AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST

Messi, Argentina beat Netherlands on penalties at World Cup

LUSAIL, Qatar (AP) — Lionel Messi started the match by delivering another soccer clinic. The Argentina superstar ended it sporting a bloodied top lip, shouting abuse to opponents and even blasting the referee.

And of course there were goals, too, for one of the greats of the game whose bid to win the World Cup for the first time is still on track.

Messi is heading to the semifinals with Argentina after a chaotic penalty-shootout victory over Netherlands that had just about everything on Friday.

Argentina took a 2-0 lead, conceded an equalizer in the 11th minute of second-half stoppage time to send the match to extra time at 2-2, and then won the shootout 4-3 amid a deafening noise inside Lusail Stadium.

Messi, who scored a penalty in regulation time, converted his penalty in the shootout while goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez made two saves to help Argentina secure a semifinal match against Croatia, which beat Brazil earlier Friday.

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Putin says more US-Russian prisoner exchanges are possible

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that more U.S.-Russian prisoner exchanges are possible if Moscow and Washington find a compromise.

Putin spoke a day after Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout was swapped for WNBA star and two-time Olympian Brittney Griner.

Asked after a summit in Kyrgyzstan whether other prisoners could be swapped, Putin replied that “everything is possible,” noting that “compromises have been found” that cleared the way for Thursday’s exchange of Griner for Bout.

“We aren’t refusing to continue this work in the future,” the Russian leader said, making his first comments about the closely watched trade.

Despite negotiating for Griner’s release, the most high-profile American jailed abroad, the U.S. failed to win freedom for another American, Paul Whelan. The Michigan corporate security executive has been imprisoned in Russia since December 2018 on espionage charges that his family and the U.S. government have said are baseless.

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Ex-cop who kneeled on George Floyd’s back gets 3.5-year term

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The former Minneapolis police officer who kneeled on George Floyd’s back while another officer kneeled on the Black man’s neck was sentenced Friday to 3 1/2 years in prison.

J. Alexander Kueng pleaded guilty in October to a state count of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. In exchange, a charge of aiding and abetting murder was dropped. Kueng is already serving a federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights, and the state and federal sentences will be served at the same time.

Kueng appeared at the hearing via video from a federal prison in Ohio. When given the chance to address the court, he declined.

With credit for time served and different parole guidelines in the state and federal systems, Kueng will likely serve a total of about 2 1/2 years behind bars.

Floyd’s family members had the right to make victim impact statements, but none did. Family attorney Ben Crump, who has taken on some of the nation’s most high-profile police killings of Black people, said in a statement before the hearing that Kueng’s sentencing “delivers yet another piece of justice for the Floyd family. ”

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Warnings on gay club shooter stir questions about old case

DENVER (AP) — A California woman who warned a judge last year about the danger posed by the suspect in the Colorado Springs gay nightclub shooting said Friday that the deaths could have been prevented if earlier charges against the suspect weren’t dismissed.

Jeanie Streltzoff — a relative of alleged shooter Anderson Lee Aldrich — urged Colorado Judge Robin Chittum in a letter last November to incarcerate the suspect following a 2021 standoff with SWAT teams that uncovered a stockpile of more than 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of explosive material, firearms and ammunition.

Aldrich should have been in prison at the time of the shooting and prevented from obtaining weapons, she told The Associated Press on Friday.

“Five people died,” Streltzoff said, hushing the final word. “Someone should have done something.”

Streltzoff blamed Aldrich’s grandmother and mother for dodging subpoenas that would have forced them to testify in the bomb threat case. But documents unsealed Thursday also raised questions about whether authorities were aggressive enough in their pursuit of a conviction or could have sought different charges when it became clear Aldrich’s mother, Laura Voepel, and grandparents Jonathan and Pamela Pullen wouldn’t testify.

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Pro-democracy media tycoon jailed over fraud in Hong Kong

HONG KONG (AP) — A pro-democracy media tycoon was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison over two fraud charges linked to lease violations in Hong Kong on Saturday, the latest of a series of cases against prominent activists that critics say are aimed at snuffing out dissidents in the city.

Jimmy Lai, who was arrested during a crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement following widespread protests in 2019 and under the National Security Law imposed by Beijing, was also fined 2 million Hong Kong dollars ($257,000).

His media company, Next Digital, published the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily. The publication was forced to close following the arrests of its top executives, editors and journalists last year.

In October, Lai was found guilty of fraud for subletting part of the office space to a secretarial firm, which was also controlled by him, between 2016 and 2020. The second fraud count was for letting the same firm use the media outlet’s office space in an alleged breach of lease agreements from 1998 to 2015.

The court at that time ruled the moves had violated lease agreements with the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corp. and Lai had hidden the fact that the company was occupying space in the building.

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New Peru president appears with military to cement power

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Peru’s first female president appeared in a military ceremony on national television on Friday in her first official event as head of state, an attempt to cement her hold on power and buck the national trend of early presidential departures.

In an indication of continued political rancor, some politicians already were calling for early elections, and more protests were planned.

Dina Boluarte was elevated from vice president to replace ousted leftist Pedro Castillo as the country’s leader Wednesday. She has said she should be allowed to hold the office for the remaining 3 1/2 years of his term.

Boularte addressed members of the armed forces during a ceremony marking a historic battle. Boularte, flanked by the leaders of the judiciary and Congress, sat among lawmakers who had tried to remove Castillo from office.

“Our nation is strong and secure thanks to the armed forces, the navy, the air force, and the army of Peru,” Boularte said before hundreds of members of the armed forces in Peru’s capital. “They give us the guarantee that we live in order, respecting the constitution, the rule of law, the balance of powers.”

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Soccer writer Grant Wahl dies at World Cup match in Qatar

LUSAIL, Qatar (AP) — Grant Wahl, one of the most well-known soccer writers in the United States, died early Saturday while covering the World Cup match between Argentina and the Netherlands.

U.S. media seated near him said Wahl fell back in his seat in the media tribune at Lusail Iconic Stadium during extra time and reporters adjacent to him called for assistance. Emergency services workers responded very quickly, the reporters said, and the reporters later were told that Wahl had died.

Wahl tweeted on Wednesday that he had celebrated his birthday that day. American reporters who knew Wahl said he was 49.

“We could always count on Grant to deliver insightful and entertaining stories about our game, and its major protagonists,” the U.S. Soccer Federation said in a statement. “Grant’s belief in the power of the game to advance human rights was, and will remain, an inspiration to all. Grant made soccer his life’s work, and we are devastated that he and his brilliant writing will no longer be with us.”

Wahl was covering his eighth World Cup. He wrote Monday on his website that he had visited a medical clinic while in Qatar.

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AP Investigation: Prison boss beat inmates, climbed ranks

The prison staff didn’t know much about the new acting warden. Then, they say, he made a bizarre and startling confession: Years ago, he beat inmates — and got away with it.

Thomas Ray Hinkle, a high-ranking federal Bureau of Prisons official, was sent to restore order and trust at a women’s prison wracked by a deplorable scandal. Instead, workers say, he left the federal lockup in Dublin, California, even more broken.

Staff saw Hinkle as a bully and regarded his presence there — just after allegations that the previous warden and other employees sexually assaulted inmates — as hypocrisy from an agency that was publicly pledging to end its abusive, corrupt culture.

So at a staff meeting in March, they confronted the then-director of the Bureau of Prisons and asked: Why, instead of firing Hinkle years ago, was the agency keen to keep promoting him?

“That’s something we’ve got to look into,” Michael Carvajal responded, according to people in the room.

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Kari Lake challenges her defeat in Arizona governor’s race

PHOENIX (AP) — Kari Lake, the Republican defeated in Arizona governor’s race, is formally challenging her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs, asking a court to throw out certified election results from the state’s most populous county and either declare her the winner or rerun the governor’s election in that county.

The lawsuit filed late Friday by Lake centers on long lines and other difficulties that people experienced while voting on Election Day in Maricopa County. The challenge filed in Maricopa County Superior Court also alleges hundreds of thousands of ballots were illegally cast, but there’s no evidence that’s true.

Lake has refused to acknowledge that she lost to Hobbs by more than 17,000 votes.

The Donald Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate has bombarded Maricopa County with complaints, largely related to a problem with printers at some vote centers that led to ballots being printed with markings that were too light to be read by the on-site tabulators.

Lines backed up in some polling places, fueling Republican suspicions that some supporters were unable to cast a ballot, though there’s no evidence it affected the outcome. County officials say everyone was able to vote and all legal ballots were counted.

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Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema switches to independent

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona announced Friday she has registered as an independent, a renegade move that could bolster her political brand but won’t upend the Democrats’ narrow Senate majority. She says she will not caucus with Republicans.

Sinema, who faces reelection in 2024, has been a vibrant yet often unpredictable force in the Senate, tending toward the state’s independent streak and frustrating Democratic colleagues at times with her overtures to Republicans and opposition to Democratic priorities.

“I just don’t fit well into a traditional party system,” Sinema she said in an interview Friday.

In the interview, Sinema said she hasn’t decided whether she will run for reelection. But she said this was the time to be “true to myself and true to the values of the Arizonans I represent.”

“I don’t expect anything to change for me,” she said. “This will just be a further affirmation of my style of working across all the political boundaries with anyone to try and get something done.”