AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EST
McConnell backs off, abruptly eases impeachment trial limits
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell abruptly backed offsome of his proposed rules for President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial on Tuesday, easing plans for a tight two-day schedule and agreeing that House evidence will be included. He acted after protests from senators, including fellow Republicans.
The trial quickly burst into a partisan fight at the Capitol as the president's lawyers opened arguments in support of McConnell's plan. Democrats objected loudly to his initial rules, and some Republicans then made their concerns known in private at a GOP lunch.
Without comment, the Republican leader submitted an amended proposal after meeting behind closed doors with his senators as the trial opened. The handwritten changes would add an extra day for each side's opening arguments and stipulate that evidence from the Democratic House's impeachment hearings be included in the record.
There is still deep disagreement about calling additional witnesses.
“It’s time to start with this trial,” said White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, the president's lead lawyer in brief remarks as the proceedings opened in public.
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Washington man is 1st in US to catch new virus from China
SEATTLE (AP) — The U.S. on Tuesday reported its first case of a new and potentially deadly virus circulating in China, saying a Washington state resident who returned last week from the outbreak's epicenter was hospitalized near Seattle.
The man, identified as a Snohomish County resident is in his 30s, was in good condition and wasn't considered a threat to medical staff or the public, health officials said.
U.S. officials stressed that they believe the virus' overall risk to the American public remained low.
“This is not a moment of high anxiety,” Gov. Jay Inslee said.
The newly discovered virus has infected about 300 people, all of whom had been in China, and killed six. The virus can cause coughing, fever, breathing difficulty and pneumonia. The U.S. joins a growing list of places outside mainland China reporting cases, following Thailand, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
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What's new today in the China virus outbreak
About 300 people have been diagnosed in an outbreak linked to a new virus in China. The illnesses began late last month in the city of Wuhan in central China, and six people have died. Scientists have identified the illness as a new kind of coronavirus. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses, some of which cause the common cold. Others have evolved into more severe illnesses, such as SARS and MERS, though so far the new virus does not appear to be nearly as deadly.
WHAT’S NEW TODAY?
— The first U.S. case has been reported. The Washington state resident recently returned from a trip to central China and is hospitalized in good condition. Similar cases among Chinese travelers have also been identified in South Korea, Japan and Thailand.
— In China, face masks sold out and officials checked airline and train passengers for fevers. Many people wore masks in Wuhan, but residents appeared to be carrying on with their regular activities.
— Countries around the world are checking the body temperatures of arriving airline passengers who traveled to Wuhan. Officials hope the measures will slow the spread of the disease as millions of Chinese travel for the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday.
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Clinton won't commit to backing Sanders if he's nominee
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Clinton refused to say whether she would endorse Bernie Sanders, her 2016 rival, if he wins the Democratic nomination and offered a broad condemnation of the progressive candidate's style of politics.
“I'm not going to go there yet," she said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on Tuesday in response to whether she'd back Sanders. “We're still in a very vigorous primary season. I will say, however, that it's not only him, it's the culture around him. It's his leadership team. It's his prominent supporters. It's his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women.”
She added: “I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture — not only permitted, (he) seems to really be very much supporting it."
Her comments ripped open the scars of the brutal 2016 primary battle between Sanders and Clinton just as Democrats are poised to begin voting on their next nominee. It could also energize Sanders loyalists who believed the Democratic establishment rigged the 2016 primary in Clinton's favor. That could be especially helpful with the Iowa caucuses less than two weeks away and Sanders working to establish a clear lead in a top tier that includes former Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
Sanders, like other senators who are running for president, was in Washington on Tuesday to participate in President Donald Trump's impeachment trial. In a statement, Sanders said, “together, we are going to go forward and defeat the most dangerous president in American history.”
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Weinstein defense points to 'loving emails' as openings near
NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein's lawyers want to use intimate emails from his accusers to try to convince jurors in his rape trial that any contact was consensual, the defense said Tuesday as an appeals court rejected an 11th-hour request to move the trial out of town.
Opening statements are set for Wednesday in one of the most prominent cases of the #MeToo era, involving a once-celebrated movie producer now vilified as a predator by scores of women, including some well-known actresses who plan to testify or attend the trial.
In a three-paragraph ruling Tuesday, a panel of state appeals judges declined to move the trial or delay it for further deliberation. The same court turned down a s imilar request three months ago from Weinstein's lawyers, who say it's impossible for him to get a fair trial in media-saturated New York City.
Meanwhile, Weinstein's attorneys foreshadowed their strategy to defend him against charges that he raped a woman in a New York City hotel room in 2013 and forcibly performed a sex act on another woman at his apartment in 2006. If convicted, the 67-year-old could get life in prison.
The defense has “dozens and dozens and dozens of loving emails to Mr. Weinstein” it wants to use to discredit witnesses, attorney Damon Cheronis told the Manhattan judge overseeing the trial.
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Mexico begins flying, busing migrants back to Honduras
CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico (AP) — Hundreds of Central American migrants who waded across a river into Mexico in hopes of eventually reaching the U.S. were sent back to their homeland or retreated across the border Tuesday after Mexican troops blocked their way.
Fewer than 100 remained in the no-man's land along the river between Guatemala and Mexico.
The caravan of thousands had set out from Honduras last week in hopes Mexico would grant them passage, posing a fresh test of President Donald Trump's effort to reduce the flow of migrants arriving at the U.S. border by pressuring other governments to stop them.
Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said 2,400 of the migrants entered Mexico legally over the weekend. About 1,000 of them requested Mexico's help in returning to their countries. The rest were being held in immigration centers while they start legal processes that would allow them to seek refuge in Mexico or obtain temporary work permits that would confine them to southern Mexico.
An additional 1,000 had tried to enter illegally Monday, he said, and hundreds of them were apparently detained by Mexican National Guardsmen and immigration agents. Immigration officials estimated Monday night that 500 had evaded capture by the security forces.
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Documents: Extremist group wanted rally to start civil war
COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) — A hidden camera captured members of a white supremacist group expressing hope that violence at a gun rights rally in Virginia this week could start a civil war, federal prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday.
Former Canadian Armed Forces reservist Patrik Jordan Mathews also videotaped himself advocating for killing people, poisoning water supplies and derailing trains, a prosecutor wrote in urging a judge in Maryland to keep Mathews and two other members of The Base detained in federal custody.
But the 27-year-old Canadian national didn’t know investigators were watching and listening when he and two other group members talked about attending the Richmond rally in the days leading up to Monday's event, which attracted tens of thousands of people and ended peacefully.
Last month, a closed-circuit television camera and microphone installed by investigators in a Delaware home captured Mathews talking about the Virginia rally as a “boundless” opportunity.
“And the thing is you’ve got tons of guys who ... should be radicalized enough to know that all you gotta do is start making things go wrong and if Virginia can spiral out to (expletive) full blown civil war,” he said.
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Netanyahu tries to rally global opposition to ICC case
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is calling on the world to take “concrete actions” against the International Criminal Court ahead of a possible war-crimes case against Israel.
The ICC's chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said last month that there was a “reasonable basis” to open a war crimes probe into Israeli military actions in the Gaza Strip as well as Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. She has asked the court to determine whether she has territorial jurisdiction before proceeding with the case.
Israel, which is not a member of the ICC, has said the court has no jurisdiction and accused Bensouda of being driven by anti-Semitism.
In an interview with the Christian network TBN to be aired later Tuesday, Netanyahu praised President Donald Trump for criticizing the ICC and called on others to follow suit.
“I think that everybody should rise up against this,” he said, according to excerpts released by his office. “I urge all your viewers to do the same and to ask for concrete actions, sanctions against the international court, its officials, its prosecutors, everyone.”
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At 90, Alaska Native woman will be 1st counted in US Census
TOKSOOK BAY, Alaska (AP) — Lizzie Chimiugak has lived for 90 years in the windswept western wilds of Alaska, born to a nomadic family who lived in mud homes and followed where the good hunting and fishing led.
Her home now is an outpost on the Bering Sea, Toksook Bay, and she is about to become the first person counted in the U.S. Census, taken every 10 years to apportion representation in Congress and federal money.
"Elders that were before me, if they didn’t die too early, I wouldn’t have been the first person counted," Lizzie Chimiugak said, speaking Yup'ik language of Yugtun, with family members serving as interpreters. "Right now, they’re considering me as an elder, and they’re asking me questions I’m trying my best to give answers to, or to talk about what it means to be an elder."
The decennial U.S. census has started in rural Alaska, out of tradition and necessity, ever since the U.S. purchased the territory from Russia in 1867. The ground is still frozen, which allows easier access before the spring melt makes many areas inaccessible to travel and residents scatter to subsistence hunting and fishing grounds. The mail service is spotty in rural Alaska and the internet connectivity unreliable, which makes door-to-door surveying important.
The rest of the nation, including more urban areas of Alaska, begin the census in mid-March.
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AP PHOTOS: Auschwitz, 75 years after its liberation
OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) — On Jan. 27, 1945, the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz death camp in German-occupied Poland. The Germans had already fled westward, leaving behind the bodies of prisoners who had been shot and thousands of sick and starving survivors.
The Soviet troops also found gas chambers and crematoria that the Germans had blown up before fleeing in an attempt to hide evidence of their mass killings.
But the genocide was too massive to hide. Today, the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau endures as the leading symbol of the terror of the Holocaust. Its iconic status is such that every year it registers a record number of visitors — 2.3 million last year alone.
On Monday — 75 years after its liberation — hundreds of survivors from across the world will travel to Auschwitz for official anniversary commemorations. In advance of that, Associated Press photographer Markus Schreiber visited the site. Using a panoramic film camera, he documented the remains of the camp in a series of haunting black and white photos.
Auschwitz today is many things at once: an emblem of evil, a site of historical remembrance and a vast cemetery. It is a place where Jews make pilgrimages to pay tribute to ancestors whose ashes and bones remain part of the earth.