After allegations, Moore avoids spotlight, questions
MONTGOMERY, Ala. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore has been a rare sight on the traditional campaign trail in the days ahead of a critical U.S. Senate race. He's appeared at only a handful of rallies in front of friendly audiences and steadfastly has shunned reporters from the mainstream media.
Moore’s past campaigns have never been heavy on the conventional, but his relative absence from the spotlight this time around is nearly unheard of for a major party candidate.
Moore has focused on meeting with small groups of supporters and an aggressive social media campaign out of camera range as he tries to win Tuesday’s election against Democrat Doug Jones - a contest that was supposed to be an easy GOP victory - until November, when a number of women stepped forward to accuse Moore of engaging in sexual misconduct when he was in his 30s and they were teenagers.
Moore has denied the allegations.
Bitcoin futures rise as virtual currency hits major exchange
CHICAGO The first-even bitcoin future began trading Sunday as the increasingly popular virtual currency made its debut on a major U.S. exchange.
The futures contract that expires in January rose $340 to $15,800 in the first hour and 15 minutes of trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange. The contract opened at $15,460, according to data from the CBOE.
The CBOE futures don’t involve actual bitcoin. They’re securities that will track the price of bitcoin on Gemini, one of the larger bitcoin exchanges.
The start of trading at 5 p.m. CST overwhelmed the CBOE website. “Due to heavy traffic on our website, visitors to www.cboe.com may find that it is performing slower than usual and may at times be temporarily unavailable,” the exchange said in a statement. But it said the trading in the futures had not been disrupted.
Israeli, French leaders tangle over US Jerusalem decision
JERUSALEM The French and Israeli leaders sparred verbally Sunday over the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, while new violence rippled across the region following the move by U.S. President Donald Trump.
In Jerusalem, a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli security guard, seriously wounding him in the first attack in the volatile city since Trump’s pronouncement Wednesday. In Beirut, scores of Lebanese and Palestinian demonstrators clashed with security forces outside the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy, and Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo demanded that the United States rescind the decision.
The move upended decades of U.S. policy, and a longstanding international consensus, that the fate of Jerusalem be decided in negotiations. Israeli and Palestinian claims to the city’s eastern sector form the emotional core of their conflict, and Trump’s announcement was seen as siding with the Israelis and has drawn wide international criticism.
At a meeting in Paris with Israel’s visiting prime minister, French President Emmanuel Macron condemned recent violence against Israelis. But he also expressed “disapproval” of Trump’s decision, calling it “dangerous for peace.”
“It doesn’t seem to serve, in the short term, the cause of Israel’s security and the Israelis themselves,” Macron said.
Nobel laureate worries politics undermining science
STOCKHOLM An American researcher who shared this year’s Nobel Prize for medicine bluntly criticized political developments at home in his address at the awards’ gala banquet Sunday night.
Michael Rosbash, who was honoured for his work on circadian rhythms — commonly called the body clock — expressed concern that U.S. government support such as that received by him and colleagues Jeffrey Hall and Michael Young is endangered.
“We benefited from an enlightened period in the postwar United States. Our National Institutes of Health have enthusiastically and generously supported basic research ... (but) the current climate in the U.S. is a warning that continued support cannot be taken for granted,” he said in a short speech at the ornate city hall in Stockholm.
The 2018 federal budget proposed by President Donald Trump calls for cutting science funding by billions of dollars
“Also in danger is the pluralistic America into which all three of us of born were born and raised after World War II,” Rosbash said. “Immigrants and foreigners have always been an indispensable part of our country, including its great record in scientific research.”
New evacuations in Southern California
LOS ANGELES A powerful flare-up on the western edge of Southern California’s largest and most destructive wildfire sent residents fleeing Sunday, as windfanned flames churned through old-growth brush in canyons and along hillsides toward coastal towns.
Crews with help from a fleet water-dropping planes and helicopters saved homes as unpredictable gusts sent the blaze deeper into residential foothill areas northwest of Los Angeles that haven’t burned in decades. New evacuations were ordered as the fire sent up an enormous plume near Montecito and Carpinteria, seaside areas in Santa Barbara County that had been under fire threat for days and were now choked with smoke.
“The winds are kind of squirrely right now,” said county fire spokesman Mike Eliason. “Some places the smoke is going straight up in the air, and others it’s blowing sideways. Depends on what canyon we’re in.”
S. Korea imposes new sanctions
SEOUL South Korea added several North Korean groups and individuals to its sanctions list Monday in a largely symbolic move that is part of efforts to cut off funding for the North’s weapons programs.
The government said those added were 20 North Korean groups, including several banks and companies, and 12 individuals.
Seoul is among the first to respond to North Korea’s Nov. 29 missile launch with fresh sanctions. While the move is largely symbolic because all transactions between two Koreas have been banned for years, the government said it hopes its move will prompt the international community to do likewise.
The measure will “remind the international community of the risks of doing transactions with the groups and individuals,” Baek Tae-hyun, South Korea's Unification Ministry spokesman, said during a media briefing.
The blacklist includes Rason International Commercial Bank and Korea Zinc Industrial Group. Individuals are North Korean officials who work for the country's banks or companies based in China, Russia, Vietnam and Namibia.