Hunter Biden indicted on nine tax charges, adding to gun charges in special counsel probe

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hunter Biden was indicted on nine tax charges in California on Thursday as a special counsel investigation into the business dealings of President Joe Biden's son intensifies against the backdrop of the looming 2024 election.

The new charges — three felonies and six misdemeanors — are in addition to federal firearms charges in Delaware alleging Hunter Biden broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018. They come after the implosion of a plea deal over the summer that would have spared him jail time.

Hunter Biden “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills,” special counsel David Weiss said in a statement. The charges are centered on at least $1.4 million in taxes Hunter Biden owed during between 2016 and 2019, a period where he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. The back taxes have since been paid.

If convicted, Hunter Biden could face up to 17 years in prison. The special counsel probe remains open, Weiss said.

In a fiery response, defense attorney Abbe Lowell accused Weiss of “bowing to Republican pressure" in the case.

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Desperation grows among Palestinians trapped with little aid as Israel battles Hamas in Gaza

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Desperation grew Thursday among Palestinians largely cut off from supplies of food and water as Israeli forces engaged in fierce urban battles with Hamas militants. Strikes in the southern Gaza town of Rafah sowed fear in one of the last places where civilians could seek refuge.

United Nations officials say there are no safe places in Gaza nearly a week after Israel widened its offensive into the southern half of the territory. Heavy fighting in and around the city of Khan Younis has displaced tens of thousands of people and cut most of Gaza off from aid deliveries. More than 80% of the territory's population has already fled their homes.

Two months into the war, the grinding offensive has triggered renewed international alarm. U.N Secretary-General Antonio Guterres used a rarely exercised power to warn the Security Council of an impending “humanitarian catastrophe,” and Arab and Islamic nations called for a vote Friday on a draft Council resolution demanding a humanitarian cease-fire.

Gutteres explicitly cited Article 99 of the U.N. Charter, which allows the secretary-general to bring to the council's attention any matter that he believes threatens international peace and security. The power has only been used a handful of times in the history of the world body.

The United States, Israel's closest ally, appears likely to block any U.N. effort to halt the fighting. Still, U.S. concern over the devastation was growing. Before the southern offensive, U.S. officials told Israel it must limit civilian deaths and displacement, saying too many Palestinians were killed when it obliterated much of Gaza City and the north.

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Israel designates safe zone in Gaza. Palestinians and aid groups say it offers little relief

MUWASI, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel has designated a small slice of mostly undeveloped land along Gaza's Mediterranean coast as a safe zone — a place where waves of people fleeing the war can find protection from airstrikes and receive humanitarian supplies for their families.

The reality? The area of Muwasi is a makeshift tent camp where thousands of dazed Palestinians live in squalid conditions in scattered farm fields and waterlogged dirt roads. Their numbers have swelled in recent days as people flee an Israeli military offensive in nearby areas of the southern Gaza Strip.

Roughly 20 square kilometers (8 square miles) in southwest Gaza, Muwasi lies at the heart of a heated debate between Israel and international humanitarian organizations over the safety of the territory's civilians.

Israel has offered Muwasi as a solution for protecting people uprooted from their homes and seeking safety from the heavy fighting between its troops and Hamas militants. The United Nations and relief groups say Muwasi is a poorly planned attempt to impose a solution for people who have been displaced and offers no guarantee of safety in a territory where people have faced the dangers of continued airstrikes in other areas where the army ordered them to go.

“How can a zone be safe in a war zone if it is only unilaterally decided by one part of the conflict?” said Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA. “It can only promote the false feeling that it will be safe.”

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Trump's vow to only be a dictator on 'day one' follows growing worry over his authoritarian rhetoric

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — As Donald Trump faces growing scrutiny over his increasingly authoritarian and violent rhetoric, Fox News host Sean Hannity gave his longtime friend a chance to assure the American people that he wouldn't abuse power or seek retribution if he wins a second term.

But instead of offering a perfunctory answer brushing off the warnings, Trump stoked the fire.

“Except for day one,” the GOP front-runner said Tuesday night before a live audience in Davenport, Iowa. “I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill."

And in case anyone missed it, he reenacted the exchange.

“We love this guy,” Trump said of Hannity. “He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said: ‘No, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.’”

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House votes to censure Democratic Rep. Bowman for pulling a fire alarm in a Capitol office building

WASHINGTON (AP) — House members voted again Thursday to punish one of their own, targeting Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman for triggering a fire alarm in a U.S. Capitol office building when the chamber was in session.

The Republican censure resolution passed with a few Democratic votes, but most of the party stood by Bowman in opposition of an effort they said lacked credibility and integrity. The prominent progressive now becomes the third Democratic House member to be admonished this year through the censure process, which is a punishment one step below expulsion from the House.

“It’s painfully obvious to myself, my colleagues and the American people that the Republican Party is deeply unserious and unable to legislate,” Bowman said Wednesday as he defended himself during floor debate. “Their censure resolution against me today continues to demonstrate their inability to govern and serve the American people.”

The 214-191 vote to censure Bowman caps nearly a year of chaos and retribution in the House of Representatives. Since January, the chamber has seen the removal of a member from a committee assignment, the first ouster of a speaker in history and, just last week, the expulsion of a lawmaker for only the third time since the Civil War.

Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., who introduced the censure resolution, defended it, claiming Bowman pulled the alarm in September to “cause chaos and the stop the House from doing its business" as lawmakers scrambled to pass a bill to fund the government before a shutdown deadline.

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UNLV gunman had list of targets at the university and 150 rounds of ammunition, police say

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The 67-year-old gunman who killed three faculty members and wounded a fourth in a roughly 10-minute rampage at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, had a list of targets at the school and more than 150 rounds of ammunition, police said Thursday.

Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill identified the suspect, who was killed in a shootout with police, as Anthony Polito, a longtime business professor who was living in nearby Henderson, Nevada. The sheriff said at a news conference that investigators were still looking into a motive but noted that Polito had applied for several jobs at various colleges and universities in Nevada but was denied the job each time.

However, Roseman University of Health Sciences in Henderson said Polito had an adjunct faculty contract and taught two courses in the school's Master of Business Administration program from October 2018 to June 2022. He left when the program was discontinued, said Jason Roth, a spokesperson for the school.

McMahill said targets on Polito’s list also included faculty members at East Carolina University in North Carolina, where Polito was a professor at the university's business school from 2001 to 2017.

“None of the individuals on the target list became a victim,” McMahill said, adding that police have contacted everyone on the suspect’s list, except for one person who is on a flight.

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Texas judge grants pregnant woman permission to get an abortion despite state’s ban

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas judge on Thursday gave a pregnant woman whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis permission to get an abortion in an unprecedented challenge over bans that more than a dozen states have enacted since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

The lawsuit by Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two from the Dallas area, is believed to be the first time since the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that a woman has asked a court to approve an abortion. The order only applies to Cox and her attorneys afterward spoke cautiously about any wider impacts, calling it unfeasible that scores of other women seeking abortions would also now to turn to courts.

“This can't be the new normal,” said Marc Hearron, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights. “I don’t think you can expect to see now hundreds of cases being filed on behalf of patients. It's just not realistic.”

State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, an elected Democrat, granted a temporary restraining order allowing Cox to have an abortion under what are narrow exceptions to Texas' ban. Her attorneys said they would not disclose what Cox was planning to do next, citing safety concerns.

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office argued that Cox does not meet the criteria for a medical exception, issued a statement that did not say whether the state would appeal. But in a letter to three Houston hospitals, Paxton warned that legal consequences were still possible if Cox's physician provided the abortion.

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Trump appeals ruling rejecting immunity claim as window narrows to derail federal election case

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump is appealing a ruling that found he is not immune from criminal prosecution as he runs out of opportunities to delay or even derail an upcoming trial on charges that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Lawyers for the 2024 Republican presidential primary frontrunner filed a notice of appeal Thursday indicating that they will challenge U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan's decision rejecting Trump's bid to dismiss the case headed to trial in Washington, D.C., in March.

The one-page filing, the first step in a process that could potentially reach the Supreme Court in the months ahead, was accompanied by a request from the Trump team to freeze deadlines in the case while the appeals court considers the matter.

“The filing of President Trump’s notice of appeal has deprived this Court of jurisdiction over this case in its entirety pending resolution of the appeal,” Trump's lawyers wrote. “Therefore, a stay of all further proceedings is mandatory and automatic.”

In a separate statement, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said one of Trump's "most sacred obligations and responsibilities as President was to ensure that the election process was conducted in a way that complied with the law, including investigating and challenging election fraud and irregularities."

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Ospreys had safety issues long before they were grounded. A look at the aircraft's history

WASHINGTON (AP) — When the U.S. military took the extraordinary step of grounding its entire fleet of V-22 Ospreys this week, it wasn’t reacting just to the recent deadly crash of the aircraft off the coast of Japan. The aircraft has had a long list of problems in its short history.

The Osprey takes off and lands like a helicopter but can tilt its propellers horizontally to fly like an airplane. That unique and complex design has allowed the Osprey to speed troops to the battlefield. The U.S. Marine Corps, which operates the vast majority of the Ospreys in service, calls it a “game-changing assault support platform."

But on Wednesday, the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps grounded all Ospreys after a preliminary investigation of last week’s crash indicated that a materiel failure — that something went wrong with the aircraft — and not a mistake by the crew led to the deaths.

And it's not the first time. There have been persistent questions about a mechanical problem with the clutch that has troubled the program for more than a decade. There also have been questions as to whether all parts of the Osprey have been manufactured according to safety specifications and, as those parts age, whether they remain strong enough to withstand the significant forces created by the Osprey's unique structure and dynamics of tiltrotor flight.

The government of Japan, which is the only international partner flying the Osprey, had already grounded its aircraft after the Nov. 29 crash, which killed all eight Air Force Special Operations Command service members on board.

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Centenarian survivors of Pearl Harbor attack return to honor those who perished 82 years ago

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — Ira “Ike” Schab had just showered, put on a clean sailor's uniform and closed his locker aboard the USS Dobbin when he heard a call for a fire rescue party.

He went topside to see the USS Utah capsizing and Japanese planes in the air. He scurried back below deck to grab boxes of ammunition and joined a daisy chain of sailors feeding shells to an anti-aircraft gun up above. He remembers being only 140 pounds (63.50 kilograms) as a 21-year-old, but somehow finding the strength to lift boxes weighing almost twice that.

“We were pretty startled. Startled and scared to death,” Schab, now 103, said. “We didn’t know what to expect and we knew that if anything happened to us, that would be it.”

Eighty-two years later, Schab returned to Pearl Harbor Thursday on the anniversary of the attack to remember the more than 2,300 servicemen killed. He was one of five survivors at a ceremony commemorating the assault that propelled the United States into World War II. Six of the increasingly frail men had been expected, but one was not feeling well, organizers said.

The aging pool of Pearl Harbor survivors has been rapidly shrinking. There is now just one crew member of the USS Arizona still living, 102-year-old Lou Conter of California.

News from © The Associated Press, 2023