Trump lashes out at San Juan mayor who begged for more help

BRANCHBURG, N.J. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Saturday lashed out at the mayor of San Juan and other officials in storm-ravaged Puerto Rico, contemptuous of their claims of a laggard U.S. response to the natural disaster that has imperiled the island's future.

"Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help," Trump said in a series of tweets a day after the capital city's mayor appealed for help "to save us from dying."

"They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort," Trump wrote from his New Jersey golf club.

The tweets were a biting attack on the leader of a community in crisis. After 10 days of desperation, with many still unable to access essentials including food and water, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz accused the Trump administration Friday of "killing us with the inefficiency" after Hurricane Maria. She implored the president, who is set to visit the U.S. territory on Tuesday, to "make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives."

"I am begging, begging anyone that can hear us, to save us from dying," Cruz said at a news conference, her voice breaking with rage.

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Price's exit further complicates GOP health care push

BRANCHBURG, N.J. (AP) — The ouster of Tom Price as President Donald Trump's health secretary is yet another self-inflicted blow for Republicans wishing to put their own stamp on health care — and the latest distraction for a White House struggling to advance its agenda after months of turmoil.

Price resigned Friday amid investigations into his use of costly charter flights for official travel at taxpayer expense. His exit makes it even more unlikely that Republicans will be able to deliver on their promise to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama's law, even though they control the White House and both chambers of Congress.

"I think health care is a dead letter through the next election," Joe Antos, a policy expert with the business-oriented American Enterprise Institute, said Saturday.

The health secretary's exit capped a week in which a last-ditch GOP health care bill failed to advance in the Senate. Regaining momentum will be more difficult now that the White House also has to find a replacement for Price. That makes it harder to visualize how the administration and congressional Republicans can fulfil their goal of remaking the health care system along conservative lines, although Trump has said he's confident a plan can pass early next year.

Price — who Trump concluded had become a distraction — had been on the rocks with the president since before the travel flap. A former Republican congressman from Georgia, he proved less helpful than expected on the health care fight. Price played a supporting role while Vice-President Mike Pence took the lead, especially with the Senate.

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Hurricane stresses Puerto Rico's already weak health system

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Martin Lopez was shot in the hand last Saturday by two thieves who made off with his precious cans of gas in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. He was rushed to Centro Medico, a trauma centre in the Puerto Rican capital where in ordinary times he would be quickly treated by surgeons and sent on his way.

But five days later, the 26-year-old cook was still waiting because only a fraction of the operating rooms were available due to an island-wide breakdown in the electrical power grid caused by the storm. He finally got the surgery and the hospital said he was on the mend Friday — but the same can't be said for Puerto Rico's badly stressed medical system.

"Thank God I'm fine, I'm getting better," he told The Associated Press in an air-conditioned medical tent set up by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on the grounds of Centro Medico. "But Puerto Rico is destroyed. It's really sad."

Of all the problems unleashed by the storm, which roared over the island Sept. 20 as a Category 4 hurricane with winds up to 155 mph, the plight of overtaxed hospitals and smaller clinics — and health care in general — is one of the most worrying for officials grappling with recovery efforts.

The health system in the U.S. territory was already precarious, with a population that is generally sicker, older and poorer than that of the mainland, long waits and a severe shortage of specialists as a result of a decade-long economic recession. The island of 3.4 million people has higher rates of HIV, asthma, diabetes and some types of cancer, as well as tropical diseases such as the mosquito-borne Zika and dengue viruses.

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Tillerson says US has direct channels to talk to North Korea

BEIJING (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged on Saturday that the United State is maintaining direct channels of communications with North Korea even as tensions rise over the North's nuclear and missile programs and the countries' leaders spar through bellicose name-calling.

Tillerson said the U.S. was probing North Korea's willingness to talk, and called for a calming of the situation on the Korean Peninsula, adding it was incumbent on the North to halt the missile launches.

"We have lines of communication to Pyongyang. We're not in a dark situation, a blackout," Tillerson told reporters during a visit to China. "We have a couple ... three channels open to Pyongyang. We can talk to them, we do talk to them."

No elaboration about those channels or the substance of any discussions came from Tillerson, who met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other top officials in Beijing.

While Tillerson affirmed that the U.S. would not recognize North Korea as a nuclear power, he also said the Trump administration had no intention of trying to oust Kim. "Despite assurances that the United States is not interested in promoting the collapse of the current regime, pursuing regime change, accelerating reunification of the peninsula or mobilizing forces north of the DMZ, North Korean officials have shown no indication that they are interested in or are ready for talks regarding denuclearization," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement.

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Separatists vow to defy police ultimatum over Catalan vote

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Catalan separatists vowed Saturday to ignore a police ultimatum to leave the schools they are occupying to use in a vote seeking independence from Spain. As police methodically sealed off hundreds of schools, some parents decided to send their children home and girded for pre-dawn confrontations Sunday with police.

Tensions rose across the country over the planned vote. In the Spanish capital of Madrid, thousands marched to protest the separatists' attempt to break up their nation, demanding that Catalan leaders be sent to jail. In Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, thousands more also took to the streets to urge their prosperous region to stay united with Spain.

The police deadline of 6 a.m. Sunday for the activists, parents and children in the occupied Catalan schools is designed to prevent the vote from taking place, since the polls are supposed to open three hours later.

Spain's constitutional Court suspended the independence vote more than three weeks ago and the national government calls it illegal. Police have been ordered to stop ballots from being cast on Sunday and have been cracking down for days, confiscating millions of ballots and posters.

Catalonia's defiant regional government is pressing ahead anyway, urging the region's 5.3 million voters to make their voices heard.

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Amid outcry over Confederate markers, new ones are going up

ATLANTA (AP) — While Confederate statues and monuments around the nation get removed, defaced, covered up or toppled, some new memorials are being erected, by people who insist their only purpose is to honour the soldiers who died for the South.

Supporters of these new Civil War monuments describe a determination to hold onto their understanding of history.

"What I want to get across is how much the South suffered, not only through the war but after the war, during the Reconstruction years," said David Coggins. His Confederate Veterans Memorial Park in Brantley, Alabama, dedicated a memorial to "Unknown Alabama Confederate Soldiers" in September.

Others say race has nothing to do with these new monuments, unlike those erected in the early 20th century.

"The problem was with some of the other statues that were put up, that were basically intended to intimidate people," said Danny Francis, commander of a Sons of Confederate Veterans unit in South Carolina. "We're not trying to oppress anyone - we're just historians. We welcome everybody."

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Mormon leader reaffirms faith's opposition to gay marriage

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A top Mormon leader reaffirmed the religion's opposition to same-sex marriage on Saturday during a church conference — and reminded followers watching around the world that children should be raised in families led by a married man and woman no matter what becomes the norm in a "declining world."

The speech by Dallin H. Oaks, a member of a top governing body called the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, followed a push in recent years by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to uphold theological opposition to gay marriage amid widespread social acceptance while trying to foster an empathetic stance toward LGBT people.

The Mormon church is one of many conservative faith groups navigating the challenges that arise from trying to strike the right balance.

"We have witnessed a rapid and increasing public acceptance of cohabitation without marriage and same-sex marriage. The corresponding media advocacy, education, and even occupational requirements pose difficult challenges for Latter-day Saints," Oaks said. "We must try to balance the competing demands of following the gospel law in our personal lives and teachings even as we seek to show love for all."

Oaks acknowledged that this belief can put Mormons at odds with family and friends and doesn't match current laws, including the recent legalization of gay marriage in the United States. But he told members of the nearly 16-million member faith watching around the world that the religion's 1995 document detailing the doctrine — "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" — isn't' a policy statement that will be changed.

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Airstrikes on IS-held areas in Syria kill and wound dozens

BEIRUT (AP) — Airstrikes on villages and towns held by the Islamic State group in eastern Syria have killed and wounded dozens a day after an attack by the extremists killed more than 120 pro-government fighters and briefly cut off the highway linking the capital Damascus with eastern Syria, opposition activists said Saturday.

It was not immediately clear if the airstrikes on areas including Mayadeen, Boukamal, Bouleil, Bouomar and Mushassan were carried out by the Russians or the U.S.-led coalition. Syrian troops have been advancing in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour against IS under the cover of Russian airstrikes while the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces are marching against the extremists under the cover of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition.

The airstrikes came after two days of clashes between Syrian government forces and their allies against IS fighters in central and eastern Syria that left nearly 200 dead on both sides. Syrian troops and their allies have regained most of the areas they had lost earlier.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday's airstrikes and those the night before killed 18 people, including two children and five women.

"They burnt Bouleil overnight," said Omar Abou Leila, of the monitoring group DeirEzzor 24, adding that 13 people were killed in Bouleil and nine others in Boukamal alone.

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'Let's Make a Deal' host, philanthropist Monty Hall dies

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Monty Hall, the genial TV game show host whose long-running "Let's Make a Deal" traded on love of money and merchandise and the mystery of which door had the car behind it, has died. He was 96.

Hall, who had been in poor health, died Saturday morning of heart failure at his home in Beverly Hills, said his daughter, Sharon Hall of Los Angeles.

"Let's Make a Deal," which Hall co-created, debuted as a daytime show on NBC in 1963 and became a TV staple. Through the next four decades, it also aired in prime time, in syndication and, in two brief outings, with hosts other than Hall at the helm.

An episode of "The Odd Couple" featured Felix Unger (Tony Randall) and Oscar Madison (Jack Klugman) as bickering guests on Hall's program.

Contestants were chosen from the studio audience — outlandishly dressed as animals, clowns or cartoon characters to attract the host's attention — and would start the game by trading an item of their own for a prize. After that, it was matter of swapping the prize in hand for others hidden behind doors, curtains or in boxes, presided over by the leggy, smiling Carol Merrill.

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Cavs owner gets 'vile' voicemails after LeBron's 'bum' tweet

CLEVELAND (AP) — Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert received "vile, disgusting" voicemails after LeBron James called President Donald Trump a "bum" on Twitter.

Gilbert said he was flooded with phone messages when the NBA's most celebrated player criticized Trump for rescinding a White House invitation to Golden State's Stephen Curry to honour the team's NBA championship.

"I received voicemails after LeBron tweeted that were some of the most vile, disgusting, racist," Gilbert said Friday on CNBC's "Squawk Box. "There's an element of racism that I didn't even realize existed in this country this much."

Gilbert said he had not told James about the voicemails. He called the comments unnerving.

"And you could hear it in their voice — the racism," Gilbert said. "It wasn't even really about the issue, and that's what really got me, because they went to who they really are, some of them."

News from © The Associated Press, 2017