COLU @ CONCEPTS

WASHINGTON (AP) — Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Saturday he will delay consideration of health care legislation in the Senate, after Sen. John McCain’s announced absence following surgery left Republicans short of votes on their marquee legislation. McConnell’s announcement amounted to another setback for GOP efforts, promoted by President Donald Trump, to repeal and replace “Obamacare” after years of promises. McConnell issued his statement not long after McCain’s office disclosed that he had undergone surgery to remove a blood clot from above his left eye, and had been advised by his doctors to stay in Arizona next week to recover. With McConnell’s health care legislation already hanging by a thread in the Senate with no votes to spare, McCain’s absence meant it would become impossible for the majority leader to round up the votes needed to move forward with the bill next week as planned. “While John is recovering, the Senate will continue our work on legislative i...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Forty-eight years after he landed on the moon, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin on Saturday rolled out a red carpet for the red planet at a star-studded gala at the Kennedy Space Center. Aldrin, 87, commemorated the upcoming anniversary of the 1969 mission to the moon under a historic Saturn V rocket and raised more than $190,000 for his nonprofit space education foundation,  ShareSpace Foundation  . Aldrin believes people will be able to land on Mars by 2040, a goal that NASA shares. The space agency is developing the  Space Launch System  and the  Orion  spacecraft to send Americans to deep space. Apollo astronauts Walt Cunningham, Michael Collins and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt joined Aldrin, one of 12 people to walk on the moon, at the sold-out fundraiser. “I like to think of myself as an innovative futurist,” Aldrin told a crowd of nearly 400 people in the Apollo/Saturn V Center. “The programs we have right now are eat...

y   DETROIT (AP) — Deborah Chenault Green is 62, a writer. But 50 years ago she was a pre-teen, sleeping on the porch to escape the oppressive heat, awakening to see a sky that glowed unnaturally. Azerine Jones is a retired baker. But in 1967 she was the 12-year-old daughter of a barber who watched his business go up in smoke. Gerard Townsend is 66 now, living in a seniors building near the Detroit waterfront. But a half century ago, he was just a kid on a city bus. The bus stopped near 12th and Clairmount streets. Townsend stepped off — and into the very start of the Detroit riot. This photo shows Girard Townsend in Detroit. (AP Photo/Corey Williams) “I saw all these guys with masks and shields,” he said — city police officers, most of them white, far outnumbered by a seething black crowd. In the days that followed, he would witness — and take part in — an epic eruption of violence that still reverberates in his life and the life of this city. Five d...

HONOLULU (AP) — As smoke filled his 26th-floor apartment in Honolulu, a Hawaiian Airlines manager made one final telephone call to his brother, the brother says, before both the man and his mother were killed in the blaze. Pearl City Community Church Pastor Phil Reller told The Honolulu Star-Advertiser ( http://bit.ly/2tXsf7e)  that police confirmed that two of the three victims killed in the blaze Friday are his mother and brother. A resident who lives in the Honolulu high-rise that was hit by a deadly fire said it was “like a horror movie. except it wasn’t a horror movie. It was for real.” (July 15) Reller told the newspaper he received a call from his brother, Britt Reller, 54, saying he had been taking a shower when he smelled the smoke. He rushed out but was unable to get to their 85-year-old mother, Melba Jeannine Dilley. He had crawled under a bed and wasn’t heard from again, his brother told the newspaper. Britt Reller had worked as an in-flight manager f...

ISTANBUL (AP) — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to “rip the heads off” of terror groups and coup-plotters who tried to end his more than decade-long rule on Saturday, as Turkey marked the anniversary of the country’s crushed military coup with a series of rallies and other commemorative events. Accompanied by his family and the families of the victims of the coup, Erdogan joined a massive, flag-waving crowd near the iconic July 15 Martyrs’ Bridge in Istanbul to remember 250 people who died on July 15, 2016 resisting the coup. Tens of thousands joined a national unity march in Istanbul on Saturday, converging at the iconic July 15 Martyrs’ Bridge to mark the anniversary of the failed military coup attempt that 250 people died resisting. (July 15) He inaugurated a hollow, globe-shaped monument featuring the names of the victims near the foot of the bridge, before flying to Ankara to attend a special session in parliament at the exact moment it was bombed a year ago....

LONDON (AP) — British police have charged a teenager with a spate of London acid attacks, as authorities considered whether tougher sentences would curb a spike in assaults with corrosive liquids. The Metropolitan Police force said late Saturday that a 16-year-old boy faces 15 charges, including grievous bodily harm. The boy, who can’t be named because of his age, was arrested after five moped riders were sprayed with a corrosive substance during a 90-minute period last week. One man was left with life-changing injuries, police said. At least two of those attacked were drivers for food delivery services Deliveroo and UberEATS. A 15-year-old boy who was also arrested has been released on bail. Police say the number of reported attacks with corrosive liquids in London rose from 261 in 2015 to 454 in 2016. Some appear related to gang activity or the theft of cars and motorbikes. Amid mounting public concern, the British government said it is considering increasing sentences...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s opposition called for a massive turnout Sunday in a symbolic rejection of President Nicolas Maduro’s plan to rewrite the constitution, a proposal that’s escalating tensions in a nation stricken by widespread shortages and more than 100 days of anti-government protests. Maduro has called a July 30 vote to elect members of a special assembly to retool Venezuela’s 1999 constitution. The opposition says the vote is structured to pack the constitutional assembly with government supporters and allow Maduro to eliminate the few remaining checks on his power, creating a Cuba-style system dominated by his socialist party. Maduro and the military dominate most state institutions but the opposition controls the congress and holds three of 23 governorships. The country’s chief prosecutor has recently broken with the ruling party. “This fraudulent constitutional assembly will create a majority that will shut congress, throw democracy out the window, ...

JERUSALEM (AP) — Hundreds of Muslim worshippers visited a Jerusalem holy site Sunday after Israel reopened the compound following a rare closure in response to a deadly shooting last week that raised concerns about wider unrest. For the first time in decades, Israel closed the site — known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount — on Friday after three Arab citizens of Israel opened fire from the sacred site with automatic weapons, killing two police officers. The three were later shot dead inside the compound. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that following consultations with security officials the site would be reopened Sunday afternoon with increased security measures that included metal detectors at the entrance gates and additional security cameras. At midday, Israeli police opened two of the gates to the compound to allow worshippers to enter through the newly erected detectors. Police said some worshippers refused to go through them a...

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron says his glamorous Paris charm offensive on Donald Trump was carefully calculated — and may have changed the U.S. president’s mind about climate change. Macron defended his outreach to Trump, whose “America first” policies have elicited worry and disdain in Europe. “Our countries are friends, so we should be too,” Macron said in an interview Sunday in the Journal du dimanche newspaper. After a tense, white-knuckle handshake at their first meeting in May, Macron said they gained “better, intimate knowledge of each other” during Trump’s visit to Paris last week. On their main point of contention — Trump’s withdrawal from the landmark Paris climate agreement — Macron is quoted as saying that “Donald Trump listened to me. He understood the reason for my position, notably the link between climate change and terrorism.” Increasing droughts and other extreme weather blamed on man-made climate change are worsening migration crises an...

NEW YORK (AP) — House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley hesitated when asked about his party’s core message to voters. “That message is being worked on,” the New York congressman said in an interview this past week. “We’re doing everything we can to simplify it, but at the same time provide the meat behind it as well. So that’s coming together now.” The admission from the No. 4 House Democrat — that his party lacks a clear, core message even amid Republican disarray — highlights the Democrats’ dilemma eight months after President Donald Trump and the GOP dominated last fall’s elections, in part, because Democrats lacked a consistent message. The soul-searching comes as Democrats look to flip at least 24 GOP-held seats necessary for a House majority and cut into Republican advantages in U.S. statehouses in the 2018 midterm elections. Yet with a Russia scandal engulfing the White House, a historically unpopular health-care plan wrenching Capitol Hill and no major GOP legi...