AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Comatose Russian dissident stable upon arrival in Germany
BERLIN (AP) — Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who is in a coma after a suspected poisoning, arrived in Berlin on a special flight Saturday for treatment by specialists at the German capital’s main hospital.
“Navalny is in Berlin,” Jaka Bizilj, of the German organization Cinema For Peace, which organized the flight, told The Associated Press. “He survived the flight and he's stable.”
After touching down shortly before 9 a.m. at a special area of the capital's Tegel airport used for government and military flights, Navalny was taken by ambulance to the downtown campus of Berlin's Charite hospital.
The hospital later issued a statement saying extensive tests were being carried out on Navalny, and doctors would not comment on his illness or treatment until those were completed.
Navalny, a politician and corruption investigator who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, was admitted to an intensive care unit in the Siberian city of Omsk on Thursday. His supporters believe that tea he drank was laced with poison — and that the Kremlin is behind both his illness and the delay in transferring him to a top German hospital.
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House holding rare Saturday vote on postal changes, funds
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House is convening for a rare Saturday session to address mail delivery disruptions, poised to pass legislation that would reverse recent changes in U.S. Postal Service operations and send $25 billion in emergency funds to shore up the agency ahead of the November election.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the Postal Service will be “election central” as she recalled lawmakers to Washington in a highly unusual election year as millions of Americans are expected to opt for mail-in ballots to avoid polling places during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Postal Service is “under attack,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the chair of the Oversight Committee and the bill's author, in the Democrats' weekly address.
The daylong Saturday session comes as an uproar over mail interference puts the Postal Service at the center of the nation’s tumultuous election year, with Americans rallying around one of the nation’s oldest and more popular institutions.
New Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testified Friday in the Senate that his “No. 1 priority” is to ensure election mail arrives on time.
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Mounting US deaths reveal an outsize toll on people of color
As many as 215,000 more people than usual died in the U.S. during the first seven months of 2020, suggesting that the number of lives lost to the coronavirus is significantly higher than the official toll. And half the dead were people of color — Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and, to a marked degree unrecognized until now, Asian Americans.
The new figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlight a stark disparity: Deaths among minorities during the crisis have risen far more than they have among whites.
As of the end of July, the official death toll in the U.S. from COVID-19 was about 150,000. It has since grown to over 170,000.
But public health authorities have long known that some coronavirus deaths, especially early on, were mistakenly attributed to other causes, and that the crisis may have led indirectly to the loss of many other lives by preventing or discouraging people with other serious ailments from seeking treatment.
A count of deaths from all causes during the seven-month period yields what experts believe is a fuller — and more alarming — picture of the disaster and its racial dimensions.
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Biden, once an orator, reaches for rhetorical flourish again
WASHINGTON (AP) — The early months of Joe Biden’s third White House bid were marked with uneven debate performances and winding town halls in Iowa and New Hampshire. That contrast to the loquacious, eloquent young senator who first sought the presidency 33 years ago, struck even some friendly Democrats and fed the Republican narrative that the 77-year-old was no longer fit to lead.
Biden did much to dispel that caricature Thursday night during his 24-minute address accepting the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. His performance validates at least some of the frustrations the former vice president and his aides have expressed privately through months of viral videos of “Biden gaffes” and the “Sleepy Joe” invective peddled by President Donald Trump, himself a septuagenarian who mangles syntax and regularly speaks or tweets meandering, nonsensical thoughts.
“It was a beautiful, powerful speech that hit so many notes,” said Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist who worked for nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016.
Political observers from both parties broadly agreed that Biden exceeded the expectations Trump had set for his Democratic rival with months of attacks. But some Republicans and Democrats said Trump may also have helped Biden by reducing expectations for anyone seeking the presidency.
“For 24 minutes, every American who watched it escaped our current reality and was imagining a world without Donald Trump. And that alone made it a good speech,” said Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist and outspoken critic of the president.
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Democrats see racism in GOP mispronunciations of 'Kamala'
CHICAGO (AP) — Bantering during the final night of the Democratic National Convention, actor Julia Louis-Dreyfus and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang repeatedly got the name of “our current vice president" wrong. Was it “Mika Pints?” or “Paints?” Or maybe “Ponce," Yang suggested.
“Oh, some kind of weird foreign name?" Louis-Dreyfus asked.
“Yeah, not very American sounding," Yang replied.
It was a quick bit of satire with a pointed message from Democrats: When top Republicans — including President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence — mispronounce Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ first name, it's not just disrespectful, it's racist.
Harris' first name is pronounced “KAH'-mah-lah” — or, as she explains in her biography, “'comma-la,' like the punctuation mark." But mispronunciations have been rampant in the days since the California senator became the first Black woman and the first Asian American woman named to a major party's ticket. Pence referred to her as “kah-MAH'-lah,” putting his emphasis on the second syllable, at events last week. Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel did the same on Wednesday, as did Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Thursday, the day after Harris delivered a prime-time speech accepting the Democratic nomination — a speech he indicated he watched.
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Democratic plan in rural, swing state counties: Lose by less
MONTFORT, Wis. (AP) — Jerry Volenec felt betrayed.
Sold on Donald Trump’s pledge to help struggling Wisconsin dairy farmers, Volenec voted for the Republican. But within two years, Trump's trade pact with Canada had blocked the export of a good bit of Volenec's milk.
“It was a line in the sand. It said to me I was expendable,” Volenec said, as his shiny-coated Holsteins feasted on heaps of corn silage at his southwest Wisconsin farm. “As much as he says he loves the farmers, he loves us in so much as what we can do for him.”
Democrats are hoping to find just enough voters like Volenec to shave Trump's margins in rural areas while they rack up larger numbers in cities and suburbs. They have put in money in the millions and staff in the dozens to try to make it happen.
Their unorthodox strategy: win by losing by less.
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Asia Today: S. Korea imposes strict measures to stem spread
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea is banning large gatherings, closing beaches, shutting nightspots and churches and removing fans from professional sports in strict new measures announced Saturday as it battles the spread of the coronavirus.
Health Minister Park Neung-hoo announced the steps shortly after the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 332 new cases — the ninth straight day of triple-digit increases. The national caseload is now at 17,002, including 309 deaths.
While most of the new cases came from the densely populated Seoul metropolitan area, which has been at the center of the viral surge in recent weeks, infections were also reported in practically every major city and town, raising concerns that transmissions are slipping out of control.
The government had already imposed elevated social distancing measures in Seoul this week after resisting them for months out of economic concerns.
“We are now in a very dangerous situation that could trigger a massive nationwide spread of COVID-19,” Park said.
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Reinforcements arriving to help in deadly California fires
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Firefighters and aircraft from 10 states began arriving in California Friday to help weary crews battling some of the largest blazes in state history as weekend weather threatened to renew the advance of flames that have killed six people and incinerated hundreds of homes.
Some 560 wildfires were burning throughout the state but many were small and remote. The bulk of damage was from three clusters of blazes that were ravaging forest and rural areas in the wine country and San Francisco Bay Area.
Those complexes, consisting of dozens of fires, exploded in size Friday. Together, they had scorched 991 square miles (2,566 square kilometers) and destroyed more than 500 homes and other buildings, fire officials said.
At least 100,000 people were under evacuation orders.
Two Bay Area clusters, the LNU Lightning Complex and the SCU Lightning Complex, became respectively the second- and third-largest wildfires in recent state history by size, according to Cal Fire records.
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2 tropical storms a potential double threat to US Gulf Coast
Two newly formed tropical storms could become almost simultaneous threats to the U.S. Gulf Coast early next week. They could even get sucked into an odd dance around each other. Or they could fall apart as they soak the Caribbean and Mexico this weekend.
Tropical storms Laura and Marco have such bad and good environments ahead of them that their futures were not clear late Friday. Computer forecast models varied so much that some saw Laura becoming a major hurricane nearing the U.S., while others saw it dissipating.
If both storms survive the weekend, the National Hurricane Center forecast that Laura would as head a hurricane toward the central Gulf Coast around Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the western Florida Panhandle, while Marco aimed at Texas, though most likely remaining a tropical storm.
“A lot of people are going to be impacted by rainfall and storm surge in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Joel Cline, the tropical program coordinator for the National Weather Service. “Since you simply don’t know you really need to make precautions.”
Two hurricanes have never appeared in the Gulf of Mexico at the same time, according to records going back to at least 1900, said Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. The last time two tropical storms were in the Gulf together was in 1959, he said.
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AP PHOTOS: In Belarus, protesters show pride, worry, empathy
MINSK, Belarus (AP) — Behind each protester in Belarus is a surprising story of awakening.
A police officer who quit his job, ashamed of violence by his colleagues. A paramedic who treated victims of that brutality, wielding white roses in response. An actor using his theater as backdrop for revolt, ready to sabotage his career to seek a freer nation.
Holding signs or personal tokens of resistance, they described their fears and hopes to The Associated Press, after nearly two weeks of protests against President Alexander Lukashenko’s 26-year rule.
Tatyana, a 29-year-old paramedic, joined the protests after treating those wounded when police tried to stifle demonstrations on the night of presidential elections Aug. 9.
“Despite what they were subjected to, (protesters) didn’t respond with violence,” she said, holding her roses and pointing to children mixed in among the protesting crowds as a sign of hope that they will remain peaceful. “They just want justice.”