In Brief: Nation & World: 8-1-16

Clinton accuses Trump of ‘degrading comments about Muslims’

ASHLAND, Ohio — Hillary Clinton said Sunday that Donald Trump repaid the “ultimate sacrifice” of a U.S. Army captain killed in Iraq with insults and degrading comments about Muslims, as the soldier’s bereaved father pressured Republican Party leaders to distance themselves from the GOP presidential nominee.

Clinton’s comments came after Trump refused to back down from his criticism of the Gold Star parents’ remarks.

“Am I not allowed to respond?” Trump had tweeted. “Hillary voted for the Iraq war, not me!”

It was the latest bitter rhetorical volley between the defiant Republican candidate, Clinton and the family of a fallen soldier since the two parties concluded their major conventions last week and the nation looked ahead to a close election this November.

Trump’s stand has once again left Republican leaders facing demands to denounce their party nominee and overshadowed Clinton’s campaign message with controversy.

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Trump backers claim shift in his immigration rhetoric

CLEVELAND — As he turns his attention to the general election, Donald Trump is signaling that he is ready to tone down his fiery rhetoric on illegal immigration — at least behind closed doors.

At the same time, Republican officials appear eager to push him in a more moderate direction, telling Hispanics that he has abandoned his divisive primary pledge to deport the estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally — even if Trump hasn’t said so publicly himself.

“Trump has already said that he will not do massive deportations,” Helen Aguirre Ferre, the Republican National Committee’s director of Hispanic communications, told reporters at a Spanish-language briefing at the party’s convention two weeks ago. Instead, she said, “he will focus on removing the violent undocumented who have criminal records and live in the country.”

It’s a statement that may come as a surprise to Trump’s legion of loyal followers, many of whom were first drawn to Trump because of his hard-line views on immigration and border security. Trump has vowed to build a wall along the length of the southern border and use a “deportation force” to track down and deport anyone in the country illegally.

“You’re going to have a deportation force, and you’re going to do it humanely,” Trump said in a TV interview last fall. He estimated in a separate interview that the process would take between 18 months to two years.

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NTSB: Balloon hit power lines before crashing, killing 16

LOCKHART, Texas — A hot air balloon made contact with high-tension power lines before crashing into a pasture in Central Texas, killing all 16 on board, according to federal authorities who are investigating the worst such disaster in U.S. history.

A power line was tripped at 7:42 a.m. Saturday, and the first call to 911 came a minute later, National Transportation Safety Board member Robert Sumwalt said during a news conference. The crash site was near a row of high-tension power lines, and aerial photos showed an area of scorched land underneath. One witness described to The Associated Press seeing a “fireball” near the power lines.

The NTSB will look at all factors that might have played a role, including weather, but is concentrating on gathering “perishable evidence, the evidence that goes away with the passage of time,” Sumwalt said, noting some of that is witness statements that can fade with time.

“This wreckage will not be here more than another day or so,” he added.

The pilot was Skip Nichols, 49, said Alan Lirette, who identified Nichols as his best friend, roommate and boss. Lirette said he helped launch the balloon, which was carrying a total of 16 people, none of them children. The NTSB has not yet publicly identified the pilot or the passengers.

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Officials: 1 dead, 3 hospitalized in Austin shooting

AUSTIN, Texas — A shooting in a crowded entertainment district in downtown Austin early Sunday caused a chaotic scene, leaving one woman dead and three others wounded and police searching for a suspect.

Austin police say they want to question a 24-year-old possibly armed man in the overnight shootings. Police are circulating a photograph of a man described in a statement as a “person of interest.”

Austin Police Chief of Staff Brian Manley says police received reports of gunshots in crowded Sixth Street Entertainment District shortly after 2 a.m. Sunday, and found that five people had been shot.

“It was a very chaotic scene,” Manley said. “A lot of people running in different directions with all the gunshots coming out.”

One woman was pronounced dead at the scene, and three other women were taken to University Medical Center Brackenridge with injuries that were serious, but not life-threatening. Manley said another victim declined to be transported to the hospital.

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Bach defends IOC handling of Russian doping scandal

RIO DE JANEIRO — IOC President Thomas Bach defended the decision not to ban Russia’s entire team from the Rio Games, declaring Sunday that the doping crisis won’t damage the Olympic body’s credibility and taking a swipe at global anti-doping officials for failing to act sooner against state-sponsored cheating in Russia.

Speaking at a news conference five days before the opening of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Bach said a total ban on Russia for systematic doping “would not be justifiable” on either moral or legal grounds.

“Every human being is entitled to certain rights of natural justice,” said Bach, who also denied suggestions he had bowed to pressure from the Russian government to reject calls by anti-doping authorities for a complete ban.

Bach was peppered with questions about the International Olympic Committee’s handling of the Russian scandal, including the decision to give international sports federations the authority to decide which Russian athletes should be cleared to compete in Rio.

Asked whether the ruling represented a failure by the IOC, Bach said: “No. This is for very obvious reasons.”

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Pope to young on Poland trip: Believe ‘in a new humanity’

KRAKOW, Poland — Pope Francis told young people who flocked by the hundreds of thousands to his words Sunday that they need to “believe in a new humanity” stronger than evil, and cautioned against concluding that one religion is more violent than others.

Organizers of the Catholic jamboree known as World Youth Day estimated 1.5 million youths attended his Mass at a meadow near Krakow, many of them having camped out in sleeping bags from a vigil service of prayer, singing and dance performances the previous evening.

The jamboree, meant to infuse young Catholics with fresh passion for their religion, was the main reason Francis came to Poland on a five-trip, which also took him to the former Nazi Auschwitz death camp, where he prayed in silence and reflected on what he called “so much cruelty,” and to a church in Krakow, where he prayed that God protect the world from the “devastating wave” of terrorism.

Extremist violence was on his mind when he set out last week, the day after extremists rushed into a church in the French countryside and murdered the elderly priest there, slitting his throat, as he was celebrating Mass.

Flying back to Rome Sunday night from Krakow, he was asked by reporters why he has never used the word “Islam” when denouncing terrorist attacks.

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Pope will let justice take its course on Pell allegations

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis told reporters Sunday he won’t address child molestation allegations against a top Vatican cardinal who is one of his most-trusted aides until justice officials in Australia have made a determination.

Francis said as far as he’s concerned, accusations against Cardinal George Pell, Francis’ top financial adviser, “are in the hands of justice.” He said that the accused deserved the benefit of the doubt, adding that “once justice has its say, I will speak.”

“You can’t judge before they decide. We must wait for justice and not make judgments ahead of time,” the pope said. He was responding to a question posed by an AP reporter aboard the papal plane on a late evening flight to Rome after a pilgrimage in Poland about what would be the right thing to do in the Pell case.

Pell has long been dogged by allegations of mishandling cases of abusive clergy when he was archbishop of Melbourne and later Sydney. More recently, the prelate has been accused of child abuse himself when he was a young priest. Two men, now in their 40s, said he touched them inappropriately under the guise of play at a swimming pool during the late 1970s, according to Australian media, which reported the men have given statements to Victoria police.

Separately, a businessman this week told Australia’s public broadcaster, ABC television, that he saw the cardinal exposing himself to three young boys in a surf club changing room in the late 1980s. Pell was at the time a senior priest in Melbourne.

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Russian television shows what the Kremlin thinks of Clinton

MOSCOW — To understand what the Kremlin thinks about the prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming the U.S. president, it was enough to watch Russian state television coverage of her accepting the Democratic nomination.

Viewers were told that Clinton sees Russia as an enemy and cannot be trusted, while the Democratic Party convention was portrayed as further proof that American democracy is a sham.

In her acceptance speech, Clinton reaffirmed a commitment to NATO, saying she was “proud to stand by our allies in NATO against any threat they face, including from Russia.”

In doing so, she was implicitly rebuking her rival, Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has questioned the need for the Western alliance and suggested that if he is elected president, the United States might not honor its NATO military commitments, in particular regarding former Soviet republics in the Baltics.

While Trump’s position on NATO has delighted the Kremlin, Clinton’s statement clearly stung.

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Muslims go to Catholic Mass in France, Italy for solidarity

ROUEN, France — Muslims in France and Italy flocked to Mass on Sunday, a gesture of interfaith solidarity following a drumbeat of jihadi attacks that threatens to deepen religious divisions across Europe.

From the towering Gothic cathedral in Rouen, only a few miles from where 85-year-old Rev. Jacques Hamel was killed Tuesday by two Muslim fanatics, to Paris’ iconic Notre Dame, where the rector of the Mosque of Paris invoked a papal benediction in Latin, many churchgoers were cheered by the Muslims in their midst.

Interviewed outside the cathedral in Rouen, Jacqueline Prevot called it “a magnificent gesture.”

“Look at this whole Muslim community that attended Mass,” she said. “I find this very heartwarming.”

French television broadcast scenes of interfaith solidarity from all around France, with Muslim women in headscarves and Jewish men in kippot crowding the front rows of Catholic cathedrals in Lille, Calais or the Basilica of St. Denis, the traditional resting place of French royalty.