In Brief: September 5, 2020

US Forest Service police dog survives stabbing attack

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A highly decorated U.S. Forest Service police dog suffered nine stab wounds during a marijuana raid in Northern California. But he survived after he was airlifted to a veterinary clinic, the agency said Friday.

What’s more, it’s the second time the dog, an 11-year-old Belgian Malinois named Ice, recovered after being seriously injured on the job.

Ice was wounded Aug. 27 in the Klamath National Forest south of the Oregon border when he was released to catch a suspect who had fled down a steep hill to escape the raid that unearthed more than 5,500 marijuana plants. He kept hold of the suspect even after he was stabbed, while his handler, Patrol Capt. Christopher Magallon, made the arrest.

Magallon then gave his dog first aid while calling in a helicopter, which flew Ice more than 70 miles to the Veterinary Specialty Center in Medford, Oregon. The dog, which had been wearing a protective vest, was released later that afternoon, and federal prosecutors are still considering charges.

“Thankfully, despite the attack, no major areas were struck, and Ice will quickly recover and return to service until his expected retirement at the end of this month,” Cody Wheeler, the Forest Services’ North Zone patrol commander, said in a statement.

US unemployment rate falls to 8.4% even as hiring slows

WASHINGTON — U.S. unemployment dropped sharply in August from 10.2% to a still-high 8.4%, with about half the 22 million jobs lost to the coronavirus outbreak recovered so far, the government said Friday in one of the last major economic reports before Election Day.

Employers added 1.4 million jobs last month, down from 1.7 million in July and the fewest since hiring resumed in May. And an increasingly large share of Americans reported that their jobs are gone for good, according to the Labor Department report.

Altogether, that was seen by economists as evidence that further improvement is going to be sluggish and uneven.

“The fact that employment is settling into a trend of slower, grinding growth is worrisome for the broader recovery,” said Lydia Boussour, an economist at Oxford Economics.

Still, President Donald Trump, who is seeking reelection in less than two months amid the worst economic downturn since the Depression in the 1930s, exulted over the latest unemployment figure, saying, “That is many, many months ahead of schedule.”

Pentagon reaffirms Microsoft as winner of disputed JEDI deal

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon on Friday reaffirmed Microsoft as winner of a cloud computing contract potentially worth $10 billion, although the start of work is delayed by a legal battle over rival Amazon’s claim that the bidding process was flawed.

“The department has completed its comprehensive re-evaluation of the JEDI cloud proposals and determined that Microsoft’s proposal continues to represent the best value to the government,” the Pentagon said.

From wire sources

The Pentagon had requested time to review how it evaluated certain technical aspects of the bids after the judge who is presiding over Amazon’s bid protest in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims issued a preliminary injunction on Feb. 13. The judge said that Amazon’s challenge likely had merit in some respects.

The contract was awarded to Microsoft last October, prompting Amazon to cry foul.

Amazon Web Services, a market leader in providing cloud computing services, had long been considered a leading candidate to run the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project, known as JEDI. The project will store and process vast amounts of classified data, allowing the U.S. military to improve communications with soldiers on the battlefield and use artificial intelligence to speed up its war planning and fighting capabilities.

Suspect in Portland protest killing dies in hail of gunfire

LACEY, Wash. — A man who said he believed a civil war was coming to America and was suspected of killing a right-wing protester in Portland, Oregon, died in a hail of gunfire in neighboring Washington state, officials and witnesses said.

The killing of Michael Forest Reinoehl shook a quiet suburb of Olympia, Washington Thursday evening — with bystanders ducking for cover behind automobiles from dozens of gunshots as four agents serving on a U.S. Marshals Service task force opened fire at Reinoehl.

Authorities said Reinoehl, 48, was armed with a semi-automatic handgun and a witness who was driving to the small apartment complex that Reinoehl was leaving said she saw him open fire from a car and the officers return fire.

Reinoehl then got out of the car and started running away but collapsed amid more gunfire, the witness, Deshirlynn Chatman, told The Olympian newspaper.

“He did open fire first,” she said in a video posted by The Olympian. Lt. Ray Brady of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Department said investigators have not concluded whether Rienoehl fired any shots.

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In Barr, Trump has powerful ally for challenging mail voting

WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump sows doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 election, he’s found a powerful partner in Attorney General William Barr.

Like Trump, Barr has repeatedly sounded alarms about the November vote despite a lack of evidence pointing to pervasive problems with the process.

That’s important — and worrisome to Democrats — because Barr is no ordinary Cabinet member. As head of the Justice Department, he can shape investigations into election interference and voting fraud. Though the department doesn’t oversee elections, it could inject itself into court fights over disputed contests. And any statements from America’s top law enforcement officer questioning election results could further shake public confidence in the vote at a time of widespread disinformation and rumors.

“Those who think that Barr is watching over the interests of Trump rather than the interests of the country have reason to be concerned that he would weaponize the Justice Department’s investigative authority to help Trump at least politically, if not legally, in any post-election challenge,” said Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine.

Concerns about Barr among Democrats and election experts outside the department are heightened because he is seen as a loyalist to the president, as well as an ardent defender of broad executive power and a passionate critic of the FBI’s Russia probe.

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No 7th trial for Mississippi man freed from prison in 2019

JACKSON, Miss. — A Mississippi man freed last year after 22 years in prison will not be tried a seventh time in a quadruple murder case, a judge ruled Friday after prosecutors told him they no longer had any credible witnesses.

Curtis Flowers was convicted multiple times in a bloody slaying and robbery at a small-town furniture store in 1996. The U.S. Supreme Court threw out the most recent conviction in June 2019, citing racial bias in jury selection.

“Today, I am finally free from the injustice that left me locked in a box for nearly twenty three years,” Flowers said in a statement released by his lawyer. “I’ve been asked if I ever thought this day would come. I have been blessed with a family that never gave up on me and with them by my side, I knew it would.”

Montgomery County Circuit Judge Joseph Loper signed the order Friday after the state attorney general’s office, which had taken over the case, admitted the evidence was too weak to proceed with another trial.

“As the evidence stands today, there is no key prosecution witness … who is alive and available and has not had multiple, conflicting statements in the record,” Assistant Attorney General Mary Helen Wall wrote in a filing presented to Loper on Friday.

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Brazil leader rapped for stirring doubt on COVID-19 vaccine

SAO PAULO — Critics of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro are again speaking out against the leader’s stance on the coronavirus pandemic, this time rejecting his view that vaccination for the virus shouldn’t be mandatory.

Bolsonaro’s first such comments came Monday, when he told a supporter, “No one can force anyone to get a vaccine.” He repeated it Thursday night during a live broadcast on Facebook, adding his opposition to administering vaccines that are yet to be proven on Brazilian soil.

“It has been proven in other countries, but not here in Brazil,” he said, without specifying to which potential vaccine he was referring. “We cannot be irresponsible and put a vaccine into people’s bodies. As I said, nobody can oblige someone to take a vaccine.”

The comments were swiftly rebuked by opponents on social media.

Sao Paulo state Gov. João Doria, a former Bolsonaro ally turned foe, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday that immunization cannot be viewed as a personal decision. Sao Paulo, with 46 million residents, is the pandemic’s epicenter in Brazil, with its more than 30,000 dead from COVID-19 accounting for about a fourth of the country’s death toll from the illness.