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LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy will serve four months in prison on a misdemeanor conviction for using excessive force after the new Trump-appointed U.S. attorney offered an unusual plea deal despite a jury convicting him of a felony.

The victim’s attorney asked a federal appeals court to reinstate the felony conviction, but the court declined to do so on Thursday.

Deputy Trevor Kirk was recorded tackling and pepper-spraying an older woman while she filmed a man being handcuffed outside a supermarket in June 2023. A federal jury in February found Kirk guilty of one felony count of deprivation of rights under color of law, a crime that carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years. Felony convictions also prevent law enforcement officials from continuing to serve or owning a gun.

But when U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli took office a few months later, federal prosecutors offered Kirk a plea deal — a dismissal of the felony if Kirk pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, and a recommendation of one year of probation. A judge agreed to the lessened charge but sentenced Kirk to four months in prison on Monday.

Essayli said in a video posted online that prosecutors also offered Kirk a misdemeanor plea agreement under the prior administration, which he turned down.

“After reviewing this case extensively and thoroughly and carefully reviewing the facts and the law, I made the decision to re-extend the misdemeanor plea agreement to Deputy Kirk,” Essayli said.

In court filings signed off by Essayli, prosecutors wrote they believed that Kirk’s actions fell on the lower end of the excessive force spectrum, the woman did not suffer “serious bodily injury,” and that the case was prosecuted improperly.

Some former prosecutors and police conviction experts called the step highly unusual, especially without any indication of prosecutorial misconduct, ethical violations or new evidence in the case. It follows President Donald Trump’s vow to “protect and defend” law enforcement officers from prosecution and his efforts to assert greater control over the U.S. Justice Department.

“It’s very unusual to offer a plea deal after a conviction,” said Jeffrey Bellin, a former federal prosecutor from Washington, D.C., who is now a law professor at William and Mary Law School. In cases where it could happen, there’s usually new evidence of innocence, “not just the same evidence from a different perspective,” he said.

Kirk’s attorney, Tom Yu, said they filed a motion for acquittal that was denied but planned to appeal the decision.

The encounter

Caree Harper, who represents the woman Kirk injured, said in court filings that the federal government changed its account of the incident to make Kirk’s actions seem justified.

In the original indictment, prosecutors wrote Kirk “violently” threw the woman to the ground. In the new plea agreement, the government alleged the woman “swatted” at Kirk and “resisted,” Harper wrote, which she said was not proven in the criminal trial nor testified to in civil litigation.

She said her client did not commit a crime, had no weapon, and did not try to flee or resist. She suffered from a black eye, a fractured bone in her right wrist, multiple bruises, scratches and significant chemical burning from the pepper-spray.

Harper said the plea agreement sent a “dangerous message” that law enforcement officials could be convicted of a felony and still “cut a backroom deal after the trial.”

Philip Stinson, a former police officer and attorney who studies police misconduct, said the plea deal offered to Kirk was “seemingly without precedent” in federal court cases prosecuting police officers for their on-duty crimes, according to his search of an internal database of more than 24,000 arrest cases in the last 20 years involving sworn law enforcement officers.

LA County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Nicole Nishida said Kirk will remain employed with the agency but relieved from duty while it conducts an internal investigation to determine if any policy or procedures were violated.

A new approach by federal prosecutors

Kirk’s case is the latest showing the Trump administration’s plan to take a lighter hand in the federal government’s traditional role in prosecuting police misconduct. Trump’s April executive order on policing promised the “unleashing” of law enforcement and support for their legal defense.

The Justice Department announced in May it was canceling proposed consent decrees reached with Minneapolis and Louisville to implement policing reforms in the wake of the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The department also announced it would retract its findings in six other sweeping investigations into police departments that the Biden administration had accused of civil rights violations.

Trump-appointed federal judges have also played a hand in dismissing cases against police officers, including murder charges against a former Atlanta police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man hiding in a closet in 2019.

Experts say the reliance on the federal government to perform this policing oversight comes from the close relationship between local prosecutors and police officers, who regularly work together to investigate crimes.

“We are often looking at the federal government to serve as a check and balance for local law enforcement officials who are accused of really egregious activity toward the public,” said Devin Hart, a spokesperson for the National Police Accountability Project.

All four members of the original prosecutors withdrew from the case after the new plea deal was presented, and at least one resigned from the office, according to court filings. Two others took the buyout offered to federal employees, spokesperson Ciaran McEvoy confirmed.

A 19-year-old man was arrested Wednesday after a Connecticut State Police trooper observed him driving at a speed later confirmed to be 132 mph.

The trooper saw a Mercedes-Benz E300 traveling at excessive speed on I-91 south near Cromwell and tried to initiate a traffic stop with lights and sirens. The driver accelerated away, making unsafe lane changes and weaving in and out of traffic, the trooper’s report said.

Because of the hazard being created, the trooper stopped the pursuit.

State Police contacted the registered owner of the vehicle, who said that a family member had it.

Troopers obtained a phone number for the man, who admitted he had been driving and said he didn’t stop because he was late for a job interview.

He then agreed to meet Troopers at Troop H office in Hartford, where he was arrested.

He faces nine charges: reckless driving; disobeying signal of an officer; failure to maintain lane; passing on the right; improper turn; passing at an unsafe distance; engaging police in a pursuit; interfering with an officer; and reckless endangerment in the first degree.

He was released on a $2,500 bond and is scheduled to appear in Middletown Superior Court on June 17.

PHOENIX — Rookie Lexi Held scored a season-high 24 points, Satou Sabally had 19 points, seven rebounds and five assists and the Phoenix Mercury closed on an 18-1 run to beat the Golden State Valkyries 86-77 on Thursday night.

Phoenix trailed 76-68 with 4:04 remaining.

Held put the Mercury ahead 77-76 with 1:11 remaining on a deep 3-pointer. After Golden State went 1 for 2 at the free-throw line, Sabally rebounded her own miss and put it in while being fouled. Sabally made the free throw for a three-point play and an 80-77 advantage with 33.3 left.

Golden State guard Veronica Burton missed a wide-open layup at the other end and Sabally was fouled before making two free throws for a five-point lead. The Valkyries turned it over on their next two inbound plays, and the Mercury made four straight free throws to seal it.

Held was 7 for 15 from the field, including 4 for 9 behind the arc, and 6 for 6 at the free-throw line for the best scoring output by a rookie this season, passing Paige Bueckers’ mark of 21.

Phoenix (6-3) improved to 5-1 at home — a franchise best to begin a season.

Sami Whitcomb added nine points before fouling out late for Phoenix, which was without starters Kahleah Copper (left knee) and Alyssa Thomas (left calf).

Burton led Golden State (2-5) with 16 points, going 9 for 11 at the free-throw line. Temi Fagbenle had 12 points and 10 rebounds. Kayla Thornton, Cecilia Zandalasini and Julie Vanloo each scored 10.

Jersey swap

Megan McConnell, sister of NBA guard T.J. McConnell, was wearing his No. 9 Indiana Pacers jersey on the bench after getting injured in Phoenix’s loss to Minnesota on Tuesday. He was seen arriving at the NBA Finals wearing her No. 16 Mercury jersey.

A private lunar lander from Japan crashed while attempting a touchdown Friday, the latest casualty in the commercial rush to the moon.

The Tokyo-based company ispace declared the mission a failure several hours after communication was lost with the lander. Flight controllers scrambled to gain contact, but were met with only silence and said they were concluding the mission.

Communications ceased less than two minutes before the spacecraft’s scheduled landing on the moon with a mini rover. Until then, the descent from lunar orbit seemed to be going well.

CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada apologized to everyone who contributed to the mission, the second lunar strikeout for ispace.

Two years ago, the company’s first moonshot ended in a crash landing, giving rise to the name “Resilience” for its successor lander. Resilience carried a rover with a shovel to gather lunar dirt as well as a Swedish artist’s toy-size red house for placement on the moon’s dusty surface.

Company officials said it was too soon to know whether the same problem doomed both missions.

“This is the second time that we were not able to land. So we really have to take it very seriously,” Hakamada told reporters. He stressed that the company would press ahead with more lunar missions.

A preliminary analysis indicates the laser system for measuring the altitude did not work as planned, and the lander descended too fast, officials said. “Based on these circumstances, it is currently assumed that the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface,” the company said in a written statement.

Long the province of governments, the moon became a target of private outfits in 2019, with more flops than wins along the way.

Launched in January from Florida on a long, roundabout journey, Resilience entered lunar orbit last month. It shared a SpaceX ride with Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost, which reached the moon faster and became the first private entity to successfully land there in March.

Another U.S. company, Intuitive Machines, arrived at the moon a few days after Firefly. But the tall, spindly lander face-planted in a crater near the moon’s south pole and was declared dead within hours.

Resilience was targeting the top of the moon, a less treacherous place than the shadowy bottom. The ispace team chose a flat area with few boulders in Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a long and narrow region full of craters and ancient lava flows that stretches across the near side’s northern tier.

Plans had called for the 7.5-foot Resilience to beam back pictures within hours and for the lander to lower the piggybacking rover onto the lunar surface this weekend.

Made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic with four wheels, ispace’s European-built rover — named Tenacious — sported a high-definition camera to scout out the area and a shovel to scoop up some lunar dirt for NASA.

The rover, weighing just 11 pounds, was going to stick close to the lander, going in circles at a speed of less than one inch per second. It was capable of venturing up to two-thirds of a mile from the lander and should be operational throughout the two-week mission, the period of daylight.

Besides science and tech experiments, there was an artistic touch.

The rover held a tiny, Swedish-style red cottage with white trim and a green door, dubbed the Moonhouse by creator Mikael Genberg, for placement on the lunar surface.

Minutes before the attempted landing, Hakamada assured everyone that ispace had learned from its first failed mission. “Engineers did everything they possibly could” to ensure success this time, he said.

He considered the latest moonshot “merely a steppingstone” to its bigger lander launching by 2027 with NASA involvement.

Ispace, like other businesses, does not have “infinite funds” and cannot afford repeated failures, Jeremy Fix, chief engineer for ispace’s U.S. subsidiary, said at a conference last month.

While not divulging the cost of the current mission, company officials said it’s less than the first one which exceeded $100 million.

Two other U.S. companies are aiming for moon landings by year’s end: Jeff Bezos‘ Blue Origin and Astrobotic Technology. Astrobotic’s first lunar lander missed the moon altogether in 2024 and came crashing back through Earth’s atmosphere.

Paramount Global chair Shari Redstone was diagnosed with thyroid cancer earlier this spring, a spokesperson for Redstone said in a statement to Reuters on Thursday.

After feeling fatigue and other symptoms, Redstone sought medical help about two months ago and was diagnosed with thyroid cancer the next day. Surgeons removed her thyroid gland, but some cancer cells remained as they had spread to her vocal cords, according to the New York Times, which first reported the news on Thursday.

“She is maintaining all professional and philanthropic activities throughout her treatment, which is ongoing. She and her family are grateful that her prognosis is excellent,” Redstone‘s spokesperson Molly Morse said.

Redstone kept her diagnosis private, sharing it with only a tight circle of relatives, close friends, and advisers including David Ellison, the Skydance head and tech heir, whose company is set to purchase Paramount and the Redstone family’s stake, NYT added.

The diagnosis comes against the backdrop of Paramount preparing for an $8.4 billion merger with Skydance Media, which still requires U.S. FCC approval. The company also entered mediation to try and settle a lawsuit by U.S. President Donald Trump against CBS, reportedly offering $15 million to settle.

It’s official. Until it’s official.

The Steelers have announced that they have agreed to terms with quarterback Aaron Rodgers, pending a physical.. It’s a one-year contract.

The terms will be leaked once the contract is filed, if not sooner. The threshold question is whether will be paid the $10 million he said in April that he’d take for 2025.

Our guess is it will be higher. Even if it’s twice that amount, it’s a great deal for the Steelers.

The move sets the stage for Rodgers to participate in next week’s mandatory minicamp. Then, when training camp opens, it’ll be all about getting him ready for a Week 1 return to New Jersey for a game against the Jets.

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine was under an ongoing Russian ballistic missile and drone attack early Friday that wounded at least three people, officials said.

Multiple explosions were heard in the capital, Kyiv, where falling debris sparked fires across several districts as air defense systems attempted to intercept incoming targets, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv City Administration.

Three people were wounded, local officials said. They urged residents to seek shelter.

“Our air defense crews are doing everything possible. But we must protect one another — stay safe,” Tkachenko wrote on Telegram.

Authorities reported damage in several districts, and rescue workers were responding at multiple locations.

In Solomyanskyi district, a fire broke out on the 11th floor of a 16-story residential building. Emergency services evacuated three people from the apartment, and rescue operations were ongoing. Another fire broke out in a metal warehouse.

In northern Chernihiv region, a Shahed drone exploded near an apartment building, shattering windows and doors, according to regional military administration chief Dmytro Bryzhynskyi. He added that explosions from ballistic missiles were also recorded on the outskirts of the city.

The nighttime attack came hours after U.S. President Donald Trump said it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a while” before pulling them apart and pursuing peace, in comments that were a remarkable detour from Trump’s often-stated appeals to stop the three-year war. Trump spoke as he met with Germany’s new chancellor, who appealed to him as the “key person in the world” who could halt the bloodshed by pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Steelers wanted him. Their fans weren’t quite as committed.

While plenty of Steelers fans surely support whatever the team chooses to do, a sense of dismay emerged from more than a few Terrible Towel wavers. Whether they regard Rodgers as a barnstorming opportunist who is hoping to exit the NFL with a better final chapter or whether they resent his failure to pounce on the team’s interest in signing him (Cam Heyward’s words resonated in Steelers Nation) or whether they simply don’t like him, the anti-Aaron sentiment has been palpable.

Beyond the anecdotal evidence of fans complaining about Rodgers, we posted a couple of polls that posed a simple question. The first one, in late March, generated a 55.9-percent “no” vote. The second, a day after he appeared with Pat McAfee and aired grievances and spewed conspiracy theories, saw the negative response spike to 70 percent.

If the Steelers play well, the naysayers will change their tune. But if the Steelers struggle and/or if Rodgers doesn’t play dramatically better than the team’s quarterbacks in recent years (the bar is fairly low), the fans will not keep quiet.

For the team, the stakes are high. They’ve changed their ways in an effort to alter the outcome of the past eight seasons, which have featured zero playoff wins. That’s the longest the Steelers have gone between playoff wins since the first time they won a postseason contest on December 23, 1972 — better known as the Immaculate Reception game.

The bromance may be dead, but Republicans worry that an escalating feud between President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk could live on, leaving collateral damage in its wake for weeks, months or even years.

The proximate cause is the centerpiece of Trump’s agenda, the “big, beautiful bill,” which Musk is trashing publicly and privately. To try to kill the legislation, he’s said he will spend money to oust Republican lawmakers who vote for it.

“He does not give a f— about Republicans or the RNC, or House seats, or whatever,” a Musk adviser said Thursday in the middle of a social media war between the president and the tech mogul, who had never aligned with the Republican Party until the last few years. The adviser was given anonymity to speak candidly about the blow-up. “He will blow them up, he will. … I mean, we already know Republicans are going to lose the House. Senate will likely be fine, but Elon does not give a s— about that party stuff.”

Republican lawmakers care a lot — especially when it comes to their own congressional seats and chairmanships, which would be in danger if Musk tried to oust them from power in next year’s midterm elections.

In interviews with GOP lawmakers and operatives with ties to Congress, a clear theme emerged: Republicans should be scared of getting crosswise with either Trump or Musk — a tough task when they are slinging mud, insults and threats at each other.

In short, other Republicans are like the kids caught between parents in the midst of a possibly brutal divorce.

“I’m staying out of it,” said Rep. Don Bacon, who represents a competitive Nebraska district. “There’s a good verse in Proverbs: ‘Stay out of fights.’ I’m staying out of this one.”

But Trump allies are taking shots at Musk for his comments about the president and even encouraging Trump to take action against him.

“People including myself are recommending to the president that he pull every every contract associated with Elon Musk and that major investigations start immediately,” said Steve Bannon, a White House adviser in Trump’s first term and a frequent critic of Musk.

In particular, Bannon said, the South African-born Musk’s immigration status, security clearance, reported drug abuse, relationship with China and “involvement with attempting to get President Xi to the inauguration” should all receive scrutiny.

Getting nastier by the minute

Perhaps it was inevitable that the Trump-Musk buddy-trip movie would end — how long can the world’s most powerful man and its wealthiest man pretend that they aren’t in competition? But few in Washington could have predicted that the resulting inferno would consume their professional and personal relationships so quickly.

By Thursday afternoon, Musk was retweeting a suggestion that Trump should be impeached. In the hours before that, Trump said he was “very disappointed” with Musk for turning on his signature legislation, which would cut taxes by $3.7 trillion over a decade and slash government spending by $1.3 trillion — leaving a $2.4 trillion deficit — over the same period.

Musk and his allies bristled at the suggestion by Trump and White House officials that he was angry because the bill would kill tax benefits for electric vehicles, like those made by the Musk owned Tesla company.

Musk spent $275 million in the 2024 elections, mostly to help elect Trump, according to campaign finance records, and Trump rewarded him with a high-profile post as the face of the new Department of Government Efficiency. The role positioned Musk as the avatar of a push to cut the size and scope of the federal government — a role that turned him into a controversial figure as he appeared to revel in firing workers and closing agencies. At one point, Musk wielded a fake chainsaw on a stage to illustrate his post as cutter-in-chief.

That all came to an end last week when the two men held a chummy Oval Office news conference to announce Musk’s departure from the government.

But now, Trump says Musk was “wearing thin” as a special government employee and the featured player at DOGE. In a Truth Social post Thursday, Trump said the easiest way to cut more government spending would be to cancel federal subsidies for Musk’s business ventures.

Musk fired back by picking at a scab involving the Trump administration’s withholding of some documents from its hyped release of records pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein, a onetime associate of powerful figures — including Trump — who died in prison after being charged with sex-trafficking of minors. The Trump administration has released some new information from those records, but most of it has already been public. Musk tweeted that the “Epstein files” include Trump’s name. Trump and Epstein knew each other and Trump’s name appeared on flight records for Epstein’s plane, but Trump has never been implicated in Epstein’s abuse of underage girls.

Musk also predicted the economy would be in recession by the second half of this year as a result of Trump’s policies.

The fallout

Just a few months ago, Musk indicated he would put $100 million into political committees associated with Trump. That money never came — and now, it won’t, the Musk adviser said.

In addition, Republicans have to worry that vast sums will be used against them if they vote for Trump’s bill.

“It’s gone,” the Musk adviser said of the money once earmarked for Trump’s use. “He’s going to go nuclear. He will support Democrats if needed, he absolutely will.”

Democrats watched Thursday’s contretemps with glee.

“This is Christmas,” one Democratic Party operative said in a text message.

But even on a more substantive level, it gave some of Trump’s adversaries hope that his agenda would sink under the weight of Musk’s threats.

“The most important thing that’s happening here is that Musk is killing this terrible bill. If he’s willing to do that, then welcome,” said Simon Rosenberg, a veteran Democratic operative. “This is doing enormous damage to Donald Trump. There is no version of this that is good for him. There is nothing here positive for Trump. He looks weak and feckless, he can’t control his buddy.”

That’s the view from the left. The view of a GOP operative close to the White House was that the episode underscores Trump’s independence from Musk, adding a note of optimism that the fight would end with harmony.

“President Trump is the boss and there can be only one boss. If anything, this deals a blow to the Democrats’ lame attempts to paint the president as a puppet of the world’s richest man,” said the operative, who was given anonymity to speak candidly about the two powerful men. “On the other hand, I could see them both back in the Oval bro-ing it up again in a month, as it may be just the art of the deal.”

Some GOP strategists said the damage could be contained — but that it’s not yet clear whether that will happen.

“It depends on how long it goes and how nasty it gets,” said one former Trump campaign adviser who counts congressional candidates among his clients.

Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., who chairs the House GOP’s campaign arm and is in charge of protecting their 3-seat margin in the chamber, said he believes the rift will “blow over.”

But asked whether he thought Trump and Musk would make up, he just shrugged his shoulders.

A Texas woman died from an infection caused by a brain-eating amoeba days after cleaning her sinuses using tap water, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention case report.

The woman, an otherwise healthy 71-year-old, developed “severe neurologic symptoms” including fever, headache and an altered mental status four days after she filled a nasal irrigation device with tap water from her RV’s water system at a Texas campsite, the CDC report said.

She was treated for primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM) — a brain infection caused by Naegleria fowleri, often referred to as the “brain-eating amoeba,”the CDC said. Despite treatment, the woman experienced seizures and died from the infection eight days after she developed symptoms, the agency said.

Lab tests confirmed the amoeba in the woman’s cerebrospinal fluid, according to the report.

The CDC said the infection usually occurs after “recreational water activities” but noted that cleaning sinuses with non-distilled water is also a risk factor for developing PAM.

An investigation conducted by the agency found that the woman had not recently been exposed to fresh water but had done the nasal irrigation using non-boiled water from the RV’s potable water faucet “on several occasions” before her illness.

The potable water tank, the investigation found, was filled before the woman bought the RV three months ago and could have contained contaminated water. The investigation also concluded that the municipal water system, which was connected to the potable water system and bypassed the tank, could have caused the contamination.

The agency stressed the importance of using distilled, sterilized or boiled and cooled tap water when performing nasal irrigation to reduce the risk of infection and illness.