AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST

Judge sets Trump’s sentencing in hush money case for Jan. 10, but signals no jail time

NEW YORK (AP) — In an extraordinary turn, a judge Friday set President-elect Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money criminal case for Jan. 10 — little over a week before he’s due to return to the White House — but indicated he wouldn’t be jailed.

The development nevertheless leaves Trump on course to be the first president to take office convicted of felony crimes.

Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial, signaled in a written decision that he’d sentence the former and future president to what’s known as an unconditional discharge, in which a conviction stands but the case is closed without jail time, a fine or probation. Trump can appear virtually for sentencing, if he chooses.

Rejecting Trump’s push to dismiss the verdict and throw out the case on presidential immunity grounds and because of his impending second term, Merchan wrote that only “bringing finality to this matter” would serve the interests of justice.

He said he sought to balance Trump’s ability to govern, “unencumbered” by the case, against other interests: the U.S. Supreme Court’s July ruling on presidential immunity and the public’s expectation “that all are equal and no one is above the law,” and the importance of respecting a jury verdict.

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Republican Mike Johnson reelected House speaker in dramatic floor vote

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Mike Johnson narrowly won reelection Friday as House speaker on a first ballot, overcoming hard-right GOP holdouts in a tense standoff and buoyed by a nod of support from President-elect Donald Trump.

The uneasy scene brought an ominous start to the first day of the new Congress. A small collection of hardline Republicans convened in the back of the House chamber, one by one declining to vote or choosing another lawmaker. Johnson’s face turned grim, acknowledging fresh turmoil and signaling trouble ahead for him as Trump returns to the White House with unified GOP control of Washington.

In the end, however, Johnson was able to flip two holdouts who switched to support him, with help from Trump, who called the dissenting Republican lawmakers from the golf course. The final tally was 218-215.

Johnson, visibly relieved, vowed to “reject business as usual” in his first speech with the gavel.

“We’re going to drastically cut back the size and scope of government,” he promised.

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Soldier who blew up Tesla at Trump hotel left note saying blast was to be a ‘wake up call’ for US

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A highly decorated Army soldier who fatally shot himself in a Tesla Cybertruck just before it blew up outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas left notes saying the New Year’s Day explosion was a stunt to serve as a “wake up call” for the country’s ills, investigators said Friday.

Matthew Livelsberger, a 37-year-old Green Beret from Colorado Springs, Colorado, also wrote in notes he left on his cellphone that he needed to “cleanse” his mind “of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.” Livelsberger served in the Army since 2006 and deployed twice to Afghanistan.

“This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives,” Livelsberger wrote in one letter found by authorities and released Friday.

The explosion caused minor injuries to seven people but virtually no damage to the Trump International Hotel. Authorities said that Livelsberger acted alone.

Livelsberger’s letters covered a range of topics including political grievances, societal problems and both domestic and international issues, including the war in Ukraine. He said in one letter that the U.S. was “terminally ill and headed toward collapse.”

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New Orleans attacker had suspected bomb materials at home, reserved truck weeks ago, officials say

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The man who rammed a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans had suspected bomb-making materials at his home and reserved the vehicle used in the deadly attack more than six weeks earlier, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press on Friday.

Federal authorities searching the home of Shamsud-Din Jabbar in Houston found a workbench in the garage and hazardous materials believed to have been used to make explosive devices, according to law enforcement officials familiar with the search. The officials were not authorized to speak about the ongoing inquiry and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity.

The FBI investigation also revealed that Jabbar purchased a cooler in Vidor, Texas, hours before the attack and gun oil from a store in Sulphur, Louisiana, the officials said. Authorities also determined Jabbar booked his rental of the pickup truck on Nov. 14, suggesting he may have been plotting the attack for more than six weeks.

Authorities say 14 people were killed and about 30 were injured in the attack early Wednesday by Jabbar, a former Army soldier who posted several videos on his Facebook hours before the attack previewing the violence he would unleash and proclaiming his support for the Islamic State militant group. The coroner’s office listed the cause of death for all 14 victims as “blunt force injuries.”

Jabbar, 42, was fatally shot in a firefight with police at the scene of the deadly crash on Bourbon Street, famous worldwide for its festive vibes in New Orleans’ historic French Quarter.

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New Orleans attack and Vegas explosion highlight extremist violence by active military and veterans

While much remains unknown about the man who carried out an attack in New Orleans on New Year’s and another who died in an explosion in Las Vegas the same day, the violence highlights the increased role of people with military experience in ideologically driven attacks, especially those that seek mass casualties.

In New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a veteran of the U.S. Army, was killed by police after a deadly rampage in a pickup truck that left 14 others dead and injured dozens more. It’s being investigated as an act of terrorism inspired by the Islamic State group.

In Las Vegas, officials say Matthew Livelsberger, an active duty member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, shot himself in the head in a Tesla Cybertruck packed with firework mortars and camp fuel canisters, shortly before it exploded outside the entrance of the Trump International Hotel, injuring seven people. On Friday, investigators said Livelsberger wrote that the explosion was meant to serve as a “wake up call” and that the country was “terminally ill and headed toward collapse.”

Service members and veterans who radicalize make up a tiny fraction of a percentage point of the millions and millions who have honorably served their country. But an Associated Press investigation published last year found that radicalization among both veterans and active duty service members was on the rise and that hundreds of people with military backgrounds had been arrested for extremist crimes since 2017. The AP found that extremist plots they were involved in during that period had killed or injured nearly 100 people.

The AP also found multiple issues with the Pentagon’s efforts to address extremism in the ranks, including that there is still no force-wide system to track it, and that a cornerstone report on the issue contained old data, misleading analyses and ignored evidence of the problem.

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A double dose of nasty winter is about to smack much of the US with snow, ice and biting cold

A strong snow and ice storm followed by brutally cold conditions will soon smack the eastern two-thirds of the United States as frigid air escapes the Arctic, plunging as far south as Florida, meteorologists forecast.

Starting Saturday, millions of people are going to be hit by moderate to heavy snow from Kansas City to Washington — including a high chance of at least 8 inches of snow between central Kansas and Indiana — the National Weather Service warned Friday. Dangerous ice particularly lethal to power lines — “so heavy like paste, it’s hard to move,” said private meteorologist Ryan Maue — is likely to set in just south of that in southern Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and much of Kentucky and West Virginia.

“It’s going to be a mess, a potential disaster,” Maue said. “This is something we haven’t seen in quite a while.”

National Weather Service meteorologist Alex Lamers said Friday that the potential for blizzard conditions is increasing, particularly in Kansas and neighboring portions of the Central Plains, and that wind gusts may reach 50 mph at times.

As the storm moves out on Monday, hundreds of millions of people in the eastern two-thirds of the nation will be plunged into dangerous bone-chilling air and wind chills all week, government and private forecasters said. Temperatures could be 12 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (7 to 14 degrees Celsius) colder than normal as the dreaded polar vortex stretches down from the high Arctic bringing chilly weather, they said.

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New York governor to push for expanded mental health laws, citing violence on subway

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to expand the state’s involuntary commitment laws to allow hospitals to compel more mentally ill people into treatment, following a series of violent crimes in the New York City subway system.

In a statement Friday, Hochul, a Democrat, said she would push to change mental health care laws during the coming legislative session in an attempt to address what she described as a surge of crimes on the subway.

“Many of these horrific incidents have involved people with serious untreated mental illness, the result of a failure to get treatment to people who are living on the streets and are disconnected from our mental health care system,” she said.

“We have a duty to protect the public from random acts of violence, and the only fair and compassionate thing to do is to get our fellow New Yorkers the help they need.”

Most people with mental illness are not violent and they are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators, according to mental health experts.

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Surgeon General calls for new label on drinks to warn Americans of alcohol’s cancer risk

WASHINGTON (AP) — Alcohol is a leading cause of cancer, a risk that should be clearly labeled on drinks Americans consume, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy proposed on Friday.

Murthy’s advisory comes as research and evidence mounts about the bad effects that alcohol has on human health, but his proposal for a label would require a rare approval from the U.S. Congress.

Americans should be better informed about the link between alcohol and cancer, in particular, Murthy argues in his advisory, noting alcohol consumption is to blame for nearly one million preventable cancer cases in the U.S. over the last decade. About 20,000 people die every year from those alcohol-related cancer cases, according to his advisory.

Bottles of beer, wine and liquor already carry warning labels that say pregnant women should not drink and that alcohol consumption can impair someone’s ability to drive a car. But Murthy’s proposed label would go even further, raising awareness about the risk for cancer, too.

“It’s pretty crazy that there’s a lot more information on a can of peas than on a bottle of whiskey,” said Dr. Timothy Naimi, who directs the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. “Consumers have the right to basic information about health risks, serving size and drinks per container.”

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Israeli strikes kill at least 42 in Gaza as ceasefire talks set to resume in Qatar

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli strikes killed at least 42 people in Gaza, including children, overnight and into Friday, hospital and emergency response workers said, as health workers and Israel’s military traded claims over reported evacuation orders for two hospitals in the territory’s largely isolated north.

The assertions over Al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals occurred as stalled ceasefire talks to end nearly 15 months of war were set to resume in Qatar.

Staff at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said that more than a dozen women and children were killed in strikes in central Gaza, including in Nuseirat, Zawaida, Maghazi and Deir al-Balah. Dozens of people were killed across the enclave the previous day.

“We woke up to the missile strike. We found the whole house disintegrated,” Abdul Rahman Al-Nabrisi said in the Maghazi refugee camp.

Later Friday, officials at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said that an airstrike killed three people in a car in Zawaida in central Gaza. And the Civil Defense, first responders affiliated with the Hamas-run government, said that an airstrike killed seven people, including four children and a woman, in the Shijaiyah neighborhood outside Gaza City, and another strike killed two people at Al-Samer junction in Gaza City.

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Why Apple TV+ is offering a free weekend of binge-watching

NEW YORK (AP) — Apple TV+ is hoping people will make a dent in the Strategic Popcorn Reserve by bingeing its streaming TV and movies for free this weekend in what experts are calling a canny promotion.

The two-day offer this Saturday and Sunday is intended to give viewers a taste of what’s behind the Apple paywall and get them hooked, ready to fork over $9.99 a month in the U.S.

Michael D. Smith, a professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, said the two-day window is not too short to ignore and not too long to satisfy all demand.

“This is not ‘I’m going to let you binge-watch this over the course of three or four days or a week or a couple weeks and then maybe you won’t subscribe next month,’” he said. “This is, ‘I’m giving you two days to explore my catalog. And I’m hoping that you’re going to find something in there that maybe you’ll binge. Maybe you’ll have time to binge the first six episodes, but it’s so cool you’ve got to come back and you’re going to be willing to subscribe to come back.’”

While entertainment companies often use promotions and discounts to lure new customers, Apple TV+’s pitch has no catches, like entering personal info or credit card numbers. All you need is an Apple ID, which is free and which many people already have from the days of 99-cent song downloads.

The Associated Press