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Tag: State governments

  • Missouri prepares to execute man for killing officer in 2005

    Missouri prepares to execute man for killing officer in 2005

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    FOR MOVEMENT TUESDAY AT 1 AM ET. EDITED BY CBLAKE.

    A Missouri inmate convicted of ambushing and killing a St. Louis area police officer he blamed in the death of his younger brother was scheduled to be executed Tuesday, though his lawyers are seeking to have the lethal injection halted.

    Kevin Johnson’s legal team doesn’t deny that he killed Police Officer William McEntee in 2005, but contend in an appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court that he was sentenced to death in part because he is Black. The U.S. Supreme Court declined a stay request last week, and Gov. Mike Parson on Monday announced he would not grant clemency.

    “The violent murder of any citizen, let alone a Missouri law enforcement officer, should be met only with the fullest punishment state law allows,” Parson, a Republican and a former county sheriff, said in a statement. “Through Mr. Johnson’s own heinous actions, he stole the life of Sergeant McEntee and left a family grieving, a wife widowed, and children fatherless. Clemency will not be granted.”

    Johnson, 37, faces execution at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the state prison in Bonne Terre. He would be the second Missouri man put to death in 2022 and the 17th nationally.

    McEntee, 43, was a 20-year veteran of the police department in Kirkwood, a St. Louis suburb. The father of three was among the officers sent to Johnson’s home on July 5, 2005, to serve a warrant for his arrest. Johnson was on probation for assaulting his girlfriend, and police believed he had violated probation.

    Johnson saw officers arrive and awoke his 12-year-old brother, Joseph “Bam Bam” Long, who ran to a house next door. Once there, the boy, who suffered from a congenital heart defect, collapsed and began having a seizure.

    Johnson testified at trial that McEntee kept his mother from entering the house to aid his brother, who died a short time later at a hospital.

    That same evening, McEntee returned to the neighborhood to check on unrelated reports of fireworks being shot off. A court filing from the Missouri attorney general’s office said McEntee was in his car questioning three children when Johnson shot him through the open passenger-side window, striking the officer’s leg, head and torso. Johnson then got into the car and took McEntee’s gun.

    The court filing said Johnson walked down the street and told his mother that McEntee “let my brother die” and “needs to see what it feels like to die.” Though she told him, “That’s not true,” Johnson returned to the shooting scene and found McEntee alive, on his knees near the patrol car. Johnson shot McEntee in the back and in the head, killing him.

    Johnson’s lawyers have previously asked the courts to intervene for other reasons, including a history of mental illness and his age — 19 — at the time of the crime. Courts have increasingly moved away from sentencing teen offenders to death since the Supreme Court in 2005 banned the execution of offenders who were younger than 18 at the time of their crime.

    But a broader focus of appeals has been on alleged racial bias. In October, St. Louis Circuit Judge Mary Elizabeth Ott appointed a special prosecutor to review the case. The special prosecutor, E.E. Keenan, filed a motion earlier this month to vacate the death sentence, stating that race played a “decisive factor” in the death sentence.

    Ott declined to set aside the death penalty. The Missouri Supreme Court convened an emergency hearing Monday to consider the request.

    Keenan’ told the state Supreme Court that former St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s office handled five cases involving the deaths of police officers during his 28 years in office. McCulloch sought the death penalty in the four cases involving Black defendants, but did not seek death in the one case where the defendant was white, the file said.

    Assistant Attorney General Andrew Crane responded that “a fair jury determined he deserves the death penalty.”

    McCulloch does not have a listed phone number and could not be reached for comment.

    Johnson’s 19-year-old daughter, Khorry Ramey, had sought to witness the execution, but a state law prohibits anyone under 21 from observing the process. Courts have declined to step in on Ramey’s behalf.

    The U.S. saw 98 executions in 1999 but the number has dropped dramatically in recent years. Missouri already has two scheduled for early 2023. Convicted killer Scott McLaughlin is scheduled to die on Jan. 3, and convicted killer Leonard Taylor’s execution is set for Feb. 7.

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  • Judge denies bid for new trial in Whitmer kidnapping case

    Judge denies bid for new trial in Whitmer kidnapping case

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    GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A federal judge has denied a new trial request by two men convicted of conspiring to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

    Lawyers for Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. alleged misconduct by a juror and unfairness by U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker following their conviction by a federal jury in August.

    Jonker in a written ruling Friday shot down claims of juror misconduct and said he found “no constitutional violation and no credible evidence” to convene a new hearing.

    Fox and Croft face up to life in prison when they’re sentenced Dec. 28.

    Whitmer, who was reelected Nov. 8 to a second term, was never physically harmed in the plot, which led to more than a dozen arrests in 2020.

    Fox and Croft’s first trial ended in a mistrial earlier this year when the jury was unable to come to a unanimous verdict. A motion for a third trial was filed in September.

    Defense lawyers said a juror seated in the second trial was described by a co-worker as “far-left leaning,” was eager to get on the jury and poised to convict before hearing evidence.

    The defense team’s investigator said he interviewed two co-workers who said they had heard about it but had no firsthand knowledge. A third person declined to speak to him in the parking lot.

    The allegation first was raised early in the second trial. Jonker said he spoke privately to the juror, who denied saying that a vote to convict was already settled.

    Separately, defense lawyers said the judge violated the rights of Fox and Croft by imposing a time limit on the cross-examination of a star government witness.

    “Defendants have neither demonstrated that the jury verdict is ‘against the manifest weight of the evidence’ nor that a ‘substantial legal error has occurred’ such that the interests of justice demand a new trial,” Jonker wrote in Friday’s ruling.

    Croft is from Bear, Delaware. Fox lived in the Grand Rapids area in western Michigan.

    Two other men have pleaded guilty in the federal case, while two more were acquitted.

    Three other men accused of supporting terrorism in the kidnapping plot were convicted in October in state court.

    Joe Morrison; Morrison’s father-in-law, Pete Musico; and Paul Bellar were found guilty of supplying “material support” for a terrorist act as members of a group known as the Wolverine Watchmen. They await sentencing on Dec. 15.

    They held gun training in rural Jackson County with Fox who was disgusted with Whitmer and other officials and said he wanted to snatch her.

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  • Group files emergency motion to stop Oregon gun control law

    Group files emergency motion to stop Oregon gun control law

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    PORTLAND, Ore. — A gun rights group, sheriff and gun store owner filed an emergency motion in federal court late Wednesday seeking to stop enforcement of one of the strictest gun control laws in the nation.

    The gun control measure narrowly approved by Oregon voters is set go into effect on Dec. 8. U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut on Thursday scheduled a hearing on the motion for Dec. 2. The state has until next Wednesday to file a response to the emergency motion for preliminary injunction.

    The Oregon Firearms Foundation, Sherman County Sheriff Brad Lohrey and Adam Johnson, owner of Coat of Arms Firearms, filed a federal lawsuit against the Oregon governor and attorney general on Nov. 18 saying Measure 114 is unconstitutional.

    The measure requires residents to obtain a permit to purchase a gun, bans magazines that hold more than 10 rounds except in some circumstances and creates a statewide firearms database.

    “Banning magazines over 10 rounds is no more likely to reduce criminal abuse of guns then banning high horsepower engines is likely to reduce criminal abuse of automobiles,” the lawsuit said. “To the contrary, the only thing the ban contained in 114 ensures is that a criminal unlawfully carrying a firearm with a magazine over 10 rounds will have a potentially devastating advantage over his law-abiding victim.”

    Measure 114 backers argued that banning large-capacity magazines will save lives because it would force shooters to pause to reload, which would provide an opening for others to stop the shooting. Proponents also say it would reduce suicides — which account for 82% of gun deaths in the state — mass shootings and other gun violence.

    The preliminary injunction seeks to stop the state from enforcing the new law while the lawsuit is considered by the court.

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  • Today in History: November 24, Ruby shoots Oswald

    Today in History: November 24, Ruby shoots Oswald

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    Today in History

    Today is Thursday, Nov. 24, the 328th day of 2022. There are 37 days left in the year. Today is Thanksgiving.

    Today’s Highlight in History:

    On Nov. 24, 1963, Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, in a scene captured on live television.

    On this date:

    In 1859, British naturalist Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species,” which explained his theory of evolution by means of natural selection.

    In 1865, Mississippi became the first Southern state to enact laws which came to be known as “Black Codes” aimed at limiting the rights of newly freed Blacks; other states of the former Confederacy soon followed.

    In 1941, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Edwards v. California, unanimously struck down a California law prohibiting people from bringing impoverished non-residents into the state.

    In 1947, a group of writers, producers and directors that became known as the “Hollywood Ten” was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about alleged Communist influence in the movie industry. John Steinbeck’s novel “The Pearl” was first published.

    In 1971, a hijacker calling himself “Dan Cooper” (but who became popularly known as “D.B. Cooper”) parachuted from a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 over the Pacific Northwest after receiving $200,000 in ransom; his fate remains unknown.

    In 1974, the bone fragments of a 3.2 million-year-old hominid were discovered by scientists in Ethiopia; the skeletal remains were nicknamed “Lucy.”

    In 1987, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed on terms to scrap shorter- and medium-range missiles. (The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev the following month.)

    In 1989, Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu (chow-SHES’-koo) was unanimously re-elected Communist Party chief. (Within a month, he was overthrown in a popular uprising and executed along with his wife, Elena, on Christmas Day.)

    In 1991, rock singer Freddie Mercury died in London at age 45 of AIDS-related pneumonia.

    In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped into the bitter, overtime struggle for the White House, agreeing to consider George W. Bush’s appeal against the hand recounting of ballots in Florida.

    In 2014, it was announced that a grand jury in St. Louis County, Missouri, had decided against indicting Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown; the decision enraged protesters who set fire to buildings and cars and looted businesses in the area where Brown had been fatally shot.

    In 2020, Pennsylvania officials certified Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential vote in the state; the Trump campaign had gone to court trying to prevent the certification. The Nevada Supreme Court made Biden’s win in the state official. County election workers across Georgia began an official machine recount of the roughly 5 million votes cast in the presidential race in the state; certified results had shown Biden winning in Georgia by 12,670 votes.

    Ten years ago: Fire raced through a garment factory in Bangladesh that supplied major retailers in the West, killing 112 people; an official said many of the victims were trapped because the eight-story building lacked emergency exits. Former championship boxer Hector “Macho” Camacho died at a hospital in Puerto Rico after doctors disconnected life support; he’d been shot in his hometown of Bayamon earlier in the week.

    Five years ago: Militants attacked a crowded mosque in Egypt with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades, killing more than 300 people in the deadliest-ever attack by Islamic extremists in the country. Zimbabwe swore in its new leader, Emmerson Mnangagwa, after the resignation of President Robert Mugabe, who had fired his longtime deputy just two and a half weeks earlier. South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal increased the prison sentence of Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius to 13 years and five months in the shooting death of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, more than doubling the original six-year sentence.

    One year ago: Three men were convicted of murder in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, the Black man who was running through a Georgia subdivision in February 2020 when the white strangers chased him, trapped him on a quiet street and blasted him with a shotgun. At least 27 people died when a boat carrying migrants across the English Channel to Britain sank a few miles from the French coast.

    Today’s Birthdays: Basketball Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson is 84. Country singer Johnny Carver is 82. Former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue (TAG’-lee-uh-boo) is 82. Rock drummer Pete Best is 81. Actor-comedian Billy Connolly is 80. Former White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater is 80. Former congressman and Motion Picture Association of America Chairman Dan Glickman is 78. Singer Lee Michaels is 77. Actor Dwight Schultz is 75. Actor Stanley Livingston is 72. Rock musician Clem Burke (Blondie; The Romantics) is 68. Actor/director Ruben Santiago-Hudson is 66. Actor Denise Crosby is 65. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is 63. Actor Shae D’Lyn is 60. Rock musician John Squire (The Stone Roses) is 60. Rock musician Gary Stonadge (Big Audio) is 60. Actor Conleth Hill is 58. Actor-comedian Brad Sherwood is 58. Actor Garret Dillahunt is 58. Actor-comedian Scott Krinsky is 54. Rock musician Chad Taylor (Live) is 52. Actor Lola Glaudini is 51. Actor Danielle Nicolet is 49. Actor-writer-director-producer Stephen Merchant is 48. Actor Colin Hanks is 45. Actor Katherine Heigl (HY’-guhl) is 44. Actor Sarah Hyland is 32.

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  • Alabama pausing executions after 3rd failed lethal injection

    Alabama pausing executions after 3rd failed lethal injection

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    BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey sought a pause in executions and ordered a “top-to-bottom” review of the state’s capital punishment system Monday after an unprecedented third failed lethal injection.

    Ivey’s office issued a statement saying she had both asked Attorney General Steve Marshall to withdraw motions seeking execution dates for two inmates and requested that the Department of Corrections undertake a full review of the state’s execution process.

    Ivey also requested that Marshall not seek additional execution dates for any other death row inmates until the review is complete.

    The move followed the uncompleted execution Thursday of Kenneth Eugene Smith, which was the state’s second such instance of being unable to put an inmate to death in the past two months and its third since 2018. The state completed an execution in July, but only after a three-hour delay caused at least partly by the same problem with starting an IV line.

    Denying that prison officials or law enforcement are to blame for the problems, Ivey said “legal tactics and criminals hijacking the system are at play here.”

    “For the sake of the victims and their families, we’ve got to get this right,” she said.

    Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said the department is fully committed to the review and is “confident that we can get this done right.”

    “Everything is on the table — from our legal strategy in dealing with last minute appeals, to how we train and prepare, to the order and timing of events on execution day, to the personnel and equipment involved,” Hamm said in a statement issued through the governor’s office.

    Marshall “read the governor’s and commissioner’s comments with interest” and “will have more to say on this at a later date,” said Mike Lewis, a spokesman for the attorney general.

    The Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death-penalty group with a large database on executions, said no state other than Alabama has had to halt an execution in progress since 2017, when Ohio halted Alva Campbell’s lethal injection because workers couldn’t find a vein.

    The executive director of the organization, Robert Dunham, said Ivey was right to seek an investigation and a pause, but any review of the system needs to be done by someone other than the state’s prison system. While Ivey blamed defense efforts for execution failures, Dunham said her “willful blindness” to the prison system’s woes were part of the problem.

    “The Alabama Department of Corrections has a history of denying and bending the truth about its execution failures, and it cannot be trusted to meaningfully investigate its own incompetence and wrongdoing,” he said.

    Earlier this year, after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee halted a lethal injection in April because he learned the drugs hadn’t been tested as required, he ordered an independent investigation and paused all executions through the end of the year.

    Alabama’s execution of Joe Nathan James Jr. took several hours to get underway in July because of problems establishing an IV line, leading anti-death-penalty group Reprieve US Forensic Justice Initiative to claim the execution was botched.

    In September, the state called off the scheduled execution of Alan Eugene Miller because of difficulty accessing his veins. Miller said in a court filing that prison staff poked him with needles for more than an hour, and at one point left him hanging vertically on a gurney before announcing they were stopping. Prison officials have maintained the delays were the result of the state carefully following procedures.

    Ivey asked the state to withdraw motions seeking execution dates for Miller and James Edward Barber, the only two death row inmates with such requests before the Alabama Supreme Court.

    Alabama in 2018 called off the execution of Doyle Hamm because of problems getting the intravenous line connected. Hamm had damaged veins because of lymphoma, hepatitis and past drug use, his lawyer said. Hamm later died in prison of natural causes.

    Alabama should have imposed an execution moratorium after Hamm’s failed execution for the benefit of everyone, said Bernard Harcourt, an attorney who represented Hamm for years.

    “As a political matter, Gov. Ivey mentions only the victims, but these botched executions have been ordeals for the men on the gurney, their families, friends, ministers, and attorneys, and all the men and women working at the prison and involved in these botched attempts. The trauma of these executions extend widely to everyone that they touch,” Harcourt said.

    ———

    More of AP’s coverage of executions can be found at https://apnews.com/hub/executions.

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  • Public safety accounts urge caution on Twitter after changes

    Public safety accounts urge caution on Twitter after changes

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    As Twitter became knotted with parody accounts and turmoil, Rachel Terlep, who runs an account for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources that intersperses cheeky banter with wildfire and weather warnings, watched with equal parts trepidation and fascination.

    “It kind of feels like a supernova moment right now — a big, bright flash before it all goes away,” she said.

    So the department stepped into the fray, taking advantage of the moment with some of its signature humor. “Update: The Twitter wildfire is 44 billion acres and 0% contained,” they posted.

    But under the joke, it linked to a thread that gave helpful tips about how to review a handle to see if it’s real. Some of the suggestions included looking at how old the account is and checking to see if the public safety agency’s website links to the profile.

    It underscored the challenge for the people tasked with getting public safety information out to communities. Now, they don’t only have to get information out quickly. On the new Twitter, they also have to convince people they are actually the authorities.

    Government agencies, especially those tasked with sending messages during emergencies, have embraced Twitter for its efficiency and scope. Getting accurate information from authorities during disasters is often a matter of life or death. For example, the first reports this week of a deadly shooting at the University of Virginia came from the college’s Twitter accounts that urged students to shelter in place.

    Disasters also provide fertile ground for false information to spread online. Researchers like Jun Zhuang, a professor at the University of Buffalo who studies how false information spreads during natural disasters, say emergencies create a “perfect storm” for rumors, but that government accounts have also played a crucial role in batting them down.

    During Hurricane Harvey in 2017, for example, an online rumor spread that officials were checking people’s immigration status at storm shelters, potentially dissuading people from seeking safety there. However, crisis communication researchers have also found that the city’s mayor reassured residents and helped the community pull together with a constant stream of Twitter messages.

    Amid the slew of changes at one of the world’s most influential social media platforms, the public information officers who operate government Twitter accounts are cautiously waiting out the turmoil and urging the public to verify that it really is their accounts appearing on timelines. While it’s an issue they’ve always had to contend with, it’s especially worrisome now as a proliferation of brand impersonations spreads across the platform and changes to verification take hold.

    Darren Noak, who helps run an account for Austin-Travis County emergency medical services in Texas, said Twitter’s blue checkmark has often been discussed among those who operate government Twitter accounts. The badge — up until a week ago — indicated an account was verified as a government entity, corporation, celebrity or journalist.

    The AP reviewed dozens of government agencies responsible for responding to emergencies from the county to the national level, and none had received an official label — denoted by a gray checkmark — by Friday. Spoof accounts are a concern, Noak said, because they create “a real pain and a headache, especially in times of crisis and emergency.”

    Government accounts have long been a target of copycats. Fairfax County in Virginia had to quash fake school closures tweeted from a fraudulent account during a 2014 winter storm. And both the state of North Carolina and its city of Greensboro have had to compete with accounts appearing to speak for their governments.

    It has become even harder in recent days to verify that an account is authentic.

    In the span of a week, Twitter granted gray checkmark badges to official government accounts — then rescinded them. It next allowed users to receive a blue checkmark through its $8 subscription services — then halted that offering after it spawned an infestation of imposter accounts. Over the weekend, Twitter laid off outsourced moderators who enforced rules against harmful content, further gutting its guardrails against misinformation.

    Twitter hasn’t responded to media requests for information since Musk took over, but its support account has posted: “To combat impersonation, we’ve added an ‘Official’ label to some accounts.”

    Twitter’s changes could be deadly, warned Juliette Kayyem, a former homeland security adviser at the state and national levels who now teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

    Twitter has become a go-to source of localized information in emergencies, she said. But imposter accounts could introduce a new level of misinformation — or disinformation when people intentionally try to cause harm — in urgent situations. When instructing the public how to respond, the right instructions — such as sheltering in place or evacuating a certain area — can be a matter of life or death.

    “In a disaster where time is limited, the greatest way to limit harm is to provide accurate and timely information to communities about what they should do,” Kayyem said. “Allowing others to claim expertise — it will cost lives.”

    In the past, Kayyem had worked with Twitter to research how government agencies can communicate in emergencies. She said the leadership at Twitter’s trust and safety department “thought long and hard” about its public service role. But Twitter has lost those high-level leaders responsible for cybersecurity, data privacy and complying with regulations.

    Some agencies are pushing audiences to other venues for information.

    Local government websites are often the best place to turn for accurate, up-to-date information in emergencies, said April Davis, who works as a public affairs officer and digital media strategist at the Oregon Department of Emergency Management. She, like many others at emergency management agencies, said her agency doesn’t yet plan to change how it engages on Twitter, but also emphasized that it’s not the best place to turn to in emergencies.

    “If it goes away, then we’ll migrate to another platform,” said Derrec Becker, chief of public information at the South Carolina Emergency Management Division. “It is not the emergency alert system.”

    Twitter accounts for emergency management in Washington, South Carolina and Oregon provide public service information on preparing for disasters and weather alerts. They also tweet about evacuation and shelter orders.

    Becker, who has cultivated the agency’s sizeable Twitter following with a playful presence, said emergency alerts broadcast on TV, radio or cell phones are still the go-to methods for urgent warnings.

    Shortly after Becker fielded questions from The Associated Press on his agency’s plans Monday, the department tweeted: “Leave Twitter? Disasters are kind of our thing.”

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  • Dangerous lake-effect snowstorm blankets Buffalo, western NY

    Dangerous lake-effect snowstorm blankets Buffalo, western NY

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    BUFFALO, N.Y. — A dangerous lake-effect snowstorm paralyzed parts of western and northern New York, with more than a foot of snow already on the ground Friday morning in places and a driving ban keeping people off the roads in the Buffalo area.

    The worst snowfall was expected in Buffalo, where the National Weather Service said up to 4 feet (1.2 meters) might fall in some spots through Sunday, with periods of near-zero visibility. Other areas could get a foot (0.3 meters) or less of the lake-effect snow, which is caused by frigid air picking up copious amounts of moisture from the warmer lakes.

    The weather service received reports early Friday of more than a foot of snow along the eastern end of Lake Erie, with totals as high as 19.5 inches (49.5 centimeters) in Buffalo and up to 22.5 inches (57 cm) in Hamburg, New York, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) from Buffalo.

    New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency Thursday for parts of western New York, including communities along the eastern ends of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Hochul’s state of emergency covers 11 counties, with commercial truck traffic banned from a stretch of Interstate 90.

    Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz issued a driving ban beginning Thursday night, shortly after heavy snow punctuated by thunder and lightning moved into Buffalo. The ban on nonemergency vehicles on roadways was downgraded to an advisory for the city of Buffalo on Friday, but the ban remained in effect in some other parts of the county, Poloncarz said. The most intense snowfall was expected to last through Friday evening, with more falling on Saturday into Sunday.

    A car carrying a TV news crew reporting on the storm got stuck early Friday and had to be pushed out of the snow by onlookers, WGRZ reporter Alexandra Rios said on Twitter.

    “Our car got stuck after our 4:30a live shot,” Rios tweeted. “Then, at one point about 6 people gathered together to help us out.” She said they told her that Buffalo residents “always come together when someone is in need.”

    Administrators canceled Friday classes for students in Buffalo and throughout the county. Amtrak stations in Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Depew closed Thursday and will stay closed Friday, The Buffalo News reported, while numerous flights in and out of Buffalo Niagara International Airport were canceled.

    Also ahead of the storm, the NFL announced it would relocate the Buffalo Bills’ home game against the Cleveland Browns to Detroit on Sunday.

    The switch in sites means the Bills will play back-to-back games in Detroit, as they are scheduled to play the Lions on Thanksgiving.

    The weather service also warned of accumulations of 2 feet (0.6 meters) or more of snow in northern New York on the eastern edge of Lake Ontario, and in parts of northern Michigan through Sunday. Parts of Pennsylvania also were seeing accumulations of lake-effect snow.

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  • Prosecution rests case at Harvey Weinstein sex assault trial

    Prosecution rests case at Harvey Weinstein sex assault trial

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    LOS ANGELES — Prosecutors in Los Angeles rested their case Thursday in the trial of Harvey Weinstein, who they allege raped two women and sexually assaulted two others.

    The move from Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson came after nearly four weeks of testimony from 44 witnesses.

    Weinstein is charged with crimes against four of them: one a model, another a model and actor, a third a massage therapist.

    The fourth, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker who was an actor at the time of her alleged rape and is now married to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, provided the most dramatic moments at the trial so far with her emotional testimony.

    Four other women who are not involved with the charges testified that Weinstein sexually assaulted them, as prosecutors sought to show he had a propensity for such acts.

    Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench denied a motion from Weinstein’s lawyers to dismiss all of the counts against Weinstein, which they said prosecutors failed to prove.

    “We are nearing the end of this case if you haven’t already picked up on that fact,” Lench told the jurors, who will get Thanksgiving week off and return for testimony by defense witnesses on Nov. 28.

    She warned them not to consume any trial-related media singling out “any movie trailers that may be related to this case or movies that may be related to this case – well, not related to this case, but related to this issue.”

    Without saying the name of the movie, she was clearly referring to the Friday release of “She Said,” a film about the New York Times reporting of the 2017 stories that put Weinstein at the center of the #MeToo movement.

    Once the jury was excused, Weinstein’s lawyer entered a new not guilty plea for him to an amended indictment that drops four of the 11 previous counts against him. The move became necessary when prosecutors said earlier this week that the accuser known in court as Jane Doe #5 would not be appearing to testify and that the counts would no longer be pursued. They would not give a reason when asked.

    Weinstein spokesman Juda Engelmayer said in response to the dropped charges that “this witness could have felt uneasy about being scrutinized knowing the truth of the matter.”

    Nor did prosecutors explain why Mel Gibson was missing. They never called the actor, director and one of the trial’s most anticipated witnesses to the stand. The judge had ruled at the start of trial that Gibson could testify about a conversation he had with the massage therapist Weinstein is charged with sexually assaulting.

    In moving to have them dismissed, Weinstein attorney Alan Jackson went through the seven remaining counts against his client, and provided a likely preview of the defense’s closing arguments.

    Jackson said the allegations that in 2013 Weinstein raped and sexually assaulted an Italian model known at the trial as Jane Doe 1 were especially unfounded, arguing that there is no convincing evidence that “the interlude occurred at all.”

    Jackson said there was no evidence that there was “any restraint whatsoever,” as required for a count of sexual battery, in the part of the case involving model Lauren Young.

    Young, the only Weinstein accuser to testify at his trials in both New York and Los Angeles, said she was paralyzed by fear when Weinstein blocked her from leaving the bathroom, masturbated in front of her and groped her breasts in a hotel in 2013.

    Jackson said there was ample evidence, including emails the two exchanged in the ensuing years, that Siebel Newsom and Weinstein had a consensual sexual encounter that she later reframed as rape.

    “The defendant’s motion is denied,” Lench responded. “I think there is enough evidence to send all these counts to the jury, and I will do so.”

    Weinstein is two years into a 23-year sentence for his conviction in New York, and has been held in a Los Angeles jail throughout the trial.

    The Associated Press typically does not publish the names of people alleging sexual assault unless they come forward publicly, as Young and Siebel Newsom have done through their lawyers.

    ———

    Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: twitter.com/andyjamesdalton

    ———

    For more on the Harvey Weinstein trial, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/harvey-weinstein

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  • 2 Hawaiian men guilty of hate crime in white man’s beating

    2 Hawaiian men guilty of hate crime in white man’s beating

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    HONOLULU — A jury on Thursday found two Native Hawaiian men guilty of a hate crime for the 2014 beating of a white man who was fixing up a house he purchased in their remote Maui neighborhood.

    U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright ordered Kaulana Alo-Kaonohi and Levi Aki Jr. detained pending sentencing scheduled for March 2, and marshals moved to handcuff the two men after the verdict was announced in the afternoon.

    Family members and supporters wept in the courtroom and called out to the men: “I love you,” and “Be good.” “God bless you daddy,” said Alo-Kaonohi’s son Kahue, 3.

    In an unusual move, the U.S. Department of Justice sought to prosecute Alo-Kaonohi and Aki and secured a federal grand jury indictment in December 2020 charging each with a hate crime count punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

    Prosecutors alleged during the trial in U.S. District Court in Honolulu that Alo-Kaonohi and Aki were motivated by Christopher Kunzelman’s race when they punched, kicked and used a shovel to beat him in Kahakuloa village. Kunzelman was left with injuries including a concussion, two broken ribs and head and abdominal trauma, prosecutors said.

    Alo-Kaonohi previously pleaded no contest to felony assault in state court and was sentenced to probation, while Aki pleaded no contest to terroristic threatening and was sentenced to probation and nearly 200 days in jail. The federal trial was held separately, to determine if they were guilty of a hate crime. It’s unclear why it took so long for U.S. prosecutors to pursue hate crime charges.

    Local attorneys say they’ve never heard of the federal government prosecuting Native Hawaiians for hate crimes before this case.

    Lawyers for Alo-Kaonohi and Aki did not deny the assault but said it was not a hate crime. It was not race that sparked the attack, they said, but Kunzelman’s entitled and disrespectful attitude.

    The men were upset that Kunzelman cut locks to village gates, their attorneys said. Kunzelman said he did so because residents were locking him in and out. He testified that he wanted to provide the village with better locks and distribute keys to residents.

    Kunzelman testified that while Alo-Kaonohi and Aki beat him, they told him no white people would ever live in Kahakuloa village. However, he acknowledged that’s not heard in video recorded during the attack.

    Kunzelman said he decided to take two pistols to Maui after hearing that a contractor he hired to do mold remediation had been assaulted when he showed up and after his realtor said the close-knit community of Native Hawaiians had a problem with white people.

    He also installed cameras on his vehicle, which were on during the attack. The vehicle was parked under the house and recorded images of what was happening downstairs, including Aki pacing with a shovel on his shoulder. The video only captured audio from the assault, which took place upstairs.

    Lawyers for Alo-Kaonohi an Aki told jurors the video shows that they didn’t use any racial slurs.

    “Haole,” a Hawaiian word with meanings that include foreign and white person, was central to the case, highlighting multicultural Hawaii’s nuanced and complicated relationship with race.

    At one point Aki is heard saying, “You’s a haole, eh,” using a Hawaiian word that can mean white person. Defense attorneys said he didn’t use the word in a derogatory way.

    “It’s not a hate crime to assault somebody and in the course of it use the word ‘haole,’” court-appointed attorney Lynn Panagakos said during her opening statement. She noted that Aki is part-Hawaiian and part-haole.

    “’Haole’ has multiple meanings depending on the context,” she said. “It’s an accepted word.”

    Megan Kau, a Native Hawaiian attorney not involved in the case, said it depends on the tone and manner in which the word is used.

    “These Native Hawaiians who live in a secluded, very traditional community who use the term ‘haole’ to describe people that are not from Hawaii — that’s the term that they use,” she said. “We all very often use the term ‘haole.’ It’s not derogatory unless you use it in a derogatory sense.”

    Wiping away tears outside the courthouse following the verdict, Alo-Kaonohi’s father, Chico Kaonohi, said bias was not a motivation behind the attack and “’Haole’ is not a racial word.”

    “Where we come from, we’re not racial people,” Chico Kaonohi, said. “It wasn’t about race.”

    Attorneys for both defendants declined to comment Thursday. Prosecutors did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

    Kunzelman testified that he and his wife decided to move to Maui from Scottsdale, Arizona, after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He said his wife loved the island.

    He said that a Hawaiian woman visited him in his dreams and told him to buy the dilapidated oceanfront house, which he and his wife purchased sight-unseen for $175,000 after coming across a listing for it online.

    Kunzelman and his family never got to live in the home, he testified. They now reside in Puerto Rico.

    He sat in the courtroom watching as the verdict was announced. He could not immediately be reached for comment afterward.

    ———

    This story has been corrected to reflect that the defendant’s son is 3 years old, not 4.

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  • Mexico investigates death of US tourist seen in fight video

    Mexico investigates death of US tourist seen in fight video

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    MEXICO CITY — Mexican prosecutors said Thursday they have opened an investigation into the death of a U.S. woman seen being beaten in a video that has gone viral.

    Prosecutors in the state of Baja California Sur said in a statement they are investigating the death of a woman they identified only as a foreigner, at a resort development in the town of San Jose del Cabo.

    A state official who was not authorized to be quoted by name confirmed the victim was Shanquella Robinson. The official confirmed that the group she had been traveling with had since left Mexico.

    A video apparently taped at a luxury villa in San Jose del Cabo shows one woman, apparently an American, beating another woman.

    The video has been reposted many times on social media sites. In it, a man with an American accent can be heard saying “Can you at least fight back?” The man did not appear to intervene in the beating.

    Prosecutors said police found Robinson dead at the villa on Oct. 29.

    The Charlotte, North Carolina station Queen City News published a report saying Robinson died of a severe spinal chord injury.

    Mexican officials said they could not confirm that was the cause of death, because it was part of an ongoing investigation.

    The video raised questions about why nobody intervened in the purported beating, or why people she was traveling with would have beaten her.

    In another case in a different part of Baja California Sur, prosecutors said they had arrested three men and one woman in the Oct. 25 disappearance of another American, identified as Rodney Davis, 73.

    Davis was last seen near El Juncalito beach in the township of Loreto, well to the north of San Jose del Cabo.

    The three suspects face kidnapping charges. Davis’s body was found two days later on a nearby highway.

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  • US Catholic bishops worry about abortion views in the pews

    US Catholic bishops worry about abortion views in the pews

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    BALTIMORE — Even as they signaled a continued hardline stance on opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, the nation’s Catholic bishops acknowledged Wednesday that they’re struggling to reach a key audience: their own flock.

    The members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops rounded out their leadership bench during the last day of public sessions of their fall annual meeting in Baltimore, which concludes with private meetings Thursday.

    They also set in motion a plan to recirculate their long-standing election document in 2024 — a 15-year-old statement that prioritizes opposition to abortion — while acknowledging it’s outdated and adding a cover statement addressing such things as the teachings of Pope Francis and the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling in June that overturned the nationwide right to abortion.

    The bishops elected Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley as secretary in a 130-104 vote over Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, who had been named a cardinal by Pope Francis. It’s the second time in five years that the bishops have passed over a Francis-appointed cardinal for a key leadership post.

    Earlier this year, Coakley had applauded the decision by San Francisco’s archbishop to deny Communion to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic Democrat from that city who supports abortion rights. So had the bishops’ new point man on opposition to abortion — Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, Virginia, elected Wednesday as chairman of its Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

    The votes came a day after the bishops elected as their new president Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services. Broglio is also seen as more of a culture warrior than Pope Francis, though Broglio has dismissed the idea of any “dissonance” between the two.

    At the same time, Coakley cited the importance of Francis’ priorities in a news conference Wednesday.

    Coakley is leading the bishops’ review of, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” a document they have used in election years with only minor revisions since 2007.

    While a full revision will take years, bishops approved Coakley’s recommendation to begin drafting a new introduction to issue with the document in time for 2024’s election. It would incorporate recent events such as the Ukraine war and the Dobbs decision.

    The plan also includes using parish bulletins and social media to share main ideas from the lengthy document.

    Coakley said the new introduction needs to reflect Pope Francis’ priorities, such as promoting civil discourse and protecting the environment.

    “It’s a rich pontificate that offers us plenty to lay out for people … to embrace the vision that Pope Francis has articulated,” Coakley said.

    Bishops from both the progressive and conservative flanks of the church echoed concern that Catholics aren’t reading the document.

    Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky, a Francis appointee, said that bishops need a statement that’s relevant amid the shaken confidence in democracy following the U.S. Capitol riot and in the wake of Dobbs and defeats for abortion opponents in votes on five state ballot measures. “It’s irresponsible to issue an old teaching and suggest the church has nothing new to say when so much of this context has changed,” he said.

    Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, one of the most outspoken conservative bishops, lamented the recent state ballot measures. Polls show Catholics to be mixed on legal abortion.

    “I think it’s a solid document,” Strickland said, but “I think we have to acknowledge people aren’t listening.”

    The gap between Francis and the U.S. bishops reflects in part the conference’s continued emphasis on culture-war battles over abortion and same-sex marriage.

    Francis, while also opposing both in keeping with church teaching, has used his papacy to emphasize a wider agenda of bringing mercy to those at the margins, such as migrants and other poor. The Vatican said in 2021 the church cannot bless gay unions because God “cannot bless sin,” but Francis has made outreach to the church’s LGBTQ members a hallmark of his papacy. As recently as last Friday, Francis met with the Rev. James Martin, an American Jesuit priest whom the pontiff has supported in his calls for dialogue with LGBTQ Catholics.

    Both Pelosi and President Joe Biden, another Catholic who favors legalized abortion, have received Communion since 2021 in churches in Rome, the pope’s own diocese.

    The bishops also heard an impassioned talk Wednesday by Archbishop Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Archeparchy of Philadelphia on behalf of war-torn Ukraine.

    Gudziak thanked U.S. Catholics for providing millions in relief for displaced Ukrainians and urged continued American support for Ukraine’s self-defense, saying Russian assaults have left many vulnerable in the coming winter.

    At the same time, he said that on a conference call with staff at a Catholic university in Lviv, he heard only joy and resolve even amid losses of electrical power in Russia’s missile barrage Tuesday. One staff member told him, “Better without electricity and with Kherson,” he said, alluding to the recently liberated city.

    Gudziak accused Russia of a “genocide” through such attacks and through its denial of Ukrainians’ identity as a separate people.

    Also Wednesday, a small group of survivors of sexual abuse and their supporters held a sidewalk news conference outside Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, where the bishops are meeting. While this year marks the 20th anniversary of the bishops’ landmark policy barring all abusers from ministry, advocates are seeking more transparency.

    They called for bishops in every diocese to post detailed lists of credibly accused abusers and to stop lobbying against state legislation that would extend statutes of limitations for abuse lawsuits.

    David Lorenz, Maryland director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, cited Archbishop Broglio’s archdiocese as one of the few that still does not publish even a minimal list of abusers. Broglio declined to comment.

    “I don’t need another apology because it doesn’t do anything to protect kids,” Lorenz added. “I want action to help kids. I want them (bishops) to be totally, absolutely transparent.”

    Also Wednesday, the bishops voted to advance efforts to have three American women declared saints.

    They include Michelle Duppong of North Dakota, a campus missionary who died of cancer in 2014 and is credited with showing faithfulness in suffering.

    They also include two 20th century women: Cora Evans, a Catholic convert from Utah who reported mystical experiences from an early age; and Mother Margaret Mary Healy Murphy of Texas, founder of a religious order, who provided education and other ministry to African Americans.

    ———

    Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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  • US House panel eyes prospect of seating Cherokee delegate

    US House panel eyes prospect of seating Cherokee delegate

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    The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma moved a step closer on Wednesday to having a promise fulfilled from nearly 200 years ago that a delegate from the tribe be seated in Congress.

    Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin was among those who testified before the U.S. House Rules Committee, which is the first to examine the prospect of seating a Cherokee delegate in the U.S. House. Hoskin, the elected leader of the 440,000-member tribe, put the effort in motion in 2019 when he nominated Kimberly Teehee, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, to the position. The tribe’s governing council then unanimously approved her.

    The tribe’s right to a delegate is detailed in the Treaty of New Echota signed in 1835, which provided the legal basis for the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from its ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi River and led to the Trail of Tears, but it has never been exercised. A separate treaty in 1866 affirmed this right, Hoskin said.

    “The Cherokee Nation has in fact adhered to our obligations under these treaties. I’m here to ask the United States to do the same,” Hoskin told the panel.

    Hoskin suggested to the committee that Teehee could be seated as early as this year by way of either a resolution or change in statute, and the committee’s chairman, Massachusetts Democratic Rep. James McGovern, and other members supported the idea that it could be accomplished quickly.

    “This can and should be done as quickly as possible,” McGovern said. “The history of this country is a history of broken promise after broken promise to Native American communities. This cannot be another broken promise.”

    But McGovern and other committee members, including ranking member Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, acknowledged there are some questions that need to be resolved, including whether other Native American tribes are afforded similar rights and whether the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma is the proper successor to the tribe that entered into the treaty with the U.S. government.

    McGovern said he has been contacted by officials with the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Delaware Nation, both of which have separate treaties with the U.S. government that call for some form of representation in Congress. McGovern also noted there also are two other federally recognized bands of Cherokee Indians that argue they should be considered successors to the 1835 treaty: the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians based in North Carolina, both of which reached out to his office.

    The UKB selected its own congressional delegate, Oklahoma attorney Victoria Holland, in 2021. Holland said in an interview with The Associated Press that her tribe is a successor to the Cherokee Nation that signed the 1835 treaty, just like the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

    “As such, we have equal rights under all the treaties with the Cherokee people and we should be treated as siblings,” Holland said.

    Only a few Native Americans serve in Congress, including Cole and U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation who was elected earlier this month to the U.S. Senate, where he will become the first Native American in that body in nearly 20 years.

    “As a member of the Cherokee Nation, I firmly believe the federal government must honor its trust and treaty responsibilities to Indian Nations,” Mullin said in a statement. “We are only as good as our word.”

    Members of the committee seemed to be in agreement that any delegate from the Cherokee Nation would be similar to five other delegates from the District of Columbia, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands. These delegates are assigned to committees and can submit amendments to bills, but cannot vote on the floor for final passage of bills. Puerto Rico is represented by a non-voting resident commissioner who is elected every four years.

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  • Arkansas governor recommends school funding increase

    Arkansas governor recommends school funding increase

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    LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Thursday recommended that lawmakers increase public school funding by $550 million over the next two years to raise teacher pay, as the Republican prepares to leave office in January.

    Hutchinson presented his budget recommendations to a legislative panel days after Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders was elected the state’s next governor. Hutchinson, who was barred by term limits from seeking reelection, acknowledged that the decision on the budget will be up to the Legislature and Sanders next year.

    Hutchinson said his funding proposal “allows the next administration and the General Assembly maximum flexibility in terms of raising teacher salaries and raising the outcomes for education in the state.”

    The proposal calls for increasing public school funding by $200 million in the fiscal year that begins July 2023 and by $350 million the following year.

    Hutchinson earlier this year called on lawmakers to raise teacher pay, but decided against putting it on the agenda for a special session in August due to a lack of support in the majority-Republican Legislature.

    The House and Senate education committees have since endorsed proposals to give teachers $4,000 raises, though they differ on when the raises should be granted.

    Sanders, who announced her transition team on Thursday, stopped short of saying whether she agreed with Hutchinson’s budget recommendation.

    “Governor-elect Sanders looks forward to continued conversations with the governor and her legislative partners during the transition as she works to develop a budget that makes government lean and efficient, cuts taxes, and prioritizes the promises she made to Arkansans to make our state one of the best to live, work, and raise a family,” Sanders spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.

    Hutchinson recommended the state’s overall budget increase by 5% to $6.3 billion in the next fiscal year. The budget proposal projects the state will end that year with a nearly $255 million surplus.

    Hutchinson, who has clashed with the Legislature in recent years on issues such as a ban on transgender medical care and COVID-19 restrictions, alluded to the at-times rocky relationship as he addressed lawmakers.

    “When iron strikes iron, what do you get? You get a few sparks,” Hutchinson said, referring to a Bible passage. “But you also get a sharper outcome, and I believe our relationship has reflected that scriptural principle.”

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  • Death sentence upheld in Nebraska killing, dismemberment

    Death sentence upheld in Nebraska killing, dismemberment

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    OMAHA, Neb. — A man sentenced to death for the killing and dismemberment of a Lincoln woman he met through the dating app Tinder lost his initial appeal in which he argued he should have been granted a mistrial after violently disrupting his own trial.

    The Nebraska Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the appeal of Aubrey Trail, 56, who was convicted of first-degree murder in the 2017 death of 24-year-old Sydney Loofe and sentenced to death last year. Trail’s girlfriend at the time of Loofe’s death, Bailey Boswell, was also convicted as an active participant in Loofe’s death and sentenced last November to life in prison.

    The high court rejected all of Trail’s appeal claims, which included arguments that the trial court violated his constitutional rights by excluding potential jurors who indicated they would not be able to perform jury duties dictated by Nebraska law because they were opposed to the death penalty.

    Trail’s claims also included the arguments that the judge should have declared a mistrial — or later, granted a request for a new trial — after Trail disrupted the third day of his trial by yelling, “Bailey is innocent, and I curse you all!” before cutting his own throat with a razor blade he had obtained in jail and sneaked into the courtroom.

    In denying Trail’s motions for a mistrial or new trial, the district court found that Trail’s act of self-harm was “a calculating gesture.” On Thursday, the state’s high court said it would not second-guess the trial court’s decision in the matter. The Supreme Court cited other appeals court cases that also ruled against defendants who had disrupted their own court hearings, saying that to allow mistrials in such cases “would provide a criminal defendant with a convenient device for provoking a mistrial whenever he chose to do so.”

    “As with these other defendants, we will not permit Trail to benefit from his own bad behavior during trial,” Justice John Freudenberg wrote for the court in its unanimous ruling.

    Prosecutors said Trail and Boswell planned the abduction and killing of Loofe, whom Boswell met using the online dating app Tinder. Two days after Boswell and Loofe met for a date on Nov. 14, 2017, Loofe’s mother reported her missing. Loofe’s dismembered remains were found weeks later, stuffed into garbage bags that had been dumped in a field near Edgar, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southwest of Lincoln.

    Trail later told investigators that he strangled Sydney Loofe with an extension cord, prosecutors said. He and Boswell then dismembered and disposed of Loofe’s body with items they bought at a home improvement store the day before her death.

    Neither an attorney for Trail nor the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office immediately responded Thursday to requests for comment on the ruling.

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  • Youngkin apologizes to Pelosi for remarks after attack

    Youngkin apologizes to Pelosi for remarks after attack

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    WASHINGTON — Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to apologize for widely criticized remarks he made after the October attack on her husband, Paul Pelosi, Youngkin’s office confirmed Wednesday.

    “My full intention on my comments was to categorically state that violence and the kind of violence that was perpetrated against Speaker Pelosi’s husband is not just unacceptable, it’s atrocious. And I didn’t do a great job with that,” the Republican governor said in a statement provided by a spokesperson.

    Youngkin said he sent Pelosi a “personal note” to “to reflect those sentiments.”

    Paul Pelosi was hospitalized after authorities say he was violently assaulted by an intruder who broke into the couple’s San Francisco home.

    Law enforcement officers who responded to the Oct. 28 break-in witnessed the 82-year-old being struck in the head with the hammer at least once, according to court documents. Paul Pelosi was released from the hospital last week. The suspect, David DePape, faces numerous charges, including attempted murder and attempted kidnapping of a U.S. official.

    Hours after the news of the attack, Youngkin made a campaign stop for a GOP congressional candidate and said of the Pelosis: “There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her back to be with him in California.” The remark drew laughs from the crowd but was quickly condemned — mostly by Democrats — as insensitive and an insufficient condemnation of the violence.

    Youngkin initially declined to say he regretted the remarks when pressed on the matter in a TV interview.

    A spokesperson for Pelosi confirmed the letter.

    The apology was first reported by Punchbowl News.

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  • Republican Katie Britt wins US Senate race in Alabama

    Republican Katie Britt wins US Senate race in Alabama

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    MONTGOMERY, Ala — Republican Katie Britt on Tuesday won the U.S. Senate race in Alabama, becoming the first woman elected to the body from the state.

    Britt will fill the seat held by Richard Shelby, her one-time boss who is retiring after 35 years in the Senate. Britt was Shelby’s chief of staff before leaving to take the helm of a state business lobby. Britt defeated Democrat Will Boyd and Libertarian John Sophocleus.

    Britt, 40, cast herself as part of a new generation of conservative leaders and will become one of the Senate’s youngest members. She will be the first Republican woman to hold one of the state’s Senate seats and the state’s first elected female senator. The state’s previous female senators, both Democrats, had been appointed.

    “Tonight, parents, families and hard-working Alabamians across the state let their voices be heard. We said loud and clear this is our time,” Britt told supporters at her victory party in downtown Montgomery.

    Britt, who noted her early dismal poll numbers and how some initially dismissed her notion of running for Senate, said her campaign is “proof that the American dream is still alive.”

    Fueled by deep pockets and deep ties to business and political leaders, Britt ran under the banner of “Alabama First” and secured the GOP nomination after a heated and expensive primary. She was first in the initial round of voting and then defeated six-term Rep. Mo Brooks in a primary runoff.

    Brooks, who ran under the banner “MAGA Mo” — Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again campaign slogan — and was initially endorsed by the former president, had been an early favorite in the race. But Brooks faltered under a barrage of attack ads and lackluster fundraising. As Britt surged in the polls, Trump rescinded his endorsement of Brooks and swung his support to Britt.

    Britt began her political career working for Shelby. She thanked the outgoing senior senator for taking a chance on her 20 years ago and called him “Alabama’s greatest statesman” who left a lasting legacy on the state.

    The senator-elect was introduced by her husband Wesley Britt, a former football player for the New England Patriots and the University of Alabama, who said his best title is, “Katie’s husband.”

    Flanked by her husband and two-school-age children, and with her speech occasionally punctuated by the sound of children popping the red, white and blue balloons that fell to celebrate her victory, Britt called herself a “Mama on a mission” to get things done in Washington.

    Britt, who spent much of her race in partisan appeals, criticizing the policies of President Joe Biden and lamenting a country she said she no longer recognized, promised to work for all Alabamians, “even those that have different beliefs than I do.”

    “No one will worker harder than me in the United States Senate. I am going to listen to you, not lecture you. I know that every one of you is not going to agree with me on every single issue and that’s OK,” Britt said.

    “I am going to be a voice for parents and families and hard-working Alabamians across this state,” she said, “and I’m going to work tirelessly every single day to make Alabama proud.”

    ———

    Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

    ———

    Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections.

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  • Wisconsin’s Evers, in 2nd term bid, says democracy at stake

    Wisconsin’s Evers, in 2nd term bid, says democracy at stake

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    MADISON, Wis. — Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers staked his bid Tuesday for a second term on his support for abortion rights and his status as the only check on the GOP in a state certain to be pivotal in the 2024 presidential race.

    Evers faced Tim Michels, a Donald Trump-backed Republican who promised to deliver “massive” tax cuts and largely financed his campaign from his fortune as owner of the state’s largest construction firm.

    Roughly half of Wisconsin voters say the nation’s economy is the most pressing issue facing the country, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 3,200 voters in the state.

    Nearly all the state’s voters say inflation was a factor in how they cast their ballots, with roughly half naming it as the single most important factor. Among those who named inflation as a factor in how they voted, nearly half say the rising costs of groceries and food were most important.

    Evers frequently touted the more than 120 vetoes he issued to block Republican legislation in his first term, including bills that would have broadened gun rights, made it harder to get an abortion and tougher to cast absentee ballots. Future elections loomed large in the race, with Evers arguing that democracy was on the ballot.

    “I am the last line of defense for voting rights in Wisconsin,” Evers tweeted in the final weeks of the race. “If Republicans win, they’ll undoubtedly make it harder to vote and undermine our electoral system.”

    Michels, who won a tough primary after getting Trump’s endorsement, initially refused to commit to accepting the results of the election before saying in late October he would “certainly” accept the outcome. Michels also has said “maybe” the 2020 election lost by Trump was stolen, even though President Joe Biden’s win has survived numerous lawsuits, reviews and recounts.

    Michels also supports Republican proposals to disband the state’s bipartisan elections commission and to make it harder to vote.

    He tried to make the race largely about the economy, education, crime and public safety, arguing that Evers allowed too many prison inmates to be paroled and failed to act decisively to quell violent protests following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Kenosha in 2020.

    Michels also faulted Evers’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that schools and businesses were shuttered too long and that Evers has failed to improve educational results. Michels supports making everyone eligible to attend private schools using taxpayer-funded vouchers, a program that Evers, the former state schools chief, opposes. Michels also wants to cut income taxes to a nearly flat rate of around 5%.

    Michels, in their lone debate, said all Evers “wants to do is blame others and talk about more resources, more money.” He added: “I’m a leader that will take responsibility. I’m a man of integrity.”

    After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Evers tried to make the race a referendum on abortion. Michels supported the state’s 1849 abortion ban in the Republican primary, but after his win he changed positions and said he would sign a bill creating exceptions for rape and incest. Evers said he would not sign such a bill if it left the underlying ban in place.

    Al Drifka, 65, a retired manufacturing executive voting in the northern Milwaukee suburb of Cedarburg, split his ticket in the state’s top two races — voting for GOP Sen. Ron Johnson in that race but going for Evers as governor.

    “I think the state of Wisconsin is in a good position right now,” Drifka said. “And I didn’t hear a lot of substance from Michels on what he was actually going to do.”

    Vasyl Ovod, 41, a construction worker who described himself as conservative, voted for Michels at the same polling place. Ovod said he emigrated from Ukraine 17 years ago and things have gotten harder.

    “When we came, it was much different,” he said. “I could even make more money. Gas was low. Now I feel like everything is going wrong. You feel this, you know?”

    Though Republicans were keen to knock off Evers, they were also vying Tuesday to win supermajorities in the Legislature — a threshold that would allow them to override vetoes and shape state policy almost entirely to their liking.

    Evers won in 2018 by a little more than a percentage point, and history was not on his side for a second term. He was trying to become the first Wisconsin governor in 32 years who was the same party as the sitting president to win reelection in a midterm.

    Trump’s endorsement of Michels in the primary propelled him to victory over the presumptive favorite up to that point, former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch. But Michels downplayed that backing in the general election and never mentioned it in his one debate with Evers.

    Michels, 59, co-owns Michels Corporation with his brothers and claimed that he is “not a politician.” He previously ran for U.S. Senate in 2004, losing to then-Sen. Russ Feingold.

    ———

    Learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections.

    And follow the AP’s election coverage of the 2022 elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

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  • EU court sides with Fiat Chrysler in tax advantage case

    EU court sides with Fiat Chrysler in tax advantage case

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    LUXEMBOURG — The European Union’s top court on Tuesday overturned a decision requiring automaker Fiat Chrysler to pay up to 30 million euros ($30 million) in back taxes to Luxembourg.

    The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm and anti-trust regulator, had determined in 2015 that a 2012 Luxembourg tax ruling favored Fiat companies in Europe and was incompatible with state aid rules in the 27-nation bloc.

    A European court ruled in the commission’s favor in 2019, ordering the automaker to return the tax break. Fiat Chrysler, which last year merged with France’s PSA Peugeot to form Stellantis, asked the higher court to set aside the order.

    The Court of Justice of the EU said Tuesday that the commission failed to take into account the typical tax laws in Luxembourg when it was determining whether the automaker got a tax advantage and that the EU’s General Court “committed an error of law” in upholding that approach three years ago.

    EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager tweeted that Tuesday’s ruling was a “big loss for tax fairness.”

    “The Commission is committed to continue using all the tools at its disposal to ensure that fair competition is not distorted in the Single Market through the grant by Member States of illegal tax breaks to multinational companies,” she said in a statement.

    It comes as countries in Europe and around the world are working to enshrine into law a global minimum tax deal that more than 130 nations signed on to last year, designed to create a more equal footing in attracting and keeping multinational companies.

    It aims to deter multinationals from stashing profits in countries where they pay little or no taxes — commonly known as tax havens.

    Stellantis is “pleased that the Court of Justice has confirmed our view that the Commission was wrong to consider our tax ruling to be unlawful state aid,” spokeswoman Valerie Gillot said.

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  • O’Rourke hopes to upset Texas Gov. Abbott’s bid for 3rd term

    O’Rourke hopes to upset Texas Gov. Abbott’s bid for 3rd term

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    AUSTIN — Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sought a record-tying third term Tuesday while Democrat Beto O’Rourke reached for an upset in America’s biggest red state in one of the most expensive midterm races in the U.S.

    More than 5 million early votes had already been cast ahead of Election Day in Texas, where anger over the Uvalde school shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead in May intensified an already heated contest in which both candidates’ campaigns combined spent more than $200 million.

    Five months later, Texas state police still face pressure for failing to confront the gunman sooner at Robb Elementary School. O’Rourke said the shooting, one of the deadliest classroom attacks in U.S. history, crystalized the stakes of the election as Abbott waved off calls for tougher gun laws.

    But Abbott, 64, has remained formidable in a state where Republicans have won every governor’s race since 1994.

    He has rallied his base around a record number of illegal border crossings from Mexico to the U.S., aggressively courted Hispanic voters in South Texas, and seized on economic anxieties and recession fears that have created headwinds for Democrats nationally.

    A victory by Abbott would strengthen his position as a potential presidential contender in 2024, secure his place as the second-longest serving governor in the state’s history and extend decades of GOP dominance.

    O’Rourke on Tuesday was set to embark on one last campaign blitz through Dallas, San Antonio and Houston before heading home to wait for election returns in his hometown of El Paso. Abbott was spending election night Tuesday in the southern border city of McAllen, underscoring the GOP’s rising confidence in a region that has long been a stronghold for Democrats.

    O’Rourke’s hard-charging challenge has rekindled Democrats’ hopes while appealing to voters soured by the Uvalde shooting, a strict new abortion ban and the deadly collapse of the state’s power grid in winter 2021. The former El Paso congressman has cast himself as a fresh start for Texas and a check on a GOP-controlled Legislature, while vowing to legalize marijuana and expand Medicaid.

    But four years after O’Rourke, 50, nearly won a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, raising his profile in the Democratic Party, he has confronted more skeptical voters. Abbott has painted him as a liberal crusader, and O’Rourke has been forced to answer for positions he took while running for the White House, particularly his support of mandatory gun buybacks.

    A day after the shooting in Uvalde, O’Rourke interrupted an Abbott news conference, telling him, “This is on you,” in reference to the governor’s opposition of tougher gun measures. To Republicans, the moment was a tasteless political stunt, but O’Rourke’s supporters saw it as an authentic reflection of their anger.

    During early voting in suburban Dallas, Deborah Thompson said she voted for all Democrats, including O’Rourke, out of concern that Republicans threaten voting and abortion rights.

    “I think that an 18-year-old girl that’s been raped should be able to get an abortion,” the 56-year-old Richardson resident said. “I’m not going back. I’m not going back to the ’50s … and I’m so angry at all of this.”

    Janie Helms, a retiree, said worries about inflation led her to vote for Abbott.

    “I see him as a conservative who will watch our money,” she said.

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    Associated Press writer Jake Bleiberg contributed from Plano, Texas.

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    Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

    Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections.

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  • Today in History: November 8, Hitler’s “Beer-Hall Putsch”

    Today in History: November 8, Hitler’s “Beer-Hall Putsch”

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    Today in History

    Today is Tuesday, Nov. 8, the 312th day of 2022. There are 53 days left in the year.

    Today’s Highlight in History:

    On Nov. 8, 1923, Adolf Hitler launched his first attempt at seizing power in Germany with a failed coup in Munich that came to be known as the “Beer-Hall Putsch.”

    On this date:

    In 1793, the Louvre began admitting the public, even though the French museum had been officially open since August.

    In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln won reelection as he defeated Democratic challenger George B. McClellan.

    In 1889, Montana became the 41st state.

    In 1935, the movies “Mutiny on the Bounty,” starring Clark Gable and Charles Laughton, and “A Night at the Opera,” starring the Marx Brothers, premiered in New York.

    In 1942, Operation Torch, resulting in an Allied victory, began during World War II as U.S. and British forces landed in French North Africa.

    In 1950, during the Korean War, the first jet-plane battle took place as U.S. Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown shot down a North Korean MiG-15.

    In 1966, Republican Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California, defeating Democratic incumbent Pat Brown.

    In 1974, a federal judge in Cleveland dismissed charges against eight Ohio National Guardsmen accused of violating the civil rights of students who were killed or wounded in the 1970 Kent State shootings.

    In 2000, a statewide recount began in Florida, which emerged as critical in deciding the winner of the 2000 presidential election. Earlier that day, Vice President Al Gore had telephoned Texas Gov. George W. Bush to concede, but called back about an hour later to retract his concession.

    In 2002, the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved Resolution 1441, aimed at forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face “serious consequences.” President George W. Bush said the new resolution presented the Iraqi regime “with a final test.”

    In 2011, an asteroid as big as an aircraft carrier zipped by Earth in the closest encounter by such a massive space rock in more than three decades.

    In 2016, Republican Donald Trump was elected America’s 45th president, defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in an astonishing victory for a celebrity businessman and political novice. Republicans kept their majorities in the Senate and House.

    Ten years ago: Jared Lee Loughner was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the January 2011 shootings in Tucson, Arizona, that killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Longtime baseball executive and Hall of Famer Lee MacPhail, 95, died in Delray Beach, Florida.

    Five years ago: In a speech to South Korean lawmakers in Seoul, President Donald Trump warned North Korea, “Do not underestimate us.” Director Ridley Scott decided to cut Kevin Spacey out of the already-completed movie “All the Money in the World” because of the sexual misconduct allegations against Spacey and reshoot his many scenes using Christopher Plummer, just six weeks ahead of the film’s release date. Garth Brooks continued his winning streak as entertainer of the year at the Country Music Association Awards.

    One year ago: A U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection issued subpoenas to six more associates of former President Donald Trump who were involved in his efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election. The U.S. fully reopened to many vaccinated international travelers, allowing families and friends to reunite for the first time since the coronavirus emerged. A new mandate in the city of Los Angeles required people visiting shopping malls, theaters, gyms or nail salons to verify they were vaccinated against COVID-19. President Joe Biden welcomed the NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks to the White House; the Bucks were the first NBA champions to visit the White House in nearly five years.

    Today’s Birthdays: Actor Alain Delon is 87. Singer-actor Bonnie Bramlett is 78. Singer Bonnie Raitt is 73. TV personality Mary Hart is 72. Former Playboy Enterprises chairman and chief executive Christie Hefner is 70. Actor Alfre Woodard is 70. Singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones is 68. Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro is 68. Rock musician Pearl Thompson (The Cure) is 65. Singer-actor Leif Garrett is 61. Chef and TV personality Gordon Ramsay is 56. Actor Courtney Thorne-Smith is 55. Actor Parker Posey is 54. Actor Roxana Zal is 53. Singer Diana King is 52. Actor Gonzalo Menendez is 51. Rock musician Scott Devendorf (The National) is 50. Actor Gretchen Mol is 50. ABC News anchor David Muir is 49. Actor Matthew Rhys is 48. Actor Tara Reid is 47. Country singer Bucky Covington is 45. Actor Dania Ramirez is 43. Actor Azura Skye is 41. Actor Chris Rankin is 39. TV personality Jack Osbourne is 37. Actor Jessica Lowndes is 34. R&B singer SZA is 33. New York Yankees outfielder and designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton is 33. Singer-actor Riker Lynch is 31. Country singer Lauren Alaina is 28. Actor Van Crosby (TV: “Splitting Up Together”) is 20.

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