Voice of America’s immigration news

Los Angeles — The Rev. James Lawson Jr., an apostle of nonviolent protest who schooled activists to withstand brutal reactions from white authorities as the Civil Rights Movement gained traction, has died, his family said Monday. He was 95. His family said Lawson died on Sunday after a short illness in Los Angeles, where he spent decades working as a pastor, labor movement organizer and university professor. Lawson was a close adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who called him “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.” Lawson met King in 1957, after spending three years in India soaking up knowledge about Mohandas K. Gandhi’s independence movement. King would travel to India himself two years later, but at the time, he had only read about Gandhi in books. The two Black pastors -- both 28 years old -- quickly bonded over their enthusiasm for the Indian leader’s ideas, and King urged Lawson to put them into action in the American South. Lawson soon led workshops in church basements in Nashville, Tennessee, that prepared John Lewis, Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette, Marion Barry, the Freedom Riders and many others to peacefully withstand vicious responses to their challenges of racist laws and policies. Lawson’s lessons led Nashville to become the first major city in the South to desegregate its downtown, on May 10, 1960, after hundreds of well-organized students staged lunch-counter sit-ins and boycotts of discriminatory businesses. Lawson’s particular contribution was to introduce Gandhian principles to people more familiar with biblical teachings, showing how direct action could expose the immorality and fragility of racist white power structures. Gandhi said “that we persons have the power to resist the racism in our own lives and souls,” Lawson told the AP. “We have the power to make choices and to say no to that wrong. That’s also Jesus.” Years later, in 1968, it was Lawson who organized the sanitation workers strike that fatefully drew King to Memphis. Lawson said he was at first paralyzed and forever saddened by King’s assassination. “I thought I would not live beyond 40, myself,” Lawson said. “The imminence of death was a part of the discipline we lived with, but no one as much as King.” Still, Lawson made it his life’s mission to preach the power of nonviolent direct action. “I’m still anxious and frustrated,” Lawson said as he marked the 50th anniversary of King’s death with a march in Memphis. “The task is unfinished.” Civil rights activist Diane Nash was a 21-year-old college student when she began attending Lawson's Nashville workshops, which she called life-changing. “His passing constitutes a very great loss,” Nash said. “He bears, I think, more responsibility than any other single person for the civil rights movement of Blacks being nonviolent in this country.” James Morris Lawson Jr., was born on Sept. 22, 1928, the son and grandson of ministers, and grew up in Massillon, Ohio, where he became ordained himself as a high school senior. He told The Tennessean that his commitment to nonviolence began in elementary school, when he told his mother that he had slapped a boy who had used a racial slur against him. “What good did that do, Jimmy?” his mother asked. That simple question forever changed his life, Lawson said. He became a pacifist, refusing to serve when drafted for the Korean War, and spent a year in prison as a conscientious objector. The Fellowship of Reconciliation, a pacifist group, sponsored his trip to India after he finished a sociology degree. Gandhi had been assassinated by then, but Lawson met people who had worked with him and explained Gandhi’s concept of “satyagraha,” a relentless pursuit of Truth, which encouraged Indians to peacefully reject British rule. Lawson then saw how the Christian concept of turning the other cheek could be applied in collective actions to challenge morally indefensible laws. Lawson was a divinity student at Oberlin College in Ohio when King spoke on campus about the Montgomery bus boycott. King told him, “You can’t wait, you need to come on South now,‘” Lawson recalled in an Associated Press interview. Lawson soon enrolled in theology classes at Vanderbilt University, while leading younger activists through mock protests in which they practiced taking insults without reacting. The technique swiftly proved its power at lunch counters and movie theaters in Nashville, where on May 10, 1960, businesses agreed to take down the “No Colored” signs that enforced white supremacy. “It was the first major successful campaign to pull the signs down,” and it created a template for the sit-ins that began spreading across the South, Lawson said. Lawson was called on to organize what became the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which sought to organize the spontaneous efforts of tens of thousands of students who began challenging Jim Crow laws across the South. Angry segregationists got Lawson expelled from Vanderbilt, but he said he never harbored hard feelings about the university, where he returned as a distinguished visiting professor in 2006, and eventually donated a significant portion of his papers. Lawson earned that theology degree at Boston University and became a Methodist pastor in Memphis, where his wife Dorothy Wood Lawson worked as an NAACP organizer. They moved several years later to Los Angeles, where Lawson led the Holman United Methodist Church and taught at California State University, Northridge and the University of California, Los Angeles. They raised three sons, John, Morris and Seth.  Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said Lawson taught Southern California activists and organizers “and helped shape the civil rights and labor movement locally just as he did nationally.” “Today Los Angeles joins the state, country and world in mourning the loss of a civil rights leader whose critical leadership, teachings, and mentorship confronted and crippled centuries of systemic oppression, racism and injustice," Bass said in a statement. Lawson remained active into his 90s, urging younger generations to leverage their power. Civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network, called Lawson “the ultimate preacher, prophet, and activist.” “In his senior years, I was privileged to spend time with him at his church in Los Angeles,” Sharpton said. “He would sit in his office and tell me inside stories of the battles of the 1950’s and 1960’s that he Dr. King and others engaged in. Lawson helped to change this nation — thank God the nation never changed him.” Eulogizing the late Rep. John Lewis last year, he recalled how the young man he trained in Nashville grew lonely marches into multitudes, paving the way for major civil rights legislation. “If we would honor and celebrate John Lewis’ life, let us then re-commit our souls, our hearts, our minds, our bodies and our strength to the continuing journey to dismantle the wrong in our midst,” Lawson said.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

BOGOTA — Chiquita Brands International must pay $38.3 million in damages to the families of eight Colombian men killed by a paramilitary group in that country, a Florida jury said on Monday.  Chiquita in 2007 was ordered by a U.S. court to pay a $25 million fine to settle criminal charges that it did business with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary group. Chiquita pled guilty in that case to paying protection money from 2001 to 2004, which it said it did to protect employees. The jury in the civil case before the U.S. District Court Southern District of Florida said in the verdict on Monday that Chiquita knowingly provided substantial assistance to the AUC in the form of cash payments or other means of support, to a degree sufficient to create a foreseeable risk of harm. The men were killed by the AUC, the jury said, and Chiquita did not prove its support for the AUC was the result of impending harm to the company or its employees. "The verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed, but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita's doorstep," said Agnieszka Fryszman, a lawyer at law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, who represented the plaintiffs, said in a statement. Chiquita did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hamas has welcomed a UN Security Council resolution proposed by the U.S. backing a plan for a cease-fire in Gaza, saying it is ready to cooperate with mediators over implementing the principles of the plan. We talk to University of California Los Angeles professor Saree Makdisi. In the balloon warfare between North Korea and South Korean activists, one Seoul-based group has honed its tech expertise to develop smart balloons capable of dispersing leaflets and electronic speakers hundreds of kilometers across the border. An aircraft carrying the Malawi’s vice president and nine others has gone missing. And people from all walks of life played colorful pianos at New York's Fosun Plaza in downtown Manhattan on Monday at a launch event for the Sing for Hope Pianos.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Blantyre — Medical workers in Malawi's public health facilities started a nationwide sit-in strike Monday to push the government to meet their longtime grievances, which include special allowances and improved conditions of service. The strike forced patients in many hospitals to return home without receiving medical care. Strike organizers said some medical workers could treat patients with critical conditions. In some public health facilities medical workers were seen singing and dancing outside the hospitals. While some patients like Nelia Banda of the M’bwatalika area returned home without receiving attention. She said “Medical workers told me that they will not attend to me because they are not working today. They said I should come again on Monday next week. I am pregnant and yesterday I fell because of high blood pressure but I haven’t been assisted here.” The strike is a result of the failure of negotiations between the medical workers and government authorities on worker demands dating back to February of this year. The government had told the medical workers that it would increase their allowances and improve their working conditions instead of meeting the 15% salary increase that medical workers were demanding.     The increase was meant for risk allowance, top-up allowance and professional allowance. Put simply, this is income that medical workers receive for working overtime or for performing duties outside their normal schedule. Daniel Nasimba is the general secretary for the Physician Assistants Union of Malawi (PAUM), one of the organizers of the strike. He said some staff members at the hospital were allowed to attend to patients with emergencies. He said, “At least we have people. Every department has someone who can attend to any emergency that can come in. What is happening now is called a sit-in. It’s not a complete shutdown of the health service. We are all at work, nobody is at home.” Nasimba said the workers will not return to duty fully — until the government honors its promise. However, the Malawi government has obtained an injunction stopping the strike. Organizers of the strike, the National Organization of Nurses and Midwives and the Physician Assistants Union of Malawi, said in a statement released Monday evening that they were consulting their legal team about the matter. 

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

phoenix — Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and Donald Trump attorney, was processed Monday in the criminal case over the effort to overturn Trump's Arizona election loss to Joe Biden, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office said.  The sheriff's office provided a mug shot but no other details. The office of the clerk of the Superior Court for Maricopa County said Giuliani posted bond of $10,000 in cash.  "Mayor Rudy Giuliani — the most effective federal prosecutor in U.S. history — will be fully vindicated," said his spokesperson, Ted Goodman. "This is yet another example of partisan actors weaponizing the criminal justice system to interfere with the 2024 presidential election through outlandish charges against President Trump and anyone willing to take on the permanent Washington political class."  Giuliani pleaded not guilty in May to nine felony charges stemming from his alleged role in the fake electors effort. He is among 18 people indicted in the Arizona case, including Trump attorneys John Eastman, Christina Bobb and Jenna Ellis.  Former Trump presidential chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump 2020 Election Day operations director Michael Roman pleaded not guilty Friday in Phoenix to nine felony charges for their alleged roles in the scheme.  The indictment alleges Meadows worked with other Trump campaign members to submit names of fake electors from Arizona and other states to Congress in a bid to keep Trump in office despite his November 2020 defeat.  Other states where criminal charges have been filed related to the fake electors scheme are Michigan, Nevada and Georgia.

mexico city — Mexican President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday that she would put up for discussion proposed constitutional reforms, including a judicial overhaul that has spooked markets, before the next congressional session kicks off.  The judicial reform would replace an appointed Supreme Court with popularly elected judges, as well as for some lower courts, which critics allege would fundamentally alter the balance of power in Mexico.  Sheinbaum, speaking in a press conference following a meeting with outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, said the reform would be "among the first" that could be passed, along with some boosted social benefits.  She added she did not believe the proposed reforms would impact the peso, which tumbled following her election win earlier this month.  As Sheinbaum was speaking, however, the peso weakened by nearly 2% against the U.S. dollar in international trading.  Some of the measures are part of a slew of constitutional reforms Lopez Obrador proposed in February that would also eliminate key regulatory agencies.  At the time they did not cause market jitters, but investors sounded the alarm as the ruling coalition closed in on a congressional supermajority needed to pass constitutional reforms in the June 2 election.  The coalition led by MORENA secured a two-thirds supermajority in the lower house but fell just short in the Senate, although analysts believe those extra votes can likely be secured through negotiation.  While the newly elected Congress will take office at the beginning of September, Sheinbaum will not be inaugurated until a month later, which could give Lopez Obrador and lawmakers a window to try to enact the reforms.  "In the case of the judicial reform, [discussion] should be through the bar association, professors of law, the ministers and magistrates themselves," Sheinbaum said.  She added she would name her cabinet next week, and that she would receive a team sent by U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday.  Lopez Obrador had said earlier in the day that he would not pressure Sheinbaum to rush the package of constitutional reforms through Congress.  Mexico's peso is now down 8% since the elections Sheinbaum and her party won in a landslide - its biggest plunge since the COVID-19 pandemic - while the country's main stock index has fallen nearly 4%.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday urged Hamas to accept a cease-fire in Cairo, part of growing international pressure to end the eight-month-old conflict with Israel. VOA Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, haiti — Haiti's new prime minister on Monday condemned the gang killings of three police officers on patrol in a part of the capital controlled by gang leader Jimmy "Barbecue" Cherizier.  A group of armed men working under Cherizier ambushed a patrol vehicle from the police's anti-gang unit in the Delmas 18 neighborhood Sunday and set it on fire, police in the Caribbean country said.  Two officers were killed at the site and two were evacuated by reinforcements; one of them later died at a hospital.  Prime Minister Garry Conille promised state aid for the victims' families. Conille was sworn in this month and has yet to install his cabinet after taking power nearly three months after his predecessor, Ariel Henry, resigned.  "This barbaric act is a direct attack on security and on [the] stability of the nation," Conille said in a video address. "I send heartfelt condolences to the family of these officers who are gone, along with their colleagues and friends."  He spoke after being briefly hospitalized Saturday for what his office called "a slight illness."  Police union SYNAPOHA, however, said words were not enough and demanded the victims' bodies be returned.  Unverified videos on social media, apparently filmed by gang members, appear to show footage of the charred truck and captured firearms.  Gang leader Cherizier later shared a video on social media in which he said police officers had gone rogue and come "to kill people in lower Delmas." He also challenged police to recover the seized firearms if they could.  Kenyan President William Ruto said Sunday that a long-awaited deployment of Kenyan police officers set to lead a U.N.-sanctioned international force to support Haitian police should arrive in one or two weeks, African news outlets reported.  It remains unclear when the rest of the force — with troops from Benin, Chad, Bangladesh and the Caribbean — will land. SYNAPOHA warned at the start of this year of a rapidly shrinking and under-resourced police body.  The international force was initially requested by Haiti's former government in 2022 but has faced extended delays. Gangs have since increased their control over the capital, pushing hundreds of thousands from their homes and millions into hunger.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

ottawa, ontario — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday ceded to opposition pressure to expand a public inquiry into election interference to also probe allegations of treason against some lawmakers for secretly working with foreign governments.  Legislators have been pressing Trudeau's Liberal government to name names following the revelations made last week in a heavily redacted national security committee report.   The report also claimed that China and India meddled in Canadian party leadership campaigns, including that of Trudeau's main rival, Tory leader Pierre Poilievre.  Members of Parliament were expected on Tuesday to pass an opposition motion calling for an independent inquiry that is already looking into foreign interference in Canada's 2019 and 2021 elections to scrutinize possible treason, too.  The inquiry led by Justice Marie-Josee Hogue was launched last September.  "I think it's extremely important that we continue to take foreign interference with all the seriousness that it requires," Trudeau said.  The opposition motion is nonbinding on the government, but he said his Liberals would vote with opposition parties to ask Hogue to further investigate the claims so that "Canadians can have confidence in the integrity of their democracy."  In the House of Commons earlier, opposition parties urged transparency.  "Conservatives are demanding that the government expand the scope of the foreign interference public inquiry to receive all documents and information and reveal the names of which MPs have sold out their country," said Tory MP Andrew Scheer.  Bloc Quebecois MP Pierre Paul-Hus, who presented the motion, said: "We need to know who these members are who are collaborating with hostile foreign countries."  He was echoed by New Democratic Party leader and Trudeau ally Jagmeet Singh, who called the findings "deeply troubling" and demanded accountability. "Canadians ought to know," he said.  The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) in a report last week cited "troubling intelligence that some Parliamentarians are 'semi-witting or witting' participants in the efforts of foreign states to interfere in our politics."  This included the secret funding of political campaigns, sharing of confidential information or privileged information on the work or opinions of fellow lawmakers with foreign intelligence officers, and influencing Canadian lawmakers to advantage a foreign state.  The report did not identify Canadians implicated in the schemes, but chided Ottawa for its "slow response to a known threat."  Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc refused to reveal the identities of lawmakers mentioned in the report, saying to do so was itself illegal.  He also said the allegations in the NSICOP report may include uncorroborated or unverified intelligence information.

WASHINGTON — A closely watched Alzheimer's drug from Eli Lilly won the backing of federal health advisers Monday, setting the stage for the treatment's expected approval for people with mild dementia caused by the brain-robbing disease.  Food and Drug Administration advisers voted unanimously that the drug's ability to slow the disease outweighs its risks, including side effects like brain swelling and bleeding that will have to be monitored.  “I thought the evidence was very strong in the trial showing the effectiveness of the drug,” said panel member Dean Follmann, a National Institutes of Health statistician.  The FDA will make the final decision on approval later this year. If the agency agrees with the panel's recommendation, the drug, donanemab, would only be the second Alzheimer’s drug cleared in the U.S. that's been shown to convincingly slow cognitive decline and memory problems due to Alzheimer's. The FDA approved a similar infused drug, Leqembi, from Japanese drugmaker Eisai last year.  The slowdown seen with both drugs amounts to several months and experts disagree on whether patients or their loved ones will be able to detect the difference.  But Lilly's approach to studying its once-a-month treatment prompted questions from FDA reviewers.  Patients in the company's study were grouped based on their levels of a brain protein,   called tau, that predicts severity of cognitive problems. That led the FDA to question whether patients might need to be screened via brain scans for tau before getting the drug. But most panelists thought there was enough evidence of the drug's benefit to prescribe it broadly, without screening for the protein.  “Imposing a requirement for tau imaging is not necessary and would raise serious practical and access concerns to the treatment,” said Dr. Thomas Montine of Stanford University, who chaired the panel and summarized its opinion.  At a high level, Lilly’s results mirrored those of Leqembi, with both medications showing a modest slowing of cognitive problems in patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s. The Indianapolis-based company conducted a 1,700-patient study showing patients who received monthly IV infusions of its drug declined about 35% more slowly than those who got a placebo treatment.  The FDA had been widely expected to approve the drug in March. But instead, the agency said it would ask its panel of neurology experts to publicly review the company’s data, an unexpected delay that surprised analysts and investors.  Several unusual approaches in how Lilly tested its drug led to the meeting.  One change was measuring patients' tau — and excluding patients with very low or no levels of the protein. But panelists said there was enough data from other measures to feel confident that nearly all patients could benefit from the drug, regardless of their levels.  In another key difference, Lilly studied taking patients off its drug when they reached very low levels of amyloid, a sticky brain plaque that's a contributor to Alzheimer's.  Lilly scientists suggested stopping treatment is a key advantage for its drug, which could reduce side effects and costs. But FDA staff said Lilly provided little data supporting the optimal time to stop or how quickly patients might need to restart treatment.  Despite those questions, many panelists thought the possibility of stopping doses held promise.  “It’s a huge cost savings for the society, we’re talking about expensive treatment, expensive surveillance,” said Dr. Tanya Simuni of Northwestern University. She and other experts said patients would need to be tracked and tested to see how they fare and whether they need to resume treatment.  The main safety issue with donanemab was brain swelling and bleeding, a problem common to all amyloid-targeting drugs. Most cases identified in Lilly's trial were mild.  Three deaths in the donanemab study were linked to the drug, according to the FDA, all involving brain swelling or bleeding. One of the deaths was caused by a stroke, a life-threatening complication that occurs more frequently among Alzheimer's patients.  The FDA's panel agreed those risks could be addressed by warning labels and education for doctors and medical scans to identify patients at greater risk of stroke.

Brussels — A court in Brussels on Monday sentenced a 65-year-old Belgian-Rwandan man to 25 years in prison for murder and rape committed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.   Emmanuel Nkunduwimye was found guilty of war crimes and genocide for a series of murders as well as the rape of a Tutsi woman.  Nkunduwimye, who was first arrested in Belgium in 2011, owned a garage in Rwanda's capital, Kigali, in April 1994 when the genocide began. The garage was part of a complex of buildings that was the scene of massacres perpetrated by Interahamwe militiamen.   Nkunduwimye was close to several militia leaders - including Georges Rutaganda, who was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and died in 2010.  The jury at the trial in Brussels found the accused assisted the militia "with full knowledge of the facts."   "He could not have been unaware of the abuses committed there," the sentencing said, according to Belga news agency.   During the trial, Nkunduwimye was formally identified by the woman he raped, who came to testify in private at the hearing.  Nkunduwimye denied the accusations and his defense called for his acquittal, arguing in particular that the prosecution's evidence was unreliable.  Prosecutors at the trial, which began in April, had requested a sentence of 30 years in jail.   The genocide in Rwanda, which took place between April and July 1994, claimed at least 800,000 lives, according to the U.N. The victims were mainly members of the Tutsi minority, but also included moderate Hutus.   The trial of Nkunduwimye was the seventh such trial to be held in Belgium since 2001 involving alleged crimes committed during the genocide.  Belgium - which controlled Rwanda during the colonial period – can prosecute alleged genocidaires because its court recognizes universal jurisdiction for crimes under international humanitarian law committed outside the country.  In the most recent trial, Seraphin Twahirwa was sentenced in December 2023 to life imprisonment for dozens of murders and rapes perpetrated by himself or the Interahamwe militiamen under his authority in Kigali between April and July 1994.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

NEW YORK — Donald Trump 's mandatory presentencing interview Monday ended after less than a half-hour of routine and uneventful questions and answers, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and did so on the condition of anonymity.   The former president was quizzed by a New York City probation officer for a report that will be compiled and presented to trial judge Juan M. Merchan prior to Trump's July 11 sentencing in his hush money criminal case.   Merchan can use the report to help decide Trump's punishment following his May 30 felony conviction for falsifying business records to cover up a potential sex scandal. The judge has discretion to impose a wide range of punishments, ranging from probation and community service to up to four years in prison.  Trump, who declined to testify at the trial, appeared for the probation interview Monday by video conference from his residence at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, with his lawyer Todd Blanche by his side. The arrangement garnered complaints of special treatment, but city officials contend that is not the case.  Typically, people convicted of crimes in New York must meet with probation officials face-to-face for their required presentence interviews and aren’t allowed to have their lawyers with them. After Blanche balked, Merchan granted him permission to sit in on Trump’s interview.  The city’s public defenders Monday criticized what they said were “special arrangements” for Trump and urged the probation department to “ensure that all New Yorkers, regardless of income, status, or class, receive the same presentencing opportunities.”  “All people convicted of crimes should be allowed counsel in their probation interview, not just billionaires,” four of the city’s public defender organizations said in a statement. “This is just another example of our two-tiered system of justice.”  “Pre-sentencing interviews with probation officers influence sentencing, and public defenders are deprived of joining their clients for these meetings. The option of joining these interviews virtually is typically not extended to the people we represent either,” said the statement from the Legal Aid Society, Bronx Defenders, New York County Defender Services and Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem.  A spokesperson for the city, which runs the probation department, said defendants have had the option of conducting their presentencing interviews by video since before the dawn of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A message seeking comment was left with a spokesperson for the state court system.  Presentence reports include a defendant’s personal history, criminal record and recommendations for sentencing. They also include information about employment and any obligations to help care for a family member. The interview is also a chance for a defendant to say why they think they deserve a lighter punishment.  Such reports are typically prepared by a probation officer, a social worker or a psychologist working for the probation department who interviews the defendant and possibly that person’s family and friends, as well as people affected by the crime.  Trump was convicted in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records arising from what prosecutors said was an attempt to hide a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. She claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier, which he denies.  Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has vowed to appeal his conviction — though by law he must wait until after he is sentenced to do so. He says he is innocent of any crime and says the case was brought to hurt his chances to regain the White House.

WILMINGTON, Delaware — Jurors in Hunter Biden’s gun trial began deliberating Monday whether the president’s son is guilty of federal firearms charges over a revolver he bought in 2018 when prosecutors say he was addicted to crack cocaine. He's charged with three felonies in the case that has laid bare some of the darkest moments of his drug-fueled past. Prosecutors have used testimony from former romantic partners, personal text messages, and photos of Hunter Biden with drug paraphernalia or partially clothed to make the case that he broke the law. “No one is above the law,” prosecutor Leo Wise told jurors in his closing argument as first lady Jill Biden watched from the front row of the Wilmington courtroom. Jurors deliberated for less than an hour before leaving the courthouse for the day. Deliberations were to resume Tuesday morning. President Joe Biden's son has publicly detailed his struggle with a crack cocaine addiction before getting sober more than five years ago. But the defense sought to show that that he did not consider himself an “addict” when he bought the gun and checked “no” on the form that asked whether he was “an unlawful user" of drugs or addicted to them. 'Overwhelming' evidence The case has pitted Hunter Biden against the U.S. Justice Department during his father's reelection campaign. The charges were brought by special counsel David Weiss, who was nominated by Republican former President Donald Trump to be U.S. attorney for Delaware and led the yearslong investigation. Before the case went to the jury, the prosecutor urged jurors to focus on the “overwhelming” evidence against Hunter Biden and pay no mind to members of the president's family sitting in the courtroom. “All of this is not evidence,” Wise said, extending his hand and directing the jury to look at the gallery. “People sitting in the gallery are not evidence.” Jill Biden and other family members left the courthouse shortly after deliberations began. The first lady sat through most of the trial, missing only one day last week to attend D-Day anniversary events with the president in France. At one point Monday, Hunter Biden leaned over a railing to whisper in his mother’s ear. Defense attorney Abbe Lowell told jurors in his closing argument that prosecutors had failed to prove their case. Lowell said his client may have a famous last name, but he is still presumed innocent until proven guilty like any other defendant. “With my last breath in this case, I ask for the only verdict that will hold the prosecutors to what the law requires of them" — a verdict of not guilty, Lowell said. Hunter Biden's lawyers have suggested he was trying to turn his life around at the time of the gun purchase, having completed a detoxification and rehabilitation program at the end of August 2018. The defense called three witnesses, including Hunter's daughter Naomi, who told jurors that her father seemed to be improving in the weeks before he bought the gun. Closing arguments came shortly after the defense rested its case without calling Hunter Biden to the witness stand. He smiled as he chatted with members of his defense team and flashed a thumbs-up sign to a supporter in the gallery after the final witness — an FBI agent called by prosecutors in their rebuttal case. The trial has put a spotlight on a turbulent time in Hunter Biden's life after the 2015 death of his brother, Beau, from brain cancer. The proceedings have played out in the president’s home state, where Hunter Biden grew up and where the family is deeply established. Joe Biden spent 36 years as a senator in Delaware, commuting daily to Washington, and Beau Biden was the state's attorney general. Hunter Biden's ex-wife and two former girlfriends testified for prosecutors about his habitual crack use and their failed efforts to help him get clean. One woman, who met Hunter Biden in 2017 at a strip club where she worked, described him smoking crack every 20 minutes or so while she stayed with him at a hotel. Excerpts from book Jurors have also heard him describe at length his descent into addiction through audio excerpts played in court of his 2021 memoir, “Beautiful Things." The book, written after he got sober, covers the period he had the gun but doesn’t mention it specifically. A key witness for prosecutors was Beau’s widow, Hallie, who had a brief, troubled relationship with Hunter after his brother's death. She found the unloaded gun in Hunter’s truck on October 23, 2018, panicked and tossed it into a garbage can at a grocery store in Wilmington, where a man seeking recyclables inadvertently fished it out of the trash. The prosecutor pointed to text messages he said showed Hunter trying to make drug deals in the days around time of the gun purchase. In one message, Hunter told Hallie he was smoking crack. “That’s my truth,” Hunter wrote. “Take the defendant’s word for it. That’s his truth,” Wise said. He urged jurors to reject the defense's suggestion that Hunter did not really mean what he was texting at the time and was simply trying to avoid being with Hallie. “You don’t leave your common sense behind when you come into that jury box,” Wise said. The defense told jurors that there was no actual witness to drug use by Hunter during the 11 days that he had the gun. Lowell also sought to discredit testimony from Hallie and another ex-girlfriend. He told jurors to consider their testimony “with great care and caution,” noting that they were given immunity agreements in exchange for taking the witness stand for prosecutors. Joe Biden said last week that he would accept the jury’s verdict and ruled out a presidential pardon for his son. After flying back from France, the president was at his home in Wilmington for the day and was expected in Washington in the evening for a Juneteenth concert. He was scheduled to travel to Italy later this week for the Group of Seven leaders conference.  Last summer, it looked as if Hunter Biden would avoid prosecution in the gun case altogether, but a deal with prosecutors imploded after the judge, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, raised concerns about it. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years in prison, though first-time offenders do not get anywhere near the maximum, and it’s unclear whether the judge would give him time behind bars. Hunter Biden also faces a trial scheduled for September on felony charges alleging he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes over four years.