AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EST
Biden nabs Klobuchar, Buttigieg support on Super Tuesday eve
DALLAS (AP) — Rivals no more, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg united behind Joe Biden's presidential bid on Monday as the Democratic Party's moderate wing scrambled to boost the former vice president just hours before voting began across a series of high-stakes Super Tuesday states.
The urgency of the moment reflected deep concerns from the Democratic establishment that Bernie Sanders, a polarizing progressive, was positioned to seize a significant delegate lead when 14 states, one U.S. territory vote on Tuesday.
Klobuchar suspended her campaign and endorsed Biden just a day after Buttigieg announced his exit. Both Klobuchar and Buttigieg, who had been Biden's chief competition for their party's pool of more moderate voters over the last year, declared their public support for Biden on Monday evening at a rally in Dallas.
“I’m looking for a leader, I’m looking for a president, who will draw out what’s best in each of us,” Buttigieg said. “We have found that leader in vice president, soon-to-be president, Joe Biden.”
The sweeping shifts come at a key crossroads in Democrats' turbulent primary season as the party struggles to unify behind a clear message or messenger in its urgent quest to defeat President Donald Trump. Yet as a field that once featured more than two dozen candidates shrinks to just five, the choice for primary voters is becoming clearer.
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More testing sheds light on how virus is spreading in US
SEATTLE (AP) — An increase in testing for the coronavirus began shedding light Monday on how the illness has spread in the United States, including in Washington state, where four people died at a nursing home and some schools were closed for disinfection.
New diagnoses in several states pushed the tally of COVID-19 cases past 100, and New Hampshire reported its first case, raising the total of affected states to 11. Seattle officials announced four more deaths, bringing the total in the U.S. to six.
In Seattle, King County Executive Dow Constantine declared an emergency and said the county was buying a hotel to be used as a hospital for patients who need to be isolated. He said the facility should be available by the end of the week.
“We have moved to a new stage in the fight,” he said.
Vice President Mike Pence met with the nation's governors and pledged to continue updating them weekly by teleconference. President Donald Trump met with pharmaceutical companies to talk about progress toward a vaccine.
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Exit polls: Netanyahu short of majority in Israel vote
JERUSALEM (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party on Monday emerged as the largest party in the country’s third election in under a year, according to exit polls, but it was unclear whether the embattled Israeli leader could secure a parliamentary majority as he prepares to go on trial for corruption charges later this month.
Exit polls on Israeli TV stations indicated that Likud and its smaller ultra-religious and nationalist allies had captured 59 seats, two short of the majority required to declare victory.
His opponents were projected to get a majority of 61 seats. But with his main challenger, the centrist Blue and White party, trailing Likud by several seats and the rest of the opposition fragmented, polls were pointing to a continued paralysis of Israel's political system.
Addressing a raucous crowd of thousands of ecstatic supporters at 2:30 a.m., Netanyahu claimed a “giant victory.”
“This is a victory against all the odds, because we stood against powerful forces,” he said. “They already eulogized us. Our opponents said the Netanyahu era is over.”
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Dow surges 5% on hopes for central bank help on the economy
The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared nearly 1,300 points, or 5%, Monday as stocks roared back from a seven-day rout on hopes that central banks will take action to shield the global economy from the effects of the coronavirus outbreak.
The huge gains clawed back some of the ground lost last week in a massive sell-off that gave stocks their worst stretch since the financial crisis of 2008.
Technology companies led the broad gains, which gave the Dow its biggest-ever point gain and biggest percentage increase since March 2009. The S&P 500 index jumped 4.6%, its best day since December 2018.
European benchmarks were mostly higher, and Asian markets rose broadly.
Bond prices fell, pushing yields higher after having touched another record low earlier in the day. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 1.15% from 1.12% late Friday.
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Virus spreads to more countries as new cases slow in China
NEW YORK (AP) — The coronavirus spread to ever more countries and world capitals Monday — and the U.S. death toll climbed to six — even as new cases in China dropped to their lowest level in over a month.
A shift in the crisis appeared to be taking shape: Hundreds of patients were released from hospitals at the epicenter of the outbreak in China, while the World Health Organization reported that nine times as many new infections were recorded outside the country as inside it over the past 24 hours.
Alarming clusters of disease continued to swell in South Korea, Italy and Iran, and the virus turned up for the first time in New York, Moscow and Berlin, as well as Latvia, Indonesia, Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, Jordan and Portugal. The worldwide death toll topped 3,000, and the number of those infected rose to about 89,000 in 70 countries on every continent but Antarctica.
Global health officials sought to reassure the public that the virus remains a manageable threat.
“Containment is feasible and must remain the top priority for all countries,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
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Chris Matthews retires from MSNBC, cites comments to women
NEW YORK (AP) — Longtime MSNBC host Chris Matthews abruptly retired from his “Hardball” show on Monday, apologizing for making inappropriate comments about women and following a brutal week where he also took heat from supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
His exit came after a weekend of discussions with his bosses, three days after GQ ran a column by a freelance journalist about her “own sexist run-in” with Matthews in the makeup room before appearing on his show.
Matthews opened his program Monday with the announcement, talking in his familiar staccato style, that he was ending his run on the political talk show he started in 1997. After a commercial break, he was replaced in the anchor chair by a shaken Steve Kornacki.
“This is the last ‘Hardball’ on MSNBC, and obviously this isn’t for lack of interest in politics,” Matthews said.
He said that "compliments on a woman’s appearance that some men, including me, might have incorrectly thought were OK were never OK. Not then, and certainly not today, and for making such comments in the past, I’m sorry.”
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Big Super Tuesday prizes a study in contrasts over voting
The two biggest states participating in Super Tuesday represent another story aside from what happens in the Democratic primary: Voting rights.
California and Texas are the most populous states in the nation and the biggest delegate prizes on Tuesday for the presidential contestants. They also present a stark contrast in voting laws.
Deeply Democratic California has taken several steps in recent years to make it easier to register and vote, including pre-registration for teenagers, community drop-off centers for early voting and the ability to register on Election Day.
While Texas has early voting, the Republican-controlled state also has policies that make voting more challenging. Those include a voter ID law that allows handgun licenses but not college IDs, and restrictions on how and when people can register. Last year, Texas officials also sent letters to 95,000 registered voters to tell them they may not be eligible because they're not citizens — only to find serious flaws in the list.
The two Super Tuesday giants illustrate how the ability to easily register and cast a ballot depends in many ways on where voters live. In the last presidential election four years ago, 75% of registered California voters participated. In Texas, it was 59%.
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Trump lobs fresh barbs at Dems, rallies GOP faithful in NC
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — President Donald Trump gloated about the stock market roaring back Monday, while throwing sharp barbs at the thinning Democratic presidential field on the eve of Super Tuesday's big round of primaries.
Trump's spirits were high after the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared nearly 1,300 points, or 5%, clawing back from a seven-day rout in which it dropped more than 3,500 points. Stocks rose Monday on hopes that central banks will take action to shield the global economy from the effects of the coronavirus outbreak.
"Do you think our opponents were thrilled when they saw the stock market today?" asked Trump, who has taken credit for a bull market throughout his three years in office.
The president threw some of his hardest punches at former Vice President Joe Biden, who is coming off a decisive win in Saturday's South Carolina primary. Trump picked at Biden's propensity for rhetorical stumbles on the stump, suggesting it was a sign of senility.
“I honestly don’t think he knows what office he’s running for,” Trump said. He speculated that if Biden wins the White House, “he’s not going to be running it. Other people are going to. They're going to put him into a home and other people are going to be running the country and they’re going to be super left radical crazies."
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Child dies as migrants rush to cross Greek-Turkish border
KASTANIES, Greece (AP) — A child died when a boat full of migrants heading to a Greek island capsized Monday, part of a wave of thousands trying to push through Greece's land and sea borders.
The child's death was the first since neighboring Turkey announced Thursday it was easing restrictions on those wishing to cross to Europe, and thousands of migrants began massing at the frontiers with Greece.
Greek authorities said they had stopped more than 24,000 attempted illegal crossings at the land border with Turkey since early Saturday, and arrested 183 people — very few of whom were Syrians.
Turkey's announcement marked a dramatic departure from its previous policy of containing refugees and other migrants under an agreement with the European Union. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country hosts more than 3.5 million Syrian refugees, has demanded more support from Europe in dealing with the fallout from the Syrian war to its south.
As European countries rushed to back Greece, Erdogan said Monday that Western leaders were calling him and urging him to reverse the border opening. “It’s done, the gates are open now. You will have your share of this burden now," he said he told them.
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Opera union board member alleges cover-up in Domingo scandal
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A senior member of the main U.S. union that represents opera performers resigned Monday, accusing the leadership of a cover-up in its investigation into accusations of sexual harassment against superstar Plácido Domingo.
Samuel Schultz, a baritone and vice president of the American Guild of Musical Artists, had provided the full findings of the union's investigation to The Associated Press, which he said AGMA's leadership had planned to keep secret as part of an agreement with Domingo. Schultz said the deal involved the legendary tenor paying the union a $500,000 fine and issuing a negotiated public apology in exchange for the full details not being disclosed.
The union has said that money would have covered the cost of its 4-month investigation, which involved hiring outside counsel, and funding sexual harassment training. But Schultz called it hush money that did a disservice to the women who stepped forward.
"This is a quid pro quo — silence in exchange for money," Schultz said in a resignation letter sent Monday to AGMA President Raymond Menard and National Executive Director Len Egert. "I found AGMA's willingness to bury the details of the investigative report deeply betraying of the women who were sexually harassed by Domingo," he wrote.
Schultz, who wrote that he was acting “as a sexual assault survivor myself,” provided a copy of his letter to the AP.