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

GOP network props up liberal third-party candidates in key states, hoping to siphon off Harris votes

WASHINGTON (AP) — Italo Medelius was leading a volunteer drive to put Cornel West on North Carolina’s presidential ballot last spring when he received an unexpected call from a man named Paul who said he wanted to help.

Though Medelius, co-chairman of West’s “Justice for All Party,” welcomed the assistance, the offer would complicate his life, provoking threats and drawing him into a state election board investigation of the motivations, backgrounds and suspect tactics of his new allies.

His is not an isolated case.

Across the country, a network of Republican political operatives, lawyers and their allies is trying to shape November’s election in ways that favor former President Donald Trump. Their goal is to prop up third-party candidates such as West who offer liberal voters an alternative that could siphon away support from Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.

It is not clear who is paying for the effort, but it could be impactful in states that were decided by miniscule margins in the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.

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Large-scale polio vaccinations begin in war-ravaged Gaza after first case in 25 years

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Palestinian health authorities and United Nations agencies on Sunday began a large-scale campaign of vaccinations against polio in the Gaza Strip, hoping to prevent an outbreak in the territory that has been ravaged by the Israel-Hamas war.

Authorities plan to vaccinate children in central Gaza until Wednesday before moving on to the more devastated northern and southern parts of the strip. The campaign began with a small number of vaccinations on Saturday and aims to reach about 640,000 children.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said more than 72,600 children received vaccines Sunday.

The World Health Organization has said Israel agreed to limited pauses in the fighting to facilitate the campaign. There were initial reports of Israeli strikes in central Gaza early Sunday, but it was not immediately known if anyone was killed or wounded. The pause ended Sunday afternoon, according to a schedule released by Israel.

Israel has said the vaccination program will continue through Sept. 9 and last eight hours a day.

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Israelis erupt in protest to demand a cease-fire after 6 more hostages die in Gaza

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Tens of thousands of grieving and angry Israelis surged into the streets Sunday night after six more hostages were found dead in Gaza, chanting “Now! Now!” as they demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reach a cease-fire with Hamas to bring the remaining captives home.

The mass outpouring appeared to be the largest such demonstration in 11 months of war and protesters said it felt like a possible turning point, although the country is deeply divided.

Israel’s largest trade union, the Histadrut, further pressured the government by calling a general strike for Monday, the first since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that started the war. It aims to shut down or disrupt major sectors of the economy, including banking, health care and the country’s main airport.

Cease-fire negotiations have dragged on for months. Many blame Netanyahu for failing to reach a deal, which opinion polls show a majority of Israelis favor. But the prime minister also has significant support for his strategy of “total victory” against Hamas, even if a deal for the hostages has to wait.

Thousands of people, some of them weeping, gathered Sunday night outside Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem. In Tel Aviv, hostages’ relatives marched with coffins to symbolize the toll.

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Strikes start at top hotel chains as housekeepers seek higher wages and daily room cleaning work

With up to 17 rooms to clean each shift, Fatima Amahmoud’s job at the Moxy hotel in downtown Boston sometimes feels impossible.

There was the time she found three days worth of blond dog fur clinging to the curtains, the bedspread and the carpet. She knew she wouldn’t finish in the 30 minutes she is supposed to spend on each room. The dog owner had declined daily room cleaning, an option that many hotels have encouraged as environmentally friendly but is a way for them to cut labor costs and cope with worker shortages since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unionized housekeepers, however, have waged a fierce fight to restore automatic daily room cleaning at major hotel chains, saying they have been saddled with unmanageable workloads, or in many cases, fewer hours and a decline in income.

The dispute has become emblematic of the frustration over working conditions among hotel workers, who were put out of their jobs for months during pandemic shutdowns and returned to an industry grappling with chronic staffing shortages and evolving travel trends.

Some 10,000 hotel workers represented by the UNITE HERE union walked off the job Sunday at 24 hotels in eight cities, including Honolulu, Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego and Seattle. Hotel workers in other cities could strike in the coming days, as contract talks stall over demands for higher wages and a reversal of service and staffing cuts. At total of 15,000 workers have voted to authorize strikes.

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Linda Deutsch, AP trial writer who had front row to courtroom history, dies at 80

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Linda Deutsch, a special correspondent for The Associated Press who for nearly 50 years wrote glittering first drafts of history from many of the nation’s most significant criminal and civil trials — Charles Manson, O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, among others — died Sunday. She was 80.

Deutsch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2022 and underwent successful treatment, but the cancer returned this summer. She died at her Los Angeles home, surrounded by family and friends, said nurse Narek Petrosian of Olympia Hospice Care.

AP chief United Nations correspondent Edith Lederer was among those with Deutsch at the end. They were friends for more than 50 years and trailblazing female reporters when they joined AP in the late 1960s.

“She was an incomparable friend to hundreds of people who will miss her wit, wisdom, charm and constant inquisitiveness,” Lederer said.

One of America’s best-known trial reporters when she retired in 2015, Deutsch’s courts career began with the 1969 trial and conviction of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan. She went on to cover a who’s who of criminal defendants — Manson, Simpson, Jackson, Patty Hearst, Phil Spector, the Menendez Brothers, “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez, “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski and the police officers charged in the beating of motorist Rodney King.

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A German far-right party wins its first state election and is very close in a second

BERLIN (AP) — A far-right party won a state election for the first time in post-World War II Germany in the country’s east on Sunday, and looked set to finish a very close second to mainstream conservatives in a second vote.

A new party founded by a prominent leftist also made a strong impact, while the parties in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s unpopular national government obtained extremely weak results.

The far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, won 32.8% of the vote in Thuringia — well ahead of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, the main national opposition party, with 23.6%.

In neighboring Saxony, projections for ARD and ZDF public television with the count well advanced put support for the CDU, which has led the state since German reunification in 1990, at 31.9% and AfD on 30.6-30.7%. AfD made substantial gains in Thuringia and smaller ones in Saxony compared with the last state elections in 2019.

“An openly right-wing extremist party has become the strongest force in a state parliament for the first time since 1949, and that causes many people very deep concern and fear,” said Omid Nouripour, a leader of the Greens, one of the national governing parties.

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US border policy spurred migrant camps hundreds of miles away in Mexico’s capital

MEXICO CITY (AP) — “That’s it, dude! Done!” exclaimed Eliezer López as he jumped up and down, throwing his arms to the sky and drawing a sign of the cross across his chest. His joy was so contagious, his friends started to emerge from nearby tents to celebrate with him.

López, a 20-year-old Venezuelan migrant in Mexico City, had reason to rejoice: after several frustrating attempts, he was able to secure an appointment to seek asylum in the U.S.

He is one of thousands of migrants whose U.S.-bound journey has landed them in the Mexican capital, the southernmost point until recently from which migrants can register to request an appointment to seek asylum through the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s mobile app known as CBP One.

Since June, when the Biden administration announced significant restrictions on migrants seeking asylum, the app became one of the only ways to request asylum at the Southwest border.

This U.S. asylum policy and its geographic limits are a driving force behind the emergence of migrant encampments throughout the Mexican capital where thousands of migrants wait weeks — even months — in limbo, living in crowded, makeshift camps with poor sanitation and grim living conditions.

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Pope embarks on longest, farthest and most challenging trip to Asia, with China in the background

VATICAN CITY (AP) — If any evidence were needed to underscore that Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Asia and Oceania is the longest, farthest and most challenging of his pontificate, it’s that he’s bringing along his secretaries to help him navigate the four-country program while keeping up with work back home.

Francis will clock 32,814 kilometers (20,390 miles) by air during his Sept. 2-13 visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, far surpassing any of his previous 44 foreign trips and notching one of the longest papal trips ever, both in terms of days on the road and distances traveled.

That’s no small feat for a pope who turns 88 in December, uses a wheelchair, lost part of a lung to a respiratory infection as a young man and had to cancel his last foreign trip at the last minute (to Dubai in November to participate in the U.N. climate conference) on doctors’ orders.

But Francis is pushing ahead with this trip, originally planned for 2020 but postponed because of COVID-19. He’s bringing along his medical team of a doctor and two nurses and taking the usual health precautions on the ground. But in a novelty, he’s adding his personal secretaries into the traditional Vatican delegation of cardinals, bishops and security.

The long trip recalls the globetrotting travels of St. John Paul II, who visited all four destinations during his quarter-century pontificate, though East Timor was an occupied part of Indonesia at the time of his landmark 1989 trip.

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Coco Gauff loses at the U.S. Open to Emma Navarro, ending her title defense with 19 double-faults

NEW YORK (AP) — This is pretty much all anyone needs to know about defending champion Coco Gauff’s 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 loss to Emma Navarro in the U.S. Open’s fourth round on Sunday: Gauff wound up with more double-faults, 19, than winners, 14.

It was the latest in a series of early-for-her exits in recent weeks, including bowing out in the third round at the Paris Olympics, then going 1-2 at hard-court tuneup events before arriving in New York.

“I feel like there’s 70 other players in the draw that would love to have the summer that I had, even though it’s (the) least, probably, (I’ve) done well during this time of the year,” said the No. 3-seeded Gauff, who went 18-1 during the North American swing on hard courts 12 months ago, including the run to her first Grand Slam title. “So many people want to be in the fourth round. So many people want to make the Olympics. So many people want to be flag bearer. It’s perspective.”

The 20-year-old from Florida did fight her way back into the match with a four-game run in which she claimed 14 of 17 points and grabbed the second set.

“Had a little bit of a lull there,” said the 13th-seeded Navarro, an American who was 0-2 at the U.S. Open until this year, “but I was able to regroup.”

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ESPN networks, ABC and Disney channels go dark on DirecTV on a busy night for sports

ESPN has gone off the air on a major carrier for the second straight year during the U.S. Open tennis tournament and in the midst of the first full weekend of college football.

Disney Entertainment channels went dark on DirecTV Sunday night after the sides were unable to reach a new carriage agreement.

The move angered some sports fans, who posted their displeasure on social media. And the U.S. Tennis Association wasn’t pleased with another carriage dispute.

ESPN was showing the fourth round of the U.S. Open when it went off the air on DirecTV at 7:20 p.m. EDT.

That was a half-hour before the start of the match between Frances Tiafoe, an American who reached the 2022 U.S. Open semifinals, and Alexei Popyrin, an Australian who eliminated defending champion Novak Djokovic on Friday.

The Associated Press