A federal judge in Washington agreed Thursday to delay until after Inauguration Day the trial of a Kansas man accused of attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after the defendant argued that it could be pointless, considering President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to pardon the rioters who stormed the building that day.

Several Jan. 6 defendants have sought in recent days to push back their trials and other court appearances until after Trump takes office. But the decision by Judge Rudolph Contreras to delay the trial of William Pope, a 38-year-old doctoral student at Kansas State University, appeared to be the first time that a jurist had postponed a proceeding directly at the request of a defendant who expected Trump to pardon him.

It remains unclear if Contreras will issue a written order outlining his reasons for allowing the delay. But after a hearing on the issue Thursday, Pope, who is acting as his own lawyer in the case, said in a brief interview that Contreras decided he did not want to waste judicial resources by holding a trial if Trump might ultimately wipe out a jury’s verdict by granting a pardon.

Pope’s trial was set to begin Dec. 2 in U.S. District Court in Washington. But last week, just days after Trump won the election, Pope filed court papers to Contreras, asking him to push back the trial for at least three months.

Federal prosecutors opposed the request, saying that the mere prospect of a presidential pardon was not enough to merit a delay.

2 Giuliani lawyers quit his defamation case

Two lawyers say they can no longer represent Rudy Giuliani in a legal fight over property he’s been ordered to give up to satisfy part of a $148 million defamation judgment against him. They asked a judge to remove them from the case, citing disagreements with the former New York City mayor.

The request in federal court comes a week after a judge ordered Giuliani to turn over by Friday a Mercedes that once belonged to actress Lauren Bacall, an heirloom watch and other prized assets to two former Georgia election workers who sued him over his remarks about them as he fought to overturn President-elect Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.

The women were awarded the judgment last year. Giuliani then filed for bankruptcy, but a judge cut that short after finding that the ex-mayor had flouted the process. Lawyers for the election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, say Giuliani has avoided turning over his assets.

Palm Springs considers $6M in reparations

The city of Palm Springs, Calif., will consider a nearly $6 million reparations settlement for former residents of a neighborhood of mostly Black and Latino families that was destroyed more than a half-century ago.

Former residents of Section 14, which was razed in the 1960s to make room for commercial development, accepted the city’s final cash offer of $5.9 million. Up to another $21 million could go toward housing, economic development and small business programs. The City Council was expected to vote on the settlement offer and the initiatives at a public meeting Thursday.

“We have been fighting for a long time to tell our story,” said Margarita Genera, 86, who lived with her parents and two siblings in the neighborhood.

If the settlement is approved, Palm Springs, a desert resort destination, would become one of a few municipalities in the country to have successfully reached a deal on reparations.

DOJ finds violations at Atlanta jailhouse

The Justice Department has found significant civil rights violations at a jail complex in Fulton County, Ga., that it says was plagued by inadequate staffing, overcrowding, poor and unsanitary living conditions, sexual assaults and excessive violence by inmates and staff.

The department, in a blunt report released Thursday, pinned responsibility on officials in Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, which oversees the jail system. They have had a “deliberate indifference to the risks of harms,” it said.

“Detention in the Fulton County jail has amounted to a death sentence for dozens of people who have been murdered or who died as a result of the atrocious conditions inside the facility,” Kristen Clarke, an assistant attorney general who leads the agency’s civil rights division, said during a news conference Thursday in Atlanta.

The Fulton County jail system, which includes four buildings, was under federal supervision between 2006 and 2015, largely for the very problems identified in the report.

NASA rebuts rumors on astronaut’s health

Suni Williams, a NASA astronaut on the International Space Station, is healthy and not suffering from any medical problems, NASA’s top medical officer said Thursday.

The unusual pronouncement was prompted by news articles suggesting that Williams was experiencing health problems during an unplanned extended stay in orbit. That in turn set off widespread rumors on social media.

Williams, 59, addressed the issue directly Tuesday during an interview with New England Sports Network.

“I think there’s some rumors around outside there that I’m losing weight and stuff,” she said. “No, I’m actually right at the same amount.”

Williams is one of the two astronauts whose stay at the space station was stretched from eight days to eight months because of propulsion problems with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that took them there in June. While taking pains to insist that Williams and Butch Wilmore, the other astronaut, were not stranded, NASA decided that Starliner would return to Earth empty and that Williams and Wilmore would join the space station crew until February. They are to head home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft instead.

Haitian gang violence surges amid turmoil

Masses of residents fled a running battle Thursday between gang members and police in one of the few neighborhoods of Haiti’s capital that hadn’t already been fully taken over by gangs, as violence flared amid political turmoil.

Families frantically packed mattresses and furniture into cars and carried their belongings on their heads as they left the Solino neighborhood, one of a handful of areas in Port-au-Prince where a coalition of gangs, called Viv Ansanm, and police were locked in a violent firefight over the past several days.

“We barely made it out,” said 52-year-old Jean-Jean Pierre, who carrying his son in his arms as he fled the neighborhood with throngs of people. “I’ve lived here 40 years of my life and I’ve never seen it this bad.”

Violence has exploded in the capital since Sunday when Haiti’s transitional council created to restore democratic order fired the interim prime minister amid political infighting.

Study: Three-quarters of U.S. adults too heavy

Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, according to a sweeping new study. The findings have wide-reaching implications for the nation’s health and medical costs as it faces a growing burden of weight-related diseases.

The study, published Thursday in The Lancet, reveals the striking rise of obesity rates nationwide since 1990 — when just over half of adults were overweight or obese — and shows how more people are becoming overweight or obese at younger ages than in the past. Both conditions can raise the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease, and shorten life expectancy.

The study’s authors documented increases in the rates of overweight and obesity across ages. They were particularly alarmed by the steep rise among children, more than 1 in 3 of whom are now overweight or obese. Without aggressive intervention, they forecast, the number of overweight and obese people will continue to go up — reaching nearly 260 million people in 2050.

Pentagon UFO report: no little green men

The Pentagon’s latest report on UFOs has revealed hundreds of new reports of unidentified and unexplained aerial phenomena but no indications suggesting an extraterrestrial origin.

The review includes hundreds of cases of misidentified balloons, birds and satellites as well as some that defy easy explanation, such as a near-miss between a commercial airliner and a mysterious object off the coast of New York.

While it isn’t likely to settle any debates over the existence of alien life, the report reflects heightened public interest in the topic and the government’s efforts to provide some answers. Its publication comes a day after House lawmakers called for greater transparency during a hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs — the government’s term for UFOs.

Federal efforts to study and identify UAPs have focused on potential threats to national security or air safety and not their science fiction aspects.

Norway apologizes for Indigenous repression

For more than a century, Norway forcibly suppressed the language and culture of Indigenous people and other minority groups, including removing children from their parents, in a system of “Norwegianization” whose devastation continues to be felt.

This week, the country’s parliament issued a formal apology to the Sami, Kven and Forest Finn peoples and outlined 17 resolutions to address the discrimination they still face, including protecting minority languages and ensuring that children are taught those languages.

The move, which parliament approved Tuesday, was welcomed by Silje Karine Muotka, a Sami leader, who described the moment as “a day with many emotions.” But she also said it needed to be followed up with concrete and significant action.

Car insurance fraud is blamed on ‘bear’

California has seen its share of bears breaking into cars. But bears caught on camera entering luxury cars tipped off insurers that something wasn’t right.

In what’s dubbed “Operation Bear Claw,” the California Insurance Department said four Los Angeles residents were arrested Wednesday, accused of defrauding three insurance companies out of nearly $142,000 by claiming a bear had caused damage to their vehicles. The group is accused of providing video footage from the San Bernardino Mountains in January of a “bear” moving inside a Rolls-Royce and two Mercedes to the insurance companies as part of their damage claims, the department said.

The company viewing video of the Rolls-Royce suspected that it was not a bear inside, but someone in a bear costume. The department had a state wildlife biologist review the three videos, who concluded it was “clearly a human in a bear suit,” the department said.

— News service reports