US marks slowest population growth since the Depression

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. population growth has slowed to the lowest rate since the Great Depression, the Census Bureau said Monday, as Americans continued their march to the South and West and one-time engines of growth, New York and California, lost political influence.

Altogether, the U.S. population rose to 331,449,281 last year, the Census Bureau said, a 7.4% increase that was the second slowest ever. Experts say that paltry pace reflects the combination of an aging population, slowing immigration and the scars of the Great Recession more than a decade ago, which led many young adults to delay marriage and families.

The new allocation of congressional seats comes in the first release of data from last year's headcount. The numbers generally chart familiar American migration patterns: Texas and Florida, two Republican Sunbelt giants, added enough population to gain congressional seats as chillier climes like New York and Ohio saw slow growth and lost political muscle. The report also confirms one historic marker: For the first time in 170 years of statehood, California is losing a congressional seat, a result of slowed migration to the nation’s most populous state, which was once a symbol of the country’s expansive frontier.

The state population figures, known as the apportionment count, determine distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal spending each year. They also mark the official beginning of once-a-decade redistricting battles. The numbers released Monday, along with more detailed data expected later this year, will be used by state legislatures or independent commissions to redraw political maps to account for shifts in population.

It’s been a bumpy road getting this far. The 2020 census faced a once-in-a-century coronavirus pandemic, wildfires, hurricanes, allegations of political interference with the Trump administration’s failed effort to add a citizenship question, fluctuating deadlines and lawsuits.

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US to share AstraZeneca shots with world after safety check

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. will begin sharing its entire stock of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines with the world once it clears federal safety reviews, the White House said Monday, with as many as 60 million doses expected to be available for export in the coming months.

The move greatly expands on the Biden administration's action last month to share about 4 million doses of the vaccine with Mexico and Canada. The AstraZeneca vaccine is widely in use around the world but has not yet been authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The White House is increasingly feeling assured about the supply of the three vaccines being administered in the U.S., particularly following the restart of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson shot over the weekend. The U.S. has also been under mounting pressure in recent weeks to share more of its vaccine supply with the world, as countries like India experience devastating surges of the virus and others struggle to access doses needed to protect their most vulnerable populations.

“Given the strong portfolio of vaccines that the U.S. already has and that have been authorized by the FDA, and given that the AstraZeneca vaccine is not authorized for use in the U.S., we do not need to use the AstraZeneca vaccine here during the next several months," said White House COVID-19 co-ordinator Jeff Zients. "Therefore the U.S. is looking at options to share the AstraZeneca doses with other countries as they become available.”

More than 3 million people worldwide have died of COVID-19, including more than 572,000 in the U.S. The U.S. has vaccinated more than 53% of its adult population with at least one dose of its three authorized vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna and J&J, and it expects to have enough supply for its entire population by early summer.

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Attorney: Black man killed by deputies shot in back of head

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. (AP) — A Black man killed by deputies in North Carolina was shot in the back of the head and had his hands on his car steering wheel when they opened fire, attorneys for his family said Monday after relatives viewed body camera footage.

The account was the first description of the shooting of Andrew Brown Jr., who was killed by deputies serving drug-related search and arrest warrants. His death last Wednesday led to nightly protests and demands for justice in the town of Elizabeth City. Authorities have released few details, and the video has not been made public.

Attorney Chantel Cherry-Lassiter watched a 20-second portion of body camera video with Brown's family. Lassiter said Brown did not appear to be a threat to officers as he backed his vehicle out of his driveway and tried to drive away from deputies with guns drawn.

"There was no time in the 20 seconds that we saw where he was threatening the officers in any kind of way," she told reporters at a news conference.

When asked whether Brown was shot in the back, attorney Harry Daniels said, “Yes, back of the head.”

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SOS messages, panic as virus breaks India's health system

NEW DELHI (AP) — Dr. Gautam Singh dreads the daily advent of the ventilator beeps, signalling that oxygen levels are critically low, and hearing his desperately ill patients start gasping for air in the New Delhi emergency ward where he works.

Like other doctors across India, which on Monday set another record for new coronavirus infections for a fifth day in a row at more than 350,000, the cardiologist has taken to begging and borrowing cylinders of oxygen just to keep patients alive for one more day.

On Sunday evening, when the oxygen supplies of other nearby hospitals were also near empty, the desperate 43-year-old took to social media, posting an impassioned video plea on Twitter.

“Please send oxygen to us," he said in a choked voice. "My patients are dying.”

India was initially seen as a success story in weathering the pandemic, but the virus is now racing through its population of nearly 1.4 billion, and systems are beginning to collapse.

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Biden plan for cleaner power system faces daunting obstacles

NEW YORK (AP) — If the nation is to meet President Joe Biden's goal of cutting America’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by the end of the decade, it will have to undertake a vast transformation toward renewable energy.

And to achieve that, the near-impossible will be required: A broad network of transmission lines will have to be built to carry solar and wind power across the continent to deliver electricity to homes and businesses — something the administration envisions accomplishing by 2035.

What's more, utility-scale batteries on a widespread scale, to store renewable energy for peak-use periods, would be needed.

The financial and technological tasks of linking cleaner power sources to an aging electric grid pummeled by climate change are daunting enough. Add to them the legal fights that states and localities will likely mount to fight the build-outs of transmission lines in their areas, and the challenges become extraordinary.

It normally takes years to win authorization to build new transmission lines. Because many such decisions are made at the local level, critics across the country who oppose having wires strung through their landscapes could further prolong the battles.

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California recall has enough signatures to make ballot

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Organizers of the recall effort against California Gov. Gavin Newsom collected enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot, state election officials said Monday, likely triggering just the second such election in state history.

“The people of California have done what the politicians thought would be impossible," said Orrin Heatlie, the retired county sheriff's sergeant who launched the recall effort last year. “Our work is just beginning. Now the real campaign is about to commence."

Heatlie spearheaded the signature collection effort that began last June and then picked up momentum in the fall as frustration grew over Newsom's coronavirus-related actions. The California secretary of state's office said more than 1.6 million signatures had been deemed valid as of Monday, about 100,000 more than required.

People who signed petitions now have 30 days to withdraw their signatures, though it’s unlikely enough will do so to stop the question from going to voters.

The recall against Newsom, a first-term Democrat seen as a possible White House hopeful someday, will be among the highest-profile political races in the country this year. He launched a campaign to fight the effort in March alongside endorsements from Democrats including U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. So far no other Democrats have jumped in to run against him.

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'Red Tourism' draws Chinese on centennial of Communist Party

JINGGANGSHAN, China (AP) — On the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, tourists are flocking to historic sites and making pilgrimages to party landmarks.

On a street where the Red Army once roamed, a group of retirees in historic pastel-blue army uniforms belt out tunes made famous through countless movies, television shows and other forms of propaganda. Historic locations in Jiangxi and Guizhou provinces — the sites of revolutionary leader Mao Zedong’s early battles, his escape from Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces in the Long March and the cementing of his leadership in Zunyi — are experiencing an influx of tourists this year as post-pandemic travel returns to China.

In Guizhou, tourism in the first quarter of 2021 has already recovered to 2019 levels, local official Lu Yongzheng said. The province, among China’s top tourist destinations, received millions of tourists who brought in billions of dollars in revenue.

On a recent government-organized tour, descendants of the Red Army told stories of their forefathers at the Zunyi Memorial Museum, which houses artifacts from the period and hologram recreations of a key meeting at which Mao established his dominance.

Kong Xia grew up listening to stories of hardships and toil and the arduous Long March, a military retreat in which her grandfather, Kong Xianquan, participated. In the epic journey, the Communists travelled over treacherous terrain to eventually establish their World War II capital in the dry northern province of Shaanxi, from which they would expand and eventually triumph over their Nationalist rivals in 1949.

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Student's Snapchat profanity leads to high court speech case

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fourteen-year-old Brandi Levy was having that kind of day where she just wanted to scream. So she did, in a profanity-laced posting on Snapchat that has, improbably, ended up before the Supreme Court in the most significant case on student speech in more than 50 years.

At issue is whether public schools can discipline students over something they say off-campus. The topic is especially meaningful in a time of remote learning because of the coronavirus pandemic and a rising awareness of the pernicious effects of online bullying.

Arguments are on Wednesday, via telephone because of the pandemic, before a court on which several justices have school-age children or recently did.

The case has its roots in the Vietnam-era case of a high school in Des Moines, Iowa, that suspended students who wore armbands to protest the war. In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court sided with the students, declaring students don't “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

Ever since, courts have wrestled with the contours of the decision in Tinker v. Des Moines in 1969.

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Cop accused of hurting woman's arm: 'Ready for the pop?'

DENVER (AP) — A Colorado police officer accused of dislocating the shoulder of a 73-year-old woman with dementia while arresting her seemed to be aware he had injured her. He told fellow officers “ready for the pop?” as he showed them his body camera footage, according to police station surveillance video with enhanced audio that was made public Monday by the woman's lawyer.

Officer Austin Hopp made the comment while showing the other officers the part of the arrest that shows Karen Garner being held against the hood of a patrol car in Loveland, about 50 miles (80 kilometres) north of Denver last year, her handcuffed left arm bent up behind her head. The body camera footage, which can be heard but not seen on the surveillance video, was also previously released by Garner's lawyer.

The videos plus a lawsuit filed against Hopp, other officers and the city and investigations into the arrest came this month amid a national reckoning over the use of force by police against people — including those with mental and physical health conditions.

The surveillance video captured in the Loveland police station shows two other officers, one male and female, watching the footage with Hopp as he makes the “pop” comment. The female officer, who helped during the arrest and says “I hate this.”

The video then shows her pull her hat over her eyes while another male officer says, “I love it.”

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Scientists: Up to 25,000 barrels at DDT dump site in Pacific

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Marine scientists say they have found what they believe to be as many as 25,000 barrels that possibly contain DDT dumped off the Southern California coast near Catalina Island, where a massive underwater toxic waste site dating back to World War II has long been suspected.

The 27,345 “barrel-like" images were captured by researchers at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. They mapped more than 36,000 acres of seafloor between Santa Catalina Island and the Los Angeles coast in a region previously found to contain high levels of the toxic chemical in sediments and in the ecosystem.

Historical shipping logs show that industrial companies in Southern California used the basin as a dumping ground until 1972, when the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act, also known as the Ocean Dumping Act, was enacted.

Resting deep in the ocean, the exact location and extent of the dumping was not known until now.

The territory covered was “staggering,” said Eric Terrill, chief scientist of the expedition and director of the Marine Physical Laboratory at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

News from © The Associated Press, 2021