AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
`Stop fighting!' Atlanta sobriety test quickly turned deadly
ATLANTA (AP) — One minute, Rayshard Brooks was chatting cooperatively with Atlanta police, saying he'd had a couple of drinks to celebrate his daughter's birthday and agreeing to a breath test. The next, they were wrestling on the ground and grappling over a Taser before Brooks took the weapon and ran.
Seconds later, three gunshots sounded and Brooks fell mortally wounded.
Atlanta police video released Sunday showing a seemingly routine sobriety check outside a Wendy's restaurant that quickly spun out of control, ending in gunfire. The killing of the 27-year-old black man in an encounter with two white officers late Friday rekindled fiery protests in Atlanta and prompted the police chief's resignation.
Police said Sunday the department terminated Officer Garrett Rolfe, who fired the fatal shots, and officer Devin Brosnan was placed on administrative duty. Rolfe had worked for the department since October 2013, and Brosnan since September 2018.
Meanwhile, authorities announced a $10,000 reward for information finding those responsible for setting fire to the Wendy's restaurant at the shooting scene. Flames gutted the restaurant late Saturday after demonstrations grew turbulent. The protests prompted 36 arrests.
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Beijing outbreak shows need to be ready as economies reopen
BEIJING (AP) — China moved swiftly Monday to try to control a new outbreak of the coronavirus after 36 more cases were confirmed in Beijing.
People were lined up at hospitals and other facilities around the capital as authorities rushed to administer thousands of nucleic acid tests of people who worked at a major wholesale market, anyone who had visited it in the past two weeks or anyone who had come in contact with either group.
Authorities have confirmed 79 cases of the coronavirus over four days in what looks to be the largest outbreak since China largely stopped the epidemic's spread at home more than two months ago. The new outbreak appears to have started in the Xinfadi market, Beijing's largest wholesale food market, prompting inspections of fresh meat and seafood in the city and elsewhere in China.
"We must continue to take decisive measures to defend against outside cases and internal resurgences, and mobilize all units to take responsibility,” said Xu Hejian, the director of the Beijing government information office.
At a time when other countries are loosening virus-related restrictions, the development shows the importance of being ready to deal with the inevitable fresh outbreaks. They can pop up at anytime in unexpected places, even weeks after the epidemic has seemingly died down.
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American sentenced to 16 years in Russia on spying charges
MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian court on Monday sentenced an American businessman to 16 years in prison on spying charges, a sentence that he and his brother rejected as being political.
The Moscow City Court read out the conviction of Paul Whelan on charges of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in a maximum security prison colony. The trial was held behind closed doors.
Whelan, who was arrested in Moscow in December 2018, has insisted on his innocence, saying he was set up.
Speaking after the verdict, U.S. Ambassador John Sullivan denounced the secret trial in which no evidence was produced as an egregious violation of human rights and international legal norms. He described Whelan's conviction as a mockery of justice and demanded his immediate release.
Whelan's brother David said lawyers will appeal the verdict that he denounced as political, adding in a statement that “the court’s decision merely completes the final piece of this broken judicial process.”
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Europe's borders reopen but long road for tourism to recover
BERLIN (AP) — Borders opened up across Europe on Monday after three months of coronavirus closures that began chaotically in March. But many restrictions persist, it's unclear how keen Europeans will be to travel this summer and the continent is still closed to Americans, Asians and other international tourists.
Border checks for most Europeans were dropped overnight in Germany, France and elsewhere, nearly two weeks after Italy opened its frontiers. The European Union's 27 nations, as well as those in the Schengen passport-free travel area, which also includes a few non-EU nations such as Switzerland, aren't expected to start opening to visitors from outside the continent until at least the beginning of next month, and possibly later.
Announcing Monday's reopening of borders and Paris restaurants, French President Emmanuel Macron said it's time “to turn the page of the first act of the crisis” and “rediscover our taste for freedom.”
But he warned: "This doesn't mean the virus has disappeared and we can totally let down our guard. ... The summer of 2020 will be a summer unlike any other."
That caution is widespread after more than 182,000 virus-linked deaths in Europe. The region has had more than 2 million of the world’s 7.9 million confirmed infections, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
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Grim blame game over COVID deaths in besieged nursing homes
WASHINGTON (AP) — A grim blame game with partisan overtones is breaking out over COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents, a tiny slice of the population that represents a shockingly high proportion of Americans who have perished in the pandemic.
The Trump administration has been pointing to a segment of the industry — facilities with low federal ratings for infection control — and to some Democratic governors who required nursing homes to take recovering coronavirus patients.
Homes that followed federal infection control guidelines were largely able to contain the virus, asserts Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, which sets standards and pays the bills. “Trying to finger-point and blame the federal government is absolutely ridiculous,” she says.
Verma says data collected by her agency suggest a connection between low ratings on safety inspections and COVID-19 outbreaks. But several academic researchers say their own work has found no such link.
Advocates for the elderly say the federal government hasn’t provided needed virus testing and sufficient protective gear to allow nursing homes to operate safely. A White House directive to test all residents and staff has been met with an uneven response.
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To help distance learning absentees, educators go sleuthing
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — After a knock on his door, third-grade student Jamie-Lee emerged to see his school principal smiling at him from his doorstep. She held out her arms, offering a socially distant “air hug,” and told the boy how much she’d missed him since the pandemic closed their school building.
As they chatted, Principal Tayarisha Batchelor picked up on a clue to the question that brought her to the apartment. The boy was not looking up from a smartphone. Twice, she asked what he was doing on it before he confirmed her suspicions: He was playing video games.
“I like playing games,” Batchelor told the boy as his parents looked on, before suggesting he spend more time first on his daily schoolwork. “I want to make sure you’re still learning, OK?”
Nearly a third of her students at Rawson Elementary School in Hartford, Connecticut, have been unplugged from distance learning. On a Friday afternoon, as she visited some of their homes, she saw many of the reasons why: Internet service is unreliable. Parents are away at work. Some are uncomfortable with the technology. Still others think their children are doing fine when they are actually using the devices for other things.
As the academic year nears an end, districts around the country have been racing to get large numbers of no-show students back on track. It's one thing not to participate this spring, when expectations are lower because of the crisis. It will be another if distance learning resumes in the fall, when the stakes are raised by the return of formal grading and attendance tracking.
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Netanyahu turns to rich friend to fund corruption trial fees
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial for accepting gifts from wealthy friends. But that has not stopped him from seeking another gift from a wealthy friend to pay for his multimillion-dollar legal defense.
The awkward arrangement opens a window into the very ties with billionaire friends that plunged Netanyahu into legal trouble and sheds light on the intersection of money and Israeli politics.
Netanyahu has asked an Israeli oversight committee to allow a 10 million shekel ($2.9 million) donation from Spencer Partrich, a Michigan-based real estate magnate, to fund his legal defense. Because Partrich also happens to be a witness in one of the cases, the committee has asked the country’s attorney general for his opinion on the matter.
The request for financial aid from a friend is not illegal, and Israeli politicians have a long tradition of hobnobbing with wealthy Jewish supporters abroad. But to some, the optics of Netanyahu's request are sketchy.
“It is a problem that we have prime ministers who have ties to moguls,” said Tomer Naor, of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, a good governance group. “When the borders blur, you are blinded by the big money. You want more of it. Then all of a sudden the friend asks for a little favor and that poses a problem.”
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Philippine journalist convicted of libel, given 6-year term
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — An award-winning journalist critical of the Philippine president was convicted of libel and sentenced to jail Monday in a decision called a major blow to press freedom in an Asian bastion of democracy.
The Manila court found Maria Ressa of the online news site Rappler Inc. and former reporter Reynaldo Santos Jr. guilty of libeling a wealthy businessman. The Rappler’s story on May 29, 2012, cited an intelligence report linking him to a murder, drug dealing, human trafficking and smuggling. The site’s lawyers disputed any malice and said the time limit for filing the libel complaint had passed.
“Rappler and both accused did not offer a scintilla of proof that they verified the imputations of various crimes in the disputed article upon the person of Keng,” Judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa said in the 36-page ruling. “They just simply published them as news in their online publication in reckless disregard of whether they are false or not.”
“The decision for me is devastating because it essentially says that Rappler, that we are wrong,” Ressa said in a news conference after the ruling. Her voice cracking, she vowed that “we will keep fighting” and appealed to journalists and Filipinos to continue fighting for their rights “and hold power to account.”
The businessman, Wilfredo Keng, welcomed the ruling, which he said vindicated him and cleared his name “which Ressa, with one click of a button, attempted to destroy.”
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GOP candidates balance pros, cons of running with Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is hitting the road again. And while a campaign event with a president who draws TV cameras and raucous crowds can be gold for down-ballot candidates, these days its value can be debatable.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, facing a competitive North Carolina reelection contest, “is looking forward to campaigning" with Trump, Tillis' spokesperson said. GOP Sen. Steve Daines tweeted, “Montana can’t wait to have you back, Mr. President!” after Trump promised to help him battle a strong Democratic challenger.
Yet a spokesperson said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in the reelection fight of her life, “was at work in Washington” recently as Trump visited her state to open a marine conservation area to commercial fishing. The Senate wasn't in session that day.
And while GOP Senate candidate John James appeared with Trump in May in Michigan, where polls have trended against the president, James demurred when asked about his 2017 comment that he backs Trump “2,000%.” James said he supports Trump, adding, “I’m looking forward to running my own race, being my own man.”
Trump is the GOP's unrivaled beast, commanding the unswerving fealty of nearly all its voters. While some Republican candidates yanked their support late in his 2016 campaign after a decade-old video showed him boasting about groping women, he's since proved that crossing him can be politically fatal.
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AP PHOTOS: Ambulance driver in India rushes to save lives
MUMBAI, India (AP) — The first thing noticeable about Izhaar Hussain Shaikh is the fatigue marking his youthful face. The second thing is that his phone constantly buzzes.
The 30-year-old ambulance driver works for HelpNow, an initiative started by three engineering students in 2019 to help the stretched services of first responders in the Indian coastal city of Mumbai. It charges patients, but services are free for the city’s administrators, police force, medicos and the poor.
In a city with a history of ambulance shortages and where the coronavirus pandemic has claimed nearly 1,300 lives, putting the health care system under immense strain, every bit of help counts. And it is people like Shaikh — working tirelessly, dodging health risks — who are helping to ease that burden.
“My family, neighbors, everyone is scared. I am frightened too," said Shaikh. "But I keep telling them and myself that its our way of helping people during this time."
It’s a grueling job, with Shaikh's daily shifts sometimes stretching 16 hours. Responding to an urgent call demands that his ambulance makes its way through Mumbai's notoriously heavy but now unusually light traffic and narrow streets.