Suspect charged with killing UnitedHealthcare’s CEO as an act of terrorism
NEW YORK (AP) — The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare’s CEO has been charged with murder as an act of terrorism, prosecutors said Tuesday as they worked to bring him to a New York court from a Pennsylvania jail.
Luigi Mangione already was charged with murder in the Dec. 4 killing of Brian Thompson, but the terror allegation is new.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Thompson’s death on a midtown Manhattan street “was a killing that was intended to evoke terror. And we’ve seen that reaction.”
Mangione’s New York lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, declined to comment.
Thompson, 50, was shot while walking to a hotel where Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare — the United States’ biggest medical insurer — was holding an investor conference.
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Police chief says motive for Wisconsin school shooting was a ‘combination of factors’
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The motive for a shooting that killed a teacher and a student and wounded others at a Wisconsin school appears to be a “combination of factors,” a police chief said Tuesday as he appealed to the public to share what they might know about the 15-year-old girl who attacked a study hall before shooting herself.
Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes offered no details about a possible motive, though he said bullying at Abundant Life Christian School would be investigated.
Barnes said police are also investigating writings that may have been penned by Natalie Rupnow and could shed light on her actions.
“Identifying a motive is our top priority, but at this time it appears that the motive is a combination of factors,” the chief told reporters.
Barnes gave the number to a tip line for anyone who might have known the shooter and her feelings.
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A couple hundred North Korean troops killed, wounded in battles with Ukrainian forces
WASHINGTON (AP) — A couple hundred North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian forces against Ukraine have been killed or wounded during battle in the Kursk border region, a senior military official said Tuesday.
The official didn’t provide details on exactly how many have been killed, but said the North Korean forces don’t appear to be battle-hardened, which contributes to the number of casualties they’ve had. The official was providing the first significant estimate of North Korean casualties, which comes several weeks after Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost 3-year war.
The White House and Pentagon on Monday confirmed that the North Korean forces have been battling on the front lines in largely infantry positions. They have been fighting with Russian units and, in some cases, independently around Kursk.
The casualty disclosure comes as the Biden administration is pressing to send as much military aid as possible to Ukraine before President-elect Donald Trump takes over. But a senior defense official told reporters Tuesday that the Defense Department may not be able to send all of the remaining $5.6 billion in Pentagon weapons and equipment stocks intended for Ukraine before Jan. 20, when Trump is sworn in.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to provide a U.S. assessment of the war.
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Congress unveils funding deal with more than $100 billion in disaster aid
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional leaders have unveiled a stopgap spending bill that will keep the federal government funded through March 14 and provide more than $100 billion in emergency aid to help states and local communities recover from Hurricanes Helene and Milton and other natural disasters.
The measure would prevent a partial government shutdown set to begin after midnight Friday. It would kick final decisions on this budget year’s spending levels to a new Republican-led Congress and President-elect Donald Trump. The continuing resolution generally continues current spending levels for agencies.
Passage of the measure is one of the final actions that lawmakers will consider this week before adjourning for the holidays and making way for the next Congress. It’s the second short-term funding measure the lawmakers have taken up this fall as they struggled to pass the dozen annual appropriations bills before the new fiscal year began Oct. 1, as they typically do.
The bill will provide $100.4 billion in disaster relief, with an additional $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers struggling with low commodity prices and high input costs.
“We have to be able to help those who are in these dire straits,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters.
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Nissan, Honda confirm talks on closer collaboration but say there’s been no decision on a merger
BANGKOK (AP) — Japanese automakers Nissan Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. confirmed Wednesday that they are discussing closer collaboration but denied reports they have decided on a merger.
Nissan’s share price soared more than 22% in Tokyo after reports citing unnamed sources said it might merge with Honda to form the world’s third-largest automaking group. Honda’s share price fell as much as 3%.
The reports said that Nissan alliance member Mitsubishi Motors Corp. was included in the talks.
All three Japanese automakers announced in August that they planned to share components for electric vehicles like batteries and jointly research software for autonomous driving to adapt better to dramatic changes in the auto industry centered around electrification. A preliminary agreement between Honda, Japan’s second-largest automaker, and Nissan, third largest, was announced in March.
Trading in Nissan’s shares was suspended but then resumed after the companies jointly issued a statement saying they were “considering various possibilities for future collaboration, but no decisions have been made.”
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Biathlon official apologizes to athletes who have suffered mistreatment
The secretary general of the International Biathlon Union apologized to any athlete who was mistreated during his tenure at U.S. Biathlon while speaking to a 90-minute meeting Tuesday that focused on concerns about athlete safety brought to light by multiple Associated Press reports.
“I appreciate anyone who comes forward with issues, especially issues of sexual misconduct, whether it’s recent ones or old ones. I think that’s an incredibly brave and important thing to do,” Max Cobb said in remarks to the U.S. Biathlon Association’s annual meeting, held over Zoom.
It was Cobb’s first public statement since AP’s report a week ago detailing how women said officials ignored or excused sexual abuse and harassment of female biathletes by their coaches and others over decades because they were more concerned about winning medals than holding offenders accountable.
While the men involved climbed the ranks of the sport, the women — who described a culture of abuse dating back to the 1990s — said they were forced to end their racing careers early. Biathlon combines cross-country skiing with target shooting.
“I can say personally I am very sorry for any athlete who suffered any kind of mistreatment during my time working with U.S. Biathlon,” said Cobb, who rose from domestic team manager to CEO of the association and is now an official with the IBU, the worldwide governing body of the sport.
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Man who killed brother and 3 others set to be put to death in Indiana’s first execution in 15 years
MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. (AP) — An Indiana man convicted in the 1997 killings of his brother and three other men was set to receive a lethal injection by early Wednesday in the state’s first execution in 15 years, without any independent witness present under the state’s laws shielding information about the death penalty.
Joseph Corcoran, 49, has been on death row since 1999, the year he was convicted in the shootings of his brother, James Corcoran, 30; his sister’s fiancé, Robert Scott Turner, 32; and two other men: Timothy G. Bricker, 30, and Douglas A. Stillwell, 30.
Barring intervention by Gov. Eric Holcomb, Corcoran is scheduled to be executed before sunrise Wednesday at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.
Holcomb’s office did not immediately respond to an email sent late Tuesday by The Associated Press asking if he might commute Corcoran’s death sentence.
Holcomb said recently he would let the legal process play out before deciding whether to intervene. And late Tuesday, Corcoran’s options with the courts ended when the U.S. Supreme Court denied his attorneys’ request to halt his execution.
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Rayful Edmond, notorious DC drug kingpin, dies in federal custody at 60
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rayful Edmond, a drug kingpin once believed to control about a third of the cocaine trade in the nation’s capital during the crack epidemic of the 1980s, has died in federal custody, the Bureau of Prisons confirmed Tuesday.
Edmond, 60, was known at the height of his criminal empire as the “king of cocaine” in Washington, D.C. He oversaw a sprawling drug network that fueled the city’s devastating crack epidemic, contributing to a dramatic rise in homicides and the destruction of countless lives. Armed enforcers, wielding Uzi submachine guns, protected Edmond’s territory as he ran an operation linked to at least 30 murders, although none were directly attributed to him.
The Bureau of Prisons did not release details about the cause of Edmond’s death. Rob Sperling, a spokesperson for the bureau, said only that Edmond had died, without elaborating on the circumstances.
In 1989, at the age of 24, Edmond was arrested and later sentenced to life in prison for his role in running a vast drug distribution network. His operation was estimated to be moving up to 1,700 pounds of cocaine per month, generating millions of dollars each week. At the time, Edmond was a household name in D.C., living a lavish lifestyle that included sponsoring local basketball tournaments and frequent trips to Las Vegas for high-profile boxing matches.
His trial was marked by unprecedented security measures, and jury members were kept anonymous for their protection. He received a sentence of life without parole and was sent to a maximum-security prison in Pennsylvania. He continued to run a drug distribution network from inside the prison, and when he was caught, Edmond received an additional 30-year sentence.
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Trump sues Des Moines Register, pollster for ‘election interference’ after pre-election poll
President-elect Donald Trump sued the Des Moines Register and its pollster for “brazen election interference” in publishing a survey the weekend before the election that showed Democrat Kamala Harris with a surprising lead of three percentage points in the state.
The Register’s parent Gannett Co. on Tuesday dismissed the lawsuit as meritless and said it would vigorously defend its First Amendment rights.
The lawsuit continues the president-elect’s campaign against media outlets he feels have wronged him. ABC this past weekend agreed to pay $15 million toward a Trump presidential library in order to settle a defamation lawsuit against George Stephanopoulos for inaccurately saying Trump had been found civilly liable for rape.
The Des Moines survey, done by since-retired pollster J. Ann Selzer, was considered shocking for indicating that an earlier Trump lead in the Republican-leaning midwestern state had been erased. In the actual election, Trump won Iowa by more than 13 percentage points.
“There was a perfectly good reason nobody saw this coming: because a three-point lead for Harris in deep-red Iowa was not reality,” the lawsuit said. “It was election-interfering fiction.”
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Netanyahu says Israeli troops will occupy a buffer zone inside Syria for the foreseeable future
JERUSALEM (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israeli forces will stay in a buffer zone on the Syrian border, seized after the ouster of Syria’s President Bashar Assad, until another arrangement is in place “that ensures Israel’s security.”
Netanyahu made the comments from the summit of Mount Hermon — the highest peak in the area — inside Syria, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border with the Israel-held Golan Heights.
It appeared to be the first time a sitting Israeli leader had set foot that far into Syria. Netanyahu said he had been on the same mountaintop 53 years ago as a soldier, but the summit’s importance to Israel’s security has only increased given recent events.
Israel seized a swath of southern Syria along the border with the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights days after Assad was ousted by rebels last week.
Israel’s capture of the buffer zone, a roughly 400-square-kilometer (155-square-mile) demilitarized area in Syrian territory, has sparked condemnation, with critics accusing Israel of violating a 1974 ceasefire and possibly exploiting the chaos in Syria in the wake of Assad’s ouster to make a land grab.
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/world/2024/12/17/ap-news-in-brief-at-1204-a-m-est-288
