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

Voting largely smooth in primaries in Kentucky, New York

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Voting appeared to be running smoother in primaries on Tuesday than in elections held two weeks earlier in Georgia and Nevada, where voters experienced long lines and stood for hours outside polling places.

While there were reports of some voters in New York and Kentucky having to cast ballots in person after failing to receive an absentee ballot, it did not appear to be causing the long lines that were seen in places like Milwaukee and Atlanta.

The longest wait times were reported at the lone voting site in Lexington, Kentucky. Fayette County Clerk Don Blevins said he added two more check-in stations at the Lexington site after turnout remained steady into the late morning with voters reporting a wait time of about an hour and a half.

“This is definitely the longest that I’ve ever waited,” said 55-year-old Bob Woods, who spent nearly an hour and fifteen minutes winding through the entryway of Kroger Field on the University of Kentucky's campus with several hundred others before approaching the room where voters were being checked in.

But voting was moving smoothly in Louisville, the state’s most populous city, despite the fact residents had just one polling place available Tuesday for in-person voting.

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Fauci: Next few weeks critical to tamping down virus spikes

WASHINGTON (AP) — The next few weeks are critical to tamping down a disturbing coronavirus surge, Dr. Anthony Fauci told Congress on Tuesday — issuing a plea for people to avoid crowds and wear masks just hours before mask-shunning President Donald Trump was set to hold a campaign rally in one hot spot.

Fauci and other top health officials also said they have not been asked to slow down virus testing, in contrast to Trump’s claim last weekend that he had ordered fewer tests be performed because they were uncovering too many infections. Trump said earlier Tuesday that he wasn't kidding when he made that remark.

“We will be doing more testing,” Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health, pledged to a House committee conducting oversight of the Trump administration's response to the pandemic.

The leading public health officials spent more than five hours testifying before the committee at a fraught moment, with coronavirus cases rising in about half the states and political polarization competing for attention with public health recommendations.

Fauci told lawmakers he understands the pent-up desire to get back to normal as the U.S. begins emerging from months of stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns. But that has “to be a gradual step-by-step process and not throwing caution to the wind,” he said.

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As virus surges, Trump turns attention to border wall

SAN LUIS, Arizona (AP) — President Donald Trump visited the U.S.-Mexico border Tuesday and tried to credit his new wall with stopping both illegal immigration and the coronavirus. But his visit played out as top public health officials in Washington were testifying about the ongoing threat posed by COVID-19, singling out Arizona as one of the states now experiencing a surge in cases.

In the blazing summer heat, Trump briefly stopped to inspect a new section of the concrete and rebar structure where the president and other officials took a moment to scrawl their signatures on the wall.

"It stopped COVID, it stopped everything,” Trump said.

Trump was looking to regain campaign momentum after his weekend rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was supposed to be a sign of the nation’s reopening and a show of political force but instead generated thousands of empty seats and swirling questions about the president’s campaign leadership and his case for another four years in office. The low turnout sharpened the focus on Trump’s visit to Arizona, which doubles as both a 2020 battleground state and a surging coronavirus hot spot.

By visiting the border, Trump sought to change the subject to an issue he believes will help electrify his base in November.

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Mourners bid farewell to Rayshard Brooks at historic church

ATLANTA (AP) — Scores of mourners Tuesday paid their final respects to Rayshard Brooks at the Atlanta church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. used to preach, taking part in a funeral filled with historical echoes and a tragic sense that Black America has been through this all too many times before.

“Rayshard Brooks is the latest high-profile casualty in the struggle for justice and a battle for the soul of America. This is about him, but it is so much bigger than him,” the Rev. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, told the crowd, less than two weeks after the Black man was shot twice in the back by a white Atlanta police officer following a struggle in a fast-food parking lot.

Warnock recited a long list of names of Black people who died at the hands of police in recent years, including Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Philando Castile and George Floyd, lamenting: “Sadly we’ve gotten too much practice at this.”

Brooks’ widow, Tomika Miller, dressed in white, sat surrounded by family and friends. Former state lawmaker Stacey Abrams and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, both of whom have been mentioned as potential running mates for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, were among the mourners.

Most people dressed all in white, while some wore T-shirts with Brooks’ picture. Nearly everyone had masks on against the coronavirus.

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Powerful earthquake shakes southern Mexico, at least 4 dead

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A powerful earthquake centered near the southern Mexico resort of Huatulco killed at least four people, swayed buildings in Mexico City and sent thousands fleeing into the streets.

Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said one person was killed and another injured in a building collapse in Huatulco, Oaxaca. Otherwise he said reports were of minor damage from the magnitude 7.4 quake, including broken windows and collapsed walls. Oaxaca Gov. Alejandro Murat later said a second person was killed in an apparent house collapse in the tiny mountain village of San Juan Ozolotepec.

Federal civil defense authorities reported two more deaths: a worker at the state-run oil company, Pemex, fell to his death from a refinery structure, and a man died in the Oaxaca village of San Agustin Amatengo when a wall fell on him.

Pemex also said the quake caused a fire at its refinery in the Pacific coast city of Salina Cruz, relatively near the epicenter. It said one worker was injured and the flames were quickly extinguished. Churches, bridges and highways also suffered damage during the quake.

López Obrador said there had been more than 140 aftershocks, most of them small.

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Baptists and Walmart criticize rebel-themed Mississippi flag

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Confederate-themed Mississippi flag drew opposition Tuesday from two big forces in the culturally conservative state: Southern Baptists and Walmart.

Walmart said it will stop displaying the Mississippi flag while the state debates whether to change the design. The Mississippi Baptist Convention said lawmakers have a moral obligation to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag because many people are “hurt and shamed” by it.

“We believe it’s the right thing to do, and is consistent with Walmart’s position to not sell merchandise with the confederate flag from stores and online sites, as part of our commitment to provide a welcoming and inclusive experience for all of our customers in the communities we serve," company spokesperson Anne Hatfield said.

The announcements increase pressure for change in a state that is slow to embrace it. Protests against racial injustice across the U.S. are focusing new attention on Confederate symbols.

Mississippi has the last state flag that includes the Confederate battle emblem: a red field topped by a blue X with 13 white stars. The NCAA, the Southeastern Conference, prominent business organizations and other religious groups have already called for the state to adopt a more inclusive banner.

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Prosecutor: Trump ally Roger Stone was 'treated differently'

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal prosecutor is prepared to tell Congress on Wednesday that Roger Stone, a close ally of President Donald Trump, was given special treatment ahead of his sentencing because of his relationship with the president.

Aaron Zelinsky, a career Justice Department prosecutor who worked on cases as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, including the case against Stone, will say he was told in no uncertain terms by supervisors that political considerations influenced the handling of the case, according to testimony released by the House Judiciary Committee. Zelinsky now works in the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland.

“What I heard — repeatedly — was that Roger Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the president,” Zelinsky says in the prepared testimony.

The panel subpoenaed Zelinksy and John Elias, a career official in the department’s antitrust division, as part of its probe into the politicization of the department under Attorney General William Barr. The Democratic-led panel and Barr have been feuding since shortly after he took office in early 2019, when he declined to testify about Mueller's report.

The Democrats launched the investigation earlier this year over Barr's handling of the Stone case, but have expanded their focus to several subsequent episodes in which they believe Barr is doing Trump's bidding. That includes the department's efforts to dismiss the criminal case against Gen. Michael Flynn and the firing last weekend of the the top prosecutor in New York’s Southern District. The prosecutor, Geoffrey Berman, has been investigating the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.

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No charges in NASCAR noose incident involving Black driver

The noose found hanging in Bubba Wallace's garage stall at Talladega Superspeedway had been there since at least last October, federal authorities said Tuesday in announcing there will be no charges filed in an incident that rocked NASCAR and its only fulltime Black driver.

U.S. Attorney Jay Town and FBI Special Agent in Charge Johnnie Sharp Jr. said an investigation determined “although the noose is now known to have been in garage number 4 in 2019, nobody could have known Mr. Wallace would be assigned to garage number 4 last week.”

A crew member for Richard Petty Motorsports discovered the noose Sunday at the Alabama race track. NASCAR was alerted and contacted the FBI, which sent 15 agents to the track to investigate. They determined no federal crime was committed.

The statement said the garage stall was assigned to Wallace last week in advance of the race scheduled for Sunday but held on Monday because of rain. Through video confirmed by NASCAR it was discovered the noose“was in that garage as early as October 2019."

The agencies said the evidence did not support federal charges.

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Obama raises $7.6M for Joe Biden's campaign

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Barack Obama helped raise a record-breaking $7.6 million from more than 175,000 individual donors ahead of his first fundraiser for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

“I'm here to say that help is on the way if we do the work,” Obama said during the virtual fundraiser. “Because there's nobody that I trust more to be able to heal this country and get it back on track than my dear friend Joe Biden.”

The small-dollar fundraiser Tuesday offered a fresh test of Obama's ability to transfer his popularity to Biden, his former vice president who is now seeking the White House on his own. It was a kickoff of what Obama’s team says will likely be a busy schedule heading into the fall, as he looks to help elect not just Biden but Democrats running for House and Senate.

Obama sometimes struggled to lift other Democratic candidates while he was in the White House, notably losing control of the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. But in the era of President Donald Trump, Democrats believe Obama's appeal, especially among Black and younger voters, can help boost energy for Biden.

“There’s two groups of voters that Biden needs to move,” said Dan Pfeiffer, former White House communications director. “You have the 4 million Obama 2012 voters that sat out in ’16, Obama obviously has cache with them. And you have to persuade some number of voters who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and either Trump or a third party candidate in 2016, and Obama obviously is very, very high-performing with those as well.”

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Scottish grandmother climbs a mountain, one step at a time

LONDON (AP) — In the end, Margaret Payne scaled her mountain, one step at a time.

The 90-year-old grandmother who launched an epic climb to raise money for charity completed her fundraiser Tuesday. Paybe scaled the stairs at her home the equivalent of 731 meters (2,398 feet) — enough to reach the peak of Scotland's iconic Suilven mountain.

Payne, who is from Ardvar in the Scottish Highlands, calculated that climbing 282 flights of her staircase would get her to the top of a mountain she climbed only once, when she was 15.

“I just climbed a few stairs every day until I got to the top, 282 times,’’ Payne told The Associated Press. The feat took her 73 days and kept her busy for 10 weeks while the U.K. sheltered in lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Payne took on the challenge after being inspired by military veteran Tom Moore, who completed 100 laps of his garden just before his 100th birthday to raise money for the National Health Service. The feat captivated the lockdown nation, and Moore ended up raising some 33 million pounds ($40 million).