AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Schools or bars? Opening classrooms may mean hard choices
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — President Donald Trump insists that schools reopen this fall. Many parents, educators, doctors and economists want the same thing. But getting children back to school safely could mean keeping high-risk spots like bars and gyms closed.
A growing chorus of public health experts is urging federal, state and local officials to reconsider how they are reopening the broader economy, and to prioritize K-12 schools — an effort that will likely require closing some other establishments to help curb the virus spread and give children the best shot at returning to classrooms.
“We need to think about what our priorities are as a society, and some other things may just have to wait,” said Helen Jenkins, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Boston University. “I think there are hard choices having to be made by decision makers.”
Schools are crucial to communities in ways that go beyond basic learning. They also provide children with friends, food and other support systems. The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly supports children physically returning to classrooms.
Schools are also a key part of getting the economy going, said David Rothschild, an economist at Microsoft Research.
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Virus cases jump in worst-hit trio of US, Brazil and India
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — India on Thursday reported nearly 25,000 new coronavirus infections, as the disease continued its ominous spread through the nation of nearly 1.4 billion people.
The virus is showing no signs of slowing in the worst-affected countries: the United States, Brazil and India. The three nations are accounting for more than 60% of new cases, according to recent tallies from Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. reported nearly 59,000 new daily cases, just short of the record 60,000 cases set a day earlier, as President Donald Trump insisted that schools reopen in the fall. Brazil reported nearly 45,000 new cases.
The virus has also been spreading rapidly in South Africa, which reported nearly 9,000 new cases in its latest daily update. A provincial health official said 1.5 million grave sites are being prepared and it’s the public’s responsibility “to make sure that we don’t get there.”
In Australia, which had initial success containing the outbreak, authorities on Thursday reported 179 new cases, most of them in the city of Melbourne, where authorities are battling a resurgence and have imposed a new six-week lockdown.
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Officer to Floyd: 'It takes ... a lot of oxygen to talk'
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — As George Floyd told Minneapolis police officers that he couldn't breathe more than 20 times in the moments before he died, the officer who pressed his knee against Floyd's neck dismissed his pleas, saying “it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk," according to transcripts of body camera video recordings made public Wednesday.
The transcripts for the body camera videos of officers Thomas Lane and J. Kueng provide the most detailed account yet of what happened as police were taking Floyd into custody on May 25, and reveal more of what was said after Floyd, a Black man who was handcuffed, was put on the ground.
“You’re going to kill me, man,” Floyd said, according to a transcript of Lane's body camera video.
“Then stop talking, stop yelling. It takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk,” said Derek Chauvin, the white officer who held his knee to Floyd's neck for nearly eight minutes, even after Floyd stopped moving.
“They'll kill me. They'll kill me. I can't breathe. I can't breathe," Floyd said.
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Pentagon leaders face grilling on use of military in unrest
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon's top leaders are going before Congress for the first time in months to face a long list of controversies, including their differences with President Donald Trump over the handling of protests near the White House last month during unrest triggered by the killing of George Floyd in police hands.
The House hearing Thursday will provide the first congressional testimony by Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, since March 4, when they appeared to discuss the administration's defense budget proposal. That was before the full impact of the coronavirus pandemic became apparent and before nationwide civil unrest threw the Pentagon's relations with Trump into crisis.
Trump's push for an aggressive response to the civil unrest led to an extraordinary clash with Esper and Milley, who on June 1 accompanied the president when he walked from the White House to St. John's Church on Lafayette Square, where he held up a Bible for photographers. That same day, a National Guard helicopter was flown at extremely low altitude to help disperse protesters from the capital's streets, prompting a Pentagon investigation into whether that was a proper use of military resources.
Esper drew Trump's ire for telling a Pentagon news conference that he opposed invoking the Insurrection Act to permit the president to use the armed forces to put down domestic civil unrest. Esper said he saw no need for such an extreme measure, a clear counterpoint to Trump’s threat to use force.
Esper also made known his regret at having accompanied Trump to the presidential photo opportunity in front of St. John's on the day of the Lafayette Square confrontations.
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Supreme Court expected to rule on Trump's tax records
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether Congress and the Manhattan district attorney can see President Donald Trump's taxes and other financial records that the president has fought hard to keep private.
The high-stakes dispute, which could be resolved Thursday, tests the balance of power between the White House and Congress, as well as Trump's claim that he can't be investigated while he holds office.
It's unclear, even if Trump loses, how much of the material would become public, since some records would go to a confidential grand-jury investigation in New York and the rest, sought by committees of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, could contain highly sensitive information not just about Trump, but also about other members of his family and businesses.
Trump has so far lost at every step, but the records have not been turned over pending a final court ruling.
The case was argued by telephone in May because of the coronavirus pandemic. The court said Wednesday that all remaining cases would be decided Thursday. A dispute over whether a large chunk of eastern Oklahoma remains American Indian land, also argued in May, is the only other outstanding case.
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Bolsonaro now the 'poster boy' for dubious COVID treatment
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — After months of touting an unproven anti-malaria drug as a treatment for the new coronavirus, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is turning himself into a test case live before millions of people as he swallows hydroxychloroquine pills on social media and encourages others to do the same.
Bolsonaro said this week that he tested positive for the virus but already felt better thanks to hydroxychloroquine. Hours later he shared a video of himself gulping down what he said was his third dose.
“I trust hydroxychloroquine,” he said, smiling. “And you?”
On Wednesday, he was again extolling the drug's benefits on Facebook, and claimed that his political opponents were rooting against it.
A string of studies in Britain and the United States, as well as by the World Health Organization, have found chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine ineffective against COVID-19 and sometimes deadly because of their adverse side effects on the heart. Several studies were canceled early because of adverse effects.
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Virus projects renew questions about UAE's mass surveillance
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Efforts by the United Arab Emirates to fight the coronavirus have renewed questions about mass surveillance in this U.S.-allied federation of seven sheikhdoms.
Experts believe the UAE has one of the highest per-capita concentrations of surveillance cameras in the world. From the streets of the capital of Abu Dhabi to the tourist attractions of skyscraper-studded Dubai, the cameras keep track of the license plates and faces of those passing by them.
While heralded as a safety measure in a country so far spared from a major militant attack, it also offers its authoritarian government means to track any sign of dissent.
“There is no protection of civil liberties because there are no civil liberties," said Jodi Vittori, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies the UAE.
Dubai and Emirati government officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
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Health official: Trump rally 'likely' source of virus surge
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — President Donald Trump's campaign rally in Tulsa in late June that drew thousands of participants and large protests "likely contributed" to a dramatic surge in new coronavirus cases, Tulsa City-County Health Department Director Dr. Bruce Dart said Wednesday.
Tulsa County reported 261 confirmed new cases on Monday, a one-day record high, and another 206 cases on Tuesday. By comparison, during the week before the June 20 Trump rally, there were 76 cases on Monday and 96 on Tuesday.
Although the health department’s policy is to not publicly identify individual settings where people may have contracted the virus, Dart said those large gatherings “more than likely" contributed to the spike.
“In the past few days, we’ve seen almost 500 new cases, and we had several large events just over two weeks ago, so I guess we just connect the dots," Dart said.
Trump's Tulsa rally, his first since the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S., attracted thousands of people from around the country. About 6,200 people gathered inside the 19,000-seat BOK Center arena — far fewer than was expected.
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25 years on, Srebrenica dead still being identified, buried
SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — A quarter of a century after they were killed in Europe’s worst massacre since World War II, eight Bosnian men and boys will be laid to rest Saturday in a cemetery just outside of Srebrenica — their marble gravestones joining thousands more, each with the same month and year of death.
Over 8,000 Bosnian Muslims perished in 10 days of slaughter after the town was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces in the closing months of the country's 1992-95 fratricidal war. Their executioners tried to ensure they would never get the sort of memorial Srebrenica holds every year. Their bodies were plowed into hastily made mass graves and then later dug up with bulldozers and scattered among other burial sites to hide the evidence of the crime.
But, since 1996, Bosnian and international scientists have slowly unlocked what was once described as the “biggest forensic puzzle anywhere in the world,” unearthing the bones from those gruesome death pits and connecting them with the names of the people they belonged to.
When the remains are identified, they are returned to their relatives and reburied in the Potocari memorial cemetery. And each year on July 11, the anniversary of the day the killing began in 1995, relatives gather for a funeral of the recently identified. Most of the dead were men and boys, so most of the mourners are women — mothers and sisters, daughters and wives.
Massacre survivor Fazila Efendic will attend the collective funeral this year to witness her sisters in grief bury a handful of bones, as she once did.
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Sheriff: Actress Naya Rivera missing in SoCal lake
LOS ANGLES (AP) — Authorities say former “Glee” star Naya Rivera is missing and being searched for at a Southern California lake.
The Ventura County Sheriff's Department late Wednesday confirmed that Rivera, 33, is the person being searched for in the waters of Lake Piru, which is approximately 56 miles (90 kilometers) northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
KNBC reported late Wednesday that Rivera rented a pontoon boat at the Lake Piru reservoir Wednesday and that her young son was found on the boat wearing a life vest. Rivera’s identification was found on the boat. Sheriff’s officials launched a boat and helicopter search Wednesday afternoon, but that had been suspended by nighttime. The search will continue early Thursday.
“We’re going on the belief that she did go in the water and we have not been able to locate her. So this may well be a case of drowning,” Captain Eric Buschow said during a news conference.
Rivera’s 4-year-old son is from a marriage with actor Ryan Dorsey. The couple finalized their divorce in June 2018 after nearly four years of marriage.