AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EDT
'So frustrating': Grave missteps seen in US virus response
NEW YORK (AP) — A president who downplayed the coronavirus threat, scorned masks and undercut scientists at every turn. Governors who resisted or rolled back containment measures amid public backlash. State lawmakers who used federal COVID-19 aid to plug budget holes instead of beefing up testing and contact tracing.
As a powerful new wave of infections sweeps the U.S. just ahead of Election Day, the nation's handling of the nearly 8-month-old crisis has been marked by what health experts see as grave missteps, wasted time and squandered opportunities by leaders at all levels of government.
The result: The country could be looking at a terrible winter.
“The inconsistency of the response is what’s been so frustrating,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. “If we had just been disciplined about employing all these public health methods early and aggressively, we would not be in the situation we are in now.”
Though Redlener sees some of the new wave as inevitable, he estimates at least 130,000 of the nation's more than 227,000 deaths could have been avoided had the country more widely embraced masks and social distancing.
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As virus surges, Trump rallies keep packing in thousands
WASHINGTON (AP) — There are no crowds at Disneyland, still shut down by the coronavirus. Fewer fans attended the World Series this year than at any time in the past century. Big concerts are canceled.
But it's a different story in Trumpland. Thousands of President Donald Trump's supporters regularly cram together at campaign rallies around the country — masks optional and social distancing frowned upon.
Trump rallies are among the nation's biggest events being held in defiance of crowd restrictions designed to stop the virus from spreading. This at a time when public health experts are advising people to think twice even about inviting many guests for Thanksgiving dinner.
“It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are, when you have congregate settings where people are crowded together and virtually no one is wearing a mask, that’s a perfect setup to have an outbreak of acquisition and transmissibility,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, recently told Yahoo News. “It's a public health and scientific fact.”
The Trump campaign, which distributes masks and hand sanitizer at its rallies, says those who attend are peaceful protesters who, just like Black Lives Matter demonstrators, have a right to assemble. The president says he wants to get the country back to normal.
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Tunisian carrying Quran fatally stabs 3 in French church
NICE, France (AP) — A young Tunisian man armed with a knife and carrying a copy of the Quran attacked worshippers in a French church and killed three Thursday, prompting the government to raise its security alert to the maximum level hours before a nationwide coronavirus lockdown.
The attack in Mediterranean city of Nice was the third in less than two months that French authorities have attributed to Muslim extremists, including the beheading of a teacher who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class after the images were re-published by a satirical newspaper targeted in a 2015 attack.
Thursday's attacker was seriously wounded by police and hospitalized in life-threatening condition after the killings at the Notre Dame Basilica. The imposing edifice is located half a mile (less than a kilometer) from the site where another attacker plowed a truck into a crowd on France's national day in 2016, killing dozens.
President Emmanuel Macron said he would immediately increase the number of soldiers deployed to protect schools and religious sites from around 3,000 to 7,000.
France’s anti-terrorism prosecutor said the suspect is a Tunisian born in 1999 who reached the Italian island of Lampedusa, a key landing point for migrants crossing in boats from North Africa, on Sept. 20 and traveled to Bari, a port city in southern Italy, on Oct. 9. Prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard did not specify when he arrived in Nice.
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Trump tests limits as Cabinet members fan out to key states
WASHINGTON (AP) — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos planned a “Moms for Trump” rally in her home state of Michigan. The Department of Homeland Security's top official was in Texas to celebrate completion of a section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall. The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency headed to North Carolina after visiting Georgia the day before.
That was just Thursday.
Members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet are logging extra miles as mostly unofficial campaign surrogates in crucial states in the final days before Tuesday's election, blending politics and policy in ways that critics say skirt established norms and may even violate the law.
It's long been one of the benefits of incumbency that a president can enlist his Cabinet to promote administration accomplishments. But only to a point, with a law on the books since 1939 requiring a division between political and official activities for all federal employees except the president and vice president.
“The Trump administration has completely obliterated that line," said Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, which describes itself as a nonpartisan watchdog organization. "The White House is now the seat of government, where the president lives, and one of his chief campaign props. And that erosion of norms has spread throughout the entire administration.”
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Harris target of more misinformation than Pence, data shows
CHICAGO (AP) — Long before Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden announced her as his running mate, Kamala Harris was the target of widespread online misinformation.
Social media posts included racist claims that she was ineligible to serve in the White House or that she was lying about her Black and Indian heritage. Her mother is from India and her father from Jamaica.
Since being named to the presidential ticket, Harris has been at the center of online misinformation campaigns four times as much as the white men who campaigned for the job in the last four years, according to a report from media intelligence firm Zignal Labs shared exclusively with The Associated Press.
“The narratives related to Kamala Harris zeroed in much more on her personal identity, especially as a woman of color,” said Jennifer Granston, head of insights at Zignal Labs.
The firm identified more than 1 million mentions since June on Twitter of Harris with hashtags or terms associated with misinformation about her. The mentions include fact checks that rebuffed the falsehoods, but those made up only a small portion of that conversation.
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New Zealand votes to legalize euthanasia but not marijuana
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealanders voted to legalize euthanasia in a binding referendum, but preliminary results released Friday showed they likely would not legalize recreational marijuana use.
With about 83% of votes counted, New Zealanders emphatically endorsed the euthanasia measure with 65% voting in favor and 34% voting against.
The “No” vote on marijuana was much closer, with 53% voting against legalizing the drug for recreational use and 46% voting in favor. That left open a slight chance the measure could still pass once all special votes were counted next week, although it would require a huge swing.
The two referendums represented significant potential changes to New Zealand's social fabric, although the campaigns for each ended up getting overshadowed somewhat by the coronavirus pandemic and a parallel political race, in which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her liberal Labour Party won a second term in a landslide.
In past elections, special votes — which include those cast by overseas voters — have tended to track more liberal than general votes, giving proponents of marijuana legalization some hope the measure could still pass.
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Illinois judge to rule on Rittenhouse extradition to Kenosha
CHICAGO (AP) — The mother of a 17-year-old accused of killing two demonstrators in Kenosha, Wisconsin, is among those slated to testify Friday during a hearing in Illinois to decide if her son should be extradited across the border to stand trial on homicide charges.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s lawyers also planned to call an expert on self-defense, a prison-safety consultant and two former homicide detectives in a long shot bid to convince Judge Paul Novak in Waukegan, Illinois, not to turn their client over to Wisconsin authorities.
The case has become a rallying point for some conservatives who see Rittenhouse as a patriot who was exercising his right to bear arms during unrest in Kenosha following the shooting of a Black man by a white police officer. Others portray him as a domestic terrorist who incited protesters by showing up wielding a rifle.
State-to-state extraditions are typically formalities and judges rarely refuse to OK another state’s request to transfer a suspect. Efforts to fight extradition are nearly always in vain but can help attorneys to buy time to compile evidence and prepare a defense.
A recent defense filing listing witnesses it wants to call at the hearing in the Lake County Courthouse in Waukegan names Rittenhouse’s mom, Wendy Rittenhouse. The documents didn't offer details, saying she would discuss the circumstances of her son’s arrest.
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Police who shot Wallace were improperly trained, family says
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The footage from body-worn cameras that was taken as police responded to a call about Walter Wallace Jr. shows him emerging from a house with a knife as relatives shout at officers about his mental health condition, a lawyer for the man's family said Thursday.
The video also shows Wallace became incapacitated after the first shot of 14 that two officers fired at him, said lawyer Shaka Johnson, describing footage he said police showed him and other members of Wallace's family before a plan to release it and 911 calls publicly.
“I understand he had a knife, but that does not give you carte blanche to execute a man, quite frankly," Johnson told reporters at a news conference outside Philadelphia City Hall. “What other than death did you intend when you shoot a man — each officer — seven times apiece?"
The family does not want the officers, who have not yet been publicly identified, to be charged with murder, Johnson said, because they were improperly trained and didn't have the right equipment to do their job.
The video shows “instant panic” from officers whose training taught them only how to open fire, he said, noting he saw no viable attempt from officers to deescalate the situation.
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Zeta soaks Southeast after swamping Gulf Coast; 6 dead
ATLANTA (AP) — Millions of people were without power and at least six were dead Thursday after Hurricane Zeta slammed into Louisiana and made a beeline across the South, leaving shattered buildings, thousands of downed trees and fresh anguish over a record-setting hurricane season.
From the bayous of the Gulf Coast to Atlanta and beyond, Southerners used to dealing with dangerous weather were left to pick up the pieces once again just days ahead of an election in which early voting continued despite the storm.
In Atlanta and New Orleans, drivers dodged trees in roads and navigated intersections without traffic signals. In Lakeshore, Mississippi, Ray Garcia returned home to find a shrimp boat washed up and resting against its pilings
"I don’t even know if insurance is going to pay for this,” Garcia said. “I don’t know what this boat has done.”
As many as 2.6 million homes and businesses lost power across seven states, but the lights were coming back on slowly. The sun came out and temperatures cooled, but trees were still swaying as the storm's remnants blew through.
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AP PHOTOS: Teachers improvise to make hybrid learning work
NEW YORK (AP) — When New York schools reopened in September it was anything but business as usual. With state guidelines for social distancing making it impossible for all students to attend classes in person at the same time, educators prepared for a hybrid model of instruction.
Besides preparing lesson plans and decorating classrooms with the usual “Welcome Back” posters and inspirational quotes, teachers and IT personnel set up computers, cameras, and document readers to be able to reach students who are learning remotely.
Educators now deliver their lessons to half empty classrooms as well as computer screens filled with faces of children logged in from home. As they move from desk to desk helping students with their lessons, they also remind those at home to unmute their computers so they can be heard responding to questions.
Everywhere, teachers are improvising. Classes are held outdoors. Physical education instructors demonstrate exercise techniques in front of a camera in empty gymnasiums. In some cases, hallways are used for one-on-one instruction or remote learning classrooms. Auditoriums, previously used for school assemblies, are storing furniture and equipment.
One thing that hasn’t changed is teachers’ dedication to their students and the pride they put into their work. Teachers are making the most of the changes brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.