Trump charged over classified documents in 1st federal indictment of an ex-president

MIAMI (AP) — Donald Trump said Thursday that he was indicted for mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate, a remarkable development that makes him the first former president in U.S. history to face criminal charges by the federal government that he once oversaw.

The indictment carries unmistakably grave legal consequences, including the possibility of prison if he's convicted.

But it also has enormous political implications, potentially upending a Republican presidential primary that Trump had been dominating and testing anew the willingness of GOP voters and party leaders to stick with a now twice-indicted candidate who could face still more charges. And it sets the stage for a sensational trial centered on claims that a man once entrusted to safeguard the nation's most closely guarded secrets willfully, and illegally, hoarded sensitive national security information.

The Justice Department did not immediately confirm the indictment publicly. But two people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to discuss it publicly said the indictment included seven criminal counts. One of those people said Trump's lawyers were contacted by prosecutors shortly before he announced on his Truth Social platform that he had been indicted.

Within 20 minutes of his announcement, Trump began fundraising off it for his 2024 presidential campaign. He declared his innocence in a video and repeated his familiar refrain that the investigation is a “witch hunt.” He said he planned to be in court Tuesday afternoon in Miami, where a grand jury had been meeting to hear evidence as recently as this week.

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Supreme Court rules in favor of Black Alabama voters in unexpected defense of Voting Rights Act

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a surprising 5-4 ruling in favor of Black voters in a congressional redistricting case from Alabama, with two conservative justices joining liberals in rejecting a Republican-led effort to weaken a landmark voting rights law.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh aligned with the court's liberals in affirming a lower-court ruling that found a likely violation of the Voting Rights Act in an Alabama congressional map with one majority Black seat out of seven districts in a state where more than one in four residents is Black. The state now will have to draw a new map for next year's elections.

The decision was keenly anticipated for its potential effect on control of the closely divided U.S. House of Representatives. Because of the ruling, new maps are likely in Alabama and Louisiana that could allow Democratic-leaning Black voters to elect their preferred candidates in two more congressional districts.

The outcome was unexpected in that the court had allowed the challenged Alabama map to be used for the 2022 elections, and in arguments last October the justices appeared willing to make it harder to challenge redistricting plans as racially discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The chief justice himself suggested last year that he was open to changes in the way courts weigh discrimination claims under the part of the law known as section 2. But on Thursday, Roberts wrote that the court was declining “to recast our section 2 case law as Alabama requests.”

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Before-and-after satellite images show profound toll of Ukraine dam collapse

KHERSON, Ukraine (AP) — Before-and-after images of the area downstream from a dam that collapsed Tuesday vividly show the extent of the devastation of a large, flooded swathe of southern Ukraine.

Before the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River broke, farm fields appear green and crossed by peaceful streets and farm roads and dotted with trees. Afterward, only metal roofs and treetops poke above the murky water. Greenhouses and homes are almost entirely submerged.

The pre-collapse satellite photos were taken in May and early June. Photos of the same area taken after the dam collapsed clearly show how much of it has become unlivable. Brown water as high as people covers much of the territory captured in the images.

Paired with exclusive drone footage of the Ukrainian dam and surrounding villages occupied by Russia, the before-and-after satellite images illustrate the profound changes wrought by the disaster.

Ukraine has warned since last October that the hydroelectric dam was mined by Russian forces, and accused them of touching off an explosion that has turned the downstream areas into a waterlogged wasteland. Russia said Ukraine hit the dam with a missile. But while the AP footage clearly shows the extent of the damage to the region, it offered a limited snapshot of the partially submerged dam, making it difficult to categorically rule out any scenario.

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The S&P 500 is in a bull market. Here's what that means and how long the bull might run

The S&P 500 is now in what Wall Street refers to as a bull market, meaning the index has risen 20% or more from its most recent low.

Here are some answers to questions about bull and bear markets:

WHY IT IS CALLED A BULL MARKET?

Wall Street’s nickname for a surging stock market is a bull market because bulls charge, said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA. In contrast, bears hibernate, so bears represent a market that’s retreating.

WHEN DID THE NEW BULL MARKET BEGIN?

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'Dollarization' of North Korean economy, once vital, now potential threat to Kim's rule

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Before fleeing North Korea in 2014, Jeon Jae-hyun kept U.S. dollars as a store of value and used Chinese yuan to make everyday purchases at markets, restaurants and other places. He used the domestic currency, the won, only occasionally.

“There were not many places to use the won, and we actually had little faith in our currency,” Jeon said during a recent interview in Seoul. “Even the quality of North Korean bills was awful as they often ripped when we put them in our pockets.”

North Korea has tolerated the widespread use of more stable foreign currencies like U.S. dollars and Chinese yuan since a bungled revaluation of the won in 2009 triggered runaway inflation and public unrest.

The so-called “dollarization” helped ease inflation and stabilize exchange rates, enabling leader Kim Jong Un to establish a stable hold on power after he inherited that role in late 2011. But the trend poses a potential threat to Kim as it has undermined his government’s control over money supply and monetary policies.

The isolation of the pandemic badly hurt the North's economy but still gave Kim a chance to solidify social controls by restricting market activities and limiting influence from capitalist, democratic South Korea. Now, observers say Kim is trying to roll back use of the dollar and yuan to tighten his grip on power as the North grapples with pandemic-related hardships, longstanding U.N. sanctions and tensions with the U.S.

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FBI arrests Texas businessman linked to impeachment of state Attorney General Ken Paxton

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The FBI on Thursday arrested a businessman at the center of the scandal that led to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's historic impeachment, a move that came amid new questions about the men’s dealings raised by financial records the Republican's lawyers made public to try to clear him of bribery allegations.

Nate Paul, 36, was taken into custody by federal agents and booked into an Austin jail in the afternoon, according to Travis County Sheriff’s Office records. It was not immediately clear what charges led to his arrest, but the records showed he was being held on a federal detainer for a felony.

Paul's arrest followed a yearslong federal investigation into the Austin real estate developer — a probe that Paxton involved his office in, setting off a chain of events that ultimately led to his impeachment last month.

Lawyers for Paul did not immediately respond to requests for comment. One of Paxton's defense attorneys, Dan Cogdell, said he had no additional information on the arrest. The FBI declined to comment, and a spokesman for federal prosecutors in West Texas did not respond to inquiries.

FBI agents examining Paul's troubled real estate empire searched his Austin offices and palatial home in 2019. The next year, seven of Paxton ’s top deputies reported the attorney general to the FBI on allegations of bribery and abusing his office to help Paul, including by hiring an outside lawyer to examine the developer's claims of wrongdoing by federal agents.

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To restore reefs dying in warming seas, UAE turns to coral nurseries

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — On a boat off the coast of an island near Abu Dhabi, marine scientist Hamad al-Jailani feels the corals, picked from the reef nursery and packed in a box of seawater, and studies them carefully, making sure they haven’t lost their color.

The corals were once bleached. Now they're big, healthy and ready to be moved back to their original reefs in the hope they'll thrive once more.

“We try to grow them from very small fragments up to — now some of them have reached — the size of my fist,” al-Jailani said, who's part of the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi's coral restoration program.

The nursery gives corals the ideal conditions to recover: clear waters with strong currents and the right amount of sunlight. Al-Jailani periodically checks the corals' growth, removes any potentially harmful seaweed and seagrass, and even lets the fish feed off the corals to clean them, until they're healthy enough to be relocated.

The Environment Agency Abu Dhabi, or EAD, has been rehabilitating and restoring corals since 2021, when reefs off the United Arab Emirates' coast faced their second bleaching event in just five years. EAD's project is one of many initiatives — both public and private — across the country to protect the reefs and the marine life that depend on them in a nation that has come under fire for its large-scale developments and polluting industries that cause harm to underwater ecosystems. There's been some progress, but experts remain concerned for the future of the reefs in a warming world.

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Social media helps invent, then circulate info on DIY air purifiers amid wildfire smoke

NEW YORK (AP) — Social media users are sharing a surprisingly effective way to protect yourself indoors from the toxic wildfire smoke blanketing much of the East Coast: a box fan, four air filters and a whole lot of duct tape.

As searches for “air purifiers” spike on Google, people are posting on TikTok and Facebook about how to build the DIY air purifier. The technique, known as the Corsi-Rosenthal method, has gained attention in recent years amid the pandemic and raging western U.S. wildfires.

Some East Coast residents are learning about the box fan method for the first time, unlike their West Coast counterparts who are accustomed to wildfire smoke.

Seattle resident Angel Robertson, 34, posted a video on a New Yorker’s TikTok demonstrating how to put it together. In her video, which has amassed more than 600,000 views, Robertson duct tapes four 20-by-20 air filters into a box shape and attaches the fan on top. The whole apparatus costs under $100.

“It works extremely well and will save your life with really smoky days,” she says in the video. “It does a lot better than the normal air filters.”

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Florida woman who fatally shot neighbor appears in court, sheriff releases details of racist threats

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — A white Florida woman charged with shooting and killing her Black neighbor told detectives that she called the victim’s children by racist slurs in the months leading up to the slaying, according to an arrest report released Thursday.

Susan Louise Lorincz, 58, admitted to detectives that she called the children “the n-word.” One child told deputies that the night of the shooting, Lorincz “came out of her house and gave the children the middle finger” and also said this: “Get away from my house, you Black slave,” according to the report.

The report from the Marion County Sheriff's Office came out shortly before Lorincz made her initial appearance in court Thursday by video. She has been charged with the first-degree felony of manslaughter with a firearm, as well as culpable negligence, battery and two counts of assault Sheriff Billy Woods said in a statement.

Lorincz appeared wearing a dark protective vest, answered the judge's questions about her finances and her attorney, an assistant public defender appointed by the judge, entered a written plea of not guilty. A bond hearing will be scheduled in the coming days.

Ajike Owens, a 35-year-old Black mother of four, was killed this week in Ocala, about 83 miles (133 kilometers) north of Orlando. Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, has said she will now raise her four young grandchildren.

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How ‘The Flash,’ many years in the works and beset by turmoil, finally reached the finish line

There were many stressful things about making “The Flash” and getting it to theaters. It was shot in the middle of a pandemic. There was isolation from friends and family for the 138-day shoot. There were A-list schedules to coordinate for cameos. There was a star in Ezra Miller who, after it wrapped, made headlines for legal run-ins amid a mental health crisis. And behind it all, a studio undergoing leadership changes and rethinking the whole DC Comics strategy.

But first, they had to figure out how to transport a two-ton Batmobile from Los Angeles to the U.K. amid a worldwide shortage of shipping containers in 2021.

This was not just any Batmobile, mind you. It was one of the originals from the Tim Burton movies that was needed for the grand return of Michael Keaton’s caped crusader after 30 years — a major production that also involved building, from scratch, a life-size replica of the Batcave.

Director Andy Muschietti and his sister, producer Barbara Muschietti, waited nervously for its arrival worried whether it would make it in time or just be stuck in the middle of the ocean. They breathed a sigh of relief when it made it ashore, briefly celebrated and moved on to the next problem: how to get it into the Batcave at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden. Ultimately it involved a loading it onto a modified airport cargo truck that was lifted 20 feet (6 meters) in the air and “gently rolled” onto set.

“Everything came with a little adventure,” Barbara Muschietti said with a laugh in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

News from © The Associated Press, 2023