AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
Pandemic brings smaller, subdued Memorial Day observances
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Americans settled for small processions and online tributes instead of parades Monday as they observed Memorial Day in the shadow of the pandemic, which forced communities to honor the nation’s military dead with modest, more subdued ceremonies that also remembered those lost to the coronavirus.
On the weekend that marked the unofficial start of summer, authorities warned people heading to beaches, parks or backyard barbecues to heed social-distancing rules to avoid a resurgence of the disease that has infected 5.4 million people worldwide and killed over 345,000, including nearly 100,000 Americans, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
Memorial Day commemorations were canceled or toned down across the country. Veterans, along with nursing home residents, have made up a significant portion of those who died in the U.S. outbreak.
Frank Groblebe and his wife placed lilacs on several graves at Mountview Cemetery in Billings, Montana, including those of his mother and father, who served in the Philippines as a Navy Seabee during World War II. Groblebe said he approved of plans to curtail the ceremony, which included a motorcycle procession and moments of quiet remembrance.
“This is our freedom. This is our history. It’s what they fought for,” Groblebe said, briefly choking up with tears. “Anything that shows respect for it is all right with me."
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Biden makes 1st in-person appearance in more than 2 months
NEW CASTLE, Del. (AP) — Joe Biden made his first in-person appearance in more than two months on Monday as he marked Memorial Day by laying a wreath at a veterans park near his Delaware home.
Since abruptly canceling a March 10 rally in Cleveland at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has waged much of his campaign from his home in Wilmington. When Biden emerged on Monday, he wore a face mask, in contrast to President Donald Trump, who has refused to cover his face in public as health officials suggest.
Biden and his wife, Jill, laid a wreath of white flowers tied with a white bow, and bowed their heads in silence at the park. He saluted. “Never forget the sacrifices that these men and women made," he said after. “Never, ever, forget.”
“I feel great to be out here," Biden told reporters, his words muffled through his black cloth mask. His visit to the park was unannounced and there was no crowd waiting for him.
But Biden briefly greeted a county official and another man, both wearing face masks and standing a few feet away. Biden also yelled to another, larger group standing nearby, “Thank you for your service.” His campaign says Biden has gone to the park for Memorial Day often in the past, though services were canceled Monday in the pandemic.
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Trump honors war dead in events colored by pandemic's threat
BALTIMORE (AP) — President Donald Trump honored America’s war dead Monday in back-to-back Memorial Day appearances colored by an epic struggle off the battlefield, against the coronavirus.
Eager to demonstrate national revival from the pandemic, Trump doubled up on his Memorial Day public schedule, while threatening to pull the Republican National Convention out of Charlotte in August unless North Carolina's Democratic governor gives a quick green light to the party's plans to assemble en masse.
The U.S. death toll from the pandemic approached 100,000; North Carolina two days earlier reported its largest daily increase yet in COVID-19 sickness.
Trump first honored the nation’s fallen at Arlington National Cemetery. Presidents on Memorial Day typically lay a wreath and speak at the hallowed burial ground in Virginia. But the coronavirus crisis made this year different.
Many attendees arrived wearing masks but removed them for the outdoor ceremony in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Trump, maskless as always in public, gave no remarks. He approached a wreath already in place, touched it and saluted.
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States give few details on billions spent on virus supplies
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — States are spending billions of dollars stocking up on medical supplies such as masks and breathing machines during the coronavirus pandemic. But more than two months into the buying binge, many aren't sharing details about how much they’re spending, what they’re getting for their money or which companies they’re paying.
An Associated Press survey of all 50 states found a hodgepodge of public information about the purchase of masks, gloves, gowns and other hard-to-get equipment for medical and emergency workers.
Illinois has one of the most detailed tracking websites, showing the date, vendor, purpose, quantity and price of each purchase. In most states, it's not that easy. Some provided similar information only after the AP pointed to laws requiring the release of government documents.
The public can see only a piece of the procurement puzzle in many states — maybe an estimate of the total spent on supplies, but not the names of the providers or the price of each item, which could show whether the state got a good deal or was ripped off.
Those details are important because many states set aside purchasing safeguards amid a scramble for supplies among health care providers, states, the U.S. government and other countries. Instead of seeking competitive bids and vetting them for months, states have closed emergency deals in days with businesses claiming to have access to supplies. In some cases, states have prepaid to ensure orders aren't diverted elsewhere.
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In Bolsonaro's Brazil, everyone else is to blame for virus
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — With Brazil emerging as one of the world's most infected countries, President Jair Bolsonaro is deflecting all responsibility for the coronavirus crisis, casting blame on mayors, governors, an outgoing health minister and the media.
By contrast, he portrays himself as a clear-eyed crusader willing to defend an unpopular idea — that shutting down the economy to control COVID-19 will ultimately cause more suffering than allowing the disease to run its course. The refusal of governors to fall into line with his decree allowing gyms to open, he said, verged on authoritarianism.
Asked about Brazil's death toll surpassing China's, he feigned impotence: “I don't work miracles. What do you want me to do?” Confronted with a travel ban imposed on Brazil by the U.S. because of widespread COVID-19, one of his advisers called it press hysteria.
Since the outbreak started, the Brazilian leader has avoided acknowledging the potential effects of his actions, particularly in undermining local leaders’ stay-at-home recommendations. A rare exception came in mid-April, as Bolsonaro appointed a new health minister tasked with sparing the economy from the coronavirus.
“Reopening commerce is a risk I run because, if it (the virus) gets worse, then it lands in my lap,” he said.
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In his final days, Ahmaud Arbery's life was at a crossroads
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — He was at a crossroads, his life stretching out before him, his troubles largely behind him. He had enrolled at South Georgia Technical College, preparing to become an electrician, just like his uncles. But first, he decided, he would take a break. College could wait until the fall.
To help keep his head clear, he ran, just about every day. Off he’d go, out of the doors of his mother’s house, down the long street toward Fancy Bluff Road. Then would come the right turn onto the two-lane road lined by oak trees draped with Spanish moss.
About a mile and a half into his usual route, Ahmaud Arbery would cross the four lanes of Jekyll Island Causeway into the subdivision of Satilla Shores.
Three months ago, at the age of 25, he ran through Satilla Shores for the final time.
On Feb. 23, Arbery was shot to death by a father and son who told police they grabbed guns and pursued him in a pickup truck because they believed he was responsible for break-ins in their neighborhood — a black man, killed by two white men.
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NASA astronauts go back to the future with capsule launch
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — It’s back to the future as NASA astronauts launch again from the U.S. — aboard a retro-style “Right Stuff” capsule.
Make no mistake: This is not your father’s — or grandfather’s — capsule.
SpaceX’s Dragon crew capsule outshines NASA’s old Apollo spacecraft in virtually every way. The Dragon’s clean lines and minimalist interior, with touchscreens instead of a mess of switches and knobs, make even the space shuttles seem yesteryear.
This fresh take on a vintage look will be on full display Wednesday when SpaceX plans to launch NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station — a first for a private company.
It will be the first astronaut launch from Florida since Atlantis closed out the space shuttle program in 2011, and the first American-made capsule to carry people into orbit since the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975.
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Lock your cars! Vehicle theft spikes in COVID-19 pandemic
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The coronavirus hasn’t been kind to car owners.
With more people than ever staying home to lessen the spread of COVID-19, their sedans, pickup trucks and SUVs are parked unattended on the streets, making them easy targets for opportunistic thieves.
Despite silent streets and nearly nonexistent traffic, vehicle larcenies shot up 63% in New York and nearly 17% in Los Angeles from Jan. 1 through mid-May, compared with the same period last year.
And many other law enforcement agencies around the U.S. are reporting an increase in stolen cars and vehicle burglaries, even as violent crime has dropped dramatically nationwide in the coronavirus pandemic. It's a low-risk crime with a potentially high reward, police say, especially when many drivers leave their doors unlocked or their keys inside.
“You might as well put a sticker on the window that says ‘come take my stuff,’” said an exasperated Alex Villanueva, the Los Angeles County sheriff.
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VIRUS DIARY: A Memorial Day visit, altered but not stopped
SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — I won’t be visiting Adam this Memorial Day weekend. COVID-19 is seeing to that.
Since 2010 I have visited section 60, grave 8397 of Arlington National Cemetery nearly every Memorial Day weekend. I was in Africa the one year I didn’t go. This year, a pandemic is stopping me from carrying a Dr. Pepper to the grave of Lance Cpl. Kevin Adam Lucas.
As a journalist, there are stories across a career that are etched in memory. Few are so indelibly burned there that you remember the details as if the interview was today. Fewer still are so powerful you make a commitment to someone you never met.
I learned of Adam in 2010 while working on a story about how our war dead are buried. My reporting included trips to Dover Air Force Base to observe the transfers of dead service members being brought home. I spoke with several Gold Star families. Kevin and Sandra Lucas, of Greensboro, North Carolina, was one of them. Kevin, Adam’s father, was gracious, kind and patient with me.
Adam, 20 when he died, was their only son and youngest of their three children. Their son had been bound for the Marines, it seems, almost since birth. He enlisted while still in high school and joined the Corps in 2004.
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Gucci, Saint Laurent seek radical redo of fashion calendars
SOAVE, Italy (AP) — Gucci and Saint Laurent are two of the highest profile luxury fashion houses to announce they will leave the fashion calendar behind, with its relentless four-times-a-year rhythm, shuttling cadres of fashionistas between global capitals where they squeeze shoulder-to-shoulder around runways for 15 breathless minutes.
The coronavirus lockdown, which has hit luxury fashion houses on their bottom lines, has also given pause to rethink the pace of fashion, offering the possibility to return to less hectic, more considered periods of creativity and production — and perhaps consumption.
Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele imagines a twice yearly appointments — one in the fall and one in the spring — to present co-ed collections, getting away from the hyped-up calendar which has come to require pre-season collections before the major women’s and men’s runway shows and a one-off cruise collection, increasingly in exotic locations.
“Two appointments a year are more than enough to give time to form a creative thought, and to give more time to this system,” Michele said in a video conference Monday, expanding on an idea he launched over the weekend in a series of Instagram posts from his own lockdown diaries.
The virus-imposed shutdown — while stopping production and consumption that feed the fashion cycle — also recharged creativity among those who found new time for reflection. "It is a great gift that our planet gave us, a great gift that cannot be discarded,’’ Michele said.