Trump's health secretary resigns in travel flap

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's health secretary resigned Friday, after his costly travel triggered investigations that overshadowed the administration's agenda and angered his boss. Tom Price's regrets and partial repayment couldn't save his job.

The Health and Human Services secretary became the first member of the president's Cabinet to be pushed out in a turbulent young administration that has seen several high-ranking White House aides ousted. A former GOP congressman from the Atlanta suburbs, Price served less than eight months.

Publicly, Trump had said he was "not happy" with Price for repeatedly using private charter aircraft for official trips on the taxpayer's dime, when cheaper commercial flights would have done in many cases.

Privately, Trump has been telling associates in recent days that his health chief had become a distraction. Trump felt that Price was overshadowing his tax overhaul agenda and undermining his campaign promise to "drain the swamp" of corruption, according to three people familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity.

On Friday the president called Price a "very fine person," but added, "I certainly don't like the optics." Price said in his resignation letter that he regretted that "recent events have created a distraction."

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US to Americans: Stay away from Cuba after health 'attacks'

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States delivered an ominous warning to Americans on Friday to stay away from Cuba and ordered home more than half the U.S. diplomatic corps, acknowledging neither the Cubans nor America's FBI can figure out who or what is responsible for months of mysterious health ailments.

No longer tiptoeing around the issue, the Trump administration shifted to calling the episodes "attacks" rather than "incidents."

The U.S. actions are sure to rattle already delicate ties between the longtime adversaries who only recently began putting their hostility behind them. The U.S. Embassy in Cuba will lose roughly 60 per cent of its American staff and will stop processing visas for prospective Cuban travellers to the United States indefinitely, officials said. Roughly 50 Americans had been working at the embassy.

President Donald Trump said that in Cuba "they did some very bad things" that harmed U.S. diplomats, but he didn't say who he might mean by "they."

Though officials initially suspected some futuristic "sonic attack," the picture is muddy. The FBI and other agencies that searched homes and hotels where incidents occurred found no devices.

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Aid flows to Puerto Rico but many still lack water and food

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Thousands of Puerto Ricans were finally getting water and food rations Friday as an aid bottleneck began to ease, but many remained cut off from the basic necessities of life and were desperate for power, communications and other trappings of normality in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

There were many people across the island, especially outside the capital, unable to get water, gas or generator fuel. That was despite the fact that military trucks laden with water bottles and other supplies began to reach even some remote parts of Puerto Rico and U.S. federal officials pointed to progress in the recovery effort, insisting that more gains would come soon.

In some cases, aid that was being distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency was simply not enough to meet demand on an island of 3.4 million people where nearly everyone was still without power, half were without running water in their homes and the economy was still crippled from the effects of the storm that swept across the U.S. territory as a fierce Category 4 hurricane on Sept. 20.

"I haven't seen any help and we're running out of water," said Pedro Gonzalez, who was clearing debris to earn some money in the northern coastal town of Rio Grande. Increasingly desperate and with a daughter with Down syndrome to support, he had already decided to move to Louisiana to stay with relatives. "We're getting out of here."

FEMA sent Rio Grande officials shipments of food and water for the past three days and arrived Thursday to help distribute meal packets, water and snacks in one community. But people in nearby neighbourhoods complained that they weren't told about the aid.

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Trump praises Puerto Rico aid, mayor says it's 'killing us'

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump pledged to spare no effort to help Puerto Ricans recover from Maria's ruinous aftermath Friday even as San Juan's mayor, her voice breaking with rage, accused his administration of "killing us with the inefficiency."

Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz implored Trump from afar to "make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives," while the president asserted that U.S. officials and emergency personnel are working all-out against daunting odds, with "incredible" results.

Trump's acting homeland security secretary, Elaine Duke, visited the island Friday, surveying the ravaged landscape by helicopter in an hourlong tour, driving past still-flooded streets, twisted billboards and roofs with gaping holes, and offering encouragement to some of the 10,000 emergency personnel she says the U.S. government has on the ground.

Duke tried, too, to move on from the remarks she made a day earlier in which she called the federal relief effort a "good-news story." But on that front, she ran into winds as fierce as Maria.

"We are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency," Cruz said in a news conference. "I am begging, begging anyone that can hear us, to save us from dying."

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Maria dims Puerto Rico's bleak economic outlook

NEW YORK (AP) — Hurricane Maria has thrown Puerto Rico's already messy economic recovery plans into disarray.

For now, the focus has shifted from Puerto Rico's financial woes to meeting the basic needs of its 3.5 million people, many of whom still lack adequate food, water and power more than a week since the Category 4 hurricane laid waste to the U.S. territory. But as Puerto Rico emerges from the worst of the disaster, it will still face a $74 billion public debt load and a decade-old economic recession that has sent hundreds of thousands of islanders fleeing to the U.S. mainland.

The hurricane has interrupted court proceedings and mediation efforts with creditors aimed at restructuring the debt. The destruction will severely disrupt revenue flows and force a recalculation of a fiscal plan, painfully negotiated with federal oversight board appointed to oversee Puerto Rico's finances. While there is some potential for federal recovery money and insurance payouts to jolt a stagnant economy, much depends on how much aid Congress will approve.

President Donald Trump on Friday promised the rebuilding effort "will end up being one of the biggest ever." With so many unknowns, however, economists are unsure if there will be any silver lining for Puerto Rico.

"Generally, what we find is that natural disasters are just temporary problems and in most cases after the rebuilding, things revert to the long-term trends," said David Hitchcock, an analyst with S&P. "Unfortunately, the longer-term trends already weren't very good."

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Report finds GOP tax plan benefits top 1 per cent

WASHINGTON (AP) — The new GOP tax plan delivers a big tax cut to the wealthiest Americans while some in lower tax brackets would end up paying more, according to an analysis Friday from prominent nonpartisan researchers.

The plan being touted by President Donald Trump as the biggest tax cut ever delivers 50 per cent of its total tax benefit to taxpayers in the top 1 per cent, those with incomes above $730,000 a year, according to the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. For those wealthy taxpayers, their after-tax incomes would increase 8.5 per cent next year.

For other taxpayers, though, the benefits are far more modest or non-existent, the report finds. Taxpayers in the bottom 95 per cent would see tax cuts averaging 1.2 per cent of after-tax income or less next year.

And about 12 per cent of taxpayers would face a tax increase next year, of $1,800 on average. That includes more than a third of taxpayers making between about $150,000 and $300,000, mostly because of the elimination of many itemized deductions.

By 2027, taxes would increase for about a quarter of Americans, including nearly 30 per cent of those earning about $50,000 to $150,000 a year, and 60 per cent of people making $150,000 to $300,000, according to the study.

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Air Force Academy leader delivers powerful speech on race

AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AP) — The leader of the Air Force Academy delivered a poignant and stern message on race relations in a speech to thousands of cadets after someone wrote racial slurs on message boards outside the dorm rooms of five black students.

Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria warned students that he would not tolerate racism at the academy and invoked some of the racial tensions that have been gripping the country. At one point, he insisted that everyone in the audience take out their phones and record him so his message was clearly heard.

"If you can't treat someone with dignity and respect, get out," he said Thursday as audience members looked on with rapt attention.

Air Force security personnel are investigating the incident after the slurs were discovered Tuesday. Racial slurs are illegal in the military and can bring charges of violating orders and conduct unbecoming an officer.

Officials have said they cannot provide any more information about what happened because of the ongoing investigation. No additional details were released Friday.

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Wisconsin girl reaches plea deal in Slender Man case

WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) — The second of two Wisconsin girls charged with repeatedly stabbing a classmate to impress horror character Slender Man will plead guilty in a deal that will send her to a state mental hospital and bring an end a case that shocked people in part because the attackers were only 12.

The deal, announced in court Friday, means both girls will avoid prison time for the attack on Payton Leutner, who was also 12. Morgan Geyser, now 15, will be treated indefinitely at a mental hospital. Her co-defendant, Anissa Weier, faces at least three years in a mental hospital.

"It's been a tragic experience for everyone," Geyser's attorney, Donna Kuchler, said after a brief court hearing Friday. "Our hearts go out to the victim and her family. And we're very grateful that the district attorney's office gave this case the considering it deserves."

Weier and Geyser lured Payton Leutner, who was also 12, into the woods at a park in Waukesha, a Milwaukee suburb. Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier urged her on, according to investigators. Leutner survived after she crawled out of the woods to a path where a passing bicyclist found her.

Both Weier and Geyser told detectives they felt they had to kill Leutner to become Slender Man's "proxies," or servants, and protect their families from him.

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APNewsBreak: No increased danger after Yosemite rocks fall

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — A geological analysis Friday found there was no more danger than usual of another giant rock fall after two huge slides, including one involving a slab of granite the size of a 36-story building, occurred this week on the famed El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park.

One person was killed and two injured in the successive rock falls on Wednesday and Thursday at the climbing mecca.

"If we felt any area was unsafe we wouldn't be allowing people in there," Yosemite geologist Greg Stock said Friday.

He and a U.S. Geological Service geologist were studying the mountain after the rock falls that awed but did not deter people in the close-knit climbing community.

"It's kind of an inherently dangerous sport," Hayden Jamieson, 24, of Mammoth Lakes, California, said as he prepared to head up El Capitan early Saturday.

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Myanmar refugee exodus tops 500,000 as more Rohingya flee

TEKNAF, Bangladesh (AP) — He trekked to Bangladesh as part of an exodus of a half million people from Myanmar, the largest refugee crisis to hit Asia in decades. But after climbing out of a boat on a creek on Friday, Mohamed Rafiq could go no further.

He collapsed onto a muddy spit of land cradling his wife in his lap — a limp figure so exhausted and so hungry she could no longer walk or even raise her wrists.

The couple had no food, no money, no idea what to do next. Their two traumatized children huddled close beside them, unsure what to make of the country they had arrived in just hours earlier, in the middle of the night.

Rafiq said their third child, an 8-month-old boy, had been left behind. Buddhist mobs in Myanmar burned the child to death, he said, after setting their village ablaze while security forces stood idly by — part of a systematic purge of ethnic Rohingya Muslims from Buddhist-majority Myanmar that the United Nations has condemned as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing."

Five weeks after the mass exodus began on Aug. 25, the U.N. says the total number of arrivals in Bangladesh has now topped 501,000.

News from © The Associated Press, 2017