By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Congress’s probe of the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters trying to overturn his election defeat enters a new phase this week with hearings meant to refocus attention on the violence and those who planned it.

The Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Jan. 6 will attempt to reverse Republican efforts to downplay or deny the violence of the day, with five months to go until Nov. 8 midterm elections that will determine which party controls Congress for the next two years.

“This was a coup organized by the president against the vice president and against the Congress in order to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” Representative Jamie Raskin, one of the Democratic members of the nine-member committee, said in a recent interview.

“We’re going to tell the whole story of everything that happened. There was a violent insurrection and an attempted coup and we were saved by (then-Vice President) Mike Pence’s refusal to go along with that plan,” Raskin said.

The panel of seven Democrats and two Republicans has spent much of the past year investigating the events preceding and driving the attack by thousands of Trump loyalists, who stormed the building in a failed bid to prevent Congress from formally certifying his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.

The committee has not yet said what witnesses it will call at its Thursday 8 p.m. ET (0000 GMT June 10) hearing, a prime time spot intended to capture the attention of as many Americans as possible. ABC and CBS News programming schedules showed that the networks planned to carry Thursday’s hearing live.

Five more hearings are expected in the next two weeks.

The committee said in a statement the hearings would “provide the American people a summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power.”

“It will be a combination of exhibits, staff testimony, outside witnesses,” the committee’s chairperson, Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, recently told reporters.

Prospects for success are not clear, in a deeply divided country. A Washington Post-ABC News poll last month found that only 40% of Americans believe the committee is conducting a “fair and impartial” investigation of the attack, while 40% say it is not.

Many Americans are simply not paying attention, more worried about inflation, a spate of mass shootings and summer vacations than an attack 18 months ago.

CLOSED DOORS, SHIFTING NARRATIVE

The panel and its dozens of investigators have conducted more than 1,000 depositions and interviews and collected more than 140,000 documents.

The investigation has focused on efforts by Trump and associates to promote his false election claims, with committee members contending that the fate of American democracy is at stake.

“People are going to be absolutely surprised how much was known,” Denver Riggleman, a Republican former congressman who worked as an adviser to the committee said on CNN on Sunday. “When you look at the totality of the evidence, it’s pretty apparent that at some point President Trump knew what was going on.”

Some congressional Republicans condemned Trump in the first days after the attack, but since then almost all of shifted their tone. Members of Congress have refused to cooperate and disputed accounts of the riot, despite thousands of photographs and videos.

Republican Representative Andrew Clyde, who helped barricade the doors of the House chamber against the mob, said the Trump supporters who stormed the building behaved “in an orderly fashion.”

The Republican National Committee called the assault “legitimate political discourse.”

Four people died the day of the attack, one fatally shot by police and the others of natural causes. More than 100 police officers were injured, and one died the next day. Four officers later died by suicide. The Capitol sustained millions of dollars in damage.

Trump, who is publicly flirting with another White House run in 2024, has denied wrongdoing and accused the committee of engaging in a political attack. He has leveled harsh criticism particularly at Representative Liz Cheney, the panel’s Republican vice chairperson, as she runs for re-election.

Representative Adam Kinzinger, the panel’s other Republican member, is retiring from Congress.

Every Republican House leader voted to overturn 2020 election results in the hours after the riot. Cheney – the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney – was removed from Republican leadership for criticizing Trump.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, who refused to comply with a committee subpoena, called the committee invalid, for reasons including having too few members and lacking a formal Republican “ranking member.”

The June sessions will not be the committee’s first public hearings. The panel held one last July, at which police officers described being beaten, threatened and taunted with racial insults as they faced the worst attack on the seat of the U.S. government in more than two centuries.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, additional reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Scott Malone)

Washington (AFP) – US President Joe Biden on Monday will suspend tariffs for two years on solar panel imports from four countries and invoke a key power to compel domestic manufacture of clean energy technology, the White House said.

The moves are aimed at boosting renewable capacity and combating climate change, a priority for the president whose green ambitions have met with mixed success.

“Today’s clean energy technologies are a critical part of the arsenal we must harness to lower energy costs for families, reduce risks to our power grid, and tackle the urgent crisis of a changing climate,” the White House said in a fact sheet.

It added that, compared to when Biden took office, the United States was on track to triple domestic solar manufacturing capacity by 2024, from 7.5 gigawatts to 22.5 gigawatts, enough to enable 3.3 million homes to switch to solar each year.

Duties will be lifted on certain solar parts from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam — but not China — as a “bridge” to ensure the United States has access to sufficient parts to meet electricity needs while domestic capacity scales up.

China is excluded as the Commerce Department investigates whether some Chinese companies are circumventing US customs duties by assembling parts in the four countries.

At the same time, Biden’s administration will invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) to accelerate production, and use the federal government’s purchasing power to increase demand.

Solar panel parts, building insulation and efficient heat pumps are all targeted under the DPA.

Former president Donald Trump used the same powers during the Covid pandemic to increase production of medicines and equipment, and it was also invoked during World War II.

Most recently, Biden used the act to help baby formula makers to overcome a production shortfall.

The administration will also look to permit more clean energy projects on public lands, including both solar and wind.

“The fact is with a stronger clean energy arsenal, the United States can also be a stronger power partner to our allies all around the world, especially in the face of Putin’s war in Ukraine,” a senior administration official told reporters.

“The stakes are high and the president is taking action.”

Biden has succeeded in getting Congress to pass a bipartisan infrastructure law, a pillar in his climate policy, but has failed to pass a second proposed law, the Build Back Better act.

At the same time he has been criticized by environmental groups for plans to resume oil and gas drilling on public lands, reneging on a campaign promise.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Monday he had tested positive for COVID-19 and was experiencing mild symptoms.

“I plan to work remotely while isolating according to CDC guidelines, and look forward to when I can safely return to the office and the road,” Buttigieg said on Twitter. A number of U.S. cabinet secretaries have tested positive for COVID-19.

(Reporting by David Shepardson)

Andrew Ridgeley is working with Netflix on a new Wham! documentary.

The 59-year-old singer starred alongside George Michael in the 1980s, and he’s now joined forces with the streaming giant to help to make a new documentary.

A source shared: “The Netflix team jumped at the chance to make this film. The Wham! story is an incredible one and who better to offer insight than Andrew? It is a really exciting project and they are putting a lot of resources into it.

“Andrew is also very keen for the opportunity to look back over his years with George in the band – though it will, of course, be bittersweet for him.”

The Netflix documentary promises to give fans a behind-the-scenes look at their ups and downs as a pop duo.

The insider explained: “It is a welcome chance to celebrate what they achieved together and will give fans a unique look behind the scenes.”

The new documentary is being billed as an intimate look at Andrew and George’s chart success.

And Netflix hopes that it’ll be similarly successful to Taylor Swift’s ‘Miss Americana’ and Lady Gaga’s ‘Five Foot Two’.

A second source told The Sun on Sunday newspaper: “The bosses are confident this will be just as much of a hit, if not more.”

George passed away on Christmas Day in 2016, aged 53. But prior to his death, the ‘Faith’ hitmaker revealed he wanted to be remembered as someone “with integrity”.

The pop icon had been working on a documentary film called ‘George Michael Freedom Uncut’ in the months before his death.

And in a clip from the planned project, he said: “I want to leave songs … that will mean something to later generations. I want to be remembered as someone who had some kind of integrity.”

Washington (AFP) – Heather Booth was a student in Chicago in 1965 when she received a call from a friend in need. His sister, he said, was pregnant but not ready to have a child. She was “nearly suicidal.”

Drawing on her contacts in the city, Booth helped the young woman find a doctor willing to perform an illegal abortion — in what she believed would be a one-off “act of goodwill.”

“But word must have spread,” the 76-year-old said in an interview from her home in Washington, more than half a century later.

That one act would grow into an underground network of women called “Jane,” whose members helped end thousands of unwanted pregnancies, safely and without stigma — eventually performing 11,000 abortions themselves.

By January 22, 1973 — when the US Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision created a nationwide right to abortion — seven “Jane” members were awaiting trial.

One of them was Martha Scott, who at the age of 80 — and with the court now expected to repeal that right — looks back defiantly on her decision to break the law many years ago.

“I felt very strongly… that we are doing this illegal thing because it is important to do, because it can’t be done legally,” Scott said in a video interview from her home in Chicago.

“We were just ladies down the street,” she said, but “bad laws require you to choose to act in ways that may be a little risky.”

‘Caring community’

Booth and Scott, whose journey with the “Janes” is spotlighted in an upcoming HBO documentary, have stark memories of the time before Roe — when desperate women would harm themselves attempting to end their pregnancies.

“Some were taking lye (a caustic ingredient in soap), some were using a coat hanger,” said Booth. “Some were doing damage to themselves, throwing themselves down stairs or off a rooftop.”

Without alternatives, women sought out abortions from illegal providers, many of whom were motivated by profit or unscrupulous in other ways, with little concern for women’s health.

Eleanor Oliver, another former member of the network, said when she sought an illegal abortion in Washington, she was told the doctor might want her to be “a little cozier and friendlier than just a patient.”

Fortunately, said the now-84-year-old Oliver, “he was very businesslike, very official.”

As word got out that Booth could help women get a safe abortion, more and more began contacting her — and she recruited others to help.

To be discreet, they told callers to leave a message for “Jane” — and the group, established as a “caring community,” was born.

After some time, the group discovered their abortionist was not a licensed doctor — a shock that led some members to leave.

But others, said Scott, realized that if a man without professional training could learn how to safely perform abortions, so could they.

– ‘Furious’ –

In May 1972, the police barged into the apartment where the “Jane” collective was operating.

“They kept saying ‘So where’s the doctor?’…’‘Where’s the guy who’s doing abortions?'” recalled Scott, who was in one of the bedrooms-turned-surgeries.

“Well, of course, it wasn’t any guy who was doing abortions… we were doing abortions.”

She and six others were rounded up and taken to jail, where they spent the night — before being released pending trial.

In the wake of Roe v. Wade, the charges against the “Janes” were dropped, and the group disbanded.

Half a century later, though, their work appears relevant all over again, after a leak revealed that the Supreme Court is seriously considering a full reversal of Roe.

Scott was “furious, just furious” at the news — but “not surprised” either, in light of former president Donald Trump’s nomination of three anti-abortion conservative justices, tilting the bench decisively to the right.

If the nationwide right to abortion is struck down — leaving states free to enact “dangerous” restrictions — Scott expects a new generation of activists will need to step up.

“What we need to do is use every tool at our disposal,” echoed Booth.

While conservative-led states are expected to drastically curb abortion rights if given free rein, it would remain legal in many other states — “islands in the storm,” as Booth calls them.

Some, like Illinois, have already moved to loosen their abortion restrictions in anticipation of the Supreme Court decision.

The poorest women — less able to travel out of state — will be the hardest-hit, as seen in Texas where abortions after six weeks have already been effectively banned.

But new medication can safely induce abortions up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy and — though it would still be illegal — can easily be sent through the mail.

And so, Scott and Booth hold out hope that the United States will not be going back to the dark days of back-alley abortions. 

“The abortions won’t stop,” Booth said, citing data that shows one in four American women will terminate a pregnancy at some point in their lifetime.

“It’s not rare, and it needs to be safe.” 

George Michael wanted to be remembered as someone “with integrity”.

The ‘Careless Whisper’ hitmaker had been working on documentary film ‘George Michael Freedom Uncut’ in the months leading up to his shock death in December 2016, and in the film, he speaks poignantly about his legacy.

According to the Sunday Times Culture magazine, he said: “I want to leave songs . . . that will mean something to later generations. I want to be remembered as someone who had some kind of integrity.”

Sir Elton John was interviewed for the documentary and remembered his ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me’ collaborator as outspoken and very talented.

He said: “Dinner with him was always an event because he would have a definite opinion on anything. He took something I thought was near perfect in Don’t Let the Sun and made it better. That’s the biggest compliment I can pay.”

George lived next door to supermodel Kate Moss and the pair had a lot of fun together.

She said: “My favourite night was after the Olympics closing ceremony. We went back to his house and we danced and laughed and rewatched his performance. It was a very long night, I was still there when the sun came up.

“I told George that I really wanted to go to the final Wham! concert and sat on the phone for eight hours, but they sold out. I was heartbroken. His music is still on all my playlists.”

The ‘Freedom’ hitmaker worked on the film with his best friend, David Austin.

David reflected: “George made this film the way he made everything. He took complete control.”

After his pal’s death, David stopped listening to George’s music for some time.

He added “But a few years ago I was in New York walking down Madison Avenue and Praying for Time came on. It took me by surprise. It really hit me and I listened in a different way. I thought, ‘He can really sing.’

“We met when we were a few months old in our prams. We started writing songs together when we were around five. One was called ‘Music Maker of the World’ and we played ‘Crocodile Rock’ by Elton John. George was the drummer and I played guitar and we recorded everything.

“He was such a kind, caring, gentle, giving person. I miss my friend. I miss our friendship, doing all the normal things together, speaking three or four times a day. Music was our first love.”

Supplying long-range missiles of Western manufacture to Ukraine will result in a strong response from Russian forces, President Vladimir Putin told state broadcaster Rossija 1.

“If they supply, then we will draw the corresponding conclusions from this and deploy our means of destruction, of which we have enough, to deliver blows to those objects that we are not yet attacking,” he said. The West’s aim in supplying arms to Ukraine was to draw out the conflict, Putin said.

The Russian leader appeared relaxed about the delivery of modern HIMARS multiple rocket launchers announced by the United States, saying it would not change the balance of forces fundamentally. “There’s nothing new here,” he said, noting that the Ukrainian army already had similar, Russian-made systems and that US deliveries would just replace systems that had been destroyed.

Precisely which missiles were deployed would be decisive, Putin said. According to his information, missiles with ranges of between 45 and 70 kilometres would be supplied, similar to Russia’s Uragan, Smerch and Grad systems. Ukraine had 515 such systems when the “operation” began and is still thought to have 360, he said.

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) – U.S. health officials on Friday urged doctors to test for monkeypox if they suspect cases, saying there may be community-level spread but that the overall public health risk remained low.

So far, there have been 21 cases of the disease in at least 11 states. Affected patients are isolating to help prevent spreading the virus, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials told reporters in a conference call.

The CDC said it was aware of 700 cases of monkeypox that have been reported globally outside of parts of Africa, where the disease is endemic. No deaths have been reported so far.

The agency is collaborating with global experts to learn more about how this outbreak began and how it is now spreading within the United States and elsewhere.

In a detailed report of 17 cases published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, most patients identified as men who have sex with men. In many of the cases the monkeypox rash started in the genital area, which could lead some doctors to diagnose it as a more common sexually transmitted infection such as herpes or syphilis.

Health officials believe community transmission is likely, which is why they want doctors to test patients if they have any reason to suspect monkeypox.

The CDC stressed that monkeypox is transmitted by close contact with someone who has the virus and to monkeypox sores.

“Anyone can get monkeypox and we are carefully monitoring for monkeypox that may be spreading in any population, including those who are not identifying as men who have sex with men,” Jennifer McQuiston, the CDC’s deputy director of the Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, told the briefing.

So far, the United States has run 120 tests for monkeypox. Officials said the government has the capacity to run 1,000 tests per day.

Currently, all U.S. patients are in recovery or have already recovered. Those who still have a rash are being asked to stay home until they are fully recovered, the CDC said.

A patient is considered recovered when all of the sores have scabbed over, the scabs fall off and healthy skin has emerged.

McQuiston said an analysis of the genetic sequences of U.S. virus samples found that in most cases it is similar to the variant circulating in Europe.

However, U.S. scientists identified two genetically distinct variants of the monkeypox virus among the U.S. samples. Both share common ancestors with strains that have been present in Nigeria since at least 2017.

McQuiston said it is possible that some form of the virus has been transmitting under the radar in the United States, albeit on a very limited basis.

U.S. officials said the government has ample vaccines within the Strategic National Stockpile, and the government is offering those to people who have had high-risk contact with infected individuals to prevent transmission of the virus.

The United States has so far delivered about 1,200 vaccines and 100 courses of treatment.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen and Susan Heavey; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – A Republican congressman who came out in support of gun control after a mass shooting in his area dropped out of the race for his re-election on Friday upon coming under withering criticism from Republicans who saw his policy shift as a betrayal.

Chris Jacobs, a first-term U.S. representative from suburban Buffalo, New York, said he decided to withdraw to avoid “an incredibly divisive election” for the Republican Party.

Jacobs embraced a federal ban on assault weapons and other gun control measures a week ago in the wake of two massacres. Authorities say a white gunman killed 10 Black people inside a supermarket on May 14 in a racially motivated attack, and a gunman killed 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in another attack in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24.

“This has been a profoundly impactful event for me,” Jacobs told the Buffalo News, referring to the Buffalo shooting.

The backlash was immediate. Gun rights groups posted his office and cellphone numbers on the internet and local party leaders began pulling their support, the New York Times reported.

“The last thing we need is an incredibly negative, half-truth-filled media attack funded by millions of dollars of special interest money coming into our community around this issue of guns and gun violence and gun control,” Jacobs told reporters Friday upon announcing his withdrawal.

Jacobs was elected to Congress in New York’s 27th District two years ago with the support of the National Rifle Association but now is in the redrawn 23rd District.

The Republican candidate will be chosen in an Aug. 23 primary election ahead of the Nov. 8 general election, when the entire House of Representatives will be decided.

Republicans are poised to regain control from the Democrats in the closely divided House, as the party in control of the White House traditionally loses seats in Congress in midterm elections.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Washington (AFP) – From the Texas school massacre to a Tulsa hospital shooting and many less-reported incidents, a recent spate of gun violence across America bears out a trend police departments have long sworn by: murders go up in warmer weather.

The link has been written about for decades by criminologists, with more recent research drilling down on the precise relationship between temperature and crime rates.

For those who have studied the question, there are common sense as well as potentially less obvious mechanisms at play.

First, the more obvious: “It’s hard to shoot somebody if there’s nobody around,” David Hemenway, a professor of health policy at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, told AFP, explaining why gun crime is lower in bad weather.

A second, more controversial idea is that heat itself — as opposed to weather that encourages people to be out — might rev up conflict.

While there are many causes behind the rising tide of gun violence in the United States, weather could play an increasingly important role in world that is fast warming due to climate change.

Hemenway said he had long been interested in the relationship between heat and higher crime given stereotypes about the north-south divide within the United States and Italy, as well as between the northern European states of Scandinavia and southern Mediterranean countries.

In 2020, he co-wrote a paper in Injury Epidemiology led by his then-graduate student Paul Reeping examining the city of Chicago between 2012 and 2016.

The paper used reports from the Chicago Tribune to get the number of shootings per day, and then matched those against daily high temperature, humidity, wind speed, difference in temperature from historical average, and precipitation type and amount.

They found a 10 degree Celsius higher temperature was significantly associated with 34 percent more shootings on weekdays, and 42 percent more shootings on weekends or holidays. 

They also found a 10C higher than average temperature was associated with 33.8 percent higher rate of shootings.

In other words, said Hemenway, it’s not just heat that’s important, but relative heat: “In the winter, there were more shootings on those days which wouldn’t have been hot in the summer but were warm for winter.”

Another recent paper, led by Leah Schinasi of Drexel University and published in the Journal of Urban Health in 2017, looked at violent crime in Philadelphia.

“I live in Philadelphia, and I remember biking home from work on a very hot day and observing how cranky everyone seemed. I was interested to see if this observation translated to higher rates of crime on hot days,” she told AFP.

She and co-author Ghassan Hamra did indeed find violent crimes happened more often in the warmer months — May through September — and were highest on the hottest days.

The contrast was most striking on comfortable days in the colder months — October through April — compared to colder days in those months. 

When temperatures reached 21C (70F) during that time period, daily rates of violent crime were 16 percent higher compared to 6C (43F) days, the median for those months.

–  ‘Harm reduction’ –

Hemenway believes that both of the main hypotheses on the subject — that more people being outside opens more possibilities of hostile interactions, and that heat itself makes people more aggressive — could be true.

A striking study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2019 involved placing university students in Kenya and California in either hot or cold rooms and measuring the impact on a number of behavioral categories.

It found “heat significantly affects individuals’ willingness to voluntarily destroy other participants’ assets” in the form of gift cards and vouchers.

When it comes to the overall issue of gun violence, there are far bigger drivers than temperature, Hemenway acknowledged.

These include the fact there were an estimated 393 million guns in circulation in the United States in 2020, more than the number of people, while many states have moved in recent years to ease rather than toughen restrictions.

But better understanding the relationship with weather could have policy implications — for example finding more activities for young males to keep them off street corners on the hottest summer days, and boosting police presence in key areas based on forecasts.

“It’s sort of a harm reduction,” said Hemenway. “But even if this wasn’t a gun problem, I suspect we would find the same thing if we had evidence about fights and assaults. What the guns do is make hostile interactions more deadly.”

Rachel Brosnahan was told she was “not funny” before landing the starring role on ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.’

The 31-year-old actress stars in title role of aspiring stand-up comedienne Midge Maisel in the hit Amazon Prime series but was initially told to consider a different kind of acting career before landing the part.

She said: “I spent the first couple years of my career being told I was not funny. It wasn’t like an insulting thing. It was really just a lot of people who were professionals kind of saying, ‘You might want to head in a different direction. Maybe consider something over here.’”

The former ‘Manhattan’ actress – who eventually won a Primetime Emmy Award for her role in ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ – went on to reveal that just hours before being offered the part, she had been rejected at another audition because casting directors wanted “someone funnier.”

Speaking at Prime Video show’s FYC event, she said: “I think it’s been a really challenging and really incredible exercise over the last couple of years. But I’m eternally indebted to [executive producers] Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino for saying yes and taking that kind of chance on someone like me.

“The day I found out I was going to be their Midge, [I] lost a role that morning because I wasn’t funny enough. They wanted someone funnier.”

During the event, panel moderator Danny Strong recalled a conversation he had with producers about their challenge in finding the right person to take on the role and claimed that had they not found Rachel in the end, the show may “never” have happened.

He said: “I was having dinner with them in the early part of the casting process. And Amy, she said, ‘Yeah, I can’t … I haven’t found my lead. And if I don’t find her, I’m just gonna not do the show because I need someone great or it’s just gonna be a waste of my time. Then we had dinner, I don’t know, a month later, three weeks later. And she was like, ‘I found her. We’re all good.’ So literally, if she hadn’t found [Rachel], there may never have been the show.”