Ohio House Speaker: No likely fix to get Biden on ballot

Ohio House leaders said Tuesday there will probably not be a legislative solution to get President Joe Biden on the November ballot in Ohio. Current law says Ohio officials must certify the ballot on Aug. 7, 90 days before the election, but Biden won’t be nominated until the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19.

Despite the lack of a legislative solution, Ohio House leaders said they are confident Biden will be on the ballot in November.

House Speaker Jason Stephens, a Republican, said the Legislature has fixed the issue with convention dates in the past, but there was just not the will from the Legislature this time. The Ohio House and Senate had separate proposals to fix the deadline issue, but neither advanced when the Legislature was last in session on May 8.

House Minority Leader Allison Russo, a Democrat, said she believes the solution will come from within the national Democratic Party or through legal action.

China’s foreign minister calls Taiwan’s president ‘disgraceful’

BEIJING – Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called Taiwan’s newly inaugurated President Lai Ching-te “disgraceful” on Tuesday, stepping up Beijing’s rhetoric just a day after he took office. China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory, believes Lai to be a “separatist” and has rebuffed his offers of talks.

China’s government has generally avoided directly naming Lai since he won election in January, unlike in the run-up to the vote where they regularly denounced him by name and said the election was a choice between war and peace.

Speaking at a foreign ministers meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Kazakhstan, Wang said

Taiwan was the “core of core issues” for China, and independence activities the most destructive factor for peace in the Taiwan Strait.

“The ugly acts of Lai Ching-te and others who betray the nation and their ancestors is disgraceful,” China’s foreign ministry cited Wang as saying. Nothing can stop China from achieving “reunification” and bringing Taiwan “back to the motherland,” he added.

Russian court rejects appeal by dissident Kara-Murza

LONDON – A Moscow court ruled on Tuesday that Russia’s Investigative Committee is not obliged to investigate two attempts on the life of jailed dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, independent news outlet Mediazona reported.

Moscow-born Kara-Murza, who has both Russian and British passports, was sentenced in April 2023 to 25 years on treason charges after he repeatedly condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine and lobbied for Western sanctions against Moscow. His appeal against the sentence was rejected this month.

The 42-year-old politician and former journalist has survived two poisoning attempts. He became ill and was hospitalized in Moscow in 2015, a few months after his colleague, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, was gunned down while walking across a bridge near the Kremlin walls.

In 2017, Kara-Murza was placed in a medically induced coma and put on life support after the onset of similar symptoms. Kara-Murza’s wife Evgenia says the poison attempts have left him with a nerve disorder and she fears for his life in prison.

Chilean scientists track flamingos to preserve dwindling population

SANTIAGO, Chile – The flamingo population in Chile’s Los Flamencos national reserve is dwindling and scientists are trying to find out where the long-legged, pink-plumed birds are going. “The number of flamingos we’re seeing is much lower than two years ago,” said Guillermo Cubillos, head of conservation and investigations unit for Chile’s National Zoo.

Cubillos said that while between 100 and 150 flamingos were detected last year in the reserve in the country’s north, just 15 to 20 were accounted for this year.

“Threats like climate change, mining – in this case lithium – could potentially be a direct threat to this species and their habitat,” he said, noting that flamingos were highly sensitive to any changes in their environment, including noise from trucks and other human activity. “So any change in the ecosystem, flamingos are the first to feel it.”

To find out where flamingos are going, scientists are trapping the birds and attaching satellite transmitters to track their movements and see where they feed, breed and how they use their environment.

USA TODAY NETWORK AND REUTERS