Attorney John Eastman surrenders on charges in Trump's Georgia 2020 election subversion case

ATLANTA (AP) — John Eastman, the conservative attorney who pushed a plan to keep Donald Trump in power, turned himself in to authorities Tuesday on charges in the Georgia case alleging an illegal plot to overturn the former president’s 2020 election loss.

Eastman was booked at the Fulton County jail and is expected to have an arraignment in the coming weeks in the sprawling racketeering case.

He was indicted last week alongside Trump and 17 others, who are accused by District Attorney Fani Willis of scheming to subvert the will of Georgia voters in a desperate bid to keep Joe Biden out of the White House. It was the fourth criminal case brought against the Republican former president.

Trump, whose bond was set Monday at $200,000, has said he will surrender to authorities in Fulton County on Thursday. His bond conditions prohibit him from intimidating co-defendants, witnesses or victims in the case, including on social media. He has a history of assailing the prosecutors leading the cases against him, including Willis.

Eastman said in a statement provided by his lawyers that he was surrendering Tuesday “to an indictment that should never have been brought.” He criticized the indictment for targeting “attorneys for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients” and said each of the 19 defendants was entitled to rely on the advice of lawyers and past legal precedent to challenge the results of the election.

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Drones downed in Moscow and surrounding region with no casualties, Russian officials say

Russian defenses downed Ukrainian drones in Moscow and the region around the capital early Wednesday, the defense ministry and the mayor said. No casualties were reported.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said one drone fell into a building under construction in Moscow City, a prestigious business complex hit by drones twice before. Several windows were broken in two buildings nearby and emergency services responded to the scene.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said the drone had been electronically jammed.

It blamed the attack on Ukraine and said two other drones were shot down by air defense systems in the Mozhaisk and Khimki areas of the Moscow region.

Moscow airports briefly closed but have now reopened, according to Russian state media.

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Rescuers save 8 people trapped in cable car dangling above canyon in Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Eight people who got trapped in a disabled cable car dangling high above a valley in Pakistan returned safely to the ground Tuesday after military commandos staged a daring and delicate rescue using helicopters and a makeshift chairlift.

The daylong ordeal began when six children got into the gondola for a trip to school. Two adults were with them. But then a cable snapped, bringing the car to a halt and trapping the group in midair. They were helpless, suspended hundreds of meters (feet) above a remote, mountainous landscape.

Six hours passed before a helicopter arrived. When the rescues began at last, at least one child who was plucked out of the car could be seen in video footage hanging at the end of a cable as he was winched up to the aircraft.

But the choppers also added an element of danger. The air currents churned up by the whirling blades risked weakening the only cable holding the car aloft and preventing it from crashing to the bottom of the river canyon in the Battagram district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Because helicopters could not fly after sunset, rescuers eventually shifted from an airborne effort to a risky operation that involved using one cable that was still intact to approach the car with the improvised chairlift.

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UPS workers approve 5-year contract, capping contentious negotiations that threatened deliveries

The union representing 340,000 UPS workers said Tuesday that its members voted to approve the tentative contract agreement reached last month, putting a final seal on contentious labor negotiations that threatened to disrupt package deliveries for millions of businesses and households nationwide.

The Teamsters said in a statement that 86% of the votes casts were in favor of ratifying the national contract. They also said it was passed by the highest vote for a contract in the history of the Teamsters at UPS.

The union said more than 40 supplemental agreements were also ratified, except for one that covers roughly 170 members in Florida. The national master agreement will go into effect as soon as that supplement is renegotiated and ratified, it said.

UPS said voting results for deals covering employees under two locals are expected soon.

“Our members just ratified the most lucrative agreement the Teamsters have ever negotiated at UPS," Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement. "This contract will improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers.”

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Who's in, who's out, who's boycotting: The 8 candidates expected on-stage for the first GOP debate

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Donald Trump won't be on the Republican debate stage Wednesday. But the former president is driving the conversation on and off the debate stage anyway.

Trump supporters including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene will be in Milwaukee. There are questions about how many of his campaign surrogates will be allowed into Fox News' spin room. The network has restricted their access unless they are the guests of another media organization.

Eight other candidates met the donor and polling qualifications to be on stage, according to the Republican National Committee. For those who didn't, missing the debate could be a decisive moment in their campaigns.

Conservative radio host Larry Elder has said he plans to sue the RNC over being left out, despite what he says is proof that he qualified for the debate. It also wasn’t immediately clear what Miami Mayor Francis Suarez — who didn’t make the cut — would do, following his Iowa State Fair comments that he might drop out of the race if that happened.

To qualify for the Aug. 23 debate, candidates needed to satisfy polling and donor requirements set by the RNC: at least 1% in three national polls or a mix of national and early-state polls deemed acceptable by the committee, between July 1 and Aug. 21, and a minimum of 40,000 donors, with 200 in 20 or more states.

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Digital clones and Vocaloids may be popular in Japan. Elsewhere, they could get lost in translation

TOKYO (AP) — Kazutaka Yonekura dreams of a world where everyone will have their very own digital “clone” — an online avatar that could take on some of our work and daily tasks, such as appearing in Zoom meetings in our place.

Yonekura, chief executive of Tokyo startup Alt Inc., believes it could make our lives easier and more efficient.

His company is developing a digital double, an animated image that looks and talks just like its owner. The digital clone can be used, for example, by a recruiter to carry out preliminary job interviews, or by a physician to screen patients ahead of checkups.

“This liberates you from all the routine (tasks) that you must do tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and the day after that,” he told The Associated Press as he showed off his double — a thumbnail video image of Yonekura on the computer screen, with a synthesized version of his voice.

When his digital clone is asked “What kind of music do you like,” it pauses for several seconds, then goes into a long-winded explanation about Yonekura's fondness for energetic rhythmical music such as hip-hop or rock 'n' roll.

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Texas' floating barrier to stop migrants draws recurring concerns from Mexico, US official says

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Mexico's government has repeatedly raised concerns with the U.S. about large buoys Texas put on the Rio Grande to deter migrants and agreements between the two countries could suffer if the floating barrier remains in place, a State Department official said in court Tuesday.

The testimony sought to reinforce what the Biden administration argues are the diplomatic stakes over wrecking-ball-sized buoys that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott authorized this summer as part of the Republican's increasingly hardline measures in the name of curbing the flow of migrants crossing the border.

U.S. District Judge David Ezra did not immediately rule at the conclusion of the hearing Tuesday in Austin. At one point, Ezra said the issue centered on whether Abbott has the power to unilaterally try stopping what the governor has described as an “invasion” on America's southern border.

“Mexico has sensitivities about sovereignty and doesn't want to be seen as a lesser partner to the United States,” said Hillary Quam, the State Department's coordinator for border affairs between U.S. and Mexico.

The hearing is one of two key court cases in Texas this week surrounding immigration. On Thursday, the Biden administration will again be in court, this time on the defense as it tries to keep in place a program designed to allow people to come to the U.S. from four countries.

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Kerry Washington, Martin Sheen shout for solidarity between Hollywood strikers and other workers

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kerry Washington and Martin Sheen, a pair of fictional former politicos, turned Hollywood's strikes into a rousing campaign rally Tuesday with speeches celebrating unity across the industry and with labor at large.

“We are here because we know that unions matter,” said Washington, who played a political fixer on ABC’s “Scandal.” “Not only do we have solidarity within our union, we have solidarity between our unions, because we are workers.”

The rally outside Disney Studios in Burbank, California, coming more than a month into a strike by Hollywood actors and more than three months into a strike by screenwriters, was meant to highlight their alliance with the industry's other guilds and the nation's other unions, including the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO.

“The audacity of these studios to say they can’t afford to pay their workers after they make billions in profits is utterly ridiculous,” Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Yvonne Wheeler told the crowd. She added a dig at Disney's CEO, who has become a target of strikers. "But despite their money, they can’t buy this kind of solidarity. Tell Bob Iger that.”

Sheen, who played the president for seven seasons on “The West Wing,” was joined by most of the show's main cast members on the stage as he emphasized that the toll being taken as the strikes stretch out.

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'Get out of my house!' Video shows 98-year-old mother of Kansas newspaper publisher upset amid raid

MARION, Kan. (AP) — Newly released video shows the 98-year-old mother of a Kansas newspaper publisher confronting police officers as they searched her home in a raid that has drawn national scrutiny, at one point demanding: “Get out of my house!”

Video released by the newspaper Monday shows Joan Meyer shouting at the six officers inside the Marion, Kansas, home she shared with her son, Marion County Record Editor and Publisher Eric Meyer. Standing with the aid of a walker and dressed in a long robe or gown and slippers, she seems visibly upset.

“Get out of my house ... I don't want you in my house!” she said at one point. “Don't touch any of that stuff! This is my house!” she said at another.

The raids of the newspaper and the homes of the Meyers and a City Council member happened on Aug. 11, after a local restaurant owner accused the newspaper of illegally accessing information about her. Joan Meyer died a day later. Her son said he believes that the stress contributed to her death.

A prosecutor said later that there was insufficient evidence to justify the raids, and some of the seized computers and cellphones have been returned. Meanwhile, the initial online search of a state website that the police chief cited to justify the raid was legal, a spokesperson for the agency that maintains the site said Monday.

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Spain's acting prime minister criticizes federation head for kissing player from World Cup champs

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spain’s acting prime minister said it was “unacceptable” that the Spanish soccer federation president kissed a player on the lips without her consent, as pressure builds on Luis Rubiales to resign for tarnishing the team’s Women’s World Cup championship.

Pedro Sánchez praised the team during an audience at the presidential palace on Tuesday and later joined the growing criticism of Rubiales.

“What we saw is unacceptable,” Sánchez said. “And the apologies offered by Mr. Rubiales are not sufficient, I would call them inappropriate, so he must continue taking further steps to clarify what we all saw.”

Late Tuesday, the Spanish soccer federation announced it will hold an emergency meeting of its general assembly on Friday. It is unclear if Rubiales can maintain the backing of the leaders of Spain’s regional soccer organizations.

The federation said it was opening an internal probe “regarding the incidents during the awards ceremony Women’s World Cup.”

The Associated Press