US marks 9/11 anniversary at tributes shadowed by virus

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans commemorated 9/11 Friday as another national crisis reconfigured memorial ceremonies, dividing some victims’ families over coronavirus safety precautions, and a presidential campaign carved a path through the observances.

In New York, victims’ relatives gathered Friday morning for split-screen remembrances at the World Trade Center’s Sept. 11 memorial plaza and on a nearby corner, set up by separate organizations.

Standing on the plaza, with its serene waterfall pools and groves of trees, Jin Hee Cho said she couldn’t erase the memory of the death of her younger sister, Kyung, in the collapse of the trade center’s north tower.

“It’s just hard to delete that in my mind. I understand there’s all this, and I understand now that we have even COVID,“ said Cho, 55. ”But I only feel the loss, the devastating loss of my flesh-and-blood sister.”

Around the country, some communities canceled 9/11 ceremonies, while others went ahead, sometimes with modifications. The Pentagon’s observance was so restricted that not even victims’ families could attend, though small groups could visit its memorial later in the day.

On an anniversary that fell less than two months before the presidential election, President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden both headed for the Flight 93 National Memorial in the election battleground state of Pennsylvania — at different times of day. Biden also attended the ceremony at ground zero in New York, exchanging a pandemic-conscious elbow bump with Vice President Mike Pence before the observance began.

In short, the 19th anniversary of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil was a complicated occasion in a maelstrom of a year, as the U.S. grapples with a pandemic, searches its soul over racial injustice and prepares to choose a leader to chart a path forward.

Still, families say it’s important for the nation to pause and remember the hijacked-plane attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people at the trade center, at the Pentagon outside Washington and in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 11, 2001 — shaping American policy, perceptions of safety and daily life in places from airports to office buildings.

“People could say, ‘Oh, 19 years.’ But I’ll always be doing something this day. It’s history,” said Annemarie D’Emic, who lost her brother Charles Heeran, a stock trader. She went to the alternative ceremony in New York, which kept up the longstanding tradition of in-person readers.


Speaking at the Pennsylvania memorial, Trump recalled how the plane’s crew and passengers tried to storm the cockpit as the hijackers as headed for Washington.

“The heroes of Flight 93 are an everlasting reminder that no matter the danger, no matter the threat, no matter the odds, America will always rise up, stand tall, and fight back,” the Republican president said.

Biden visited the memorial later Friday, laid a wreath and greeted relatives of victims including First Officer LeRoy Homer. Biden expressed his respect for those aboard Flight 93, saying sacrifices like theirs “mark the character of a country.”

“This is a country that never, never, never, never, never, never gives up,” he said.

At the Sept. 11 memorial in New York hours earlier, Biden offered condolences to victims’ relatives including Amanda Barreto, 27, and 90-year-old Maria Fisher, empathizing with their loss of loved ones. Biden’s first wife and their daughter died in a car crash, and his son Beau died of brain cancer.

Biden didn’t speak at that ceremony, which has a longstanding custom of not allowing politicians to make remarks.

Pence went on to the separate ceremony, organized by the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation, where he read the Bible’s 23rd Psalm. His wife, Karen, read a passage from the Book of Ecclesiastes.

“For the families of the lost and friends they left behind, I pray these ancient words will comfort your heart and others,” said the vice president, drawing applause from the audience of hundreds.

Formed in honor of a firefighter killed on 9/11, the foundation felt in-person readers were crucial to the ceremony’s emotional impact and could recite names while keeping a safe distance. By contrast, recorded names emanated from speakers placed around the memorial plaza. Leaders said they wanted to keep readers and listeners from clustering at a stage.

As in past years on the plaza, many readers at the alternative ceremony added poignant tributes to their loved ones’ character and heroism, urged the nation not to forget the attacks and recounted missed family milestones: “How I wish you could walk me down the aisle in just three weeks,” Kaitlyn Strada said of her father, Thomas, a bond broker.

One reader thanked essential workers for helping New York City endure the pandemic, which has killed at least 24,000 people in the city and over 190,000 nationwide. Another reader, Catherine Hernandez, said she became a police officer to honor her family’s loss.

Other victims’ relatives, however, weren’t bothered by the switch to a recording at the ground zero ceremony.

“I think it should evolve. It can’t just stay the same forever,” said Frank Dominguez, who lost his brother, Police Officer Jerome Dominguez.

The Sept. 11 memorial and the Tunnel to Towers foundation also tussled over the Tribute in Light, a pair of powerful beams that shine into the night sky near the trade center, evoking its fallen twin towers. The 9/11 memorial initially canceled the display, citing virus safety concerns for the installation crew. After the foundation vowed to put up the lights instead, the memorial changed course with help from its chair, former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Tunnel to Towers, meanwhile, arranged to display single beams for the first time at the Shanksville memorial and the Pentagon.

Over the years, the anniversary also has become a day for volunteering. Because of the pandemic, the 9/11 National Day of Service and Remembrance organization is encouraging people this year to make donations or take other actions from home.

Associated Press 

Luxury goods giant LVMH cancels $14.5B deal for Tiffany

NEW YORK (AP) — Luxury goods giant LVMH is ending its takeover deal of jewelry retailer Tiffany & Co., saying the French government had requested a delay to assess the threat of proposed U.S. tariffs and amid wider industry troubles caused by the pandemic.

The Paris-based conglomerate said that both the French government and Tiffany had requested that the closing of the deal be postponed by a few months. The French government, it said, wanted to assess the impact of the possible U.S. tariffs on French goods.

As a result, LVMH said, the $14.5 billion deal — which would have been biggest ever in the luxury market and was scheduled to close Nov. 24 — will be canceled.

Tiffany replied that it’s suing to enforce the merger agreement, which was signed in November 2019. The New York company said LVMH’s argument has no basis in French law. Tiffany also said that LVMH hasn’t even attempted to seek the required antitrust approval from three jurisdictions.

“We believe that LVMH will seek to use any available means in an attempt to avoid closing the transaction on the agreed terms,” said Roger Farah, chairman of Tiffany, in a statement.

Shares in Tiffany slid 6% in afternoon trading in New York. Those in LVMH, which owns 75 brands including Christian Dior, Fendi, Givenchy and Tag Heuer, were stable.

The deal’s value came under strain during the coronavirus pandemic, which caused retail sales to plunge around the world. Tiffany’s share price has been trading around $125 a share for weeks - below the $135 per share price that LVMH had agreed to pay last fall, before the pandemic.

Back then, industry experts had said the deal made sense. Tiffany, known for its delicate jewelry, distinctive blue boxes and an Audrey Hepburn movie, had been trying to transform its brand to appeal to younger and more digital shoppers, and could have used an owner with deep pockets to help expand.

LVMH, led by billionaire Bernard Arnault, had thought the deal would strengthen its position in high-end jewelry and in the U.S. market. LVMH was also making a bet on China’s economy, where Tiffany had been expanding its presence.

The pandemic threw all those assumptions and plans in doubt, and the threat of new tariffs between the U.S. and Europe was cited as a further complicating issue.

Before COVID, the global market for personal luxury goods was solid, reaching a record high of $307.1 billion (260 billion euros) in 2018 — a 6% increase from the year before, according to consulting firm Bain & Co. That sector slipped by 2.1% to $331.9 (281 billion euros) last year, according to Bain estimates. But given COVID’s financial fallout and the shutdown of tourism worldwide, those sales could drop by 20% to 35% in 2020, Bain estimates. Bain expects that personal luxury sales won’t recover to pre-COVID levels until 2022 and 2023.

Tiffany’s global sales declined 29% during the fiscal second quarter ended July 31, following a 45% drop in the fiscal first quarter.

Last year, France sought to impose a tax on global tech giants including Google, Amazon and Facebook. The French tech tax is aimed at “establishing tax justice.” France wants digital companies to pay their fair share of taxes in countries where they make money instead of using tax havens, and is pushing for an international agreement on the issue.

In response to the tech tax, the U.S. threatened to slap 100% tariffs on $2.4 billion of French products.

The two sides are at a tense truce as France has said it would delay collection of the digital tax until December, parking the issue until after the next U.S. presidential election where Trump hopes to secure another four-year term.

In a press conference on Wednesday, French government spokesman Gabriel Attal confirmed that a letter was sent by French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian to LVMH and referred to international talks about U.S. tariffs as a “very important issue.”

“The (French) government is neither naive nor passive. We have objectives that we want to reach,” he said. He wouldn’t further elaborate and said that Le Drian is expected to express his views on the issue in the coming hours.

CFO Jean Jacques Guiony of the LVMH insisted in a phone interview with reporters that the letter received Sept. 1 from the French government was legal and valid and left the group no choice.

“I don’t think their objective is to please or not to please LVMH. They don’t give a damn…,” he said. “The letter is legally valid, is legal. When you get such a legally binding and legally valid letter, you just apply it…We will apply it.”

Asked about lowering the price to keep the deal alive, he said that had not even been considered as there is no article in the contract that would allow that.

“The deal cannot take place .. we are prohibited from closing this transaction … we have no choice.”

As for the threatened law suit, the CFO said that he doesn’t “see a way in between” the arguments the two sides could put forth – we don’t do the deal on Nov. 24 and they saying that you have to do it anyway, he said.

“We’ll see what happens.”

________

AP Writers Sylvie Corbet ad Elaine Ganley in Paris contributed to this report.

Associated Press

India now 2nd behind US in virus cases amid economic pain

NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s increasing coronavirus caseload made the Asian giant the world’s second-worst-hit country behind the United States on Monday, as its efforts to head off economic disaster from the pandemic gain urgency.

The 90,802 cases added in the past 24 hours pushed India’s total past Brazil with more than 4.2 million cases. India is now behind only the United States, where more than 6.2 million people have been infected, according to Johns Hopkins University.

India’s Health Ministry on Monday also reported 1,016 new deaths for a total of 71,642, the third-highest national toll.

The world’s second-most populous country with 1.4 billion people, India has been recording the world’s largest daily increases in coronavirus cases for almost a month. Despite over 2 million new cases in the past month and the virus spreading through the country’s smaller towns and villages, the Indian government has continued relaxing restrictions to try and resuscitate the economy.

On Monday, the Delhi Metro, which serves India’s sprawling capital, New Delhi, and adjoining areas, resumed operations after remaining shuttered for more than five months. The commuters were scarce and stations deserted. Only asymptomatic people were allowed to board the trains, with masks, social distancing and temperature checks mandatory.

Security personnel used metal detectors attached to rods to ensure social distancing during frisking at the stations, and commuters were allowed to enter only after sanitizing their hands.

New Delhi’s streets have already returned to their normal bustle, and people are again flocking to markets. The city’s bars will reopen on Wednesday.

The reopenings come after India’s economy shrank faster than any other major nation’s, nearly 24% in the last quarter.

India’s economic pain dates to the demonetization of the nation’s currency in 2016 and a hasty rollout of a goods and services tax the next year. But the strict virus lockdown that started on March 24 further exacerbated the economic woes.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered everyone in the country to stay indoors, the whole economy shut down within four hours. Millions lost their jobs instantly and tens of thousands of migrant workers, out of money and fearing starvation, poured out of cities and headed back to villages. The unprecedented migration not only hollowed out India’s economy but also spread the virus to the far reaches of the country.

Now, as cases surge, most of the country, except in high-risk areas, has already opened up, with authorities saying they have little choice.

“While lives are important, livelihoods are equally important,” Rajesh Bhushan, the top official of India’s federal health ministry, said at a news briefing last week.

Almost 60% of India’s virus cases are now coming from the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, the nation’s most populous state. But infections are also returning to areas that had managed to slow the spread of the virus, offsetting marginal gains.

Initially hit hard by the virus, New Delhi had seemed to turn the tide through its aggressive screening for patients. But after reopening steadily, the state has reported a recent surge in cases and fatalities. The reopening of the metro is expected to further worsen the situation, experts fear.

The recent surge in cases also highlights the risks of India’s strategy on relying too heavily on rapid tests that screen for antigens or viral proteins. These tests are cheap, yield results in minutes and have allowed India to test over a million people a day.

But they are also less precise and likely to miss infected people, said Dr. Gagandeep Kang, an infectious diseases expert of Christian Medical College at Vellore in southern India.

India also says its recovery rate is 77.3% and that the fatality rate has declined to around 1.72%.

But the economic crisis means that people in India, especially the poor who were inordinately impacted by the harsh lockdown, have to go out and work. They are also less likely to have access to good healthcare.

The virus has already deepened misery in the country’s vast hinterlands and poorer states, where surges have crippled the underfunded healthcare system and stretched resources.

S.P. Kalantri, a public health specialist, said India’s poor face a “desperate choice” between “an immediate death versus a death that could come any time.”

“The disease is already there in the villages,” he said.

Associated Press

Colleges combating coronavirus turn to stinky savior: sewage

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Days after he crossed the country to start college, Ryan Schmutz received a text message from Utah State University: COVID-19 had been detected at his dorm.

Within 10 minutes, he dropped the crepes he was making and was whisked away by bus to a testing site.

“We didn’t even know they were testing,” said Schmutz, who is 18 and from Omaha, Nebraska. “It all really happened fast.”

Schmutz was one of about 300 students quarantined to their rooms last week, but not because of sickness reports or positive tests. Instead, the warning bells came from the sewage.

Colleges across the nation — from New Mexico to Tennessee, Michigan to New York — are turning tests of waste into a public health tool. The work comes as institutions hunt for ways to keep campuses open despite vulnerabilities like students’ close living arrangements and drive to socialize. The virus has already left its mark with outbreaks that have forced changes to remote learning at colleges around the country.

The tests work by detecting genetic material from the virus, which can be recovered from the stools of about half of people with COVID-19, studies indicate. The concept has also been used to look for outbreaks of the polio virus.

Sewage testing is especially valuable because it can evaluate people even if they aren’t feeling sick and can detect a few cases out of thousands of people, experts say. Another wastewater-flagged quarantine of 300 students at Arizona State University, for example, turned up two cases. Both were students who were asymptomatic, but they could potentially still have spread the virus.

“That’s just tremendously valuable information when we think about the setting of a college dorm, and how quickly this disease can spread through that population,” said Peter Grevatt, CEO of The Water Research Foundation, which promotes studies of water and wastewater to ensure water quality and service.

Wastewater tests also flagged the possible presence of the virus at University of Colorado residence halls.

Utah has used the method more widely, including to track an outbreak at a meatpacking plant. The British, Italian and Dutch governments have also announced similar monitoring programs, and the Massachusetts-based company Biobot tests wastewater from cities around the country.

The method remains imprecise, though. It can spot infection trends, but it can’t yet pinpoint how many people have the virus or the stage of infection. That means it’s not yet quite as useful on a larger scale in cities, which don’t always have a university’s scientific resources or ability to require people to get tested.

The technology is being closely studied, though, and it is evolving rapidly, Grevatt said, adding that it’s best used along with other methods like contact tracing.

It’s not a panacea for colleges either. Utah State, for example, can only closely monitor sewage from the relatively small portion of students who live on campus — not the thousands of other people who come and go every day. The university has an enrollment of about 28,000.

And this week, Utah State’s positive wastewater test could be narrowed only as far as four residence halls that share the same sewer system. The test came back positive late Aug. 29, and the quarantine started the next day. Students were required to stay in their rooms, eating meals delivered by a “COVID care” team and barred from walking more than a few steps outside the residence hall.

The buildings are laid out in apartment-style suites, and students were released from quarantine in small groups if every roommate in a suite tested negative. The tests had turned up four coronavirus cases as of Thursday.

Schmutz, who tested negative along with his roommates, didn’t miss much in-person class time during his four-day quarantine.

But he’s a little disconcerted that he and his family weren’t told about the sewage testing. “It felt like we were kind of out of the loop on everything. It’s definitely hard to process,” he said.

Utah State has heard from parents and students similarly frustrated, though many others are grateful, spokeswoman Emilie Wheeler said. “They see it as a noninvasive early detection system,” she said.

The program is relatively inexpensive, too. The school takes samples daily to monitor several living areas, and the tests are run by a team of students.

“Wastewater has a story to tell about the public health status of communities,” Grevatt said. “There’s so many folks working on this right now. It’s just remarkable to see how quickly it has moved forward.”

Associated Press

Will long Labor Day weekend mean another coronavirus spike?

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Americans headed into Labor Day weekend — the unofficial end to the Lost Summer of 2020 — amid warnings from public health experts that backyard parties, crowded bars and other gatherings could cause the coronavirus to come surging back.

“I look upon the Labor Day weekend really as a critical point,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert. “Are we going to go in the right direction and continue the momentum downward, or are we going to have to step back a bit as we start another surge?”

The rise in infections, deaths and hospitalizations over the summer, primarily in the South and West, was blamed in part on Americans behaving heedlessly over Memorial Day and July Fourth.

The landscape has improved in recent weeks, with the numbers headed in the right direction in hard-hit states like Florida, Arizona and Texas, but there are certain risk factors that could combine with Labor Day: Children are going back to school, university campuses are seeing soaring case counts, college football is starting, more businesses are open, and flu season is around the corner.

And a few states are heading into the holiday with less room in hospitals than they had over Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. Alabama, for example, had about 800 people hospitalized with the virus on July 1. This week, it has just under 1,000.

More beaches will be open on Labor Day than on Memorial Day, but Fauci said that is not cause in itself for concern, as long as people keep their distance.

“I would rather see someone on a beach, being physically separated enough, than someone crowded in an indoor bar,” he said.

The outbreak is blamed for about 187,000 deaths and almost 6.2 million confirmed infections in the U.S., by far the highest totals in the world. Cases of COVID-19, which spiked from about 20,000 per day to around 70,000 during the summertime surge in the South, are now down to about 40,000.

Dr. Albert Ko, a Yale University epidemiologist, said he is concerned about students heading back to school across the nation next week after coming back from holiday travel and a weekend of social gatherings.

“Any transmission events that happen here could be amplified unless we’re careful about it,” Ko said. “Whether it’s going to be a perfect storm, l don’t think so. People are aware of the risk, and people have been socially distancing. But this is certainly a concern.”

Associated Press

Macy’s posts $400 million loss as sales drop 36%

NEW YORK (AP) — Macy’s got more people to shop on its website and app, but it wasn’t enough to make up for plummeting sales inside its department stores.

Online sales were up 53%, and the company said it attracted 4 million new online customers. But sales sunk 61% inside its stores, which reopened in June after being temporarily closed due to the pandemic.

Macy’s is the country’s largest department store operator, offering a glimpse into what America’s are buying.

With people spending more time at home, shoppers bought fewer dresses, luggage and men’s suits. But they spent more on comfy athletic wear, as well as decor to spruce up their homes. Macy’s said luxury goods did surprisingly well, too, such as high-priced mattresses, perfumes and diamond jewelry. The New York company also owns Bloomingdale’s and the Bluemercury makeup and cosmetic chain.

Many of its department stores are at malls, which have struggled to attract shoppers even before COVID-19. Some of its mall-based rivals have gone bankrupt, including J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus and Stage Stores.

Over the next two years, Macy’s said it plans to open smaller Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s stores that are not attached to a mall.

For the holiday season, it will spread out discounts over a longer period to avoid overcrowding at its stores and continue to push shoppers to buy online and pick up at the curb.

The virus is also forcing Macy’s to rethink how it will hold its annual holiday events, like Christmas tree lightings, holiday window decorations and its annual Thanksgiving Day parade. But the company didn’t provide any details on changes it plans to make.

Overall, the company reported a second-quarter loss of $431 million, or $1.39 per share, after posting a profit in the same quarter a year ago.

Adjusted losses came to 81 cents per share, which was better than the loss of $1.78 per share Wall Street analysts expected, according to Zacks Investment Research.

Revenue fell 36% to $3.56 billion in the period, also topping analyst expectations.

Shares of Macy’s Inc., which are down nearly 60% so far this year, rose less than 1.5% to $7.12 in midday trading Wednesday.

Associated Press

Berkshire Hathaway takes stakes in Japanese trading houses

TOKYO (AP) — Billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway said Monday it has taken stakes of just over 5% in five major Japanese trading houses in what it says is a long-term investment.

Share prices of the five huge companies surged between 4% to 9.5% on Monday in Tokyo after the company announced the investment.

Berkshire Hathaway said that its subsidiary National Indemnity Co. planned to notify regulators of the purchases that had been made over the past year.

The companies are Itochu Corp., Marubeni Corp., Mitsubishi Corp., Mitsui & Co. and Sumitomo Corp.


It said it might increase the stakes to up to 9.9% in any of the companies. It described them as “passive investments,” noting that the company has held similar holdings in Coca-Cola, for 32 years; American Express, for 29 years and credit ratings agency Moody’s, for 20 years.

“I am delighted to have Berkshire Hathaway participate in the future of Japan and the five companies we have chosen for investment,” Buffett said. “The five major trading companies have many joint ventures throughout the world and are likely to have more of these partnerships. I hope that in the future there may be opportunities of mutual benefit.”

The powerful trading houses are some of Japan’s oldest and biggest companies and the anchors of vast industrial groups called keiretsu.

Although the Japanese economy has been growing slowly for most of the past two decades and has been in recession since late last year, major companies have invested on a global scale and are cash-rich.

They are also viewed as relatively undervalued, with price to earnings ratios, in most cases, well below the average for markets in the U.S. and Japan.

Edward Jones analyst Jim Shanahan said the roughly $6 billion investment in the Japanese companies will allow Berkshire to profit when the economy performs well in the region.

“He found a very interesting way to invest in the broader trading activity in Asia and the south Pacific by investing in these companies,” Shanahan said.

Many investors follow what Berkshire buys and sells closely because of Buffett’s successful track record. Recently, Buffett has been criticized for not investing more of his company’s $147 billion cash during the market swoon that followed the coronavirus outbreak.

But Buffett has been more active this summer when Berkshire agreed to buy Dominion Energy’s natural gas pipeline and storage business for $4 billion, and he bought roughly $2.1 billion of Bank of America stock to give Berkshire control of nearly 12% of the bank’s stock.

Berkshire owns more than 90 companies, including BNSF railroad, Geico insurance and utility, furniture, manufacturing and jewelry businesses. The Omaha, Nebraska-based conglomerate also has major investments in such companies as Apple, U.S. Bancorp, Costco and Kraft Heinz.

Associated Press

Japan PM Shinzo Abe says he’s resigning for health reasons

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said Friday he is stepping down because a chronic health problem has resurfaced. He told reporters that it was “gut wrenching” to leave many of his goals unfinished.

Abe has had ulcerative colitis since he was a teenager and has said the condition was controlled with treatment. Concerns about his health began this summer and grew this month when he visited a Tokyo hospital two weeks in a row for unspecified health checkups. He is now on a new treatment that requires IV injections, he said. While there is some improvement, there is no guarantee that it will cure his condition and so he decided to step down after treatment Monday, he said.

“It is gut wrenching to have to leave my job before accomplishing my goals,” Abe said Friday, mentioning his failure to resolve the issue of Japanese abducted years ago by North Korea, a territorial dispute with Russia and a revision of Japan’s war-renouncing constitution.

He said his health problem was under control until earlier this year but was found to have worsened in June when he had an annual checkup.

“Faced with the illness and treatment, as well as the pain of lacking physical strength ... I decided I should not stay on as prime minister when I’m no longer capable of living up to the people’s expectations with confidence,” Abe said at a news conference.

In a country once known for its short-tenured prime ministers, the departure marks the end of an unusual era of stability that saw the Japanese leader strike up strong ties with U.S. President Donald Trump even as Abe’s ultra-nationalism riled the Koreas and China. While he pulled Japan out of recession, the economy has been battered anew by the coronavirus pandemic, and Abe has failed to achieve his cherished goal of formally rewriting the U.S.-drafted pacifist constitution because of poor public support.

Abe said he achieved a stronger Japan-U.S. security alliance and the first visit by a serving U.S. president to the atom-bombed city of Hiroshima. He also helped Tokyo gain the right to host the 2020 Olympics by pledging that a disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant was “under control” when it was not.

Recently, “The coronavirus’s impact on the economy was a blow to Abe, who was stuck at home and lacking an opportunity to make any achievement or show off his friendship with Trump, and was pushed into a corner,” said Koichi Nakano, an international politics professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.

Abe continued to bolster Japan’s defense capability to respond to America’s needs, Nakano said. “For those who believe the Japan-U.S. alliance is paramount, that was his major achievement,” he said. But Abe bulldozed his expanded defense policy and other contentious issues through parliament, repeatedly neglecting public opinion, Nakano said.

Abe is a political blue blood who was groomed to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi. His political rhetoric often focused on making Japan a “normal” and “beautiful” nation with a stronger military and bigger role in international affairs.

Abe, whose term ends in September 2021, is expected to stay on until a new party leader is elected and formally approved by the parliament, a process which is expected to take several weeks.

Abe became Japan’s youngest prime minister in 2006, at age 52, but his overly nationalistic first stint abruptly ended a year later because of his health.

In December 2012, Abe returned to power, prioritizing economic measures over his nationalist agenda. He won six national elections and built a rock-solid grip on power, bolstering Japan’s defense role and capability and its security alliance with the U.S. He also stepped up patriotic education at schools and raised Japan’s international profile.

Abe on Monday became Japan’s longest-serving prime minister by consecutive days in office, eclipsing the record of Eisaku Sato, his great-uncle, who served 2,798 days from 1964 to 1972.

But his second hospital visit Monday accelerated speculation and political maneuvering toward a post-Abe regime.

Ulcerative colitis causes inflammation and sometimes polyps in the bowels. People with the condition can have a normal life expectancy but serious cases can involve life-threatening complications.

After his recent hospital visits were reported, top officials from Abe’s Cabinet and the ruling party said he was overworked and badly needed rest.

His health concerns came as his support ratings plunged due to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and its severe impact on the economy, on top of a stream of political scandals, including his own.

There are a slew of politicians eager to replace Abe.

Shigeru Ishiba, a 63-year-old hawkish former defense minister and Abe’s archrival, is a favorite next leader in media surveys, though he is less popular within the governing party. A low-key former foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, Defense Minister Taro Kono, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, and economic revitalization minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who is in charge of coronavirus measures, are widely mentioned in Japanese media as potential successors.

Abe was often upstaged in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic by Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike, a former governing party conservative who is seen as a potential prime minister candidate by some. But she would have to first be elected to parliament to be in the running for the top job.

Analysts say no major change of policy is expected whoever succeeds Abe, though Japan may return to an era of short-lived leadership.

The end of Abe’s scandal-laden first stint as prime minister was the beginning of six years of annual leadership change, remembered as an era of “revolving door” politics that lacked stability and long-term policies.

When he returned to office in 2012, Abe vowed to revitalize the nation and get its economy out of its deflationary doldrums with his “Abenomics” formula, which combines fiscal stimulus, monetary easing and structural reforms.

Perhaps Abe’s biggest regret was his inability to fulfill a long-cherished goal of his grandfather and himself to formally rewrite the pacifist constitution. Abe and his ultra-conservative supporters see the U.S.-drafted constitution as a humiliating legacy of Japan’s World War II defeat.

He was also unable to achieve his goal of settling several unfinished wartime legacies, including normalizing ties with North Korea, settling island disputes with neighbors and signing a peace treaty with Russia formally ending their hostilities in World War II.

Abe said he will focus on his treatment for now and “continue his political activity and support a new administration as a lawmaker.”

Associated Press

Barcelona still hoping Messi will stay with the club

MADRID (AP) — Barcelona hasn’t given up on Lionel Messi just yet.

A day after the Argentine great told the club he wants to leave, Barcelona said its restructuring project still revolves around the player.

“We want to rebuild for the future together with the best player in history,” Ramon Planes, the club’s technical director, said Wednesday. “We are not contemplating any departure on a contractual level because we want him to stay. We have to show a huge respect for Messi because he is the best player in the world.”

Planes spoke as Barcelona officially introduced striker Francisco Trincão at an event that had already been scheduled before Messi announced his desire to leave on Tuesday.

“We can’t make this a dispute between Leo Messi and Barcelona because neither deserves it,” Planes said.

Barcelona is trying to avoid an abrupt ending to Messi’s career at the club. His last match with a Barcelona jersey was the embarrassing 8-2 loss to Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals of the Champions League, one of the worst defeats in the player’s career and in the club’s history.

But Messi apparently has already made up his mind, and it seems only a matter of how ugly the termination will get and if Barcelona will get any money out of it.

Dozens of fans protested in front of the Camp Nou late Tuesday calling for the resignation of team president Josep Bartomeu. More protests by fans were scheduled for Wednesday.

“The situation has been uncomfortable for everybody,” Barcelona fan Oriol Aznar said. “This board of directors should have resigned a long time ago. Bad results, bad management. Nothing positive about them. They are destroying the club. It’s normal that Messi wants to leave. They want to end the year with a decent financial balance if they make money out of Messi leaving. But this isn’t the right way.”

Messi’s first contract with the club was signed on a napkin after a lunch between his representatives and club officials nearly 20 years ago, but it was with a burofax — a certified communication method commonly used in Spain, similar to a telegram — that Messi told the club he wants to leave.

There was no phone call or meeting with club officials. Just the burofax.

In it, Messi invoked a clause in his contract that allowed him to leave for free after the end of the season.

But Barcelona said the clause mentioned by Messi expired on June 10, meaning that the player missed the deadline and would have to pay the clause of 700 million euros ($827 million) if he wants to leave before his contract ends in June 2021.

What Messi may contend is that the clause was to expire at the end of the season, which this year was moved back because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The club said it replied to Messi’s burofax saying it wanted him to stay and finish his career with Barcelona.

“Total war!” said a front-page headline by the Sport newspaper on Wednesday.

“Goodbye by burofax,” said the sports daily AS.

Messi was outspoken against club directors throughout the season but has yet to speak publicly since the loss to Bayern.

Former Barcelona playmaker Rivaldo said he was sad to see Messi leaving like this, and that it would be difficult for the club if it didn’t get compensated financially.

“At a complicated time like this, with the current crisis, it would be a drama for Barcelona to lose its biggest star without getting anything in return,” he said. “This is probably the biggest dispute between the parts right now, so I don’t expect a quick exit, especially after the exchange of burofaxes between them yesterday.”

Associated Press

Big California wildfires burn on as death toll reaches 7

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. (AP) — Firefighters battling three massive wildfires in Northern California got a break from the weather early Monday as humidity rose and there was no return of the onslaught of lightning strikes that ignited the infernos a week earlier.

The region surrounding San Francisco Bay remained under extreme fire danger until late afternoon amid the possibility of of lightning and gusty winds, but fire commanders said the weather had aided their efforts so far.

“Mother Nature’s helped us quite a bit,” said Billy See, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection incident commander for a complex of fires burning south of San Francisco.

The three big fires around the Bay Area and many others burning across the state have put nearly 250,000 people under evacuation orders and warnings and authorities renewed warnings for anxious homeowners to stay away from the evacuation zones.

Six people who returned to a restricted area south of San Francisco to check on their properties were surprised by fire and had to be rescued, the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office said.

The death toll from the fires reached 7 over the weekend after authorities battling a big fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco announced the discovery of the body of a 70-year-old man in a remote area called Last Chance.

He had been reported missing and police had to use a helicopter to reach the area of about 40 off-the-grid homes at the end of a windy, steep dirt road north of the city of Santa Cruz.

The area was under an evacuation order and Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Chris Clark said the discovery of the man’s body was a reminder of how important it was for residents to evacuate from fire danger zones.

“This is one of the darkest periods we’ve been in with this fire,” he said.

California over the last week has been hit by 650 wildfires across the state, many sparked by more than 12,000 lighting strikes recorded since Aug. 15. There are 14,000 firefighters, 2,400 engines and 95 aircraft battling the fires.

The Santa Cruz fire is one of three “complexes,” or groups of fires, burning on all sides of the San Francisco Bay Area. All were started by lightning.

Fire crew made slow progress battling the blazes over the weekend, which included a break in the unseasonably warm weather and little wind.

But the National Weather Service issued a “red flag” warning through Monday afternoon for the drought-stricken area, meaning extremely dangerous fire conditions exist, including high temperatures, low humidity, lightning and wind gusts up to 65 mph (105 kph) that officials said “may result in dangerous and unpredictable fire behavior.”

A fire in wine country north of San Francisco and another southeast of the city have within a week have grown to be two of the three largest fires in state history, with both burning more than 500 square miles (1,295 square kilometers).

The wine country fire has been the most deadly and destructive blaze, accounting for five deaths and 845 destroyed homes and other buildings. Three of the victims were in a home that was under an evacuation order.

Officials surveying maps at command centers are astonished by the sheer size of the fires, said Cal Fire spokesman Brice Bennett.

“You could overlay half of one of these fires and it covers the entire city of San Francisco,” Bennett said Sunday.

In Southern California, an 11-day-old blaze held steady at just under 50 square miles (106 square kilometers) near Lake Hughes in the northern Los Angeles County mountains. Rough terrain, hot weather and the potential for thunderstorms with lightning strikes challenged firefighters on Sunday.

Authorities said their firefighting effort in Santa Cruz was hindered by people who refused to evacuate and those who were using the chaos to loot. Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart said 100 officers were patrolling and anyone not authorized to be in an evacuation zone would be arrested.

“What we’re hearing from the community is that there’s a lot of looting going on,” Hart said.

He and county District Attorney Jeff Rosell expressed anger at what Rosell called the “absolutely soulless” criminals victimizing people already victimized by the fire. Among them was a fire commander who was robbed when he left his fire vehicle to help direct operations.

Someone entered the vehicle and stole personal items, including a wallet and “drained his bank account,” said Chief Mark Brunton, a battalion chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

“I can’t imagine a bigger lowlife,” Hart said.

Holly Hansen, who fled the wine country fire, was among evacuees from the community of Angwin allowed Sunday to return home for one hour to retrieve belongings. She and her three dogs waited five hours in her SUV for their turn. Among the items she took with her were photos of her pets.

“It’s horrible when you have to think about what to take,” she said. “I think it’s a very raw human base emotion to have fear of fire and losing everything. It’s frightening.”

Associated Press