Politics in the air as Biden visits future Intel plant
NEW ALBANY, OHIO » President Joe Biden steered clear of partisan politics at Friday's groundbreaking celebration for a huge new computer chip facility in Ohio — as a tough Senate contest in that state and a Democratic candidate seeking to distance himself from Biden reflected the challenge of translating White House policy wins into political gains.
Biden, a major force behind the legislation that helped lure Intel, went to suburban Columbus to take a victory lap just as voters in the state are starting to tune in to the Senate race between Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan and Republican author and venture capital executive J.D. Vance. They're competing in a former swing state that has trended Republican over the past decade.
Ryan attended the event but raised questions in interviews about whether he thinks Biden should pursue reelection in 2024. Vance did not attend.
Man gets 60 years for filming himself raping 7-year-old girl
DALLAS » A Dallas-area man was sentenced to 60 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to filming himself raping a 7-year-old girl, authorities said Friday.
Mark Allen Miller of Rowlett was sentenced Thursday by a federal judge in Dallas after pleading guilty to two counts of producing child pornography, the U.S. attorney's office said.
Miller, 35, was arrested Jan. 12 after the girl's father, with whom Miller was staying, said he walked in on Miller raping the girl. Miller admitted to police that he had been molesting the girl for years.
The father told investigators that he and Miller had been friends for more than a decade and that Miller was staying overnight at their home. The father saw that Miller wasn't in the living room where he'd been sleeping and found Miller raping her in the girl's bedroom. The father held Miller at gunpoint until police arrived.
Opposition mostly absent as 1st election held since invasion
MOSCOW » Russians on Friday began voting in the first nationwide elections since the invasion of Ukraine in a climate of wartime censorship and repression, with the Kremlin trying to assure the public that it was business as usual.
The vote for local and regional governments across the country includes the first municipal-level elections in the capital of Moscow since 2017, when the opposition won a sizable minority of seats despite the Kremlin's dominance of the political system and accusations of fraud. But the ranks of the opposition have since been depleted even further. Many anti-government politicians have fled the country, while others have been arrested or blocked from running by the election commissions.
“Real competition this year is at one of the lowest rates in a decade,” according to an assessment by Golos, a Russian independent elections watchdog.