Judge orders Trump to pay $355 million for lying about his wealth in staggering civil fraud ruling

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York judge ordered Donald Trump on Friday to pay $355 million in penalties, finding that the former president lied about his wealth for years in a sweeping civil fraud verdict that pierces his billionaire image but stops short of putting his real estate empire out of business.

Judge Arthur Engoron’s decision after a trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit punishes Trump, his company and executives, including his two eldest sons, for scheming to dupe banks, insurers and others by inflating his wealth on financial statements. It forces a shakeup at the top of his Trump Organization, putting the company under court supervision and curtailing how it does business.

The decision is a staggering setback for the Republican presidential front-runner, the latest and costliest consequence of his recent legal troubles. The magnitude of the verdict on top of penalties in other cases could dramatically dent Trump’s financial resources and damage his identity as a savvy businessman who parlayed his fame as a real estate developer into reality TV stardom and the presidency. He has vowed to appeal and won't have to pay immediately.

Trump’s true punishment could be far costlier because under state law he is also required to pay interest on the penalties, which James said puts him on the hook for a total of more than $450 million. The amount, which would be paid to the state, will grow until he pays.

The judge made clear, however, that the Trump Organization will continue to operate, backing away from an earlier ruling that would have dissolved Trump’s companies.

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Alexei Navalny, galvanizing opposition leader and Putin’s fiercest foe, died in prison, Russia says

Alexei Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died Friday in the Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence, Russia’s prison agency said. He was 47.

The stunning news — less than a month before an election that will give Putin another six years in power — brought renewed criticism and outrage from world leaders toward the Russian president who has suppressed opposition at home.

After initially allowing people to lay flowers at monuments to victims of Soviet-era repressions in several Russian cities, police sealed off some of the areas and started making arrests.

More than 100 people were detained in eight cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Murmansk in the Arctic Circle, Krasnodar and Rostov-on-Don in the south of Russia, according to the OVD-Info monitoring group. Shouts of “Shame!” were heard as Moscow police rounded up more than a dozen people — including one with a sign reading “Killer” — near a memorial to political prisoners, the group said.

But there was no indication Navalny’s death would spark large protests, with the opposition fractured and now without its “guiding star,” as an associate put it.

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Nerve agents, poison and window falls. Kremlin foes have been attacked or killed over the years

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The attacks range from the exotic — poisoned by drinking polonium-laced tea or touching a deadly nerve agent — to the more mundane of getting shot at close range. Some take a fatal plunge from an open window.

Over the years, Kremlin political critics, turncoat spies and investigative journalists have been killed or assaulted in a variety of ways.

On Friday, Russian authorities said President Vladimir Putin’s key political challenger, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic prison colony. The details of what happened are unknown; Navalny's team says it has no official confirmation of his death and Russian authorities say they are establishing why he died. His allies previously accused Russian officials of trying to poison him with a nerve agent in 2020.

Assassination attempts against foes of Putin have been common during his nearly quarter century in power. Those close to the victims and the few survivors have blamed Russian authorities, but the Kremlin has routinely denied involvement.

There also have been reports of prominent Russian executives dying under mysterious circumstances, including falling from windows, although whether they were deliberate killings or suicides is sometimes difficult to determine.

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Ukraine withdrawing from Avdiivka, where outnumbered defenders held out for 4 months

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s military chief said early Saturday that he’s withdrawing troops from the city of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine, where outnumbered defenders battled a Russian assault for four months.

The timing is critical as Russia is looking for a morale boost ahead of the second anniversary on Feb. 24 of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the March presidential election in Russia.

In a short statement posted on Facebook early Saturday, Ukrainian commander Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi said he had made the decision to avoid encirclement and “preserve the lives and health of servicemen."

The commander-in-chief added that troops were moving to “more favorable lines."

“Our soldiers performed their military duty with dignity, did everything possible to destroy the best Russian military units, inflicted significant losses on the enemy in terms of manpower and equipment.

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Fani Willis case ensnared in legal arguments during testimony about romantic relationship timeline

ATLANTA (AP) — A man expected to be a key witness for lawyers trying to get Fani Willis disqualified from the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump instead refused to answer most of their questions on Friday, citing attorney-client privilege during the second day of a hearing that sometimes bordered on theater.

During repeated interrogations by a series of attorneys for Trump and other defendants in the election case, Terrence Bradley declined to discuss a romantic relationship between Willis and Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she hired for the case.

The lawyers contend the relationship started before Willis, the district attorney for Georgia's Fulton County, hired Wade and that she improperly benefited from his earnings, creating a conflict of interest that should disqualify Willis' office from the case. Robin Yeartie, Willis' former friend and co-worker, testified Thursday that she saw the two hugging and kissing before Wade was hired in November 2021.

Meanwhile, attorneys for the state who are trying to discredit the misconduct allegations against Willis called two key witnesses of their own Friday: Willis’ father, who said he didn't know about his daughter's relationship until recently; and former Gov. Roy Barnes, who testified that Willis asked him to serve as special prosecutor, testimony the attorneys used to back her claim that Wade was not her first choice for the job.

Other testimony in the hearing — about cash stashes in homes and romantic dalliances to exotic locales — has lent a soap opera feel to the election case against Trump, one of the most politically consequential prosecutions ever initiated by a district attorney. Thousands watched a livestream of the proceedings, even during tedious lawyerly exchanges about legal theory, while some prominent local figures — including Atlanta’s mayor — dropped in to witness the hearing in person.

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Israel's defense chief says military 'thoroughly planning' offensive in crowded Gaza border town

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s defense minister on Friday said Israel is “thoroughly planning” a military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, signaling determination to move ahead despite growing international concerns about the safety of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians seeking refuge there.

U.S. President Joe Biden has urged Israel not to carry out the operation without a “credible” plan to protect civilians and to instead focus on a cease-fire, while Egypt has said an operation could threaten diplomatic relations between the countries. Many other world leaders have issued similar messages of concern.

An estimated 1.4 million Palestinians, more than half of Gaza’s population, have crammed into Rafah, most of them displaced by fighting elsewhere in the territory. Hundreds of thousands are living in sprawling tent camps.

Speaking to reporters Friday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel has inflicted heavy losses on Hamas during a war that is now in its fifth month and that Rafah is “the next Hamas center of gravity” Israel plans to target.

“We are thoroughly planning future operations in Rafah, which is a significant Hamas stronghold,” he said. He declined to say say when the operation might begin, though Israel has previously said it will first develop a plan to evacuate civilians.

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West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin announces he won't run for president in 2024

NEW YORK (AP) — West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin announced on Friday that he is not running for president, saying he didn't want to be a “spoiler.”

“I will not be seeking a third-party run," he said in a speech at West Virginia University. "I will not be involved in a presidential run. I will be involved in making sure that we secure a president that has the knowledge and has the passion and has the ability to bring this country together.”

The speech was billed as part of a national listening tour Manchin announced when he decided not to seek another Senate term. He told the Morgantown audience that he had no interest in being “a deal-breaker, if you will, a spoiler, whatever you want to call it.”

"I just don’t think it’s the right time.”

The centrist Democrat who often bucked his party's leadership had been considering a run for the presidency and had said he thought it would be clear by March if there was a path for a third-party candidate this year. He said in the speech that he thought a third-party bid might be viable at some point “but right now it’s really challenging.”

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Tech companies sign accord to combat AI-generated election trickery

Major technology companies signed a pact Friday to voluntarily adopt “reasonable precautions” to prevent artificial intelligence tools from being used to disrupt democratic elections around the world.

Executives from Adobe, Amazon, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and TikTok gathered at the Munich Security Conference to announce a new framework for how they respond to AI-generated deepfakes that deliberately trick voters. Twelve other companies — including Elon Musk's X — are also signing on to the accord.

“Everybody recognizes that no one tech company, no one government, no one civil society organization is able to deal with the advent of this technology and its possible nefarious use on their own,” said Nick Clegg, president of global affairs for Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, in an interview ahead of the summit.

The accord is largely symbolic, but targets increasingly realistic AI-generated images, audio and video "that deceptively fake or alter the appearance, voice, or actions of political candidates, election officials, and other key stakeholders in a democratic election, or that provide false information to voters about when, where, and how they can lawfully vote.”

The companies aren't committing to ban or remove deepfakes. Instead, the accord outlines methods they will use to try to detect and label deceptive AI content when it is created or distributed on their platforms. It notes the companies will share best practices with each other and provide “swift and proportionate responses” when that content starts to spread.

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In video, Maine gunman said reservists were scared because he was ‘capable’ of doing something

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — An Army reservist responsible for Maine's deadliest mass shooting told state police in New York before his hospitalization last summer that fellow soldiers were worried about him because he was “gonna friggin' do something.”

Reservist Robert Card told troopers who escorted him to a hospital in upstate New York that fellow reservists and others kept talking about him behind his back, “and it's getting old," according to police body cam video obtained by WMTW-TV and others under New York's Freedom of Information Law.

“They’re scared ’cause I’m gonna friggin’ do something. Because I am capable," Card said.

The release of the police body cam video recorded July 16 followed the release of a new detail Thursday by Maine State Police who addressed an independent commission investigating the tragedy: A review of Card’s cellphone revealed a note he had written three days before the Oct. 25 shooting in Lewiston in which he said he’d “had enough” and warned he was “trained to hurt people.”

Army spokesperson Bryce Dubee told The Associated Press on Friday it's cooperating with the independent commission and that eight of Card's fellow reservists have been authorized to testify in their personal capacity at an upcoming meeting. The Army was also conducting its own investigation.

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Japan's new flagship H3 rocket reaches planned trajectory in key test after failed debut last year

TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese flagship H3 rocket lifted off from a space station in southwestern Japan Saturday, successfully reaching its planned trajectory and releasing one of the two payloads in a key second test, overcoming its failed debut launch a year ago and buoying hope for the country to stay competitive in the global space race.

The H3 rocket blasted off from a launch pad at the Tanegashima Space Center on time Saturday morning, two days after its originally scheduled liftoff which was delayed due to bad weather.

The rocket's initial flight has been smooth as planned and it successfully released the first of two small payloads, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said. JAXA will have a news conference later in the day to provide further details. Officials are confirming the status of a second satellite.

JAXA says the primary goal of the second test flight is to put the rocket into the intended trajectory. The agency also planned to place two observation microsatellites into orbit.

Saturday’s success is a boost for Japan’s space program following a recent streak of successes, including a historic precision touchdown of an unmanned spacecraft last month.

News from © The Associated Press, 2024