Nation & World Glance
San Francisco gas explosion shoots fire that burns buildings
SAN FRANCISCO — A gas explosion in a San Francisco neighborhood shot flames into the air for hours Wednesday and burned five buildings, sending panicked residents and workers fleeing into the streets.
It took utility crews more than two hours to put out the fire after private construction workers cut a natural gas line, igniting the towering flames, Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said. Authorities initially said five workers were missing, but the entire construction crew was found safe, and no other injuries were reported.
Officials evacuated several nearby buildings, including a medical clinic and apartment buildings, Hayes-White said. Vehicles on a busy street got rerouted as authorities cordoned off the bustling retail and residential neighborhood.
The fire damaged a building housing Hong Kong Lounge II, a popular dim sum restaurant frequented by tourists and students at the University of San Francisco that made many “best of” lists.
Unbowed by Trump, Dems charge ahead with investigations
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump warned Congress that investigations and legislation don’t mix. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi said such threats have no place in the House, as unbowed Democrats charged ahead Wednesday with plans to probe Trump’s tax returns, business and ties to Russia.
The chairman of the intelligence committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, announced a broad new investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and Trump’s foreign financial interests. Other committees’ actions are well underway.
The day after the president essentially laid out the ultimatum to Congress during his State of the Union address, Democrats appeared even more resolved to conduct oversight of his administration and legislate on their priorities.
“The president should not bring threats to the floor of the House,” Pelosi told reporters, rebuking Trump for saying during his address that the “ridiculous partisan investigations” must end because they could harm the economy.
Pelosi said Congress has a responsibility to provide oversight, under the Constitution’s system of checks and balances, and would be “delinquent” if it failed to do so.
Political crisis engulfs Virginia’s top 3 elected officials
RICHMOND, Va. — The political crisis in Virginia spun out of control Wednesday when the state’s attorney general confessed to putting on blackface in the 1980s and a woman went public with detailed allegations of sexual assault against the lieutenant governor.
With Gov. Ralph Northam’s career already hanging by a thread over a racist photo in his 1984 medical school yearbook, the day’s developments threatened to take down all three of Virginia’s top elected officials, all of them Democrats.
The twin blows began with Attorney General Mark Herring issuing a statement acknowledging he wore brown makeup and a wig in 1980 to look like a rapper during a party when he was a 19-year-old student at the University of Virginia.
Herring — who had previously called on Northam to resign and was planning to run for governor himself in 2021 — apologized for his “callous” behavior and said that the days ahead “will make it clear whether I can or should continue to serve.”
The 57-year-old Herring came clean after rumors about the existence of a blackface photo of him began circulating at the Capitol, though he made no mention of a picture Wednesday.
Woman accuses Virginia lieutenant governor of sexual assault
WASHINGTON — A California woman went public with her sexual assault accusation against Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax on Wednesday, saying in a statement that she suppressed the memory for years but came forward in part because of the possibility that the Democrat could succeed a scandal-mired governor.
Vanessa Tyson, a 42-yearold political science professor who studies the intersection of politics and the #MeToo movement, said Fairfax held her head down and forced her to perform oral sex on him in his hotel room at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004.
“I cannot believe, given my obvious distress, that Mr. Fairfax thought this forced sexual act was consensual,” Tyson said in a three-page statement issued by her attorney. “To be very clear, I did not want to engage in oral sex with Mr. Fairfax and I never gave any form of consent. Quite the opposite.”
At the time of the 2004 convention, Fairfax, now 39, was a law student serving as an aide to then-Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards.
Migrant caravan detained in old factory, across from Texas
PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico — A caravan of 1,600 Central American migrants was surrounded Wednesday by Mexican authorities in an old factory a short distance from Texas, where they hoped to seek asylum even as U.S. authorities sent extra law enforcement and soldiers to stop them.
President Donald Trump warned in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday of migrant caravans and accused Mexican cities of busing migrants to the border “to bring them up to our country in areas where there is little border protection.”
The migrants arrived Monday in Piedras Negras, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas. The caravan is the first in recent months to head toward Texas instead of California.
The state government organized 49 buses from the interior cities of Saltillo and Arteaga to ensure the migrants’ safety, said Jose Borrego, a spokesman for the Coahuila state government.
But Mexican police and soldiers are holding the caravan in the factory and not letting them stay anywhere else, in part to prevent a mass attempt by migrants to cross the Rio Grande. Only migrants who receive a humanitarian visitor visa from Mexico were to be allowed to leave the factory, Borrego said.
Federal financial watchdog to gut most of its payday lending rules
NEW YORK — The nation’s federal financial watchdog said Wednesday that it plans to abolish most of its critical consumer protections governing payday lenders.
The move is a major win for the payday lending industry, which argued the government’s regulations could kill off a large chunk of its business. It’s also a big loss for consumer groups, who say payday lenders exploit the poor and disadvantaged with loans that have annual interest rates as much as 400 percent.
The cornerstone of the regulations was a requirement that lenders make sure borrowers could afford to repay a payday loan without being stuck in a cycle of debt, a standard known as “ability to repay.” This standard would be eliminated under the new rules. Another part of the rules, which would have limited the number of payday loans a person could roll over, was also eliminated.
Critics of the payday lending industry have argued that without these underwriting standards, the CFPB’s new regulations are effectively toothless. The main criticism of the payday lending industry was that many borrowers would take months to repay a loan that was originally designed only to last a couple of weeks, renewing the loan over and over again.