AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Mass protests rock Russian Far East city again
MOSCOW (AP) — Tens of thousands of people in the Russian Far East city of Khabarovsk took to the streets on Saturday, protesting the arrest of the region’s governor on charges of involvement in multiple murders.
Local media estimated the rally in the city 6100 kilometres (3800 miles) east of Moscow attracted from 15,000 to 50,000 people. The protests against the arrest of Furgal have taken place every day this week, with hundreds of people rallying in the city center every day, and reflected widespread anger over the arrest of the popular governor and a simmering discontent with the Kremlin’s policies.
Sergei Furgal, the popular Khabarovsk region governor, was arrested two weeks ago and flown to Moscow where he was put in jail for two months. Russia’s Investigative Committee says he is suspected of involvement in several murders of businessmen in 2004 and 2005, before his political career began.
Furgal has denied the charges, which relate to his time as a businessman with interests ranging from imports of consumer goods to timber and metals.
Last Saturday, crowd of up to 35,000 people reportedly rallied in the city center. The protests are the largest ever to have taken place in Khabarovsk, a city of 590,000.
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John Lewis, lion of civil rights and Congress, dies at 80
ATLANTA (AP) — John Lewis, a lion of the civil rights movement whose bloody beating by Alabama state troopers in 1965 helped galvanize opposition to racial segregation, and who went on to a long and celebrated career in Congress, died. He was 80.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed Lewis’ passing late Friday night, calling him “one of the greatest heroes of American history.”
“All of us were humbled to call Congressman Lewis a colleague, and are heartbroken by his passing,” Pelosi said. “May his memory be an inspiration that moves us all to, in the face of injustice, make ‘good trouble, necessary trouble.’”
The condolences for Lewis were bipartisan. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Lewis was “a pioneering civil rights leader who put his life on the line to fight racism, promote equal rights, and bring our nation into greater alignment with its founding principles. ”
Lewis’s announcement in late December 2019 that he had been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer — “I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now,” he said — inspired tributes from both sides of the aisle, and an unstated accord that the likely passing of this Atlanta Democrat would represent the end of an era.
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John Lewis' legacy shaped in 1965 on 'Bloody Sunday'
SELMA, Ala. (AP) — John Lewis saw the line of Alabama state troopers a few hundred yards away as he led hundreds of marchers to the apex of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on March 7, 1965. Armed with gas canisters and nightsticks, the troopers were flanked by horse-riding members of the sheriff’s posse. A crowd of whites milled around nearby.
Lewis, who died Friday at age 80, was just 25 at the time. He had been leading voting rights demonstrations for months in the notoriously racist town, and he and the others were trying to take a message of freedom to segregationist Gov. George C. Wallace in Montgomery.
So, rather than stopping, Lewis put another foot forward.
That seminal step propelled him on to a global stage as a hero of the U.S. civil rights movement. The ensuing confrontation helped lead to the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act.
With fellow civil rights activist Hosea Williams at his side, Lewis finally stopped a few feet away from the phalanx of troopers commanded by Maj. John Cloud of the Alabama Department of Public Safety. Other marchers stopped behind them, shifting their feet uncomfortably on the bridge shoulder.
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Rep. John Lewis remembered for legacy of 'good trouble'
ATLANTA (AP) — FORMER PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
“Considering his enormous impact on the history of this country, what always struck those who met John was his gentleness and humility. Born into modest means in the heart of the Jim Crow South, he understood that he was just one of a long line of heroes in the struggle for racial justice. Early on, he embraced the principles of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience as the means to bring about real change in this country, understanding that such tactics had the power not only to change laws, but to change hearts and minds as well."
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HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI
“John Lewis was a titan of the civil rights movement whose goodness, faith and bravery transformed our nation – from the determination with which he met discrimination at lunch counters and on Freedom Rides, to the courage he showed as a young man facing down violence and death on Edmund Pettus Bridge, to the moral leadership he brought to the Congress for more than 30 years. ”
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Reality shows shortfalls of Trump's claim to 'best testing'
WASHINGTON (AP) — Here are some snapshots from what President Donald Trump describes as the nation with the “best testing in the world" for the coronavirus:
In Sun Belt states where the virus is surging, lines of cars with people seeking tests snake for hours in the beating sun, often yielding results so far after the fact that they're useless.
In Pittsburgh, adults who are afraid they’ve been exposed to the coronavirus are being asked to skip testing if they can quarantine at home for 14 days to help reduce delays and backlogs.
In Hawaii, the governor will wait another month to lift a two-week quarantine on visitors because of test supply shortages and delays that potential visitors are facing in getting results.
“Testing has been a challenge everywhere,” says Utah Republican Gov. Gary Herbert.
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Millions of kids told full return to school in fall unlikely
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Millions more children in the U.S. learned Friday that they're unlikely to return to classrooms full time in the fall because of the coronavirus pandemic as death tolls reached new highs.
It came as many states — particularly in the Sunbelt — struggled to cope with the surge and governments worldwide tried to control fresh outbreaks. In a sign of how the virus is galloping around the globe, the World Health Organization reported nearly a quarter-million new infections in a single day.
In the U.S., teams of military medics were deployed in Texas and California to help hospitals deluged by coronavirus patients. The two most populous states each reported roughly 10,000 new cases and some of their highest death counts since the pandemic began. Big numbers in Florida, Arizona and other states also are helping drive the U.S. resurgence that's forcing states to rethink the school year.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom laid out strict criteria for school reopenings that makes classroom instruction unlikely for most districts. The Democrat's rules mandate that students above second grade and all staff wear masks.
Texas gave public schools permission to stay closed for more than 5 million students well into the fall. Under the guidelines, schools can hold online-only instruction for up to the first eight weeks, potentially pushing a return to campus in some cities until November.
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Justice Ginsburg says cancer has returned, but won't retire
WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Friday she is receiving chemotherapy for a recurrence of cancer, but has no plans to retire from the Supreme Court.
The 87-year-old Ginsburg, who has had four earlier bouts with cancer including pancreatic cancer last year, said her treatment so far has succeeded in reducing lesions on her liver and she will continue chemotherapy sessions every two weeks “to keep my cancer at bay.”
“I have often said I would remain a member of the Court as long as I can do the job full steam. I remain fully able to do that,” Ginsburg said in a statement issued by the court.
Ginsburg, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, is the senior liberal justice on a court that leans conservative by a 5-4 margin. Her departure before the election could give President Donald Trump the chance to shift the court further to the right.
Ginsburg’s history with cancer goes back more than 20 years. In addition to being treated without surgery for a tumor on her pancreas last year, she also underwent surgery for colorectal cancer in 1999, pancreatic cancer in 2009 and lung cancer in December 2018.
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Surging Democrats expand Senate targets to GOP states
WASHINGTON (AP) — It's come to this for Republicans straining to defend their Senate majority in November's elections: They're air-dropping millions of dollars into races in Alabama, Kentucky and other red states where Donald Trump coasted during his 2016 presidential election triumph.
This year, challenged by Trump's fumbled handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the crippled economy and his racially inflammatory stances, Republicans face potentially competitive races they'd normally have locked down. Compounding their problems is strong fundraising by Democratic candidates that's kept them in contention in unlikely locations.
“The president’s weakening poll numbers over the last several months have made down-ballot races more competitive,” said GOP pollster Whit Ayres. While saying he believes Republicans will win many of the contested seats, Ayres added, “It’s fair to say the map is expanded.”
GOP fretting is being aggravated by some polls showing Trump trailing nationally and in some battleground states against Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
And while it's early and well-known senators can differentiate themselves from an unpopular president atop their ticket, Democrats are defending just 12 Senate seats this November to Republicans' 23. The GOP controls the Senate 53-47.
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Asia Today: China battles new outbreak in far west Xinjiang
BEIJING (AP) — The number of confirmed cases in a new COVID-19 outbreak in China’s far west has risen to 17.
The National Health Commission said Saturday that 16 more cases were identified in the previous 24 hours in the Xinjiang region, on top of a first case.
The outbreak in the city of Urumqi is the latest to pop up since China largely contained the domestic spread of the virus in March. The largest was a recent outbreak in Beijing that infected more than 330 people.
Authorities in Urumqi have reduced subways, buses and taxis and closed off some residential communities, according to Chinese media reports. They also placed restrictions on people leaving the city, including a suspension of subway service to the airport.
China has been accused of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, the homeland of the largely Muslim Uighur ethnic community. The region has long been blanketed with extreme security, which China says is necessary to prevent terrorist activity.
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Fair housing groups slam Trump's suburban racial rhetoric
Washington (AP) — President Donald Trump’s pledge to roll back an Obama-era regulation designed to eliminate racial disparities in the suburbs is drawing harsh criticism from fair housing advocates, who label it a blatant attempt to play racial politics and appeal to white voters in the final weeks before the election.
They also consider it a empty political stunt, since the regulation he's talking about eliminating never truly got started on the ground in the first place.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to repeal a 2015 initiative that requires local governments to address historic patterns of racial segregation. On Thursday, he said the regulation “will totally destroy the beautiful suburbs” and demolish property values by forcing low-income housing construction in suburban areas.
“Your home will go down in value and crime rates will rapidly rise,” he said. “People have worked all their lives to get into a community, and now they’re going to watch it go to hell. Not going to happen, not while I’m here.”
It's rhetoric that housing advocates find both historically familiar and particularly incendiary as America grapples with a national reckoning over entrenched racial iniquities.