10 things you need to know today: January 17, 2023

(Image credit: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

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1. White House: Government doesn't keep visitor logs at presidents' homes
2. MLK's daughter slams politicians who quote King but don't work for change
3. China's population drops for 1st time in 6 decades
4. Flight recorders found at Nepal plane-crash site
5. Report: Santos has 'deeper ties' to Russian oligarch's cousin than previously known
6. Death toll from Russian missile strike in Dnipro rises to 40
7. 6 people, including 6-month-old baby, killed in California shooting
8. Millions still threatened by floods but California storms to ease
9. Failed N.M. GOP candidate arrested over shootings at Democrats' homes
10. Italian cinema star Gina Lollobrigida dies at 95

published 17 January 2023

1. White House: Government doesn't keep visitor logs at presidents' homes

The White House said Monday it couldn't provide visitor logs for President Biden's residence in Wilmington, Delaware, as requested by House Republicans because the government doesn't maintain visitor logs for officials' personal homes. "Like every president in decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal," White House counsel's office spokesman Ian Sams said in a statement to Fox News. Sams noted that Biden "restored the norm" of keeping White House visitor logs "after the previous administration ended them." House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) on Sunday sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain requesting visitor logs after small sets of documents with classified markings were found at Biden's residence and an office he used after serving as vice president.

The Rev. Bernice King, daughter of slain civil rights icon Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said Monday that she is "exhausted, exasperated, and, frankly, disappointed" to hear politicians repeat her father's words but "not set aside politics" to end police brutality and voter suppression. "We love to quote King in and around the holiday, but then we refuse to live King 365 days of the year," she said at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where her father was once a pastor, on the holiday honoring the slain leader and marking his birthday. The service was one of the high-profile events honoring King on the 38th federal King holiday, celebrating what would have been his 94th birthday.

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China's population declined last year for the first time since the 1960s, signaling that start of "a demographic crisis that will have consequences not just for China and its economy but for the world," according to The New York Times. China's government on Tuesday reported 9.6 million births in 2022, and 10.4 million deaths. China's declining birth rate is now considered irreversible, speeding the country toward the day when it "will not have enough people of working age to fuel the high-speed growth that made it an engine of the global economy," the Times said. By 2035, China will have 400 million people over 60 — nearly a third of its population — raising the threat of labor shortages.

Search crews on Monday recovered the flight data and cockpit voice recorders of a passenger plane that crashed in Nepal, killing at least 69 of the 72 people aboard. The disaster, which occurred in the foothills of the Himalayas, was the country's deadliest plane crash in three decades. Rescuers continued to sift through the debris, but access was difficult, as the plane plummeted to the ground in a 984-foot-deep gorge. The Sunday flight was headed to Pokhara, a city that is popular with tourists because it serves as the gateway to the Annapurna Circuit hiking trail. A witness said the plane, which was less than a minute from the airport, appeared to be landing normally when it suddenly veered left and plummeted.

Embattled freshman Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), who has acknowledged making up much of his resume, "has deeper ties than previously known" to the cousin of sanctioned Russian billionaire Victor Vekselberg, The Washington Post reported Monday, citing video footage and court documents. Andrew Intrater, a cousin of Vekselberg, and his wife gave $5,800 — the maximum allowed — to Santos' main campaign committee, the Post reported. The couple also donated even more to committees linked to Santos since 2020, Federal Election Commission filings indicate. A Security and Exchange Commission filing in a lawsuit against Florida-based investment firm Harbor City Capital, where Santos once worked, shows that Intrater put hundreds of thousands of dollars into the firm.

The death toll from a Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro continued to rise Monday, reaching 40 with dozens of other people still missing. It is the deadliest single attack yet in Russia's three-month series of missile and drone attacks targeting Ukrainian cities far from the front lines. Ukraine has labeled the strikes against civilians as terrorism, and cited them to justify pleas for more weapons from Western allies as it continues to fight invading Russian forces. Hopes have faded that more of the missing will be found alive in the rubble, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said rescuers would keep working "as long as there is even the slightest chance to save lives."

A 6-month-old baby, her 17-year-old mother, and four others were killed Monday in Goshen, California, in what law enforcement officials believe was an attack by a drug cartel. "The level of violence ... this was not your run-of-the-mill low-end gang member," Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux told the Los Angeles Times. The baby was found cradled in the arms of her mother, law enforcement officials said, and both had been shot in the head. An elderly woman and three men were also killed. Authorities said the massacre could be linked to a narcotics-related search warrant carried out at the residence last week. A man was arrested, and it is not clear whether he was one of the victims found Monday.

About eight million people remained under flood watches in California through Monday evening as the latest atmospheric-river storm hit the already drenched state with more torrential rain and violent winds. California has seen more than 400 landslides in a series of storms since Dec. 30, according to the California Geological Survey. At least 19 people have died, as the storms destroyed homes and inundated entire neighborhoods. The state is expected to get a break later in the week. "As we push into the day on Tuesday, we're looking for quieter weather across much of the state, with one fast-moving additional system arriving for later Wednesday into early Thursday," said David Lawrence of the National Weather Service.

Albuquerque police on Monday arrested an unsuccessful Republican state House candidate, Solomon Pena, who is accused of being the "mastermind" behind shootings at the homes of four Democratic elected officials in December and January. Nobody was injured in the incidents. Pena lost November's state House District 14 race, but claimed on social media that the election was stolen from him. He went unannounced to three of the elected officials' homes in November saying the election results shouldn't be certified. Pena is accused of hiring four men and conspiring to have them shoot at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators, Police Chief Harold Medina announced Monday, according to the Albuquerque Journal.

Legendary Italian film star Gina Lollobrigida died in Rome on Monday. She was 95. Her agent, Paola Comin, confirmed Lollobrigida's death without indicating the cause. Lollobrigida last year broke a thigh in a fall, and had surgery to repair it in September. Lollobrigida was long referred to as "the most beautiful woman in the world," after the title of one of her films. She starred in The World's Most Beautiful Woman in 1955. Other notable roles came in Golden Globe winner Come September with Rock Hudson, 1953's Beat the Devil, a John Huston film also starring Humphrey Bogart and Jennifer Jones, and Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, for which she won Italy's top movie award, a David di Donatello, as best actress in 1969.

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.