AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
In race against clock, expanding fleet of ships searches for submersible lost near Titanic wreck
In a race against the clock on the high seas, an expanding international armada of ships and airplanes searched Tuesday for a submersible that vanished in the North Atlantic while taking five people down to the wreck of the Titanic.
U.S. Coast Guard officials said the search covered 10,000 square miles (26,000 square kilometers) but turned up no sign of the lost sub known as the Titan. Although they planned to continue looking, time was running out because the vessel had less than two days of oxygen left.
"This is a very complex search, and the unified team is working around the clock," Cpt. Jamie Frederick of the First Coast Guard District in Boston told a news conference.
Frederick said the crew had about 41 hours of oxygen remaining as of midday Tuesday. He added that an underwater robot had started searching in the vicinity of the Titanic and that there was a push to get salvage equipment to the scene in case the sub is found.
Three C-17s from the U.S. military have also been used to move a commercial company´s submersible and support equipment from Buffalo, New York, to St. John´s, Newfoundland, to aid in the search, a spokeswoman for U.S. Air Mobility Command said.
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Hunter Biden will plead guilty in a deal that likely averts time behind bars in a tax and gun case
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Joe Biden´s son Hunter will plead guilty to federal tax offenses but avoid full prosecution on a separate gun charge in a deal with the Justice Department that likely spares him time behind bars.
Hunter Biden, 53, will plead guilty to the misdemeanor tax offenses as part of an agreement made public Tuesday. The agreement will also avert prosecution on a felony charge of illegally possessing a firearm as a drug user, as long as he adheres to conditions agreed to in court.
The deal ends a long-running Justice Department investigation into President Biden´s second son, who has acknowledged struggling with addiction following the 2015 death of his brother Beau Biden. It also averts a trial that would have generated days or weeks of distracting headlines for a White House that has strenuously sought to keep its distance from the Justice Department.
The president, asked about the development at a meeting on another subject in California, said simply, "I´m very proud of my son." The White House counsel´s office said in a statement that the president and first lady Jill Biden "love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life."
While the agreement requires the younger Biden to admit guilt, the deal is narrowly focused on tax and weapons violations rather than anything broader or tied to the Democratic president. Nonetheless, former President Donald Trump and other Republicans continued to try to use the case to shine an unflattering spotlight on Joe Biden and to raise questions about the independence of the Biden Justice Department.
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Social media star Andrew Tate charged with rape and human trafficking in Romania
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - Andrew Tate, a social media personality known for expressing misogynistic views online, was charged in Romania with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to exploit women, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Prosecutors also filed charges against Tate's brother, Tristan, and two Romanian women in a court in Bucharest, Romania's capital, the nation's anti-organized crime agency said.
In a statement, the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism alleged the four defendants formed a criminal group in 2021 "in order to commit the crime of human trafficking" in Romania as well as the United States and Britain.
The agency alleged that seven female victims were misled and transported to Romania, where they were sexually exploited and subjected to physical violence by the gang. One defendant is accused of raping a woman twice in March 2022, according to the statement.
Tate, 36, has resided in Romania since 2017. The former professional kickboxer has repeatedly claimed Romanian prosecutors have no evidence and alleged the case is a political conspiracy designed to silence him.
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Supreme Court turns away veterans who seek disability benefits over 1966 hydrogen bomb accident
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal on behalf of some U.S. veterans who want disability benefits because they were exposed to radiation while responding to a Cold War-era hydrogen bomb accident in Spain.
The justices not did comment in turning away an appeal from Victor Skaar, an Air Force veteran in his mid-80s.
Skaar, of Nixa, Missouri, filed class-action claims seeking benefits for him and others who say they became ill from exposure to radiation during the recovery and cleanup of the undetonated bombs at the accident site in Palomares, a village in southern Spain, in 1966.
A federal appeals court rejected the class-action claims. The Supreme Court's action leaves that ruling in place.
The Justice Department, arguing against high-court review, noted that Congress last year enacted legislation that expands eligibility for benefits for many Palomares veterans. But the department also acknowledged that Skaar is not covered by the legislation.
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Trump adviser faces possible disbarment over his efforts to overturn 2020 election
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Attorney John Eastman, the architect of a legal strategy aimed at keeping former President Donald Trump in power, concocted a baseless theory and made false claims of fraud in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, a prosecutor said Tuesday in arguing that Eastman be disbarred.
Eastman's attorney countered that his client never intended to steal the election, but was considering ways to delay electoral-vote counting so states could investigate allegations of voting improprieties. Trump's claims of fraud were roundly rejected by courts, including by judges the Republican appointed.
Eastman faces 11 disciplinary charges in the State Bar Court of California stemming from his development of a dubious legal strategy aimed at having Vice President Mike Pence interfere with the certification of President Joe Biden's victory. If the court finds Eastman culpable of the alleged violations it can recommend a punishment such as suspending or revoking his law license. The California Supreme Court makes the final decision.
Duncan Carling of the office of chief trial counsel - which is seeking Eastman's disbarment - said Eastman´s legal theory was "unsupported by historical precedent and law and contrary to our values as a nation." Eastman continued his efforts to undermine the election even after state and federal officials publicly rejected Trump allies´ claims of fraud, Carling said.
"All of his misconduct was done with one singular purpose: To obstruct the electoral count on Jan. 6 and stop Vice President Pence from certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the election," Carling said. "He was fully aware in real time that his plan was damaging the nation," he added.
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Judge strikes down Arkansas ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - A federal judge struck down Arkansas' first-in-the-nation ban on gender-affirming care for children as unconstitutional Tuesday, the first ruling to overturn such a prohibition as a growing number of Republican-led states adopt similar restrictions.
U.S. District Judge Jay Moody issued a permanent injunction against the Arkansas law, which would have prohibited doctors from providing gender-affirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18.
Arkansas' law, which Moody temporarily blocked in 2021, also would have prohibited doctors from referring patients elsewhere for such care.
In his order, Moody ruled that the prohibition violated the due process and equal protection rights of transgender youth and families. He said the law also violated the First Amendment rights of medical providers by prohibiting them from referring patients elsewhere.
"Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics, the evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that, by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing," Moody wrote in his ruling.
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Pentagon accounting error provides extra $6.2 billion for Ukraine military aid
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon said Tuesday that it overestimated the value of the weapons it has sent to Ukraine by $6.2 billion over the past two years - about double early estimates - resulting in a surplus that will be used for future security packages.
Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said a detailed review of the accounting error found that the military services used replacement costs rather than the book value of equipment that was pulled from Pentagon stocks and sent to Ukraine. She said final calculations show there was an error of $3.6 billion in the current fiscal year and $2.6 billion in the 2022 fiscal year, which ended last Sept. 30.
As a result, the department now has additional money in its coffers to use to support Ukraine as it pursues its counteroffensive against Russia. And it come as the fiscal year is wrapping up and congressional funding was beginning to dwindle.
"It´s just going to go back into the pot of money that we have allocated" for the future Pentagon stock drawdowns," said Singh.
The revelation comes as Ukraine moves ahead with the early stages its counteroffensive, in an effort to dislodge the Kremlin´s forces from territory they´ve occupied since a full-scale invasion in February 2022. The counteroffensive has come up against heavily mined terrain and reinforced defensive fortifications, according to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of Ukraine´s armed forces.
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Sweltering heat tests Texas' power grid and patience as thousands in South still without electricity
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Texas' power grid operator asked residents Tuesday to voluntarily cut back on electricity due to anticipated record demand on the system as a heat wave kept large swaths of the state and southern U.S. in triple-digit temperatures.
On the last day of spring, the sweltering heat felt more like the middle of summer across the South, where patience was growing thin over outages that have persisted since weekend storms and tornadoes caused widespread damage.
In the Mississippi capital, some residents said Tuesday that they had been without power and air conditioning for almost 100 hours, which is longer than the outages caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Entergy Mississippi, the state´s largest electric utility, said its crews had worked 16-hour shifts since Friday, but some officials expressed doubts about its preparedness.
High temperatures in the state were expected to reach 90 degrees (32 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday.
"The delay in restoring power has caused significant hardship for their customers and it is unacceptable," said Brent Bailey, a member on the Mississippi Public Service Commission, the state's energy regulator.
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How you water the garden can save you money, gallons and your plants, too
Until I installed soaker hoses throughout my vegetable beds this year, I´d always watered my plants by hand, which over the years had become tiresome.
Standing outside holding a garden hose wasn´t exactly my idea of a good time, but it directs water precisely to the soil above roots, making sure it lands where it´s needed. That eliminates waste, and goes a long way toward preventing diseases like powdery mildew. That's good for plants, the environment and the water bill.
Placing flexible, porous rubber or fabric soaker hoses on the soil around plants is another preferred way to irrigate, as it allows water to seep slowly over roots. Drip irrigation hoses (rigid tubes with emitter holes that drip or stream water) work similarly.
There are plenty of other easy ways to save water around the garden.
Applying water in the morning, for instance, allows time for it to permeate deeply into the soil before the sun gets too hot. Wait until later in the day, and a good portion of that water will evaporate from the soil surface before doing its job. Later still, and moisture could stick around overnight, risking mold, mildew and fungal diseases.
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41 inmates die in grisly riot in women's prison in Honduras that president blames on gangs
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) - A grisly riot at a women´s prison in Honduras Tuesday left at least 41 women dead, most burned to death, in violence the country's president blamed on "mara" street gangs that often wield broad power inside penitentiaries.
Most victims were burned but there also were reports of inmates shot or stabbed at the prison in Tamara, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, said Yuri Mora, the spokesman for Honduras´ national police investigation agency.
At least seven female inmates were being treated at a Tegucigalpa hospital for gunshot and knife wounds, employees there said.
Local media interviewed one injured inmate outside the hospital who said prisoners belonging to the feared Barrio 18 gang burst into a cell block and shot other inmates or set them afire.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro said the riot was "planned by maras with the knowledge and acquiescence of security authorities."
