US virus deaths top 100,000, caseloads rise in India, Russia

MOSCOW (AP) — As the United States crossed a somber landmark of 100,000 coronavirus cases, India registered record numbers Thursday while Russia continued to swiftly ease restrictions in sync with the Kremlin's political plans despite a continuing high pace of infection.

The once-unthinkable death toll in the U.S. means that more Americans have died from the virus than were killed in the Vietnam and Korean wars combined.

India, home to more than 1.3 billion people, reported more than 6,500 new infections Thursday as cases continued to rapidly rise. The surge comes as the nation’s two-month-old lockdown is set to end Sunday.

South Korea on Thursday reported its biggest jump in coronavirus cases in more than 50 days, a setback that could erase some of the hard-won gains that have made it a model for the rest of the world. Health officials warned that the resurgence is getting harder to track and social distancing and other steps need to be taken.

And in Russia, high daily numbers of new coronavirus infections underlined the risks of reopening the economy, which has been badly battered by the outbreak.

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Violence again rocks Minneapolis after man's death; 1 killed

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A man was shot to death as violent protests over the death of a black man in police custody rocked Minneapolis for a second straight night Wednesday, with protesters looting stores near a police precinct and setting fires.

Police said they were investigating the death as a homicide and had a suspect in custody, but were still investigating what led to the shooting.

Protesters began gathering in the early afternoon near the city's 3rd Precinct station, in the southern part of the city where 46-year-old George Floyd died on Memorial Day after an officer knelt on his neck until he became unresponsive.

News helicopter footage showed protesters milling in streets near the city's 3rd Precinct station, with some running in and out of nearby stores. A Target, a Cub Foods, a Dollar Tree and an auto parts store all showed signs of damage and looting. As darkness fell, fire erupted in the auto parts store, and city fire crews rushed to control it. Protesters set other fires in the street.

Officers could be seen surrounding the nearby precinct, not attempting to intervene in the looting.

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'Didn't give a damn': Inside a ravaged Spanish nursing home

MADRID (AP) — Zoilo Patiño was just one of more than 19,000 elderly people to die of coronavirus in Spain’s nursing homes but he has come to symbolize a system of caring for the country’s most vulnerable that critics say is desperately broken.

When the Alzheimer’s-stricken 84-year-old succumbed in March on the same day 200 others died across Madrid, funeral homes were too overwhelmed to take his body and he was instead left locked in the same room, in the same bed, where he died.

Spanish army disinfecting teams going through the Usera Center for the Elderly more than 24 hours later were stunned to come across Patiño’s body and it made headlines around the world, with the country’s Defense Minister Margarita Robles describing “elderly abandoned, if not dead, on their beds.”

“It wasn’t ideal to have a possibly infectious body there,” says José Manuel Martín, a staff member who took the soldiers through the home. “But what else could we have done? We didn’t even have protective gear to be able to put the body in a bag.”

The grim find triggered soul-searching over Spain’s nursing homes, which have had more deaths than those in any other country in Europe. Much of the scrutiny has focused on the lower end of the market, government-owned homes like the Usera center, where day-to-day operations have been contracted to companies often controlled by multinational private-equity firms that seek to turn profits quickly by cutting staff, expenses —and some say care — to the bone.

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Chinese lawmakers endorse Hong Kong national security law

BEIJING (AP) — China’s ceremonial legislature overwhelmingly endorsed a national security law for Hong Kong on Thursday that has strained relations with the United States and Britain and triggered protests in the semi-autonomous territory.

The National People’s Congress backed the bill by a vote of 2,878 to 1 with 6 abstentions as it wrapped up an annual session that was held under intensive anti-coronavirus controls.

The move will ultimately change the territory’s mini-constitution, or Basic Law, adding a national security law to be decided later by Chinese leaders. The standing committee of the National People’s Congress that handles most legislation will work out its details.

Activists in Hong Kong say the law will undermine civil liberties and might be used to suppress political activity.

The law and the way it is being enacted prompted U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to announce on Wednesday that Washington will no longer treat Hong Kong as autonomous from Beijing.

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Failed Maduro coup leader flew on pro-govt magnate's plane

MIAMI (AP) — It was mid-January and Jordan Goudreau was itching to get going on a secret plan to raid Venezuela and arrest President Nicolás Maduro when the former special forces commando flew to the city of Barranquilla in Colombia to meet with his would-be partner in arms.

To get there, Goudreau and two former Green Beret buddies relied on some unusual help: a chartered flight out of Miami's Opa Locka executive airport on a plane owned by a Venezuelan businessman so close to the government of the late Hugo Chávez that he spent almost four years in a U.S. prison for trying to cover up clandestine cash payments to its allies.

The owner of the Venezuela-registered Cessna Citation II with yellow and blue lines, identified with the tail number YV-3231, was Franklin Durán, according to three people familiar with the businessman’s movements who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Durán over two decades has had numerous business ties with the socialist government of Venezuela, making him an odd choice to help a band of would-be-mercenaries overthrow Maduro, the handpicked successor of the late Chávez

Durán and his associates are now at the center of multiple investigations in the U.S., Colombia and Venezuela into how Goudreau, a combat veteran with three Bronze Stars but little knowledge of Venezuela, managed to launch a failed raid that ended with the capture and arrest of his two special forces colleagues.

Durán's role and his closeness to top officials have revived allegations floated by opposition leader Juan Guaidó and U.S. officials that he was secretly working on Maduro’s behalf and had co-opted “Operation Gideon,” the name of Goudreau's foiled plot.

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Trump continues to claim broad powers he doesn't have

WASHINGTON (AP) — Threatening to shut down Twitter for flagging false content. Claiming he can “override" governors who dare to keep churches closed to congregants. Asserting the “absolute authority” to force states to reopen, even when local leaders say it's too soon.

As he battles the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump has been claiming extraordinarily sweeping powers that legal scholars say the president simply doesn't have. And he has repeatedly refusing to spell out the legal basis for those powers.

“It's not that the president does't have a remarkable amount of power to respond to a public health crisis. It’s that these are not the powers he has," said Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas School of Law professor who specializes in constitutional and national security law.

First it was Trump's assertion that he could force governors to reopen their economies before they felt ready. “When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total,” he claimed.

Trump soon dropped the threat, saying he would instead leave such decisions to the states. But he has revived the idea in recent days as he has tried to pressure governors to allow churches and other places of worship to hold in-person services, even where stay-at-home orders and other limits on large gatherings remain in effect.

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Virus, heat wave and locusts form perfect storm in India

NEW DELHI (AP) — As if the coronavirus wasn't enough, India grappled with scorching temperatures and the worst locust invasion in decades as authorities prepared for the end of a monthslong lockdown despite recording thousands of new infections every day.

This triple disaster drew biblical comparisons and forced officials to try to balance the competing demands of simultaneous public health crises: protection from eviscerating heat but also social distancing in newly reopened parks and markets.

The heat wave threatens to compound challenges of containing the virus, which has started spreading more quickly and broadly since the government began easing restrictions of one of the world’s most stringent lockdowns earlier this month.

“The world will not get a chance to breathe anymore. The ferocity of crises are increasing, and they’re not going to be spaced out,” said Sunita Narain of New Delhi’s Center for Science and Environment.

When her 6-year-old son woke up with a parched throat and a fever, housekeeper Kalista Ekka wanted to bring him to the hospital. But facing a deluge of COVID-19 patients, the doctor advised Ekka to keep him at home despite boiling temperatures in the family's two-room apartment in a low-income neighborhood in South Delhi.

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UN: Virus could push 14 million into hunger in Latin America

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The U.N. World Food Program is warning that upward of at least 14 million people could go hungry in Latin America as the coronavirus pandemic rages on, shuttering people in their homes, drying up work and crippling the economy.

New projections released late Wednesday estimate a startling increase: Whereas 3.4 million experienced severe food insecurity in 2019, that number could more than quadruple this year in one of the world’s most vulnerable regions.

“We are entering a very complicated stage,” said Miguel Barreto, the WFP’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean. “It is what we are calling a hunger pandemic.”

Signs of mounting hunger are already being felt around the region, where desperate citizens are violating quarantines to go out in search of money and food and hanging red and white flags from their homes in a cry for aid. Many of the hungry are informal workers who make up a sizable portion of Latin America’s workforce, while others are newly poor who have lost jobs amidst an historic economic downturn.

“I am the captain of the family,” said Dieufete Lebien, 57, a now unemployed construction worker in Haiti. “A boat that is sinking.”

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Lives Lost: Veteran guarded Nazis during war crimes trial

Emilio DiPalma was, as he liked to say, just a kid from western Massachusetts when he found himself in a front-row seat to history as a courtroom guard in Nuremberg, Germany, during the first and most famous trial of Nazi war criminals in 1945.

The 19-year-old had fought Germans on the front lines in World War II, lost friends in battle and witnessed horrors that would forever change his view of the world. Then he found himself standing guard over Adolph Hitler's top officers as they were brought to justice for atrocities committed by the Third Reich.

“To this day, I can hardly believe that any human being could do such cruel things to another,” DiPalma wrote in the memoir he published with the help of his daughter decades later.

DiPalma died on April 8 at the age of 93 after contracting the coronavirus at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home in Massachusetts, where he was being cared for because of dementia. More than 70 other veterans sickened with the virus at the Soldiers Home have died, making it one of the deadliest known outbreaks at a long-term care facility in the U.S.

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Patrons under plastic: Restaurants get creative in virus era

PARIS (AP) — Dining at a table where each person is enclosed by a clear plastic shield might look and sound futuristic, but it could be one way for some restaurants to reopen. It also might help out if your companion orders escargots, heavy on the garlic.

The prototype plastic shields are known as the “Plex'eat,” and they resemble big clear lampshades suspended from the ceiling. They are being showcased temporarily at H.A.N.D., a Parisian restaurant seeking a way to reopen its dining room as coronavirus restrictions are relaxed.

As restaurateurs around the world seek to resume in-person dining amid the pandemic, they want to adhere to social distancing rules while also trying to serve as many customers as health and safety measures will allow.

Some are putting mannequins at every other table to put some space between the actual customers, like at Augustas and Barbora, a restaurant in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. Some of its faux diners are dressed casually, while others look as though they are at a ball. The clothes showcase the work of local fashion designers.

“We want to fill the space with fun things,” said owner Patrikas Ribas.