State Dept: Russia rejects offer to free pair of US detainees
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has made a new and significant offer aimed at securing the release of U.S. detainees Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich, but Russia has rejected the offer, the State Department said Tuesday.
Spokesman Matthew Miller did not reveal the details of the offer nor why Russia had turned it down, but the revelation of the proposal was a fresh indication that Washington is continuing to try to negotiate with Moscow to get both men home.
The U.S. government has declared both Whelan and Gershkovich to be wrongfully detained.
Whelan, a corporate security executive from Michigan, has been jailed in Russia since his December 2018 arrest on espionage-related charges that both he and the U.S. government dispute. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was detained in March while on a reporting trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, about 1,200 miles east of Moscow.
Gershkovich and the Journal deny the allegations, and Russian authorities haven’t detailed any evidence to support the espionage charges. A Russian court last week extended the detention until Jan. 30.
“They never should have been arrested in the first place. They should be released immediately,” Miller said. “But we have made a number of proposals and including a substantial one in recent weeks and we will continue to work every day to bring Evan and Paul Whelan home. There is no prior higher priority for the
Secretary of State. There is no higher priority for the president.”
In July 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed that the U.S. had made a substantial proposal to Moscow to bring home WNBA star Brittney Griner and Whelan. Griner was ultimately released in December in a prisoner swap with Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout, but Whelan was not part of the deal.
Mchenry’s reversal: North Carolina Rep. Patrick Mchenry, who presided temporarily over the U.S. House for three intense weeks while Republicans struggled to elect a permanent speaker after Kevin Mccarthy’s ouster, announced Tuesday that he won’t seek reelection to his seat next year.
Mchenry, who was first elected to the House in 2004 at age 29, unveiled the surprise decision the day after candidate filing started in North Carolina. He represents the 10th Congressional District covering several counties north and west of Charlotte entering the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
He had announced his reelection bid in late October, just two days after the completion of another congressional redistricting by the Republican-controlled legislature that kept the reconfigured 10th District on the GOP side of the ledger in the November 2024 election. That announcement also came two days after House Republicans ultimately got behind Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana to become the next speaker.
Henry, now 48, married and with three children, did not explain his reversal in a news release.
Texas abortion case: A pregnant Texas woman whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis asked a court Tuesday to let her have an abortion, bringing what her attorneys say is the first lawsuit of its kind in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year.
Texas is one of 13 states that ban abortion at nearly all stages of pregnancy. Although Texas allows exceptions, doctors and women have argued in court this year that the state’s law is so restrictive and vaguely worded that physicians are fearful of providing abortions lest they face potential criminal charges.
Kate Cox, 31, is 20 weeks pregnant and has been told by doctors that her baby is likely to be stillborn or live for a week at most, according to the lawsuit filed in Austin. The suit says doctors told her their “hands are tied” under Texas’ abortion ban.
“Kate Cox needs an abortion, and she needs it now,” the lawsuit reads.
Spokespersons for the Texas attorney general’s
office, which has defended the ban in court, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Actor’s NY trial: Jonathan Majors’ former girlfriend told a Manhattan jury that the actor was prone to fits of rage that escalated in the months leading up to his arrest for allegedly attacking her in the backseat of a car last spring.
During hours of tearful testimony Tuesday, Grace Jabbari described Majors as a controlling, manipulative partner who hurled household objects at the wall, tried to control her socially and repeatedly threatened to take his own life in the aftermath of their fights.
“It felt like I was walking around on eggshells,” said Jabbari, 30, a professional dancer from the United Kingdom. “I had to be perfect.”
The testimony came on the second day of the trial against Majors, a rising Hollywood film actor whose portrayal of the comic book supervillain “Kang the Conqueror” was set to anchor the next phase
of the Marvel cinematic universe.
Nigerian drone error: At least 85 civilians were killed when an army drone attack erroneously targeted a religious gathering in northwest Nigeria, officials confirmed Tuesday, as the president ordered a probe into the latest in a series of such deadly mistakes in Nigeria’s conflict zones.
The strike took place Sunday night in Kaduna state’s Tudun Biri village while residents observed the Muslim holiday marking the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, government officials said. The military believed it was “targeting terrorists and bandits,” officials said.
At least 66 people also were injured in the attack, the National Emergency Management Agency said in a statement. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu ordered “a thorough and full-fledged investigation into the incident.” However, such investigations and their outcomes are often shrouded in secrecy.
Order to free Fujimori: Peru’s constitutional court ordered an immediate humanitarian release Tuesday for imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori, 85, who was serving a 25-year sentence in connection with the death squad slayings of 25 Peruvians in the 1990s.
The court ruled in favor of a 2017 pardon that had granted the former leader a release on humanitarian grounds but that later was annulled.
Fujimori was sentenced in 2009 to 25 years in prison on charges of human rights abuses. He had been accused of being the mastermind behind the slayings of 25 Peruvians by a military death squad during his administration from 1990 to 2000, while the government fought the Shining Path communist rebels.
Fujimori’s 2017 pardon granted by then-president Pablo Kuczynski was annulled under pressure from the Inter-american Court of Human Rights, and its status was the subject of legal wrangling afterward.