AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EDT

No hugs or handshakes: Pandemic complicates storm relief

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — For people who lost homes to the deadly tornadoes that rampaged across the South, there are no comforting hugs from volunteers or handshakes from politicians. For homeless families, there are no Red Cross shelters, only hotel rooms.

These and other changes reflect how disaster response has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic: Workers are still trying to provide all the help they can, but from a distance.

Within hours of the tornado onslaught, which began Sunday and killed more than 30 people, church groups were out in damaged communities, and Southern Baptist volunteers were told to avoid holding hands with people as they prayed, said Sam Porter, director of disaster relief for the nearly 15 million-member denomination. Hugs also are out.

“You’re talking about a very hard change in procedures,” Porter said Tuesday. “It’s agonizing. Jesus touched people all through his ministry. He created us as emotional beings. But we are trying to comply with the guidelines.”

About 550 people in four states were staying in hotel rooms funded by the Red Cross since mass shelters were not an option, said Brad Kieserman, a vice-president of the organization.

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Trump reverses course on power to ‘reopen’ states amid virus

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday he’s open to some states “reopening” before federal social distancing guidelines expire at the end of month, as he appeared to back off his claim of absolute authority to decide when the time was right to act.

Hours after suggesting that the bipartisan concerns of governors about his assertion of power would amount to an insurrection, Trump abruptly reversed course, saying he would leave it to governors to determine the right time and manner to revive activity in their states. Trump said he would be speaking with governors, probably on Thursday, to discuss his administration’s plans.

“The governors are responsible,” Trump said Tuesday. “They have to take charge.”

Still, he insisted, “The governors will be very, very respectful of the presidency.”

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have been preparing federal guidelines for states looking to resume normal operations. They were expected to be unveiled later this week.

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What you need to know today about the virus outbreak

Setting the stage for a possible power struggle with President Donald Trump, governors around the U.S. began collaborating on plans Tuesday to reopen their economies in what is likely to be a drawn-out, step-by-step process to prevent the new coronavirus from rebounding with disastrous results.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said the U.S. does not yet have the critical testing and tracing procedures needed to begin reopening the nation’s economy, adding a dose of caution to increasingly optimistic projections from the White House.

“We have to have something in place that is efficient and that we can rely on, and we’re not there yet,” Fauci said in an interview with The Associated Press.

In parts of Europe where infections and deaths have begun stabilizing, the process of restarting the economy was already underway. Certain businesses and industries have been allowed to reopen in a calibrated effort by politicians to balance public health against their countries’ economic well-being.

Meanwhile, Trump has directed a halt to U.S. payments to the World Health Organization pending a review of its warnings about the coronavirus and China.

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Deaths hit 45 at Virginia care home called ‘virus’s dream’

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Ronald Mitchell worried about his mother’s care at a suburban Richmond nursing home long before she was swept up in one of the nation’s deadliest coronavirus outbreaks.

She’s bedbound and susceptible to seizures. A sore on her foot went unnoticed for so long, he said, that it led to the amputation of her leg. When he called her last month after she tested positive for COVID-19, she sounded disoriented, and he stayed on the line as she pressed a call button and waited an hour and a half for a nurse who never came.

Mitchell then called Canterbury Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center directly and was told that they were doing the best they could with just two nurses looking after 40 patients at a time in the coronavirus quarantine wing.

With the death toll from the Canterbury outbreak rising to 45, Mitchell can only hope that his 62-year-old mother now on a ventilator in a hospital won’t be next.

“It’s the worst feeling in the world,” he said.

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States map out reopening of economies, say crisis not over

WASHINGTON (AP) — Governors around the U.S. began sketching out plans Tuesday to reopen their economies in a slow and methodical process to prevent the coronavirus from rebounding with tragic consequences, as President Donald Trump appeared to back off his claim of absolute authority to determine when to end social distancing guidelines.

In Italy, Spain and other places around Europe where infections and deaths have begun stabilizing, the process is already underway, with certain businesses and industries allowed to start back up in a calibrated effort by politicians to balance public health against their countries’ economic well-being.

Trump announced a halt to U.S. payments to the World Health Organization pending a review of its warnings about the coronavirus and China. Trump, whose own response to the virus has been called into question, criticized the WHO for not sounding the alarm sooner. He asserted that the virus could have been contained at its source and lives could have been spared had the U.N. health agency done a better job investigating reports coming out of China.

While the crisis is far from over in the U.S., with more than 25,000 dead and approximately 600,000 confirmed infections by Johns Hopkins University’s count, the doomsday scenarios that were predicted just two weeks ago have not come to pass, raising hopes from coast to coast.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has joined a coalition with his counterparts in Oregon and Washington on how to emerge from the crisis, outlined a set of conditions for lifting restrictions in America’s most populous state. Among other things, he said hospitalizations will have to decline and more testing will have to become available.

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AP Interview: Sanders says opposing Biden is ‘irresponsible’

Bernie Sanders said Tuesday that it would be “irresponsible” for his loyalists not to support Joe Biden, warning that progressives who “sit on their hands” in the months ahead would simply enable President Donald Trump’s reelection.

And lest there be any question, the 78-year-old Vermont senator confirmed that “it’s probably a very fair assumption” that he would not run for president again. He added, with a laugh: “One can’t predict the future.”

Sanders, who suspended his presidential bid last week, spoke at length about his decision to endorse Biden, his political future and the urgent need to unify the Democratic Party during an interview with The Associated Press. He railed against the Republican president but also offered pointed criticism at his own supporters who have so far resisted his vow to do whatever it takes to help Biden win the presidency.

He seemed to distance himself from his campaign’s former national press secretary, Briahna Joy Gray, when asked about her recent statement on social media refusing to endorse Biden.

“She is my former press secretary — not on the payroll,” Sanders noted. A spokesman later clarified that all campaign staffers were no longer on the payroll as of Tuesday, though they will get a severance check in May.

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Coronavirus relief checks won’t have to be repaid, feds say

CHICAGO (AP) — Videos and online reports claiming that millions of Americans will have to repay the relief checks they receive from the federal government under the $2.2 trillion coronavirus economic recovery bill are not true.

The government began issuing the one-time payments this week. Most adults who earned up to $75,000 will see a $1,200 payout, while married couples who made up to $150,000 can expect to get $2,400. Parents will get payments of $500 per child. The checks will be directly deposited into bank accounts or mailed to households, depending on how you’ve filed your tax returns in the past.

In recent days, social media posts have falsely claimed there’s one catch to this money — that you’ll eventually have to pay it back.

“Next year, you’re automatically going to owe $1,200 come tax season,” one of the videos, viewed hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube, falsely claims. The video has also been shared widely on social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.

The U.S. Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service, which are working to deliver the money to people, confirmed to The Associated Press that households will not have to pay back the money in next year’s tax filing.

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Court throws out Trump rollback of school nutrition rules

NEW YORK (AP) — After making a brief comeback on school lunch menus, white bread and other refined grains may be vanishing again when schools reopen after a federal court threw out the Trump administration’s rollback of school nutrition standards.

The U.S. district court in Maryland this week said the administration did not give adequate public notice of the change, which had gone into effect for this past school year. The ruling was in response to a lawsuit brought by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and Healthy School Food Maryland.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it does not comment on ongoing litigation and it’s unknown how the agency will proceed. The agency oversees the national school lunch and breakfast programs, which serve millions of free and reduced-price meals daily.

For now, closed schools that have continued distributing meals during the coronavirus pandemic are operating under different standards and have been able to request flexibility on nutrition standards.

“None of this applies under the current situation. This is for when we resume post-pandemic school operations,” said Laura MacCleery, senior policy director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

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Liberty University sued for not refunding student fees

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Liberty University has profited from the COVID-19 pandemic by refusing to refund thousands of dollars in room and board and other fees owed to students after the school moved classes online last month, a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Lynchburg accuses the university — one of the nation’s largest and most prominent evangelical institutions — of purporting to remain open so it could refuse to return fees paid by students and their parents for the remainder of the spring semester.

The lawsuit also accuses Liberty and its president, Jerry Falwell Jr., of putting students at risk by telling students they were welcome to return to campus following spring break in March.

The suit cites comments and tweets made by Falwell in which he downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic and implied that the government shutdowns were an attempt to hurt President Donald Trump politically.

The lawsuit said that despite efforts to downplay the pandemic, the university stopped providing services and activities by moving classes online, closing its campus to visitors, prohibiting gatherings of 10 or more people and closing indoor recreation and fitness centres.

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Marine barbershops abuzz with demand for high-and-tight cuts

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barbershops at some Marine Corps bases are abuzz with demand for high-and-tight haircuts.

Despite social distancing and other Defence Department policies on coronavirus prevention, Marines are still lining up for the trademark cuts, at times standing only a foot or two apart, with few masks in sight.

On Tuesday, Defence Secretary Mark Esper acknowledged it’s tough to enforce new virus standards with a force of 2.2 million spread out all over the world.

“Our challenge is to get out there and educate the chain of command,” Esper said during a Pentagon news conference.

Esper said he provided broad guidance about following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and other health protections, but added he doesn’t wade into every detail, including whether or not Marines should get haircuts.

The Associated Press