WASHINGTON (AP) —Democrats in Congress released six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns on Friday, the culmination of a yearslong effort to learn about the finances of a onetime business mogul who broke decades of political precedent when he&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/be17fb95a8564a88996d1331ebaf763b">refused to voluntarily release the information</a>&nbsp;as he sought the White House.

<a href="https://waysandmeans.house.gov/sites/democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/files/wysiwyg_uploaded/Attachment_E.zip">Click here to download and read</a> the massive file

The returns, which include redactions of some personal sensitive information such as Social Security and bank account numbers, are from 2015 to 2020. They span nearly 6,000 pages, including more than 2,700 pages of individual returns from Trump and his wife, Melania, and more than 3,000 pages in returns for Trump's business entities.

Their release follows a&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/videos-9ac33a7c71844b45bd2a88f8969929ce">party-line vote</a>&nbsp;in the House Ways and Means Committee last week to make the returns public. Committee Democrats argued that transparency and the rule of law were at stake, while Republicans countered that the release would set a dangerous precedent with regard to the loss of privacy protections.

Trump had refused to release his returns when he ran for president and had waged a legal battle to keep them secret while he was in the White House. But the&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/us-supreme-court-donald-trump-business-john-roberts-congress-8ea516dace48875ad7c5dd472dd16dcf">Supreme Court ruled</a>&nbsp;last month that he had to turn them over to the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

Trump blasted the decision, arguing it would further divide the country.

“The Democrats should have never done it, the Supreme Court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people," he said in a statement. “The radical, left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!”

He said the returns "once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.”

The release, just days before Trump’s fellow Republicans retake control of the House from the Democrats, raises the potential of new revelations about Trump’s finances, which have been shrouded in mystery and intrigue since his days as an up-and-coming Manhattan real estate developer in the 1980s. The returns could take on added significance now that Trump has&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-2024-updates-cd5339d48064a149527e8f9a1aa7614e">launched a campaign</a>&nbsp;for the White House in 2024.

They are likely to offer the clearest picture yet of his finances during his time in office.

Trump, known for building skyscrapers and hosting a reality TV show before winning the White House, did give some limited details about his holdings and income on mandatory disclosure forms. He has promoted his wealth in the annual financial statements he provides to banks to secure loans and to financial magazines to justify his place on rankings of the world’s billionaires.

Trump’s longtime accounting firm has since disavowed the statements, and New York Attorney General Letitia James has&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-sued-new-york-letitia-james-ec6b3b91b6c8594495ada7d0a2b80a2f">filed a lawsuit</a>&nbsp;alleging Trump and his Trump Organization inflated asset values on the statements as part of a yearslong fraud. Trump and his company have denied wrongdoing.

It will not be the first time Trump's tax returns have been under scrutiny.

In October 2018, The New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series based on leaked tax records that showed that Trump received a modern-day equivalent of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate holdings, with much of that money coming from what the Times called “tax dodges” in the 1990s.

A second series in 2020 showed that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018, as well as no income taxes at all in 10 of the past 15 years because he generally lost more money than he made.

In its report last week, the Ways and Means Committee indicated the Trump administration may have disregarded a post-Watergate requirement&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-donald-trump-richard-neal-c697c4e300948a9e2638d0d9fbbe2f96">mandating audits of a president’s tax filings</a>.

The IRS only began to audit Trump’s 2016 tax filings on April 3, 2019 — more than two years into his presidency — when the committee chairman, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., asked the agency for information related to the tax returns.

By comparison, there were audits of President Joe Biden for the 2020 and 2021 tax years, said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson. A spokesperson for former President Barack Obama said Obama was audited in each of his eight years in office.

A report from Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation raised multiple red flags about aspects of Trump’s tax filings, including his carryover losses, deductions tied to conservation and charitable donations, and loans to his children that could be taxable gifts.

The&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-donald-trump-775097263d0e3526a35723f0952e8d0f">House passed a bill</a>&nbsp;in response that would require audits of any president’s income tax filings. Republicans strongly opposed the legislation, raising concerns that a law requiring audits would infringe on taxpayer privacy and could lead to audits being weaponized for political gain.

The measure, approved mostly along party lines, has little chance of becoming law anytime soon with a new Republican-led House being sworn in in January. Rather, it is seen as a starting point for future efforts to bolster oversight of the presidency.

Republicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move once Republicans take power next week, and they warn that the committee’s new GOP chair will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other prominent people.

Rep. Don Beyer, chairman of the congressional Joint Economic Committee and a Ways and Means Committee member, presided over the routine pro forma session in the House as the tax returns were released. Beyer, D-Va., said the release was delayed as committee staff worked to redact Tpersonal and identifying information, a promise Democrats made to Republicans during a closed meeting last week.

“We’ve been trying to be very careful to make sure that we weren’t ‘weaponizing’ the IRS returns,” he said.

Every president and major-party candidate since Richard Nixon has voluntarily made at least summaries of their tax information available to the public. Trump bucked that trend as a candidate and as president, repeatedly asserting that his taxes were “under audit” and couldn’t be released.

Trump’s lawyers were repeatedly denied in their quest to keep his tax returns from the House committee. A&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-personal-taxes-congress-government-and-politics-386ef94dc8c41c75ea77d02d36afe446">three-judge federal appeals court panel in August</a>&nbsp;upheld a lower-court ruling granting the committee access.

Trump’s lawyers also tried and failed to block the Manhattan district attorney’s office from getting Trump’s tax records as part of its investigation into his business practices, losing twice in the Supreme Court.

Trump’s longtime accountant, Donald Bender, testified at the Trump Organization’s recent Manhattan criminal trial that Trump&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-new-york-manhattan-donald-trump-896e245936aaf71d26b1c29c0070c8eb">reported losses on his tax returns every year</a>&nbsp;for a decade, including nearly $700 million in 2009 and $200 million in 2010.

Bender, a partner at Mazars USA LLP who spent years preparing Trump’s personal tax returns, said Trump’s reported losses from 2009 to 2018 included net operating losses from some of the many businesses he owns through the Trump Organization.

The Trump Organization was&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-new-york-manhattan-donald-trump-government-and-politics-86177401a887c85ab50d8b78eb1ed397">convicted earlier this month</a>&nbsp;on tax fraud charges for helping some executives dodge taxes on company-paid perks such as apartments and luxury cars.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2022/12/1672416879967.png" alt="Copies of former President Donald Trump and former first lady Melania Trump individual tax returns for the years 2015 to 2020, released by the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee, are photographed Friday, Dec. 30, 2022. The returns, which include redactions of some personal sensitive information such as Social Security and bank account numbers, span nearly 6,000 pages, including more than 2,700 pages of individual returns, and more than 3,000 pages in returns for Trump's business entities. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)" />
 <figcaption>Copies of former President Donald Trump and former first lady Melania Trump individual tax returns for the years 2015 to 2020, released by the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee, are photographed Friday, Dec. 30, 2022. The returns, which include redactions of some personal sensitive information such as Social Security and bank account numbers, span nearly 6,000 pages, including more than 2,700 pages of individual returns, and more than 3,000 pages in returns for Trump's business entities. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)</figcaption>
 </figure>WASHINGTON (AP) —Democrats in Congress released six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns on Friday, the culmination of a yearslong effort to learn about the finances of a onetime business mogul who broke decades of political precedent when he&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/be17fb95a8564a88996d1331ebaf763b">refused to voluntarily release the information</a>&nbsp;as he sought the White House.<a href="https://waysandmeans.house.gov/sites/democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/files/wysiwyg_uploaded/Attachment_E.zip">Click here to download and read</a> the massive fileThe returns, which include redactions of some personal sensitive information such as Social Security and bank account numbers, are from 2015 to 2020. They span nearly 6,000 pages, including more than 2,700 pages of individual returns from Trump and his wife, Melania, and more than 3,000 pages in returns for Trump's business entities.Their release follows a&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/videos-9ac33a7c71844b45bd2a88f8969929ce">party-line vote</a>&nbsp;in the House Ways and Means Committee last week to make the returns public. Committee Democrats argued that transparency and the rule of law were at stake, while Republicans countered that the release would set a dangerous precedent with regard to the loss of privacy protections.Trump had refused to release his returns when he ran for president and had waged a legal battle to keep them secret while he was in the White House. But the&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/us-supreme-court-donald-trump-business-john-roberts-congress-8ea516dace48875ad7c5dd472dd16dcf">Supreme Court ruled</a>&nbsp;last month that he had to turn them over to the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.Trump blasted the decision, arguing it would further divide the country.“The Democrats should have never done it, the Supreme Court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people," he said in a statement. “The radical, left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!”He said the returns "once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.”The release, just days before Trump’s fellow Republicans retake control of the House from the Democrats, raises the potential of new revelations about Trump’s finances, which have been shrouded in mystery and intrigue since his days as an up-and-coming Manhattan real estate developer in the 1980s. The returns could take on added significance now that Trump has&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-2024-updates-cd5339d48064a149527e8f9a1aa7614e">launched a campaign</a>&nbsp;for the White House in 2024.They are likely to offer the clearest picture yet of his finances during his time in office.Trump, known for building skyscrapers and hosting a reality TV show before winning the White House, did give some limited details about his holdings and income on mandatory disclosure forms. He has promoted his wealth in the annual financial statements he provides to banks to secure loans and to financial magazines to justify his place on rankings of the world’s billionaires.Trump’s longtime accounting firm has since disavowed the statements, and New York Attorney General Letitia James has&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-sued-new-york-letitia-james-ec6b3b91b6c8594495ada7d0a2b80a2f">filed a lawsuit</a>&nbsp;alleging Trump and his Trump Organization inflated asset values on the statements as part of a yearslong fraud. Trump and his company have denied wrongdoing.It will not be the first time Trump's tax returns have been under scrutiny.In October 2018, The New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series based on leaked tax records that showed that Trump received a modern-day equivalent of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate holdings, with much of that money coming from what the Times called “tax dodges” in the 1990s.A second series in 2020 showed that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018, as well as no income taxes at all in 10 of the past 15 years because he generally lost more money than he made.In its report last week, the Ways and Means Committee indicated the Trump administration may have disregarded a post-Watergate requirement&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-donald-trump-richard-neal-c697c4e300948a9e2638d0d9fbbe2f96">mandating audits of a president’s tax filings</a>.The IRS only began to audit Trump’s 2016 tax filings on April 3, 2019 — more than two years into his presidency — when the committee chairman, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., asked the agency for information related to the tax returns.By comparison, there were audits of President Joe Biden for the 2020 and 2021 tax years, said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson. A spokesperson for former President Barack Obama said Obama was audited in each of his eight years in office.A report from Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation raised multiple red flags about aspects of Trump’s tax filings, including his carryover losses, deductions tied to conservation and charitable donations, and loans to his children that could be taxable gifts.The&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-donald-trump-775097263d0e3526a35723f0952e8d0f">House passed a bill</a>&nbsp;in response that would require audits of any president’s income tax filings. Republicans strongly opposed the legislation, raising concerns that a law requiring audits would infringe on taxpayer privacy and could lead to audits being weaponized for political gain.The measure, approved mostly along party lines, has little chance of becoming law anytime soon with a new Republican-led House being sworn in in January. Rather, it is seen as a starting point for future efforts to bolster oversight of the presidency.Republicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move once Republicans take power next week, and they warn that the committee’s new GOP chair will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other prominent people.Rep. Don Beyer, chairman of the congressional Joint Economic Committee and a Ways and Means Committee member, presided over the routine pro forma session in the House as the tax returns were released. Beyer, D-Va., said the release was delayed as committee staff worked to redact Tpersonal and identifying information, a promise Democrats made to Republicans during a closed meeting last week.“We’ve been trying to be very careful to make sure that we weren’t ‘weaponizing’ the IRS returns,” he said.Every president and major-party candidate since Richard Nixon has voluntarily made at least summaries of their tax information available to the public. Trump bucked that trend as a candidate and as president, repeatedly asserting that his taxes were “under audit” and couldn’t be released.Trump’s lawyers were repeatedly denied in their quest to keep his tax returns from the House committee. A&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-personal-taxes-congress-government-and-politics-386ef94dc8c41c75ea77d02d36afe446">three-judge federal appeals court panel in August</a>&nbsp;upheld a lower-court ruling granting the committee access.Trump’s lawyers also tried and failed to block the Manhattan district attorney’s office from getting Trump’s tax records as part of its investigation into his business practices, losing twice in the Supreme Court.Trump’s longtime accountant, Donald Bender, testified at the Trump Organization’s recent Manhattan criminal trial that Trump&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-new-york-manhattan-donald-trump-896e245936aaf71d26b1c29c0070c8eb">reported losses on his tax returns every year</a>&nbsp;for a decade, including nearly $700 million in 2009 and $200 million in 2010.Bender, a partner at Mazars USA LLP who spent years preparing Trump’s personal tax returns, said Trump’s reported losses from 2009 to 2018 included net operating losses from some of the many businesses he owns through the Trump Organization.The Trump Organization was&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-new-york-manhattan-donald-trump-government-and-politics-86177401a887c85ab50d8b78eb1ed397">convicted earlier this month</a>&nbsp;on tax fraud charges for helping some executives dodge taxes on company-paid perks such as apartments and luxury cars.___

Read 6-years of former President Trump's tax returns 

HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The major questions doctrine holds that courts should not defer to agency statutory interpretations that concern questions of "vast economic or political significance."

In late June, the Supreme Court issued a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf">ruling</a>&nbsp;stating that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot put state-level caps on carbon emissions under the 1970 Clean Air Act, calling that a 'major question'.

Roger A. McEowen is the Professor of Agricultural Law and Taxation at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka. McEowen notes that this is a case where the administration at the time tried to make changes without asking Congress.

"What this was, was an attempt by the Obama EPA to basically rewrite and say, we're going to just shift to regulating out of existence coal-fired plants, fossil fuel generated electricity and we're going to regulate them out. They were doing this by regulation, so this would never come up for a vote in Congress and people wouldn't see it. It would just happen."

Now the follow up to the use of the&nbsp;major questions doctrine is, naturally, how do you define what a major question is?

"What the regulatory body is trying to do, when does it impact the entire economy?" McEowen said. "Of course, the Supreme Court doesn't tell us that. They just decide that on a case by case basis. Here they said that changing the manner in which energy is produced is national. That was kind of an easy one for them. There will be harder questions that will come up in the future, because the various administrations and agencies will try to push the envelope."

One area that will be constantly monitored by lawyers is that of the Waters of the U.S. rule, because the regulation of waterways will likely always be a source of contention for as long as humans need clean water to drink and plants and animals need water to survive. The two agencies tasked with figuring out how to interpret WOTUS are the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers.&nbsp;

"There's a case before the U.S. Supreme Court on this out of Idaho," McEowen said. "That was also argued in October. We will probably see an opinion, I'm thinking February or March on this, to again try to define what a water of the United States is that gives the federal government jurisdiction to regulate it. It's a huge issue for agriculture, because we use a lot of water in agriculture for irrigation purposes, for livestock watering purposes. We don't want to have a puddle in a farm field defined as a wetland that the government can regulate, because that impacts farming activities."

In this particular case, the court appears to be looking to decide what test it should use to apply the WOTUS portion of the Clean Water Act, rather than calling it a major question that needs further clarification from Congress, even though almost every living thing uses water.

However, Congress could clarify future applications of law more generally if they would take up large concepts like air and water as a legislative body on a regular basis, at least once per Presidential Administration, rather than leaving it to courts and agencies to fight, or choose not to, based on who is in the White House.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/3/1584977157818.jpeg" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>NICK GOSNELL Hutch PostHUTCHINSON, Kan. — The major questions doctrine holds that courts should not defer to agency statutory interpretations that concern questions of "vast economic or political significance."In late June, the Supreme Court issued a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf">ruling</a>&nbsp;stating that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot put state-level caps on carbon emissions under the 1970 Clean Air Act, calling that a 'major question'.Roger A. McEowen is the Professor of Agricultural Law and Taxation at Washburn University School of Law in Topeka. McEowen notes that this is a case where the administration at the time tried to make changes without asking Congress."What this was, was an attempt by the Obama EPA to basically rewrite and say, we're going to just shift to regulating out of existence coal-fired plants, fossil fuel generated electricity and we're going to regulate them out. They were doing this by regulation, so this would never come up for a vote in Congress and people wouldn't see it. It would just happen."Now the follow up to the use of the&nbsp;major questions doctrine is, naturally, how do you define what a major question is?"What the regulatory body is trying to do, when does it impact the entire economy?" McEowen said. "Of course, the Supreme Court doesn't tell us that. They just decide that on a case by case basis. Here they said that changing the manner in which energy is produced is national. That was kind of an easy one for them. There will be harder questions that will come up in the future, because the various administrations and agencies will try to push the envelope."One area that will be constantly monitored by lawyers is that of the Waters of the U.S. rule, because the regulation of waterways will likely always be a source of contention for as long as humans need clean water to drink and plants and animals need water to survive. The two agencies tasked with figuring out how to interpret WOTUS are the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers.&nbsp;"There's a case before the U.S. Supreme Court on this out of Idaho," McEowen said. "That was also argued in October. We will probably see an opinion, I'm thinking February or March on this, to again try to define what a water of the United States is that gives the federal government jurisdiction to regulate it. It's a huge issue for agriculture, because we use a lot of water in agriculture for irrigation purposes, for livestock watering purposes. We don't want to have a puddle in a farm field defined as a wetland that the government can regulate, because that impacts farming activities."In this particular case, the court appears to be looking to decide what test it should use to apply the WOTUS portion of the Clean Water Act, rather than calling it a major question that needs further clarification from Congress, even though almost every living thing uses water.However, Congress could clarify future applications of law more generally if they would take up large concepts like air and water as a legislative body on a regular basis, at least once per Presidential Administration, rather than leaving it to courts and agencies to fight, or choose not to, based on who is in the White House.

Washburn Ag Law Prof: EPA questions continue before Supreme Court

JACKSON COUNTY— A Kansas City man charged in the October double-murder of Chantell Gipson and Austin Scott is now in custody, according to a statement from Kansas City Police.

Glenn A. Pulluaim II, 28, faces two Murder 1st Degree charges and two Armed Criminal Action charges, according to Jackson County. Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker.

According to court records, on Oct. 17, Kansas City police&nbsp; were dispatched to the 8700 block of Chestnut Circle to check on the welfare of an individual. 

Inside an apartment, police officers found the body of Chantell Gipson. She had been shot. In another bedroom they found the second victim, Austin Scott, Gipson's cousin. 

Witnesses helped identify Pulluaiam. His DNA profile was founnd&nbsp; on spent shells found at the crime scene.

Pulluaim fled the scene im the victim's vehicle. Police recovered the vehicle and have exhausted all leads in an attempted to find him until Thursday.&nbsp; Police have released no additional details on the arrest.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2022/12/1671103315937.png" alt="Pulluaim-photo KCPD" />
 <figcaption>Pulluaim-photo KCPD</figcaption>
 </figure>JACKSON COUNTY— A Kansas City man charged in the October double-murder of Chantell Gipson and Austin Scott is now in custody, according to a statement from Kansas City Police.Glenn A. Pulluaim II, 28, faces two Murder 1st Degree charges and two Armed Criminal Action charges, according to Jackson County. Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker.According to court records, on Oct. 17, Kansas City police&nbsp; were dispatched to the 8700 block of Chestnut Circle to check on the welfare of an individual. Inside an apartment, police officers found the body of Chantell Gipson. She had been shot. In another bedroom they found the second victim, Austin Scott, Gipson's cousin. Witnesses helped identify Pulluaiam. His DNA profile was founnd&nbsp; on spent shells found at the crime scene.Pulluaim fled the scene im the victim's vehicle. Police recovered the vehicle and have exhausted all leads in an attempted to find him until Thursday.&nbsp; Police have released no additional details on the arrest.

Police catch man wanted for double-murder in Kansas City

WASHINGTON (AP) —&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/jan-6-committee-final-report-trump-bcfea6162fe9cfa0d120e86d069af0e4">The House Jan. 6 committee</a>&nbsp;has dropped its subpoena against former President Donald Trump as it wraps up work and prepares to dissolve next week.

Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee's Democratic chairman, wrote in a letter to Trump lawyer David Warrington on Wednesday that he is formally withdrawing the subpoena.

“As you may know, the Select Committee has concluded its hearings, released its final report and will very soon reach its end,” Thompson wrote. “In light of the imminent end of our investigation, the Select Committee can no longer pursue the specific information covered by the subpoena.”

<a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-subpoena-jan-6-committee-2d63a2ba74c1874ef6ef0d8ae6d788c1">The committee had voted to subpoena Trump</a>&nbsp;during its final televised hearing before the midterm elections in October, demanding testimony and documents from the former president as it has investigated his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection and efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat.

<a href="https://cdn.nucleusfiles.com/27/27b7896f-01c5-4609-93c7-742e5cb22e96/830-am-final-january-6th-committee-letter14446.pdf?utm_medium=email_hf&amp;utm_source=ncl__&amp;utm_campaign=20221014___sa&amp;utm_content=__6167&amp;_nlid=test123&amp;_nhids=TEST">CLICK here to read</a>&nbsp;the full letter Trump sent in October to the Jan. 6 committee&nbsp;

Lawmakers on the panel have acknowledged the subpoena would be difficult to enforce, especially as Republicans are poised to take over the House in January. But the move had political and symbolic value.

“We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion,” Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the panel’s vice chairwoman and one of two Republicans on the nine-member committee, said at the time. “And every American is entitled to those answers.”

<a href="https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-donald-trump-lawsuits-subpoenas-congress-d4318c5a2622f8f973b966e834a5631e">Trump then sued the panel</a>&nbsp;in November to avoid cooperating. The lawsuit contended that while former presidents have voluntarily agreed to provide testimony or documents in response to congressional subpoenas in the past, “no president or former president has ever been compelled to do so.”

The committee’s request for documents was sweeping, including personal communications between Trump and members of Congress as well as extremist groups. Trump’s attorneys said it was overly broad and framed it as an infringement of his First Amendment rights.

While the panel never gained Trump's testimony, the committee interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, including most of his closest White House aides and allies. Many of those witnesses provided substantive detail about his efforts to sway state legislators, federal officials and lawmakers to help him overturn his defeat. And White House aides who were with him on Jan. 6 told the panel about his resistance to tell the violent mob of his supporters to leave the Capitol after they had broken in and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden's victory.

In its final report issued last week, the committee concluded that Trump engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to upend the 2020 election and failed to act on the violence. The panel also recommended that the Justice Department investigate the former president for four separate crimes, including aiding an insurrection.

On social media Wednesday evening, Trump and his lawyers construed the move as a victory. “They probably did so because they knew I did nothing wrong, or they were about to lose in Court,” Trump wrote on his social media site. He called the panel “political Thugs.”

On Twitter, Trump lawyer Harmeet Dhillon said the panel had “waved the white flag."

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2022/10/1665779973146.png" alt="-Former President Trump as shown from Dec. 2, 2020, in the Jan. 6 committee hearing video&nbsp;" />
 <figcaption>-Former President Trump as shown from Dec. 2, 2020, in the Jan. 6 committee hearing video&nbsp;</figcaption>
 </figure>WASHINGTON (AP) —&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/jan-6-committee-final-report-trump-bcfea6162fe9cfa0d120e86d069af0e4">The House Jan. 6 committee</a>&nbsp;has dropped its subpoena against former President Donald Trump as it wraps up work and prepares to dissolve next week.Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee's Democratic chairman, wrote in a letter to Trump lawyer David Warrington on Wednesday that he is formally withdrawing the subpoena.“As you may know, the Select Committee has concluded its hearings, released its final report and will very soon reach its end,” Thompson wrote. “In light of the imminent end of our investigation, the Select Committee can no longer pursue the specific information covered by the subpoena.”<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2022/10/1665779185751.png" alt="Trump's response to the Jan. 6 panel following the Oct. subpoena vote" />
 <figcaption>Trump's response to the Jan. 6 panel following the Oct. subpoena vote</figcaption>
 </figure><a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-subpoena-jan-6-committee-2d63a2ba74c1874ef6ef0d8ae6d788c1">The committee had voted to subpoena Trump</a>&nbsp;during its final televised hearing before the midterm elections in October, demanding testimony and documents from the former president as it has investigated his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection and efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat.<a href="https://cdn.nucleusfiles.com/27/27b7896f-01c5-4609-93c7-742e5cb22e96/830-am-final-january-6th-committee-letter14446.pdf?utm_medium=email_hf&amp;utm_source=ncl__&amp;utm_campaign=20221014___sa&amp;utm_content=__6167&amp;_nlid=test123&amp;_nhids=TEST">CLICK here to read</a>&nbsp;the full letter Trump sent in October to the Jan. 6 committee&nbsp;Lawmakers on the panel have acknowledged the subpoena would be difficult to enforce, especially as Republicans are poised to take over the House in January. But the move had political and symbolic value.“We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion,” Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the panel’s vice chairwoman and one of two Republicans on the nine-member committee, said at the time. “And every American is entitled to those answers.”<a href="https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-donald-trump-lawsuits-subpoenas-congress-d4318c5a2622f8f973b966e834a5631e">Trump then sued the panel</a>&nbsp;in November to avoid cooperating. The lawsuit contended that while former presidents have voluntarily agreed to provide testimony or documents in response to congressional subpoenas in the past, “no president or former president has ever been compelled to do so.”The committee’s request for documents was sweeping, including personal communications between Trump and members of Congress as well as extremist groups. Trump’s attorneys said it was overly broad and framed it as an infringement of his First Amendment rights.While the panel never gained Trump's testimony, the committee interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, including most of his closest White House aides and allies. Many of those witnesses provided substantive detail about his efforts to sway state legislators, federal officials and lawmakers to help him overturn his defeat. And White House aides who were with him on Jan. 6 told the panel about his resistance to tell the violent mob of his supporters to leave the Capitol after they had broken in and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden's victory.In its final report issued last week, the committee concluded that Trump engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to upend the 2020 election and failed to act on the violence. The panel also recommended that the Justice Department investigate the former president for four separate crimes, including aiding an insurrection.On social media Wednesday evening, Trump and his lawyers construed the move as a victory. “They probably did so because they knew I did nothing wrong, or they were about to lose in Court,” Trump wrote on his social media site. He called the panel “political Thugs.”On Twitter, Trump lawyer Harmeet Dhillon said the panel had “waved the white flag."

Jan. 6 panel drops Trump subpoena as it wraps up work

DALLAS (AP) — Travelers who counted on Southwest Airlines to get them home suffered another wave of canceled flights Thursday, and pressure grows on the federal government to help customers get reimbursed for unexpected expenses they incurred because of the airline’s meltdown.

Exhausted Southwest travelers tried finding seats on other airlines or renting cars to get to their destination, but many remained stranded. The airline’s CEO said it could be next week before the flight schedule returns to normal.

Southwest Airlines has opened a self-service tool to help travelers impacted by their travel disruptions.

If your flight has been significantly delayed or canceled, <a href="https://www.southwest.com/traveldisruption/?clk=CALLVOLUME_HPHERO_221227&amp;fbclid=IwAR0SKcCpcT6GdozvyXMNGoSsL0whMtEGvrkElL-G4dZYjrwheCbUTZuAbuI">click here </a>to request a refund and other services you are entitled to.

Adontis Barber, a 34-year-old jazz pianist from Kansas City had camped out in the city’s airport since his Southwest flight was canceled Saturday, hoping to reach a New Year's gig in Washington, D.C.

He left his airport vigil Wednesday. “I give up,” he said. “I’m starting to feel homeless.”

By early afternoon on the East Coast, about 90% of all canceled flights Wednesday in the U.S. were on Southwest, according to the FlightAware tracking service.

Other airlines recovered from ferocious winter storms that hit large swaths of the country over the weekend, but not Southwest, which scrubbed 2,500 flights Wednesday and 2,300 more on Thursday.

The Dallas airline was undone by a combination of factors including an antiquated crew-scheduling system and a network design that allows cancellations in one region to cascade throughout the country rapidly. Those weaknesses are not new — they helped cause a similar failure by Southwest in October 2021.

The U.S. Transportation Department is now investigating what happened at Southwest, which carries more passengers within the United States than any other airline. A Senate committee promises to investigate too.

In a video that Southwest posted late Tuesday, CEO Robert Jordan said Southwest would operate a reduced schedule for several days but hoped to be “back on track before next week.”

“We have some real work to do in making this right,” said Jordan, a 34-year Southwest veteran who became CEO in February. “For now, I want you to know that we are committed to that.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has criticized airlines for previous disruptions, said that “meltdown” was the only word he could think of to describe this week’s events at Southwest. He noted that while cancellations across the rest of the industry declined to about 4% of scheduled flights, they remained above 60% at Southwest.

From the high rate of cancellations to customers’ inability to reach Southwest on the phone, the airline’s performance has been unacceptable, Buttigieg said. He vowed to hold the airline accountable and push it to reimburse travelers.

“They need to make sure that those stranded passengers get to where they need to go and that they are provided adequate compensation,” including for missed flights, hotels and meals, he said Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Robert Mann, an aviation consultant and former airline executive, said the Transportation Department could force Southwest to pay refunds for all flights that were canceled for reasons within the airline’s control, such as lack of crews. He estimated that could total 6,000 cancellations affecting 1 million customers and adding up to $300 million.

Since Southwest plans to pay $428 million in shareholder dividends next month, “the numbers are not life-threatening, although brand damage has been done,” Mann said.

Some consumer advocates are skeptical the government will punish Southwest.

William McGee, a travel expert at the American Economic Liberties Project, noted that the Transportation Department fined Frontier Airlines and several foreign carriers for slow refunds early in the pandemic but didn't touch the four biggest U.S. airlines.

“What Pete Buttigieg should do and what he will do are probably two different things,” McGee said. His group wants a change in federal law that would make it easier for states and private parties to sue airlines for harming consumers.

On its website, Southwest told customers affected by canceled or delayed flights between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2 to submit receipts. The airline said, "We will honor reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel, and alternate transportation.”

Navy physician Lt. Cmdr. Manoj Mathew said after spending hours on hold over two days Southwest reimbursed him for the first leg of his family's trip from Washington to Houston — they drove through terrible weather after the Dec. 23 flight was canceled. Now he is worried whether Southwest will operate the return flight Sunday.

“I’m trying to reach other airlines,” he said. “There are no flights, plus it’s very expensive for us.”

Delta Air Lines said it was capping last-minute fares in Southwest markets through the weekend, and American Airlines said it too was limiting fares in “select” cities. Neither provided figures.

Leaders of Southwest labor unions have warned for years that the airline’s crew-scheduling system, which dates to the 1990s, was not keeping up as the route map grew more complicated.

“The fact is this is not the same airline that (Southwest co-founder) Herb Kelleher built where planes went point-to-point,” Randy Barnes, president of the union that represents Southwest ground workers, said Wednesday. “If airline managers had planned better, the meltdown we’ve witnessed in recent days could have been lessened or averted.”

The other large U.S. airlines use “hub and spoke” networks in which flights radiate out from a few major or hub airports. That helps limit the reach of disruptions caused by bad weather in part of the country.

Southwest, however, has a “point-to-point” network in which planes crisscross the country during the day. This can increase the utilization and efficiency of each plane, but problems in one place can ripple across the country and leave crews trapped out of position. (Crews can be stranded at hub-and-spoke airlines too.)

Those issues don't explain all the complaints that stranded travelers made about Southwest, including no ability to reach the airline on the phone and a lack of help with hotels and meals.

Teal Williams, a 48-year-old active-duty Army reservist from Utah, was stuck at the Denver airport with her husband and two teenage kids on Christmas Day after their flight to Des Moines, Iowa, was canceled. She said Southwest employees had no information about flights and didn’t offer food vouchers while elderly passengers sat in wheelchairs for hours and mothers ran out of formula for their infants.

“It was just imploding, and no one could tell you anything,” Williams said. The airline employees “were desperately trying to help, but you could tell they were just as clueless as everybody else... it was scary.”

Unable to find plane, train or bus seats, Williams and her family felt lucky to score a rental car. They drove 12 hours to Iowa.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2022/12/1672320886223.png" alt="The U.S. Transportation Department is now investigating what happened at Southwest, which carries more passengers within the United States than any other airline.-photo courtesy KMBC" />
 <figcaption>The U.S. Transportation Department is now investigating what happened at Southwest, which carries more passengers within the United States than any other airline.-photo courtesy KMBC</figcaption>
 </figure>DALLAS (AP) — Travelers who counted on Southwest Airlines to get them home suffered another wave of canceled flights Thursday, and pressure grows on the federal government to help customers get reimbursed for unexpected expenses they incurred because of the airline’s meltdown.Exhausted Southwest travelers tried finding seats on other airlines or renting cars to get to their destination, but many remained stranded. The airline’s CEO said it could be next week before the flight schedule returns to normal.Southwest Airlines has opened a self-service tool to help travelers impacted by their travel disruptions.If your flight has been significantly delayed or canceled, <a href="https://www.southwest.com/traveldisruption/?clk=CALLVOLUME_HPHERO_221227&amp;fbclid=IwAR0SKcCpcT6GdozvyXMNGoSsL0whMtEGvrkElL-G4dZYjrwheCbUTZuAbuI">click here </a>to request a refund and other services you are entitled to.<div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">We’ve let our Customers and Employees down, and we pledge to do everything we can to make it right. If you still need assistance rearranging your travel, getting a refund, or tracking down your luggage, please visit <a href="https://t.co/II3YgdPy7J">https://t.co/II3YgdPy7J</a>. <a href="https://t.co/64Fdt8jJPn">pic.twitter.com/64Fdt8jJPn</a>&mdash; Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) <a href="https://twitter.com/SouthwestAir/status/1608303039181647873?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 29, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Adontis Barber, a 34-year-old jazz pianist from Kansas City had camped out in the city’s airport since his Southwest flight was canceled Saturday, hoping to reach a New Year's gig in Washington, D.C.He left his airport vigil Wednesday. “I give up,” he said. “I’m starting to feel homeless.”By early afternoon on the East Coast, about 90% of all canceled flights Wednesday in the U.S. were on Southwest, according to the FlightAware tracking service.Other airlines recovered from ferocious winter storms that hit large swaths of the country over the weekend, but not Southwest, which scrubbed 2,500 flights Wednesday and 2,300 more on Thursday.The Dallas airline was undone by a combination of factors including an antiquated crew-scheduling system and a network design that allows cancellations in one region to cascade throughout the country rapidly. Those weaknesses are not new — they helped cause a similar failure by Southwest in October 2021.The U.S. Transportation Department is now investigating what happened at Southwest, which carries more passengers within the United States than any other airline. A Senate committee promises to investigate too.In a video that Southwest posted late Tuesday, CEO Robert Jordan said Southwest would operate a reduced schedule for several days but hoped to be “back on track before next week.”<div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">On the heels of wide-scale disruptions, we&#39;re working diligently to Safely recover our operation &amp; accommodate displaced Customers &amp; Crews. We know this is unacceptable &amp; sincerely apologize. If your travel was impacted, explore self-service options here: <a href="https://t.co/B6L8HR9Yqc">https://t.co/B6L8HR9Yqc</a> <a href="https://t.co/mLWndYMned">pic.twitter.com/mLWndYMned</a>&mdash; Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) <a href="https://twitter.com/SouthwestAir/status/1607905087074013185?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 28, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>“We have some real work to do in making this right,” said Jordan, a 34-year Southwest veteran who became CEO in February. “For now, I want you to know that we are committed to that.”Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has criticized airlines for previous disruptions, said that “meltdown” was the only word he could think of to describe this week’s events at Southwest. He noted that while cancellations across the rest of the industry declined to about 4% of scheduled flights, they remained above 60% at Southwest.From the high rate of cancellations to customers’ inability to reach Southwest on the phone, the airline’s performance has been unacceptable, Buttigieg said. He vowed to hold the airline accountable and push it to reimburse travelers.“They need to make sure that those stranded passengers get to where they need to go and that they are provided adequate compensation,” including for missed flights, hotels and meals, he said Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”Robert Mann, an aviation consultant and former airline executive, said the Transportation Department could force Southwest to pay refunds for all flights that were canceled for reasons within the airline’s control, such as lack of crews. He estimated that could total 6,000 cancellations affecting 1 million customers and adding up to $300 million.Since Southwest plans to pay $428 million in shareholder dividends next month, “the numbers are not life-threatening, although brand damage has been done,” Mann said.Some consumer advocates are skeptical the government will punish Southwest.William McGee, a travel expert at the American Economic Liberties Project, noted that the Transportation Department fined Frontier Airlines and several foreign carriers for slow refunds early in the pandemic but didn't touch the four biggest U.S. airlines.“What Pete Buttigieg should do and what he will do are probably two different things,” McGee said. His group wants a change in federal law that would make it easier for states and private parties to sue airlines for harming consumers.On its website, Southwest told customers affected by canceled or delayed flights between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2 to submit receipts. The airline said, "We will honor reasonable requests for reimbursement for meals, hotel, and alternate transportation.”Navy physician Lt. Cmdr. Manoj Mathew said after spending hours on hold over two days Southwest reimbursed him for the first leg of his family's trip from Washington to Houston — they drove through terrible weather after the Dec. 23 flight was canceled. Now he is worried whether Southwest will operate the return flight Sunday.“I’m trying to reach other airlines,” he said. “There are no flights, plus it’s very expensive for us.”Delta Air Lines said it was capping last-minute fares in Southwest markets through the weekend, and American Airlines said it too was limiting fares in “select” cities. Neither provided figures.Leaders of Southwest labor unions have warned for years that the airline’s crew-scheduling system, which dates to the 1990s, was not keeping up as the route map grew more complicated.“The fact is this is not the same airline that (Southwest co-founder) Herb Kelleher built where planes went point-to-point,” Randy Barnes, president of the union that represents Southwest ground workers, said Wednesday. “If airline managers had planned better, the meltdown we’ve witnessed in recent days could have been lessened or averted.”The other large U.S. airlines use “hub and spoke” networks in which flights radiate out from a few major or hub airports. That helps limit the reach of disruptions caused by bad weather in part of the country.Southwest, however, has a “point-to-point” network in which planes crisscross the country during the day. This can increase the utilization and efficiency of each plane, but problems in one place can ripple across the country and leave crews trapped out of position. (Crews can be stranded at hub-and-spoke airlines too.)Those issues don't explain all the complaints that stranded travelers made about Southwest, including no ability to reach the airline on the phone and a lack of help with hotels and meals.Teal Williams, a 48-year-old active-duty Army reservist from Utah, was stuck at the Denver airport with her husband and two teenage kids on Christmas Day after their flight to Des Moines, Iowa, was canceled. She said Southwest employees had no information about flights and didn’t offer food vouchers while elderly passengers sat in wheelchairs for hours and mothers ran out of formula for their infants.“It was just imploding, and no one could tell you anything,” Williams said. The airline employees “were desperately trying to help, but you could tell they were just as clueless as everybody else... it was scary.”Unable to find plane, train or bus seats, Williams and her family felt lucky to score a rental car. They drove 12 hours to Iowa.

🎥 Airline offers self-service tool as travel nightmare continues

WASHINGTON (AP) —The U.S. announced new COVID-19 testing requirements Wednesday for all travelers from China, joining other nations imposing restrictions because of a surge of infections.

The increase in cases across China follows the rollback of the nation's strict anti-virus controls. China's “zero COVID” policies had kept the country's infection rate low but fueled public frustration and crushed economic growth.

The new U.S. requirements, which start Jan. 5, apply to travelers regardless of their nationality and vaccination status.

In a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/p1228-COVID-china.html">statement explaining the testing</a>, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cited the surge in infections and what it said was a lack of adequate and transparent information from China, including genomic sequencing on the viral strains circulating in the country.

“These data are critical to monitor the case surge effectively and decrease the chance for entry of a novel variant of concern,” the CDC said.

Some scientists are worried&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/science-health-china-covid-306b688d84e31a9462f82d0ead1f4584">the COVID-19 surge in China could unleash a new coronavirus variant</a>&nbsp;on the world that may or may not be similar to the ones circulating now. That’s because every infection is another chance for the virus to mutate.

“What we want to avoid is having a variant enter into the U.S. and spread like we saw with delta or omicron,” said Matthew Binnicker, director of clinical virology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

But the CDC's action may be less about stopping a new variant from crossing U.S. borders and more about increasing pressure on China to share more information, said Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, adding he hopes the restrictions "aren’t kept in place longer than they need to be.”

“I don’t think it’s going to have a major impact in slowing the spread of COVID-19,” Dowdy said. “We have a whole lot of transmission of COVID-19 here within our borders already.”

Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University, agreed China isn't sharing enough genomic sequencing information. But he also said the U.S. has become a little complacent about sequencing and needs to redouble its own efforts. The CDC also announced the expansion of an early warning program that tests volunteers at select airports for new and rare variants of the coronavirus. That program will expand to airports in Seattle and Los Angeles.

Under the new U.S. rules, travelers to the U.S. from China, Hong Kong and Macau, will be required to take a COVID-19 test no more than two days before travel and provide a negative test before boarding their flight. The testing applies to anyone 2 years and older, including U.S. citizens.

It will apply to people traveling from China via a third country and to people connecting through the U.S. as they go on to other destinations. Anyone testing positive more than 10 days before the flight can provide documentation showing they’ve recovered from COVID-19 instead of a negative test result.

It will be up to the airlines to confirm negative tests and documentation of recovery before passengers board.

Other countries have taken similar steps in an effort to keep infections from spreading beyond China's borders. Japan will require a negative COVID-19 test upon arrival for travelers from China, and Malaysia announced new tracking and surveillance measures. India, Italy, South Korea and Taiwan are requiring virus tests for visitors from China.

Lunar New Year, which begins Jan. 22, is usually China's busiest travel season, and China announced Tuesday it will resume issuing passports for tourism for the first time since the start of the pandemic in 2020.

“We look forward to welcoming Chinese travelers back to the United States,” U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Geoff Freeman said in a statement. He called the U.S. approach to testing inbound travelers “reasonable and appreciated.”

The U.S. action is a return to testing requirements for some international travelers. The&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-travel-government-and-politics-air-af509c58df1c931caac6ecf957ea1aed">Biden administration lifted the last of such mandates in June</a>. At that time, the CDC continued to recommend that people boarding flights to the U.S. get tested close to departure time and not travel if they are sick.

“We’ve done this before. We can do it again,” Dowdy said.

Early in the pandemic,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-donald-trump-us-news-ap-top-news-virus-outbreak-9e22f8aabe2f454593b9f9b4c67eb31f">the U.S. barred entry to foreigners traveling from China,</a>&nbsp;weeks after the virus first emerged there three years ago, and dozens of other countries were added to the list. The country started lifting travel bans late last year, but required travelers to the U.S. to be vaccinated and tested.&nbsp;

BEIJING (AP) — China says it will resume issuing passports for tourism in another big step away from anti-virus controls that isolated the country for almost three years, setting up a potential flood of Chinese going abroad for next month’s Lunar New Year holiday.

The announcement Tuesday adds to abrupt changes that are rolling back some of the world’s strictest anti-virus controls as President Xi Jinping's government&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/floods-health-business-beijing-covid-f0253b7a9a888a56835cb9bb09364b2d">tries to reverse an economic slump.</a>&nbsp;Rules that confined millions of people to their homes kept China’s infection rate low but fueled public frustration and crushed economic growth.

The latest decision could send free-spending Chinese tourists to revenue-starved destinations in Asia and Europe for Lunar New Year, which begins Jan. 22 and usually is the country's busiest travel season. But it also presents a danger they might spread COVID-19 as&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-china-beijing-covid-d0718b53ded7fb1a70c2db8e564ed072">infections surge in China.</a>

Travel services companies Trip.com and Qunar said international ticket bookings and searches for visa information on their websites rose five to eight times after Tuesday's announcement. Top destinations included Japan, Thailand, South Korea, the United States, Britain and Australia.

<a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-business-china-japan-covid-0935f496eea6a5be28ae0fc5f8a44ea7">Japan, India, South Korea and Taiwan</a>&nbsp;have responded to the Chinese wave of infections by requiring virus tests for visitors from China.

China stopped issuing visas to foreigners and passports to its own people at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.

The National Immigration Administration of China said it will start taking applications Jan. 8 for passports for tourists to go abroad.

The agency said it will take applications to extend, renew or reissue visas but gave no indication when they might be issued to first-time applicants.

China will “gradually resume” admitting foreign visitors, the agency said. It gave no indication when tourist travel from abroad might resume.

The changes will “create better conditions for orderly cross-border travel" and "bring more benefits to global economic development,” said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin.

China will “work with all countries” to “restore safety and stability to global industrial and supply chains and promote world economic recovery,” Wang said.

Health experts and economists expect the ruling Communist Party to keep limits on travel into China until at least mid-2023 while it carries out a&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-china-beijing-covid-0ad4ad8851cb1cea47a67abd16024c15">campaign to vaccinate millions of elderly people.</a>&nbsp;Experts say that is necessary to prevent a public health crisis.

During the pandemic, Chinese with family emergencies or work travel deemed important could obtain passports, but some students and businesspeople with visas to go to foreign countries were blocked by border guards from leaving. The handful of foreign businesspeople and others who were allowed into China were quarantined for up to one week.

Before the pandemic, China was the biggest source of foreign tourists for most of its Asian neighbors and an important market for Europe and the United States.

The government has dropped or eased most quarantine, testing and other restrictions within China, joining the United States, Japan and other governments in trying to live with the virus instead of stamping out transmission.

Japan and India have begun requiring virus tests for travelers from China. South Korea tests all visitors with elevated temperatures. South Korea says anyone who tests positive will be quarantined at home or in a hotel for a week.

South Korean officials said possible additional measures for arrivals from China will be announced Friday.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to relate internal discussions, said Washington is considering taking similar steps.

Taiwan on Wednesday announced visitors from China will be tested starting Jan. 1.

Hong Kong authorities said Wednesday they would scrap some of the city's COVID-19 restrictions, including PCR tests for all inbound travelers and vaccination requirements to enter certain venues. The easing comes as the southern city prepares for a&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/politics-health-china-beijing-xi-jinping-ec64078ae99587e02ff5e91c5f0cf490">reopening of borders with mainland China next month.</a>

On Monday, the Chinese government said it would remove&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-business-china-covid-ce7061b5d5c1782eefc1f05c79ddd835">quarantine requirements for travelers arriving from abroad,</a>&nbsp;also effective Jan. 8. Foreign companies welcomed the change as an important step to revive slumping business activity.

Business groups have warned global companies were shifting investment away from China because foreign executives were blocked from visiting.

The American Chamber of Commerce in China says more than 70% of companies that responded to a poll this month expect the impact of the latest wave of outbreaks to last no more than three months, ending in early 2023.

The government has stopped reporting nationwide case numbers but announcements by some cities indicate at least tens and possibly hundreds of millions of people might have been infected since the surge began in early October.

Experts have forecast 1 million to 2 million deaths in China through the end of 2023.

Also Monday, the government downgraded the official seriousness of COVID-19 and removed it from a list of illnesses that require quarantine. It said authorities would stop tracking close contacts and designating areas as being at high or low risk of infection.

WASHINGTON (AP) —The U.S. announced new COVID-19 testing requirements Wednesday for all travelers from China, joining other nations imposing restrictions because of a surge of infections.The increase in cases across China follows the rollback of the nation's strict anti-virus controls. China's “zero COVID” policies had kept the country's infection rate low but fueled public frustration and crushed economic growth.The new U.S. requirements, which start Jan. 5, apply to travelers regardless of their nationality and vaccination status.In a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/p1228-COVID-china.html">statement explaining the testing</a>, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cited the surge in infections and what it said was a lack of adequate and transparent information from China, including genomic sequencing on the viral strains circulating in the country.“These data are critical to monitor the case surge effectively and decrease the chance for entry of a novel variant of concern,” the CDC said.Some scientists are worried&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/science-health-china-covid-306b688d84e31a9462f82d0ead1f4584">the COVID-19 surge in China could unleash a new coronavirus variant</a>&nbsp;on the world that may or may not be similar to the ones circulating now. That’s because every infection is another chance for the virus to mutate.“What we want to avoid is having a variant enter into the U.S. and spread like we saw with delta or omicron,” said Matthew Binnicker, director of clinical virology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.But the CDC's action may be less about stopping a new variant from crossing U.S. borders and more about increasing pressure on China to share more information, said Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, adding he hopes the restrictions "aren’t kept in place longer than they need to be.”“I don’t think it’s going to have a major impact in slowing the spread of COVID-19,” Dowdy said. “We have a whole lot of transmission of COVID-19 here within our borders already.”Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University, agreed China isn't sharing enough genomic sequencing information. But he also said the U.S. has become a little complacent about sequencing and needs to redouble its own efforts. The CDC also announced the expansion of an early warning program that tests volunteers at select airports for new and rare variants of the coronavirus. That program will expand to airports in Seattle and Los Angeles.Under the new U.S. rules, travelers to the U.S. from China, Hong Kong and Macau, will be required to take a COVID-19 test no more than two days before travel and provide a negative test before boarding their flight. The testing applies to anyone 2 years and older, including U.S. citizens.It will apply to people traveling from China via a third country and to people connecting through the U.S. as they go on to other destinations. Anyone testing positive more than 10 days before the flight can provide documentation showing they’ve recovered from COVID-19 instead of a negative test result.It will be up to the airlines to confirm negative tests and documentation of recovery before passengers board.Other countries have taken similar steps in an effort to keep infections from spreading beyond China's borders. Japan will require a negative COVID-19 test upon arrival for travelers from China, and Malaysia announced new tracking and surveillance measures. India, Italy, South Korea and Taiwan are requiring virus tests for visitors from China.Lunar New Year, which begins Jan. 22, is usually China's busiest travel season, and China announced Tuesday it will resume issuing passports for tourism for the first time since the start of the pandemic in 2020.“We look forward to welcoming Chinese travelers back to the United States,” U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Geoff Freeman said in a statement. He called the U.S. approach to testing inbound travelers “reasonable and appreciated.”The U.S. action is a return to testing requirements for some international travelers. The&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-travel-government-and-politics-air-af509c58df1c931caac6ecf957ea1aed">Biden administration lifted the last of such mandates in June</a>. At that time, the CDC continued to recommend that people boarding flights to the U.S. get tested close to departure time and not travel if they are sick.“We’ve done this before. We can do it again,” Dowdy said.Early in the pandemic,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-donald-trump-us-news-ap-top-news-virus-outbreak-9e22f8aabe2f454593b9f9b4c67eb31f">the U.S. barred entry to foreigners traveling from China,</a>&nbsp;weeks after the virus first emerged there three years ago, and dozens of other countries were added to the list. The country started lifting travel bans late last year, but required travelers to the U.S. to be vaccinated and tested.&nbsp;------------BEIJING (AP) — China says it will resume issuing passports for tourism in another big step away from anti-virus controls that isolated the country for almost three years, setting up a potential flood of Chinese going abroad for next month’s Lunar New Year holiday.The announcement Tuesday adds to abrupt changes that are rolling back some of the world’s strictest anti-virus controls as President Xi Jinping's government&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/floods-health-business-beijing-covid-f0253b7a9a888a56835cb9bb09364b2d">tries to reverse an economic slump.</a>&nbsp;Rules that confined millions of people to their homes kept China’s infection rate low but fueled public frustration and crushed economic growth.The latest decision could send free-spending Chinese tourists to revenue-starved destinations in Asia and Europe for Lunar New Year, which begins Jan. 22 and usually is the country's busiest travel season. But it also presents a danger they might spread COVID-19 as&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-china-beijing-covid-d0718b53ded7fb1a70c2db8e564ed072">infections surge in China.</a>Travel services companies Trip.com and Qunar said international ticket bookings and searches for visa information on their websites rose five to eight times after Tuesday's announcement. Top destinations included Japan, Thailand, South Korea, the United States, Britain and Australia.<a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-business-china-japan-covid-0935f496eea6a5be28ae0fc5f8a44ea7">Japan, India, South Korea and Taiwan</a>&nbsp;have responded to the Chinese wave of infections by requiring virus tests for visitors from China.China stopped issuing visas to foreigners and passports to its own people at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.The National Immigration Administration of China said it will start taking applications Jan. 8 for passports for tourists to go abroad.The agency said it will take applications to extend, renew or reissue visas but gave no indication when they might be issued to first-time applicants.China will “gradually resume” admitting foreign visitors, the agency said. It gave no indication when tourist travel from abroad might resume.The changes will “create better conditions for orderly cross-border travel" and "bring more benefits to global economic development,” said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin.China will “work with all countries” to “restore safety and stability to global industrial and supply chains and promote world economic recovery,” Wang said.Health experts and economists expect the ruling Communist Party to keep limits on travel into China until at least mid-2023 while it carries out a&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-china-beijing-covid-0ad4ad8851cb1cea47a67abd16024c15">campaign to vaccinate millions of elderly people.</a>&nbsp;Experts say that is necessary to prevent a public health crisis.During the pandemic, Chinese with family emergencies or work travel deemed important could obtain passports, but some students and businesspeople with visas to go to foreign countries were blocked by border guards from leaving. The handful of foreign businesspeople and others who were allowed into China were quarantined for up to one week.Before the pandemic, China was the biggest source of foreign tourists for most of its Asian neighbors and an important market for Europe and the United States.The government has dropped or eased most quarantine, testing and other restrictions within China, joining the United States, Japan and other governments in trying to live with the virus instead of stamping out transmission.Japan and India have begun requiring virus tests for travelers from China. South Korea tests all visitors with elevated temperatures. South Korea says anyone who tests positive will be quarantined at home or in a hotel for a week.South Korean officials said possible additional measures for arrivals from China will be announced Friday.U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to relate internal discussions, said Washington is considering taking similar steps.Taiwan on Wednesday announced visitors from China will be tested starting Jan. 1.Hong Kong authorities said Wednesday they would scrap some of the city's COVID-19 restrictions, including PCR tests for all inbound travelers and vaccination requirements to enter certain venues. The easing comes as the southern city prepares for a&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/politics-health-china-beijing-xi-jinping-ec64078ae99587e02ff5e91c5f0cf490">reopening of borders with mainland China next month.</a>On Monday, the Chinese government said it would remove&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-business-china-covid-ce7061b5d5c1782eefc1f05c79ddd835">quarantine requirements for travelers arriving from abroad,</a>&nbsp;also effective Jan. 8. Foreign companies welcomed the change as an important step to revive slumping business activity.Business groups have warned global companies were shifting investment away from China because foreign executives were blocked from visiting.The American Chamber of Commerce in China says more than 70% of companies that responded to a poll this month expect the impact of the latest wave of outbreaks to last no more than three months, ending in early 2023.The government has stopped reporting nationwide case numbers but announcements by some cities indicate at least tens and possibly hundreds of millions of people might have been infected since the surge began in early October.Experts have forecast 1 million to 2 million deaths in China through the end of 2023.Also Monday, the government downgraded the official seriousness of COVID-19 and removed it from a list of illnesses that require quarantine. It said authorities would stop tracking close contacts and designating areas as being at high or low risk of infection.___

US set to again require COVID tests for travelers from China  

Friday, October 23rd, 1931-Tuesday, December 27th, 2022

An obituary and funeral services are pending with Baalmann Mortuary.

<h2>Mary Mathilda Cripe </h2>Friday, October 23rd, 1931-Tuesday, December 27th, 2022<ul>
 <li>Service: 2 p.m.
 Wednesday, Jan. 4 at Beulah Cemetery, Country Club Drive, Colby, KS 67701
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 </li><li>Interment: Beulah Cemetery, Country Club Drive, Colby, KS 67701 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 </li>
 </ul>An obituary and funeral services are pending with Baalmann Mortuary.

Mary Mathilda Cripe

JACKSON COUNTY— A Kansas City man charged in the October double-murder of Chantell Gipson and Austin Scott is still at large.

Pulluaim fled the scene im the victim's vehicle. Police recovered the vehicle and have exhausted all leads in an attempted to find him.&nbsp;

Pulluaim is described as 6-foot,&nbsp;&nbsp;thin build with&nbsp; shoulder length dreadlocks. He should be considered armed and dangerous. The FBI is assisting with the investigation.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2022/12/1671103315937.png" alt="Pulluaim-photo KCPD" />
 <figcaption>Pulluaim-photo KCPD</figcaption>
 </figure>JACKSON COUNTY— A Kansas City man charged in the October double-murder of Chantell Gipson and Austin Scott is still at large.Glenn A. Pulluaim II, 28, faces two Murder 1st Degree charges and two Armed Criminal Action charges, according to Jackson County. Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker.According to court records, on Oct. 17, Kansas City police&nbsp; were dispatched to the 8700 block of Chestnut Circle to check on the welfare of an individual. Inside an apartment, police officers found the body of Chantell Gipson. She had been shot. In another bedroom they found the second victim, Austin Scott, Gipson's cousin. Witnesses helped identify Pulluaiam. His DNA profile was founnd&nbsp; on spent shells found at the crime scene.Pulluaim fled the scene im the victim's vehicle. Police recovered the vehicle and have exhausted all leads in an attempted to find him.&nbsp;Pulluaim is described as 6-foot,&nbsp;&nbsp;thin build with&nbsp; shoulder length dreadlocks. He should be considered armed and dangerous. The FBI is assisting with the investigation.

Kansas City double-murder suspect is sill at large

DALLAS (AP) — Southwest Airlines scrubbed thousands of flights again Tuesday in the aftermath of the massive winter storm that wrecked Christmas travel plans across the U.S., and the federal government said it would investigate why the company lagged so far behind other carriers.

Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan issued an apology on social media.

A day after most U.S. airlines had recovered from the storm, Southwest called off about 2,600 more flights on the East Coast by late afternoon. Those flights accounted for more than 80% of the 3,000 trips that got canceled nationwide Tuesday, according to tracking service FlightAware.

And the chaos seemed certain to continue. The airline also scrubbed 2,500 flights for Wednesday and nearly 1,400 for Thursday as it tried to restore order to its mangled schedule.

At airports with major Southwest operations, customers stood in long lines hoping to find a seat on another flight. They described waiting hours on hold for help, only to be cut off. Some tried to rent cars to get to their destinations sooner. Others found spots to sleep on the floor. Luggage piled up in huge heaps.

Conrad Stoll, a 66-year-old retired construction worker in Missouri, planned to fly from Kansas City to Los Angeles for his father's 90th birthday party until his Southwest flight was canceled early Tuesday. He said he won't get to see his 88-year-old mother either.

"I went there in 2019, and she looked at me and said, 'I'm not going to see you again.'" Stoll said. "My sister has been taking care of them, and she's just like, 'They're really losing it really quick.'"

Stoll hopes to get another chance to see his parents in the spring, when the weather is warmer.

In a video that Southwest posted late Tuesday, CEO Robert Jordan said Southwest would operate a reduced schedule for several days but hoped to be "back on track before next week."

Jordan blamed the winter storm for snarling the airline's "highly complex" network. He said Southwest's tools for recovering from disruptions work "99% of the time, but clearly we need to double down" on upgrading systems to avoid a repeat of this week.

"We have some real work to do in making this right," said Jordan, a 34-year Southwest veteran who became CEO in February. "For now, I want you to know that we are committed to that."

The problems began over the weekend and snowballed Monday, when Southwest called off more than 70% of its flights.

That was after the worst of the storm had passed. The airline said many pilots and flight attendants were out of position to work their flights. Leaders of unions representing Southwest pilots and flight attendants blamed antiquated crew-scheduling software and criticized company management.

Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said the airline failed to fix problems that caused a similar meltdown in October 2021.

"There is a lot of frustration because this is so preventable," Murray said. "The airline cannot connect crews to airplanes. The airline didn't even know where pilots were at."

Murray said managers resorted this week to asking pilots at some airports to report to a central location, where they wrote down the names of pilots who were present and forwarded the lists to headquarters.

Lyn Montgomery, president of the Transport Workers Union representing Southwest flight attendants, said she and other labor leaders have repeatedly told management that the airline's scheduling technology is not good enough.

"This has been something we have seen coming," she said. "This is a very catastrophic event."

The airline is now drawing unwanted attention from Washington.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has criticized airlines for previous disruptions, said his agency would examine the causes of Southwest's widespread cancellations and whether the airline was meeting its legal obligations to stranded customers.

"While we all understand that you can't control the weather, this has clearly crossed the line from what is an uncontrollable weather situation to something that is the airline's direct responsibility," Buttigieg told "NBC Nightly News." He said Southwest should at least pay cash refunds for canceled flights and cover stranded passengers' hotel and meal costs.

In Congress, the Senate Commerce Committee also promised an investigation. Two Senate Democrats called on Southwest to provide "significant" compensation for stranded travelers, saying that the airline has the money because it plans to pay $428 million in dividends next month.

Bryce Burger and his family were supposed to be on a cruise to Mexico departing from San Diego on Dec. 24, but their flight from Denver was canceled without warning. The flight was rebooked through Burbank, California, but that flight was canceled while they sat at the gate.

"It's horrible," Burger said Tuesday by phone from Salt Lake City, where the family decided to drive after giving up the cruise.

The family's luggage is still at the Denver airport, and Burger doesn't know if he can get a refund for the cruise because the flight to California was booked separately.

The size and severity of the storm created havoc for many airlines, although the largest number of canceled flights Tuesday were at airports where Southwest is a major carrier, including Denver, Chicago Midway, Las Vegas, Baltimore and Dallas.

Spirit Airlines and Alaska Airlines both canceled about 10% of their flights, with much smaller cancellation percentages at American, Delta, United and JetBlue.

Kristie Smiley planned to return home to Los Angeles until Southwest canceled her Tuesday flight, so she waited at the Kansas City airport for her mother to pick her up. Southwest can't put her on another plane until Sunday, New Year's Day.

Smiley said the airline kept blaming the weather after the storm passed and didn't tell passengers why planes couldn't take off.

"They like acted like (Tuesday's flight) was going to go until they started saying, 'Oh, five more minutes. Oh, 10 more minutes.' I'm not sure what's up with them. It seems a little off," she said.

Danielle Zanin vowed never to fly Southwest again after it took four days, several canceled flights and sleeping in the airport before she, her husband and their two young children got home to Illinois from Albuquerque, New Mexico. They made stops at airports in Denver and Phoenix and reached Chicago only after ditching Southwest and paying $1,400 for four one-way tickets on American Airlines.

"I remember saying, 'Oh my God, we're getting on a plane!' I was honestly shocked because I thought we were stuck in airports forever," she said.

Zanin plans to ask Southwest to be reimbursed for part of their original tickets plus the new ones on American, and extra spending on rental cars, parking, an Uber ride and food — about $2,000 in all.

"I don't have good faith that they will do much of anything," she said.

Associated Press writers Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Missouri, Thalia Beaty in New York and Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California, contributed to this story.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2022/12/1672191058148.png" alt="Denver International Airport on Tuesday- photo courtesy KMGH" />
 <figcaption>Denver International Airport on Tuesday- photo courtesy KMGH</figcaption>
 </figure>By DAVID KOENIG AP Airlines WriterDALLAS (AP) — Southwest Airlines scrubbed thousands of flights again Tuesday in the aftermath of the massive winter storm that wrecked Christmas travel plans across the U.S., and the federal government said it would investigate why the company lagged so far behind other carriers.Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan issued an apology on social media.<div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">On the heels of wide-scale disruptions, we&#39;re working diligently to Safely recover our operation &amp; accommodate displaced Customers &amp; Crews. We know this is unacceptable &amp; sincerely apologize. If your travel was impacted, explore self-service options here: <a href="https://t.co/B6L8HR9Yqc">https://t.co/B6L8HR9Yqc</a> <a href="https://t.co/mLWndYMned">pic.twitter.com/mLWndYMned</a>&mdash; Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) <a href="https://twitter.com/SouthwestAir/status/1607905087074013185?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 28, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>A day after most U.S. airlines had recovered from the storm, Southwest called off about 2,600 more flights on the East Coast by late afternoon. Those flights accounted for more than 80% of the 3,000 trips that got canceled nationwide Tuesday, according to tracking service FlightAware.And the chaos seemed certain to continue. The airline also scrubbed 2,500 flights for Wednesday and nearly 1,400 for Thursday as it tried to restore order to its mangled schedule.At airports with major Southwest operations, customers stood in long lines hoping to find a seat on another flight. They described waiting hours on hold for help, only to be cut off. Some tried to rent cars to get to their destinations sooner. Others found spots to sleep on the floor. Luggage piled up in huge heaps.Conrad Stoll, a 66-year-old retired construction worker in Missouri, planned to fly from Kansas City to Los Angeles for his father's 90th birthday party until his Southwest flight was canceled early Tuesday. He said he won't get to see his 88-year-old mother either."I went there in 2019, and she looked at me and said, 'I'm not going to see you again.'" Stoll said. "My sister has been taking care of them, and she's just like, 'They're really losing it really quick.'"Stoll hopes to get another chance to see his parents in the spring, when the weather is warmer.In a video that Southwest posted late Tuesday, CEO Robert Jordan said Southwest would operate a reduced schedule for several days but hoped to be "back on track before next week."Jordan blamed the winter storm for snarling the airline's "highly complex" network. He said Southwest's tools for recovering from disruptions work "99% of the time, but clearly we need to double down" on upgrading systems to avoid a repeat of this week."We have some real work to do in making this right," said Jordan, a 34-year Southwest veteran who became CEO in February. "For now, I want you to know that we are committed to that."The problems began over the weekend and snowballed Monday, when Southwest called off more than 70% of its flights.That was after the worst of the storm had passed. The airline said many pilots and flight attendants were out of position to work their flights. Leaders of unions representing Southwest pilots and flight attendants blamed antiquated crew-scheduling software and criticized company management.Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said the airline failed to fix problems that caused a similar meltdown in October 2021."There is a lot of frustration because this is so preventable," Murray said. "The airline cannot connect crews to airplanes. The airline didn't even know where pilots were at."Murray said managers resorted this week to asking pilots at some airports to report to a central location, where they wrote down the names of pilots who were present and forwarded the lists to headquarters.Lyn Montgomery, president of the Transport Workers Union representing Southwest flight attendants, said she and other labor leaders have repeatedly told management that the airline's scheduling technology is not good enough."This has been something we have seen coming," she said. "This is a very catastrophic event."The airline is now drawing unwanted attention from Washington.Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has criticized airlines for previous disruptions, said his agency would examine the causes of Southwest's widespread cancellations and whether the airline was meeting its legal obligations to stranded customers."While we all understand that you can't control the weather, this has clearly crossed the line from what is an uncontrollable weather situation to something that is the airline's direct responsibility," Buttigieg told "NBC Nightly News." He said Southwest should at least pay cash refunds for canceled flights and cover stranded passengers' hotel and meal costs.In Congress, the Senate Commerce Committee also promised an investigation. Two Senate Democrats called on Southwest to provide "significant" compensation for stranded travelers, saying that the airline has the money because it plans to pay $428 million in dividends next month.Bryce Burger and his family were supposed to be on a cruise to Mexico departing from San Diego on Dec. 24, but their flight from Denver was canceled without warning. The flight was rebooked through Burbank, California, but that flight was canceled while they sat at the gate."It's horrible," Burger said Tuesday by phone from Salt Lake City, where the family decided to drive after giving up the cruise.The family's luggage is still at the Denver airport, and Burger doesn't know if he can get a refund for the cruise because the flight to California was booked separately.The size and severity of the storm created havoc for many airlines, although the largest number of canceled flights Tuesday were at airports where Southwest is a major carrier, including Denver, Chicago Midway, Las Vegas, Baltimore and Dallas.Spirit Airlines and Alaska Airlines both canceled about 10% of their flights, with much smaller cancellation percentages at American, Delta, United and JetBlue.Kristie Smiley planned to return home to Los Angeles until Southwest canceled her Tuesday flight, so she waited at the Kansas City airport for her mother to pick her up. Southwest can't put her on another plane until Sunday, New Year's Day.Smiley said the airline kept blaming the weather after the storm passed and didn't tell passengers why planes couldn't take off."They like acted like (Tuesday's flight) was going to go until they started saying, 'Oh, five more minutes. Oh, 10 more minutes.' I'm not sure what's up with them. It seems a little off," she said.Danielle Zanin vowed never to fly Southwest again after it took four days, several canceled flights and sleeping in the airport before she, her husband and their two young children got home to Illinois from Albuquerque, New Mexico. They made stops at airports in Denver and Phoenix and reached Chicago only after ditching Southwest and paying $1,400 for four one-way tickets on American Airlines."I remember saying, 'Oh my God, we're getting on a plane!' I was honestly shocked because I thought we were stuck in airports forever," she said.Zanin plans to ask Southwest to be reimbursed for part of their original tickets plus the new ones on American, and extra spending on rental cars, parking, an Uber ride and food — about $2,000 in all."I don't have good faith that they will do much of anything," she said.___Associated Press writers Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Missouri, Thalia Beaty in New York and Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California, contributed to this story.

🎥 Southwest Airlines apologizes as travel nightmare continues

By JOHN P. TRETBAR Operators of the Keystone Pipeline announced on Friday federal regulators have OKed planning to restart the segment of pipe that spilled 14,000 barrels of heavy Canadian crude in northern Kansas.

TC Energy said earlier the impacted segment of what it calls the Cushing Segment had been removed and sent to a lab for testing.

On Friday the company said the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration had approved its Restart Plan. The statement said the plan includes several days of testing and inspections.

TC Energy said activities on the spill site would continue despite the cold weather's impact on some equipment. The company reported approximately 8,395 barrels of oil had been recovered as of Friday. TC Energy dramatically ramped up crude flows through the Keystone system in the weeks leading up to the oil spill in Washington County on Dec. 8.

That's according to a Bloomberg report citing data from an energy research firm. Wood-Mackenzie confirmed the numbers for us via email.

"The half-hourly data point Wood-Mackenzie recorded before the decrease in flows was 649,868 bpd. This occurred at 9 p.m. ET on Dec. 7," according to the Wood-Mackenzie email.

Those flows rose from a baseline of 622,000 barrels per day. The company reported in October it would raise flows to test the system's operational efficiency. Kansas regulators approved eight new drilling permits for the week, 1,581 for the year, including three in eastern Kansas and five west of Wichita. There was one new permit filed in Barton County last week. Operators completed 38 wells last week, bringing the total for the year to 1,589, compared to 959 completions a year ago.

By JOHN P. TRETBAR Operators of the Keystone Pipeline announced on Friday federal regulators have OKed planning to restart the segment of pipe that spilled 14,000 barrels of heavy Canadian crude in northern Kansas.TC Energy said earlier the impacted segment of what it calls the Cushing Segment had been removed and sent to a lab for testing.On Friday the company said the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration had approved its Restart Plan. The statement said the plan includes several days of testing and inspections.TC Energy said activities on the spill site would continue despite the cold weather's impact on some equipment. The company reported approximately 8,395 barrels of oil had been recovered as of Friday. TC Energy dramatically ramped up crude flows through the Keystone system in the weeks leading up to the oil spill in Washington County on Dec. 8.That's according to a Bloomberg report citing data from an energy research firm. Wood-Mackenzie confirmed the numbers for us via email."The half-hourly data point Wood-Mackenzie recorded before the decrease in flows was 649,868 bpd. This occurred at 9 p.m. ET on Dec. 7," according to the Wood-Mackenzie email.Those flows rose from a baseline of 622,000 barrels per day. The company reported in October it would raise flows to test the system's operational efficiency. Kansas regulators approved eight new drilling permits for the week, 1,581 for the year, including three in eastern Kansas and five west of Wichita. There was one new permit filed in Barton County last week. Operators completed 38 wells last week, bringing the total for the year to 1,589, compared to 959 completions a year ago.The Kansas Rig Count was down two rigs in eastern Kansas and down two west of Wichita. That's down 8 percent from the week before.Independent Oil &amp; Gas Service reported two operators about to spud new wells in Ellis County. Operators completed one new well in Barton County, one in Ellis County and two in Stafford County. The rotary rig count from Baker Hughes last week dropped by five oil rigs, with Texas dropping by three rigs, Wyoming down two, and Colorado, North Dakota and Oklahoma each down one. The rig count in Kansas from Independent Oil &amp; Gas Service was up one east of Wichita and unchanged in western Kansas. Drilling was underway or about to begin on three wells in Ellis County and one in Stafford County Monday. The Kansas Geology Society's Nomenclature Committee met earlier this month to recognize and name four new oil fields in Kansas. They're located in Butler, Cheyenne, Gove and Scott counties. According to a release from Independent Oil &amp; Gas Service, that's 40 new fields in the calendar year 2022, compared to 21 last year. The second felt earthquake in West Texas in less than a month struck northwest of Midland with a magnitude of 5.3, the fourth-largest in state history. It occurred in an area where saltwater disposal operations were halted a year ago after a string of three felt quakes in just over a year.Another felt quake last month struck in a different seismic response area southwest of Midland. Regulators last week responded with new disposal limits there.On Nov. 16, a 5.4-magnitude shook a desolate stretch of desert in Reeves County, Texas. The quake was the third largest in Texas history, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.&nbsp; The chief energy regulator in Texas has a new leader. Commissioner Christi Craddick was unanimously elected chairman of the Railroad Commission of Texas during a meeting Dec. 13. Craddick replaces Commissioner Wayne Christian as chairman of the three-member panel. The latest numbers from the No. 3 crude-producing state show October output dropped a fraction of a percent. The North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources reports output of 1.112 million barrels per day, down 123 barrels per day from September.&nbsp; The gas-capture tally statewide remains at 95 percent, with some ups and downs in the various basins and leaseholds. That means operators were able to limit the venting or flaring to just 5 percent of the natural gas produced at oil wells. Gasoline inventories increased by 2.5 million barrels, according to a government report. The auto club Triple-A says the national average for regular gasoline has fallen by another four cents to $3.10 per gallon. Pump prices have dropped a dime a week for the last month.Diesel stockpiles dropped slightly, and are about 7 percent below the five-year average for this time of year. National diesel prices dropped last week to $4.70 per gallon, down more than half a dollar from a month ago, but still more than a dollar higher than last year at this time. A government report predicts the huge profit margins currently enjoyed by U.S. refiners will drop by almost 20 percent early next year. The EPA report also suggests refiners will maximize diesel fuel production amid a slight contraction in the U.S. economy, which could reduce historically high diesel pump prices beginning next year. The government reported a slight uptick in U.S. crude production last week, to 12.15 million barrels per day, up from 11.5 million barrels per day a year ago. U.S. crude imports decreased by a million barrels per day last week to 5.8 million barrels per day. The four-week average is about 4 percent lower than during the same four weeks last year. Commercial crude inventories dropped by almost 6 million barrels last week. The tally as of Dec. 16 was 418.2 million barrels, or about 7 percent below the five-year average for this time of year. Oil-by-rail shipments in the U.S. dropped slightly across the U.S. but rose in Canada. Ahead of the expected holiday lull, U.S. operators originated 10,582 tanker carloads of petroleum and petroleum products in the week through Dec. 17, according to a weekly report from the Association of American Railroads. Russia's deputy prime minister said last week they are ready to reduce Russian production by 500,000 to 700,000 barrels per day early next year, just as crude demand in China is expected to spike. The production cuts are viewed as a response to the G-7 nations' recent move to cap the price they'll pay for Russian crude. Another fire at another Liquefied Natural Gas facility prompts another warning of the impact on winter supplies. Bloomberg reports Shell has suspended production at a floating LNG facility off the coast of Australia after a fire broke out. The move puts a crimp in supplies to Asia right as winter starts to boost consumption. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission sent detailed demands to Freeport LNG on 64 items following a visit to the company's Texas facility last month. Freeport shut down the plant June 8 after an explosion and fire that energy consultants blamed on inadequate procedures, human error and fatigue. The company says they have nothing new to report on plans to restart operations this month. Reuters reports Freeport missed three previous restart targets. In November, it said it expects to be processing about 2 billion cubic feet of gas per day in January, and reach full production in March 2023.