AP News in Brief at 6:09 a.m. EDT
Profile of a killer: Unraveling the deadly new coronavirus
NEW YORK (AP) — What is this enemy?
Seven months after the first patients were hospitalized in China battling an infection doctors had never seen before, the world’s scientists and citizens have reached an unsettling crossroads.
Countless hours of treatment and research, trial and error now make it possible to take much closer measure of the new coronavirus and the lethal disease it has unleashed. But to take advantage of that intelligence, we must confront our persistent vulnerability: The virus leaves no choice.
“It’s like we’re in a battle with something that we can’t see, that we don’t know, and we don’t know where it’s coming from,” said Vivian Castro, a nurse supervisor at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Yonkers, just north of New York City, which struggled with its caseload this spring.
Castro had treated scores of infected patients before she, too, was hospitalized for the virus in April, then spent two weeks in home quarantine. As soon as she returned to the emergency room for her first shift, she rushed to comfort yet another casualty -- a man swallowing the few words he could muster between gasps for air.
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Rules once lifted are reimposed to try to curb new outbreaks
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Virus restrictions once lifted are being reimposed, shutting businesses and curbing people's social lives as communities try to curb a disease resurgence before it spins out of control.
Residents of Australia’s second-largest city were warned on Wednesday to comply with lockdown regulations or face tougher restrictions. Melbourne's 5 million people and part of the city's semi-rural surroundings are a week into a new, six-week lockdown to contain a new outbreak there.
“The time for warnings, the time for cutting people slack is over,” Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews said. “Where we are is in a very serious and deadly position.”
Victoria reported 238 new cases, which authorities say may indicate a stabilizing trend underway in Melbourne's outbreak.
Indian authorities will impose lockdowns in high-risk areas in nearly a dozen states as the nation's coronavirus caseload approaches 1 million.
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Body camera footage of Floyd arrest could show more of story
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Video from the body cameras of two officers charged in George Floyd's death is being made available for public viewing by appointment on Wednesday, but a judge has so far declined to allow news organizations to publish the footage for wider distribution.
Footage from the body cameras of Thomas Lane and J. Kueng was filed with the court last week by Lane's attorney, but only the written transcripts were made public. A coalition of news media organizations and attorneys for Lane and Kueng have said making the videos public would provide a more complete picture of what happened when Floyd was taken into custody.
Members of the news media and the public are viewing the video Wednesday by appointment at the courthouse. The media coalition, which includes The Associated Press, has said this arrangement is the equivalent of keeping the videos under seal, and the coalition is asking Judge Peter Cahill to allow the media to copy the videos and publish them.
Media attorney Leita Walker said in a court filing that the footage should be made widely available to "all members of the public concerned about the administration of justice in one of the most important, and most-watched, cases this State — perhaps this country — has ever seen.”
She also said allowing journalists to copy the footage, watch it multiple times, transcribe it and compare it to the transcripts and to time stamps from widely seen bystander video will help reporters piece together a more complete story.
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Chaotic protests prompt soul-searching in Portland, Oregon
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Nearly two months of nightly protests that have devolved into violent clashes with police have prompted soul-searching in Portland, Oregon, a city that prides itself on its progressive reputation but is increasingly polarized over how to handle the unrest.
President Donald Trump recently deployed federal agents to “quell” the demonstrations in Portland that began after George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police, shining an unwelcome spotlight as the city struggles to find a way forward. The national attention comes as divisions deepen among elected officials about the legitimacy of the more violent protests — striking at the heart of Portland's identity as an ultraliberal haven where protest is seen as a badge of honor.
“I was born and raised here, and I’m a graduate of the local public school system. I chose to make my livelihood here, I chose to raise my daughter here," said Mayor Ted Wheeler, who has faced criticism from all sides. “And in all the years that I have lived here, I have never seen the community more divided. Nor have I seen it look worse.”
Small groups of protesters have set fires, launched fireworks and sprayed graffiti on public buildings, including police precincts and the federal courthouse, leading to nearly nightly clashes with police who have used force that's caused injuries. Similar unrest engulfed many U.S. cities when Floyd died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee to his neck on May 25. But in Portland, which is familiar ground for the loosely organized, far-left activists known as “antifa,” or anti-fascists, the protests never stopped.
Lost in the debate are the downtown businesses racking up millions in property damage and lost sales and the voices of the hundreds of thousands of Portland residents who have stayed off the streets.
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Trump signs bill, order rebuking China, and slams Biden
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed legislation and an executive order on Tuesday that he said will hold China accountable for its oppressive actions against the people of Hong Kong, then quickly shifted his policy speech into a political one, hurling broadsides against Democratic rival Joe Biden.
The legislation and order are part of the Trump administration's stepped-up offensive against China for what he calls the rising Asian superpower's exploitation of America and its effort to conceal details about the human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus from the world. The almost daily administration attacks on Beijing come as Trump defends his own response to the virus, with cases surging in parts of the United States, and as he works ahead of the election to portray Biden as soft on China.
“So Joe Biden and President Obama freely allowed China to pillage our factories, plunder our communities and steal our most precious secrets,” Trump said, adding, “I’ve stopped it largely.”
Trump said that as vice president, Biden advocated for the Paris Agreement addressing climate change; Trump withdrew the U.S. from the accord. “It would have crushed American manufacturers while allowing China to pollute the atmosphere with impunity, yet one more gift from Biden to the Chinese Communist Party,” Trump said.
Trump talked up his own tough approach to Beijing, though he spent the early weeks of the pandemic praising Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two nations signed phase one of a trade deal, but since then, relations have soured and Trump told reporters in the Rose Garden that he has no interest in talking to Xi.
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Lebanon looks to China as US, Arabs refuse to help in crisis
BEIRUT (AP) — Facing a worsening economic crisis and with little chance of Western or oil-rich Arab countries providing assistance without substantial reforms, Lebanon’s cash-strapped government is looking east, hoping to secure investments from China that could bring relief.
But help from Beijing risks alienating the United States, which has suggested such a move could come at the cost of Lebanese-U.S. ties.
A tiny nation of 5 million on a strategic Mediterranean crossroads between Asia and Europe, Lebanon has long been a site where rivalries between Iran and Saudi Arabia have played out. Now, it's becoming a focus of escalating tensions between China and the West.
In recent months, the Lebanese pound has lost around 80% of its value against the dollar, prices have soared uncontrollably, and much of its middle class has been plunged into poverty. Talks with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout have faltered, and international donors have refused to unlock $11 billion pledged in 2018, pending major economic reforms and anti-corruption measures.
Left with few choices, Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s government — supported by the Iran-backed Hezbollah and its allies — is seeking help from China, an approach that the Shiite militant group strongly supports.
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In defeat, Sessions still says Trump right for the nation
MOBILE, Ala. (AP) — Jeff Sessions took the stage Tuesday night near the Alabama gulf coast with the same certitude he’d displayed on another, bigger stage across town almost five years ago. Donald Trump’s vision, the former attorney general declared anew, is right for America.
Yet this occasion couldn’t have been more different.
Neither Trump nor the boisterous throngs they’d greeted together at an August 2015 stadium rally were anywhere to be seen as Sessions calmly conceded defeat in Alabama’s Republican Senate runoff. The outcome ended Sessions’ hopes of returning to the Senate seat he abandoned to join Trump’s administration and instead left him to defend his honor one last time against the unlikely president he’d helped elect but then angered.
From the White House, Trump tweeted his joy over the stinging defeat of the former Justice Department chief he’s chastised since Sessions recused himself in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
“I leave elected office with my integrity intact,” Sessions said, initially standing alone before his grandsons joined him in front of reporters. “I hold my head high.”
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In virus era, back-to-school plans stress working parents
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — For generations, school has been an opportunity for American children to learn and make friends. For many parents today, though, it's something that's elemental in a very different way: a safe place that cares for their children while they are at work — or a necessity for them to be able to work at all.
The outbreak of the coronavirus this year, and the upending of society it has produced, have caused these views of school in American life to collide in ways that have thrown millions of parental lives into disarray. Now, President Donald Trump is demanding that schools reopen in the fall. But with the virus resurging widely, many working parents see no good options.
“I don’t have the benefit of a husband or other family members to care for my son,” says Michelle Brinson, who works full time for a Nashville nonprofit while raising her 11-year-old alone.
At 50, and with underlying health conditions, Brinson says she is “terrified” of contracting COVID-19. She is worried that if her son goes back to school, he could bring the virus home to her. “If I’m dead or on a ventilator," she says, "what good am I to him?”
This isn’t the first time American schools have closed — or talked about it — because of an epidemic. It happened in 1918 with the so-called Spanish Flu and in the 1930s and 1950s with polio outbreaks.
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Apple wins EU court case over $15 billion in claimed taxes
BRUSSELS (AP) — A European Union high court on Wednesday ruled that technology giant Apple does not have to pay 13 billion euros ($15 billion) in back taxes to Ireland, as the EU's executive commission wants.
The EU Commission had claimed in 2016 that Apple had an illegal sweetheart tax deal with Irish authorities. But the Luxembourg-based General Court said Wednesday that ”the Commission did not succeed in showing to the requisite legal standard that there was an advantage.”
It said in a statement that “the Commission was wrong to declare” that Apple “had been granted a selective economic advantage and, by extension, state aid.”
The ruling from the EU’s second-highest court can only be appealed on points of law.
The European Commission had ordered Apple to pay for gross underpayment of tax on profits across the European bloc from 2003 to 2014. The Commission concluded that Cupertino, California-based Apple used two shell companies incorporated in Ireland to permit Apple to report its Europe-wide profits at effective rates well under 1%.
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Statue of Black protester replaces toppled UK slave trader
LONDON (AP) — An artist has erected a statue of a Black Lives Matter protester atop the plinth in the English city of Bristol once occupied by the toppled statue of a slave trader.
Marc Quinn created the likeness of Jen Reid, a protester photographed standing on the plinth after demonstrators pulled down the statue of Edward Colston and dumped it in Bristol’s harbor on June 7.
The statue, titled “A Surge of Power (Jen Reid)” was erected before dawn on Wednesday without approval from city officials.
Colston was a 17th-century trader who made a fortune transporting enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas. His money funded schools and charities in Bristol, 120 miles (195 kilometers) southwest of London.
The toppling of his statue is part of a worldwide reckoning with racism and slavery sparked by the death of a Black American man, George Floyd, at the hands of police in Minneapolis, in May.