AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Flights canceled as Beijing's new outbreak raises concerns
BEIJING (AP) — More than 60% of commercial flights in and out of Beijing have been canceled as the Chinese capital raised its alert level Wednesday against a new coronavirus outbreak and other nations confront rising numbers of illnesses and deaths.
The virus prevention and control situation in Beijing was described as “extremely grave” at a meeting of Beijing's Communist Party Standing Committee led by the city’s top official, Party Secretary Cai Qi.
“This has truly rung an alarm bell for us,” Cai told participants.
The website of the Communist Party’s Global Times said 1,255 flights to and from the capital’s two major airports were scrapped by Wednesday morning. Beijing Capital Airport is traditionally the world’s second busiest in passenger capacity.
That accounts for 67% of outgoing flights and 68% of incoming flights, the newspaper said.
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Trump signs order on police reform, doesn't mention racism
WASHINGTON (AP) — Following weeks of national protests since the death of George Floyd, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order he said would encourage better police practices. But he made no mention of the roiling national debate over racism spawned by police killings of black people.
Trump met privately with the families of several black Americans killed in interactions with police before his Rose Garden signing ceremony and said he grieved for the lives lost and families devastated. But he quickly shifted his tone and devoted most of his public remarks to a need to respect and support “the brave men and women in blue who police our streets and keep us safe.”
He characterized the officers who've used excessive force as a “tiny” number of outliers among “trustworthy” police ranks.
“Reducing crime and raising standards are not opposite goals," he said before signing the order Tuesday, flanked by police officials.
Trump and Republicans in Congress have been rushing to respond to the mass demonstrations against police brutality and racial prejudice that have raged for weeks across the country in response to the deaths of Floyd and other black Americans. It's a sudden shift that underscores how quickly the protests have changed the political conversation and pressured Washington to act.
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China says it agrees with India to peacefully solve tensions
BEIJING (AP) — China said Wednesday that it is seeking a a peaceful resolution to its Himalayan border dispute with India following the death of 20 Indian soldiers in the most violent confrontation in decades.
“Both sides agree to resolve this matter through dialogue and consultation and make efforts to ease the situation and safeguard peace and tranquility in the border area,” foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing.
It wasn't immediately clear what form talks would take. Earlier, Indian Defense Ministry spokesperson Col. Aman Anand did not respond immediately to queries on the situation or whether talks were planned to defuse the tensions.
Indian security forces said neither side fired any shots in the clash in the Ladakh region late Monday that was the first deadly confrontation on the disputed border between India and China since 1975. Some officials said the soldiers were carrying anti-riot gear instead of weapons.
China has not said if any of its troops were injured or killed.
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AP Analysis: North Korea gambling with latest standoff
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Only two years ago the leaders of North and South Korea shared drinks, laughs and vows for peace during three highly orchestrated summits that lowered fears of war that had risen as Pyongyang pursued an arsenal of nuclear missiles.
That's all gone, for now, and it ended this week with a bang.
The North on Tuesday blew up an empty office building that had allowed the two Koreas to talk in person in the North Korean border town of Kaesong. Pyongyang also said it was scrapping a key military agreement aimed at reducing conventional threats along the border.
The largely symbolic, made-for-TV explosion has shattered already fading hopes in South Korea that the basic foundation of cooperation with its rival could be salvaged. It's also stoked public fear that the Korean Peninsula will once again take its place as a global hotspot.
While North Korea's actions may appear abrupt and reckless, the leadership in Pyongyang may be executing a carefully measured plan aimed at winning outside concessions while showing its people a strong face in dealing with its rival.
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Lafayette Square could decide Trump's legacy — and election
NEW YORK (AP) — Charlottesville. Helsinki. The children in cages at the Mexican border.
And now Lafayette Square.
Only a few legacy-defining moments have clung to President Donald Trump, who often appears to emerge relatively unscathed from a seemingly endless stream of crises and controversies. But the forceful clearing of demonstrators from the park across from the White House has resonated like few others, prompting top military leaders and usually lockstep Republicans to distance themselves from him.
It's one of those rare images that seems unlikely to be overwritten by tomorrow’s headlines, instead claiming a prominent place in Trump’s entry in the history books. It also could help shape an election less than five months away. Even the president and members of his inner circle have privately expressed worry that its impact could be lasting.
“It’s an indelible moment when the president of the United States ordered the use of force against peaceful protesters using their First Amendment rights in order to walk across Lafayette Square" and hoist a Bible, said Steve Schmidt, senior adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. “In 10 minutes, he totally disgraced his office and committed sacrilege.”
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Near Trump's rally site, black Tulsa lives with fiery legacy
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — In the real world, 74-year-old Donald Shaw is walking on the empty, parched grass slope by Tulsa’s noisy crosstown expressway. He's on the other side of the city’s historical white-black dividing line from where President Donald Trump will hold a rally Saturday with his overwhelmingly white supporters.
But Shaw can conjure stories and images of so much more — the once-thriving black community that stood on this same ground, destroyed nearly a century ago by white violence and ensuing decades of repression.
“Just imagine, in your mind, all these homes,” Shaw said one morning this week, describing the black-built, black-owned houses and churches that once covered dozens of blocks where he's walking, the site of Tulsa's 1921 race massacre. “Just picture that.”
“Hotels, movie theater, roller rink,” said Shaw, a retired man who spends his mornings sitting in the shade of an engraved stone memorial to the Home Style Café, A.S. Newkirk photography studio, and literally hundreds of other African American-owned bakeries, barber shops, attorney offices and businesses razed in the massacre.
Burned bricks and a fragment of a church basement are about all that survive today of the more than 30-block historically black district. On May 31 and June 1 in 1921, white residents and civil society leaders looted and burned Tulsa's black Greenwood district to the ground, and used planes to drop projectiles on it.
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Senate GOP to propose policing changes in 'Justice Act'
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans are proposing changes to police procedures and accountability with an enhanced use-of-force database, restrictions on chokeholds and new commissions to study law enforcement and race, according to a draft obtained by The Associated Press.
The JUSTICE Act — Just and Unifying Solutions To Invigorate Communities Everywhere Act of 2020 — is the most ambitious GOP policing proposal in years, a direct response to the massive public protests over the death of George Floyd and other black Americans.
The package is set to be introduced Wednesday by Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the GOP's lone black Republican, and a task force of GOP senators assembled by Republican leadership.
The 106-page bill is not as sweeping as a Democratic proposal, which is set for a House vote next week, but it shows how swiftly the national debate has been transformed as Republicans embrace a new priority in an election year.
The GOP legislation would beef up requirements for law enforcement to compile use of force reports under a new George Floyd and Walter Scott Notification Act, named for the Minnesota father whose May 25 death sparked worldwide protests over police violence, and Scott, the South Carolina man shot by police after a traffic stop in 2015.
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Months into virus, biggest one-day case spike worries Iran
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Months into Iran's fight against the coronavirus, doctors and nurses at Tehran’s Shohadaye Tajrish Hospital still don a mask, a disposable hazmat suit and a double layer of latex gloves every day to attempt to contain a pandemic that shows no signs of slowing.
The hiss of high-flow oxygen to wheezing patients, the beeps of equipment monitoring vital signs and the crinkling rustle of passing medics have become a daily symphony here and in other hospitals across the Islamic Republic.
Iran reported its first coronavirus cases and deaths on the same day in February — the Middle East’s first and biggest outbreak of the virus — yet it only recently saw its highest single-day spike in reported cases, followed soon by the highest daily death toll in months.
The spikes, which came after a major Muslim holiday last month, have renewed fears about a potential second wave of infections sweeping across Iran. As businesses open and people begin to move around more after weeks of closures of most stores, offices and public spaces, health experts worry that growing complacency among the country’s 80 million people may further allow the virus to spread.
Health Minister Saeed Namaki said he realized the extent of the challenge when he took a domestic flight. “Many people have become careless, frustrated with wearing masks,” he said. “They did not observe (social) distancing in the flight’s seating and the airliner’s ventilation system was not working.”
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High court decision spotlights GOP divide over LGBT rights
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats flooded Twitter and email inboxes this week with praise for the watershed Supreme Court decision shielding gay, lesbian and transgender people from job discrimination. Republicans — not so much.
The court's 6-3 ruling came just two days after an event that played out in the opposite direction. Freshman GOP Rep. Denver Riggleman, who’d officiated at a same-sex wedding, lost his party’s nomination in a conservative Virginia district.
The two developments underscored an election-year challenge facing the GOP: how to reconcile broad national support for LGBT protections, even among many Republicans, with fervent opposition from some of the party's die-hard conservative voters.
On Election Day, that question will be easily overshadowed by the moribund economy, the coronavirus pandemic, the interaction between race and violent police tactics and by Trump himself. Still, the week's events point to a culture-war schism in the GOP that Democrats are happy to exploit, even as Republicans struggle to prevent moderate suburban voters from deserting them.
“This is something suburban voters support,” said GOP pollster Glen Bolger. “And that is a group that Republicans are having challenges with.”
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5 Things to Know for Today
Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:
1. BEIJING SEES SPIKE IN VIRUS CASES Describing a new coronavirus outbreak as “extremely grave,” the Chinese capital cancels more than 60% of commercial flights and raises the alert level.
2. TENSIONS RISING ON KOREAN PENINSULA North Korea will redeploy troops to now-shuttered inter-Korean cooperation sites, reinstall guard posts and resume military exercises at front-line areas.
3. SENATE GOP PROPOSES POLICING CHANGES The legislation would establish an enhanced use-of-force database, restrictions on chokeholds and new training and commissions to study law enforcement and race, AP learns.
4. CHINA, INDIA DEFUSE BORDER CRISIS Beijing says it has agreed with New Delhi to peacefully resolve their Himalayan border tensions following the most violent confrontations in decades.