AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT
In race against clock, expanding fleet of ships searches for submersible lost near Titanic wreck
In a race against the clock on the high seas, an expanding international armada of ships and airplanes searched Tuesday for a submersible that vanished in the North Atlantic while taking five people down to the wreck of the Titanic.
U.S. Coast Guard officials said the search covered 10,000 square miles (26,000 square kilometers) but turned up no sign of the lost sub known as the Titan. Although rescuers planned to continue looking, time was running out because the vessel would have less than two days of oxygen left if it is still intact and functioning.
“This is a very complex search, and the unified team is working around the clock,” Cpt. Jamie Frederick of the First Coast Guard District in Boston told a news conference.
Frederick said the crew would have no more than about 41 hours of oxygen remaining as of midday Tuesday. That means its air supply could run out Thursday morning.
He added that an underwater robot had started searching in the vicinity of the Titanic and that there was a push to get salvage equipment to the scene in case the sub is found.
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Trump’s penchant for talking could pose problems as Mar-a-Lago criminal case moves ahead
WASHINGTON (AP) — Criminal defendants are routinely advised to avoid commenting on pending charges against them. But Donald Trump, the former president and current White House hopeful, is no ordinary defendant.
In his first televised interview since his arraignment last week on federal charges, the former president acknowledged that he delayed turning over boxes of documents despite being asked to do so, drew factually incorrect parallels between his case and classified document probes concerning other politicians, and claimed he didn’t actually have a Pentagon attack plan that the indictment says he boasted about to others.
Those comments — like any remarks made by a defendant about an ongoing case — could complicate his lawyers’ work, potentially precluding defenses they might have otherwise wanted to make or alternately boxing them into certain arguments so as to remain consistent with their clients’ claims. The interview could give the Justice Department compelling, and admissible, insight into Trump’s state of mind as the case moves forward, allowing prosecutors to preemptively attack defenses he might intend to invoke.
“If my client went on TV and said everything that he said, I might have fainted,” said Jeffrey Jacobovitz, a Washington criminal defense lawyer.
The interview with Fox News aired just hours after a federal magistrate judge granted a Justice Department request for a protective order in the case that would prevent the public disclosure of evidence provided to the Trump team through the information-sharing process known as discovery, though nothing said in the interview would seem to have run afoul of that directive.
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What to know about Hunter Biden’s plea deal in federal tax and gun case
The announcement that federal prosecutors have reached a plea deal with President Joe Biden’s son Hunter over tax and gun charges marks the likely end of a five-year Justice Department investigation that has dogged the Biden family.
It doesn’t, however, mean that congressional Republicans are done with their own wide-ranging probe into nearly every facet of Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including examining foreign payments and other aspects of his finances.
Some of the Republican candidates hoping to face off against President Biden in the 2024 election are decrying the deal as evidence of an unfair justice system, particularly in light of the recent federal indictment of GOP front-runner Donald Trump, though there are obvious differences between the two cases.
Here’s what to know about the charges, plea agreement, other probes involving the president’s son and the politics:
WHAT ARE THE CHARGES?
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Judge rules Arkansas ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors violates US Constitution
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A federal judge struck down Arkansas’ first-in-the-nation ban on gender-affirming care for children as unconstitutional Tuesday, the first ruling to overturn such a prohibition as a growing number of Republican-led states adopt similar restrictions.
U.S. District Judge Jay Moody issued a permanent injunction against the Arkansas law, which would have prohibited doctors from providing gender-affirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18.
Arkansas’ law, which Moody temporarily blocked in 2021, also would have prohibited doctors from referring patients elsewhere for such care. At least 19 other states have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming care for minors following Arkansas’ law, and nearly all of them have been challenged in court.
In his order, Moody ruled that the prohibition violated the due process and equal protection rights of transgender youth and families. He said the law also violated the First Amendment rights of medical providers.
“Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics, the evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that, by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing,” Moody wrote in his ruling.
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Pentagon accounting error provides extra $6.2 billion for Ukraine military aid
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon said Tuesday that it overestimated the value of the weapons it has sent to Ukraine by $6.2 billion over the past two years — about double early estimates — resulting in a surplus that will be used for future security packages.
Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said a detailed review of the accounting error found that the military services used replacement costs rather than the book value of equipment that was pulled from Pentagon stocks and sent to Ukraine. She said final calculations show there was an error of $3.6 billion in the current fiscal year and $2.6 billion in the 2022 fiscal year, which ended last Sept. 30.
As a result, the department now has additional money in its coffers to use to support Ukraine as it pursues its counteroffensive against Russia. And it come as the fiscal year is wrapping up and congressional funding was beginning to dwindle.
“It’s just going to go back into the pot of money that we have allocated” for the future Pentagon stock drawdowns,” said Singh.
The revelation comes as Ukraine moves ahead with the early stages its counteroffensive, in an effort to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from territory they’ve occupied since a full-scale invasion in February 2022. The counteroffensive has come up against heavily mined terrain and reinforced defensive fortifications, according to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces.
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Sweltering heat tests Texas’ power grid and patience as thousands in South still without electricity
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas’ power grid operator asked residents Tuesday to voluntarily cut back on electricity due to anticipated record demand on the system as a heat wave kept large swaths of the state and southern U.S. in triple-digit temperatures.
On the last day of spring, the sweltering heat felt more like the middle of summer across the South, where patience was growing thin over outages that have persisted since weekend storms and tornadoes caused widespread damage.
In the Mississippi capital, some residents said Tuesday that they had been without power and air conditioning for almost 100 hours, which is longer than the outages caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Entergy Mississippi, the state’s largest electric utility, said its crews had worked 16-hour shifts since Friday, but some officials expressed doubts about its preparedness.
High temperatures in the state were expected to reach 90 degrees (32 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday.
“The delay in restoring power has caused significant hardship for their customers and it is unacceptable,” said Brent Bailey, a member on the Mississippi Public Service Commission, the state’s energy regulator.
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Utah school district returns the Bible to shelves after appeals and outcry
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Bibles will return to the shelves in a northern Utah school district that provoked an outcry after it banned them from middle and elementary schools last month.
Officials from the Davis School District, which educates 72,000 students north of Salt Lake City, said at a board meeting Tuesday that the district had determined the sacred text was age-appropriate for all district libraries. In allowing the Bible to be accessible to students regardless of their grade level, the board sided with 70 people who filed appeals after it was banned last month.
“Based on their assessment of community standards, the appeal committee determined that The Bible has significant, serious value for minors which outweighs the violent or vulgar content it contains,” the committee wrote in a decision published along with school board materials.
The committee’s reversal is the latest development in the debate over a Utah law allowing parents to challenge “sensitive materials” available to children in public schools. Parents’ rights activists successfully lobbied for the legislation in 2022 amid a wave of new laws targeting the materials accessible in schools and libraries — particularly about race, gender and sexuality.
In statehouses from Florida to Arkansas, Republicans have enacted laws that expand parents’ power to challenge what is available in schools and libraries and, in some places, subject librarians to criminal penalties for providing materials deemed harmful to minors. The legislative effort is one prong of growing push to ban certain titles; the number of attempts to ban or restrict books across the U.S. in 2022 was the highest in the 20 years, according to the American Library Association.
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Supreme Court turns away veterans who seek disability benefits over 1966 hydrogen bomb accident
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal on behalf of some U.S. veterans who want disability benefits because they were exposed to radiation while responding to a Cold War-era hydrogen bomb accident in Spain.
The justices not did comment in turning away an appeal from Victor Skaar, an Air Force veteran in his mid-80s.
Skaar, of Nixa, Missouri, filed class-action claims seeking benefits for him and others who say they became ill from exposure to radiation during the recovery and cleanup of the undetonated bombs at the accident site in Palomares, a village in southern Spain, in 1966.
A federal appeals court rejected the class-action claims. The Supreme Court’s action leaves that ruling in place.
The Justice Department, arguing against high-court review, noted that Congress last year enacted legislation that expands eligibility for benefits for many Palomares veterans. But the department also acknowledged that Skaar is not covered by the legislation.
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What it’s like to get a Wes Anderson education, from ‘Rushmore’ to ‘Asteroid City’
NEW YORK (AP) — When Tony Revolori, then a 17-year-old with little Hollywood experience, was beginning to shoot Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Jason Schwartzman took him aside to give some advice.
No one knew better than Schwartzman what Revolori, who was starring alongside Ralph Fiennes, was in for. Schwartzman was by then a regular member of Anderson’s troupe, but he was also 17 when he first broke through as Max Fischer in Anderson’s “Rushmore.”
“He looked at me and he said, ‘None of this is going to make sense until you’ve actually gone through it,’” Revolori recalls. “Your life is going to change in no way and every way. But as long as you keep the people around you, you’re good.’”
Much has been made of Anderson’s recurring regulars, like Bill Murray, Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson. But for many young actors, Anderson’s film sets have been their first real blush with moviemaking — or, at least, Anderson’s elegant style of it.
Since “Rushmore” introduced Schwartzman, Anderson’s films have been nurturing, if surreal, environments for young performers and a singular rite of passage. Anderson’s productions are atypically communal, with nightly feasts among cast and crew, and a spirit that can resemble summer camp. For young actors, it can be a thrilling education.
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How you water the garden can save you money, gallons and your plants, too
Until I installed soaker hoses throughout my vegetable beds this year, I’d always watered my plants by hand, which over the years had become tiresome.
Standing outside holding a garden hose wasn’t exactly my idea of a good time, but it directs water precisely to the soil above roots, making sure it lands where it’s needed. That eliminates waste, and goes a long way toward preventing diseases like powdery mildew. That’s good for plants, the environment and the water bill.
Placing flexible, porous rubber or fabric soaker hoses on the soil around plants is another preferred way to irrigate, as it allows water to seep slowly over roots. Drip irrigation hoses (rigid tubes with emitter holes that drip or stream water) work similarly.
There are plenty of other easy ways to save water around the garden.
Applying water in the morning, for instance, allows time for it to permeate deeply into the soil before the sun gets too hot. Wait until later in the day, and a good portion of that water will evaporate from the soil surface before doing its job. Later still, and moisture could stick around overnight, risking mold, mildew and fungal diseases.
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