AP News in Brief 03-09-18

UK police: 21 people sought treatment after poisoning of Russian ex-spy

LONDON — Around 21 people have received medical treatment after a nerve-agent attack on an ex-Russian spy, British police said Thursday, as the U.K. vowed strong action against whoever was responsible for the “brazen and reckless” act.

Three people remain hospitalized after the poisoning Sunday in the southern English city of Salisbury — former spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter and a British police officer who tried to help them.

Health authorities say there is little risk to the wider public. But Wiltshire county acting police chief Kier Pritchard said “around 21 people” have had treatment, including the Skripals, who were found unconscious on a bench.

Pritchard said “a number” of the 21 were having “blood-tests, support and advice.” Previously, authorities had said only that “several” people had sought treatment.

The ex-spy and his daughter remain in critical condition in a Salisbury hospital. A police officer who came to their aid, Sgt. Nick Bailey, is hospitalized in a serious condition, though he is conscious and talking, officials said.

Florida governor won’t say whether he will sign gun bill bumping age limit

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Three weeks after the Parkland high school shooting, Florida Gov. Rick Scott has a gun-control bill on his desk that challenges the National Rifle Association but falls short of what the Republican and survivors of the massacre demanded.

Now he must decide whether to sign it. Scott has not said what he will do, and he plans to take up the issue Friday with relatives of 17 people slain in the Feb. 14 attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

“I’m going to take the time and I’m going to read the bill and I’m going to talk to families,” he said.

State lawmakers formally delivered the reform package Thursday. The governor has 15 days to sign it, veto it or let it become law without his signature.

The measure would raise the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21 and extend a three-day waiting period for handgun purchases to include long guns. It also would create a so-called guardian program enabling school employees and many teachers to carry handguns if they go through law enforcement training and their school districts agree to participate.

911 calls, radio traffic show chaos in Florida high school massacre

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — In the minutes after a gunman opened fire in a Florida high school, killing 17, frantic students and parents begin flooding 911 with calls.

A deputy on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School campus first thought the loud bangs were firecrackers but quickly realized they are gunshots — yet he never ran toward them.

Other responding deputies and police officers desperately tried to sort through a chaotic scene, treat the injured, lock down the school and locate the shooter.

The Broward County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday released 12 minutes of radio transmissions from its deputies and neighboring Coral Springs police, along with recordings of 10 of the 81 calls its 911 center received during the Feb. 14 shooting. The sheriff also released a written timeline laying out how the radio calls correlated with what was seen on unreleased school security video.

Investigators say video shows the suspect opening fire with an AR-15 assault rifle 15 seconds after he enters the school’s freshman building, and firing periodically over the next six minutes. Deputy Scot Peterson, the resource officer assigned to protect the school, is at the nearby administration building. It will be more than 90 seconds before he heads toward the shooting. The first 911 call comes in 68 seconds after Cruz opens fire. The first responding deputies arrive two minutes after that.

Trump orders stiff trade tariffs, unswayed by grim warnings

WASHINGTON — Unswayed by Republican warnings of a trade war, President Donald Trump ordered steep new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to the U.S. on Thursday, vowing to fight back against an “assault on our country” by foreign competitors. The president said he would exempt Canada and Mexico as “a special case” while negotiating for changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The new tariffs will take effect in 15 days, with America’s neighbors indefinitely spared “to see if we can make the deal,” Trump said. He suggested in an earlier meeting with his Cabinet that Australia and “other countries” might be spared, a shift that could soften the international blow amid threats of retaliation by trading partners.

Those “other countries” can try to negotiate their way out of the tariffs, he indicated, by ensuring their trade actions do not harm America’s security.

Surrounded by steel and aluminum workers holding hard hats, Trump cast his action as necessary to protect industries “ravaged by aggressive foreign trade practices. It’s really an assault on our country. It’s been an assault.”

His move, an assertive step for his “America First” agenda, has rattled allies across the globe and raised questions at home about whether protectionism will impede U.S. economic growth. The president made his announcement the same day that officials from 11 other Pacific Rim countries signed a sweeping trade agreement that came together after he pulled the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership last year.

Views of Trump’s trade adviser carry the day at White House

WASHINGTON — In the squabbling Trump White House, no insider is ever above rebuke and no one blacklisted beyond redemption. Trade adviser Peter Navarro, once barred from sending private emails and spotted skulking in West Wing hallways, has emerged from the chaos ascendant.

With his chief ideological rival, Gary Cohn, now headed for the exit, Navarro and his protectionist trade policies are taking center stage as President Donald Trump prepares to impose the steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports that Navarro has long championed.

Navarro, a 68-year-old former economics professor whose ideas were once considered well outside the mainstream, joined the Trump campaign in 2016 after one of his books on China happened to catch the eye of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner during an internet search.

From the presidential campaign, Navarro made the leap to the new administration to head a new White House National Trade Council. But he was quickly sidelined by chief of staff John Kelly and closely managed by former staff secretary Rob Porter.

As alliances shifted and staffers departed, though, Navarro made his move, encouraging Trump to embrace a plan that many economists, lawmakers and White House aides warn could lead to a trade war and imperil U.S. economic gains. Trump signed a pair of proclamations Thursday imposing tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum.

White House aide launches first wave in final-days PA push

PITTSBURGH — In the first wave of the White House’s new western Pennsylvania offensive, one of President Donald Trump’s chief aides on Thursday attacked Democratic congressional candidate Conor Lamb on abortion while casting Republican Rick Saccone as “a reliable vote” for the president.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, the first of three Republican heavyweights set to campaign in the region before Tuesday’s special election, charged that even a single vote could affect Trump’s policy agenda on Capitol Hill.

“Every vote counts at the ballot box, but every vote counts in Washington right now too,” she told a dozen campaign volunteers at an Allegheny County GOP office. She added later, “The president wants a reliable vote in Washington.”

Conway acknowledged she was the “warm-up band” for the White House’s final-days push to preserve a Republican congressional seat in Pennsylvania’s 18th district, a working-class region that stretches from the Pittsburgh suburbs to the West Virginia border. The president is scheduled to attend a local rally on Saturday followed by his son, Donald Trump Jr., on Monday.

The high-profile reinforcements from the president’s orbit were welcomed by Saccone, a 60-year-old state representative, who has wholeheartedly embraced Trump throughout his campaign. Trump carried the region by nearly 20 percentage points in 2016. Yet with the election just days away, polls suggest that Saccone is essentially tied with Lamb, a 33-year-old Marine and former federal prosecutor who has never before run for office.

What swamp? Lobbyists get ethics waivers to work for Trump

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and his appointees have stocked federal agencies with ex-lobbyists and corporate lawyers who now help regulate the very industries from which they previously collected paychecks, despite Trump’s promises as a candidate to drain the swamp in Washington.

A week after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order that bars former lobbyists, lawyers and others from participating in any matter they worked on for private clients within two years of going to work for the government.

But records reviewed by The Associated Press show Trump’s top lawyer, White House counsel Don McGahn, has issued at least 37 ethics waivers to key administration officials at the White House and executive branch agencies.

Though the waivers were typically issued months ago, the Office of Government Ethics disclosed several more on Wednesday. The White House had previously released more than a dozen waivers granted to its staff.

One allows FBI Director Chris Wray “to participate in matters involving a confidential former client.” The three-sentence waiver gives no indication about what Wray’s conflict of interest might be. The FBI declined to comment Thursday.