AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EDT
Winds a worry as death toll reaches 33 from West Coast fires
BEAVERCREEK, Ore. (AP) - Nearly all the dozens of people reported missing after a devastating blaze in southern Oregon have been accounted for, authorities said over the weekend as crews battled wildfires that have killed at least 33 from California to Washington state.
The flames up and down the West Coast have destroyed neighborhoods, leaving nothing but charred rubble and burned-out cars, forced tens of thousands to flee and cast a shroud of smoke that has given Seattle, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, some of the worst air quality in the world.
The smoke filled the air with an acrid metallic smell like pennies and spread to nearby states. While making it difficult to breathe, it helped firefighters by blocking the sun and turning the weather cooler as they tried to get a handle on the blazes, which were slowing in some places.
But warnings of low moisture and strong winds that could fan the flames added urgency to the battle. The so-called red flag warnings stretched from hard-hit southern Oregon to Northern California and extended through Monday evening.
Lexi Soulios, her husband and son were afraid they would have to evacuate for a second time because of the weather. They left their small southern Oregon town of Talent last week when they saw a "big, huge flow of dark smoke coming up," then went past roadblocks Friday to pick through the charred ruins of their home.
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Teacher departures leave schools scrambling for substitutes
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - With many teachers opting out of returning to the classroom because of the coronavirus, schools around the U.S. are scrambling to find replacements and in some places lowering certification requirements to help get substitutes in the door.
Several states have seen surges in educators filing for retirement or taking leaves of absence. The departures are straining staff in places that were dealing with shortages of teachers and substitutes even before the pandemic created an education crisis.
Among those leaving is Kay Orzechowicz, an English teacher at northwest Indiana´s Griffith High School, who at 57 had hoped to teach for a few more years. But she felt her school's leadership was not fully committed to ensuring proper social distancing and worried that not enough safety equipment would be provided for students and teachers.
Add the technology requirements and the pressure to record classes on video, and Orzechowicz said it "just wasn´t what I signed up for when I became a teacher."
"Overall, there was just this utter disrespect for teachers and their lives," she said. "We´re expected to be going back with so little." When school leaders said teachers would be "going back in-person, full throttle, that´s when I said, `I´m not doing it. No.´"
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As Trump played down virus, health experts' alarm grew
WASHINGTON (AP) - Public health officials were already warning Americans about the need to prepare for the coronavirus threat in early February when President Donald Trump called it "deadly stuff" in a private conversation that has only now has come to light.
At the time, the virus was mostly a problem in China, with just 11 cases confirmed in the United States.
There was uncertainty about how the U.S. ultimately would be affected, and top U.S. officials would deliver some mixed messages along the way. But their overall thrust was to take the thing seriously.
"We´re preparing as if this is a pandemic," Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters on Feb. 5. "This is just good commonsense public health."
Trump, however, had a louder megaphone than his health experts, and in public he was playing down the threat. Three days after delivering his "deadly" assessment in a private call with journalist Bob Woodward, he told a New Hampshire rally on Feb. 10, "It´s going to be fine."
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Virus America, six months in: Disarray, dismay, disconnect
For years, Erin Whitehead has been a committed fan of the crisis-fueled medical drama "Grey´s Anatomy." She has watched its doctors handle all manner of upheaval inside their put-upon hospital - terrifying diseases, destructive weather, bombs, mass shootings, mental illness, uncertainty, grief.
Today, she turns to the emotionally draining show as a salve, something to take her mind off of ... well, off of everything this jumbled year has delivered to her nation, to her society, to her front door.
"Sixteen seasons of `Grey´s Anatomy'. That´s what the past six months of 2020 have been," says Whitehead, a podcaster and full-time mother in Pace, a town of 34,000 in Florida's panhandle. "We´ve all just been in triage. Nobody can sustain that level of stress."
On Friday, March 13, 2020, a COVID curtain descended upon the United States, and a new season - a season of pandemic - was born. Now we are half a year into it - accustomed in some ways, resistant in others, grieving at what is gone, wondering with great trepidation what will be.
New conflicts and causes have risen. Anger and death sit in daily life´s front row. A sense of uncertainty reigns. Great chunks of the national emotional infrastructure are buckling. We are locked in a countrywide conversation about control - who has it and who should.
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TikTok picks Oracle over Microsoft in Trump-forced sales bid
The owner of TikTok has chosen Oracle over Microsoft as its preferred suitor to buy the popular video-sharing app, according to a source familiar with the deal who was not authorized to speak publicly about it.
Microsoft announced Sunday that its bid to buy TikTok has been rejected, removing a leading suitor for the Chinese-owned app a week before President Donald Trump promises to follow through with a plan to ban it in the U.S.
The Trump administration has threatened to ban TikTok by Sept. 20 and ordered ByteDance to sell its U.S. business, claiming national-security risks due to its Chinese ownership. The government worries about user data being funneled to Chinese authorities. TikTok denies it is a national-security risk and is suing to stop the administration from the threatened ban.
TikTok declined to comment Sunday. Oracle didn't return a request for comment but has previously declined comment.
Microsoft said in a Sunday statement that TikTok's parent company, Bytedance, "let us know today they would not be selling TikTok´s US operations to Microsoft."
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Gunman sought after California deputies shot in patrol car
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Authorities searched Sunday for a gunman who shot and critically wounded two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies who were sitting in their squad car - an apparent ambush that drew a reward for information and an angry response from the president.
The 31-year-old female deputy and 24-year-old male deputy underwent surgery Saturday evening, Sheriff Alex Villanueva said in a late-night news conference. Both graduated from the academy 14 months ago, he said.
"They performed in an admirable fashion in spite of grave adversity," Villanueva said Sunday during a conversation with local religious leaders. "God bless them, it looks like they´re going to be able to recover."
He said the wounded female deputy was able to get help for the male deputy by calling in on the police radio despite having been shot.
"They´ve survived the worst," he added.
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Sheriff: Deputy on video punching Black man in Georgia fired
A sheriff's deputy in Georgia has been fired after being captured on video repeatedly punching a Black man during a traffic stop, authorities said Sunday.
The deputy was being let go for "excessive use of force," the Clayton County Sheriff's Office said in a statement. It did not identify the deputy, but said a criminal investigation has been turned over to the district attorney's office.
Roderick Walker, 26, was arrested and beaten after Clayton County sheriff´s deputies pulled over the vehicle he was riding in Friday with his girlfriend, their 5-month-old child and his stepson for an alleged broken taillight, his attorney, Shean Williams of The Cochran Firm in Atlanta said Sunday. The deputies asked for Walker´s identification and got upset and demanded he get out of the vehicle when he questioned why they needed it since he wasn´t driving, Williams said.
The subsequent arrest, captured on video by a bystander and shared widely, shows two deputies on top of Walker, one of whom repeatedly punches him. Walker´s girlfriend screams and tells the deputies Walker said he can´t breathe. A child in the vehicle yells, "Daddy."
As Walker is handcuffed, the deputy who punched him tells the bystander that Walker bit him.
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Battle on to save Brazil's tropical wetlands from flames
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) - A vast swath of a vital wetlands is burning in Brazil, sweeping across several national parks and obscuring the sun behind dense smoke.
Preliminary figures from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, based on satellite images, indicate that nearly 5,800 square miles (1.5 million hectares) have burned in the Pantanal region since the start of August - an expanse comparable to the area consumed by the historic blazes now afflicting California. It's also well beyond the previous fire season record from 2005.
Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, whose satellites monitor the fires, said the number of Panantal fires in the first 12 days of September was nearly triple the figure for the same period last year. From January through August, the number of fires more than tripled, topping 10,000.
Fernando Tortato, who has been working and living near the Encontro Das Aguas reserve since 2008, said he's never seen the fires as bad as this year.
"It is an immense area that has been burned and consumed by the fire. And we still have another two, three or four weeks without rain" ahead, he said.
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Grandson of Harding and lover wants president's body exhumed
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - The grandson of U.S. President Warren G. Harding and his lover, Nan Britton, went to court in an effort to get the Republican´s remains exhumed from the presidential memorial where they have lain since 1927.
James Blaesing told an Ohio court that he is seeking Harding´s disinterment as a way "to establish with scientific certainty" that he is the 29th president´s blood relation.
The dispute looms as benefactors prepare to mark the centennial of Harding's 1920 election with site upgrades and a new presidential center in Marion, the Ohio city near which he was born in 1865. Blaesing says he deserves to "have his story, his mother´s story and his grandmother´s story included within the hallowed halls and museums in this town."
A branch of the Harding family has pushed back against the suit filed in May - not because they dispute Blaesing's ancestry, but because they don´t.
They argue they already have accepted as fact DNA evidence that Blaesing´s mother, Elizabeth Ann Blaesing, was the daughter of Harding and Britton and that she is set to be acknowledged in the museum. Harding had no other children.
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Racial injustice themes fill empty NFL stadiums
Jason Myers kicked off to start the Seahawks' season-opener against the Falcons, and the ball sailed through the end zone for a touchback. No one moved a step.
Instead, the players all dropped to one knee.
After years of pleading with the NFL to act against systemic racism, they were willing to wait another 10 seconds to make their point.
Teams opening the year in empty stadiums knelt, locked arms, raised fists in protest or stayed off the field entirely for the "Star-Spangled Banner" and the Black anthem "Lift Every Voice and Sing" on Sunday as the once-reluctant league brought racial injustice to the forefront on the NFL's first full slate of games.
In Atlanta, the teams wore armbands honoring civil rights leader John Lewis and staged the most striking of the day's gestures: They barely flinched as the opening kickoff landed beyond the end line, took a knee, and remained there for about 10 seconds before trotting off the field to resume the game.
