AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Trump says he's ready for rallies but details slim on health
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump insisted Thursday that he is ready to resume campaign rallies and feels “perfect” one week after his diagnosis with the coronavirus that has killed more than 210,000 Americans, as his doctor said the president had ”completed his course of therapy" for the disease.
The president has not been seen in public — other than in White House-produced videos — since his Monday return from the military hospital where he received experimental treatments for the virus. On Thursday, his physician, Navy Cmdr. Sean Conley, said in a memo that Trump would be able to safely “return to public engagements” on Saturday, as the president tries to shift his focus to the election that's less than four weeks away, with millions of Americans already casting ballots.
While Trump said he believes he's no longer contagious, concerns about infection appeared to scuttle plans for next week's presidential debate.
“I’m feeling good. Really good. I think perfect," Trump said during a telephone interview with Fox Business, his first since he was released from a three-day hospital stay Monday. “I think I’m better to the point where I’d love to do a rally tonight,” Trump said. He added, “I don't think I'm contagious at all."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says individuals can discontinue isolation 10 days after the onset of symptoms, which for Trump was Oct. 1, according to his doctors. Conley said that meant Trump, who has been surrounded by minimal staffing as he works out of the White House residence and the Oval Office, could return to holding events on Saturday.
___
Next Trump-Biden debates uncertain, though Oct. 22 is likely
WASHINGTON (AP) — The campaign's final debates between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden were thrown into uncertainty Thursday as the rival camps offered dueling proposals for the remaining faceoffs that have been upended by the president’s coronavirus infection.
The chair of the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates told The Associated Press that the final debate, scheduled for Oct. 22, was still slated to go on with both candidates present as planned. But next Thursday's debate seemed to be gone, after the Trump team objected to the commission's format change.
The whipsaw day began with an announcement from the commission that the town hall-style affair set for Oct. 15 in Miami would be held virtually. The commission cited health concerns following Trump’s infection as the reason for the change.
Trump, who is eager to return to the campaign trail despite uncertainty about his health, said he wouldn’t participate if the debate wasn’t in person. Biden's campaign then suggested the event be delayed a week until Oct. 22, which is when the third and final debate was already scheduled.
Next, Trump countered again, agreeing to a debate on Oct. 22 — but only if face to face — and asking that a third contest be added on Oct. 29, just before the election. But Biden's advisers rejected squaring off that late in the campaign.
___
The U.N.'s World Food Program wins Nobel Peace Prize
OSLO, Norway (AP) — The United Nations' World Food Program on Friday won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to combat hunger and food insecurity around the globe.
The organization provided assistance to almost 100 million people in 88 countries around the world last year.
“I think this is the first time in my life I've been without words," WFP’s head David Beasley told The Associated Press from Niger. "I was just so shocked and surprised.”
Beasley said he found out about the award from a WFP media officer who had just been informed by the AP.
The Nobel Committee said that the coronavirus pandemic has added to the hunger faced by millions of people around the world, and called on governments to ensure that WFP and other aid organizations receive the financial support necessary to feed them.
___
13 charged in plots against Michigan governor, police
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Agents foiled a stunning plot to kidnap Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, authorities said Thursday in announcing charges in an alleged scheme that involved months of planning and even rehearsals to snatch her from her vacation home.
Six men were charged in federal court with conspiring to kidnap the governor before the Nov. 3 elections in reaction to what they viewed as her “uncontrolled power,” according to a federal complaint. Separately, seven others linked to a paramilitary group called the Wolverine Watchmen were charged in state court for allegedly seeking to storm the Michigan Capitol and seek a “civil war.”
The two groups trained together and planned “various acts of violence,” according to the state police.
Surveillance for the kidnapping plot took place in August and September, according to an FBI affidavit, and four of the men had planned to meet Wednesday to “make a payment on explosives and exchange tactical gear.”
The FBI quoted one of the men as saying Whitmer “has no checks and balances at all. She has uncontrolled power right now. All good things must come to an end."
___
As virus fills French ICUs anew, doctors ask what went wrong
PARIS (AP) — Over the course of a single overnight shift this week, three new COVID-19 patients were rushed into Dr. Karim Debbat’s small intensive care ward in the southern French city of Arles. His service now has more virus patients than during the pandemic’s first wave, and is scrambling to create new ICU beds elsewhere in the hospital to accommodate the sick.
Similar scenes are playing out across France. COVID-19 patients now occupy 40% of ICU beds in the Paris region, and nearly a quarter in ICUs nationwide, as several weeks of growing infections among young people spread to vulnerable populations.
Despite being one of the world’s richest nations — and one of those hardest hit when the pandemic first washed over the world — France hasn’t added significant ICU capacity or the staff needed to manage extra beds, according to national health agency figures and doctors at multiple hospitals. Like in many countries facing resurgent infections, critics say France’s leaders haven’t learned their lessons from the first wave.
“It’s very tense, we don’t have any more places,” Dr. Debbat told The Associated Press. His hospital is converting recovery rooms into ICUs, delaying non-urgent surgery and directing more and more of his staff to high-maintenance COVID patients. Asked about extra medics to help with the new cases, he said simply, “We don’t have them. That’s the problem.”
When protesting Paris public hospital workers confronted French President Emmanuel Macron this week to demand more government investment, he said: “It’s no longer a question of resources, it’s a question of organization.”
___
China joins COVAX coronavirus vaccine alliance
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China, which has at least four coronavirus vaccine candidates in the last stage of clinical trials, said Friday it is joining the COVID-19 vaccine alliance known as COVAX.
The country signed an agreement with Gavi, the co-leader of the alliance, on Thursday, China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Initially, China did not agree to join the alliance, missing the deadline to join in September.
“We are taking this concrete step to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines, especially to developing countries, and hope more capable countries will also join and support COVAX," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement.
The terms of the agreement and how China will contribute are not yet clear. The country's leader Xi Jinping previously said that China would make the vaccine a global public good.
The World Health Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
___
Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict draws in fighters from Mideast
BEIRUT (AP) —
For the past two weeks, Raffi Ghazarian has been glued to the TV at home and at work watching news about the fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces. If it goes on, the 50-year-old Lebanese of Armenian descent says he’s ready to leave everything and volunteer to defend his ancestral land.
Some from Lebanon’s large ethnic Armenian population have already travelled to join the fight, according to members of the community, although they say the numbers are small.
The new eruption of violence in the Caucasus region strikes close to home for Lebanon’s Armenians. Red, blue and orange Armenian flags are flown on balconies, windows and roofs of buildings in Bourj Hammoud, Beirut’s main Armenian district. Anti-Turkish graffiti in English and Armenian mark walls all over the streets.
Fighting has raged since Sept. 27 in the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, leaving several hundred dead. The enclave lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by neighboring Armenia since 1994, when a truce ended a years-long war that killed an estimate 30,000 people.
___
Battered Louisiana coast braces for 1 more: Hurricane Delta
ABBEVILLE, La. (AP) — Boarded windows and empty sidewalks made parts of Louisiana's Acadiana region look like empty movie sets as major Hurricane Delta roared ever closer to the U.S. Gulf coast, apparently on track to smash into the same southwestern part of the state where Hurricane Laura blasted ashore six weeks ago.
Forecasters said Delta — the 25th named storm of an unprecedented Atlantic hurricane season — would likely crash ashore Friday evening somewhere on southwest Louisiana's coast. The question was whether it would remain at devastating Category 3 strength, with top winds of 120 mph (195 kph) early Friday, or drop just before landfall to a still extremely dangerous Category 2 storm.
Either way, people in this battered coastal region were taking Delta seriously.
“You can always get another house another car but not another life,” said Hilton Stroder as he and his wife Terry boarded up their Abbeville home with plans to head to their son's house further east.
As Delta churned north at 12 mph (19 kph) on Friday morning, the National Hurricane Center had a hurricane warning in place for the Gulf Coast extending from High Island, Texas, to Morgan City, Louisiana.
___
Scalia 'heir' Barrett may be open to reversing Roe v. Wade
CHICAGO (AP) — President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court has expressed unease with some landmark rulings, including ones that established a right to abortion, and has suggested in her academic writing that she may be willing to reconsider those decisions.
The question of whether Amy Coney Barrett, a one-time clerk to former conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, would actually try to overturn Roe v. Wade, the high court’s 1973 ruling recognizing a woman’s right to an abortion, and other long-established precedents looms large as she heads into Senate confirmation hearings next week.
A review of Barrett's writings and speeches as a Notre Dame law professor for the 15 years before she became a federal appeals court judge in 2017 reveal a nuanced thinker cautious about stating her personal views. She has never said publicly she would overturn Roe, or other precedents expanding abortion rights.
But she has clearly left the door open to that possibility.
“Our legal culture does not, and never has, treated the reversal of precedent as out-of-bounds,” she said in a 2013 Texas Law Review article. She also describes the high-court tradition of heeding previous rulings, or precedent, as a “soft rule” and not “an inexorable command.”
___
Venezuelans once again fleeing on foot as troubles mount
PAMPLONA, Colombia (AP) — Eleazar Hernández slept on a sidewalk amid a light drizzle, temperatures that dipped close to freezing and the roar of passing trucks.
The 23-year-old Venezuelan migrant was trying to make it to the Colombian city of Medellin with his wife, who is seven months pregnant.
But the couple had run out of money for transportation by the time they reached Pamplona, a small mountain town over 300 miles (482 km) away from their final destination. Unable to buy a bus ticket, Hernández pinned his hopes on catching a ride on the back of a truck. It was the safest way to cross the Paramo de Berlin, a freezing plateau located at 13,000 feet (4,000 meters).
“My wife can barely walk,” said Hernández, who had spent four days sleeping on Pamplona’s sidewalks. “We need transport to get us out of here.”
After months of COVID-19 lockdowns that halted one of the world’s biggest migration movements in recent years, Venezuelans are once again fleeing their nation’s economic and humanitarian crisis.