AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
Laura carves destructive path through Louisiana; 4 dead
LAKE CHARLES, La. (AP) — One of the strongest hurricanes ever to strike the U.S., Laura barreled across Louisiana on Thursday, shearing off roofs, killing a least four people and maintaining ferocious strength while carving a destructive path hundreds of miles inland.
A full assessment of the damage wrought by the Category 4 system was likely to take days. But initial reports offered hope that Laura, despite leaving entire neighborhoods in ruins and more than 875,000 people without power, was not the annihilating menace that forecasters had feared.
“It is clear that we did not sustain and suffer the absolute, catastrophic damage that we thought was likely," Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said. “But we we have sustained a tremendous amount of damage," he said.
He called it the most powerful hurricane to strike Louisiana, meaning it surpassed even Katrina, which was a Category 3 storm when it hit in 2005.
The hurricane’s top wind speed of 150 mph (241 kph) put it among the strongest systems on record in the U.S. Not until 11 hours after landfall did Laura finally weaken into a tropical storm as it plowed north and thrashed Arkansas.
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Trump, in convention speech, to decry Biden, radical forces
WASHINGTON (AP) — With crises brewing beyond the White House gates, President Donald Trump planned to stand on the South Lawn Thursday night to accept his party’s nomination for president, presenting himself as the last barrier protecting an American way of life under siege from radical forces.
Facing a fraught national moment, Trump was to paint an optimistic vision of America’s future, including an eventual triumph over the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 175,000 people, left millions unemployed and rewritten the rules of society. But that brighter horizon could only be secured, Trump was to assert, if he defeated Joe Biden, against whom he was set to unleash blistering attacks meant to erase the Democrat’s stubborn lead in the polls.
“We have spent the last four years reversing the damage Joe Biden inflicted over the last 47 years, Trump was to say according to speech excerpts confirmed by his campaign. “At no time before have voters faced a clearer choice between two parties, two visions, two philosophies or two agendas."
The Democratic agenda, he said, "is the most extreme set of proposals ever put forward by a major party nominee.”
As his speech brings the scaled-back Republican National Convention to a close, Trump risks inflaming a divided nation reeling from a series of calamities, including the pandemic, a major hurricane that slammed into the Gulf Coast and nights of racial unrest and violence after Jacob Blake, a Black man, was shot by a white Wisconsin police officer.
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What virus? At GOP's convention, pandemic is largely ignored
WASHINGTON (AP) — It was a scene from a bygone era: Vice President Mike Pence shaking hands with and fist-bumping audience members who had rushed forward, standing shoulder to shoulder, to greet him and the president after Pence's speech at the Republican National Convention.
No one appeared concerned about social distancing. Few wore masks. Some told reporters they had not been tested for the coronavirus before Wednesday night’s gathering at Fort McHenry in Baltimore
A more striking scene could unfold Thursday night, when more than 1,000 people were expected to assemble on the South Lawn of the White House for President Donald Trump's renomination acceptance speech. That's an eye-popping crowd in a global pandemic that has forced the cancellation of large gatherings, from sports events and concerts to weddings and funerals.
As Trump has tried to push past a virus that has tanked the economy and threatened his reelection, GOP organizers have worked to stage a convention that puts the pandemic in the rear view mirror and highlights the nation's progress, even as it continues to kill. More than 42,000 new cases were reported on Wednesday alone and 2,700 more have died since the week began.
Few convention speakers have made reference to the virus; others have discussed it in the past tense.
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Police largely silent as outrage builds over Blake shooting
It took three days, an outpouring of anger in the streets and a NBA boycott before authorities investigating the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, started answering some of the most basic questions about what happened.
And still, many key pieces of information have yet to be released, fueling speculation over why a white officer shot Blake in the back at close range Sunday as the Black man leaned into his SUV.
Police maintain they are not hiding information but can't reveal other details while the case is under investigation. But the near-silence from the Kenosha department and state authorities is at odds with what an increasing number of American police forces are doing in the wake of high-profile shootings with the potential to cause unrest.
“The times have changed. What you may have done even a year ago doesn’t work now. We need to recognize the public outcry that is taking place and the need for information,” said Chris Burbank, a former police chief in Salt Lake City.
Even as new questions surfaced about the delayed arrest of a white teenager suspected in the shooting deaths of two protesters, police took no questions Thursday at a news conference where they focused on the response to the unrest.
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AP PHOTOS: Aerial images show stark destruction from Laura
From the air, the destruction of Hurricane Laura is especially stark. Photographs from The Associated Press show entire neighborhoods surrounded by green-brown floodwater. A glassy high-rise stands with most of its windows missing. An airport hangar is shredded into ribbons of metal.
After days of gathering strength in the Gulf of Mexico, Laura grew into one of the most powerful storms ever to strike the U.S., a Category 4 monster with 150 mph winds that surpassed even Katrina, which hit Louisiana almost exactly 15 years ago.
Laura pounded the Gulf Coast with wind and rain, unleashed a fearsome wall of seawater and killed at least four people. The system sheared off roofs and left whole neighborhoods in ruins. Most of the homes that remained intact still had missing shingles, shattered windows and yards strewn with debris.
The hurricane maintained strength for hours after making landfall and carved a destructive path hundreds of miles inland.
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As virus rages, US economy struggles to sustain a recovery
WASHINGTON (AP) — Home sales are booming. Stocks are setting record highs. Industrial production is clambering out of the ditch it fell into early this year.
And yet the U.S. economy is nowhere close to regaining the health it achieved, with low unemployment, free-spending consumers and booming travel, before the coronavirus paralyzed the country in March. Not while the viral outbreak still rages and Congress remains deadlocked over providing more relief to tens of millions of people thrown out of work and to state and local governments whose revenue has withered.
Every week, roughly 1 million new Americans are applying for unemployment benefits — a depth of job insecurity not seen in any single week during the depths of the 2007-2009 Great Recession.
Economists say that as many businesses have reopened and consumers have begun shopping and spending more, the picture is beginning to brighten, if only fitfully. Most say the economy is growing again. Yet scars are sure to remain from the catastrophic April-June quarter, when, according to the government, the economy collapsed at a 31.7% annual rate — by far the worst quarterly contraction since such record-keeping began in 1947.
Some industries, notably those involving travel and hotels and restaurants, could struggle for years. And while the number of confirmed viral infections has been declining, the threat of a major resurgence remains, especially as students increasingly return to schools and colleges. The consumers whose spending drives the bulk of the economy and the economists who analyze it are decidedly downbeat about the prospects for a return to prosperity.
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Back to class: Despite virus surge, Europe reopens schools
PARIS (AP) — A mother and her three children scanned the school supplies in a Paris supermarket, plucking out multicolored fountain pens, crisp notebooks – and plenty of masks. Despite resurgent coronavirus infections, similar scenes are unfolding across Europe as a new school year dawns.
Virus or no virus, European authorities are determined to put children back into classrooms, to narrow the learning gaps between haves and have-nots that deepened during lockdowns — and to get their parents back to work.
Facing a jump in virus cases, authorities in France, Britain, Spain and elsewhere are imposing mask rules, hiring extra teachers and building new desks and classrooms.
While the U.S. back-to-school saga has been politicized and chaotic, with a hodgepodge of fast-changing rules and a backlash against President Donald Trump’s insistence on reopening, European governments have faced less of an uproar.
And even though the virus has invaded classrooms in recent days from Berlin to Seoul, and some teachers and parents warn that their schools aren’t ready, European leaders from the political left, right and center are sending an unusually consistent message: Even in a pandemic, children are better off in class.
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Neighbors with hoses target fires as crews urge them to stop
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) — With California firefighters strapped for resources, residents have organized to put out flames themselves in a large swath of land burning south of San Francisco, defending their homes despite orders to evacuate and pleas by officials to get out of danger.
They are going in despite California’s firefighting agency repeatedly warning people that it’s not safe and actually illegal to go into evacuated areas, and they can hinder official efforts to stop the flames. The former head of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said the effort near a cluster of wildfires around the city of Santa Cruz is larger and more organized than he recalls in previous blazes.
“People are frustrated with the lack of resources available. People are always going to try to sneak back in, but it sounds like this is growing to a new level,” said Ken Pimlott, who retired as director of the Cal Fire in 2018. “I haven’t seen people re-engage to this scale, particularly with the level of organization.”
The group of wildfires near Santa Cruz has burned 125 square miles (324 square kilometers) and destroyed more than 500 buildings. While those fires are 20% contained, firefighters have been pushed to the breaking point since lightning ignited more than 500 blazes in one night last week, most of them in the central and northern parts of the state.
In Boulder Creek, a community at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains near a state park filled with towering redwoods, some people call the group of residents fighting the flames the “Boulder Creek Boys.” They say the group, which includes former volunteer firefighters, have been protecting homes and extinguishing blazes behind fire lines for over a week, at times using nothing but dirt and garden hoses.
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Fox's Tucker Carlson takes heat for Kenosha commentary
NEW YORK (AP) — Fox News' Tucker Carlson, no stranger to the hot seat for his commentary, is being criticized for suggesting that no one should be surprised by the killing of two demonstrators during social unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Authorities “stood back and watched Kenosha burn,” he said on Fox News Channel on Wednesday. “So are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder? How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”
Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Illinois resident and police supporter, was taken into custody on suspicion of homicide after the killings of two people involved in unrest following last weekend's police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake.
Carlson's commentary drew an angry response online because it was seen as sympathetic to Rittenhouse or offering justification for murder.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich tweeted the Fox management “is complicit in Tucker Carlson's racist, murderous rants” if they take no action against him. Author Don Winslow called the comments disgusting.
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Black National Convention puts spotlight on police brutality
NEW YORK (AP) — Black Lives Matter activists are holding their first Black National Convention Friday, a virtual event that will adopt a political agenda calling for slavery reparations, universal basic income, environmental justice and legislation that entirely re-imagines criminal justice reform.
The gathering follows Democratic and Republican party conventions that laid out starkly different visions for America. It also comes on the heels of yet another shooting by a white police officer of a Black man — 29-year-old Jacob Blake — in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that sparked days of protests, unrest and violence.
And it comes on the same day as a commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington, where the families of an ever-growing list of police and vigilante violence victims will appear with civil rights leaders.
Friday's live-stream broadcast will include policy proposals on such issues as voter suppression, reproductive rights, inequality in public education, housing insecurity and inter-communal violence, according to its agenda, shared exclusively with The Associated Press.
“These are absolutely public policies that the Democratic Party, state and local officials, or anyone who is looking to serve Black people can take up now,” said Jessica Byrd, who leads the Electoral Justice Project of the Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of more than 150 Black groups organizing the event.