AP News in Brief at 12:09 a.m. EDT

By The Associated Press

AP source: Prosecutor to examine Russia probe origins

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General William Barr has appointed a U.S. attorney to examine the origins of the Russia investigation and determine if intelligence collection involving the Trump campaign was “lawful and appropriate,” a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Monday.

Barr appointed John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to conduct the inquiry, the person said. The person could not discuss the matter publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Durham’s appointment comes about a month after Barr told members of Congress he believed “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign in 2016. He later said he didn’t mean anything pejorative and was gathering a team to look into the origins of the special counsel’s investigation.

Barr provided no details about what “spying” may have taken place but appeared to be alluding to a surveillance warrant the FBI obtained on a former Trump associate, Carter Page, and the FBI’s use of an informant while the bureau was investigating former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos.

Trump and his supporters have seized on both to accuse the Justice Department and the FBI of unlawfully spying on his campaign.

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China retaliates on tariffs, stock markets go into a slide

BEIJING (AP) — Sending Wall Street into a slide, China announced higher tariffs Monday on $60 billion worth of American goods in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s latest penalties on Chinese products.

Duties of 5% to 25% will take effect on June 1 on about 5,200 American products, including batteries, spinach and coffee, China’s Finance Ministry said.

With investors worried about the potential economic damage on all sides from the escalating trade war, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 617 points, or 2.4%, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq plunged 270 points, or 3.4%, its biggest drop of the year. Earlier, stocks fell in Europe and Asia.

“We appear to be in a slow-motion train wreck, with both sides sticking to their positions,” said William Reinsch, a trade analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former U.S. trade official. “As is often the case, however, the losers will not be the negotiators or presidents, but the people.”

Beijing’s move came after the U.S. raised duties Friday on $200 billion of Chinese imports to 25%, up from 10%. In doing so, American officials accused China of backtracking on commitments it made in earlier negotiations. The same day, trade talks between the two countries broke up without an agreement.

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Satellite images show oil tankers allegedly sabotaged

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — New satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press show the oil tankers that Gulf officials alleged were the targets of “sabotage” off the coast of the United Arab Emirates.

The images, provided Tuesday by Colorado-based Maxar Technologies, show the oil tankers. Two are from Saudi Arabia, one is Norwegian and the other is Emirati.

A boom surrounds the Emirati oil tanker, suggesting officials worry about an oil leak from the vessel.

Otherwise, the vessels do not show signs of massive damage. The Norwegian ship sustained a hole just above its hull in the incident.

A U.S. official, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation, said all the ships sustained similar damage.

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Venezuela exodus raises worries of babies being stateless

CÚCUTA, Colombia (AP) — Arelys Pulido had already lost one baby in a neglected Venezuelan hospital where doctors and medical gear are in increasingly short supply, so when she got pregnant again she decided to give birth in a foreign land.

She packed suitcases filled with clothes and a few prized ceramic statues of saints that she hoped would grant her and her unborn child protection as they passed through one of the perilous illegal crossings into Colombia.

Earlier this year, Zuleidys Antonella Primera was born, a lively girl with dark hair and eyes bearing no hint of the odyssey her mother went through so she could deliver her in a hospital across the border in the city of Cúcuta.

Yet little Zuleidys so far has neither the citizenship of the country her parents fled nor that of the nation where she was born. She is one of a growing number of children born to undocumented Venezuelan migrants in Colombia who have been left essentially stateless.

“It’s one more thing to worry about,” said José Antonio Primera, the baby’s father, a former military officer who now paints motorcycles for a living.

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Researchers: Iran-linked disinfo effort had personal touch

LONDON (AP) — When an attractive young Middle Eastern woman contacted Saudi dissident Ali AlAhmed over Twitter last November, he was immediately suspicious.

The Associated Press was on the verge of publishing a story about how AlAhmed, who is based in the Washington area, had been targeted by hackers posing as a female journalist. Now, just two days before the article was set to go live, another young woman had sidled up to him over the internet, trying to entice him to read an article and share it online.

“They will never stop,” AlAhmed wrote in a Nov. 6 message to the AP. “They think a hot girl can lure me.”

The AP flagged the exchange to Canadian internet watchdog Citizen Lab, which was already helping AlAhmed deal with the hackers. Citizen Lab quickly determined that the Twitter account, purportedly belonging to an Egyptian writer named Mona A.Rahman , was part of a separate operation. In fact, she wasn’t even trying to hack AlAhmed — she was trying to enlist him in an ambitious global disinformation effort linked to Tehran.

In a report published Tuesday, Citizen Lab said A.Rahman was but a small piece of a yearsold, multilingual campaign aimed at seeding anti-Saudi, anti-Israel and anti-American stories across the internet. Citizen Lab, which is based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School, said it believes “with moderate confidence” that the operation is aligned with Iran. The campaign is another indication of how online disinformation is being tested by countries well beyond Russia, whose interference into the 2016 U.S. presidential election was laid out in vivid detail in special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s report .

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AP sources: Trump officials discussed deporting families

WASHINGTON (AP) — Homeland Security officials considered arresting thousands of migrant families who had final deportation orders and removing them from the U.S. in a flashy show of force, but the idea was tabled as the Trump administration grappled with straining resources and a growing number of Central Americans crossing the border.

Two Homeland Security officials and two other people familiar with the proposal described it to The Associated Press. They were not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity.

The idea was to arrest parents and children in 10 cities with large populations of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, specifically New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, they said, without naming others.

The proposal, first reported by The Washington Post, was meant to send a message and possibly deter others from coming across the border, they said.

But then-Immigrations and Customs Enforcement head Ron Vitiello and then-Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen put the proposal aside over concerns about diverting resources from the border, a lack of detention space and the possibility of renewed public outrage over treatment of families.

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Felicity Huffman pleads guilty in college admissions scheme

BOSTON (AP) — “Desperate Housewives” star Felicity Huffman pleaded guilty Monday in the college admissions bribery scheme, the biggest name to do so in a scandal that has underscored the lengths to which some wealthy parents will go to get their children into top universities.

The Emmy-winning actress, 56, could face prison time after she admitted to participating in the nationwide scam, in which authorities say parents bribed coaches, rigged entrance exams or both to game the admissions system.

Huffman pleaded guilty in federal court to paying an admissions consultant $15,000 to have a proctor correct her older daughter’s answers on the SAT. She also considered going through with the plan for her younger daughter before ultimately deciding not to, authorities say.

The consultant, Rick Singer, arranged for the cheating by having students obtain permission for extra time on the exams through diagnoses for things like learning disabilities, and then taking the exams at his testing centre, prosecutors say.

In court, Huffman explained her daughter had been seeing a neuropsychologist for years and been getting extra time on tests since she was 11 — an apparent attempt to explain that her daughter’s doctor had no part in the scheme.

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Victims of clergy abuse to sue Vatican, seek abusers’ names

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Five men who say they were sexually abused by Roman Catholic priests when they were minors are planning to sue the Vatican and are demanding the names of thousands of predator priests they claim have been kept secret by the Holy See.

In a Monday news release announcing the lawsuit, Minnesota attorney Jeff Anderson said he wants to show that the Vatican tried to cover up actions by top church officials including former St. Paul-Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt. The lawsuit being filed Tuesday seeks the release of 3,400 names of priests who were referred to the Vatican for “credible cases of abuse.” That number was released by the Vatican in 2014.

The lawsuit comes less than a week after Pope Francis issued a groundbreaking new church law requiring all Catholic priests and nuns worldwide to report clergy sexual abuse and coverups by their superiors to church authorities. The law is part of a new effort to hold the Catholic hierarchy accountable.

But the new law stops short of requiring the crimes to be reported to police, and abuse victims and their advocates say it’s not enough since it essentially tasks discredited bishops who have mishandled abuse for decades with policing their own.

The plaintiffs in the new lawsuit include three brothers who were abused by former priest Curtis Wehmeyer as recently as 2012 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Wehmeyer pleaded guilty to criminal sexual conduct and child pornography in connection with his contact with two of the boys, who were 12 and 14. The brothers are not named in the press release.

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Jury: Monsanto to pay $2 billion in weed killer cancer case

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A jury on Monday ordered agribusiness giant Monsanto Co. to pay a combined $2.055 billion to a couple claiming that the company’s popular weed killer Roundup Ready caused their cancers.

The jury’s verdict is the third such courtroom loss for Monsanto in California since August, but a San Francisco law professor said it’s likely a trial judge or appellate court will significantly reduce the punitive damage award.

The state court jury in Oakland concluded that Monsanto’s weed killer caused the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma Alva Pilliod and Alberta Pilliod each contracted. Jurors awarded them each $1 billion in punitive damages in addition to a combined $55 million in compensatory damages.

Alberta Pilliod, 76, said after the verdict that she and her husband, Alva, have each been battling cancer for the last nine years. She says they are unable to enjoy the same activities they participated in before their cancer diagnosis.

“It changed our lives forever,” she said. “We couldn’t do things we used to be able to do, and we really resent them for that.”

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Former US President Jimmy Carter has surgery for broken hip

ATLANTA (AP) — Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter broke his hip Monday at his south Georgia home when he fell while leaving to go turkey hunting, a spokeswoman for the Carter Center said.

The 94-year-old former president was treated in Americus, Georgia, near his home in Plains, and was recovering comfortably after successful surgery, spokeswoman, Deanna Congileo, said in a statement.

His wife of 73 years, Rosalynn, was with him, Congileo said.

In an indication Carter was in good spirits, Congileo said Carter’s main concern was that he had not reached his limit on turkeys with the shooting season ending this week.

“He hopes the State of Georgia will allow him to roll over the unused limit to next year,” the statement said.

The Associated Press

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