AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
Seeping under doors, bad air from West's fires won't ease up
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Dangerously dirty air spewing from the West Coast wildfires is seeping into homes and businesses, sneaking into cars through air conditioning vents and preventing people already shut away by the coronavirus pandemic from enjoying a walk or trip to the park.
People in Oregon, Washington state and California have been struggling for a week or longer under some of the most unhealthy air on the planet. The acrid yellow-green smog may linger for days or weeks, scientists and forecasters said.
It is also a sign of things to come. With wildfires getting larger and more destructive because of climate change and more people living closer to areas that burn, smoke will likely shroud the sky more often in the future.
“I don’t think that we should be outside, but at the same time, we’ve been cooped up in the house already for months, so it’s kind of hard to dictate what’s good and what’s bad. I mean, we shouldn’t be outside period,” Portland resident Issa Ubidia-Luckett said Monday.
The hazy air closed businesses like Whole Foods and the iconic Powell’s Books in Portland and suspended garbage pickup in some communities. Pollution and fire evacuations canceled online school and closed some college campuses in Oregon.
___
Israel signs pacts with 2 Arab states: A 'new' Mideast?
WASHINGTON (AP) — Israel on Tuesday signed historic diplomatic pacts with two Gulf Arab states at a White House ceremony that President Donald Trump declared will mark the “dawn of a new Middle East," casting himself as an international peacemaker at the height of his reelection campaign.
The bilateral agreements formalize the normalization of Israel's already thawing relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in line with their common opposition to Iran. But the agreements do not address the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, who view the pacts as a stab in the back from their fellow Arabs and a betrayal of their cause for a Palestinian state.
Hundreds of people massed on the sunwashed South Lawn to witness the signing of agreements in a festive atmosphere little marked by the coronavirus pandemic. Attendees did not practice social distancing and most guests didn’t wear masks.
“We’re here this afternoon to change the course of history,” Trump said from a balcony overlooking the South Lawn. “After decades of division and conflict, we mark the dawn of a new Middle East.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the day "is a pivot of history. It heralds a new dawn of peace.”
___
Apology, no firing: Official said US scientists hurt Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Trump health appointee who is accused of trying to muzzle an important scientific publication in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic apologized Tuesday for a separate video in which he reportedly says scientists battling the virus are conspiring against President Donald Trump and warns of shooting in America if Trump loses the election.
Michael Caputo, the top spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, apologized to his staff for the Facebook video, said an administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The department is standing by Caputo so far in the face of calls by congressional Democrats for his dismissal — and for the resignation of his boss, HHS Secretary Alex Azar. But Caputo, a Trump loyalist and former New York political operative, has become a significant new problem for a White House that has struggled all year with its coronavirus response.
He can be heard on an HHS podcast asserting that Democrats don't want a coronavirus vaccine before the election in order to punish Trump. Although Trump has made the same assertion, with no evidence to support it, such broadsides are not in a department spokesman's normal portfolio.
News reports alleged last week that Caputo's office tried to take over and muzzle a scientific weekly from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that publishes what is supposed to be authoritative, unvarnished information about disease-fighting efforts, including, most importantly at present, COVID-19.
___
Experts worry as US virus restrictions are eased or violated
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — State and local officials around the U.S. are rolling back social-distancing rules again after an abortive effort over the summer, allowing bars, restaurants and gyms to open. Fans are gathering mask-free at football games. President Donald Trump is holding crowded indoor rallies.
While some Americans may see such things as a welcome step closer to normal, public health experts warn the U.S. is setting itself up for failure — again.
“Folks are becoming very cavalier about the pandemic," said Mark Rupp, professor and chief of infectious diseases at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Nebraska's governor ended nearly all of his state’s restrictions on Monday, even with new cases of the coronavirus on the rise.
“I think it is setting us up for further transmission and more people getting ill and, unfortunately, more people dying," Rupp said.
The virus is blamed for more than 6.5 million confirmed infections and 195,000 deaths in the U.S., by far the highest totals of any country, according to the count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
___
City to pay $12M to Breonna Taylor's family, reform police
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The city of Louisville will pay $12 million to the family of Breonna Taylor and reform police practices as part of a lawsuit settlement months after Taylor's slaying by police thrust the Black woman's name to the forefront of a national reckoning on race, Mayor Greg Fischer announced Tuesday.
Taylor's death sparked months of protests in Louisville and calls nationwide for the officers to be criminally charged. The state's attorney general, Daniel Cameron, is investigating police actions in the March 13 fatal shooting.
“I cannot begin to imagine Ms. Palmer’s pain, and I am deeply, deeply sorry for Breonna’s death,” Fischer said, referring to Taylor's mother, Tamika Palmer.
At Tuesday's news conference, an emotional Palmer pushed for charges against the officers involved in the shooting.
“As significant as today is, it’s only the beginning of getting full justice for Breonna," Palmer said. “We must not lose focus on what the real drive is and with that being said, it’s time to move forward with the criminal charges because she deserves that and much more."
___
'Huge rainmaker': Hurricane Sally threatens historic floods
ORANGE BEACH, Ala. (AP) — Hurricane Sally drifted in a slow crawl Tuesday toward the northern Gulf Coast, threatening dangerous storm surge and relentless rainfall that forecasters warned could trigger historic flooding as the storm was expected to hover in the area long after coming ashore.
“It’s going to be a huge rainmaker,” said Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist and meteorologist at Colorado State University. “It’s not going to be pretty."
The National Hurricane Center expects Sally to remain a Category 1 hurricane, with top sustained winds of 80 mph (130 kph) when it makes landfall late Tuesday or early Wednesday. The storm's sluggish pace made it harder to predict exactly where its center will strike, though it was expected to reach land near the Mississippi-Alabama state line.
The hurricane's slow movement not only delayed landfall, but also exacerbated the threat of heavy rain and storm surge. Sally remained a dangerous storm Tuesday even after losing power, its fiercest winds having dropped considerably from a peak of 100 mph (161 kph) on Monday.
By late morning Tuesday, hurricane warnings stretched from east of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, to Navarre, Florida. Rainfall of up to 20 inches (50 centimeters) was forecast near the coast. There was a chance the storm could also spawn tornadoes and dump isolated rain accumulations of 30 inches (76 centimeters).
___
South Dakota AG was frequent traveler before fatal crash
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — For South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg spending Saturday driving hundreds of miles on the state’s roads was not unusual. But by this past Sunday, it was clear that his latest trip was anything but routine: An investigation was underway that would reveal he struck and killed a man walking along a rural stretch of highway.
Ravnsborg has said that he thought he had hit a large animal while driving home to Pierre from a Republican fundraiser some 110 miles (180 kilometers) away in Redfield. He said realized he killed a man only after returning to the site the next morning.
Until then, Ravnsborg had made few waves as the state’s top law enforcement officer, garnering a reputation as a quiet prosecutor, but a relentless campaigner who developed personal connections in the state’s Republican Party.
Ravnsborg crisscrossed South Dakota in his Ford Taurus, attending what are often small events known as Lincoln Day Dinners. He made the drive Saturday even though he does not face reelection for two years. Photos posted on the Spink County Republican Party’s Facebook page show no more than two dozen people at Rooster’s Bar & Grill.
It was Ravnsborg’s dutiful attendance of these events that propelled him from being a GOP outsider to winning the party's nomination for attorney general, said Republican state Sen. Lance Russell, who ran against him in 2018. Ravnsborg had mounted an unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign in 2014, garnering just over 2,000 votes in the primary. But South Dakota political parties decide their candidates for attorney general at conventions, meaning they gather support from party stalwarts.
___
While income in the US rose in 2019, so did the uninsured
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic hit and the U.S. economy crashed, median household income was the highest ever on record, but the number of U.S. residents without health insurance also increased, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday.
Median household income in 2019 was $68,703, an increase of 6.8% from the previous year. That figure surpassed past boom-before-the bust years in 2007, when it was $62,090 in 2019 dollars and in 1999, when it was $62,641 in 2019 dollars, according to the Census Bureau.
The poverty rate in 2019 was 10.5%, a decrease from 11.8% in 2018. It was the fifth consecutive annual decline in the national poverty rate, according to the Census Bureau.
The number of people without health insurance increased last year to 29.6 million residents, or about 9.2% of the U.S. population from 28.6 million residents, or about 8.9% of the population, in 2018. That was primarily due to a decrease in the number of people covered by Medicaid, which provides health coverage to low-income adults, children, pregnant women and people with disabilities.
Hispanics saw the greatest jump in the uninsured of any racial or ethnic group, going from 17.9% in 2018 to 18.7% in 2019. The percentage of non-Hispanic whites and Asians without health insurance grew by less than half a percentage point from 2018 to 2019, and there was no statistical change for Blacks.
___
Apple debuts discount watch, but no new iPhones ... yet
SAN RAMON, Calif. (AP) — Apple introduced a cheaper version of its smartwatch, its latest attempt to broaden the appeal of its trend-setting products while many consumers are forced to scrimp during the coronavirus pandemic.
The scaled-down Apple Watch follows on the heels of a budget iPhone the company released five months ago as the economy cratered and unemployment rates rose above the levels reached during the Great Recession more than a decade ago.
Apple also took the wraps off a new high-end watch model, a next-generation iPad and a couple of new subscription services during a virtual event held Tuesday. The company normally also rolls out its new iPhones at this time of year, but production problems caused by the pandemic have delayed their release until at least October.
CEO Tim Cook didn’t mention iPhones during Tuesday’s one-hour presentation recorded at the company's massive, but now mostly empty, headquarters in Cupertino, California.
The Apple Watch has never come close to rivaling the iPhone's popularity, but it does dominate the market for smartwatches. Canaccord Genuity analyst T. Michael Walkley estimates about 51 million Apple Watches will be sold this year, a 5% increase from last year. The research firm GlobalData pegs Apple's share of the $64 billion smartwatch market at roughly 60%.
___
Gloria Estefan, Alex Rodriguez mark Latino impact on media
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Gloria Estefan, Alex Rodriguez and Eva Longoria will be among the participants in a monthlong online celebration of Latino contributions to television.
The Paley Center for Media’s tribute to the work of actors, journalists and other notable Latinos begins Wednesday and will be held virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. It’s the first such event by Paley to coincide with Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs Sept. 15 to Oct. 15.
The inaugural celebration will feature “conversations and events that spotlight critically acclaimed, groundbreaking, and culturally influential Hispanic personalities and rising stars who demonstrate the power of the community” and its cultural impact, the center said in its announcement Tuesday.
Maureen J. Reidy, the center’s president and CEO, called it a “a must-see celebration for the whole family that informs, educates, and entertains."
A bilingual component with education programs, interactive trivia and other elements is available at paleycenter.org through Oct. 15.