AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Virus numbers surge globally as many nations ease lockdowns
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The number of global coronavirus cases continued to surge Tuesday in many large countries that have been lifting lockdowns, including the U.S., even as new infections stabilized or dropped in parts of Western Europe.
India has been recording about 15,000 new infections each day, and some states Tuesday were considering fresh lockdown measures to try to halt the spread of the virus in the nation of more than 1.3 billion. The government earlier lifted a nationwide lockdown in a bid to restart the ailing economy, which has shed millions of jobs.
Hospitals in Pakistan are turning away patients, but with the economy there teetering, the government remains determined to reopen the country.
New cases have also been rising steeply in Mexico, Colombia and Indonesia.
Brazil, with more than 1.1 million cases and 51,000 deaths, has been affected more than anywhere but the U.S., which has reported more than 2.3 million cases and 120,000 deaths, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
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Saudi Arabia: Hajj will see at most 'thousands' due to virus
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Saudi official said Tuesday that the hajj pilgrimage, which usually draws millions of Muslims from all over the world, will only see at the most “thousands" of pilgrims next month due to concerns over the spread of the coronavirus.
The kingdom's Hajj Minister Muhammad Benten said a “small and very limited” number of people already residing in the kingdom will be allowed to perform the pilgrimage to ensure social distancing and crowd control amid the virus outbreak globally.
“The number, God willing, may be in the thousands. We are in the process of reviewing so it could be 1,000 or less, or a little more,” Benten said in a virtual press conference
During the press conference, Saudi officials said that no one over the age of 65 will be allowed to perform the hajj and that all pilgrims and those serving pilgrims this year will be quarantined both before and after the pilgrimage.
“This is a very sensitive operation and we are working with experts at the Health Ministry,” Benten said, stressing the importance of protecting the lives and health of pilgrims.
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Funeral for Rayshard Brooks to be held at MLK's church
ATLANTA (AP) — Rayshard Brooks, who was fatally shot by a police officer, is to be remembered Tuesday at the church in Atlanta where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached.
The private funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church follows a public viewing held Monday. The Rev. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor at the church and a Democratic candidate for Senate, will deliver the eulogy.
“Rayshard Brooks wasn’t just running from the police. He was running from a system that makes slaves out of people. A system that doesn’t give ordinary people who’ve made mistakes a second chance, a real shot at redemption," Warnock plans to say, according to a short excerpt released Monday.
Officer Garrett Rolfe fatally shot Brooks in the back after Brooks fired a Taser in his direction while running away after a struggle with officers outside a Wendy’s restaurant on June 12. Rolfe, 27, is white. Brooks, 27, was Black.
King's daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, also plans to deliver remarks at Brooks' funeral, along with a friend of his and his mother-in-law, according to a draft program released by the church.
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Fauci to testify at a fraught time for US pandemic response
WASHINGTON (AP) — With coronavirus cases rising in about half the states and political polarization competing for attention with public health recommendations, Dr. Anthony Fauci returns to Capitol Hill on Tuesday at a fraught moment in the nation's pandemic response.
The government's top infectious disease expert will testify before a House committee, along with the heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Since Fauci's last appearance at a high-profile hearing more than a month ago, the U.S. is emerging from weeks of stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns. But it's being done in an uneven way, with some states far less cautious than others. A trio of states with Republican governors who are bullish on reopening — Arizona, Florida and Texas — are among those seeing worrisome increases in cases.
Last week, Vice President Mike Pence published an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal saying the administration's efforts have strengthened the nation's ability to counter the virus and should be “a cause for celebration.”
Then President Donald Trump said at his weekend rally in Tulsa that he had asked administration officials to slow down testing, because too many positive cases are turning up. Many rally goers did not wear masks, and for some that was an act of defiance against what they see as government intrusion. White House officials later tried to walk back Trump's comment on testing, suggesting it wasn't meant to be taken literally.
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After Tulsa, Trump heads to virus hotspot Arizona and border
WASHINGTON (AP) — Regrouping after a humbling weekend rally, President Donald Trump faces another test of his ability to draw a crowd during a pandemic Tuesday as he visits Arizona and tries to remind voters of one of his key 2016 campaign promises.
Trump’s weekend rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, had been meant to be a sign of the nation’s reopening and a show of political force but instead generated thousands of empty seats and swirling questions about the president’s campaign leadership and his case for another four years in office. The low turnout has sharpened the focus on Trump’s visit to Arizona, which doubles as both a 2020 battleground state and a surging coronavirus hotspot.
First, the president will travel to Yuma to mark the construction of more than 200 miles of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, an issue that he built his campaign on four years ago. Later, he'll address a group of young Republicans at a Phoenix megachurch, where event organizers have pledged thousands will attend.
Throughout the trip, the COVID-19 pandemic will shadow Trump. The Democratic mayor of Phoenix made clear that she does not believe the speech can be safely held in her city — and urged the president to wear a face mask.
“Everyone attending tomorrow’s event, particularly any elected official, should set an example to residents by wearing a mask,” said Mayor Kate Gallego. “This includes the President.”
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Election chaos renews focus on gutted Voting Rights Act
ATLANTA (AP) — When some Georgia voters endured a pandemic, pouring rain and massive waits earlier this month to cast their ballot, President Donald Trump and other Republicans blamed local Democrats for presiding over chaos.
“Make no mistake, the reduction in polling places is a result of a concerted effort by Democrats to push vote-by-mail at the expense of in-person voting,” said Justin Clark, the Trump campaign’s senior counsel. “Nothing more and nothing less.”
But the meltdown was also a manifestation of a landmark Supreme Court case that gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The 2013 decision — Shelby County v. Holder — was heralded by conservatives at the time for invalidating a longstanding “preclearance” process that required certain states and jurisdictions with high minority populations and a history of discrimination to get federal approval for any changes to voting procedures.
Seven years later, the fallout from that decision is colliding with unprecedented changes to the way elections are being conducted. In response to the coronavirus, many states are encouraging mail-in voting. That — combined with a reduction in poll workers — has prompted the consolidation of polling places.
That reduction would have been much harder to pull off in Georgia without the Supreme Court decision. Voting rights advocates are braced for more potential trouble on Tuesday when another round of states hold elections.
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Lockdown placed on German area with slaughterhouse outbreak
BERLIN (AP) — New lockdown measures are being imposed for one week in a German region that has seen a large increase in coronavirus infections linked to a slaughterhouse, officials said Tuesday.
More than 1,500 people have tested positive for coronavirus at the Toennies slaughterhouse in Rheda-Wiedenbrueck and thousands more have been put under a quarantine to try to halt the outbreak.
The governor of North Rhine-Westphalia state said people in Guetersloh and parts of a neighboring county will now face the same kind of restrictions that existed across Germany during the early stages of the pandemic in March and April.
These include limiting the number of people who can meet in public to those from a single household or two people from separate households, Gov. Armin Laschet said.
Cinemas, fitness studios and bars will also be closed, although restaurants can continue to cater to people from the same household, he added. Previously, the western county had only closed schools and child care centers.
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Lebanon's crisis, pandemic hit American University in Beirut
BEIRUT (AP) — One of the Arab world’s oldest and most prestigious universities, which endured civil war, kidnappings and various economic crises, is preparing for what may be the biggest challenge in its 154-year history.
The American University of Beirut is confronting a global pandemic, a severe recession and the collapse of Lebanon's currency — all at the same time — and is planning a series of sweeping layoffs and salary cuts in response.
AUB president Fadlo Khuri said the school, which ranks among the top 150 in the world, will lay off up to 25% of its workforce, close administrative departments and shelve an ambitious project for a major new medical center.
“The layoffs are very painful," Khuri told The Associated Press in an interview at the sprawling campus on the Mediterranean Sea. “AUB has never had to do this before, we’ve never been forced to have layoffs.”
The American University of Beirut, which operates under a charter from the state of New York, was the first to introduce American education to the Middle East. For generations, it has educated the Arab world’s elite, produced three presidents, around a dozen prime ministers — including Lebanon's current premier, Hassan Diab — and countless Cabinet ministers and ambassadors.
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South Korean activist floats leaflets to North amid tensions
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean group launched hundreds of thousands of leaflets by balloon across the border with North Korea overnight, an activist said Tuesday, despite Pyongyang repeatedly warning it that it will retaliate against such actions.
Activist Park Sang-hak said his organization floated 20 huge balloons carrying 500,000 leaflets, 2,000 one-dollar bills and small books on North Korea from the border town of Paju on Monday night.
Park, formerly a North Korean who fled to South Korea, said in a statement his leafleting is “a struggle for justice for the sake of liberation of” North Koreans.
The move is certain to intensify already high tensions between the Koreas. North Korea recently abruptly raised its rhetoric against South Korean civilian leafleting, destroyed an empty, Seoul-built liaison office on its territory and pushed to resume its psychological warfare against the South.
Local officials in South Korea said they were looking into the account and may ask police to investigate it as a potential safety threat to front-line residents. Seoul’s Unification Ministry, which handles relations with North Korea, issued a separate statement expressing “deep regret” over Park’s attempt to send leaflets.
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South Carolina beaches fill, but COVID-19 takes no vacation
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (AP) — The elevator doors opened and inside were 10 people crammed into a space no bigger than a closet, none of them wearing a mask.
In bathing suits, they walked out of the hotel, across the pool deck and into the sand in what is fast becoming South Carolina's hot spot for COVID-19 — Myrtle Beach. People in this resort city are leaving their cares — and sometimes their face coverings — at home after months of worry as hotels, restaurants and beaches reopen.
Mark Johnson said he doesn't like wearing a mask when he's at work delivering doughnuts to grocery stores around Charlotte, North Carolina. “Just wash your hands and use common sense,” Johnson said as he sat on a chair in the sand, a can of beer in his cup holder.
The coronavirus has not taken a vacation. When hotels were allowed to start taking reservations again on May 15, there had been 283 COVID-19 cases in Horry County, which includes Myrtle Beach. By June 22, that number had climbed to more than 2,000, and infections had doubled in nine days.
And those numbers include only people who live in the county. The figures do not count anyone who tests positive after taking COVID-19 home along with a souvenir hermit crab or an airbrushed T-shirt. Business leaders estimate 20 million people visit the area each year, 60 times Horry County's population of about 330,000.