AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EDT
Dozens missing as firefighters battle two large Oregon fires
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Hundreds of firefighters battled two large wildfires Friday that threatened to merge near the most populated part of Oregon, including the suburbs of Portland, and the governor said dozens of people are missing in other parts of the state.
The state's emergency management director, Andrew Phelps, said officials are “preparing for a mass fatality event” and that thousands of structures have been destroyed.
Gov. Kate Brown said more than 40,000 Oregonians have been evacuated and about 500,000 are in different levels of evacuation zones, either having been told to leave or to prepare to do so. She was dialing back on a statement late Thursday issued by the state Office of Emergency Management that said a half-million people had been ordered to evacuate statewide.
Dozens of people are missing in Jackson County in the south and Marion County, where a fire continues to burn east of Salem, Brown told a news conference Friday. Also Friday, authorities announced that a man had been arrested on two counts of arson for allegedly starting a fire in southern Oregon on Tuesday.
The Oregon Convention Center in Portland was among the buildings being transformed into shelters for evacuees. Portland, shrouded in smoke from the fires, on Friday had the worst air quality of the world's major cities, according to IQAir.
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Officials battle online misinformation along with wildfires
SEATTLE (AP) — Emergency responders in the Pacific Northwest are fighting misinformation along with raging wildfires as people spread unsubstantiated social media posts blaming coordinated groups of arsonists from both the far left and far right for setting the blazes.
The FBI said Friday that it's investigated several claims and found them to be untrue, while officials in Oregon and Washington state have turned to Facebook to knock down the competing narratives — some posts blamed far-left antifa activists and others claimed the far-right group the Proud Boys was responsible for the fires scorching wide swaths of the region.
“I am physically and emotionally exhausted. We’ve been working really hard to protect people’s lives and homes,” firefighter Matt Lowery wrote Thursday night on the Facebook page for the East Pierce Fire & Rescue union south of Seattle. “I also want to address an issue that keeps coming up, even from some of the public that we are talking to while working. It is hot, dry, and fire spreads quickly in those conditions. There is nothing to show its Antifa or Proud Boys setting fires. Wait for information.”
The Mason County Sheriff's Office urged Washington residents to stop spreading rumors as isolated incidents of apparent arson led to widespread, unfounded claims that antifa agitators were conspiring to start fires along the West Coast. Antifa is short for anti-fascists, a range of far-left militant groups that oppose white supremacists.
“Though some agencies have made arrests related to arson recently, they appear to all be separate individuals, however as with many incidents, it will be an ongoing investigation in each jurisdiction,” the agency wrote Thursday night on Facebook.
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Comforting families, warning foes: Biden, Trump mark 9/11
SHANKSVILLE, Pa. (AP) — One spent time quietly consoling families.
The other proclaimed America’s might.
President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, Joe Biden marked the 19th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on Friday at memorial services where their differences in style couldn’t have been more sharply on display.
As Biden approached those who’d lost loved ones at Ground Zero and shared the pain of his own losses, Trump vowed that “America will always rise up, stand tall and fight back,” speaking at the Shanksville, Pennsylvania, site where hijacked Flight 93 crashed after passengers rushed the cockpit.
Biden also visited Shanksville later in the day, laying a wreath at the memorial and meeting with families, but the two did not cross paths. And while Americans were focused on the commemorations, the political significance of the visits to Shanksville was hard to ignore: Pennsylvania is a crucial battleground state in the 2020 election. Trump won there by less than 1 percentage point four years ago, and Democrats hope they can return it to their column this year.
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AP Exclusive: Disabled NFL retirees slam benefits plan delay
An NFL and players union-run fund that helps ailing retired players shut down its application process for nearly six months because of the coronavirus, irritating retirees who complained the league devoted resources toward safely starting the 2020 season on time but not to their medical needs.
The Associated Press interviewed four people familiar with the program, three of whom are retired players waiting for program administrators to schedule doctors' visits that are key to determining benefits. Last year, the program gave out $157 million to 2,247 applicants. One person familiar with the program estimated there were more than 200 applications and appeals that have been awaiting action for up to six months.
None of the players wanted their names used for fear of retribution by those who run the program, which is operated by the league and union.
All said they were perplexed by the league's willingness to hold training camps for more than 3,000 players this summer and kick off the season this week while suspending a program that doesn't have anything close to the social-distancing issues of the day-to-day logistics of an NFL season.
On Friday, two days after the AP questioned the league and union about the halt, the NFL said benefits coordinators were sending out letters to applicants announcing the resumption of doctor's appointments for some players.
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Trump lauds Medal of Honor recipient for hostage rescue
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump bestowed the Medal of Honor on a U.S. soldier Friday, calling him “one of the bravest men anywhere in the world” for his role in a daring 2015 missio n to rescue dozens of hostages who were set to be executed by Islamic State militants in Iraq.
Trump picked the 19th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks to honor Sgt. Maj. Thomas “Patrick” Payne, who negotiated a barrage of enemy gunfire and repeatedly entered a burning building in a harrowing effort that saved more than 70 hostages. The president said that Payne, who was in high school on 9/11, and his classmates learned about the attacks on the United States from a teacher who solemnly relayed what had happened.
“In that moment, Pat was called to action,” Trump said. “He knew that his country needed him.”
Trump highlighted Payne's “small-town America” upbringing and his family's commitment to public service. The soldier grew up in Batesburg-Leesville and Lugoff, South Carolina. His wife Alison is a nurse, his father a police officer, and his two brothers serve in the Army and Air Force.
Payne, 36, was assigned to lead a team clearing one of two buildings known to house hostages in a nighttime operation in the northern Iraq province of Kirkuk. The Oct. 22, 2015, raid quickly became complicated.
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Study: Kids infected at day care spread coronavirus at home
NEW YORK (AP) — Children who caught the coronavirus at day cares and a day camp spread it to their relatives, according to a new report that underscores that kids can bring the germ home and infect others.
Scientists already know children can spread the virus. But the study published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “definitively indicates — in a way that previous studies have struggled to do — the potential for transmission to family members,” said William Hanage, a Harvard University infectious diseases researcher.
The findings don’t mean that schools and child-care programs need to close, but it does confirm that the virus can spread within those places and then be brought home by kids. So, masks, disinfection and social distancing are needed. And people who work in such facilities have to be careful and get tested if they think they may be infected, experts said.
Earlier research from the U.S., China and Europe has found that children are less likely than adults to be infected by the virus and are less likely to become seriously ill when they do get sick.
There also was data suggesting that young children don’t spread the virus very often, though older kids are believed to spread it as easily as adults.
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Combat vet killed by Texas deputy buried in Alabama on 9/11
MONTEVALLO, Ala. (AP) — His Army stint complete after serving in Afghanistan, Damian Daniels left Alabama to begin a new life in Texas. He bought a house, enrolled in college and supported the Black Lives Matter movement. Black himself, Daniels was working to start a new business when paranoid hallucinations began last month and a brother sought help from police.
Shot dead by officers who were sent to aid him, Daniels was buried Friday on Sept. 11, the anniversary of the date that sent him down the path to war.
Relatives gathered at Alabama National Cemetery, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Birmingham, to mourn a death they are still trying to understand.
"A call for help should never result in the loss of life,” brother Brendan Daniels said in an interview beforehand.
The shooting is still under review in San Antonio, where a sheriff defended officers' actions but a county leader said the killing never should have occurred. Grand jurors will review what happened, a prosecutor has said.
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Bahrain becomes latest Arab nation to recognize Israel
WASHINGTON (AP) — Bahrain on Friday agreed to normalize relations with Israel, becoming the latest Arab nation to do so as part of a broader diplomatic push by President Donald Trump and his administration to further ease the Jewish state's relative isolation in the Middle East and find common ground with nations that share U.S. wariness of Iran.
Trump announced the agreement on the 19th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks following a phone call he had with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. The three leaders also issued a brief joint statement marking the second such Arab normalization agreement with Israel in the past two months.
The announcement came less than a week before Trump hosts a White House ceremony to mark the establishment of full relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, something that Trump and his Middle East team brokered in August. Bahrain’s foreign minister will attend that event and sign a separate agreement with Netanyahu.
“There’s no more powerful response to the hatred that spawned 9/11 than this agreement,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
Friday's agreement is another diplomatic win for Trump less than two months before the presidential election and an opportunity to shore up support among pro-Israel evangelical Christians. In addition to the UAE deal, Trump just last week announced agreements in principle for Kosovo to recognize Israel and for Serbia to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
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Experts: Revamped OxyContin hasn't curbed abuse, overdoses
WASHINGTON (AP) — A panel of government health advisers said Friday there’s no clear evidence that a harder-to-crush version of the painkiller OxyContin designed to discourage abuse actually resulted in fewer overdoses or deaths.
The conclusion from the Food and Drug Administration advisory panel comes more than a decade after Purdue Pharma revamped its blockbuster opioid, which has long been blamed for sparking a surge in painkiller abuse beginning in the 1990s.
In a series of non-binding votes, the FDA experts said that the updated OxyContin appeared to cut down abuse via snorting and injecting, compared to the original drug. But panelists overwhelmingly ruled that data from Purdue and other researchers did not show that the reformulation curbed abuse overall or led to fewer overdoses.
Panelists said the shortcomings were due, in part, to the challenges of studying overdoses, which often involve multiple drugs.
“I think it’s very difficult to tease out cause of death and overdose,” said Dr. Lewis Nelson of Rutgers University. “Overall, I think the quality of evidence was fairly poor.”
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Autopsy report: Naya Rivera called for help as she drowned
LOS ANGELES (AP) — An autopsy report released Friday says “Glee” actor Naya Rivera raised her arm and called for help as she accidentally drowned while boating with her 4-year-old son on a California lake.
Once his mother had helped him back on to the boat, the boy “noticed the decedent put her arm up in the air and yelled ‘help,’" the report from the Ventura County Medical Examiner says. “The decedent then disappeared in to the water.”
Authorities had previously said that Rivera had drowned accidentally after putting the boy, Josey Hollis Dorsey, back on the boat at Lake Piru northwest of Los Angeles on July 8, but had not mentioned her shouting for help.
Rivera “knew how to swim well,” the report said.
The man who rented her the pontoon boat said she declined a life vest, but he put one aboard anyway.