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

FBI contacts Kavanaugh Yale classmate in its investigation

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI has contacted Deborah Ramirez, who’s accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct when he was a Yale student, as part of the bureau’s investigation of the Supreme Court nominee, her attorney said Saturday.

Ramirez’s lawyer, John Clune, said agents want to interview her and she has agreed to co-operate. Ramirez has said Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party in the early 1980s when they were Yale students.

President Donald Trump ordered the FBI on Friday to reopen Kavanaugh’s background investigation after several women accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations.

Senate leaders agreed to delay a final vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination to allow for a one-week FBI investigation. The Senate Judiciary Committee has said the probe should be limited to “current credible allegations” against Kavanaugh and be finished by next Friday.

Leaving the hearing Friday, Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said it was his understanding there would be an FBI investigation of “the outstanding allegations, the three of them,” but Republicans have not said whether that was their understanding as well.

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Trump urges supporters to vote in wake of Kavanaugh hearing

WHEELING, W.Va. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Saturday turned his embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh into a rallying cry for Republicans to vote in November, saying they can help reject the “ruthless and outrageous tactics” he says Democrats used against the judge.

“We see this horrible, horrible, radical group of Democrats. You see what’s happening right now,” Trump said at a rally with thousands of supporters in West Virginia. Trump won the state in 2016 by 42 percentage points and remains popular there.

“And they’re determined to take back power by any means necessary. You see the meanness, the nastiness. They don’t care who they hurt, who they have to run over to get power,” he said.

“We’re not going to give it to them,” Trump said.

Kavanaugh, the federal appeals judge Trump nominated to the nation’s highest court, appeared headed for confirmation until California professor Christine Blasey Ford accused him of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers in Maryland in the 1980s. Kavanaugh denied her accusations and those of two other women since have accused him of sexual misconduct.

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Republicans fear political fallout from Kavanaugh turmoil

NEW YORK (AP) — Whether or not Republicans ultimately confirm President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, some on the front lines of the GOP’s midterm battlefield fear the party may have already lost.

In the days after a divided nation watched Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser Christine Blasey Ford deliver conflicting stories about what happened when they were teenagers, Republican campaign operatives acknowledged this is not the fight they wanted six weeks before Election Day.

Should they give Kavanaugh a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court after Ford’s powerful testimony about sexual assault, Republicans risk enraging the women they need to preserve their House majority. Vote him down, they risk enraging the party’s defiant political base.

In swing state New Hampshire, former Republican Party chair Jennifer Horn said Republicans are “grossly underestimating the damage that would be done” at the ballot box in the short and long term should they confirm Kavanaugh.

Horn, a lifelong Republican and frequent Trump critic, described Ford as “the most credible person I have ever seen publicly talk about this.” One young friend of Horn’s family was so inspired by the testimony that she revealed her own painful experience with sexual assault on social media for the first time Thursday.

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Musk out as Tesla chair, remains CEO in $40M SEC settlement

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk have agreed to pay a total of $40 million and make a series of concessions to settle a government lawsuit alleging Musk duped investors with misleading statements about a proposed buyout of the company.

The settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission allows Musk to remain CEO of the electric car company but requires him to relinquish his role as chairman for at least three years.

Tesla must hire an independent chairman to oversee the company, something that should please a number of shareholders who have criticized Tesla’s board for being too beholden to Musk.

The deal was announced Saturday, just two days after SEC filed its case seeking to oust Musk as CEO.

Musk, who has an estimated $20 billion fortune, and Tesla, a company that ended June with $2.2 billion in cash, each are paying $20 million to resolve the case, which stemmed from a tweet Musk sent on Aug. 7 indicating he had the financing in place to take Tesla private at a price of $420 per share.

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NKorea: US needs to build our trust, and sanctions lower it

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — North Korea needs more trust in the U.S. and their developing relationship before it will get rid of its nuclear weapons, Pyongyang’s top diplomat said Saturday as an envoy from another of the international community’s biggest worries — Syria — demanded that the U.S., France and Turkey withdraw their troops from his civil-war-wracked country.

More than three months after a June summit in Singapore between the U.S. and North Korean leaders, Ri Yong Ho told world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly that the North doesn’t see a “corresponding response” from the U.S. to North Korea’s early disarmament moves. Instead, he noted, the U.S. is continuing sanctions aimed at keeping up pressure.

“The perception that sanctions can bring us on our knees is a pipe dream of the people who are ignorant of us,” he said, adding that the continued sanctions are “deepening our mistrust” and deadlocking the current diplomacy.

“Without any trust in the U.S., there will be no confidence in our national security, and under such circumstances there is no way we will unilaterally disarm ourselves first,” Ri said, adding that the North’s commitment to disarming is “solid and firm,” but that trust is crucial.

Washington is wary of easing sanctions or agreeing to another of the North’s priorities — a declaration ending the Korean War — without Pyongyang first making significant disarmament moves.

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N. Korea FM: Peace possible, but only if US ends hostility

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Calling for more trust, North Korea’s foreign minister urged the United States on Saturday to keep moving past what he called seven decades of entrenched hostility if Washington wants to restart stalled negotiations meant to rid Pyongyang of its nuclear bombs.

Boiling the rivals’ diplomatic standoff down to the North’s deepening feeling of mistrust, Ri Yong Ho sought to lay out a vision of peace on the troubled Korean Peninsula — provided the North gets what it wants from the United States.

Ri, standing at a podium at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, said North Korea is ready to implement the points that his leader, Kim Jong Un, and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to in June during a summit in Singapore.

But his comments were infused with what came across as impatience at the slow pace of progress in a process the world hopes will cause Pyongyang to abandon an arsenal of nuclear-tipped missiles that aims to accurately target the entire U.S. mainland.

In recent weeks, Kim Jong Un has said he would permanently dismantle North Korea’s main nuclear complex, but only if the United States takes unspecified corresponding measures. Kim has also promised to accept international inspectors to monitor the closing of a key missile test site and launch pad.

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Paradise bay likely made Indonesia tsunami more dangerous

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — The sun had just slipped behind the mountains, leaving a soft pink glow as the blue sea melted into the darkening horizon. It could have been a video postcard from a tropical paradise, except for the long white wave stretching the width of the bay — getting larger and closer with each passing second.

By the time the fast-moving wall of frothing water slammed into the city of Palu off Indonesia’s Sulawesi island on Friday, it was 3 metres (10 feet) high.

The tsunami, triggered by a magnitude 7.5 earthquake, destroyed the idyllic scene in seconds, leaving hundreds dead. The video clip, shot on a smartphone and widely broadcast Saturday on Indonesian TV, showed water swallowing an entire row of buildings and gushing into streets and a damaged mosque as onlookers ran in terror. Photos showed twisted tin and wood splinters floating in the coffee-colored torrent alongside cars and motorbikes that had been tossed like toys. A shopping mall was reduced to rubble.

Images also showed bodies draped in crude blue tarps on roads near the beach, while others were laid out in rows on concrete foundations. One man carried a dead child through the debris.

Experts said the long, narrow bay running into Palu, a city of 380,000, squeezed the tsunami into a tight space, likely making the waves more dangerous. Officials said more than 380 were dead in Palu alone, and more were unaccounted for.

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Ex-cardinal accused of sex abuse living near Kansas school

VICTORIA, Kan. (AP) — The friary in remote western Kansas that is now home to a disgraced former U.S. cardinal removed from ministry by Pope Francis over allegations of sexual abuse is just one block from an elementary school.

The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., confirmed in a statement Friday that ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick is living at St. Fidelis Friary in Victoria, a rural town of about 1,200 that lies more than 250 miles (402 kilometres) west of Kansas City. The Friary is within a block of Victoria Elementary School.

News of McCarrick’s living arrangement took school officials by surprise, the Kansas City Star reported .

“I was never made aware of it until I found out through social media” on Friday, Victoria Elementary Principal Kent Michel said.

McCarrick, 88, was the retired Archbishop of Washington when he was removed from public ministry in June by Pope Francis after allegations that he sexually abused a teenager while a priest in New York more than 40 years ago were found to be credible by the church.

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Legendary Chicago blues guitarist Otis Rush dies at 84

CHICAGO (AP) — Legendary Chicago blues guitarist Otis Rush, whose passionate, jazz-tinged music influenced artists from Carlos Santana and Eric Clapton to the rock band Led Zeppelin, died Saturday at the age of 84, his longtime manager said.

Rush succumbed to complications from a stroke he suffered in 2003, manager Rick Bates said.

Born in Philadelphia, Mississippi, Rush settled in Chicago as an adult and began playing the local clubs, wearing a cowboy hat and sometimes strumming his guitar upside down for effect.

He catapulted to international fame in 1956 with his first recording on Cobra Records of “I Can’t Quit You Baby,” which reached No. 6 on the Billboard R&B charts.

He was a key architect of the Chicago “West Side Sound” in the 1950s and 1960s, which modernized traditional blues to introduce more of a jazzy, amplified sound.

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Europe builds 10-6 lead in Ryder Cup behind ‘Moliwood’

SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France (AP) — Francesco Molinari and Tommy Fleetwood walked down the fairway after delivering another big point in the Ryder Cup, side by side with their arms around each other’s shoulder.

Here came “Moliwood” at Le Golf National, the latest Ryder Cup sensation and the first European tandem to win all four matches since the current format began in 1979. Even more satisfying was that three of those points came at the expense of Tiger Woods.

But this was no time to celebrate.

“We came here to do a job, and it wasn’t to go in the record books or anything like that,” Molinari said.

And now they have to do it by themselves.