AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Young immigrants land court win but still face uncertainty
PHOENIX (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld legal protections for young immigrants, but President Donald Trump could still take away the ability for hundreds of thousands of them to live and work legally in the United States. With no legislative answer in sight, that means the uncertainty of the last eight years isn't over for many who know of nowhere else as home.
Activists are vowing to keep fighting for a long-term solution for 650,000 immigrants who were brought to the country as children. They face a White House that's prioritized immigration restrictions and a divided Congress that's unlikely to pass legislation giving them a path to citizenship anytime soon.
The high court on Thursday ruled that President Donald Trump improperly ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2017. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the four liberal justices in the 5-4 majority, while the conservatives justices called DACA illegal.
It's now up to the Trump administration whether to try again to dismantle the program that offers protection from deportation. Trump slammed the ruling, tweeting: “These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives," apparently also referring to a ruling this week that said it’s illegal to fire people because they’re gay or transgender.
But experts say there isn't enough time to knock down the 8-year-old program before the November election and doubt the government would try because DACA is popular with voters.
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Juneteenth: A day of joy and pain - and now national action
In just about any other year, Juneteenth, the holiday celebrating the day in 1865 that all enslaved black people learned they had been freed from bondage, would be marked by African American families across the nation with a cookout, a parade, a community festival, a soulful rendition of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.”
But in 2020, as the coronavirus ravishes black America disproportionately, as economic uncertainty wrought by the pandemic strains black pocketbooks, and as police brutality continues to devastate black families, Juneteenth is a day of protest.
Red velvet cake, barbecued ribs and fruit punch are optional.
For many white Americans, recent protests over police brutality have driven their awareness of Juneteenth's significance.
“This is one of the first times since the ’60s, where the global demand, the intergenerational demand, the multiracial demand is for systemic change,” said Cornell University professor Noliwe Rooks, a segregation expert. “There is some understanding and acknowledgment at this point that there’s something in the DNA of the country that has to be undone.”
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Singapore opens gyms, dining out as China outbreak steadies
SINGAPORE (AP) — Singaporeans can wine and dine at restaurants, work out at the gym and socialize with no more than five people at a time as of Friday, when the city-state removed most of its pandemic lockdown restrictions.
The latest relaxation comes as reopenings in many places around the world are touching off fresh spikes in infections, raising questions about how to live with the coronavirus without causing unnecessary deaths or economic catastrophe.
Getting back to business in Singapore came as China declared a fresh outbreak in Beijing under control after confirming 25 new cases among some 360,000 people tested. That was up by just four from a day earlier.
A Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention official said the number of cases was expected to fall soon in outbreak centered on Beijing’s main wholesale market. So far Beijing has confirmed 183 new cases over the past week.
Singapore's malls, gyms, massage parlors, parks and other public facilities reopened their doors with strict social distancing and other precautions.
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Atlanta police call out sick over charges in fatal shooting
ATLANTA (AP) — Atlanta police officers called out sick to protest the filing of murder charges against an officer who shot a man in the back, while the interim chief acknowledged members of the force feel abandoned amid protests demanding massive changes to policing.
Interim Chief Rodney Bryant told The Associated Press in an interview that the sick calls began Wednesday night and continued Thursday, but said the department had sufficient staff to protect the city. It’s not clear how many officers called out.
“Some are angry. Some are fearful. Some are confused on what we do in this space. Some may feel abandoned," Bryant said of the officers. "But we are there to assure them that we will continue to move forward and get through this.”
Prosecutors brought felony murder and other charges against Garrett Rolfe, a white officer who shot Rayshard Brooks after the 27-year-old black man grabbed a Taser during a struggle and ran, firing it at the officer, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said.
Four months before Brooks was killed, Reconnect, a company that focuses on fighting incarceration and addiction, interviewed him about the year he spent in jail. He said the criminal justice system treats the people incarcerated within like “animals.”
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Klobuchar urges Biden to pick nonwhite woman as running mate
CHICAGO (AP) — Amy Klobuchar says she is dropping out of the running to be vice president and urging Democrat Joe Biden to select a woman of color instead.
The white Minnesota senator, who had seen her prospects fall as racial tensions swept the nation, said Thursday that she called the presumptive presidential nominee Wednesday night and made the suggestion. Biden had already committed to choosing a woman as his running mate.
“I think this is a moment to put a woman of color on that ticket," Klobuchar said on MSNBC. “If you want to heal this nation right now — my party, yes, but our nation — this is sure a hell of a way to do it.”
Biden praised Klobuchar in a tweet Thursday, citing her “grit and determination” and saying, "With your help, we’re going to beat Donald Trump.”
Klobuchar's chances at getting the VP nod diminished after the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis. Klobuchar was a prosecutor years ago in the county that includes Minneapolis, and during that period, more than two dozen people — mostly minorities — died during encounters with police.
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How black history is taught in schools faces new scrutiny
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — For decades, when it was discussed at all, the killing of hundreds of people in a prosperous black business district nearly a century ago was referred to as the Tulsa race riot.
Under new standards developed by teachers, Oklahoma students are urged to consider the differences between labeling it a “massacre” or a “riot,” which is how it's still described in state laws. Typically in ninth and 11th grades, students also are encouraged to research survivors and learn their firsthand accounts of the 1921 violence.
“If that’s taught correctly, then any freshman has a context for how and why this kind of thing can happen in the United States of America,” said Aaron Baker, a history teacher in the Putnam City school district in Oklahoma City.
The state’s new standards are going out to schools as a national conversation on racial injustice brings new scrutiny to how African American history is taught nationwide. Recent demonstrations over police brutality also are bringing awareness to an important holiday that isn't widely taught — Juneteenth. Celebrated Friday, it honors the day in 1865 that the last enslaved black people learned they had been freed.
There is no national curriculum or set of standards for teaching black history in America. Only a small number of states, including Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi and New York, have laws requiring that it be taught in public schools. States set their own standards, and history survey courses often touch on slavery, Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow laws and the civil rights movement.
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Biden seizes on Bolton book to hit Trump's record on China
WASHINGTON (AP) — John Bolton's claim in an explosive new book that President Donald Trump urged China's Xi Jinping to help him win reelection could undermine his campaign's effort to portray Democratic rival Joe Biden as soft on Beijing.
Biden's top aides moved quickly on Thursday to argue that it's Trump who has taken a weak approach to the rising superpower. They seized on accusations from Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, that the president continually kowtowed to Xi and ignored human rights abuses while trying to get his foreign counterpart’s assistance with domestic politics.
“The Bolton allegations are just the most noxious and hateful cherry on top of a sundae that already existed here," Ron Klain, a longtime Biden adviser, said in an interview. "We have seen for three years that Donald Trump has curried favor with authoritarian regimes that are willing to help him personally and politically.”
China already loomed large in the contest as Trump and Biden have traded accusations over corruption, geopolitical pandering and the president’s shifts in tone toward the country during the coronavirus pandemic, which ignited in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. But Bolton's accusations intensified the debate with less than five months remaining until the election.
Biden's team hopes the book will help reinforce their argument that the administration was slow to react to the pandemic, in part because of the tone set by Trump.
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Palestinians fear displacement from an annexed Jordan Valley
FASAYIL, West Bank (AP) — For generations, the people of Fasayil herded animals on the desert bluffs and palm-shaded lowlands of the Jordan Valley. Today, nearly every man in the Palestinian village works for Jewish settlers in the sprawling modern farms to the north and south.
The grazing lands to the west and east, leading down to the banks of the biblical Jordan River, have been swallowed up by the settlements or fenced off by the Israeli military. So instead of leading sheep out to pasture, the men rise before dawn to work in the settlements for around $3 an hour — or they move away.
“Everyone here works in the settlements, there’s nothing else,” said Iyad Taamra, a member of the village council who runs a small grocery store. "If you have some money you go somewhere else where there is a future.”
Palestinians fear communities across the Jordan Valley will meet a similar fate if Israel proceeds with its plans to annex the territory, which accounts for around a quarter of the occupied West Bank and was once seen as the breadbasket of a future Palestinian state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to annex the valley and all of Israel's far-flung West Bank settlements, in line with President Donald Trump's Middle East plan, which overwhelmingly favors Israel and has been rejected by the Palestinians. The process could begin as soon as July 1.
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India-China Himalayan standoff deadly for cashmere herds
SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Antagonisms between Indian and Chinese troops high in the Himalayas are taking a dire toll on traditional goat herds that supply the world’s finest, most expensive cashmere.
This week, a deadly brawl between Indian and Chinese soldiers caused the deaths of at least 20 Indian soldiers in the Galwan Valley, an achingly beautiful landscape that is part of a border region that has been disputed for decades because of its strategic importance as the world's highest landing ground.
The months-long military standoff between the Asian giants is hurting local communities due to the loss of tens of thousands of Himalayan goat kids died because they couldn't reach traditional winter grazing lands, officials and residents said.
Nomads have roamed these lands atop the roof of the world, around the undemarcated borders with China and Tibet, for centuries, herding the famed and hardy goats that produce the ultrasoft wool known as Pashmina, the finest of cashmeres.
Cashmere takes its name from the disputed Kashmir valley, where artisans weave the wool into fine yarn and exquisite shawls that cost up to $1,000 apiece in world fashion capitals in a major handicraft export industry that employs thousands.
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Lives Lost: South African activist targeted apartheid, HIV
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Clarence Mini's life was marked by battles against formidable foes. The South African doctor fought apartheid — receiving his medical training in exile — the government's denial of HIV/AIDS and rampant corruption.
Loved ones say Mini, who recently died of COVID-19 at age 69, knew the odds were against him but never gave up, dedicating his life to the belief that all South Africans receive proper health care. They say he never became a cynic despite the struggles and made sure he had time for his four children — whether they were getting their driver’s licenses or a leadership post at school.
“He would always make time to celebrate those small milestones," his son Yandi Mini told The Associated Press. "He always supported what we were passionate about.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of an ongoing series of stories remembering people who have died from the coronavirus around the world.