AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

For McCain, a life of courage, politics came down to 1 vote

WASHINGTON (AP) — For John McCain, a lifetime of courage, contradictions and contrarianism came down to one vote, in the middle of the night, in the twilight of his career.

The fate of President Donald Trump’s long effort to repeal Barack Obama’s health care law hung in the balance as a Senate roll call dragged on past 1 a.m. on a July night in 2017.

Then came McCain — 80 years old, recently diagnosed with brain cancer, his face still scarred from surgery, striding with purpose toward the well of the Senate.

The Arizona Republican raised his right arm, paused for dramatic effect and flashed a determined thumbs-down, drawing gasps from both sides of the aisle.

Trump’s health care bill was dead. McCain’s lifelong reputation as free thinker, never to be intimidated, was very much alive.

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McCain on his time as POW: ‘I fell in love with my country’

DENVER (AP) — On Oct. 26, 1967, a missile the size of a telephone pole blew the wing off of John McCain’s Skyhawk dive bomber.

McCain, then a 31-year-old lieutenant commander in the Navy, parachuted out of the plane and landed in a lake in Hanoi, North Vietnam. He broke both arms and a leg in the fall, was dragged from the lake by an angry crowd, and was beaten and bayoneted.

Thus began a harrowing, five-year ordeal that was to define the future senator and presidential candidate’s life.

Before his imprisonment in Vietnam, McCain was Navy royalty — the grandson and son of four-star admirals — as well as a self-described lousy student at the U.S. Naval Academy and a hotshot pilot who had survived three accidental crashes. His time in captivity gave his life purpose.

“I have never felt more powerfully free, more my own man, than when I was a small part of an organized resistance to the power that imprisoned me,” McCain wrote in his 1997 memoir, “Faith of My Fathers.” ”Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself.”

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For McCain, a cross-country farewell from public, presidents

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two former presidents are expected to speak at Sen. John McCain’s service and he will lie in state in both the nation’s capital and Arizona as part of a cross-country funeral procession ending with his burial at the U.S. Naval Academy, according to plans taking shape Sunday.

McCain had long feuded with President Donald Trump, and two White House officials said McCain’s family had asked, before the senator’s death, that Trump not attend the funeral services. Vice-President Mike Pence is likely to attend, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.

A day after McCain died of brain cancer at 81, his family, friends and congressional and state leaders were working out details of the farewell to the decorated Vietnam War hero, prisoner of war and six-term senator.

His office said that McCain will lie in state in the Arizona state capitol on Wednesday. A funeral will be conducted at North Phoenix Baptist Church on Thursday with former Vice-President Joe Biden speaking.

The procession will then head to Washington, where McCain will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda on Friday with a formal ceremony and time for the public to pay respects. The next day, the procession will pass the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and head to a funeral at Washington National Cathedral. A private funeral is planned for Sunday at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

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Sheriff: Gunman kills 2, then himself at video game tourney

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — A gunman opened fire Sunday at an online video game tournament as it was being livestreamed from a Florida mall, killing two people and then fatally shooting himself in a rampage that wounded several others, authorities said.

Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams said authorities believe 24-year-old David Katz of Baltimore carried out the attack using at least one handgun at the Jacksonville Landing, a collection of restaurants and shops along the St. Johns River. Williams said the man died from a self-inflicted gunshot, adding final confirmation of the suspect’s identity was pending as the FBI in Baltimore aided in the investigation.

Nine other people were wounded by gunfire and all were in stable condition Sunday evening after being taken to hospitals, Williams said. He added that two others were injured in the rush to flee the gunfire.

Katz was in Jacksonville for the “Madden NFL 19” video game tournament, authorities said. The games maker, EA Sports, lists a David Katz as a 2017 championship winner.

The competition was held in a gaming bar that shares space with a pizzeria. Viewers could watch the games online and see the players.

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Gentle humour was the lifeblood of playwright Neil Simon

NEW YORK (AP) — When master playwright Neil Simon accepted the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2006, he was visibly nervous. But his gentle humour was evident.

“It took me six years to write my first play,” he said, recalling that he found the title for “Come Blow Your Horn” from one of his daughter’s nursery rhyme books. He said it turned out to be “a so-so play” that was turned into “a so-so movie” with Frank Sinatra.

But it was successful enough that Simon considered calling his subsequent works “The Sheep’s in the Meadow” and “The Cow’s in the Corn.”

“For the first time,” he said, “I had money in the bank. Yes, sir, yes sir, three bags full!”

Simon, who died Sunday at 91, was a meticulous joke-smith, peppering his plays, especially the early ones, with one-liners and humorous situations that critics said sometimes came at the expense of character and believability.

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Pope on McCarrick claims: “I won’t say a word about it.”

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis declined Sunday to confirm or deny claims by the Vatican’s retired ambassador to the United States that he knew in 2013 about sexual misconduct allegations against the former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, but rehabilitated him anyway.

Francis said the 11-page text by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, which reads in part like a homophobic attack on Francis and his allies, “speaks for itself” and that he wouldn’t comment on it.

Francis was asked by a U.S. reporter during an airborne press conference Sunday if Vigano’s claims that the two discussed the McCarrick allegations in 2013 were true. Francis was also asked about Vigano’s claims that McCarrick was already under sanction at the time, but that Francis rehabilitated him.

Francis said he had read Vigano’s document and trusted journalists to judge for themselves.

“It’s an act of trust,” he said. “I won’t say a word about it.”

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Pope apologizes for ‘crimes’ against Irish women, babies

DUBLIN (AP) — Pope Francis issued a sweeping apology Sunday for the “crimes” of the Catholic Church in Ireland, saying church officials didn’t respond with compassion, truth or justice to the many children and women who were abused over generations.

Francis was interrupted by applause from the crowd of 300,000 as he read the apology out loud at the start of Mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, the largest gathering of his two-day trip. It was a response to the tens of thousands of Irish children sexually and physically abused at Catholic Churches, schools and workhouses, and the women who were forced to live and work in laundries and give up their children if they got pregnant out of wedlock.

“We ask forgiveness for those members of the hierarchy who didn’t take responsibility for this painful situation, and who kept silence,” Francis said. “May the Lord keep this state of shame and compunction and give us strength so this never happens again, and that there is justice.”

Hundreds of kilometres (miles) away, a few hundred sombre protesters marched through the Irish town of Tuam and recited the names of a 796 babies and young children who died at a Catholic-run orphanage there, most during the 1950s. The children were buried in a mass grave in a septic area of the grounds.

“Elizabeth Murphy, 4 months. Annie Tyne, 3 months. John Joseph Murphy, 10 months,” the protesters said.

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Half of states act as #MeToo sexual misconduct claims mount

As the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct began snaring politicians, state legislatures across the country vowed to re-examine their policies to prevent harassment and beef up investigations into complaints of sexual wrongdoing.

About half of all state legislative chambers have followed through with at least some sort of change to their sexual harassment policies, most often by boosting their own training, according to a 50-state analysis by The Associated Press. But the others have done nothing this year, even as sexual misconduct allegations against lawmakers have been mounting.

The mixed response highlights both the political pressure to act and the institutional resistance to do so that exists in many state legislatures, where women now serve in record numbers yet remain outnumbered 3-to-1 by men.

“In the wake of Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement that swept across different industries, we had to act,” said Democratic Assemblywoman Nily Rozic of New York, which mandated more robust sexual harassment policies for government agencies and private employers.

But “I think we have a long ways to go in addressing sexual harassment in legislatures across the country,” she said.

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Replacing McCain in the Senate is political balancing act

PHOENIX (AP) — Sen. John McCain’s death in office has handed Arizona’s governor an empty Senate seat to give out — and a difficult political puzzle to solve before he does.

Arizona law requires only that Gov. Doug Ducey name a replacement who is a member of McCain’s Republican party and who will fill the seat until the next general election in 2020. But in a state with a deeply divided Republican Party, where McCain was a towering but divisive figure, the choice is far more complicated.

Ducey is balancing the demands of the many conservative Arizona Republicans who have soured on McCain due to his dovish immigration stance, criticism of President Trump and vote against a rollback of President Obama’s health care law. They are wary of Ducey appointing a moderate. But naming someone with dramatically different views from McCain could be viewed as disrespectful to McCain’s legacy, carrying its own risks. In either case, Ducey wants to set the party up to hold the seat two years from now, no easy task given the turmoil in his party.

The decision is under close scrutiny in Washington. While McCain has been treated for cancer in Arizona and unable to vote in Washington, his party’s already narrow Senate majority had shrunk from two votes to one. With the confirmation of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, scheduled for next month the GOP needs every reliable vote it can get. Ducey’s office has heard from Vice-President Mike Pence’s aides about the choice, a person familiar with the discussions said Sunday. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter and asked for anonymity.

A day after McCain’s death, political types from Arizona to Washington were buzzing with options. The senator’s wife, Cindy McCain, was viewed as a possibility, as was former Sen. John Kyl and former McCain chief of staff, Grant Woods. Another group of former lawmakers and state officials were floated as middle-ground options — including Ducey’s chief of staff Kirk Adams — who might not anger the right wing of the party.

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8 people, 6 of them kids, killed in Chicago apartment fire

CHICAGO (AP) — Eight people, including six children, were killed when a fire broke out before dawn Sunday at a Chicago apartment in one of the deadliest fires in the nation’s third-largest city in years, officials say.

Two other people were hospitalized in very critical condition, Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Merritt said. One of the children who died was an infant, according to Fire Commissioner Jose Santiago.

“We have not had this in many, many, many years — this amount of fatalities and injuries in one location,” he said.

A makeshift memorial along a nearby sidewalk included crosses for each child who died — a small Mickey Mouse doll set next to one. The Rev. Clifford Spears of Saint Michael Missionary Baptist Church led a crowd that gathered in prayer, the Chicago Tribune reported. A candlelight vigil was planned for Sunday night.

Officials had not released the names or ages of the victims, all of whom were in the same residence, Merritt said. The cause of the blaze hasn’t been determined.