AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT

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This article was published 05/09/2019 (2310 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A rescue, a reunion and a rush to help in Dorian’s aftermath

ABACO, Bahamas (AP) — When Hurricane Dorian hit Sylvia Cottis’ home at a beach club in the Bahamas, the fearsome Category 5 storm blew out the supposedly hurricane-proof windows, turning the glass into razor-sharp shrapnel that opened a wide gash on her knee.

Then the 89-year-old woman and her caretaker settled in to wait for help, and conditions soon worsened. The house became flooded with sewage after the septic tank overflowed with floodwater. They could not flush the toilet without using water from a pool. Surrounded by wet belongings and filth, Cottis spent the days sitting in her wheelchair and the nights sleeping in a metal lawn lounger.

Five agonizing days passed. Then on Wednesday, a neighbour and his friend at last pried opened the home’s jammed door with a screwdriver to check on Cottis and 58-year-old Kathryn Cartwright. By then, her gash had become infected and swollen.

They were two of the thousands of desperate people seeking help in Dorian’s aftermath. The storm’s devastation came into sharper focus as the death toll climbed to 20 and many people emerged from shelters to check on their homes. They confronted a muddy, debris-strewn landscape across Abaco and Grand Bahama islands, which are known for their marinas, golf courses and all-inclusive resorts.

Meanwhile, the now-distant Dorian regained strength as it pushed up the southeastern U.S. coast as a Category 3 hurricane, menacing Georgia and the Carolinas after millions of people were warned to clear out.

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Dorian, back to a Category 3 hurricane, creeps up US coast

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Hurricane Dorian , back to a Category 3 storm, began raking the Southeast U.S. seaboard early Thursday and left tens of thousands without power as it threatened to inundate low-lying coasts from Georgia to Virginia with a life-threatening storm surge after its deadly mauling of the Bahamas.

Dorian squatted over the island nation as its strongest hurricane on record, leaving widespread devastation and at least 20 people dead. But it weakened substantially in the days since, dropping from a Category 5 to a Category 2 storm before increasing again late Wednesday. Dorian could maintain this intensity for several days before gradually weakening through Saturday, according to the National Hurricane Center.

As of early Thursday more than 68,700 customers in Charleston County and over 15,200 in Beaufort County were without power, according to Dominion Energy. Berkeley Electric Cooperative reports another 12,600 lost electricity in Charleston County.

Duke Energy in a news release Wednesday said it expected the storm to cause 700,000 outages in the Carolinas and that it brought in resources from 23 states and Canada to respond “as soon as it was safe to do so.”

More than 1,500 people sought refuge in 28 shelters in South Carolina, where sheets of rain began falling late Wednesday in the historic port city of Charleston, located on a peninsula prone to flooding. As Dorian crept dangerously closer, winds picked up sending rain sheets sideways, thunder boomed in the night sky and power flickered on and off in places.

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His Brexit plans in crisis, Johnson pushes for new elections

LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister Boris Johnson looked for new ways Thursday to bring about a national election, after rebellious British lawmakers rejected his call to trigger a snap poll and moved to block his plan to leave the European Union next month without a divorce deal.

Johnson’s office said he will seek the public’s support for his bid to hold a general election in coming weeks. Downing Street says Johnson plans to speak directly to the people Thursday, but details of a planned speech or rally were not immediately released.

Johnson’s failure on Wednesday to secure a quick ballot was the embattled leader’s third Parliamentary defeat in two days. It was also evidence that scarcely six weeks after taking office with a vow to break Britain’s Brexit deadlock — which ensnared and eventually brought down his predecessor, Theresa May — Johnson’s plans to lead the U.K. out of the EU are in crisis.

Events have spiraled out of his control. He leads a government with no majority in Parliament and an election that could change that fact may be beyond his reach.

The latest setback for Johnson came Wednesday evening after he called for a national election on Oct. 15, saying it was the only way out of Britain’s Brexit impasse after lawmakers moved to block his plan to leave the European Union next month without a divorce deal.

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10 Things to Know for Today

Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:

1. BATTERED BAHAMAS IN NEED AFTER DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

Thousands of desperate hurricane survivors in the island nation are seeking help in Dorian’s aftermath as the death toll reaches 20.

2. STRENGTHENING DORIAN RAKING SOUTHEAST

The Category 3 hurricane leaves tens of thousands without power as it threatens to inundate low-lying coasts from Georgia to Virginia with a life-threatening storm surge.

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Australia faces its own opioid crisis after warnings ignored

BLACK RIVER, Australia (AP) — The coroner’s sense of futility was clear, as he investigated the death of yet another Australian killed by prescription opioids.

Coroners nationwide have long urged officials to address Australia’s ballooning opioid addiction, and to create a tracking system to stop people from collecting multiple prescriptions from multiple doctors. Yet even as thousands died, the coroners’ pleas were met largely with silence.

“For what it is worth, I add my voice to the chorus pleading for urgency,” Western Australia coroner Barry King wrote in his report, delivered in May.

Half a world away, Australia has failed to heed the lessons of the United States, and is now facing skyrocketing rates of opioid prescriptions and related deaths. Drug companies facing scrutiny for their aggressive marketing of opioids in America have turned their focus abroad, working around marketing regulations to push the painkillers in other countries. And as with the U.S., Australia’s government has also been slow to respond to years of warnings from worried health experts.

In dozens of interviews, doctors, researchers and Australians whose lives have been upended by opioids described a plight that now stretches from coast to coast. Australia’s death rate from opioids has more than doubled in just over a decade. And health experts worry that without urgent action, Australia is on track for an even steeper spike in deaths like those seen in America, where the epidemic has left 400,000 dead.

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More women say opera’s Domingo harassed them, forced kisses

The glittering production was a high point of the Washington Opera’s 1999-2000 season: Jules Massenet’s “Le Cid,” about a legendary Spanish conqueror, starring a tenor legendary in his own right — Placido Domingo, then the company’s artistic director.

The opera, also being filmed for broadcast on public television, was unquestionably a career break for a 28-year-old singer named Angela Turner Wilson, who’d been cast as the second female lead and was singled out for praise in reviews. “I knew this was the start of big things for me,” she says now.

But one evening before a performance, she said, she and Domingo were having their makeup done together when he rose from his chair, stood behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. As she looked at him in the mirror, he suddenly slipped his hands under her bra straps, she said, then reached down into her robe and grabbed her bare breast.

“It hurt,” she told The Associated Press. “It was not gentle. He groped me hard.” She said Domingo then turned and walked away, leaving her stunned and humiliated.

Wilson, now 48 and a college voice teacher in the Dallas area, was one of 11 women to come forward after an Aug. 13 AP story in which numerous women accused the long-married, Spanish-born superstar of sexual harassment or inappropriate, sexually charged behaviour and of sometimes damaging their careers if they rejected him.

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Analysis: Black votes will define electability for Democrats

For all the strategic calculations, sophisticated voter targeting and relentless talk about electability in Iowa and New Hampshire, the Democratic presidential nomination will be determined by a decidedly different group: black voters.

African Americans will watch as mostly white voters in the first two contests express preferences and winnow the field — then they will almost certainly anoint the winner.

So far, that helps explain the front-running status of former Vice-President Joe Biden. He has name recognition, a relationship with America’s first black president and a decadeslong Democratic resume. Black voters have long been at the foundation of his support — his home state of Delaware, where he served as a U.S. senator for nearly four decades, is 38 per cent black — and until another presidential candidate proves that he or she can beat him, he is likely to maintain that support.

In the 2008 campaign, Hillary Clinton held a strong lead among black voters over Barack Obama until he stunned her by winning the Iowa caucuses and proved to black voters that he was acceptable to a broad spectrum of Democrats. Those same voters returned to Clinton in 2016.

This cycle, many black voters are also making a pragmatic choice — driven as much or more by who can defeat President Donald Trump as the issues they care about — and sitting back to see which candidate white voters are comfortable with before deciding whom they will back.

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Taliban suicide bombing kills 10 near US Embassy in Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A Taliban suicide car bomb rocked Kabul on Thursday, killing at least 10 civilians in a diplomatic area that also includes the U.S. Embassy — the second such attack this week that underscored Afghan government warnings that a preliminary U.S.-Taliban deal on ending America’s longest war was moving dangerously quickly.

Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said another 42 people were wounded and 12 vehicles destroyed.

The Taliban said they targeted vehicles of “foreigners” as they tried to enter the heavily guarded Shashdarak area where Afghan national security authorities have offices. The NATO Resolute Support mission is nearby, and British soldiers were at the scene retrieving what appeared to be the remains of a NATO vehicle.

Neither the NATO mission nor the British high commission immediately commented on the bombing.

Footage widely shared on social media showed the suicide bomber’s vehicle turning into the checkpoint and exploding — and a passer-by trying to sprint away just seconds before.

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China says trade talks with US to take place in October

BEIJING (AP) — U.S. and Chinese envoys will meet in early October for more talks aimed at ending a tariff war that threatens global economic growth.

Stock markets rose on Thursday’s announcement but there has been no sign of progress since Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agreed in June to resume deadlocked negotiations about trade and technology.

Earlier, investors were rattled by a report officials were struggling to agree on a schedule for talks originally planned for this month.

The agreement on a date came in a phone call conducted by the chief Chinese envoy, Vice Premier Liu He, with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the Chinese Commerce Ministry said in a statement.

Officials will “conduct conscientious consultations” in mid-September to prepare, the ministry said. It gave no details but said the two sides want to create “favourable conditions.”

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Iran poised for faster centrifuges as nuclear deal collapses

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran was poised Thursday to begin work on advanced centrifuges that will enrich uranium faster as the 2015 nuclear deal unravels further and a last-minute French proposal offering a $15-billion line of credit to compensate Iran for not being able to sell its crude oil abroad because of U.S. sanctions looked increasingly unlikely.

Meanwhile, Iran released seven crew members from a detained British-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero in a goodwill gesture and the mariners flew out of Iran, the ship’s owner said.

Though Iran has yet to say officially what exact steps it will take as a deadline it gave Europeans to salvage the deal is to expire on Friday. Centrifuges that speed enrichment further shorten the time Tehran would need to have enough material available to build a nuclear weapon — if it chose to do so. Under the deal, experts thought Iran would need about a year to reach that point.

The U.S. meanwhile continued its effort to choke off Iran’s crude oil sales abroad, a crucial source of government revenue. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who continues a whirlwind global diplomatic tour, insists his country will do everything it can to keep those sales going, though he described U.S. sanctions in an angry tweet Thursday as the equivalent of a “jail warden.”

“We will sell our oil, one way or the other,” Zarif told Russian broadcaster RT in a recently aired interview. “The United States will not be able to prevent that.”