Virus taking stronger hold in US, other populated countries

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — While China moved closer to containing a fresh outbreak in Beijing, the coronavirus took a stronger hold elsewhere, including the United States, where surging infections across southern states have highlighted the risks of reopening economies without effective treatment or vaccines.

Another record daily increase in India on Friday pushed the country’s caseload toward half a million, and other countries with large populations like Indonesia, Pakistan and Mexico grappled with large caseloads and strained health care systems.

South Africa, which accounts for about half of the infections on the African continent with 118,375, reported a record 6,579 new cases, as transmissions increase after it loosened what had been one of the world’s strictest lockdowns earlier this month.

Mexico reported some of its highest 24-hours counts so far with 6,104 new cases and 736 additional deaths, as its treasury secretary began isolating at home after a positive test.

In China, where the pandemic originated in December, authorities have mobilized resources for mass testing and locked down parts of Beijing this month due to an outbreak that has infected 260 people. The 11 new cases reported in the capital Friday continued a downward trend that suggests transmissions have been largely brought under control.

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Despite pandemic, Trump administration urges end to ACA

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

The administration's latest high court filing came the same day the government reported that close to half a million people who lost their health insurance amid the economic shutdown to slow the spread of COVID-19 have gotten coverage through HealthCare.gov.

The administration's legal brief makes no mention of the virus.

Some 20 million Americans could lose their health coverage and protections for people with preexisting health conditions also would be put at risk if the court agrees with the administration in a case that won't be heard before the fall.

In the case before the Supreme Court, Texas and other conservative-led states argue that the ACA was essentially rendered unconstitutional after Congress passed tax legislation in 2017 that eliminated the law’s unpopular fines for not having health insurance, but left in place its requirement that virtually all Americans have coverage.

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Governors who quickly reopened backpedal as virus surges

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — When Texas began lifting coronavirus restrictions, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott didn't wear a mask. He wouldn't let mayors enact extra precautions during one of America's swiftest efforts to reopen. He pointed out that the White House backed his plan and gave assurances there were safe ways to go out again.

Two months later, a sharp reversal is unfolding as infections surge.

The backpedaling is not just in Texas, where Abbott abruptly halted the push to loosen more restrictions and is now urgently telling people to stay home. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, also a Republican, did the same, declaring the state “on pause” as hospitals accelerate toward capacity.

As an alarming coronavirus resurgence sets records for confirmed cases and hospitalizations across the U.S. South and West, governors are retreating to measures they once resisted and striking a more urgent tone.

“I think they’re going to have to,” said Dr. Mark McClellan, former head of the Food and Drug Administration. “It doesn’t take most people in a community getting sick to overwhelm health care systems.”

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Rayshard Brooks struggled in system but didn't hide his past

ATLANTA (AP) — Rayshard Brooks didn’t hide his history.

About five months before he was killed by Atlanta police in a Wendy’s parking lot — before his name and case would become the latest rallying point in a massive call for racial justice and equality nationwide — Brooks gave an interview to an advocacy group about his years of struggle in the criminal justice system. He described an agonizing cycle of job rejection and public shame over his record and association with a system that takes millions of Americans, many of them Black like him, away from their families and treats them more like animals than individuals.

“That’s a hard feeling to stomach,” he told the group Reconnect, as he lamented the lack of support, both in prison and once released. “Once you get in there, you know, you’re just in debt. ... I’m out now, and I have to try to fend for myself ... clueless of everything that’s been going on, I don’t know, I’m trying to adapt back to society.”

When he died June 12, Brooks seemed to finally be gaining firmer footing, family members and friends say. He was working to support his wife, three daughters and stepson. He planned eventually to move to Ohio, where he’d recently spent months getting to know his father and was an energetic and supportive co-worker at a construction company. Those close to him described him as always happy and smiling, ready to do anything — a silly dance or a cook-off — to make people laugh or defuse any tense situation.

He was a full-time carpenter and was regaining his kids’ trust, even starting to answer their questions about his time incarcerated, he said in the February Reconnect video.

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Colorado reexamines Elijah McClain's death in police custody

DENVER (AP) — The Colorado governor on Thursday ordered prosecutors to reopen the investigation into the death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man put into a chokehold by police who stopped him on the street in suburban Denver last year because he was “being suspicious.”

Gov. Jared Polis signed an executive order directing state Attorney General Phil Weiser to investigate and possibly prosecute the three white officers previously cleared in McClain's death. McClain's name has become a rallying cry during the national reckoning over racism and police brutality following the deaths of George Floyd and others.

“Elijah McClain should be alive today, and we owe it to his family to take this step and elevate the pursuit of justice in his name to a statewide concern,” Polis said in a statement.

He said he had spoken with McClain's mother and was moved by her description of her son as a “responsible and curious child ... who could inspire the darkest soul."

Police in Aurora responded to a call about a suspicious person wearing a ski mask and waving his arms as he walked down a street on Aug. 24. Police body-camera video shows an officer getting out of his car, approaching McClain and saying, “Stop right there. Stop. Stop. ... I have a right to stop you because you’re being suspicious.”

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After waves of COVID deaths, care homes face legal reckoning

PARIS (AP) — The muffled, gagging sounds in the background of the phone call filled Monette Hayoun with dread.

Was her severely disabled 85-year-old brother, Meyer, choking on his food? Was he slowly suffocating like the Holocaust survivor who died a few months earlier in another of the care home’s bedrooms, a chunk of breakfast baguette lodged in his throat?

Meyer Haiun died the next day, one of the more than 14,000 deaths that tore through care homes for France’s most vulnerable older adults when they were sealed off to visitors during the coronavirus’ peak.

Three months on, the questions plague Monette: How did her brother die? Did he suffer? And, most gnawing of all, who is responsible?

“All the questions that I have about Meyer, maybe the truth isn’t as bad as what I imagine,” she says. Still, she adds, “You cannot help but imagine the worst.”

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India's social inequalities reflected in coronavirus care

NEW DELHI (AP) — When Pradeep Kumar's wife was admitted to a government-run hospital in India's capital for treatment of COVID-19, it took two days before she was able to see a doctor.

“There are six other women in her room and everyone is frustrated,” he said outside New Delhi's LNJP Hospital. “They're behaving like they're leprosy patients.”

Kumar’s wife had just given birth when she found out she had the virus. She was told she would have to change hospitals and be admitted at one set up to handle coronavirus patients, an exhausting process that took hours.

Though India’s leaders have promised coronavirus testing and care for all who need it, regardless of income, treatment options are as stratified and unequal as the country itself. Care ranges from crowded wards at public hospitals that some worry will make them sicker than if they stayed home to spacious suites at private hospitals that only the wealthy can afford.

Under India's health care system, everyone should be able to receive either free or highly subsidized care at those public hospitals depending on their income. But the system has been chronically underfunded, meaning government hospitals are overburdened and patients often face dayslong waits for even basic treatments.

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Trump zeroes in on base to overcome reelection obstacles

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is sharpening his focus on his most ardent base of supporters as concern grows inside his campaign that his standing in the battleground states that will decide the 2020 election is slipping.

Trump turned his attention this week to “left wing mobs” toppling Confederate monuments and visited the nation's southern border to spotlight progress on his 2016 campaign promise to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

He ignored public health experts warning Americans to avoid large gatherings by holding two large campaign events in Oklahoma and Arizona, parts of the country where coronavirus infections are surging.

With his rhetorical turn, Trump is feeding red meat issues to a base that helped spur his upset victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. But he risks appearing to ignore larger issues that are jolting the country, like the pandemic and racial injustice, while underplaying economic issues, even though polling shows that to be an area where Trump performs relatively well.

“This might be the only path for him at this point,” said Dan Schnur, who served as a campaign adviser to Arizona Sen. John McCain and California Gov. Pete Wilson. “Most of the center is no longer available to him. Motivating his base is not just his best available strategy. It might be the only one.”

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Seawater seeping into decaying oil tanker off Yemen coast

CAIRO (AP) — The United Nations said an abandoned oil tanker moored off the coast of Yemen loaded with more than 1 million barrels of crude oil is at risk of rupture or exploding, causing massive environmental damage to Red Sea marine life, desalination factories and international shipping routes.

Meanwhile, Houthi rebels who control the area where the ship is moored have denied U.N. inspectors access to the vessel. Internal documents obtained by The Associated Press shows that seawater has entered the engine compartment of the tanker, which hasn't been maintained for over five years, causing damage to the pipelines and increasing the risk of sinking. Rust has covered parts of the tanker and the inert gas that prevents the tanks from gathering inflammable gases, has leaked out. Experts say maintenance is no longer possible because the damage to the ship is irreversible.

For years, the U.N. has been trying to send inspectors to assess the damage aboard the vessel known as the FSO Safer and look for ways to secure the tanker by unloading the oil and pulling the ship to safety.

But one European diplomat, a Yemeni government official and the tanker’s company owner said that Houthi rebels have resisted. The diplomat said the rebels are treating the vessel as a “deterrent like having a nuclear weapon.” All three individuals spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

“They do say that openly to the U.N., ‘We like to have this as something to hold against the international community if attacked,'" the diplomat said. “Houthis are definitely responsible for failure of the U.N. to look at the ship.”

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Country music reckons with racial stereotypes and its future

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — When country singer Rissi Palmer was working on her debut album, she wanted a song like Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck Woman,” a song that would introduce her and tell her story to fans.

On her 2007 debut single, “Country Girl,” she celebrated her country roots while explaining that she didn’t have to look or talk a certain way to call herself a country girl.

“I said that I am not white in the first verse, and the label was like, ‘No, no, no,’” said Palmer, who then rewrote the lyrics to make it feel more universal. “It was very intentional when I wrote that song to talk about all the women, or all the people, that might not necessarily fit in the box, but are still of the same mindset.”

The country music industry has long been hesitant to address its long and complicated history with race, but the death of George Floyd in police custody and the protests it sparked in the U.S. and around the world became a sound too loud for the genre to ignore.

Over the past weeks, country artists, labels and country music organizations posted about Black Lives Matter on social media, participated in the industry wide Blackout Tuesday or denounced racism outright. On Thursday, Grammy-winning country group, The Dixie Chicks announced it would drop "dixie'' from its name. The group said in a statement that it wanted to meet “this moment.”