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

Hawaii churches offer prayers for the dead and the missing after devastating Maui wildfires

LAHAINA, Hawaii (AP) — Parishioners mourned the dead and prayed for the missing Sunday in Hawaii churches as communities began looking ahead to a long recovery from last week’s wildfire that demolished a historic Maui town and killed more than 90 people.

Maria Lanakila Church in Lahaina was spared from the flames that wiped out most of the surrounding community, but with search-and-recovery efforts ongoing, its members attended Mass about 10 miles up the road, with the Bishop of Honolulu, the Rev. Clarence “Larry” Silva, presiding.

Taufa Samisoni said his uncle, aunt, cousin and the cousin’s 7-year-old son were found dead inside a burned car. Samisoni’s wife, Katalina, said the family would draw comfort from Silva’s reference to the Bible story of how Jesus’ disciple Peter walked on water and was saved from drowning.

“If Peter can walk on water, yes we can. We will get to the shore,” she said, her voice quivering.

During the Mass, Silva read a message from Pope Francis, who said he was praying for those who lost loved ones, homes and livelihoods. He also conveyed prayers for first responders.

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7 killed in Ukraine’s Kherson region, including a 23-day-old baby girl

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Seven people – including a 23-day-old baby girl – were killed in Russian shelling in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on Sunday, the country’s Internal Affairs Ministry said.

Artillery shelling in the village of Shiroka Balka, on the banks of the Dnieper River killed a family — a husband, wife, 12-year-old boy and 23-day-old girl — and another resident.

Two men were killed in the neighboring village of Stanislav, where a woman was also wounded.

The attack on Kherson province followed Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar’s comments on Saturday attempting to quell rumors that Ukrainian forces had landed on the occupied left (east) bank of the Dnieper in the Kherson region.

“Again, the expert hype around the left bank in the Kherson region began. There are no reasons for excitement,” she said.

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Far-right populist emerges as biggest vote-getter in Argentina’s presidential primary voting

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Far-right populist Javier Milei rocked Argentina’s political establishment Sunday by emerging as the biggest vote-getter in primary elections to choose presidential candidates for the October general election in a nation battered by economic woes.

Milei, an admirer of former U.S. President Donald Trump, says Argentina’s Central Bank should be abolished, thinks climate change is a lie, characterizes sex education as a ploy to destroy the family, believes the sale of human organs should be legal and wants to make it easier to own handguns.

Votes were still being counted late Sunday, but analysts agreed that the upstart candidate who gained notoriety — and a rockstar-like following — by angrily ranting against the “political caste” did much better than expected and is a real contender for the presidency in this South American country.

With nearly two-thirds of polling locations reporting results, Milei had around 32% of the total vote, according to official results. The candidates in the main opposition coalition, United for Change, were at 28% and the current governing coalition, Union for the Homeland, had 26%.

Before the election, analysts had warned that a better-than-expected showing for Milei, 52, would likely upset financial markets and lead to a sharp plunge in the value of Argentina’s peso amid uncertainty about what economic policies he might implement if he became president.

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A central Kansas police force sparked a firestorm by raiding a newspaper and the publisher’s home

MARION, Kan. (AP) — A small central Kansas police department is facing a torrent of criticism for raiding a local newspaper’s office and the home of its owner and publisher, seizing computers and cellphones, and, in the publisher’s view, stressing his 98-year-old mother enough to cause her weekend death.

Several press freedom watchdogs condemned the Marion Police Department’s actions as a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s protection for a free press. The Marion County Record’s editor and publisher, Eric Meyer, worked with his staff Sunday to reconstruct stories, ads and other materials for its next edition Wednesday, even as he took time in the afternoon to provide a local funeral home with information about his mother, Joan, the paper’s co-owner.

A search warrant tied Friday morning raids, led by Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, to a dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell. She is accusing the newspaper of invading her privacy and illegally accessing information about her and her driving record and suggested that the newspaper targeted her after she threw Meyer and a reporter out of restaurant during a political event.

While Meyer saw Newell’s complaints — which he said were untrue — as prompting the raids, he also believes the newspaper’s aggressive coverage of local politics and issues played a role. He said the newspaper was examining Cody’s past work with the Kansas City, Missouri, police as well.

“This is the type of stuff that, you know, that Vladimir Putin does, that Third World dictators do,” Meyer said during an interview in his office. “This is Gestapo tactics from World War II.”

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Prominent Hong Kong democracy activists partially win bid to quash convictions over 2019 protest

HONG KONG (AP) — Seven of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy advocates had part of their convictions quashed Monday over their roles in one of the biggest pro-democracy protests in 2019.

Jimmy Lai, founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper; Martin Lee, the founding chairman of the city’s Democratic Party; and five former pro-democracy lawmakers, including barrister Margaret Ng, had been found guilty of organizing and participating an unauthorized assembly.

Lai, Lee Cheuk-yan, Leung Kwok-hung and Cyd Ho were jailed between eight to 18 months. Martin Lee, an octogenarian nicknamed the city’s “Father of Democracy,” Ng and Albert Ho were given suspended jail sentences.

Their convictions two years ago and their sentences were widely seen as another blow to the city’s flagging democracy movement under an unprecedented crackdown by Beijing and Hong Kong authorities.

Judge Andrew Macrae said he and other judges of the Court of Appeal unanimously quashed their convictions over the charge of organizing an unauthorized assembly. But their convictions over taking part in an unauthorized assembly were upheld.

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North Korea’s Kim orders sharp increase in missile production, days before US-South Korea drills

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made another inspection tour of major munitions factories and ordered a drastic increase in production of missiles and other weapons, state media said Monday, days before South Korea and the U.S. begin annual military drills that North Korea views as an invasion rehearsal.

Kim’s push to produce more weapons also comes as U.S. officials believe Russia’s defense minister recently talked with North Korea about selling more weapons to Russia for its war with Ukraine.

The Korean Central News Agency said Kim visited factories producing tactical missiles, mobile launch platforms, armored vehicles and artillery shells on Friday and Saturday.

During a stop at the missile factory, Kim set a goal to “drastically boost” production capacity so the facility can mass produce missiles to meet the needs of frontline military units, KCNA said.

“The qualitative level of war preparations depends on the development of the munitions industry and the factory bears a very important responsibility in speeding up the war preparations of the (North) Korean People’s Army,” Kim said, according to the report.

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Niger’s junta gains the upper hand over the regional bloc threatening military force, analysts say

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) — One week after a deadline passed for mutinous soldiers in Niger to reinstate the country’s ousted president or face military intervention, the junta has not acquiesced. No military action has been taken and the coup leaders appear to have gained the upper hand over the regional group that issued the threat, analysts say.

The West African bloc ECOWAS had given the soldiers that overthrew Niger’s democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum until last Sunday to release and reinstate him or they threatened military action. On Thursday, the bloc ordered the deployment of a “standby” force to restore constitutional rule in Niger, with Nigeria, Benin, Senegal and Ivory Coast saying they would contribute troops.

But it’s unclear when, how or if the troops will deploy. The move could take weeks or months to set into motion, and while the bloc decides what to do the junta is gaining power, some observers say.

“It looks as though the putschists have won and will stay … The putschists are holding all the cards and have cemented their rule,” said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a think tank.

ECOWAS is unlikely to intervene militarily and risk dragging Niger into civil war, he said, adding that ECOWAS and Western countries would instead likely press the junta to agree to a short transition period.

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Alabama riverfront brawl videos spark a cultural moment about race, solidarity and justice

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — As bystanders trained their smartphone cameras on the riverfront dock while several white boaters pummeled a Black riverboat co-captain, they couldn’t have known the footage would elicit a national conversation about racial solidarity.

Yet, a week after multiple videos showing the now-infamous brawl and valiant defense of the outnumbered co-captain were shared widely on social media, it’s clear the event truly tapped into the psyche of Black America and created a broader cultural moment.

Andrea Boyles, a sociology professor at Tulane University, said a long history of anti-Black racism and attacks and current events likely magnified the attack’s impact and response.

“Especially at a time like now where we see an increase in anti-Black racism through legislation and otherwise, whether we’re thinking about history, the banning of Black history and curriculum and all sorts of things across the state of Florida” and elsewhere, Boyles said. “So this is why it is on the forefront of people’s minds. And folks are very much tuned in, Black people in particular.”

Many see the Aug. 5 ordeal on the riverfront dock in Montgomery, Alabama’s capital city steeped in civil rights history, as a long-awaited answer to countless calls for help that went unanswered for past Black victims of violence and mob attacks.

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Mishmash of how US heat deaths are counted complicates efforts to keep people safe as Earth warms

PHOENIX (AP) — Postal worker Eugene Gates Jr. was delivering mail in the suffocating Dallas heat this summer when he collapsed in a homeowner’s yard and was taken to a hospital, where he died.

Carla Gates said she’s sure heat was a factor in her 66-year-old husband’s death, even though she’s still waiting for the autopsy report. When Eugene Gates died on June 20, the temperature was 98 degrees Fahrenheit (36.6 Celsius) and the heat index, which also considers humidity, had soared over 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius).

“I will believe this until the day I die, that it was heat-related,” Carla Gates said.

Even when it seems obvious that extreme heat was a factor, death certificates don’t always reflect the role it played. Experts say a mishmash of ways more than 3,000 counties calculate heat deaths means we don’t really know how many people die in the U.S. each year because of high temperatures in an ever warming world.

That imprecision harms efforts to better protect people from extreme heat because officials who set policies and fund programs can’t get the financial and other support needed to make a difference.

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Popular weight-loss drugs like Wegovy may raise risk of complications under anesthesia

Patients who take blockbuster drugs like Wegovy or Ozempic for weight loss may face life-threatening complications if they need surgery or other procedures that require empty stomachs for anesthesia. This summer’s guidance to halt the medication for up to a week may not go far enough, either.

Some anesthesiologists in the U.S. and Canada say they’ve seen growing numbers of patients on the weight-loss drugs who inhaled food and liquid into their lungs while sedated because their stomachs were still full — even after following standard instructions to stop eating for six to eight hours in advance.

The drugs can slow digestion so much that it puts patients at increased risk for the problem, called pulmonary aspiration, which can cause dangerous lung damage, infections and even death, said Dr. Ion Hobai, an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“This is such a serious sort of potential complication that everybody who takes this drug should know about it,” said Hobai, who was among the first to flag the issue.

Nearly 6 million prescriptions for the class of drugs that include Wegovy and Ozempic were written between January and May in the U.S. for people who don’t have diabetes, according to Komodo Health, a health care technology company. The drugs induce weight loss by mimicking the actions of hormones, found primarily in the gut, that kick in after people eat. They also target signals between the gut and the brain that control appetite and feelings of fullness, and by slowing how fast the stomach empties.