The southern city of Houston late Saturday became the largest US metropolis to elect an openly gay mayor when Annise Parker, an open lesbian, claimed a solid victory over her rival.
"I know what this win means to many of us who thought we could never achieve high office," she said in her victory speech, at which she introduced her partner Kathy and their three children, according to the Houston Chronicle.
"I understand, because I feel it, too. But now, from this moment, let us join as one community," said Parker, 53.
According to local election data, Democrat Parker won about 53 percent of the vote and opponent Gene Locke, also a Democrat, took 47 percent.
The population of the Texas city is about 2.2 million.
Throughout her campaign, Parker enjoyed the support of gay and lesbian political organizations nationwide, though she did not make her sexual orientation a key issue in the campaign.
Several smaller US cities already have openly gay mayors, including Portland, Oregon; Providence, Rhode Island; and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Parker has worked in the Houston city administration for the last 11 years -- first on the city council, and for the last five years as city controller.
She spent 20 years in the oil and gas industry before entering public service.
KYIV (Reuters) -Ukrainian and Russian-installed officials reported shelling near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine on Monday, with both sides blaming each other days after the world nuclear watchdog warned of disaster if the fighting does not stop.
Russia and Ukraine have traded accusations this month of shelling near the plant, which dominates the south bank of a vast reservoir on the Dnipro River, amid fears of a nuclear catastrophe.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has warned Russian soldiers who attack Europe's largest nuclear power station or use it as a base to shoot from that they will become a "special target".
The plant is in the now Russian-controlled city of Enerhodar.
Yevhen Yevtushenko, head of the administration of the Nikopol district, which lies across the river from Enerhodar, accused Russian forces of shelling the city.
Vladimir Rogov, a Russia-installed official in Enerhodar, said that over the past two hours about 25 heavy artillery strikes from U.S.-made M777 howitzers had hit near the nuclear plant and residential areas.
Russia's Interfax news agency, quoting the press service of Enerhodar's Russian-appointed administration, said Ukrainian forces opened fire, with blasts near the power plant.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is seeking access to the plant, has warned of possible disaster. Nuclear experts fear fighting might damage the plant's spent fuel pools or reactors.
"The Russians think they can force the world to comply with their conditions by shelling the Zaporizhzhia NPP (nuclear power plant)," Andriy Yermak, chief of the Ukrainian presidential staff, wrote on Twitter. "This will not happen. Instead, our military will punish them by hard hitting with precision on pain points."
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for the establishment of a demilitarised zone around Zaporizhzhia. The United Nations has the logistics and security capacity to support an IAEA visit if both Russia and Ukraine agree, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu held a phone call with Guterres to discuss conditions for the safe functioning of the plant, the ministry said.
A spokeswoman for Russia's foreign ministry said it would do all it could to allow IAEA specialists to visit.
"In close cooperation with the agency and its leadership, we will do everything necessary for the IAEA specialists to be at the station and give a truthful assessment of the destructive actions of the Ukrainian side," spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
DEATH PENALTY
Ukraine, where parliament on Monday extended martial law for a further three months, has said for weeks it is planning a counteroffensive to recapture Zaporizhzhia and neighbouring Kherson province, the largest part of the territory Russia seized after its Feb. 24 invasion and still holds.
Ukrainian forces reported heavy Russian shelling and attempts to advance on several towns in the eastern region of Donetsk that has become a key focus of the near six-month-old war, but said they had repelled many of the attacks.
The General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces also reported Russian shelling of more than a dozen towns on the southern front - particularly the Kherson region, mainly held by Russian forces but where Ukrainian troops are steadily retaking territory.
A Russian-backed separatist court in Donetsk charged five foreign nationals captured fighting with Ukrainian forces with being mercenaries, saying three could face the death penalty, Russian media reported.
Russia calls its invasion of Ukraine a "special military operation" to demilitarise its smaller neighbour and protect Russian-speaking communities. Ukraine and Western backers accuse Moscow of waging an imperial-style war of conquest.
The conflict has pushed Moscow-Washington relations to a low point, with Russia warning it may sever them.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was ready to offer modern weapons to its allies, using a speech at an arms show near Moscow to boast of Russia's advanced weapons capabilities.
"(We) are ready to offer our allies the most modern types of weapons, from small arms to armoured vehicles and artillery to combat aviation and unmanned aerial vehicles," Putin said at the opening ceremony of the "Army-2022" forum.
"Almost all of them have been used more than once in real combat operations."
Putin's military has performed worse than expected in Ukraine. It has been beaten back from Ukraine's two biggest cities and is making slow headway, at heavy cost, in the east of the country, making the war an unconvincing showcase for Russia's arms industry.
(Reporting by Natalia Zinets in Kyiv, Yoruk Isik and Ece Toksabay in Istanbul, Andrea Shalal in Yuzhne, Maya Gebeily in Beirut and Jonathan Saul in London, and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Lincoln Feast and Nick Macfie; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Alex Richardson and Philippa Fletcher
This Sunday, former President Donald Trump called on the FBI to return documents they recovered at Mar-a-Lago that he says are are protected by attorney-client privilege.
Trump was referencing a Fox News report that the FBI seized information covered by attorney-client privilege during its search at Trump’s Palm Beach resort. The network also reported that some some of the material seized could be covered by executive privilege.
Speaking on CNN this Monday, legal expert Jennifer Rodgers said Trump's claims are a "red herring."
"Attorney-client privilege documents are attorney-client communications," Rodgers said. "So nothing that's classified at any level of classification and nothing that belongs to the government as a presidential record is going to be attorney-client privilege."
Rodgers went on to say they is any documents that were recovered do enter into that category, the government will put a "filter team" in place "to weed those documents out."
"So this is really a claim without any basis at all."
FBI agents recovered records marked "top secret" during their search of former president Trump's Florida estate, according to documents made public last week in a probe that includes possible violations of the US Espionage Act.
The warrant and related materials, unsealed by a Florida judge, showed agents took away with them a significant amount of classified files after the raid, which ignited a political firestorm in an already bitterly divided country.
The extraordinary search was partly based on suspicions of violations of the US Espionage Act related to the illegal retention of sensitive defense documents, the warrant showed.
Some of the papers were marked "top secret" and were "meant to be only available in special government facilities," said the unsealed seven-page federal court filing.
The filing contained a list of items removed from Mar-a-Lago, including information about the "President of France," and the warrant to search the palatial estate in Palm Beach.
Attorney and former senior advisor to then-President Donald Trump, Eric Herschmann, has been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury, after his explosive primetime testimony before the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack last month.
“A federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 attack has subpoenaed Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann for documents and testimony, according to a person familiar with the matter,” Politico reports.
Herschmann, who also defended Trump as part of the first Senate impeachment trial, famously attended the “craziest meeting of the Trump presidency,” a post-election Oval Office meeting during which he allegedly told conspiracy theory promoter and Trump loyalist Patrick Byrne, “Do you even know who the fuck I am, you idiot?”
In February of 2021, less than one month after the January 6 insurrection, Axios reported on that meeting, adding this exchange between Herschmann and Trump’s “Kraken” attorney Sidney Powell:
“Powell, fixing on Trump, continued to elaborate on a fantastical election narrative involving Venezuela, Iran, China and others. She named a county in Georgia where she claimed she could prove that [voting machine manufacturer] Dominion had illegally flipped the vote,” Axios reported. “Herschmann interrupted to point out that Trump had actually won the Georgia county in question: ‘So your theory is that Dominion intentionally flipped the votes so we could win that county?'”
Herschmann, who is also becoming known for his colorful language, says he told coup memo author and far right attorney John Eastman to “Get a great f’ing criminal defense lawyer,” on January 7, 2021, one day after the insurrection.
“He started to ask me about something dealing with Georgia, preserving something, potentially for appeal,” Herschmann says in his testimony to the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, NBC News reported. “And I said to him, are you out of your f’ing mind? Right? I said I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on, ‘orderly transition.’”
“Now I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life: Get a great f’ing criminal defense lawyer. You’re gonna need it.”
During the first impeachment hearing, Herschmann argued that Trump should not be convicted by the Senate, claiming he was no threat to the nation because his approval rating was high.
The southern city of Houston late Saturday became the largest US metropolis to elect an openly gay mayor when Annise Parker, an open lesbian, claimed a solid victory over her rival.
