California firefighters `taxed to the limit' seeking help

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) — More than two dozen major fires were scorching California on Thursday and taxing the state's firefighting capacity, sparked by an unprecedented lightning siege that dropped nearly 11,000 strikes over several days.

The fires have destroyed 175 structures, including homes, and are threatening 50,000 more, said Daniel Berlant, an assistant deputy director with the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. In all, 33 civilians and firefighters have been injured, and two people have died.

Most of the activity is in Northern California, where fires have chewed through about 500 square miles (1,250 square kilometers) of brushland, rural areas, canyon country and dense forest surrounding San Francisco.

More than 10,000 firefighters are on the front lines, but fire officials in charge of each of the major fire complexes say they are strapped for resources. Some firefighters were working 72-hour shifts instead of the usual 24 hours. The state has requested 375 engines and crew from other states.

“That’s going to allow our firefighters that have have been on the front line since this weekend to have an opportunity to take some rest," Berlant said.

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Ex-Trump aide Bannon pleads not guilty in border wall scheme

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was pulled from a luxury yacht and arrested Thursday on allegations that he and three associates ripped off donors trying to fund a southern border wall, making him the latest in a long list of Trump allies to be charged with a crime.

The organizers of the “We Build The Wall” group portrayed themselves as eager to help the president build a “big beautiful” barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border, as he promised during the 2016 campaign. They raised more than $25 million from thousands of donors and pledged that 100% of the money would be used for the project.

But according to the criminal charges unsealed Thursday, much of the money never made it to the wall. Instead, it was used to line the pockets of group members, including Bannon, who served in Trump's White House and worked for his campaign. He allegedly took over $1 million, using some to secretly pay co-defendant Brian Kolfage, the founder of the project, and to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal expenses.

Hours after his arrest, Bannon pleaded not guilty during an appearance in a Manhattan federal court. He is the latest addition to a startlingly long list of Trump associates who have been prosecuted, including his former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, whom Bannon replaced, his longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

Trump has also made clear that he is willing to use his near-limitless pardon power to help political allies escape legal jeopardy, most recently commuting the sentence of longtime political adviser Roger Stone.

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Biden seeking party, national unity in convention climax

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Joe Biden is poised to accept the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday night, achieving the pinnacle of his nearly five-decade political career in the climax of the most unorthodox national convention in modern history.

He's also hoping for initial steps to not only unify the diverse Democratic Party but a deeply divided America as well.

The former vice president, who at 77 years old would be the oldest president ever elected, will be feted by family and former foes as he becomes the Democratic Party's official standard bearer in the campaign to defeat President Donald Trump in November.

A day after California Sen. Kamala Harris became the first Black woman to accept a major party's vice presidential nomination, Biden campaign co-chair Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Delaware congresswoman, predicted that Thursday would be “a whole 'nother level of special."

Above all, Biden is expected to focus on uniting the deeply divided nation as Americans grapple with the long and fearful health crisis, the related economic devastation and a national awakening on racial justice.

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Russia's Navalny in coma, allegedly poisoned by toxic tea

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, one of Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics, lay in a coma Friday at a Siberian hospital, the victim of what his allies said appeared to be a poisoning engineered by the Kremlin.

Navalny's organization was scrambling to make arrangements to transfer him to Germany for treatment; a German group said it was ready to send a plane for him and that a noted hospital in Berlin was ready to treat him.

The 44-year-old Navalny fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk on Thursday and was taken to a hospital after the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, Navalny's spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said on Twitter.

She told the Echo Moskvy radio station that he must have consumed poison in tea he drank at an airport cafe before boarding the plane early Thursday. During the flight, Navalny started sweating and asked her to talk to him so that he could “focus on the sound of a voice." He then went to the bathroom and lost consciousness, and has been in a coma and on a ventilator in grave condition ever since.

In a video statement released early Friday in Omsk, Yarmysh said Navalny remained in critical condition and she called on the hospital's leadership “not to obstruct us from providing all necessary documents for his transfer.” It was not clear what the possible obstructions could be.

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US demands restoration of UN sanctions against Iran

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The Trump administration on Thursday formally notified the United Nations of its demand for all U.N. sanctions on Iran to be restored, setting off an immediate confrontation with Russia and other Security Council members, including America's European allies, who called the U.S. move illegal.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered the notification to the president of the U.N. Security Council, citing significant Iranian violations of the 2015 nuclear deal, a requirement to “snap back” U.N. sanctions.

“The United States will never allow the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism to freely buy and sell planes, tanks, missiles and other kinds of conventional weapons ... (or) to have a nuclear weapon," Pompeo told a U.N. press conference.

He said the U.S. action will extend the arms embargo, which is set to expire Oct. 18, and prohibit Iran from ballistic missile testing and enrichment of nuclear material.

A Russian deputy ambassador to the U.N., Dmitry Polyansky, shot back on Twitter: “Looks like there are 2 planets. A fictional dog-eat-dog one where US pretends it can do whatever it wants without ‘cajoling’ anyone, breach and leave deals but still benefit from them, and another one where the rest of the world lives and where intl law and diplomacy reign.”

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Rise in jobless claims reflects still-struggling US economy

WASHINGTON (AP) — The coronavirus recession struck swiftly and violently. Now, with the U.S. economy still in the grip of the outbreak five months later, the recovery looks fitful and uneven — and painfully slow.

The latest evidence came Thursday, when the government reported that the number of workers applying for unemployment climbed back over 1 million last week after two weeks of declines.

The figures suggest that employers are still slashing jobs even as some businesses reopen and some sectors like housing and manufacturing have rebounded.

“Getting the virus in check dictates when there’ll be relief from this economic nightmare, and it doesn’t look like it will be soon,” said AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at Indeed, a job listings website.

The scourge in the U.S. has killed more than 170,000 people and caused over 5.5 million confirmed infections, with deaths rising by more than 1,000 a day on average. Worldwide, the death toll stands at about 790,000, with over 22 million cases.

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Young children pose a dilemma for airlines with mask rules

DALLAS (AP) — Two recent incidents involving young children who refused to wear face masks show how airlines are struggling to balance safety with compassionate treatment of all their customers during a pandemic.

JetBlue Airways forced a woman and her six children off a plane this week when her 2-year-old daughter wouldn’t keep her mask on.

“It was horrible, the whole experience was traumatizing,” the mother, Chaya Bruck, told the New York Daily News from the airport in Orlando, Florida, where the Brooklyn family was stranded.

Last week, a Texas woman said Southwest Airlines booted her family off a plane after one of the children, a 3-year-old with autism, refused to wear a mask. Alyssa Sadler said her son became upset because he does not like to have his face touched.

All major U.S. airlines have mask rules and have banned at least a couple hundred passengers who have refused to comply. Typically, the violators are adults who argue that there is no government requirement to wear a mask — there isn’t; the Federal Aviation Administration has declined to impose one, leaving it up to the airlines.

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1 in 5 nursing homes short on PPE and staff in virus rebound

WASHINGTON (AP) — One in five U.S. nursing homes faced severe shortages of protective gear like N95 masks this summer even as the Trump administration pledged to help, according to a study released Thursday that finds facilities in areas hard-hit by COVID-19 also struggled to keep staff.

Significantly, there was no improvement from May to July in the shortages of personal protective equipment, known as PPE, or in the staffing shortfalls, according to the analysis of federal data by academic researchers. The summer has seen the coronavirus surge across the South, and much of the West and Midwest.

People living in long-term care facilities represent less than 1% of the U.S. population, but account for 43% of coronavirus deaths, according to the COVID Tracking Project. Similar glaring disparities have been seen with nursing home residents in other countries, but in the U.S. the issue has become politically sensitive for President Donald Trump, who is trying to hang on to support from older voters in his reelection bid.

“A study that shows that 1 in 5 nursing homes has a severe shortage of PPE and a shortage of staff, and that it did not change from May to July, should be a massive red flag,” said Terry Fulmer, president of the John A. Hartford Foundation, a nonprofit that works to improve care for older adults.

“We have had no coherent federal response,” added Fulmer, who was not involved in the research.

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Facebook stirs anger, abandons drilling gear on Oregon coast

TIERRA DEL MAR, Ore. (AP) — Facebook's effort to build a landing site in a village on the Oregon coast for a fiber optic cable linking Asia and North America has run into serious trouble.

First, a drill pipe snapped under the seabed. Workers left 1,100 feet of pipe, 6,500 gallons of drilling fluid, a drill tip and other materials under the seabed as they closed down the site, aiming to try again next year.

And then the Facebook subsidiary waited seven weeks before telling state officials about the abandoned equipment, according to the Oregon Department of State Lands.

Homeowners in Tierra del Mar, which has around 200 houses, no stoplights or cellphone service, had opposed the project from the start, pointing out that it's zoned residential and that having a cable landing site threatened the character of their community and could invite similar projects.

Now they are furious, and political leaders are too.

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Virtual Emmys: Less walking, talking, but beware the Wi-Fi

LOS ANGELES (AP) — In a typical Hollywood awards show, it’s the orchestra’s task to nudge off winners whose acceptance speeches wander into overtime. In a virtual ceremony, the internet could give them an unintentional boot.

A balky online connection is among the pitfalls that may face next month’s prime-time Emmy Awards, forced into socially distanced safety by the coronavirus pandemic.

Whether ABC and the ceremony’s producers decide to gamble on mixing live and pre-taped elements remains to be seen, with planning for the Sept. 20 event hosted by Jimmy Kimmel under wraps.

The risks and rewards of going live are well-known to Adam Sharp, head of the New York-based TV academy that administers Emmys for programs outside of prime-time series; those are under the auspices of the LA-based TV academy.

He has already soldiered through the daytime and sports Emmy ceremonies that were in the vanguard of an unprecedented awards season. The Aug. 11 sports awards tackled a challenging live presentation.