AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
2016 sequel? Trump's old attacks failing to land on Biden
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump stood before a crowd in a state that had once been firmly in his grasp. There were fewer than three weeks left in the campaign, one reshaped by a virus that has killed more than 215,000 Americans, and he was running out of time to change the trajectory of the race.
He posed a question.
“Did you hear the news?” the president asked the hopeful crowd. “Bruce Ohr is finally out of the Department of Justice.”
There were scattered cheers in the crowd as the president then detailed the fate of a mostly forgotten, minor figure in the Russia probe that feels like a lifetime of news cycles ago.
That moment Wednesday in Iowa, a state Trump won comfortably four years ago but is now seen as competitive, underscored a fundamental challenge facing his reelection campaign: It’s not 2016.
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Trump, Biden go on offense in states they're trying to flip
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — President Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden went on offense over the weekend, as both campaigned in states they are trying to flip during the Nov. 3 election that is just over two weeks away.
Trump began his Sunday in Nevada, making a rare visit to church before a fundraiser and an evening rally in Carson City. Once considered a battleground, Nevada has not swung for a Republican presidential contender since 2004.
The rally drew thousands of supporters who sat elbow to elbow, cheering Trump and booing Biden and the press. The vast majority wore no masks to guard against the coronavirus, though cases in the state are on the rise, with more than 1,000 new infections reported Saturday. The president, as he often does, warned that a Biden election would lead to further lockdowns and at one point appeared to mock Biden for saying he would listen to scientists.
“He'll listen to the scientists. If I listened totally to the scientists, we would right now have a country that would be in a massive depression,” Trump said.
Biden, a practicing Catholic, attended Mass in Delaware before campaigning in North Carolina, where a Democrat has not won in a presidential race since Barack Obama in 2008.
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As virus flares globally, new strategies target hot spots
NEW YORK (AP) — After entire nations were shut down during the first surge of the coronavirus earlier this year, some countries and U.S. states are trying more targeted measures as cases rise again around the world, especially in Europe and the Americas.
New York’s new round of virus shutdowns zeroes in on individual neighborhoods, closing schools and businesses in hot spots measuring just a couple of square miles.
Spanish officials limited travel to and from some parts of Madrid before restrictions were widened throughout the capital and some suburbs.
Italian authorities have sometimes quarantined spots as small as a single building.
While countries including Israel and the Czech Republic have reinstated nationwide closures, other governments hope smaller-scale shutdowns can work this time, in conjunction with testing, contact tracing and other initiatives they've now built up.
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Vaccine storage issues could leave 3B people without access
GAMPELA, Burkina Faso (AP) — The chain breaks here, in a tiny medical clinic in Burkina Faso that went nearly a year without a working refrigerator.
From factory to syringe, the world’s most promising coronavirus vaccine candidates need non-stop sterile refrigeration to stay potent and safe. But despite enormous strides in equipping developing countries to maintain the vaccine “cold chain,” nearly 3 billion of the world’s 7.8 billion people live where temperature-controlled storage is insufficient for an immunization campaign to bring COVID-19 under control.
The result: Poor people around the world who were among the hardest hit by the virus pandemic are also likely to be the last to recover from it.
The vaccine cold chain hurdle is just the latest disparity of the pandemic weighted against the poor, who more often live and work in crowded conditions that allow the virus to spread, have little access to medical oxygen that is vital to COVID-19 treatment, and whose health systems lack labs, supplies or technicians to carry out large-scale testing.
Maintaining the cold chain for coronavirus vaccines won’t be easy even in the richest of countries, especially when it comes to those that require ultracold temperatures of around minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 F). Investment in infrastructure and cooling technology lags behind the high-speed leap that vaccine development has taken this year due to the virus.
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'Our house is on fire': Suburban women lead a Trump revolt
TROY, Mich. (AP) — She walks with the determination of a person who believes the very fate of democracy might depend on the next door she knocks on, head down, shoulders forward. She wears nothing fussy, the battle fatigues of her troupe: yoga pants and sneakers. She left her Lincoln Aviator idling in the driveway, the driver door open -- if this house wasn’t the one to save the nation, she can move quickly to the next.
For most of her life, until 2016, Lori Goldman had been politically apathetic. Had you offered her $1 million, she says, she could not have described the branches of government in any depth. She voted, sometimes.
Now every moment she spends not trying to rid America of President Donald Trump feels like wasted time.
“We take nothing for granted,” she tells her canvassing partner. “They say Joe Biden is ahead. Nope. We work like Biden is behind 20 points in every state.”
Goldman spends every day door knocking for Democrats in Oakland County, Michigan, an affluent Detroit suburb. She feels responsible for the country’s future: Trump won Michigan in 2016 by 10,700 votes and that helped usher him into the White House. Goldman believes people like her -- suburban white women -- could deliver the country from another four years of chaos.
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2020 Watch: Is debate Trump's last chance to save himself?
NEW YORK (AP) — Presidential politics move fast. What we’re watching heading into a new week on the 2020 campaign:
Days to general election: 15
Days to next scheduled presidential debate: 3
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THE NARRATIVE
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Morales aide claims victory in Bolivia's election redo
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Evo Morales’ party claimed victory in Bolivia’s presidential election as official results trickled in from Sunday’s high-stakes redo of last year’s annulled ballot that saw the leftist leader resign and flee the country.
More than nine hours after polls closed, barely 6% of all ballot boxes had been counted and they showed Morales’ handpicked successor, Luis Arce, trailing a conservative rival.
But with a private quick count of sampled polling stations favoring Arce by a wide margin, even interim President Jeanine Áñez — an archrival of Morales — recognized that the socialist movement looked set to return to power in what looked to be a major jolt to South America's beleaguered left.
“I congratulate the winners and I ask them to govern thinking in Bolivia and in our democracy,” Áñez said on Twitter.
Bolivians have long been accustomed to quick preliminary results in presidential elections. But after allegations of fraud and days of unrest marred last year’s ballot, newly installed electoral authorities had been appealing for patience, reminding voters that they have up to five days to declare a winner.
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Thai authorities seek to censor coverage of student protests
BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand’s embattled prime minister said Monday that there were no plans to extend a state of emergency outside the capital, even as student-led protests calling for him to leave office spread around the country. Police, however, indicated they were working to censor coverage of the demonstrations.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha's government has already issued a decree that bans public gatherings of more than four people in Bangkok, outlaws news said to affect national security and gives authorities broad power to detain people.
None of that has been able to keep the mostly young protesters from gathering en masse across Bangkok the past five days to push their demands, which also include constitutional changes and reform of the monarchy. On Sunday, rallies spread to at least a dozen provinces outside Bangkok.
Prayuth told reporters the state of emergency will remain only in Bangkok for now.
“I want to ask them for a few things: Don’t destroy the government and private properties and don’t touch the monarchy," Prayuth said of the demonstrators.
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China's economy accelerates as virus recovery gains strength
BEIJING (AP) — China’s shaky economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic is gaining strength as consumers return to shopping malls and auto dealerships while the United States and Europe endure painful contractions.
Growth in the world’s second-largest economy accelerated to 4.9% over a year earlier in the three months ending in September, up from the previous quarter's 3.2%, official data showed Monday. Retail spending rebounded to above pre-virus levels for the first time and factory output rose, boosted by demand for exports of masks and other medical supplies.
China is the only major economy that is expected to grow this year while activity in the United States, Europe and Japan shrinks.
The recovery is “broadening out and becoming less reliant” on government stimulus, Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics said in a report. He said growth is “still accelerating” heading into the present quarter.
Most Asian stock markets rose on the news of increased activity in China, the biggest trading partner for all of its neighbors. Japan's Nikkei 225 index added 1.1% while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng climbed 0.9%. Markets in South Korea and Australia also rose.
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Dodgers-Rays rare wild-card era matchup of baseball's best
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — The World Series matchup between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays is a rare meeting of baseball’s best for the title, and a matchup of organizations with Andrew Friedman’s imprint.
Friedman was the Rays’ director of baseball operations from 2004-05 and then general manager from until he left in October 2014 to become the Dodgers president of baseball operations.
Game 1 is Tuesday night.
Retired first baseman James Loney, a veteran of both organizations, describes the Rays as “feisty.”
“We were always fighting. But we always did feel like we were the better team,” he said Sunday. “I don’t ever feel like we went out there overmatched. We didn’t care who was pitching. We didn’t care what kind of lineup they had. We were bringing that mentality and I think the Rays team this year has that.”