AP News in Brief at 6:03 a.m. EDT
EXPLAINER: Where does harassment report leave Andrew Cuomo?
NEW YORK (AP) - New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo´s monthslong fall from grace reached a nadir Tuesday, when investigators said they substantiated sexual harassment allegations against him from 11 women, many of whom have worked for him.
Cuomo, once widely beloved for his telegenic response to the coronavirus pandemic, continues to deny the allegations and maintains he isn´t going anywhere - but his political future might soon be out of his own hands.
Here are the takeaways from the report and Cuomo's response, along with what happens next:
WHAT WAS CUOMO ACCUSED OF DOING?
Multiple women accused Cuomo of sexual harassment and assault. The public allegations, which started in December and cascaded over the winter, ranged from inappropriate comments to forced kisses and groping.
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Analysis: Delta variant upends politicians' COVID calculus
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Joe Biden´s administration drew up a strategy to contain one coronavirus strain, then another showed up that´s much more contagious.
This week - a month late - Biden met his goal of 70% of U.S. adults having received at least one COVID-19 shot. Originally conceived as an affirmation of American resiliency to coincide with Independence Day, the belated milestone offered little to celebrate. Driven by the delta variant, new cases are averaging more than 70,000 a day, above the peak last summer when no vaccines were available. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is drawing criticism from experts in the medical and scientific community for its off-and-on masking recommendations.
But the delta variant makes no distinctions when it comes to politics. If Biden's pandemic response is found wanting, Republican governors opposed to pandemic mandates also face an accounting. They, too, were counting on a backdrop of declining cases. Instead unvaccinated patients are crowding their hospitals.
The Biden administration's process-driven approach succeeded in delivering more than enough vaccine to protect the country, sufficient to ship 110 million doses overseas. When the president first set his 70% vaccination target on May 4, the U.S. was dispensing around 965,000 first doses per day, a rate more than twice as fast as needed to reach the July 4 goal.
Then things started to happen.
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Black women, across generations, heed Biles´ Olympic example
NEW YORK (AP) - Naomi Osaka. Simone Biles. Both are prominent young Black women under the pressure of a global Olympic spotlight that few human beings ever know. Both have faced major career crossroads at the Tokyo Games. Both cited pressure and mental health.
The glare is even hotter for these Black women given that, after years of sacrifice and preparation, they are expected to perform, to be strong, to push through. They must work harder for the recognition and often are judged more harshly than others when they don´t meet the public´s expectations.
So when New York city resident Natelegé Whaley heard that Black women athletes competing in the Tokyo Olympics were asserting their right to take care of their mental health, over the pressure to perform a world away, she took special notice.
"This is powerful," said Whaley, who is Black. "They are leading the way and changing the way we look at athletes as humans, and also Black women as humans."
Being a young Black woman - which, in American life, comes with its own built-in pressure to perform - entails much more than meets the eye, according to several Black women and advocates who spoke to The Associated Press.
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EXPLAINER: What happens when Olympics and politics collide?
TOKYO (AP) - For all the International Olympic Committee talks of staying neutral, its games have long proven to be essentially and sometimes overtly political - for the Games overall, and often for the athletes who are intended to entertain the world in a two-week global show.
Case in point: diplomatic eruptions. Hundreds of athletes have come to an Olympic Games and never returned to the home nation they represented in the pool, on the mat or on the track. Their stories since 1948, when the Olympics resumed in London after a wartime pause, confirm that when the world meets for sports, politics is always there.
The sprinter from Belarus, Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, who left Tokyo early Wednesday to seek refuge, fits into that long tradition - yet with a unique reason.
Most athletes who defected competed under a kind of flag of convenience - traveling to the Summer Games from eastern Europe with a plan to head west. The Olympics offered escape from authoritarian regimes at home, and at no time more than the peak of the Cold War.
After the 1972 Munich Olympics, more than 100 athletes stayed in West Germany to first seek refuge before, in many cases, moving on to make lives in democratically run countries. Those whose plans succeeded have cited varied reasons - political ideology, the prospect of a more peaceful life or simply the chance to achieve their true value as an athlete.
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China seals city as its worst virus outbreak in a year grows
BEIJING (AP) - China's worst coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic a year and a half ago escalated Wednesday with dozens more cases around the country, the sealing-off of one city and the punishment of its local leaders.
Since that initial outbreak was tamed last year, China's people had lived virtually free of the virus, with extremely strict border controls and local distancing and quarantine measures stamping out scattered, small flareups when they occurred.
Now, the country is on high alert as an outbreak of cases connected to the international airport in the eastern city of Nanjing touched at least 17 provinces. China reported 71 new cases of COVID-19 from local transmission Wednesday, more than half of them in coastal Jiangsu province, of which Nanjing is the capital.
In Wuhan, the central city where the first cases of COVID-19 were identified in late 2019, mass testing has shown some of its newly reported cases have a high degree of similarity to cases discovered in Jiangsu province. Those cases have been identified as being caused by the highly transmissible delta variant that first was identified in India.
Meanwhile, another COVID-19 hotspot was emerging in the city of Zhangjiajie, near a scenic area famous for sandstone cliffs, caves, forests and waterfalls that inspired the on-screen landscape in the "Avatar" films.
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Mired in crises, Lebanon marks 1 year since horrific blast
BEIRUT (AP) - Banks, businesses and government offices were shuttered Wednesday as Lebanon marks one year since the horrific explosion at the port of Beirut with a national day of mourning.
The grim anniversary comes amid an unprecedented economic and financial meltdown, and a political stalemate that has kept the country without a functioning government for a full year. United in grief and anger, families of the victims and other Lebanese were planning prayers and protests later in the day.
The explosion killed at least 214 people, according to official records, and injured thousands.
The blast was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history - the result of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate igniting after a fire broke out. The explosion tore through the city with such force it caused a tremor across the entire country that was heard and felt as far away as the Mediterranean island of Cyprus more than 200 kilometers (180 miles) away.
It soon emerged in documents that the highly combustible nitrates had been haphazardly stored at the port since 2014 and that multiple high-level officials over the years knew of its presence and did nothing.
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For Missouri congresswoman, eviction fight is personal
WASHINGTON (AP) - Roughly two decades before she was elected to Congress, Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri lived in a Ford Explorer with her then-husband and two young children after the family had been evicted from their rental home.
So for Bush, a freshman Democrat from St. Louis, the debate over whether to revive the moratorium on evictions during the pandemic is deeply personal. To dramatize her point, she started to sleep outside the U.S. Capitol last Friday to call attention to the issue as part of the effort to pressure President Joe Biden and Congress to act.
On Tuesday, she won. After coming under intense pressure, the Biden administration issued a new eviction moratorium that will last until October 3, temporarily halting evictions in counties with "substantial and high levels" of virus transmissions, which covers areas where 90% of the U.S. population lives.
Bush's experience sets her apart from the more conventional partisan sniping and grandstanding in the capital because of her direct connection to an urgent problem affecting millions of Americans.
"I know what it´s like to be evicted and have to live out of my car with my two babies," Bush said in an interview Saturday. "As long as I am a sitting U.S. congressperson, I will not keep my mouth shut about it."
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This year's summer of climate extremes hits wealthier places
As the world staggers through another summer of extreme weather, experts are noticing something different: 2021´s onslaught is hitting harder and in places that have been spared global warming´s wrath in the past.
Wealthy countries such as the United States, Canada, Germany and Belgium are joining poorer and more vulnerable nations on a growing list of extreme weather events that scientists say have some connection to human-caused climate change.
"It is not only a poor country problem, it's now very obviously a rich county problem," said Debby Guha-Sapir, founder of the international disaster database at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. "They (the rich) are getting whacked."
Killer floods hit China, but hundreds of people also drowned in parts of Germany and Belgium not used to being inundated. Canada and the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. had what climate scientist Zeke Hausfather called "scary" heat that soared well past triple digits in Fahrenheit and into high 40s in Celsius, shattering records and accompanied by unusual wildfires. Now southern Europe is seeing unprecedented heat and fire.
And peak Atlantic hurricane and U.S. wildfire seasons are only just starting.
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Olympics Latest: Britain wins gold in two-person dinghy
TOKYO (AP) - The Latest on the Tokyo Olympics, which are taking place under heavy restrictions after a year´s delay because of the coronavirus pandemic:
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MEDAL ALERT
Britain has won gold in the two-person dinghy sailing event.
Hannah Mills becomes the first British woman to win at least three Olympic medals in sailing. She and Eilidh McIntyre won at Enoshima Yacht Harbor. Britain also won in Rio in 2016.
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"Uuuh-aaah!" Sport climbing's Ondra screams his way to top
TOKYO (AP) - Weightlifters are among the most vocal athletes at the Olympics, letting out screams as they lock out at the top of a lift: "ahhhhhh!"
Tennis players have long been known to be grunters, usually with some form of "ha-uh!" or "ha-ooah!"
The loudest vocalizations of the Tokyo Games may come from the grounds in one of the Olympic program's newest sports.
Adam Ondra is widely considered the best climber in the world and a gold medal favorite in sport climbing's Olympic debut.
He's also a bit of a yeller.
