AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EDT

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This article was published 07/07/2022 (1162 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Japan ex-leader Shinzo Abe apparently shot, in heart failure

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in heart failure after apparently being shot during a campaign speech Friday in western Japan, NHK public television said Friday.

The broadcaster aired footage showing Abe collapsed on the street, with several security guards running toward him. Abe was holding his chest when he collapsed, with his shirt smeared with blood. NHK says Abe was rushed to a hospital.

Abe was in Nara campaigning ahead of Sunday’s election for the parliament’s upper house and was giving a speech when people heard a gunshot.

Police arrested a male suspect at the scene on suspicion of attempted murder, NHK said.

The attack was a shock in a country that’s one of the world’s safest and with some of the strictest gun control laws anywhere.

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One scandal too many: British PM Boris Johnson resigns

LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his resignation Thursday after droves of top government officials quit over the latest scandal to engulf him, marking an end to three tumultuous years in which he tried to bluster his way through one ethical lapse after another.

Months of defiance ended almost with a shrug as Johnson stood outside No. 10 Downing St. and conceded that his party wanted him gone.

“Them’s the breaks,” he said.

The brash, 58-year-old politician who took Britain out of the European Union and steered it through COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine was brought down by one scandal too many — this one involving his appointment of a politician who had been accused of sexual misconduct.

The messiest of prime ministers did not leave cleanly. Johnson stepped down immediately as Conservative Party leader but said he would remain as prime minister until the party chooses his successor. The timetable for that process will be announced next week. The last leadership contest took six weeks.

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Facing pressure, Biden to sign order on abortion access

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will take executive action Friday to protect access to abortion, according to three people familiar with the matter, as he faces mounting pressure from Democrats to be more forceful on the subject after the Supreme Court ended a constitutional right to the procedure two weeks ago.

The White House said Biden will speak Friday morning “on protecting access to reproductive health care services,.” The actions he was expected to outline are intended to try to mitigate some potential penalties women seeking abortion may face after the ruling, but are limited in their ability to safeguard access to abortion nationwide. Biden is expected to formalize instructions to the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services to push back on efforts to limit the ability of women to access federally approved abortion medication or to travel across state lines to access clinical abortion services. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Biden’s actions before they were officially announced.

Biden’s executive order will also direct agencies to work to educate medical providers and insurers about how and when they are required to share privileged patient information with authorities — an effort to protect women who seek or utilize abortion services. He will also ask the Federal Trade Commission to take steps to protect the privacy of those seeking information about reproductive care online.

The order, coming two weeks after the high court’s June 24 ruling that ended the nationwide right to abortion and left it to states to determine whether or how to allow the procedure, comes as Biden has faced criticism from some in his own party for not acting with more urgency to protect women’s access to abortion. The decision in the case known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned the court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.

Since the ruling, Biden has stressed that his ability to protect abortion rights by executive action is limited without congressional action.

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G-20 diplomats face unity headwinds on Ukraine, war’s impact

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (AP) — Deeply divided top diplomats from the world’s richest and largest developing nations opened talks Friday with an appeal from the Indonesian host for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

As the foreign ministers from the Group of 20 confront multiple crises, including the lingering effects of the coronavirus pandemic, all are overshadowed by the war in Ukraine and its ripple effects, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi told the opening session.

She appealed for unity among the group — which included Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and several European counterparts — despite signs that any consensus on the matter would remain elusive.

“The world has yet to recover from the pandemic but we are already confronted with another crisis: the war in Ukraine,” Marsudi told the gathering. “The ripple effects are being felt globally on food, on energy and physical space.”

She noted that poor and developing countries now face the brunt of fuel and grain shortages resulting from the war in Ukraine and said that the G-20 has a responsibility to step up to deal with the matter or risk losing the world’s faith in the multilateral rules-based international order that emerged after WWII.

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Services planned Friday for 3 Highland Park parade victims

HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. (AP) — Memorial services and funerals for three of the seven people killed when a gunman opened fire on a July 4 parade are scheduled Friday, the first formal opportunity to grieve the deaths of two beloved grandfathers and a former synagogue preschool teacher shot Monday during the annual event in the northern Chicago suburb of Highland Park.

Services are scheduled for 63-year-old Jacquelyn Sundheim, 88-year-old Stephen Straus and 78-year-old Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza through Friday.

Robert E. Crimo III, the accused 21-year-old gunman, was charged Wednesday with murdering seven people. Prosecutors have said they expect to bring attempted murder charges for each of the more than 30 people wounded in the attack on paradegoers gathered in the affluent suburb that is home to about 30,000 people near the Lake Michigan shore.

Services for another of the victims, 69-year-old Eduardo Uvaldo, are scheduled for Saturday.

Details for the remaining victims have not been made public. Authorities have identified them as 35-year-old Irina McCarthy and 37-year-old Kevin McCarthy who were attending the parade with their two-year-old son, and 64-year-old Katherine Goldstein, a mother of two.

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Lone Mississippi abortion clinic seeks legal path to reopen

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Attorneys for Mississippi’s only abortion clinic filed papers Thursday asking the state Supreme Court to block a new law that bans most abortions and to let the clinic reopen next week.

The clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, is at the center of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and took away women’s constitutional protection for abortion nationwide.

A Mississippi law that took effect Thursday bans most abortions, and the clinic performed its last procedures Wednesday. Clinic attorneys are making the same arguments that a trial court judge rejected Tuesday as the clinic tried to block the law from taking effect. They said that in 1998, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution has a right to privacy that includes abortion.

“Absent relief, Mississippians will continue to be denied their rights under the Mississippi Constitution to privacy and bodily autonomy, as they are compelled by the State to endure the risks of pregnancy and bear children against their will,” clinic attorney Rob McDuff wrote.

It was not immediately clear when the conservative state Supreme Court would consider the appeal.

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WNBA’s Griner pleads guilty at her drug trial in Russia

MOSCOW (AP) — American basketball star Brittney Griner pleaded guilty Thursday to drug possession charges on the second day of her trial in a Russian court in a case that could see her sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.

The abrupt guilty plea by the Phoenix Mercury center and two-time Olympic gold medalist came amid a growing chorus of calls for Washington to do more to secure her freedom nearly five months after her arrest in February amid rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine.

A senior Russian diplomat said earlier that no action could be taken by Moscow on Griner’s case until the trial was over, and her guilty plea could be an effort by her and her advisers to expedite the court proceedings.

Griner, 31, was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport while returning to play basketball in Russia, and police said they found vape canisters containing cannabis oil in her luggage.

Speaking through an interpreter, Griner told the court she had no intention of committing a crime and had acted unintentionally because she had packed for Moscow in a hurry. The trial was then adjourned until July 14.

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Putin to Ukraine: Russia has barely started its action

MOSCOW (AP) — With Russia’s military action in Ukraine in its fifth month, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday warned Kyiv that it should quickly accept Moscow’s terms or brace for the worst, adding ominously that Russia has barely started its action.

Speaking at a meeting with leaders of the Kremlin-controlled parliament, Putin accused Western allies of fueling the hostilities, charging that “the West wants to fight us until the last Ukrainian.”

“It’s a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it looks like it’s heading in that direction,” he added.

“Everybody should know that largely speaking, we haven’t even yet started anything in earnest,” Putin said in a menacing note.

He declared that Russia remains ready to sit down for talks to end the fighting, adding that “those who refuse to do so should know that the longer it lasts the more difficult it will be for them to make a deal with us.”

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Yellowstone floods reveal forecasting flaws in warming world

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Yellowstone National Park area’s weather forecast the morning of June 12 seemed fairly tame: warmer temperatures and rain showers would accelerate mountain snow melt and could produce “minor flooding.” A National Weather Service bulletin recommended moving livestock from low-lying areas but made no mention of danger to people.

By nightfall, after several inches of rain fell on a deep spring snowpack, there were record-shattering floods.

Torrents of water poured off the mountains. Swollen rivers carrying boulders and trees smashed through Montana towns over the next several days. The flooding swept away houses, wiped out bridges and forced the evacuation of more than 10,000 tourists, park employees and residents near the park.

As a cleanup expected to last months grinds on, climate experts and meteorologists say the gap between the destruction and what was forecast underscores a troublesome aspect of climate change: Models used to predict storm impacts do not always keep up with increasingly devastating rainstorms, hurricanes, heat waves and other events.

“Those rivers had never reached those levels. We literally were flying blind not even knowing what the impacts would be,” said Arin Peters, a senior hydrologist with the National Weather Service.

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James Caan, Oscar nominee for ‘The Godfather,’ dies at 82

James Caan, the curly-haired tough guy known to movie fans as the hotheaded Sonny Corleone of “The Godfather” and to television audiences as both the dying football player in the classic weeper “Brian’s Song” and the casino boss in “Las Vegas,” has died. He was 82.

His manager Matt DelPiano said he died Wednesday. No cause was given and Caan’s family, who requests privacy, said that no further details would be released at this time.

Al Pacino wrote in an emailed statement that, “Jimmy was my fictional brother and my lifelong friend. It’s hard to believe that he won’t be in the world anymore because he was so alive and daring. A great actor, a brilliant director and my dear friend. I loved him, gonna miss him.” Robert De Niro also wrote that he was, “very very sad to hear about Jimmy’s passing.”

A football player at Michigan State University and a practical joker on production sets, Caan was a grinning, handsome performer with an athlete’s swagger and muscular build. He managed a long career despite drug problems, outbursts of temper and minor brushes with the law.

Caan had been a favorite of Francis Ford Coppola since the 1960s, when Coppola cast him for the lead in “Rain People.” He was primed for a featured role in “The Godfather” as Sonny, the No. 1 enforcer and eldest son of Mafia boss Vito Corleone.