AP News in Brief at 11:09 p.m. EDT

Leaked records open a ‘Pandora’ box of financial secrets

Hundreds of world leaders, powerful politicians, billionaires, celebrities, religious leaders and drug dealers have been hiding their investments in mansions, exclusive beachfront property, yachts and other assets for the past quarter-century, according to a review of nearly 12 million files obtained from 14 firms located around the world.

The report released Sundayby the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists involved 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries. It’s being dubbed the “Pandora Papers” because the findings shed light on the previously hidden dealings of the elite and the corrupt, and how they have used offshore accounts to shield assets collectively worth trillions of dollars.

The more than 330 current and former politicians identified as beneficiaries of the secret accounts include Jordan’s King Abdullah II, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Czech Republic Prime Minister Andrej Babis, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso, and associates of both Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The billionaires called out in the report include Turkish construction mogul Erman Ilicak and Robert T. Brockman, the former CEO of software maker Reynolds & Reynolds.

Many of the accounts were designed to evade taxes and conceal assets for other shady reasons, according to the report.

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Crews race to limit damage from major California oil spill

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Crews on the water and on shore worked feverishly Sunday to limit environmental damage from one of the largest oil spills in recent California history, caused by a suspected leak in an underwater pipeline that fouled the sands of famed Huntington Beach and could keep the beaches there closed for weeks or longer.

Booms were deployed on the ocean surface to try to contain the oil while divers sought to determine where and why the leak occurred. On land, there was a race to find animals harmed by the oil and to keep the spill from harming any more sensitive marshland.

An estimated 126,000 gallons (572,807 liters) of heavy crude leaked into the waters off Orange County starting late Friday or early Saturday, when boaters began reporting a sheen in the water, officials said. The pipeline and operations at three off-shore platforms owned by Houston-based Amplify Energy Corp. were shut down Saturday night, CEO Martyn Willsher said.

He said the 17.5-mile (28.16-kilometer) pipeline that is 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) below the surface was suctioned out so no more oil would spill as the location of the leak was being investigated.

Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr said the beaches of the community nicknamed “Surf City” could remain closed for weeks or even months. The oil created a miles-wide sheen in the ocean and washed ashore in sticky, black globules.

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Ex-Facebook manager alleges social network fed Capitol riot

NEW YORK (AP) — A data scientist who was revealed Sunday as the Facebook whistleblower says that whenever there was a conflict between the public good and what benefited the company, the social media giant would choose its own interests.

Frances Haugen was identified in a “60 Minutes” interview Sunday as the woman who anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement that the company’s own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation.

Haugen, who worked at Google and Pinterest before joining Facebook in 2019, said she had asked to work in an area of the company that fights misinformation, since she lost a friend to online conspiracy theories.

“Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety,” she said. Haugen, who will testify before Congress this week, said she hopes that by coming forward the government will put regulations in place to govern the company’s activities.

She said Facebook prematurely turned off safeguards designed to thwart misinformation and rabble rousing after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump last year, alleging that contributed to the deadly Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol.

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Democrats see political peril in replacing Minneapolis PD

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — As activists mobilized this summer to ask Minneapolis voters to replace their police department, one of the first prominent Democrats to slam the plan was a moderate congresswoman who doesn’t even live in the city.

Angie Craig declared it “shortsighted, misguided and likely to harm the very communities that it seeks to protect.” She warned that it could push out the city’s popular Black police chief.

Craig’s district covers a suburban-to-rural and politically divided region south of the city, but her willingness to jump into the fight next door highlights the political threat that Democrats like Craig see in the proposal.

As a city that has become synonymous with police abuse wrestles with police reform, the effort is sharply dividing Democrats along ideological lines. The state’s best known progressives — U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar and Attorney General Keith Ellison — support the plan, which would replace the police department with a new Department of Public Safety. Other top Democrats, including Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Gov. Tim Walz, oppose it.

The debate is dominating the city’s mayoral and City Council races, the first since a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd in May 2020 and sparked a global racial reckoning. Passing the amendment would be a major win for the reform movement — both in substance and symbolism. But many in the Democratic establishment believe calls to “dismantle” or “defund” police cost the party seats in statehouses and Congress last year. They’re determined not to let that happen again next year. Defeating the Minneapolis measure has become a critical, high-profile test.

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2 Koreas restore hotline despite North’s missile tests

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North and South Korea restored a stalled communication hotline after weeks of a hiatus in a small, fragile reconciliation step Monday, as the North pushes hard to win outside concessions with a mix of conciliatory gestures and missile tests.

Liaison officials from the two Koreas exchanged messages over a cross-border communication channel on Monday morning, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said.

The two Koreas are expected to restore other communication channels running across their tense border later Monday as they have both previously expressed their intentions to reopen them.

The phone and fax channels — which the rival Koreas use to set up meetings, arrange border crossings and avoid accidental clashes — have been largely dormant for more than a year. Communications were briefly revived for about two weeks this summer, but North Korea later refused to exchange messages again after Seoul staged annual military drills with Washington that it views as an invasion rehearsal.

“The South Korean authorities should make positive efforts to put the North-South ties on a right track and settle the important tasks which must be prioritized to open up the bright prospect in the future, bearing deep in mind the meaning of the restoration of communication lines,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said ahead of the hotline’s restoration.

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Virus surge hits New England despite high vaccination rates

Despite having the highest vaccination rates in the country, there are constant reminders for most New England states of just how vicious the delta variant of COVID-19 is.

Hospitals across the region are seeing full intensive care units and staff shortages are starting to affect care. Public officials are pleading with the unvaccinated to get the shots. Health care workers are coping with pent-up demand for other kinds of care that had been delayed by the pandemic.

“I think it’s clearly frustrating for all of us,” said Michael Pieciak, the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation who monitors COVID-19 statistics for the state. “We want kids to be safe in school, we want parents not to have to worry about their child’s education and health.”

Even though parts of New England are seeing record case counts, hospitalizations and deaths that rival pre-vaccine peaks, largely among the unvaccinated, the region hasn’t seen the impact the delta variant wave has wrought on other parts of the country.

According to statistics from The Associated Press, the five states with the highest percentage of a fully vaccinated population are all in New England, with Vermont leading, followed by Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. New Hampshire is 10th.

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AP: States and cities slow to spend federal pandemic money

As Congress considered a massive COVID-19 relief package earlier this year, hundreds of mayors from across the U.S. pleaded for “immediate action” on billions of dollars targeted to shore up their finances and revive their communities.

Now that they’ve received it, local officials are taking their time before actually spending the windfall.

As of this summer, a majority of large cities and states hadn’t spent a penny from the American Rescue Plan championed by Democrats and President Joe Biden, according to an Associated Press review of the first financial reports due under the law. States had spent just 2.5% of their initial allotment while large cities spent 8.5%, according to the AP analysis.

Many state and local governments reported they were still working on plans for their share of the $350 billion, which can be spent on a wide array of programs.

Though Biden signed the law in March, the Treasury Department didn’t release the money and spending guidelines until May. By then, some state legislatures already had wrapped up their budget work for the next year, leaving governors with no authority to spend the new money. Some states waited several more months to ask the federal government for their share.

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Brady sets passing yards record, Bucs trail 7-6 at halftime

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — Playing as a visitor at Gillette Stadium wasn’t the only big change for Tom Brady on Sunday night.

He also was booed. Often.

And when Brady was sacked by Matt Judon in the second quarter, the crowd went wild.

Even when the Buccaneers quarterback set the record for yards passing in a career on a 28-yard completion to Mike Evans in the first quarter, there was a mixture of cheers and applause along with the jeers. Brady, 44, reached 80,359 yards through the air and then called a timeout before the next play — though no announcement had been made about setting the mark. That came during the timeout.

Ryan Succop’s field goal a few plays later — after Brady misfired on a couple of throws — gave Tampa Bay a 3-0 lead. By halftime in a steady rain, the six-time Super Bowl champion looked ordinary in the highly charged atmosphere, and defending champion Tampa Bay trailed 7-6. Brady was 15 for 27 for 182 yards, with a few pinpoint completions and just as many overthrows.

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Puerto Ricans fume as outages threaten health, work, school

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Not a single hurricane has hit Puerto Rico this year, but hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. territory feel like they’re living in the aftermath of a major storm: Students do homework by the light of dying cellphones, people who depend on insulin or respiratory therapies struggle to find power sources and the elderly are fleeing sweltering homes amid record high temperatures.

Power outages across the island have surged in recent weeks, with some lasting several days. Officials have blamed everything from seaweed to mechanical failures as the government calls the situation a “crass failure” that urgently needs to be fixed.

The daily outages are snarling traffic, frying costly appliances, forcing doctors to cancel appointments, causing restaurants, shopping malls and schools to temporarily close and even prompting one university to suspend classes and another to declare a moratorium on exams.

“This is hell,” said Iris Santiago, a 48-year-old with chronic health conditions who often joins her elderly neighbors outside when their apartment building goes dark and the humid heat soars into the 90s Fahrenheit.

“Like any Puerto Rican, I live in a constant state of anxiety because the power goes out every day,” she said. “Not everyone has family they can run to and go into a home with a generator.”

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George Floyd memorial statue in New York City defaced again

NEW YORK (AP) — A statue honoring George Floyd in New York City’s Union Square Park was vandalized on Sunday, police said.

According to police, a video showed an unidentified man on a skateboard throwing paint on the statue at approximately 10 a.m. then fleeing. Nearby statues of late Congressman John Lewis and Breonna Taylor, a Louisville, Kentucky, woman shot and killed by police last year, apparently weren’t touched.

Police have not released the video.

Sunday’s act wasn’t the first example of vandalism to the statue memorializing Floyd, whose killing at the hands of police in Minneapolis last year galvanized a racial justice movement across the country.

The statue was unveiled on the Juneteenth holiday in a spot on Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn, and it was vandalized five days later with black paint and marked with an alleged logo of a white supremacist group.