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

Some hospitals in crisis as US nears high for COVID-19 cases

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The United States is approaching a record for the number of new daily coronavirus cases in the latest ominous sign about the disease’s grip on the nation, as states from Connecticut to the Rocky Mountain West reel under the surge.

The impact is being felt in every section of the country — a lockdown starting Friday at the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s reservation in South Dakota, a plea by a Florida health official for a halt to children’s birthday parties, dire warnings from Utah’s governor, and an increasingly desperate situation at a hospital in northern Idaho, which is running out of space for patients and considering airlifts to Seattle or Portland, Oregon.

“We’ve essentially shut down an entire floor of our hospital. We’ve had to double rooms. We’ve bought more hospital beds,” said Dr. Robert Scoggins, a pulmonologist at the Kootenai Health hospital in Coeur d’Alene. “Our hospital is not built for a pandemic.”

Among those joining Scoggins at a meeting of northern Idaho’s Panhandle Health District was board member Walk Kirby.

“People are dying, they’re going to keep dying and catching this stuff,” Kirby said. “How many people won’t wear a mask? The same people that won’t get vaccinated for it.”

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Upbeat Trump hits the trail, Biden tries debate cleanup

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President Donald Trump and his allies fought for momentum in election battleground states on Friday after a debate performance that gave new hope to anxious Republicans. Democrat Joe Biden tried to clean up a debate misstep while urging voters to stay focused on the president's inability to control the worsening pandemic.

The surge of activity with just 11 days remaining in the 2020 contest highlighted the candidates' divergent strategies, styles and policy prescriptions shaping the election's closing days. Nearly 50 million votes have already been cast, with an additional 100 million or so expected before a winner is declared.

The coronavirus debate has pushed Trump onto the defensive for much of the fall, but for the moment it was Biden's team that was forced to explain itself. In the final moments of Thursday's debate, the former vice president said he supports a “transition” away from oil in the U.S. in favor of renewable energy. The campaign released a statement hours later declaring that he would phase out taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuel companies, not the industry altogether.

While ending the nation's reliance on fossil fuel is popular among many liberals, that prospect could hurt Biden among working-class voters in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas who depend on the industry, and fracking in particular, to make a living.

"Let’s be really clear about this: Joe Biden is not going to ban fracking,” running mate Kamala Harris told reporters in Georgia on Friday. “He is going to deal with the oil subsidies. You know, the president likes to take everything out of context. But let’s be clear, what Joe was talking about was banning subsidies, but he will not ban fracking in America.”

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Biden's warning on oil tests voter resolve on climate change

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Joe Biden is confronting the harsh political realities of combating climate change.

The Democratic presidential nominee has spent months touting a $2 trillion plan to boost investment in clean energy and stop all climate-damaging emissions from the U.S. economy by 2050. The plan implied that he would wean the U.S. off oil and gas, but Biden wasn't so explicit about the industry's fate — until Thursday night.

During the final moments of the presidential debate, Biden said he would “transition away from the oil industry.”

President Donald Trump, trailing Biden in many national and battleground state polls, immediately sensed an opportunity to appeal to voters in competitive states like Texas and Pennsylvania that produce oil and gas.

“Basically what he is saying is he is going to destroy the oil industry,” Trump said. “Will you remember that, Texas? Will you remember that, Pennsylvania? Oklahoma? Ohio?”

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Fiasco over pope's cut civil union quote intensifies impact

ROME (AP) — The world premiere of a documentary on Pope Francis was supposed to have been a bright spot for a papacy locked down by a pandemic and besieged by a corruption scandal, recalling Francis’ glory days traveling the world to bless the oppressed.

But the red carpet rollout of “Francesco” has been anything but bright, with evidence that the Vatican censored the pope last year by deleting his endorsement of same-sex civil unions from an interview, only to have the footage resurface in the new film.

Aside from the firestorm the remarks created, the “Francesco" fiasco has highlighted the Vatican’s often self-inflicted communications wounds and Francis’ willingness to push his own agenda, even at the expense of fueling pushback from conservative Catholics.

That pushback was swift and came from predictable corners: Cardinal Raymond Burke, Francis’ frequent nemesis on matters of doctrine, said the pope’s comments were devoid of any “magisterial weight.” But in a statement, Burke expressed concern that such personal opinions coming from the pope “generate great bewilderment and cause confusion and error among Catholic faithful.”

The kerfuffle began Wednesday with the world premiere of “Francesco,” a feature-length film on Francis and the issues he cares most about: climate change, refugees and social inequality. Midway through, Francis delivers the bombshell quote that gays deserve to be part of the family and that he supported civil unions, or a “ley de convivencia civil” as he said in Spanish — to give them legal protections.

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Nigeria says 51 civilians, 18 security forces dead in unrest

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — At least 51 civilians have been killed in Nigeria's unrest following days of peaceful protests over police abuses, the president said Friday, blaming “hooliganism” for the violence while asserting that security forces have used “extreme restraint.”

President Muhammadu Buhari's comments are expected to further inflame tensions in Africa's most populous country after Amnesty International reported that soldiers shot and killed at least 12 demonstrators Tuesday night as a large crowd sang the national anthem. The deaths sparked international condemnation.

In a statement, Buhari also said 11 policemen and seven soldiers had been killed by “rioters” as of Thursday, and “the mayhem has not stopped.” He said another 37 civilians were injured in some of Nigeria's worst turmoil in years.

The president said the well-intentioned protests were hijacked by thugs.

But many Nigerians are upset by what the president hasn't said. Buhari in a national address Thursday night didn't mention the shootings, instead warning protesters against “undermining national security and law and order.” On Friday he said the government “will not fold its arms and allow miscreants and criminals continue to perpetrate acts of hooliganism."

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Trump: Sudan to join UAE, Bahrain in recognizing Israel

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump announced Friday that Sudan will start to normalize ties with Israel, making it the third Arab state to do so as part of U.S.-brokered deals in the run-up to Election Day.

The announcement came after the North African nation agreed to put $335 million in an escrow account to be used to compensate American victims of terror attacks. The attacks include the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania by the al-Qaida network while its leader, Osama bin Laden, was living in Sudan. In exchange, Trump notified Congress on Friday of his intent to remove Sudan from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

It was foreign policy achievement for Trump just 11 days before Election Day. Previously, the Trump administration engineered diplomatic pacts between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — the first since Jordan recognized Israel in the 1990s and Egypt in the 1970s.

Trump said at least five other countries want to come into the deal, which is collectively called the Abraham Accords.

The new recognitions of Israel unify Arab nations around their common enemy, Iran. They also upend the traditional Arab strategy of refusing to normalize relations with Israel before an independent Palestinian state is created.

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California prosecutors again seek death for Scott Peterson

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California prosecutors said Friday they again will seek the death penalty for Scott Peterson even as a county judge considers throwing out his conviction for murdering his pregnant wife because of juror misconduct during a 2005 trial that riveted the nation.

Stanislaus County Assistant District Attorney Dave Harris announced that it is prosecutors' intention to retry the penalty phase of the case, spokesman John Goold said after a court hearing. He said prosecutors otherwise won't comment or discuss the decision.

Peterson, 47, wearing a buzz haircut and a mask designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, appeared remotely in the Modesto courtroom from San Quentin State Prison north of San Francisco, home to the state's death row.

District Attorney Birgit Fladager acted after the California Supreme Court in August overturned Peterson's 2005 death sentence in a case that attracted worldwide attention.

The state's high court upheld his conviction in that ruling. But the same justices in October ordered a new hearing in San Mateo Superior Court to determine whether his underlying murder conviction must also be tossed out if a juror committed "prejudicial misconduct.”

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Trump, Biden lawyer up, brace for White House legal battle

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's and Democratic rival Joe Biden's campaigns are assembling armies of powerful lawyers for the possibility that the race for the White House is decided not at the ballot box but in court.

They have been engaging in a lawyer's version of tabletop war games, churning out draft pleadings, briefs and memos to cover scenarios that read like the stuff of a law school hypothetical more than a real-life case in a democracy.

Attorneys for the Republicans and the Democrats are already clashing in courts across the U.S. over mailed-in ballot deadlines and other issues brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. And as Trump tries to sow doubt in the legitimacy of the Nov. 3 election, both sides have built massive legal operations readying for a bitterly disputed race that lands at the Supreme Court

“We’ve been preparing for this for well over a year," Republican National Committee Chief Counsel Justin Riemer told The Associated Press. "We’ve been working with the campaign on our strategy for recount preparation, for Election Day operations and our litigation strategy.”

On the Democratic side, the Biden campaign's election protection program includes a special national litigation team involving hundreds of lawyers led by Walter Dellinger, acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration, and Donald Verrilli, a solicitor general under President Barack Obama, among others. Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel to Obama, and Biden campaign general counsel Dana Remus are focused on protecting the rights of voters, who have been enduring long lines at polling places around the country on the belief that the presidential election will be decided by their ballots.

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Hospitalization data flawed in Missouri, perhaps elsewhere

O'FALLON, Mo. (AP) — With the number of coronavirus patients requiring hospitalization rising at alarming levels, Missouri and perhaps a handful of other states are unable to post accurate data on COVID-19 dashboards because of a flaw in the federal reporting system.

Since Tuesday, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Service’s coronavirus dashboard has posted a message that the total number of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 has been underreported since Oct. 17. The note blamed “challenges entering data” to the portal used by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for collecting daily hospitalizations around the country.

It wasn't immediately clear on Friday how many states are impacted since some states rely on their own hospitalization counts, not HHS data collection. HHS did not immediately respond to phone and email messages seeking comment.

But The COVID Tracking Project said in a blog post that it has “identified five other states with anomalies in their hospitalization figures" that could be tied to the HHS reporting problem.

The project noted that the number of reported intensive care unit patients in Kansas had decreased from 80 to one without explanation. It said Wisconsin’s hospitalization figures stayed unexpectedly flat while other indicators worsened. And it said Georgia, Alabama, and Florida reported only partial updates to hospitalization data.

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Washington state discovers first 'murder hornet' nest in US

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Scientists have discovered the first nest of so-called murder hornets in the United States and plan to wipe it out Saturday to protect native honeybees, officials in Washington state said.

After weeks of searching, the agency said it found the nest of Asian giant hornets in Blaine, a city north of Seattle near the Canadian border. Bad weather delayed plans to destroy the nest Friday.

The world’s largest hornet at 2 inches (5 centimeters) long, the invasive insects can decimate entire hives of honeybees and deliver painful stings to people. Farmers in the northwestern U.S. depend on those honeybees to pollinate many crops, including raspberries and blueberries.

Despite their nickname and the hype around the insect that has stirred fears in an already bleak year, the hornets kill at most a few dozen people a year in Asian countries, and experts say it is probably far less. Meanwhile, hornets, wasps and bees typically found in the United States kill an average of 62 people a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said.

The real threat from Asian giant hornets is their devastating attacks on honeybees, which are already under siege from problems like mites, diseases, pesticides and loss of food. A small group of the hornets can kill an entire honeybee hive in hours.