AP News in Brief at 9:04 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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'No easy answer': Many ask what next in Breonna Taylor case
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — In the wake of the decision not to prosecute Kentucky police officers for killing Breonna Taylor, authorities and activists alike wrestled Thursday with the question of what comes next amid continued demands for justice in the Black woman's death.
“The question obviously is: What do we do with this pain?” Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said during a news conference. “There is no one answer, no easy answer to that question.”
Fischer pleaded for calm a day after peaceful protests in Louisville turned violent, and a gunman shot and wounded two police officers. Activists, who were back out chanting Taylor's name and marching for a second night, vowed to press on with their cause after a grand jury Wednesday didn't bring homicide charges against the officers who burst into her apartment during a drug investigation in March.
Taylor, an emergency medical worker, was shot multiple times by white officers after Taylor's boyfriend fired at them, authorities said. He said he didn't know who was coming in and opened fire in self-defense. Police entered on a warrant connected to a suspect who did not live there, and no drugs were found inside.
State Attorney General Daniel Cameron said the investigation showed officers acted in self-defense; one was wounded. A single officer was charged Wednesday with wanton endangerment for firing into neighboring apartments.
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Despite Trump attacks, both parties vow orderly election
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses drew swift blowback Thursday from both parties in Congress, and lawmakers turned to unprecedented steps to ensure he can't ignore the vote of the people. Amid the uproar, Trump said anew he's not sure the election will be “honest."
Congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, rejected Trump's assertion that he’ll “see what happens” before agreeing to any election outcome.
Many other lawmakers -- including from Trump’s own Republican Party -- vowed to make sure voters’ wishes are followed ahead of Inauguration Day in January. And some Democrats were taking action, including formally asking Trump's defense secretary, homeland security adviser and attorney general to declare they'll support the Nov. 3 results, whoever wins.
Asked as he departed the White House for a campaign rally if the election is only legitimate if he is the winner, Trump said, “We'll see.”
The president said he wants to “make sure the election is honest, and I’m not sure that it can be.”
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Pac-12 football season to kick off in November
The Pac-12 set a Nov. 6 start date Thursday for a seven-game football season, following the Big Ten in overturning an August decision to postpone until spring because of concerns about playing through the pandemic.
With the conference having secured daily COVID-19 testing for its athletes and having been given the green light from some state and local health officials in California and Oregon, the Pac-12 university presidents voted unanimously to lift a Jan. 1 moratorium on athletic competition.
The Pac-12′s men’s and women’s basketball seasons can start Nov. 25, in line with the NCAA’s recently announced opening date. The football championship game is set for Dec. 18 — along with other cross-division games that weekend — putting the conference in play for College Football Playoff and New Year's Six Bowl selection.
A major college football season that six weeks ago seemed to be in peril, slowly crumbling away, is reforming and has a chance to be almost whole by November. The Big Ten reversed course last week, with kickoff scheduled for the weekend of Oct. 24.
The Mountain West presidents were meeting Thursday night to discuss a possible late October start to the football season and the Mid-American Conference, the first FBS league to postpone, is also reconsidering playing in the fall.
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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 $2.4 trillion 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 back by $1 trillion or so, Senate Republicans have focused on a much smaller rescue package in the $650 billion to $1 trillion range.
Bridging the overall topline gulf would be difficult enough, but fleshing out hundreds of legislative details at the height of the presidential campaign and a heated battle over filling Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat on the High Court could be impossible.
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.
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Feds put first Black inmate to death since execution restart
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — A man who killed a religious couple visiting Texas from Iowa was executed Thursday, the first Black inmate put to death as part of the Trump administration’s resumption of federal executions.
Christopher Vialva, 40, was pronounced dead shortly before 7 p.m. EDT after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
In a last statement, Vialva asked God to comfort the families of the couple he had killed, saying, “Father … heal their hearts with grace and love.” His final words were: “I’m ready, Father.”
The execution comes during demonstrations, disappointment, violence and sadness in Louisville, Kentucky, after a grand jury did not charge the officers who shot Breonna Taylor with her death, rather filing lower level felonies for shooting into neighboring homes. Questions about racial bias in the criminal justice system have been front and center since May — following the death of George Floyd after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on the handcuffed Black man’s neck for several minutes.
A report this month by the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center said Black people remain overrepresented on death rows and that Black people who kill white people are far more likely to be sentenced to death than white people who kill Black people.
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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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Trump promotes health care 'vision' but gaps remain
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — More than three-and-a-half years into his presidency and 40 days from an election, President Donald Trump on Thursday launched what aides termed a “vision” for health care heavy on unfulfilled aspirations.
“This is affirmed, signed, and done, so we can put that to rest,” Trump said. He signed an executive order on a range of issues, including protecting people with preexisting medical conditions from insurance discrimination.
But that right is already guaranteed in the Obama-era health law his administration is asking the Supreme Court to overturn.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissively said Trump's “bogus executive order on pre-existing conditions isn’t worth the paper it’s signed on.” Democrats are betting heavily that they have the edge on health care this election season.
Trump spoke at an airport hangar in swing-state North Carolina to a crowd that included white-coated, mask-wearing health care workers. He stood on a podium in front of a blue background emblazoned with “America First Healthcare Plan.” His latest health care pitch won accolades from administration officials and political supporters but failed to impress others.
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Records: Mail delivery lags behind targets as election nears
The slice of Michigan that covers Detroit, its suburbs and towns dependent on the auto industry is coveted political terrain in one of this year's most important presidential swing states. It also has another distinction as home to one of the worst-performing U.S. Postal Service districts in the country.
In Michigan and beyond, states are seeing record-breaking interest in mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic. But controversial changes at the Postal Service have compounded long-standing delivery delays nationwide and sparked concerns among election officials and voters alike over the agency's ability to deliver this fall.
Data obtained by The Associated Press shows postal districts across the country are missing by wide margins the agency’s own goals for on-time delivery, raising the possibility that scores of mailed ballots could miss deadlines for reaching local election offices if voters wait too long. Missing a deadline is a key reason mail-in ballots get rejected.
Several postal districts serving urban regions in battleground states have a history of delivering mail at below the national targets and saw sharp drop-offs in performance over the summer. The message to voters is clear: Mail those ballots early.
“As soon as possible," said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat.
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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.