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

Ex-FBI informant charged with lying about Bidens had Russian intelligence contacts, prosecutors say

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A former FBI informant charged with making up a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company had contacts with Russian intelligence-affiliated officials, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Prosecutors revealed the alleged contact as they urged a judge in Las Vegas to keep Alexander Smirnov behind bars while he awaits trial. But U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel Albregts allowed Smirnov to be released from custody on electronic GPS monitoring.

He is accused of falsely telling his FBI handler that executives with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each around 2015 — a claim that became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.

Smirnov, 43, hid his face and did not speak to reporters Tuesday night when he walked out of the courthouse with his lawyers and girlfriend at his side. He wore a GPS monitor on his left ankle and had changed into street clothes and out of the yellow jail garb he had worn in court.

Defense attorney David Chesnoff said he looks forward to defending Smirnov at trial.

___

2 men are charged with murder in the deadly shooting at Kansas City’s Super Bowl celebration

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Two men charged with murder in last week’s shooting after the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade were strangers who pulled out guns and began firing within seconds of starting an argument, according to court documents released Tuesday.

Missouri prosecutors said at a news conference that Lyndell Mays, of Raytown, Missouri, and Dominic Miller, of Kansas City, Missouri, have been charged with second-degree murder and several weapons counts in the shooting that left one person dead and roughly two dozen others injured.

Both men were shot during the melee, according to probable cause affidavits. Both have been hospitalized since, Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said during a news conference.

The argument began when two groups of people grew agitated over the belief that people in the other group were staring at them, according to affidavits from police. Surveillance video shows Mays and someone with him aggressively approached the other group, police say.

The video showed Mays was the first to begin shooting despite being surrounded by crowds of people, including children, according to one of the affidavits.

___

Food deliveries into northern Gaza are halted because of the war’s chaos, increasing famine risk

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The World Food Program said Tuesday it has paused deliveries of food to isolated northern Gaza because of increasing chaos across the territory, hiking fears of potential starvation. A study by the U.N. children’s agency warned that one in six children in the north are acutely malnourished.

Entry of aid trucks into the besieged territory has been more than halved in the past two weeks, according to U.N. figures. Overwhelmed U.N. and relief workers said intake of trucks and distribution have been crippled by Israeli failure to ensure convoys’ safety amid its bombardment and ground offensive and by a breakdown in security, with hungry Palestinians frequently overwhelming trucks to take food.

The weakening of the aid operation threatens to deepen misery across the territory, where Israel’s air and ground offensive, launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, has killed over 29,000 Palestinians, obliterated entire neighborhoods and displaced more than 80% of the population of 2.3 million.

Heavy fighting and airstrikes have flared in the past two days in areas of northern Gaza that the Israeli military said had been largely cleared of Hamas weeks ago. The military on Tuesday ordered the evacuation of two neighborhoods on Gaza City’s southern edge, an indication that militants are still putting up stiff resistance.

The north, including Gaza City, has been isolated since Israeli troops first moved into it in late October. Large swaths of the city have been reduced to rubble, but several hundred thousand Palestinians remain largely cut off from aid.

___

The Supreme Court leaves in place the admissions plan at an elite Virginia public high school

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday left in place the admissions policy at an elite public high school in Virginia that some parents claimed discriminates against highly qualified Asian Americans.

The court’s order, over the dissent of Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, ended a legal challenge to a policy that was overhauled in 2020 to increase diversity, without taking race into account.

A panel of the federal appeals court in Richmond had earlier upheld the constitutionality of the admissions policy at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a school frequently cited among the best in the nation.

The high court’s consideration of the case followed its decision in June that struck down admissions policies at colleges and universities that took account of the race of applicants.

The Fairfax County School Board overhauled the Thomas Jefferson admissions process in 2020, scrapping a standardized test. The new policy gives weight in favor of applicants who are economically disadvantaged or still learning English, but it does not take race into account.

___

Nikki Haley hasn’t yet won a GOP contest. But she’s vowing to keep fighting Donald Trump

GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — There are no wins on the horizon for Nikki Haley.

Those close to the former United Nations ambassador, the last major Republican candidate standing in Donald Trump’s path to the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, are privately bracing for a blowout loss in her home state’s primary election in South Carolina on Saturday. And they cannot name a state where she is likely to beat Trump in the coming weeks.

But in an emotional address on Tuesday, Haley declared, “I refuse to quit.”

And in an interview, she vowed to stay in the fight against Trump at least until after Super Tuesday’s slate of more than a dozen contests on March 5 — even if she suffers a big loss in her home state Saturday.

“Ten days after South Carolina, another 20 states vote. I mean, this isn’t Russia. We don’t want someone to go in and just get 99% of the vote,” Haley told The Associated Press. “What is the rush? Why is everybody so panicked about me having to get out of this race?”

___

Divers find body in Texas river of Audrii Cunningham, 11-year-old girl missing since last week

Divers have recovered the body of 11-year-old Audrii Cunningham from a Texas river days after the girl went missing, and authorities are preparing to file a murder charge against a friend of her father who lived on her family’s property, a sheriff said Tuesday afternoon.

Polk County Sheriff Byron Lyons said Audrii’s body was found by divers during a search in the Trinity River in a rural area north of Houston. Her body was located about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from her home near Lake Livingston.

“My heart aches with this news,” Lyons said.

Audrii’s family had reported her missing on Thursday after she failed to return after school to her home in Livingston. After she was reported missing, investigators discovered that she never got on the bus to go to school that morning.

Polk County District Attorney Shelly Sitton said officials were preparing an arrest warrant for Don Steven McDougal, 42, on a recommended charge of capital murder. She said they do not yet know if they would seek the death penalty in the case.

___

YouTube mom Ruby Franke apologizes at sentencing in child abuse case

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Ruby Franke, a Utah mother of six who gave parenting advice to millions via a once-popular a YouTube channel, shared a tearful apology to her children for physically and emotionally abusing them before a judge delivered a sentence that could put her in prison for years, if not decades.

Franke also claimed that she had been “manipulated” by her fellow YouTuber and business partner.

Franke told the judge that she would not argue for a shorter sentence before she stood to thank local police officers, doctors and social workers for being the “angels” who saved her children from her at a time when she says she was under the influence of her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt. The Utah mental health counselor, who had been hired to work with Franke’s youngest son before going into business with her, also received four consecutive prison sentences of one to 15 years.

However, the women will only serve up to 30 years in prison due to a Utah state law that caps the sentence duration for consecutive penalties. The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole will consider their behavior while incarcerated and determine how much of that time each will spend behind bars.

“I’ll never stop crying for hurting your tender souls,” Franke said to her children, who were not present at the sentencing hearing in St. George. “My willingness to sacrifice all for you was masterfully manipulated into something very ugly. I took from you all that was soft and safe and good.”

___

Alabama Supreme Court rules frozen embryos are ‘children’ under state law

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law, a decision critics said could have sweeping implications for fertility treatment in the state.

The decision was issued in a pair of wrongful death cases brought by three couples who had frozen embryos destroyed in an accident at a fertility clinic. Justices, citing anti-abortion language in the Alabama Constitution, ruled that an 1872 state law allowing parents to sue over the death of a minor child “applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.”

“Unborn children are ‘children’ … without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics,” Justice Jay Mitchell wrote in Friday’s majority ruling by the all-Republican court.

Mitchell said the court had previously ruled that fetuses killed while a woman is pregnant are covered under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act and nothing excludes “extrauterine children from the Act’s coverage.”

The ruling brought a rush of warnings about the potential impact on fertility treatments and the freezing of embryos, which had previously been considered property by the courts.

___

WikiLeaks founder Assange faces his last legal roll of the dice in Britain to avoid US extradition

LONDON (AP) — Julian Assange’s lawyers opened a final U.K. legal challenge Tuesday to stop the WikiLeaks founder from being sent to the United States to face spying charges, arguing that American authorities are seeking to punish him for exposing serious criminal acts by the U.S. government.

Lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said Assange may “suffer a flagrant denial of justice” if he is sent to the U.S. At a two-day High Court hearing, Assange’s attorneys are asking judges to grant a new appeal, his last legal roll of the dice in Britain.

Assange himself was not in court. Judge Victoria Sharp said he was granted permission to come from Belmarsh Prison for the hearing, but had chosen not to attend. Fitzgerald said the 52-year-old Australian was unwell.

Stella Assange, his wife, said Julian had wanted to attend, but that his health was “not in good condition.”

“He was sick over Christmas, he’s had a cough since then,” she told The Associated Press. She said The WikiLeaks founder was following proceedings through his lawyers.

___

Americans’ reliance on credit cards is the key to Capital One’s bid for Discover

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans have become increasingly reliant on their credit cards since the pandemic. So much so that Capital One is willing to bet more than $30 billion that they won’t break the habit.

Capital One Financial announced Monday that it would buy Discover Financial Services for $35 billion. The combination could potentially shake up the payments industry, which is largely dominated by Visa and Mastercard.

For customers of the companies, it might eventually mean bigger perks and more merchant acceptance of Discover cards, and potentially lead to more competition in the payments industry. But most of the benefits will be going to the companies themselves, as well as the merchants who accept these cards.

Some of the biggest issuers of credit cards are banks, like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. But Capital One and Discover are first and foremost credit card companies — like American Express, but with different clientele. They have tens of millions of customers and target their products at Americans who do not travel heavily outside the U.S. and would like to get more value out of their everyday purchases like gas, groceries and domestic travel. In other words, people who typically don’t carry premium credit cards.

The combined company will have more loans to customers on its credit cards than JPMorgan and Citigroup combined. The merger also gives the Discover network the ability to fight on more equal footing with Mastercard and American Express in a way that it simply hasn’t been able to in its 40-year history.