News briefs: from the campaign to Thanksgiving

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New focus for campaign: Will Biden or Trump keep you safer?

PITTSBURGH (AP) - The battle over who can keep Americans safe after recent deadly protests has emerged as the sharpest dividing line for the presidential campaign’s final weeks, with Joe Biden on Monday condemning the violence and President Donald Trump defending a supporter accused of fatally shooting two men.

While the president blamed Biden, his Democratic foe, for siding with “anarchists,” Biden, in his most direct attacks yet, accused Trump of causing the divisions that have ignited the violence. He delivered an uncharacteristically blistering speech and distanced himself from radical forces involved in altercations.

Biden said of Trump: “He doesn’t want to shed light, he wants to generate heat, and he’s stoking violence in our cities. He can’t stop the violence because for years he’s fomented it.”

Trump blames radical troublemakers whom he says are stirred up and backed by Biden. But when he was asked about one of his own supporters who was charged with killing two men during the mayhem in Kenosha, Wisconsin, he declined to denounce the killings and suggested that 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense.

After a confrontation in which he fatally shot one man, police say, Rittenhouse fell while being chased by people trying to disarm him.

Sheriffs reject governor’s plan to curb Portland violence

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Sheriffs from two counties in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, on Monday em- phatically rejected a plan by the state’s governor for their deputies to help patrol the city following last weekend’s deadly shooting of a right- wing supporter of President Donald Trump.

Their decision threw into doubt a plan announced a day earlier by Gov. Kate Brown to keep the peace in Portland by adding nearby sheriffs deputies and Oregon State Police troopers as the liberal city struggles to regain its footing in the glare of the national spotlight.

Brown, a Democrat, announced the security plan for Portland after the fatal shooting of Aaron Danielson, 39, on Saturday as Black Lives Matter protesters clashed with Trump supporters who drove in a caravan through the city. No one has been arrested in the case.

The rejection by the two sheriffs, elected as nonpartisans, increases uncertainty about Portland’s future just as Trump puts the chaos in Portland in his campaign crosshairs as part of his law and order re-election campaign theme.

Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts said inundating the city with more law enforcement would not work because Portland’s newly elected district attorney has dismissed charges against hundreds of protesters arrested for non-violent, low-level crimes.

A Zoom Thanksgiving? Summer could give way to a bleaker fall

As the Summer of COVID draws to a close, many ex- perts fear an even bleaker fall and suggest that American families should start planning for Thanksgiving by Zoom.

Because of the many uncertainties, public health scientists say it’s easier to forecast the weather on Thanksgiving Day than to predict how the U.S. coronavirus crisis will play out this autumn. But school reopenings, holiday travel and more indoor activity because of colder weather could all separately increase transmission of the virus and combine in ways that could multiply the threat, they say.

Here’s one way it could go: As more schools open for in-person instruction and more college students return to campuses, small clusters of cases could widen into outbreaks in late September. Public fatigue over mask rules and other restrictions could stymie efforts to slow these infections.

A few weeks later, widening outbreaks could start to strain hospitals. If a bad flu season peaks in October, as happened in 2009, the pressure on the health care system could result in higher daily death tolls from the coronavirus. Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has said that scenario is his biggest fear.

One certainty is that the virus will still be around, said Jarad Niemi, a disease-modeling expert at Iowa State University.