Idaho Legislature.

• An Idaho Republican said his experience milking dairy cows offered insights into reproductive healthcare.
• Idaho Rep. Jack Nelsen apologized for the comment, saying he respected women’s “right to choose.”
•  Earlier this month, US Supreme Court upheld Idaho’s near-total abortion ban, which has few exceptions.

A newly-elected Idaho lawmaker apologized after he compared reproductive health policies to his experience milking cows as a farmer. 

Republican Rep. Jack Nelsen said he was “embarrassed” that he suggested his experience as a “lifelong dairy farmer” offered him insight into reproductive issues, according to the Idaho Statesman. 

“I’ve milked a few cows, spent most of my time walking behind lines of cows, so if you want some ideas on repro and the women’s health thing, I have some definite opinions,” Nelson said with a laugh during a meeting of the state’s House Agricultural Affairs Committee, per the Statesman.

The comment sparked immediate backlash from Idaho’s Democratic party, who tweeted a video of the incident, adding that “politicians like Jack Nelsen have no business mandating our reproductive health care decisions.” 

—Idaho Democratic Party (@IdahoDems) January 12, 2023

Earlier this month, the US Supreme Court upheld Idaho’s near-total abortion ban, which has exceptions for rape, incest, and saving a pregnant patient’s life. 

Nelsen said in a statement to the Statesman that he was “embarrassed” and “offended others,” the outlet reported. 

“The way I phrased my statement about women and reproductive rights yesterday completely missed the mark,” Nelson said, per the Statesman. “I am deeply sorry. I recognize the mistake and commit to doing better in the future.”

According to the Statesman, Nelson said during his campaign that the government shouldn’t be involved in abortion care, a sentiment he repeated in his apology. 

“I absolutely respect women and the right to choose their own health care,” Nelson said in his statement, per the Statesman. “I have always operated and will continue to operate under the standard that the government does not belong in the doctor’s office.”

A spokesperson for Nelson did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on Saturday. 

Michael Kovac/Getty Images

• Goldman Sachs staff were emailed calendar invites for fake business meetings, per the New York Post.
• Workers arrived in conference rooms to discover they were among the 3,200 job cuts Wednesday.
• Meetings were set as early as  7:30 a.m. and some junior bankers were given 30 minutes to leave.

Goldman Sachs asked staff to attend “phony” business meetings where they were told they’d been laid off, the New York Post reported. 

Bankers were emailed calendar invites for meetings on Wednesday morning and informed they were let go by managers when they got to a conference room, according to the report. 

The newspaper said many of the Goldman Sachs workers were called in for meetings as early as 7:30 a.m., with some junior bankers given just 30 minutes to collect their belongings and leave.

An insider told the Post that one colleague was let go after coming in early for a meeting “put on his calendar under false pretenses.”

Goldman cut 3,200 jobs, or about 6.5% of its global workforce, on Wednesday. Positions were culled from New York, Dallas, Chicago, Salt Lake City and London, where “there were a lot of tears,” Financial News reported.

The publication reported that many senior staff were told earlier in the week about their roles, while more junior staff were “cut with little fanfare” on Wednesday.

Last month CEO David Solomon warned staff of the looming layoffs in a memo obtained by Bloomberg. He reportedly blamed the cuts on factors including “tightening monetary conditions” that are hampering economic activity.

Workers laid off from the New York headquarters will continue to be paid for 90 days as required by the state’s WARN Act, before getting a severance pay. In other states the notice period is 60 days. 

Goldman made some layoffs in September when it cut senior associates and vice presidents from its technology, media, and telecommunications team. It also axed staff from its consumer retail, healthcare, and industrials divisions.

Those cuts followed a 41% decline in revenues from its investment banking division. CFO Denis Coleman said at the time that the bottom 5% of performers would go, with brakes put on the pace of hiring.

A Goldman Sachs spokesperson told Insider in a statement: “We know this is a difficult time for people leaving the firm. We’re grateful for all our people’s contributions, and we’re providing support to ease their transitions. Our focus now is to appropriately size the firm for the opportunities ahead of us in a challenging macroeconomic environment.”

Reuters

• Russia’s army and the paramilitary Wagner Group have both taken credit for capturing Soledar in Ukraine.
• The salt-mining town could be a financial, military, and symbolic prize if under Russian control.
• Take a look inside the cavernous salt mines, which have previously hosted symphonies and soccer games.

In recent days the war in Ukraine has revolved around the salt-mining town of Soledar in the east of the country.

Russia claimed on Friday that it had seized the town. The founder of the paramilitary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, claimed earlier this week that his troops had achieved the rare victory without any involvement from Russia’s official military and pictures emerged of him and his troops inside the Soledar’s famous salt mines.

Russia’s defense ministry later credited the group with leading the attack after days of public sparring in a surprising concession.

Meanwhile, Kyiv has denied that Russia has taken full control of Soledar.

Officials in the US have speculated that Russia, particularly the Wagner Group, has aimed to capture the town to gain control of its valuable salt and gypsum resources for financial purposes.

Before the war the mined galleries of salt, had been convertor into a magical buried world.

Look inside the town’s vast salt mines, where Ukraine has previously hosted symphonies, soccer games, the inflation of a hot air balloon, and more.

Pre-war tourist guide information describes an amazing ‘underground city’ carved from salt deposits.Symphony orchestra’s bass player tunes his instrument before a concert held in a 900-feet deep salt mine in the town of Soledar, 560 miles east of the capital Kyiv, October 2, 2004.

Gleb Garanich/Reuters

The vast salt mines are owned by state enterprise Artemsil, which was one the biggest producers of salt in Europe, but halted operations following Russia’s invasion in February. 

It has produced more than 280 million tonnes of salt since mining began in the town in the late 19th century, according to Reuters.

The miles of vast galleries that the mining activity left have been converted into an “underground city,” according to tourist guides that predate the war.

The subterranean world included a concert hall, a soccer field, a church, a bar, and a health spa.

 

The salt mine reaches a depth of around 1,000 feet.A salt mine is converted into a concert hall for a performance by the Donetsk Symphony orchestra in the town of Soledar, October 2, 2004.

Gleb Garanich/Reuters

The mines can be up to 1,000 feet deep and its mined tunnels have a combined length of 186 miles, Reuters reported, citing a local tourist website. Huge deposits remain are still to be mined.

The health benefits of salt are well known and the mines’ micro-climate also combines with the healing process.

Near the tourist route there is a speleo-sanitarium where people are treated for bronchial conditions, asthma, chronic pneumonia, some forms of psoriasis, weak immunity, and thyroid diseases.

The mines could provide Russia with a lucrative asset.Visitors enjoy their meal at a 980-foot-deep salt mine converted into a concert hall for a performance by the Donetsk Symphony orchestra in the town of Soledar, on October 2, 2004.

Gleb Garanich/Reuters

Capturing Soledar’s mines, among the largest in Europe, could serve a financial purpose for Russia. The salt from Soledar is known to be very pure.

However, it is unlikely that the current conflict conditions would allow salt mining to restart.

The United States has previously accused mercenaries from the Wagner Group of exploiting natural resources in African countries, including the Central African Republic, Mali, and Sudan, to help fund Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

Russia has rejected those accusations as being “anti-Russian rage.”

The mines could also have a military value.A soccer game was set up in the Soledar salt mine in September 2020.

Visem/Wikimedia Commons

Capturing the mines could also be valuable to Russia to bolster its defensive position, as they could muster troops and store weapons underground where Ukraine could not strike them.

Prigozhin previously said on Telegram that he wants to capture “the system of Soledar and Bakhmut mines, which is actually a network of underground cities,” which he said could be used in war, according to a translation by Reuters.

—Matthew VanDyke (@Matt_VanDyke) January 12, 2023

 

Russian forces could then use this position to increase their assault on the nearby city of Bakhmut, which has been the main focus of the war in eastern Ukraine since the summer.

Capturing Soledar could also be a symbolic victory.A musician plays the transverse flute during the 3rd Salt Symphony art festival in a salt mine in Soledar, Ukraine, May 27, 2006.

Alexander Khudotioply/Reuters

Taking Soledar and its salt mines could also serve as a symbolic victory for the Wagner Group.

Prigozhin said in a Telegram statement on Friday that “Soledar was taken solely by the efforts of the fighters of the Wagner PMC.” 

“And there is no need to offend the fighters by humiliating their merit,” he said. “You are demotivating them. We must fight, and not compete in whose dick is bigger and steal other people’s merits.”

Donetsk Symphony orchestra performs during a concert held in a deep salt mine in the town of Soledar, some 400 km (250 miles) east from the capital Kyiv, October 2, 2004.

Gleb Garanich/Reuters

The town of Soledar had a pre-war population of just over 10,000, but now lies largely in ruin.

Despite Russia’s efforts, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that taking control of Soledar “will not necessarily allow Russian forces to exert control over critical Ukrainian ground lines of communication into Bakhmut.” 

“Even taking the most generous Russian claims at face value, the capture of Soledar would not portend an immediate encirclement of Bakhmut,” the think tank said.

Maine scored its first Mega Millions jackpot — and someone beat the ill fortune of Friday the 13th — when a ticket purchased in the state matched the winning numbers for the lottery’s estimated $1.35 billion grand prize.

The lucky combination of numbers drawn late Friday night were: 30, 43, 45, 46, 61 and gold Mega Ball 14.

The winner, whose name is not yet known, overcame steep odds of 1 in 302.6 million, which led to three months of drawings without a claim on the jackpot.

“Congratulations to the Maine State Lottery, which has just won its first-ever Mega Millions jackpot,” Pat McDonald, Ohio lottery director and lead director of the Mega Millions Consortium, said in a statement early Saturday.

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The jackpot was the second largest in Mega Millions history and the fourth time the game has had a billion-dollar win. The largest Mega Millions jackpot in October 2018 was $1.53 billion claimed by a single ticket holder in South Carolina.

Friday’s prosperous drawing also marked the seventh time there was a grand prize winner on Friday the 13th, a date superstitiously considered unlucky.

To claim the full $1.35 billion, the winner would need to take the money in an annuity with annual payments over 29 years. Most jackpot recipients prefer the reduced but quicker cash option, which for Friday night’s drawing was an estimated $724.6 million.

The next grand prize drawing on Tuesday will drop to an estimated $20 million and a cash option of $10.7 million.

Until Friday night, there had been 25 straight drawings without a jackpot winner.

There were more than 7 million winning tickets across nine prize tiers Friday. Beyond Maine’s jackpot, 14 tickets matched five white balls to claim the second-tier prize of $1 million. Four were sold in New York, two in California and one each in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas, Mega Millions said.

Mega Millions is played in 45 states as well as Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

In 2020, America elected Joe Biden to be not-Trump—a role for which he seemed well-suited. In 2016, the country voted for burn-it-all-down upheaval. Trump was the tribune of those who felt betrayed and misled and mistreated. Four chaotic years later, alarmed voters fled into the arms of an aging former vice-president and senator—a man they had twice rejected as a presidential contender—who seemed the personification of the steady hand.

No one expected Biden to be transformational or extraordinary, but we did need him to be the anti-Trump in the most important ways. We needed him to be sober and responsible, to play by the rules, and to uphold the primacy of law and procedure. And he delivered. President Biden freed the country and the world from the tyranny of tweeted insults, conspiracies, threats, lies, fantasies, and reversals. And while naturally some will criticize his policies, Biden has conducted the presidency with dignity. He has gone some way toward restoring a sense that the system, whatever its flaws, is basically sound.

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But the revelation that, like Trump, Biden mishandled classified documents, including storing them in his garage next to his Corvette, drags us back to precisely the world in which Trump is most comfortable. Like all reprobates, Trump’s default justification when caught out is “everybody does it.” Last summer, when the FBI executed a search of Mar-a-Lago for purloined classified documents, Trump demanded, on his social media platform Truth Social, “What happened to the 30 million pages of documents taken from the White House to Chicago by Barack Hussein Obama? He refused to give them back! What is going on? This act was strongly at odds with NARA. Will they be breaking into Obama’s ‘mansion’ in Martha’s Vineyard?” It was rubbish, as the National Archives confirmed in a statement. Obama had turned everything over to the proper authorities. But now, Biden has offered an enormous gift to Trump and his truth-optional allies. Biden really did do something similar.

The TV analysts who are rushing to explain that what Trump did was orders of magnitude worse than what Biden did are correct, but it will not alter the political calculus. What Biden did (so far as we know or have reason to suspect) was negligent but not intentional. And yet, it’s still way too close to Trump’s transgressions for comfort. Millions of Republicans, marinated in grievance, are primed to believe that Trump is the victim of a double standard and they won’t delve too deeply into the distinction between purposely absconding with classified material, lying about it, and defying a subpoena, and simply leaving classified documents in an office closet and in a garage.

The great loss here is not that this makes it more challenging to bring criminal charges against Trump for his contempt of the law regarding classified materials, the tragedy is that this is a victory for the kind of cynicism that Trump has popularized. “Drain the swamp.” “Lock Her Up.” “Stop the Steal.” “Defund the FBI.” Trump’s message has been consistent. Everyone is corrupt. The system is rigged. No one is honest. No one really plays by the rules.

Until now, it seemed that President Biden was defying that theme. His administration has been staffed by grown ups. There have been no scandals. The Department of Justice has been methodical and fair in its prosecutions.

In an appearance on 60 Minutes in September of 2022, Biden was asked: “When you saw the photograph of the top secret documents laid out on the floor at Mar-a-Lago, what did you think to yourself looking at that image?” Scott Pelley was really asking how a respectable government official, a rule upholder, regards those who trash those standards. It was an invitation to express censoriousness on behalf of everyone who would never consider treating national security so cavalierly. Biden replied, “How that could possibly happen, how anyone could be that irresponsible?” At the time, that moment seemed a ratification of normality in American politics. Now, the clip is an arrow in the quiver of the truth-denying nihilists.

Worse, the Biden administration’s post-revelation conduct has been less than inspiring. We now know that Mr. Biden’s lawyers discovered the documents in the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C. on November 2. When news leaked on January 9, the White House issued a statement stressing that as soon as these documents were discovered, their existence was reported to the National Archives and they were recovered the following morning. The message: It was an oversight, but as soon as it was discovered, we did things by the book.

Except that a few days later, the White House was obliged to acknowledge that the Penn Biden Center documents were not, in fact, the only ones they found. There was a second tranche of documents, this time discovered in Biden’s Delaware home, that they reported to the Archives on December 20, but only acknowledged publicly on January 12, again only after a press leak.

That looks, in these early days, like the kind of dodgy, hide-the-ball behavior that Biden should have been above. The man who was dismayed by the spectacle of classified documents splayed out on the floor of Mar-a-Lago has been transformed into the tetchy pol explaining that documents locked next to a Corvette were hardly “sitting out on the street.” That is demoralizing for those who believe that Biden’s chief accomplishment–and purpose–as president has been to restore a modicum of trust to a nation that has been sunk in suspicion and bitterness for too long. Being not-Trump demands better.

Air raid sirens rang out Saturday in Kyiv amid a layer of major fog as a new spherical of missile fire struck the capital after two months without a solitary drone or missile strike.

Ukrainian officials reported civilian infrastructure had been destroyed, but no casualties were noted. 

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschk explained explosions had been listened to in the household space of the Dniprovskyi district on the remaining lender of the Dnieper River and that missile fragments fell to the south on non-residential places of the Holosiivskyi district wherever a hearth broke out.

Fog addresses Kyiv metropolis heart, Ukraine, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2023. A series of explosions rocked Kyiv on Saturday morning and minutes later air raid sirens started to wail as an clear missile attack on the Ukrainian money was underway. 

(AP Photograph/Efrem Lukatsky)

US TO Start out Education UKRAINIANS ON PATRIOT System ON US SOIL Up coming Week

One more 18 household ended up also harmed along with a “critical infrastructure facility” on the outskirts of the metropolis in accordance to the regional governor Oleksii Kuleba.

Even though Russia has routinely strike Kyiv with missile strikes since the war broke out nearly 11 months ago – including an extreme barrage in excess of the Xmas year – the Saturday strikes had been the 1st Russia experienced introduced at the money due to the fact the New Yr kicked off.

The reduction in strikes could signal diminishing missile stocks as Western protection officers repeatedly claimed Russia would not be able to retain the degree of attacks it was levying just months ago. 

Ukrainian Air Power spokesman Yurii Ihnat said the missiles most likely “flew on a ballistic trajectory” from north of Ukraine, documented Ukrainian information outlet Pravda.

It is unclear exactly where specifically the missiles had been fired from as Russian troops have levied missiles from Belarus as well as within just its individual borders. 

Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko visits a checkpoint of the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Forces, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine carries on, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 6, 2022.

(REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko)

RUSSIA Once again Promises VICTORY About UKRAINIAN Town SOLEDAR, IN Possible Scarce VICTORY

Ihnat said officials had been nonetheless investigating the fragments of the missiles to decide if they have been in actuality ballistic or S-300 anti-aircraft missiles. 

The formal pressured that Ukraine has no way of halting ballistic missiles, though Ukrainian soldiers will commence education in the U.S. up coming week on the Patriot missile system which is capable to downing ballistic and aircraft introduced missiles. 

Ihnat also reported that Russian Tu-95 strategic bombers were airborne and being monitored, however he reported it was unclear if they meant to launch their individual strikes.

A pet dog walks between debris of properties destroyed by a missile assault in the outskirts of Kyiv, on Dec. 29, 2022, next a Russian missile strike on Ukraine.

(GENYA SAVILOV/AFP by means of Getty Pictures)

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At least two S-300 missiles were also levied at “power and industrial objects” in the Kharkiv area Saturday claimed its regional governor Oleh Syniehubov.

Unexpected emergency electricity cuts had been immediately designed, but no casualties had been claimed.

The Connected Push contributed to this report. 

Caitlin McFall is a Reporter at Fox News Electronic masking Politics, U.S. and World information.

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