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John Robert Lewis, a champion of civil rights for African Americans and longtime U.S. lawmaker, has died. He was 80. The veteran congressman died Friday after a yearlong battle with advanced pancreatic cancer.John Lewis rose to fame as a leader of the modern-day American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. At age 23, he worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr. and was the last surviving keynote speaker from the August 1963 March on Washington where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. During the historic gathering, Lewis reminded America of the power of the civil rights movement.“By the force of our demands, our determination, and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them together in the image of God and democracy.  We must say: ‘Wake up America!  Wake up!’ For we cannot stop, and we will not and cannot be patient,” said Lewis, overlooking a crowd of 250,000.Former U.S. President Barack Obama said, “In so many ways, John’s life was exceptional. But he never believed that what he did was more than any citizen of this country might do. He believed that in all of us, there exists the capacity for great courage, a longing to do what’s right, a willingness to love all people, and to extend to them their God-given rights to dignity and respect. And it’s because he saw the best in all of us that he will continue, even in his passing, to serve as a beacon in that long journey towards a more perfect union.”From humble beginnings to a civil rights leaderBorn February 21, 1940, outside Troy, Alabama, John Lewis was the son of sharecroppers who grew up in the racially segregated South. He was not able to vote, enroll in college or obtain a public library card because he was Black.Determined to be a part of the struggle for equal rights, Lewis graduated from Fisk University in Nashville in 1963 with a degree in religion and philosophy.As a student, he organized sit-in demonstrations at segregated “Whites Only” lunch counters and staged bus boycotts. Lewis was one of the 13 original “Freedom Riders” beaten and arrested for riding alongside white passengers on interstate buses in the South.Two years later, as chairman of the influential Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, he helped register thousands of Black voters in places like Alabama and Mississippi. “I’ve always fought for what was right,” said Lewis.Life-changing eventsAs a 25-year-old activist, Lewis was badly beaten by white Alabama state troopers as he and 600 peaceful demonstrators marched for voting rights across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. Lewis suffered a fractured skull. Television images of the incident known as “Bloody Sunday” caused a national awakening to end racial discrimination.“I was beaten bloody and tear-gassed, fighting for what’s right for America. Our country would never ever be the same, because of what happened on this bridge,” said Lewis of the history-making event.Later that year, Lewis stood next to President Lyndon Johnson when he signed the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. The legislation outlawed discriminatory voting practices that kept Blacks from gaining political power.SuccessThe civil rights movement led John Lewis into a career of politics. He was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1981. Lewis was elected to Congress in 1986, calling it “the honor of a lifetime.” He served 17 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia’s 5th district.Sometimes called the “conscience of the Congress,” Lewis fought for income equality for minorities, criminal justice reform, gun safety and health care for all. In recognition of his achievements, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama in 2011.“Every day of John Lewis’s life was dedicated to bringing freedom and justice to all,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.  “As he declared 57 years ago during the March on Washington, standing in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial: ‘Our minds, souls, and hearts cannot rest until freedom and justice exist for all the people.’ How fitting it is that even in the last weeks of his battle with cancer, John summoned the strength to visit the peaceful protests where the newest generation of Americans had poured into the streets to take up the unfinished work of racial justice.”Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Our great nation’s history has only bent towards justice because great men like John Lewis took it upon themselves to help bend it. Our nation will never forget this American hero.”While undergoing cancer treatment, he returned to Alabama to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the voting rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. “We must go out and vote like we never, ever voted before,” he said. “I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to give in. We’re going to continue to fight. We must use the vote as a nonviolent instrument or tool to redeem the soul of America.”Before his death, Lewis endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination for president in April 2020. In one of his last public statements, the congressman said, “I cannot stand by and watch President (Donald) Trump undo the progress we fought so hard for.”Lewis’s longtime friend and fellow civil rights activist Jesse Jackson said Lewis will be remembered for risking his life to change America for the better.Fern Robinson contributed to this story.  
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Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said Friday he is now getting intelligence briefings and has been told Russia continues to try to meddle in November’s U.S. election.China also was conducting activities “designed for us to lose confidence in the outcome” of the 2020 election, Biden told supporters during an online fundraiser for his campaign.”We know from before, and I guarantee you that I know now, because now I get briefings again. The Russians are still engaged in trying to delegitimize our electoral process. Fact,” Biden said.He warned that if Russia continued to interfere there would be “a real price to pay” if he wins the November election against Republican President Donald Trump.It is unclear when Biden began receiving the intelligence briefings, which are normal for major party presidential nominees. His campaign did not respond immediately to a request for comment.Biden said at a June 30 press conference he had not been offered a classified briefing and “may very well” ask for one in the aftermath of reports Trump did not act on intelligence reports that Russia had put bounties on U.S. troops in Afghanistan.The former vice president under President Barack Obama has criticized Trump over reports he does not read his intelligence briefings.Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies found Russia acted to help Trump in the 2016 election, a charge Russia denies, and which Trump has repeatedly labeled a “hoax.” 
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British ministers are making plans to distribute millions of free coronavirus antibody tests after a version backed by the UK government passed its first major trials, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Friday. The fingerprick tests, which can tell within 20 minutes if a person has ever been exposed to the coronavirus, were found to be 98.6% accurate in secret human trials held in June, the newspaper reported. It added the test was developed by the UK Rapid Test Consortium (UK-RTC), a partnership between Oxford University and leading UK diagnostics firms. Britain’s only antibody tests approved thus far have involved blood samples being sent to laboratories for analysis, which can take days, The Telegraph said. Anticipating a regulatory approval in the coming weeks, tens of thousands of prototypes have already been manufactured in factories across the United Kingdom, the report added. Ministers are hoping that the AbC-19 lateral flow test will be available for use in a mass screening program before the end of the year, the newspaper reported. “It was found to be 98.6 percent accurate, and that’s very good news,” Chris Hand, the leader of the UK-RTC, was quoted as saying by The Telegraph. “We’re now scaling up with our partners to produce hundreds of thousands of doses every month,” Hand said, adding the government’s health department is in talks with UK-RTC over buying millions of tests before the year ends. The tests are likely to be free and would be ordered online instead of being sold in supermarkets, according to plans cited by the newspaper. “While these tests will help us better understand how coronavirus is spreading across the country, we do not yet know whether antibodies indicate immunity from reinfection or transmission,” a Department of Health and Social Care spokesman was quoted as telling the newspaper.   
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EU leaders failed Friday to make headway in negotiations over a massive stimulus plan to breathe life into economies ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, returning to their Brussels hotels shortly before midnight to rest and try again in the morning.Many of the 27 heads declared on arrival for their first face-to-face summit for five months that a deal was crucial to rescue economies in free fall and shore up faith in the European Union, which has lurched for years from crisis to crisis.But officials said a thrifty camp of wealthy northern states led by the Netherlands stood its ground on access to the recovery fund, in the face of opposition from Germany, France, southern nations Italy and Spain, and eastern European states.The proposed sums under discussion include the EU’s 2021-27 budget of more than 1 trillion euros and the recovery fund worth 750 billion euros that will be funneled mostly to Mediterranean coast countries worst affected by the pandemic.Diplomats said the 27 remained at odds over the overall size of the package, the split between grants and repayable loans in the recovery fund and rule-of-law strings attached to it.But the main stumbling block was over vetting procedures to access aid, an EU official said, with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte demanding that one country could block payouts from the fund if member states backslide on economic reform.”If they want loans and even grants then I think it’s only logical that I can explain to people in the Netherlands … that in return those reforms have taken place,” Rutte said, estimating the chances for a deal at 50-50.Polish premier Mateusz Morawiecki was even more gloomy.As the leaders broke up for the day, he tweeted that they were divided by a bundle of issues and said it was “highly probable” that they would fail to reach a deal on Saturday or even on Sunday if the summit drags past its scheduled two days.German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who celebrated her 66th birthday around the negotiating table in Brussels, was also cautious on chances for an agreement, envisaging “very, very difficult negotiations.”After initial elbow bumps between the leaders – all wearing face masks – and birthday gifts for Merkel and Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa, tense meetings followed in the evening with Rutte and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.The world is watchingOrban, who critics accuse of stifling the media, academics and NGOs, threatened to veto the entire plan over a mechanism that would freeze out countries that fail to live up to democratic standards.With EU economies deep in recession and immediate relief measures such as short-time work schemes running out, the specter of an autumn of hardship and discontent is looming.The EU is already grappling with the protracted saga of Britain’s exit from the bloc and is bruised by past crises, from the financial meltdown of 2008 to feuds over migration.Another economic shock could expose it to more eurosceptic, nationalist and protectionist forces, and weaken its standing against China, the United States or Russia.”The stakes couldn’t be higher,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “The whole world is watching us.”Despite wrangling over medicines, medical gear, border closures and money, the EU has managed to agree a half-a-trillion-euro scheme to cushion the first hit of the crisis.Mediterranean countries now want the recovery financing to prevent their economies taking on ever-greater burdens of debt.”The big picture is that we are faced with the biggest economic depression since World War Two,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said. “We need … an ambitious solution because our citizens expect nothing less from us.” 
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The Tokyo Olympics next year will use the same venues and follow an almost identical competition schedule as the one originally planned for this year before the event was postponed because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, organizers said Friday.However, organizers told an IOC session held by videoconference that it was too early to give details on coronavirus prevention measures during the games or on whether events would be in full or partly full stadiums, or behind closed doors.The International Olympic Committee and Japanese government decided in March to postpone the games until 2021 and organizers have been working to rearrange an event almost a decade in the making.The Olympics had been set to begin on July 24 this year.FILE – Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee CEO Toshiro Muto attends a news conference after a Tokyo 2020 executive board meeting in Tokyo, March 30, 2020.”Today, we are able to report that we have confirmed both the competition schedule and the use of all venues originally planned for this year, including the venue for the athletes village and the main press center,” said Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto.The new schedule means women’s softball will get competition underway at 9 a.m. (0000 GMT) in Fukushima on July 21, two days before the games officially open, with all events taking place a day earlier than the 2020 schedule.There have also been some minor changes to session times.Biggest everThe games are set to be the biggest ever in terms of events, with a record 339 medals available before the closing ceremony on August 8, although organizers say they will be simplified.Muto said all of the 42 venues have been secured, overcoming one of the biggest hurdles for organizers as many had already been booked for 2021.This means the marathon and race walking events will remain in the northern city of Sapporo after being controversially moved out of Tokyo because of anticipated scorching summer heat.One of the biggest questions concerns how many people will be able to travel to the games and watch the events.”This is of course one of the scenarios we have to look into, because this has to do with travel restrictions and quarantine, and it’s too early to tell,” said IOC President Thomas Bach, speaking from the organization’s headquarters in Lausanne.”We would like to see stadiums full of enthusiastic fans to give them all the opportunity to live the Olympic experience, support the athletes, and this is what we are working for,” added Bach, who earlier said he was prepared to stand for reelection next year.”We cannot address the details yet. … There cannot be a solution today. This is asking too much,” he said.Massive taskJohn Coates, the head of the IOC’s coordination commission, said that securing the venues had been a “massive task.””We are talking about venues in different ownership,” he told the session.”We are talking also of securing the Olympic village, which has been constructed by a consortium of 11 different companies, who have agreed to put back the date when they will be able to hand over the apartments to the public.”The next challenge for Tokyo organizers is developing measures to help prevent a COVID-19 outbreak during the games and how much the delay will cost Japanese taxpayers.Muto said decisions would be made on these issues in the autumn. “We will be having a full-fledged discussion over COVID-19 countermeasures,” he said.”But, as an example, the topics and themes we may discuss are immigration control, enhanced testing structures and the establishment of treatment systems and measures against COVID-19 in the areas of accommodation and transport.”
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Federal agents in green camouflage uniforms have been taking into custody people in the streets of Portland, not close to federal property that they were sent to protect, in what the ACLU on Friday said “should concern everyone in the United States.” “Usually when we see people in unmarked cars forcibly grab someone off the street we call it kidnapping,” said Jann Carson, interim executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon.”The actions of the militarized federal officers are flat-out unconstitutional and will not go unanswered.” Gov. Kate Brown said President Donald Trump, who deployed Department of Homeland Security officers to Portland, is looking for a confrontation in the hopes of winning political points elsewhere. The Democratic governor on Thursday called the actions “a blatant abuse of power by the federal government.” Her spokesman, Charles Boyle, said Friday that arresting people without probable cause is “extraordinarily concerning and a violation of their civil liberties and constitutional rights.” Federal officers have charged at least 13 people with crimes related to the protests so far, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported Thursday. Some have been detained by the federal courthouse, which has been the scene of protests. But others were grabbed blocks away. One video showed two people in helmets and green camouflage with “police” patches grabbing a person on the sidewalk, handcuffing them and taking them into an unmarked vehicle. “Who are you?” someone asks the pair, who do not respond. At least some of the federal officers belong to the Department of Homeland Security. “Authoritarian governments, not democratic republics, send unmarked authorities after protesters,” Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley said in a tweet.  The Council on American-Islamic Relations Oregon chapter said in a statement: “We are now seeing escalating tactics with protesters being unlawfully detained by unknown Federal law enforcement entities.”  On Thursday night, federal officers deployed tear gas and fired non-lethal rounds into a crowd of protesters, hours after the the head of the Department of Homeland Security visited the city and called the demonstrators, who are protesting racism and police brutality, “violent anarchists.” A few hundred people gathered near the federal courthouse Thursday night. Other protesters went to a police station in another part of the city. Police told protesters to leave that site after announcing they heard some chanting about burning down the building. Protester Paul Frazier said Friday the chant was “much more rhetorical than an actual statement.” Portland police said Friday they wound up arresting 20 people overnight. Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf said Thursday that state and city authorities are to blame for not putting an end to the protests, angering local officials. Mayor Ted Wheeler and others have said they didn’t ask for help from federal law enforcement and have asked them to leave.  Homeland Security Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli said Friday morning on “Fox & Friends” that the federal government has a responsibility to protect buildings such as the courthouse. “What we’ve seen around the country is where responsible policing is advanced, violence recedes,” Cuccinelli said. “And Portland hasn’t gotten that memo. Nor have a lot of other cities. And the president is determined to do what we can, within our jurisdiction, to help restore peace to these beleaguered cities.” The Department of Homeland Security had no immediate comment when reached by The Associated Press on Friday. Tensions have escalated in the past two weeks, particularly after an officer with the U.S. Marshals Service fired at a protester’s head on July 11, critically injuring him. The protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis have often devolved into violent clashes between smaller groups and the police. The unrest has caused deep divisions in a city that prides itself on its activism and progressive reputation.   
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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Friday she is receiving chemotherapy for a recurrence of cancer, but has no plans to retire from the Supreme Court.The 87-year-old Ginsburg, who spent time in the hospital this week for a possible infection, said her treatment so far has succeeded in reducing lesions on her liver and that she will continue chemotherapy sessions every two weeks.
“I have often said I would remain a member of the Court as long as I can do the job full steam. I remain fully able to do that,” Ginsburg said in a statement issued by the court.
She said her recent hospitalizations, including one in May, were unrelated to the cancer.
A medical scan in February revealed growths on her liver, she said, and she began chemotherapy in May.
“My most recent scan on July 7 indicated significant reduction of the liver lesions and no new disease,” she said. “I am tolerating chemotherapy well and am encouraged by the success of my current treatment.” 
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The United States has blocked imports from the world’s top rubber glove maker just as health care workers are facing a new surge of coronavirus cases in some states.U.S. Customs and Border Protection imposed a “withhold release order” on two subsidiaries of Malaysia’s Top Glove Corp. on Wednesday over evidence of forced labor at their factories.MalaysiaMalaysia produces roughly two-thirds of the world’s disposable rubber gloves, a critical piece of personal protective equipment for health care workers on the front lines of the battle to stem the tide of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Top Glove alone makes about 20 percent of the gloves globally.”The evidence reveals multiple International Labor Organization … indicators of forced labor including debt bondage, excessive overtime, retention of identification documents and abusive working and living conditions,” the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement.The ban on shipments, it added, “sends a clear and direct message to U.S. importers that the illicit, inhumane and exploitative practices of modern-day slavery will not be tolerated in U.S. supply chains.”The CBP said it was aware of the critical need for rubber gloves during the pandemic and that the ban on Top Glove “will not have a significant impact on total U.S. imports of this type of gloves.”Top Glove downplayed the impact of the block on the company, noting that it was a seller’s market for glove makers with COVID-19 cases continuing to surge in the United States and elsewhere.“Other countries can take up these orders easily,” the firm’s executive chairman, Lim Wee Chai, told reporters in Malaysia late Thursday.“We have other plans as well if the U.S. does not allow the shipment to enter into their country,” he added, citing Brazil, which now has the second most confirmed COVID-19 cases in the world, as one potential alternative.FILE – A worker inspects newly-made gloves at Top Glove factory in Klang, Malaysia, March 3, 2020.The block does not cover all Top Glove imports to the United States, either. The company said the U.S. accounts for a quarter of its total sales and that the two subsidiaries hit by the withhold release order make up only half of those.Labor rights groups said that raises concerns the company could skirt the ban.Independent labor rights advocate Andy Hall said there would be “close monitoring by multiple stakeholders across [Top Glove] sites to see whether orders are shifted to get around the CBP” withhold release order and keep exports to the U.S. steady using other subsidiaries.Even so, he added, Top Glove will “find it hard to sidestep the impact of the ban given the severity of the challenges facing the company’s reputation now.”The CBP did not reply to a request to elaborate on its reasons for blocking the company’s imports. But Top Glove, reacting to the ban, said in a statement it may have to do with the recruitment fees many of its migrant workers pay middlemen to land jobs at its factories.Malaysia’s rubber glove industry runs on an army of migrant workers from poorer countries in the region lured by the promise of higher wages than those on offer at home. Along the way, many end up in crippling debt to recruitment agents who can charge upwards of $5,000 to set them up at a factory, leaving them virtually enslaved to their employers while they work off their loans at minimum wage.Top Glove said it has already “resolved” the issue among its migrant workers except for those who paid agents before 2019. But the company said it was working on a plan that could cost it up to $11.7 million to reimburse them and that it hoped to convince the CBP to lift its import ban in a matter of weeks.The U.S. agency handed down a similar import ban on another Malaysian rubber glove maker, WRP Asia Pacific, in September over similar forced labor concerns, then lifted it in March claiming the factories were by then free of labor abuses.Just last month, WRP launched a scheme to reimburse its migrant workers for their recruitment fees over the next two-and-a-half years.Hall said the U.S. import ban on WRP, the first for any Southeast Asian country, had been meant as a warning to the nation’s other glove makers to settle their own accounts with their migrant workers. He believes most ignored it thinking the United States would not risk its rubber glove supplies during a pandemic but expects more firms to reconsider, now that a second Malaysian company, considered an industry leader, has been hit.”We should expect all gloves companies to quickly move to remediate worker recruitment fees now to avoid further sanctions,” he said. 
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Asian countries who feel pinched by China over competing maritime claims expect the U.S. government to step up aid following Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s words of support this week, but only in severe cases and without risking conflict, scholars in the region believe.In a statement issued Monday, Pompeo promised to protect the maritime rights of the smaller Asian countries in keeping with international law. China vies for maritime sovereignty with Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, all of which have weaker militaries. At stake is the shared 3.5 million-square-kilometer South China Sea, which is flush with fish and energy reserves.Claimant governments tentatively welcome Pompeo’s offer but want to know what, specifically, Washington will do before feeling more confident, analysts say. “It will really make Southeast Asia sit up and take notice if there are real concrete actions that follow soon after the recent Pompeo statement, because otherwise it will still remain a statement and people will continue guessing what is going to come after the statement,” said Collin Koh, a maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.Pompeo told reporters in Washington on Wednesday he would consider protecting third countries against China through legal means and multilateral bodies including the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations bloc. Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines are among the bloc members.U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Stilwell hinted at a conference Tuesday there is “room to sanction Chinese officials and state-owned enterprises that engage in illegal activities,” Olli Pekka Suorsa, research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, wrote in a commentary e-mailed to reporters on Thursday.Pompeo said Washington’s superpower rival Beijing lacks rights to claim 90% of the waterway, where it has angered neighboring countries over the past decade by landfilling tiny islets for military, economic and scientific use.In this photo provided by the Department of National Defense, ships carrying construction materials are docked at the new beach ramp at the Philippine-claimed island of Pag-asa in the South China Sea on June 9, 2020.Stephen Nagy, a senior associate professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo, said U.S. officials will probably respond just to major upsets involving China but do that without sparking a conflict. The U.S. government would ignore localized fishing disputes and altercations over placement of oil rigs, he said. American officials might consider responding instead to Chinese ship movement in waters claimed by other countries. Chinese survey vessels have this year tested waters claimed by Malaysia and Vietnam.“It’s a very difficult line to walk between putting significant pressure back on the Chinese without it spiraling into a kinetic conflict,” Nagy said.China cites historical records to explain its maritime claims. On Thursday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman defended China’s compliance with international law and questioned whether the U.S. side had been as diligent.Washington is expected to enlist other powers in any action against China on behalf of a third country. A Japan-Australia-U.S. statement on July 7 condemned Chinese actions in Asia after Australia, Japan and India made their own similar comments. India’s external affairs ministry said Thursday the sea should stay open to international navigation and overflight. “I see that (it’s) stepping up and concentrating all levers of pressure against China and it’s going to include a multilateral pushback against China’s claims,” Nagy said.South China Sea Territorial ClaimsOfficials from Southeast Asian states were quiet after the Pompeo comments.Vietnam, normally the most outspoken claimant, probably welcomes Pompeo’s plan but hopes not to be singled out as a protected country, said Nguyen Thanh Trung, director of the Center for International Studies director at University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam needs China as a trading partner and the two Communist neighbors still try to get along despite decades of flare-ups in the South China Sea.“I think that they hope the U.S. can confront China unilaterally or with some other allies,” Nguyen said. “Vietnam should not be deeply involved in any initiatives.”
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