AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
White House ups virus aid offer, resumes talks with Pelosi
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is boosting its offer in up-and-down COVID-19 aid talks Friday in hopes of an agreement before Election Day, even as President Donald Trump's most powerful GOP ally in the Senate said Congress is unlikely to deliver relief by then.
Trump on Friday took to Twitter to declare: “Covid Relief Negotiations are moving along. Go Big!” A top economic adviser said the Trump team was upping its offer in advance of a Friday conversation between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The two spoke for more than 30 minutes Friday afternoon, said Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill.
A GOP aide familiar with the new offer said it is about $1.8 trillion, with a key state and local fiscal relief component moving from $250 billion to at least $300 billion. The White House says its most recent prior offer was about $1.6 trillion. The aide requested anonymity because the negotiations are private.
“I would like to see a bigger stimulus package than either the Democrats or Republicans are offering," Trump said on Rush Limbaugh's radio show Friday. Earlier this week, Trump lambasted Democrats for their demands on an aid bill.
Pelosi's most recent public offer was about $2.2 trillion, though that included a business tax increase that Republicans won't go for.
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Trump sets big events for WH, Florida, restarting campaign
WASHINGTON (AP) — Looking to shove his campaign back on track, President Donald Trump and his team laid out an aggressive return to political activities on Friday, including a big Saturday White House event and a rally in Florida on Monday, a week after his hospitalization for the coronavirus that has killed more than 210,000 Americans.
As questions linger about his health — and Democratic opponent Joe Biden steps up his own campaigning — Trump is planning to leave Washington for the first time since he was hospitalized. He is also increasing his radio and TV appearances with conservative interviewers, hoping to make up for lost time with just over three weeks until Election Day and millions already voting.
The president has not been seen in public — other than in White House-produced videos — since his return days ago from the military hospital where he received experimental treatments for the virus.
Two weeks after his Rose Garden event that has been labeled a “super-spreader” for the virus, Trump is planning to convene another large crowd outside the White House on Saturday on a law-and-order theme. More than two dozen people linked to the White House have contracted COVID-19 since the president's Sept. 26 event announcing Judge Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee to the Supreme Court.
Trump will address the group, expected to be at least several hundred supporters, from the White House balcony, according to an official. A person with knowledge of the planning said all attendees must bring masks or will be provided with one, and also will be given temperature checks and asked to fill out a brief questionnaire. Following CDC guidelines will be strongly encouraged, which include mask-wearing and social distancing.
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World Food Program wins Nobel Peace Prize for hunger fight
NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — The World Food Program won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for fighting hunger and seeking to end its use as "a weapon of war and conflict” at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has driven millions more people to the brink of starvation.
Announcing the prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said it wished “to turn the eyes of the world towards the millions of people who suffer from or face the threat of hunger.”
The committee also said it hoped that bestowing the prize on the U.N. agency would highlight the need to strengthen global solidarity and cooperation in an era of go-it-alone nationalism.
“We are sending a signal to every nation who raises objections to international cooperation,” committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen said. “We are sending a signal to this type of nationalism where the responsibility for global affairs is not being faced.”
The Rome-based agency was established in 1961 at the behest of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower and has brought aid to multiple crises, including Ethiopia's famine of 1984, the Asian tsunami of 2004 and the Haiti earthquake of 2010.
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Louisiana braces to relive a nightmare with Hurricane Delta
LAKE CHARLES, La. (AP) — People in south Louisiana steeled themselves Friday as Hurricane Delta delivered bands of rain, strong winds and rising water ahead of its expected arrival in a part of the state still recovering from a deadly catastrophic hurricane six weeks ago.
In the city of Lake Charles, located about 30 miles inland from where Delta was expected to make landfall, rain pelted the tarp-covered roofs of buildings that Hurricane Laura battered when it barreled through Louisiana in late August and killed at least 27 people in the state.
“It’s devastating and it’s emotional for the citizenry,” Mayor Nic Hunter said as he prepared to ride out the storm in downtown Lake Charles.
At 4 p.m., Delta moving at 14 miles per hour and 35 miles (80kilometers) south of Cameron, Louisiana, a sparely populated coastal community devastated by 2005's Hurricane Rita and Hurricane Ike in 2008.
Forecasters said the storm surge could reach as high as 11 feet along the Louisiana coast. With landfall within hours, the National Hurricane Center reported 4.5 feet (1.4 meters) of storm surge had been measured on the coast east of Cameron.
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Biden, Harris dodge questions about Supreme Court expansion
PHOENIX (AP) — There are few topics that Joe Biden isn't willing to opine on — except the Supreme Court.
The Democratic presidential nominee and his running mate, Kamala Harris, are refusing demands from Republicans — and some fellow Democrats — to say whether they would seek to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court.
Harris dodged persistent questioning about the issue on Wednesday during her debate against Vice President Mike Pence. And facing pressure to take a stance during a campaign swing through Phoenix on Thursday, Biden offered a particularly terse response.
“They’ll know my position on court packing when the election is over,” he said.
In the final weeks of the campaign, Biden is in a bind when it comes to the future of the judiciary. Republicans, increasingly fearful of losing both the presidency and the Senate, are seizing on the issue to make a last-minute argument to voters that a Biden administration would upend norms and install liberals on an expanding Supreme Court. Some progressive Democrats are pressing Biden to embrace all means possible to counter Republican power plays that have pushed the court to the right.
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McConnell tries to salvage Senate majority with court vote
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spent a year prepping his Republican colleagues for this moment, telling them the confirmation a Supreme Court justice is the most important vote they will take as senators, the chance to make what he called seismic change that will stay with the nation for generations to come.
Now, three weeks before Election Day, the GOP leader needs this moment more than ever.
Confirmation hearings are set to begin Monday for President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee giving Republicans one last chance to salvage their Senate majority by wresting attention away from the White House and its COVID-19 response and onto the GOP’s longtime goal of fashioning a conservative court.
The arrival of conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett offers a long-shot opportunity to bring wayward Republican voters back in the fold. As Trump's standing drops in internal polls, McConnell hopes to remind voters why they stuck with Trump in 2016: the promise of another conservative justice ruling on abortion access and other big issues. Democrats are within range of seizing Senate control Nov. 3.
“It’s going to do what it’s going to do -- energize the base,” said Doug Deason, a wealthy Dallas donor who is the Northern Texas fundraising chairman for Trump and helps congressional Republicans.
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Twitter tightens limits on candidates ahead of US election
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Twitter is imposing tough new rules that restrict candidates from declaring premature victory and tighten its measures against spreading misinformation, calling for political violence and spreading thoughtless commentary in the days leading up to and following the Nov. 3 U.S. election.
The social platform will remove tweets that encourage violence or call for people to interfere with election results. Tweets that falsely claim a candidate has won will be labeled to direct users to the official U.S. election results page on Twitter.
Twitter said Friday it is will also make it more difficult to retweet posts it has labeled to highlight the presence of misleading information — whether about COVID, civic integrity or for including manipulated photos or videos. Beginning next week, people who want to retweet such posts will see a prompt pointing them to credible information about the topic before they are able to retweet it. The step is designed to make people pause and think, potentially slowing the thoughtless retweets that are often a problem on the platform.
Beginning on Oct. 20, and at least through Election Week in the U.S., Twitter says it will also encourage people to add their own commentary to retweets. People who try to retweet someone else's post will first be directed to the “quote tweet” feature, which lets them add their own comment.
Twitter said in a blog post it hopes this “will encourage everyone to not only consider why they are amplifying a Tweet, but also increase the likelihood that people add their own thoughts, reactions and perspectives to the conversation."
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Trump official says vaccine expected starting in January
A Trump administration official leading the response to the coronavirus pandemic says the U.S. can expect delivery of a vaccine starting in January 2021, despite statements from the president that inoculations could begin this month.
And a growing, bipartisan chorus of lawmakers, experts and public health officials says the country is ill prepared for a projected winter surge of COVID-19.
Dr. Robert Kadlec said in an email Friday that the administration “is accelerating production of safe and effective vaccines ... to ensure delivery starting January 2021." Kadlec is the Department of Health and Human Services' assistant secretary of preparedness and response. HHS says a vaccine could be approved before the end of the year but will take time to distribute.
President Donald Trump has said at rallies, debates and press conferences that a vaccine could arrive within weeks. “We think we can start sometime in October,” Trump said at a White House press briefing last month.
Kadlec wasn't the first health official to counter the president's optimistic timeline. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday that there could be 100 million vaccine doses available by the end of the year “pending FDA authorizations.” And Dr. Moncef Slaoui, who is leading the government's vaccine effort, told Marketwatch on Friday that researchers could know “by late October, or November, or in December” whether one of the vaccines in development is effective, but that it would then take weeks to get emergency authorization to administer it.
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Broadway shutdown due to virus extended again until May 30
NEW YORK (AP) — Fans of Broadway will have to wait a little longer for shows to resume — until at least late May.
Although an exact date for various performances to resume has yet to be determined, Broadway producers are now offering refunds and exchanges for tickets purchased for shows through May 30.
"We are working tirelessly with multiple partners on sustaining the industry once we raise our curtains again,” said Charlotte St. Martin, president of the Broadway League, which represents producers.
The latest delay was endorsed by Actors’ Equity Association, which represents 51,000 theater actors and stage managers.
“Today the Broadway League made the difficult but responsible decision to put the safety and health of their workers and audience first. This is a deeply painful time for everyone who depends on the arts for their livelihood," said Mary McColl, executive director for Actors’ Equity Association.
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NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week
A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
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Video edited to remove context from Biden’s comment about Black worker
CLAIM: Video shows Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden saying the reason he has been able to stay sequestered in his home is because “some Black woman was able to stack the grocery shelf.”
THE FACTS: The video including that remark by Biden was shortened to remove the context in which it was said. A review of the full video taken during a Sept. 15 veterans roundtable Biden hosted at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida, shows the candidate was making a point about various groups stepping up as essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic. At least two heavily edited versions of the video were shared by public figures including Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and Fox News analyst Gregg Jarrett. Cleveland-area pastor Darrell Scott, who co-founded Trump’s National Diversity Coalition, posted one of the videos on Twitter with the caption, “What???? And Black folks STILL giving him a pass!” The videos quickly amassed millions of views on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. But they lacked important context for understanding Biden’s point, which was about different groups coming together to help each other during the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden used the quote as one of multiple examples of different groups supporting each other as he explained his optimism for America’s future: “And you say, ‘Why in the hell would you say that, Biden? You just talked about all these difficulties,’” Biden said. “Well, I’ll tell you why. Because the American public, the blinders have been taken off. They’ve all of a sudden seen a hell of a lot clearer. They are saying: ‘Jeez, the reason I was able to stay sequestered in my home is because some Black woman was able to stack the grocery shelf, or I got a young Hispanic is out there, or these dreamers out there, 60,000 of them, acting as first responders and nurses and docs.’ Or, all of a sudden people are realizing, my lord, you know, these people have done so much — not just Black, white but across the board — have done so much for me. We can do this. We can get things done.”