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

‘Bogus’ Ukraine theory led to Trump’s abuse, Dems tell trial

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic House prosecutors made an expansive case Thursday at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial that he abused power like no other president in history, swept up by a “completely bogus” Ukraine theory pushed by attorney Rudy Giuliani.

On Friday, the Democrats will press their final day of arguments before skeptical Republican senators, focusing on the second article of impeachment, obstruction of Congress’ investigation.

As the audience of Senate jurors sat through another long day, and night, the prosecutors outlined how they said Trump abused power for his own personal political benefit ahead of the 2020 election, even as the nation’s top FBI and national security officials were publicly warning off the theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election.

“That’s what Donald Trump wanted investigated or announced — this completely bogus Kremlin-pushed conspiracy theory,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who is leading the prosecution, during Thursday’s session, which wrapped around 10:30 p.m. ET.

Trump is accused of seeking the Ukrainian investigation — and probes of political foe Joe Biden and Biden’s son — while holding back congressionally approved military aid as leverage. Schiff said, “You can imagine what a danger that presents to this country.”

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Trial highlights: Conspiracy theories and fidget spinners

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats argued that President Donald Trump sought a phoney investigation of a political rival and pursued a discredited conspiracy theory about Ukraine, while restless senators played with a new toy Thursday during Trump’s impeachment trial.

Highlights of Thursday’s session , which wrapped around 10:30 p.m. ET, and what’s ahead as senators conduct just the third impeachment trial of a president:

‘POLITICAL’ INVESTIGATION

Pressing their case for a second day, Democrats said there was no evidence that former Vice-President Joe Biden did anything improper in dealings with Ukraine. Rebutting a central Trump claim, Democrats said the president sought a political investigation of Biden by Ukraine to sway the 2020 election in his favour.

“There was no basis for the investigation the president was pursuing and pushing. None. He was doing it only for his own political benefit,” said Rep. Sylvia Garcia of Texas, a Democratic prosecutor.

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China expands lockdowns to 25M people to halt viral outbreak

BEIJING (AP) — China broadened its unprecedented, open-ended lockdowns to encompass around 25 million people Friday to try to contain a deadly new virus that has sickened hundreds, though the measures’ potential for success is uncertain.

At least eight cities have been shut down —- Wuhan, Ezhou, Huanggang, Chibi, Qianjiang, Zhijiang, Jingmen and Xiantao — all in central China’s Hubei province, where the illness has been concentrated.

In Wuhan, where the lockdown began early Thursday, normally bustling streets, malls and other public spaces were eerily quiet. Masks were mandatory in public. Train stations, the airport and subways were closed; police checked incoming vehicles but did not close off roads.

The seven other cities under lockdown as of Friday morning are near Wuhan, but authorities were taking precautions around the country. In the capital, Beijing, major public events were cancelled indefinitely, including traditional temple fairs that are a staple of Lunar New Year celebrations. The Forbidden City, the palace complex in Beijing, announced it will close indefinitely on Saturday.

The number of confirmed cases of the new coronavirus rose to 830 with 25 deaths, the National Health Commission said Friday morning. The first death was also confirmed outside Hubei. The health commission in Hebei, a northern province bordering Beijing, said an 80-year-old man died after returning from a two-month stay in Wuhan to see relatives.

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Ex-pharmaceutical exec gets 5 1/2 years for pushing opioid

BOSTON (AP) — The founder of an Arizona pharmaceutical company was ordered to spend 5 1/2 years in prison Thursday for orchestrating a bribery and kickback scheme prosecutors said helped fuel the opioid crisis.

John Kapoor, 76, the former chairman of Insys Therapeutics, was sentenced in Boston’s federal court after a jury found him guilty of racketeering conspiracy last May. The 10-week trial revealed sensational details about the company’s marketing tactics, including testimony that a sales executive once gave a lap dance to a doctor the company was wooing.

Kapoor was also ordered to pay a $250,000 fine, the maximum under sentencing guidelines.

He and others were accused of paying millions of dollars in bribes to doctors across the United States to prescribe the company’s highly addictive oral fentanyl spray, known as Subsys. The bribes were paid in the form of fees for sham speaking engagements that were billed as educational opportunities for other doctors.

The company was also accused of misleading insurers to get payment approved for the drug, which is meant to treat cancer patients in severe pain and can cost as much as $19,000 a month.

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Trump vs. Bloomberg: Fortunes collide in pricey knife fight

NEW YORK (AP) — They are circling each other like wary boxers, with taunts on Twitter, snarky asides and belittling descriptions. They rose to prominence in Manhattan on parallel tracks, amassed wealth real and perceived and displayed a penchant for putting their names on things.

That’s where the similarities end. President Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg could hardly be more different as people, but now they both want the same job: Trump’s.

Bloomberg is making the case that he is many things that Trump is not: a builder of a financial data and media company that employs 20,000 people, a billionaire whose worth Forbes estimates at $60 billion, a problem-solver with a steady temperament who was elected three times as mayor of the nation’s largest city, one of the world’s leading philanthropists.

“Bloomberg is someone Trump would have liked to have been: to have invented something everyone uses, to have real wealth, to be seen as a creative person. Trump had to create an image for himself,” said George Arzt, onetime press secretary to former New York Mayor Ed Koch. Arzt knows both men professionally and personally.

He said Bloomberg is someone who likes to solve problems, who likes to be hands-on, even including the design of new Department of Sanitation trucks, while Trump is “basically a showman.” Arzt added that Trump always sought the limelight while Bloomberg shied away from it until he ran for mayor.

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‘Sopranos’ actress says Weinstein raped her in the mid-1990s

NEW YORK (AP) — “Sopranos” actress Annabella Sciorra confronted Harvey Weinstein from the witness stand Thursday, testifying that the former Hollywood studio boss overpowered and raped her and made other crude overtures that included sending her X-rated chocolates and showing up uninvited in his underwear with a bottle of baby oil in one hand and a video in the other.

In a quivering voice, Sciorra told the jury that the burly Weinstein barged into her apartment in the mid-1990s, threw her on a bed and forced himself on her as she tried to fight him off by kicking and punching him.

She said that roughly a month later, she ran into him and confronted him about what happened, and he replied: “That’s what all the nice Catholic girls say.”

Then, she told the jury, Weinstein leaned toward her and added menacingly: “This remains between you and I.”

“His eyes went black and I thought he was going to hit me right there,” Sciorra testified.

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Questions linger over investigation into Jeff Bezos’ hacking

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Cybersecurity experts said Thursday there were still many unanswered questions from an investigation commissioned by Jeff Bezos that concluded the billionaire’s cellphone was hacked, apparently after receiving a video file with malicious spyware from the WhatsApp account of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince.

The experts said the evidence in the privately commissioned report does not show with certainty that Bezos’ phone was actually hacked, much less how it was compromised or what kind of malware was used.

The report on the investigation, which was managed by FTI Consulting and overseen by Anthony Ferrante, a former head of the FBI’s Cyber Division, was made public Wednesday.

In it, investigators said a digital forensic review concluded with “medium to high confidence” that Bezos’ phone was compromised via malware sent from a WhatsApp account used by Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Two U.N. experts issued their own take on the report’s findings, calling on the U.S. to investigate further. They said it appeared the Amazon founder may have been targeted because of his ownership of The Washington Post, which was publishing reports critical of the crown prince by columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

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Over 100 state lawmakers accused of misconduct in 3 years

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — State lawmakers across the U.S. have reached a troubling milestone for allegations of sexual misconduct, even as they have taken significant steps to try to prevent and investigate such behaviour.

Recent complaints filed against Michigan state Sen. Peter Lucido mean at least 101 state legislators now have been publicly accused of sexual harassment or misconduct since the start of 2017, according to an Associated Press review.

That tally has continued to grow, despite the fact that the vast majority of state legislative chambers now require lawmakers to undergo training about sexual harassment, the AP review found.

“Training doesn’t guarantee that harassment will stop,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

The AP review found mixed indications of progress and problems as the #MeToo movement enters its third legislative year. Over the past two years, states have enacted more than 75 laws and resolutions targeting sexual harassment, abuse and assault within government or the private sector.

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Islamic leaders make ‘groundbreaking’ visit to Auschwitz

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Muslim religious leaders joined members of a U.S. Jewish group at Auschwitz on Thursday for what organizers described as “the most senior Islamic leadership delegation” to visit the site of a Nazi German death camp.

The interfaith visit came four days before the 75th anniversary of the camp’s Jan. 27, 1945, liberation by Soviet forces and as world leaders gathered in Jerusalem to commemorate the Holocaust.

The secretary general of the Muslim World League, Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, and the CEO of the American Jewish Committee, David Harris, led the tour to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial in Poland. The Nazis operated extermination and concentration camps in Poland when Germany occupied the country during World War II.

The American Jewish Committee said that Al-Issa, who is based in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, led a delegation of 62 Muslims, including 25 prominent religious leaders, from some 28 countries during the “groundbreaking” visit. At one point, they prayed with their heads pressed on the ground at Birkenau, the largest part of the camp and the most notorious site of Germany’s mass murder of European Jews.

The AJC delegation included members of the organization, among them children of Holocaust survivors.

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‘NewsHour’ host and debate moderator Jim Lehrer dies at 85

NEW YORK (AP) — Jim Lehrer, longtime host of the nightly PBS “NewsHour” whose serious, sober demeanour made him the choice to moderate 11 presidential debates between 1988 and 2012, has died, PBS said Thursday. He was 85.

Lehrer died “peacefully in his sleep,” according to PBS. He had suffered a heart attack in 1983 and more recently, had undergone heart valve surgery in April 2008.

For Lehrer, and for his friend and longtime partner Robert MacNeil, broadcast journalism was a service, with public understanding of events and issues its primary goal.

“We both believed the American people were not as stupid as some of the folks publishing and programming for them believed,” Lehrer wrote in his 1992 memoir, “A Bus of My Own.”

“We were convinced they cared about the significant matters of human events. … And we were certain they could and would hang in there more than 35 seconds for information about those subjects if given a chance.”