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

Jury finds Rittenhouse not guilty in Kenosha shootings

KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges Friday after testifying he acted in self-defense in the deadly Kenosha shootings that became a flashpoint in the debate over guns, vigilantism and racial injustice in the U.S.

Rittenhouse, 18, began to choke up, fell forward toward the defense table and then hugged one of his attorneys as he heard a court clerk recite “not guilty” five times. A sheriff’s deputy whisked him out a back door.

“He wants to get on with his life,” defense attorney Mark Richards said. “He has a huge sense of relief for what the jury did to him today. He wishes none of this ever happened. But as he said when he testified, he did not start this.”

The verdict in the politically combustible case was met with anger and disappointment from those who saw Rittenhouse as a vigilante and a wannabe cop, and relief and a sense of vindication from those who regarded him as a patriot who took a stand against lawlessness and exercised his Second Amendment right to carry a gunand to defend himself. Supporters donated more than $2 million toward his legal defense.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the longtime civil rights leader, said the verdict throws into doubt the safety of people who protest in support of Black Americans.

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US opens COVID boosters to all adults, urges them for 50+

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. on Friday opened COVID-19 booster shots to all adults and took the extra step of urging people 50 and older to seek one, aiming to ward off a winter surge as coronavirus cases rise even before millions of Americans travel for the holidays.

Until now, Americans faced a confusing list of who was eligible for a booster that varied by age, their health and which kind of vaccine they got first. The Food and Drug Administration authorized changes to Pfizer and Moderna boosters to make it easier.

Under the new rules, anyone 18 or older can choose either a Pfizer or Moderna booster six months after their last dose. For anyone who got the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the wait already was just two months. And people can mix-and-match boosters from any company.

“We heard loud and clear that people needed something simpler — and this, I think, is simple,” FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks told The Associated Press.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had to agree before the new policy became official late Friday. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky endorsed a recommendation from her agency’s scientific advisers that — in addition to offering all adults a booster — had stressed that people 50 and older should be urged to get one.

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House OKs $2T social, climate bill in Biden win; Senate next

WASHINGTON (AP) — A fractious House handed President Joe Biden a marquee victory Friday by approving a roughly $2 trillion social and environment bill, as Democrats cast aside disputes that for months had stalled the measure and hampered efforts to sell their priorities to voters.

Lawmakers approved the legislation 220-213 as every Democrat but one backed it, overcoming unanimous Republican opposition. The measure now heads to the Senate, where changes are certain and disputes between cost-conscious Democratic moderates and progressives who seek bold policy changes will flare anew.

For the moment, Democrats were happy to shake off a dispiriting period of off-year election setbacks, tumbling Biden poll numbers and public disgruntlement over inflation, stalled supply chains and the pandemic. All that and the party’s nasty internal bickering have left voters with little idea of how the legislation might help them, polls have shown.

“Above all, it puts us on the path to build our economy back better than before by rebuilding the backbone of America: working people and the middle class,” Biden said in a statement.

He told reporters at the White House he expected the legislation to “take awhile” to move through the Senate but declared, “I will sign it. Period.”

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White supremacist prison guards work with impunity in Fla.

In June, three Florida prison guards who boasted of being white supremacists beat, pepper sprayed and used a stun gun on an inmate who screamed “I can’t breathe!” at a prison near the Alabama border, according to a fellow inmate who reported it to the state.

The next day, the officers at Jackson Correctional Institution did it again to another inmate, the report filed with the Florida Department of Corrections’ Office of Inspector General stated.

“If you notice these two incidents were people of color. They (the guards) let it be known they are white supremacist,” the inmate Jamaal Reynolds wrote. “The Black officers and white officers don’t even mingle with each other. Every day they create a hostile environment trying to provoke us so they can have a reason to put their hands on us.”

Both incidents occurred in view of surveillance cameras, he said. Reynolds’ neatly printed letter included the exact times and locations and named the officers and inmates. It’s the type of specific information that would have made it easier for officials to determine if the reports were legitimate. But the inspector general’s office did not investigate, corrections spokeswoman Molly Best said. Best did not provide further explanation, and the department hasn’t responded to The Associated Press’ August public records requests for the videos.

Some Florida prison guards openly tout associations with white supremacist groups to intimidate inmates and Black colleagues, a persistent practice that often goes unpunished, according to allegations in public documents and interviews with a dozen inmates and current and former employees in the nation’s third-largest prison system. Corrections officials regularly receive reports about guards’ membership in the Ku Klux Klan and criminal gangs, according to former prison inspectors, and current and former officers.

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Attorney accuses Arbery advocates of `lynching’ defendants

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — The defense attorney who caused an outcry by saying Black pastors should be barred from the murder trialover Ahmaud Arbery’s death declared in court Friday that a courthouse rally and other actions supporting the slain Black man’s family were comparable to a “public lynching” of the three white defendants.

“This case has been infected by things that have nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of these defendants,” attorney Kevin Gough told the judge, arguing that civil rights activists are trying to influence the disproportionately white jury.

Gough renewed a request for a mistrial the day after the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King III joined hundreds of pastors, most of them Black, praying and rallying at the steps of the Glynn County courthouse. The event was organized after Gough last week objected to Sharpton sitting in the back row of the courtroom with Arbery’s parents.

“Third parties are influencing this case,” Gough said. “They’ve been doing it from the gallery in this courtroom. They’ve been doing it outside. This is what a public lynching looks like in the 21st century.”

He told the judge his client’s right to a fair trial was being violated by a “left woke mob.”

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Elizabeth Holmes takes the stand in her criminal fraud trial

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Fallen Silicon Valley star Elizabeth Holmes, accused of bamboozling investors and patients about her startup Theranos and its medical device that she said would reshape health care, took the witness stand late Friday in her trial for criminal fraud.

The surprise decision to have Holmes testify so early in her defense came as a bombshell and carries considerable risk. Federal prosecutors, who rested their months-long case earlier on Friday, have made it clear that they’re eager to grill Holmes under oath.

Prosecutors aren’t likely to get that chance until after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Holmes attorney Kevin Downey told U.S. District Judge Edward Davila that he expects to continue steering her through her story when she returns to the stand Monday and again Tuesday in a San Jose, California, courtroom before the trial breaks until Nov. 29.

Prosecutors called 29 witnesses to support their contention that Holmes endangered patients’ lives while also duping investors and customers about Theranos’ technology. Among them was Gen. James Mattis, a former U.S. defense secretary and former Theranos board member, who explained how he was first impressed and ultimately disillusioned by Holmes.

They also presented internal documents and sometimes salacious texts between Holmes and her former lover, Sunny Bulwani, who also served as Theranos’ chief operating officer. In court documents, Holmes’ attorneys have asserted she was manipulated by Balwani through “intimate partner abuse” — an issue that is expected to come up during her ongoing testimony next week.

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Tennis trailblazer: Peng known for her grit on the court

Struggling to stay upright as suffocating heat and humidity drained her energy in the U.S. Open semifinals, Peng Shuai refused to give up.

She paused between points to clutch at her left thigh and put her weight on her racket as if it were a cane. She leaned against a wall and wiped away tears.

Helped off the court and diagnosed with heat stroke, doctors told her to quit. But Peng still came back for more. Six more points until she eventually collapsed to the ground and Caroline Wozniacki, her opponent in that 2014 match, came around the net to check on her.

Only then, with her body pushed to the absolute limit — maybe even beyond the limit — did Peng retire from the match that marked the pinnacle of her singles career.

Ultimately, she was taken away in a wheelchair.

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Native American confirmed as head of National Park Service

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The U.S. Senate has unanimously approved the nomination of Charles “Chuck” Sams III as National Park Service director, which will make him the first Native American to lead the agency.

Some conservationists hailed Sams’ confirmation Thursday night as a commitment to equitable partnership with tribes, the original stewards of the land.

“I am deeply honored,” Sams told the Confederated Umatilla Journalon Friday. “I am also very deeply appreciative of the support, guidance and counsel of my tribal elders and friends throughout my professional career.”

The National Park Service oversees more than 131,000 square miles (339,000 square kilometers) of parks, monuments, battlefields and other landmarks. It employs about 20,000 people in permanent, temporary and seasonal jobs, according to its website.

Sams is the agency’s first Senate-confirmed parks director in nearly five years. It was led by acting heads for years under the Trump administration, and for the first 10 months of Biden’s presidency. Jonathan Jarvis, who was confirmed as park service director in 2009, left the agency in January 2017.

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Biden says pardoned turkeys will get ‘boosted,’ not ‘basted’

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday pardoned two Thanksgiving turkeys, saying that the white male birds were selected based on their “temperament, appearance and, I suspect, vaccination status.”

“Instead of getting basted, these two turkeys are getting boosted today,” Biden joked.

Biden was in a jovial mood when he appeared before White House staffers and their families in the Rose Garden to pardon the Indiana turkeys, who gobbled merrily throughout the event. And while they were given a reprieve from the fate met by millions of turkeys on Thanksgiving Day, Biden said their names — Peanut Butter and Jelly — reminded him of the sandwich he often enjoys for lunch.

The pardoning comes as Biden’s agenda has seen fresh signs of life, with the president signing his $1 trillion infrastructure bill on Monday and the House passing an even bigger companion bill — the $2 trillion social services and climate change bill — on Friday. That bill will have to make it through the 50-50 Senate before landing on Biden’s desk.

On Friday, Biden poked fun at his recent speeches on the infrastructure bill, declaring that “turkey is infrastructure” and that “Peanut Butter and Jelly are going to help build back the butterball as we move along,” a reference to his administration’s “Build Back Better” catchphrase.

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Wildfires torched up to a fifth of all giant sequoia trees

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Lightning-sparked wildfires killed thousands of giant sequoias this year, leading to a staggering two-year death toll that accounts for up to nearly a fifth of Earth’s largest trees, officials said Friday.

Fires in Sequoia National Park and surrounding Sequoia National Forest tore through more than a third of groves in California and torched an estimated 2,261 to 3,637 sequoias, which are the largest trees by volume.

Nearby wildfires last year killed an unprecedented 7,500 to 10,400 giant sequoias that are only native in about 70 groves scattered along the western side of the Sierra Nevada range. Losses now account for 13% to 19% of the 75,000 sequoias greater than 4 feet (1.2 meters) in diameter.

Blazes so intense to burn hot enough and high enough to kill so many giant sequoias — trees once considered nearly fire-proof — puts an exclamation point on climate change’s impact. A warming planet that has created hotter droughts combined with a century of fire suppression that choked forests with thick undergrowth have fueled flames that have sounded the death knell for trees dating to ancient civilizations.

“The sobering reality is that we have seen another huge loss within a finite population of these iconic trees that are irreplaceable in many lifetimes,” said Clay Jordan, superintendent of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. “As spectacular as these trees are we really can’t take them for granted. To ensure that they’re around for our kids and grandkids and great grandkids, some action is necessary.”

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