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

After smooth campaign start, Kamala Harris faces a crucial week ahead

WASHINGTON (AP) — The crowds are psyched. The campaign donations are flooding in. Volunteers are showing up at field offices in droves.

After a mostly smooth two-week campaign startup, Vice President Kamala Harris is headed into a crucial week that includes her most critical decision yet — choosing a running mate — while grappling with how to keep that early political momentum alive.

Harris, a former prosecutor known for being deliberative, effectively has a deadline of Tuesday to select who will be her No. 2 from a list that has been whittled down to four governors, a senator and a Cabinet official who was also one of her 2020 foes. It’s a high-pressure decision that usually spans several months, but in this case is compressed into a matter of just weeks.

From there, Harris and her running mate will launch into an aggressive, seven-state battleground tour that begins in Philadelphia on Tuesday and winds through Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. Her early rallies have attracted enthusiastic thousands.

Campaign officials are aware that momentum can be fleeting and are working to capitalize on the energy now, while managing expectations by continuing to emphasize the race with Republican nominee Donald Trump is tight. But the strong rollout has allowed the Harris campaign to put a number of states back in play that had been feared out of reach when President Joe Biden remained at the top of the ticket.

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Trump again tears into Georgia’s Republican governor on the same day he campaigns in the state

ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump picked a new fight Saturday with Georgia’s Republican governor as he campaigned in the key swing state where he’s looking to avenge his narrow 2020 loss — a defeat he continues to blame on GOP officials for not giving into his false theories of election fraud.

Trump attacked Gov. Brian Kemp on his social media site before his rally and said Kemp should be “fighting Crime, not fighting Unity and the Republican Party.” He also criticized Kemp’s wife, Marty, for saying she would write in her husband’s name for president this fall instead of voting for the Republican nominee.

At Saturday’s rally, Trump assailed Kemp in a roughly 10-minute tirade, blaming him for his loss to Democratic President Joe Biden and for not stopping a local district attorney from prosecuting him and several associates for his efforts to overturn the results.

“He’s a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he’s a very average governor,” Trump said. “Little Brian, little Brian Kemp. Bad guy.”

On X, Kemp told Trump to “leave my family out of it” and urged him to stop “engaging in petty personal insults, attacking fellow Republicans, or dwelling on the past.”

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Katie Ledecky swims into history with 800 freestyle victory at the Paris Olympics

NANTERRE, France (AP) — Every year on Aug. 3, Katie Ledecky is reminded of her first Olympic gold medal.

She was just 15 years old, a reserved high schooler who had surprisingly made the U.S. swim team for the London Games. Then she went out and shocked the world, beating everyone in the 800-meter freestyle.

Twelve years to the day, Ledecky did it again.

Not a stunner, but one for the ages.

Gold medal No. 9.

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Algerian boxer Imane Khelif clinches medal at Olympics after outcry fueled by gender misconceptions

VILLEPINTE, France (AP) — Boxer Imane Khelif of Algeria clinched a medal at the Paris Olympics in an emotional fight Saturday that followed days of sharp scrutiny and online abuse as misconceptions about her gender exploded into a larger clash about identity in sports.

Khelif defeated Anna Luca Hamori of Hungary 5:0 in the quarterfinals of the women’s 66-kilogram division. Khelif will win at least a bronze medal after she comfortably earned the second victory of her tumultuous second trip to the Olympics.

Khelif faced outcry fueled by claims from the International Boxing Association, which has been banned from the Olympics since 2019, that she failed an unspecified eligibility test to compete last year over elevated levels of testosterone. She won her opening bout at the Paris Games on Thursday when opponent Angela Carini of Italy tearfully abandoned the fight after just 46 seconds.

That unusual ending became a sharp wedge to drive into an already prominent divide over gender identity and regulations in sports, drawing comments from the likes of former U.S. President Donald Trump, “Harry Potter” writer J.K. Rowling and others falsely claiming Khelif was a man or transgender.

At a Paris Games that has championed inclusion and seen other outcry over an opening ceremony performance featuring drag queens, LGBTQ+ groups say the hateful comments could pose dangers to their community and female athletes.

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Horror at deaths of 12 children unites Druze across borders. But Mideast’s wars tear at their bonds

FARDIS, Lebanon (AP) — Alma Ayman Fakhr al-Din, a lively 11-year-old who loved basketball and learning languages, was playing on a soccer field a week ago in Majdal Shams, a Druze town in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, when the rocket hit.

Running to the site, her father Ayman pleaded with emergency workers for information about his daughter. “Suddenly I went to the corner, I saw such a tiny girl in a bag,” he said. He recognized her shoes, her hand. “I understood that that’s it, nothing is left, she’s gone.” She was among 12 children and teens killed.

The shocking bloodshed unified the Druze across the region in grief – and laid bare the complex identity of the small, insular religious minority, whose members are spread across Israel, the Golan Heights, Lebanon and Syria.

The Druze religious sect began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. Outsiders are not allowed to convert, and most religious practices are shrouded in secrecy. There are just one million Druze – more than half of them in Syria, around 250,000 in Lebanon, 115,000 in Israel and 25,000 in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.

Separated by borders, each part of the Druze community has taken different paths, always with an eye on preserving their existence among larger powers. Druze in Lebanon and Syria adopted Arab nationalism, including support for the Palestinian cause. In Israel, Druze are highly regarded for their loyalty to the state and their military service, with many entering elite combat units, including fighting in Gaza. In the Golan, the Druze navigate their historically Syrian identity while living under Israeli occupation.

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Opposition leader joins rally calling for Venezuela presidential election results to be overturned

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Thousands of people rallied in the streets of Venezuela’s capital Saturday, waving the national flag and singing the national anthem in support of an opposition candidate they believe won the presidential election by a landslide.

Authorities have declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner of last Sunday’s election but have yet to produce voting tallies to prove he won. Maduro also urged his backers to attend his own “mother of all marches” later Saturday in Caracas.

The government arrested hundreds of opposition supporters who took to the streets in the days after the disputed poll, and the president and his cadres have threatened to also lock up opposition leader, María Corina Machado, and her hand-picked presidential candidate, Edmundo González.

On Saturday, supporters chanted and sang as Machado arrived at the rally in Caracas. Ecstatic, they crushed around her as she climbed onto a raised platform on a truck to address the crowd.

“After six days of brutal repression, they thought they were going to silence us, intimidate or paralyze us,” she told them. “The presence of every one of you here today represents the best of Venezuela.”

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Trump says he’ll skip an ABC debate with Harris in September and wants them to face off on Fox News

CHAPIN, S.C. (AP) — Donald Trump says he is pulling out of a scheduled September debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on ABC and wants them to face off on Fox News, making it increasingly unlikely that the candidates will confront each other on stage before the November election.

In a series of Truth Social posts late Friday, the Republican nominee and former president said his agreement to a Sept. 10 debate on ABC “has been terminated” because he will no longer face Democratic President Joe Biden, who ended his campaign last month after a disastrous performance in their first debate.

Trump now says he will appear on Fox News on Sept. 4 in Pennsylvania with rules that he called “similar” to his debate with Biden, but with a full audience instead of a mostly empty studio. Trump said that if Harris, the likely Democratic nominee, does not agree to the new network and date, he will do a “major Town Hall” with Fox News.

Michael Tyler, a Harris spokesperson, said Trump “is running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to and running straight to Fox News to bail him out.”

It was not immediately clear whether ABC would turn its Sept. 10 event into a Harris town hall in Trump’s absence. Tyler said Harris is committed to the time slot and would appear “one way or the other to take the opportunity to speak to a prime time national audience.”

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Israel kills militants in the West Bank as a nervous region watches latest on cease-fire talks

ZEITA, West Bank (AP) — Two Israeli airstrikes in the West Bank killed nine Palestinian militants on Saturday, Israel’s army said, as violence flared again in the Israeli-occupied territory with tensions high over the war in Gaza and a potential regional escalation.

Cease-fire discussions on Gaza continued, with an Israel delegation led by the Mossad chief briefly visiting Cairo, an Egyptian official said. The U.S. has urged Israel to seize the chance for a cease-fire after the shock killing of Hamas’ political leader in Iran, which Tehran blames on Israel.

That killing and Israel’s assassination of a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon have the region holding its breath for retaliation against Israel on either front, or both, after Iran and its proxies vowed to act. Hamas said its command had begun discussions on choosing a new leader.

In the northern West Bank, the Israeli army said its forces first struck a vehicle in a rural area outside the city of Tulkarem early Saturday, killing the five occupants. The army said they were on their way to carry out an attack. Hamas identified all five as militants with the group, including a local commander.

According to an Associated Press journalist and witnesses, the blast took place along a road connecting the Palestinian villages of Zeita and Qaffin.

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Tropical depression strengthens into Tropical Storm Debby as it moves through Gulf toward Florida

MIAMI (AP) — A tropical depression strengthened into Tropical Storm Debby north of Cuba on Saturday and was newly predicted to become a hurricane as it moves through the Gulf of Mexico on a collision course with Florida.

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center said the storm now had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph). Debby was located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) west-southwest of Key West, Florida, and it was moving toward the northwest at 14 mph (22 kph).

Wind and thunderstorms have spread over a broad region, including southern Florida, the Florida Keys and the Bahamas.

Debby is likely to bring drenching rain and coastal flooding to much of Florida’s Gulf Coast by Sunday night, and predictions show the system could come ashore as a hurricane Monday and cross over northern Florida into the Atlantic Ocean.

Forecasters warn it could also drop heavy rains over north Florida and the Atlantic coasts of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina early next week.

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Younger adults are going public with their digestive problems. Experts say it’s mostly a good thing

Lauren Bell was stressed out and just starting her first job post-college in New York City when she realized a bout of food poisoning wasn’t going away after weeks.

A doctor’s appointment revealed she had irritable bowel syndrome, a surprising diagnosis — until she learned more about the connection between mental health and gut health, as well as the prevalence of digestive problems among women.

“Working in a pretty intense environment, living in the city and being an adult for the first time was doing a number on my body,” the 27-year-old said of her diagnosis five years ago.

Every few months, a new TikTok about digestive problems goes viral — the taboo topic often being brought up by women who suggest tips to reduce bloat or ease pain. Experts say it’s not clear whether there is an uptick in the number of people having digestive problems or if the online conversation is leading to more appointments and diagnoses.

But doctors are seeing a pattern of more and younger people wanting to deal with their gastrointestinal distress, and they suspect anxiety related to increased isolation during the pandemic is playing a big role in the increase in visits.

The Associated Press