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

Texas governor: 20 dead in El Paso shopping centre shooting

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A young gunman opened fire in an El Paso, Texas, shopping area packed with as many as 3,000 people during the busy back-to-school season Saturday, leaving 20 dead and more than two dozen injured.

Gov. Greg Abbott called the incident in the Texas border city “one of the most deadly days in the history of Texas.” Police said authorities were investigating if it was a hate crime.

The suspect was arrested without incident outside the Walmart near the Cielo Vista Mall, said El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen. Two law enforcement officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity identified the suspect as 21-year-old Patrick Crusius. El Paso police didn’t release his name at a news conference but confirmed the gunman is from Allen, near Dallas.

Many of the victims were shot at the Walmart, police said.

“The scene was a horrific one,” said Allen, adding that many of the 26 people who were hurt had life-threatening injuries.

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2020 Dems back gun limits after El Paso mass shooting

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Democratic presidential candidates expressed outrage Saturday that mass shootings have becoming chillingly common nationwide and blamed the National Rifle Association and its congressional allies after a gunman opened fire at a shopping area near the Texas-Mexico border.

“It’s not just today, it has happened several times this week. It’s happened here in Las Vegas where some lunatic killed 50 some odd people,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said as he and 18 other White House hopefuls were in Nevada to address the nation’s largest public employees union. “All over the world, people are looking at the United States and wondering what is going on? What is the mental health situation in America, where time after time, after time, after time, we’re seeing indescribable horror.”

Sanders blasted Republican Senate leadership for being “more concerned about pleasing the NRA than listening to the vast majority of the American people” and said that President Donald Trump has a responsibility to support commonsense gun safety legislation.

At least 20 people were killed amid back-to-school shopping in El Paso. A 21-year-old man was taken into custody, law enforcement officials said.

Shortly after the shooting and before its death toll was widely reported, White House officials said Trump had been briefed while spending the weekend at his New Jersey golf club. He conveyed his initial reaction on Twitter, writing that the shooting was “terrible” and that he was in close consultation with state officials. He turned to other topics, tweeting a note of encouragement to UFC fighter Colby Covington, a Trump supporter, and retweeting two messages that furthered his argument that African Americans had flourished under his administration.

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3 family members killed in California sea cliff collapse

ENCINITAS, Calif. (AP) — Three women killed when a Southern California sea cliff collapsed were members of a family gathered on a beach to celebrate one of them having survived breast cancer, authorities and relatives said Saturday.

Anne Clave, 35, and her mother, Julie Davis, 65, died at hospitals after tons of sandstone were unleashed Friday at Grandview Beach, the San Diego County Medical Examiner said. A family email obtained Saturday by KNSD-TV identified the third victim as Elizabeth Cox, Clave’s aunt.

The victims were part of a family gathering celebrating Cox surviving breast cancer, the email said.

Cox died instantly at the scene, the email said. Her age wasn’t given.

Clave “enriched the lives of all those around her with the joy and fun she brought to all,” the email said, and Davis was an “incredible grandmother.”

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Cummings urges Trump to ‘come to Baltimore’

BALTIMORE (AP) — Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings took the high road Saturday, inviting President Donald Trump and other Americans to visit Baltimore but declining to respond in kind to the barrage of presidential tweets and comments disparaging him and the majority-black city he has long represented

“We are a great community,” Cummings, the chairman of the powerful House Oversight committee investigating the administration, said in his first public remarks about the controversy as he participated in the midday opening of a small neighbourhood park near his home.

Community leaders and residents gathered to cut the ribbon on a pocket of greenery and flowers, built from what had been a vacant lot often used as a dumping ground for trash.

“Come to Baltimore. Do not just criticize us, but come to Baltimore and I promise you, you will be welcomed,” he said.

Cummings said he doesn’t have time for those who criticize the city where he grew up but wants to hear from people willing to help make the community better. He noted the outpouring of support he has received, thousands of emails, and the presence at the event of leaders from the University of Maryland’s medical centre, foundations and businesses. He wore a hat and polo shirt of Under Armour, the popular apparel maker headquartered in Baltimore.

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Impeachment summer? August town halls may decide next steps

WASHINGTON (AP) — Freshman Democratic Rep. Andy Kim came face to face with impeachment fervour at a town hall in New Jersey. “Do your job!” shouted one voter.

Several states away, a woman held up a copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and told freshman Rep. Elissa Slotkin at a Michigan town hall she hoped she would “be the person that puts us over the top to start an impeachment inquiry.”

And in Virginia, newcomer Rep. Abigail Spanberger encountered voters with questions, if not resolve, about impeaching President Donald Trump.

“I don’t have blood dripping from my fangs for or against impeachment,” said David Sussan, 70, a retired postal inspector from Chesterfield, who favours starting an inquiry. “I just want the truth to come out.”

It’s these freshman lawmakers, and others like them, who will likely decide when, if ever, House Democrats start formal efforts to impeach the president.

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ID theft stings, but it’s hard to pin on specific data hacks

NEW YORK (AP) — Equifax 2017. Marriott 2018. Capital One 2019.

Data breaches through hacking attacks are distressingly common these days, and personal details about you can lead to identity theft, such as credit cards and loans in your name. But it’s hard to pin the blame on any specific hack, as the most sophisticated criminals combine data from multiple attacks to better impersonate you.

“That’s why fraud can be emotionally challenging,” said Kyle Marchini, a specialist in fraud management at the financial research group Javelin. “It just comes out of the blue, and there’s no way to identify where it came from or what I could have done to prevent that.”

While the number of reported breaches decreased slightly last year to 1,244, according to the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center, the total number of records exposed more than doubled to 447 million. That suggests hackers are focusing on larger organizations with bigger payoffs. Last year’s figures include data on about 383 million . Marriott guests in a breach that investigators suspect was tied to the Chinese government.

Criminal rings often buy datasets from multiple hacks to commit fraud. The idea is to collect enough information to get past ID verification and authentication checks that banks and other institutions employ. One database with your Social Security number might have your old address, but hackers can simply sub in your current one from a more recent database.

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Trump administration pushes to speed up migrant family cases

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rosita Lopez said armed gang members demanded money from her and her partner at their small grocery store on the Guatemalan coast and threatened to kill them when they couldn’t pay. When her partner was shot soon afterward, they sold everything and fled north.

Lopez was eight months pregnant when the couple arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border last year with their 1-year-old daughter. Just over a year later, an immigration judge in Los Angeles heard her case, denied her asylum and ordered her deported.

“I’m afraid of going back there,” she told the judge.

The decision for 20-year-old Lopez — who now has an American-born baby — was swift in an immigration court system so backlogged with cases that asylum seekers often wait years for a hearing, let alone a ruling on whether they can stay in the country.

But her case is one of 56,000 in a Trump administration pilot program in 10 cities from Baltimore to Los Angeles aimed at fast-tracking court hearings to discourage migrants from making the journey to seek refuge in the United States. The administration selected family cases in those cities from the past 10 months.

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Moscow police detain more than 800 at protest, monitor says

MOSCOW (AP) — Police in Moscow cracked down hard on an unsanctioned election protest for the second weekend in a row Saturday, detaining more than 800 people at a rally against the exclusion from city council contests of some independent and opposition candidates, an arrest monitoring group said.

Election officials rejected signatures several candidates needed to qualify for next month’s local ballot. The decision tapped dissatisfaction with a political environment dominated by the Kremlin-aligned United Russia party, in which dissenting voices are marginalized, ignored or repressed.

The OVD-Info organization, which tracks arrests in Russia, said 828 people were detained Saturday.

The Russian Interior Ministry said the number was about 600 in a crowd of about 1,500 protesters, although police are widely believed to understate crowd estimates for opposition events.

The detentions came a week after authorities arrested nearly 1,400 people at a similar protest.

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Sanchez, Astros throw combined no-hitter against Mariners

HOUSTON (AP) — Aaron Sanchez looked like a reinvented pitcher in his Houston debut, throwing six stellar innings to start the Astros on a combined no-hitter Saturday night in their 9-0 victory over the Seattle Mariners.

Sanchez was an All-Star in 2016 and led the American League in ERA, but he’s struggled badly this season and had lost 13 straight decisions to lead the majors with 14 losses. Three days after he was acquired from Toronto at the trade deadline, the 27-year-old right-hander teamed with Will Harris, Joe Biagini and Chris Devenski to shut down Seattle.

“Just trying to have a good first impression,” Sanchez said.

It was the second time in less than a month the last-place Mariners were no-hit by multiple pitchers. The Los Angeles Angels used two pitchers in a combined no-hitter July 12 against Seattle on a night when they honoured late left-hander Tyler Skaggs by all wearing his No. 45 in their first home game since his death.

After throwing 92 pitches, Sanchez (4-14) was replaced by Harris to start the seventh.

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Oscar-winning documentary maker D.A. Pennebaker dies at 94

SAG HARBOR, N.Y. (AP) — D.A. Pennebaker, the Oscar-winning documentary maker whose historic contributions to American culture and politics included immortalizing a young Bob Dylan in “Don’t Look Back” and capturing the spin behind Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign in “The War Room,” has died. He was 94.

Pennebaker, who received an honorary Academy Award in 2013, died Thursday of natural causes at his home in Long Island, his son, Frazer Pennebaker said in an email.

Pennebaker was a leader among a generation of filmmakers in the 1960s who took advantage of such innovations as handheld cameras and adopted an intimate, spontaneous style known as cinéma vérité. As an assistant to pioneer Robert Drew, Pennebaker helped invent the modern political documentary, “Primary,” a revelatory account of John F. Kennedy’s 1960 victory in Wisconsin over fellow Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey. He on went to make or assist on dozens of films, from an early look at Jane Fonda to an Emmy-nominated portrait of Elaine Stritch to a documentary about a contentious debate between Norman Mailer and a panel of feminists (“Town Bloody Hall”).

Widely admired and emulated, Pennebaker was blessed with patience, sympathy, curiosity, the journalist’s art of setting his subjects at ease, the novelist’s knack for finding the revealing detail and the photographer’s eye for compelling faces and images. When reducing vast amounts of raw footage into a finished film, Pennebaker said, “The one barometer I believe in is boredom. The minute people start to lose interest, that’s it.”

Pennebaker parted from Drew in the mid-’60s and became a top filmmaker in his own right with the 1967 release “Don’t Look Back,” among the first rock documentaries to receive serious critical attention. It follows Dylan on a 1965 tour of England, featuring Joan Baez, Donovan, Allen Ginsberg and others.