USA

CALABASAS, Calif. (AP) — A veteran pilot who plunged into a Los Angeles-area hillside, killing Kobe Bryant and eight others, had tried to avoid fog so heavy that it had grounded police choppers, authorities said.

But even experienced pilots may have only seconds to act when they are blinded by weather, an expert said as investigators began scouring the wreckage for clues to Sunday morning’s crash.

The NBA postponed the Los Angeles Lakers’ next game against the Clippers on Tuesday night after the deaths of the retired superstar and the other victims.

NEW YORK (AP) — Britain’s Prince Andrew has provided “zero cooperation” to the American investigators who want to interview him as part of their sex trafficking probe into Jeffrey Epstein, a U.S. prosecutor said Monday.

Speaking at a news conference outside Epstein’s New York mansion, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said prosecutors and the FBI had contacted Andrew’s lawyers and asked to interview him.

“To date, Prince Andrew has provided zero cooperation,” said Berman, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment.

MIAMI (AP) — An ally of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has hired a Washington lobbyist whose business has boomed under the Trump administration as part of a $12.5 million effort to ease sanctions and reset bilateral relations as the U.S.-backed campaign to oust the socialist leader stalls.

The Maduro government’s top lawyer, Inspector General Reinaldo Muñoz, hired lobbyist Robert Stryk’s Sonoran Policy Group as part of a larger contract he signed with Foley & Lardner, a law firm with offices in Washington.

SCOTTSBORO, Ala. (AP) — A massive fire that killed at least eight people and destroyed dozens of boats in an Alabama marina early Monday was spread so rapidly by the wind that “we didn’t have time to do nothing,” said one resident who survived but lost his brother in the cold water.

Tommy Jones, a Jackson County Park Marina resident, said he also watched helplessly as a small boat containing a woman and her children was engulfed in flames.

“There was nothing we could do,” he said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump stated falsely Monday that House Democrats never called his former national security adviser to testify in their impeachment inquiry. Actually they did.

Trump’s tweet about John Bolton came as the Senate entered the second week of the impeachment trial, where his defense team stretched the facts on Trump’s effort to get Ukraine to investigate Democrats.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A single paper copy in a nondescript envelope arrived at the White House on Dec. 30. Four weeks later, news of John Bolton’s book manuscript about his time as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser has exploded into public view, sending a jolt through the president’s impeachment trial.

The book contains an account of an August conversation in which Bolton says Trump told him that he wanted to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in security aid from Ukraine until it helped him with investigations into political rival Joe Biden.

MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — The brother of rapper Nicki Minaj was sentenced Monday to 25 years to life in prison for sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl at his Long Island home.

A judge convicted Jelani Maraj of predatory sexual assault and child endangerment in November 2017. The victim testified during the trial that Maraj repeatedly raped her in 2015 while her mother was at work.

Prosecutors have said DNA evidence recovered from the girl’s pajama pants was linked to Maraj. The girl’s younger brother also testified at the trial that he witnessed one assault.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — When the leading Democratic presidential candidates marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day by linking arms and marching through South Carolina’s capital, Michael Bloomberg was nowhere near the early primary state.

The former New York mayor was instead in Arkansas, tossing out candy at a King Day parade and enjoying his status as the only presidential hopeful in town.

“Mike Boomerang?” a woman asked, as the billionaire businessman walked by.

“Mike Bloomberg,” a supporter clarified. “He’s running for president.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s legal team is raising a broad-based attack on the impeachment case against him even as it mostly brushes past allegations in a new book that could undercut a key defense argument at his Senate trial.

NEW YORK, Jan 26 (APP): The (Kashmir) valley looked like Switzerland but felt like the Gaza Strip,” is how a veteran American journalist with years of reporting experience in South Asia described India’s repression in the disputed state during one of her trips there even before it plunged into deeper crisis after New Delhi’s annexation on August 5.