AP News in Brief 08-30-19

Pentagon establishes U.S. Space Command

WASHINGTON — Declaring space crucial to the nation’s defense, President Donald Trump said Thursday the Pentagon has established U.S. Space Command to preserve American dominance on “the ultimate high ground.”

“This is a landmark day,” Trump said in a Rose Garden ceremony, “one that recognizes the centrality of space to America’s national security and defense.”

He said Space Command, headed by a four-star Air Force general, will “ensure that America’s superiority in space is never questioned and never threatened.”

But there’s still no Space Force.

Space Force, which has become a reliable applause line for Trump at his campaign rallies, has yet to win final approval by Congress.

The renewed focus on space as a military domain reflects concern about the vulnerability of U.S. satellites, both military and commercial, that are critical to U.S. interests and are potentially susceptible to disruption by Chinese and Russian anti-satellite weapons.

The role of the new Space Command is to conduct operations such as enabling satellite-based navigation and communications for troops and commanders in the field and providing warning of missile launches abroad. That is different from a Space Force, which would be a distinct military service like the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard.

Congress has inched toward approving the creation of a Space Force despite skepticism from some lawmakers of both parties. The House and Senate bills differ on some points, and an effort to reconcile the two will begin after Congress returns from its August recess.

Satellite photos show burning Iran space center launch pad

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A rocket at an Iranian space center that was to conduct a satellite launch criticized by the U.S. apparently exploded on its launch pad Thursday, satellite images show, suggesting the Islamic Republic suffered its third failed launch this year alone.

State media and officials did not immediately acknowledge the incident at the Imam Khomeini Space Center in Iran’s Semnan province.

However, satellite images by Planet Labs Inc. showed a black plume of smoke rising above a launch pad there, with what appeared to be the charred remains of a rocket and its launch stand. In previous days, satellite images had shown officials there repainted the launch pad blue.

On Thursday morning, half of that paint apparently had been burned away.

“Whatever happened there, it blew up and you’re looking at the smoldering remains of what used to be there,” said David Schmerler, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

Watchdog: Comey violated FBI policies in handling of memos

WASHINGTON — Former FBI Director James Comey violated FBI policies in his handling of memos documenting private conversations with President Donald Trump, the Justice Department’s inspector general said Thursday.

The watchdog office said Comey broke bureau rules by giving one memo containing unclassified information to a friend with instructions to share the contents with a reporter. Comey also failed to return his memos to the FBI after he was dismissed in May 2017, retaining copies of some of them in a safe at home, and shared them with his personal lawyers without permission from the FBI, the report said.

“By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees — and the many thousands more former FBI employees — who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information,” the report said.

The report is the second in as many years to criticize Comey’s actions as FBI director, following a separate inspector general rebuke for decisions made during the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. It is one of multiple inspector general investigations undertaken in the last three years into the decisions and actions of Comey and other senior FBI leaders.

Trump, who has long regarded Comey as one of his principal antagonists in a law enforcement community he sees as biased against him, cheered the conclusions on Twitter. He wrote: “Perhaps never in the history of our Country has someone been more thoroughly disgraced and excoriated than James Comey in the just released Inspector General’s Report. He should be ashamed of himself!”

Opioid settlement would use a formula to split the money

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The multibillion-dollar settlement that the maker of OxyContin is negotiating to settle a crush of lawsuits over the nation’s opioid crisis contains formulas for dividing up the money among state and local governments across the country, The Associated Press has learned.

The formulas would take into account several factors, including opioid distribution in a given jurisdiction, the number of people who misuse opioids and the number of overdose deaths.

Spelling out the way the settlement is to be split could forestall squabbles over the money and avoid what some see as the mistakes made with the hundreds of billions of dollars received under the nationwide settlement with Big Tobacco during the 1990s.

From wire sources

Activists have complained that precious little of the money from the tobacco industry went toward anti-smoking programs and too much was diverted toward state budget holes, pensions and other things unrelated to smoking’s toll.

In the case of the opioid litigation, some of the plaintiffs have said they want direct control over the money to make sure it goes toward treating and preventing addiction and covering some of the taxpayer costs associated with the deadly epidemic, including mental health services, police calls and foster care for children of addicts.

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Backlash grows to Johnson’s suspension of UK Parliament

LONDON — Opposition to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s move to suspend Parliament intensified Thursday, with the head of the Labour Party vowing “to politically stop him” from pushing through a chaotic no-deal Brexit.

Johnson’s tactic gave lawmakers little time to prevent Britain from crashing out of the European Union without an agreement on Oct. 31.

But a backlash to the maneuver has unified the disparate political opposition, bringing protests, legal action and a petition with more than 1 million signatures.

The confrontation is almost certain to increase next week when lawmakers return from their summer recess for a brief session. They are pledging to challenge what Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has called Johnson’s “smash-and-grab raid against our democracy.”

“What we’re going to do is try to politically stop him on Tuesday with a parliamentary process in order to legislate to prevent a no-deal Brexit and also to try and prevent him shutting down Parliament in this utterly crucial period,” Corbyn told Sky News. “We believe we can do it.”

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Survivors demand US investigation of Mississippi abuse deals

JACKSON, Miss. — Catholic sex abuse survivors in Mississippi and Wisconsin on Thursday demanded that federal authorities investigate allegations from three black Mississippi men who say they were molested by Franciscan friars during the mid-1990s, when they were as young as 9 years old.

Mark Belenchia, the Mississippi leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, issued a statement calling for federal law enforcement agencies to “pursue any federal charges that may be possible due to the interstate transmission of the victims for the purpose of rape and exploitation by abusive clergymen.”

“It’s time for the outside authorities to come in and investigate … find out what we know, what they know and what they’ve covered up — because I guarantee you, they covered it up. It’s just systemic,” he said, in a news conference in front of the offices of the Jackson diocese.

Cousins Joshua Love and La Jarvis Love and a third man, Joshua’s brother, Raphael Love, say they were repeatedly abused by Brother Paul West during the 1990s, when they were elementary school students at St. Francis of Assisi School, in Greenwood, Mississippi. Joshua Love says he was also molested by the late Brother Donald Lucas.

In addition, the alleged victims say they were repeatedly molested by West during excursions to Wisconsin and New York.

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EPA moves to revoke rules on oil industry methane leaks

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration moved Thursday to revoke regulations on methane leaks from oil facilities, a proposal environmental advocates said would renounce key federal authority to regulate the climate-damaging gas.

The proposed rule follows President Donald Trump’s directions to remove “unnecessary and duplicative regulatory burdens from the oil and gas industry,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement.

Exxon Mobil and some other oil giants — wary of blowback from growing public concern over global warming — joined environmental groups in urging the Trump administration to drop the rollback on methane controls, although several state-level and national industry groups welcomed the easing.

The step would be the latest in a series unwinding the Obama administration’s efforts to cut climate-changing emissions from the oil, gas and coal industries, including a 2016 rule regulating oil-industry methane leaks as a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act.

Trump has pushed to open vast expanses of U.S. wilderness and coastline to oil and gas drilling, speed construction of petroleum pipelines and ease regulations on the industry, dismissing calls from scientists in and out of government for rapid cuts in oil, gas and coal emissions to stave off the worst of climate change.

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Families begin burying the 28 victims of Mexico bar fire

COATZACOALCOS, Mexico — Anger remained high Thursday as relatives began the slow, tearful task of mourning and burying the 28 people who died horrendously when gang members set a bar on fire after blocking its exits.

The families complained that criminals are out of control and making life impossible in this southern Mexico oil town.

At least seven of the victims were buried Thursday, with the 3-year-old daughter of one woman, Xochitl Irineo Gomez, waving goodbye to her mother after her coffin was placed into the ground.

Vanessa Galindo Blas, 32, leaned over the brown metal coffin of her common-law husband, Erick Hernandez Enriquez, 29, who had dreamed of becoming a famous deejay. He was working at the club to support his three children.

“He wanted to be famous,” she sighed. “Look what they did to him.”