AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EST

Virus effects take hold as Trump calls criticisms a 'hoax'

TOKYO (AP) — The coronavirus outbreak's impact on the world economy grew more alarming on Saturday, even as President Donald Trump denounced criticisms of his response to the threat as a “hoax" cooked up by his political enemies.

New data released by manufacturing powerhouse China, where the virus was first detected in December, showed a sharp drop in the purchasing managers' index to 35.7 in February, down from 50 in January. Any reading above 50 indicates expansion, while a reading below shows contraction.

National Bureau of Statistics senior statistician Zhao Qinghe said the novel coronavirus outbreak was a direct cause of the sharp decline.

An Iranian Health Ministry spokesman said Saturday that the virus has killed 43 people amid 593 confirmed cases in the Islamic Republic. Iran has the world’s highest death toll outside of China.

Earlier Saturday, Bahrain threatened legal prosecution against travelers who came from Iran and hadn't been tested for the virus, and also barred public gatherings for two weeks.

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As virus spreads, other countries can learn from China

BEIJING (AP) — As the new coronavirus spread rapidly in central China, the country’s authoritarian government took a very authoritarian step: It ordered the unprecedented lockdown of 60 million people in the hardest-hit province.

The shutdown of public transport in some cities, the closing of entertainment venues nationwide and a heavy dose of fear emptied the streets of the world’s most populous nation.

Now that the virus has reached every continent except Antarctica, with South America's first confirmed case this week, the World Health Organization is proposing a challenge for others: Be more like China.

Simply put, if a disease isn’t truly understood and there are no medicines or vaccines for it, then quarantine is the most effective way to curb its spread. And acting fast is crucial, as China learned, after its initial tepid response.

The question before the world is to what extent it can and wants to replicate China’s draconian methods.

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Trump picks Ratcliffe as top intelligence official, again

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday picked Rep. John Ratcliffe again to be the nation's top intelligence official, just months after abruptly ending an earlier effort to install him amid bipartisan criticism that the Texas Republican was unqualified for the post.

Trump's decision meant that once again the GOP-led Senate would have to decide whether to put the three-term lawmaker in charge of overseeing the 17 U.S. spy agencies that the president has repeatedly scorned.

It also puts the leadership of the intelligence community in the spotlight early in an election year in which those agencies are already warning that Russia is trying anew to interfere in the presidential race. Democrats have also accused Trump of installing people atop some agencies most noteworthy for their fealty to him, not intelligence expertise.

“All while our elections are perilously at risk of foreign interference. Just the way the President likes it,” tweeted Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who chairs the House Intelligence Committee and helped lead his impeachment by the House.

Trump initially named Ratcliffe for the job last summer, but abruptly withdrew his name just five days later, before the Senate even considered him. The president bowed to questions about Ratcliffe's qualifications and bipartisan concerns that he had little experience in the field of intelligence.

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Biden looks for first 2020 victory in South Carolina primary

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The Democrats' 2020 nominating fight turned to South Carolina on Saturday for the first-in-the-South primary, with Joe Biden confident that his popularity with black voters will seal him a victory and help blunt some of front-runner Bernie Sanders' momentum.

The primary stands as the first marker on a critical four-day stretch that will help determine whether the party rallies behind Sanders or embraces a longer and uglier slog that could carry on until the national convention.

“Only two things are going to happen: either Bernie or brokered,” said James Carville, a veteran Democratic strategist.

Carville is uncomfortable with a Sanders nomination but fears that a brokered convention — in which party bosses or delegates in floor fights and negotiations decide the nominee after no candidate amasses enough delegates in the primary — would inflict serious damage on the party, as well. “It’s just hard for me to see beyond the two options," he said.

In Saturday's primary, Biden and his establishment allies hope to slow Sanders' rise — and change the trajectory of the race — with a convincing victory demonstrating his strength among African Americans. But just three days later, Sanders believes he's positioned to seize a major delegate advantage when 14 states and one U.S. territory vote on “Super Tuesday.”

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Court halts Trump asylum policy, then suspends its own order

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel voted unanimously Friday to suspend an order it issued earlier in the day to block a central pillar of the Trump administration’s policy requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases wind through U.S. courts.

The three-judge panel told the government to file written arguments by the end of Monday and for the plaintiffs to respond by the end of Tuesday.

The Justice Department said at least 25,000 asylum seekers subject to the policy are currently waiting in Mexico and expressed “massive and irreparable national-security of public-safety concerns.”

Government attorneys said immigration lawyers had begun demanding that asylum seekers be allowed in the United States, with one insisting that 1,000 people be allowed to enter at one location.

“The Court’s reinstatement of the injunction causes the United States public and the government significant and irreparable harms — to border security, public safety, public health, and diplomatic relations,” Justice Department attorneys wrote.

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Joe Coulombe, founder of popular Trader Joe’s markets, dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Joe Coulombe envisioned a new generation of young grocery shoppers emerging in the 1960s, one that wanted healthy, tasty, high-quality food they couldn’t find in most supermarkets and couldn’t afford to buy in the few high-end gourmet outlets.

So he found a new way to bring everything from a then-exotic snack food called granola to the California-produced wines that for flavor compared with anything from France. And he made shopping for them almost as much fun as sailing the high seas when he created Trader Joe’s, a quirky little grocery store filled with nautical themes and staffed not by managers and clerks but by “captains and mates.”

From the time he opened his first store in Pasadena, California, in 1967 until his death Friday at age 89, Coulombe watched his namesake business rise from a cult favorite of educated but underpaid young people — and a few hippies — to a retail giant with more than 500 outlets in over 40 states.

A giant yes, but one that across more than half a century has never lost its reputation for friendly service from employees decked out in goofy Hawaiian shirts, a newsletter that looks like it was published in the 1890s, and rows and rows of high-quality, moderately priced healthy food and great wine, even if you sometimes can’t ever again find exactly the same thing.

“He wanted to make sure whatever was sold in our store was of good value,” said Coulombe’s son, also named Joe, who added that his father died following a long illness. “He always did lots of taste tests. My sisters and I remember him bringing home all kinds of things for us to try. At his offices he had practically daily tastings of new products. Always the aim was to provide good food and good value to people.”

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States to get test kits as White House amps up virus effort

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health officials scrambled Friday to get coronavirus testing up and running in every state, as the Trump administration signaled it may also invoke a 70-year-old defense law to guarantee the availability of protective gear should the virus spread.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said two more Americans tested positive for the virus out of the group of quarantined passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

Health officials in California, Oregon and Washington state worried about the virus spreading through West Coast communities after confirming three patients were infected by unknown means.

The World Health Organization upgraded the risk level from the virus to “very high” as it continued to spread around the globe. Friday evening, the State Department issued an advisory telling Americans to avoid nonessential travel to Italy, which has seen nearly 900 cases. A travel advisory already is in place for China.

Two days after the White House abruptly shifted gears from President Donald Trump's initial assurances of minimal U.S. fallout to an all-out mobilization under Vice President Mike Pence, the administration's messaging still wasn't completely seamless.

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The big crunch: For 2020 Dems, March is key in delegate race

WASHINGTON (AP) — March is crunch time for Democratic presidential candidates, with a nominee likely to emerge over the next several weeks, if not sooner.

Nearly two-thirds of the party’s national delegates are up for grabs in a 30-day time period starting with Saturday’s South Carolina primary. The biggest prizes come on Tuesday, when 1,344 delegates will be at stake in 14 states and American Samoa.

If one candidate can emerge from Super Tuesday with a significant lead in the delegate count, it would be very difficult for anyone to catch up. If that same candidate racks up big victories the following two weeks, when 10 more states and the Northern Mariana Islands have contests, the race would be all but over.

Bernie Sanders is the clear front-runner after winning New Hampshire and Nevada, and essentially tying with Pete Buttigieg in Iowa. If any of the other candidates hope to stop him, they have to start now.

“Starting with Super Tuesday, we shift from the momentum race to the delegate race,” Virginia Tech political scientist Caitlin Jewitt said in an email. She said during the next month, “if Sanders can rapidly amass delegates and expand his delegate lead, it is more likely that his competitors will begin to see his nomination as inevitable and withdraw from the race.”

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US, Taliban set peace signing for America's longest war

WASHINGTON (AP) — America's longest war may finally be nearing an end.

The United States and the Islamists it toppled from power in Afghanistan are poised to sign a peace deal Saturday after a conflict that outlasted two U.S. commanders in chief and is now led by a third eager to fulfill a campaign promise to extricate America from “endless wars."

More than 18 years since President George W. Bush ordered bombing in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the agreement will set the stage for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, some of whom were not yet born when the World Trade Center collapsed on that crisp, sunny morning that changed how Americans see the world.

Saturday's ceremony also signals the potential end of a tremendous investment of blood and treasure. The U.S. spent more than $750 billion, and on all sides the war cost tens of thousands of lives lost, permanently scarred and indelibly interrupted. Yet it's also a conflict that is frequently ignored by U.S. politicians and the American public.

In the Qatari capital of Doha, America’s top diplomat will stand with leaders of the Taliban, Afghanistan's former rulers who harbored Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network as they plotted, and then celebrated, the hijackings of four airliners that were crashed into lower Manhattan, the Pentagon and a field in western Pennsylvania, killing almost 3,000 people.

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AP Week in Pictures

FEBRUARY 22-28, 2020

This photo gallery highlights some of the most compelling images made or published by Associated Press photographers around the world.

The gallery was curated by AP photo editor Patrick Sison in New York.

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