AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
Trump announces plasma treatment authorized for COVID-19
WASHINGTON (AP) — After expressing frustration at the slow pace of approval for coronavirus treatments, President Donald Trump announced Sunday the emergency authorization of convalescent plasma for COVID-19 patients.
The announcement came after days of White House officials suggesting there were politically motivated delays by the Food and Drug Administration in approving a vaccine and therapeutics for the disease that has upended Trump's reelection chances.
On the eve of the Republican National Convention, Trump issued the emergency order — it would make it easier for some patients to obtain the treatment — in a news conference Sunday evening, according to White House officials.
The blood plasma, taken from patients who have recovered from the coronavirus and rich in antibodies, may provide benefits to those battling with the disease. But the evidence so far has not been conclusive about whether it works, when to administer it and what dose is needed.
In a letter describing the emergency authorization, the chief scientist for the FDA, Denise Hinton, noted: “COVID-19 convalescent plasma should not be considered a new standard of care for the treatment of patients with COVID-19. Additional data will be forthcoming from other analyses and ongoing, well-controlled clinical trials in the coming months.”
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Emails show businesses held sway over state reopening plans
As South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster prepared to announce the end of a coronavirus stay-at-home order, his top staff received an email from the state health department.
The message, highlighted in bold, was clear: Wait longer before allowing customers back inside restaurants, hair salons and other businesses where people will be in close contact.
Instead, McMaster pressed ahead with a plan written by the state restaurant association to resume inside dining on May 11. The guidelines made masks optional for employees and allowed more customers inside than the health agency had advised.
A few days later, the Republican governor opened the doors to salons, fitness centers and swimming pools. He did not wait to gauge the effect of the restaurant reopening on the virus, as public health officials had suggested. Like many states, South Carolina later experienced a surge in infections that forced McMaster to dial back his reopening plan.
He was hardly alone. Thousands of pages of emails provided to The Associated Press under open-records laws show that governors across the U.S. were inundated with reopening advice from a wide range of industries — from campgrounds in New Hampshire to car washes in Washington. Some governors put economic interests ahead of public health guidance, and certain businesses were allowed to write the rules that would govern their own operations.
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Residents flee as Gulf Coast sees possible tandem hurricanes
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Gulf Coast braced Sunday for a potentially devastating hit from twin hurricanes as two strong storms swirled toward the U.S from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Officials feared a history-making onslaught of life-threatening winds and flooding along the coast, stretching from Texas to Alabama.
A storm dubbed Marco grew into a hurricane Sunday as it churned up the Gulf of Mexico toward Louisiana. Another potential hurricane, Tropical Storm Laura, lashed the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and was tracking toward the same region of the U.S. coast, carrying the risk of growing into a far more powerful storm.
Experts said computer models show Laura could make landfall with winds exceeding 110 mph, and the overlapping storms could bring 2 feet of rain to south-central portions of Louisiana.
“There has never been anything we’ve seen like this before, where you can have possibly two hurricanes hitting within miles of each over a 48-hour period,” said Benjamin Schott, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service’s Slidell, Louisiana, office.
The prospect of piggybacked hurricanes was reviving all-too-fresh memories of damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005. The storm has been blamed for as many as 1,800 deaths and levee breaches in New Orleans led to catastrophic flooding.
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'End of the world': Countdown to Beirut's devastating blast
BEIRUT (AP) — The 10 firefighters who received the call shortly before 6 p.m. — a big fire at the nearby port of Beirut — could not know what awaited them.
The brigade of nine men and one woman could not know about the stockpile of ammonium nitrate warehoused since 2013 along a busy motorway, in the heart of a densely populated residential area — a danger that had only grown with every passing year.
They and nearly all the population of Beirut were simply unaware. They were not privy to the warnings authorities had received, again and again, and ignored: ammonium nitrate is highly explosive, used in fertilizer and sometimes to build bombs. The stockpile was degrading; something must be done.
They knew, of course, that they lived in a dysfunctional country, its government rife with corruption, factionalism and negligence that caused so much pain and heartbreak. But they could not know that it would lead to the worst single-day catastrophe in Lebanon’s tragic history.
Across the city, residents who noticed the grey smoke billowing over the facility were drawn to streets, balconies and windows, watching curiously as the fire grew larger. Phones were pulled out of pockets and pointed toward the flames.
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Sato wins 2nd Indianapolis 500 under caution at empty track
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Takuma Sato snatched a second Indianapolis 500 victory at empty Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday as the Japanese racer held off Scott Dixon and ultimately won under caution.
IndyCar officials declined to throw a red flag after a violent crash by Spencer Pigot with just a handful of laps remaining. Pigot needed medical attention on the track, the crash scene was a debris field and there was no way the race could resume without a stoppage.
Dixon, the five-time IndyCar champion who had dominated the race, asked on his radio if IndyCar was going to give the drivers a final shootout to the checkered flag, NASCAR style.
“Are they going red?” Dixon asked. “They’ve got to go red. There’s no way they can clean that up.”
IndyCar never threw the flag and Sato led Dixon across the finish line under yellow.
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Trump delivered on some big 2016 promises, but others unmet
WASHINGTON (AP) — He’s broken his pledge never to take a vacation or play golf for pleasure. His plan to update the nation’s infrastructure has become a running punchline and he’s dropped his threat to throw Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl out of a plane without a parachute. But behind the drama, chaos and tumult that has defined President Donald Trump’s administration, the president has fulfilled a wide range of promises he made during his 2016 campaign.
It’s a theme that will play a major role in the upcoming Republican National Convention, as the president tries to convince a weary nation that he deserves a second term, even when millions of Americans have been infected by the coronavirus, the economy is in tatters and racial tensions are boiling over.
“I’m the only candidate that gave you more than I promised in the campaign. It’s true. I’m the only one ever, maybe ever,” Trump said at a rally in battleground Arizona last week.
Back in 2016, Trump was criticized for failing to release detailed policy plans akin to those of his rival, Hillary Clinton. What Trump did do was lay out a vision for a new America — one driven by a nationalist self-interest and disregard for Democratic norms.
In the years since, Trump has acted on that vision, making good on his nativist immigration rhetoric, tearing back regulations on business and transforming America’s role in the world by abandoning multilateral agreements and upending decades-old alliances, cheered on by many of his most loyal supporters and generating great alarm among his critics.
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Opera's Domingo denies abusing power, seeks to clear name
NAPLES, Italy (AP) — Opera legend Plácido Domingo denied ever abusing his power during his management tenure at two U.S. opera houses in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday, as he embarks on a full-throttle campaign to clear his name after two investigations found credible accusations he had engaged in ‘’inappropriate conduct’’ with multiple women over a period of decades.
Domingo deflected direct questions about whether he ever sexually harassed women, accusations that were first reported by the AP last summer. The allegations have crippled his career in the United States, as well as his native Spain.
‘’I never promised a part to a singer, or never take a part from a singer," he said. “I have spent my whole life helping, and you know, encouraging and driving people.”’ He added that responsibilities within opera companies are divided, meaning he never had sole sway over casting decisions.
‘’People that deserved to sing were singing,’’ he said.
Multiple performers told the AP that Domingo harassed them and abused his power while he held management positions at Los Angeles Opera and Washington National Opera. Numerous women said Domingo had dangled career opportunities as he pursued sexual relationships with them and then withdrew the offers or stopped hiring them when they rejected his advances.
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Winds could fan already enormous Northern California fires
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A calm overnight allowed firefighters to make progress against a trio of massive wildfires burning in Northern California but they were girding for a weather system Sunday that will bring high winds and thunderstorms that could spark new fires and fan existing blazes that destroyed nearly 1,000 homes and other structures and forced tens of thousands to evacuate.
The “complexes,” or groups of fires, burning on all sides of the San Francisco Bay Area were started by lightning strikes that were among 12,000 registered in the state in the past week. The National Weather Service issued a “red flag” warning through Monday afternoon for the drought-stricken area, meaning extreme fire conditions including high temperatures, low humidity and wind gusts up to 65 mph (105 kph) that “may result in dangerous and unpredictable fire behavior.”
At a morning briefing on the so-called CZU Lightning Complex fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco, fire officials said they had increased containment to 8% and with the better weather on Saturday dug more protective fire lines around vulnerable communities, including the University of California, Santa Cruz.
But there is concern about the weather and the thunderstorms that will bring high winds and “dry” lightning, a term used when such storms have little or no rain. Radar images from late morning showed lightning offshore and approaching the coast.
Chief Mark Brunton, a battalion chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), said the winds can blow a fire in any direction and while he’s confident firefighters did the most with the time they had to prepare, he’s not sure what to expect.
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Video shows armed Belarus president as protests roil capital
MINSK, Belarus (AP) — The authoritarian president of Belarus made a dramatic show of defiance Sunday against the massive protests demanding his resignation, toting a rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest as he strode off a helicopter that landed at his residence while demonstrators massed nearby.
In the 15th day of the largest and most determined protests ever in independent Belarus, a crowd of about 200,000 rallied against President Alexander Lukashenko in a square in Minsk, the capital. They then marched to another rally and approached the Independence Palace, the president’s working residence.
Video from the state news agency Belta showed a government helicopter landing on the grounds and Lukashenko getting off holding what appeared to be a Kalashnikov-type automatic rifle. No ammunition clip was visible in the weapon, suggesting that Lukashenko, who cultivates an aura of machismo, aimed only to make a show of aggression.
Protests started Aug. 9 after a presidential election that officials say handed the 65-year-old Lukashenko his sixth term in office with 80% voter approval. Opponents claim the results are fraudulent.
The size and duration of the protests have been unprecedented for Belarus, a former Soviet republic of 9.5 million people that Lukashenko has ruled harshly for 26 years.
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'Hoax' book reveals extent of internal unease at Fox
NEW YORK (AP) — Brian Stelter knows critics accuse Fox News of bending the truth in order to maintain its staunch support of and closeness to President Donald Trump. As CNN media reporter and host of “Reliable Sources,” he's often one of them.
He wasn't prepared to hear the extent of concerns about the network's direction by people who work there.
It was one of the reasons he wrote “Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth,” which will be released Tuesday. The book shot from No. 340 to No. 1 on Amazon's best-seller's list following Stelter's appearance with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC Friday.
Several people at Fox privately expressed worry to him about the growing power of prime-time opinion hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham at the expense of Fox's news operation, he said.
“There is a real resistance inside Fox News,” Stelter told The Associated Press. “Nobody there would use that term. But there are many people there who are uncomfortable with Sean Hannity's lies and Tucker Carlson's xenophobia. It's just that they are powerless, or feel powerless, and the prime-time stars have all the power. There are Trump true believers at Fox, but there are many others who are concerned about the damage being done, and don't feel that they can speak out publicly.”