Manafort transferred to federal prison
Paul Manafort, former chairman of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, has been transferred to a minimum-security prison near Scranton, Pa., to serve his federal sentence after being convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
Manafort is to be released on Christmas Day 2024, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
The U.S. Penitentiary at Canaan Township is a high-security prison for men, with a minimum-security satellite camp for about 113 inmates -- where Manafort is staying -- about 134 miles north of Philadelphia, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
Manafort, 70, was transferred late last week from the jail in Alexandria, Va., and logged into the federal system overnight Tuesday.
Manafort was sentenced March 13 to 7½ years in prison in Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election for conspiring to hide tens of millions of dollars earned through undisclosed lobbying for a Russia-aligned politician in Ukraine and conspiring to tamper with witnesses, as well as bank and tax fraud.
Manafort served about 10 months of his sentence while he was jailed pending trial in Alexandria. His release date factors in estimated good-time credits.
On the day Manafort was sentenced in federal court, state prosecutors in New York announced a 16-count grand jury indictment charging him with mortgage fraud, falsifying business records and conspiracy. Those charges are pending.
Oklahoma justices strike damages caps
OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Oklahoma Supreme Court has struck down a state law that caps damages for pain and suffering in personal injury lawsuits.
The state's highest court ruled Tuesday that a civil justice statute limiting noneconomic damages in personal injury lawsuits to $350,000 is an unconstitutional special law that treats people who survive injuries differently than those who don't.
The decision involves a lawsuit by an oilfield services worker whose left arm was amputated after an accident. An Oklahoma County jury awarded the worker and his wife $6 million for pain and suffering, an award that was reduced to $700,000 by the cap.
The cap was adopted by the Legislature and signed into law by former Gov. Mary Fallin in 2011.
18-year-old sues Apple over ID software
An 18-year-old from New York is suing Apple, claiming that a facial recognition system at its stores falsely connected him to a series of thefts.
In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Ousmane Bah, who was arrested at his home in November, says that the warrant he was served included a photo of someone else. The lawsuit also claims that a detective with the New York Police Department concluded that the thief caught by a store surveillance camera "looked nothing like" Bah.
The lawsuit, citing the detective, says that Apple uses facial recognition software to identify shoplifters. The company declined to comment on the lawsuit itself; it would say only that it doesn't use such technology in its stores.
Bah said his interim learner's permit, which does not have a photo, had been either lost or stolen. His attorney said that the permit may have been presented as identification at an Apple store, erroneously connecting Bah's name with the thief's face in the company's security system. That means every time the perpetrator walked into an Apple store, his face would register as Bah, the attorney said.
Bah had been charged in multiple jurisdictions, including Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York, according to the lawsuit. Three of the cases have been dropped, the suit said, but the one in New Jersey is pending.
Trump team to skip press-group dinner
WASHINGTON -- The White House has announced that administration officials will not be attending this year's annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on Saturday after the president's decision to boycott the event.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump announced that he would be skipping the dinner for the third year in a row, telling reporters it was too "boring" and "negative."
He'll be holding a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wis., instead.
Many White House staff members and other administration officials had been planning to attend the dinner as guests of news organizations.
In a statement responding to the decision, Olivier Knox, the association's president, said, "We're looking forward to an enjoyable evening of celebrating the First Amendment and great journalists past, present and future."
On Tuesday, Trump issued a series of tweets lashing out at several news personalities and claimed, without offering any evidence, that back in the "old days," presidents whose terms coincided with good economies "were basically immune from criticism."
A Section on 04/24/2019