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Mormon church opposes Utah LGBTQ conversion therapy ban

A proposed conversion therapy ban in Utah is in danger of being derailed after the influential Church of Jesus of Christ of Latter-day Saints came out Tuesday night in opposition, just months after it said it wouldn't stand in the way of a similar measure under consideration. State regulators crafted the rule at the request of Republican Gov. Gary Herbert, a member of the church, who in June asked for a set of rules after a similar bill died in the Legislature despite the church not taking a position. The church's statement strikes a blow to the hopes of LGBTQ advocates hoping Utah could join 18 states that have enacted laws banning or restricting conversion therapy that's opposed by the American Psychological Association.

Republicans infuriated by Schiff's secrecy

Trump and the White House have denied those claims. “Volker was devastating for the Democrats’ narrative,” the Republican staffer involved in impeachment asserted, though he was unable to provide any details.

Here's everyone who has been sentenced in the college admissions scandal so far

Felicity Huffman became the first parent in the college admissions scandal to be sentenced. Here's everyone else facing jail time or fines.

Amazon fish wears nature's 'bullet-proof vest' to thwart piranhas

One of the world's largest freshwater fish is protected by the natural equivalent of a "bullet-proof vest," helping it thrive in the dangerous waters of the Amazon River basin with flexible armor-like scales able to withstand ferocious piranha attacks. Researchers from the University of California, San Diego and University of California, Berkeley on Wednesday described the unique structure and impressive properties of the dermal armor of the fish, called Arapaima gigas.

The Ukrainian Prosecutor Behind the Dossier Targeting Hunter Biden

KYIV, Ukraine -- When the Ukrainian prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk compiled a seven-page dossier in English that accused the son of former Vice President Joe Biden of corruption, he helped set off a political firestorm that has led to the impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump. But even as he was reopening a corruption case related to Hunter Biden's service on the board of Burisma Holdings, a major Ukrainian gas company, Kulyk himself was under a cloud of suspicion. He has been indicted three times on corruption charges and accused of bringing politically motivated criminal cases against his opponents. In a Ukrainian security clearance form, Kulyk admitted having ties to a warlord in eastern Ukraine accused of working for the Russian intelligence services. Yet none of this -- including the case related to the Bidens -- has seemed to harm the career of Kulyk, who remains a department head in the Ukrainian prosecutor general's office under a new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. "In Ukraine, a toxic person can keep a job," said Yuriy Butusov, editor-in-chief of the political news outlet Tsenzor.net. "That's not a problem." Kulyk's continued presence in the halls of government illustrates the blending of politics and criminal justice in Ukraine, where investigations are routinely used as political weapons or to grease the business interests of wealthy insiders. And the spread of his dossier in Washington shows how these tactics have spilled into American politics. In a July phone call that is central to the impeachment inquiry, Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate the Biden case, including supposed conflicts of interest by Biden when he was vice president, and a debunked theory that Ukraine, not Russia, hacked the 2016 presidential election. Zelenskiy agreed, according to White House notes on the call, saying a new prosecutor general "will look into the situation," though he said later that the new prosecutor would act fairly and independently. In a statement, the prosecutor general's office declined to clarify if Kulyk retains control over the Biden case, which is now under an audit that delays any prosecutorial decisions. Kulyk did not respond to requests for an interview. Kulyk's dossier did more than revive the Biden case. The seven-page document he compiled and circulated also accused American diplomats of covering up for crimes committed by the Bidens, a spurious theory that played a role in the recall of the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. A strapping former military prosecutor with a buzz cut, Kulyk pivoted his allegiance to Zelenskiy late in the Ukrainian presidential race last spring, allowing him to continue holding sway over important matters. Currently, he is pursuing a case against a former central bank governor that could aid a powerful oligarch, Ihor Kolomoisky, a former business partner of Zelenskiy. The case has become entangled in talks with the International Monetary Fund about a $5 billion aid program for Ukraine. Those broke off last month amid concerns about Kolomoisky's influence on the government. Calls seeking comment from Kolomoisky on a phone number he has used in the past went unanswered. The Kolomoisky case and Kulyk's role in it have become a credibility test for Zelenskiy, who swept to office on an anticorruption platform. "If he doesn't fire Kulyk it will be a big negative for him, because then no one will believe that he is a reformer," said Valeria Gontareva, the former central banker involved in the case. "If this country doesn't get real rule of law then all of our reforms will be easily reversed." In March, Kulyk, who with a former prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, had coordinated with Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to promote the allegations against the Bidens, suddenly switched allegiance in Ukraine's domestic politics. He and Lutsenko had been seen as staunch enforcers for President Petro Poroshenko. But two days before the first round of the country's presidential election -- with opinion polls showing Zelenskiy crushing Poroshenko -- Kulyk filed criminal corruption charges against dozens of Poroshenko aides. He then went on a television talk show to discuss the highlights of these cases. An on-air confrontation ensued. Poroshenko rushed to the studio and accused Kulyk of naked political abuse of the justice system. The 11th-hour smear nevertheless reinforced Zelenskiy's campaign message that the country needed a new leader to root out corruption.Corruption allegations trailed Kulyk long before his role in the Biden case. In 2016, he was indicted on charges of illegal enrichment, with prosecutors noting that his expensive tastes seemed incongruous with his modest salary as a prosecutor. Court documents describe Kulyk as owning assets equivalent to 1,615 times the minimum cost of living for Ukraine, including two apartments in central Kyiv and a Toyota Land Cruiser that together cost more than four years' worth of his income. "In any other country a prosecutor like this would have been fired a long time ago," said Andrii Savin, a lawyer with Ukraine's Anticorruption Action Center who has followed Kulyk's career closely. "But what happened in this country? The prosecutor general promoted him." Kulyk has also come under fire for his ties to a man believed to be a Russian intelligence agent in his hometown, Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine. Kulyk disclosed the friendship in an application for security clearance in 2014 as war broke out between Russia-backed separatists and Ukraine, Kulyk's former boss in the military prosecutor's office, Anatoly Matios, told Ukrainian media in 2017. Kulyk had known the man, Yevhen Zhylin, when Kulyk served in the Kharkiv regional prosecutor's office and Zhylin ran a martial arts club in the city, called Oplot, or the Stronghold. Oplot was subsequently transformed into a large, Russian-backed paramilitary unit fighting on the separatist side. Matios told the Ukrainian media that Kulyk had passed the security clearance, but added: "I will tell you something: The moral principles of this person are worthless." Investigators who pursued the illegal enrichment case against Kulyk did, however, find the source of one unexplained asset: the Toyota Land Cruiser. It was registered to the father of Zhylin, the commander on the pro-Russian side in the war. In the middle of his corruption trial, Kulyk was transferred from the military prosecutor's service to Kyiv, where he became a department head in the prosecutor general office's international department. (Yovanovitch, then the new American ambassador, was among those who objected to the move.) It was in this position that Kulyk began digging into Burisma, the gas company where Hunter Biden served on the board. In an interview published in The Hill in April, Kulyk told the conservative commentator John Solomon that he had been trying to give the United States government what he said was evidence of sweeping wrongdoing by Democrats and American diplomats, but had been blocked by officials in the American Embassy in Kyiv. The substance of the interview was consistent with the theory laid out in the dossier he compiled in late 2018, according to his former colleagues at the prosecutor's office. The dossier, which was leaked by a Ukrainian blogger, asserted that Ukrainian prosecutors had evidence that "may attest to the commission of corrupt actions aimed at personal unlawful enrichment by the former Vice President of the United States Joe Biden." Lutsenko, the former prosecutor general, said in an interview that he never gave Kulyk's dossier to Giuliani. But notes taken by Giuliani during their meeting in January, passed to Congress this month by the State Department inspector general, mirror the ideas laid out in Kulyk's memo. And in her testimony in the impeachment inquiry on Friday, Yovanovitch, the former ambassador, suggested that Kulyk's dossier, or its main points, had filtered even higher in the American government. She said her recall from Kyiv last spring was tied to "unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company

Officials eye explosion at California fuel site after quake

Officials were trying to determine Wednesday if a 4.5 magnitude earthquake triggered an explosion at a fuel storage facility in the San Francisco Bay Area that started a fire and kept thousands of people in their homes for hours because of potentially unhealthy air. It occurred 15 hours before the fire Tuesday that consumed thousands of gallons of ethanol, a gasoline additive. The fire badly damaged or destroyed two tanks containing about 250,000 gallons of ethanol.

An Equestrian Was Shot by Her Olympic Trainer, Then Pummeled Online

LONG VALLEY, N.J. -- The gunshots rang out from the back porch of the farmhouse, a little ways off from the stables and Olympic-level dressage arena, the improbable sound rising over the 53-acre estate. A woman had been shot twice in the chest by a man well known not merely to her but also to just about everyone in the rarefied dressage community: Michael Barisone, an Olympic rider, the owner of the farm and the woman's trainer. The shooting was the shocking culmination of a landlord-tenant dispute that the woman, Lauren Kanarek, had documented all summer on social media, openly fearful of what might happen. "I'm afraid," she wrote, five days before the attack. "I'm being bullied." Barisone, who was charged with two counts of attempted murder, said that he shot Kanarek in self-defense. In the week before the shooting, Barisone had called 911 several times, claiming that she and her fiance were squatters on his farm and were harassing him; in one call, Barisone described the conflict as "a war. And it's going to be dealt with." Kanarek survived the attack but was placed in a medically induced coma. Finally, after an extensive surgery to repair damage from a bullet to her left lung and more than a week of hospitalization, she had recovered enough to start reconnecting with the world. The first thing she saw, she recalled, were comments that "wished I was dead." "They know there is a person suffering multiple gunshot wounds, bullet wounds," she said in an interview, her voice raspy where the ventilator had damaged her vocal cords. "To say those things, is something no one could ever imagine." Seldom do attempted murder cases elicit sympathy for the suspect; rarer still are cases where the victim is blamed. And yet Kanarek somehow found herself the target of an online lynch mob. "Yes, you were shot by an obviously provoked man … but you accept zero accountability," reads one direct reply to Kanarek on an online forum hosted by The Chronicle of the Horse, an equestrian publication. "What a narcissist. It's always someone else's fault." The blind sympathy for Barisone lies partly in his standing in the dressage world; he served as a reserve rider on the U.S. dressage team in the 2008 Olympics and coached Allison Brock, one of the riders for the U.S. squad that won a team bronze in the 2016 Olympics. Few fans could fathom his involvement, and many who tried to find reason behind the shooting ended up focusing on his claims that Kanarek had serially harassed him. Just before the shooting, Kanarek had asked the Division of Child Protection and Permanency to investigate Barisone for potential abuse of a child of his fiancee, according to Jeffery Simms, the lawyer who represented him at the arraignment. "The alleged victim is not a victim," Simms told reporters then. "She's a villain." Kanarek said she did not recall placing the call to child services. Barisone's supporters also point to Kanarek's inflammatory social media presence. She has at least one pending charge against her for cyberstalking in North Carolina, where she used to live."Lauren Kanarek took her bullying too far. Everyone has limits," Susan Wachowich, who runs a popular site covering the sport, wrote on Twitter the day of the shooting. She wrote that the site "100% supports Michael Barisone in his actions." The post has since been deleted by Twitter as a violation of its standards. Wachowich did not respond to a request for comment. As is her way, Kanarek is fighting back. In flurries of posts since her attack, Kanarek has replied to strangers, friends and foes, unspooling her version of events and reminding the people who pile up on her that she was nearly killed. "No matter what -- I was shot twice. It was not in self-defense. While plenty more story exists, what else matters?" she wrote in one response. "Do you condone trainers shooting their students trying to kill them? Sure looks that way." Kanarek met Barisone at a horse competition in Wellington, Florida, in 2018. She decided to move her horses from North Carolina to his Hawthorne Hill farm in Long Valley, in the heart of New Jersey's horse country, for the chance to train with an Olympic great, she said. As part of the arrangement, she and her fiance, Robert Goodwin, would live on the property, in an apartment in a farmhouse where Barisone lived. Tensions grew after a flood in the farmhouse forced Barisone and his fiancee to move into a barn on the property, Kanarek said. Barisone tried to kick Kanarek and Goodwin out of the apartment, according to Kanarek, so he could live there; they refused. A month before the shooting, Barisone began contacting people who had online disputes with Kanarek. He told them that he was trying to build a legal case against Kanarek and Goodwin, and eject them from his property. Joey Ann Stagaard, a hair restoration specialist from New Jersey, received one such call about a week before the shooting. "'I know that you are a victim of this girl Lauren's torture, and she is on our farm,' " Stagaard recalled Barisone telling her over the phone. "He said, 'She is causing nothing but havoc here; we are losing our minds.' " Stagaard has been embroiled in a long online spat with Kanarek, whom she has never met, over a former shared love interest, she said. Her public animus toward Kanarek has continued even after the shooting. Stagaard was one of several women, including a North Carolina-based horsewomen named Kathryn Parkinson, who filed a complaint last spring to the U.S. Equestrian Federation and SafeSport, a nonprofit organization that investigates various forms of misconduct in Olympic sports. They accused Kanarek of bullying. The federation said the complaint was investigated and found not to merit any action. "It seemed to us more like a personal matter," said Vicki Lowell, a spokeswoman for the federation. Separately, Kanarek said she had complained to SafeSport about Barisone this summer. Dan Hill, a spokesman for SafeSport, said he could not confirm whether a report was filed.In the meantime, the situation at Hawthorne Hill worsened in the weeks before the shooting: Police were summoned to the farm at least six times, according to recordings of 911 calls placed by Kanarek, her family and Barisone. "These people have been living here, and they're causing us hell," Barisone told the operator July 31, according to recordings obtained by news site Patch. Three days before the attack, on Aug. 4, Barisone called 911 a final time. "I'm taking my life back," he told the operator. When police responded the day of the shooting, they found Barisone pinned beneath Goodwin, a black and pink 9-millimeter Ruger pistol under both of them. The police report indicated that he also shot at Goodwin but missed. As medical personnel and police officers circled through, Barisone was overheard repeating the same sentence: "I had a good life." Barisone is being held in a Morris County jail, after being refused bail by a judge. His current lawyer, Edward J. Bilinkas, did not respond to multiple emails and calls requesting comment. To Kanarek and her lawyer, the details of the spiraling conflict between trainer and student, whether bandied about in the courtroom or on Facebook, are beside the point. "She is the victim here, and she was fighting for her life and trying to recover, while at the same time being attacked," her lawyer, Andrew O'Connor, said. "A disconnect that a lot of these trolls can't get over, is that, 'I've seen this guy from afar, and I see his bronze medal, and so it must be her.' "Kanarek concurred, saying that it was difficult to "go online and see every single person talking about you." She pulled up her blouse to reveal two entry wounds in her rib cage. "Every part of my body and soul and mind is just thinking, I should be on my horses, riding," she said. "Instead, I was shot." This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company

Teva to donate over $15 billion worth of drugs in opioid settlement: source

The news follows media reports that major drug distributors McKesson Corp , AmerisourceBergen Corp and Cardinal Health are discussing with governments to settle thousands of opioid-related lawsuits for $18 billion. The companies, including Teva, are all defendants in a landmark trial set to begin in federal court in Cleveland, Ohio, on Oct. 21, which will be presided over by U.S. District Judge Dan Polster, who has long pushed for a global settlement of the litigation.

Trump on Turkey going into Syria: 'It's not our border'

Asked at a White House photo op with Italy's president, “Are you okay -- are you okay with Erdoğan saying that he is not going to do a ceasefire?” -- referring to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's response to U.S. efforts to broker a stop to the conflict -- Trump, after a lengthy discourse about why the U.S. should not be involved in the fighting, then said, “So, if Russia wants to get involved with the -- with Syria, that's really up to them.

Convicted ex-Honolulu police chief files for divorce

A retired Honolulu police chief convicted of conspiracy in Hawaii's biggest corruption case wants a divorce from his wife and co-defendant, a former city prosecutor. Louis Kealoha filed for divorce Tuesday, according to court records. A jury in June convicted him and Katherine Kealoha of conspiracy in a plot to frame her uncle to keep him from revealing fraud that financed their lavish lifestyle.

Hogan details Bay Bridge repair urgency and traffic action

Hogan said the deck surface of a westbound lane is "severely deteriorated" and beyond its service life, creating "a number of very major safety risks." In one section, 75% of the lane's surface is deteriorated, Hogan said. "The condition is worsening every single day," Hogan said a Board of Public Works meeting. It has five lanes, and a westbound lane has been closed since work began.

Detectives across US grill serial killer, close cold cases

Keep him talking, don't interrupt him and, no matter what, don't ask why he killed his victims. Little ultimately spilled forth with chilling confessions, claiming he killed 93 women in all between 1970 and 2005 and smilingly recounting the details with startling clarity. Miami-Dade Police homicide detective David Denmark and his partner interviewed Little last October about two murders in the Miami area from the 1970s.

U.S. Supreme Court tackles sentencing appeal in 'D.C. Sniper' case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday wrestled with whether a man serving life in prison over his role in a deadly 2002 shooting spree in the Washington area should be resentenced because he was only 17 years old at the time of the so-called D.C. Sniper crimes. The nine justices heard a one-hour argument in an appeal filed by the state of Virginia objecting to a lower court's decision ordering that Lee Boyd Malvo's sentence of life in prison without parole be thrown out because his age at the time of the crimes was not taken into account during sentencing. If Malvo prevails, he and other prison inmates in similar cases involving certain crimes committed by minors could receive new sentencing hearings in which judges would consider whether their youth at the time of the offense is a reason for a more lenient sentence.

Indiana attorney general tries barring testimony against him

Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill is trying to block two women from testifying about allegations of sexual misconduct as he prepares for an upcoming disciplinary hearing on separate claims that he drunkenly groped four women at a bar last year. The Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission wants the women to testify about Hill's actions when they were employees under him as the Elkhart County prosecutor before becoming attorney general in 2017. One of the women is expected to testify about Hill's "inappropriate sexual innuendo and propositions directed to her," commission lawyers said in legal filings in the past week, first reported by The (Fort Wayne) Journal Gazette.

6-year-old 'baby whisperer' helps calm crying baby

Six-year-old Welles Peterson is definitely one of those people. "He asked to hold Alek and within seconds, the baby calmed down," Peterson said. The sweet video of Welles the "baby whisperer" has been watched 14 million times so far.

Factbox: All the president's men - Supporting actors in Trump's Ukraine scandal

The scandal has also featured an extensive cast of Ukrainian officials. Trump's personal attorney, a former New York mayor and 2008 presidential candidate, is a central figure in a scandal that has led to the impeachment inquiry. Acting independently of the U.S. government, Giuliani has urged Ukrainian officials to investigate one of Trump's main Democratic rivals in the 2020 election, former Vice President Joe Biden.

British family says detained in US for making wrong turn

US authorities are disputing the account of a British couple who claim they have been held in dire conditions with their 3-month-old son for nearly two weeks after mistakenly straying into the US from Canada. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) arrested the family on October 2 for entering the country illegally from British Columbia where they were vacationing with another couple and their two children. The family has said that they ended up in the United States after swerving down a road to avoid hitting an animal.

Tracking the nor'easter: Where the heavy rain, gusty winds are heading

Heavy rain, gusty winds and possibly flash flooding are headed to the Northeast as a nor'easter strengthens off the coast. The heavy rain is pushing across Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia Wednesday afternoon. Some spots in New Jersey and New York could see up to 4 inches of rain as well as flash flooding.

Police search of apartments fails to locate missing girl

An intense search of an apartment complex didn't turn up signs of a missing 3-year-old Alabama girl who was abducted from a birthday party days ago, police in Birmingham said Wednesday. A man and a woman described as persons of interest were arrested and charged with crimes that police said were unrelated to the girl's disappearance.

Why Natalie Portman is encouraging women to mess up

Natalie Portman wants women to know it's OK to be human. In a speech at Elle magazine's annual Women in Hollywood event on Tuesday, the Oscar-winning actress encouraged women in the room to make mistakes -- and feel good about that.

Hubble Telescope zooms in on interstellar visitor

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the best pictures yet of our newest interstellar visitor. This comet from outside our solar system is zooming by us at a blistering 110,000 mph (177,000 kph). Hubble caught some glam shots over the weekend from a distance of 260 million miles (420 million kilometers).

The Latest: Police find no sign of abducted Alabama girl

Authorities searching for a missing 3-year-old girl who was abducted say a search of a Birmingham, Alabama, apartment complex didn't turn up signs of the child. Multiple police officers descended on a small apartment development Wednesday morning in Birmingham less than 10 miles (16 kilometers) from where Kamille McKinney was last seen Saturday at a birthday party. A police spokesman, Sgt. Johnny Williams, says officers were acting on a tip.

Kansas lawmaker who left GOP running for Senate as Democrat

One of four Kansas legislators who made headlines last year by defecting from the Republican Party is running for the U.S. Senate as a "pragmatic" Democrat, entering a race in which some GOP leaders are worried about immigration hardliner Kris Kobach 's chances should he win their party's nomination. State Sen. Barbara Bollier, a retired suburban Kansas City anesthesiologist, launched her bid Wednesday, a day after campaign finance reports showed that Kobach is well behind a GOP rival, U.S. Rep. Roger Marshall, in fundraising. Marshall, who represents western Kansas in Congress, raised twice as much in contributions as Kobach from July 1 through Sept. 30 and ended the period with nearly $1.9 million in cash, compared to about $198,000 for Kobach.

'More than just money': Chicago parents warm to teachers' contract demands

Carmen Rodriguez, a life-long Chicagoan who lives on the city's Southeast Side, sends her two children to a predominately Hispanic elementary school where she says teachers are struggling with class sizes of up to 40 students. The crowded conditions at Virgil Grissom Elementary School makes Rodriguez, a 45-year-old stay-at-home mom, sympathetic to Chicago's 25,000 teachers, who have authorized a strike against the public school system unless the two sides can reach a contract deal by Thursday. In addition to wage increases, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is demanding more funding to ease overcrowded classrooms and hire more support staff, two perennial issues plaguing the third-largest U.S. school district.

Toxic PCBs linger in schools; EPA, lawmakers fail to act

At first, teachers at Sky Valley Education Center simply evacuated students and used fans to clear the air when the fluorescent lights caught fire or smoked with noxious fumes. Then came the tests that confirmed their suspicions about the light ballasts. Millions of fluorescent light ballasts containing PCBs probably remain in schools and day care centers across the U.S. four decades after the chemicals were banned over concerns that they could cause cancer and other illnesses.

Boeing CEO says 'fully supportive' of board's move to split jobs: memo

Boeing Co Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg told employees he was "fully supportive" of the board's decision to split his chairman and CEO roles, allowing him to focus on running the world's largest planemaker, according to a memo seen by Reuters on Wednesday. A Boeing spokesman did not provide an immediate comment. Muilenburg said the "division of labor" was the latest action taken by the board and senior company leaders to "strengthen Boeing's governance and safety management processes" as it struggles to get its fastest-selling 737 MAX jetliner back into the air following deadly crashes.