AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Dems end deadlock, House hands Biden infrastructure win
WASHINGTON (AP) - The House approved a $1 trillion package of road and other infrastructure projects after Democrats resolved a months-long standoff between progressives and moderates, notching a victory that President Joe Biden and his party had become increasingly anxious to claim.
The House passed the measure 228-206 late Friday, prompting prolonged cheers from the relieved Democratic side of the chamber. Thirteen Republicans, mostly moderates, supported the legislation while six of Democrats' farthest left members - including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri - opposed it.
Approval of the bill, which would create legions of jobs and improve broadband, water supplies and other public works, whisked it to the desk of a president whose approval ratings have dropped and whose nervous party got a cold shoulder from voters in this week´s off-year elections.
Democratic gubernatorial candidates were defeated in Virginia and squeaked through in New Jersey, two blue-leaning states. Those setbacks made party leaders - and moderates and progressives alike - impatient to produce impactful legislation and demonstrate they know how to govern. Democrats can ill afford to seem in disarray a year before midterm elections that could result in Republicans regaining congressional control.
Simply freeing up the infrastructure measure for final congressional approval was a like a burst of adrenaline for Democrats. Yet despite the win, Democrats endured a setback when they postponed a vote on a second, even larger bill until later this month.
___
Local Democrats warn party: Growing Republican wave is real
NEW HOPE, Pa. (AP) - The Democrats of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, felt the red wave building over the summer when frustrated parents filled school board meetings to complain about masking requirements and an academic theory on systemic racism that wasn't even taught in local schools.
They realized the wave was growing when such concerns, fueled by misleading reports on conservative media, began showing up in unrelated elections for judges, sheriff and even the county recorder of deeds. And so they were not surprised - but devastated all the same - when Democrats all across this key county northeast of Philadelphia were wiped out in Tuesday's municipal elections.
"This is a bell we need to pay attention to. This is something going on across the country," said attorney Patrice Tisdale, a Democrat who lost her bid to become a magisterial district judge against a Republican candidate with no formal legal training. "The Democrats can´t keep doing politics as usual."
She's among the down-ballot Democrats sending an urgent message to the national party: It´s worse than you think.
This suburban region northeast of Philadelphia is a critical political battleground in one of the nation's premier swing states. It's the type of place where moderate and college-educated voters, repelled by former President Donald Trump's divisive behavior, helped Democrats retake control of Congress in 2018 and win back the White House in 2020. That's what makes the setbacks here so alarming to many Democrats.
___
Ice on the edge of survival: Warming is changing the Arctic
While conducting research in Greenland, ice scientist Twila Moon was struck this summer by what climate change has doomed Earth to lose and what could still be saved.
The Arctic is warming three times faster than the rest of the planet and is on such a knife´s edge of survival that the U.N. climate negotiations underway in Scotland this week could make the difference between ice and water at the top of the world in the same way that a couple of tenths of a degree matter around the freezing mark, scientists say.
Arctic ice sheets and glaciers are shrinking, with some glaciers already gone. Permafrost, the icy soil that traps the potent greenhouse gas methane, is thawing. Wildfires have broken out in the Arctic. Siberia even hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). Even a region called the Last Ice Area showed unexpected melting this year.
In the next couple of decades, the Arctic is likely to see summers with no sea ice.
As she returns regularly to Greenland, Moon, a researcher with the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, said she finds herself "mourning and grieving for the things we have lost already" because of past carbon dioxide emissions that trap heat.
___
8 dead, numerous injured at Astroworld Festival in Houston
HOUSTON (AP) - At least eight people died and numerous others were injured in what officials described as a surge of the crowd at the Astroworld music festival in Houston while rapper Travis Scott was performing.
Officials declared a "mass casualty incident" just after 9 p.m. Friday during the festival where an estimated 50,000 people were in attendance, Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña told reporters at a news conference.
"The crowd began to compress towards the front of the stage, and that caused some panic, and it started causing some injuries," the fire chief said. "People began to fall out, become unconscious, and it created additional panic."
The show was called off shortly thereafter. The fire chief said "scores of individuals" were injured.
Officials transported 17 people to hospitals, including 11 who were in cardiac arrest, Peña said. Many people were also treated at the scene at NRG Park, where a field hospital had been set up. About 300 people were examined at that site throughout the day, he said.
___
Oil tanker explodes in Sierra Leone; scores feared dead
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) - Scores of people were feared dead near Sierra Leone´s capital after an oil tanker exploded at a gas station while large crowds had gathered to collect leaking fuel, officials and witnesses said.
The explosion took place early Saturday after a bus struck the tanker in Wellington, a suburb just to the east of Freetown.
President Julius Maada Bio, who was in Scotland attending the United Nations climate talks Saturday, deplored the "horrendous loss of life."
"My profound sympathies with families who have lost loved ones and those who have been maimed as a result," he tweeted.
___
Fire in Indian hospital COVID-19 ward kills 10 patients
NEW DELHI (AP) - Ten patients died Saturday after a fire broke out in a hospital's COVID-19 ward in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, officials said.
An official told New Delhi Television that around 17 patients were in the ward in the city of Ahmednagar when the fire broke out. The remaining patients have been moved to a COVID-19 ward in another hospital, district collector Rajendra Bhosle said.
While the fire has since been brought under control, the cause was not immediately clear, he added, saying officials will carry out an investigation.
The former chief minister of the state, Devendra Fadnavis, took to Twitter to express his condolences and called for "strict action" against those responsible.
Such incidents are not uncommon in India. In May, when the country was battling a devastating surge in coronavirus cases, a fire in a COVID-19 ward in western India killed at least 18 patients.
___
More vaccines, fewer mask rules as US keeps fighting COVID
The United States is steadily chipping away at vaccine hesitancy and driving down COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations to the point that schools, governments and corporations are lifting mask restrictions yet again.
Nearly 200 million Americans are fully vaccinated and the nation´s over-65 population, which bore the brunt of the pandemic when it started nearly two years ago, is enthusiastically embracing vaccines.
Nearly 98% of the over-65 population has received at least one COVID-19 shot and more than 25% of them have gotten boosters, just weeks after they were authorized. The improving metrics could get a boost from President Joe Biden´s workplace mandate unveiled Thursday and the launch of COVID-19 shots in elementary-age students.
Seniors also are playing a role in getting other family members vaccinated. Erin Lipsker plans to get her 8-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son vaccinated as soon as possible so they can see her parents and her 98-year-old grandmother. An added motivation is that Lipsker was treated for cancer two years ago, and her 8-year-old daughter, Kennedy, has asthma.
"The more children and adults are vaccinated, the quicker we will be able to resume a new normal. I want that for my kids. I want that for our planet," said Lipsker, of Spokane, Washington. "I think I will feel much safer around our family. I have a 98-year-old grandmother that my kids adore. I will feel safer having my kids around her, and my parents."
___
Prosecutor in Andrew Cuomo's groping case seeks more time
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - A prosecutor investigating accusations that former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo groped a woman asked a judge for more time to evaluate the evidence, saying the criminal complaint filed last week by the local sheriff was "potentially defective," according to a letter released Friday.
The request from Albany County District Attorney David Soares throws the high-profile case into further turmoil a week after Cuomo was charged with committing a misdemeanor sex crime. The one-page complaint filed in Albany City Court by a sheriff's office investigator accuses Cuomo of forcible touching by putting his hand under a woman´s shirt on Dec. 7.
Soares, who has said he was caught off guard by the filing, said in a letter to Judge Holly Trexler on Thursday that his office had been investigating the matter for several months.
"We were in the middle of that investigation when the Sheriff unilaterally and inexplicably filed a complaint in this court," Soares wrote in the letter. "Unfortunately, the filings in this matter are potentially defective in that the police-officer-complainant failed to include a sworn statement by the victim such that the People could proceed with a prosecution on these papers."
The district attorney said the sheriff´s complaint, as filed, only included part of the woman's testimony, but left other parts out, including sections that could possibly be "exculpatory," meaning potentially helpful to Cuomo´s defense.
___
Virginia Dems concede defeat, say Republicans control House
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Democratic leaders in Virginia conceded Friday that Republicans have won control of the House of Delegates.
The Associated Press has not called all of Virginia's House races yet. But the concession means Republicans would complete an elections sweep in which they also reclaimed the offices of governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.
House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn issued a statement acknowledging the GOP majority shortly after Democratic Del. Martha Mugler conceded defeat in a tight race against Republican challenger A.C. Cordoza in the 91st House district, located in Virginia's Hampton Roads region. With Mugler's concession, Republicans now expect to hold at least 51 seats in the 100-member chamber.
"While the results of the election were not in our favor, our work for the people of Virginia goes on," said Filler-Corn.
Garren Shipley, a spokesman for House Republican Leader Todd Gilbert, said Filler-Corn called Gilbert on Friday. "The House Republican caucus appreciates her pledge to a smooth transition to the incoming majority," Shipley said.
___
EXPLAINER: How the Arbery trial got a nearly all-white jury
The long-standing practice of allowing attorneys to dismiss prospective jurors without giving a reason has come under intense criticism after a nearly all-white jury was picked to decide whether three white men are guilty of murder for shooting and killing Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was jogging though a neighborhood in Georgia.
The selection of 11 white jurors and one Black man to decide the fate of the three defendants has drawn complaints from prosecutors and the victim's family that jury selection process was blatantly unfair.
Even the judge in the case agreed with prosecutors that the exclusion of Black potential jurors looked like intentional discrimination. Still, the judge said he had limited authority to intervene after defense attorneys gave reasons that were not about race for cutting jurors.
The trial has brought new attention to a debate and growing movement around the U.S. to do away "peremptory challenges," which allow lawyers to summarily dismiss jurors. Critics say the practice is fraught with biases and creates racially imbalanced juries that make it harder to bring equal justice.
HOW DO STRIKES WORK?
