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

White House confident Biden’s bill will pass House this week

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s top economic adviser expressed confidence Sunday that the White House’s $1.85 trillion domestic policy package will quickly pass the House this week and said approval couldn’t come at a more urgent time as prices of consumer goods spike.

“Inflation is high right now. And it is affecting consumers in their pocketbook and also in their outlook for the economy,” said Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council.

“This, more than anything, will go at the costs that Americans face,” he said, before adding that the House will consider the legislation this coming week. “It will get a vote, it will pass.”

The House has been moving toward approval of the massive Democrat-only-backed bill even as the measure faces bigger challenges in the Senate, where Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have insisted on reducing its size.

In a letter Sunday to Democratic colleagues, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., counseled “time and patience” for working through a bill of this size.

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Thousands of military families struggle with food insecurity

SAN DIEGO (AP) — It’s a hidden crisis that has existed for years inside one of the most well-funded institutions on the planet and has only worsened during the coronavirus pandemic. As many as 160,000 active-duty military members are having trouble feeding their families.

That estimate by Feeding America, which coordinates the work of more than 200 food banks around the country, underscores how long-term food insecurity has extended into every aspect of American life, including the military.

The exact scope of the problem is a topic of debate, due to a lack of formal study. But activists say it has existed for years and primarily affects junior-level enlisted service members — ranks E1 to E4 in military parlance — with children.

“It’s a shocking truth that’s known to many food banks across the United States,” said Vince Hall, Feeding America’s government relations officer. “This should be the cause of deep embarrassment.”

The group estimates that 29% of troops in the most junior enlisted ranks faced food insecurity during the previous year.

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9-year-old Dallas boy dies after Astroworld festival crush

HOUSTON (AP) — A 9-year-old Dallas boy has become the youngest person to die from injuries sustained during a crowd surge at the Astroworld music festival in Houston.

Ezra Blount of Dallas died Sunday at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, family attorney Ben Crump said.

Ezra was placed in a medically induced coma after suffering serious injuries in the Nov. 5 crush of fans during a performance by the festival’s headliner, rapper Travis Scott.

He is the 10th person who attended the festival to die.

“The Blount family tonight is grieving the incomprehensible loss of their precious young son,” Crump said in a news release Sunday night. “This should not have been the outcome of taking their son to a concert, what should have been a joyful celebration.”

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AP Exclusive: ‘Sesame Street’ debuts Asian American muppet

What’s in a name? Well, for Ji-Young, the newest muppet resident of “Sesame Street,” her name is a sign she was meant to live there.

“So, in Korean traditionally the two syllables they each mean something different and Ji means, like, smart or wise. And Young means, like, brave or courageous and strong,” Ji-Young explained during a recent interview. “But we were looking it up and guess what? Ji also means sesame.”

At only 7 years old, Ji-Young is making history as the first Asian American muppet in the “Sesame Street” canon. She is Korean American and has two passions: rocking out on her electric guitar and skateboarding. The children’s TV program, which first aired 52 years ago this month, gave The Associated Press a first look at its adorable new occupant.

Ji-Young will formally be introduced in “See Us Coming Together: A Sesame Street Special.” Simu Liu, Padma Lakshmi and Naomi Osaka are among the celebrities appearing in the special, which will drop Thanksgiving Day on HBO Max, “Sesame Street” social media platforms and on local PBS stations.

Some of Ji-Young’s personality comes from her puppeteer. Kathleen Kim, 41 and Korean American, got into puppetry in her 30s. In 2014, she was accepted into a “Sesame Street” workshop. That evolved into a mentorship and becoming part of the team the following year. Being a puppeteer on a show Kim watched growing up was a dream come true. But helping shape an original muppet is a whole other feat.

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Workers at federal prisons are committing some of the crimes

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 100 federal prison workers have been arrested, convicted or sentenced for crimes since the start of 2019, including a warden indicted for sexual abuse, an associate warden charged with murder, guards taking cash to smuggle drugs and weapons, and supervisors stealing property such as tires and tractors.

An Associated Press investigation has found that the federal Bureau of Prisons, with an annual budget of nearly $8 billion, is a hotbed of abuse, graft and corruption, and has turned a blind eye to employees accused of misconduct. In some cases, the agency has failed to suspend officers who themselves had been arrested for crimes.

Two-thirds of the criminal cases against Justice Department personnel in recent years have involved federal prison workers, who account for less than one-third of the department’s workforce. Of the 41 arrests this year, 28 were of BOP employees or contractors. The FBI had just five. The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives each had two.

The numbers highlight how criminal behavior by employees festers inside a federal prison system meant to punish and rehabilitate people who have committed bad acts. The revelations come as advocates are pushing the Biden administration to get serious about fixing the bureau.

In one case unearthed by the AP, the agency allowed an official at a federal prison in Mississippi, whose job it was to investigate misconduct of other staff members, to remain in his position after he was arrested on charges of stalking and harassing fellow employees. That official was also allowed to continue investigating a staff member who had accused him of a crime.

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‘Watered-down hope’: Experts wanted more from climate pact

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — While world leaders and negotiators are hailing the Glasgow climate pact as a good compromise that keeps a key temperature limit alive, many scientists are wondering what planet these leaders are looking at.

Crunching the numbers they see a quite different and warmer Earth.

“In the bigger picture I think, yes, we have a good plan to keep the 1.5-degree goal within our possibilities,” United Nations climate chief Patricia Espinosa told The Associated Press, referring to theoverarching global goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the conference host, agreed, calling the deal a “clear road map limiting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees.”

But many scientists are far more skeptical. Forget 1.5 degrees, they say. Earth is still on a path to exceed 2 degrees (3.6 Fahrenheit).

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In gun debate, Rittenhouse verdict unlikely to be last word

Kyle Rittenhouse walked the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, a rifle slung around his chest and shoulder.

The weapon was supposed to be for hunting on a friend’s property up north, the friend says. But on that night in August 2020, Rittenhouse says he took the Smith & Wesson AR-style semi-automatic with him as he volunteered to protect property damaged during protests the previous evening. Before midnight, he used it to shoot three people, killing two.

After a roughly two-week trial, a jury will soon deliberate whether Rittenhouse is guilty of charges, including murder, that could send him to prison for life. Was the then-17-year-old forced to act in self-defense while trying to deter crime, as he and his defense attorneys say? Or did Rittenhouse — the only person in a well-armed crowd to shoot anyone — provoke people with his weapon, instigating the bloodshed, as prosecutors argue?

It’s a similar debate to what has played out across the country around the use of guns, particularly at protests like the one in Kenosha over the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by a white police officer or in other cities over pandemic-related restrictions. In Rittenhouse, some see a patriot defending an American city from destruction when police were unwilling or too overwhelmed to do so. Others see an irresponsible kid in over his head, enamored with brandishing a firearm, or someone looking for trouble or people to shoot.

On the streets of Kenosha that night, Rittenhouse was notable to some for his apparent youthfulness. But, for a while anyway, he was just another person with a gun.

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Buttigieg’s star rises as $1T Biden agenda shifts toward him

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary who holds the purse strings to much of President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure package, was holding forth with reporters on its impact — the promise of more electric cars, intercity train routes, bigger airports — when a pointed question came.

How would he go about building racial equity into infrastructure?

The 39-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate laid out his argument that highway design can reflect racism, noting that at least $1 billion in the bill will help reconnect cities and neighborhoods that had been racially segregated or divided by road projects.

“I’m still surprised that some people were surprised when I pointed to the fact that if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a white and a Black neighborhood … that obviously reflects racism,” he said.

Racial equity is an issue where Democratic priorities and Buttigieg’s future align. One of his greatest shortcomings as a White House candidate was his inability to win over Black voters. How he navigates that heading into the 2022 midterms will probably shape the fortunes of Biden’s agenda and the Democratic Party, if not his own prospects.

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Signs abounded that deadly Ecuador prison attack was coming

GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AP) — The signs that an attack was imminent inside the largest prison in Ecuador’s coastal city of Guayaquil could not have been clearer.

There had been talk among inmates of the Litoral Penitentiary for days that a group was going to attack another. Then, early Friday morning, police arrested three men trying to smuggle two rifles, five handguns, three grenades, sticks of dynamite and hundreds of rounds of ammunition into the lockup.

Hours later police announced what the prisoners inside Litoral already knew: The three men detained belonged to a prison gang that was stockpiling weapons.

What happened hours later confirmed there were many more weapons already inside. Late Friday, a brutal attack was launched and clashes among rival gangs lasted for hours into early Saturday. When the dust settled and authorities had regained control, they found at least 68 inmates dead and 25 wounded in what was only the most recent massacre in Ecuador’s troubled penitentiary system.

So far this year, at least 334 inmates have died in different clashes in the Guayaquil prison, including 119 inmates in an attack in September.

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As virus surges in Eastern Europe, leaders slow to act

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — At the main hospital in Romania’s capital, the morgue ran out of space for the dead in recent days, and doctors in Bulgaria have suspended routine surgeries so they can tend to a surge in COVID-19 patients. In the Serbian capital, the graveyard now operates an extra day during the week in order to bury all the bodies arriving.

For two months now, a stubborn wave of virus infections has ripped mercilessly through several countries in Central and Eastern Europe, where vaccination rates are much lower than elsewhere on the continent. While medical workers pleaded for tough restrictions or even lockdowns, leaders let the virus rage unimpeded for weeks.

“I don’t believe in measures. I don’t believe in the same measures that existed before the vaccines,” Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said last month as the Balkan nation sustained some of its worst daily death tolls of the pandemic. “Why do we have vaccines then?”

A World Health Organization official declared earlier this month that Europe is again at the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. While several Western European countries are seeing spikes in infections, it is nations to the East that are driving fatalities. Romania, Bulgaria and the Balkan states recorded some of the highest per-capita death rates in the world in the first week of November, according to the WHO.

Experts say fumbled vaccination campaigns and underfunded and mismanaged health systems set the stage for the latest outbreaks, which gathered pace as leaders dithered. Some are acting now — but many doctors say it took too long and is still not enough.