AP Top News at 11:00 p.m. EST
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee’s final report asserts that Donald Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol, concluding an extraordinary 18-month investigation into the former president and the violent insurrection two years ago. The 814-page report released Thursday comes after the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held 10 hearings and obtained millions of pages of documents. The witnesses — ranging from many of Trump’s closest aides to law enforcement to some of the rioters themselves — detailed Trump’s actions in the weeks ahead of the insurrection and how his wide-ranging pressure campaign to overturn his defeat directly influenced those who brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors of the Capitol on Jan.
Throughout Mariupol, Russian workers are tearing down bombed-out buildings at a rate of at least one a day, hauling away shattered bodies with the debris. Russian military convoys are rumbling down the broad avenues of what is swiftly becoming a garrison city, and Russian soldiers, builders, administrators and doctors are replacing the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who have died or left. Many of the city’s Ukrainian street names are reverting to Soviet ones, with the Avenue of Peace that cuts through Mariupol to be labeled Lenin Avenue. Even the large sign that announces the name of the city at its entrance has been Russified, repainted with the red, white and blue of the Russian flag and the Russian spelling.
NEW YORK (AP) — Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried walked out of a Manhattan courthouse Thursday with his parents after they agreed to sign a $250 million bond and keep him at their California home while he awaits trial on charges that he swindled investors and looted customer deposits on his FTX trading platform. Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos said in federal court that Bankman-Fried, 30, “perpetrated a fraud of epic proportions.” Roos proposed strict bail terms including the $250 million bond — which he said is believed to be the largest federal pretrial bond ever — and house arrest at his parents’ home in Palo Alto.
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — Thousands of flights were canceled and homeless shelters were overflowing Thursday amid one of the most treacherous holiday travel seasons the U.S. has seen in decades, with temperatures plummeting 50 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas and forecasters warning of an impending “bomb cyclone” that could make conditions even worse before Christmas. The frigid air was moving through the central United States to the east, with windchill advisories affecting about 135 million people over the coming days, weather service meteorologist Ashton Robinson Cook said Thursday. Places like Des Moines, Iowa, will feel like minus 37 degrees, making it possible to suffer frostbite in less than five minutes.
PHOENIX (AP) — Republican Kari Lake didn’t offer evidence to back her claims of widespread, intentional misconduct on Election Day at her two-day trial challenging her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs in Arizona governor’s race, lawyers for the state said Thursday. Lake also never established her claim that printer problems at Maricopa County polling places were intentional acts that would have changed the race’s outcome had they not occurred, said Abha Khanna, a lawyer representing Hobbs, who ultimately won the race by just over 17,000 votes. At the trial’s closing arguments Thursday, Khanna said Lake’s claims were based on hearsay, speculation and theatrics.
Polar bears in Canada’s Western Hudson Bay — on the southern edge of the Arctic — are continuing to die in high numbers, a new government survey of the land carnivore has found. Females and bear cubs are having an especially hard time. Researchers surveyed Western Hudson Bay — home to Churchill, the town called ‘the Polar Bear Capital of the World,’ — by air in 2021 and estimated there were 618 bears, compared to the 842 in 2016, when they were last surveyed. “The actual decline is a lot larger than I would have expected,” said Andrew Derocher, a biology professor at the University of Alberta who has studied Hudson Bay polar bears for nearly four decades.
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona will take down a makeshift wall made of shipping containers at the Mexico border, settling a lawsuit and political tussle with the U.S. government over trespassing on federal lands. The Biden administration and the Republican governor entered into an agreement that Arizona will cease installing the containers in the Coronado National Forest — the only national forest along the border — according to court documents filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Phoenix. The agreement also calls for Arizona to remove the containers that were already installed in the remote San Rafael Valley, in southeastern Cochise County, and in the Yuma area where the U.S.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The minister of higher education in the Taliban government on Thursday defended his decision to ban women from universities — a decree that had triggered a global backlash. Discussing the matter for the first time in public, Nida Mohammad Nadim said the ban issued earlier this week was necessary to prevent the mixing of genders in universities and because he believes some subjects being taught violated the principles of Islam. He said the ban was in place until further notice. In an interview with Afghan television, Nadim pushed back against the widespread international condemnation, including from Muslim-majority countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Now you see them, now you don’t. Some frogs found in South and Central America have the rare ability to turn on and off their nearly transparent appearance, researchers report Thursday in the journal Science. During the day, these nocturnal frogs sleep by hanging underneath tree leaves. Their delicate, greenish transparent forms don’t cast shadows, rendering them almost invisible to birds and other predators passing overhead or underneath. But when northern glass frogs wake up and hop around in search of insects and mates, they take on an opaque reddish-brown color. “When they’re transparent, it’s for their safety,” said Junjie Yao, a Duke University biomedical engineer and study co-author.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jurors began deliberations Thursday at the trial of rapper Tory Lanez, who is charged with shooting and wounding hip-hop star Megan Thee Stallion in the feet. The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for just over three hours after hearing the last part of the defense’s closing argument that began a day earlier and a brief rebuttal from Los Angeles County prosecutors. They did not reach a verdict and will return Friday to resume talks on the three felony counts brought against the 30-year-old Canadian rapper: discharging a firearm with gross negligence, assault with a semiautomatic firearm and carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle.