AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EDT
Kentucky Derby shocker: Country House wins via DQ
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Maximum Security led the Kentucky Derby every step of the way except for the last one - into the winner's circle.
The colt became the first winner disqualified for interference in the Derby's 145-year history, leading to an agonizing wait and an eventual stunning reversal that made 65-1 shot Country House the winner Saturday.
Country House finished second in the slop before objections were raised, causing a 22-minute delay while three stewards repeatedly reviewed different video angles before they unanimously elevated him into the winner's circle.
That gave Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott his first Derby victory at age 65.
"It's bittersweet. You always want to win with a clean trip and have everybody recognize the horse as the very good horse and great athlete that he is," Mott said. "Due to the disqualification, I think some of that is diminished."
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Kim oversees missile firing drills, tells troops to be alert
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korean state media on Sunday showed leader Kim Jong Un observing live-fire drills of long-range multiple rocket launchers and what appeared to be a new short-range ballistic missile, a day after South Korea expressed concern that the launches were a violation of an inter-Korean agreement to cease all hostile acts.
Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said Kim expressed "great satisfaction" over Saturday's drills and stressed that his front-line troops should keep a "high alert posture" and enhance combat ability to "defend the political sovereignty and economic self-sustenance of the country."
The weapons launches were a likely sign of Pyongyang's growing frustration at stalled diplomatic talks with Washington meant to provide coveted sanctions relief in return for nuclear disarmament. They also highlighted the fragility of the detente between the Koreas, which in a military agreement reached last September vowed to completely cease "all hostile acts" against each other in land, air and sea.
South Korea said it's "very concerned" about North Korea's weapons launches, calling them a violation of the agreements to reduce animosities between the countries. The statement, issued after an emergency meeting Saturday of top officials at the presidential Blue House in Seoul, also urged North Korea to stop committing acts that would raise military tensions and join efforts to resume nuclear diplomacy.
"Praising the People's Army for its excellent operation of modern large-caliber long-range multiple rocket launchers and tactical guided weapons, he said that all the service members are master gunners and they are capable of carrying out duty to promptly tackle any situation," the KNCA paraphrased Kim as saying. "He stressed the need for all the service members to keep high alert posture and more dynamically wage the drive to increase the combat ability so as to defend the political sovereignty and economic self-sustenance of the country and ... the security of the people from the threats and invasion by any forces."
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Biden: Trump, Republicans allowing Jim Crow to return
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Former Vice President Joe Biden charged Saturday that Jim Crow is "sneaking back in" as he emphasized voting rights at his first presidential campaign stop in South Carolina, where black voters play a key role in the South's first presidential primary.
In criticizing Republican efforts to adopt more stringent voting rules, including identification requirements and curtailing early voting hours, Biden recalled the racial segregation laws of the past.
"You've got Jim Crow sneaking back in," he said, referring to the era before the civil rights movement. "You know what happens when you have an equal right to vote? They lose."
Biden centered much of his trip around the need to restore decency to the White House. "Your state motto is, 'While I breathe, I hope,'" he said at the rally after continuing his full-throated denunciation of President Donald Trump. "It's not a joke. We're breathing, but God, we have got to have hope."
He kept up that theme at a private evening fundraiser, telling several dozen donors that he expects a nasty race from President Donald Trump.
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Under heavy rocket fire, Israeli reprisals kill 6
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Palestinian militants on Saturday fired over 250 rockets into Israel, drawing dozens of retaliatory airstrikes on targets across the Gaza Strip in a round of heavy fighting that broke a month-long lull between the enemies. Six Palestinians, including a pregnant mother and her baby, were killed, while four Israelis were wounded, including an elderly man who was in a critical condition.
The fighting, the most intense between the sides in months, came as leaders from Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza, and the smaller armed faction Islamic Jihad, were in Cairo for talks with Egyptian mediators aimed at preventing a fraying cease-fire from collapsing altogether.
It also comes at a sensitive time for Israel, which is to mark its Memorial Day and Independence Day holiday this week, before hosting the Eurovision song contest in the middle of the month. Prolonged fighting could overshadow the Eurovision and potentially deter international travelers from coming in for the festive event. For Gazans, the violence continued as they prepare to begin the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan on Monday.
Israel and Hamas, an Islamic group that opposes Israel's existence, have fought three wars and dozens of smaller flare-ups of violence since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007. They engaged in several days of heavy fighting in March before Egypt brokered a truce in which Israel agreed to ease a crippling blockade on Gaza in exchange for a halt in rocket fire. In recent days, Hamas accused Israel of reneging on its pledges as militants began to fire rockets into Israel.
In a familiar scene, air raid sirens wailed across southern Israel throughout the day and into the evening as barrages of rockets were repeatedly fired. Retaliatory airstrikes caused large explosions to thunder across Gaza, as plumes of smoke rose into the air. Outgoing Palestinian rockets left long trails of smoke behind them.
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All survive as plane carrying US military crashes into river
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - A military-chartered jet carrying 143 people landed hard, then bounced and swerved as the pilot struggled to control it amid thunder and lightning, ultimately skidding off the runway and coming to a crashing halt in a river at Naval Air Station Jacksonville.
It meant chaos and terror for passengers in the Boeing 737 as the plane jolted back and forth and oxygen masks deployed, then overhead bins opened, sending contents spilling out.
But authorities said all the people onboard emerged without critical injuries Friday night, lining up on the wings as they waited to be rescued. Only a 3-month-old baby was hospitalized, and that was done out of an abundance of caution, officials said.
"I think it is a miracle," said Capt. Michael Connor, the base's commanding officer, hours after the plane landed. "We could be talking about a different story this evening."
The National Transportation Safety Board sent a team of investigators Saturday to the crash site in the St. Johns River in north Florida, where the aircraft was still partially submerged in shallow water and its nose cone was sliced off, apparently from the impact. Two pet cats and a dog were still on the plane as well, and their status wasn't immediately clear.
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7 Venezuelan military officers killed in chopper crash
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Seven Venezuelan military officers were killed on Saturday when their helicopter crashed while heading to a state where President Nicolás Maduro appeared alongside troops, days after the opposition called in vain for a military uprising.
The Cougar helicopter hurtled into a mountain outside Caracas in the early hours of an overcast day in the capital. An investigation was underway.
The armed forces in a statement said the chopper was heading to San Carlos in Cojedes state. That's near a military academy where Maduro appeared early Saturday to oversee training exercises following a week of intrigue that saw a small group of security forces turn against him in the failed attempt by opposition leader Juan Guaidó to overthrow the government.
On board the helicopter were two lieutenant colonels as well as five lower-ranking officers. The statement didn't say if the chopper was part of the presidential delegation.
Also in Caracas on Saturday, a protester handed over a written appeal for the military's support, but a Venezuelan policeman burned the document and let the ashes fall to the ground.
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Justice Clarence Thomas' moment may finally have arrived
WASHINGTON (AP) - Clarence Thomas has been a Supreme Court justice for nearly three decades. It may finally be his moment.
Many Americans know Thomas largely from his bruising 1991 confirmation hearing, when he was accused of sexual harassment charges by former employee Anita Hill - charges he denied. People may know he's a conservative and has gone years without speaking during arguments at the court. But scholars say it would be wise to pay closer attention to Thomas.
Thomas is now the longest-serving member of a court that has recently gotten more conservative, putting him in a unique and potentially powerful position, and he's said he doesn't plan on retiring anytime soon. With President Donald Trump's nominees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh now on the court, conservatives are firmly in control as the justices take on divisive issues such as abortion, gun control and LGBT rights.
Thomas, for the first time, is on a court where there are at least four votes for some "pretty radical" decisions, said political science professor Corey Robin, the author of a Thomas book due out in September. Robin says the question will be whether the court's more conservative justices - Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito - can get Chief Justice John Roberts, a more moderate conservative, to go along.
Thomas, 70, became the high court's longest-serving justice, the "senior associate justice," when Justice Anthony Kennedy retired last summer . But unlike Kennedy, who sat at the court's ideological center and was most often the deciding vote when the court split 5-4, Thomas is consistently on the court's far right.
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Fines, jail time? Trump team resists oversight, Dems dig in
WASHINGTON (AP) - They're talking at the Capitol about jailing people. Imposing steep fines. All sorts of extraordinary, if long-shot measures to force the White House to comply with Democratic lawmakers' request for information about President Donald Trump stemming from the special counsel's Russia investigation.
This is the remarkable state of affairs between the executive and legislative branches, unseen in recent times, as Democrats try to break through Trump's blockade of investigations and exert congressional oversight of the administration.
"One of the things that everybody in this country needs to think about is when the president denies the Congress documents and access to key witnesses, basically what they're doing is saying, Congress you don't count," said Rep. Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
"We cannot - we simply cannot - have a presidency that is run as if it were a king or a dictator in charge," said Cummings, D-Md.
Trump's blanket refusal to engage in oversight - and Democrats' unrelenting demand that he do so - is testing the system of checks and balances with a deepening standoff in the aftermath of Robert Mueller's investigation.
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Illinois governor announces plan to legalize marijuana
CHICAGO (AP) - Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Saturday he's reached an agreement with key lawmakers on a plan to legalize recreational marijuana in the state starting next year.
The legislation would allow adults 21 and older to legally buy cannabis for recreational use from licensed dispensaries. Illinois residents could possess up to about an ounce (30 grams) of marijuana, while non-residents could possess about half an ounce (15 grams).
The measure also would automatically expunge some marijuana convictions.
If it passes, Illinois would join 10 other states, including neighboring Michigan, in legalizing recreational marijuana. While the Illinois law would take effect Jan. 1, the first licenses for Illinois growers, processors and dispensaries wouldn't be issued until May and July 2020, the governor's office said.
Pritzker was joined by fellow Democratic lawmakers in Chicago to announce the deal, which comes after years of discussion among state legislators. They said the measure will be introduced Monday, kicking off debate at the Legislature, where Democrats hold a majority in both chambers.
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Trump attacks social media companies after Facebook bans
STERLING, Va. (AP) - President Donald Trump criticized social media companies after Facebook banned a number of extremist figures, declaring that he was "monitoring and watching, closely!!"
Trump, who tweeted and re-tweeted complaints Friday and Saturday, said he would "monitor the censorship of AMERICAN CITIZENS on social media platforms." He has previously asserted that social media companies exhibit bias against conservatives, something the companies have rejected as untrue.
The president's comments came after Facebook this week banned Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones and other extremists, saying they violated its ban on "dangerous individuals." The company also removed right-wing personalities Paul Nehlen, Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson and Laura Loomer, along with Jones' site, Infowars, which often posts conspiracy theories. The latest bans apply both to Facebook's main service and to Instagram and extend to fan pages and other related accounts.
Facebook's move signaled renewed effort by the social media giant to remove people and groups promoting objectionable material such as hate, racism and anti-Semitism. The company said it has "always banned" people or groups that proclaim a violent or hateful mission or are engaged in acts of hate or violence, regardless of political ideology.
On Twitter, Trump cited a number of individuals he said were being unfairly treated by social media companies, including Watson and actor James Woods. He insisted it was "getting worse and worse for Conservatives on social media!"