anchor Chris Wallace makes his own news with move to CNN
NEW YORK (AP) - Veteran anchor Chris Wallace has left Fox News after 18 years for CNN, dealing a significant blow to Fox's news operation at a time that it has been overshadowed by the network's opinion side.
Wallace delivered the surprising news that he was leaving at the end of the "Fox News Sunday" show he moderates, and within two hours CNN announced he was joining its new streaming service as an anchor. CNN+ is expected to debut in early 2022.
"It is the last time, and I say this with real sadness, we will meet like this," Wallace, who is 74, said on his show, which airs on the Fox network and is later rerun on Fox News Channel. "Eighteen years ago, the bosses here at Fox promised me they would never interfere with a guest I booked or a question I asked. And they kept that promise."
Wallace was a veteran broadcast network newsman, working at both ABC and NBC News, before the late Roger Ailes lured him to Fox with the promise of his own Sunday show. Methodical and never showy - in contrast to his father Mike, the legendary "60 Minutes" reporter - Chris Wallace was known for his willingness to ask hard questions of all guests no matter their politics.
He was the first Fox News personality to moderate a presidential debate, doing it in 2016 and 2020. The debate he moderated last year went off the rails when then-President Donald Trump repeatedly interrupted Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
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Inflation is painfully high, but some relief may be coming
NEW YORK (AP) - Inflation is painfully high, but this hopefully is close to as bad as it gets.
Consumer prices rose 6.8% for the 12 months ending in November, a 39-year high. Many economists expect inflation to remain near this level a few more months but to then moderate through 2022 for a variety of reasons. And they don't see a repeat of the 1970s or early 1980s, when inflation ran above 10% for frighteningly long stretches.
Households could even see relief in some areas within weeks. Prices have dropped on global markets for crude oil and natural gas, which is filtering into lower prices at the pump and for home heating. That should keep inflation somewhat in check, even if prices keep rising elsewhere in the economy.
To be sure, economists say inflation will likely stay higher than it was before the pandemic, even after it eases through 2022. More often than not in the last 10 years, inflation was below 2%, and it even scraped below zero during parts of 2015. The bigger danger then was too-low inflation, which can also lead to a weak economy.
"This is not going to be an easy fix," said Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP. "Just because inflation will eventually moderate doesn´t mean that prices are going to go down. They´re up. We´re just lowering the rate of change, not the level of prices."
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Will new bacon law begin? California grocers seek delay
ELLIOTT, Iowa (AP) - A coalition of California restaurants and grocery stores has filed a lawsuit to block implementation of a new farm animal welfare law, adding to uncertainty about whether bacon and other fresh pork products will be much more expensive or in short supply in the state when the new rules take effect on New Year's Day.
The lawsuit is the latest step in a tumultuous three-year process of enacting rules overwhelmingly approved by voters but that remain in question even as the law is set to begin. Since voters approved Proposition 12 by a 2-to-1 ratio in November 2018, state officials have missed deadlines for releasing specific regulations covering the humane treatment of animals that provide meat for the California market.
Most hog producers haven't made changes to comply with the law. And now a coalition of business owners is seeking more than a two-year delay.
"We´re saying this is not going to work," said Nate Rose, a spokesman for the California Grocers Association.
While groups are working to delay the measure, the state has eased the transition to the new system. It has allowed pork processed under the old rules and held in cold storage to be sold in California in 2022, which could prevent shortages for weeks or even months.
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Photo from tornado-damaged home lands almost 130 miles away
When Katie Posten walked outside Saturday morning to her car parked in her driveway, she saw something that looked like a note or receipt stuck to the windshield.
She grabbed it and saw it was a black and white photo of a woman in a striped sundress and headscarf holding a little boy in her lap. On the back, written in cursive, it said, "Gertie Swatzell & J.D. Swatzell 1942." A few hours later, Posten would discover that the photo had made quite a journey - almost 130 miles (209 kilometers) on the back of monstrous winds.
Posten had been tracking the tornadoes that hit the middle of the U.S. Friday night, killing dozens of people. They came close to where she lives in New Albany, Indiana, across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky. So she figured it must be debris from someone's damaged home.
"Seeing the date, I realized that was likely from a home hit by a tornado. How else is it going to be there?" Posten said in a phone interview Sunday morning. "It´s not a receipt. It´s well-kept photo."
So, doing what any 21st century person would do, she posted an image of the photo on Facebook and Twitter and asked for help in finding its owners. She said she was hoping someone on social media would have a connection to the photo or share it with someone who had a connection.
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Tornado survivor: 'Not knowing is worse than knowing'
MAYFIELD, Ky. (AP) - Autumn Kirks said she and her boyfriend, Lannis Ward, had been dating for about a year and were saving money to buy a house. They were both working the night shift at the candle factory for extra money when the tornado struck.
Now Ward, described by Kirks as "a big teddy bear," is missing - and all she can do is wait.
"Not knowing is worse than knowing right now," she said Sunday as she stood outside His House Ministries, a nondescript prefabricated building on the edge of Mayfield where people have been told to go to wait for word about the missing. In the aftermath of the massive tornado that roared through the western Kentucky darkness early Saturday morning, the chances for good news seem to diminish by the hour.
"I´m trying to stay strong," Kirks said. "It´s very hard right now."
An unusual mid-December swarm of twisters across the Midwest and the South leveled entire communities and left dozens dead in five states. The death toll is expected to go higher in Kentucky.
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South African president tests positive for COVID, mildly ill
JOHANNESBURG (AP) - South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is receiving treatment for mild COVID-19 symptoms after testing positive for the disease Sunday, his office said.
Ramaphosa started feeling unwell and a test confirmed COVID-19, a statement from the presidency announced.
He is self-isolating in Cape Town and is being monitored by the South African Military Health Service, the statement said. He has delegated all responsibilities to Deputy President David Mabuza for the next week.
Ramaphosa, 69, is fully vaccinated. The statement didn´t say whether he had been infected with the omicron coronavirus variant.
Last week, Ramaphosa visited four West African countries. He and all members of his delegation were tested for COVID-19 in each of the countries during the trip. Some in the delegation tested positive in Nigeria and returned directly to South Africa. Throughout the rest of the trip, Ramaphosa and his delegation tested negative. Ramaphosa returned from Senegal on Dec. 8
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Boris Johnson: UK faces 'tidal wave' of omicron cases
LONDON (AP) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned Sunday that Britain faces a "tidal wave" of infections from the omicron coronavirus variant, and announced a huge increase in booster vaccinations to strengthen defenses against it.
In a televised statement, Johnson said everyone age 18 and older will be offered a third shot of vaccine by the end of this month in response to the omicron "emergency." The previous target was the end of January.
He said cases of the highly transmissible variant are doubling every two to three days in Britain, and "there is a tidal wave of omicron coming."
"And I´m afraid it is now clear that two doses of vaccine are simply not enough to give the level of protection we all need," Johnson said. "But the good news is that our scientists are confident that with a third dose - a booster dose - we can all bring our level of protection back up."
He announced a "national mission" to deliver booster vaccines, with pop-up vaccination centers and seven-day-a-week getting extra support from teams of military planners and thousands of volunteer vaccinators.
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Anne Rice, who breathed new life into vampires, dies at 80
NEW YORK (AP) - Anne Rice, the novelist whose lush, best-selling gothic tales, including "Interview With a Vampire," reinvented the blood-drinking immortals as tragic antiheroes, has died. She was 80.
Rice died late Saturday due to complications from a stroke, her son Christopher Rice announced on her Facebook page and his Twitter page.
"As a writer, she taught me to defy genre boundaries and surrender to my obsessive passions," Christopher Rice, also an author, wrote. "In her final hours, I sat beside her hospital bed in awe of her accomplishments and her courage."
Rice's 1976 novel "Interview With the Vampire" was later adapted, with a script by Rice, into the 1994 movie directed by Neil Jordan and starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. It's also set to be adapted again in an upcoming TV series on AMC and AMC+ set to premiere next year.
"Interview With the Vampire," in which reporter Daniel Molloy interviews Louis de Pointe du Lac, was Rice's first novel but over the next five decades, she would write more than 30 books and sell more than 150 million copies worldwide. Thirteen of those were part of the "Vampire Chronicles" begun with her 1976 debut. Long before "Twilight" or "True Blood," Rice introduced sumptuous romance, female sexuality and queerness - many took "Interview With the Vampire" as an allegory for homosexuality - to the supernatural genre.
