AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EST
New round of Trump clemency benefits Manafort, other allies
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday pardoned more than two dozen people, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, in the latest wave of clemency to benefit longtime associates and supporters.
The actions, in Trump's final weeks at the White House, bring to nearly 50 the number of people whom the president has granted clemency in the last week. The list from the last two days includes not only multiple people convicted in the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia but also allies from Congress and other felons whose causes were championed by friends.
Pardons are common in the final stretch of a president's tenure, the recipients largely dependent on the individual whims of the nation's chief executive. Trump throughout his administration has shucked aside the conventions of the Obama administration, when pardons were largely reserved for drug offenders not known to the general public, and instead bestowed clemency on high-profile contacts and associates who were key figures in an investigation that directly concerned him.
Even members of the president's own party raised eyebrows, with Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska issuing a brief statement that said: “This is rotten to the core."
The pardons Wednesday of Manafort and Roger Stone, who months earlier had his sentence commuted by Trump, were particularly notable, underscoring the president's desire to chip away at the results and legacy of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. He has now pardoned four people convicted in that investigation, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
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'Mom's worth it': US holiday travel surges despite outbreak
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Some are elderly and figure they don’t have many Christmases left. Others are trying to keep long-distance romance alive. Some just yearn for the human connection that’s been absent for the past nine months.
Millions of Americans are traveling ahead of Christmas and New Year’s, despite pleas from public health experts that they stay home to avoid fueling the raging coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 320,000 nationwide.
Many people at airports this week thought long and hard about whether to go somewhere and found a way to rationalize it.
“My mom’s worth it. She needs my help,” said 34-year-old Jennifer Brownlee, a fisherman from Bayou La Batre, Alabama, who was waiting at the Tampa airport to fly to Oregon to see her mother, who just lost a leg. “I know that God’s got me. He’s not going to let me get sick.”
Brownlee said that she would wear a mask on the plane “out of respect” for other passengers but that her immune system and Jesus Christ would protect her.
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With a video filmed in secret, Trump keeps sowing chaos
WASHINGTON (AP) — The video message that plunged Washington into chaos was filmed in secret.
President Donald Trump stood in the White House's Diplomatic Reception Room, holiday garland and gleaming ornaments draped on the fireplace behind him. He spoke into the camera not to deliver warm Christmas wishes, but to threaten to detonate Congress’ $900 billion COVID-19 relief and year-end package.
The video was released without warning Tuesday night, its recording orchestrated by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and kept from all but a handful of aides. On Wednesday, few Republicans or even White House staffers knew what Trump plans next, in a return to the around-the-clock chaos of his first months in office.
The moment was also a flashback to the start of Trump's political career, when he delivered direct assaults on GOP leadership and the party’s establishment. Now Trump appears willing to do that again on his way out of office, potentially sabotaging his party’s chances of controlling the Senate as he lashes out in anger at those he believes have not supported his efforts to overturn the election.
Since his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden, Trump has been holed up in the White House with an ever-shrinking circle of aides and allies, including some pushing fraudulent conspiracy theories about the election. He has ignored the surging pandemic that is killing 3,000 Americans a day, and has mostly left it to others to promote vaccines being counted on to bring it to an end.
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A season of fear, not cheer, as virus changes Christmas
Montserrat Parello lost her husband eight years ago, and Christmas gatherings with children and grandchildren had helped her deal with her loneliness. But this year, the 83-year-old will be alone for the holiday at her home in Barcelona, due to the risk of infection from the coronavirus.
“In these days of pandemic, I feel loneliness and anger,” Parello said, expressing fears that “I will leave this life devoid of affection, of warmth.”
All most people wanted for Christmas after this year of pandemic uncertainty and chaos was some cheer and togetherness. Instead many are heading into a season of isolation, grieving lost loved ones, worried about their jobs or confronting the fear of a new potentially more contagious virus variant.
Residents of London and surrounding areas can't see people outside their households. Peruvians won't be allowed to drive their cars over Christmas and New Year to discourage visits even with nearby family and friends. South Africans won’t be able to go to the beach on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day or New Year’s Day.
The patchwork of restrictions being imposed by local and national governments across the world varies widely — but few holiday seasons will look normal this year.
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Trump vetoes defense bill, setting up possible override vote
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday vetoed the annual defense policy bill, following through on threats to veto a measure that has broad bipartisan support in Congress and potentially setting up the first override vote of his presidency.
The bill affirms 3% pay raises for U.S. troops and authorizes more than $740 billion in military programs and construction.
The action came while Trump was holed up at the White House, stewing about his election loss and escalating his standoff with Republicans as he pushed fraudulent conspiracy theories and tried to pressure them to back his efforts to overturn the results.
The House was poised to return Monday, and the Senate on Tuesday, to consider votes to override the president’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA.
Trump's move provoked swift condemnation, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling it “an act of staggering recklessness that harms our troops, endangers our security and undermines the will of the bipartisan Congress.”
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Politicians and vaccines: Set an example or cut in line?
WASHINGTON (AP) — As the first round of COVID-19 vaccinations trickled out across the United States, many members of Congress lined up at the Capitol physician's office to get inoculated.
President-elect Joe Biden got vaccinated, too, as did Vice President Mike Pence. Both rolled up their sleeves live on television to receive their shots.
For some of America's political leaders, there are practical imperatives for getting vaccinated early: their own risk factors, ensuring continuity at the highest reaches of the U.S. government and helping build public confidence in the vaccine. But there are also tricky optics for politicians to navigate, particularly with supplies of the vaccines still exceedingly limited and millions of elderly Americans and essential workers weeks away from being inoculated.
“We want to ensure that everyone feels safe about this vaccine and sees some of the more prominent members of society getting it, but also ensure people don’t say ‘what about us?’” said Utibe R. Essien, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.
With the pandemic raging across the country, and more than 320,000 Americans already dead, some lawmakers with access to the vaccine said they were indeed planning to wait until more Americans could get their shots before getting theirs.
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Video released in police killing of Black man holding phone
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Body camera footage released Wednesday shows Andre Hill, a 47-year-old Black man, emerging from a garage and holding up a cellphone in his left hand seconds before he is fatally shot by a Columbus police officer.
About six seconds pass between the time Hill is visible in the video and when the officer fires his weapon early Tuesday. There is no audio because the officer hadn't activated the body camera; an automatic “look back” feature captured the shooting without audio.
Without audio, it's unclear whether the officer, identified as Adam Coy, yelled any commands at Hill, whose right hand isn't visible in the video. Authorities say no weapon was recovered from the scene. The city says Hill was visiting someone at the time.
Hill lay on the garage floor for several minutes without any officer on the scene coming to his aid. That violates policy requiring officers to help the injured, said Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther on Wednesday, calling for Coy to be fired as a result.
Coy also violated departmental policies requiring his camera's full video and audio functions to have been activated, Ginther said.
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Studies find having COVID-19 may protect against reinfection
Two new studies give encouraging evidence that having COVID-19 may offer some protection against future infections. Researchers found that people who made antibodies to the coronavirus were much less likely to test positive again for up to six months and maybe longer.
The results bode well for vaccines, which provoke the immune system to make antibodies — substances that attach to a virus and help it be eliminated.
Researchers found that people with antibodies from natural infections were “at much lower risk ... on the order of the same kind of protection you’d get from an effective vaccine,” of getting the virus again, said Dr. Ned Sharpless, director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
“It’s very, very rare” to get reinfected, he said.
The institute's study had nothing to do with cancer — many federal researchers have shifted to coronavirus work because of the pandemic.
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British model, fashion muse Stella Tennant dies at 50
LONDON (AP) — Stella Tennant, the aristocratic British model who was a muse to designers such as Karl Lagerfeld and Gianni Versace, died suddenly at the age of 50, her family said Wednesday.
Tennant, the granddaughter of a duke, rose to fame in the 1990s while walking the runway for Versace, Alexander McQueen and other designers.
In a statement, her family said: “It is with great sadness we announce the sudden death of Stella Tennant on Dec. 22.”
“Stella was a wonderful woman and an inspiration to us all. She will be greatly missed,” it said.
The family asked for privacy and said arrangements for a memorial service would be announced later. They did not disclose her cause of death.
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OKC-Houston game postponed, Harden out after COVID violation
HOUSTON (AP) — The James Harden soap opera in Houston now comes with a canceled season opener — and a $50,000 fine for the league's leading scorer.
Houston's opener against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday night was scrapped after coronavirus cases and Harden's violation of the NBA's COVID-19 protocols left the Rockets without the league-mandated eight players available to start a game.
It was a dispiriting blow to the NBA on just the second night of an uncertain season launching with the pandemic still raging.
The NBA announced the postponement in a release that said three Rockets players had returned tests that were either positive or inconclusive and that four other players were quarantined because of contract tracing.
The release also said that Harden was unavailable for the game because of a violation of health and safety protocols after video of the disgruntled star surfaced on social media where he was without a mask at a crowded party in a private event space Monday night.