Palestinians see victory in Gaza truce as Israel warns Hamas
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Palestinians rallied by the thousands Friday after a cease-fire took effect in the latest Gaza war, with many viewing it as a costly but clear victory for the Islamic militant group Hamas. Israel vowed to respond with a “new level of force” to further hostilities.
The 11-day war left more than 250 dead — the vast majority Palestinians — and brought widespread devastation to the already impoverished Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. But the rocket barrages that brought life to a standstill in much of Israel were seen by many Palestinians as a bold response to perceived Israeli abuses in Jerusalem, the emotional heart of the conflict.
Like the three previous wars, the latest round of fighting ended inconclusively.
Israel claimed it inflicted heavy damage on Hamas but once again was unable to halt the rockets. Even as it claims victory, Hamas faces the daunting challenge of rebuilding in a territory already suffering from high unemployment and a coronavirus outbreak, and from years of blockade by Egypt and Israel.
Infrastructure deal slips, GOP pans $1.7T White House offer
WASHINGTON — Prospects for an ambitious infrastructure deal were thrown into serious doubt late Friday after the White House reduced President Joe Biden’s sweeping proposal to $1.7 trillion but Republican senators rejected the compromise as disappointing, saying “vast differences” remain.
While talks have not collapsed, the downbeat assessment is certain to mean new worries from Democrats that time is slipping to strike a deal. The president’s team is holding to a soft Memorial Day deadline to determine whether a compromise is within reach. Skepticism had been rising on all sides over the lack of significant movement off Biden’s $2.3 trillion plan or the GOP’s proposed $568 billion alternative.
“This proposal exhibits a willingness to come down in size,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki, disclosing the new offer as talks were underway between key Cabinet secretaries and GOP senators at a crucial stage toward a deal.
But after the hourlong meeting, the Republicans quickly rejected the new approach as “well above the range” of a proposal that could win bipartisan support.
Biden, South Korea’s Moon ‘deeply concerned’ about North Korea
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Friday said he and South Korean President Moon Jae-in remain “deeply concerned” about the situation with North Korea, and announced he will deploy a new special envoy to the region to help refocus efforts on pressing Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
Moon, meanwhile, welcomed “America’s return” to the world stage and said both leaders pledged in their meeting to work closely toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Biden told a joint news conference with Moon that he was dispatching career diplomat Sung Kim, who previously served as ambassador to South Korea, to serve as the special envoy to the region. Moon said the move by Biden “reflects the firm commitment of the U.S. for exploring diplomacy and its readiness for dialogue with North Korea.”
Biden also announced that the U.S. would vaccinate 550,000 South Korean servicemembers who serve alongside U.S. forces on the peninsula.
This marks the first commitment by the Biden administration for what it plans to do with the 80 million vaccine doses it aims to distribute globally in the next six weeks. Biden has said he hopes to use domestically produced vaccines as a modern-day “arsenal of democracy,” a reference to the U.S. effort to arm allies in World War II. At the same time, the White House has pledged not to attach policy conditions to countries receiving the doses as global vaccine diplomacy heats up.
Actor Masterson must stand trial on three rape charges
LOS ANGELES — After three days of dramatic and often emotional testimony from three women who said “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson raped them nearly 20 years ago, a judge on Friday found that he must stand trial.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo ordered Masterson to trial on three counts of rape by force or fear, charges that could get him up to 45 years in prison.
She said she found the women’s testimony credible for the purposes of the preliminary hearing, where the bar for sufficient evidence is significantly lower than it will be at the forthcoming trial.
That trial will represent the rare prosecution of a Hollywood figure in the #MeToo era despite dozens of investigations by police and the Los Angeles district attorney, most of which have ended without charges.
Masterson, 45, has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers said they would prove his innocence, and during the hearing repeatedly challenged the women on discrepancies in stories they alleged the accusers had coordinated in the years since their alleged rapes. The lawyers said the age of the incidents, which date from 2001 and 2003, made accurate memories impossible.
Shackled Black man ordered facedown in deadly arrest
NEW ORLEANS — Beaten and shackled by Louisiana state troopers, Black motorist Ronald Greene desperately tried to roll over in what may have been a struggle to breathe but was ordered to stay on his belly, according to body-camera video newly obtained by The Associated Press.
And the long-secret autopsy report, also newly secured, cited Greene’s head injuries and the way he was restrained as factors in his 2019 death. It also noted he had high levels of cocaine and alcohol in his system as well as a broken breastbone and a torn aorta.
“I beat the ever-living f—- out of him, choked him and everything else trying to get him under control,” Trooper Chris Hollingsworth can be heard telling a fellow officer in the newly obtained batch of video. “All of a sudden he just went limp. … I thought he was dead.”
“You all got that on bodycam?” the other officer asks over the phone, at which point Hollingsworth switches his camera off.
The footage and the autopsy report add to the growing wealth of details about Greene’s death, which has long been surrounded by allegations of a cover-up and is now the subject of a federal civil rights investigation.
Epstein guards to skirt jail time in deal with prosecutors
WASHINGTON — The two Bureau of Prisons workers tasked with guarding Jeffrey Epstein the night he killed himself in a New York jail have admitted they falsified records, but they will skirt any time behind bars under a deal with federal prosecutors, authorities said Friday.
The prison workers, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, were accused of sleeping and browsing the internet instead of monitoring Epstein the night he took his own life in August 2019.
They were charged with lying on prison records to make it seem as though they had made required checks on the financier before he was found in his cell. New York City’s medical examiner ruled Epstein’s death a suicide.
As part of the deal with prosecutors, they will enter into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department and will serve no time behind bars, according to a letter from federal prosecutors that was filed in court papers Friday. Noel and Thomas would instead be subjected to supervised release, would be required to complete 100 hours of community service and would be required to fully cooperate with an ongoing probe by the Justice Department’s inspector general, it says.
The two have “admitted that they ‘willfully and knowingly completed materially false count and round slips regarding required counts and rounds’” in the housing unit where Epstein was being held, the letter says.
By wire sources