AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

Venezuelan opposition says it has proof its candidate defeated President Maduro in disputed election

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — As thousands of people demonstrated across Venezuela, opposition candidate Edmundo González on Monday announced that his campaign has the proof it needs to show he won the country’s disputed election whose victory electoral authorities handed to President Nicolás Maduro.

González and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado told reporters they have obtained more than 70% of tally sheets from Sunday’s election, and they show González with more than double Maduro’s votes. Both called on people, some of whom protested in the hours after Maduro was declared winner, to remain calm and invited them to gather peacefully at 11 a.m. Tuesday to celebrate the results.

“I speak to you with the calmness of the truth,” González said as dozens of supporters cheered outside campaign headquarters in the capital, Caracas. “We have in our hands the tally sheets that demonstrate our categorical and mathematically irreversible victory.”

Their announcement came after the National Electoral Council, which is loyal to Maduro’s ruling Unites Socialist Party of Venezuela, officially declared him the winner, handing him his third six-year term.

In the capital, the protests were mostly peaceful, but when dozens of riot gear-clad national police officers blocked the caravan, a brawl broke. Police used tear gas to disperse the protesters, some of whom threw stones and other objects at officers who had stationed themselves on a main avenue of an upper-class district.

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Biden proposed enforceable ethics code and term limits for Supreme Court. How might they work?

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday proposed major changes for the U.S. Supreme Court: an enforceable code of ethics, term limits for justices and a constitutional amendment that would limit the justices’ recent decision on presidential immunity.

There’s almost no chance of the proposal passing a closely divided Congress with Election Day looming, but the ideas could still spark conversation with public confidence in the court hitting an all-time low amid ethical revelations about some justices. It also comes against the backdrop of a contentious presidential election and growing Democratic outrage about recent decisions from the conservative-majority court.

Here’s a look at how the ideas, how they might work, and the possible stumbling blocks:

Limiting how long justices serve on the nation’s highest court has broad support among Americans, polling indicates.

A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in July 2022 found 67% of Americans support a proposal to set a specific number of years that justices serve instead of life terms, including 82% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans.

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Focused on legacy, Biden calls out Trump and says how civil rights led him into politics

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — No longer on the campaign trail, President Joe Biden on Monday delivered a speech at the LBJ Presidential Library designed to help cement his legacy.

Slightly more than a week after dropping out of this year’s election, Biden marked the 60th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act by speaking out for the rule of law and democratic principles. All the while, he warned about the threat he sees if Republican Donald Trump returns to the White House.

“No one is above the law,” Biden said.

Biden followed his denunciations of Trump with a mix of nostalgia for his early days in politics during the era of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

It’s a story he’s told before, about how he became a public defender and was cornered by Delaware leaders to run for the U.S. Senate. But it’s taken on a new resonance as he stares down the final six months of his political career.

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NC Gov. Cooper opted out of Harris VP vetting, in part over worry about GOP lieutenant: AP sources

WASHINGTON (AP) — North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper opted not to be a candidate in Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate search in part due to concerns that his Republican lieutenant governor would try to assume control if he left the state to campaign as part of the Democratic ticket, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Cooper confirmed in a statement Monday night that he would not be a candidate to be Harris’ vice president, saying he was “honored” to be considered but “this just wasn’t the right time for North Carolina and for me to potentially be on a national ticket.” The governor, 67, withdrew from contention well before Harris’ vetting process began and never submitted the requisite material, according to two of the people. All three spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive search process.

Harris’ search is ongoing and her teams of lawyers and political aides are still reviewing information on a narrowing list of potential candidates.

Harris’ team was initially said to looking at about a dozen potential contenders, but the field has narrowed and now Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly are seen as among the front-runners, according to the people.

Cooper, the former chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, has been close to Harris since they were both state attorneys general. His potential selection was seen as a possible asset in shifting North Carolina — the Democrats’ only significant opportunity to expand on their 2020 map — into Harris’ hands.

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2 children dead and 11 people injured in stabbing rampage at a dance class in England, police say

LONDON (AP) — Bloodied children ran screaming from a dance and yoga class “like a scene from a horror movie” to escape a teenager’s savage knife attack that killed two children and wounded 11 other people Monday in northwest England, police and witnesses said.

A 17-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder in the stabbing in Southport, a seaside town near Liverpool, Merseyside Police said. The motive was not clear, but police said detectives were not treating the attack as terror-related.

Nine children were wounded — six of them in critical condition — in the latest headline-grabbing attack amid a recent rise in knife crime that has stoked anxieties and led to calls for the government to do more to clamp down on bladed weapons.

Two wounded adults who tried to shield the pupils were in critical condition, police said.

“We believe the adults who were injured were bravely trying to protect the children who were being attacked,” Merseyside Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy said.

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California man defends his home as wildfires push devastation and spread smoke across US West

COHASSET, Calif. (AP) — In the small forest community of Cohasset, Ron Ward watched as flames hundreds of feet high from California’s deadly Park Fire approached his family ranch.

He had lost insurance coverage on it just a month earlier as companies increasingly drop California homeowners due to the growing risk of wildfires in the state, in part due to hotter weather and arid conditions caused by climate change. So he and his son Ethan went to work installing a fire protection system involving a water line to a pond and sprinklers. The system’s pump was delivered right when the fire started.

The flames reached within 70 feet (21. meters) of his house. Then they stopped.

“It hit our sprinklers and kind of died down and then went around our property and missed, missed all of our structures,” Ward said. His 100-year-old ranch was saved.

Cohasset exhibited charred remnants of the devastation Sunday, a scene that Ward described as a “moonscape.” Mailboxes and vehicles were covered with pink fire retardant dropped by aircraft. The husks of a washer and dryer set were surrounded by burned debris and a blackened motorcycle was propped upright, balancing on rims after its tires apparently melted away.

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Trump agrees to be interviewed as part of an investigation into his assassination attempt, FBI says

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump has agreed to be interviewed by the FBI as part of an investigation into his attempted assassination in Pennsylvania earlier this month, a special agent said on Monday in disclosing how the gunman prior to the shooting had researched mass attacks and explosive devices.

The expected interview with the 2024 Republican presidential nominee is part of the FBI’s standard protocol to speak with victims during the course of its criminal investigations. The FBI said on Friday that Trump was struck in the ear by a bullet or a fragment of one during the July 13 assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“We want to get his perspective on what he observed,” said Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office. “It is a standard victim interview like we would do for any other victim of crime, under any other circumstance.”

Trump said in a Fox News interview that aired Monday night that he expected the FBI interview to take place Thursday.

Through more than 450 interviews, the FBI has fleshed out a portrait of the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, that reveals him to be a “highly intelligent” but reclusive 20-year-old whose primary social circle was his family and who maintained few friends and acquaintances throughout his life, Rojek said. Even in online gaming platforms that Crooks visited, his interactions with peers appeared to have been minimal, the FBI said.

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Israeli military detains 9 soldiers over alleged abuse of a detainee at a shadowy military facility

SDE TEIMAN BASE, Israel (AP) — The Israeli military said Monday it was holding nine soldiers for questioning following allegations of “substantial abuse” of a detainee at a shadowy facility where Israel has held Palestinian prisoners throughout the war in Gaza.

The military did not disclose additional details surrounding the alleged abuse, saying only that its top legal official had launched a probe. An investigation by The Associated Press and reports by rights groups have exposed abysmal conditions and abuses at the Sde Teiman facility, the country’s largest detention center.

A report by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, earlier this year said that detainees alleged they were subjected to ill-treatment and abuse while in Israeli custody, without specifying the facility.

The military has generally denied ill-treatment of detainees. Following the accusations of harsh treatment that prompted a court case, Israel said it was transferring the bulk of Palestinian detainees out of Sde Teiman and upgrading it.

Israeli media reported that military police officers who arrived at Sde Teiman in southern Israel to detain the soldiers were met with protests and scuffles. Later, dozens of protesters who had come to show support for the soldiers burst through the facility’s gate, waving Israeli flags and chanting “shame.”

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US boosting alliance with the Philippines with military funding and pact amid concern over China

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Washington’s top diplomat and defense chief, in Manila for talks Tuesday, will announce $500 million in military funding to boost Philippine defenses and progress in a proposed military pact, given that China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the region “will not stop,” a Philippine official said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who has fortified Manila’s decades-old treaty alliance with Washington as hostilities between Philippine and Chinese forces flared since last year in the disputed South China Sea.

Marcos welcomed Blinken and Austin, praising the “very open” communication lines between Washington and Manila so that their treaty alliance and the issues on the South China Sea and the Indo-Pacific region “are continuously examined and reexamined so we are agile in terms of our responses.”

Blinken, along with Austin, expressed their condolences over the dozens of deaths wrought by typhoon-worsened monsoon rains in recent weeks and offered U.S. assistance.

Blinked said there was “really evidence of a steady drumbeat, very high-level engagements between our countries that are covering the full range of issues and opportunities that bring us together, not only security but also economic.”

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The U.S. men’s gymnastics team ended a lengthy Olympic medal drought. They hope the NCAA notices

PARIS (AP) — Before they stood with their arms wrapped around each other in a brotherhood forever etched into U.S. Olympic lore, Brody Malone, Frederick Richard, Asher Hong, Paul Juda and Stephen Nedoroscik were collegians.

Yes, the dreams the members of the U.S. men’s gymnastics team had fostered since childhood began in small gyms scattered across the country. But they became tangible at Stanford, Michigan and Penn State.

So when it was time for those dreams to become fully, vividly realized inside a raucous Bercy Arena on Monday night, they leaned on the experiences they gained during all those meets in all those sometimes sparsely filled gyms that taught them about pressure and teamwork and belief.

Yes, the bronze medal the Americans so emphatically earned ended a 16-year drought on the sport’s biggest stage.

Yet it was also a message to athletic directors at the dozen schools that still have Division I gymnastics — and to be honest, to the ones that don’t, too — that the sport is worth saving.

The Associated Press