USA

(AP) --- The Portland Police Bureau declared an unlawful assembly Saturday night when people gathered outside a police precinct in Oregon’s largest city and threw bottles toward officers, police said.

Until that point, federal, state and local law enforcement had been seemingly absent from the protests Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The demonstrations - that for weeks ended with tear gas, fireworks shot towards buildings, federal agents on the street and injuries to protesters and officers - have recently ended with chanting and conversations.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The vote to renominate President Donald Trump is set to be conducted in private later this month, without members of the press present, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Convention said on Saturday, citing the coronavirus.

However, a Republican National Committee official contradicted that assessment Sunday, emphasizing that no final decisions have been made and that logistics and press coverage options were still being evaluated, The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Eight troops missing after their landing craft sank off the Southern California coast during a training exercise are presumed dead, the Marine Corps announced Sunday.

The Marines said they had called off the search that started late Thursday afternoon when the amphibious assault vehicle sank with 15 Marines and one Navy sailor aboard. Eight Marines were rescued, but one later died and two are in critical condition.

The 26-ton, tank-like craft took on water and quickly sank in hundreds of feet of water — too deep for divers — making it difficult to reach.

VERO BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Bands of heavy rain from Isaias lashed Florida’s east coast Sunday, with the tropical storm strengthening slightly and forecast to be near hurricane strength by the time it reaches the Carolinas.

Officials dealing with surging cases of the coronavirus in Florida kept a close watch on the storm that was weakened from a hurricane to a tropical storm Saturday afternoon, but still brought heavy rain and flooding to Florida’s Atlantic coast.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Two NASA astronauts returned to Earth on Sunday in a dramatic, retro-style splashdown, their capsule parachuting into the Gulf of Mexico to close out an unprecedented test flight by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.

It was the first splashdown by U.S. astronauts in 45 years, with the first commercially built and operated spacecraft to carry people to and from orbit. The return clears the way for another SpaceX crew launch as early as next month and possible tourist flights next year.

NEW YORK (AP) — Microsoft confirmed Sunday it is in talks with Chinese company ByteDance to acquire the U.S. arm of its popular video app TikTok and has discussed with President Donald Trump his concerns about security and censorship surrounding such an acquisition.

In a statement, Microsoft said Microsoft and ByteDance have provided notice of their intent to explore a deal resulting in Microsoft owning and operating the TikTok service in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The company said it expects those talks to conclude by Sept. 15.

(AP) --- Who gets to be first in line for a COVID-19 vaccine? U.S. health authorities hope by late next month to have some draft guidance on how to ration initial doses, but it’s a vexing decision.

“Not everybody’s going to like the answer,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, recently told one of the advisory groups the government asked to help decide. “There will be many people who feel that they should have been at the top of the list.”

NEW YORK, Aug 01 (APP): The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a US-based independent watchdog body, on Saturday called on India to immediately release Qazi Shibli, editor of The Kashmiriyat, a news website based in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, from custody. Shibli was detained at the Shergarh police station in Srinagar on Friday after questioning by the police’s cybercrime division, according to news reports and a member of Shibli’s family who spoke to CPJ, a press release said.

NEW YORK, Aug 2 (APP): Pakistan, where coronavirus was spreading out of control some two months ago, has “dramatically reversed course, recording a sharp decline in coronavirus cases and deaths, which are both down more than 80% from their peaks,” a prominent American Newspaper reported Sunday.

WASHINGTON, August 2. /TASS/: The US Republican Party is intending to hold its national convention, scheduled for August 21-24 in North Carolina’s Charlotte, as an event closed to the press for the first time in its history. The decision comes amid the coronavirus pandemic, the convention’s press service said Saturday.