ACROSS THE NATION

Trump says Iran will be hit 'very hard' if it is behind copilot who tried to crash flight to Israel

JERUSALEM (AP) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that if Iran is linked to the copilot who tried to crash an Israel-bound flight, the Islamic Republic would be struck "very hard" for the attempt on the lives of more than 180 people aboard the jet.

Trump issued the warning as investigators worked to determine why the copilot stabbed the flight's captain, causing the FlyDubai plane to plummet before others on board stopped the attack and landed the airliner in Saudi Arabia.

The president was asked by reporters at the White House whether he had been briefed about any links between the pilot behind the attack and Tehran. He said, "We're working on it right now."

"I would say the answer, based on what I'm hearing, is yes, but we're working on it right now," Trump said. He did not elaborate about why he suspects Iran might be involved.

Asked if the U.S. would retaliate against Tehran if it was behind the attack, Trump said, "Oh they'll be hit, very hard, don't worry."

"You just ask them," he added. "They know what happened. They'll be hit very hard."

His remarks came as diplomatic efforts to end the war appear to have stalled.

Iranian officials indicated Wednesday that they received an official U.S. response to Tehran's latest proposal to end the seven-month war, which Trump had publicly rejected just days earlier. The officials did not say what the response contained and whether it was a rejection.

Trump said in a Time magazine interview published Thursday that he will not accept proposals from Iran that "he wouldn't have approved a year ago," and left open the possibility of resuming bombing after the Nov. 3 election in the U.S.

Meanwhile, the American military has dispatched roughly 9,000 troops aboard a group of ships to the Middle East, a U.S. official said Thursday. That could mean three carriers will be in the region as soon as late October, according to the official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.

Despite Trump's public rebuff, mediators have continued working with Iran and the U.S. to try to broker a deal to end the fighting and open the Strait of Hormuz, according to officials who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Former Dallas officer who shot Black man in apartment that she mistook for hers gets parole

A white Dallas police officer convicted of killing a Black man in his apartment that she mistook for her own was granted parole Thursday after serving seven years of her 10-year sentence.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, which is appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, rejected Amber Guyger's initial parole request in 2024, but approved her case over the objections of victim Botham Jean 's family the first time she was eligible to ask again.

Guyger, 38, was convicted of murder in the 2018 killing of 26-year-old Jean, an accountant from the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia, who had been eating a bowl of ice cream when Guyger entered his home and shot him. Guyger was arrested three days after the shooting and was fired before her murder trial.

She had faced up to life in prison or as little as two years. Prosecutors initially asked the jury for a sentence of 28 years.

The shooting drew widespread attention because of the strange circumstances and because it was one in a string of shootings of Black men by white police officers. Guyger's sentencing hearing also included a stunning courtroom scene when Jean's brother and the Black judge presiding over the case embraced the sobbing Guyger.

At trial, Guyger said that after a long shift at work and still in uniform, she walked up to Jean's apartment -- which was on the fourth floor, directly above hers on the third -- and found the door unlocked. She said she thought the apartment was her own and that Jean was an intruder when she drew her service weapon and entered.

Civil rights attorney Lee Merritt said Thursday that Jean's family "strongly opposed this parole."

"They stood up again and again to ask that the full sentence be served. A 10-year sentence was already a fraction of what was lost. Releasing Ms. Guyger after seven years makes that loss feel even smaller in the eyes of the system. It is not smaller," Merritt said.

In 2024, a jury ordered Guyger to pay Jean's family nearly $100 million in a federal civil trial.

In granting her release, the board said it reviewed a "plethora" of information in her case.

Supreme Court grants review of Trump administration's mandatory detention policy for immigrants

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to review a Trump administration policy denying bond hearings for immigrants as the government carries out a sweeping crackdown.

The justices will consider whether immigrants who have been living in the U.S. have a right to a hearing to determine if they should remain detained while challenging their possible deportation.

The case will test a key pillar of the Trump administration's hard-line immigration agenda.

Most appeals courts to have considered the issue have found that it violates federal law to detain immigrants, including those living in the U.S. illegally, without a bond hearing. Those decisions conflict with rulings by the 5th and 8th circuits, which held that immigrants accused of illegally entering and remaining in the U.S. must be detained while their deportation cases are pending.

The high court agreed to hear the case of Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha, a citizen of Brazil. Authorities say he entered the United States illegally two decades ago and applied for asylum in 2016. He sought a bond hearing after an immigration judge determined that his detention was mandatory following his September 2025 arrest.

He has never been charged or convicted of a crime, his attorneys said. The court is expected to hear the case in the coming months.

President Donald Trump's administration had urged the high court to take up a different but related case that involves the broader constitutional implications of the new policy.

Attorneys from the Republican administration argue the circuits' split is "disrupting the orderly administration of immigration law." They say the nation's courts have been inundated with thousands of petitions filed by immigrants challenging the government's legal interpretation.

"The result is an unworkable patchwork of inconsistent immigration enforcement, where aliens present without admission are subject to mandatory detention in some circuits but are entitled to bond hearings and often released in others," lawyers for the administration wrote.

New ICE guidance bans high-speed car chases and sets tighter rules for traffic stops, a memo shows

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been ordered not to engage in high-speed car chases and to make vehicle stops only if they have completed specific training, under new internal guidance issued after several drivers were shot in encounters with ICE.

A memo sent to officers in ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division and obtained by The Associated Press warned they are not authorized to chase vehicles that fail to pull over under any circumstances. Instead, officers should take down the vehicles' information for further investigation, according to the memo signed by ICE's executive associate director Marcos D. Charles and dated Wednesday.

The new guidance comes after ICE-initiated vehicle stops have repeatedly escalated when drivers have refused to cooperate or tried to flee. ICE agents have fired their guns during more than a dozen such encounters since last year, killing at least four people and wounding several others.

President Donald Trump's administration has faced internal tension over how to handle traffic stops, which are seen as particularly high-risk encounters.

After fatal shootings of drivers in Maine and Texas in July, ICE officers were directed to temporarily pause most vehicle stops. But the next day, Trump went on social media to direct the agency to continue traffic stops, calling them "one of ICE's most important and effective Crime Fighting tools."

ICE has faced intense pressure from the White House to deport more people who are in the country illegally, and its arrests have reached record numbers. At the same time, the agency's rapid hiring spree last year resulted in some poorly vetted and trained officers hitting the streets.

In a statement, ICE downplayed the significance of the memo, which said the new guidance was intended to replace and amend prior directives issued earlier this year, last year and in 2018.

"Occasionally, ICE leadership issues guidance reminders to law enforcement officers," the statement said. "Vehicle stops and arrests of illegal aliens continue."

The new memo outlines steps intended to improve the safety of vehicle stops for ICE officers, drivers they are targeting, their passengers and the public.

Judge denies defense motion asking Lindsay Clancy be found not guilty due to a lack of evidence

BOSTON (AP) -- The judge in the Lindsay Clancy murder case on Thursday refused to declare her not guilty, turning down a defense motion that had argued there wasn't enough evidence to prove she was responsible for killing her three children.

During Clancy's first trial, which ended Sept. 4 with a deadlocked jury, her defense argued that she was not criminally responsible because of a mental disease, specifically a rare condition called postpartum psychosis. As such, the defense didn't dispute that the 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse carried out the killings at her family's Massachusetts home in 2023.

However, in a hearing earlier this week, Clancy's attorney Kevin Reddington tried to persuade the judge that prosecutors had not offered any proof that Clancy did it. Prosecutors argued there was plenty of evidence, calling Reddington's claim "laughable."

Prosecutors have yet to decide whether they will put the case in front of a jury for a second time. They could choose to retry her on first-degree murder charges or seek to try her only on lesser charges, including second-degree murder or manslaughter, or drop the case entirely.

In his ruling Thursday, Judge William Sullivan noted that for the purposes of his decision, he was required to analyze the evidence in the light most favorable to prosecutors -- and that it was up to the jury, not the judge, to decide whether to believe expert witnesses for the defense who testified that Clancy was not responsible for her actions because of mental illness.

"There was evidence introduced, both physical and circumstantial, that would permit a rational trier of fact to find beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of the charge of murder," Sullivan wrote.

At the first trial, prosecutors acknowledged that Clancy had mental health problems that included months of treatment and a stay in a psychiatric hospital, but argued that she knew what she was doing when she strangled the children -- the youngest just 8 months old -- then tried to kill herself.

Sullivan had declared a mistrial with the jury split 11 to 1 in favor of acquitting Clancy of murder charges.

Christa Pike is in critical condition after Tennessee's failed execution attempt, her lawyers say

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Christa Pike was in critical condition Thursday and receiving "lifesaving care" at a hospital, her lawyers said, a day after a failed attempt to execute her pushed Tennessee's governor to halt further executions this year and order an independent review.

Pike, who was sentenced to death for a 1995 murder, was taken to a hospital Wednesday night after surviving a double dose of the drug Tennessee uses to execute prisoners.

"We don't have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment," attorney Randy Spivey said during a news conference. "But we know she is alive right now."

The failed execution, which one death penalty expert described as unprecedented, led Republican Gov. Bill Lee to order a review, calling what happened "deeply disturbing" and indefinitely postponing Pike's execution and another one that had been scheduled for this year. It also reignited the debate over the state's execution procedures, including its single-drug lethal injections.

Spivey called the process cruel and torturous, saying he was "haunted" by watching and hearing Pike talking, singing and then snoring loudly during her more than 90 minutes in the death chamber. Her attorneys also said it was unclear if she might have suffered brain damage from being deprived of oxygen.

May Martinez, whose daughter was murdered by Pike and her boyfriend and who traveled to Nashville to watch the execution, was also upset.

"I didn't get justice for my daughter," Martinez told The Associated Press on Thursday.

"I watched the whole thing. She was awake. She was laughing. She was moving her head, moving her feet. She was trying to sit up," Martinez said. "Didn't work the first time they gave her a shot. It didn't work the second time."

SpaceX launches 4 astronauts on a fast track to the International Space Station

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- Four astronauts rocketed into orbit Thursday on a space station mission that will stretch until spring, among them a Canadian whose wife will give birth while he’s away.

SpaceX launched commander Jessica Watkins and her crew for NASA after a three-week delay to fix their Dragon capsule’s leaking fuel system. Thick clouds threatened all morning to halt the countdown but in the end, the skies cleared enough to allow for a safe liftoff.

Although their stay at the International Space Station will last a long six months, the flight there promised to be the quickest yet for Elon Musk’s company: a mere eight-hour transit with an arrival well before bedtime.

With the late morning liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Watkins became the first Black woman to lead a crew to orbit. A geologist who worked with NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity a decade ago, Watkins is making her second trip to the space station following a lengthy stay in 2022.

“Thanks for an amazing ride,” Watkins radioed after reaching orbit.

The others are newcomers to space: NASA’s Luke Delaney, a retired Marine; Canada’s Joshua Kutryk, a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force; and Russia’s Sergey Teteryatnikov, a former submariner. They will replace four astronauts who have been living at the orbiting laboratory since February.

This was the 13th crew launched by SpaceX for NASA, not counting 2020’s test flight. All four embrace their Crew-13 designation that pays homage in their mission patch to Apollo 13. The harrowing 1970 moonshot ended with the astronauts’ safe return.

References to the number 13 abounded Thursday. Watkins and her crew rode to the launch pad in black Teslas bearing plates that read “Lucky 13.” What’s more, they carried up a small crocheted golden dragon named Lucky with a four-leaf clover around its neck.

“We figured it wouldn’t hurt to bring a little of our own luck just in case, but clearly we don’t need it,” Watkins said from orbit, noting they were “four of the luckiest humans on or off planet Earth.”