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

Trump renews Afghan war commitment, sees no speedy exit

WASHINGTON (AP) — Reversing his past calls for a speedy exit, President Donald Trump renewed the United States’ commitment Monday to the 16-year-old war in Afghanistan, declaring that U.S. troops must “fight to win.” He pointedly declined to disclose how many more troops might be sent to wage America’s longest war.

In a prime-time address to unveil his new Afghanistan strategy, Trump said the U.S. would shift away from a “time-based” approach, instead linking its assistance to results and to co-operation from the beleaguered Afghan government, Pakistan and others. He insisted it would be a “regional” strategy that addressed the role played by other South Asian nations — especially Pakistan and its tolerance of the Taliban.

“America will work with the Afghan government as long as we see determination and progress,” Trump said. “However, our commitment is not unlimited, and our support is not a blank check.”

Still, Trump offered few details about how progress would be measured. Nor did he explain how his approach would differ substantively from what two presidents before him tried unsuccessfully over the past 16 years.

Although Trump insisted he would “not talk about numbers of troops” or telegraph military moves in advance, he hinted that he’d embraced the Pentagon’s proposal to boost troop numbers by nearly 4,000, augmenting the roughly 8,400 Americans there now.

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Analysis: Trump will own the war that bedeviled predecessors

WASHINGTON (AP) — Before he became president, Donald Trump rarely talked about Afghanistan. When he did, he often called for a swift end to America’s longest war.

But on Monday, Trump announced to the nation that the war will press on, with no clear end in sight. His prime-time address cemented his standing as the third American president to oversee a conflict that has vexed Republicans and Democrats alike.

He declared: “In the end, we will win.”

Trump’s plans, while vague at times, amount to a victory for the military men increasingly filling Trump’s inner circle and a stinging defeat for the nationalist supporters who saw in Trump a like-minded skeptic of U.S. intervention in long and costly overseas conflicts. Chief among them is ousted adviser Steve Bannon, whose website Breitbart News blared criticism Monday of the establishment’s approach to running he war.

“What Does Victory in Afghanistan Look Like? Washington Doesn’t Know,” read one headline.

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10 Things to Know for Tuesday

Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Tuesday:

1. NO EASY ANSWERS IN AFGHANISTAN

Trump faces many of the same challenges in the country that have bedeviled his predecessors and left some U.S. officials deeply uncertain about whether victory is possible.

2. WHAT HELD MILLIONS OF AMERICANS SPELLBOUND

The moon blots out the sun in a midday total solar eclipse, turning daylight to twilight in a broad arc across the U.S.

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‘A primal experience’: Americans dazzled by solar eclipse

The stars came out in the middle of the day, zoo animals ran in agitated circles, crickets chirped, birds fell silent and a chilly darkness settled upon the land Monday as the U.S. witnessed its first full-blown, coast-to-coast solar eclipse since World War I.

Millions of Americans gazed in wonder at the cosmic spectacle, with the best seats along the so-called path of totality that raced 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometres) across the continent from Oregon to South Carolina.

“It was a very primal experience,” Julie Vigeland, of Portland, Oregon, said after she was moved to tears by the sight of the sun reduced to a silvery ring of light in Salem.

It took 90 minutes for the shadow of the moon to travel across the country. Along that path, the moon blotted out the midday sun for about two wondrous minutes at any one place, eliciting oohs, aahs, whoops and shouts from people gathered in stadiums, parks and backyards.

It was, by all accounts, the most-observed and most-photographed eclipse in history, documented by satellites and high-altitude balloons and watched on Earth through telescopes, cameras and cardboard-frame protective eyeglasses.

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On Afghanistan’s front lines, US commanders await more men

TACTICAL BASE GAMBERI, Afghanistan (AP) — Deep in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, on the front lines against Taliban and Islamic State fighters, U.S. military commanders say they needs more forces to better train Afghan soldiers to combat the escalating threat. President Donald Trump declared Monday he’d augment troop levels, but wouldn’t say by how much.

At Tactical Base Gamberi, the Americans helping Afghan army units try to quell the insurgent stronghold of Nangarhar province want to put more advisory teams into the field. They believe expanding the training can make the Afghans more capable of taking on the enemy alone.

“We need guardian angels,” said Lt. Col. John Sandor, deputy senior adviser for the Afghan Army’s 201st Corps, referring to security forces that would protect U.S. training teams so they can work alongside Afghan brigades.

Senior military officials have been discussing such deficiencies for months. In February, the top U.S. commander in the country told Congress he needs “a few thousand” more troops. The Pentagon has asked for Trump’s approval of a nearly 4,000 troop increase as part of the broader new strategy.

Trump already had given military leaders greater authority to manage America’s military efforts. But his new Afghan strategy had been held up for months amid a contentious review process that has included the president publicly voicing his dissatisfaction with the options.

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NKorea issues trademark fiery rhetoric over US-SKorea drills

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea’s military on Tuesday greeted the start of annual U.S.-South Korean military drills with its standard fiery threats, vowing “merciless retaliation” for exercises Pyongyang claims are an invasion rehearsal.

North Korea routinely issues such warlike rhetoric or conducts weapons tests to respond to the U.S.-South Korean exercises. Tuesday’s threat came as top U.S. generals, including Adm. Harry Harris, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, visited South Korea. Ties between the Koreas are almost always fraught, but anxiety is higher than normal following weeks of tit-for-tat threats between President Donald Trump and Pyongyang in the wake of the North’s two intercontinental ballistic missile tests last month.

The U.S. generals were to travel to the site of a contentious U.S. missile-defence system in South Korea later Tuesday.

The North’s military statement said it will launch an unspecified “merciless retaliation and unsparing punishment” on the United States over the Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills that began Monday for an 11-day run.

Despite the threat, an unprompted direct attack is extremely unlikely because the United States vastly outguns Pyongyang, which values the continuation of its dictatorship above all else. Impoverished North Korea hates the drills in part because they force it to respond with expensive military measures of its own.

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Search underway for missing sailors; Navy chief orders probe

SINGAPORE (AP) — The U.S. Navy ordered a broad investigation into the performance and readiness of the Pacific-based 7th Fleet after the USS John S. McCain collided with an oil tanker in Southeast Asia, leaving 10 U.S. sailors missing and five injured.

It was the second major collision in two months involving the 7th Fleet. Seven sailors died in June when the USS Fitzgerald and a container ship collided in waters off Japan.

Vessels and aircraft from the U.S., Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia were searching for the missing sailors. Four other sailors were evacuated by a Singaporean navy helicopter to a hospital in the city-state for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries, the Navy said. A fifth was taken to the hospital by ambulance after the destroyer arrived in Singapore under its own power, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore said.

“It is the second such incident in a very short period of time — inside of three months — and very similar as well,” Navy Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, told reporters at the Pentagon. “It is the last of a series of incidents in the Pacific fleet in particular and that gives great cause for concern that there is something out there we are not getting at.”

Richardson ordered a pause in operations for the next couple of days to allow fleet commanders to get together with leaders, sailors and command officials and identify any immediate steps that need to be taken to ensure safety.

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Anger over rally violence boils over in Charlottesville

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Anger boiled over at the first Charlottesville City Council meeting since a white nationalist rally in the city descended into violent chaos, with some residents screaming and cursing at councillors Monday night and calling for their resignations.

Scores of people packed the council’s chambers, and The Daily Progress reported Mayor Mike Signer was interrupted by shouting several times in the first few minutes of the meeting. As tensions escalated, the meeting was halted. Live video showed protesters standing on a dais with a sign that said, “Blood on your hands.”

After talking with members of the crowd, Councilor Wes Bellamy said the council would drop its agenda and focus on the crowd’s concerns, the newspaper reported.

Speakers, some yelling and hurling profanities, then took turns addressing the council, some expressing frustration that leaders had granted a permit for the Aug. 12 rally that had turned violent. Others criticized the police response to the event, which drew hundreds of white nationalists and other counter-protesters.

The two sides clashed violently in the street that day, largely uninterrupted by authorities, until the event was declared an unlawful assembly and the crowd was forced to disperse. Later, a car rammed into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 others. The death toll for the day climbed to three when a helicopter that had been monitoring the event and assisting with the governor’s motorcade crashed, killing two state troopers.

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Police: Fugitive’s death ‘breaks’ cell behind Spain attacks

SUBIRATS, Spain (AP) — The lone fugitive from the Spanish cell that killed 15 people in and near Barcelona was shot to death Monday after he flashed what turned out to be a fake suicide belt at two troopers who confronted him in a vineyard not far from the city he terrorized, authorities said.

Police said they had “scientific evidence” that Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, drove the van that barrelled through Barcelona’s crowded Las Ramblas promenade, killing 13 people on Thursday, then hijacked a car and fatally stabbed its driver while making his getaway.

Abouyaaqoub’s brother and friends made up the rest of the 12-man extremist cell, along with an imam who was one of two people killed in what police said was a botched bomb-making operation.

After four days on the run, Abouyaaqoub was spotted outside a train station west of Barcelona on Monday afternoon. A second witness told police she was certain she had seen the man whose photo has gone around the world as part of an international manhunt.

Two officers found him hiding in a nearby vineyard and asked for his identification, according to the head of the Catalan police. He was shot to death when he opened his shirt to reveal what looked to be explosives and cried out “Allah is great” in Arabic, regional police chief Josep Luis Trapero said.

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Record $417M award in lawsuit linking baby powder to cancer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Los Angeles jury on Monday ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay a record $417 million to a hospitalized woman who claimed in a lawsuit that the talc in the company’s iconic baby powder causes ovarian cancer when applied regularly for feminine hygiene.

The verdict in the lawsuit brought by the California woman, Eva Echeverria, marks the largest sum awarded in a series of talcum powder lawsuit verdicts against Johnson & Johnson in courts around the U.S.

Echeverria alleged Johnson & Johnson failed to adequately warn consumers about talcum powder’s potential cancer risks. She used the company’s baby powder on a daily basis beginning in the 1950s until 2016 and was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2007, according to court papers.

Echeverria developed ovarian cancer as a “proximate result of the unreasonably dangerous and defective nature of talcum powder,” she said in her lawsuit.

Echeverria’s attorney, Mark Robinson, said his client is undergoing cancer treatment while hospitalized and told him she hoped the verdict would lead Johnson & Johnson to put additional warnings on its products.

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