AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EST

Top Republican says Trump committed 'impeachable offenses'

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats' momentum for a fresh drive to quickly impeach outgoing President Donald Trump has gained support, and a top Republican said the president's role in the deadly riot at the Capitol by a violent mob of Trump supporters was worthy of rebuke.

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said Saturday he believed Trump had committed “impeachable offenses.” But he did not explicitly say whether he would vote to remove the president from office at the conclusion of a Senate trial if the House sent over articles of impeachment.

“I don’t know what they are going to send over and one of the things that I’m concerned about, frankly, is whether the House would completely politicize something,” Toomey said Saturday on Fox News Channel, speaking of the Democratic-controlled House.

“I do think the president committed impeachable offenses, but I don’t know what is going to land on the Senate floor, if anything," Toomey said.

Late Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to her Democratic colleagues reiterating that Trump must be held accountable — but stopped short of committing to an impeachment vote. Still, she told her caucus, “I urge you to be prepared to return to Washington this week.”

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Squelched by Twitter, Trump seeks new online megaphone

BOSTON (AP) — One Twitter wag joked about lights flickering on and off at the White House being Donald Trump signaling to his followers in Morse code after Twitter and Facebook squelched the president for inciting rebellion.

Though deprived of his big online megaphones, Trump does have alternative options of much smaller reach. The far right-friendly Parler may be the leading candidate, though Google and Apple have both removed it from their app stores and Amazon decided to boot it off its web hosting service. That could knock it offline for a week, Parler’s CEO said.

Trump may launch his own platform. But that won't happen overnight, and free speech experts anticipate growing pressure on all social media platforms to curb incendiary speech as Americans take stock of Wednesday’s violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol by a Trump-incited mob.

Twitter ended Trump’s nearly 12-year run on Friday. In shuttering his account it cited a tweet to his 89 million followers that he planned to skip President-elect Joe Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration that it said gave rioters license to converge on Washington once again.

Facebook and Instagram have suspended Trump at least until Inauguration Day. Twitch and Snapchat also have disabled Trump’s accounts, while Shopify took down online stores affiliated with the president and Reddit removed a Trump subgroup. Twitter also banned Trump loyalists including former national security advisor Michael Flynn in a sweeping purge of accounts promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory and the Capitol insurrection. Some had hundreds of thousands of followers.

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The Latest: England invites over 80s to get virus vaccine

LONDON — Thousands of people 80 and older have started receiving invitations to get the coronavirus vaccine in England, officials said Sunday, as Britain ramps up its national vaccination program in a bid to meet its target of inoculating about 15 million people by the middle of February.

More than 600,000 invitations are due to arrive at doorsteps across England this week, asking the elderly to sign up for jabs at new mass vaccination centers near them.

The government has given a first dose of the vaccine to more than 1.2 million people so far.

The seven new large-scale vaccination centers join some 1,000 other sites across the country, including hospitals, general practitioners’ clinics and some drugstores.

Officials are hoping a speedy mass vaccination rollout will help get Britain out of its third national lockdown, which was ordered this month to curb an alarming surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths. Britain has seen 81,000 deaths in the pandemic, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

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Indonesian divers find parts of plane wreckage in Java Sea

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian divers on Sunday located parts of the wreckage of a Boeing 737-500 at a depth of 23 meters (75 feet) in the Java Sea, a day after the aircraft with 62 people onboard crashed shortly after takeoff from Jakarta.

“We received reports from the diver team that the visibility in the water is good and clear, allowing the discovery of some parts of the plane," Air Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto said in a statement. “We are sure that is the point where the plane crashed.”

He said the objects included broken pieces of fuselage with aircraft registration parts.

Earlier, rescuers pulled out body parts, pieces of clothing and scraps of metal from the surface.

“Hopefully until this afternoon the current conditions and the view under the sea are still good so that we can continue the search,” he said.

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Johnson under fire as UK again faces onslaught of COVID-19

LONDON (AP) — The crisis facing Britain this winter is depressingly familiar: Stay-at-home orders and empty streets. Hospitals overflowing. A daily toll of many hundreds of coronavirus deaths.

The U.K. is the epicenter of Europe’s COVID-19 outbreak once more, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government is facing questions, and anger, as people demand to know how the country has ended up here — again.

Many countries are enduring new waves of the virus, but Britain’s is among the worst, and it comes after a horrendous 2020. More than 3 million people in the U.K. have tested positive for the coronavirus and 81,000 have died — 30,000 in just the last 30 days. The economy has shrunk by 8%, more than 800,000 jobs have been lost and hundreds of thousands more furloughed workers are in limbo.

Even with the new lockdown, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said Friday that the situation in the capital was “critical,” with one in every 30 people infected. “The stark reality is that we will run out of beds for patients in the next couple of weeks unless the spread of the virus slows down drastically,″ he said.

Medical staff are also at breaking point.

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US consulate a turning point for disputed Western Sahara

DAKHLA, Western Sahara (AP) — Trawlers pack the bustling Western Saharan port of Dakhla, where fish scales glisten from workers’ arms as they roll up their nets and buyers shout bids in a sprawling auction warehouse. Nearby, turquoise waters lap wide, nearly empty Atlantic beaches and diners sip tea in sidewalk cafes.

Plans by the United States to open a consulate in Western Sahara mark a turning point for the disputed and closely policed territory in North Africa. The U.S. move recognizes Morocco's authority over the land — in exchange for Morocco normalizing relations with Israel. Top American and Moroccan officials are in the region this weekend to lay the groundwork for the project.

While this shift in U.S. foreign policy frustrates indigenous Sahrawis who have sought Western Sahara's independence for decades, others see new opportunities for trade and tourism that will provide a welcome boost for the region and sun-kissed coastal cities like Dakhla.

A portrait of Moroccan King Mohammed VI, waving from behind his sunglasses, hangs from the crenellated archway that greets people arriving in Dakhla. The king's face is juxtaposed on a map that includes Western Sahara as an integral part of Morocco.

Morocco annexed the former Spanish colony in 1975, which unleashed a 16-year war and then 30 years of diplomatic and military stalemate between Morocco and the Polisario Front, an organization seeking Western Sahara's independence that is based in and backed by Algeria. The long-running territorial dispute has limited Western Sahara’s links with the outside world.

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Asia Today: China reports 380 cases south of Beijing

BEIJING (AP) — More than 380 people have tested positive in a growing COVID-19 outbreak south of Beijing in China's Hebei province.

Hebei health authorities said that 40 new cases had been confirmed Sunday morning, bringing the total to 223. Another 161 people tested positive but showed no symptoms. China does not include such asymptomatic cases in its official tally.

The outbreak has raised particular concern because Hebei borders the nation’s capital. Travel between the two has been restricted, with workers from Hebei having to show proof of employment in Beijing to enter the city.

Almost all the cases are in Shijuazhuang, the provincial capital, which is about 260 kilometers (160 miles) southwest of Beijing. A handful have also been found in Xingtai city, 110 kilometers (68 miles) farther south.

Both cities have conducted mass testing of millions of residents, suspended public transportation and taxis, and restricted residents to their communities or villages for one week.

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UN envoy: Britain is `gung ho' about world role after Brexit

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Britain’s new U.N. ambassador says the government is feeling “gung ho” about continuing its role as an important player on the world stage despite its exit from the European Union.

Barbara Woodward pointed to the United Kingdom’s permanent seat on the powerful U.N. Security Council, its presidency this year of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations, its membership in the Group of 20 leading economic powers and NATO, and its hosting of the next United Nations global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.

“Don’t underestimate the power of the relationship with the EU,” she stressed in an interview with The Associated Press this past week. “There’s a lot of values and principles which we share with European partners which I think will stand us in good stead.”

Britain’s long and sometimes contentious divorce from the EU became final on Dec. 31, a split that left the 27-member bloc without one of its major economic powers and the U.K. freer to chart its future but facing a world trying to confront a deadly pandemic and cope with rising unemployment, growing divisions between haves and have-nots, and a climate crisis.

An article in the U.S.-based World Politics Review in October identified three visions for Britain's future: “Catastrophists who argue that the U.K. has become completely irrelevant on the international stage as a result of Brexit; the nostalgics, who see a powerful Britain through the lens of a great colonial power; and the denialists, who refuse to accept that Britain must adapt to a changing global context.”

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Minister: Massive power outage leaves Pakistan in the dark

ISLAMABAD (AP) — A major technical fault in Pakistan's power generation and distribution system caused a massive power outage that plunged the country into darkness overnight, the energy minister said.

Hours after the late Saturday outage, Energy Minister Omar Ayub said on Twitter that power was being restored in phases, starting with Islamabad. He said later Sunday that power had been restored to much of the country.

The blackout was initially reported on social media by residents of major urban centers, including Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Multan. The minister and his spokesman then took to Twitter to update the country.

Ayub urged people to be patient. He said the cause of the power outage was being investigated and work was being done to fire up Pakistan's main Tarbela power station in the northwest, which would lead to a restoration of power in the rest of the country in phases.

Ayub said in a news conference Sunday that the Guddu power plant in southern Sindh province developed a fault at 11:41 p.m. that triggered the shutdown of other power plants in seconds.

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Rams get better of division rivals, toppling Seahawks 30-20

SEATTLE (AP) — Quietly, Aaron Donald, Jared Goff and the rest of the Los Angeles Rams seethed.

They watched less than two weeks ago as the Seattle Seahawks loudly celebrated a division title the Rams felt they gave away. Los Angeles desperately wanted another shot.

Behind a lot of Cam Akers churning yards on the ground and mostly a great defense, the Rams are moving on in the NFC playoffs at the expense of the Seahawks.

“We come up here, and all week we were told how good they are and how we snuck into the playoffs," Goff said. "Two weeks ago you saw them smoking cigars and getting all excited about beating us, and winning the division, and we were able to come up here and beat them.”

Akers rushed for 131 yards and a touchdown, Darious Williams returned Russell Wilson’s interception 42 yards for a score, and the Rams beat the Seahawks 30-20 in the NFC wild-card playoff game Saturday.