AP News in Brief 01-28-18

Steve Wynn resigns as top GOP finance chairman

WASHINGTON — Casino mogul Steve Wynn resigned Saturday as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee amid allegations of sexual harassment and assault.

Wynn has been a prolific Republican donor and led the RNC’s fundraising efforts during President Donald Trump’s first year, helping the committee rake in more than $130 million.

“Today I accepted Steve Wynn’s resignation as Republican National Committee finance chair,” said RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that a number of women said they were harassed or assaulted by Wynn, the chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts. Wynn has denied the allegations.

Trump seeking a reset with State of the Union

WASHINGTON — Beset by poor poll numbers and the grind of the Russia investigation, President Donald Trump will look to reset his term with his first State of the Union address, arguing that his tax cut and economic policies will benefit all Americans.

The theme of his Tuesday night address to Congress and the country is “Building a safe, strong and proud America,” and the president is looking to showcase accomplishments of his first year while setting the tone for the second.

Aides say the president plans to set aside his more combative tone for one of compromise, and to make an appeal beyond his base.

Trump often engages in hyperpartisan politics, and his tax overhaul has been criticized for disproportionately favoring the wealthy. But he will try to make the case that all groups of people have benefited during his watch, according to a senior administration official who was not authorized to preview the speech for the record and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The annual address is a big set piece for any president, a prime-time window to address millions of voters. Every word is reviewed, every presidential guest carefully chosen, every sentence rehearsed. The stakes are enormous for Trump, hoping to move past a turbulent first 12 months in office.

Bomber in ambulance detonates at Afghan checkpoint; 95 dead

KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber drove an ambulance into a commercial area by pretending to be carrying a patient to a hospital and then detonated his explosives at a checkpoint near the European Union consulate, killing at least 95 people and wounding 158 more in an attack claimed by the Taliban, authorities said.

Saturday’s powerful explosion, which came a week after Taliban militants killed 22 people at an international hotel in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, was felt throughout the city and covered the blast area in smoke and dust. Dozens of vehicles were damaged or destroyed, and several shops, including some selling antiques and photography equipment, were decimated.

Windows at the nearby Jamhuriat government hospital were shattered, and its walls were damaged. People ran out to help, and ambulances arrived to transport dozens of wounded people to hospitals.

The attacker used the ambulance to coast through one security checkpoint in central Kabul by telling police he was transporting a patient and then detonated his explosives at a second checkpoint, the Interior Ministry said. Four suspects in the deadly bombing, which occurred near the European Union and Indian consulates, had been arrested and were being questioned, the ministry said, but it didn’t elaborate.

“The majority of the dead in the attack are civilians, but of course we have military casualties as well,” ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said.

Tillerson seeks to show ‘America First’ isn’t America alone

WARSAW, Poland — As President Donald Trump declared that “America First does not mean America alone” at a global economic forum in Switzerland, his top diplomat was on a European trip of his own, trying to convince skeptical allies that the oft-repeated phrase is more than just lip service.

Yet a year into Trump’s presidency, his administration has demonstrated that “America First” may, indeed, mean “America alone,” though it remains unclear if that has helped Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s bargaining position on crucial national security and foreign policy matters.

Amid crises in multiple hotspots and before joining Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Tillerson visited London and Paris with a full agenda aimed at defusing not only the issues at hand but also tensions with Washington.

His mission was primarily to secure British and French support for tough new measures against Iran that might prevent the U.S. from withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear accord. Along the way, he also accused Russia of responsibility for chemical weapons attacks in Syria and chastised Turkey for attacking U.S.-backed Kurd forces there.

“As the old saying goes, it’s always darkest before the dawn,” Tillerson said while wrapping up his European tour in Warsaw on Saturday. “I don’t want to say we’re at the darkest moment of any of those three areas … but I think it’s why we have given it so much attention and are working hard with partners and allies to put mechanisms in place to begin the very, very hard work of addressing the concerns in all three.”

Justice Ginsburg signals her intent to work for years more

WASHINGTON — In different circumstances, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg might be on a valedictory tour in her final months on the Supreme Court. But in the era of Donald Trump, the 84-year-old Ginsburg is packing her schedule and sending signals she intends to keep her seat on the bench for years.

The eldest Supreme Court justice has produced two of the court’s four signed opinions so far this term. Outside court, she’s the subject of a new documentary that includes video of her working out. And she’s hired law clerks to take her through June 2020, just four months before the next presidential election.

Soaking in her late-in-life emergence as a liberal icon, she’s using the court’s monthlong break to embark on a speaking tour that is taking her from the Sundance Film Festival in Utah to law schools and synagogues on the East Coast. One talk will have her in Rhode Island on Tuesday, meaning she won’t attend the president’s State of the Union speech that night in Washington.

She has a standard response for interviewers who ask how long she intends to serve. She will stay as long as she can go “full steam,” she says, and she sees as her model John Paul Stevens, who stepped down as a justice in 2010 at age 90.

“I think that Justice Ginsburg has made clear that she has no intention of retiring. I am sure she wants to stay on the court until the end of the Trump presidency if she can,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, and a liberal who called on Ginsburg to retire in 2014, when Barack Obama was president and Democrats controlled the Senate.

‘Beetle Bailey’ cartoonist Mort Walker dies at 94

LOS ANGELES — Comic strip artist Mort Walker, a World War II veteran who satirized the Army and tickled millions of newspaper readers with the antics of the lazy private “Beetle Bailey,” died Saturday. He was 94.

Walker died at his home in Stamford, Connecticut, said Greg Walker, his eldest son and a collaborator. His father’s advanced age was the cause of death, he said.

Walker began publishing cartoons at age 11 and was involved with more than a half-dozen comic strips in his career, including “Hi and Lois,” ”Boner’s Ark” and “Sam &Silo.” But he found his greatest success drawing slacker Beetle, his hot-tempered sergeant and the rest of the gang at fictional Camp Swampy for nearly 70 years.

The character that was to become Beetle Bailey made his debut as Spider in Walker’s cartoons published by the Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. Walker changed Spider’s name and launched “Beetle Bailey” as a college humor strip in 1950.

At first the strip failed to attract readers and King Features Syndicate considered dropping it after just six months, Walker said in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press. The syndicate suggested Beetle join the Army after the start of the Korean War, Walker said.

Families recall spirit of Kentucky school shooting victims

BENTON, Ky. — The aunt of one of two teenage victims of a school shooting in Kentucky described her Saturday as an “old soul” who was simple, easy to love and “the salt of the Earth.”

Tracy Tubbs told reporters that her niece, 15-year-old Bailey Holt, was a “sweatshirt kind of girl” who often wore jeans and Converse shoes. Tubbs said Holt listened to classic rock bands like AC/DC and Van Halen and was a big fan of the Louisville Cardinals athletic teams.

“How great our Lord and savior is,” Tubbs said. “He chose us to have this beautiful creature in our lives for 15 short, magnificent years.”

Holt died at the scene of the shooting Tuesday at Marshall County High School in Benton. Fifteen-year-old Preston Ryan Cope was declared dead at a Nashville hospital. Their funerals are scheduled on Sunday. A 15-year-old boy is being held on murder and assault charges in the shooting. Police said 14 students were wounded by gunfire and seven others suffered other injuries when the boy opened fire before classes began

Tubbs spoke on behalf of the Holt family. Jackie Reid, principal of Sharpe Elementary School in Benton, spoke for Cope’s family. Both women read statements from the families before answering a few questions from reporters.