Archives for March 2021

BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo (AP) — The leading opposition presidential candidate in Republic of Congo was receiving oxygen at a private hospital after being diagnosed with COVID-19, a family member said, casting Sunday’s election into doubt on the eve of the vote.

The election’s outcome was already all but certain even before confirmation of Guy Brice Parfait Kolelas’ illness. President Denis Sassou N’Guesso has been in power for more than 36 years, last winning 60% of the vote in 2016. But the Central African country’s constitution stipulates that an election can be delayed if a candidate dies or is unable to participate in the vote.

Kolelas, the president’s leading opponent, skipped his final campaign event on Friday after telling some reporters a day earlier that he feared he had malaria. A relative who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter said plans were under way for Kolelas to be evacuated abroad for further treatment.

The 61-year-old is diabetic and at higher risk of complications from COVID-19. A video circulating on social media dated Friday showed Kolelas wearing an oxygen mask and with a blood pressure cuff on his arm as he lay in a hospital bed.

“My dear compatriots, I am in trouble. I am fighting death,” the candidate says in a weak-sounding voice after removing his oxygen mask. “However, I ask you to stand up and vote for change. I would not have fought for nothing.”

A campaign spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the video and Kolelas’ hospitalization. Two people at the hospital who had seen Kolelas’ test results confirmed to the AP late Saturday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.

There was no immediate reaction to the developments from the government late Saturday.

Kolelas placed second to Sassou N’Guesso in the country’s 2016 presidential election with about 15% of the vote. The opposition figure has been particularly critical of the incumbent leader in recent days, declaring that Republic of Congo had become “a police state.”

Sassou N’Guesso is the third-longest serving president in Africa, ruling from 1979-1992 and then again since 1997 in this nation often overshadowed by its vast neighbor Congo.

Republic of Congo has had fewer than 10,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, with 134 confirmed deaths.

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Associated Press writer Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal contributed.

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UConn and Baylor didn’t get to play their scheduled game in January because Lady Bear’s coach Kim Mulkey came down with COVID-19.

They have a chance to meet again if both top seeds advance in the NCAA Tournament’s River Walk regional. But UConn must first win at least a of couple games without coach Geno Auriemma, who begins the tournament isolating at home after he too became infected with the coronavirus.

The Hall of Famer said having no control over what happens on the court 1,950 miles away will make it hard for him to watch.

“I might need to hide down in the basement and have somebody come down and give me the update,” he said.

Associate head coach Chris Dailey, who is 10-0 filling in for Auriemma, will lead the Huskies. Connecticut is seeking a record 12th NCAA title and the Huskies first hurdle will be getting past High Point (22-6) in the first round on Sunday.

Dailey, who was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018, said she doesn’t expect Auriemma’s absence will have much impact on how the Huskies play.

“This preparation didn’t start Monday or Tuesday,” she said. “This preparation started in September. So what we’ve done well and what we’ve gotten better at all year will be part of what we do against High Point. And what we’ve not been good at all year will probably be evident, or hopefully less evident against High Point.”

Their opponents are not coming in scared.

“It’s kind of cool,” High Point coach Chelsea Banbury said. “We get to play against some of the best players in the country. Let’s go out, let’s have some fun.”

Baylor , which opens with Jackson State, is working toward a fourth title and is technically the defending champion, having won the 2019 tournament.

Mulkey said her team is playing in part for the four seniors she had last year who were not able to defend their title after COVID-19 shut everything down.

“It was pulled out from under ‘em,” she said. “They never got a chance to get back to a Final Four. So, I want our players not to look back to that, but to always remember that could have been them. So play the game as if tomorrow’s not promised.”

Some other things to keep an eye on in the River Walk region:

TENNESSEE RIVALRY

The ties are deep between the Tennessee Lady Vols (16-7) and Middle Tennessee Lady Raiders (17-7), who meet Sunday afternoon.

Tennessee coach Kellie Harper played point guard for MTSU coach Rick Insell’s AAU teams.

Then there’s junior guard Anastasia Hayes, the Conference USA Player of the Year. The 2017 McDonald’s All-American got her start at Tennessee before being dismissed in August 2018. Hayes wound up back home at MTSU playing with her sister Aislynn,

“I’m just so blessed and honored that she’s even gets to play with me, and we play great together,” Anastasia Hayes said. “I know if I tell Aislynn, ’Make a shot,’ she’s going to make a shot. And we have that chemistry that nobody else can ever have.”

Hayes says she doesn’t really talk to any of the Lady Vols, but she’s given her coaches a bit of a scouting report on the Tennessee players she knows.

STAR POWER.

The River Walk region is loaded with some of the top individual talent in women’s college basketball, including three AP first-team All Americans and five of the nation’s top seven scorers.

UConn freshman sensation Paige Bueckers (19.7 points, 6.1 assists per game), Baylor’s NaLyssa Smith (18.1 points, 9.1 rebounds) and Kentucky’s Rhyne Howard (20.7 points, 7.3 rebounds) are all legitimate national player of the year candidates.

They are joined by the nation’s leading scorer in Iowa freshman Caitlin Clark (26.7 points per game), the No. 2 scorer in MTSU’s Anastasia Hayes (26.5), Big Ten player of the year Naz Hillmon (25.1) from Michigan, Florida Gulf Coast’s Kierstan Bell (24.3) and Central Michigan’s Micaela Kelly (23.9).

Iowa’s Clark takes on Central Michigan’s Kelly and Michigan’s Hillmon faces FGCU’s Bell in the first round. Potential second-round matchups include Clark and Kentucky’s Howard.

“It’s a very humbling experience to me, because I know so many people who are also tagged to that list, a lot of them who I played USA basketball with,” Hillmon said. To be mentioned with all of those people is something that you don’t necessarily always put yourself in that place. You think about it, but you don’t always think that it will come true.”

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AP Sports Writer Teresa Walker contributed to this story

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More AP women’s basketball: https://apnews.com/Womenscollegebasketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25

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ATLANTA (AP) — The murder case against a white man charged with shooting and killing six women of Asian descent and two other people at Atlanta-area massage businesses this week could become the first big test for Georgia’s new hate crimes law.

Robert Aaron Long, 21, told police that the attacks Tuesday at two spas in Atlanta and another massage business near suburban Woodstock were not racially motivated and claimed to have a sex addiction. Authorities said he apparently lashed out at what he saw as sources of temptation but were still investigating his motive.

Because most of the victims were women of Asian descent, there’s skepticism of that explanation and public clamoring for hate crime charges, especially among the Asian American community, which has faced rising numbers of attacks since the coronavirus pandemic took hold.

But, like many states, the Georgia law enacted last summer does not provide for a standalone hate crime, instead allowing an additional penalty when a person is convicted of another crime.

“It’s not something you get arrested for. It’s a sentence enhancer,” said Pete Skandalakis, a former prosecutor and executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia.

The law says an additional penalty can be applied for certain crimes if they are motivated by a victim’s race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender, or mental or physical disability. Even before the law passed amid the national reckoning over racial injustice, the pandemic had largely paused court cases, so Skandalakis said he doesn’t believe the rule has been used yet.

A hate crime charge can be included in an indictment or added at some point before trial. If a jury convicts the defendant of the underlying crime, prosecutors can present evidence for a hate crime sentencing enhancement. Defense attorneys can present their own evidence, and the jury deliberates again. If jurors find it’s a hate crime, there is a mandatory enhancement of at least two years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000 for a felony.

The federal government and some other states go further with laws that criminalize bias-motivated violence without requiring a conviction on an underlying crime.

The U.S. Department of Justice could choose to bring federal hate crime charges independently of the state prosecutions. Federal investigators have not yet uncovered evidence to prove Long targeted the victims because of their race, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press. The officials had direct knowledge of the investigation but were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

In Georgia, the minimum sentence for murder is life in prison, with or without the possibility of parole after 30 years. Prosecutors also can seek the death penalty if the killing meets certain requirements.

Long has been charged with eight counts of murder, and it will be up to Cherokee County District Attorney Shannon Wallace and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to decide whether to pursue the hate crime enhancement.

Wallace said in a statement that she can’t answer specific questions about the case but that she is “acutely aware of the feelings of terror being experienced in the Asian-American community.” A representative for Willis did not respond to requests for comment.

Given that someone convicted of multiple murders is unlikely to be released from prison, an argument could be made that it’s not worth the effort, time and expense to pursue a hate crime designation that carries a relatively small additional penalty.

But Republican state Rep. Chuck Efstration, who sponsored the legislation, said it’s not just about the punishment.

“It is important that the law calls things what they are,” he said. “It’s important for victims, and it’s important for society.”

And the law needs to be used to give it teeth, said state Sen. Michelle Au, a Democrat who is Chinese American.

Au believes there has been some resistance nationwide to charge attacks against Asian Americans as hate crimes because they are seen as “model minorities,” a stereotype that they are hard-working, educated and free of societal problems. She said she heard from many constituents in the last year that Asian Americans — and people of Chinese descent in particular — were suffering from bias because the coronavirus had emerged in China and then-President Donald Trump used racial terms to describe it.

“People feel like they’re getting gaslighted because they see it happen every day,” she said. “They feel very clearly that it is racially motivated, but it’s not pegged or labeled that way. And people feel frustrated by that lack of visibility and that aspect being ignored.”

In addition to sending a message to the community, it’s important for the new law to be used for legal reasons, Georgia State University law professor Tanya Washington said. While police have said it’s too soon to tell whether the spa shootings qualify as a hate crime, she said it seems obvious the violence was motivated by bias given the people and businesses targeted.

“Unless we test it with cases like this one, we won’t have a body of law around how do you prove bias motivated the behavior,” she said.

The Georgia law also mandates collecting and reporting data on hate crimes investigated by law enforcement, which allows tracking and proper allocation of resources, Washington said.

While many of the calls for a hate crime charge have focused on race, J. Tom Morgan, a former district attorney in Georgia, said it appears the victims’ gender motivated the shootings.

“This, to me, is a sex crime hate crime where the victims happen to be Asian,” he said.

Georgia was one of only four states without a hate crimes law when lawmakers quickly passed it last year following the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man pursued by armed white men last year, and national protests against racial injustice and police brutality.

Georgia’s Supreme Court had overturned an earlier hate crimes statute in 2004, saying it was too broad.

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Associated Press writers Jeff Amy in Atlanta and Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed reporting.

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ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has tested positive for the coronavirus two days after he received his first vaccine dose, officials announced Saturday.

Dr. Faisal Sultan, Khan’s special assistant on health, said the prime minister has quarantined himself at his private home on a hilltop in an Islamabad suburb. The government tweeted a statement from Sultan saying the vaccine had not been effective because Khan had received it so recently, and it was only the first of two required doses.

There has been a spike in COVID-19 cases in the capital and in eastern and northern Pakistan, where authorities on Saturday reported daily totals of 42 new deaths and 3,876 new coronavirus infections. Overall, the virus has killed close to 14,000 people in Pakistan and infected more than 623,000.

The positivity rate in Pakistan has jumped to over 8%, prompting government officials to say people could face a lockdown-like situation if violations of social distancing guidelines continued.

Since February, Pakistan has been using a coronavirus vaccine donated by neighboring China. Health workers have been vaccinated and now older people are receiving the jab.

Media reports say a private Pakistani pharmaceutical company has imported 50,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, but it was unclear at what price the vaccine will be available to people.

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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — David McCormack gave third-seeded Kansas a spark when the big man returned from his COVID-19 quarantine in time to practice for its NCAA Tournament opener.

When the first round game against Eastern Washington began, McCormack gave the Jayhawks much more than a boost of energy.

Put on the ropes early by Tanner Groves and the Big Sky champs, McCormack responded by piling up 22 points and nine rebounds in 25 minutes of work to help slow-starting Kansas rally from a 10-point second-half deficit and beat the No. 14 seed Eagles 93-84 on Saturday to advance to the second round.

“David brought us energy from the time he arrived yesterday,” said Marcus Garrett, one of his closest friends, who fought through foul trouble to add 20 points. “He was just happy to be with us, happy to be back on the court.”

Ochai Agbaji contributed 21 points, Dajuan Harris Jr. scored 13 and Christian Braun overcame a poor shooting day to score 12 as the Jayhawks (21-8) survived the scare to play sixth-seeded Southern California for a spot in the Sweet 16.

Kansas has now won 14 consecutive first-round games in the NCAA Tournament.

“We told our guys you have to play well so your teammates get a chance to experience this,” said Kansas coach Bill Self, whose team is still missing Jalen Wilson and Tristan Enaruna due to COVID-19.

“We didn’t talk about what we did not have, we talked about what we had, that we had to play well, and what we had was enough.”

Tanner Groves scored a career-high 35 points and younger brother Jacob Groves had 23 for the Eagles (16-8), whose third trip to the NCAA Tournament ended just as quickly as the first two — though not without putting up a fight.

The aptly named “Groves Bros” got Eastern Washington off to a flying start. The pair of All-Big Sky forwards combined to score the first nine points of the game and forced Jayhawks coach Bill Self to burn through early timeouts.

Kansas settled down and put together a 17-5 run and suddenly looked again like the big boys out of the Big 12. But Shantay Legans’ motley crew of underrated and overlooked sharp-shooters finished the half on a 24-10 charge.

The Groves kids were at it again. They combined for 3-pointers on three straight trips down floor, then Tyler Robertson added a fourth from the top of the key to give Eastern Washington a 46-38 lead headed into the locker room.

“I just thought Tanner had the advantage all game long and he came up big for us,” Legans said. “He came up aces.”

Compounding problems for Kansas: Garrett, one of the nation’s best defenders, picked up his third foul before the break.

Self turned to McCormack to bail the Jayhawks out. Even though he was only expected to play about 10 minutes a half after his bout with COVID-19, the big guy went to work in the paint as if he hadn’t missed a day. He scored their first eight points of the second half, trying to keep Kansas alive until his teammates could find their shots.

They finally did midway through the second half.

Still trailing 63-59, Agbaji threw down a dunk in transition to begin a game-changing 14-3 run. Seldom-used Harris drained back-to-back 3-pointers, McCormack added back-to-back buckets inside, and Garrett — who is hardly known for his outside shooting — hit the first of his three second-half 3s as the Jayhawks took a 73-66 lead.

McCormack, who tested positive for the coronavirus before last week’s Big 12 Tournament, continued to score in the post down the stretch, helping the Jayhawks avoid the same fate that befell top-four seed Ohio State and Purdue on Friday.

“We came up short but that’s alright. I’m just really happy with the performance our team put together,” Tanner Groves said. “It feels really cool that we were able to keep it really close with Kansas — make it a game, give them a little scare.”

BIG PICTURE

Eastern Washington followed the recipe for an upset perfectly: It shot 50% from the field, hit 10 3-pointers, protected the ball and battled the Jayhawks to a standstill on the glass. But the Eagles’ defense let them down in the second half, when Kansas began getting open looks and knocking them down.

Kansas could get Wilson back for the next round, though the timing will be tight. The Jayhawks’ leading rebounder is due to finish his quarantine period on Sunday, meaning he would not get to practice before their next game. Enaruna would not be cleared to return until the middle of next week.

UP NEXT

The Jayhawks will face the Trojans on Monday for a spot in the West Region semifinal game.

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More AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/College-basketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25 and https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket

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