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

Extra unemployment aid expires as virus threatens new states

LOS ANGELES (AP) — As public health officials warned Friday that the coronavirus posed new risks to parts of the Midwest and South, enhanced federal payments that helped avert financial ruin for millions of unemployed Americans were set to expire — leaving threadbare safety nets offered by individual states to catch them.

Since early in the pandemic, the federal government has added $600 to the weekly unemployment checks that states send. That increase ends this week, and with Congress still haggling over next steps, most states will not be able to offer nearly as much.

The extra federal aid helped keep Wally Wendt and his family afloat.

Wendt, 54, of Everett, Washington, was laid off from the fitness company where he worked for 31 years. The extra federal benefits helped him pay a loan to put a new roof on his house that he took out before the virus struck and the economy cratered.

The money also helps his daughter, who lost her restaurant job. With the boost, she can afford diapers, baby formula, rent and utilities. Without it, Wendt said, his daughter and her two children might move in with him.

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AP-NORC poll: Nearly half say job lost to virus won't return

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly half of Americans whose families experienced a layoff during the coronavirus pandemic now believe those jobs are lost forever, a new poll shows, a sign of increasing pessimism that would translate into roughly 10 million workers needing to find a new employer, if not a new occupation.

It's a sharp change after initial optimism the jobs would return, as temporary cutbacks give way to shuttered businesses, bankruptcies and lasting payroll cuts. In April, 78% of those in households with a job loss thought they'd be temporary. Now, 47% think that lost job is definitely or probably not coming back, according to the latest poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The poll is the latest sign the solid hiring of May and June, as some states lifted stay-at-home orders and the economy began to recover, may wane as the year goes on. Adding to the challenge: Many students will begin the school year online, making it harder for parents to take jobs outside their homes.

“Honestly, at this point, there’s not going to be a job to go back to,” said Tonica Daley, 35, who lives in Riverside, California, and has four children ranging from 3 to 18 years old. “The kids are going to do virtual school, and there is no day care.”

Daley was furloughed from her job as a manager at J.C. Penney, which has filed for bankruptcy protection. The extra $600 a week in jobless benefits Congress provided as part of the federal government's coronavirus relief efforts let her family pay down its credit cards, she said, but the potential expiration or reduction of those benefits in August would force her to borrow money to get by.

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Thousands of families evicted in Sao Paulo amid pandemic

SAO PAULO (AP) — Jussara de Jesus never thought that her family would live in a shack.

But work as a hairdresser dried for up after the novel coronavirus hit Brazilian metropolis Sao Paulo. She couldn't afford $150 a month in rent for the small house where she and her three children lived. Three months ago, they were evicted.

They moved to Jardim Julieta, one of Brazil's newest favelas, or shantytowns. With more than 800 shacks of wood and plastic sheeting, there are already several thousand people living in what used to be a parking lot for trucks in one of the poorest areas of the city.

“We didn’t even have the means to build the shack. We came with some plastic sheets,” de Jesus said.

The growing number of evictions driven by Brazil's COVID-19 pandemic is worsening an already serious housing problem in the country. Before the pandemic, local authorities counted more than 200,000 families waiting for adequate housing in Sao Paulo, a city of 12 million.

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Chinese researcher charged with US visa fraud is in custody

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A Chinese researcher accused of concealing her ties to the Chinese military on a visa application she submitted so she could work in the U.S. was booked Friday into a Northern California jail and was expected to appear in federal court Monday.

Sacramento County jail records show Juan Tang, 37, was being held on behalf of federal authorities after she was arrested by the U.S. Marshals Service. It was unclear if she had an attorney who could comment on her behalf.

The Justice Department on Thursday announced charges against Tang and three other scientists living in the U.S., saying they lied about their status as members of China’s People’s Liberation Army. All were charged with visa fraud.

Tang was the last of the four to be arrested, after the justice department accused the Chinese consulate in San Francisco of harboring a known fugitive. The consulate did not immediately respond to email and Facebook messages seeking comment and it was not possible to leave a telephone message.

The Justice Department said Tang lied about her military ties in a visa application last October as she made plans to work at the University of California, Davis and again during an FBI interview months later. Agents found photos of Tang dressed in military uniform and reviewed articles in China identifying her military affiliation.

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Pepcid-COVID study raised red flags weeks after $21M grant

Two months after the Trump administration awarded $21 million to study whether a common heartburn drug was effective against COVID-19, government health officials raised serious concerns about patient safety and scientific integrity, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services outlined a long list of concerns in a June 8 letter, concluding there was “a high probability” that the companies doing the research would fail to honor the terms of the deal to assess famotidine, the active ingredient in Pepcid, as a coronavirus treatment.

The AP reported Thursday that the contract with Florida-based Alchem Laboratories and its subcontractor, Northwell Health in New York, was the subject of ridicule by some government scientists who did not think the Pepcid study merited millions of federal research dollars. A federal whistleblower, Dr. Rick Bright, cited the contract as a key example of what he called unethical conduct by agency leadership in deciding how to spend taxpayer dollars to combat the coronavirus.

Despite the problems, the HHS office spearheading the federal response to the coronavirus crisis has not canceled the contract. Northwell, the state’s largest health care provider, told AP earlier this week that the famotidine trial has been paused indefinitely because of a shortage of new COVID-19 patients in New York.

In the four-page “cure notice,” HHS raised a litany of red flags about the Pepcid trial, which delivers a large dose of famotidine intravenously to patients in the study. Among them: a “lack of adequate documentation of good clinical practices related to ensuring patient safety.”

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Trump, GOP ally vow Confederate base names won't change

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and a top Senate Republican are pushing Congress to preserve the names of military bases that honor Confederate generals, even though the House and Senate have overwhelmingly approved bills that rename them.

Trump said in a tweet Friday that he had spoken to Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, “who has informed me that he WILL NOT be changing the names of our great Military Bases and Forts, places from which we won two World Wars (and more!).″

Like him, Inhofe “is not a believer in 'Cancel Culture,' ” Trump said.

Inhofe, a staunch conservative and close Trump ally, also opposes the name change, even though he led Senate approval of the defense bill that would mandate name changes at Fort Bragg, Fort Benning and other Army posts named for Confederate generals.

Inhofe told The Oklahoman newspaper that he spoke with Trump on Thursday about the base names, adding: “We’re going to see to it that provision doesn’t survive the bill. I’m not going to say how at this point.”

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NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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CLAIM: There is no coin shortage. Coins get recirculated, they don’t just disappear. The government is trying to usher in a cashless society.

THE FACTS: Not so, says The Federal Reserve, which manages the country's coin inventory. Coins aren’t being circulated because businesses are closed and sales are down during the pandemic. And the government isn’t pushing the U.S. into a cashless society, either. The U.S. Mint is actively producing more coins to alleviate the short supply. Despite that, posts circulating widely on Facebook are suggesting that the shortage of coins in the U.S. is a hoax because it doesn’t make sense for the currency to have “disappeared.” The posts suggest a larger conspiracy is at play to usher us all into a “cashless” era. The Federal Reserve has explained that the supply chain is severely disrupted by the pandemic. “With establishments like retail shops, bank branches, transit authorities and laundromats closed, the typical places where coin enters our society have slowed or even stopped the normal circulation of coin,” the Federal Reserve said in a June statement. The Federal Reserve has asked banks to only order the coins they need and to make depositing coins easy for customers. It also put together a task force of retail, bank and armored cash carrier leaders to brainstorm ways to normalize coin circulation again. The U.S. Mint, meanwhile, is moving at full speed to mint more coins, while minimizing its employees risk to COVID-19 exposure, the agency’s spokesman Michael White told The Associated Press in an email. The Mint produced nearly 1.6 billion coins last month, White said, and is on track to average about 1.65 billion per month for the rest of the year. That’s up from an average of 1 billion coins per month last year, he added.

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At 88, former Sheriff Joe Arpaio makes 2nd comeback bid

PHOENIX (AP) — Joe Arpaio is trying to win back the sheriff’s post in metro Phoenix that he held for 24 years, facing his former second-in-command in the Aug. 4 Republican primary in what has become his second comeback bid.

The 88-year-old lawman, who was unseated in the 2016 sheriff’s race by a Democratic challenger and was trounced in a 2018 U.S. Senate race, has based much of his campaign around his support for President Donald Trump.

He has vowed to bring back things that the courts have either deemed illegal or his successor has done away with — immigration crackdowns, a complex of jail tents and other now-discarded trademarks.

“I’m telling you right now: I am going to do 90% of what I did during my 24 years,” Arpaio said. “That’s the way it’s going to be.”

Arpaio and his former second-in-command, Jerry Sheridan, are considered front-runners in GOP primary. Glendale Officer Mike Crawford and Mesa security guard Lehland Burton also are seeking the Republican nomination.

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Blue Jays to play in Buffalo minor league park amid pandemic

TORONTO (AP) — The displaced Toronto Blue Jays will play in a minor league ballpark in Buffalo, New York, this year after being turned down by the Canadian government and blocked from playing in Pittsburgh by the state of Pennsylvania.

The Blue Jays' home for the season will be Sahlen Field, where the Triple-A affiliate Buffalo Bisons usually play.

The team had been looking for a major league ballpark for its home games after the Canadian government wouldn't allow it to play in Toronto but the search was unsuccessful. Pennsylvania health officials rejected a deal to play in Pittsburgh because of rising COVID-19 cases there.

The team also held talks with the Baltimore Orioles about Camden Yards, but the Blue Jays didn't want to wait on Maryland officials with their season starting Friday.

“Baltimore never got to a situation to where we were denied,” Blue Jays President Mark Shapiro said. ”At some point continuing to explore and look at an option like Baltimore was not going to be a risk we could take. That risk of being turned down certainly existed. And so we obviously had to make a decision knowing we had a very good alternative, albeit not a major league one."

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Lost toy dog returns home with help of Cincinnati airport

The Cincinnati-area airport took a child’s beloved stuffed animal for an impromptu tour, reaching many on social media, before uniting the toy Dalmatian with its family in Florida.

Staff at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport were sending the toy back to Florida on Friday. The airport's Facebook posts about the missing plaything reached 1 million people, airport spokesperson Mindy Kershner said.

Airport employees found the toy left behind in the terminal, Kershner told The Associated Press, and snapped photos of the lost traveler outfitted in a mask at the airport's restaurants, on the runway and with a K9 team.

Doug and Phyllis Ronco, of Madeira Beach, Florida, said they were driving to the St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport to retrieve their son's stuffed animal Friday morning.

The family’s flight out of the southern Ohio airport had left early in the morning the day the toy was lost, Doug Ronco said.