AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT

Canada puts the military on standby as British Columbia wildfires kill 1 and displace thousands

Canada put its military on standby Monday to help battle deadly wildfires in British Columbia as a local mayor warned that one of the blazes had wreaked huge destruction on his community. A woman has died and some 20,000 people have fled their homes so far.

For days, scores of wildfires have burned across the province, nearly half of them out of control in hot, windy weather and prolonged drought. Thousands have fled on jammed roads as officials said even more communities could be threatened.

The mayor of Summerland — home to about 12,000 people, which was ordered evacuated on Saturday night along with about 8,000 people in and around nearby Peachland — warned that the affected areas remained too dangerous to enter and that it was impossible to determine the scope of the destruction.

The blaze — known as the Bald Range wildfire — remained out of control after racing toward Summerland and other communities along Okanagan Lake over the weekend.

“It’s going to be quite a bit,” Mayor Doug Holmes said of the expected destruction. “We need to brace ourselves for that bad news when it’s time to go back. Everybody will know somebody who has lost a home.”

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Magnitude 7.4 quake rocks western Colombia, killing at least 111 people

CALI, Colombia (AP) — A powerful 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia on Monday, killing at least 111 people, damaging hundreds of buildings and leaving many trapped under debris while their loved ones and rescue workers searched through rubble.

Search teams and civilians picked through the remains of destroyed buildings in the country’s third-largest city, Cali, passing large pieces of concrete and other rubble down a long line of volunteers.

“Our building has basically been left in ruins, and the building next to ours? Completely collapsed,” said Álvaro López, who cradled his dog as he watched the search. The desperate scene recalled the searches still ongoing in neighboring Venezuela weeks after that country was devastated by two powerful earthquakes.

Besides Cali, the quake ravaged cities across western Colombia, including Pereira, Quibdo and Manizales, and was felt in neighboring Ecuador and Panama. The epicenter was in San Jose Del Palmar, a community of about 4,800 people in the Choco region about 250 miles (400 kilometers) west of Bogota, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Colombia’s President Abelardo de la Espriella said at least 87 people were injured and around 1,600 buildings were damaged, including at least 61 that completely collapsed. He declared an emergency to expedite funding for the quake recovery while saying he would visit the disaster zone.

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What we know about the death of Tasia Fortune in Mississippi

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The hanging death of Tasia Fortune, whose body was found outside an abandoned house, has shaken her family and community in Mississippi, where two other people have been found hanging from trees in less than a year.

Police have not indicated whether they consider the 29-year-old Black woman’s death suspicious, saying only that they are actively working “to determine the circumstances surrounding the death.”

A week after Fortune’s body was found, a pink and white memorial honoring her life stood as a bright spot Monday in the otherwise overgrown backyard of the abandoned house in Jackson.

Feet from where rainbow pinwheels, white flowers and teddy bears surrounded a photograph of Fortune, empty chip bags and discarded plastic bottles littered the ground. Nearby, an entrance to the home gaped open, a tarp, foam pad and other debris scattered outside.

Jackson police officers responded to the home on Aug. 3 and discovered a body hanging in the backyard. Hinds County chief medical examiner investigator Jeremiah Howard later confirmed the identity as Fortune.

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Ukraine’s push to cripple Russia in Crimea is just getting started, drone chief tells AP

EASTERN UKRAINE (AP) — The commander leading Ukraine’s drone war says his country’s recent strikes in Crimea are the first phase of a campaign aimed at rendering the peninsula — illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 — unusable as a staging ground for Russian forces.

Maj. Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, one of Ukraine’s most prominent commanders among a new generation of soldiers, said his forces could strike seven times more military targets in Crimea if the money pledged by Western allies came faster.

“Crimea falls within the key conceptual pillars on the path to ending the war,” Brovdi told The Associated Press in an interview.

Despite that shortfall, Ukraine’s summer campaign in Crimea has already inflicted significant damage: striking rail bridges, oil depots and power infrastructure to disrupt supply lines and blind Russian air defenses as drones fly in.

Brovdi said his forces are equipped at just 14% of what they would need to carry out the Crimea campaign at full capacity.

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Defense lawyer takes aim at psychiatrist’s care before Lindsay Clancy killed her 3 kids

Lindsay Clancy ’s lawyer probed her psychiatrist’s expertise, prescribing decisions and overall treatment as the defense sought Monday to suggest that the mental healthcare system mishandled the Massachusetts mother’s decline in the months before she killed her three young children.

In questioning Dr. Jennifer Tufts, defense lawyer Kevin Reddington spotlighted her use of 25-minute video appointments with limited time for talk therapy, the computerized forms that documented her observations, and the series of pharmaceuticals she recommended as Clancy reported various side effects, symptoms and concerns about taking medications.

Reddington portrayed Clancy’s care not as common practice in U.S. mental healthcare, but rather as inadequate and indifferent treatment of a deteriorating patient. At one point, Reddington implied that the doctor was a box-checking “robot.”

“What did you do? You had a woman who was telling you she felt hopeless,” he asked as they discussed an appointment about two months before the killings.

“I told her that this was something we could address, that there was hope, that there are treatments, that there are different types of programs,” Tufts said, “so she knew that she still had options and a reason to hope.”

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Trump signs order calling for spacing out childhood vaccines, against medical groups’ guidance

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order calling for revamped childhood vaccine recommendations that promote his long-held but discredited theory that childhood shots should be spaced out into separate medical visits.

The order advocates separating the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three different single-disease shots and administering all childhood immunizations at separate appointments whenever possible. It also directs the nation’s health department to improve research on vaccines, which are already extensively studied, and present a plan to offer separate measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines for children, since that is not currently an option in the United States.

Speaking about the order at the Oval Office on Monday, Trump repeatedly suggested the number or timing of vaccines could play a role in rising rates of autism spectrum disorder, even as scientific consensus and decades of studies have firmly concluded there is no link. The order also includes several changes to the childhood vaccine schedule that his health department has already attempted, but that have been blocked by a federal judge.

The renewed focus on vaccines marks a departure from his administration’s recent efforts to emphasize less controversial health policies related to healthy eating, drug price negotiations and medical fraud crackdowns ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Public health experts have raised concerns that spacing out shots as Trump suggests can lead to an increased risk that children become infected with a vaccine-preventable disease before returning for another visit. Childhood vaccines — and how and when to give them in combination — go through rigorous studies, and safety tracking continues for years as the shots are used.

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Trump scoffs at Iran’s demand for war reparations and other Mideast developments

President Donald Trump on Monday scoffed at Iran’s demand for reparations for devastation caused to the country by the U.S. and Israeli bombardment over the past five months — a demand he said Tehran’s negotiators hadn’t raised until now.

Here’s a look at the latest developments in the Iran war and the wider Middle East on Monday. Full coverage can be found here.

Trump’s social media post Monday came after Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei stressed that Iran will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until the U.S. meets its conditions.

Tehran wants the U.S. to end its blockade of Iranian ports, lift economic sanctions and release Iran’s frozen assets. It also said the U.S. must pay compensation for war damage.

“It is up to the U.S. side to stop and make amends for its illegal and destructive actions,” Baghaei said.

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Former gang leader accused of ordering Tupac Shakur’s killing goes on trial. Here’s what to know

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Almost 30 years after rap legend Tupac Shakur was gunned down near the Las Vegas Strip, the former gang leader accused of ordering the killing went on trial Monday.

The 1996 drive-by shooting remains one of the hip-hop world’s defining moments and enduring mysteries.

Family members of Shakur were among those who gathered at a Las Vegas courthouse for the beginning of jury selection, which could continue through much of this week.

“Whoever had anything to do with it, whoever set it up, whoever had any hand in it should be locked up in prison,” said Shakur’s cousin, Kendrick Lesane.

Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, has pleaded not guilty to murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang in the rapper’s death. At the time, Davis was a leader of the South Side Compton Crips in California.

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Contiguous US breaks its record for hottest month ever, NOAA says

KENSINGTON, Maryland (AP) — The contiguous United States sizzled to its hottest month ever last month, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

July averaged 76.89 degrees Fahrenheit (24.94 degrees Celsius) across the Lower 48 states, eclipsing the Dust Bowl’s July 1936 by an eighth of a degree. Records go back to 1895.

“It’s not good when you’re breaking records from the Dust Bowl, which we are in this case,” said meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections. “And that was a crazy sort of situation where you put tens of millions of people in motion. You had this great migration because of the drought and the heat that hit the center of the U.S. — just a cataclysmic event in U. S. history. If we’re exceeding records from The Dust Bowl, that says that we’re in deep trouble.”

Although it was unusually cool in Alaska, hotter-than-normal conditions blanketed the Lower 48, with the most excessive heat in the Mountain West, Southwest, Northern Plains and Southeast. The heat was so widespread that every one of the Lower 48 states was at least 1 degree Fahrenheit (nearly 0.6 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 20th century average, said Russ Vose, chief of monitoring at NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information.

The heat in the Dust Bowl years was more concentrated in parts of the Midwest and was aggravated by agricultural practices at the time, Vose said.

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Wisconsin and Minnesota primaries next to feature progressive clash with Democratic establishment

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Progressive candidates for governor in Wisconsin and U.S. Senate in Minnesota are making their final pushes ahead of Tuesday’s election, increasing the pressure on a Democratic establishment that has spent the year on its heels.

The primaries come a week after Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan’s divisive and costly U.S. Senate primary. El-Sayed’s victory has energized the left while stoking fears among Democratic Party leaders that the shift to the left, particularly in battleground states like Michigan and Wisconsin, will make it more difficult to win in November.

In Wisconsin, democratic socialist Francesca Hong is trying to win a four-way Democratic primary for governor where her top opponent has been endorsed by popular Gov. Tony Evers, who isn’t seeking a third term.

Evers got behind Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley on July 18, the same day Crowley reentered the race after dropping out 10 days earlier. Crowley rejoined after the candidate he backed, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, ended her candidacy amid a campaign finance scandal.

Evers and Crowley were crisscrossing the state together in the last days before final ballots are cast Tuesday.