AP News Digest 2 p.m.
Columbia Basin Herald | UPDATED 6 years, 2 months AGO
Here are the AP’s latest coverage plans, top stories and promotable content. All times EDT. For up-to-the minute information on AP’s coverage, visit Coverage Plan at https://newsroom.ap.org.
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ONLY ON AP
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AP POLL-VIRUS OUTBREAK-REOPENING — Support for measures that slowed COVID-19’s spread has declined from the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, amid fears from experts that complacency could be spurring new cases, a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds. Still, many Americans never fully embraced the reopening effort now underway in many states. By Kevin Freking and Hannah Fingerhut. UPCOMING: 855 words by 2:30 p.m., photos, graphics.
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VIRUS OUTBREAK-GLOBAL — The number of new coronavirus cases per day in the U.S. stood near an all-time high, hovering close to the peak reached in late April during some of the darkest and deadliest days of the crisis. While greatly expanded testing probably accounts for some of the increase, experts say other measures indicate the virus is making a comeback. By Jennifer Peltz and Elaine Kurtenbach. SENT: 800 words, photos.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-TRUMP -- U.S. officials believe as many as 20 million Americans have contracted the coronavirus since COVID-19 first arrived in the country, suggesting millions had the virus and never knew it. That’s nearly 10 times as many infections as the 2.3 million cases that have been confirmed in the U.S. and comes as the Trump administration works to tamp down nationwide concern about the COVID-19 pandemic when about a dozen states are seeing worrisome increases in cases. By Zeke Miller and Marilynn Marchione. UPCOMING: 900 words by 3 p.m., photos.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-TESTING LAG — As part of the plan to restart its season, the NBA is preparing to test players, coaches and others for the coronavirus each night inside a basketball bubble in Orlando, Florida. Test results will come back the next morning, before that day’s schedule of practices and games begins. That sort of rapid turn-around is the gold standard for tracking a disease that continues to spread with alarming speed, yet an Associated Press survey of selected U.S. states shows it is rarely met even as testing capacity has increased. By Christina A. Cassidy. UPCOMING: 1,000 words, photos by 4 p.m.
MED--VIRUS OUTBREAK-TELEPHONE CARE —Worries about coronavirus exposure have pushed some patients into relying on audio-only telephone calls for their care, even as technology and changes in government regulations make video telemedicine easier. Doctors say some of their older and poorer patients lack a fast internet connection, smartphone or computer, which are essential elements for video visits. Doctors say they are doing more care over the telephone than they ever have, but they see these visits as a last resort. By Regina Garcia Cano and Tom Murphy. SENT: 910 words, photos.
Find more coverage of the Virus Outbreak in AP Newsroom.
RACIAL INJUSTICE-LAW ENFORCEMENT — Law enforcement officers say they’re caught in the middle of the raging nationwide debate over police reform and brutality. They've been jeered, attacked and in at least one case killed in the protests as a long history of systemic racism in criminal justice is laid bare. But they've also been ridiculed for taking a knee in support of the demonstrations around the country after George Floyd’s death. By Colleen Long and Michael Balsamo. UPCOMING: 1,000 words, photos by 3 p.m.
RACIAL INJUSTICE-TRUMP MONUMENTS — The National Guard will be deployed to patrol national monuments in the nation’s capital, after protesters this week tried to bring down a statue of Andrew Jackson, one of President Trump’s favorite presidents, in the park across from the White House. Other monuments in D.C. have also been eyed for removal. By Kevin Freking. UPCOMING: 750 words by 3 p.m., photos.
Find more coverage of Racial Injustice in AP Newsroom.
VIRUS OUTBREAK UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS — The number of laid-off workers seeking U.S. unemployment benefits dipped only slightly last week, and the economy shrank in the first three months of the year — evidence of the ongoing economic damage being inflicted by the viral pandemic. By Christopher Rugaber. SENT: 1,100 words, photos. WITH: ECONOMY-GDP — The U.S. economy shrank at a 5.0% rate in the first quarter with a much worse decline expected in the current three-month economic period. SENT: 500 words, photos. WITH: FINANCIAL MARKETS — Stocks rose on Wall Street after a choppy start as investors weigh a mixed batch of economic reports. SENT: 500 words, photos, developing.
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MORE ON THE VIRUS OUTBREAK
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VIRUS OUTBREAK-UNAWARE OF COVID-19 — A half-year into the pandemic, it’s hard to imagine that anyone, anywhere hasn’t heard of the coronavirus. But scores of migrants arriving in Somalia, many who are en route to rich Gulf nations, tell United Nations workers every day that they are unaware of COVID-19. SENT: 750 words, photos.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-STILL AT SEA — When the coronavirus made U.S. Navy ship stops in foreign countries too risky, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the USS San Jacinto were ordered to keep moving and avoid all port visits. More than five months after they set sail, they have broken a record they never planned to achieve -- their 161st consecutive day at sea, breaking the previous Navy record of 160 days. SENT: 999 words, photo.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-PRIVATE SCHOOLS — The Trump administration moves forward with a policy ordering public schools across the U.S. to share coronavirus relief funding with private schools at a higher rate than federal law typically requires. UPCOMING: 700 words by 4 p.m., photo.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-EIFFEL TOWER — Marking another milestone in France’s recovery from coronavirus lockdown, the Eiffel Tower reopened to visitors after its longest-ever closure in peacetime: 104 days. SENT: 290 words, photos.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-INDIA-NEW DELHI TESTING — Indian authorities are launching a massive coronavirus survey taking down health details from New Delhi’s entire population of 29 million and testing everyone with symptoms by July 6. SENT: 530 words, photos.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-MISSING CAMP -- For millions of kids in the U.S., late June has been a time they wait for all year long — the start of summer camp. But this year most overnight summer camps are canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. For those who love camp it’s yet another childhood milestone missed. SENT: 985 words, photos.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-DIARY-MOVIE THEATERS -- Movie theaters have been closed throughout the country since mid-March, and AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr had been away from the silver screen for almost 100 days. Now that some are beginning to reopen, Bahr cautiously went back to the movies in her childhood hometown for a screening of “The Goonies.” Everywhere there were reminders that this is not regular moviegoing. SENT: 630 words, photos.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-ONE GOOD THING-RUNNING FOR GRANDMA -- As his “Nana” battled COVID-19, endurance athlete Corey Cappelloni ran 218 miles from Washington, D.C., to her nursing home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to lift her spirits. Cappelloni arrived June 19 to balloons and cheers by the facility’s workers. Ruth Andres, 98, peered from her fourth-floor window as he gave her words of encouragement by cellphone. SENT: 650 words, photos, video.
A separate advisory has moved outlining the AP's complete coronavirus coverage.
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MORE ON RACIAL INJUSTICE
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RACIAL INJUSTICE-CONGRESS —House Democrats return to Washington for a day heavy with emotion and symbolism as they vote on their sweeping policing overhaul bill, intended to address the global outcry over the death of George Floyd and other Black Americans. But with the Republican policing bill stalled in the Senate, the House measure has little chance of becoming law, despite backing by the nation’s leading civil rights groups. SENT: 899 words. UPCOMING: Evening House vote expected, 900 words by 7 p.m., photos, video.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-RELIEF CHECKS-DECEASED — Nearly 1.1 million coronavirus relief payments totaling some $1.4 billion went to dead people, a government watchdog reports. And while the government has asked survivors to return the money, it’s not clear they have to. SENT: 440 words. UPCOMING: Developing, 700 words by 4 p.m., photos.
RACIAL INJUSTICE-REMOVING HATE TATTOOS --A Vermont tattoo artist is offering a free service to people who want to remove or cover hateful skin art. Since the death of George Floyd, he has been getting so many requests he’s looking for an office manager to schedule his appointments. SENT: 695 words, photos.
RACIAL INJUSTICE-KENTUCKY IMPATIENCE — The outcry has reverberated for weeks online and at demonstrations nationwide: Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor. But three months after plainclothes detectives serving a warrant busted into her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment and shot the 26-year-old Black woman to death, only one of the three officers who opened fire has lost his job. No one is facing criminal charges. SENT: 730 words, photos.
RACIAL INJUSTICE-FLOYD REENACTMENT -- New Jersey’s Department of Corrections says it has filed removal proceedings against an officer seen in a video with people mocking George Floyd’s death as protesters passed by. SENT: 375 words.
RACIAL INJUSTICE-EMANCIPATION STATUE — Calls are intensifying for the removal of twin Emancipation memorials in Washington, D.C., and Boston that depict a freed slave kneeling at Abraham Lincoln’s feet — optics that jar and offend many in a nation confronting racial injustice through a fresh lens. SENT: 580 words, photos.
POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY-NEW YORK -- A New York City police officer who was suspended after putting a man in what authorities said was a banned chokehold now faces criminal charges. SENT: 500 words, photos.
RACIAL INJUSTICE-OFFICERS FIRED-VIDEO — North Carolina prosecutors have dismissed cases involving three officers who were fired after a video recording captured one of them saying a civil war was necessary to wipe Black people off the map and that he was ready. SENT: 300 words.
RACIAL INJUSTICE-DISNEY RIDE — The Splash Mountain ride at Disney parks in California and Florida is being recast. Disney officials said the ride would no longer be tied to the 1946 movie, “Song of the South,” which many view as racist. Instead, the revamped ride will be inspired by the 2009 Disney film “The Princess and the Frog.” SENT: 230 words, photos.
MASK PROTEST-FLOYD REMARK — A city council member in suburban Phoenix is drawing criticism from the governor and others after invoking George Floyd’s dying words of “I can’t breathe” during a protest over an order to wear masks to stop the spread of coronavirus. SENT: 400 words.
RACIAL INJUSTICE-CONFEDERATE FLAG-MISSISSIPPI — Former Mississippi governor says it's time to remove rebel emblem from state flag. SENT: 500 words, photo.
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WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT
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MUSIC-DIXIE CHICKS — Grammy-winning country group The Dixie Chicks have dropped the word Dixie from their name, now going by The Chicks. SENT: 330 words, photos.
CHUCK E CHEESE-BANKRUPTCY — Chuck E. Cheese - where kids could be kids while parents nursed headaches - is filing for bankruptcy protection. SENT: 450 words, photo.
GOOGLE NEWS PAYMENTS — Google says it will start paying some news publishers for their journalistic content. SENT: 235 words, photo.
TANZANIA-MINER TO MILLIONAIRE -- A miner in Tanzania becomes an overnight millionaire after unearthing two of the biggest rough tanzanite gemstones ever found. SENT: 175 words.
UNILEVER-DIVERSITY -- Consumer products giant Unilever says it is aiming for a “more inclusive vision of beauty” and will remove words such as “fair,” “whitening” and “lightening” from its products. SENT: 250 words, photo.
INDIA LIGHTNING DEATHS — Lightning killed 83 people, mostly farm workers, and injured 10 others during thunderstorms in India. SENT: 110 words.
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ELECTION 2020 — President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden are both in battleground states where their contrasting approaches to the pandemic and economic crisis will be on full display. UPCOMING: 600 words by 2:30 p.m., photos, video. WITH: ELECTION 2020-TRUMP — President Donald Trump’s return to Wisconsin takes him to a shipyard in a deeply conservative area where Navy warships are being built. Trump may find fodder for his law-and-order message after this week’s violent protests in the liberal capital, Madison. SENT: 770 words. UPCOMING: Developing from events starting at 2:30 p.m., 850 words by 5 p.m., photos, video.
Find more coverage of the 2020 U.S. Elections in AP Newsroom.
SUPREME COURT-IMMIGRATION ASYLUM — The Supreme Court strengthens the Trump administration’s ability to deport people seeking asylum without allowing them to make their case to a federal judge. While the immediate impact may be limited, experts suggest the administration may try to use Justice Samuel Alito’s sweeping language to bolster broader efforts to restrict asylum. By Mark Sherman. SENT: 660 words. UPCOMING: Developing, 800 words by 4 p.m., photos.
TRUMP-FOURTH OF JULY -- Government watchdogs say President Trump’s Fourth of July gala in the nation’s capital last year cost taxpayers more than $13 million, twice as much as previous celebrations. Trump’s desire to have Department of Defense military vehicles participate helped drive up the cost at a gala that went beyond the traditional concert and fireworks of years past. By Ellen Knickmeyer. SENT: 120 words, photo. UPCOMING: 600 words by 3 p.m.
ELECTION 2020-WHERE’S MARKEY? -- Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Edward Markey has missed dozens of votes in the past two months as the coronavirus pandemic raged in Massachusetts. Markey, who is locked in a tough re-election primary battle against a fellow Democrat — U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III — missed 34 of 42 Senate votes in May and the first half of June, or about 80% of votes. SENT: 790 words, photos.
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PAKISTAN PLANE CRASH — Pakistan’s state-run airline said it will ground 150 pilots, accusing them of obtaining licenses by having others take exams for them after a probe into last month’s crash that killed 97 people in Karachi. Abdullah Hafeez, a spokesman for Pakistan International Airlines, didn’t give additional details about the cheating but said a process to fire the pilots had been initiated. SENT: 515 words, photos.
KOREAS-WAR ANNIVERSARY — North and South Korea mark the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War with largely subdued commemorations amid the coronavirus pandemic, a day after the North abruptly halted a pressure campaign against the South. SENT: 810 words, photos.
IRAN-TELEVISED CONFESSIONS — Iranian state television has broadcast the suspected coerced confessions of at least 355 people over the last decade to both suppress dissent and frighten activists in the Islamic Republic on behalf of security services, a report says. SENT: 820 words, photos.
RUSSIA-VOTE — Polls open in Russia for a weeklong vote on constitutional changes that would allow President Vladimir Putin to stay in power until 2036. SENT: 535 words, photos.
EGYPT-EDITOR ARRESTED — A leading media watchdog group is condemning the arrest of the editor of one of Egypt’s few remaining independent news outlets. SENT: 380 words.
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LGBTQ PRIDE-50 YEARS -- LGBTQ Pride is turning 50 this year a little short on its signature fanfare, after the coronavirus pandemic drove it to the internet and after calls for racial equality sparked by the killing of George Floyd further overtook it. SENT: 770 words, photos.
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HEALTH & SCIENCE
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SCI--VIRUS OUTBREAK-SPACE DASHBOARD -- Three space agencies are showing people how the coronavirus lockdowns are changing Earth in real time. NASA, the European Space Agency and Japan’s space agency unveiled a dashboard on the web so that people can see 50 different changes to Earth, some environmental, some economic and a few agricultural. SENT: 275 words, photo.
SCI--NASA HEADQUARTERS-HIDDEN FIGURES -- NASA is naming its headquarters in Washington after the space agency’s first African American female engineer. Mary Jackson started her NASA career as part of a segregated unit of female mathematicians at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The women did calculations during the early pre-computer days of the U.S. space program. SENT: 200 words, photo.
CONGO-END TO EBOLA — Eastern Congo marked an official end to the second deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, which killed 2,280 people over nearly two years, as armed rebels and community mistrust undermined the promise of new vaccines. SENT: 620 words, photos.
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HOTEL LOANS — Since the coronavirus crisis started, hotel owners say they are struggling to get relief on a type of loan that Wall Street investors buy. These commercial mortgage-backed securities loans are packaged in the form of bonds with the loans on properties such as hotels serving as collateral. Since the coronavirus halted most travel, many hotel owners have had to lay off workers and they’ve been unable to make monthly payments on their loans. SENT: 970 words, photos.
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RACIAL INJUSTICE-ANTEBELLUM FILM — “Antebellum,” the forthcoming psychological thriller starring singer-actor Janelle Monae, plucks the experience of American slavery out of the past and places it squarely in our present. The film depicts a divided U.S. where Confederate nostalgia and white nationalism find new platforms to wreak havoc on Black liberty and the Black psyche. SENT: 1,125 words, photos.
TV-I’LL BE GONE IN THE DARK — They say timing is everything when it comes to documentary filmmaking. If so, director Liz Garbus has been blessed with plenty of it in her latest project, “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark,” a six-part documentary series debuting Sunday on HBO. By AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy. SENT: 750 words, photos.
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BBO—DOWN TIME —Finally, major leaguers are on track to resume this virus-abbreviated 2020 season. The hiatus has provided a welcomed dose of extra family time for many, but the unprecedented idling this spring and summer for players used to being on the diamond daily has predictably created a collective antsy feeling around the game. UPCOMING: 700 words, photos, by 6 p.m.
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HOW TO REACH US
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At the Nerve Center, Richard A. Somma can be reached at 800-845-8450 (ext. 1600). For photos, Courtnery Dittmar (ext. 1900). For graphics and interactives, Phil Holm (ext. 7636). Expanded AP content can be obtained from http://newsroom.ap.org. For access to AP Newsroom and other technical issues, contact apcustomersupport(at)ap.org or call 877-836-9477.