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A look at Juan Merchan, the Manhattan jurist overseeing Trump’s business records case: ‘A very serious judge’

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:52 GMT

Tim Balk | New York Daily NewsEx-president Donald Trump’s hush money case is being overseen by a veteran Manhattan Supreme Court jurist who also heard the Trump Organization tax fraud trial that in January ended in a jail term for Trump confidant and aide Allen Weisselberg.Justice Juan Merchan, a 60-year-old former prosecutor who was born in Colombia and raised in Jackson Heights, Queens, carries a reputation as a thorough and even-handed judge, and has spent more than a decade on the bench in New York.He attended Baruch College and Hofstra University School of Law and worked as an assistant attorney in the Manhattan district attorney’s office in the 1990s. From 2006 to 2009, he worked as a family court judge. He has served as an acting justice of the state Supreme Court since 2009.Brendan Tracy, a criminal defense lawyer who has appeared before Merchan as a prosecutor, said the judge is well-suited for a high-wattage case like the one against Trump.“He truly strikes me as probably ...

Robot brainstorm: Seaport incubator home to 74 companies in growing field

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:52 GMT

Robotics across Massachusetts is expanding, MassRobotics told city officials on a tour of their Seaport facility Tuesday — developing for defense, hospitals, manufacturing and occasionally the Macarena.“Can you dance, Pepper?” MassRobotics Business Development Vice President Micaelah Morrill said to a shiny white, semi-humanoid form at the entrance of a classroom full of children operating rolling bots.“We reprogrammed it,” she explained of Pepper. “She’s very useful. A lot of the applications for robots are in hospitals — she’s typically a concierge robot in hospitals. We reprogrammed it to like do the Macarena and fist bumps.”The 50,000 square feet MassRobotics facility, toured by Mayor Michelle Wu and others Tuesday afternoon, is full of a range of robots moving in their own ways — from flying around, to lifting and placing objects, to building things.The nonprofit hosts 74 companies in the field and worked with ov...

Trump charges a political ploy or justice being done, depending on the source

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:52 GMT

The reaction to former President Donald Trump’s 34-count indictment broke along party lines, as expected.“The prosecution and … arraignment appear to be little more than a way for this DA, who campaigned on prosecuting the former president, to advance his own career,” MassGOP Chairwoman Amy Carnevale said.The 45th president left the Criminal Courts Building in Manhattan Tuesday and departed for his home in Florida, not long after Assistant District Attorney Christopher Conroy told a New York judge the president had falsified records regarding his business dealings in the lead up to the 2016 campaign in such a way that misdemeanor charges should be elevated to felonies.The falsifications, prosecutors allege, are rooted in hush-money payments made to people with whom Trump allegedly had extramarital sexual encounters and paid for silence in the days leading up to his first election and which amount to high-level crimes in New York.In a press conference following Trump’s un...

Kansas passes trans bathroom bill; Arkansas OKs own version

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:52 GMT

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas bill to impose some of the nation’s broadest bathroom restrictions and ban transgender people from changing the name or gender on their driver’s licenses cleared the Legislature by margins Tuesday that suggest backers could override the Democratic governor’s expected veto.Kansas Senate voted 28-12 with one vote more than a two-thirds majority needed to overturn any veto, giving final passage to an earlier House-passed version and sending it to Gov. Laura Kelly. Both chambers have Republican supermajorities.The measure deals with bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities, and defines “sex” as “either male or female, at birth,” a move LGBTQ+-rights advocates said would legally erase transgender people and deny recognition to non-binary, gender fluid and gender non-conforming people.The final vote came less than two hours after Arkansas lawmakers sent Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders a bathroom bill after scaling it back following...

Darius Miles pleads not guilty to capital murder charge

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:52 GMT

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A former University of Alabama basketball player has pleaded not guilty to a capital murder charge filed against him after he was accused of providing the gun used in a fatal shooting near campus. Darius Miles, 21, of Washington, D.C., entered the plea on Monday, according to court documents.Miles, a former junior reserve forward for the Crimson Tide, and Michael Lynn Davis, 21, of Charles County, Maryland, are charged with capital murder in the January shooting death of 23-year-old Jamea Harris. The shooting occurred on the Strip, a student-oriented business district of bars and restaurants near the Tuscaloosa campus. Investigators said Harris was sitting in the passenger seat of a car when she was struck by a bullet, which brings a capital murder charge in Alabama. Miles was removed from the university’s team following his arrest.Davis is accused of firing the gun that killed the young woman, according to court documents filed in Tuscaloosa. Investigators w...

Mexico power plant purchases touted as ‘new nationalization’

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:52 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president announced a deal Tuesday to buy 13 of the power plants operated by the Spanish company Iberdrola in the country for an estimated $5.94 billion, calling it a “new nationalization” of the Mexican electericity sector. The deal could put an end to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s years of verbally sparring with the company, along with fines and limits on its plants in Mexico. López Obrador has long admired former President Adolfo López Mateos, who nationalized Mexico’s electrical industry in 1960. By the 2000s, decades of corruption, high domestic electricity rates and under-investment led López Obrador’s predecessors to invite foreign companies in to build new, cleaner power plants.On Tuesday, López Obrador said the deal will give Mexico’s state-owned power company a 55.5% share of the electricity market. The utility, the Federal Electricity Commission, now produces just under 40% of Mexico’s electricity.“This i...

Trump makes history, pleading not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:52 GMT

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump became the first-ever former U.S. president to confront felony charges Tuesday, pleading not guilty in what prosecutors allege was a hush-money scheme designed to protect his reputation prior to the 2016 election. As modest but vocal factions of protesters and supporters pulsed on the streets of lower Manhattan, Trump entered his plea during an unprecedented court appearance that was surrounded by a steely gauntlet of police and Secret Service agents. In total, Trump is facing 34 counts of falsifying business records, all of them allegedly “with intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof,” the now-unsealed indictment reads. The part about committing another crime is important, because it’s what elevates what would otherwise be misdemeanors to the level of a felony. Aside from entering his plea, Trump was otherwise uncharacteristically silent throughout the afternoon, waving to supporters...

‘More needs to be done:’ Police say Indigenous woman’s body found in landfill

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:52 GMT

WINNIPEG — The Winnipeg police homicide unit is investigating the death of a First Nations woman as suspicious after her body was found in a city landfill.Police say the remains of Linda Mary Beardy, 33, were found Monday afternoon by staff at the Brady landfill in south Winnipeg and notified police.“I wish to express our sincerest condolences to Linda’s family, friends and the entire community as everyone processes this tragedy,” Insp. Shawn Pike said Tuesday.Police did not release a cause of death and could not provide an exact time frame.“From the time that these remains were left at or located at the Brady landfill was probably a matter of a couple of hours,” he said.Pike said the case is not believed to be linked to the remains of Rebecca Contois that were found in the same landfill last year, or the killings of three other women.“We have no information to suggest that there are any other victims, or that this investigation is related to any ...

Authorities: Michigan woman set fire that killed her, 3 kids

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:52 GMT

SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. (AP) — A woman intentionally set a house fire last month that killed her and her three young childre n in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, authorities said Tuesday.The March 14 fire killed Alicia Adzima, 31, of Sault Ste. Marie; her 4-year-old twin daughters, Ella and Eva Clossick; and her 1-year-old son, Emery Adzima, the city’s police and fire chiefs said in a news release posted on Facebook.“The investigation has determined this fire was a Homicide-Suicide. Alicia Adzima intentionally caused the fire with the intent to cause the deaths of her and her children,” the news release said.The police and fire departments were called to the scene shortly after 7:30 a.m. on the day of the fire.Sault Ste. Marie, population 13,400, is at the northeastern tip of the Upper Peninsula, about 350 miles (563 kilometers) north of Detroit.The Associated Press

Jill Biden to represent US at King Charles III coronation

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:31:52 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — First lady Jill Biden will represent the U.S. at the coronation of King Charles III next month, President Joe Biden told the royal during a Tuesday call, the White House said.Biden said he looked forward to meeting with the king in the U.K. “at a future date,” the White House said, and that his wife “looks forward to attending on behalf of the United States.”The White House said the pair also discussed the “strength of the relationship between our countries and the friendship between our peoples.”The president and the first lady jointly attended last year’s funeral in London for Elizabeth II. No sitting U.S. president has ever attended a British royal coronation. The Associated Press