Christa Pike is angry and confused after surviving execution attempt, attorney says
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Christa Pike was “angry and confused” in the hours after regaining consciousness following Tennessee’s failed execution attempt, first asking, “Where am I?” her lawyer said Wednesday.
Pike, believed to be the first person to survive after receiving lethal injection drugs during an execution, stunningly woke up as plans were being made to remove her from life support, just six days after she was strapped to a gurney in the death chamber, said attorney Randy Spivey.
“But on Tuesday, to the shock of everyone ... Christa woke up and began talking,” Spivey said.
Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer, is aware of what happened to her, at least up to a point, Spivey said.
Many questions remain, though, about her prognosis for recovery and whether Tennessee will make another attempt to execute Pike, now age 50.
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FBI says it stopped a Mall of America terror attack by a teen after agents sold him an assault rifle
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — FBI agents thwarted a terror attack by a teenager on the Mall of America after monitoring him for nearly two years and ultimately supplying him with the AK-47 he planned to use, authorities said Wednesday.
The 18-year-old had been on the FBI's radar since December 2024, when he began trading messages with a confidential informant. A criminal complaint says he initially expressed an interest in traveling to Somalia to fight for al-Shabab militants. As his plans to instead attack the mall solidified, the complaint says, agents sold him the gun and ammunition on Tuesday and arrested him on the spot.
“This was a radicalized young man who needed to be watched,” U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen said. Agents “were able to detect a threat, and disrupt it, before the defendant carried out his intention to kill, in his words, maybe 30 to 60 people.”
Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud was arrested Tuesday in a public park in Richfield, several miles northwest of the Mall of America, after he paid $600 to an undercover FBI employee posing as a member of the Islamic State group for the rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition, the agency said.
Mohamud appeared in a yellow jail uniform for his initial appearance Wednesday in federal court in St. Paul. He told the judge he did not have a job, own a house or a car, or have any money in the bank. He was represented by Siri Carlson McDowell, a federal public defender. Carlson McDowell and relatives of Mohamud declined to comment after the hearing.
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Isaias strengthens into the first hurricane of the Atlantic season
Isaias strengthened into the first hurricane of the Atlantic season late Wednesday as it surged towards the U.S. Gulf Coast, the National Hurricane Center said.
Forecasters warned that it was on track to make landfall between the Mississippi coast and the Florida Panhandle late Friday or early Saturday and was expected to bring heavy rains and potentially flash flooding.
The center of the cyclone was about 460 miles (745 kilometers) south-southwest of the Mississippi River, with maximum sustained winds around 75 mph (120 kph), according to an advisory from the Miami-based hurricane center.
Isaias is developing more than four months into the Atlantic hurricane season, tying a 121-year-old record for the area’s latest-forming hurricane.
According to the National Weather Service, the record dates to 1905, when the year’s first Atlantic hurricane formed on Oct. 8.
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Maricarmen, the 87-year-old woman whose eviction shook Spain, has died in hospital
MADRID (AP) — María del Carmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman whose eviction from her longtime Madrid home sparked nationwide protests across Spain and unleashed a political crisis, died on Wednesday while hospitalized.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez led the way on social media offering his condolences after housing activists and Abascal's lawyer announced her death. Known widely as “Maricarmen,” she had become a symbol for renters struggling with Spain's housing affordability crisis.
“All my love to Maricarmen’s family and loved ones,” Sánchez said in a post on X. “A hug as well to all of us who feel this loss as our own today. Rest in peace.”
The emotions ran into anger on the street among the protesters gathered near Spain's Parliament who chanted “Maricarmen lives, the fight goes on!”
Iciar López, a 32-year-old psychologist, shared her feelings with The Associated Press at the protest in Madrid.
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Cornell gang-rape accuser was 'misled' about criminal investigation, her lawyer says
ITHACA, N.Y. (AP) — The woman accusing several men of raping her at a Cornell University fraternity party was “misled” about the status of the criminal investigation in the weeks after she went to police, her lawyer said Wednesday.
Even as she took her allegations about a 2024 gang rape at the Chi Phi fraternity house through Cornell's internal disciplinary process, the university's police department gave her the impression that a criminal investigation was continuing, lawyer Thomas Giuffra told The Associated Press.
In fact, the criminal inquiry ended almost as soon as it began.
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, the local prosecutor, made the decision not to go forward with a criminal case within days of the woman giving her first substantial interviews to police.
Van Houten has said that he asked Cornell's police department to convey the decision to the woman, who is referred to in court documents as Jane Doe, but never spoke personally to her or her lawyer.
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Two lawsuits challenge Trump's taxpayer-funded ads, alleging they violate propaganda law
WASHINGTON (AP) — Two lawsuits filed Wednesday challenged President Donald Trump's recent series of federally funded television advertisements, which promote his political message while costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
The Democratic National Committee was first to sue the Republican administration, alleging the ads are illegal government-sponsored propaganda and accusing Trump of personally directing them. Later Wednesday, a coalition including the nonpartisan watchdog Common Cause filed a separate lawsuit, also alleging an illegal misuse of funds.
Both complaints asked federal judges to stop the use of federal funds to pay for the ads. The lawsuits represented the first legal challenges to the TV spots, which have faced bipartisan backlash for glorifying Trump and promoting his campaign message with November's midterm elections less than a month away.
The ads, which began airing in September, already have cost more than $12 million to run, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. The Department of Homeland Security awarded a $20 million contract for the campaign.
Responding Monday to the criticism, Trump defended them as “positive promotion for our Great U.S.A.” but said he’d start paying for them using his MAGA Inc. super PAC going forward.
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Israelis mourn Oct. 7 attack as Palestinians in Gaza languish in ruins of the war it sparked
REIM, Israel (AP) — On a field where music festival revelers were gunned down by Hamas-led militants three years ago, Israelis on Wednesday embraced and wept for those lost in an attack that plunged the Middle East into war.
Israelis mourned at the site of the Nova Music Festival, as well as at bomb shelters, intersections and in communities targeted on Oct. 7, 2023. Tens of thousands gathered in Tel Aviv for the main ceremony organized by bereaved families, separate from the official government ceremonies.
On that day — the deadliest in the country's history — militants killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostage. Israel's retaliatory offensive killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, destroyed much of Gaza and drove most of its 2 million residents from their homes.
This is the first anniversary since all the hostages, living and dead, were returned. Signs calling for their return are mostly gone, but reminders of those who were killed are ubiquitous in a country still reckoning with the trauma of that day.
For Palestinians, the anniversary brings another day of fear and misery. Most Gaza residents live in squalid tent camps, with large parts of cities bombed to rubble. More than half the territory remains in the hands of the Israeli military. Despite a ceasefire deal reached nearly a year ago, Israeli strikes continue almost daily.
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UN health agency wants more details from Russia on suspected pneumonic plague case
GENEVA (AP) — A top official with the World Health Organization said Wednesday it doesn’t know how a lab worker in Siberia died, and she urged Russia to provide more information about a case that prompted global concerns about suspected pneumonic plague.
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO director of Epidemic and Pandemic Management, said the U.N. health agency doesn’t know what the “causative agent” was behind the woman’s Oct. 2 death, which unconfirmed reports in Russia blamed on pneumonic plague — a less common but severe form of plague that can spread from person to person.
In its tersely worded statements, Russia's public health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, does not link the case to pneumonic plague, saying only that the lab worker had contracted pneumonia of “unknown” origin and that “extensive” testing found no evidence her illness was caused by any of the pathogens she worked with at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East.
“We don’t understand how she was infected,” Van Kerkhove said. “We need information in a timely way. We need regular information. We need answers to the follow-up of the questions that we have asked.”
“We have posed these questions to our colleagues in the Russian Federation. In fairness, they have responded. We’ve gone back with more questions,” she said.
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Texas carries out nation’s first execution since Christa Pike’s failed lethal injection
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas man who fatally shot a convenience store clerk was put to death Wednesday evening, becoming the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year and the first since Tennessee’s failed attempt to administer a lethal injection to Christa Pike a week ago.
Jamaal Howard, 46, was pronounced dead at 8:03 p.m. after receiving a fatal dose of pentobarbital at the state prison in Huntsville. He was convicted of killing Vickie Swartout, 42, in a 2000 store robbery caught on surveillance video.
Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Howard apologized profusely to some members of his victim’s family, who watched through a window just feet from the death chamber.
“I wish that you accept my apology and I wish for your forgiveness,” he said, shortly before the injection got underway. “I’m sorry for what happened. I wish you can learn to forgive me one of these days.”
He also thanked his friends and family and said he loved them, adding he was “in a good state of mind to find peace and the Lord, so I thank y’all.” He concluded with: "Hey, enjoy life, and peace to y’all.”
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Trump's $90 Medicare rebate rolls out, but millions aren't eligible. Critics see a political stunt
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says his administration will make one-time payments of $90 per person to help more than 20 million Medicare enrollees pay for their Part B premiums. It will cost about $2 billion.
Less than one-third of all Medicare recipients are eligible for the payments, which are expected to be sent out this week. Not eligible are roughly 35 million Medicare Advantage enrollees, millions of other people with disabilities and low-income Medicare recipients.
The election-year promise that the Republican president made over the weekend comes as the Nov. 3 midterms are fast approaching, with the cost of living and healthcare expenses among the top issues for voters.
Some questions and answers about the payouts:
Some 20.8 million people in the original Medicare Part B who are living in the United States, not receiving premium assistance from Medicaid or not paying an income-related monthly adjusted amount.
