White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said President Donald Trump will not attend the United Nations General Assembly next week.Meadows announced the decision Thursday in a briefing to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Trump’s campaign rally in Wisconsin that he would not attend.The annual meeting draws world leaders every year, but this year the General Assembly is a victim of the COVID-19 pandemic.Many heads of state are sending recorded messages for the virtual gathering, but it was not immediately clear whether Trump would submit a message for the annual event or if he would participate virtually.Trump has said he wants to host a G-7 meeting of the world’s largest industrialized countries, but that meeting may also fall victim to the coronavirus pandemic.  He has indicated that he would like to host the G-7 gathering in November, after the U.S. presidential election.  
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Nearly half of Americans, or 49%, said they definitely or probably would not get an inoculation if a coronavirus were available today, while 51% said they would, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted earlier this month.The 49% who lean toward rejecting the inoculation cited concerns about side effects from the vaccine.The public’s trust in a safe COVID-19 vaccine coming to market has taken a tumble. In May, a Pew survey revealed 72% of Americans said they would be inoculated if the vaccine were available.Only 21% in this month’s poll said they would definitely get the vaccine.The recent Pew survey found that 77% of Americans believe the vaccines in development in the United States would likely be approved before their safety and effectiveness are completely understood.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
A young woman wearing a face mask walks across the medieval Charles Bridge in Prague, Czech Republic, Sept. 18, 2020.A further breakdown of the numbers shows that Hispanic children made up 44% of the fatalities, and Black children made up 29%, compared with 14% for white children. American Indian and Alaska Natives accounted for 4% of COVID-19 deaths, with Asian and Pacific Islanders making up the same amount.The CDC report also found that 75% of those who died had at least one underlying health condition such as asthma, obesity, neurologic and developmental conditions or cardiovascular conditions. Researchers pointed out that certain social conditions, including crowded living environments, food and housing insecurity, and wealth and education gaps, could be contributing factors in the high fatality rates among minority children.The CDC on Wednesday outlined details of a plan to begin distributing a vaccine within 24 hours of official approval. Under the plan, the drug would be distributed once the Food and Drug Administration authorizes either an emergency use order or full formal approval, and would likely be administered first to essential personnel such as health care workers.The agency said the vaccine would be administered free of charge to all Americans once it becomes widely available.The announcement of the plan came on the same day President Donald Trump contradicted CDC Director Robert Redfield on when Americans would get a reliable COVID-19 vaccine.Redfield told a Senate committee that a vaccine could be generally available to the American public in the second or third quarter of next year, with those most at risk such as the elderly and those with preexisting health conditions to be prioritized for vaccination.In a news conference hours later, Trump made clear he did not like Redfield expressing a more cautious timeline.“I think he made a mistake when he said that. That’s just incorrect information,” Trump told reporters. “Under no circumstance will it be as late as the doctor said.”  
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In a private call with federal prosecutors across the country, Attorney General William Barr’s message was clear: Aggressively go after demonstrators who cause violence.  Barr pushed his U.S. attorneys to bring federal charges whenever they could, keeping a grip on cases even if a defendant could be tried instead in state court, according to officials with knowledge of last week’s call who were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity. Federal convictions often result in longer prison sentences. The Trump administration’s crackdown has already led to more than 300 arrests for federal crimes allegedly committed in protests since the death of George Floyd. An AP analysis of the data shows that while many people are accused of violent crimes such as arson for hurling Molotov cocktails and burning police cars and assault for injuring law enforcement, others are not. That’s led to criticism that at least some arrests are a politically motivated effort to stymie demonstrations.  FILE – A man runs as several protesters manage to breach the fence and enter the portico of the Multnomah County Justice Center in Portland, Oregon, July 23, 2020.”The speed at which this whole thing was moved from state court to federal court is stunning and unbelievable,” said Charles Sunwabe, who represents an Erie, Pennsylvania, man accused of lighting a fire at a coffee shop after a May 30 protest. “It’s an attempt to intimidate these demonstrators and to silence them,” he said.  Some cases are viewed as concocted and should not be in federal court, lawyers say, including a teenager accused of civil disorder for claiming online “we are not each other’s enemy, only enemy is 12,” a reference to law enforcement.  The administration has seized on the demonstrations and an aggressive federal response to showcase what President Donald Trump says is his law-and-order prowess, claiming he is countering rising crime in cities run by Democrats. Trump has derided protesters and played up the violence around protests, though the majority of them are peaceful.  The Justice Department had also explored whether it could pursue either criminal or civil rights charges against city officials in Portland, Oregon, after clashes erupted there night after night between law enforcement and demonstrators, a department spokesperson told The Associated Press. The department had done research on whether it could pursue either criminal charges or action through civil litigation, spokesperson Kerri Kupec said. She declined to comment on the status or whether charges would be brought. Violent protestsPockets of violence have indeed popped up in cities, including Portland, Oregon, where protests devolved into clashes with law enforcement for several weeks. Nights of looting and other unrest have occurred elsewhere: Rochester, New York; Minneapolis; Louisville, Kentucky; Washington and Chicago.  Federal officials were called into Kenosha, Wisconsin, after large protests and unrest following the shooting of Jacob Blake and the gunning down of two protesters and the subsequent arrest of a 17-year-old in their deaths. Notably, that teenager has not been charged with any federal crimes. Neither was a man accused of shooting and killing a demonstrator in Louisville following the death of Breonna Taylor.  FILE – People stand in front of the damage at Car Source, a used car lot, after protests following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Aug. 27, 2020.While Barr has gone after protest-related violence targeted at law enforcement, he has argued there is seldom a reason to open sweeping investigations into the practices of police departments. The Justice Department, however, has initiated a number of civil rights investigations into individual cases. Barr has said he does not believe there is systemic racism in police departments, even though Black people are disproportionately more likely to be killed by police, and public attitudes about police reforms have shifted. During the call with U.S. attorneys, Barr raised the prospect that prosecutors could bring a number of other charges in unrest cases, including the rarely used sedition statute, according to the officials familiar with the call. Legal experts cautioned the use of that statute is unlikely, as sedition can be difficult to prove in court.  Federal roleFederal involvement in local cases is nothing new. Officials across the country have turned to the Justice Department for decades, particularly for violent crime and gang cases where offenders could face much stiffer federal penalties and there is no parole. Police chiefs in several cities have pointed to the importance of their relationships with federal prosecutors to bring charges that can result in long prison sentences to drive down violent crime.  Even before the unrest earlier this year, the Justice Department was stepping in to bring charges in states where the government believes justice is not being fully pursued by local prosecutors. In January, for example, the department brought federal hate crime charges against a woman accused of slapping three Orthodox Jewish women in one of several apparently anti-Semitic attacks reported throughout New York during Hanukkah. It is not clear whether protest-related arrests will continue apace. Demonstrations have slowed, though not necessarily because of the federal charges. Wildfires in the West and hurricanes in the South have lessened some of the conflict.While many local prosecutors have dismissed dozens of low-level protest arrests, some are still coming down hard. A Pennsylvania judge set bail at $1 million for about a dozen people in a protest that followed the death of a knife-wielding man by police.  Even some Democrats, including District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser, have called for the Justice Department to pursue federal charges against violent demonstrators, going as far as accusing the administration of declining to prosecute rioters. Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department had arrested 42 people one August weekend after a protest left a trail of vandalism. But prosecutors said the arrest paperwork did not identify specific crimes tied to each suspect. The federal confrontation with Bowser seemed counterintuitive, though Trump has a history of squaring off against the mayor. Protest-related casesAbout one-third of the federal protest-related cases are in Portland, for crimes such as assaulting a deputy U.S. marshal with a baseball bat, setting fires and setting off explosives at the federal courthouse, and throwing rocks at officers.  Three purported Boogaloo members, who use the loose movement’s name as a slang term for a second civil war or collapse of civilization, were charged with possessing a homemade bomb and inciting a riot in Las Vegas.  An El Paso, Texas, man was accused of promoting hate speech, posting a video online with a racist epithet and making threatening comments to Black Lives Matter protesters while holding a military-style rifle at his feet. A Minnesota man was accused of helping burn down a police precinct headquarters there after Floyd’s death.  But other cases simply do not belong in federal court, lawyers say. FILE – Seattle bicycle police officers wear gas masks and carry weapons as smoke rises and they clash with protesters, July 25, 2020.In Seattle, 35-year-old Isaiah Willoughby, who’s accused of setting fire to the outside of a police precinct, faces a mandatory minimum of five years in prison if convicted of arson in federal court. He could be looking at about a year behind bars in state court, where his lawyer said the case belongs.  “This is city property that has been destroyed and you have a local prosecutors office that is ready and willing and able to charge these cases in state court, but the federal government is attempting to emphasize these protest-related crimes for whatever agenda they are seeking to pursue,” said assistant federal public defender Dennis Carroll.  Carroll accused federal authorities of using the cases to try to make the protests seem more violent and disruptive than they really were. Federal prosecutors this month agreed to dismiss the charge against a man who authorities said was found with a Molotov cocktail in his backpack after he and other protesters were arrested in May for blocking traffic in Jacksonville, Florida. Video showed that 27-year-old Ivan Zecher was wrongfully arrested because he was actually on the sidewalk — not in the street — meaning prosecutors could not pursue their case, Zecher’s attorney, Marcus Barnett said.  “There is absolutely an agenda here to blow these out of proportion, make these look more serious or more sinister than it is,” Barnett said of the pursuit of federal charges. “This is the Justice Department, from the top, furthering an agenda that has nothing to do with justice,” he said. 
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Just two weeks after students started returning to Ball State University last month, the surrounding county had become Indiana’s coronavirus epicenter.
Out of nearly 600 students tested for the virus, more than half have been positive. Dozens of infections have been blamed on off-campus parties, prompting university officials to admonish students.
University President Geoffrey Mearns wrote that the cases apparently were tied not to classrooms or dormitories but to “poor personal choices some students are making, primarily off campus.”  
“The actions of these students are putting our planned on-campus instruction and activities at risk,” he said.
Similar examples abound in other college towns across the nation. Among the 50 large U.S. counties with the highest percentages of student residents, 20 have consistently reported higher rates of new virus cases than their states have since Sept. 1, according to an Associated Press analysis.  
On average, infection rates in those 20 counties have been more than three times higher than their states’ overall rates.
At James Madison University in Virginia, which recently sent students home through September amid a surge in cases, the county is averaging a weekly infection rate of nearly 90 cases per 100,000 people, or more than eight times the statewide average.
Health officials fear that surges among college students will spread to more vulnerable people — older ones and those with underlying health problems — and trigger a new wave of cases and hospitalizations. Some worry that colleges could overwhelm hospitals already bracing for increasing cases of COVID-19 and flu this fall and winter.
“There’s this waiting game. Does it stay on college campuses or will it escape?” said Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer at the University of Wisconsin medical center in Madison, where cases among college students have been climbing.  
While universities have emerged as hot spots in nearly every state, many of the worst outbreaks have been scattered across the South and Midwest. Of the 50 college counties analyzed by the AP, James Madison’s had the highest infection rate, followed by counties that are home to the University of Georgia, Florida State and Indiana University in Bloomington.
In the 10 counties with the highest infection rates, colleges have reported at least 15,000 cases among students and employees in recent weeks, though testing and reporting practices vary significantly and the actual number is probably much higher.
For many colleges, the return to campus was a carefully orchestrated process that took months to plan and millions of dollars to pull off. But as safe as they’ve made their campuses, many colleges have struggled to curb off-campus gatherings that have been tied to thousands of infections.
Parties were blamed for dozens of cases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which brought students back in early August only to send them home weeks later.
Other schools have cracked down on parties and disciplined students. The University of Missouri in Columbia announced this week that it expelled two students and suspended three others for violating rules meant to slow the virus’s spread.
The outbreaks are increasingly straining relations between universities and their towns.
Amid a spike in cases at the University of Colorado at Boulder, county health authorities Tuesday urged all students to quarantine for two weeks. Students and others at the university have accounted for 76% of the county’s 663 positive cases over the past two weeks, officials said.
“More stringent and mandatory restrictions will be imposed if students do not comply and break the transmission cycle,” Jeffrey Zayach, executive director of Boulder County Public Health, warned in a letter to students.
In a letter to students, the school’s chancellor, Philip DiStefano, warned that the quarantine will be strictly enforced and that students who violate it could face suspension or other discipline. Already, DiStefano said, more than 400 students face university discipline for violating public health orders.
At Miami University in Ohio, county health authorities ordered all of the school’s athletes to isolate for 14 days last month after 27 tested positive for the virus. Last week, local police cited six men at an off-campus house party that included several students who had recently tested positive.
As cases increase at Boston College and the campus runs out of quarantine space, the mayor of nearby Newton is asking the school not to use any of the town’s hotels or other property to isolate students.  
Some cities have tightened rules at bars to discourage students from gathering. As cases surged at Illinois State, the town’s mayor issued an order requiring all bar customers to be seated to be served. He also limited gatherings near campus to no more than 10 people.
Still, residents and officials in many college towns are rooting for universities to work through outbreaks and avoid campus closings that could further hurt the local economy.
Fred Pryce, who manages a series of stores in a strip mall near Ball State, said sending students home would hurt the area’s businesses “big time.”
“That’s 20,000-plus potential patrons that will vanish,” Pryce said. “There are ways to keep students in Muncie safely while they do their classes.”
Ball State, roughly 60 miles from Indianapolis, has about 22,000 students on a campus of red brick buildings and sleek, modern dorms in Muncie, where the university is the city’s second-largest employer after Ball Memorial Hospital.  
On campus last week, sophomore La’Tricia Williams, wearing a mask, said she was glad to be back instead of sitting on the couch with her laptop at her family’s home, taking online classes.
“But I get that it comes with some risk,” she said. “You can give students a whole bunch of rules for what they should and shouldn’t do while they’re back at the school, but they’re not going to stop doing certain things here or going out into the community.”
Caleb Henry, a Ball State junior who lives off campus, said that he and other students have been frequenting local bars and meeting at friends’ houses but that he and most others are behaving responsibly, with masks and social distancing. He said students are being vilified unfairly.
“Everyone seems to be getting upset at college kids right now, accusing us of spreading the virus and making us out to be these highly infectious creatures that need to be sent home,” Henry said. “What about all the other people around town going to bars … having parties, weddings, whatever? We’re only doing the same things they are.”
As cases mounted at Ball State last month, the school tried to ban students from visiting dorms other than their own, but officials reversed the rule after a backlash from students. Even so, officials say infection rates have started to subside, and the school has no plans to suspend campus instruction.
While some colleges have sent students home amid outbreaks, many others are digging in. Some have moved classes online but urged students to stay where they are until cases drop. Among them is the University of Notre Dame, which paused in-person classes Aug. 18 and moved them online amid a surge that saw as many as 89 new cases per day. Weeks later, after a sharp decrease in infections, classes have started to resume on campus.
Other schools are hoping to replicate that success, including the University of Illinois, the University of Wisconsin and West Virginia University, which recently shifted classes online as the virus spread.
In a recent call with governors, Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, cautioned against sending students home, saying that could spark outbreaks elsewhere.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has also endorsed Notre Dame’s approach, saying colleges that “work through it” and find ways to isolate infected students are more likely to “end up in the best place.”
In a letter to students at Ball State this week, the university president thanked students for helping reduce virus rates. Still, he warned: “This data is not a cause for celebration. Rather, this data is a call for continued action.”
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