AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Crews battling California fires head to devastated areas
BERRY CREEK, Calif. (AP) —
Smoke from massive wildfires that painted California skies orange was also helping crews corral the deadliest blaze of the year, but despite the progress there was concern that the death toll could mount as crews reach devastated areas.
Nine people, including a 16-year-old boy, have been confirmed dead since lightning-caused fires that started weeks ago fused into a monster that largely destroyed Berry Creek, a tiny hamlet in the Sierra Nevada foothills northeast of San Francisco.
Crews made progress Friday in chopping or bulldozing brush-free lines to control lne North Complex fire. In addition, gusting winds that whipped up the flames days earlier eased while smoke blocked out the sun and lowered previously scorching temperatures. Saturday's high temperature was expected to top out at 80 degrees or less.
Nearly 15,000 firefighters were battling 28 major wildfires across California, although 24 were sparked Thursday and quickly contained.
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Dozens still missing in Oregon as weather helps fire fight
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — A change in the weather — with winds easing and humidity rising — have helped firefighters battling massive blazes in Oregon that have taken a deadly toll from one end of the state to the other.
Gov. Kate Brown said Friday that dozens of people were still missing and tens of thousands had been forced to flee their homes. The state’s emergency management director, Andrew Phelps, said officials are “preparing for a mass fatality event” and thousands of structures have been destroyed.
Oregon officials haven’t released an exact death count but at least eight fatalities have been reported. Marion County Sheriff Joe Kast said Friday evening that searchers had found two victims of the Beachie Creek fire near Salem. A 1-year-old boy was killed in wildfires in Washington.
Hundreds of firefighters were battling two large blazes that threatened to merge near the most populated part of Oregon, including the suburbs of Portland.
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 dialed back a statement late Thursday by the state Office of Emergency Management that said a half-million people had been ordered to evacuate statewide.
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Trump looks west, eyeing new paths to White House
WASHINGTON (AP) — Pushing for new roads to reelection, President Donald Trump will go on offense this weekend in Nevada, a state that hasn’t supported a Republican presidential candidate since 2004.
Trump will plunge head-on into a battle with local authorities in Nevada by holding public events there Saturday and Sunday after his initial plans for rallies in Reno and Las Vegas were blocked by state officials because they would have violated coronavirus health guidelines.
His campaign insisted on forging ahead with the trip — setting up a COVID-19 political fight that Trump's team relishes and underscoring the growing importance of Nevada in Trump's quest for 270 electoral votes as the race looks tight in a number of battleground states.
Trump narrowly lost Nevada in 2016 and the state has trended further toward the Democrats in the last decade. But Trump's campaign has invested heavily in the state, relying on its ground game to turn out voters. Democrats, by contrast, have largely relied on virtual campaign efforts during the pandemic, save for the casino workers’ Culinary Union, which has deployed workers door to door.
“Nevada Trump Victory has over 50 staffers in the state and has contacted over 2 million voters,” said state GOP chairman Michael McDonald. “The Democrats are scared. They know President Trump has the momentum.”
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Biden audio first shared by 'Russian agent' thrives online
WASHINGTON (AP) — The leaked recordings were hardly a political bombshell: The apparent conversations between Joe Biden and Ukraine’s then-president largely confirm Biden’s account of his dealings in Ukraine.
But the choppy audio, disclosed by a Ukrainian lawmaker whom U.S. officials described Thursday as an “active Russian agent” who has sought to spread online misinformation about Biden, was nonetheless seized on by President Donald Trump as well as his supporters to promote conspiracy theories about the Democratic nominee. Social media posts and videos about the recordings have been viewed millions of times, according to an Associated Press analysis, even though Trump's own administration says they rely on "false and unsubstantiated narratives.”
The audio’s proliferation on social media shows how foreign operations aimed at influencing the U.S. election are still easily reaching Americans, despite efforts by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to rein in such meddling.
Since there’s no evidence the heavily edited recordings have been stolen or were entirely fabricated, they’ve been able to flourish online, skirting new policies social media companies rolled out to prevent foreign interference in this year’s elections. And unlike in 2016, when Russia used bogus social media accounts or bots to wage a misinformation campaign, this time they're being spread by legitimate American social media users.
“It’s certainly an influence campaign,” Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation fellow at the nonpartisan Wilson Center, said of the recordings. “It’s misleading to an audience that doesn’t have the full picture.”
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Antarctica is still free of COVID-19. Can it stay that way?
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — At this very moment a vast world exists that’s free of the coronavirus, where people can mingle without masks and watch the pandemic unfold from thousands of miles away.
That world is Antarctica, the only continent without COVID-19. Now, as nearly 1,000 scientists and others who wintered over on the ice are seeing the sun for the first time in weeks or months, a global effort wants to make sure incoming colleagues don’t bring the virus with them.
From the U.K.'s Rothera Research Station off the Antarctic peninsula that curls toward the tip of South America, field guide Rob Taylor described what it’s like in “our safe little bubble.”
In pre-coronavirus days, long-term isolation, self-reliance and psychological strain were the norm for Antarctic teams while the rest of the world saw their life as fascinatingly extreme.
How times have changed.
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Prosecutor looking into the origins of Russia probe resigns
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal prosecutor who was helping lead the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe has resigned from the Justice Department, a spokesman said.
Nora Dannehy was a top prosecutor on a team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham of Connecticut, who was appointed last year to lead an investigation into how the FBI and other federal agencies set out to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether the Trump campaign had coordinated with the Kremlin.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Connecticut on Friday confirmed Dannehy's departure, which was first reported by The Hartford Courant, but the spokesman declined to comment further.
Her departure could complicate the final stretch of an investigation already slowed by the coronavirus pandemic but eagerly anticipated by President Donald Trump and his supporters to uncover what they see as wrongdoing within the FBI during the Russia investigation. It leaves the investigative team without one of its veteran prosecutors as key decisions presumably await before the probe wraps up.
Durham's appointment by Attorney General William Barr was made public soon after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's report into Russian election interference. In the year and a half since, he has questioned former law enforcement and intelligence officials — former CIA Director John Brennan among them — about decisions made during the course of the Russia probe. Dannehy had been a top leader on the team, present for interviews with such officials, including Brennan.
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Iran executes man whose case drew international attention
TEHRAN (AP) — Iran’s state TV is reporting that the country’s authorities has executed a wrestler for allegedly murdering a man after President Donald Trump asked for the 27-year-old condemned man's life to be spared.
State TV quoted the chief justice of Fars province, Kazem Mousavi as saying on Saturday: “The retaliation sentence against Navid Afkari, the killer of Hassan Turkman, was carried out this morning in Adelabad prison in Shiraz.”
Afkari's case had drawn the attention of a social media campaign that portrayed him and his brothers as victims targeted over participating in protests against Iran’s Shiite theocracy in 2018. Authorities accused Afkari of stabbing a water supply company employee in the southern city of Shiraz amid the unrest.
Iran broadcast the wrestler's televised confession last week. The segment resembled hundreds of other suspected coerced confessions aired over the last decade in the Islamic Republic.
The case revived a demand inside the country for Iran to stop carrying out the death penalty. Even imprisoned Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, herself nearly a month into a hunger strike over conditions at Tehran’s Evin prison amid the coronavirus pandemic, passed word that she supported Afkari.
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Warring Afghans meet to find peace after decades of war
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Afghanistan’s warring sides started negotiations for the first time, bringing together the Taliban and delegates appointed by the Afghan government Saturday for historic meetings aimed at ending decades of war.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended the opening ceremony in Qatar, where the meetings are taking place and where the Taliban maintain a political office. The start of negotiations was the latest in a flurry of diplomatic activity by the Trump administration ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November.
“Each of you carry a great responsibility,” Pompeo told the participants. “You have an opportunity to overcome your divisions."
While Saturday's opening was about ceremony, the hard negotiations will be held behind closed doors. There the sides will be tackling tough issues. This includes the terms of a permanent cease-fire, the rights of women and minorities, and the disarming of tens of thousands of Taliban fighters and militias loyal to warlords, some of them aligned with the government.
The Afghan sides are also expected to discuss constitutional changes and power sharing during the talks in Qatar's capital of Doha.
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Thousands left homeless by Greek refugee camp fire protest
MORIA, Lesbos (AP) — Thousands of asylum-seekers have spent a fourth night sleeping in the open on the Greek island of Lesbos, after successive fires destroyed a notoriously overcrowded migrant and refugee camp during a coronavirus lockdown.
Officials have said the Tuesday and Wednesday night blazes were deliberately set by some camp residents angered at quarantine and isolation orders imposed after 35 people in the Moria camp tested positive for COVID-19.
With the camp gutted, Saturday morning found men, women and children sleeping under improvised shelters made of reed stalks, blankets and salvaged tents.
Thousands gathered for a protest demanding to be allowed to leave the island, gathering on a road blocked by police buses. The demonstration was loud but peaceful, with mainly children and women at the front. Riot police observed nearby as protesters chanted slogans and held up improvised banners made of pieces of cardboard or sheets.
“We need peace & freedom. Moria kills all lives,” read one.
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Celtics' young core heads back to East finals, once again
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — Marcus Smart is 26. Jaylen Brown is 23. Jayson Tatum is 22.
The Boston Celtics aren’t old, by any measure.
That doesn’t mean they are lacking for experience — or don’t already know what it’s like to play in the Eastern Conference finals.
Smart and Brown are going there for the third time in four years, Tatum for the second time in his three seasons, and they’re bringing Kemba Walker along for his first view of what the conference-final stage looks like. The Celtics held off reigning champion Toronto 92-87 in Game 7 of their East semifinal series Friday night, earning a trip to the East title series against the Miami Heat.
“We have three 30-year-olds,” Celtics coach Brad Stevens said. “We’re basically a college team with a couple of guys.