AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT
Top UN court orders Israel to halt military offensive in Rafah, though Israel is unlikely to comply
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The United Nations' top court ordered Israel on Friday to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, but stopped short of ordering a cease-fire for the enclave. Although Israel is unlikely to comply with the order, it will ratchet up the pressure on the increasingly isolated country.
Criticism of Israel's conduct in the war in Gaza has been growing, particularly since it turned its focus to Rafah. This week alone, three European countries announced they would recognize a Palestinian state, and the chief prosecutor for another international court requested arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, along with Hamas officials.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also under some pressure at home to end the war, which was triggered when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 people, most civilians, and taking roughly 250 hostage. Thousands of Israelis have joined weekly demonstrations calling on the government to reach a deal to bring the hostages home, fearing time is running out.
“The charges of genocide brought by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice in the Hague are false, outrageous and morally repugnant,” Netanyahu’s government said in response to the ruling, maintaining its position that the military hasn't and won't target civilians.
South Africa was able to bring its case because it and Israel are signatories to the U.N.'s Genocide Convention, which includes a clause allowing the court to settle disputes over it.
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Egypt agrees to send aid trucks through Israeli crossing to Gaza but impact is unclear
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Egypt said Friday it has agreed to send U.N. humanitarian aid trucks through Israel’s main crossing into Gaza, but it remained unclear if they will be able to enter the territory as fighting raged in the southern city of Rafah amid Israel’s escalating offensive there.
Meanwhile, the bodies of three more hostages killed on Oct. 7 were recovered overnight from Gaza, Israel’s army said Friday. The CIA chief met in Paris with Israeli and Qatari officials, trying to revive negotiations for a cease-fire and a hostage release.
Gaza’s humanitarian crisis has spiraled as the U.N. and other aid agencies say the entry of food and other supplies to them has plunged dramatically since Israel’s Rafah offensive began more than two weeks ago. On Friday, the top U.N. court — the International Court of Justice — ordered Israel to halt the Rafah offensive, though Israel is unlikely to comply.
At the heart of the problem lie the two main crossings through which around 300 trucks of aid a day had been flowing into Gaza before the offensive began.
Israeli troops seized the Rafah crossing into Egypt, which has been inoperative since. The nearby Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza has remained open, and Israel says it has been sending hundreds of trucks a day into it. But while commercial trucks have successfully crossed, the U.N. says it cannot reach Kerem Shalom to pick up aid as it enters because fighting in the area makes it too dangerous.
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Trump swaps bluster for silence, and possibly sleep, in his hush money trial
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump isn’t known for letting slights pass.
Yet for weeks, the famously combative presumptive Republican nominee has sat silently — to the point of sometimes seeming asleep — in a sterile Manhattan courtroom amid a barrage of accusations and insults.
There were the times his former fixer-turned-chief prosecution witness was quoted calling him a “boorish cartoon misogynist" and a “Cheeto-dusted” villain who belonged in a “cage, like an animal.” There were the graphic details relayed by a porn actor about the night she claims they had sex. And there were lengthy descriptions of what the prosecution argues was an illegal scheme to conceal hush money payments to salvage his then-flailing 2016 campaign.
Through it all, even as he and his allies attacked the case outside the courtroom, Trump has spent the majority of his time as a criminal defendant sitting nearly motionless for hours, leaning back in his burgundy leather chair with his eyes closed. He ultimately chose not to testify in a case that made him the first former president in the nation’s history to stand trial on criminal charges.
Closing arguments in the case are scheduled for Tuesday, after which a jury will decide whether to make him the first former president and major party nominee convicted of felony charges.
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Prosecutors seek to bar Trump from statements endangering law enforcement in classified records case
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal prosecutors on Friday asked the judge overseeing the classified documents case against Donald Trump to bar the former president from public statements that “pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents” participating in the prosecution.
The request to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon follows a distorted claim by Trump earlier this week that the FBI agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022 were “authorized to shoot me” and were “locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee was referring to the disclosure in a court document that the FBI, during the search, followed a standard use-of-force policy that prohibits the use of deadly force except when the officer conducting the search has a reasonable belief that the “subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.”
The Justice Department policy is routine and meant to limit, rather than encourage, the use of force during searches. Prosecutors noted that the search of the Florida property was intentionally conducted when Trump and his family were out of state and was coordinated in advance with the U.S. Secret Service. No force was used.
Prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith's team said in court papers late Friday that Trump's statements falsely suggesting that federal agents “were complicit in a plot to assassinate him” expose law enforcement — some of whom prosecutors noted will be called as witnesses at his trial — "to the risk of threats, violence, and harassment."
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Young missionary couple from US among 3 killed by gunmen in Haiti's capital, family says
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A U.S. missionary couple and a Haitian man who worked with them were shot and killed by gang members in Haiti’s capital after they were attacked while leaving a youth group activity held at a local church, a family member said Friday.
The attack happened Thursday evening in the community of Lizon in northern Port-au-Prince, Lionel Lazarre, head of a Haitian police union, told The Associated Press.
The slayings occurred as the capital crumbles under the relentless assault of violent gangs that control 80% of Port-au-Prince while authorities await the arrival of a police force from Kenya as part of a U.N.-backed deployment aimed at quelling gang violence in the troubled Caribbean country.
Two of the victims were a young married couple, Davy and Natalie Lloyd, according to a Facebook posting from Natalie Lloyd’s father, Missouri state Rep. Ben Baker. The third victim was Jude Montis, who was the country's director of Missions In Haiti Inc.
“My heart is broken in a thousand pieces,” Baker wrote on Facebook on Thursday. “I’ve never felt this kind of pain. Most of you know my daughter and son-in-law Davy and Natalie Lloyd are full time missionaries in Haiti. They were attacked by gangs this evening and were both killed. They went to Heaven together.”
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Uvalde families sue Meta and Call of Duty maker on second anniversary of school attack
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Families in Uvalde took more legal action Friday on the second anniversary of the Robb Elementary School attack, suing Meta Platforms, which owns Instagram, and the maker of the video game Call of Duty over claims the companies bear responsibility for products used by the teenage gunman.
They also filed another lawsuit against Daniel Defense, which manufactured the AR-style rifle used in the May 24, 2022, shooting — and has already been sued.
It added to mounting lawsuits over the attack and came as the small Texas city gathered to mourn the anniversary of one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. The gunman killed 19 students and two teachers. Officers finally confronted and shot him after waiting more than an hour to enter the fourth-grade classroom.
“There is a direct line between the conduct of these companies and the Uvalde shooting,” said Josh Koskoff, an attorney for the families. “This three-headed monster knowingly exposed him to the weapon, conditioned him to see it as a tool to solve his problems and trained him to use it.”
Some of the same families on Wednesday filed a $500 million lawsuit against Texas state police officials and officers who were part of the botched law enforcement response that day. More than 370 federal, state and local officers responded but waited more than an hour to confront the shooter inside the classroom as students and teaches lay dead, dying or wounded.
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More severe weather moves through Midwest as Iowa residents clean up tornado damage
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Several tornadoes were reported in Iowa and Illinois as storms downed power lines and trees on Friday, just days after a deadly twister devastated one small town.
The large storm system began overnight in Nebraska before traveling across central Iowa and into Illinois. A weak tornado touched down in suburban Des Moines, according to the National Weather Service, which was also assessing damage from several other reported twisters south of Iowa City and near Moline, Illinois. No injuries or deaths were reported.
The storm also brought rain that was heavy in some areas of Iowa, where totals have reached as much as 8 inches (20 centimeters) over the last week, according to the weather service.
Also Friday, a church caught fire in Madison, Wisconsin, as a thunderstorm rolled through the area. Nate Moll, who lives two doors down from Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, said he heard a “zap zap zap” electrical sound, followed by a loud crack of thunder. Firefighters extinguished the blaze.
In Oklahoma, a tornado was on the ground for about an hour Thursday evening in Jackson County and neighboring counties as a slow-moving storm moved through, according to Ryan Bunker, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Norman, Oklahoma, office. News outlets reported downed power lines and outages and damage to some structures.
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Louisiana governor signs bill making two abortion drugs controlled dangerous substances
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — First-of-its-kind legislation that classifies two abortion-inducing drugs as controlled and dangerous substances was signed into law Friday by Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry.
The Republican governor announced his signing of the bill in Baton Rouge a day after it gained final legislative passage in the state Senate.
The measure affects the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, which are used in medication abortions, the most common method of abortion in the U.S..
Opponents of the bill included many physicians who said the drugs have other critical reproductive health care uses, and that changing the classification could make it harder to prescribe the medications.
Supporters of the bill said it would protect expectant mothers from coerced abortions, though they cited only one example of that happening, in the state of Texas.
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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin resumes duty after undergoing procedure at Walter Reed
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin underwent a medical procedure at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center Friday evening and has resumed duty after temporarily transferring power to his deputy, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement.
Austin is continuing to deal with bladder issues that arose in December following his treatment for prostate cancer, Ryder said.
The procedure was successful, elective and minimally invasive, “is not related to his cancer diagnosis and has had no effect on his excellent cancer prognosis,” the press secretary said.
Austin transferred authority to Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks for about two-and-a-half hours while he was indisposed, the Pentagon said.
The Pentagon chief returned home after the procedure. “No changes in his official schedule are anticipated at this time, to include his participation in scheduled Memorial Day events,” Ryder said.
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Involuntary manslaughter allegation against Alec Baldwin advances toward trial with new court ruling
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A New Mexico judge has rejected a request by Alec Baldwin to dismiss the sole criminal charge against him in a fatal shooting on the set of the movie “Rust,” keeping the case on track for a trial this summer.
Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer on Friday upheld an indictment charging Baldwin with one count of involuntary manslaughter in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021. The judge rejected defense arguments that prosecutors flouted the rules of grand jury proceedings to divert attention away from exculpatory evidence and witnesses.
Special prosecutors have denied accusations that the grand jury proceedings were marred and say Baldwin made “shameless” attempts to escape culpability, highlighting contradictions in his statements to law enforcement, to workplace safety regulators and in a televised interview.
Friday’s decision removes one of the last hurdles for prosecutors to put Baldwin on trial in July.
“We look forward to our day in court,” defense attorneys Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro said in an email.
The Associated Press
