Trump says Giuliani needs to 'get facts straight' on Stormy
WASHINGTON (AP) President Donald Trump suggested Friday that Rudy Giuliani, the aggressive new face of his legal team, needed to "get his facts straight" about the hush money paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election. Giuliani quickly came up with a new version.
Trump chided Giuliani even as he insisted that "we're not changing any stories" about the $130,000 settlement, which was paid to Daniels to keep her quiet about her allegations of an affair with Trump.. Hours later, Giuliani backed away from his previous suggestion that the Oct. 27 settlement had been made because Trump was in the stretch run of his campaign.
"The payment was made to resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the president's family," Giuliani said in a statement released Friday. "It would have been done in any event, whether he was a candidate or not."
A day earlier, Giuliani had said on Fox News: "Imagine if that came out on October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton."
Trump said Friday that Giuliani was "a great guy but he just started a day ago" and the former mayor of New York City was still "learning the subject matter." Giuliani revealed this week that Trump knew about the payment to Daniels made by his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and the president paid Cohen back.
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Quakes, lava and gas: Hawaii residents flee volcanic threats
PAHOA, Hawaii (AP) Many rural residents living on an erupting volcano in Hawaii fled the threat of lava that spewed into the air in bursts of fire and pushed up steam from cracks in roadways Friday, while others tried to get back to their homes.
Officials ordered more than 1,700 people out of Big Island neighborhoods near Kilauea volcano's newest lava flow, warning of the dangers of spattering hot rock and high levels of sulfuric gas that could threaten the elderly and people with breathing problems. Two homes have burned.
Adding to the chaos, the island's largest earthquake in more than 40 years, a magnitude-6.9, struck near the south part of the volcano, following a smaller quake that rattled the same area.
Officials said highways, buildings and utility lines were not damaged, but residents said they felt strong shaking and more stress as they dealt with the dual environmental phenomena.
Communities in the mostly rural Puna district, which sits on Kilauea's eastern flank, know it is one of the world's most active volcanoes and have seen its destruction before.
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Ex-President George HW Bush released from Houston hospital
HOUSTON (AP) Former President George H.W. Bush was released from a Houston hospital on Friday after spending 13 days being treated for an infection that required his hospitalization a day after his wife's funeral.
Jim McGrath, a spokesman for the 93-year-old Bush, tweeted that doctors at Houston Methodist Hospital "report he is doing well" and that the former president is "happy to return home."
The nation's 41st president was admitted to the hospital on April 22 for treatment of an infection that spread to his blood. Bush spent some time in an intensive care unit before being moved to a regular patient room.
Bush was hospitalized a day after he attended the funeral and burial of his 92-year-old wife, Barbara, who died on April 17 at their Houston home. Married for 73 years, the Bushes were the longest-married presidential couple in U.S. history.
In a tweet sent out during his hospitalization, Bush thanked Houston for its "professionalism and obvious care" during the memorials and services for his wife.
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Court vacates Kennedy cousin Skakel's murder conviction
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) In a stunning reversal, the Connecticut Supreme Court on Friday overturned Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel's murder conviction in the 1975 bludgeoning death of a girl in wealthy Greenwich.
The high court issued a 4-3 ruling that Skakel's trial attorney failed to present evidence of an alibi. The same court in December 2016 had reinstated Skakel's conviction after a lower court ordered a new trial, citing mistakes by the trial attorney, Mickey Sherman.
It wasn't immediately clear if prosecutors will subject Skakel to a new trial. A spokesman for Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane said prosecutors were reviewing the new ruling. He declined further comment.
Skakel, a nephew of Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy, was convicted of murder in 2002 in the death of Martha Moxley in 1975 when they were teenagers. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison, but was freed on $1.2 million bail after serving 11 years behind bars when the lower court overturned his murder conviction in 2013.
The case has drawn international attention because of the Kennedy name, Skakel's rich family, numerous theories about who killed Moxley and the brutal way in which she died. Several other people, including Skakel's brother Tommy Skakel, have been mentioned as possible killers.
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Indiana officer, homicide suspect killed after shootout
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) An Indiana officer was killed Friday evening in an exchange of gunfire between police and a homicide suspect, who barricaded him inside an apartment complex and later died from injuries sustained during the shootout, authorities said.
Terre Haute police spokesman Ryan Adamson said the police officer's investigation of a homicide led him the apartment complex on the city's south side. Authorities did not reveal when the homicide under investigation occurred.
Adamson said the suspect in that homicide opened fire when he was approached by four investigators, wounding the officer who was later pronounced dead at Terre Haute Regional Hospital. No additional information was immediately available on the male officer who was killed.
"It is another tragic loss for the Wabash Valley and the Terre Haute Police Department," Indiana State Police spokesman Joe Watts said in announcing the officer's death.
Terre Haute Police Chief John Plasse said the suspect was wounded in a shootout with officers from the city and other agencies, then barricaded himself inside the building. The wounded suspect was treated by medics who responded to the scene, but the suspect later died, Plasse said.
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Judge poses pointed questions on Manafort charges at hearing
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) A federal judge on Friday asked pointed questions about special counsel Robert Mueller's authority to bring charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and suggested that prosecutors' true motive is getting Manafort to "sing" against the president.
Manafort's lawyers argued at a hearing in Alexandria that the tax and bank fraud charges are far afield from Mueller's mandate to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether any coordination with Trump associates occurred.
"I don't see what relationship this indictment has with what the special counsel is investigating," U.S. Senior Judge T.S. Ellis III, a Reagan appointee, told government lawyers at Friday's hearing.
The Virginia indictment alleges Manafort hid tens of millions of dollars he earned advising pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine from the Internal Revenue Service, money earned from 2006 through 2015. The indictment accuses Manafort of fraudulently obtaining millions in loans from financial institutions later, after his Ukrainian work dwindled. Prosecutors say that part of the conspiracy stretched from 2015 through January 2017, including the months while he was working on the Trump campaign.
Under questioning from Ellis, government lawyers admitted that Manafort had been under investigation for years in the Eastern District of Virginia before Mueller was ever appointed special counsel. And Ellis said it was implausible to think that the charges against Manafort, which primarily concern his business dealings and tax returns from about 2005 through 2015, could have a real connection to Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
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Iowa governor signs strictest abortion regulation in US
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Friday signed a law banning most abortions if a fetal heartbeat can be detected, or at around six weeks of pregnancy, marking the strictest abortion regulation in the nation but setting the state up for a lengthy court fight.
The Republican governor signed the legislation in her formal office at the state Capitol as protesters gathered outside chanting, "My body, my choice!" Reynolds acknowledged that the new law would likely face litigation, but said: "This is bigger than just a law, this is about life, and I'm not going to back down." Reynolds has previously said she was "proud to be pro-life."
The ban, set to take effect on July 1, has propelled Iowa to the front of a push among conservative statehouses jockeying to enact restrictive regulations on the medical procedure. Mississippi passed a law earlier this year banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, but it's on hold after a court challenge.
The Iowa law provides for some exemptions that allow abortions during a later pregnancy stage to save a pregnant woman's life or in some cases of rape and incest.
Maggie DeWitte, who leads the group Iowans for Life, called Reynolds' move "historic."
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Korean Air pilots, crew protest abuse by founding family
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) Hundreds of Korean Air Lines Co. pilots, cabin crew and other workers staged a rally Friday night in Seoul saying they can't take any more abuse from the company's founding family.
One of the protesters was Park Chang-jin, a crew member who was forced off of a Korean Air aircraft at John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2014, when the company chairman's daughter threw a tantrum over the way nuts were served.
"I'm proud of Korean Air. I love Korean Air. Let's protect Korean Air," Park told the roaring crowd.
Authorities are investigating multiple charges against Chairman Cho Yang-ho's family, including smuggling and tax evasion. Another of Cho's daughters is under investigation for allegedly throwing a drink at ad agency officials, an allegation that she denies.
Such a protest by employees of a "chaebol," the family-controlled big businesses that dominate the South Korean economy, is rare. It reflects growing resentment against perceived outlandish behavior by the elite founding families and the view that they treat publicly listed companies as their private firms.
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Dozens of wild horses found dead amid Southwest drought
CAMERON, Ariz. (AP) Off a northern Arizona highway surrounded by pastel-colored desert is one of the starkest examples of drought's grip on the American Southwest: Dozens of dead horses surrounded by cracked earth, swirling dust and a ribbon of water that couldn't quench their thirst.
Flesh exposed and in various stages of decomposition, the carcasses form a circle around a dry watering hole sunken in the landscape.
It's clear this isn't the first time the animals have struggled. Skeletal remain are scattered on the fringes and in an adjacent ravine.
It's a symptom of a burgeoning wild horse population and the scarcity of water on the western edge of the Navajo Nation following a dry winter and dismal spring runoff. Conditions aren't forecast to improve anytime soon, and tribal officials suspect other animals have died with not enough to eat or drink.
"One of the things we do is we picture the worst-case scenario when we got out there," said Harlan Cleveland of the tribe's Department of Emergency Management. "I did smell the decomposition and the bodies starting to smell, the carcasses. But I didn't realize until I looked down from the berm and saw all those horses down there."
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Shaquem Griffin ready to have focus on football in Seattle
RENTON, Wash. (AP) The number was different on Friday No. 49 instead of No. 18. So were the colors, trading black and gold for dark blue and white.
The effort and excitement from Shaquem Griffin? That remained the same.
"We had to slow him down on some stuff early. In the walkthrough he was going too hard. We had to chill him out a little bit," Seattle coach Pete Carroll said.
The next chapter of Griffin's football career got underway with the first day of Seattle's three-day minicamp for rookies. In a way, it was a welcome return to normalcy for Griffin after months where the focus was strictly on what he's overcome missing his left hand and whether he would be given a chance in the NFL.
For one afternoon even if it was simply in shorts, his new jersey and a helmet Griffin could just be a football player.