Exit polls suggest no clear winner in Israel's election, but Netanyahu is far from defeated
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli voters delivered a rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 's far-right and religious governing coalition, but exit polls Wednesday suggested the election had no clear winner and indicated that the long-serving Israeli leader was far from defeated after three years of war ignited on his watch.
The exit polls suggested voters gave opponents of the current government a solid majority in the next parliament. But it's not clear if those disparate parties — which include Arab-led factions who appear to have made a historic showing — are willing to form a coalition. If they are, it would likely take weeks of haggling.
At an appearance early Wednesday, Netanyahu was upbeat and already trying to position himself to remain prime minister, listing off military achievements of the past three years. He called on his opponents to line up behind him and dismissed the idea of a partnership with Arab parties — whose constituents make up 20% of Israel's population — as treasonous.
“We must establish a strong, right-wing, nationalist government,” said Netanyahu, who was facing off in the vote against his former military chief, centrist Gadi Eisenkot. “We must not endanger Israel and establish a government that relies on anti-Zionist Arab parties.”
While exit polls indicated Netanyahu would face a difficult path to return to office, in his defiant speech he made clear he had no intention of stepping aside. Even if he is unable to form a government, Netanyahu's inflammatory rhetoric against the Arab parties could complicate any attempt by his opponents to partner with them and sets the stage for a potential new vote where the Israeli leader could make gains.
___
Brazil's Flávio Bolsonaro and family will get US visas after election loss, State Department says
WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior State Department official said Tuesday that Flávio Bolsonaro and his family will be granted U.S. visas after his weekend loss to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a hotly contested race that bucked a trend of conservative electoral results in Latin America.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to visa privacy laws, said “the State Department will issue visas to Flávio Bolsonaro and his family and allow them entry into the United States.”
Bolsonaro, who had President Donald Trump’s tacit support, had been under investigation for corruption, money laundering and tax evasion in Brazil and had been ordered to surrender his passport.
The State Department official did not say if Bolsonaro had already left Brazil or if he and his family were en route to the U.S. Lula told a few dozen supporters outside the presidential residence in Brasilia that he did not have precise information of Bolsonaro’s whereabouts, but said he had left Brazil.
Bolsonaro's campaign manager, Rogério Marinho, said he hadn't spoken to the defeated candidate since early Tuesday morning.
___
Talarico vows to 'take back Texas' as Trump makes last-minute push to keep the state in GOP hands
LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico on Tuesday decried a "corruption crisis” he says is plaguing the U.S. political system, competing for the spotlight with President Donald Trump in deeply conservative West Texas ahead of next week's midterm elections.
Trump was in Texas for the third time in a month in a last-minute push to back Republican Ken Paxton and block Democrats from notching their first statewide election victory in more than three decades.
Talarico took the stage in Lubbock an hour after Trump wrapped up his own speech across town. A seminarian and a former teacher, Talarico reached for metaphors from both the Bible and a famous Texas pastime — Friday night football — to cast himself as an underdog against powerful forces including Trump and Elon Musk, who is bankrolling attack ads against Talarico on Paxton's behalf.
“We’re going to shock the nation and shock the world when we beat the billionaires and take back Texas,” Talarico said.
Moments earlier, Trump leaned into cultural issues to portray Talarico as too liberal for Texas.
___
Alexander brothers each get 30 years in prison after women speak of being drugged and raped by them
NEW YORK (AP) — Three brothers convicted of leveraging their wealthy lifestyle to drug and rape dozens of women were each sentenced Tuesday to 30 years in prison after one victim described her attack as an “eternity of terror” and the judge slammed their behavior as shameful, degenerate and monstrous.
Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander — known collectively as the Alexander Brothers — stared blankly as U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni announced their punishment, which was less than the life sentences that federal prosecutors sought. Some of the 11 women who spoke during the hearing wept in the Manhattan courtroom gallery.
“Your conduct was monstrous,” Caproni told the men, equating them to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as she reconciled their March sex trafficking conviction with their claims that being fathers and husbands has changed them from the partying, womanizing ways of their youth.
“It’s hard for me to believe the defendants changed their spots just like that,” the judge said. She added, “it strains credulity that marriage would change them from sexual predators to model gentlemen.”
Many of the women in the packed courtroom appeared disappointed with the sentences, which will spring the Alexanders from prison around the age most Americans are settling into retirement.
___
Serial killer Ted Bundy is linked to another Utah teenager's 1974 killing through DNA testing
DNA connects serial killer Ted Bundy to the death of another Utah teenager, authorities announced Tuesday, exactly 52 years after her body was discovered in the woods by a hunter.
Bundy has been dead since 1989, but the tally of his confirmed victims continues to grow due to advances in DNA testing. He killed at least 30 women and girls in multiple states in the 1970s, and many more escaped or survived with injuries.
Investigators are satisfied that Bundy was responsible for killing 17-year-old Melissa Ann Smith in 1974, a death that had long been listed as a cold case, Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson said at a news conference.
They were able to close the case by making crucial connections with DNA found on Smith and Laura Aime, another Bundy victim whose case was resolved last April in Utah County. Bundy's DNA was on file in Florida, where he was convicted and ultimately executed.
Besides that evidence, Smith’s death showed hallmarks of Bundy’s “pattern, motive, means and opportunity,” Olson said.
___
AP sources: Federal agents search Beverly Hills mansion in investigation of ex-Rep. Eric Swalwell
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal law enforcement agents searched a Beverly Hills home early Tuesday as part of an investigation into Eric Swalwell, who resigned from Congress amid a wave of sexual misconduct allegations, two people familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press.
Agents searched the home of wealthy developer and Swalwell donor Stephen Cloobeck, where the ex-Congressman spent time before resigning from office in April, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation.
Swalwell, D-Calif., has denied criminal wrongdoing.
Messages seeking comment were left for Swalwell’s lawyer and for a lawyer who represented Cloobeck in another matter.
Cloobeck, who founded the Diamond Resorts International timeshare company and ran last year for California governor, contributed more than $23,000 to Swalwell’s congressional campaigns since 2017, federal campaign finance records show.
___
Truck stolen by escaped Tennessee inmate is found abandoned in Illinois, authorities say
An escaped Tennessee inmate convicted of murdering a co-worker stole a truck from a nearby farm and apparently made it to southern Illinois before abandoning it, authorities said Tuesday.
Jacob Morley, who was serving a life sentence for killing a co-worker four years ago, was found to be missing from the Northwest Correctional Complex late on Sunday.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation released surveillance video from the farm, which is near Tiptonville and about a 2-mile (3-kilometer) walk through fields from the prison, showing Morley open the truck's unlocked driver's side door and drive off at about 1 a.m. Monday.
Firefighters in Hornbeak, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) east of the farm, said on social media that investigators confirmed their cameras captured footage of the truck driving by their station about 15 minutes later.
The truck was found abandoned Tuesday in Marion, Illinois, about 120 miles (193 kilometers) north of the prison and roughly 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of St. Louis.
___
Supreme Court won't intervene to allow judges to pause some deportation proceedings
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court declined to intervene Tuesday in a dispute over a Biden-era immigration regulation that allowed immigration judges to pause some deportation proceedings.
The high court turned down a request from Democratic-led cities who say the rule was used to help crime victims and neglected juveniles and should be revived.
Texas and the Trump administration agreed to a court order blocking the regulation after the state sued. Texas alleged that the practice called administrative closure was dramatically expanded under former President Joe Biden and effectively allowed people to stay in the country indefinitely.
The cities of Baltimore, Columbus, Ohio and New Haven, Connecticut, along with the legal group Centro Legal de la Raza, had asked to join the case to defend the regulation. They filed an emergency appeal before the Supreme Court after a judge refused to allow them to intervene.
Represented by the group Democracy Forward, they argued that Texas and the Trump administration had worked together to allow the regulation to be permanently blocked in court, bypassing a public rulemaking process.
___
FACT FOCUS: Kennedy's claim that Arabs 'don't produce science' meets a Nobel Prize reality check
WASHINGTON (AP) — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s broad assertions about Arab contributions to humanity's scientific and literary discoveries at a Republican campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, have drawn criticism just days before midterm elections.
“There's 500 million Arabs in the world and yet they don't produce science," Kennedy said on the campaign trail Monday. “They don’t win the Nobel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Prize. They don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.”
The health secretary's comments — widely condemned overnight by critics as untrue and racially biased — were made while campaigning in a state with a large Arab American population.
An HHS representative did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment.
Arab refers to an ethnic and linguistic identification, while Muslim refers to a religious identity. So while Arabs can be Muslim, Christian, Jewish or of another faith, the vast majority of Muslims worldwide are not Arab.
___
Susan Saint James, Emmy-winning actor of 'McMillan & Wife' and 'Kate & Allie,' dies at 80
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Susan Saint James, who co-starred with Rock Hudson in the 1970s TV crime series “McMillan & Wife” and later co-starred with Jane Curtin in the sitcom “Kate & Allie” in the 1980s, has died. She was 80.
People magazine, citing a representative for the actor, said Saint James died Monday. She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
“She never met a stranger," her family said in a statement to People. "Every person she met became the most important person in the room at that moment, from a fellow board member to the clerk at the shoe store, who usually walked away knowing her entire life story."
Born Susan Jane Miller on Aug. 14, 1946, in Los Angeles, she was raised in the northern Illinois city of Rockford, where her father had transferred for work. She began modeling as a teenager in Paris.
At 20, she moved back to Los Angeles and landed a seven-year contract with Universal Studios. She made her television debut in the 1966 movie “Fame is the Name of the Game” with Tony Franciosa.
