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Josseli Barnica died days state passed six-week abortion ban and doctors delayed treatment, ProPublica reports

Just days after Texas banned abortion past six weeks of pregnancy, a woman died after doctors in the state delayed treating her miscarriage for 40 hours, ProPublica reported on Wednesday.

Experts told ProPublica that the September 2021 death of Josseli Barnica, a 28-year-old mother, was “preventable”. Barnica is the third woman reported by ProPublica to have died in recent years after being unable to access abortion legally or having her medical care delayed.

Although US abortion bans – which more than a dozen states have enacted in the two years since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade – technically permit the procedure in medical emergencies, doctors across the country have said that the laws are worded so vaguely that they don’t know when they can legally intervene. Instead, many physicians say they have been forced to wait until a patient is on the brink of death – then attempt to pull them back.

• Elon Musk must attend an emergency court hearing in Philadelphia on Thursday to address a bid by the city’s top prosecutor to stop the Tesla CEO and his political action committee from continuing to award $1 million prizes to registered voters in the swing state of Pennsylvania.
• Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner revealed his lawsuit against Musk and the America PAC “triggered an avalanche of [social media] posts from Musk’s followers,” many of whom “made antisemitic attacks on Krasner.”
• Krasner’s lawsuit accuses Musk and the PAC of operating an illegal lottery and trying to influence voters in the presidential election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Facing a shortage of planes due to Western sanctions, Russia is in talks with some Central Asian countries for their airlines to run domestic flights and help meet a pick up in travel demand.

Russian airlines, which use many Western aircraft delivered before the war in Ukraine, are struggling to meet growing demand for air travel as sanctions hinder access to parts and domestic production takes time to ramp up.

Transport Minister Roman Starovoit said last week Russia was in talks with so-called "friendly" countries, including Kazakhstan, about foreign airlines operating domestic flights, Russian news agencies reported.

Russia has also approached Uzbekistan, which is considering the proposal, an Uzbek government source told Reuters.

The bitter nationwide debate over transgender rights is playing out on a very personal level in a federal court lawsuit filed in Virginia by a former Liberty University employee. She was fired by the evangelical Christian school after disclosing her identity as a transgender woman.

The lawsuit on behalf of Ellenor Zinski was filed in July by the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and the Richmond law firm of Butler Curwood. It alleges that she was fired last year from her job on Liberty’s Information Technology help desk solely because of her gender identify, in violation of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Earlier this month, the conservative legal organization Liberty Counsel filed a brief on behalf of the university asking the federal district court to dismiss the lawsuit. The brief contends that the Civil Rights Act explicitly permits religious educational institutions to make employment decisions consistent with their religious doctrine — in this case a doctrinal statement asserting that “denial of birth sex by self-identification with a different gender” is sinful.

Naomi Whitehead attains status after death of Elizabeth Francis, who was third-oldest known living person in world

A 114-year-old woman residing in Pennsylvania who says she never smoked or drank alcohol recently became the oldest known living person in North America.

Naomi Whitehead attained that status after the 22 October death of Elizabeth Francis, 115, a Louisiana native who moved to Houston and was the world’s third-oldest person, according to the LongeviQuest website, an authority on supercentenarians – those who are 110 or older.

Two pieces of advice attributed to Francis and widely circulated after her last birthday in July were “if the Lord gave it to you, use it” and “speak your mind, don’t bite your tongue.”

Death toll is expected to rise as search continues for missing people, with residents urged to stay off roads

At least 63 people are feared to have died after torrential rains hit southern and eastern Spain on Tuesday, bringing flash floods that raged through towns and cut off roads and railway lines.

As the search continued for the missing, people were urged to stay off the roads and away from swollen rivers amid warnings that the severe weather was not over and that the number of fatalities could still rise.

The Valencian government’s emergency coordination centre said its multiple victims protocol had been activated, adding that the latest number of known fatalities in the region was 62.

Wikipedia is embroiled in a major legal battle in India that experts say could impact how the online encyclopedia functions in the country.

The battle stems from a 20m rupee ($237,874; £183,012) lawsuit filed by India’s largest newswire service against Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, for allegedly publishing defamatory content against it. 

In the lawsuit in the Delhi high court, Asian News International (ANI) said a paragraph in its description on Wikipedia falsely accuses it of being "a propaganda tool for the incumbent [federal] government” and of "distributing material from fake news websites" and demanded the page be taken down.

Wikipedia says the content on the website is completely managed by volunteers and that the Foundation has no control over it.

In August, the court ordered Wikipedia to disclose who made these allegedly defamatory edits to the ANI page - and threatened to shut down the website if it didn't comply with its orders.

The EU has has increased tariffs, up to 45.3% on Chinese-imported EVs. China has slammed the decision, with EU members Germany and Hungary also vocally criticizing it.

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The EU argues that Chinese subsidies hurt competitiveness at home. The European Commission identified preferential financing and grants, along with land, batteries, and raw materials offered below-market prices.

The commission argues that China's spare production capacity, roughly 3 million EVs annually, is twice the size of the EU markets. The US and Canada had already enforced 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs, making Europe the most obvious market for these Chines cars now.

EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis said Tuesday that "by adopting these proportionate and targeted measures after a rigorous investigation, we're standing up for fair market practices and for the European industrial base."

Volkswagen and unions are set for talks over management plans for plant closures and mass layoffs. The talks come as Europe's biggest car manufacturer reported a profit slump due to high costs and growing competition.

Car giant Volkswagen and labor leaders were set for talks on Wednesday, as company bosses said they would table proposals to tackle high costs and growing competition.

The discussions come on the same day VW announced a 64% plunge in profits and amid concern about widespread job cuts.

For the last several months, Republicans have been perpetuating the false narrative that non-citizens are illegally voting en-masse on behalf of Democrats this cycle, as Donald Trump and his supporters manufacture voter fraud hysteria that they can point to if they lose next week.

Republican state officials across the country have bolstered this effort by announcing various voter roll purge programs and legal challenges to remove supposed non-citizens from the rolls in recent weeks and months — ominously close to the election.

One by one, however, the courts have swiftly shut down these programs and dismissed the lawsuits alleging issues with voter rolls. The across-the-board dismissals have only reinforced the idea that the GOP non-citizen voting myths have only ever been a messaging campaign meant for an audience of one.

Ex-president also says ‘worst gang members’ are entering US, and hinted at ‘transgender operations all over the place’

Donald Trump accused Kamala Harris of running a campaign of hate at his Mar-a-Lago club in a display of projection days after his rally in New York became embroiled by racist and crude comments that aides worried might have broken through to voters in the final days of the presidential race.

The event was open to reporters but Trump took no questions – he would have almost certainly been asked about the caustic rally rhetoric – and in an attempt to change the narrative, argued Kamala Harris was stoking division.

It was also an attempt to pre-empt what could be a damaging day for the Trump campaign. Later on Tuesday, Harris will speak at a rally on the Ellipse in Washington – the same site as Trump’s rally just before the January 6 Capitol attack – to tie him directly to the riot.

Revealed: officers appear to hold Michael Kenyon, 30, to hot pavement in July, causing third-degree burns

On 6 July 2024, a day when temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona, reached 114F (45.5C), Michael Kenyon was walking to his local store to buy a soda when two officers of the city’s police department stopped him.

They hastily told him he was being detained, Kenyon recalls, without clearly stating why. Two more officers arrived.

Surveillance footage from across the parking lot, which was viewed by the Guardian, shows the 30-year-old on the pavement soon after, with several officers on top of him and holding him down. Once they lift Kenyon off the ground after roughly four minutes, he appears limp.