AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
Prosecutors abandon criminal case against Jussie Smollett
CHICAGO (AP) - Infuriating Chicago's mayor and police chief, prosecutors abruptly dropped all charges against Jussie Smollett on Tuesday after the "Empire" actor accused of faking a racist, anti-guy attack on himself agreed to do volunteer service and to let the city keep his $10,000 in bail.
Authorities gave no detailed explanation for why they abandoned the case only five weeks after filing the charges and threatening to pursue Smollett for the cost of a monthlong investigation. Prosecutors said they still believe Smollett concocted the assault.
The dismissal drew an immediate backlash. Emanuel called the deal "a whitewash of justice" and lashed out at Smollett for dragging the city's reputation "through the mud" in a quest to advance his career. At one point he asked, "Is there no decency in this man?"
Smollett's attorneys said his record was "wiped clean" of the 16 felony counts related to making a false report that he was assaulted by two men. The actor insisted that he had "been truthful and consistent on every single level since day one."
"I would not be my mother's son if I was capable of one drop of what I was being accused of," he told reporters after a court hearing. He thanked the state of Illinois "for attempting to do what's right."
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Trump border emergency survives as House veto override fails
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Democratic-led House failed Tuesday to override President Donald Trump's first veto, salvaging his effort to steer billions of extra dollars to erecting border barriers and delivering a victory to the White House in a constitutional and political clash that's raged for months.
Lawmakers voted 248-181 to overturn Trump's veto, but that fell 38 votes shy of the required two-thirds margin. Just days after Attorney General William Barr announced that special counsel Robert Mueller had found Trump didn't scheme with Russia to help his 2016 election, Tuesday's vote bolstered Trump's drive to build a wall along the boundary with Mexico, a hallmark of his 2016 presidential campaign and a priority of his presidency.
While clearly a defeat for Democrats, the vote afforded them a chance to reemphasize policy differences with Trump and change the subject from collusion allegations that have lost political clout. Underscoring that, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi placed her name atop a House Democratic fundraising email referencing the failed veto override, writing, "I know grassroots Democrats won't let Trump's enablers get away with this."
Just 14 Republicans joined all voting Democrats in Tuesday's futile effort to void Trump's declaration of a national emergency at the Southwest border.
By invoking that power, Trump has said he will shift $3.6 billion from military construction to erecting barriers along that boundary. Congress has voted to provide less than $1.4 billion for border barriers, leaving Democrats and some Republicans fuming that Trump is abusing his powers by ignoring Congress' constitutional control over spending.
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Israel bolsters forces as Gaza calm holds
JERUSALEM (AP) - The Israeli army on Tuesday said it was bolstering its forces along the Gaza frontier, even as a fragile truce with the territory's Hamas rulers appeared to hold following an overnight exchange of heavy fire.
Israel's military chief, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, ordered the troop buildup after consultations with security officials and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had rushed back to Israel from a trip to Washington to deal with the crisis. Late Tuesday, a rocket fired from Gaza set off air-raid sirens in southern Israel, shattering a day-long lull and threatening the tenuous cease-fire announced by Hamas.
Following a meeting with President Donald Trump, Netanyahu was forced to cancel a planned address to the AIPAC pro-Israel lobbying group and return to Israel. Addressing the group by satellite, he said that over the past 24 hours Israel had pounded militant sites in Gaza on a scale not seen since a 2014 war with Hamas.
"I can tell you, we are prepared to do a lot more," he said. "We will do what is necessary to defend our people and to defend our state."
The cross-border fighting was triggered by a rocket fired early Monday from Gaza that slammed into a house in central Israel and wounded seven people. The outbreak of violence comes just two weeks before Israeli elections and is likely to be a key factor in the final stretch of the campaign.
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Trump takes victory lap; next Mueller release in 'weeks'
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump took a victory lap on Capitol Hill Tuesday, emboldened by the end of the special counsel's Russia probe, even as Democrats demanded the release of Robert Mueller's full report and intensified their focus on health care and other policy disputes.
A Justice Department official said it will take Attorney General William Barr "weeks, not months" to finish reviewing Mueller's Trump-Russia investigation report and make a version available for the public. It's not clear how much of what is made public will be in Mueller's own words and taken from his underlying report and how much might reflect Barr's summary or synthesis of the special counsel's findings.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity Tuesday to discuss the Justice Department's planning.
Radiating a sense of vindication, Trump strode into the Senate Republicans' lunch flanked by party leaders. GOP senators applauded.
"It could not have been better," Trump said of the summary of the Mueller report by Attorney General William Barr, which did not find the president colluded with Russia over the 2016 elections.
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Mapping pot legalization politics: Not just red vs. blue
NEW YORK (AP) - To anyone who figured the path of legalizing recreational marijuana use ran along blue state-red state lines, a sudden setback for pot advocates in New Jersey may show the issue isn't so black-and-white.
Leaders in solidly-blue New Jersey are vowing it will still join the 10 states that have legalized the drug. But when a state Senate vote was abruptly put off Monday because it didn't have enough support, the delay was a reminder that the politics of pot legalization aren't purely partisan. The key question instead can be whether voters or legislators are making the decision, experts say.
"It's a good illustration that even in a state that's entirely Democratically controlled, it's not obvious that it would be passed - or that it would be easy," says Daniel Mallinson, a Penn State Harrisburg professor who studies how marijuana legalization and other policies spread among states.
Since voters in the states of Colorado and Washington decided in 2012 to let adults use marijuana for fun, legalization has traveled a route that looks - from a distance - something like the red-and-blue maps that frame many a U.S. political conversation.
Residents of Democratic states on the West Coast and parts of the Northeast, for instance, have said yes, as has the District of Columbia. Lawmakers in Republican-led North Dakota and Arizona have said no.
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Spain: FBI was offered stolen data from NKorea embassy raid
MADRID (AP) - Spain has issued two international arrest warrants for members of a self-proclaimed human rights group that allegedly led a mysterious attack on the North Korean Embassy in February before offering data stolen during the raid to the FBI.
National Court judge Jose de la Mata on Tuesday lifted a secrecy order in the case, announcing it had found evidence of various crimes, including trespassing, injuries, threats and burglary committed by "a criminal organization" at the embassy in a leafy northern Madrid neighborhood. He identified a Mexican, an American and a South Korean as main suspects in the case.
The judge named Adrian Hong Chang, a Mexican national and resident in the United States, as the leader of a gang of 10 people who escaped on Feb. 22 after stealing computers and documents from the embassy, where they shackled and gagged its staff.
De la Mata said the assailants identified themselves as "members of an association or movement of human rights for the liberation of North Korea" and that they urged So Yun Sok, the embassy's business envoy and only diplomat, to defect. He refused to do so and was also gagged.
That group is the Cheollima Civil Defense, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the incident. The shadowy activists have the self-declared mission of helping defectors of the North Korean regime.
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Maker of OxyContin agrees to $270M settlement in Oklahoma
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - The maker of OxyContin and the company's controlling family agreed Tuesday to pay a groundbreaking $270 million to Oklahoma to settle allegations they helped create the nation's deadly opioid crisis with their aggressive marketing of the powerful painkiller.
It is the first settlement to come out of the recent coast-to-coast wave of nearly 2,000 lawsuits against Purdue Pharma that threaten to push the company into bankruptcy and have stained the name of the Sackler family, whose members rank among the world's foremost philanthropists.
"The addiction crisis facing our state and nation is a clear and present danger, but we're doing something about it today," Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter said.
Nearly $200 million will go toward establishing a National Center for Addiction Studies and Treatment at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa, while local governments will get $12.5 million. The Sacklers are responsible for $75 million of the settlement.
In settling, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company denied any wrongdoing in connection with what Hunter called "this nightmarish epidemic" and "the worst public health crisis in our state and nation we've ever seen."
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After Mueller, questions loom about 2020 election security
ATLANTA (AP) - The collusion question now answered, another one looms ahead of 2020: Will U.S. elections be secure from more Russian interference?
The 22-month-long special counsel investigation underscored how vulnerable the U.S. was to a foreign adversary seeking to sow discord on social media, spread misinformation and exploit security gaps in state election systems.
With the presidential primaries less than a year away, security experts and elected officials wonder whether the federal government and the states have done enough since 2016 to fend off another attack by Russia or other hostile foreign actors.
"Although we believe that Russia didn't succeed in changing any vote totals, the Russian playbook is out there for other adversaries to use," said Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Intelligence. "As we head towards the 2020 presidential elections, we've got to be more proactive in protecting our democratic process."
Special counsel Robert Mueller detailed the sweeping conspiracy by the Kremlin to meddle in the 2016 election in an indictment last year, charging 12 Russian military intelligence officers with hacking the email accounts of Clinton campaign officials and breaching the networks of the Democratic Party. The indictment also included allegations the Russians conspired to hack state election systems and stole information on about 500,000 voters from one state board of elections' computers.
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Apple tries to take a bite out of credit card industry
Apple is rolling out a credit card that it says is designed to do things no other card can. So how does it actually stack up?
It looks different from a traditional credit card - there's no number on the front and the users' name is etched in metal. The card expands the company's digital Apple Pay services, marrying the physical card to a virtual one and integrating both with the iPhone. And it comes with a bevy of perks - quick sign-up, elimination of most fees, strong security protections and cash back. But industry experts say they aren't impressed - the financial benefits mirror many of those already out there for consumers.
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WHAT DOES IT COST?
Apple says there are no fees associated with the card. That means no late fee, no annual fee, no international fee and no over-the-limit fees. It also said it aims to have among the lowest interest rates in the industry. Users must have an iPhone to use the card, which comes at a cost. But they will earn cash back on their purchases - 3 percent on Apple purchases, 2 percent on those with the virtual card and 1 percent with the physical card.
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Algerian army chief wants president declared unfit to lead
ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) - Algeria's powerful army chief said Tuesday he wants to trigger the constitutional process that would declare President Abdelaziz Bouteflika unfit for office, after more than a month of mass protests against the ailing leader's long rule.
The Algerian army's chief of staff is one of the country's top power brokers, so the announcement by Gen. Ahmed Gaid Salah could pave the way for Bouteflika's ouster after 20 years in power - or lead to a showdown with the president's closest protectors.
The 82-year-old Bouteflika has rarely been seen in public since a 2013 stroke.
Gaid Salah said in remarks carried on Algerian television that "the only guarantee for political stability" is to apply the article of the Algerian Constitution that empowers the Constitutional Council to determine if the president is too ill to fully exercise his functions and to ask lawmakers to declare him unfit.
If the request receives two-thirds majority approval in parliament, the Senate president takes charge of the government until a presidential election can be held, according to the constitutional procedure.