Omicron-stricken South Africa may be glimpse into the future
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Dr. Sikhulile Moyo was analyzing COVID-19 samples in his lab in Botswana last week when he noticed they looked startlingly different from others.
Within days, the world was ablaze with the news that the coronavirus had a new variant of concern — one that appears to be driving a dramatic surge in South Africa and offering a glimpse of where the pandemic might be headed.
New COVID-19 cases in South Africa have burgeoned from about 200 a day in mid-November to more than 16,000 on Friday. Omicron was detected over a week ago in the country’s most populous province, Gauteng, and has since spread to all eight other provinces, Health Minister Joe Phaahla said.
Even with the rapid increase, infections are still below the 25,000 new daily cases that South Africa reported in the previous surge, in June and July.
Little is known about the new variant, but the spike in South Africa suggests it might be more contagious, said Moyo, the scientist who may have been the first to identify the new variant, though researchers in neighboring South Africa were close on his heels. Omicron has more than 50 mutations, and scientists have called it a big jump in the evolution of the virus.
US intelligence finds Russia planning Ukraine offensive
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden pledged Friday to make it “very, very difficult” for Russia’s Vladimir Putin to take military action in Ukraine as U.S. intelligence officials determined that Russian planning is underway for a possible military offensive that could begin as soon as early 2022.
The new intelligence finding estimates that the Russians are planning to deploy an estimated 175,000 troops and almost half of them are already deployed along various points near Ukraine’s border, according to a Biden administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the finding.
It comes as Russia has picked up its demands on Biden to guarantee that Ukraine will not be allowed to join the NATO alliance.
The official added that the plans call for the movement of 100 battalion tactical groups along with armor, artillery and equipment.
Intelligence officials also have seen an uptick in Russian propaganda efforts through the use of proxies and media outlets to denigrate Ukraine and NATO ahead of a potential invasion, the official said.
Parents of Michigan boy charged in Oxford school shooting
PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — A prosecutor filed involuntary manslaughter charges Friday against the parents of a teen accused of killing four students at a Michigan high school, saying they failed to intervene on the day of the tragedy despite being confronted with a drawing and chilling message — “blood everywhere” — that was found at the boy’s desk.
James and Jennifer Crumbley committed “egregious” acts, from buying a gun on Black Friday and making it available to Ethan Crumbley to resisting his removal from school when they were summoned a few hours before the shooting, Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald said.
“I expect parents and everyone to have humanity and to step in and stop a potential tragedy,” she said. “The conclusion I draw is that there was absolute reason to believe this individual was dangerous and disturbed.”
By mid-afternoon, authorities said they were searching for the couple. Sheriff Mike Bouchard said their attorney, Shannon Smith, had agreed to arrange their arrest if charges were filed but hadn’t been able to reach them.
Smith, however, said the Crumbleys weren’t on the run and had left town earlier in the week “for their own safety.”
The AP Interview: Scientist says omicron was a group find
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The Botswana scientist who may well have discovered the omicron variant of the coronavirus says he has been on a “rollercoaster of emotions,” with the pride of accomplishment followed by dismay over the travel bans immediately slapped on southern African countries.
“Is that how you reward science? By blacklisting countries?” Dr. Sikhulile Moyo, a virologist at the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership, said in an interview Thursday night with The Associated Press.
“The virus does not know passports, it does not know borders,” he added. “We should not do geopolitics about the virus. … We should be collaborating and understanding.”
Moyo was doing genomic sequencing of COVID-19 samples at his lab in Botswana two weeks ago and noticed three cases that seemed dramatically different, with an unusual pattern showing multiple mutations. He continued studying the results and by early last week, decided to publicly release the data on the internet.
Soon scientists in South Africa said they had made the same findings. And an identical case in Hong Kong was also identified.
EXPLAINER: How unusual to charge parents in school shooting?
Guns used in U.S. school shootings have often come from the homes of young perpetrators, but parents are rarely charged for the violence that occurs, experts say.
That’s what makes the case against Ethan Crumbley’s parents uncommon, following the fatal shooting of four students at Oxford High School in southeastern Michigan. Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald said Jennifer and James Crumbley ignored opportunities to intervene, just a few hours before the bloodshed.
They’re charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, while Ethan, 15, is charged as an adult with murder, terrorism and other crimes.
The Crumbley parents and their lawyers haven’t commented on the shooting or the charges.
Here’s a look at the issues facing the parents:
Contact tracing revs up in some states as omicron reaches US
The arrival of the omicron variant of the coronavirus in the U.S. has health officials in some communities reviving contact tracing operations in an attempt to slow and better understand its spread as scientists study how contagious it is and whether it can thwart vaccines.
In New York City, officials quickly reached out to a man who tested positive for the variant and had attended an anime conference at a Manhattan convention center last month along with more than 50,000 people. Five other attendees have also been infected with the coronavirus, though officials don’t yet know whether it was with the omicron variant.
“As for what we learned about this conference at the Javits Center and these additional cases, our test and trace team is out there immediately working with each individual who was affected to figure out who else they came in contact with. That contact tracing is absolutely crucial,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
Once a global epicenter of the pandemic, New York has the country’s biggest contract tracing effort. The city identified four omicron cases Thursday, and a fifth was discovered in nearby Suffolk County on eastern Long Island.
The variant has been detected in a handful of other states so far, including California, Colorado and Hawaii.
‘We just feel it’: Racism plagues US military academies
Eight years after he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Geoffrey Easterling remains astonished by the Confederate history still memorialized on the storied academy’s campus – the six-foot-tall painting of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in the library, the barracks dormitory named for Lee and the Lee Gate on Lee Road.
As a Black student at the Army academy, he remembers feeling “devastated” when a classmate pointed out the slave also depicted in the life-size Lee painting. “How did the only Black person who got on a wall in this entire humongous school — how is it a slave?” he recalls thinking.
As a diversity admissions officer, he later traveled the country recruiting students to West Point from underrepresented communities. “It was so hard to tell people like, ‘Yeah, you can trust the military,’ and then their kids Google and go ‘Why is there a barracks named after Lee?’” he said.
The nation’s military academies provide a key pipeline into the leadership of the armed services and, for the better part of the last decade, they have welcomed more racially diverse students each year. But beyond blanket anti-discrimination policies, these federally funded institutions volunteer little about how they screen for extremist or hateful behavior, or address the racial slights that some graduates of color say they faced daily.
In an Associated Press story earlier this year, current and former enlistees and officers in nearly every branch of the armed services described a deep-rooted culture of racism and discrimination that stubbornly festers, despite repeated efforts to eradicate it.
Evidence at Maxwell trial: massage table, unfolded in court
NEW YORK (AP) — A green, folding massage table used by financier Jeffrey Epstein was brought into a Manhattan courtroom and set up in front of a jury on Friday to bolster allegations he teamed up with British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell to sexually exploit underage victims.
The theatrical flourish in federal court in Manhattan, courtesy of an investigator wearing rubber gloves, was meant to corroborate testimony from a key accuser at Maxwell’s ongoing sex-abuse trial alleging massages were used as a pretense for the sexual encounters with Epstein that sometimes included Maxwell.
A witness who said the abuse started when she was 14 described seeing a massage table in a “massage room” that police say was in the same location where they recovered one at Epstein’s Palm Beach, Florida, mansion in 2005.
A police officer testified that investigators also seized records, computers and sex toys — a photo of which was shown to the jury — from the residence.
Prosecutors showed jurors a police videotape of the residence that captured images of nude photos on the walls – decor that federal prosecutors claim is proof of a sexualized atmosphere encouraged by Maxwell to put pressure on the victims.
Plumber’s find possibly tied to 2014 Texas megachurch theft
HOUSTON (AP) — For more than seven years, no one has known what happened to $600,000 in checks and cash that was stolen from a safe at Pastor Joel Osteen’s Houston megachurch, which has one of the largest congregations in the country.
Now, there’s a possible plot twist in the case: The money might never have left the church and a plumber could have helped solve the mystery.
Houston police are investigating whether cash and checks discovered by a plumber during repair work that was being done at Lakewood Church is connected to the money that was stolen in 2014.
The revived investigation comes after a plumber on Thursday called “The Morning Bullpen with George, Mo & Erik on 100.3 The Bull” during a segment on the Houston radio station in which people were asked to talk about the most unusual things of value they had ever found.
Some callers talked about finding $100 or a ring before the plumber went on the air with his story of what he found while repairing a leaky toilet at the church about four weeks ago.
Analysis: Why Rodgers got fined and 3 Bucs got suspended
Aaron Rodgers flaunts the NFL/NFLPA coronavirus protocols and gets a fine that barely shows up in his paycheck.
Antonio Brown and two others do the same and get three-game suspensions.
What gives?
It’s complicated, but in some ways it’s also pretty simple why the Packers quarterback was fined $14,650, a sum negotiated between the league and the players’ union while developing the COVID-19 protocols. And why Brown, teammate Mike Edwards and former Buccaneers player John Franklin III took a much bigger hit for falsifying vaccination documents.
Rodgers was fined for not wearing a mask in some instances, at a Halloween party and during press conferences. A joint investigation by the NFL and union revealed that he was wearing a mask at other points and complied with the protocols.
Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
