AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
China tells US to close consulate in Chengdu in growing spat
BEIJING (AP) — China ordered the United States on Friday to close its consulate in the western city of Chengdu, ratcheting up a diplomatic conflict at a time when relations have sunk to their lowest level in decades.
The move was a response to the Trump administration's order this week for Beijing to close its consulate in Houston after Washington accused Chinese agents of trying to steal medical and other research in Texas.
The Chinese foreign ministry appealed to Washington to reverse its “wrong decision.”
Chinese-U.S. relations have soured amid a mounting array of conflicts including trade, the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, technology, spying accusations, Hong Kong and allegations of abuses against Chinese Muslims.
“The measure taken by China is a legitimate and necessary response to the unjustified act by the United States,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
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The global march of face masks: A mirror on humanity
SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE, France (AP) — House keys, wallet or purse, mobile phone and .... oh, yes: face mask.
Reluctantly for many, but also inexorably in the face of a deadly invisible enemy, small rectangles of flimsy yet live-saving tissue have in mere months joined the list of don’t-leave-home-without-them items for billions around the world.
Not since humans invented shoes or underwear has a single item of dress caught on so widely and quickly from Melbourne to Mexico City, Beijing to Bordeaux, spanning borders, cultures, generations and sexes with almost the same Earth-shaking speed as the coronavirus that has killed more than 600,000 and infected more than 15 million.
“There has, perhaps, never been such a rapid and dramatic change in global human behavior," says Jeremy Howard, co-founder of #Masks4All, a pro-mask lobbying group. “Humanity should be patting itself on the back.”
But rarely, also maybe never, has anything else worn by humans sparked such furious discord and politicking, most notably in the United States. Did anyone on an American beach ever pull a gun on someone for wearing a bikini, as an unmasked man did on a masked shopper this month at a Florida Walmart?
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AP-NORC poll: 3 in 4 Americans back requiring wearing masks
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Three out of four Americans, including a majority of Republicans, favor requiring people to wear face coverings while outside their homes, a new poll finds, reflecting fresh alarm over spiking coronavirus cases and a growing embrace of government advice intended to safeguard public health.
The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research also finds that about two-thirds of Americans disapprove of how President Donald Trump is handling the outbreak, an unwelcome sign for the White House in an election year shaped by the nation’s battle with the pandemic.
More than four months after government stay-at-home orders first swept across the U.S., the poll spotlights an America increasingly on edge about the virus. The federal government's response is seen as falling short, and most Americans favor continued restrictions to stop the virus from spreading even if they might hamstring the economy.
Support for requiring masks is overwhelming among Democrats, at 89%, but 58% of Republicans are in favor as well. The poll was conducted before Trump, who for months was dismissive of masks, said this week that it’s patriotic to wear one.
“Not wearing a mask, to me, poses a greater risk of spreading the COVID,” said Darius Blevins, a 33-year-old Republican-leaning independent from Christiansburg, Virginia, who works in bank operations. Blevins said he wears a mask in public because “it’s much more effective than not wearing the mask.”
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Trump calls off Florida segment of GOP National Convention
WASHINGTON (AP) — Bowing to the coronavirus threat, President Donald Trump has scrapped plans for a four-night Republican National Convention celebration in Florida that had been set to draw more than 10,000 people to a pandemic hot spot to mark his renomination.
Trump had already moved the convention’s public events out of North Carolina because of virus concerns. But the spiking virus shifted to the South, too, and the planned gathering in Jacksonville increasingly appeared to be both a health and political risk. Trump and his advisers feared that going forward with big parties and “infomercial” programming in Florida would ultimately backfire on the president.
“It’s a different world, and it will be for a little while,” Trump said, explaining his decision at a Thursday White House coronavirus briefing. “To have a big convention is not the right time.”
A small subset of GOP delegates will still formally renominate Trump on Aug. 24 in Charlotte, North Carolina, at an event scheduled to last just four hours.
Trump had decided last month to shift the ceremonial portions of the GOP convention to Florida because of a dispute with North Carolina’s Democratic leaders over holding an indoor gathering with throngs of supporters taking a pass on face masks.
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Police blocked from arresting observers in Portland protests
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge specifically blocked U.S. agents from arresting or using physical force against journalists and legal observers at the ongoing Portland, Oregon, protests that have sparked confrontations between local officials and President Donald Trump over the limits of federal power.
U.S. Judge Michael Simon made his ruling late Thursday, a day after Portland's mayor was tear-gassed by federal agents as he made an appearance outside a federal courthouse during raucous demonstrations. Protesters have gathered in Oregon's largest city for nearly two months straight since George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis.
A large crowd of demonstrators were out again Thursday night, chanting and holding signs near the federal courthouse.
Simon had previously ruled that journalists and legal observers are exempt from police orders requiring protesters to disperse once an unlawful assembly has been declared. Federal lawyers intervened, saying journalists should have to leave when ordered.
“This order is a victory for the rule of law,” Jann Carson, ACLU of Oregon’s interim executive director, said in a statement.
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Black protesters say focus on feds hasn't derailed message
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — After George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police, people in Portland came out in droves to protest police brutality and racism, chanting that “Black lives matter.” As the weeks went by, the crowds dwindled to a few dozen and the protests increasingly turned violent.
Since President Donald Trump deployed militarized federal agents to the progressive city early this month, the numbers of protesters have swelled again into the thousands, including mothers wearing yellow shirts and dads armed with leaf blowers to drive away tear gas.
“Feds go home!” the mostly white demonstrators chant. But they also call for racial justice, often led by Black protesters with megaphones.
While the protests have taken on a new tone of opposition to federal intervention, Black leaders and protesters say the surge in activity — though often chaotic — hasn’t distracted from their anti-racist message. Instead, it's shined a spotlight on it.
Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, the first Black woman elected to that office, rejected the idea that the Black Lives Matter protests are being hijacked by white people.
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Always rocky, China-US relations appear at a turning point
BEIJING (AP) — Four decades after the U.S. established diplomatic ties with Communist China, the relationship between the two is at a turning point.
Tensions have reached new heights on what has always been a rocky road, as the ambitions of a rising superpower increasingly clash with those of the established one. China ordered the closing of the U.S. Consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu on Friday, in rapid retaliation for the closing of its consulate in Houston.
Two weeks ago, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi asked aloud if relations could stay on track. On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered an answer: The time has come to change course.
“The old paradigm of blind engagement with China simply won’t get it done," he said in a speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in southern California. ”We must not continue it. We must not return to it.”
It was Nixon's visit to China in 1972, the first by an American president since the Communists took power in 1949, that upended a Cold War paradigm and paved the way for the normalization of relations in 1979.
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Israeli police use water cannons on protesters, arrest 55
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli police used water cannons to disperse protesters in central Jerusalem and arrested at least 55 of them as clashes broke out overnight after thousands staged a protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israelis have held a series of demonstrations in recent weeks calling on Netanyahu to resign, citing his trial on corruption charges and his fractious unity government's poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
The protest near the prime minister's residence began around sundown on Thursday and was initially largely peaceful. A smaller counterprotest in support of Netanyahu was held nearby, with the two camps separated by metal barricades and a large police presence.
Police say they moved in to disperse the protesters when they tried to stage a procession through the city. Police scuffled with demonstrators before four large trucks roared into action, spraying water cannons back and forth, scattering the protesters.
At times, it appeared the trucks were spraying protesters from behind as they tried to leave the area peacefully.
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Thousands in Puerto Rico still without housing since Maria
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Nearly three years after Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico, tens of thousands of homes remain badly damaged, many people face a hurricane season under fading blue tarp roofs and the island's first major program to repair and rebuild houses hasn’t completed a single one.
Maria hit more than 786,000 homes on Sept. 20, 2017, causing minor damage to some homes and sweeping others from their foundations. A federally funded program administered by local officials carried out relatively small repairs to some 108,000 homes the next year, while churches and nonprofits patched up thousands with private funds.
A Puerto Rican government program known as R3 is the first major effort by the U.S. territory to carry out major repairs and rebuilding of damaged and destroyed housing. Nearly 27,000 homeowners have applied. But nearly 1 1/2 years after federal funding was released to local officials, not a single repair or rebuilding job has been completed.
Puerto Rican officials say work is almost finished on the first 45 homes to benefit from the program, but it is not yet complete.
For many Puerto Ricans, the program's slow progress has become a symbol of their government’s inability to address the long-term effects of the disaster.
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AP PHOTOS: Lonely burials for virus victims in Iraq's Najaf
NAJAF, Iraq (AP) — Every chapter of Iraq’s modern history can be seen in the sprawling cemetery of Wadi al-Salam outside the holy city of Najaf. Its sandy expanse is growing, this time with coronavirus victims.
A special burial ground near the cemetery has been created specifically for COVID-19 victims because such burials have been rejected by Baghdad cemeteries and elsewhere in Iraq.
In Iraq, the virus has been surrounded by stigma, driven by religious beliefs, customs and a deep mistrust of the health care system.
Overseeing the “New Wadi al-Salam,” or Valley of Peace, cemetery and helping with the burial procedures are Iraqi Shiite volunteers from the Imam Ali Combat Division. They had been fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq over the past few years, operating under the umbrella group known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.
Corpses of the virus victims arrive at night in body bags driven by ambulances and burial procedures take place at daybreak. In the past four months, more than 3,000 bodies have been buried here, said Sarmad Khalaf Ibrahim, an official with the martyrs affairs department of the PMF.