August 16, 2020 7:40 am
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – The United States and South Korea will begin their annual joint military exercises this week. But a spreading coronavirus outbreak has apparently forced the allies to scale back an already low-key training program mainly involving computer-simulated war scenarios. The drills could still irk North Korea, which portrays the allies’ combined training as invasion rehearsals and has threatened to abandon stalled nuclear talks. The exercises also come at a delicate time after President Donald Trump openly complained about the costs of maintaining 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea to protect against North Korean threats. The allies have so far failed to sign a new cost-sharing agreement after the last one expired at the end of 2019.
August 16, 2020 7:39 am
JERUSALEM (AP) – Israel has closed the Gaza Strip’s offshore fishing zone following a night of cross-border fighting with Palestinian militants, the most intense escalation of hostilities in recent months. Sunday’s move comes after Palestinian militants in Gaza fired two rockets into southern Israel following Israeli airstrikes that targeted sites belonging to the territory’s militant Hamas rulers. The military said the Iron Dome aerial defense system intercepted the two rockets that militants in Gaza launched at southern Israel. But police said rocket fallout caused damage to a house in the town of Sderot, and paramedics treated a 58-year-old man for minor wounds from exploding glass.
August 16, 2020 7:38 am
SEATTLE (AP) – A senior administration official says President Donald Trump intends to withdraw the nomination of William Perry Pendley to head the Bureau of Land Management. The news was cheered by conservationists who insisted the longtime advocate of selling federal lands should not be overseeing them. Pendley is a former oil industry and property rights attorney from Wyoming who has been leading the Bureau of Land Management for more than a year under a series of temporary orders from Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. Democrats alleged the temporary orders were an attempt to skirt the nomination process, and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and conservation groups have filed lawsuits to have him removed from office.
August 16, 2020 7:37 am
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – Police in Portland, Oregon, declared a riot as protesters demonstrated outside a law enforcement building early Sunday, continuing a nightly ritual in the city. News outlets report officers used crowd control munitions to disperse the gathering outside the Penumbra Kelly building. Police say protesters had thrown “softball size” rocks, glass bottles and other objects at officers. Police also reported vandalism at the building. The actions came after what started as a peaceful protest late Saturday. Violence had erupted earlier Saturday afternoon when a small group of alt-right demonstrators traded paint balls and pepper spray with counter-protesters.
August 16, 2020 7:36 am
NEW YORK (AP) – President Donald Trump’s younger brother, Robert Trump, has died after being hospitalized in New York. He was 71. In a statement Saturday night, the president said his brother was his “best friend.” Donald Trump visited his brother at a New York City hospital Friday after White House officials said he had become seriously ill. The youngest of Trump’s siblings had remained close to the president. As recently as June, Robert Trump filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Trump family that unsuccessfully sought to stop publication of a tell-all book by the president’s niece. Officials did not immediately release a cause of death.
August 16, 2020 7:33 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic dioceses have been hit with about 150 lawsuits from people who say they were sexually abused as children by priests and hope a state court decision last year has shown a way around time limits for legal claims. That number may be end up dozens higher as lawyers are filing ahead of the two-year anniversary Friday of the Pennsylvania attorney general’s landmark grand jury report on priest molestation. The bulk of the new cases were filed against the Pittsburgh, Allentown, Scranton and Philadelphia dioceses. The state’s dioceses have already paid out millions to victims of priest molestation.
August 16, 2020 7:28 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Gov. Tom Wolf’s top election official says the administration had to take action after receiving a blunt warning from the U.S. Postal Service that it may be unable to deliver some mail-in ballots in the November presidential election by the deadline in state law. Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, Kathy Boockvar, said Friday that this was the first time the postal service had said the state couldn’t rely on a one-to-three day turnaround time. That warning precipitated Thursday night’s filing in the state Supreme Court asking to extend the deadline for mail-in ballots to be received in the Nov. 3 election when Pennsylvania will be a premier presidential battleground.
August 15, 2020 10:16 am
WARSAW (AP) – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has sealed a defense cooperation deal with Polish officials that will pave the way for the redeployment of American troops from Germany to Poland. In Warsaw on Saturday at the end of a four-nation tour of central and eastern Europe, Pompeo and Poland’s defense minister signed an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement that sets out the legal framework for the additional troop presence. The signing came just a day after the Trump administration suffered an embarrassing diplomatic loss at the United Nations when its proposal to indefinitely extend an arms embargo on Iran was soundly defeated in a UN Security Council vote that saw only one country side with the U.S.
August 15, 2020 9:43 am
CHICAGO (AP) – Former Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson has died. He was 84. Thompson was known as “Big Jim” during a long career that eventually made him the state’s longest-serving chief executive. His wife, Jayne, told the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times that he died shortly after 8 p.m. Friday at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago. The Tribune, citing a police report, reported Thompson had been recovering there for several weeks after suffering heart problems. Thompson was a Republican from Chicago who was first elected in 1976. He served four terms. A moderate, he managed the state through recession years in the 1980s.
August 15, 2020 9:40 am
LONDON (AP) – Thousands of British tourists beat a hasty retreat from France, packing out planes, trains and ferries to return to the U.K. by the early hours of Saturday morning to avoid a mandatory 14-day quarantine at home. On Friday, many British travelers in the country opted to cut short their vacations to meet the 4 a.m. Saturday deadline. Anyone arriving back from France from Saturday must stay at home for two weeks to make sure they cannot spread the coronavirus if they have become infected. The exodus was prompted late Thursday when the British government took France off a list of nations exempt from traveler quarantine requirements.
