AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT

Palm oil labor abuses linked to world’s top brands, banks

PENINSULAR MALAYSIA (AP) — Jum’s words tumble out over the phone, his voice growing ever more frantic.

Between sobs, he says he’s trapped on a Malaysian plantation run by government-owned Felda, one of the world’s largest palm oil companies. His boss confiscated and then lost his Indonesian passport, he says, leaving him vulnerable to arrest. Night after night, he has been forced to hide from authorities, sleeping on the jungle floor, exposed to the wind and the rain. His biggest fear: the roaming tigers.

All the while, Jum says his supervisor demanded he keep working, tending the heavy reddish-orange palm oil fruit that has made its way into the supply chains of the planet’s most iconic food and cosmetics companies like Unilever, L’Oreal, Nestle and Procter & Gamble.

“I am not a free man anymore,” he says, his voice cracking. “I desperately want to see my mom and dad. I want to go home!”

An Associated Press investigation found many like Jum in Malaysia and neighboring Indonesia – an invisible workforce consisting of millions of laborers from some of the poorest corners of Asia, many of them enduring various forms of exploitation, with the most serious abuses including child labor, outright slavery and allegations of rape. Together, the two countries produce about 85 percent of the world’s estimated $65 billion palm oil supply.

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Officials plead for calm amid anger over Breonna Taylor case

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Authorities pleaded for calm while activists vowed to fight on Thursday in Kentucky’s largest city, where a gunman wounded two police officers during anguished protests following the decision not to charge officers for killing Breonna Taylor.

Outrage over a grand jury’s failure to bring homicide charges against the officers who burst into the Black woman’s apartment six months ago set off a new round of demonstrations Wednesday in several American cities. The state attorney general said the investigation showed officers were acting in self-defense when they responded to gunfire from Taylor's boyfriend.

Reginique Jones returned Thursday morning to the park in downtown Louisville that has been the hub for protests, saying she was distraught over the grand jury's decision to only charge a single officer for firing into apartments neighboring Taylor's. Still, Jones vowed to continue pressing for increased police accountability and for a statewide ban on “no-knock” warrants — the kind issued in the Taylor case, though state Attorney General Daniel Cameron said the investigation showed police did announce themselves before entering.

“I believe that we are going to get past this,” Jones said as demonstrators began to arrive at the park dubbed Injustice Square. “As long as we continue to remain strong, and stay on the same page, we can still get some justice."

Though protests in Louisville began peacefully the day before, officers declared an unlawful assembly after they said fires were set in garbage cans, several vehicles were damaged and stores were broken into. A 26-year-old man was arrested and charged with firing at police and wounding two officers.

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Politics mixes with law as Trump closes in on court pick

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is infusing deliberations over his coming nomination of a new Supreme Court justice with political meaning as he aims to maximize the benefit before Nov. 3 and even secure an electoral backstop should the result be contested.

Even before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death last week, the president had tried to use likelihood of more Supreme Court vacancies to his political advantage. Now, as he closes in on a decision on her likely replacement, Trump has used the vacancy to appeal to battleground-state voters and as a rallying cry for his conservative base.

He also is increasingly embracing the high court — which he will have had an outsized hand in reshaping -– as an insurance policy in a close election.

Increases in mail, absentee and early voting brought about by the pandemic have already brought about a flurry of election litigation, and both Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden have assembled armies of lawyers to continue the fight once vote-counting begins. Trump has been open about tying his push to name a third justice to the court to a potentially drawn-out court fight to determine who will be sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021.

“I think this will end up in the Supreme Court,” Trump said Wednesday of the election, adding, “And I think it’s very important that we have nine justices.”

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Rejecting Trump, both parties' leaders see orderly election

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election drew swift blowback Thursday from both parties in Congress, and lawmakers were already turning to unprecedented steps to ensure he can't ignore the vote of the people.

Congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, rejected Trump's suggestion that he’d “see what happens” before agreeing to any election outcome.

Many other lawmakers -- including from Trump’s own Republican Party -- vowed to ensure voters’ wishes are followed ahead of Inauguration Day in January. And some Democrats were taking action, including formally asking Trump's defense secretary, national security adviser and attorney general to declare they'll support the Nov. 3 results.

“The President can’t successfully refuse to accept the results of the election without a number of very senior officials aiding him,” said Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA analyst, one of two congresswomen behind letters to the nation's top national security officials.

Meanwhile, McConnell, the GOP Senate leader, said in a tweet: “The winner of the November 3rd election will be inaugurated on January 20th.” He said, “There will be an orderly transition just as there has been every four years since 1792.”

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Democrats to redraft virus relief in bid to jump-start talks

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats are going back to the drawing board on a huge COVID-19 relief bill, paring back the measure in an attempt to jump-start negotiations with the Trump administration.

The Democratic-controlled chamber could also pass the $2 trillion-plus measure next week if talks fall through to demonstrate that the party isn't giving up on passing virus relief before the election.

The chamber passed a $3.4 trillion rescue measure in May but Republicans dismissed the measure as bloated and unrealistic. Even as Democrats cut their ambitions to $2.2 trillion or so, Senate Republicans have focused on a much smaller rescue package in the $650 billion to $1 trillion range.

An aide familiar with the leadership discussions and authorized to characterize them said the new bill would total about $2.4 trillion and is likely to contain additional relief for the airline and restaurant sectors, which have been especially slammed by slumps in business from the virus. The aide requested anonymity to characterize the closed-door talks.

“We’re trying to figure out how to move a negotiation forward because we believe the American people need some help. And so we’re going to try," said Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern, D-Mass. “Our chairs are looking at everything again and the hope is that we can come up with something."

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At UN, China, Russia and US clash over pandemic responses

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States butted heads with China and Russia at the United Nations on Thursday over responsibility for the pandemic that has interrupted the world, trading allegations about who mishandled and politicized the virus in one of the few real-time exchanges among top officials at this year’s COVID-distanced U.N. General Assembly meeting.

The remarks at the U.N. Security Council’s ministerial meeting on the assembly’s sidelines came just after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres decried the lack of international cooperation in tackling the still “out-of-control” coronavirus.

The sharp exchanges, at the end of a virtual meeting on “Post COVID-19 Global Governance,” reflected the deep divisions among the three veto-wielding council members that have escalated since the virus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in January. They also crackled with an energy and action that the prerecorded set pieces of leader speeches at the virtual meeting have thus far lacked.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking first, stressed the importance of U.N.-centered multilateralism and alluded to countries — including the U.S. — opting out of making a COVID-19 vaccine a global public good available to people everywhere.

“In such a challenging moment, major countries are even more duty-bound to put the future of humankind first, discard Cold War mentality and ideological bias and come together in the spirit of partnership to tide over the difficulties,” Wang said.

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Biden's Scranton vs. Park Ave. appeal targets working class

Joe Biden stood on the floor of a Wisconsin aluminum plant this week, shed the trappings of his decades in national politics and then took aim at the billionaire New Yorker he wants to evict from the Oval Office.

“I’ve dealt with guys like Donald Trump my whole life, who would look down on us because we didn’t have a lot of money or your parents didn’t go to college,” Biden said, recalling his boyhood roots. “Guys who think they’re better than you. Guys who inherit everything they’ve ever gotten in their life and squander it.”

Biden has long cultivated his persona as “Middle-Class Joe” with “hardscrabble” roots, but as he turns to the closing stretch of his third presidential bid, the Scranton, Pennsylvania, native is personalizing his pitch as he tries to undercut one of the president's core strengths.

“The truth is,” Biden said, “he never really respected us.”

It’s at once a demonstration of Biden’s personal contempt for Trump and the Democratic challenger’s pride in his own family history as mostly working-class Irish Catholics. But, most importantly as voters begin casting early ballots, it’s a carefully tailored message aimed at voters who’ve abandoned Democrats in recent elections and helped Trump flip a band of Rust Belt states to fashion his own presidential victory map.

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Trump promoting health care 'vision' in swing state NC

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on preexisting medical conditions Thursday, amid a global pandemic and growing uncertainty about the future of protections guaranteed by the Obama-era health law his administration is still trying to overturn.

In a visit to swing state North Carolina, the president will sketch out what aides call a “vision” for quality health care at affordable prices, with lower prescription drug costs, more consumer choice and greater transparency. Aside from protecting people with preexisting conditions, he'll sign another executive order to try to end surprise medical bills.

But while the Trump administration has made some progress on its health care goals, the sweeping changes he promised as a candidate in 2016 have eluded him. Democrats are warning Trump would turn back the clock if given another four years in the White House, and they're promising coverage for all and lower drug prices.

The clock has all but run out in Congress for major legislation on lowering drug costs or ending surprise bills, much less replacing the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare.”

Bill-signing ceremonies on prescription drugs and medical charges were once seen as achievable goals for Trump before the election. No longer.

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Kenosha shooter's defense portrays him as 'American patriot'

The way lawyers for Kyle Rittenhouse tell it, he wasn't just a scared teenager acting in self-defense when he shot to death two Kenosha, Wisconsin, protesters. He was a courageous defender of liberty, a patriot exercising his right to bear arms amid rioting in the streets.

“A 17-year-old citizen is being sacrificed by politicians, but it’s not Kyle Rittenhouse they are after. Their end game is to strip away the constitutional right of all citizens to defend our communities,” says the voice-over at the end of a video released this week by a group tied to Rittenhouse’s legal team.

“Kyle Rittenhouse will go down in American history alongside that brave unknown patriot ... who fired ‘The Shot Heard Round the World,’’’ lead attorney John Pierce wrote this month in a tweet he later deleted. “A Second American Revolution against Tyranny has begun.”

But such dramatic rhetoric that has helped raise nearly $2 million for Rittenhouse’s defense may not work with a jury considering charges that could put the teen in prison for life. Legal experts say there could be big risks in turning a fairly straightforward self-defense case into a fight for freedom that mirrors the law-and-order reelection theme President Donald Trump has struck amid a wave of protests over racial injustice.

“They’re playing to his most negative characteristics and stereotypes, what his critics want to perceive him as — a crazy militia member out to cause harm and start a revolution,” said Robert Barnes, a prominent Los Angeles defense attorney.

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Stuck at sea: Nations urged to help virus-stranded mariners

PARIS (AP) — Another COVID-19 problem that the U.N. is trying to solve: how to help more than 300,000 merchant mariners who are trapped at sea because of coronavirus restrictions.

Describing the mounting desperation of seafarers who have been afloat for a year or more, Captain Hedi Marzougui pleaded their case Thursday at a meeting with shipping executives and government officials on the sidelines of this week's U.N. General Assembly.

As the pandemic washed over the world and made shipping crews unwelcome in many ports, he said, “We received very limited information, and it became increasingly difficult to get vital supplies and technical support. Nations changed regulations on a daily, if not hourly, basis.”

Several months later, many borders remain closed and flights are rare, complicating efforts to bring in replacement crews for those stuck at sea and forcing their employers to keep extending their contracts.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres joined shipping companies, trade unions and maritime organizations in urging governments to recognize merchant crews as essential workers and allow them to travel more freely. With more than 80% of global trade by volume transported by sea, the world’s 2 million merchant seafarers play a vital role.