AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EDT
Posted August 28, 2020 12:05 am.
Last Updated August 28, 2020 12:14 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Trump lashes Biden, defies pandemic on White House stage
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Facing a national moment fraught with racial turmoil and a deadly pandemic, President Donald Trump accepted his party’s renomination on a massive White House South Lawn stage Thursday night, boasting of helping African Americans and defying his own administration’s pandemic guidelines to address a tightly packed, largely maskless crowd.
As troubles churned outside the gates, Trump painted an optimistic vision of America’s future, including an eventual triumph over the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 175,000 people, left millions unemployed and rewritten the rules of society. But that brighter horizon can only be secured, Trump asserted, if he defeats Democrat Joe Biden.
Trailing Biden in opinion polls, he blistered the former vice-president’s record and even questioned his love of America.
“We have spent the last four years reversing the damage Joe Biden inflicted over the last 47 years,” Trump said.
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The Latest: GOP convention wraps up with opera, fireworks
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican National Convention — the first political convention ever held at the White House — has ended with opera and fireworks.
President Donald Trump wrapped up his speech closing out the RNC on Thursday by recounting the achievements of the nation’s pioneers and pledging to forge achievements in energy development, technological advancement and space exploration, including putting the first woman on the moon.
Under his leadership in a second presidential term, Trump said the country would “prove worthy of magnificent legacy.”
Trump’s speech was punctuated by musical selections including “You’re a Grand Old Flag” and fireworks display on the National Mall, with some of the fireworks spelling out “Trump” and “2020.” Opera singer Christopher Macchio also performed from the Blue Room balcony.
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GOP convention takeaways: What virus? Fear motivates
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump refused to allow the coronavirus to deny him the crowd he craved for the Republican National Convention. He ordered up a scene never before seen at the White House: an American president using the South Lawn as the official backdrop for such overtly political activity. The federal guidelines about keeping distance, avoiding crowds and wearing masks to fight the spread of the virus were emphatically ignored.
Here are some key takeaways from the last night of the convention:
NO ‘SHINING CITY ON A HILL’
Trump made one thing abundantly clear in his speech accepting his party’s renomination: He will try to turn political orthodoxy on its head again by trying to paint himself as an outsider even though he is the head of government.
His words were often foreboding, his new policies were few, and he gave only a vague idea of what four more years under him would bring. He used the White House as a stage in the way none of his predecessors had, and spoke of the deadly coronavirus pandemic as though his handling of it was an unqualified success.
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AP FACT CHECK: BLM takes a distorted hit at GOP convention
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican National Convention’s final night heard Black Lives Matter falsely accused of co-ordinating violent protests, while President Donald Trump related familiar distortions of his record on energy, veterans and more.
A look at some of the rhetoric Thursday from Trump and his supporting speakers:
BLACK LIVES MATTER
RUDY GIULIANI, Trump’s personal attorney and former New York mayor: “Black Lives Matter and antifa sprang into action and, in a flash, they hijacked the peaceful protest into vicious, brutal riots.”
THE FACTS: That’s a hollow claim.
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Laura thrashes Louisiana, nearby states face tornado threats
LAKE CHARLES, La. (AP) — One of the strongest hurricanes ever to strike the U.S., Laura barrelled across Louisiana on Thursday, shearing off roofs and killing at least six people while carving a destructive path hundreds of miles inland.
A full assessment of the damage wrought by the Category 4 system was likely to take days, and the threat of additional damage loomed as new tornado warnings were issued after dark in Arkansas and Mississippi even as the storm weakened into a depression.
But despite a trail of demolished buildings, entire neighbourhoods left in ruins and almost 900,000 homes and businesses without power, a sense of relief prevailed that Laura was not the annihilating menace forecasters had feared.
“It is clear that we did not sustain and suffer the absolute, catastrophic damage that we thought was likely,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said. “But we have sustained a tremendous amount of damage.”
He called Laura the most powerful hurricane to strike Louisiana, meaning it surpassed even Katrina, which was a Category 3 storm when it hit in 2005. The storm toppled trees and damaged structures as far north as central Arkansas.
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A 2nd day of NBA playoff games halted over racial injustice
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — An unprecedented NBA walkout over racial injustice postponed a second day of the playoffs Thursday, although players pledged to finish the post-season even as they wrestled with their emotions about wanting to bring change in their communities.
For now, the basketball courts in the NBA’s virus-free bubble at Disney World remained empty. And other athletes across the sports world also said they weren’t ready to resume playing.
They are still angry and emotional after the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin. NBA players considered not playing again the rest of the post-season and going home to their communities, although they decided Thursday they wanted to continue, according to a person with knowledge of the details. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because no official announcement had been made.
“We obviously agree that whether we play or not, we still have to do our best to make change and we still have to do our part in the community,” Orlando guard Michael Carter-Williams said in a video interview with a Magic public relations official.
“It’s obviously not easy, given everything that’s going on. But I think that if we can go out there and do our best and also have a list of things that we want to accomplish, everything gets completed.”
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Kenosha shooting strains relationship between Blacks, police
KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — Until the police shooting of Jacob Blake, the bedroom community of Kenosha had been largely untouched by the level of demonstrations that were seen in nearby Milwaukee and Chicago after the death of George Floyd.
Like other places in America, Kenosha’s Black residents saw inequality in the way police treated them. But there had been nothing like the shooting that left Blake, who is Black, paralyzed. An officer shot Blake in the back Sunday as the 29-year-old leaned into his SUV, three of his children seated inside.
Now the city of 99,000 residents along Lake Michigan finds itself as the latest flashpoint in a larger discussion about racism and police brutality in the U.S.
“We’ve had some situations where we’ve thought the Police Department hasn’t been treating some minorities fairly. This incident, it’s just changed,” Anthony L. Davis, president of the Kenosha NAACP branch, said.
The shooting, captured on cellphone video, led to several nights of protests and unrest, with some demonstrators destroying buildings, setting fires and hurling objets at police, who responded at times with tear gas. On Wednesday, a 17-year-old from a nearby Illinois community killed two demonstrators, according to authorities.
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5th federal execution of 2020 on again after late ruling
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — The scheduled federal execution of a 10-year-old Kansas girl’s killer was back on track Friday after an appellate panel tossed a lower court’s ruling that would have required the government to get a drug prescription before it could use pentobarbital to kill the inmate.
Questions about whether pentobarbital causes pain prior to death has been a focus of last-minute appeals for Keith Nelson, who would be the fifth person to die this year and the second this week in the Trump administration’s resumption of federal executions after a 17-year hiatus. All the executions by lethal pentobarbital injection have been carried out at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
If Nelson’s lawyer appeals Friday to the Supreme Court on the prescription issue, the decision on whether Nelson lives or dies Friday could still come down to the high court. But similar moves to delay three other executions last month failed, with the high court ruling 5-to-4 allow them to proceed.
A flurry of filing by Nelson’s legal team over several weeks zeroed in on pentobarbital, a barbituate that depresses the central nervous system and, in high doses, eventually stops the heart.
In one filing in early August, attorneys for the 45-year-old Nelson cited an unofficial autopsy on one inmate executed last month, William Purkey, saying it indicated evidence of pulmonary edema in which the lungs fill with fluid and causes a painful sensation akin to drowning.
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AP PHOTOS: Aerial images show stark destruction from Laura
From the air, the destruction of Hurricane Laura is especially stark. Photographs from The Associated Press show entire neighbourhoods surrounded by green-brown floodwater. A glassy high-rise stands with most of its windows missing. An airport hangar is shredded into ribbons of metal.
After days of gathering strength in the Gulf of Mexico, Laura grew into one of the most powerful storms ever to strike the U.S., a Category 4 monster with 150 mph winds that surpassed even Katrina, which hit Louisiana almost exactly 15 years ago.
Laura pounded the Gulf Coast with wind and rain, unleashed a fearsome wall of seawater and killed at least four people. The system sheared off roofs and left whole neighbourhoods in ruins. Most of the homes that remained intact still had missing shingles, shattered windows and yards strewn with debris.
The hurricane maintained strength for hours after making landfall and carved a destructive path hundreds of miles inland.
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Lute Olson, Hall of Fame coach, Arizona icon, dies at 85
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Lute Olson, the Hall of Fame coach who turned Arizona into a college basketball powerhouse, has died. He was 85.
Olson’s family said he died Thursday evening. The cause of death wasn’t given.
“Coach Olson is the absolute best, one of the greatest coaches ever and one of the greatest human beings ever,” Georgia Tech coach and former Arizona player Josh Pasnter tweeted. “My feelings of gratitude and appreciation cannot be put in words. I love him dearly. My heart hurts, but I know he is now in heaven. May god bless his family. #RIP”
Olson spent 24 seasons at Arizona, revitalizing a fan base in the desert while transforming a program that had been to the NCAA Tournament just three times in 79 years before he was hired in 1983.
Olson first took the Wildcats to the NCAA Tournament during his second season in Tucson to start a string of 25 straight appearances. The streak would have been the third-longest in NCAA history, but the 1999 and 2008 appearances were later vacated by the NCAA for impermissible benefits to players and recruiting violations.
The Associated Press
