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

Government moves migrant kids after AP exposes bad treatment

The U.S. government has removed most of the children from a remote Border Patrol station in Texas following reports that more than 300 children were detained there, caring for each other with inadequate food, water and sanitation.

Just 30 children remained at the station outside El Paso Monday, said Rep. Veronica Escobar after her office was briefed on the situation by an official with Customs and Border Protection.

Attorneys who visited Clint last week said older children were trying to take care of infants and toddlers, The Associated Press first reported Thursday. They described a 4-year-old with matted hair who had gone without a shower for days, and hungry, inconsolable children struggling to soothe one another. Some had been locked for three weeks inside the facility, where 15 children were sick with the flu and another 10 were in medical quarantine.

“How is it possible that you both were unaware of the inhumane conditions for children, especially tender-age children at the Clint Station?” asked Escobar in a letter sent Friday to U.S. Customs and Border Protection acting commissioner John Sanders and U.S. Border Patrol chief Carla Provost.

She asked to be informed by the end of this week what steps they’re taking to end “these humanitarian abuses.”

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4 border deaths in Texas could be a preview of the summer

Two babies, a toddler and a woman were found dead near the U.S.-Mexican border, overcome by the sweltering heat in a glimpse of what could lie ahead this summer as record numbers of migrant families try to get into the United States.

Authorities believe the four may have been dead for days before the bodies were discovered on Sunday in the Rio Grande Valley. No details were released on the victims’ relationship.

It was the latest grim discovery of migrants who died while trying to cross the perilous desert and the swollen Rio Grande.

A law enforcement official close to the investigation told The Associated Press the four were overcome by the heat after fording the river. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Migrant families have been coming over the border in unprecedented numbers in recent months, reaching a peak in May, when 84,000 adults and children travelling together were apprehended. Nearly 500,000 immigrants have been detained at the border since the start of the year, resulting in dangerous overcrowding in U.S. holding centres.

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AP Analysis: Trump moves show him to be unreliable partner

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision against military strikes may have prevented open military conflict with Iran, but it also showed him anew to be an unpredictable, unreliable, partner at home and abroad.

Trump won his job partly on his claims to be a great dealmaker. But the celebrity businessman-turned-president’s negotiating style — repeatedly pushing toward a brink only to pull back at the moment of action — leaves the U.S. lurching from crisis to crisis. On trade tariffs, immigration raids and now the standoff with Iran, his course reversals confound allies as well as adversaries, and his own party in Congress.

As fallout from Trump’s actions reverberated around the globe on Monday, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo jetted to the Middle East in search of a coalition of allies against Iran, the president offered a fresh round of equivocation, defending his decision not to attack Iran even while issuing new threats.

“I think a lot of restraint has been shown by us. A lot of restraint. And that doesn’t mean we’re going to show it in the future, but I felt that we want to give him this chance,” Trump said.

“We would love to be able to negotiate a deal if they want to. If they don’t want to that’s fine too.”

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Trump: Woman who accused him of sexual assault not his type

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Monday that a New York-based advice columnist who has accused him of sexually assaulting her in a New York City department store in the mid-1990s is not his “type.”

“I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened,” Trump told The Hill in an interview at the White House.

Writer E. Jean Carroll has claimed that a friendly encounter with Trump at Bergdorf Goodman in 1995 or 1996 turned violent when the real estate mogul pushed her up against a dressing room wall, unzipped his pants and forced himself on her. Carroll said that, in a “colossal struggle,” she pushed him off and ran from the store.

Trump told The Hill that Carroll is “totally lying” about the accusation, which he also denied earlier. “I know nothing about this woman. I know nothing about her,” he said. “She is — it’s just a terrible thing that people can make statements like that.”

The allegation against Trump is included in Carroll’s upcoming book about the “hideous men” the Elle magazine columnist says she has encountered throughout her life.

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Police release more than 1,000 files from Smollett probe

CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago police on Monday released more than 1,000 files from the investigation into Jussie Smollett’s claim he was attacked by two men, including video footage that for the first time shows the “Empire” actor with a thin, white rope wrapped around his neck that he told detectives was a noose.

The footage from body cameras worn by police officers who responded on Jan. 29 to what Smollett said was a racist and homophobic attack by two large men has Smollett’s face blurred out because, as police explained, he was considered a victim at that point. The footage shows officers walking into the apartment, where they encounter the actor wearing the rope, before one asks him, “Do you want to take it off or anything?”

“Yeah, I do. I just wanted you all to see it,” Smollett says before unwinding the rope, loosening it and placing it on the kitchen counter.

Police have said he told them the attackers wrapped the rope around his neck.

In all, police released nearly 1,200 different individual files on Monday, including thousands of pages of documents, arrest reports and handwritten notes from police. Added up, there is more than 90 hours of video, much of it hour after hour of surveillance cameras high above city streets.

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Driver with record charged with 7 homicides in biker crash

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The driver of a pickup truck in a fiery collision on a rural New Hampshire highway that killed seven motorcyclists was charged Monday with seven counts of negligent homicide, and records show he was stopped on suspicion of drunken driving last month and in 2013.

Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, 23, was arrested Monday morning at his home in West Springfield, Massachusetts, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office said. He will be arraigned Tuesday in Lancaster, New Hampshire, authorities said.

He was handed over to New Hampshire authorities after a brief court appearance Monday in Springfield, Massachusetts. Zhukovskyy looked down at his feet as he was led into the courtroom with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Connecticut prosecutors say he was arrested May 11 in an East Windsor Walmart parking lot after failing a sobriety test. Officers had responded to a complaint about a man who was revving his truck engine and jumping up and down outside the vehicle.

Zhukovskyy’s lawyer in that case, John O’Brien, said he denies being intoxicated and will fight the charge. Zhukovskyy refused to submit to a blood test, prosecutors said.

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Helsinki, Mueller shadowing upcoming Trump, Putin meeting

NEW YORK (AP) — The shadow of Helsinki lingers. Uncertainties about Russia’s past and future election interference continue. And tensions are high over hot spots from Iran to Venezuela.

When President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet this week on the sidelines of an international summit in Japan, it will mark a new chapter in a much scrutinized relationship that crackles with questions and contradictions. Even as Trump places a premium on establishing close personal ties with Putin, his government has increased sanctions and other pressures on Moscow.

The agenda remains a mystery, as still does the outcome of their last meeting, nearly a year ago in Finland.

“The whole world was watching in Helsinki when President Trump sided with Putin over his own intelligence community and we still, all this time later, don’t know what they discussed in their private meeting,” said Michael McFaul, U.S. ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama. “And now, I suspect, they will bond over the end of the Mueller probe and push the narrative, individually and together, that there was nothing there. It will feel like a vindication to them both.”

The Group of 20 summit in Osaka will be the leaders’ first meeting since special counsel Robert Mueller ended his investigation with no finding that the Trump campaign in 2016 conspired with Russia. That question long had shadowed Trump’s presidency.

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High court strikes down ‘scandalous’ part of trademark law

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court struck down a section of federal law Monday that prevented businesses from registering trademarks seen as scandalous or immoral, handing a victory to California fashion brand FUCT.

The high court ruled that the century-old provision is an unconstitutional restriction on speech. Between 2005 and 2015, the United States Patent and Trademark Office ultimately refused about 150 trademark applications a year as a result of the provision. Those who were turned away could still use the words they were seeking to register, but they didn’t get the benefits that come with trademark registration. Going after counterfeiters was also difficult as a result.

The Trump administration had defended the provision, arguing that it encouraged trademarks that are appropriate for all audiences.

The high court’s ruling means that the people and companies behind applications that previously failed as a result of the scandalous or immoral provision can re-submit them for approval. And new trademark applications cannot be refused on the grounds they are scandalous or immoral.

Justice Elena Kagan said in reading her majority opinion that the most fundamental principle of free speech law is that the government can’t penalize or discriminate against expression based on the ideas or viewpoints they convey. She said Lanham Act’s ban on “immoral or scandalous” trademarks does just that.

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Trump signs order that aims to reveal real health care costs

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday that calls for upfront disclosure by hospitals of actual prices for common tests and procedures to help keep costs down .

The idea is to give patients practical information that they can use to save money. For example, if a hospital charges your insurer $3,500 for a type of echocardiogram and the same test costs $550 in a doctor’s office, you might go for the lower-price procedure to save on copays.

But insurers said the idea could backfire, prompting hospitals that now give deeper discounts to try to raise their own negotiated prices to match what high earners are getting. Hospitals were skeptical of the move.

Trump’s order also requires that patients be told ahead of time what their out-of-pocket costs like deductibles and copays will be for many procedures.

Little will change right away. The executive order calls for a rule-making process by federal agencies, which typically takes months or even years. The details of what information will have to be disclosed and how it will be made available to patients must be worked out as part of writing the regulations. That will involve a complex give-and-take with hospitals, insurers and others affected.

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US in the World Cup quarterfinals after 2-1 win over Spain

REIMS, France (AP) — Spain tested the United States like no other team at the Women’s World Cup.

The U.S. looked disorganized at times facing Spain’s aggressive and physical style before pulling out a 2-1 victory Monday night.

It could have been just what the Americans needed: France is waiting.

Megan Rapinoe converted a pair of penalty kicks to set up the United States’ much-anticipated quarterfinal rendezvous with the hosts.

The tense match was knotted at 1 until Rapinoe’s second penalty put the defending champions ahead in the 75th minute.