VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI ’s body, his head resting on a pair of crimson pillows, lay in state in St. Peter’s Basilica on Monday as tens of thousands queued to pay tribute to the pontiff who shocked the world by retiring a decade ago. On the eve of the first of three days of viewing, Italian security officials had said at least 25,000-30,000 people would come on Monday. But by the end of the first day’s viewing, some 65,000 persons had passed by the bier, the Vatican said. As daylight broke, 10 white-gloved Papal Gentlemen — lay assistants to pontiffs and papal households — carried the body on a cloth-covered wooden stretcher after its arrival at the basilica to its resting place in front of the main altar under Bernini’s towering bronze canopy.
SANTOS, Brazil (AP) — Thousands of mourners, including high school students and supreme court justices, began filing past the body of Pelé on Monday on the century-old field where he made his hometown team one of Brazil’s best. The soccer great died on Thursday after a battle with cancer. He was the only player ever to win three World Cups, and he was 82. Pelé’s coffin, draped in the flags of Brazil and the Santos FC football club, was placed on the midfield area of Vila Belmiro, the stadium outside Sao Paulo that was his home for most of his career.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian forces fired rockets at a facility in the eastern Donetsk region where Russian soldiers were stationed, killing 63 of them, Russia’s defense ministry said Monday, in one of the deadliest attacks on the Kremlin’s forces since the war began more than 10 months ago. Ukrainian forces fired six rockets from a HIMARS launch system and two of them were shot down, a defense ministry statement said. It did not say when the strike happened. The strike, using a U.S.-supplied precision weapon that has proven critical in enabling Ukrainian forces to hit key targets, delivered a new setback for Russia which in recent months has reeled from a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee is shutting down, having completed a whirlwind 18-month investigation of the 2021 Capitol insurrection and having sent its work to the Justice Department along with a recommendation for prosecuting former President Donald Trump. The committee’s time officially ends Tuesday when the new Republican-led House is sworn in. With many of the committee’s staff already departed, remaining aides have spent the last two weeks releasing many of the panel’s materials, including its 814-page final report, about 200 transcripts of witness interviews, and documents used to support its conclusions. Lawmakers said they wanted to make their work public to underscore the seriousness of the attack and Trump’s multi-pronged effort to try to overturn the election.
South Carolina finished 2022 how it started the year: No. 1 in The Associated Press Top 25 women’s basketball poll. While the top-ranked Gamecocks cruised to a win in their lone game last week, then-No. 4 Indiana, No. 6 N.C. State and No. 7 Virginia Tech all lost as they scrambled to replace injured players. There were 22 losses by teams in the AP top 10 this season before Jan. 1. That was tied for the most in the past 23 years before January, matching the 2014-15 season, according to ESPN. Seven of those losses came to unranked teams, tied with 1999-2000 and 2004-05 for the most ever.
STROUDSBURG, Pa. (AP) — Relatives of a man arrested in Pennsylvania in the slayings of four University of Idaho students expressed sympathy for the victims’ families but also vowed to support him and promote “his presumption of innocence.” Bryan Kohberger, 28, is eager to be exonerated and plans to tell a judge Tuesday in Pennsylvania that he will not fight extradition to Idaho, said his public defender, Jason LaBar. Moscow, Idaho, police Capt. Anthony Dahlinger said that would speed up the process of bringing Kohberger to Idaho to face charges, but that he wasn’t sure yet when that might happen. Kohberger, a doctoral student and teaching assistant in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University, was taken into custody early Friday by state police at his parents’ home in Chestnuthill Township in eastern Pennsylvania, authorities said.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Latin American leaders converged on Brazil to meet with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on his first full day in office Monday, welcoming him back to power and hoping his country assumes a great role on the international stage. Lula’s predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, rarely traveled abroad or received visiting heads-of-state and found himself increasingly isolated. But South American heads of state – some of them fellow leftists, though not all – clearly welcomed Lula’s third term in office and want greater participation from the continent’s largest economy. “It was a very powerful symbol of desire in the region that leaders want Brazil to be back,” according to Oliver Stuenkel, a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university.
NEW YORK (AP) — A man accused of attacking police with a machete near New York’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve was arrested on charges of attempting to murder police officers, authorities said Monday as they continued to investigate whether he was motivated by Islamic extremism. Trevor Bickford, 19, also faces attempted assault charges from the attack that injured two officers at the edge of the high-security zone where throngs of new year’s revelers were gathered, the New York Police Department said in a news release. Bickford, who lives in Wells, Maine, remained hospitalized Monday with a gunshot wound to the shoulder from police fire during the confrontation.
WASHINGTON (AP) — When lawyers argue before the Supreme Court, a small white light goes on to tell them when their time is almost expired and then a red light signals when they should stop. But arguments this term are extending well beyond the red light’s cue. Arguments that usually lasted an hour in the morning have stretched well beyond two, and on many days it’s long past lunchtime before the court breaks. The lengthy arguments have to do with a change the justices have made to their argument style, a switch tied to the coronavirus pandemic, leading to the justices asking more questions.
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Unless Missouri Gov. Mike Parson grants clemency, Amber McLaughlin, 49, will become the first transgender woman executed in the U.S. She is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday for killing a former girlfriend in 2003. McLaughlin’s attorney, Larry Komp, said there are no court appeals pending. The clemency request focuses on several issues, including McLaughlin’s traumatic childhood and mental health issues, which the jury never heard in her trial. A foster parent rubbed feces in her face when she was a toddler and her adoptive father used a stun gun on her, according to the clemency petition.
