AP News in Brief 05-12-19

More ‘heartbeat’ abortion bans advancing in South, Midwest

If a new Mississippi law survives a court challenge, it will be nearly impossible for most pregnant women to get an abortion there.

Or, potentially, in neighboring Louisiana. Or Alabama. Or Georgia.

The Louisiana legislature is halfway toward passing a law — like the ones enacted in Mississippi and Georgia — that will ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many women know they’re pregnant. Alabama is on the cusp of approving an even more restrictive bill.

State governments are on a course to virtually eliminate abortion access in large chunks of the Deep South and Midwest. Ohio and Kentucky also have passed heartbeat laws; Missouri’s Republican-controlled legislature is considering one.

Their hope is that a more conservative U.S. Supreme Court will approve, spelling the end of the constitutional right to abortion.

Turkish opposition journalist hospitalized following attack

ANKARA, Turkey — A journalist critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government and its nationalist allies was hospitalized after being attacked outside his home, his newspaper said Saturday.

The Yenicag newspaper said columnist Yavuz Selim Demirag was beaten up by about five or six people with baseball bats after appearing on a TV show Friday. The assailants escaped the scene in a vehicle.

The reason for the attack was not known but it comes amid tensions over the top electoral authority’s decision to cancel the results of the March 31 mayoral race for Istanbul, which was won by the opposition. It ordered a revote June 23.

Erdogan’s party says the Istanbul vote was marred by fraud but the opposition says the electoral board was pressured by the government, which desperately wants to hold on to power in Turkey’s largest city.

The nationalist party that Demirag supports is part of an opposition alliance whose candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu, won control of Istanbul city hall before his mandate was revoked this week.

Polish nationalists protest US over Holocaust claims

WARSAW, Poland — Thousands of Polish nationalists marched to the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw Saturday, protesting that the U.S. is putting pressure on Poland to compensate Jews whose families lost property during the Holocaust.

The protest took place amid a dramatic rise in anti-Semitic hate speech in public life in Poland and it appeared to be one of the largest anti-Jewish street demonstrations in recent times. It also comes as far-right groups are gaining in popularity, pressuring the conservative government to move further to the right.

From wire sources

Protesters, including far-right groups and their supporters, say the United States has no right to interfere in Polish affairs and that the U.S. government is putting “Jewish interests” over the interests of Poland.

Poland was a major victim of Nazi Germany during World War II and those protesting say it is not fair to ask Poland to compensate Jewish victims when Poland has never received adequate compensation from Germany.

“Why should we have to pay money today when nobody gives us anything?” said 22-year-old Kamil Wencwel. “Americans only think about Jewish and not Polish interests.”

Man who reported girl missing arrested in her disappearance

HOUSTON (AP) — The man who reported 4-year-old Maleah Davis had been abducted from him last weekend was arrested near Houston Saturday in connection with her disappearance and police say they have found blood in his apartment linked to her.

Darion Vence, who had lived with Maleah and her mother, was arrested without incident at his brother’s home in Sugar Land, Texas, about 22 miles (35 kilometers) southwest of Houston, a statement from Houston police said. He was charged with tampering with evidence. Police spokesman Kese Smith declined to give more detail on the charge.

Vence told police last Saturday that men in a pickup truck abducted him, Maleah and his 2-year-old son before freeing him and the boy. But Sugar Land police, who initially interviewed him, said his story kept changing and didn’t add up.

Houston police set out in the press release Saturday some of those false claims.

Vence reported that his silver Nissan Altima was taken in the abduction but surveillance video showed that vehicle was used to drop Vence off later at a hospital, where he first reported the abduction, police said.

Self-impeach? Talk shifts toward Trump defiance of Congress

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has introduced a new concept into the debate over President Donald Trump’s actions: “self-impeaching.”

As Trump all but goads Democrats into impeachment proceedings , viewing the showdown as potentially valuable for his 2020 re-election campaign , Democrats are trying to show restraint. Their investigations are both intensifying but also moving slowly as Democrats dig into the special counsel’s Trump-Russia report and examine Trump’s finances and governance.

The more they push, the more Trump resists, the president making what Pelosi says is his own case for impeachment with his stonewalling of Congress.

“The president is self-impeaching,” she told her colleagues last week during a private caucus meeting, echoing comments she also aired in public. “He’s putting out the case against himself. Obstruction, obstruction, obstruction. Ignoring subpoenas and the rest.”

She added, “He’s doing our work for us, in a certain respect.”

Texas boys ranch moves forward as more men discuss abuse

DALLAS (AP) — When Allan Votaw stepped onto Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch in Texas in 1957, the 5-year-old hoped he and his two brothers — ages 3½ and 6 — had found a home. Instead, the now-66-year-old says, they found a “horror house” where sadistic staff members whipped children until they were bruised and bloody and children were molested by older kids.

“You lived in fear, you totally lived in fear,” said Votaw, who said he still has nightmares from his 10 years on the sprawling ranch for at-risk youths outside of Amarillo.

He railed against the ranch for years, feeling alone in his fight until reading a 2017 story in the British newspaper The Guardian that featured a handful of men — including childhood friends — describing abuse they suffered there as children.

Since then more men have come forward, but the reckoning some had hoped for hasn’t happened. Despite the revelations, the ranch continues to glorify its past, from the description on its website of founder Cal Farley’s desire to provide a haven for children to celebrations of the ranch’s 80th anniversary this year that have included a gala and inspirational film depicting life there.

Ranch President and CEO Dan Adams said while he believes the men, he’s focused on current residents — and the future. He said the ranch will pay for former residents’ counseling, adding they responded last month to those not comfortable contacting the ranch by arranging for a third party to set it up. But, he said, he doesn’t want the men’s stories incorporated into the ranch’s account of its history, and noted it’s not part of a book the Christian ranch produced for the anniversary.

___

___

Venezuela’s Guaidó asks for relations with US military

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó on Saturday said he’s instructed his political envoy in Washington to immediately open relations with the U.S. military in a bid to bring more pressure on President Nicolás Maduro to resign.

The leader said he’s asked Carlos Vecchio, who the U.S. recognizes as Venezuela’s ambassador, to open “direct communications” toward possible military “coordination.”

The remarks, at the end of a rally Saturday, mark one of his strongest public pleas yet for greater U.S. involvement in the country’s fast-escalating crisis. While Guaidó has repeatedly echoed comments from the Trump administration that “all options” are on the table for removing Maduro, few in the U.S. or Venezuelan opposition view military action as likely nor has the White House indicated it’s seriously considering such a move.

But with tensions between the U.S. and Maduro running high, the saber rattling is getting louder.

On Saturday, Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino condemned what he said was an illegal incursion by a U.S. Coast Guard cutter into Venezuelan territorial waters. He provided no evidence to back the claim but said that the Venezuelan Navy vessels forced it to withdraw..

___

States bring price fixing suit against generic drug makers

BOSTON (AP) — Attorneys general from more than 40 states are alleging the nation’s largest generic drug manufacturers conspired to artificially inflate and manipulate prices for more than 100 different generic drugs, including treatments for diabetes, cancer, arthritis and other medical conditions.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Connecticut on Friday, also names 15 individual senior executives responsible for sales, marketing and pricing.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, a Democrat, said investigators obtained evidence implicating 20 firms.

“We have hard evidence that shows the generic drug industry perpetrated a multibillion dollar fraud on the American people,” Tong said. “We have emails, text messages, telephone records and former company insiders that we believe will prove a multi-year conspiracy to fix prices and divide market share for huge numbers of generic drugs.”

Tong said the investigation had uncovered a primary reason why the cost of health care — and specifically generic prescription drugs — has been so high in this country.