BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro started on Tuesday to serve his 27-year prison sentence for leading a coup attempt designed to keep him in office after losing the 2022 presidential elections, a move that many in the South American nation doubted would ever take place.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has overseen the case, ruled Bolsonaro will remain at the same federal police headquarters where he has been since he was preemptively arrested on Saturday for being considered a flight risk.
Bolsonaro will not have any contact with the few other inmates at the federal police headquarters. His 12-square-meter room has a bed, a private bathroom, air conditioning, a TV set and a desk, according to federal police.
Brazil’s criminal law also could have allowed the 70-year-old to be transferred to a local penitentiary or to a prison room in a military facility in capital Brasilia.
The Supreme Court justice considered that Bolsonaro’s defense had exhausted all appeals of his conviction on Monday. His lawyers wanted him to be on house arrest due to his poor health.
The embattled leader had been under house arrest since August when de Moraes first mentioned he could escape. The far-right leader said “hallucinations” had led him to break his ankle monitoring with a welder on Saturday, a claim that de Moraes dismissed in his preemptive arrest order.
The former president and several of his allies were convicted by a panel of Supreme Court justices for attempted to overthrow Brazil’s democracy following his 2022 election defeat.
The plot included plans to kill President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and Justice de Moraes. The plan also involved egging on an insurrection in early 2023.
The former president was also found guilty of charges including leading an armed criminal organization and of attempting the violent abolition of the democratic rule of law.
Bolsonaro has always denied wrongdoing.
Two others convicted, Augusto Heleno and Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, both Army generals, were sent the military facility in Brasilia to start serving their sentences. Former justice minister Anderson Torres is now imprisoned at the Papuda penitentiary, also in Brazil’s capital.
Adm. Almir Garnier will serve his term at Navy facilities in Brasilia.
Bolsonaro’s running mate and former Defense Minister Walter Braga Netto, another army general, will remain in prison at military facilities in Rio de Janeiro.
De Moraes also confirmed that lawmaker and former head of Brazil’s intelligence agency Alexandre Ramagem is on the loose in the United States.
Bolsonaro remains a key figure in Brazilian politics, despite being ineligible to run again at least until 2030 after a separate ruling by Brazil’s top electoral court. Polls show he would be a competitive candidate in next year’s vote if allowed to run.
The former president is an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has called the trial of the former Brazilian leader a “witch hunt.” Bolsonaro was mentioned in a July order by the U.S. administration to raise tariffs on several Brazilian exports by 50% tariffs.
Relations between the two countries have improved since, with Lula and Trump meeting in Malaysia at the ASEAN summit in October. Most of those higher tariffs have been dropped.
As well as the tariffs, the U.S. also imposed sanctions on de Moraes and other Brazilian officials.
The measures in support of Bolsonaro did not have their desired effect and the trial proceeded nevertheless. Lula’s popularity was boosted by the perception that he was defending Brazilian sovereignty.
Bolsonaro is not the first former president to spend time behind bars. His predecessor Michel Temer (2016-2018) and his successor Lula have also been to prison. Fernando Collor de Mello, who governed between 1990 and 1992, is currently in house arrest due to a corruption conviction.
Bolsonaro is the first to be convicted of attempting a coup.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The former employee of a San Mateo assisted living facility who left a pitcher of toxic cleaning fluid in the kitchen that another employee mistook for juice and served to residents — resulting in the deaths of two 93-year-olds — was sentenced Friday to 40 days in county jail and two years supervised probation.
Alisia Rivera Mendoza, 38, was also ordered to complete 350 hours of community service, including speaking to those working in the care industry to warn them against her mistake, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office.
In August, Rivera Mendoza pleaded no contest to one felony count of elder abuse in exchange for no time in state prison and a maximum sentence of one year in county jail, prosecutors said. Rivera Mendoza’s sentence can also be reduced to a misdemeanor after one year of complying with probation.
Rivera Mendoza’s sentence was imposed by San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Michael Wendler, who also denied a defense motion that would have immediately reduced the charge to a misdemeanor.
San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe said Monday that Wendler’s sentence was “thoughtful,” as Rivera Mendoza does not have a prior criminal record and the mistake was not intentional.
“Forty days on its face does sound low, but what Judge Wendler has done is taken what might have been a longer jail sentence and converted that into public service hours — that 350 hours of public service work is what he felt was more appropriate for punishment, because 350 hours is a substantial number of days,” Wagstaffe said. “I am not dissatisfied with the sentence.”
Wagstaffe added that Rivera Mendoza has shown remorse for the incident.
Rivera Mendoza’s defense attorney, Josh Bentley, did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
Rivera Mendoza is also not permitted to work in assisted living or elder care in the future, must pay $370 in fines and fees and will pay restitution in an amount to be determined. She also cannot possess ammunition, weapons or body armor and is subject to search and seizure.
Atria Park of San Mateo was understaffed on the morning of Aug. 28, 2022 when Rivera Mendoza poured cleaning fluid into a pitcher on the kitchen counter with the intention of using it to clean the kitchen, prosecutors said.
When Rivera Mendoza went to serve breakfast to the facility’s residents, she left the pitcher on the counter. Another employee mistook the pitcher of cleaning fluid for juice and poured it into three residents’ glasses, prosecutors said.
The three residents, thinking the liquid poured into their glasses was juice, drank it, prosecutors added.
The three residents – 93-year-old Gertrude Maxwell, 93-year-old Peter Schroder Jr. and Richard Fong – “immediately went into serious distress” after taking just a few sips of the liquid, prosecutors said. Emergency services reported to the scene to provide aid, but Maxwell and Schroeder died due to ingestion of the toxic cleaning fluid.
Both Maxwell and Schroder suffered from extremely painful blisters on their mouths before they died, their families said. Fong survived drinking the fluid, prosecutors added.
Wagstaffe added that the families of the two victims did not have “heavy animus toward” Rivera Mendoza.
“They were more concerned about Atria and the fact that they were understaffed,” Wagstaffe said, adding that there was insufficient evident to prosecute Atria in this case.
Kathryn Stebner, the attorney who represented the Schroder family, said that Rivera Mendoza’s sentence is sad to both her and the Schroder family. The family’s wrongful death lawsuit was settled in early 2025, she added.
“She’s basically a scapegoat in the face of (Atria’s) continuous wrongdoing. To point the finger at her is just not right,” Stebner said. “The real culprits were the corporation, not this poor woman who was overworked, underpaid and the scapegoat of Atria.”
“We took immediate action in response to this incident, including reviewing and reinforcing our training and policies on chemical safety,” the statement said. “As always, we remain focused on the safety, health, and well-being of all our residents.”
Rivera Mendoza is currently out of custody on supervised own recognizance. She will surrender to jail on Feb. 7.
In the end, Alex Hunter picked the day of his death.
Boulder’s longest-serving district attorney — who defined more than a quarter century of criminal justice for the region and oversaw the early years of the JonBenét Ramsey case — had exhausted all options for medical care after suffering a heart attack in mid-November.
The 89-year-old spent several days in Colorado hospitals, alert and cogent, saying goodbye to colleagues, friends and family.
Then he picked 1:30 p.m. Friday as the time for medical staff to stop the life-supporting medicines keeping him alive. He drifted off and died later that evening, a month shy of his 90th birthday, said his son, Alex “Kip” Hunter III, who is acting as a spokesman for the family.
“He was just crystalline clear,” Hunter III said Monday. “He was intentional and purposeful, gracious and elegant. …He had come to a place where he was totally at peace with the scope of his life.”
Hunter spent 28 years as Boulder County’s elected top prosecutor, serving seven consecutive terms between 1973 and 2001. He forged a community-driven, progressive, victim-focused approach to prosecution and helped shape Boulder’s reputation as a liberal enclave.
He faced intense public scrutiny in the late 1990s after 6-year-old JonBenét was killed and, in the ensuing media firestorm, he chose not to bring charges against her parents — even after a grand jury secretly returned indictments against them during his final term.
Hunter kept a picture of the young beauty queen in his office and, throughout, stood by his controversial decision in the city’s highest-profile murder case, his son said.
“He probably suffered more criticism as a result of that than any other moment in his career,” Hunter III said. “And yet he remained confident till he died that that was the right decision.”
In 1997, Hunter named JonBenét’s parents, John and Patsy, as a focus in the investigation into their daughter’s killing. More than a year later, Hunter announced that Boulder County’s grand jury had completed its work investigating the case, and that there was not sufficient evidence for charges to be filed against the Ramseys.
He was roundly criticized during the early years of the Ramsey case, featured in tabloids and The New Yorker. Some called for a special prosecutor to replace him, and a Boulder detective resigned from the case, accusing Hunter of compromising the investigation. Outsiders said Boulder needed a tough-on-crime prosecutor — decidedly not Hunter — to bring justice to JonBenét’s killer.
What Hunter kept secret in 1999 was that the grand jury had voted to indict the parents on charges of child abuse resulting in death — essentially alleging the Ramseys placed their daughter in a dangerous situation that led to her death — but that he’d declined to sign the indictments and move forward with a prosecution, believing he could not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
“It was so like him to refuse the grand jury instruction,” Hunter III said. “Because he believed in his heart that it would have a negative impact on the outcome of the case.”
Over time, Hunter came to realize the Ramsey case would define his career, even if he would rather it did not. He was surprised by how it followed him even years after his retirement, Hunter III said.
“Horrible crimes happen every day, and that was a horrible crime, but it’s had legs, it’s had a life that I think often surprised Dad in particular,” Hunter III said. “I think that a lot of Dad’s 28 years as the district attorney perhaps got lost in the JonBenét Ramsey case.”
From left, Adams County Chief Deputy District Attorney Bruce Levin, Assistant Boulder County District Attorney Bill Wise, Denver Chief Deputy District Attorney Mitch Morrissey, Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter and the JonBenét Ramsey grand jury’s special prosecutor, Michael Kane, walk outside the Ramsey family’s former Boulder home on Oct. 29, 1998. (Photo by Paul Aiken/Daily Camera)
‘Doing the right thing time and time again’
Through the decades, Hunter was attuned to the Boulder community in a way few others ever were — for years, he invited cohorts of random voters into his office on Tuesday nights for candid discussions on crime and the courts, and he often made decisions and implemented policy based on what he heard in those meetings.
He was a master at reading a room and took pride in surrounding himself with good people, said Dennis Wanebo, a former prosecutor in the Boulder DA’s office.
He rarely faced any serious opposition on the ballot.
“He was there for 28 years,” said Peter Maguire, a longtime Boulder prosecutor during Hunter’s tenure. “And you don’t do that without being the consummate politician who has his finger on the pulse of the community, and by doing the right thing time and time again.”
Hunter was first elected by a narrow margin in 1973 in no small part because he promised to stop prosecuting possession of marijuana as a felony — prompting University of Colorado students to vote for him in droves, said Stan Garnett, who served as Boulder district attorney beginning in 2009.
Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter is pictured in this October 1980 photo. (Photo by Dave Buresh/The Denver Post)
Hunter was part of a wave of Democratic leadership that swept through Boulder in the 1970s. He hosted his own talk radio show for a while in the 1980s, and ran up Flagstaff Road almost every workday, leaving at 11:30 a.m. and having his secretary collect him at the top and return him to the courthouse. He was media-savvy and funny, charming and articulate.
He declared bankruptcy in the 1970s after a failed real estate venture left him $6 million in debt. Hunter married four times and had five children, one of whom, John Hunter-Haulk, died in 2010 at the age of 20 — the “heartbreak of his life,” that Hunter never fully moved past, his son said.
In the late 1970s, after regularly hearing people’s displeasure with plea agreements, Hunter declared that his office would no longer offer plea bargains in any cases, instead requiring defendants to plead guilty to the original charges or take their cases to trial.
The effort quickly failed as the court system buckled under the increased number of jury trials.
“People made fun of him at the time, other DAs mocked him for it and said it was a fool’s errand,” Wanebo said. “And maybe in hindsight it can be looked at that way. And yet there was also a very good secondary effect of that for our office, which was, we got really careful about what we charged people with.”
‘A Renaissance man’
Hunter was moveable when he made mistakes, Maguire said, though he needed to be convinced through either a reasoned or political argument — this is what the community wants — to change his stances.
“Alex was a Renaissance man,” Garnett said. “He was interested in everything. And he was very thoughtful, very kind. He was very ethical.”
Tom Kelley, a former First Amendment attorney for The Denver Post, remembered a time in which he convinced Hunter that he was legally obligated to release some criminal justice records to the newspaper. Kelley swung by the courthouse to pick the records up, and Hunter met him, leading Kelley through the courthouse’s winding back hallways in search of the records.
Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter makes his way down a hill in front of the Boulder County Justice Center, through a mass of media and bystanders, on his way to announce that the grand jury in the JonBenét Ramsey case was disbanding without taking action on Oct. 13, 1999. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
After he gave the documents to Kelley, Hunter immediately called up the Rocky Mountain News — The Post’s bitter rival — and let them know the records were publicly available, Kelley said.
“That was classic Alex Hunter,” he said. “He was a very decent person and he tried to give everybody a little bit of something… He had a strong political sense.”
For Hunter III, having the DA as his dad was “fantastic,” he said. His dad was regularly on the newspaper’s front page. He was “always the coolest dad in Boulder,” Hunter III remembered.
His father’s death this week feels like a mountain suddenly disappearing.
He cherishes the conversations they had as a family in the days before Hunter died.
“We were in deep conversation,” he said. “And he taught us more in that last week than you could learn in a lifetime.”
VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — A Lithuanian court convicted a Ukrainian national on Monday of carrying out an arson attack last year on an IKEA store in the Baltic nation’s capital, which authorities have accused Russian military intelligence of being behind.
The Vilnius regional court convicted Daniil Bardadim of charges including a terrorist act, illegal possession of explosives and arrival in Lithuania with the aim of carrying out terrorist acts. Bardadim, who had pleaded guilty, was sentenced to three years and four months in prison — a bit short of the four years prosecutors had sought.
The store in Vilnius was attacked on May 9, 2024. Investigators have said that Bardadim and another person agreed during a secret meeting in Poland to set fire to and blow up shopping centers in Lithuania and Latvia for a reward of 10,000 euros ($11,500) plus a BMW car.
Prosecutors said that Bardadim, who was a minor at the time of the attack, acted “in the interests of the military structures and security services of the Russian Federation.” IKEA was allegedly targeted because the company withdrew from Russia and because of Sweden’s aid to Ukraine.
The device was set off around 4 a.m. but the resulting blaze was extinguished quickly by employees and firefighters.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A task force ordered by President Donald Trump to combat crime in Memphis, Tennessee, has made thousands of arrests, compounding strains on the busy local court system and an already overcrowded jail in ways that concerned officials say will last months or even years as cases play out.
Since late September, hundreds of federal, state and local law enforcement personnel tied to the Memphis Safe Task Force have made traffic stops, served warrants and searched for fugitives in the city of about 610,000 people. More than 2,800 people have been arrested and more than 28,000 traffic citations have been issued, data provided by the task force and Memphis police shows.
The task force, which includes National Guard troops, is supported by Republican Gov. Bill Lee and others who hope the surge reduces crime in a city that has grappled with violent crime, including nearly 300 homicides last year and nearly 400 in 2023.
From 2018 to 2024, homicides in Memphis increased 33% and aggravated assaults rose 41%, according to AH Datalytics, which tracks crimes across the country using local law enforcement data for its Real-Time Crime Index. But AH Datalytics reported those numbers were down 20% during the first nine months of this year, even before the task force got to work.
Opponents of the task force in majority-Black Memphis say it targets minorities and intimidates law-abiding Latinos, some of whom have skipped work and changed social habits, such as avoiding going to church or restaurants, fearing they will be harassed and unfairly detained. Statistics released at the end of October showed 319 arrests so far on administrative warrants, which deal with immigration-related issues.
The effects have rippled beyond the streets, into the aging criminal courthouse and the troubled jail. Officials are concerned about long waits in traffic court causing people to miss work and packed criminal court dockets forcing inmates to spend extra days waiting for bail hearings.
“The human cost of it is astounding,” said Josh Spickler, executive director for Just City, a Memphis-based organization that advocates for fairness in the criminal justice system.
The mayor of Shelby County, which includes Memphis, has requested more judges to hear cases that could span months or years. County officials are discussing opening court at night and on weekends, a move that would help manage the caseload but cost more.
Meanwhile, Shelby County Jail inmates are being moved to other facilities because of overcrowding, officials say. Inmates at jail intake are sleeping in chairs, and jail officials are asking county commissioners for funding to help address problems, such as a corrections employees shortage.
These issues raise concerns from activists and officials about safety in a jail that has seen 65 deaths since 2019, according to Just City. Court case backlogs mean defendants and crime victims could spend an unfair amount of time dealing with the criminal justice system, said Steve Mulroy, the county’s district attorney.
“The task force deployment probably could have used more planning,” said Mulroy, a Democrat whose office is cooperating with the task force. “More thought could have been put into the downstream effects of the increased arrest numbers.”
There were hundreds more jail bookings and bail settings during the first several weeks of the task force’s operation than during the comparable period last year, an increase of about 40% in each category, according to county statistics.
The jail, which has a regular capacity of 2,400, had an average daily population of 3,195 inmates in September, the most recent month when statistics were available. County officials said that number was expected to rise for October.
As of mid-November, 250 overflow jail detainees were being housed at other facilities, compared with 80 in November 2024. Some of those are outside Shelby County, which makes it harder for lawyers and relatives to visit and increases the cost of bringing defendants to Memphis for hearings.
In a letter to commissioners, Chief Jailer Kirk Fields has requested at least $1.5 million in emergency funds, noting that more inmates means more expenses for food, clothing, bedding and linens.
One issue is whether there are enough judges to hear cases, especially after lawmakers eliminated two judgeships during last year’s session.
On Oct. 31, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris wrote to state court officials asking for additional judges, saying the county is preparing for at least 3,500 to 5,000 people being arrested. More arrests increase jail expenses and the possible hiring of more public defenders, prosecutors and jail employees, he wrote.
“This places Shelby County in extreme financial peril,” Harris wrote.
The Tennessee Supreme Court’s response said that while lower court judges reported more judges are not necessary at this time, it has designated two senior judges to help should they be needed.
“Part of it is, understanding just what the cadence is going to look like over the next few months and then developing a strategy,” the governor said earlier this month, noting that the state is monitoring the situation.
Some officials have proposed Saturday court sessions and night court sessions two or three nights a week, Mulroy said. They’ve considered having a clinic where people facing misdemeanor warrants could surrender, to help clear those up.
Mulroy’s office also is reevaluating whether detention is necessary for people jailed in hundreds of low-level cases.
“If there’s no basis to think they’re a danger to the community or a flight risk, and they’re in there just because they can’t afford their bail, we can take a second look,” he wrote.
Ryan Guay, a U.S. Marshals Service and task force spokesperson, told The Associated Press that the high volume of arrests reflects the force’s effectiveness.
“We recognize that this success places additional demands on the broader criminal justice system, including courts and detention facilities,” Guay said.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons has said that it is making a satellite prison camp available to the task force. The bureau said the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office would assume oversight of the facility. A sheriff’s office spokesperson declined to comment on the camp’s location, citing operational security.
___
Associated Press reporter Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed.
SAO PAULO (AP) — Simone Guimarães, a retired 52-year-old teacher in Rio de Janeiro, lost at least five relatives to COVID-19: her husband, sister, two brothers-in-law and the godfather of her grandchild. She also lost friends and neighbors.
“It’s a small beginning of justice starting to be served,” she said. “Impunity has to end at some point. And in his case, we endured a lot.”
Social media filled with posts Saturday remembering people lost to COVID-19, which also happened in September when the Supreme Court convicted Bolsonaro, even though the legal case had nothing to do with the former president’s pandemic response.
Guimarães followed every vote in Bolsonaro’s trial. She was at a hospital with her sister in 2021 when Bolsonaro, who was president at the time, mimicked patients gasping for air.
“I had my forehead against my sister’s. She said, ‘I can’t breathe,’” Guimarães recalled. Her sister later died. “I can’t even bring myself to say his name.”
She now feels indirectly vindicated, like many other Brazilians who lost relatives to the disease. They say Bolsonaro’s conviction and imprisonment cleansed their souls without delivering justice for their grief.
“I’m very afraid that this conviction for crimes related to the coup will lessen the convictions for other crimes committed during the pandemic,” said Diego Orsi, a 41-year-old translator in Sao Paulo, the nation’s largest city. “I feel a bit like the Nuremberg trials had convicted the Nazis for invading Poland, and not for genocide.”
Growing up and then apart
Orsi grew up alongside his cousin, Henrique Cavalari. They were like brothers. In old family photos, the two appear together blowing out birthday candles.
As teenagers, Cavalari introduced Orsi to rock bands. Politically, however, they drifted apart. Orsi considers himself progressive while Cavalari backed Bolsonaro.
“My uncle always leaned right, and my cousin grew up with that mindset,” Orsi said. “During the pandemic, he became convinced there was nothing to worry about, that social distancing restricted freedom and the priority should be protecting the economy.”
Cavalari ran a motorcycle repair shop and was a staunch Bolsonaro supporter. He couldn’t afford to close his shop and the far-right leader’s rhetoric resonated with the mechanics, who attended his rallies even during the deadliest months of the pandemic.
Orsi wasn’t 100% sure if Cavalari was at the motorcycle rally, but said his cousin attended previous similar events.
“He was newly married, paying rent on his business. He needed the money,” Orsi said, recalling he couldn’t visit Cavalari in the hospital intensive care unit because only immediate family was allowed. “But I was told one of the last things he said was to warn his parents to take care, that the disease was serious.”
Orsi’s family remains divided, much like the rest of Brazil, and he believes Bolsonaro’s conviction will not change public opinion or reconcile other families.
Feeling grief and vindication
Bolsonaro denied wrongdoing during his trial. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected an appeal from his legal team, though another may come this week. Before his arrest Saturday, he had been under house arrest since August.
“I would have preferred that he was arrested for allowing 700,000 Brazilians to die, many deaths that could have been avoided, perhaps by speeding up the vaccine rollout,” Orsi told The Associated Press. “But since he is being tried and convicted for other crimes, it cleanses our soul. It gives us a sense that justice has been served.”
There have been more than 700,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19 in Brazil since 2020, the world’s second-highest toll after the United States.
In 2021, epidemiologists at the Federal University of Pelotas estimated 4 in 5 of those deaths could have been avoided if the Bolsonaro administration had supported containment measures and accelerated vaccine purchases.
Bolsonaro’s government ignored repeated pleas to sign additional vaccine contracts. He publicly questioned the reliability of shots and mocked contract terms, once suggesting Pfizer recipients would have no legal recourse if they “turned into alligators.” Brazil faced vaccine shortages and doses were released in phases by age and health risk.
Cavalari died just weeks before he would have been eligible for his first dose, Orsi said.
The same happened to the father of Fábio de Maria, a 45-year-old teacher in Sao Paulo.
“When he was admitted to the hospital, he was about 15 days away from being eligible for his first shot,” de Maria said. “That delay was fatal for him and many others.”
His father died in May 2021 at age 65. De Maria blames Bolsonaro and other officials he believes were complicit, but he said the former president’s conviction doesn’t bring justice.
“Many people feel vindicated, and I don’t blame them. Bolsonaro provoked a lot of anger in many people, including me,” he said. “But I don’t believe there has been justice for those who died of COVID-19, because that is not why Bolsonaro was convicted.”
Reaching a political turning point
The pandemic marked a change in course for Bolsonaro’s popularity. During the 2022 campaign, which he lost to Lula, television ads replayed footage of Bolsonaro mocking patients struggling to breathe, which is a common COVID-19 symptom, and highlighted comments widely seen as dismissive of victims and their families.
“Bolsonaro lost because of his denialist stance during the pandemic. The margin was very narrow,” said Eduardo Scolese, politics editor at the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper during Bolsonaro’s term and author of “1461 Dias na Trincheira” (”1461 Days in the Trenches”).
The federal government was expected to coordinate Brazil’s early response, Scolese said, but Bolsonaro consistently downplayed the crisis.
“No one knew how long it would last. Experts called for distancing, while he joined crowds,” Scolese said.
As the Brazilian leader resisted public health measures, state and local governments imposed their own. The dispute reached the Supreme Court, which ruled states and municipalities could enact distancing, quarantines and other sanitary rules.
“That’s when Bolsonaro lost control. He began to believe everyone was against him, especially the Supreme Court,” Scolese said.
The case sat dormant until September, when Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino ordered police to expand the investigation. The case remains underway and sealed.
Eléonore Hughes reported from Rio de Janeiro.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Varun Suresh, 29, appeared in the East County Hall of Justice in Dublin as the judge granted his defense more time before entering a plea in the case that reportedly left David Brimmer, 71, dead from multiple stab wounds in a neighborhood near the Fremont Hills.
Suresh’s attorney told NBC Bay Area in a recent interview that “there are significant mental health issues we are exploring.” Suresh is expected back in court on Dec. 17.
In the case, Suresh is accused of using the Megan’s Law website, a state database which tracks the home addresses of registered sex offenders, to develop a plan to stab Brimmer to death.
Suresh allegedly posed as a door-to-door accountant looking for clients to coax Brimmer into speaking with him at Brimmer’s home. Suresh allegedly chased Brimmer into another nearby home with a knife, slashed him in the kitchen and stalked the bloody man to the front yard before fatally stabbing him several times. Suresh then allegedly stood up, smoked a cigarette and gave himself up to police.
The fatal incident police originally reported as a fight in a hillside neighborhood near Mission Peak was the result of Suresh’s pre-planned plot to kill “child molesters” and “sex offenders,” according to court documents. After Suresh surrendered to police, he reportedly admitted the whole scheme to investigators.
Suresh allegedly told police that he chose Brimmer because he wanted “someone who is easy to kill” and that “white guys are so much more graceful. … They have no victimhood.”
“I’m hoping … that because he’s a pedophile … like, everyone hates pedophiles … so like, it should be cool,” Suresh said, according to police. “I honestly don’t like pedophiles. They deserve to die.”
According to the Megan’s Law website, Brimmer, who lived at 743 Solstice Ct., had four prior convictions of sexual offenses involving children in Alameda County between 1995 and 2004.
Brittney Kazee is also charged with an enhancement alleging she used a knife to commit the offense, according to the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office.
Officers were dispatched to an apartment complex in the 100 block of Fig Tree Lane around 1:40 p.m. Tuesday for a report of a fight between two women. They arrived to find Kazee’s daughter, Shaniyah Kazee, unconscious with a wound to her stomach.
Shaniyah Kazee was taken to John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, where she died from her injury.
Officers, meanwhile, arrested Brittney Kazee in connection with the fatal stabbing.
Brittney Kazee will be arraigned on the charges Monday in Martinez, prosecutors said. She remains in custody at the Martinez Detention Center on a $1 million bond.
MANILA, Philippines — Philippine police will arrest 18 suspects in a corruption scandal involving flood control projects that has sparked huge protests and forced implicated congressional leaders to step down, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced Friday.
Marcos has been scrambling to quell public outrage over the massive corruption, which has been blamed for substandard, defective or non-existent flood control projects in a poverty-stricken country, long prone to deadly typhoons, floodings and extreme weather in tropical Asia.
The president said the arrests were only the beginning.
The warrants were issued by the Sandiganbayan, a special anti-corruption court, against former lawmaker Zaldy Co, who has resigned from the House of Representatives and fled to an unspecified country, and 17 others, including government engineers and executives of Sunwest Corp., a constructions firm, over irregularities in a flood control project in Oriental Mindoro province.
Government prosecutors have recommended no bail for the suspects because of the scope of the irregularities in the river dike project, worth 289 million pesos ($4.8 million).
“They will be arrested, presented to the court and made to answer to the law,” Marcos said in a video message where he thanked the public for its patience. “There will be no special treatment, and nobody would be spared.”
Last week, Marcos said many of at least 37 powerful senators, members of Congress and wealthy construction executives implicated in the corruption scandal would be in jail by Christmas.
Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla, a key prosecutor in charge of fighting government corruption, told The Associated Press that at least five former and incumbent senators were under investigation for allegedly pocketing huge kickbacks in the faulty flood control projects. Among them is former Senate President Chiz Escudero, who has strongly denied any wrongdoing.
Those implicated include lawmakers opposed to and allied with Marcos, including Rep. Martin Romualdez, the president’s cousin and key ally, who has denied any involvement but has stepped down as House of Representatives speaker. Sen. Bong Go, a key ally of former President Rodrigo Duterte, has also come under suspicion but has denied any wrongdoing.
Duterte was arrested in March and detained by the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands for alleged crimes against humanity over his deadly anti-drugs crackdowns.
He is a harsh critic of Marcos and father of the incumbent vice president, Sara Duterte, who has said that the president should also be held accountable and jailed for signing into law the 2025 national budget that carried appropriations for irregular infrastructure projects.
Aides have defended Marcos from allegations linking him to the irregularities, saying that he first raised alarm over them in July in his annual state of the nation address before Congress.
Some 9,855 flood control projects worth more than 545 billion pesos ($9 billion) that were supposed to have been undertaken since Marcos took office in mid-2022 are under investigation. In September, Finance Secretary Ralph Recto told legislators that up to 118.5 billion pesos ($2 billion) for flood control projects may have been lost to corruption since 2023.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is to meet in private Friday with a high-profile issue on its agenda — President Donald Trump ’s birthright citizenship order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.
The justices could say as soon as Monday whether they will hear Trump’s appeal of lower court rulings that have uniformly struck down the citizenship restrictions. They have not taken effect anywhere in the United States.
If the court steps in now, the case would be argued in the spring, with a definitive ruling expected by early summer.
The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed on the first day of his second term in the White House, is part of his administration’s broad immigration crackdown. Other actions include immigration enforcement surges in several cities and the first peacetime invocation of the 18th century Alien Enemies Act.
The administration is facing multiple court challenges, and the high court has sent mixed signals in emergency orders it has issued. The justices effectively stopped the use of the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without court hearings, while they allowed the resumption of sweeping immigration stops in the Los Angeles area after a lower court blocked the practice of stopping people solely based on their race, language, job or location.
The justices also are weighing the administration’s emergency appeal to be allowed to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area for immigration enforcement actions. A lower court has indefinitely prevented the deployment.
Birthright citizenship is the first Trump immigration-related policy to reach the court for a final ruling. Trump’s order would upend more than 125 years of understanding that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers citizenship on everyone born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.
In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, or likely so, even after a Supreme Court ruling in late June that limited judges’ use of nationwide injunctions.
While the Supreme Court curbed the use of nationwide injunctions, it did not rule out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class-action lawsuits and those brought by states. The justices did not decide at that time whether the underlying citizenship order is constitutional.
But every lower court that has looked at the issue has concluded that Trump’s order violates or most likely violates the 14th Amendment, which was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.
The administration is appealing two cases.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco ruled in July that a group of states that sued over the order needed a nationwide injunction to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship being in effect in some states and not others.
Also in July, a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked the citizenship order in a class-action lawsuit including all children who would be affected.
The American Civil Liberties Union, leading the legal team in the New Hampshire case, urged the court to reject the appeal because the administration’s “arguments are so flimsy,” ACLU lawyer Cody Wofsy said. “But if the court decides to hear the case, we’re more than ready to take Trump on and win.”
Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers who are in the country illegally, under long-standing rules. The right was enshrined soon after the Civil War in the first sentence of the 14th Amendment.
The administration has asserted that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.
“The lower court’s decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in urging the high court’s review. “Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”
Nnamdi Kanu, founder of IPOB, was convicted and sentenced on Thursday.
IPOB has been accused of terrorism and extrajudicial killings in the country’s southeastern region where it has called for the creation of an independent state.
The separatist group condemned the sentence, claiming no weapons and “no attack plan” were ever found on Kanu and that the separatist leader did not commit any offenses under Nigerian or international law.
“We reaffirm our commitment to peaceful advocacy, international law and the pursuit of a United Nations–supervised referendum,” IPOB’s spokersperson, Emma Powerful, said in a statement.
The charges against Kanu, who has rejected the court’s authority, included carrying out acts of terrorism, issuing and violently enforcing stay-at-home orders that bring the southeastern region to a halt every Monday, giving guidance on how to make bombs to be used on government facilities, and incitement.
Judge James Omotosho told the court on Thursday that the “right to self-determination is a political right,” but he added that: “Any self-determination not done according to the constitution of Nigeria is illegal.”
Powerful said the violence in the southeast “is politically manufactured” and has nothing to do with Kanu, who has been in detention.
Ekpa, who is also a Finnish citizen, was sentenced to six years in prison for participating in the activities of a terrorist group, public incitement to commit a crime for terrorist purposes and aggravated tax fraud.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Google will confront the U.S. government’s latest attempt to topple its internet empire in federal court on Friday as a judge considers how to prevent the abusive tactics that culminated in parts of its digital ad network being branded as an illegal monopoly.
The courtroom showdown in Alexandria, Virginia, will pit lawyers from Google and the U.S. Department of Justice against each other in closing proceedings focused on the complex technology that distributes millions of digital ads across the internet each day.
After a lengthy trial last year, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled in April that pieces of Google’s ad technology had been rigged in a way that made it an illegal monopoly. That set up another 11-day trial earlier this fall to help Brinkema determine how to remedy its anti-competitive practices.
Friday’s closing arguments will give both Google and the Justice Department a final chance to sway Brinkema before she issues a ruling that probably won’t come until early next year.
The Justice Department wants Brinkema to force Google to sell some of the ad technology that it has spent nearly 20 years assembling, contending a breakup is the only way to rein in a company that the agency’s lawyers condemned as a “recidivist monopolist” in filings leading up to Friday’s hearing.
The condemnation refers not only to Google’s practices in digital advertising but also to the illegal monopoly that it unleashed through its dominant search engine. Federal prosecutors also sought a breakup in the search monopoly case, but the judge handling that issue rejected a proposal that would have required Google to sell its popular Chrome web browser.
Although Google is still being ordered to make reforms that it’s resisting, the outcome in the search monopoly case has been widely seen as a proverbial slap on the wrist. The belief that Google got off easy in the search case is the main reason the market value of its parent company Alphabet surged by about $950 billion, or 37%, to nearly $3.5 trillion since U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta’s decision came out in early September.
That setback hasn’t discouraged the Justice Department from arguing for a breakup of an ad tech system that handles 55 million requests per second, according to estimates provided by Google in court filings.
The huge volume of digital ads priced and distributed through Google’s technology is one of the main reasons that the company’s lawyers contend it would be too risky to force a dismantling of the intricate system.
“This is technology that absolutely has to keep working for consumers,” Google argues in documents leading up to Friday’s hearing. The company’s lawyers blasted the Justice Department’s proposal as a package of “legally unprecedented and unsupported divestitures.”
Besides arguing that its own proposed changes will bring more price transparency and foster more competition, Google is also citing market upheaval triggered by artificial intelligence as another reason for the judge to proceed cautiously with her decision.
In his decision in the search monopoly case, Mehta reasoned that AI was already posing more competition to Google.
But the Justice Department urged the judge to focus on the testimony from a litany of trial witnesses who outlined why Google shouldn’t be trusted to change its devious behavior.
The witnesses “explained how Google can manipulate computer algorithms that are the engine of its monopolies in ways too difficult to detect,” the Justice Department argued in court papers.
In your report on the horrific killing of coach John Beam, Alameda County Chief Public Defender Brendon Woods argued that “Instead of more jail and prison, we should invest in more effective solutions, such as diversion, mentorship and violence interruption.”
Ironically, Coach Beam exemplified the diversion, mentorship and violence prevention programs that Woods advocates, but the effective result was Beam’s own murder. Stop coddling offenders and restore punishment as a societal norm.
The government shutdown is finally over. This is good news for the nearly 42 million people receiving SNAP, as their full benefits will resume soon. But there is something seriously wrong when our government can take benefits from low-income people (many of whom have jobs). Food banks, though important and appreciated, are simply not in a position to substitute for SNAP funding. Our government has trodden on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and my personal values that food is a right.
But Congress still must pass a budget that protects critical programs that reduce poverty and ensures that the money is spent as directed. They have until Jan. 30 to get it done. Email your representatives and senators now. Tell them to protecty health care, nutrition and housing programs, and include safeguards to ensure the administration spends taxpayer funds as Congress intended.
Sue Oehser Oakland
Healthy diets are good if you can get food
President Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, Dr. Casey Means, is a proponent of lifestyle changes, including healthy eating, over medical interventions to treat diseases.
While there is certainly wisdom in eating properly to lower the risk of some illnesses, SNAP benefits in this country are in peril, not just during the recent government shutdown, but from other messages coming out of this administration critical of helping the poor.
It is wrong to insist that people should eat healthy who don’t have the means to do so. It is ignorant to then expect people won’t need medical care to treat the problems that proper nutrition might prevent.
What’s impressive in our democracy is the decision that we, the people, will allot some of our funds to ensure that those in need will have enough to eat.
If Means is serious about changes to medical care, she must also insist that our government fully fund SNAP.
Teri Shikany Danville
Trump will play system again in Epstein case
President Trump suddenly switched his position on the Epstein files by encouraging the House and Senate to vote on its release while simultaneously suggesting the Department of Justice investigate other people he knows had relationships with Jeffrey Epstein and, possibly, Epstein’s underage girls.
Trump’s tactic of running out the clock in court was successful with the Jan. 6 charges against him and will likely achieve the same result when Attorney General Pam Bondi claims the Epstein files can not be opened while the other investigations are underway. They have their ducks lined up. The clock will tick well past the midterms and the ‘28 election as additional names are suggested. Nothing will be released.
While all this might seem legal, a coordinated effort by the DOJ and the president to bury anything about his own participation and avoid possible consequences is corruption … no more, no less.
Barry Brynjulson Pleasanton
Stabilize energy costs before going green
Silicon Valley Power (SVP) will propose a 4% rate increase to the Santa Clara City Council in December.
We must help power companies stay solvent, but spiraling energy costs are not sustainable and are reflected in the cost of everything in California, from rent to food. We need nuclear and hydro to generate electricity, and we are way behind in developing those energy sources.
In the meantime, we must reauthorize natural gas. It’s the bridge fuel that’s supposed to sustain us until greener alternatives are online. California politicians burned that bridge before we could get across it. Imagine millions of electric cars returning home to recharge in 2035 with a grid that can’t support them. And dare I say it, we also need to pump more oil in California to make gas more affordable.
Green — yes, but on a realistic, science-based timeline.
Jim Stoch Carnelian Bay
No evidence Newsom cares about state either
On X, California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote that “He (President Trump) doesn’t give a damn about you.”
But considering that California’s record on homelessness, taxes and schools leaves much to be desired, I have to wonder whether Newsom truly gives a damn about California voters, besides getting their votes in the 2028 presidential election.
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A federal judge has ordered the release of 16 people detained by immigration officials during an FBI-led raid at a rural Idaho racetrack last month.
U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled Wednesday that keeping the migrants jailed without bond violated their due process rights, and he ordered that they be released while they wait for their immigration cases to be resolved. Many of them have lived in the U.S. for decades and lacked any criminal history, Winmill noted. Some are married to U.S. citizens or have children who are U.S. citizens, according to court documents.
In an e-mailed statement to The Associated Press, the Department of Homeland Security said Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents lawfully arrested the detainees during the raid, and added that “an activist judge is ordering lawbreakers to roam free.”
“The Trump administration is committed to restoring the rule of law and common sense to our immigration system, and will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country,” the department said.
The Oct. 19 raid at the privately operated outdoor track in Wilder was led by the FBI as part of an investigation into suspected illegal gambling. More than 200 officers from at least 14 agencies, including U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, participated in the raid, detaining around 400 people for hours, including many U.S. citizens.
Witnesses described aggressive tactics, including zip-tying children or separating young kids from their parents for an hour or more. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose agency oversees Border Patrol and ICE, denied that children were zip-tied. FBI spokesperson Sandra Barker initially said no restraints or rubber bullets were used on children but later amended that statement, replacing “children” with “young children.”
The raid resulted in only a handful of gambling-related arrests, while 105 people were arrested on suspicion of immigration violations. Many of them signed voluntary agreements to leave the country before they were able to talk to immigration lawyers, said Nikki Ramirez-Smith, an immigration attorney whose firm is representing 15 of the people released this week.
Just 18 people detained in the raid have sought their release in the federal courts in Idaho, according to online court records. One of them had that request initially dismissed after a judge found that they did not include enough detail in their court filing, but the judge also gave them 30 days to try again. Another person is now pursuing release through a different federal court after they were transferred to a detention facility in a different state.
The federal judge in Idaho said that nearly all of his colleagues who have faced similar requests from immigration detainees have come to the same conclusion: That non-citizens who are detained while already present in the United States are entitled to due process rights.
“Treating the detention of noncitizens stopped at or near the border differently from noncitizens who reside within the country is not an anomaly. Instead, it reflects the long-recognized distinction in our immigration laws and the Constitution that due process protections apply to noncitizens residing within the country but not those stopped at or near the border,” Winmill wrote.
Ramirez-Smith said Winmill’s release orders do “a great job of putting into perspective what the issues are.”
“They’ll just stay home with their families, and we’ll file the applications for relief in immigration court, and they’ll get a court hearing. Those trial dates will probably be years out,” she said, because of a hefty backlog of more than 3 million cases in immigration courts.
Still, President Donald Trump has taken steps to reduce the backlog, instructing judges during his first term to deny entire categories of asylum claims such as for victims of gang or domestic violence.
During his current term, the Trump administration has fired dozens of immigration judges, and authorized about 600 military lawyers to work as temporary immigration judges. The administration has also frequently turned what would normally be routine immigration hearings into deportation traps, with government lawyers quickly dismissing asylum cases so the migrants who sought asylum can be immediately arrested in the courthouse halls.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
New Jersey’s highest court ruled Thursday that expert testimony about shaken baby syndrome is scientifically unreliable and inadmissible in two upcoming trials, a decision that comes as the long-held medical diagnoses have come under increased scrutiny.
The New Jersey Supreme Court determined that a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome, which is also known as abusive head trauma, is not generally accepted within the “biomechanical community” and is therefore not “sufficiently reliable” for admission at the trials.
The 6-1 ruling deals with the trials of two men facing charges in separate cases, where the young victims showed symptoms that have come to be associated with shaken baby syndrome.
The justices, using an abbreviation for the syndrome, concluded in their lengthy decision that “there was no test supporting a finding that humans can produce the physical force necessary to cause the symptoms associated with SBS/AHT in a child.”
But Justice Rachel Wainer Apter, in a strongly worded dissent, said the other justices put more weight on the views of individual biomechanical engineers over the “consensus perspective of every major medical society in the world.”
That, she said, includes all the medical discipline involved in the diagnosis and treatment of shaken baby syndrome — pediatrics, child abuse pediatrics, neurology, neuroradiology, neurosurgery, radiology, ophthalmology and emergency medicine.
Wainer Apter also noted that every other U.S. state allows testimony in court on the syndrome and “every other court that has considered the question” has held such evidence as admissible.
“No case has ever concluded that evidence of SBS/AHT is unreliable,” she wrote. “And no case has ever found its reliability sufficiently questioned to preclude its admission at a civil or criminal trial.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, the syndrome is a result of forcefully shaking an infant or a toddler, which can damage or destroy a child’s brain cells and cause permanent brain damage or even death. Symptoms include bleeding around the brain, brain swelling and bleeding in the eyes.
Prosecutors and medical societies say the syndrome is the leading cause of fatal head injuries in children younger than 2 years of age, with more than 1,000 cases reported in the U.S. each year, according to the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome.
But defense lawyers and some in the medical and scientific communities argue that shaken baby diagnosis is flawed and has led to wrongful convictions, pointing to overturned convictions or dropped charges in California, Ohio, Massachusetts and Michigan.
The state attorney general’s office declined to comment Thursday, but the public defender’s office hailed the decision as a “landmark” moment, saying it reflected the importance of relying on “reliable, well-supported scientific evidence” in criminal cases.
“Where the science is uncertain, the stakes are simply too high to permit unsupported expert opinions to decide a person’s guilt or to justify separating children from their parents,” Cody Mason, a managing attorney in the public defender’s office, said in a statement.
EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) — A former staffer for a congressman told authorities she was attacked by three armed men who tied her up, slashed her and scrawled an anti-Trump statement on her stomach while she was walking in a New Jersey nature preserve this summer, according to authorities. But federal prosecutors are now accusing her of staging the scene and making the whole thing up.
The 26-year-old woman, who worked for Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew, and a friend had reported the attack July 23 at a nature preserve in Egg Harbor Township, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey. The friend called 911 saying the attackers had a gun, knew the woman’s name and that she worked for Van Drew, a strong supporter of President Donald Trump.
Responding police soon found the woman lying in a wooded area with her shirt pulled over her head and her hands and feet zip tied, according to prosecutors. She had several cuts on her face, neck, chest and shoulder, while slogans criticizing Trump and Van Drew were written with black marker on her stomach and back.
The woman later repeated her claims about the attack while being interviewed by police and FBI agents, according to prosecutors. But authorities allege the story soon started to unravel when they searched the woman’s Maserati and found zip ties and duct tape inside.
A search of her cellphone found she was following communities on Reddit for “bodymods” and “scarification” and had obtained directions to the studio of a body-modification artist in Pennsylvania, court documents say.
The artist at the studio showed investigators messages from the woman requesting specific scar patterns on her body and photos from after the procedure, which matched the lacerations she had when she was found in the woods, prosecutors say.
The woman was charged with conspiracy to convey false statements and hoaxes and another count of making false statements to federal law enforcement. She made her initial court appearance Wednesday.
A statement issued by Van Drew’s office said he was “deeply saddened” about the incident and said their “thoughts and prayers” were with the woman, adding “we hope she’s getting the care she needs.” His office did not immediately respond Thursday to questions on whether she was still working for the congressman at the time of the incident.
Louis Barbone, a lawyer representing the woman, noted she is presumed innocent of the charges.
“At the age of 26, my client served her community working full time to serve the constituents of the Congressman with loyalty and fidelity. She did that while being a fulltime student,” Barbone said in a statement issued Thursday. ”Under the law she is presumed innocent and reserves all her defenses for a presentation in a court of law.”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — The Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic has issued a landmark ruling ending a ban that criminalized same-sex conduct within the country’s police department and its armed forces.
Human rights activists praised the ruling on Thursday, saying it was long overdue.
“No one should be discriminated against, not only within the ranks of the police and the armed forces, but in general,” said Manuel Meccariello, director of the Human Rights Observatory for Vulnerable Groups.
However, he said that the ruling does not mean police officers or soldiers would be allowed to engage in romantic relationships at work; they must comply with labor regulations like all other members.
While some welcomed the ruling made public on Wednesday, many in the socially conservative country decried it.
“What the country is experiencing in terms of morality, values and principles is concerning,” said Feliciano Lacen, spokesperson for the country’s main evangelical organization. “Allowing such depravity publicly and legally sets an unequivocal precedent, which is neither conducive to nor in line with…what we have aspired for the Dominican Republic.”
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense declined to comment on the ruling, while the National Police said it did not have immediate comment.
Human Rights Watch said Thursday that it was part of the case and had argued that the criminalization of same-sex conduct violates international standards.
Police officers could face up to two years in prison and those in the Armed Forces one year under the ban.
“For decades, these provisions forced LGBT officers to live in fear of punishment simply for who they are,” said Cristian González Cabrera, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This ruling is a resounding affirmation that a more inclusive future is both possible and required under Dominican law.”
Human Rights Watch said other countries in the region have taken similar steps, including Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela.
TITUSVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The 16-year-old stepbrother of the Florida high school senior who died this month on a Carnival cruise ship has been identified as a suspect in her death, according to sworn statements filed by his parents in court documents.
The disclosures — contained in affidavits and motions filed in an ongoing custody dispute — offer the clearest public indication that federal investigators are scrutinizing a member of the victim’s own blended family.
The documents show both parents acknowledging that their middle child, identified in court only by his initials “T.H.,” is under FBI investigation in connection with the death of Anna Kepner, a high school cheerleader from Florida’s Space Coast whose death aboard the ship has drawn international attention and remains shrouded in uncertainty. A memorial service for Kepner was scheduled for Thursday evening.
Neither the FBI nor Carnival has said publicly how Kepner died, whether a crime occurred, or what led agents to focus on the teen. A spokesperson for the FBI has declined to comment, saying the agency “does not provide operational updates about ongoing investigations.”
A final autopsy report detailing the cause and manner of death is still pending, according to the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s office.
“T.H.” is “now a suspect in the death of the step child during the cruise,” Thomas Hudson, the boy’s father, said in court papers seeking custody of the youngest of the three children he shares with his ex-wife.
Hudson’s ex-wife, Shauntel Hudson, also acknowledged in family court filings that her middle child was a suspect in the death of Kepner aboard the Carnival Horizon ship. Shauntel Hudson married Kepner’s father after her divorce from Thomas Hudson. Kepner was traveling aboard the ship with Shauntel Hudson and her minor children.
“It is true that there is an open investigation regarding the death of the biological daughter of the stepfather and T.H. is a suspect regarding this death which occurred recently on a cruise ship,” Shauntel Hudson’s attorney wrote.
Shauntel Hudson wrote that since the death, the boy has been living with a relative “to ensure the safety of the youngest child of the parties.” She also said that her ex-husband had hired an attorney for their son due to the probe into Kepner’s death.
Earlier this week, Shauntel Hudson’s attorney had asked for a delay in a court hearing scheduled next month because of the FBI investigation. The attorney argued that her client cannot be compelled to testify, as any testimony Shauntel Hudson may give “could be prejudicial to her or her adolescent child in this pending criminal investigation.”
Kepner’s loved ones planned to honor her Thursday at a celebration of life service in Titusville, 40 miles (64 kilometers) east of Orlando. Her family encouraged attendees to wear colorful clothes instead of the traditional mourner’s black, “in honor of Anna’s bright and beautiful soul.”
Kepner’s obituary described her as someone who loved spending time on the water and said she was planning to graduate high school next year from Temple Christian School in Titusville.
The Carnival Horizon can hold nearly 4,000 guests and sails to the Caribbean. Carnival Cruise Line said the ship returned to PortMiami on Nov. 8 as planned and the ship was working with the FBI Miami office to investigate the incident.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A Philippine court convicted a former mayor, who officials say is a Chinese national, of human trafficking charges for helping establish an illegal online gaming complex in a northern province where hundreds of Chinese and other foreign nationals were forced to conduct scams.
The Pasig city regional trial court in metropolitan Manila sentenced Alice Guo to life in prison with seven other Filipino and Chinese co-accused, and ordered them to pay a fine of 2 million pesos ($34,000) each and compensate several trafficking victims, who filed the complaints.
Guo denied all allegations against her and says she is a Filipino citizen.
Vast online scam centers have flourished in Southeast Asia in recent years, especially in the border areas of Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. The U.N. has estimated that hundreds of thousands of people have been trapped in virtual slavery by gangs who force them to financially exploit people around the world through false romances, bogus investment pitches and illegal gambling schemes.
In the Philippines, scam operations rapidly built vast compounds with buildings or rented upscale offices in Manila’s financial districts and moved around large numbers of workers by bribing authorities.
Philippine authorities allege that Guo is a Chinese national named Guo Huaping, who faked Filipino citizenship to run for mayor of the town of Bamban in northern Tarlac province, where she ran a sprawling illegal scam compound near the town hall.
“They used the parcels of land and buildings to house the trafficked workers and to force them to work as scammers,” the court said in its decision.
Last year, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered a ban on hundreds of mostly Chinese-run online gaming operations, which proliferated under the administration of previous President Rodrigo Duterte. Marcos accused the gaming operations of crimes including financial scams, human trafficking, torture, kidnapping and murder.
Many have been raided and shut down since then, with tens of thousands of trafficked workers rescued and sent back to their home countries. But more scam centers remain in operation, officials said.
“The conviction of Alice Guo, also known as Guo Hua Ping, is a victory against corruption, human trafficking, cybercrime and many other transnational crimes,” said Sen. Risa Hontiveros. “But it is far from over.”
Hontiveros led televised Senate inquiries last year that exposed underground online scam operations in the Philippines, along with Guo’s alleged criminal involvement.
Philippine security officials and Hontiveros have said the scam centers operated by Guo and other Chinese nationals may have also been used for espionage by China, which has had increasingly fierce territorial conflicts with the Philippines in the South China Sea and has strongly opposed the presence of American forces in the country. The Philippines is the oldest U.S. treaty ally in Asia.
“We will continue to demand accountability from every government agency that failed in their duties, and we will continue to investigate the full extent of Chinese intelligence operations in our country,” Hontiveros said. “And to all others who enabled Alice Guo’s criminal empire: the Philippines is not a playground for exploitation, infiltration and espionage.”
Guo has not been charged with espionage and she denies any connection to spying.
The town of Bamban is located several kilometers (miles) from a Philippine air force base, where American forces have been allowed to maintain a rotating presence with their aircraft and weapons under a 2014 defense pact.
Guo was dismissed from her post as mayor last year by a state Ombudsman, who cited grave misconduct. She fled the Philippines in July 2024, but was tracked down in Indonesia, where she was arrested and deported to the Philippines. She has been in detention since last year.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
As President Donald Trump laid it out to reporters this summer, the plan was simple.
Republicans, the president said, were “entitled” to five more conservative-leaning U.S. House seats in Texas and additional ones in other red states. The president broke with more than a century of political tradition in directing the GOP to redraw those maps in the middle of the decade to avoid losing control of Congress in next year’s midterms.
Four months later, Trump’s audacious ask looks anything but simple. After a federal court panel struck down Republicans’ new map in Texas on Tuesday, the entire exercise holds the potential to net Democrats more winnable seats in the House instead.
“Trump may have let the genie out of the bottle,” said UCLA law professor Rick Hasen, “but he may not get the wish he’d hoped for.”
Trump’s plan is to bolster his party’s narrow House margin to protect Republicans from losing control of the chamber in next year’s elections. Normally, the president’s party loses seats in the midterms. But his involvement in redistricting is instead becoming an illustration of the limits of presidential power.
Gov. Greg Abbott announces his re-election campaign for Texas governor in Houston, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025. (Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Gov. Greg Abbott announces his re-election campaign for Texas governor in Houston, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025. (Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Playing with fire
To hold Republicans’ grip on power in Washington, Trump is relying on a complex political process.
Redrawing maps is a decentralized effort that involves navigating a tangle of legal rules. It also involves a tricky political calculus because the legislators who hold the power to draw maps often want to protect themselves, business interests or local communities more than ruthlessly help their party.
And when one party moves aggressively to draw lines to help itself win elections — also known as gerrymandering — it runs the risk of pushing its rival party to do the same.
That’s what Trump ended up doing, spurring California voters to replace their map drawn by a nonpartisan commission with one drawn by Democrats to gain five seats. If successful, the move would cancel out the action taken by Texas Republicans. California voters approved that map earlier this month, and if a Republican lawsuit fails to block it, that map giving Democrats more winnable seats will remain in effect even if Texas’ remains stalled.
“Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, posted on X after the Texas ruling, mentioning his Republican counterpart in Texas along with the president.
Rep. Kevin Kiley, a Republican whose northern California district would be redrawn under the state’s new map, agreed.
“It could very well come out as a net loss for Republicans, honestly when you look at the map, or at the very least, it could end up being a wash,” Kiley said. “But it’s something that never should have happened. It was ill-conceived from the start.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a rally with Harris County Democrats at the IBEW local 716 union hall in Houston, on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Karen Warren)
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a rally with Harris County Democrats at the IBEW local 716 union hall in Houston, on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Karen Warren)
For Trump, a mix of wins and losses
There’s no guarantee that Tuesday’s ruling on the Texas map will stand. Many lower courts have blocked Trump’s initiatives, only for the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court to put those rulings on hold. Texas Republicans immediately appealed Tuesday’s decision to the high court, too.
Even before Tuesday, Trump’s push for mid-decade redistricting was not playing out as neatly as he had hoped, though he had scored some apparent wins. North Carolina Republicans potentially created another conservative-leaning seat in that battleground state, while Missouri Republicans redrew their congressional map at Trump’s urging to eliminate one Democratic seat. The Missouri plan faces lawsuits and a possible referendum that would force a statewide vote on the matter.
Trump’s push has faltered elsewhere. Republicans in Kansas balked at trying to eliminate the state’s lone swing seat, held by a Democratic congresswoman. Indiana Republicans also refused to redraw their map to eliminate their two Democratic-leaning congressional seats.
After Trump attacked the main Indiana holdout, state Sen. Greg Goode, on social media, he was the victim of a swatting call over the weekend that led to sheriff’s deputies coming to his house.
Trump’s push could have a boomerang effect on Republicans
The bulk of redistricting normally happens once every 10 years, following the release of new population estimates from the U.S. Census. That requires state lawmakers to adjust their legislative lines to make sure every district has roughly the same population. It also opens the door to gerrymandering maps to make it harder for the party out of power to win legislative seats.
Inevitably, redistricting leads to litigation, which can drag on for years and spur mid-decade, court-mandated revisions.
Republicans stood to benefit from these after the last cycle in 2021 because they won state supreme court elections in North Carolina and Ohio in 2022. But some litigation hasn’t gone the GOP’s way. A judge in Utah earlier this month required the state to make one of its four congressional seats Democratic-leaning.
Trump broke with modern political practice by urging a wholesale, mid-decade redraw in red states.
Democrats were in a bad position to respond to Trump’s gambit because more states they control have lines drawn by independent commissions rather than by partisan lawmakers, the legacy of government reform efforts.
But with Newsom’s push to let Democrats draw California’s lines successful, the party is looking to replicate it elsewhere.
Next up may be Virginia, where Democrats recaptured the governor’s office this month and expanded their margins in the Legislature. A Democratic candidate for governor in Colorado has called for a similar measure there. Republicans currently hold 9 of the 19 House seats in those two states.
Overall, Republicans have more to lose if redistricting becomes a purely partisan activity nationally and voters in blue states ditch their nonpartisan commissions to let their preferred party maximize its margins. In the last complete redistricting cycle in 2021, commissions drew 95 House seats that Democrats would have otherwise drawn, and only 13 that Republicans would have drawn.
The State Capitol is seen in Austin, Texas, on June 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
The State Capitol is seen in Austin, Texas, on June 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
Gerrymandering’s unintended consequences
On Tuesday, Republicans were reappraising Trump’s championing of redistricting hardball.
“I think if you look at the basis of this, there was no member of the delegation that was asked our opinion,” Republican Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas told reporters.
Incumbents usually don’t like the idea of radically redrawing districts. It can lead to what political experts call a “dummymander” — spreading the opposing party’s voters so broadly that they end up endangering your own incumbents in a year, like 2026, that is expected to be bad for the party in power.
Incumbents also don’t like losing voters who have supported them or getting wholly new communities drawn into their districts, said Jonathan Cervas, who teaches redistricting at Carnegie Mellon University and has drawn new maps for courts. Democratic lawmakers in Illinois and Maryland have so far resisted mid-decade redraws to pad their majorities in their states, joining their GOP counterparts in Indiana and Kansas.
Cervas said that’s why it was striking to watch Trump push Republicans to dive into mid-decade redistricting.
“The idea they’d go along to get along is basically crazy,” he said.
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Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti and Kevin Freking in Washington contributed to this report.
