AP News in Brief 02-01-20

Britain leaves the European Union, leaps into unknown

LONDON — So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu.

With little fanfare, Britain left the European Union on Friday after 47 years of membership, taking a leap into the unknown in a historic blow to the bloc.

The U.K.’s departure became official at 11 p.m. (2300GMT), midnight in Brussels, where the EU is headquartered. Thousands of enthusiastic Brexit supporters gathered outside Britain’s Parliament to welcome the moment they’d longed for since Britain’s 52%-48% vote in June 2016 to walk away from the club it had joined in 1973. The flag-waving crowd erupted in cheers as Big Ben bonged 11 times — on a recording. Parliament’s real bell has been silenced for repairs.

In a message from nearby 10 Downing St., Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Britain’s departure “a moment of real national renewal and change.”

But many Britons mourned the loss of their EU identity, and some marked the passing with tearful vigils. There was also sadness in Brussels as British flags were quietly removed from the bloc’s many buildings.

US bars foreigners coming from China for now over virus

WASHINGTON — The United States on Friday declared a public health emergency and took drastic steps to significantly restrict entry into the country because of a new virus that hit China and has spread to other nations.

President Donald Trump has signed an order that will temporarily bar foreign nationals, other than immediate family of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, who have traveled in China within the last 14 days. The new restrictions, which take effect at 5 p.m. EST on Sunday, were announced by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who is coordinating the U.S. response.

“It is likely that we will continue to see more cases in the United States in the coming days and weeks, including some limited person-to-person transmissions,” Azar said. “The American public can be assured the full weight of the U.S. government is working to safeguard the health and safety of the American people.”

From wire sources

Americans returning from China will be allowed into the country, but will face screening at select ports of entry and required to undertake 14 days of self-screening to ensure they don’t pose a health risk. Those returning from Hubei province, the center of the outbreak, will be subject to up to 14 days of mandatory quarantine.

Beginning Sunday, the U.S. will also begin funneling all flights to the U.S. from China to seven major airports where passengers can be screened for illness.

The shunned: People from virus-hit city tracked, quarantined

BEIJING — Meron Mei, a sophomore at Wuhan University in the Chinese city at the heart of a viral outbreak, went back to his home village and started to cough.

So he went to the hospital and got checked. Doctors determined it was a common cold, not the new coronavirus, he says, and he returned home. Then a week ago, he says, five officers showed up at his house in Xishui County, a two hour drive from Wuhan. They wore masks and wielded blue, gun-shaped thermometers.

Now Mei finds himself under constant surveillance by plainclothes police. His doorstep has been posted with a red warning: “Do not approach – patient with suspected pneumonia.” Doctors in gowns, goggles and masks check his temperature three times a day, and the government calls him constantly to monitor his condition — despite tests that he says show his body is free of the coronavirus. His phone is constantly checked; its camera has been disabled and his photos deleted. He relayed his story to The Associated Press via messages in English to prevent officers from reading them.

“I am in prison,” said Mei, whose story could not be independently verified by the AP. “I’m so angry. I feel physically and mentally exhausted.”

As China institutes the largest quarantine in human history, locking down more than 50 million people in the center of the country, those who have recently been to Wuhan are being tracked, monitored, turned away from hotels and placed into isolation at their homes and in makeshift quarantine facilities.

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Roses for Kobe and Gianna as Lakers return to action

LOS ANGELES — Red roses adorned the courtside seats where Kobe and Gianna Bryant sat at the last Los Angeles Lakers game they attended. On the overhead video board, photos of Bryant in action for the Lakers alternated with those of the other seven people who were killed alongside him and his 13-year-old daughter in a helicopter crash.

Friday night at Staples Center was unlike any other.

Later on, there would be a basketball game between the Portland Trail Blazers and Lakers, their first since Bryant’s death on Sunday.

But in the couple hours leading up to the game there was mostly silence. The electric atmosphere that surges through the arena before NBA games was nowhere to be felt. Media talked quietly among themselves without the usual music playing. Somber ushers took up their positions with black ribbons attached to their purple work shirts. Grief counseling was offered to arena staff and one female usher pulled tissues out of her pocket that had been provided.

Inside the Lakers locker room, Bryant’s No. 24 gold jersey hung on a wooden hanger from a fire alarm next to LeBron James’ locker. It was Bryant’s locker when he helped the team win five NBA championships during his 20 years in Los Angeles.

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Woman says Weinstein yelled, ‘You owe me!’ before raping her

NEW YORK — A key accuser in Harvey Weinstein’s trial testified Friday that he raped her twice, once bellowing, “You owe me!” as he dragged her into a bedroom.

The first time, the heavyset Hollywood tycoon trapped her in a New York hotel room in March 2013, and angrily ordered her to undress as he loomed over her, and then raped her, she told jurors.

Still, she kept in touch, sending him flattering emails, because “his ego was so fragile,” she said, and it “made me feel safe, worshipping him in this sense. … I wanted to be perceived as innocent and naive.”

Then, eight months later at a Los Angeles hotel where she worked as a hairdresser, she told Weinstein that she was dating an actor, she said.

“You owe me one more time!” he screamed, she told jurors. She said she begged him not to take off her clothes, but he said, “I don’t have time for games” and ripped off her pants before pushing her legs apart and raping her.

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Police open fire at ‘impaired’ driver in Mar-a-Lago breach

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Law enforcement agents opened fire on an SUV driver who smashed through two security checkpoints at Mar-a-Lago on Friday in what authorities described as the actions of “an obviously impaired” driver but not an intentional attack on President Donald Trump’s resort.

The driver, Hannah Roemhild, 30, of Connecticut, who identifies herself on her Facebook page as an opera singer, was later arrested at a nearby motel. No one was injured, authorities said, and Trump was not at the Palm Beach club at the time, although he was scheduled to arrive there later in the day.

Roemhild was not at any time “even remotely close” to getting into the “inner perimeter” of the president’s resort, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said at a news conference.

He said Roemhild, “obviously impaired,” was dancing on top of her vehicle outside the Breakers hotel, about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from Mar-a-Lago, when an off-duty Florida Highway Patrol officer who was working hotel security approached her.

Roemhild jumped into the SUV and refused to open the window or acknowledge the officer, Bradshaw said. She then put the car in reverse and began driving away. The trooper smashed the window and tried to grab the steering wheel, but was unable to stop her, the sheriff said.

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Trump to tout U.S. ‘comeback’ at State of the Union speech

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will use next week’s State of the Union to promote what he calls the “Great American comeback,” according to a senior administration official.

The speech comes at a moment when Trump is hoping to put his Senate impeachment trial behind him. White House officials say Trump wants to use the nationally-televised address to highlight his administration’s efforts to bolster the economy, tighten immigration rules and lower prescription drug costs just as his reelection effort accelerate.

“I think it’s safe to say the speech will celebrate American economic and military strength and present an optimistic vision of America’s future,” said the senior administration official, who briefed reporters on the broad outlines of the speech that Trump is scheduled to deliver before a joint session of Congress Tuesday

But for the second straight year, Trump will deliver his speech with a cloud over his presidency as his Senate impeachment edges to a rancorous close. Last year, Trump was forced to postpone his speech because of the longest government shutdown in the nation’s history triggered by bitter partisan battle over his push for funding for his border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump appeared headed for an all-but-certain impeachment acquittal as senators prepared on Friday to reject efforts to call more witnesses to testify about his efforts to pressure Ukraine’s president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son’s business dealings in the Eastern European nation.

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Author Mary Higgins Clark, ‘Queen of Suspense,’ dead at 92

NEW YORK — Mary Higgins Clark, the tireless and long-reigning “Queen of Suspense” whose tales of women beating the odds made her one of the world’s most popular writers, died Friday at age 92.

Her publisher, Simon &Schuster, announced that she died of natural causes in Naples, Florida.

“Nobody ever bonded more completely with her readers than Mary did,” her longtime editor Michael Korda said in statement. “She understood them as if they were members of her own family. She was always absolutely sure of what they wanted to read — and, perhaps more important, what they didn’t want to read — and yet she managed to surprise them with every book.”

Widowed in her late 30s with five children, she became a perennial bestseller over the second half of her life, writing or co-writing “A Stranger Is Watching,” “Daddy’s Little Girl” and more than 50 other favorites. Sales topped 100 million copies and honors came from all over, including a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from France or a Grand Master statuette back home from the Mystery Writers of America. Many of her books, like “A Stranger is Watching” and “Lucky Day,” were adapted for movies and television. She also collaborated on several novels with her daughter, Carol Higgins Clark.

Mary Higgins Clark specialized in women triumphing over danger, such as the besieged young prosecutor in “Just Take My Heart” or the mother of two and art gallery worker whose second husband is a madman in “A Cry in the Night.” Clark’s goal as an author was simple, if rarely easy: Keep the readers reading.