AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
Confirmed coronavirus cases are rising in 40 of 50 states
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The number of confirmed coronavirus cases per day in the U.S. climbed to an all-time high of more than 50,000 on Thursday, with the infection curve rising in 40 of the 50 states in a reversal that has largely spared only the Northeast.
An alarming 36 states are seeing an increase in the percentage of tests coming back positive for the virus.
“What we've seen is a very disturbing week,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious-disease expert, said in a livestream with the American Medical Association.
In a major retreat that illustrated how dire things have become in Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the wearing of masks across most of the state after refusing until recently to let even local governments impose such rules.
The surge has been blamed in part on Americans not covering their faces or following other social distancing rules as states lifted their lockdowns over the past few weeks. Fauci warned that if people don't start complying, “we're going to be in some serious difficulty.”
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The Latest: Pence in Florida as new virus cases hit record
TAMPA, Fla. — Vice President Mike Pence met with Gov. Ron DeSantis to discuss the coronavirus situation on the same day Florida health officials reported a new single-day record total of 10,000 new cases.
Pence and DeSantis encouraged everyone, especially young adults, to wear masks in public spaces and avoid large gatherings. Both wore masks when not speaking.
“It is not an either/or choice,” Pence said Thursday. “We can slow the spread. We can flatten the curve, but it will take all of us to do it.”
Pence also said Republicans are “excited” about coming to Jacksonville in August for the Republican National Convention, noting that unspecified “sophisticated plans” are in the works to protect attendees.
Democrats criticized the White House and DeSantis for what they said was needlessly endangering lives by opening the economy too soon and not mandating masks. “They have put politics ahead of public health,” said U.S. Rep. Donna Shalala, President Bill Clinton’s Health and Human Services secretary.
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US jobs surge: Trump sees sunshine, Biden 'no victory yet'
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. economy just posted its best single-month job gain in history.
U.S. unemployment is at one of its worst points since the Great Depression.
Both are true.
As Republicans and Democrats fought to spin Thursday's jobs numbers to their advantage, both sides face tremendous political risks in navigating a delicate and defining issue heading into the presidential campaign's final months.
Democrats, led by presumptive nominee Joe Biden, seized on the growing threat presented by coronavirus after the better-than-expected numbers were released, a stance the Republicans called rooting against America's recovery. President Donald Trump claimed a major economic victory and played down the health threat, even as an explosion of new infections threatened to stall, or even reverse, the economic gains.
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Epstein pal arrested, accused of luring girls for sex abuse
British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested Thursday on charges she helped lure at least three girls — one as young as 14 — to be sexually abused by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of victimizing dozens of girls and women over many years.
According to the indictment, Maxwell, who lived for years with Epstein and was his frequent companion on trips around the world, facilitated his crimes and on some occasions joined him in sexually abusing the girls.
Epstein, 66, killed himself in a federal detention center in New York last summer while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell has, for years, been accused by many women of acting as a madam for Epstein, helping him scout young girls for abuse, then hiring them to give him massages, during which the girls were pressured into sex acts. In one lawsuit, a woman alleged Maxwell was the “highest-ranking employee” of Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking enterprise. Those accusations, until now, never resulted in criminal charges.
The 58-year-old was arrested in Bradford, New Hampshire, where she was living on a wooded estate she purchased for $1 million last December. The FBI had been keeping tabs on her after she disappeared from public view following Epstein's arrest a year ago.
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Only verified intelligence? A look at presidents' briefings
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says President Donald Trump was never briefed on intelligence that Russia had put a bounty on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan because there wasn’t corroborating evidence.
But former intelligence officials say presidents are routinely informed about intelligence even when it’s not definitively confirmed. Intelligence that may be on shaky ground today may foreshadow tomorrow’s calamity.
Some questions and answers about how presidents are briefed on intelligence, what sort of information they receive and how this applies to the situation with Russia:
HOW DO PRESIDENTS RECEIVE NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION?
Both orally and through a written document known as the President's Daily Brief.
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Herman Cain treated for COVID-19 after attending Trump rally
WASHINGTON (AP) — 2012 GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain is being treated for the coronavirus at an Atlanta-area hospital, according to a statement posted on his Twitter account Thursday.
It's not clear when or where Cain was infected, but he was hospitalized less than two weeks after attending President Donald Trump's campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He did not meet with Trump there, according to the campaign.
Cain, 74, was hospitalized after developing “serious” symptoms but is “awake and alert,” according to the statement.
The former pizza company executive has been an outspoken backer of the president and was named by the campaign as a co-chair of Black Voices for Trump.
“I realize people will speculate about the Tulsa rally, but Herman did a lot of traveling the past week, including to Arizona where cases are spiking,” Dan Calabrese, who has been editor of HermanCain.com, wrote on the website. “I don’t think there’s any way to trace this to the one specific contact that caused him to be infected. We’ll never know.”
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Fish more vulnerable to warming water than first thought
Global warming looks like it will be a bigger problem for the world’s fish species than scientists first thought: A new study shows that when fish are spawning or are embryos they are more vulnerable to hotter water.
With medium-level human-caused climate change expected by the end of the century, the world’s oceans, rivers and lakes will be too hot for about 40% of the world's fish species in the spawning or embryonic life stages, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science. That means they could go extinct or be forced to change how and where they live and reproduce.
Until now, biologists had just studied adult fish. For adult fish, around 2% to 3% of the species would be in the too-hot zone in the year 2100 with similar projected warming. So using this new approach reveals a previously unknown problem for the future of fish, scientists said.
In a worst-case climate change scenario, which some scientists said is increasingly unlikely, the figure for species in trouble jumps to 60%.
These vulnerable times in the life of a fish make this a “bottleneck” in the future health of species, said study co-author Hans-Otto Portner, a marine biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany.
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Visa lottery winners feel cheated by Trump's visa ban
CAIRO (AP) — Noha, an Egyptian engineer, should feel lucky after winning a visa lottery that randomly selects people from a pool of more than 14 million applications for about 55,000 green cards that would let them live permanently in the United States.
But the hopes she and her husband had of moving with their two children to New York vanished last week when President Donald Trump extended a ban on many green cards issued outside the United States to the end of the year, including the lottery's “diversity visas,” which have been issued every year since 1990 to people from underrepresented countries.
This year’s recipients learned of their good fortune about a year ago, but many had not yet completed the vetting process when American consulates closed in March due to the coronavirus pandemic. Now the administration’s latest step to reduce legal immigration has upended their lives, and many find themselves stuck in a worse situation than the one they were trying to escape.
The lottery requires that green cards be obtained by Sept. 30 or they will be voided. The State Department says no exceptions are made for those who do not yet have one in hand.
Noha and her children got their visas in February. But her husband, Ahmed, is still waiting, and the family fears his visa will never come.
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From big cities to backyards, July 4 not usual blowout bash
NEW YORK (AP) — The idea sounds almost un-American.
The Fourth of July was always a time for communities to come together, daylong celebrations with patriotic parades in the morning and fireworks finales to cap it off.
This year, people are being urged to stay home.
If they want a show, watch it on TV.
“This is traditionally a weekend for gathering in large groups for historic ceremonies and social events,” Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said. “This is not something that we can do this year here in Boston or in Massachusetts.”
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As Florida virus numbers rise, NBA arrivals draw closer
The coronavirus numbers kept climbing Thursday, with a single-day record for new cases being set in Florida and the NBA revealing that the count of players and staff from the 22 remaining teams that have confirmed diagnoses of COVID-19 continues to grow.
The NBA numbers: nine more positive players from tests conducted between June 24-29 to bring the total to 25 who have been positive since mandated testing began June 23, as well 10 positive-testing staff members from the teams that will start arriving at the Disney complex near Orlando, Florida next week for the resumption of the season.
And statewide, health departments around Florida got more than 10,000 new positive cases back on Wednesday, a single-day record for a state that remains very much under siege from the virus and likely a troubling sign for the NBA — which remains hopeful that highly restrictive rules at Disney will keep players and staff safe.
“It’s so much uncertainty,” San Antonio guard DeMar DeRozan said Thursday. “Name me a player who can give you an answer on anything. I wish I could give you an answer. It’s tough, man. It’s tough. I sit up here and tell guys on my team we’ve just got to take things day by day, because it becomes overwhelming and frustrating at times when you try to look at the whole spectacle of things and try to figure it out.”
Percentagewise, the NBA numbers are much lower than the rate of positive tests in many hotspot areas, including the average in Florida. With 351 players tested through June 29, the league had 25 positives for a 7.1% rate. Among 884 team staff tested between June 23 and June 29, the rate was minuscule — the 10 positives equate to a mere 1.1% positive rate.