Clinton feels good, says she didn’t pass out during stumble

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Monday that she’s feeling better since falling ill at a 9/11 memorial ceremony, but she never lost consciousness and didn’t think her pneumonia diagnosis was significant enough to disclose beforehand.

“I just didn’t think it was going to be that big a deal,” she said of the pneumonia diagnosis she received Friday. She told CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that despite doctor’s orders to rest for five days, she thought she could “just keep going forward and power through it and that didn’t work out so well.”

Clinton abruptly left the ceremony and appeared to stumble while she was waiting for her motorcade. Asked whether she fainted, Clinton replied: “No, I didn’t. I felt dizzy and I did lose my balance for a minute. But I got in, once I could sit down, once I could cool off, once I got some water, I immediately started feeling better.”

Later Tuesday, Clinton told supporters via text message and Facebook, “I’m feeling fine and getting better,” adding, “Like anyone who’s ever been home sick from work, I’m just anxious to get back out there.”

Clinton’s evening interview, in which she promised to release more information at some point, came as her campaign scrambled to head off lasting damage from a difficult weekend. Aides are promising to release more of her medical records following her bout of pneumonia and conceding they were too slow in providing information about her condition.

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Trump stands up for backers even as rally scuffle breaks out

BALTIMORE (AP) — Donald Trump stood up for his supporters Monday against Hillary Clinton’s remark that half of his supporters belonged in “a basket of deplorables,” denouncing the comment as “an explicit attack on the American voter” and suggesting that it makes her unfit for the presidency.

But even as Trump defended his backers, one lashed out at protesters in the hall by appearing to punch and slap them. Trump talked through the scuffle.

“While my opponent calls you deplorable and irredeemable,” he said in Asheville, North Carolina, “I call you hard-working American patriots who love their country and want a better future for all our people.”

But his rally was interrupted several times by demonstrators and, at one moment, brief violence. As several protesters were being escorted out by security, a man in the crowd grabbed a male protester around the neck and then punched him. He then slapped at a woman being led out. The Trump supporter was not ejected by security.

The celebrity businessman talked through the scuffle but cracked after the disturbance, “Is there any place more fun than a Trump rally?”

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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. CLINTON AIDES PROMISE TO RELEASE MORE OF HER MEDICAL RECORDS

Democrats say Clinton’s bout of pneumonia alone is unlikely to fundamentally alter the presidential race, but some say it adds to a growing sense of uncertainty.

2. TRUMP STANDS UP FOR BACKERS AGAINST CLINTON’S ‘DEPLORABLES’ REMARK

Even as Trump defended his backers, one lashed out at protesters at a rally by appearing to punch and slap them.

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Syria cease-fire enters into effect, but rebels don’t commit

BEIRUT (AP) — A cease-fire came into effect in Syria at sunset Monday in the latest attempt led by the United States and Russia to bring some quiet in the 5 1/2-year civil war.

Residents and observers reported quiet in most of the country hours after the truce came into effect, though activists said airstrikes took place on contested areas around the northern city of Aleppo.

But the most powerful rebel groups have shown deep misgivings over the cease-fire deal, which was crafted without their input last weekend in Geneva between the top U.S. and Russian diplomats. Hours after it came into force, a coalition of rebel factions put out a statement that stopped short of committing to the cease-fire, a reflection of their distrust of the government.

The first week of the truce will be crucial. During that time, all fighting between the military of President Bashar Assad and rebels is to stop. But, Assad’s forces can continue air strikes against the Islamic State group and al-Qaida-linked insurgents from the group once known as the Nusra Front.

However, the al-Qaida linked insurgents are closely allied to many rebel factions and are a powerful force in the defense of Aleppo in particular. That raises the danger that continued airstrikes will draw rebels into retaliation, eventually leading to the cease-fire’s collapse, much as previous attempts earlier this year fell apart.

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Confusion over cease-fire as US walks back Kerry comments

WASHINGTON (AP) — Confusion reigned Monday over Syria’s new cease-fire as Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States and Russia could permit President Bashar Assad’s government to launch new airstrikes against al-Qaida-linked militants. The State Department quickly reversed itself.

Spokesman John Kirby said later there were no provisions under the nationwide truce for U.S.-Russian authorization of bombing missions by Assad’s forces. “This is not something we could ever envision doing,” he said.

Kerry’s comments at a news conference were the closest any American official had come to suggesting indirect U.S. cooperation with Assad since the civil war started in 2011. President Barack Obama called on Assad to leave power more than five years ago; the U.S. blames the Syrian leader for a war that has killed perhaps a half-million people.

While Kirby called his boss’ remarks “incorrect,” Kerry’s statement reflected the general murkiness of an agreement that hasn’t been presented publicly in written form. The deal came after a marathon negotiation between Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last Friday; descriptions by the two diplomats represent the only public explanation of what was agreed to.

Under the truce that went into effect at sundown Monday, Assad’s forces are no longer supposed to bomb Syria’s opposition, Kerry said.

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US flies bombers over S.Korea in show of force against North

OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea (AP) — The United States on Tuesday sent two nuclear-capable supersonic bombers streaking over ally South Korea in a show of force meant to cow North Korea after its recent nuclear test and also to settle rattled nerves in the South.

The B-1B bombers, escorted by U.S. and South Korean jets, were seen by an Associated Press photographer as they flew over Osan Air Base, which is 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the border with North Korea, the world’s most heavily armed. The bombers were likely to return to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, without landing in South Korea.

Such flyovers are common when always high animosity rises on the Korean Peninsula, which is technically in a state of war as there has never been a peace treaty to officially end the 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea does not have nuclear weapons and relies on the U.S. “nuclear umbrella” as a deterrent to North Korea. Washington also stations more than 28,000 troops in the South, and tens of thousands more in Japan.

North Korea is keenly aware of the U.S. presence on the peninsula and of what it considers the U.S. nuclear threat. It uses such flyovers and the American military influence in the South in its propaganda as alleged proof of U.S. hostility that it claims as the reason it needs a nuclear bomb program.

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In historic move, California expands overtime to farmworkers

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Farmworkers in the nation’s largest agricultural state will be entitled to the same overtime pay as most other hourly workers under a law that California Gov. Jerry Brown said Monday that he had signed.

The new law, which will be phased in beginning in 2019, is the first of its kind in the nation to end the 80-year-old practice of applying separate labor rules to agricultural laborers.

In the state where Cesar Chavez successfully rallied farmworkers to demand union rights and more dignified working conditions, the legislation, AB1066, will gradually lower the number of hours that ranch hands and people who tend crops must work before accruing additional compensation.

Farmworkers will be entitled to time-and-a-half pay after eight hours in a day or 40 hours in a week, up from 10 hours a day or 60 a week. The new rules will take full effect in 2022 for most businesses and in 2025 for farms with 25 or fewer employees.

“The hundreds of thousands of men and women who work in California’s fields, dairies and ranches feed the world and anchor our economy,” Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, the bill’s author, said in a statement. “They will finally be treated equally under the law.”

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Mosque where Orlando gunman worshipped is set on fire

FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP) — The mosque that Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen attended was heavily damaged in an arson fire that Muslim leaders said was the latest incident in an escalating campaign of harassment and violence against the house of worship and its members.

Given the timing — Sunday’s 15th anniversary of 9/11 and the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha — investigators believe the blaze that broke out shortly before midnight Sunday at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce may have been a hate crime, St. Lucie County sheriff’s spokesman Maj. David Thompson said.

No one was injured. The fire burned a 10-by-10-foot (3-by-3-meter) hole in the roof at the back of the mosque’s main building and blackened its eaves with soot.

A surveillance video from the mosque showed a man on a motorcycle approaching the building with a bottle of liquid and some papers, then leaving when there was a flash and shaking his hand as though he may have burned it, Thompson said.

The arsonist “is terrorizing our community because we don’t know where he is at and we don’t know what he is capable of doing,” said Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, a Florida spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

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NCAA pulls 7 postseason events out of NC due to LGBT law

The NCAA has pulled seven championship events from North Carolina, including opening-weekend men’s basketball tournament games, for the coming year due to a state law that some say can lead to discrimination against LGBT people.

In a news release Monday, the NCAA says the decision by its board of governors came “because of the cumulative actions taken by the state concerning civil rights protections.”

“This decision is consistent with the NCAA’s long-standing core values of inclusion, student-athlete well-being and creating a culture of fairness,” said Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson, the chair of the board of governors.

The law — known as HB2 — requires transgender people to use restrooms at schools and government buildings corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates. It also excludes gender identity and sexual orientation from local and statewide antidiscrimination protections.

HB2 was signed into law by Republican Gov. Pat McCrory earlier this year. A spokesman with McCrory’s office couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Monday evening, but a spokeswoman with the state Republican party blasted the decision in statement, saying it is “so absurd it’s almost comical.”

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Roethlisberger throws for 3 TDs as Steelers beat Redskins

LANDOVER, Md. (AP) — Ben Roethlisberger recovered his own fumble at a pivotal moment and didn’t look back, throwing three touchdown passes to lead the Pittsburgh Steelers to a 38-16 victory over the Washington Redskins on Monday night.

Roethlisberger completed 27 of 37 passes for 300 yards, including two touchdowns to All-Pro wide receiver Antonio Brown and another to Eli Rogers. Often playing on the opposite side from Josh Norman and tormenting cornerback Bashaud Breeland, Brown made eight catches for 126 yards.

Starting in place of the suspended Le’Veon Bell, DeAngelo Williams ran for 143 yards and two touchdowns on 26 carries.

“We’re confident in that group,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said. “I know we were missing some pieces tonight, but we had 7. And when you got 7 you got the chance to put together performances like that.”

Washington led 6-0 and appeared to have another scoring opportunity late in the first quarter when linebacker Ryan Kerrigan sacked and stripped Roethlisberger deep in Pittsburgh territory. Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey knocked the ball out of Kerrigan’s hands, and Roethlisberger dived on it at his own 13-yard line.