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Tag: Indictments

  • The Dramatic Arraignment of Nicolás Maduro

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    Depending on whom you ask, Nicolás Maduro is either the President, the former President, or the President turned dictator of Venezuela. In an indictment unsealed over the weekend, the Trump Administration calls him “the de facto but illegitimate ruler of the country.” But, in a Manhattan courtroom, on Monday, Judge Alvin Hellerstein wasn’t interested in Maduro’s title, formal or otherwise. He only asked what judges routinely ask federal defendants during their first appearances before a magistrate, right before they’re arraigned on criminal charges. “Are you, sir, Nicolás Maduro Moros?” the judge asked.

    That’s when Maduro—dressed in navy, and wearing shackles and headphones, so that he could hear the court interpreter—stood up and, in his native Spanish, told the judge who he was and how he’d arrived inside a United States courtroom. “Soy el Presidente constitucional de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela,” Maduro responded, before explaining that the U.S. government had kidnapped him and his wife from their home in Caracas on January 3rd, and that he was invoking the protections of international treaties. “I consider myself a prisoner of war,” he said.

    Judge Hellerstein interrupted Maduro and reminded him that he had asked a simple yes-or-no question. “I only want to know one thing: Are you Nicolás Maduro Moros?”

    “I am Nicolás Maduro Moros,” the defendant confirmed. During her own allocution moments later, Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, likewise struck a note of defiance and introduced herself as the First Lady of Venezuela, her face appearing bruised and bandaged. (Later in the hearing, her lawyer indicated that she may have suffered a fracture or severe bruising to her ribs during her arrest.)

    That was only the start of a simultaneously dramatic yet profoundly quotidian hearing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, a venue long renowned for proceedings against corrupt politicians, Mafia figures, drug kingpins, and even former heads of state—such as Honduras’s Juan Orlando Hernández, who after his extradition, in 2022, was indicted, convicted, and imprisoned on federal drug-trafficking and weapons charges not unlike the ones Maduro faces. (On the week of Thanksgiving, President Donald Trump pardoned Hernández, just days after pardoning a turkey.) The Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse, together with the neighboring Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, which houses the federal appeals court, has been the battleground for numerous Trump-era legal controversies across his two Presidencies. Steve Bannon, Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels, E. Jean Carroll, Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Eric Adams are among the figures in the President’s orbit who have sought, faced, or eluded justice, in one way or another, in these marbled halls.

    Trump wasn’t a subject of the hearing on Monday, yet it was impossible to take in the spectacle of Maduro denouncing the charges against him, in open court, without considering that, for much of the past year, his beleaguered nation has been a fixation of the Administration, more so than any other country in Latin America. From the hundreds of Venezuelans unlawfully disappeared to El Salvador, under the Alien Enemies Act, to the elimination of Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans, to the lawless strikes against Venezuelan boats suspected of carrying drugs, Trump has continuously made the South American country a target of his fury, his policies, and a not-so-secret desire for regime change and its vast oil reserves. Hellerstein is well aware of this relentless campaign, having ruled in May that the American President could not invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law, to summarily deport Venezuelan migrants, because there was no war, invasion, or predatory incursion by or against Venezuela that justified its use. (The judge is also familiar with Trump’s thirty-four-count indictment in New York, over hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, which Trump tried to push to federal court—a bid that Hellerstein denied.)

    Neither geopolitics nor the broader constitutional and international-law implications of Maduro’s arrest and prosecution were a focus of Monday’s proceedings, but Hellerstein did inform Maduro, during his initial protest, that he’d have an opportunity to bring up those big-picture arguments ahead of trial. His lawyer, Barry Pollack, who once represented the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, later made reference to the expected pretrial motions seeking to quash the indictment—characterizing them as “substantial”—including one related to the question of whether Maduro enjoys head-of-state immunity. This thorny and contested issue, among others, may well reach the Supreme Court, which, like Hellerstein, has already reminded Trump twice not to play fast and loose with the due process owed to Venezuelans accused of being alien enemies.

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    Cristian Farias

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  • Suspects plead not guilty in Southern California bombing plot

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    LOS ANGELES — Three of the four suspects accused of plotting to bomb several Southern California business locations on New Year’s Eve have pleaded not guilty.

    Audrey Carroll, 30, and Zachary Page, 32, entered their pleas in federal court Monday. Tina Lai, 41, entered her plea in court a few days earlier. Their attorneys did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.

    The fourth person, Dante Anthony-Gaffield, 24, will enter his plea Jan. 20.

    The suspects, all from the Los Angeles area, were arrested Dec. 12 in the Mojave Desert east of Los Angeles as they were rehearsing their plot, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said last month. Officials said they made the arrests before the suspects assembled a functional explosive device.

    Essayli said Carroll created a detailed plan to bomb five or more business locations owned by two companies across Southern California on New Year’s Eve described as “Amazon-type” logistical centers. He did not identify the alleged targets.

    A grand jury indicted the four on multiple counts of providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists and possession of unregistered firearms. Carroll and Page were also indicted on one count of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.

    Officials said they are members of an offshoot of an anti-capitalist and anti-government group dubbed the Turtle Island Liberation Front. The group calls for decolonization, tribal sovereignty and “the working class to rise up and fight back against capitalism,” according to the criminal complaint.

    They also are members of what one of the defendants characterized as a “radical” faction of the group that communicated using a chat called “Order of the Black Lotus,” according to the indictment.

    The term “Turtle Island” is used by some Indigenous peoples to describe North America in a way that reflects its existence outside of the colonial boundaries put in place by the U.S. and Canada. It comes from Indigenous creation stories where the continent was formed on the back of a giant turtle.

    Two of the group’s members also had discussed plans for future attacks targeting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and vehicles with pipe bombs, according to the criminal complaint.

    Photos included in the court documents show the desert campsite where they were arrested with what investigators said were bomb-making materials strewn across plastic folding tables.

    Trial for Carroll, Page, and Lai is scheduled to begin Feb. 17. Anthony-Gaffield’s trial will be scheduled once he enters his plea.

    If convicted, Carroll and Page could face a maximum sentence of life in federal prison, and Anthony-Gaffield and Lai could face a maximum sentence of 25 years in federal prison.

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  • Founder of Indonesian ride-hailing app Gojek stands trial over Chromebooks procurement

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    JAKARTA, Indonesia — An Indonesian court on Monday opened the trial of a co-founder of the country’s ride-hailing and payments company Gojek, who is accused of corruption in a government project to procure Google Chromebook laptops for schools.

    Nadiem Anwar Makarim, 41, was a former education, culture, research and technology minister when he was arrested Sept. 7. His arrest came during an investigation by the attorney general’s office in Jakarta into an alleged $125 billion corruption scandal linked to the project.

    The laptop procurement initiated under the government’s “digitalization of schools” policy aimed to equip schools in remote areas with digital devices and infrastructure.

    Makarim, who was education minister between 2019 and 2024, allegedly favored Google’s Chromebook despite a ministry research team refusing to recommend the laptop model due to ineffectiveness in regions lacking internet access.

    The indictment claims Makarim steered the nationwide procurement in 2020–2021 “entirely for personal business interests.” Prosecutors said he pressed Google to invest in PT Aplikasi Karya Anak Bangsa, known as PT AKAB. The company is the parent of Gojek.

    Makarim received about 809 billion rupiah ($48.2 million) in connection with the program, prosecutors claimed.

    He faces a possible sentence of life imprisonment for causing state losses and misusing public funds under Indonesia’s 2001 Corruption Law.

    “The procurement ignored proper pricing benchmarks and technical needs, especially for remote or under-resourced regions,” lead prosecutor Muhammad Fadli Paramajeng told a panel of three judges at Jakarta’s Corruption Court on Monday.

    The purchase of more than 1.2 million Chromebooks was designed to strengthen Google’s dominance in Indonesia’s education tech ecosystem and linked to subsequent Google investments of about $787 million in PT AKAB through Google Asia Pacific, he said.

    Makarim, a Harvard University graduate, was a tech CEO who co-founded Gojek in 2009 and remained until 2019, when the company was valued at over $10 billion. He stepped down to join the cabinet of former Indonesia President Joko Widodo.

    Prosecutors allege his resignation from PT AKAB and Gojek was a “strategic concealment” to mask conflicts of interest while Makarim appointed close associates as directors and “beneficial owners,” allowing him to maintain indirect control over company decisions.

    Makarim has denied the allegations, saying he did not personally receive funds from the Chromebook procurement or related services.

    Makarim’s defense attorneys argue Google’s investment largely predated his ministerial tenure and was routine corporate activity that was not tied to the laptop deal.

    Makarim divested from PT AKAB upon taking office, his wealth fell by more than 50% during his term and procurement decisions were made by technical teams and officials, not the minister, they said.

    “The defendant was not involved in the procurement process, as his role was limited solely to formulating policy,” defense lawyer Ari Yusuf Amir told the court. He called the indictment “unclear, inaccurate and incomplete,” saying it conflated Makarim’s ministerial authority with the work of other government officials.

    Two former education ministry officials and a former tech consultant also were charged in the case, while another staff member is wanted by authorities but remains at large.

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  • How cocaine, corruption led to Maduro’s indictment

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    A newly unsealed U.S. Justice Department indictment accuses captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of running a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by a drug-trafficking operation that flooded the U.S. with thousands of tons of cocaine. The arrest of Maduro and his…

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    By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and LARRY NEUMEISTER – Associated Press

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  • Maduro’s Case Will Revive a Legal Debate Over Immunity for Foreign Leaders Tested in Noriega Trial

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    Maduro was captured Saturday, 36 years to the day after Noriega was removed by American forces. And as was the case with the Panamanian leader, lawyers for Maduro are expected to contest the legality of his arrest, arguing that he is immune from prosecution as a sovereign head of foreign state, which is a bedrock principle of international and U.S. law.

    That argument is unlikely to succeed and was largely settled as a matter of law in Noriega’s trial, legal experts said. Trump’s ordering of the operation in Venezuela raises its own constitutional concerns because it was not authorized by Congress, now that Maduro is in the United States. But American courts are to allow Maduro’s prosecution to proceed because, like Noriega in Panama, the U.S. government does not recognize him as Venezuela’s legitimate leader.

    “There’s no claim to sovereign immunity if we don’t recognize him as head of state,” said Dick Gregorie, a retired federal prosecutor who indicted Noriega and later went on to investigate corruption inside Maduro’s government. “Several U.S. administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have called his election fraudulent and withheld U.S. recognition. Sadly, for Maduro, it means he’s stuck with it.”

    Noriega died in 2017 after nearly three decades in prison, first in the U.S., then France and finally Panama. In his first trial, his lawyers argued that his arrest as a result of a U.S. invasion was so “shocking to the conscience” that it rendered the government’s case an illegal violation of his due process rights.


    Justice Department opinion allows ‘forcible abductions’ abroad

    In ordering Noriega’s removal, the White House relied on a 1989 legal opinion by then-Assistant Attorney General Bill Barr, issued six months before the invasion. That opinion said the U.N. Charter’s prohibition on the use of force in international relations does not prohibit the U.S. from carrying out “forcible abductions” abroad to enforce domestic laws.

    Supreme Court decisions dating to the 1800s also have upheld America’s jurisdiction to prosecute foreigners regardless of whether their presence in the United States was lawfully secured.

    Barr’s opinion is likely to feature in Maduro’s prosecution as well, experts said.

    Drawing parallels to the Noriega case, Barr on Sunday pushed aside criticisms that the U.S. was pursuing a change of government in Venezuela instead of enforcing domestic laws. As attorney general during the first Trump administration, Barr oversaw Maduro’s indictment.

    “Going after them and dismantling them inherently involves regime change,” Barr said in a “Fox News Sunday” interview. “The object here is not just to get Maduro. We indicted a whole slew of his lieutenants. It’s to clean that place out of this criminal organization.”


    Key differences between Noriega and Maduro in court

    There are differences between the two cases.

    Noriega never held the title of president during his six-year de facto rule, leaving a string of puppets to fill that role. By contrast, Maduro claims to have won a popular mandate three times. Although the results of his 2024 reelection are disputed, a number of governments — China, Russia and Egypt among them — recognized his victory.

    “Before you ever get to guilt or innocence, there are serious questions about whether a U.S. court can proceed at all,” said David Oscar Markus, a defense lawyer in Miami who has handled several high-profile criminal cases, including some involving Venezuela. “Maduro has a much stronger sovereign immunity defense than did Noriega, who was not actually the sitting president of Panama at the time.”

    For U.S. courts, however, the only opinion that matters is that of the State Department, which considers Maduro a fugitive and has for months been offering a $50 million reward for his arrest.

    The first Trump administration closed the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, and broke diplomatic relations with Maduro’s government in 2019 after he cruised to reelection by outlawing most rival candidates. The administration then recognized the opposition head of the National Assembly as the country’s legitimate leader.

    The Biden administration mostly stuck to that policy, allowing an opposition-appointed board to run Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, even as the U.S. engaged in direct talks with Maduro’s government that were aimed at paving the way for free elections.

    “Courts are so deferential to the executive in matters of foreign policy, that I find it difficult for the judiciary to engage in this sort of hairsplitting,” said Clark Neily, a senior vice president for criminal justice at the Cato Institute in Washington.


    US sanctions are a hurdle for Maduro’s defense

    Another challenge that Maduro faces is hiring a lawyer. He and his wife, Cilia Flores, who also was captured, have been under U.S. sanctions for years, making it illegal for any American to take money from them without first securing a license from the Treasury Department.

    The government in Caracas now led by Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, may want to foot the bill, but it is similarly restricted from doing business in the United States.

    The U.S. has indicted other foreign leaders on corruption and drug trafficking charges while in office. Among the most noteworthy is Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras, who was convicted in 2024 for drug trafficking and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

    Trump pardoned Hernández in November, a move that drew criticism from even some Republicans who viewed it as undercutting the White House’s aggressive counternarcotics strategy centered against Maduro.

    The U.S. had requested Hernández’s extradition from Honduras a few weeks after he left office. After the arrest of Noriega, who had been a CIA asset before becoming a drug-running dictator, the Justice Department implemented a new policy requiring the attorney general to personally sign off on charging of any sitting foreign president, due to its implications for U.S. foreign policy.

    Maduro may have a slightly stronger argument that he is entitled to a more limited form of immunity for official acts as at least a de facto leader, because such authority would not turn on whether he is a recognized head of state by the U.S.

    But even that defense faces significant challenges, said Curtis Bradley, a University of Chicago Law School professor who previously served as a counselor of international law at the State Department.

    The indictment unsealed Saturday accuses Maduro and five other co-defendants, including Flores and his lawmaker son, of facilitating the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. by providing law enforcement cover, logistical support and partnering with “some of the most violent and prolific drug traffickers and narco-terrorists in the world.”

    “The government will argue that running a big narco-trafficking operation … should not count as an official act,” Bradley said.

    Tucker reported from Washington

    Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Maduro Arrives in US After Stunning Capture in Operation That Trump Says Will Let US ‘Run’ Venezuela

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    Maduro landed Saturday evening at a small airport in New York following the middle-of-the-night operation that extracted him and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their home in a military base in the capital city of Caracas — an act that Maduro’s government called “imperialist.” The couple faces U.S. charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.

    Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Rodríguez, who didn’t give a number. Trump said some U.S. forces were injured, but none were killed.

    Speaking to reporters hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries.


    Trump says US will ‘run the country’

    The Trump administration promoted the ouster as a step toward reducing the flow of dangerous drugs into the U.S. The president touted what he saw as other potential benefits, including a leadership stake in the country and greater control of oil.

    Trump claimed the U.S. government would help lead the country and was already doing so, though there were no immediate visible signs of that. Venezuelan state TV aired pro-Maduro propaganda and broadcast live images of supporters taking to the streets in Caracas in protest.

    “We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference. He boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.”

    Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges, and the Justice Department released a new indictment Saturday of Maduro and his wife that painted his administration as a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by a drug-trafficking operation that flooded the U.S with cocaine. The U.S. government does not recognize Maduro as the country’s leader.

    The Trump administration spent months building up American forces in the region and carrying out attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean for allegedly ferrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. campaign began in September.

    Taking place 36 years to the day after the 1990 surrender and seizure of Panama leader Manuel Antonio Noriega following a U.S. invasion, the Venezuela operation unfolded under the cover of darkness early Saturday. Trump said the U.S. turned off “almost all of the lights” in Caracas while forces moved in to extract Maduro and his wife.

    Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces had rehearsed their maneuvers for months, learning everything about Maduro — where he was and what he ate, as well as details of his pets and his clothes.

    “We think, we develop, we train, we rehearse, we debrief, we rehearse again and again,” Caine said. “Not to get it right, but to ensure we cannot get it wrong.”

    Multiple explosions rang out that morning, and low-flying aircraft swept through Caracas. Maduro’s government accused the United States of hitting civilian and military installations, calling it an “imperialist attack” and urging citizens to take to the streets. The explosions — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what they saw and heard.

    Under Venezuelan law, Rodríguez would take over from Maduro. Rodríguez, however, stressed during a Saturday appearance on state television that she did not plan to assume power, before Venezuela’s high court ordered that she become interim president.

    “There is only one president in Venezuela,” Rodriguez said, “and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros.”


    Some streets in Caracas fill up

    Venezuela’s ruling party has held power since 1999, when Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, took office, promising to uplift poor people and later to implement a self-described socialist revolution.

    Maduro took over when Chávez died in 2013. His 2018 reelection was widely considered a sham because the main opposition parties were banned from participating. During the 2024 election, electoral authorities loyal to the ruling party declared him the winner hours after polls closed, but the opposition gathered overwhelming evidence that he lost by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

    In a demonstration of how polarizing Maduro is, people variously took to the streets to protest his capture, while others celebrated it. At a protest in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, Mayor Carmen Meléndez joined a crowd demanding Maduro’s return.

    “Maduro, hold on, the people are rising up!” the crowd chanted. “We are here, Nicolás Maduro. If you can hear us, we are here!”

    In other parts of the city, the streets were empty hours after the attack.

    “How do I feel? Scared, like everyone,” said Caracas resident Noris Prada, who sat on an empty avenue looking at his phone. “Venezuelans woke up scared. Many families couldn’t sleep.”

    In Doral, Florida, home to the largest Venezuelan community in the United States, people wrapped themselves in Venezuelan flags, ate fried snacks and cheered as music played. At one point, the crowd chanted “Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!”

    Whether the United States violated any laws, international or otherwise, was still a question early Sunday. “There are a number of international legal concepts which the United States might have broken by capturing Maduro,” said Ilan Katz, an international law analyst.

    In New York, the U.N. Security Council, acting on an emergency request from Colombia, planned to hold a meeting on U.S. operations in Venezuela on Monday morning. That was according to a council diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a meeting not yet made public.

    Lawmakers from both American political parties have raised reservations and flat-out objections to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling. Congress has not approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region.

    Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he had seen no evidence that would justify Trump striking Venezuela without approval from Congress and demanded an immediate briefing by the administration on “its plan to ensure stability in the region and its legal justification for this decision.”

    Toropin and Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jorge Rueda in Caracas, Venezuela; Lisa Mascaro, Michelle L. Price, Seung Min Kim and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington; Farnoush Amiri in New York; and Larry Neumeister in South Amboy, New Jersey, contributed to this report.

    Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • From Bus Driver to President: Venezuela’s Maduro Never Escaped His Predecessor’s Shadow

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    U.S. President Donald Trump, in an early morning social media post, announced Maduro’s capture. Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, later announced that the whereabouts of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, remained unknown. Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, said Maduro and Flores, would face charges after an indictment in New York.

    Maduro’s fall was the culmination of months of stepped-up U.S. pressure on various fronts.

    He had spent the last months of his presidency fueling speculation over the intentions of the U.S. government to attack and invade Venezuela with the goal of ending the self-proclaimed socialist revolution that his late mentor and predecessor, Hugo Chávez, ushered in 1999. Maduro, like Chávez, cast the United States as Venezuela’s biggest threat, railing against Democratic and Republic administrations for any efforts to restore democratic norms.

    Maduro’s political career began 40 years ago. In 1986, he traveled to Cuba to receive a year of ideological instruction, his only formal education after high school. Upon his return, he worked as a bus driver for the Caracas subway system, where he quickly became a union leader. Venezuela’s intelligence agencies in the 1990s identified him as a leftist radical with close ties to the Cuban government.

    Maduro eventually left his driver job and joined the political movement that Chávez organized after receiving a presidential pardon in 1994 for leading a failed and bloody military coup years earlier. After Chávez took office, the former youth baseball player rose through the ranks of the ruling party, spending his first six years as a lawmaker before becoming president of the National Assembly. He then served six years as foreign minister and a couple months as vice president.


    Appointed the political heir to Chávez

    Chávez used his last address to the nation before his death in 2013 to anoint Maduro as his successor, asking his supporters to vote for the then-foreign affairs minister should he die. The choice stunned supporters and detractors alike. But Chávez’s enormous electoral capital delivered Maduro a razor-thin victory that year, giving him his first six-year term, though he would never enjoy the devotion that voters professed for Chávez.

    Maduro married Flores, his partner of nearly two decades, in July 2013, shortly after he became president. He called her the “first combatant,” instead of first lady, and considered her a crucial adviser.

    Maduro’s entire presidency was marked by a complex social, political and economic crisis that pushed millions into poverty, drove more than 7.7 million Venezuelans to migrate and put thousands of real or perceived government opponents in prison, where many were tortured, some at his direction. Maduro complemented the repressive apparatus by purging institutions of anyone who dared dissent.

    Venezuela’s crisis took hold during Maduro’s first year in office. The political opposition, including the now-Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, called for street protests in Caracas and other cities. The demonstrations evidenced Maduro’s iron fist as security forces pushed back protests, which ended with 43 deaths and dozens of arrests.

    Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela would go on to lose control of the National Assembly for the first time in 16 years in the 2015 election. Maduro moved to neutralize the opposition-controlled legislature by establishing a pro-government Constituent Assembly in 2017, leading to months of protests violently suppressed by security forces and the military.

    More than 100 people were killed and thousands were injured in the demonstrations. Hundreds were arrested, causing the International Criminal Court to open an investigation against Maduro and members of his government for crimes against humanity. The investigation was still ongoing in 2025.

    In 2018, Maduro survived an assassination attempt when drones rigged with explosives detonated near him as he delivered a speech during a nationally televised military parade.


    Bedeviled by economic problems

    Maduro was unable to stop the economic free fall. Inflation and severe shortages of food and medicines affected Venezuelans nationwide. Entire families starved and began migrating on foot to neighboring countries. Those who remained lined up for hours to buy rice, beans and other basics. Some fought on the streets over flour.

    Ruling party loyalists moved the December 2018 presidential election to May and blocked opposition parties from the ballot. Some opposition politicians were imprisoned; others fled into exile. Maduro ran virtually unopposed and was declared winner, but dozens of countries did not recognize him.

    Months after the election, he drew the fury after social media videos showed him feasting on a steak prepared by a celebrity chef at a restaurant in Turkey while millions in his country were going hungry.

    Under Maduro’s watch, Venezuela’s economy shrank 71% between 2012 and 2020, while inflation topped 130,000%. Its oil production, the beating heart of the country, dropped to less than 400,000 barrels a day, a figure once unthinkable.

    The first Trump administration imposed economic sanctions against Maduro, his allies and state-owned companies to try to force a government change. The measures included freezing all Venezuelan government assets in the U.S. and prohibiting American citizens and international partners from doing business with Venezuelan government entities, including the state-owned oil company.

    Out of options, Maduro began implementing a series of economic measures in 2021 that eventually ended Venezuela’s hyperinflation cycle. He paired the economic changes with concessions to the U.S.-backed political opposition with which it restarted negotiations for what many had hoped would be a free and democratic presidential election in 2024.

    Maduro used the negotiations to gain concessions from the U.S. government, including the pardon and prison release of one of his closest allies and the sanctions license that allowed oil giant Chevron to restart pumping and exporting Venezuelan oil. The license became his government’s financial lifeline.


    Losing support in many places

    Negotiations led by Norwegian diplomats did not solve key political differences between the ruling party and the opposition.

    In 2023, the government banned Machado, Maduro’s strongest opponent, from running for office. In early 2024, it intensified its repressive efforts, detaining opposition leaders and human rights defenders. The government also forced key members of Machado’s campaign to seek asylum at a diplomatic compound in Caracas, where they remained for more than a year to avoid arrest.

    Hours after polls closed in the 2024 election, the National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner. But unlike previous elections, it did not provide detailed vote counts. The opposition, however, collected and published tally sheets from more than 80% of electronic voting machines used in the election. The records showed Edmundo González defeated Maduro by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

    Protests erupted. Some demonstrators toppled statues of Chávez. The government again responded with full force and detained more than 2,000 people World leaders rejected the official results, but the National Assembly sworn in Maduro for a third term in January 2025.

    Trump’s return to the White House that same month proved to be a sobering moment for Maduro. Trump quickly pushed Maduro to accept regular deportation flights for the first time in years. By the summer, Trump had built up a military force in the Caribbean that put Venezuela’s government on high alert and started taking steps to address what it called narco-terrorism.

    For Maduro, that was the beginning of the end.

    Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • What to know about the Uvalde school shooting’s first trial over police response

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    HOUSTON — Former Uvalde, Texas, schools police Officer Adrian Gonzales was among the first officers to arrive at Robb Elementary after a gunman opened fire on students and teachers.

    Prosecutors allege that instead of rushing in to confront the shooter, Gonzales failed to take action to protect students. Many families of the 19 fourth-grade students and two teachers who were killed believe that if Gonzales and the nearly 400 officers who responded had confronted the gunman sooner instead of waiting more than an hour, lives might have been saved.

    More than 3½ years since the killings, the first criminal trial over the delayed law enforcement response to one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history is set to begin.

    It’s a rare case in which a police officer could be convicted for allegedly failing to act to stop a crime and protect lives.

    Here’s a look at the charges and the legal issues surrounding the trial.

    Gonzales was charged with 29 counts of child endangerment for those killed and injured in the May 2022 shooting. The indictment alleges he placed children in “imminent danger” of injury or death by failing to engage, distract or delay the shooter and by not following his active shooter training. The indictment says he did not advance toward the gunfire despite hearing shots and being told where the shooter was located.

    Each child endangerment count carries a potential sentence of up to two years in prison.

    State and federal reviews of the shooting cited cascading problems in law enforcement training, communication, leadership and technology and questioned why officers from multiple agencies waited so long before confronting and killing the gunman, Salvador Ramos.

    Gonzales’ attorney, Nico LaHood, said his client is innocent and public anger over the shooting is being misdirected.

    “He was focused on getting children out of that building,” LaHood, said. “He knows where his heart was and what he tried to do for those children.”

    Jury selection in Gonzales’ trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 5 in Corpus Christi, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southeast of Uvalde. The trial was moved after defense attorneys argued Gonzales could not receive a fair trial in Uvalde.

    Gonzales, 52, and former Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo are the only officers charged. Arredondo was charged with multiple counts of child endangerment and abandonment. His trial has not been scheduled, and he is also seeking a change of venue.

    Prosecutors have not explained why only Gonzales and Arredondo were charged. Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment.

    It’s “extremely unusual” for an officer to stand trial for not taking an action, said Sandra Guerra Thompson, a University of Houston Law Center professor.

    “At the end of the day, you’re talking about convicting someone for failing to act and that’s always a challenge,” Thompson said, “because you have to show that they failed to take reasonable steps.”

    Phil Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University who maintains a nationwide database of roughly 25,000 cases of police officers arrested since 2005, said a preliminary search found only two similar prosecutions.

    One involved a Florida sheriff’s deputy, Scot Peterson, who was charged after the 2018 Parkland school massacre for allegedly failing to confront the shooter — the first such prosecution in the U.S. for an on-campus shooting. He was acquitted by a jury in 2023.

    The other was the 2022 conviction of former Baltimore police officer Christopher Nguyen for failing to protect an assault victim. The Maryland Supreme Court overturned that conviction in July, ruling prosecutors had not shown Nguyen had a legal duty to protect the victim.

    The justices in Maryland cited a prior U.S. Supreme Court decision on the public duty doctrine, which holds that government officials like police generally owe a duty to the public at large rather than to specific individuals unless a special relationship exists.

    Michael Wynne, a Houston criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor not involved in the case, said securing a conviction will be difficult.

    “This is clearly gross negligence. I think it’s going to be difficult to prove some type of criminal malintent,” Wynne said.

    But Thompson, the law professor, said prosecutors may nonetheless be well positioned.

    “You’re talking about little children who are being slaughtered and a very long delay by a lot of officers,” she said. “I just feel like this is a different situation because of the tremendous harm that was done to so many children.”

    ___

    Associated Press writer Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, contributed.

    ___

    Follow Juan A. Lozano: https://x.com/juanlozano70

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  • Former Baseball Player Lenny Dykstra Faces Drug Charges After New Year’s Day Traffic Stop

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    Retired professional baseball player Lenny Dykstra faces charges after Pennsylvania State Police said a trooper found drugs and paraphernalia in his possession during a traffic stop on New Year’s Day.

    Dykstra, 62, was a passenger when the vehicle was pulled over by a trooper with the Blooming Grove patrol unit in Pike County, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Scranton, where Dykstra lives.

    Police said in a statement that charges will be filed but did not specify what they may be or what drugs were allegedly involved.

    Messages seeking comment were left at a phone number linked to Dykstra. His lawyer, Matt Blit, said a statement on the matter would be released later Friday.

    The baseball star’s gritty style of play over a long career with the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies earned him the nickname “Nails.” He spent years as a businessman before running into a series of legal woes.

    Dykstra served time in a California prison for bankruptcy fraud, sentenced to more than six months for hiding baseball gloves and other items from his playing days. That ran concurrent with a three-year sentence for pleading no contest to grand theft auto and providing a false financial statement. He claimed he owed more than $31 million and had only $50,000 in assets.

    In April 2012, Dykstra pleaded no contest to exposing himself to women he met through Craigslist.

    In 2019, Dykstra pleaded guilty on behalf of his company, Titan Equity Group, to illegally renting out rooms in a New Jersey house that it owned. He agreed to pay about $3,000 in fines.

    That same year a judge dropped drug and terroristic threat charges against Dykstra after an altercation with an Uber driver. Police said they found cocaine, MDMA and marijuana among his belongings. Dykstra’s lawyer called that incident “overblown” and said he was innocent.

    And in 2020 a New York Supreme Court judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit that Dykstra filed against former Mets teammate Ron Darling over his allegation that Dykstra made racist remarks toward an opponent during the 1986 World Series.

    Justice Robert D. Kalish said Dykstra’s reputation “for unsportsmanlike conduct and bigotry” had already been so tarnished that it could not be damaged further.

    “Based on the papers submitted on this motion, prior to the publication of the book, Dykstra was infamous for being, among other things, racist, misogynist, and anti-gay, as well as a sexual predator, a drug-abuser, a thief, and an embezzler,” Kalish wrote.

    Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Florida Congresswoman Accused of Stealing COVID Funds Maintains Innocence

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    MIAMI (AP) — U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick reiterated her innocence Monday outside a Miami federal courthouse, where she faces charges of conspiring to steal $5 million in federal COVID-19 disaster funds.

    Cherfilus-McCormick was scheduled to be arraigned, but her attorney requested the proceeding be rescheduled to Jan. 20 so that she could finalize her legal team. Prosecutors didn’t object, and Judge Lisette Reid agreed to the new date. The hearing lasted less than five minutes.

    “I just want to make it very clear that I am innocent,” Cherfilus-McCormick said immediately after leaving court. “In no way did I steal any kind of funds. I’m committed to the people of Florida and my district.”

    Cherfilus-McCormick, a Democrat, has pleaded not guilty. She is facing 15 federal counts that accuse her of stealing funds that had been overpaid to her family’s health care company, Trinity Healthcare Services, in 2021. The company had a contract to register people for COVID-19 vaccinations.

    Cherfilus-McCormick’s attorney, David Oscar Markus, said the case involves mistakes that generally aren’t even misdemeanors, let alone felonies. He said he believes the case is politically motivated.

    Cherfilus-McCormick was arrested in November and then freed on a $60,000 bond. In addition to bail, the judge said Cherfilus-McCormick must surrender her personal passport, and is allowed to travel only between Florida, Washington, D.C., Maryland and the Eastern District of Virginia.

    She has been allowed to retain her congressional passport so she can perform certain duties for her job.

    According to the federal indictment, prosecutors said that within two months of receiving the funds in 2021, more than $100,000 had been spent on a 3-carat yellow diamond ring for the congresswoman.

    The health care company owned by Cherfilus-McCormick’s family had received payments through a COVID-19 vaccination staffing contract, the indictment said. Her brother, Edwin Cherfilus, requested $50,000, but they mistakenly received $5 million and didn’t return the difference.

    Prosecutors said the funds received by Trinity Healthcare were distributed to various accounts, including to friends and relatives who then donated to Cherfilus-McCormick’s campaign for Congress.

    Cherfilus-McCormick won a special election in January 2022 to represent Florida’s 20th District, which includes parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties, after Rep. Alcee Hastings died in 2021.

    The charges she faces include theft of government funds; making and receiving straw donor contributions; aiding and assisting a false and fraudulent statement on a tax return; money laundering, as well as conspiracy charges associated with each of those counts.

    According to a previous statement provided by Cherfilus-McCormick’s chief of staff, she doesn’t plan to resign from office. She said she has cooperated with “every lawful request” and will continue to do so until the matter is resolved.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Federal judge to hold hearing on whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being vindictively prosecuted

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    A federal judge has canceled the trial of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man mistakenly deported, and scheduled a hearing on whether the prosecution is being vindictive in its human smuggling case against him

    A federal judge this week canceled the trial of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man who was mistakenly deported, and scheduled a hearing on whether the prosecution is being vindictive in pursuing a human smuggling case against him.

    Abrego Garcia has become a centerpiece of the debate over immigration after the Trump administration deported him in March to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, the Trump administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee.

    Abrego Garcia has denied the allegations, and argued that prosecutors are vindictively and selectively targeting him. Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr. wrote in Tuesday’s order that Abrego Garcia had enough evidence to hold a hearing on the topic, which Crenshaw scheduled for Jan. 28.

    At that hearing, prosecutors will have to explain their reasoning for charging Abrego Garcia, Crenshaw wrote, and if they fail in that, the charges could be dismissed.

    When Abrego Garcia was pulled over in 2022, there were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. However, Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.

    A Department of Homeland Security agent previously testified that he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until after the U.S. Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration had to work to bring Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, where he was deported.

    Years earlier, Abrego Garcia had been granted protection from deportation to his home country after a judge found he faced danger there from a gang that targeted his family. That order allowed Abrego Garcia, who has an American wife and child, to live and work in the U.S. under Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervision.

    Members of President Donald Trump’s administration have accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of the MS-13 gang, but he has vehemently denied the accusations and has no criminal record.

    Abrego Garcia’s defense attorney and the U.S. attorney’s office in Nashville did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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  • Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs seeks immediate release from prison in appeals argument

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    NEW YORK — Lawyers for hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs urged a federal appeals court in New York late Tuesday to order his immediate release from prison and reverse his conviction on prostitution-related charges or direct his trial judge to lighten his four-year sentence.

    The lawyers said in a filing with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that Combs was treated harshly at sentencing by a federal judge who let evidence surrounding charges he was acquitted of unjustly influence the punishment.

    Combs, 56, incarcerated at a federal prison in New Jersey and scheduled for release in May 2028, was acquitted of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking at a trial that ended in July. Combs was convicted under the Mann Act, which bans transporting people across state lines for any sexual crime.

    Lawyers for Combs said Judge Arun Subramanian acted like a “thirteenth juror” in October when he sentenced Combs to four years and two months in prison. They said he erred by letting evidence surrounding the acquitted charges influence the sentence he imposed.

    They noted that Combs was convicted of two lesser counts, prostitution offenses that didn’t require force, fraud, or coercion. They asked the appeals court, which has not yet heard oral arguments, to acquit Combs, order his immediate release from prison or direct Subramanian to reduce his sentence.

    “Defendants typically get sentenced to less than 15 months for these offenses — even when coercion, which the jury didn’t find here, is involved,” the lawyers wrote.

    “The judge defied the jury’s verdict and found Combs ‘coerced,’ ‘exploited,’ and ‘forced’ his girlfriends to have sex and led a criminal conspiracy. These judicial findings trumped the verdict and led to the highest sentence ever imposed for any remotely similar defendant,” the lawyers wrote.

    At sentencing, Subramanian said that when calculating the prison term, he considered Combs’ treatment of two former girlfriends who testified that the Bad Boy Records founder beat them and coerced them into having sex with male sex workers while he watched and filmed the encounters, sometimes masturbating.

    At the trial, former girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura testified that Combs ordered her to have “disgusting” sex with strangers hundreds of times during their decade-long relationship that ended in 2018. Jurors saw video of him dragging and beating her in a Los Angeles hotel hallway after one such multiday “freak-off.”

    The second former girlfriend, who testified under the pseudonym “ Jane,” said she was pressured into sex with male workers during what Combs called “hotel nights,” drug-fueled sexual encounters from 2021 to 2024 that also could last days.

    At sentencing, Subramanian said he “rejects the defense’s attempt to characterize what happened here as merely intimate, consensual experiences, or just a sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll story.”

    He added: “You abused the power and control that you had over the lives of women you professed to love dearly. You abused them physically, emotionally, and psychologically. And you used that abuse to get your way, especially when it came to freak-offs and hotel nights.”

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  • Epstein document release includes multiple Trump mentions, but little news

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    The U.S. Justice Department has released tens of thousands more documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, a tranche that included multiple mentions of President Donald Trump but added little new revelatory information to the long-anticipated public file on the disgraced late…

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    By LINDSAY WHITEHURST and SEUNG MIN KIM – Associated Press

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  • Miami Heat’s Terry Rozier asks judge to throw out betting charges

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    NEW YORK — Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier ’s lawyers are asking a judge to throw out sports gambling charges that have kept him off the court this season, arguing that the government overreached by turning a private dispute over bettors’ use of non-public information into a federal case.

    In a motion to dismiss made public on Tuesday, Rozier’s lawyers argued that the government’s theory of the case — that he prevented sportsbooks from making informed decisions about accepting certain bets — runs afoul of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that narrowed the federal wire fraud statute.

    Rozier, 31, is accused of helped gamblers cash in by tipping off a friend that he would leave a March 2023 game early because of a supposed injury. The friend, Deniro “Niro” Laster, who is also charged, shared or sold the information to others, who placed more than $250,000 in prop bets, prosecutors said.

    “The government has billed this case as involving ‘insider betting’ and ‘rigging’ professional basketball games,” Rozier’s lawyers, James M. Trusty and A. Jeff Ifrah, wrote in the motion. “But the indictment alleges something less headline-worthy: that some bettors broke certain sportsbooks’ terms of use against wagering based on non-public information and ‘straw betting.’”

    Rozier was on the Charlotte Hornets at the time and the information about his early exit was not listed on the team’s injury report, nor was it shared with the public or the sportsbooks that accept wagers on NBA games and player performances, prosecutors said.

    Rozier pleaded not guilty in federal court in Brooklyn on Dec. 8 to wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy charges. He was released on $3 million bond and is due back in court for a hearing before U.S. District Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall on March 3.

    His charges were part of a sweep of more than 30 other people in a takedown of two sprawling gambling operations: one that authorities said leaked inside information about NBA athletes and another involving rigged, Mafia-backed poker games.

    The charges have raised questions about the integrity of NBA games in an era of legalized betting and myriad prop bets, prompting the league to tweak its injury reporting requirements.

    A message seeking comment on Rozier’s motion to dismiss the case was left for federal prosecutors.

    In the motion, Rozier’s lawyers wrote that under the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in United States v. Ciminelli, prosecutors can’t make a wire fraud case out of allegations that defendants conspired to deprive a person — or, in this case, sportsbooks — of the right to information needed to make discretionary economic decisions.

    They also questioned whether federal prosecutors have the authority to bring such a case, since sportsbooks are regulated at the state level, not the federal level.

    “This is not to say that sports betting platforms are without recourse when their terms of use are violated — they can void bets, pursue civil remedies, or seek state prosecutor involvement,” Trusty and Ifrah wrote in the motion, which was dated Dec. 12 but only posted to the case docket on Tuesday. “But Ciminelli puts to rest the notion that federal prosecutors are here to enforce contractual agreements between bettors and platforms.”

    Rozier has earned about $160 million over a 10-year NBA career. He was a first-round pick for the Boston Celtics in 2015 after starring at the University of Louisville. Charlotte traded him to the Heat last year.

    In the game in question, Rozier played the first nine minutes and 36 seconds against the New Orleans Pelicans before leaving, citing a foot issue. He did not play again that season.

    Rozier’s lawyers noted that the indictment does not allege that he ever placed a bet on any NBA game, nor does it allege that he knew Laster intended to sell his tip to others or that using it to place wagers would violate the sportsbooks’ terms of service. And, they said, he really was injured.

    “The government’s cynicism as to whether Mr. Rozier was injured is belied by a variety of witnesses and medical professionals who were aware of Rozier’s injury, in many cases before the Pelicans game,” Trusty and Ifrah wrote.

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  • Man charged with murder after bow and arrow killing in New Jersey

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    KEARNY, N.J. — A man in New Jersey accused of killing a man with a bow and arrow and then barricading himself for hours and setting fires inside a house was charged Monday with murder.

    The 44-year-old was arrested Sunday afternoon at the house in Kearny, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) west of New York City, once the fires were put out and following a brief standoff with police. The Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office said the man exited the home armed with knives.

    The Kearny Police Department was first notified Saturday at 6:45 p.m. of an injured man near an intersection. Officers later determined the 45-year-old man from nearby Harrison had been struck by arrow. He was taken to a hospital, where he died.

    The man accused of killing him was charged with murder, arson and two gun-related crimes. More charges are expected.

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  • WSJ’s parent firm on trial in Hong Kong, accused of dismissing reporter over union role

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    HONG KONG — A former Hong Kong reporter at the Wall Street Journal began testifying Monday against the newspaper she accuses of terminating her due to her union activities in a trial — a closely watched case that has raised concerns about press freedom in the city.

    Former WSJ reporter Selina Cheng, also chairperson of the trade union Hong Kong Journalists Association, launched a private prosecution against her ex-employer, Dow Jones Publishing Co. (Asia) Inc., the parent company of the Journal, after losing her job in July 2024.

    At that time, Cheng said she believed that the termination was linked to her refusal to comply with her former supervisor’s request to withdraw from the election for the union role, instead of the news outlet’s restructuring, as she was told.

    In the witness box, Cheng said her supervisor took issue with her running in the election.

    “She said my participation in the union election was problematic and she said she needed to discuss this with Wall Street Journal management in New York and also with legal,” Cheng said, referring to in-house lawyers at Dow Jones.

    Dow Jones faces two charges under the city’s Employment Ordinance. The company pleaded not guilty to both charges, each of which carries a maximum fine of 100,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $12,850).

    The first charge alleges the company had prevented or deterred an employee from exercising union participation rights. The second alleges the company had terminated employment, penalized, or discriminated against an employee for exercising those rights.

    Before Cheng’s testimony, Dow Jones representative Benson Tsoi last week accused her of abusing the criminal process and acting in bad faith when seeking to get the court to admit certain email exchanges. Tsoi highlighted emails showing Cheng had demanded 3 million Hong Kong dollars ($385,500) as settlement or reinstatement with a formal apology.

    Tsoi said while Cheng had told the Labor Tribunal she didn’t intend to settle out of court, the emails showed she had pressed for mediation with the company.

    Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997 after some 150 years under British control, was once considered a bastion of press freedom in Asia. Yet despite the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution which guarantees its Western-style civil liberties to be kept intact under a “one country, two systems” approach, the ability of the media to operate there has seen drastic changes.

    After Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020, two local news outlets known for critical coverage of the government, Apple Daily and Stand News, were forced to shut down following the arrest of their senior management, including Apple Daily publisher Jimmy Lai.

    Lai was convicted under the security law last Monday, facing up to life in prison. While the government insists his case has nothing to do with press freedom, rights groups expressed concerns. Amnesty International said the conviction “feels like the death knell for press freedom in Hong Kong.”

    Two former editors at Stand News were also convicted in August 2024, the first journalists found guilty of sedition under a separate law since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule.

    Cheng’s termination alarmed many journalists who are already operating in an increasingly restricted media environment in the city, where foreign outlets have traditionally faced less pressure than local news outlets.

    Hong Kong ranked 140th out of 180 countries and territories in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index, down from 80 in 2021.

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  • WSJ’s Parent Firm on Trial in Hong Kong, Accused of Dismissing Reporter Over Union Role

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    HONG KONG (AP) — A former Hong Kong reporter at the Wall Street Journal began testifying Monday against the newspaper she accused of terminating her due to her union activities in a trial — a closely watched case that has raised concerns about press freedom in the city.

    Former WSJ reporter Selina Cheng, also chairperson of the trade union Hong Kong Journalists Association, launched a private prosecution against her ex-employer, Dow Jones Publishing Co. (Asia) Inc., the parent company of the Journal, after losing her job in July 2024.

    At that time, Cheng said she believed that the termination was linked to her refusal to comply with her former supervisor’s request to withdraw from the election for the union role, instead of the news outlet’s restructuring, as she was told.

    Dow Jones faces two charges under the city’s Employment Ordinance. The company pleaded not guilty to both charges, each of which carries a maximum fine of 100,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $12,850).


    Two charges faced by newspaper

    The first charge alleges the company had prevented or deterred an employee from exercising union participation rights. The second alleges the company had terminated employment, penalized, or discriminated against an employee for exercising those rights.

    Before Cheng’s testimony, Dow Jones representative Benson Tsoi last week accused her of abusing the criminal process and acting in bad faith when seeking to get the court to admit certain email exchanges. Tsoi highlighted emails showing Cheng had demanded 3 million Hong Kong dollars ($385,500) as settlement or reinstatement with a formal apology.

    Tsoi said while Cheng had told the Labor Tribunal she didn’t intend to settle out of court, the emails showed she had pressed for mediation with the company.

    Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997 after some 150 years under British control, was once considered a bastion of press freedom in Asia. Yet despite the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution which guarantees its Western-style civil liberties to be kept intact under a “one country, two systems” approach, the ability of the media to operate there has seen drastic changes.


    Media environment in Hong Kong has faltered

    Lai was convicted under the security law last Monday, facing up to life in prison. While the government insists his case has nothing to do with press freedom, rights groups expressed concerns. Amnesty International said the conviction “feels like the death knell for press freedom in Hong Kong.”

    Two former editors at Stand News were also convicted in August 2024, the first journalists found guilty of sedition under a separate law since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule.

    Cheng’s termination alarmed many journalists who are already operating in an increasingly restricted media environment in the city, where foreign outlets have traditionally faced less pressure than local news outlets.

    Hong Kong ranked 140th out of 180 countries and territories in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index, down from 80 in 2021.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Police Allege Suspected Gunman in Bondi Beach Shooting Trained With Father, Australian Media Reports

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    MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — A suspected gunman accused of killing 15 people at Sydney’s Bondi Beach conducted “firearms training” in an area of New South Wales outside of Sydney with his father and recorded a video about their “justification” for the attack, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported Monday, citing police documents.

    The police statement of facts was made public following Naveed Akram’s video court appearance Monday from a Sydney hospital.

    The statement alleges the 24-year-old and his father, 50-year-old Sajid Akram, threw four improvised explosive devices toward at crowd involved in a Jewish event at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, but they didn’t explode, ABC reported.

    The New South Wales court media unit could not immediately provide a copy of the statement.

    Police shot the father dead at the scene and wounded the son.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Epstein Files Offer Scant New Insight Into His Crimes or How He Avoided Serious Prosecution

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    NEW YORK (AP) — The Justice Department’s much-anticipated release of records tied to Jeffrey Epstein arrived in a flood of documents that did little to quell the long-simmering intrigue, largely because some of the most consequential records were nowhere to be found.

    The initial disclosures, spanning tens of thousands of pages, offer scant new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal prosecution for years. Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions — records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.

    The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, contain no references to several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinized, who was not, and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountability

    Among the fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to abandon an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children.

    The releases so far have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.

    There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former President Bill Clinton but fleetingly few of President Donald Trump. Both have been associated with Epstein, but both have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and there was no indication the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.

    Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make everything public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.

    That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress who fought to pass the law forced the department to act. Instead of marking the end of a yearslong battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the beginning of an indefinite wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and the steps taken to investigate them.

    “I feel like again the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York City mansion when she was 14.

    Federal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.

    The documents just made public were a sliver of potentially millions of pages records in the department’s possession. In one example, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.

    Many of the records released so far had been made public in court filings, congressional releases or freedom of information requests, though, for the first time, they were all in one place and available for the public to search for free.

    Ones that were new were often lacking necessary context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” likely from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.

    Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions and was no explanation given for why any of them were together.

    The meatiest records released so far showed that federal prosecutors had what appeared to be a strong case against Epstein in 2007 yet never charged him.

    Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the first time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.

    One had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.

    Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.

    “For every girl that I brought to the table he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them that if they are under age, just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”

    The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did more than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision not to bring federal charges.

    Acosta, who was labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.

    He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.

    “I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said that the public today would likely view the survivors differently.

    “There’s been a lot of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.

    Associated Press writer Mike Catalini contributed to this report.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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  • Northern California city to reform police after racist texts scandal

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    SAN FRANCISCO — A Northern California city whose police department came under national scrutiny after it was revealed that some officers shared racist and sexist texts, used excessive force and falsified records has reached a settlement agreement to implement a series of reforms, officials announced Friday.

    The City of Antioch, in the San Francisco Bay Area, will enhance police training programs, establish an independent review board to handle complaints and implement a warning system to identify problem officers, according to an agreement that settles a civil rights lawsuit filed in 2023.

    “This agreement allows the Antioch Police Department to start with a clean slate and oversee officers’ conduct and make sure they are compliant with new standards,” said John Burris, who filed the complaint in federal court on behalf of residents who said they were targeted by Antioch police officers.

    Earlier this year, 23 people who were part of the lawsuit reached a $4.6 million settlement with Antioch for monetary damages, Burris said. The city in January announced it would hire a consultant to update its policies, procedures and training on various topics as part of an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice.

    “A lot of the bad apples are gone, in jail, retired or left on their own, and there is a new command staff that seems committed to bring about change,” Burris said.

    Antioch City Manager Bessie Marie Scott said in a statement that the settlement agreement reinforces work already underway and “ensures sustainable transparency measures and updates core policies to modernize how APD continues to provide constitutional policing services to the residents of Antioch.”

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation and county prosecutors in March 2022 launched an investigation into police officers in Antioch and Pittsburg, a neighboring city, over a broad range of offenses. As part of the investigation, officials released racist and obscenity-laden text messages shared by 45 Antioch police officers that shocked the community.

    Officers referred to some suspects as “gorillas.” They also laughed and joked about harming people who apparently had surrendered or appeared to be asleep by setting a police dog on them or shooting them with a 40 mm “less-lethal” projectile launcher, according to a federal indictment against three former Antioch police officers.

    Federal prosecutors charged Morteza Amiri, Eric Rombough and Devon Christopher Wenger, saying the three former Antioch police officers conspired between February 2019 and March 2022 “to injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate residents of Antioch, California” and later falsified reports about the encounters.

    Wenger was sentenced earlier this month to seven years and six months in federal prison for conspiring to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate residents of Antioch using unreasonable force, conspiring to distribute anabolic steroids, and obstructing justice, federal prosecutors said.

    Amiri, a former Antioch K9 officer, was sentenced in June to seven years in prison for maiming someone with his police dog, falsifying reports on that case and being part of a scheme to obtain pay raises from the Antioch Police Department for a university degree he paid someone else to obtain.

    Rombough, accused of illegally shooting people with his launcher, pleaded guilty and became a government’s witness. He testified against both Amiri and Wenger in their separate trials, the East Bay Times reported. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 13.

    Antioch, a city of 115,000 residents about 45 miles (72 kilometers) east of San Francisco, was once predominantly white but has diversified in the last 30 years.

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