AP News in Brief at 12:03 a.m. EDT
AP sources: Trump company, executive indicted in tax probe
Donald Trump´s company and his longtime finance chief have been indicted on charges stemming from a New York investigation into the former president´s business dealings, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
The charges against the Trump Organization and the company´s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, remained sealed Wednesday night, but were expected to involve alleged tax violations related to benefits the company gave to top executives, possibly including use of apartments, cars and school tuition, people familiar with the case said.
The people were not authorized to speak about an ongoing investigation and did so on condition of anonymity. The Wall Street Journal was first to report that charges were expected Thursday.
The company and Weisselberg were expected to make their first court appearance Thursday.
The charges against Weisselberg and the Trump Organization would be the first criminal cases to arise from the two-year probe led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., a Democrat who leaves office at the end of the year.
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Bill Cosby freed from prison, his sex conviction overturned
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Pennsylvania´s highest court threw out Bill Cosby´s sexual assault conviction and released him from prison Wednesday in a stunning reversal of fortune for the comedian once known as "America´s Dad," ruling that the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor's agreement not to charge Cosby.
Cosby, 83, flashed the V-for-victory sign to a helicopter overhead as he trudged into his suburban Philadelphia home after serving nearly three years of a three- to 10-year sentence for drugging and violating Temple University sports administrator Andrea Constand in 2004.
The former "Cosby Show" star - the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era - had no comment as he arrived, and just smiled and nodded later at a news conference outside, where his lawyer Jennifer Bonjean said: "We are thrilled to have Mr. Cosby home."
"He served three years of an unjust sentence and he did it with dignity and principle," she added.
In a statement, Constand and her lawyers called the ruling disappointing, and they, like many other advocates, expressed fear that it could discourage sexual assault victims from coming forward. "We urge all victims to have their voices heard," they added.
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Rumsfeld, a cunning leader who oversaw a ruinous Iraq war
WASHINGTON (AP) - Calling Donald H. Rumsfeld energetic was like calling the Pacific wide. When others would rest, he would run. While others sat, he stood. But try as he might, at the pinnacle of his career as defense secretary he could not outmaneuver the ruinous politics of the Iraq war.
Regarded by former colleagues as equally smart and combative, patriotic and politically cunning, Rumsfeld had a storied career in government under four presidents and nearly a quarter century in corporate America. After retiring in 2008 he headed the Rumsfeld Foundation to promote public service and to work with charities that provide services and support for military families and wounded veterans.
The two-time defense secretary and one-time presidential candidate died Tuesday. He was 88.
"Rummy," as he was often called, was ambitious, witty, engaging and capable of great personal warmth. But he irritated many with his confrontational style. A man seemingly always in a hurry, he would let loose with a daily flurry of memos to aides - some well down the bureaucratic chain - which he dictated into an audio recorder and were typed up by assistant. They became known as his "snowflakes."
An accomplished wrestler in college, Rumsfeld relished verbal sparring and elevated it to an art form; a biting humor was a favorite weapon.
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Latest victims in condo tower collapse include 2 children
SURFSIDE, Fla. (AP) - As more human remains emerged Wednesday from the rubble of the collapsed Florida condo tower, the dead this time included the first children, ages 4 and 10, a loss that the Miami-Dade mayor called "too great to bear."
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava made the announcement nearly a week after the Florida building came crashing down. After some preliminary remarks at a media briefing, she took a deep breath to gather herself and stared down at her notes. She spoke haltingly and said the disclosure came with "great sorrow, real pain."
"So any loss of life, especially given the unexpected, unprecedented nature of this event, is a tragedy," she said. But the loss of children was an even heavier burden.
Miami-Dade police later identified the children as 10-year-old Lucia Guara and 4-year-old Emma Guara. The remains of their father, Marcus Guara, 52, were pulled from the rubble Saturday and identified Monday. The girls and their mother, Anaely Rodriguez, 42, were recovered Wednesday.
Search crews going through the ruins found the remains of a total of six people Wednesday, bringing the number of confirmed dead to 18. It was the highest one-day toll since the building collapsed last Thursday into a heap of broken concrete. The number of residents unaccounted for stands at 145.
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Firmly in control, China's Communist Party marks centenary
BEIJING (AP) - China will not allow itself to be bullied and anyone who tries will face "broken heads and bloodshed in front of the iron Great Wall of the 1.4 billion Chinese people," President Xi Jinping said at a mass gathering Thursday to mark the centenary of the ruling Communist Party.
Wearing a grey buttoned-up suit of the type worn by Mao Zedong, Xi spoke from the balcony of Tiananmen Gate, emphasizing the party's role in bringing China to global prominence and saying it would never be divided from the people.
Xi, also head of the party and leader of the armed forces, also said China had restored order in Hong Kong following anti-government protests in the semi-autonomous city in 2019 and reiterated Beijing´s determination to bring self-governing Taiwan under its control.
He received the biggest applause, however, when he described the party as the force that had restored China's dignity after taking power amid civil war in 1949.
"The Chinese people are a people with a strong since of pride and self-confidence," Xi said. "We have never bullied, oppressed or enslaved the people of another nation, not in the past, during the present or in the future."
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Hundreds of deaths could be linked to Northwest heat wave
SALEM, Ore. (AP) - The grim toll of the historic heat wave in the Pacific Northwest became more apparent as authorities in Canada, Oregon and Washington state said Wednesday they were investigating hundreds of deaths likely caused by scorching temperatures that shattered all-time records in the normally temperate region.
British Columbia´s chief coroner, Lisa Lapointe, said her office received reports of at least 486 "sudden and unexpected deaths" between Friday and Wednesday. Normally, she said about 165 people would die in the Canadian province over a five-day period.
"While it is too early to say with certainty how many of these deaths are heat related, it is believed likely that the significant increase in deaths reported is attributable to the extreme weather," LaPointe said in a statement.
Many homes in Vancouver, much like Seattle, don´t have air conditioning, leaving people ill-prepared for soaring temperatures.
"Vancouver has never experienced heat like this, and sadly dozens of people are dying because of it," Vancouver police Sgt. Steve Addison said in a statement.
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Revised vote count shows Adams ahead in NYC mayoral primary
NEW YORK (AP) - Revised vote counts in New York City´s Democratic mayoral primary show Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams maintaining a thin lead, a day after a first attempt to report the results of a ranked choice voting analysis went disastrously wrong.
The mayor´s race, part of the first city election to use ranked choice voting, was thrown into disarray Tuesday after the city´s Board of Elections posted incorrect preliminary vote counts and then withdrew them hours later.
Corrected numbers released Wednesday showed Adams, a former police captain and state senator, leading former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia by 14,755 votes. Civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley was practically tied with Garcia, falling just 347 votes behind in the ranked choice analysis. It essentially allows some candidates to pick up votes from voters whose first choices get eliminated for lack of support.
The corrected results still don´t paint a complete picture of the race. Nearly 125,000 absentee ballots have yet to be counted.
With Adams´ thin lead, Garcia or Wiley could catch up when absentee ballots are added to the mix starting on July 6. Final results in the primary could be weeks away.
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UNC trustees OK tenure for journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) - Trustees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill approved tenure Wednesday for Pulitizer Prize-winning investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, capping weeks of tension that began when a board member halted the process over questions about her teaching credentials.
The board voted 9-4 to accept the tenure application at a special meeting that included a closed-door session that had sparked a protest by supporters of Hannah-Jones. At one point, a student said, she was manhandled by a campus police officer trying to get her out of the ballroom where the meeting was held.
"Today we took another important step in creating an even better university," trustee Gene Davis said after the vote was announced. "We welcome Nikole Hannah-Jones back to Chapel Hill."
Davis said that in granting tenure to Hannah-Jones the board was reaffirming its commitment to the university´s highest values of "academic freedom, open scholarly inquiry, commitment to diversity of all types, including viewpoint diversity, and promotion of constructive disagreement and civil public discourse."
The university had announced in April that Hannah-Jones - who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on The New York Times Magazine´s 1619 Project focusing on America´s history of slavery - would be joining the journalism school´s faculty. It said she would take up the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism in July with a five-year contract.
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EXPLAINER: Why Bill Cosby's conviction was overturned
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Bill Cosby's sexual assault conviction was thrown out Wednesday by Pennsylvania's highest court in a ruling that swiftly freed the actor from prison more than three years after he was found guilty of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia mansion.
Cosby, 83, was the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era, and his conviction was seen as a turning point in the movement to hold powerful men accountable for sexual misconduct.
Here's a look at the case against Cosby and the court's decision:
WHY DID THE COURT TOSS HIS CONVICTION?
The split court found that Cosby was unfairly prosecuted because the previous district attorney had promised the comedian once known as "America's Dad" that he wouldn't be charged over Constand's accusations. Cosby was charged by another prosecutor who claimed he wasn't bound by that agreement.
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House to probe Capitol riot - over Republican opposition
WASHINGTON (AP) - Sharply split along party lines, the House launched a new investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection on Wednesday, approving a special committee to probe the violent attack as police officers who were injured fighting Donald Trump's supporters watched from the gallery above.
The vote to form the panel was 222-190, with all but two Republicans objecting that majority Democrats would be in charge. The action came after Senate Republicans blocked creation of an independent commission that would have been evenly split between the two parties.
Ahead of the vote, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told lawmakers in the chamber, "We will be judged by future generations as to how we value our democracy." She said she preferred that an independent panel lead the inquiry but Congress could wait no longer to begin a deeper look at the insurrection that was the worst attack on the Capitol in more than 200 years.
As the vote was called, Pelosi stood in the House gallery with several police officers who fought the rioters and with the family of an officer who died, hugging several of them. One of the officers, Michael Fanone of Washington's Metropolitan Police, said he was angry at Republicans for voting against an investigation after he almost lost his life to protect them.
"I try not to take these things personally, but it´s very personal for me," Fanone said.
