AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
Mueller declares his Russia report did not exonerate Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) - Special counsel Robert Mueller said Wednesday that charging President Donald Trump with a crime was "not an option" because of federal rules, but he used his first public remarks on the Russia investigation to emphasize that he did not exonerate the president.
"If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so," Mueller declared.
The special counsel's remarks stood as a pointed rebuttal to Trump's repeated claims that he was cleared and that the two-year inquiry was merely a "witch hunt." They also marked a counter to criticism, including by Attorney General William Barr, that Mueller should have reached a determination on whether the president illegally tried to obstruct the probe by taking actions such as firing his FBI director.
Mueller made clear that his team never considered indicting Trump because the Justice Department prohibits the prosecution of a sitting president.
"Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider," Mueller said. He said he believed such an action would be unconstitutional.
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In UAE, Trump's adviser warns Iran of 'very strong response'
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - President Donald Trump's national security adviser warned Iran on Wednesday that any attacks in the Persian Gulf will draw a "very strong response" from the U.S., taking a hard-line approach with Tehran after his boss only two days earlier said America wasn't "looking to hurt Iran at all."
John Bolton's comments are the latest amid heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran that have been playing out in the Middle East.
Bolton spoke to journalists in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, which only days earlier saw former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warn there that "unilateralism will not work" in confronting the Islamic Republic.
The dueling approaches highlight the divide over Iran within American politics. The U.S. has accused Tehran of being behind a string of incidents this month, including the alleged sabotage of oil tankers off the Emirati coast, a rocket strike near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and a coordinated drone attack on Saudi Arabia by Yemen's Iran-allied Houthi rebels.
On Wednesday, Bolton told journalists that there had been a previously unknown attempt to attack the Saudi oil port of Yanbu as well, which he also blamed on Iran. He described Tehran's decision to back away from its 2015 atomic deal with world powers as evidence it sought nuclear weapons, even though it came a year after America unilaterally withdrew from the unraveling agreement.
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Israel heads to election as Netanyahu fails to form govt
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel's parliament voted to dissolve itself early Thursday, sending the country to an unprecedented second snap election this year as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a governing coalition before a midnight deadline.
The dramatic vote, less than two months after parliamentary elections, marked a dramatic downturn for Netanyahu and sent the longtime leader's future into turmoil.
Netanyahu, who has led Israel for the past decade, had appeared to capture a fourth consecutive term in April's election. But infighting among his allies, and disagreements over proposed bills that would protect Netanyahu from prosecution stymied his efforts to put together a majority coalition.
Rather than concede that task to one of his rivals, Netanyahu's Likud party advanced a bill to dissolve parliament and send the country to the polls for a second time this year.
Had the deadline passed, Israel's president would have given another lawmaker, most likely opposition leader Benny Gantz, an opportunity to put together a coalition. After the vote, Gantz angrily accused Netanyahu of choosing self-preservation over allowing the country's political process to run its course.
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No end seen to struggle as Mississippi flood enters month 4
HOLLY BLUFF, Miss. (AP) - Larry Walls should have been out working in his fields last week. Instead, his John Deere tractor is parked on high ground, just beyond the reach of the ever-encroaching floodwaters in the southern Mississippi Delta.
Four months into what seems like a never-ending flood, he's trying to stay busy. He pressure-washed his church, and he's been shooting the snakes that slither out of a swollen creek submerging his backyard.
"The corn would have been at least waist-high right now," Walls said.
Floodwater has swamped 860 square miles (2,200 sq. kilometers) north of the Mississippi River city of Vicksburg, an area larger than the cities of New York and Los Angeles combined. Residents say it's the worst flood since 1973. Gov. Phil Bryant last week went further, likening it to the 1927 flood that lives on in books, songs, movies and the folk memory of the Magnolia State.
"1927 was a line of demarcation for most of us who lived in the Delta," Bryant, a Republican, said. "This may replace that."
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AP: Purdue foreign arm caught up in opioid probe in Europe
PARMA, Italy (AP) - The police huddled for hours each day, headphones on, eavesdropping on the doctor. They'd tapped his cellphone, bugged his office, planted a camera in a trattoria.
They heard him boast about his power to help Big Pharma make millions pushing painkillers, and about all the money they say he was paid in exchange.
Now Dr. Guido Fanelli is at the center of a sprawling corruption case alleging he took kickbacks from an alliance of pharmaceutical executives he nicknamed "The Pain League." Its members, police say, included managers with Mundipharma - the international arm of Purdue Pharma, which is facing some 2,000 lawsuits in the United States over its role in the opioid crisis that has claimed 400,000 lives in two decades.
This is the first known case outside the U.S. where employees of the pharmaceutical empire owned by the Sackler family have been criminally implicated, more than a decade after Purdue executives were convicted over misleading the American public about the addictiveness of OxyContin.
Hundreds of pages of investigative files obtained by The Associated Press detail how Fanelli helped executives from Mundipharma's Italian branch and other companies promote painkillers by writing papers, organizing conferences and working to counter government warnings that opioid consumption was spiking and that physicians should be cautious. The message trumpeted, the AP found, was that there is an epidemic of chronic pain, addiction fears are exaggerated and not prescribing opioids can amount to neglecting the suffering of patients.
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Rare color footage brings D-Day memories alive, 75 years on
WASHINGTON (AP) - Seventy-five years ago, Hollywood director George Stevens stood on the deck of the HMS Belfast to film the start of the D-Day invasion.
The resulting black-and-white films - following Allied troops through Normandy, the liberation of Paris, Battle of the Bulge, the horror of the Dachau concentration camp - form the basis of Americans' historical memory of World War II, and were even used as evidence in Nazi war crimes trials.
But the director was also shooting 16-millimeter color film for himself of the same events, creating a kind of personal video journal of his experiences.
As veterans and world leaders prepare to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day next week, Stevens' surprising color images bring an immediacy to wartime memories, a powerful reminder of the war's impact and its heros as those who witnessed the war are dying out .
"You've seen it in black and white. And when you see it in color, all of a sudden it feels like today," his son George Stevens Jr. said in an interview. "It doesn't seem like yesterday. And it has a much more modern and authentic feeling to it."
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Ethiopian pilot pleaded for training weeks before Max crash
NEW YORK (AP) - Just days after a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max nosedived in Indonesia and killed all 189 people aboard, an Ethiopian Airlines pilot began pleading with his bosses for more training on the Max, warning that crews could easily be overwhelmed in a crisis and that one of their planes could be the next to go down.
"We are asking for trouble," veteran pilot Bernd Kai von Hoesslin wrote in a December email obtained by The Associated Press, adding that if several alarms go off in the cockpit at once, "it will be a crash for sure."
That prediction proved all too accurate.
What Ethiopian Airlines did in response to his warnings is unclear, and whether it made any difference is a matter of dispute. But within weeks, an Ethiopian Max indeed went down, killing all 157 people on board. It slammed into the ground amid a flurry of alarms as the pilots struggled to control a malfunction in the automatic anti-stall system.
While that system has gotten most of the scrutiny in the two Max crashes five months apart that have led to a worldwide grounding of the planes, the concerns raised by von Hoesslin have added to a debate on the role pilot error played and whether Ethiopian's pilots were as prepared as they could have been to avert disaster.
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Severe weather forecasts continue as Ohio, Kansas, clean up
DAYTON, Ohio (AP) - People from Kansas to Pennsylvania picked up the pieces from a swarm of tornadoes and braced for more violent weather Wednesday in a storm that's seen a record number of twisters with no end in sight.
North Texas remained under a tornado watch until the evening, while the National Weather Service issued a flash-flood warning along the Oklahoma-Arkansas line as strong thunderstorms brought a new round of rain to eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas, where the Arkansas River is expected to crest at historic levels.
In the east, multiple tornado warnings were issued for New Jersey and Pennsylvania. At least three tornadoes were confirmed in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.
In Kansas, the National Weather Service was still assessing the strength of a twister that injured at least 15 people Tuesday, three of them seriously, and damaged homes, trees and power lines in Douglas and Leavenworth counties in eastern Kansas.
"I'm just glad I found my two dogs alive," said Mark Duffin, of Linwood, Kansas. "Wife's alive, family's alive, I'm alive. So, that's it."
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Trump urges Roy Moore not to run for US Senate in Alabama
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday discouraged Alabama Republican Roy Moore from running for U.S. Senate again in 2020, saying the GOP must regain the once reliably red state and Moore "cannot win."
Moore, who contends establishment Republicans are trying to keep him from running, disputed the assertion saying, "everybody knows I can win."
Moore lost the 2017 special election to Democrat Doug Jones amid sexual misconduct allegations. He is considering a second run in 2020.
"Republicans cannot allow themselves to again lose the Senate seat in the Great State of Alabama," Trump wrote in a Wednesday morning tweet.
Trump, who backed Moore in 2017 despite the allegations, tweeted "I have NOTHING against Roy Moore," but warned "Roy Moore cannot win."
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AP Explains: Why do Serbia-Kosovo tensions persist?
BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) - Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo flared this week after Kosovo's police raided Serb-dominated areas in the region's north and arrested scores of people. There have been clashes between Kosovo's police and local Serbs, with several people injured, and two U.N. personnel were detained, including a Russian. Serbia raised its combat readiness and warned it won't stand by if Serbs in Kosovo are attacked. The situation has fueled fears of a renewal of the 1998-99 conflict that claimed more than 10,000 lives and left over 1 million homeless.
An explanation of why Kosovo remains a flashpoint:
WHY ARE SERBIA AND KOSOVO AT ODDS?
Kosovo is a mainly ethnic Albanian territory that was formerly a province in Serbia. It declared independence in 2008. Serbia has refused to recognize Kosovo's statehood and still considers it part of Serbia, even though it has no formal control there. Kosovo's independence has been recognized by about 100 countries, including the United States. Russia, China and five European Union nations have sided with Serbia. The deadlock has kept tensions simmering and prevented full stabilization of the Balkan region after the bloody wars in the 1990s.
HOW DEEP IS THE CONFLICT?
