In the news
■ Julie Hedrick, Union President for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, said “we are not backing down” after federal mediators rejected a request for American Airlines flight attendants to strike at the end of the year.
■ Kris Mayes, the Democratic Attorney General for Arizona, said in a statement that “the repeated attempts to undermine our democracy are unacceptable” as two Cochise County supervisors were indicted on conspiracy and interference of an election officer when they refused to sign off on the county’s 2022 vote count.
■ Dr. Tyrone Lavery of the University of Melbourne School of Biosciences said he was “shocked and amazed” when he was able to get pictures of the Vangunu giant rat which had never been documented alive on Vangunu, one of the Solomon Islands.
■ Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister of Australia, apologized in Parliament on Wednesday to victims and survivors of the medical drug Thalidomide, which caused birth defects, stillbirths and miscarriages yet was claimed to be safe by doctors.
■ Sheikh Nawaf Al Ahmad Al Sabah, the 86-year-old ruler of Kuwait, was hospitalized “due to an emergency health problem” but soon stabilized, with authorities not clarifying anything other than the emir’s medication.
■ Paul Whelan, a Michigan resident serving a 16-year prison sentence in Russia, was punched in the face by a prisoner at the labor camp he was at, according to his brother David.
■ Salomon Cespedes, the state governor of Puebla, Mexico, called on the state’s prosecutors’ office “to conduct an exhaustive investigation, so that justice can be done and a precedent set,” after video surfaced of a private high school student beating a parking lot attendant at the student’s housing complex.
■ Chris McDowell, club secretary at the Grand Ole Opry in Glasgow, Scotland, said efforts had been ongoing for years after the decision to ban the Confederate battle flag last month from the club was upheld in a secret vote by a 50-48 margin, having been displayed there since the club opened in 1974.
■ Josh Jackson, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Paste magazine, said the acquisition of the feminist website Jezebel.com “means that the critical information and content that Jezebel readers have come to rely on will live on.”