AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
Jim Brown, all-time NFL great and social activist, dead at 87
CLEVELAND (AP) - Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown, an unstoppable running back who retired at the peak of his brilliant career to become an actor as well as a prominent civil rights advocate during the 1960s, has died. He was 87.
A spokeswoman for Brown´s family said he passed away peacefully in his Los Angeles home on Thursday night with his wife, Monique, by his side.
"To the world, he was an activist, actor, and football star," Monique Brown wrote in an Instagram post. "To our family, he was a loving husband, father, and grandfather. Our hearts are broken."
One of football's first superstars, Brown was chosen the NFL´s Most Valuable Player in 1965 and shattered the league´s record books in a short career spanning 1957-65.
Brown led the Cleveland Browns to their last NFL title in 1964 before retiring in his prime after the ´65 season to become an actor. He appeared in more than 30 films, including "Any Given Sunday" and "The Dirty Dozen."
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Diplomatic tour by Ukraine´s Zelenskyy highlights Putin´s stark isolation
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) - While the world awaits Ukraine´s spring battlefield offensive, its leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has launched a diplomatic one. In the span of a week, he's dashed to Italy, the Vatican, Germany, France and Britain to shore up support for defending his country.
On Friday, he was in Saudi Arabia to meet with Arab leaders, some of whom are allies with Moscow.
President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, was in the southern Russian city of Pyatigorsk, chairing a meeting with local officials, sitting at a large table at a distance from the other attendees.
The Russian president has faced unprecedented international isolation, with an International Criminal Court arrest warrant hanging over his head and clouding the prospects of traveling to many destinations, including those viewed as Moscow's allies.
With his invasion of Ukraine, "Putin took a gamble and lost really, really big time," said Theresa Fallon, director of the Brussels-based Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies. "He is an international pariah, really."
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Guardsman Jack Teixeira, Pentagon leak suspect, to remain jailed as he awaits trial
WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) - A Massachusetts Air National Guard member charged with leaking highly classified military documents will remain behind bars while he awaits trial, a federal magistrate judge ruled Friday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge David Hennessy said releasing 21-year-old Jack Teixeira would pose a risk that he would attempt to flee the country or obstruct justice. The judge cited Teixeira´s "fascination with guns," disturbing online statements and admonitions by Teixeira's military superiors about his handling of sensitive information before his arrest.
The ruling comes after prosecutors revealed that Teixeira had a history of violent rhetoric, and was caught by fellow military members months before his arrest taking notes on classified information or viewing intelligence not related to his job.
Teixeira is accused of sharing classified military documents on Discord, a social media platform popular with people playing online games. The stunning breach exposed to the world unvarnished secret assessments on Russia´s war in Ukraine, the capabilities and geopolitical interests of other nations and other national security issues.
The judge said the case represented "a profound breach of the defendant's word that he would protect information related to the security of the United States."
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COVID emergency orders are among `greatest intrusions on civil liberties,' Justice Gorsuch says
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court got rid of a pandemic-related immigration case with a single sentence.
Justice Neil Gorsuch had a lot more to say, leveling harsh criticism of how governments, from small towns to the nation's capital, responded to the gravest public health threat in a century.
The justice, a 55-year-old conservative who was President Donald Trump's first Supreme Court nominee, called emergency measures taken during the COVID-19 crisis that killed more than 1 million Americans perhaps "the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country."
He pointed to orders closing schools, restricting church services, mandating vaccines and prohibiting evictions. His broadside was aimed at local, state and federal officials - even his colleagues.
"Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale," Gorsuch wrote in an eight-page statement Thursday that accompanied an expected Supreme Court order formally dismissing a case involving the use of the Title 42 policy to prevent asylum seekers from entering the United States.
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Debt limit talks in standstill as Republicans, White House face 'real differences'
WASHINGTON (AP) - Debt limit talks came to an abrupt standstill Friday after Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said it's time to "pause" negotiations, and a White House official acknowledged there are "real differences" making further discussions difficult.
McCarthy said resolution to the standoff is "easy," if only Democratic President Joe Biden's team would agree to some spending cuts Republicans are demanding. The biggest impasse was over the fiscal 2024 top-line budget amount, according to a person briefed on the talks and granted anonymity to discuss them. Democrats staunchly oppose the steep reductions Republicans have put on the table as potentially harmful to Americans.
It is unclear when negotiations would resume, though talks could pick up again over the weekend.
"We´ve got to get movement by the White House and we don´t have any movement yet," McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters at the Capitol. "So, yeah, we´ve got to pause."
A White House official who was granted anonymity Friday to discuss the private conversations said there are "real differences" between the parties on the budget issues and further "talks will be difficult."
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At graduations, Native American students seek acceptance of tribal regalia
When Kamryn Yanchick graduated, she hoped to decorate her cap with a beaded pattern in honor of her Native American heritage. Whether she could was up to her Oklahoma high school. Administrators told her no.
Yanchick settled for wearing beaded earrings to her 2018 graduation.
A bill vetoed earlier this month by Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, would have allowed public school students to wear feathers, beaded caps, stoles or other objects of cultural and religious significance. Yanchick, a citizen of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and descendent of the Muscogee Nation, said she hopes the legislature tries again.
Being able to "unapologetically express yourself and take pride in your culture at a celebration without having to ask a non-Native person for permission to do so is really significant," said Yanchick, a Native American policy advocate and a former intern with the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma.
For Native American students, tribal regalia is often passed down through generations and worn at graduations to signify connection with the community. Disputes over such attire have spurred laws making it illegal to prevent Native American students from wearing regalia in nearly a dozen states including Arizona, Oregon, South Dakota, North Dakota and Washington.
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Police officer charged with lying about leaks to Proud Boys leader
A Washington, D.C. police officer was arrested Friday on charges that he lied about leaking confidential information to Proud Boys extremist group leader Enrique Tarrio and obstructed an investigation after group members destroyed a Black Lives Matter banner in the nation's capital.
An indictment alleges that Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Shane Lamond, 47, of Stafford, Virginia, warned Tarrio, then national chairman of the far-right group, that law enforcement had an arrest warrant for him related to the banner's destruction.
Tarrio was arrested in Washington two days before Proud Boys members joined the mob in storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Earlier this month, Tarrio and three other leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy charges for what prosecutors said was a plot to keep then-President Donald Trump in the White House after he lost the 2020 election.
A federal grand jury in Washington indicted Lamond on one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements. A magistrate judge ordered Lamond's release from custody after he pleaded not guilty to the charges during his initial court appearance Friday.
The indictment accuses Lamond of lying to and misleading federal investigators when they questioned him in June 2021 about his contacts with Tarrio. The indictment also says Tarrio provided Lamond with information about the Jan. 6 attack.
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FBI broke rules in scouring foreign intelligence on Jan. 6 riot, racial justice protests, court says
WASHINGTON (AP) - FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when they searched a vast repository of foreign intelligence for information related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and racial justice protests in 2020, according to a heavily blacked-out court order released Friday.
FBI officials said the thousands of violations, which also include improper searches of donors to a congressional campaign, predated a series of corrective measures that started in the summer of 2021 and continued last year. But the problems could nonetheless complicate FBI and Justice Department efforts to receive congressional reauthorization of a warrantless surveillance program that law enforcement officials say is needed to counter terrorism, espionage and international cybercrime.
The violations were detailed in a secret court order issued last year by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has legal oversight of the U.S. government's spy powers. The Office of the Director of the National Intelligence released a redacted version on Friday in what officials said was the interest of transparency. Members of Congress received the order when it was issued last year.
"Today´s disclosures underscore the need for Congress to rein in the FBI´s egregious abuses of this law, including warrantless searches using the names of people who donated to a congressional candidate," said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of the ACLU's National Security Project. "These unlawful searches undermine our core constitutional rights and threaten the bedrock of our democracy. It´s clear the FBI can´t be left to police itself."
At issue are improper queries of foreign intelligence information collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables the government to gather the communications of targeted foreigners outside the U.S. That program expires at the end of the year unless it is renewed.
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Sen. Tim Scott makes it official: He's a Republican candidate for president
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina made it official Friday: He's running for president.
Scott, the Senate's only Black Republican, filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission declaring his intention to seek his party's nomination in 2024. His candidacy will test whether a more optimistic vision of America´s future can resonate with GOP voters who have elevated partisan brawlers in recent years.
The deeply religious 57-year-old former insurance broker has made his grandfather´s work in the cotton fields of the Deep South a bedrock of his political identity. Yet he rejects the notion that racism remains a powerful force in society, and he has cast his candidacy and rise from generational poverty as the realization of a dream only possible in America.
Scott, who last month formed an exploratory committee allowing him to raise and spend money while weighing a White House campaign, has scheduled a formal announcement on Monday at Charleston Southern University, a private Baptist college and Scott´s alma mater, in his hometown of North Charleston.
Scott already has scheduled TV ads to begin airing in the early voting states Iowa and New Hampshire early next week, the most significant advertising expenditure by a potential or declared candidate in the early stages of the 2024 nominating campaign.
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NASA picks Bezos' Blue Origin to build lunar landers for moonwalkers
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - Jeff Bezos' rocket company has won a NASA contract to land astronauts on the moon, two years after it lost out to SpaceX.
Blue Origin received a $3.4 billion contract Friday to lead a team to develop a lunar lander named Blue Moon. It will be used to transport astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2029, following a pair of crew landings by Elon Musk´s SpaceX.
NASA will get astronauts to lunar orbit using its own rockets and capsules, but wants private companies to take over from there.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the agency wants different landing options as it seeks a return to the moon more than a half-century after the end of the Apollo moonshots.
Blue Origin is kicking in billions of dollars, on top of the NASA contract, to help establish a permanent presence on the moon.
