AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EDT
Confirmed coronavirus cases are rising in 40 of 50 states
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Four U.S. states — Arizona, California, Florida and Texas — reported a combined 25,000 new confirmed coronavirus cases Thursday as the infection curve rose in 40 of the 50 states heading into the July Fourth holiday weekend.
With the number of daily confirmed coronavirus cases nationwide climbing past 50,000, an alarming 36 states saw 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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How California went from success story to virus hot spot
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Heading into Memorial Day weekend, California's mood was celebratory. The state had avoided dire predictions of a coronavirus surge, hospitalizations were starting to decline and restaurants and most other businesses had reopened.
As July 4th approaches, the mood has soured. Infection rates and hospitalizations are rising fast. Most bars have been ordered closed along with inside dining at restaurants. Many beaches are off-limits or have restrictions to limit crowds. Fireworks shows are canceled and Gov. Gavin Newsom is imploring residents to avoid the holiday tradition of backyard barbecues and other gatherings of relatives and friends.
In about five weeks, the nation's most populous state went from success story to cautionary tale. Health experts say no single thing went wrong, but contributing factors included a populace made complacent by a long stretch of positive trends, the rapid reopening of businesses, a confusing patchwork of local rules and enforcement, and Newsom's late adoption of a mandatory mask rule, on June 18.
“On Memorial Day, why did we just unleash the floodgates without a statewide mask order in place? I wish I had an answer to that, and it’s alarming to us,” said Stephanie Roberson, government relations director for the California Nurses Association.
Just before that holiday, about 3,000 people were in the hospital due to the virus; now it’s more than 5,000. Far more people are being tested and in the last two weeks that has helped fuel a nearly 50% jump in confirmed cases to 230,000. But the infection rate also has risen sharply from just over 4% of those tested around Memorial Day to 6% now.
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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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House judiciary panel to interview ousted NY prosecutor
WASHINGTON (AP) — The ousted former U.S. attorney for Manhattan will sit down with the House Judiciary Committee next week for a closed-door interview as the panel investigates politicization in the Justice Department.
Geoffrey Berman, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who led investigations into allies of President Donald Trump, will appear in person for the transcribed interview July 9, according to a person familiar with the meeting who requested anonymity because it hasn't yet been announced. The committee plans to publicly release the transcript.
Berman left his job last month after an extraordinary standoff in which he refused to resign until Trump himself fired him. Attorney General William Barr had attempted to force him to resign under pressure, but he refused to go.
Justice officials said Berman's investigations would remain undisturbed, but Democrats on Capitol Hill have accused Barr of politicizing the agency and acting more like Trump’s personal lawyer than the country’s chief law enforcement officer. The Judiciary Committee is investigating the politicization and is scheduled to hear from Barr himself at the end of the month.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said last week that “the effort to remove Mr. Berman is part of a clear and dangerous pattern of conduct that began when Mr. Barr took office and continues to this day.”
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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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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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Sponsor FedEx asks Redskins to change their name
WASHINGTON (AP) — The title sponsor of the Washington Redskins’ stadium wants the NFL team to change its name.
“We have communicated to the team in Washington our request that they change the team name,“ FedEx said in a statement Thursday.
The company paid the team $205 million in 1999 for the naming rights to FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland.
In addition to the stadium name and sponsorship agreement, FedEx CEO Frederik Smith is a minority owner. Majority owner Daniel Snyder has shown no indications he’ll change the name since buying the team in 1999.
Amid the national debate over race, pressure has been mounting on the organization to abandon the name called a “dictionary-defined racial slur” by experts and advocates.