Wool wrap for royal baby suggests tradition will win out

May 08, 2019

LONDON (AP) — Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor slept through his first press conference, but royal experts say the merino wool wrap in which he snuggled said a lot about how his parents, Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, will approach his future.

Meghan, a former TV star, is known for promoting social causes and niche brands with her clothing choices. Yet she and Harry introduced their son to the world Wednesday in a hand-finished shawl and cashmere cap made by G.H. Hurt & Son of Nottingham, whose intricate knitwear has swaddled royal babies for decades.

Wrapping Archie in a shawl knitted by the small, family-run English company suggests that Meghan and Harry aren't as intent on shaking up the royal family as much as some people have forecast — or feared.

"I read this as an attempt to reassure the public that they are not going to stray too far from tradition," said Pauline Maclaran, co-author of "Royal Fever: The British Monarchy in Consumer Culture." ''There has been a lot of press recently taking a slightly negative tone about Meghan, and this is an opportunity to show that she's not trying to change everything."

Princess Diana wrapped Harry and his older brother, Prince William, in G.H. Hurt. William and his wife, the Duchess of Cambridge, chose the firm for Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.

The royals don't advertise, but they do set trends with whatever they are wearing, seeing or doing. Whether it was Queen Victoria popularizing Christmas trees or Princess Diana's fluffy collars, people have long tried to copy or emulate their style.

These days, the royal effect is turbocharged by social media. The internet offers fans the opportunity to examine royal fashions in minute detail, to look at the fine stitching on a baby blanket and identify it instantly. Websites such as whatkatewore.com and whatmeghanwore.net quickly identify designers of the outfits they are wearing and tell their stories.

Susan Kelley, the American founder of whatkatewore.com, said the public's fascination with Meghan will likely trickle down to her son. And as a former actress, she has a great sensitivity to the messages sent by her sartorial selections.

"Meghan is somebody who wants to carve her own path, but she is respectful of the monarchy and traditions of it," Kelley said. "The fact that Meghan is a feminist doesn't mean she doesn't honor tradition."

Still, by selecting the Leaves And Flowers Baby Shawl with shell detailing (105 pounds, $137), Meghan chose one of G.H. Hurt's less-traditional designs. The company saw traffic on its website increase immediately after pictures of young Archie hit the news. In less than an hour, 266 visitors had looked at the shawl, up from five to 10 a day previously.

The firm, which has been in business since 1912, has a collection of vintage hand-frame knitting machines that date back hundreds of years and work alongside modern knitting technology. "Babies at the best of times are wonderful news and they are wrapped up with so much emotion and goodwill," said Richard Taylor, part of the family firm. "But from a business point of view ... we get coverage right around the world."

'A dream': Meghan, Harry present royal newborn to public

May 08, 2019

LONDON (AP) — Two tired but beaming parents and one blissfully sleeping baby posed for cameras Wednesday as Prince Harry and Meghan helped satisfy a huge global appetite for images and details about their newborn son.

Standing in a vast, red-carpeted hall at Windsor Castle, Meghan declared the baby "a dream" and motherhood "magic." Harry cradled his son in his arms as the couple, known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, posed for cameras — the first in a lifetime of photo calls for the two-day-old baby, who is seventh in line to the throne.

Baby Sussex, whose name has not been announced, lay silently, swaddled in a white blanket and wearing a matching knitted cap. Meghan declared motherhood to be "magic." "It's pretty amazing," said the 37-year-old American formerly known as Meghan Markle. "I have the two best guys in the world, so I'm really happy."

She said the baby had "just been a dream." "He has the sweetest temperament. He's really calm," she said. Harry quipped: "I wonder who he gets that from." Asked which parent the baby took after, Harry said it was too soon to tell.

"Everyone says that babies change so much over two weeks," said the 34-year-old prince. "We're basically monitoring how the changing process happens over this next month really. But his looks are changing every single day, so who knows.

"We're just so thrilled to have our own little bundle of joy," he added. The couple left the photo call to introduce the baby to his grandparents, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. The infant is the eighth great-grandchild of 93-year-old Elizabeth, Britain's longest reigning monarch.

Baby Sussex was born Monday at 5:26 a.m. (0426 GMT; 12:26 a.m. EDT) at an as-yet-undisclosed location. He weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces (3.26 kilograms). Family members have welcomed the new arrival, with Prince William saying on Tuesday he was "absolutely thrilled."

New baby alters line of succession for the British throne

May 06, 2019

The birth of a royal baby boy to Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, has changed the line of succession. The baby's name has not been released yet but here are the first 10 people in line for the throne:

1. Prince Charles, Prince of Wales

2. Prince William, Duke of Cambridge

3. Prince George of Cambridge

4. Princess Charlotte of Cambridge

5. Prince Louis of Cambridge

6. Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

7. Baby boy of Prince Harry and Meghan

8. Prince Andrew, Duke of York

9. Princess Beatrice of York

10. Princess Eugenie of York

UK military asked to help stem Channel migrant crossings

August 08, 2020

(AP) Britain’s military said Saturday it has been asked by the government to help prevent people from reaching the U.K. from France in small boats, after a surge in the number of vessels making the dangerous journey.

The Ministry of Defense said it had received a request from the Home Office to "support U.K. Border Force operations in the Dover Straits.” The department said it was “working hard to identify how we can most effectively assist.”

Britain’s Conservative government has talked tough after dozens of crossings by migrants during recent weeks of warm summer weather. On Thursday, 235 people landed or were brought ashore from boats in the English Channel, a record number for a single day. Britain’s Coastguard said it was responding to “a number of incidents” in the Channel on Saturday.

Home Secretary Priti Patel has said the Royal Navy could be called in to prevent boats reaching U.K. waters, though other senior officials and politicians say that could be impractical and potentially dangerous.

Jack Straw, who served as Home Secretary during a previous Labour government, said “it will only take one of these dinghies to capsize and everybody to drown … for there to be a hullabaloo, including in the Conservative Party, and for the policy to have to be reversed.”

Straw told the BBC that cooperation with France was the only way of reducing the number of people making the risky journey across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. The French and British immigration ministers are due to hold talks next week.

Roger Gough, head of the county council in Kent, where the majority of migrants arrive, said “historically the best experience we’ve seen of reducing the inflows is when there’s been a successful agreement, level of shared interest, between the British and French authorities.”

Migrants have long used northern France as a launching point to reach Britain, either in trucks through the Channel tunnel or on ferries. Before the coronavirus pandemic, the U.K.’s strong economy and need for farm and restaurant labor drew migrants from around the world who could speak some English.

Some have turned to small boats organized by smugglers because lockdowns have reduced opportunities to stow away on ferries and trucks. Fine summer weather is also prompting more people to make the risky sea crossing — about 20 miles (32 kilometers) at its narrowest point — in vessels as small as dinghies and kayaks.

The number of migrants crossing the Channel is small compared to the number who try to reach southern European countries across the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. Human rights and refugee groups say many migrants are legitimate refugees or have good reasons to want to come to Britain, such as relatives in the country. They argue the British government should offer safe and legal routes for them to come.

Serbian parliament convenes after elections, amid protests

August 03, 2020

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia's new parliament convened Monday amid protests by the some opposition parties and far-right groups claiming that the parliamentary election, overwhelmingly won by the ruling populists, was rigged.

Dozens of protesters booed and jeered at the lawmakers arriving to the inaugural parliament session in the domed downtown parliament building. Some of them threw eggs toward the building. Police sealed off much of the area in front of the assembly to prevent the repeat of violent protests last month at the same location against the increasingly autocratic rule of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.

Vucic’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party swept the June 21 parliamentary vote that was boycotted by several of the main opposition parties. The Progressives won 188 seats in the 250-member assembly. The rest of the seats went to Vucic’s allies or minority groups, meaning that the real opposition will not be represented.

The opposition boycott was carried out citing the lack of free and fair voting conditions and a danger to public health amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But a number of smaller parties decided to run, saying the boycott only sidelined an already marginalized opposition.

Sasa Radulovic, the leader of one of the parties that ran in the election, took part in Monday's protest. “The government has forged the elections by falsifying the final electoral reports at the polling stations," he said, claiming he has proof of the wrongdoing.

Vucic has repeatedly denied interfering in the vote, saying his opponents are crying foul because they have little popular support. Vucic, who was elected to a five-year term in April 2017 and was not running for office this time, still dominated the election campaign through the mainstream media which he controls, denouncing and ridiculing his critics. He rejected allegations that by taking a leading role in the campaign, he was abusing his largely ceremonial presidential powers.

Most of the opposition parties accused Vucic and his government of letting the coronavirus crisis spin out of control in order to hold the election that tightened the ruling party’s grip on power amid widespread feelings of chaos.

Lawmakers at the inaugural parliament session wore face masks, and kept social distancing rules.

Poland's top court confirms Duda's election for president

August 03, 2020

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The Supreme Court of Poland on Monday upheld the reelection of President Andrzej Duda after deciding that complaints about the validity of the country's presidential election were insufficient to void the results.

The ruling paves the way for Duda to take the oath of office before both chambers of parliament on Thursday. The court evaluated some 6,000 election complaints from voters and from the team of the candidate Duda faced in a runoff, liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski. Duda won 51.03% of the vote and Trzaskowski 48.97% in the July 12 election.

It found 92 of the alleged violations justified, but said the irregularities did not affect the election’s outcome. The justices said the complaints from Trzaskowski team lacked necessary evidence about the time and location of the alleged breaches.

They said the Trzaskowski team's complaint also touched on campaigning, which is beyond the bounds of an electoral protest. Many voters also complained about being unable to vote from abroad because their ballots arrived too late.

Originally scheduled for May, the presidential election was postponed by over a month, to June 28 with a runoff two weeks later, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Minnesota's Omar holds off well-funded primary challenger

August 12, 2020

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota survived a stiff Democratic primary challenge Tuesday from a well-funded opponent who tried to make an issue of her national celebrity, the latest in a string of victories by a new generation of emboldened progressive lawmakers.

Omar, seeking her second term in November, easily defeated Antone Melton-Meaux, an attorney and mediator who raised millions in anti-Omar money. Omar and her allies gained confidence in her reelection chances after primary victories last week by fellow “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib in Michigan and by Cori Bush, a Black Lives Matter activist who ousted a longtime St. Louis-area congressman. They also claimed momentum from the renewed focus on racial and economic justice after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.

“Tonight, our movement didn’t just win,” Omar tweeted. “We earned a mandate for change. Despite outside efforts to defeat us, we once again broke turnout records. Despite the attacks, our support has only grown.”

Melton-Meaux used the cash to paper the district and flood airwaves with his “Focused on the Fifth” message that portrayed Omar as out of touch with the heavily Democratic Minneapolis-area 5th District, which hasn't elected a Republican to Congress since 1960. He conceded defeat and acknowledged that his efforts weren't enough, while declining to speculate on why.

“I'm also incredibly proud of the work that we did, that garnered at least over 60,000 votes from the district, from people who resonated with our message of effective leadership grounded in the district, and bringing people together to get things done,” Melton-Meaux told The Associated Press.

Omar in 2018 became one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, building on a national profile that started when the onetime refugee from Somalia was elected to the Minnesota Legislature just two years earlier. Her aggressive advocacy on liberal issues, and her eagerness to take on Donald Trump, made her even more prominent.

Omar rejected Melton-Meaux’s attacks, saying they were funded by interests who wanted to get her out of Congress because she’s effective. She also downplayed Melton-Meaux’s prodigious fundraising before the vote, saying, “Organized people will always beat organized money.”

Democratic U.S. Sen. Tina Smith and Republican challenger Jason Lewis easily won their primaries in the only statewide races on the ballot. Elsewhere, in western Minnesota's conservative 7th District, former state Sen. Michelle Fischbach won a three-way Republican race for the right to challenge Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson. Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, is one of the GOP's top targets to flip a House seat in November.

After entering Congress with fanfare, Omar hurt herself early with comments about Israel and money that even some fellow Democrats called anti-Semitic, and found herself apologizing. She also came under scrutiny when her marriage fell apart and she married her political consultant months after denying they were having an affair.

Republicans also raised questions about continuing payments to her new husband's firm, though experts said they aren't necessarily improper. In the wake of Floyd’s death, police reform also emerged as an issue. Omar supported a push by a majority of the Minneapolis City Council to replace the city’s police department with something new. Melton-Meaux did not support that but did support shifting some funding away from police to more social service-oriented programs. Both touched on the issue in personal ways, with Omar saying she wanted her son to grow up safely. Melton-Meaux, who is also Black, told a personal story of being detained while at the University of Virginia by police seeking an assault suspect reported to have run into his apartment building.

Wendy Helgeson, 57, a consultant, backed Omar two years ago, even installing a lawn sign in her yard, and said she was “awfully proud of her being the first Black Muslim woman that we elected.” But she said she was concerned about campaign payments to Omar's husband's firm as well as her national presence, and found it easy to vote for Melton-Meaux, whom she said has been her friend for 12 years.

“I admire her as a woman,” Helgeson said of Omar. “As a candidate, ehhh ... I have some reservations.” John Hildebrand, a 47-year-old teacher in Minneapolis who voted for Omar, said her national profile is an advantage.

“I think just her presence encourages other Muslims and Somalis to run for office and to seek to be represented,” he said. “I think she just engages people in the political system more and more.” Blake Smith, 23, a parks worker who is Black and described himself as a leftist, also backed Omar. He's concerned about climate change, Medicare for all and getting money out of politics, and he sees her as an ally.

“It's more time for radical change than like small — I don't think we have time for incremental change anymore,” Smith said.

Doug Glass contributed. Ibrahim is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Biden picks Kamala Harris as running mate, first Black woman

August 12, 2020

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Joe Biden named California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, making history by selecting the first Black woman to compete on a major party’s presidential ticket and acknowledging the vital role Black voters will play in his bid to defeat President Donald Trump.

In choosing Harris, Biden embraced a former rival from the Democratic primary who is familiar with the unique rigor of a national campaign. The 55-year-old first-term senator, who is also of South Asian descent, is one of the party’s most prominent figures. She quickly became a top contender for the No. 2 spot after her own White House campaign ended.

She will appear with Biden for the first time as his running mate at an event Wednesday near his home in Wilmington, Delaware. In announcing the pick Tuesday, Biden called Harris a “fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country's finest public servants.” She said Biden would “unify the American people" and “build an America that lives up to our ideals.”

Harris joins Biden at a moment of unprecedented national crisis. The coronavirus pandemic has claimed the lives of more than 160,000 people in the U.S., far more than the toll experienced in other countries. Business closures and disruptions resulting from the pandemic have caused severe economic problems. Unrest, meanwhile, has emerged across the country as Americans protest racism and police brutality.

Trump’s uneven handling of the crises has given Biden an opening, and he enters the fall campaign in strong position against the president. In adding Harris to the ticket, he can point to her relatively centrist record on issues such as health care and her background in law enforcement in the nation’s largest state.

The president told reporters Tuesday he was “a little surprised” that Biden picked Harris, pointing to their debate stage disputes during the primary. Trump, who had donated to her previous campaigns, argued she was “about the most liberal person in the U.S. Senate.”

“I would have thought that Biden would have tried to stay away from that a little bit,” he said. Harris’s record as California attorney general and district attorney in San Francisco was heavily scrutinized during the Democratic primary and turned away some liberals and younger Black voters who saw her as out of step on issues of racism in the legal system and police brutality. She declared herself a “progressive prosecutor” who backs law enforcement reforms.

Biden, who spent eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president, has spent months weighing who would fill that same role in his White House. He pledged in March to select a woman as his vice president, easing frustration among Democrats that the presidential race would center on two white men in their 70s.

Biden’s search was expansive, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a leading progressive; Florida Rep. Val Demings, whose impeachment criticism of Trump won party plaudits; California Rep. Karen Bass, who leads the Congressional Black Caucus; former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice; and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, whose passionate response to unrest in her city garnered national attention.

A woman has never served as president or vice president in the United States. Hillary Clinton was the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016. Two women have been nominated as running mates on major party tickets: Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Republican Sarah Palin in 2008. Their parties lost in the general election.

The vice presidential pick carries increased significance this year. If elected, Biden would be 78 when inaugurated in January, the oldest man to ever assume the presidency. He’s spoken of himself as a transitional figure and hasn’t fully committed to seeking a second term in 2024.

Harris, born in 1964 to a Jamaican father and Indian mother, spent much of her formative years in Berkeley, California. She has often spoken of the deep bond she shared with her mother, whom she has called her single biggest influence.

Harris won her first election in 2003 when she became San Francisco’s district attorney. In that post, she created a reentry program for low-level drug offenders and cracked down on student truancy. She was elected California’s attorney general in 2010, the first woman and Black person to hold the job, and focused on issues including the foreclosure crisis. She declined to defend the state’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage and was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

After being elected to the Senate in 2016, she quickly gained attention for her assertive questioning of Trump administration officials during congressional hearings. Harris launched her presidential campaign in early 2019 with the slogan “Kamala Harris For the People,” a reference to her courtroom work. She was one of the highest-profile contenders in a crowded Democratic primary and attracted 20,000 people to her first campaign rally in Oakland.

But the early promise of her campaign eventually faded. Her law enforcement background prompted skepticism from some progressives, and she struggled to land on a consistent message that resonated with voters. Facing fundraising problems, she abruptly withdrew from the race in December 2019, two months before the first votes of the primary were cast.

One standout moment of her presidential campaign came at the expense of Biden. During a debate, she said Biden made “very hurtful” comments about his past work with segregationist senators and slammed his opposition to busing as schools began to integrate in the 1970s.

“There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day,” she said. “And that little girl was me.” Shaken by the attack, Biden called her comments “a mischaracterization of my position.”

The exchange resurfaced recently with a report that one of Biden’s closest friends and a co-chair of his vice presidential vetting committee, former Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, still harbors concerns about the debate and that Harris hadn’t expressed regret. The comments attributed to Dodd and first reported by Politico drew condemnation, especially from influential Democratic women who said Harris was being held to a standard that wouldn’t apply to a man running for president.

Some Biden confidants said Harris’ debate attack did irritate the former vice president, who had a friendly relationship with her. Harris was also close with Biden’s late son, Beau, who served as Delaware attorney general while she held the same post in California.

But Biden and Harris have since returned to a warm relationship. “Joe has empathy, he has a proven track record of leadership and more than ever before we need a president of the United States who understands who the people are, sees them where they are, and has a genuine desire to help and knows how to fight to get us where we need to be,” Harris said at an event for Biden earlier this summer.

At the same event, she bluntly assailed Trump, labeling him a “drug pusher” for his promotion of the unproven and much-questioned malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the coronavirus. After Trump tweeted “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” in response to protests about the death of George Floyd, a Black man in police custody, Harris said his remarks “yet again show what racism looks like.”

Harris has taken a tougher stand on policing since Floyd’s killing. She co-sponsored legislation in June that would ban police from using chokeholds and no-knock warrants, set a national use-of-force standard and create a national police misconduct registry, among other things. It would also reform the qualified immunity system that shields officers from liability.

The list in the legislation included practices Harris did not vocally fight to reform while leading California’s Department of Justice. And while she now wants independent investigations of police shootings, she didn’t support a 2015 California bill that would have required her office to take on such cases.

“We made progress, but clearly we are not at the place yet as a country where we need to be and California is no exception,” she told The Associated Press recently. The national focus on racial injustice now, she said, shows “there’s no reason that we have to continue to wait.”

Ronayne reported from Sacramento, California. Associated Press writers Alexandra Jaffe, Jill Colvin and Julie Pace contributed from Washington.

Voters will judge Omar's mix of progressivism and celebrity

August 11, 2020

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Rep. Ilhan Omar is about to learn whether voters in her Minneapolis-area congressional district support the mix of confrontational, anti-Trump progressivism and celebrity that she brings to the job.

Omar, the first Somali American and one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, is facing a surprisingly well-funded challenger in Minnesota's Democratic primaries on Tuesday. Antone Melton-Meaux, a Black lawyer and mediator, raised millions of anti-Omar dollars to fill mailboxes and flood airwaves. His “Focused on the Fifth” message has portrayed Omar, a member of “The Squad” of four progressive female lawmakers, as out of touch with the 5th District.

Omar rejected Melton-Meaux’s attacks, saying they were funded by interests that wanted to get her out of Congress because she’s effective. She also downplayed Melton-Meaux’s money and played up her ground game before the vote, saying, “Organized people will always beat organized money.”

The outcome may not be known Tuesday night if the results are close. Absentee voting in Minnesota was heavy, and officials must count mail-in ballots that arrive as late as Thursday under safety rules imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Tina Smith and Republican challenger Jason Lewis were expected to easily win their primaries in the only statewide races on the ballot. Elsewhere, in western Minnesota's conservative 7th District, former state Sen. Michelle Fischbach was the endorsed Republican in a three-way race for the right to challenge Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson. Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, is one of the GOP's top targets to flip a House seat in November.

After entering Congress with fanfare, Omar hurt herself early with comments about Jews, money and Israel that even some fellow Democrats called anti-Semitic, and found herself apologizing. She also came under scrutiny when her marriage fell apart and she married her political consultant months after denying they were having an affair.

Republicans also raised questions about continuing payments to her new husband's firm, though experts said they aren't necessarily improper. Progressive Democrats gained confidence in Omar’s reelection chances after primary victories last week by fellow “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib in Michigan and by a Black Lives Matter activist in a St. Louis-area congressional primary. Progressives also claimed momentum from the renewed focus on racial and economic justice following George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.

Shari Dveris, a 42-year-old school teacher, said she voted for Melton-Meaux because she doesn’t think the congresswoman “has done anything for her constituents,” echoing the challenger’s claim that Omar prioritized celebrity over the interests of her district. Dveris, who voted early on Monday in St. Louis Park, a Minneapolis suburb with a large Jewish community, said Omar “pulled a bait-and-switch” on the Jewish community during her 2018 campaign, namely with her support for the Boycott, Divest and Sanction, or BDS Movement against Israel.

“I just think that he’ll do more for us,” she said. “(Melton-Meaux) seems very honest and upfront, and I’m impressed with what he’s said so far.” John Hildebrand, a 47-year-old teacher in Minneapolis who voted for Omar, said her national profile is an advantage.

“I think just her presence encourages other Muslims and Somalis to run for office and to seek to be represented,” he said. “I think she just engages people in the political system more and more.”

Mohamed Ibrahim is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.

Police break up protests after Belarus presidential vote

August 10, 2020

MINSK, Belarus (AP) — Phalanxes of Belarusian police in full riot gear violently dispersed thousands of demonstrators who poured into the streets to challenge the early count from Sunday's presidential election indicating the longtime authoritarian leader won a sixth term by a landslide.

Hundreds of people were detained, according to a leading rights group. The brutal crackdown that began late Sunday and lasted through the night followed a tense campaign that saw massive rallies against President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled the ex-Soviet nation with an iron hand for 26 years.

Election officials declared that early returns show 65-year-old Lukashenko winning with more than 80% of the vote while the main challenger, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a former English teacher and political novice, had about 8%.

Tsikhanouskaya rejected the official claims, saying “I will believe my own eyes — the majority was for us.” Thousands of her supporters quickly took to the streets of the capital to protest what they saw as official manipulations of the vote. They faced rows of riot police in black uniforms who moved quickly to disperse the demonstrators, firing flash-bang grenades and beating them with truncheons.

After breaking up the big crowds, police relentlessly chased smaller groups of protesters across downtown Minsk for the next several hours. Several other cities across the country saw similar crackdowns on protesters.

Interior Ministry spokeswoman Olga Chemodanova said that police efforts to restore order were continuing overnight, but wouldn't say how many people were detained. Ales Bilyatsky of the Viasna human rights group told The Associated Press several hundred were detained and hundreds injured in the police crackdown.

“What has happened is awful,” Tsikhanouskaya told reporters Sunday. An AP journalist was beaten by police and treated at a hospital. At Minsk' Hospital No. 10, an AP reporter saw a dozen ambulances delivering protesters with fragmentation wounds and cuts from stun grenades and other injuries.

“It was a peaceful protest, we weren't using force,” said 23-year-old protester, Pavel Konoplyanik, who was accompanying his friend who had a plastic grenade fragment stuck in his neck. “No one will believe in the official results of the vote, they have stolen our victory.”

Konoplyanik, whose legs were also cut by fragments of police grenades, said he doesn't want to leave the country but fears that he might have no other choice. Two prominent opposition challengers were denied places on the ballot, but Tsikhanouskaya, the wife of a jailed opposition blogger, managed to unite opposition groups and draw tens of thousands to her campaign rallies, tapping growing anger over a stagnant economy and fatigue with Lukashenko's autocratic rule.

Lukashenko was defiant as he voted earlier in the day, warning that the opposition will meet a tough response. “If you provoke, you will get the same answer,” he said. “Do you want to try to overthrow the government, break something, wound, offend, and expect me or someone to kneel in front of you and kiss them and the sand onto which you wandered? This will not happen.”

Mindful of Belarus’ long history of violent crackdowns on dissent — protesters were beaten after the 2010 election and six rival candidates arrested, three of whom were imprisoned for years — Tsikhanouskaya called for calm earlier Sunday.

“I hope that everything will be peaceful and that the police will not use force,” she said after voting. After the polls closed, about 1,000 protesters gathered near the obelisk honoring Minsk as a World War II “hero city,” where police harshly clashed with them, beating some with truncheons and later using flash-bang grenades to try to disperse them. Some of the protesters later tried to build barricades with trash containers, but police quickly broke them up.

Three journalists from the independent Russian TV station Dozhd were detained after interviewing an opposition figure and were deported. Tsikhanouskaya emerged as Lukashenko's main opponent after two other aspirants were denied places on the ballot. Viktor Babariko, head of a major Russia-owned bank, was jailed for charges he called political, and Valery Tsepkalo, entrepreneur and former ambassador to the United States, fled to Russia with his children after warnings that he would be arrested and his children taken away.

Tsepkalo's wife Veronika became a top member of Tsikhanouskaya's campaign, but she left the country too early Sunday, fearing for her safety, said campaign spokeswoman Anna Krasulina. Over the weekend, eight members of Tsikhanouskaya's campaign staff were arrested.

Many voters were defiant in the face of Lukashenko's vow not to tolerate any protests. “There is no more fear. Belarusians will not be silent and will protest loudly," 24-year-old Tatiana Protasevich said at a Minsk polling place.

As polls opened, the country’s central elections commission said more than 40% of the electorate had cast ballots in five days of early voting, a process the opposition saw as offering fertile ground for manipulation.

“For five nights nobody has guarded the ballot boxes, which gives the authorities a wide field for maneuverings,” Veronika Tsepkalo told AP before leaving Belarus. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, whose assessments of elections are widely regarded as authoritative, was not invited to send observers.

Tsikhanouskaya had crisscrossed the country, tapping into public frustration with a worsening economy and Lukashenko’s swaggering response to the pandemic. Belarus, a country of 9.5 million people, has reported more than 68,500 coronavirus cases and 580 deaths but critics have accused authorities of manipulating the figures to downplay the death toll.

Lukashenko has dismissed the virus as “psychosis” and declined to apply measures to stop its spread, saying a lockdown would have doomed the already weak economy. He announced last month that he had been infected but had no symptoms and recovered quickly, allegedly thanks to playing sports.

Yet for some voters, Lukashenko's long, hardline rule was a plus. “He is an experienced politician, not a housewife who appeared out of nowhere and muddied the waters,” retiree Igor Rozhov said Sunday. “We need a strong hand that will not allow riots."

Associated Press journalists Jim Heintz and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this story.

Portland protesters rally as arrest of activist draws ire

August 11, 2020

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The arrest during protests in Portland, Oregon, of a Black woman who became a leading activist in the racial justice movement after she was assaulted by a white supremacist three years ago has galvanized local and national Black Lives Matter groups.

More demonstrations were planned in the city Monday night, and authorities declared one outside the North Precinct an unlawful assembly, ordering everyone to leave. Portland has seen more than two months of often violent, nightly protests since George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis.

Authorities said Demetria Hester, 46, won't be charged following her arrest early Monday. Hester had been booked on suspicion of disorderly conduct and interfering with a police officer during the protest that began Sunday night. Hester’s arrest drew a sharp rebuke from national Black Lives Matter activists, who are increasingly focusing on demonstrations in Oregon’s largest city.

After her release, Hester said at a news conference that she would keep protesting and joined others in announcing plans for a fundraiser to send Black mothers to Washington, D.C. “I was born and bred to do this. This is a dream come true,” Hester said. “This is a revolution and we’re getting reparations."

Hester and 15 other people were arrested during Portland’s 73rd consecutive nights of protest. A group of about 200 demonstrators gathered at a park and then marched to the police union headquarters, where some people set fires outside the building and launched fireworks at officers.

Two officers were injured, including one who was burned on the neck when a firework exploded, police said. Police declared a riot shortly after 10 p.m. and began arresting people, including Hester. President Donald Trump once more seized on the protests and said on Twitter that Portland was “out of control.” He urged Democratic Gov. Kate Brown to bring in the Oregon National Guard.

On Monday, civil rights groups in Portland and members of the international Black Lives Matter organization, who traveled to Portland, decried Hester’s arrest and said the city was at the center of the racial justice protest movement.

“The struggle here in Portland has become almost ground zero because what we’ve seen under this administration is the kind of flexing that we haven’t really seen in our generation, ever,” said Janaya Khan, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto. “People only protest when politicians and policies and police have failed to protect them. "

Hester gained prominence in 2017 when she was assaulted by a white supremacist while riding a light-rail train. The man who attacked Hester, Jeremy Christian, stabbed two men to death the following night and critically injured a third man when they came to the defense of two Black women — one of them wearing a Muslim head-covering — who were being harassed by Christian.

Hester gave emotional testimony this spring at Christian’s murder trial. Christian was convicted and given two life sentences without possibility of parole. Hester has reappeared in public this summer as one of the main organizers of a group of mostly white parents who have been protesting nightly. She leads marches each night, using a bullhorn to chant in a voice cracking with fatigue.

Pompeo opens anti-China, anti-Russia tour in Czech Republic

August 11, 2020

PRAGUE (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the Czech Republic at the start of a four-nation tour of central and eastern Europe expected to focus on threats to the region posed by Russia and China.

Amid post-election violence and concerns about significant democratic backsliding in nearby Belarus, Pompeo plans to use his visit to push his hosts to counter Russian and Chinese influence. Russia and China are active and seeking greater roles throughout the continent in the energy, infrastructure and telecommunications sectors, a trend the United States is keen to reverse.

Pompeo on Tuesday was opening his visit in the Czech city of Pilsen, where he was to visit the Patton Museum and memorial to the World War II liberation of western Czechoslovakia by U.S. troops. In his talks, Pompeo will likely face questions about the Trump administration’s decision to reduce the U.S. military presence in Germany. President Donald Trump wants to withdraw thousands of American troops from bases in Germany and redeploy some of them eastward, including to neighboring Poland, the last stop on Pompeo’s week-long trip.

Two of Pompeo's other three destinations — the Czech Republic and Austria — also share a border with Germany, while Slovakia borders Austria, the Czech Republic and Poland. Germany is pointedly not on Pompeo's itinerary.

In Prague on Wednesday, Pompeo will meet Czech President Milos Zeman and Prime Minister Andrej Babis to discuss nuclear energy cooperation and “efforts to counter malign actions of Russia and communist China,” the State Department said.

Energy and the tenuous political situation in the Balkans will top Pompeo’s agenda with Slovenian officials in Ljubljana, where he is expected to deliver a statement with the foreign minister about the security of 5G networks, the department said.

In Vienna, Pompeo will meet Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz to review trade relations and regional security. Pompeo will also hold talks with the head of the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is charged with monitoring Iran’s adherence to the 2015 nuclear deal from which the U.S. has withdrawn.

The Trump administration is trying to convince other members of the U.N. Security Council to indefinitely extend an arms embargo on Iran that is due to expire in October, under terms of the nuclear deal.

In Warsaw, Poland, Pompeo plans talks with President Andrzej Duda, who recently won a narrow reelection after a bitter campaign that concerned human rights advocates and others.

Chris Pratt, Katherine Schwarzenegger greet baby daughter

August 10, 2020

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger say they are “beyond thrilled” and “extremely blessed" after she gave birth to their first child together. The 41-year-old ”Avengers” actor and the 30-year-old children’s book author announced the birth of daughter Lyla Maria Schwarzenegger Pratt in a joint post on their Instagram accounts Monday.

The post included a photo of the hands of both parents and child and a pair of Bible verses; including Psalms 126:3: “The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.” Pratt also has a 7-year-old son with his first wife, Anna Faris.

The baby is the granddaughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver.

Iran says UAE-Israel deal a 'stab in the back' to Muslims

August 14, 2020

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s Foreign Ministry strongly condemned a historic deal establishing full diplomatic relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, calling it a stab in the back to all Muslims, state TV reported Friday.

Iran, in the ministry statement, called the normalizing of ties between the two countries a dangerous, “shameful" measure and warned the UAE against Israel interfering in the “political equations" of the Persian Gulf region.

“The UAE government and other accompanying governments must accept responsibility for all the consequences of this action,” the statement said. In a deal brokered by the U.S., the UAE and Israel announced Thursday they agreed to establish full diplomatic ties and Israel will halt plans for annexation of occupied land sought by the Palestinians for their future state.

The agreement makes the UAE the first Gulf Arab state — and the third Arab country, after Egypt and Jordan — to have full diplomatic ties with Israel. They announced it in a joint statement, saying deals between Israel and the UAE were expected in the coming weeks in such areas as tourism, direct flights and embassies.

Iran said in the state TV report the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE revealed the “strategic stupidity" of the two countries and said it “will undoubtedly strengthen the axis of resistance in the region.”

The ministry statement called the deal a “dagger that was unjustly struck by the UAE in the backs of the Palestinian people and all Muslims.” The historic deal delivered a key foreign policy victory for U.S. President Donald Trump as he seeks re-election and reflected a changing Middle East in which shared concerns about archenemy Iran have largely overtaken traditional Arab support for the Palestinians.

A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the deal amounts to “treason,” and should be reversed. Hossein Amirabdollahian, advisor to Iran’s Parliament speaker, criticized the deal on his Twitter account on Friday.

“UAE’s new approach for normalizing ties w/fake, criminal #Israel doesn’t maintain peace & security, but serves ongoing Zionists’ crimes," he said. Iran’s former chief of the powerful Revolutionary Guard, Mohsen Rezaei, said in a tweet the UAE has been making itself “the paradise of Israel" for the last 10 years.

“No Muslim zealous warriors and no Arabs betray Palestine, only nerveless stabs from behind,” he said.

Experts warn Spain is losing the 2nd round in virus fight

August 13, 2020

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Not two months after battling back the coronavirus, Spain’s hospitals are beginning to see patients struggling to breathe returning to their wards. The deployment of a military emergency brigade to set up a field hospital in Zaragoza this week is a grim reminder that Spain is far from claiming victory over the coronavirus that devastated the European country in March and April.

Authorities said the field hospital is a precaution, but no one has forgotten scenes of hospitals filled to capacity and the daily death toll reaching over 900 fatalities a few months ago. While an enhanced testing effort is revealing that a majority of the infected are asymptomatic and younger, making them less likely to need medical treatment, concern is increasing as hospitals begin to see more patients.

Experts are searching for reasons why Spain is struggling more than its neighbors after western Europe had won a degree of control over the pandemic. But one thing is clear: The size of the second wave has depended on the response to the first one.

“The data don't lie,” Rafael Bengoa, the former health chief of Spain’s Basque Country region and international consultant on public health, told The Associated Press. “The numbers are saying that where we had good local epidemiological tracking, like (in the rural northwest), things have gone well,” Bengoa said. “But in other parts of the country where obviously we did not have the sufficient local capacity to deal with outbreaks, we have community transmission again, and once you community transmission, things get out of hand.”

Bengoa is one of 20 Spanish epidemiologists and public health experts who recently called for an independent investigation in a letter published in the medical journal The Lancet to identify the weaknesses that have made Spain among the worst affected countries by the pandemic in Europe despite its robust universal health care system.

Spaniards largely comply with mandatory face mask rules. The health ministry also embarked on one of the world’s largest epidemiological surveys. Randomly testing over 60,000 people, it found the virus prevalence to be 5%, showing that the population was far from a “herd immunity.”

However, Spain, with a population of 47 million, leads Europe with 44,400 new cases confirmed over the past 14 days, compared with just 4,700 new cases registered by Italy, with 60 million inhabitants, which was the first European country to be rocked by the virus.

Spain is still in good shape compared with many countries in the Americas, where the spread seems unchecked in the United States, Mexico and several South American countries. But hospitalizations with COVID-19 have quintupled in Spain since early July, when cases were down to a trickle after a severe lockdown stopped a first wave of the virus that had pushed the health care system to breaking point.

On Tuesday, Spain’s ministry reported 805 people nationwide hospitalized over the past seven days. Half of the 64 people who died over the previous week were from Aragón, the region surrounding Zaragoza.

“There is no one single factor in such a pandemic,” said Manuel Franco, a professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins and Spain’s University of Alcalá, who also signed The Lancet letter. Franco cited Spain’s economic inequalities that have exposed poorer communities, especially fruit pickers, to greater harm, understaffed epidemiological surveillance services, and its large tourism industry. Combined with other factors, they could have formed a lethal cocktail.

Bengoa believes that social customs prevalent in Mediterranean cultures, which emphasize physical contact and smaller personal space, have worked against Spain. “Family gatherings are dangerous in Spain. We are being anti-Spanish in social gatherings if Spaniards don’t kiss, hug and touch one another," Bengoa said, while adding that Spanish and Italian families live in larger, more multi-generational groups than in northern European countries, making contagion inside households more likely.

Some authorities seem to agree. Spain’s Canary Islands government has issued a public awareness spot that shows a family gathering for grandfather’s birthday, with people taking off masks and embracing, only to end with grandfather in a hospital bed.

Italy, the first European country ravaged by the virus, has extended its state of emergency through Oct. 15, and the government has used that authority to pass a series of decrees, ordinances and measures to protect public health.

Spain's government, in contrast, ceded to pressure from some regions to end its three-month state of emergency in June. Spain’s regions since have complained that the government has not given them the special authority to confine people to their homes that it used to good effect under the state of emergency. That has led to regions having to recommend that people stay at home — instead of ordering them to do so — and lower compliance.

Yet it seems that adjusting to the “new normal” of co-existing with the virus has been uneven across Spain’s regions. The regional governments of Madrid and Barcelona appear to have underestimated the need to contract more contact tracers to keep tabs on cases.

Madrid, whose conservative leaders rarely shy away from a political scuffle with the nation’s left-wing government, has called for university volunteers to act as tracers and hired a private hospital to help do tracing.

Madrid’s regional health chief Enrique Ruiz told Spanish health news website ConSalud.es on Wednesday that the the capital has doubled its hospitalizations each week for the past month, reaching 4,600 last week.

“Our hospitals can handle the number of patients in the wards and critical care units, but that does not mean that we aren't closely watching the situation,” Ruiz said. Catalonia’s separatist-led administration, likewise, moved too slowly. Catalonia’s new public health director, Josep Argimon, said Tuesday that the situation is “stabilized” after his office appears to have improved the response by carrying out pool testing to control clusters.

Miquel Porta, a professor of epidemiology at Barcelona’s Hospital del Mar who also signed The Lancet letter, said “it is mind-blowing that politicians don’t take action” before the expected new wave returned.

“You need people in the field doing shoe leather work to search for contacts,” Porta said. “It boils down to very simple things, and some regional governments are not doing what they said they would.”

AP writer Nicole Winfield contributed to this report from Rome.

Virus exposes economic, racial divide in French health care

August 13, 2020

BONDY, France (AP) — Festering beneath France’s promise of guaranteed health care for all lie deep disparities across economic and racial lines — differences laid painfully bare by the COVID-19 crisis.

Two recent studies have documented these gaps, but government officials haven’t issued new proposals in response. However, as France records a new uptick in virus cases, a health advocacy group called Banlieues Santé — Suburbs Health — is trying to help, offering medical care and guidance in poor and migrant-heavy suburbs and neighborhoods.

After the pandemic broke out, they set up daily food and hygiene kit distribution points, and launched a phone application to coordinate NGOs distributing food — as well as translating public health information into the multiple languages spoken in the diverse communities.

Jacqueline Mendy, a Black mother of two, was among the fifty or so people who came to a tent that Banlieues Santé set up last week in her local park in the Paris suburb of Bondy, whose surrounding Seine-Saint-Denis region saw France’s highest mortality rate from the virus. She came with her son to ask some health questions, and learned about a free medical checkup for young women that she didn’t know about.

“I hadn’t thought of asking the question” about preventive health to her family doctor, Mendy told The Associated Press. Usually, she said, “when I go to my doctor, it’s because there’s an illness, or (the children) have a fever or something like that.”

Banlieues Santé attracted people to their tents with a Moroccan percussion and trumpet band that sang to curious onlookers. The nurses and social workers spoke French but also five other languages, and handed out masks, gel and other basics to families.

The COVID-19 crisis has re-focused attention on the health care challenges that have long plagued areas like Seine-Saint-Denis. Last month, a study from the national statistics agency revealed mortality rates rose disproportionately higher for Africa- and Asia-born people in France compared to the France-born populations during the first months of the pandemic. Another study by French economists showed France’s poorest cities in high-infection regions suffered more deaths than richer cities. The study pointed to “a higher share of workers frequently in contact with the public and a higher share of overcrowded housing."

These numbers don't surprise Abdelaali el Badaoui, the founder of Banlieues Santé, an organization of doctors, social workers and health officials that’s been working for 15 years in 300 French neighborhoods, mostly poor, immigrant and racialized. They deliver food and basic protective gear, translate public health guidance on their social media accounts and offer translators to help people navigate the French health care system.

El Badaoui hopes to “plug people back to health care routes." “The sickest are those the furthest out (from mainstream society), because of the cultural or linguistic barrier,” as well as those who can't afford supplemental insurance that makes it easier to access specialized treatment, El Badaoui told The AP.

The French health care system is meant to provide accessible medical treatment for all, but years of cost cuts left it stretched when the virus hit. The system’s bureaucratic demands and co-payments often scare away new immigrants or the very poor. And sometimes patients must travel far to reach a specialist, which not everyone can afford.

As the virus spread across France, the overall mortality rate in Seine-Saint-Denis increased 129% in March and April compared with the previous year — the highest rise in the country. Marie Pastor, a health official for Seine-Saint-Denis, outlined three main reasons: First, the department has a disproportionate rate of people with co-morbidities — for example, it has the highest rate of diabetes in mainland France. Second, a scarcity of general practitioners contributes to a “feeling of distance from institutions” and discourages people from seeking treatment, she said. Finally, the high concentration of essential workers among the region’s population made it harder for people to protect themselves and their families.

A study ordered by the Paris regional health agency found the same reasons — but didn't recommend specific measures to address the situation. Seine-Saint Denis has twice the unemployment rate of the national average, a third of its population is immigrant, and many more are descendants of immigrants. And in five years, it lost 8% of its general practitioners, despite a growing population.

Around France, minorities face other medical challenges. Last October, France’s top official for defending citizens’ rights reported that it is 6.5 times harder for people with “Muslim African names” to get psychiatry appointments than others. Despite calls by the government human rights watchdog to investigate discrimination in health care, there is little research on the topic because race-based research runs against France’s doctrine of colorblindness.

Talking about racism in French health care can prove difficult. Last week, a Twitter user published a list of Black health care professionals in France used by Black communities to find doctors less likely to discriminate against them. The very idea of such a list met heavy pushback. The Health Ministry expressed its “shock,” and the national doctors' council denied any discrimination among French doctors.

Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.

Belgian beach brawl fuels virus, political, climate tension

August 12, 2020

BRUSSELS (AP) — It started as a Saturday trip to Belgium's coast, a chance to escape a heat wave and coronavirus restrictions for a while. As the tide came in, the beach got crowded. Someone complained about the music being too loud. The mood quickly turned ugly.

Within minutes, dozens of people were battling it out on the sands. Some beach-goers threw bottles and umbrellas at police officers who intervened. By Sunday, a "gang of outsiders” was being blamed, and two coastal communities had banned day trippers from the city. Officers stood ready at railway stations and blocked traffic, turning away people who can't afford to live, work, or pay for hotel reservations in the area. Three teens, shirtless, still in their swimming gear, were charged with “armed rebellion.”

On Tuesday, Belgium's interior minister was trying to explain how it all happened, summoned to a tetchy hearing by the main populist party and a far-right nationalist faction. Civic groups called for action, urging people from poorer neighborhoods — among the hardest-hit by the virus — to find lawyers if they felt harassed by police “racial profiling,” or by zealous officials protecting wealthy holiday-makers at well-to-do beach communities.

Welcome to Belgium; a country that still has no full-time government 18 months after the last cabinet resigned; a country with one of the highest COVID-19 mortality rates in the world per population where restrictions are testing peoples’ patience; a country that just doesn’t get much really hot weather. It’s a simmering political soup on the verge of boiling over.

At the seaside resort of Knokke-Heist, where golf carts with license plates ply well-kept streets, there was ample room to stretch out on the beach early this week. Local authorities have banished day-trippers, who include many minorities, from Belgian cities or France from its 15-kilometer (10-mile) stretch of sands until the heat wave — which saw temperatures of up to 36 degrees Celsius (97 Fahrenheit) — is over.

Down a tree-lined street, at a home that he says dates from Napoleonic times, the mayor — Count Leopold Lippens — told The Associated Press that Knokke-Heist is an exclusive area prized for its many shops, restaurants and art galleries, and that only law-abiding people should bother to come.

“We are here in a country called Belgium, where the law is the law,” Lippens said. “We want the rules to be followed and if the rules are not followed, well, we will use our police force to have them followed.”

“People who don’t do that, they will be eradicated from this place,” he said. Asked whether he worried that banning ordinary people from spending the day might tarnish the image of his town, the mayor said: “People come because they like it, and they like it because it’s quality. We don’t want quantity, we want quality."

That view grates with Thierry Dupiereux, information officer with Belgium’s League of Families, a social organization aimed at helping families in need, and which lobbies for policy change. He says that the beach bans deprive people of “a safety-valve that helps them unwind.”

Almost 10,000 people have died from the coronavirus in Belgium — a country of just 11.5 million — and Dupiereux said the travel restrictions are “a social injustice” aimed at a part of society that has been hardest hit by the disease and the job losses that followed; people “who have little money, who can’t afford a week’s vacation at the beach or holidays abroad.”

The coast is just a 90-minute train ride from the capital Brussels. Other places where people without cars could get away and cool off are poorly served by public transport. Many youths boarded trains in Brussels on Tuesday, but the Knokke-Heist station was almost empty.

At first, the national rail service SNCB resisted calls to cut the number of beach-bound trains, but caved in as political pressure mounted and will now provide fewer this coming weekend. A number of lawmakers urged Interior Minister Pieter De Crem to rein in the SNCB, notably Bjorn Answeeuw, from the populist N-VA party.

Belgium’s last government collapsed when the N-VA pulled out. The party is too big to ignore and has been central in talks to form a new administration over the 14 months since the last election. During that time, the N-VA has routinely criticized the interim government installed to manage the COVID-19 crisis. Fears over migration have proved a vote winner for the party.

“Going freely to the coast is a right that we all have. Being beach day-trippers does not make us terrorists for a day,” De Crem said. For people like those involved in Saturday's beach riot in Blankenberge, De Crem suggested setting up a register — similar to ones used for soccer hooligans — and banning those on it from going to the coast.

Other parliamentarians expressed concern about the way police have acknowledged stopping people who merely look like the youths involved in the riot. “It wasn’t a night club bouncer who said this, it was a police officer,” said Socialist lawmaker Herve Rigot.

At the League of Families, Thierry Dupiereux said it’s difficult to work out who to believe these days, when the coronavirus, the lack of a full-time government and even a heat wave weigh on everyone’s minds and make for strange times.

“We’re in a political situation in Belgium today where a lot is at stake. We don’t always know who is acting on behalf of whom. There are lots of political games being played,” he said. In a surprising about-face a few hours after speaking to AP, and after the parliamentary hearing — which might underline the pressures involved — Mayor Lippens announced that day-trippers could return to Knokke-Heist as of Wednesday.

Mayo reported from Knokke-Heist, Belgium. Mark Carlson in Brussels contributed to this report.

Scientists uneasy as Russia approves 1st coronavirus vaccine

August 12, 2020

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia on Tuesday became the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine, a move that was met with international skepticism and unease because the shots have only been studied in dozens of people.

President Vladimir Putin announced the Health Ministry's approval and said one of his two adult daughters already was inoculated. He said the vaccine underwent the necessary tests and was shown to provide lasting immunity to the coronavirus, although Russian authorities have offered no proof to back up claims of safety or effectiveness.

“I know it has proven efficient and forms a stable immunity,” Putin said. “We must be grateful to those who made that first step very important for our country and the entire world.” However, scientists in Russia and other countries sounded an alarm, saying that rushing to offer the vaccine before final-stage testing could backfire. What's called a Phase 3 trial — which involves tens of thousands of people and can take months — is the only way to prove if an experimental vaccine is safe and really works.

By comparison, vaccines entering final-stage testing in the U.S. require studies of 30,000 people each. Two vaccine candidates already have begun those huge studies, with three more set to get underway by fall.

“Fast-tracked approval will not make Russia the leader in the race, it will just expose consumers of the vaccine to unnecessary danger,” said Russia’s Association of Clinical Trials Organizations, in urging government officials to postpone approving the vaccine without completed advanced trials.

While Russian officials have said large-scale production of the vaccine wasn't scheduled until September, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said vaccination of doctors could start as early as this month. Officials say they will be closely monitored after the injections. Mass vaccination may begin as early as October.

“We expect tens of thousands of volunteers to be vaccinated within the next months,” Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund that bankrolled the vaccine, told reporters.

The vaccine developed by the Gamaleya Institute in Moscow with assistance from Russia's Defense Ministry uses a different virus -- the common cold-causing adenovirus -- that’s been modified to carry genes for the “spike” protein that coats the coronavirus, as a way to prime the body to recognize if a real COVID-19 infection comes along.

That’s a similar technology as vaccines being developed by China’s CanSino Biologics and Britain’s Oxford University and AstraZeneca — but unlike those companies, Russian scientists haven't published any scientific information about how the vaccine has performed in animal tests or in early-stage human studies.

Dmitriev said even as Russian doctors and teachers start getting vaccinated, advanced trials are set to start Wednesday that will involve “several thousand people” and span several countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and possibly Brazil.

The Associated Press couldn't find documentation in the Russian Health Ministry's records indicating that permission to start the advanced trials was granted. The ministry has not responded to a request for comment.

Putin said one of his daughters has received two doses, and had minor side effects such as slight fever, and is now “feeling well and has a high number of antibodies.” It wasn't clear if she was one of the study volunteers.

The Health Ministry said in a statement Tuesday that the vaccine is expected to provide immunity from the coronavirus for up to two years, citing its experience with vaccines made with similar technology.

However, scientists around the world have been cautioning that even if vaccine candidates are proven to work, it will take even more time to tell how long the protection will last. “The collateral damage from release of any vaccine that was less than safe and effective would exacerbate our current problems insurmountably,” Imperial College London immunology professor Danny Altmann said in a statement Tuesday.

The World Health Organization has urged that all vaccine candidates go through full stages of testing before being rolled out, and said Tuesday it is in touch with the Russian scientists and “looks forward to reviewing” Russia’s study data. Experts have warned that vaccines that are not properly tested can cause harm in many ways — from harming health to creating a false sense of security or undermining trust in vaccinations.

Becoming the first country in the world to approve a vaccine was a matter of national prestige for the Kremlin as it tries to assert the image of Russia as a global power. Putin repeatedly praised Russia’s effective response to the outbreak in televised addresses to the nation, while some of Moscow’s top officials – including the country’s prime minister and Putin’s own spokesperson – became infected.

And the U.S., Britain and Canada last month accused Russia of using hackers to steal vaccine research from Western labs. Russia has denied involvement. Russia has so far registered 897,599 coronavirus cases, including 15,131 deaths.

The Gamaleya Institute’s director, Alexander Gintsburg, raised eyebrows in May when he said that he and other researchers tried the vaccine on themselves before the start of human studies. Those trials started June 17 with 76 volunteers. Half were injected with a vaccine in liquid form and the other half with a vaccine that came as soluble powder. Some in the first group were recruited from the military, which raised concerns that servicemen may have been pressured to participate. The test was declared completed earlier this month.

“It’s a too early stage to truly assess whether it’s going to be effective, whether it’s going to work or not,” said Dr. Michael Head, senior research fellow in global health at England's University of Southampton.

It's not Russia's first controversial vaccine. Putin has bragged that Russian scientists delivered an Ebola vaccine that “proved to be the most effective in the world” and “made a real contribution to fighting the Ebola fever in Africa.” However, there is little evidence either of the two Ebola vaccines approved in Russia was widely used in Africa. As of 2019, both of those vaccines were listed by the WHO as “candidate vaccines.”

AP medical writers Maria Cheng in London and Lauran Neergaard in Alexandria, Virginia, contributed to this report.

Global coronavirus cases top 20 million, doubling in 45 days

August 11, 2020

MITO, Japan (AP) — The number of coronavirus cases topped 20 million on Tuesday, more than half of them from the U.S., India and Brazil. Health officials believe the actual number is much higher than that tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, given testing limitations and the fact that as many as 40% of those who are infected have no symptoms.

It took six months or so to get to 10 million cases after the virus first appeared in central China late last year. It took just over six weeks for that number to double. An AP analysis of data through Aug. 9 showed the U.S., India and Brazil together accounted for nearly two-thirds of all reported infections since the world hit 15 million coronavirus cases on July 22.

The number of new daily cases has continued to rise in India, hitting a rolling seven-day average of 58,768. In the U.S., which has more than 5 million cases, the average has decreased since July 22nd, but remains high at 53,813 new cases a day.

In the 45 days it took reported infections to double to 20 million, the number of reported virus deaths climbed to 736,191 from 499,506, according to the Johns Hopkins count. That's 236,685 new deaths, an average of more than 5,200 a day.

About one-fifth of reported deaths, or more than 163,000, have been in the U.S., the highest in the world. Caseloads are still rising quickly in many other countries, including Indonesia and Japan. In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and President Donald Trump, seldom wears a mask and has resisted calls for a strict lockdowns, saying Mexicans should be convinced to observe social distancing, not forced to do so by police or fines.

With nearly 500,000 cases and more than 50,300 deaths, Mexico has struggled with how to curb outbreaks given that just over half its people work off the books with no benefits or unemployment insurance.

A full lockdown would prove too costly for people with little savings and tenuous daily incomes, said Assistant Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell, the president’s point man on the epidemic, noting “we do not want a solution that would, in social terms, be more costly than the disease itself.”

Mexico's relatively high death rate results partly from the country having one of the world's highest rates of obesity and diabetes. There has also been relatively little testing. Of all tests done, 47% are positive, suggesting that only seriously ill people are getting tests. That has hindered contract tracing.

India reported 53,601 new cases Tuesday as its count of total infections neared 2.3 million. Its reported case fatality rate, of 2%, is much lower than in the U.S. and Brazil. In Japan, where outbreaks have been widening as officials urge people to consider this year's summer holidays “special" and stay home, the positivity rate of tests in Tokyo, the worst hit region, has been climbing but remains at 7%.

The pandemic has waxed and waned in many regions, with the U.K. and Spain seeing new outbreaks after the worst of the early waves of cases paralyzed much of Europe. In Asia, Vietnam went from having reported no confirmed deaths and very few cases to battling fresh outbreaks that emerged in the seaside city of Danang. Australia was preparing to reopen travel with neighboring New Zealand, which has had no confirmed locally transmitted cases in more than 100 days, when fresh clusters of coronavirus cases popped up in Melbourne and the surrounding region.

That outbreak held steady Tuesday with 331 new cases and 19 more deaths in Victoria state, which includes Melbourne, raising hopes a strict, renewed lockdown in Australia's second-largest city was working. But authorities in Sydney were investigating a growing cluster of cases centered around a private Catholic school.

Meanwhile, outbreaks in mainland China and semi-autonomous Hong Kong declined, with the number of new community infections in China falling to 13, all in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. Hong Kong counted 69 new cases.

Similar to many other Asian countries, China requires testing and a two-week quarantine of all new arrivals and has barred most foreigners from entering the country. Border closures, masks, lockdowns and infection data are now the new way of life for much of the world, not the politically combustible factors they are in the U.S.

A review by the Kaiser Health News service and The Associated Press found that at least 49 state and local public health leaders have resigned, retired or been fired since April across 23 states. The list has grown by more than 20 people since the AP and KHN started keeping track in June.

Contributing to that attrition and burnout of badly needed experts have been attacks on public health experts and institutions from the highest levels, including President Donald Trump, who has sidelined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the pandemic.

“The overall tone toward public health in the U.S. is so hostile that it has kind of emboldened people to make these attacks,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, former CDC director.

Stevenson reported from Mexico City. Associated Press journalist Nicky Forster in New York contributed to this report, as did other AP journalists from around the world.

Virus-linked border moves raise fears on free travel in EU

August 10, 2020

BRUSSELS (AP) — As European countries struggle to manage spikes in coronavirus cases, concern is mounting about a “second wave” of uncoordinated border restrictions within Europe that threatens the free movement of goods and people — a foundation that the world’s biggest trading bloc is built on.

Despite repeated warnings about the dangers of unannounced checks, some countries have imposed new restrictions, or demanded that travelers quarantine, recalling the panic border closures after Europe’s first outbreak emerged in Italy in February, blocking traffic and medical equipment.

Beyond the economic impact of uncoordinated measures, experts fear that countries are becoming so used to lowering the gates at their frontiers as they see fit that the future of Europe’s ID-check free travel zone known as the Schengen area is in real peril.

In a letter to national governments, seen by The Associated Press, the European Commission warns that “while we must ensure that the EU is ready for possible resurgences of COVID-19 cases ... we should at the same time avoid a second wave of uncoordinated actions at the internal borders of the EU.”

“The re-establishment of ineffective restrictions and internal border controls must be avoided. Rather, the response should be to have targeted, proportionate and coordinated measures, informed by scientific evidence,” said the letter, sent to the 27 EU member countries and Britain.

Belgium — where EU headquarters are based — does not allow travel to some regions in Spain, notably Catalonia in the north, and also has bans on people coming from parts of France, Britain, Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, Romania and Switzerland.

Scandinavian nations are notably quick to react to any rise in infection rates. Denmark’s foreign ministry now has Spain, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Romania and Andorra on its so-called red list. Norway, which is not an EU member but is part of the Schengen area, has not hesitated either.

“Unfortunately, developments in several European countries are not moving in the right direction,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide said. She says that people arriving from France, Monaco, Switzerland and the Czech Republic must now self-quarantine for 10 days.

The use of compulsory COVID-19 testing is also growing. Germany is testing people arriving from high-risk areas, including parts of Bulgaria and Romania, which are EU partners but not members of the Schengen area. Greece and Italy are taking similar steps for the two countries.

But it’s the constant tinkering with travel restrictions that is of greatest concern. EU governments can impose border restrictions for reasons of public security — including health concerns — as they see fit. However, the measures should be targeted and limited in time, and governments should warn of their plans.

Since 2015, the Schengen rules have been routinely flouted, mostly due to distrust among European countries who doubted that their partners would do the right thing. First some countries relied on closures to help cope with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants, many fleeing conflict in Syria or Iraq, seeking better lives in northern Europe. Some of those restrictions are still in place.

The big challenge to Schengen these days is the coronavirus pandemic. “Scenes of backed-up borders and checkpoints would have been unthinkable just five years ago. Yet today, the unilateral reintroduction of border checks and border closures has become an accepted part of member states’ toolkits to respond to cross-border emergencies,” according to the Migration Policy Institute.

A side-effect of the virus border restrictions — which might be welcomed by countries such as Austria, Denmark, Hungary or Poland that are still worried about migrant arrivals — is that the number of people applying for asylum also plummeted.

The danger, the institute said, is that “the instinct to return to national borders at times of crisis may only grow stronger, particularly as second or third waves of the virus necessitate the reintroduction of some level of travel restrictions.”

Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen contributed to this report.

Turkey vows to press ahead with energy search amid tensions

August 11, 2020

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey vowed Tuesday to press ahead with searching for oil and gas in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, saying it plans to issue new exploration licenses for the area despite an escalating dispute with Greece over drilling rights.

Greece's foreign minister, meanwhile, called for an emergency meeting of the European Union's Foreign Affairs Council “on the subject of the growing Turkish provocation and delinquency.” Tension has increased between NATO allies Greece and Turkey, both of which have warships shadowing a Turkish research vessel that was sent to carry out seismic research for energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean in an area Greece says is on its continental shelf.

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias called on Turkey “to immediately withdraw from the Greek continental shelf,” saying that “we make clear that Greece will defend its sovereignty and its sovereign rights.”

Dendias said he had called for the EU's foreign ministers to meet “at a time when there is a clear Turkish threat to peace and security in the eastern Mediterranean, Greece and Cyprus.” Earlier Tuesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey planned to conduct search operations “on the western edges” of Turkey’s continental shelf. He said the work would be done on behalf of both Turkey and Turks in ethnically divided Cyprus, which also has objected to Ankara's exploration activities.

“We are fully determined to continue our seismic research and drilling efforts,” Cavusoglu said during a joint news conference with his visiting Azerbaijani counterpart. “We will defend to the end the rights of Turkey and of Turkish Cypriots in the Eastern Mediterranean and in Cyprus, and we will make no concessions.”

The Turkish government announced on Monday that its research vessel Oruc Reis and two support vessels would be operating in the Mediterranean Sea between Cyprus and Greece until Aug. 23. The vessel arrived in the area Monday morning, escorted by Turkish warships.

Greece slammed the decision as an illegal act that infringed on its sovereign rights, saying the Turkish research vessel was inside an area covered by the Greek continental shelf. Greek warships were in the area monitoring the Oruc Reis, and the military was on alert, officials said.

In Brussels, European Commission spokesman Peter Stano said member states would consult about the Greek request for an extraordinary meeting of the bloc's foreign ministers. “We agree that the situation in the eastern Mediterranean is extremely worrying and needs to be solved in dialogue and not in a series and sequence of steps that are increasing the escalation and the tension,” Stano said.

Omer Celik, the spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling party, criticized Athens for calling on the EU. “As usual, Greece has called the European Union to a meeting to support its unfair, unlawful and aggressive policies," Celik said on Twitter. "The European Union should not allow Greece to turn the whole of Europe into a ‘Greek theater,’” he said on Twitter.

Greece and Turkey have traditionally had testy relations and have been at odds for decades over a wide variety of issues. The two have come to the brink of war three times since the mid-1970s, including once over drilling exploration rights in the Aegean Sea that separates the two countries. Recent discoveries of natural gas and drilling plans across the east Mediterranean have led to renewed tension.

Cavusoglu said Turkey last month had agreed to halt its search efforts in the region “as a gesture” following the intercession of the EU and Germany but that Greece did not respond “in a positive way.”

“No one can accuse Turkey of not displaying goodwill, but on the opposite side, there is a country with bad intentions. If they are to blame anyone, they must blame Greece,” Cavusoglu said. Ankara was angered by a deal Greece signed with Egypt on Thursday delineating their bilateral maritime boundaries and exclusive economic zones for rights to the exploitation of resources.

Last year, Turkey signed a similar deal with the U.N.-backed Libyan government in Tripoli, sparking outrage in Greece, Egypt and Cyprus, which said the agreement infringed on their economic rights in the Mediterranean. The EU said the deal was a violation of international law that threatened regional stability.

At the heart of the issue is how a country’s continental shelf is calculated and whether islands should be included in the calculation. Turkey argues they should not, a position that Greece says violates international law.

Becatoros reported from Athens, Greece.