Biden angers France, EU with new Australia, UK initiative

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s decision to form a strategic Indo-Pacific alliance with Australia and Britain to counter China is angering France and the European Union. They’re feeling left out and seeing it as a return to the Trump era.

The security initiative, unveiled this week, appears to have brought Biden’s summer of love with Europe to an abrupt end. AUKUS, which notably excludes France and the European Union, is just the latest in a series of steps, from Afghanistan to east Asia, that have taken Europe aback.

After promising European leaders that “America is back” and that multilateral diplomacy would guide U.S. foreign policy, Biden has alienated numerous allies with a go-it-alone approach on key issues. France’s foreign minister expressed “total incomprehension” at the recent move, which he called a “stab in the back,” and the EU’s foreign policy chief complained that Europe had not been consulted.

France will lose a nearly $100 billion deal to build diesel submarines for Australia under the terms of the initiative, which will see the U.S. and Britain help Canberra construct nuclear-powered ones.

As such, French anger on a purely a commercial level would be understandable, particularly because France, since Britain’s handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, is the only European nation to have significant territorial possessions or a permanent military presence in the Pacific.

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COVID-19 surge forces health care rationing in parts of West

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — In another ominous sign about the spread of the delta variant, Idaho public health leaders on Thursday expanded health care rationing statewide and individual hospital systems in Alaska and Montana have enacted similar crisis standards amid a spike in the number of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization.

The decisions marked an escalation of the pandemic in several Western states struggling to convince skeptical people to get vaccinated.

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare made the announcement after St. Luke's Health System, Idaho's largest hospital network, asked state health leaders to allow “crisis standards of care” because the increase in COVID-19 patients has exhausted the state's medical resources.

Idaho is one of the least vaccinated U.S. states, with only about 40% of its residents fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Crisis care standards mean that scarce resources such as ICU beds will be allotted to the patients most likely to survive. Other patients will be treated with less effective methods or, in dire cases, given pain relief and other palliative care.

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Minnesota high court OKs ballot question on Minneapolis PD

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minnesota Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday evening for voters in Minneapolis to decide on the future of policing in the city where George Floyd was killed, just ahead of the start of early and absentee voting.

The state’s highest court overturned a lower court ruling that rejected ballot language approved by the City Council. A district judge said the wording failed to adequately describe the effects of a proposed charter amendment that would replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a new Department of Public Safety that “could include” police officers “if necessary.”

But Chief Justice Lorie Gildea said in a three-page order that the justices concluded that the challenge to the ballot language did not meet the “high standard” that the court set in earlier cases. She said the court will issue a full opinion laying out its legal reasoning sometime later to avoid impeding the start of voting.

“Now voters have the opportunity to make their voices heard on this ballot question,” City Attorney Jim Rowader said.

The Supreme Court was under pressure to rule quickly because early and absentee voting opens at 8 a.m. Friday in the Minneapolis municipal elections. The ballots were already being printed when Hennepin County District Judge Jamie Anderson ruled against the language Tuesday. It was the second time she had struck down the council’s wording. Gildea put the case on the fast track Wednesday.

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House Republican who voted to impeach Trump won't run again

One of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol announced Thursday night he will not seek reelection in Ohio next year.

U.S. Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, a former NFL player with a once-bright political future, cited his two young children for his decision and noted “the chaotic political environment that currently infects our country.” He is the first Latino to represent Ohio in Congress.

“While my desire to build a fuller family life is at the heart of my decision, it is also true that the current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decisions,” Gonzalez said in his statement.

Gonzalez, 36, would have faced Max Miller in the 2022 primary. Trump has endorsed Miller, his former White House and campaign aide, as part of his bid to punish those who voted for his impeachment or blocked his efforts to overturn the results of the election. Trump rallied for Miller this summer.

Gonzalez represents northeast Ohio's 16th Congressional District, in the northeastern part of the state.

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NYC's Rikers Island jail spirals into chaos amid pandemic

NEW YORK (AP) — A spate of inmate deaths. Cellblocks unguarded. Staggering staffing shortages caused by AWOL guards. Detainees deprived of food and medical care.

New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex, troubled by years of neglect, has spiraled into turmoil during the coronavirus pandemic. It's not just inmates and advocates saying that. City officials, including the mayor, admit there are serious problems.

One jail watchdog called it "a complete breakdown in the operation of the jails.”

"In our office's 50 years of monitoring the city jails, this is one of the most dangerous times we’ve seen," said Mary Lynne Werlwas, a lawyer and the director of the Prisoners’ Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society.

At one point during the summer, more than one-third of the city’s jail guards — about 3,050 of 8,500 — were on sick leave or medically unfit to work with inmates, according to the agency that runs the city's jails, the Department of Correction. Some guards have been missing shifts without any explanation.

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AP FACT CHECK: Biden's shaky claims on jobs, gasoline

WASHINGTON (AP) — Boasting that government policies can make a difference in improving the economy, President Joe Biden went too far Thursday in taking credit for job growth since taking office.

He also made a dubious suggestion that wrongdoing is behind higher gasoline prices — something that his administration will seek to fix. But analysts say there is little evidence that is the case.

A look at his claims and the facts:

BIDEN: “When I was sworn in as president, the nation was struggling to pull out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Job growth was anemic, with just over 60,000 new jobs per month in the three months before I was sworn in. Then we went to work. We passed the American Rescue Plan back in March. And it worked; it’s still working. Over the last three months, we have created on average 750,000 new jobs per month.”

THE FACTS: Biden is taking more credit for his plan than it deserves.

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Lawyer charged in probe of Trump-Russia investigation

WASHINGTON (AP) — The prosecutor tasked with examining the U.S. government's investigation into Russian election interference charged a prominent cybersecurity lawyer on Thursday with making a false statement to the FBI five years ago.

The indictment accuses Michael Sussmann of hiding that he was working with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign during a September 2016 conversation he had with the FBI’s general counsel, when he relayed concerns from cybersecurity researchers about potentially suspicious contacts between a Russian bank and a Trump Organization server. The FBI looked into the matter but ultimately found no evidence of a secret back channel.

That deception mattered because it “deprived the FBI of information that might have permitted it to more fully assess and uncover the origins of the relevant data and technical analysis, including the identities and motivations of Sussmann's clients,” according to the indictment filed by special counsel John Durham and his team of prosecutors.

Sussmann's lawyers said their client was charged because of “politics, not facts.”

“The Special Counsel appears to be using this indictment to advance a conspiracy theory he has chosen not to actually charge. This case represents the opposite of everything the Department of Justice is supposed to stand for. Mr. Sussmann will fight this baseless and politically-inspired prosecution,” attorneys Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth said in a statement.

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Lawyer Murdaugh exits jail after $10M insurance fraud arrest

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Instead of a suit and tie, lawyer Alex Murdaugh found himself in a jail jumpsuit Thursday in a cramped South Carolina courtroom, struggling to wipe tears from his eyes with handcuffed wrists as his lawyer detailed how his life crumbled over the past three months.

Murdaugh discovered the bodies of his wife and son, shot multiple times at their Colleton County home June 7. His drug addiction got worse and in a deep depression on Sept. 4, he decided he should die, but instead of killing himself, he hired someone to do it, defense attorney Dick Harpootlian said.

The goal was to get his surviving son a $10 million life insurance benefit, state police said. But the shot only grazed his head and Murdaugh, 53, was charged Thursday with insurance fraud, conspiracy and filing a false police report. — all felonies that could bring up to 20 years in prison if convicted of all three charges. There is no minimum sentence.

The killings of Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and son Paul in June remain unsolved. Harpootlian said Murdaugh is adamant he had nothing to do with their deaths

Murdaugh spent about five hours in the Hampton County jail before being issued a $20,000 bond and being released on his own recognizance. Prosecutors had asked for a higher bond and GPS monitoring.

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Drought haves, have-nots test how to share water in the West

MADRAS, Ore. (AP) — Phil Fine stands in a parched field and watches a harvester gnaw through his carrot seed crop, spitting clouds of dust in its wake. Cracked dirt lines empty irrigation canals, and dust devils and tumbleweeds punctuate a landscape in shades of brown.

Across an invisible line separating Fine’s irrigation district from the next, it’s another world. Automated sprinklers hiss as they douse crops, cattle munch on green grass and water bubbles through verdant farmland.

In this swath of central Oregon, where six irrigation districts rely on the Deschutes River, the consequences of the strict hierarchy dictated by the American West’s arcane water law — “first in time, first in right" — are written on the land. As drought ravages the West, the districts with century-old water claims are first in line for the scarce resource while others nearby with more recent claims have already run out.

“It’s like the Wizard of Oz. ... It’s shocking the difference,” said Matt Lisignoli, a farmer who got nearly five times more water on his land in one irrigation district than on fields in another.

“I’ve learned more about water in the last two months than I have in the last 20 years, because it’s always been here,” he said. “You don’t know until you get in a bind.”

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Jane Powell, Hollywood golden-age musicals star, dies at 92

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jane Powell, the bright-eyed, operatic-voiced star of Hollywood's golden age musicals who sang with Howard Keel in “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and danced with Fred Astaire in “Royal Wedding,” has died. She was 92.

Powell died Thursday at her Wilton, Connecticut, home, longtime friend Susan Granger said. Granger said Powell died of natural causes.

“Jane was the most wonderful friend," Granger said. ”She was candid, she was honest. You never asked Jane a question you didn’t want an absolutely honest answer to."

Granger was a youngster when she met the then-teenaged Powell, who was making her film debut in 1944's “Song of the Open Road,” directed by Granger's father, S. Sylvan Simon.

She performed virtually her whole life, starting about age 5 as a singing prodigy on radio in Portland, Oregon. On screen, she quickly graduated from teen roles to the lavish musical productions that were a 20th-century Hollywood staple.

News from © The Associated Press, 2021