As 'The King,' Pelé enchanted fans and dazzled opponents
SAO PAULO (AP) — Pelé was simply “The King.” He embraced “the beautiful game” of soccer in his 1958 World Cup debut for Brazil and never really let go.
He won a record three World Cups and was widely regarded as one of his sport's greatest players. His majestic and galvanizing presence set him among the most recognizable figures in the world.
Pelé died Thursday at 82. He had undergone treatment for colon cancer since 2021.
Pelé was among the game’s most prolific scorers and spent nearly two decades enchanting fans and dazzling opponents. His grace, athleticism and moves on soccer’s highest stage transfixed all. He orchestrated a fast, fluid style of play that revolutionized the sport — a flair that personified Brazilian elegance on the field.
He carried his country to soccer’s heights and became a global ambassador for his sport in a journey that began on the streets of Sao Paulo state, where he would kick a sock stuffed with newspapers or rags.
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Time of triumph for GOP turns into 'distraction' with Santos
WASHINGTON (AP) — It should be a time of triumph for Republicans ready to take back control of the House in the new Congress next week, but their leaders are struggling with an embarrassing distraction about one of their own: What to do about George Santos?
Weeks after winning a district that helped Republicans secure their razor-thin House majority, the congressman-elect is under investigation in New York after acknowledging he lied about his heritage, education and professional pedigree as he campaigned for office.
The top House Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, and his leadership team have kept silent about Santos, who is set to take the oath of office Tuesday, even after he publicly admitted to fabricating swaths of his biography. The now-embattled Republican has shown no signs of stepping aside, punting the decision to hold him accountable to his party and to the Congress, where he could quickly face a House ethics committee investigation once sworn into office.
Representatives for McCarthy, who is running to become the next House speaker, did not respond when asked what action he may take relating to Santos. On Tuesday, Santos was asked on Fox News about the “blatant lies” and responded that he had "made a mistake.”
Democrats, who will be in the minority during the upcoming session, are expected to pursue several avenues against the 34-year-old Santos, including a potential complaint with the Federal Election Commission and introducing a resolution to expel him once he's a sitting member of Congress, according to a senior Democratic aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
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Sarajevo’s agony echoes as Ukraine braces for a dark winter
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Vildana Mutevelić huddled in her apartment with her two young children and elderly cousins. They had no heat, electricity or running water as artillery shells tore the roof off their building and almost took their lives.
To survive, she improvised.
Mutevelić made a lamp out of used engine oil, water and a shoelace for a wick. She cooked on a fire fueled by books, furniture, shoes or clothes. A plastic spoon, she discovered, when lit, worked well as a temporary flashlight if she ventured outside. Plastic sheets covered the blown-out windows, a flimsy buffer against the bitter cold. Her news of the world came from a neighbor who powered a radio with a car battery.
“The electricity failed right away,” Mutevelić, 70, said through a translator. “And everything we had in our freezers, it melted. Those were our stocks, basically. That’s all.”
For Mutevelić, these are memories from three decades ago, when Bosnian Serbs besieged Sarajevo, causing thousands of civilian casualties. But it’s all happening again in Ukraine. Russia’s armed forces have aimed their firepower at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as winter weather sets in.
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Death toll climbs as blizzard-battered Buffalo area digs out
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Roads reopened Thursday in storm-besieged Buffalo as authorities continued searching for people who may have died or are stuck and suffering after last week's blizzard.
The driving ban in New York’s second-most-populous city was lifted just after midnight Thursday, Mayor Byron Brown announced.
At least 40 deaths in western New York, most of them in Buffalo, have been reported from the blizzard that raged across much of the country, with Buffalo in its crosshairs on Friday and Saturday.
“Significant progress has been made” on snow removal, Brown said at a news conference late Wednesday. Suburban roads, major highways and Buffalo Niagara International Airport had already reopened.
Still, Brown urged residents not to drive if they didn’t have to.
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Biden signs $1.7 trillion bill funding government operations
KINGSHILL, U.S. Virgin Islands (AP) — President Joe Biden on Thursday signed a $1.7 trillion spending bill that will keep the federal government operating through the end of the federal budget year in September 2023, and provide tens of billions of dollars in new aid to Ukraine for its fight against the Russian military.
Biden had until late Friday to sign the bill to avoid a partial government shutdown.
The Democratic-controlled House passed the bill 225-201, mostly along party lines, just before Christmas. The House vote came a day after the Senate, also led by Democrats, voted 68-29 to pass the bill with significantly more Republican support.
Biden had said passage was proof that Republicans and Democrats can work together.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader who hopes to become speaker when a new session Congress opens on Jan. 3, argued during floor debate that the bill spends too much and does too little to curb illegal immigration and the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. from Mexico.
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Vivienne Westwood, influential fashion maverick, dies at 81
LONDON (AP) — Vivienne Westwood, an influential fashion maverick who played a key role in the punk movement, died Thursday at 81.
Westwood's eponymous fashion house announced her death on social media platforms, saying she died peacefully. A cause was not disclosed.
“Vivienne continued to do the things she loved, up until the last moment, designing, working on her art, writing her book, and changing the world for the better,” the statement said.
Westwood’s fashion career began in the 1970s when her radical approach to urban street style took the world by storm. But she went on to enjoy a long career highlighted by a string of triumphant runway shows and museum exhibitions.
The name Westwood became synonymous with style and attitude even as she shifted focus from year to year, her range vast and her work never predictable.
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Southwest: Normal flight operations to resume Friday
DALLAS (AP) — Southwest Airlines said it expects to return to normal operations Friday after more than a week of widespread flight cancellations that started with a winter storm and spiraled out of control because of a breakdown with staffing technology.
If Thursday turns out to be the last day of the Southwest crisis, it will be marked by about 2,350 canceled flights, nearly 60% of the airline's schedule.
Southwest declined to say how many people have been affected, but it is likely that far more than 1 million have had a flight canceled.
The airline has scrapped more than 13,000 flights since Dec. 22, according to tracking service FlightAware. Its planes have 143 to 175 seats and were likely nearly fully booked around the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.
Airline executives said that crew-scheduling technology — a major cause of the meltdown — has caught up with the backlog of pilots and flight attendants stranded in wrong locations. Southwest operated 1,600 flights on Thursday, including 104 that carried no passengers but instead served to put planes and crews in position for full operations on Friday.
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Report shines new light on execution secrecy in Tennessee
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — When multiple pharmaceutical companies objected to Tennessee using their drugs to kill death row inmates several years back, the scramble to find lethal injection chemicals needed to carry out state-sanctioned executions grew frantic.
“What are your thoughts on acquiring it through a veterinarian?" an unidentified official wrote in a 2017 text. “They sometimes have better access to it since it's widely used for euthanasia in animals.”
“How would that even work?” asked a separate employee.
“They buy the stuff by the case,” the first official later responded.
These text messages emerged among hundreds of documents released this week as part of a blistering independent report on Tennessee's lethal injection system. The communications span years, depicting a state determined to push forward with executions despite roadblocks to obtaining the drugs and questions about whether revamped procedures would keep inmates from feeling pain as they are put to death.
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Probe: Alzheimer's drug approval 'rife with irregularities'
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration’s contentious approval of a questionable Alzheimer’s drug took another hit Thursday as congressional investigators called the process “rife with irregularities.”
The 18-month investigation by two House committees detailed “atypical collaboration” between FDA regulators and a company it’s supposed to oversee -- Aduhelm manufacturer Biogen. The probe also cited Biogen documents saying the company intended to “make history” when it set what investigators called an “unjustifiably high” initial price of $56,000 a year for the drug.
The criticism comes as the FDA is expected to decide whether to approve another new Alzheimer’s drug in January. Thursday’s report urged the agency to “take swift action” to ensure that any future Alzheimer's approvals aren’t met with “the same doubts about the integrity of FDA’s review.”
The FDA and Biogen issued statements Thursday defending the Aduhelm approval process.
In 2021, the FDA overruled its own independent scientific advisers when it approved Aduhelm even though research studies failed to prove it really helped patients. Biogen had halted two studies after disappointing results suggested the drug wasn’t slowing Alzheimer’s inevitable worsening -- only to later contend that a new analysis of one study showed higher doses offered an incremental benefit.
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Final goodbye: Recalling influential people who died in 2022
One would have to go back hundreds of years to find a monarch who reigned longer than Queen Elizabeth II.
In her 70 years on the throne, she helped modernize the monarchy across decades of enormous social change, royal marriages and births, and family scandals. For most Britons, she was the only monarch they had ever known.
Her death in September was arguably the most high-profile death this year, prompting a collective outpouring of grief and respect for her steady leadership as well as some criticism of the monarchy's role in colonialism. She likely met more people than anyone in history, and her image — on stamps, coins and bank notes — was among the most reproduced in the world.
Other world leaders who died in 2022 include former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died in August. His efforts to revitalize the Soviet Union led to the collapse of communism there and the end of the Cold War. He eventually resigned after an attempted coup, just as republics declared independence from the Soviet Union.
The year also saw the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was fatally shot during a campaign speech in July.
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