AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EDT

12 people killed in Virginia Beach shooting; suspect dead

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) — A longtime city employee opened fire in a municipal building in Virginia Beach on Friday, killing 12 people on three floors and sending terrified co-workers scrambling for cover before police shot and killed him following a “long gun-battle,” authorities said.

Four other people were wounded in the shooting, including a police officer whose bulletproof vest saved his life, said Virginia Beach Police Chief James Cervera. The city’s visibly shaken mayor, Bobby Dyer, called it “the most devastating day in the history of Virginia Beach.”

The shooting happened shortly after 4 p.m. when the veteran employee of the Public Utilities Department entered a building in the city’s Municipal Center, and “immediately began to indiscriminately fire upon all of the victims,” Cervera said. Authorities did not release the suspect’s name, instead choosing to focus on the victims during a news conference.

Police entered the building and got out as many employees as they could, then exchanged fire with the suspect, who was armed with a .45 calibre handgun, the chief said.

Police initially said the gunman shot and killed 11 people, including one who was found inside a vehicle outside the municipal building. Cervera later said one more died on the way to the hospital.

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Trump tariff threats alarm Mexico growers, economists

CULIACAN, Mexico (AP) — Tomato exporter Sergio Esquer Peiro spent much of Friday in hastily called meetings with other stunned growers, trying to evaluate the potential fallout of U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to slap coercive tariffs on all imports from Mexico.

The sudden announcement caught observers on both sides of the border by surprise and prompted President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to dispatch his top diplomat to Washington for talks seeking to head off the proposed tariffs.

Obrador said Mexico won’t panic over the threatened hike, but economists and those whose livelihoods depend on the trade relationship worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year worry that stiff duties could have dramatic, negative consequences and potentially spark a trade war between the neighbouring countries.

Already, Esquer and other exporters were having to contend with a 17.56% tariff on tomatoes imposed after Washington announced in March it was ending a longstanding agreement over alleged Mexican dumping of the fruit. If the new duties do take effect, Esquer is looking at another 5% being slapped on his products — potentially increasing to 25% in subsequent months — unless Mexico does more to stop illegal migration through its territory by a June 10 deadline per Trump’s demand.

“Right now more than anything there is a reaction of disbelief with everything that is going on,” Esquer, who’s been sending tomatoes and other crops to the United States for 60 years, told The Associated Press by phone during a break in the meetings.

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Trump’s tariff plan shows the risks he’s willing to take

WASHINGTON (AP) — Exasperated by reports of a flood of illegal border crossings, President Donald Trump summoned his top immigration advisers to demand action. Responding to his mounting concern, including his extreme threats to entirely close the U.S.-Mexico border, they prepared an alternative but still-inflammatory plan to levy escalating tariffs on all Mexican imports to the United States.

Thursday night’s surprise announcement of the plan by Trump, threatening to upend ratification chances for his own revised North American free trade pact, demonstrated the lengths to which the risk-taking president is willing to go to crack down on illegal immigration, even in the face of bipartisan criticism, legal challenges and polarized public feelings.

He’s setting the tricky politics of immigration and trade — the two issues that defined his candidacy and bedevil his presidency — on a collision course and injecting new tensions into his relations with political allies as he struggles to show results in his campaign for a second term.

“Mexico has taken advantage of the United States for decades,” Trump declared anew in a tweet on Friday. That was the morning after he announced the 5% tariff would kick in on June 10 — and increase monthly to 25% “until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied.”

“Because of the Dems, our Immigration Laws are BAD. Mexico makes a FORTUNE from the U.S., have for decades, they can easily fix this problem. Time for them to finally do what must be done!” he said.

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Judge says Missouri clinic can keep providing abortions

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A judge issued an order Friday to keep Missouri’s only abortion clinic operating over the objections of state health officials, delivering abortion-rights advocates a courtroom victory after a string of setbacks in legislatures around the U.S.

St. Louis Circuit Judge Michael Stelzer said Planned Parenthood’s St. Louis clinic can continue providing abortions despite the Missouri health department’s refusal to renew its license over a variety of patient safety concerns. He said the temporary restraining order was necessary to “prevent irreparable injury” to Planned Parenthood.

With the abortion license set to expire at midnight Friday, Planned Parenthood pre-emptively sued this week and argued that the state was “weaponizing” the licensing process. Planned Parenthood said that absent court intervention, Missouri would become the first state without an abortion clinic since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide.

The clinic’s license will remain in effect until a ruling is issued on Planned Parenthood’s request for a permanent injunction, Stelzer’s ruling says. A hearing is set for Tuesday morning.

“Today is a victory for women across Missouri, but this fight is far from over,” Planned Parenthood Federation of America CEO Dr. Leana Wen said in a statement. “We have seen just how vulnerable access to abortion care is here — and in the rest of the country.”

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Some of the most recent deadly US mass shootings

A longtime city worker opened fire Friday in a building that houses Virginia Beach government offices, killing 12 people and wounding six others.

A list of some of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States in the last two years:

— Feb. 15, 2019: Gary Martin killed five co-workers at a manufacturing plant in Aurora, Illinois, during a disciplinary meeting where he was fired. He wounded one other employee and five of the first police officers to arrive at the suburban Chicago plant before he was killed during a shootout police.

— Nov. 7, 2018: Ian David Long killed 12 people at a country music bar in Thousand Oaks, California, before taking his own life. Long was a Marine combat veteran of the war in Afghanistan.

— Oct. 27, 2018: Robert Bowers is accused of opening fire at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during Shabbat morning services, killing 11 and injuring others. It’s the deadliest attack on Jews in the U.S. in history.

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Advocates decry delays in release of migrant kids

MIAMI (AP) — Immigrant advocates say the U.S. government is allowing migrant children at a Florida facility to languish in “prison-like conditions” after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border instead of releasing them promptly to family as required by federal rules.

A court filing Friday revealed conditions inside the Homestead, Florida, facility that has become the nation’s biggest location for detaining immigrant children. A decades-old settlement governing the care of detained immigrant children calls for them to be released to family members, sponsors or other locations within 20 days, but the court filing accuses the government of keeping kids there for months in some cases.

The children detained at the facility said they longed to be released to their parents and other relatives in the United States and were allowed limited phone calls to loved ones. Some were also told to heed strict rules or it could prolong their detention or get them deported.

“At Homestead, children are housed in prison-like conditions and unnecessarily incarcerated for up to several months without being determined to be flight risks or a danger to themselves or others,” said the motion filed by the National Center for Youth Law and other organizations in federal court in Los Angeles.

Dozens of volunteer lawyers, interpreters and other legal workers interviewed more than 70 child migrants at Homestead during several visits over the past year. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services does not allow news media to speak to children at guided tours of the facility.

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US companies are in line of fire of tariffs aimed at Mexico

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s surprise threat to impose escalating tariffs on Mexican imports jolted industry leaders throughout the U.S. economy Friday, sparked opposition even from usual Trump allies and set the stage for American consumers to face higher prices.

It also sent stock markets tumbling, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing down roughly 355 points, or 1.4%. Investors poured money instead into the safety of bonds, sending yields lower and signalling that they fear the economy will slow in the coming months.

Trump vowed Thursday to slap a 5% tariff on all Mexican imports on June 10, just over a week away, and raise those tariffs to 25% by October, unless Mexico stops the flow of Central American migrants into the U.S.

If the tariffs were to take effect, they could eventually raise prices for a new Chevrolet Blazer SUV, a burrito at Chipotle, a new shirt or a Corona beer. A 5% duty on the $346.5 billion of goods imported from Mexico translates into $17 billion in tariffs. Some of that higher cost might be paid, at least initially, by U.S. companies. But a significant portion would likely be passed on to U.S. shoppers.

The impact of Trump’s latest tariffs, should they be imposed, will fall first on U.S. companies. Businesses in many industries have set up tightly linked supply chains with Mexico. Billions of dollars of auto parts, for example, are sent back and forth across the U.S.-Mexico border, in some cases several times, as components are added and integrated into finished cars. Similar networks exist in other industries, from clothing to electronics. The import taxes could quickly translate into much higher costs.

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Police searching for missing girl say body of child found

HOUSTON (AP) — The remains of a child were found Friday near a freeway in Arkansas where a community activist says a man told him he had dumped the body of a missing 4-year-old Houston girl, police said Friday.

Houston police went to Arkansas on Friday after community activist Quanell X told authorities the man arrested in connection with the disappearance of Maleah Davis confessed he disposed of her body there just before he reported her missing in early May.

Houston Police Commander Michael Skillern, one of the officers who travelled to Arkansas, told reporters that authorities had found a child’s remains in a garbage bag near Interstate 30 close to Hope.

Quanell X said he spoke on Friday in jail with Derion Vence, the ex-fiance of Maleah’s mother, who had claimed Maleah was abducted. Quanell X said that Vence told him he dumped her body in Arkansas.

Sheriff James Singleton in Arkansas’ Hempstead County said workers found the bag, which had a foul odor coming from it, near Hope, about 30 miles (48 kilometres) northeast of the Texas-Arkansas border.

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US Catholic Church reports big rise in sex-abuse allegations

NEW YORK (AP) — Quantifying its vast sex-abuse crisis, the U.S. Roman Catholic Church said Friday that allegations of child sex abuse by clerics more than doubled in its latest 12-month reporting period, and that its spending on victim compensation and child protection surged above $300 million.

During the period from July 1, 2017, to June 30, 2018, 1,385 adults came forward with 1,455 allegations of abuse, according to the annual report of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection. That was up from 693 allegations in the previous year. The report attributed much of the increase to a victim compensation program implemented in five dioceses in New York state.

According to the report, Catholic dioceses and religious orders spent $301.6 million during the reporting period on payments to victims, legal fees and child-protection efforts. That was up 14% from the previous year and double the amount spent in the 2014 fiscal year.

The number of allegations is likely to rise further during the current fiscal year, given that Catholic dioceses in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have started large compensation programs in the wake of a scathing Pennsylvania grand jury report released in August. The grand jury identified more than 300 priests in six of the state’s dioceses who have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse committed over many decades.

Since then, attorneys general in numerous states have set up abuse hotlines and launched investigations, and a growing number of dioceses and Catholic religious orders have released names of priests accused of abuse.

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Huawei retaliation? China draws up list of ‘unreliables’

In an ominous but vague warning, China said Friday that it was drawing up a list of “unreliable” foreign companies, organizations and individuals for targeting in what could signal retaliation for U.S. sanctions on the Chinese tech powerhouse Huawei.

“We think it may be the beginning of Beijing’s attempt to roll out a retaliatory framework,” said Paul Triolo of the global risk assessment firm Eurasia Group. “That could include a number of other elements, such as restrictions on rare earth shipments” — minerals that are crucial in many mobile devices and electric cars made by U.S. companies.

The move follows additional measures this week that deepen the bite of U.S. sanctions imposed on Huawei in mid-May amid an escalating trade war, whose backdrop is the two powers’ struggle for long-term technological and economic dominance.

Several leading U.S.-based global technology standards-setting groups announced restrictions on Huawei’s participation in their activities under the U.S. Commerce Department restrictions, which bar the sale and transfer of U.S. technology to Huawei without government approval.

Such groups are vital battlegrounds for industry players, who use them to try to influence the development of next-generation technologies in their favour. Excluding Huawei would put the company at serious disadvantage against rivals outside China.

The Associated Press