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Family of Menendez brothers rejects prosecutor’s criticism

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The family of Erik and Lyle Menendez on Thursday rejected claims by the Los Angeles district attorney that the brothers hadn’t appropriately taken responsibility for the 1989 killing of their parents and said that any lies they told during their murder trial were due to trauma and fear. “Kids lie when they’re scared, when they feel intimidated, and when they become traumatized. They lie when they don’t know who to trust. But they grow up, they learn, and they take responsibility,” said Tamara Goodell, a cousin of the brothers who spoke Thursday at a rally ...

Taliban release U.S. citizen abducted while in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (AP) — An American man who was abducted more than two years ago while traveling through Afghanistan as a tourist has been released by the Taliban in a deal with the Trump administration that Qatari negotiators helped broker, the State Department said Thursday. George Glezmann, an airline mechanic from Atlanta, is the third American detainee to be released by the Taliban since January. He was seized by the Taliban’s intelligence services in December 2022 and was designated by the U.S. government as wrongfully detained the following year. In a statement, Secretary of ...

Man sentenced for pressuring Chinese ex-pat to go home

NEW YORK (AP) — A real estate businessman who aided a Chinese effort to pressure an expatriate to return home has been sentenced to over a year in a U.S. prison. U.S. prosecutors say Quanzhong An’s activities were part of the Chinese government’s “Operation Fox Hunt,” which Beijing says is about pursuing people who have fled justice. Washington sees it as transnational repression, a term for governments working to silence dissenters beyond their borders. “Quanzhong An acted at the direction of the (Chinese) government to harass and intimidate individuals living on U.S. ...

Ex-FBI agent who accused agency of political bias arrested on records charge

NEW YORK (AP) — An FBI agent who publicly accused the agency of a pro-Trump bias has been arrested and charged with disclosing confidential records after authorities say he included sensitive material about investigations and informants into a draft of his memoir. Johnathan Buma, who claimed in 2023 that the FBI went after President Joe Biden’s son Hunter while stifling his own investigation of President Donald Trump’s ally Rudy Giuliani, was arrested Monday evening at Kennedy Airport in New York as he was about to board a flight out of the country, authorities said. In the ...

People named in JFK docs not happy their personal information was released

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sensitive personal information including Social Security numbers was revealed in the newly unredacted John F. Kennedy assassination documents released this week, and that is not sitting well with the people affected. Joseph diGenova, a former campaign lawyer for President Donald Trump, was among those whose personal information was disclosed. He said he is planning to sue the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration for violating privacy laws over concerns about identity theft. “It should not have happened,” diGenova said in a phone interview ...

DOGE blocked from accessing personal Social Security data

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from Social Security systems that hold personal data on millions of Americans, calling their work there a “fishing expedition.” The order also requires the team to delete any personally identifiable data in their possession. U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland found that the team got broad access to sensitive information at the Social Security Administration to search for fraud with little justification. “The DOGE Team is essentially ...