BOSTON (AP) — An American Airlines flight attendant was indicted Thursday after authorities said he tried to secretly record video of a 14-year-old girl using an airplane bathroom last September.

Police have also alleged that Estes Carter Thompson III, 36, of Charlotte, North Carolina, had recordings of four other girls using lavatories on an aircraft where he worked.

Thompson was indicted on one count of attempted sexual exploitation of children and one count of possession of images of child sexual abuse depicting a prepubescent minor.

Thompson was charged and arrested in January 2024 in Lynchburg, Virginia. He has been in federal custody since. A lawyer for Thompson said after the indictment by a federal grand jury that he was unable to comment.

Investigators said that about midway through a Sept. 2, 2023, flight from Charlotte to Boston, the 14-year-old got up to use the main cabin lavatory nearest to her seat but found it was occupied.

Thompson then told her the first-class lavatory was unoccupied and escorted her there, investigators said. Before she entered the bathroom, Thompson allegedly told her he needed to wash his hands and that the toilet seat was broken, they said.

After he left, the teen entered the bathroom and she saw red stickers on the underside of the toilet seat lid, which was in the open position, officials said.

Beneath the stickers, Thompson had concealed his iPhone to record a video, investigators said. The girl used her phone to take a picture of the stickers and concealed iPhone before leaving.

Prosecutors also allege hundreds of images of child sexual abuse generated through artificial intelligence were found stored on Thompson’s iCloud account.

Attempted sexual exploitation of children carries a sentence of 15-30 years in prison, while possessing images of sexual abuse of a prepubescent minor can mean up to 20 years in prison.

Both charges also provide for at least five years and up to a lifetime of supervised release, a fine of up to $250,000 and restitution.

American Airlines previously issued a statement saying the flight attendant was “immediately withheld from service” and hasn’t worked since the phone was discovered.

A search of Thompson’s iCloud account revealed four additional instances between January and August 2023 in which Thompson recorded a minor using the lavatory on an aircraft, according to investigators.

Those depicted in the recordings were 7, 9, 11 and 14 years old at the time, they said. Their families have been contacted by police, investigators said.

LUPTON, Ariz. (AP) — A freight train carrying fuel derailed and caught fire Friday near the Arizona-New Mexico state line, forcing the closure of an interstate highway that serves as a key trucking route.

Initial passersby posted video and photos on social media of crumpled train cars and billowing, black smoke.

No injuries were reported in the midday train wreck near Lupton, Arizona. BNSF Railway spokesperson Lena Kent said company personnel were on site working to clear the wreckage. Kent said the cause of the derailment is under investigation.

Interstate 40 was closed by authorities in both directions in the area in the early afternoon, directing trucks and motorists off the freeway to alternate routes, New Mexico State Police and the Arizona Department of Public Safety announced.

The train was transporting non-odorous propane and gasoline, and a half-dozen rail cars caught fire and burned for hours after the derailment, New Mexico State Police Lt. Phil Vargas said.

“It looks like they’re just letting those (rail) cars burn themselves out,” Vargas said.

Nearby residences and a truck stop were evacuated as a precaution as winds carried away thick smoke and local firefighting crews responded. The derailment also led Amtrak to cancel some passenger travel, including on the route between Los Angeles and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Traffic on I-40 backed up for more than 10 miles, though detours were opened on two-lane roads and highways, said Kristine Bustos-Mihelcic, a spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Transportation. The agency warned Friday evening of an extended highway closure that would increase traffic on other interstate highways, including I-25 and I-10.

The Arizona Corporation Commission that oversees railroad safety said in a social media post on X that 10 rail cars were involved in the derailment and that two were transporting liquid petroleum. The agency said it planned to send a railroad inspector to the site but later learned the derailment happened on the New Mexico side of the tracks.

BALTIMORE (AP) — A wooden cross is laden with Miguel Luna’s personal belongings — his construction uniform and work boots, a family photo, the flag of his native El Salvador — but his body remains missing after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

More than a month has passed since six members of a roadwork crew plunged to their deaths when a container ship lost power and crashed into one of the bridge’s supporting columns. Four bodies have been recovered, but Luna and another worker, Jose Mynor Lopez, have not been found.

They were all Latino immigrants who came to the United States from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. They were fathers and husbands, brothers and grandfathers. They shared a common dream and a determination to achieve it.

In an effort to honor their lives and their work, Baltimore County’s close-knit Latino community has constructed an elaborate memorial near the south end of the bridge. It includes decorated wooden crosses, a painted canvas backdrop, bunches of flowers, candles and a giant modified American flag with six stars — one for each of the men.

A group of mourners gathered at the memorial Friday evening to offer support for the victims’ loved ones and remind the public that even as cleanup efforts proceed on schedule and maritime traffic resumes through the Port of Baltimore, two families have yet to be made whole.

“It is one month, and there’s still two bodies under the water,” said Fernando Sajche, who knew Luna and helped construct the memorial. “We really need some answers.”

Sajche, who immigrated from Guatemala 16 years ago and works in construction himself, said it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the victims died on the job.

“They’re the people who do the hard work in this country,” Sajche said.

The men were filling potholes on the bridge in the early hours of March 26 when the ship veered off course. A last-minute mayday call from the ship’s pilot allowed police officers to stop traffic to the bridge moments before the collapse, but they didn’t have enough time to alert the workers.

One of the officers who helped block traffic stopped by the vigil Friday and visited briefly with some of Luna’s relatives. He admired the memorial and praised the community’s warm response to an unthinkable tragedy.

Organizers used two cranes to hoist Salvadoran and Guatemalan flags high into the air in honor of Luna and Mynor Lopez.

Marcoin Mendoza, who worked with Luna several years ago as a welder, said Luna came to the U.S. to build a better life for himself and his family, like so many other immigrants.

“Same dream as everybody else,” Mendoza said. “To work hard.”

Luna was especially well-known in his community because his wife has a local food truck specializing in pupusas and other Salvadoran staples. He would often spend his days helping at the food truck and his nights working construction.

As the sun set Friday evening, mourners listened to mariachi music and passed out bowls of soup and beans. They lit candles and prayed together.

Bernardo Vargas, who also helped construct the memorial, said he appreciates being able to do something for the victims’ families.

“I’ll be here every day until they find those two people,” he said.

Standing in front of the memorial’s elaborate painted backdrop, he pointed to a cluster of red handprints made by Luna’s relatives. They stood out among abstract depictions of the bridge collapse and salvage efforts as well as a violent scene from the U.S. southern border that showed a row of armored officers fighting back desperate migrants.

Loved ones left written messages in English and Spanish.

“Here is where everything ends, all your aspirations and all your work. Now rest until the day when the trumpets sound,” someone had written in Spanish. “You will live on in the hearts of your loving family.”

DENVER (AP) — A former Colorado sheriff’s deputy was convicted of a misdemeanor on Friday in the shooting death of a 22-year-old man in distress who had called 911 for help after his car got stuck in a small mountain community.

Andrew Buen was also charged with second-degree murder and official misconduct in the 2022 death of Christian Glass, which drew national attention and prompted calls for police reform focused on crisis intervention. But jurors could not reach a verdict on those charges and only found him guilty of reckless endangerment, which is typically punished by a maximum four months in jail, The Denver Post reported.

A second-degree murder conviction would have carried a sentence of years in prison.

Prosecutors alleged that Buen needlessly escalated a standoff with Glass, who exhibited signs of a mental health crisis. But the defense said Buen shot Glass to protect a fellow officer, which made the shooting legally justified.

A second officer indicted in Glass’ death previously pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. Six other officers have been charged with failing to intervene.

District Attorney Heidi McCollum still has the option of pursuing the charges against Buen for murder and official misconduct. She said Friday she expects to make a decision in the next couple of weeks.

An attorney for the Glass family said the family would like the prosecution continue.

“The jury found Deputy Buen’s conduct to be criminal,” Siddharta Rathod said. “The jury found Deputy Buen guilty of reckless endangerment. And it is one step closer to getting justice for Christian. Deputy Buen will reface a jury of his peers.”

Glass called for help after his SUV became stuck on a dirt road in Silver Plume. He told a dispatcher he was being followed and made other statements suggesting he was paranoid, hallucinating or delusional, and experiencing a mental health crisis, according to Buen’s indictment.

When Buen and other officers arrived, Glass refused to get out of his vehicle. Officers’ body camera footage showed Glass making heart shapes with his hands to the officers and praying: “Dear Lord, please, don’t let them break the window.”

In closing arguments on Wednesday, prosecutors said Buen decided from the start that Glass needed to get out of the vehicle and shouted commands at him 46 times over about 10 minutes. The prosecution contends Buen did not have any legal justification to force Glass out, not even if it was a suspected case of driving under the influence.

They fired bean bag rounds and shocked him with a Taser, but those attempts failed to make Glass exit. He then took a knife he had offered to surrender at the beginning of the encounter and flung it out a rear window, which was broken by a bean bag, toward another officer, Randy Williams, according to the indictment. At that point, Buen fired five times at Glass.

Glass just reacted after being treated “like an animal in a cage being poked and prodded,” and the knife never touched Williams, District Attorney Heidi McCollum told jurors in closing arguments in Idaho Springs.

Defense lawyer Carrie Slinkard faulted prosecutors for not looking into whether Glass had behavioral or psychological issues that could explain his behavior, whether drugs had played a role, or whether both factors could have contributed.

Glass’ mother, Sally Glass, has previously said her son has depression and had recently been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. She said he was “having a mental health episode” during his interaction with the police.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Stephen Potts, who described Glass as a “terrified boy,” said it did not matter what prompted the crisis.

“He was in a crisis of some kind,” he said. “Is this how we expect people in crisis to be treated?”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Regulators have closed Republic First Bank, a regional lender operating in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Friday it had seized the Philadelphia-based bank, which did business as Republic Bank and had roughly $6 billion in assets and $4 billion in deposits as of Jan. 31.

Fulton Bank, which is based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, agreed to assume substantially all of the failed bank’s deposits and buy essentially all of its assets, the agency said.

Republic Bank’s 32 branches will reopen as branches of Fulton Bank as early as Saturday. Republic First Bank depositors can access their funds via checks or ATMs as early as Friday night, the FDIC said.

The bank’s failure is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund $667 million.

The lender is the first FDIC-insured institution to fail in the U.S. this year. The last bank failure — Citizens Bank, based in Sac City, Iowa — was in November.

In a strong economy an average of only four or five banks close each year.

Rising interest rates and falling commercial real estate values, especially for office buildings grappling with surging vacancy rates following the pandemic, have heightened the financial risks for many regional and community banks. Outstanding loans backed by properties that have lost value make them a challenge to refinance.

Last month, an investor group including Steven Mnuchin, who served as U.S. Treasury secretary during the Trump administration, agreed to pump more than $1 billion to rescue New York Community Bancorp, which has been hammered by weakness in commercial real estate and growing pains resulting from its buyout of a distressed bank.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A retired professional wrestler and former congressional candidate in Nevada and Texas has been indicted on a murder charge in the death of an Idaho man who suffered a head injury during a Halloween Party at a Las Vegas Strip hotel.

Daniel Rodimer, 45, who now lives in Texas, is expected to appear before a Nevada judge May 8 following his indictment Friday in the death of Christopher Tapp.

His defense attorneys, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, said Friday that Rodimer “maintains his complete innocence and looks forward to his day in court.”

Tapp, 47, of Idaho Falls, was injured Oct. 29 at the Resorts World hotel and taken to a hospital, where he died several days later, police said. He had served more than 20 years in prison in Idaho in a 1996 killing before receiving an $11.7 million settlement from Idaho Falls in 2022 in a wrongful conviction lawsuit.

Investigators initially believed Tapp had been fatally injured in a fall, but they later learned that he had been in an argument with Rodimer.

Rodimer, a Republican who lost bids for Congress in Nevada in 2020 and in Texas in 2021, surrendered to Las Vegas police for his arrest March 6 and remains free on a $200,000 bail.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Federal Election Commission has fined the campaign fund of a former Illinois congressman $43,475 for failing to refund excess contributions in a timely manner.

A letter from the FEC this month reports the fine against Republican Rodney Davis’ campaign committee, Rodney for Congress, and its treasurer, Thomas Charles Datwyler.

The violations occurred during the 2021-2022 election cycle. Federal campaign finance law prohibits contributions of more than $2,900 per cycle from an individual or single-candidate political committee and $5,000 per election from a multicandidate committee. Excess contributions must be refunded or redesignated within 60 days.

In a negotiated settlement with Davis’ committee and Datwyler, the FEC found that one contribution of $3,625 and general election contributions of $479,784 were not properly redistributed within 60 days, resulting in the fine. Davis was not eligible for the larger amount because he was not on the 2022 general election ballot.

A call to a telephone number associated with Davis went unanswered. A phone message was left for Datwyler.

The FEC noted that the committee disclosed refunds of excessive contributions on quarterly and year-end reports for 2022 and in January 2024 filed paperwork disclosing the refunds that were part of the negotiated settlement.

Davis, a 54-year-old Taylorville resident, served five terms in Congress. After the 2020 congressional redistricting controlled by Democrats in the Illinois General Assembly, Davis was pushed into a district with conservative Republican Mary Miller, who beat Davis in the 2022 GOP primary with more than 57% of the vote.

Davis’ committee told the FEC it would dissolve upon resolving the matter. The fine is payable by July 18.

Harvey Weinstein will appear in a New York City court next week, the first step in potentially retrying the film mogul after his 2020 rape conviction was overturned.

New York’s highest court on Thursday threw out Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction, ordering a new trial. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has said it intends to pursue a retrial, but gave no indication about the agenda for Wednesday’s hearing.

“We will do everything in our power to retry this case, and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement Friday.

Meanwhile, a woman Weinstein was sent to prison for sexually assaulting said Friday she is considering whether she would testify at any retrial.

Mimi Haley said she is still processing Thursday’s decision by the state Court of Appeals and is considering numerous factors, including the trauma of having to prepare for another trial and again relive what happened to her.

“It was retraumatizing and grueling and exhausting and all the things,” she said during a news conference with her attorney, Gloria Allred. “I definitely don’t want to actually go through that again. But for the sake of keeping going and doing the right thing and because it is what happened, I would consider it.”

Weinstein was convicted in New York in February 2020 of forcing himself on Haley, a TV and film production assistant, in 2006 for oral sex and raping an aspiring actress in 2013.

The Associated Press does not generally identify people alleging sexual assault unless they consent to be named and Haley has agreed to be named.

Weinstein, 72, will remain in prison because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in that case.

Thursday’s Court of Appeals court ruling in New York essentially resets Weinstein’s case, with next week’s hearing the first step in the process of potentially retrying him. Prosecutors will work off the same indictment, albeit excluding the charges he was acquitted of four years ago.

Among other things, authorities will need to sort out where Weinstein is incarcerated while he awaits a new trial in New York. He could be sent to the city’s notorious Riker’s Island jail complex, or to California to begin serving a sentence for his conviction there.

Allred said the New York decision shows how important it was to also bring charges in California, even when critics called that prosecution superfluous.

Weinstein’s attorney, Arthur Aidala, did not immediately respond to an email seeking a response to Haley’s comments. But on Thursday he called the state Court of Appeals ruling “a tremendous victory for every criminal defendant in the state of New York.”

The court overturned Weinstein’s 23-year sentence in a 4-3 decision, saying “the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts” and permitted questions about Weinstein’s “bad behavior” if he had testified. It called this “highly prejudicial” and “an abuse of judicial discretion.”

New York Governor Kathy Hochul said Friday that her office is analyzing the scale of the decision and how the state can make sure that all women feel safe coming forward.

“I don’t want this to be a moment of stifling the environment that was created where finally we were calling out people who were abusing women in their presence,” Hochul said. “We don’t want to have any setbacks where there’s this sense that you now have to be silenced, and that’s something that we have to protect.”

Allred said she welcomed the governor’s comments and likely would be suggesting possible legislation. She said she’s concerned that the ruling will lead to fewer cases being brought, especially against high-profile defendants.

“Then there will be not only no access to justice for the ‘Me too’ witnesses, prior bad-act witnesses, but in addition for the actual victim of the crime…where it could have been prosecuted, would have been prosecuted otherwise,” she said.

Haley said she has talked to other alleged victims of Weinstein about the ruling, but the subject of testifying again did not come up.

“What would make me want to do it again would just be, like I said in the past, this isn’t just about me,” she said. “It’s a really important case. It’s in the public eye. It’s really difficult for me personally, but it’s important for the collective.”

____

Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this story from Albany, New York.

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – A former McKinsey & Co partner sued the global consulting firm on Friday and accused it of defaming him and making him a “scapegoat” to distract attention from its work advising OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and other manufacturers of opioid pain medications.

Arnab Ghatak, who was fired in 2021, filed the lawsuit in New York state court just two days after Reuters and others reported that the U.S. Department of Justice was conducting a criminal investigation of McKinsey’s role in the U.S. opioid epidemic.

Part of that investigation concerns whether McKinsey obstructed justice, an inquiry related to McKinsey’s disclosure that it had fired two partners who communicated about deleting documents related to their opioids work, people familiar with the matter said.

Those partners included Ghatak, who had been a senior partner and McKinsey’s global head of medical affairs. In his lawsuit, Ghatak alleged that McKinsey and its global managing partner, Bob Sternfels, lied to the U.S. Congress and the public about his role deleting emails.

Ghatak accused Sternfels of misleading Congress when he testified before a House of Representatives committee in 2022 that the two partners were terminated for violating a document retention policy, one that Ghatak said in fact did not exist.

He said McKinsey knew no evidence existed of him improperly deleting emails, yet had promoted the narrative “to create a scapegoat as a diversion from their own decades long work in non abuse deterrent opioids.”

The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages from McKinsey and Sternfels, who was also named as a defendant.

A spokesperson for McKinsey called the complaint “entirely meritless.”

“We terminated him for serious violations of our professional standards,” the McKinsey spokesperson said. “We fully stand by our decision to terminate Dr. Ghatak and by our public statements on the matter.”

A U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

McKinsey previously agreed to pay nearly $1 billion to settle widespread opioid lawsuits and other related legal actions by states, local governments, school districts, Native American tribes and health insurers accusing it of contributing to a deadly U.S. opioid addiction epidemic.

McKinsey in 2019 said it would no longer advise clients on any opioid-related businesses. McKinsey did not admit to wrongdoing in those civil settlements.

Purdue pleaded guilty in 2020 to charges over its handling of opioids. A multi-billion-dollar settlement it reached in bankruptcy court resolving lawsuits alleging it fueled the epidemic is on hold while the U.S. Supreme Court considers a challenge by the Biden administration to the deal.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; additional reporting by Chris Prentice; Editing by Leslie Adler)

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Former Rep. Peter Meijer withdrew his name from the U.S. Senate race in Michigan on Friday, ending a longshot bid to become the Republican nominee and return to Congress after being ousted by voters for supporting an effort to impeach then-President Donald Trump.

Meijer announced his candidacy in November and contended for the Republican nomination against former U.S. Reps. Mike Rogers and Justin Amash, in addition to wealthy businessman Sandy Pensler.

Meijer met an April 23 deadline to turn in petition signatures to get his name on the ballot for the August primary but withdrew from the race on Friday, a Michigan Secretary of State spokesperson confirmed to The Associated Press. Meijer’s name will not be on the ballot since he met a 4 p.m. deadline Friday to withdraw from the race.

“The hard reality is the fundamentals of the race have changed significantly since we launched this campaign. After prayerful consideration, today I withdrew my name from the primary ballot,” Meijer said in a statement.

Although many believed that Meijer had the potential to be competitive in a general election, his vote to impeach Trump undermined his bid to be competitive in a primary in a state that supported Trump in 2016. Trump has endorsed Rogers in the race.

Meijer, who is from Grand Rapids, is an heir to a Midwestern grocery store empire and a former U.S. Army Reserve officer who served in Iraq. He was seen as part of the next generation of Republican leaders when he was elected to the U.S. House in 2020 at only 32 years old.

Meijer was among 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021 following the deadly mob siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He then would lose reelection to a Trump-backed primary opponent in 2022 despite having a significant fundraising advantage.