The Biden administration on Tuesday abruptly dropped its nascent plan to protect old-growth forests after getting pushback from Republicans and the timber industry.

The move was announced by U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore in a letter to forest supervisors.

It brings a sudden end to a yearslong process to craft a nationwide plan that would better protect old trees that are increasingly threatened by climate change. The effort had been supported by some conservationists as one of the most significant forest preservation efforts in decades.

President Joe Biden launched the initiative with an executive order on Earth Day in April 2022. The proposal went through extensive public comment periods and internal analyses by government officials and was due to be finalized any day.

The plan would have limited logging in old-growth forests, with exceptions to allow logging in some old-growth areas to protect against wildfires.

But those exceptions were not enough for the timber industry and Republicans in Congress who bitterly opposed the administration’s proposal. They said it wasn’t needed since many forested areas already are protected. And they warned it could be devastating to logging companies that rely on access to cheap timber on public lands.

GOP lawmakers introduced legislation while the administration’s plans were still in the works to block them from going into effect.

Virginia Dems retain statehouse majority

Virginia Democrats preserved their Statehouse majority on Tuesday in the first test of voters’ energy since President-elect Donald Trump’s win in November, which left many party members across the country reckoning with their losses in federal elections.

Tuesday’s races were the first official elections in Virginia since November’s presidential contest. Democrats now have a narrow 21-19 edge in the state Senate and a 51-49 lead in the House of Delegates, preserving their majorities in both chambers during Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s last year in office.

The results could limit Youngkin’s conservative agenda for the state, requiring the governor to gain bipartisan support for his legislative vision.

Police: Vegas bomber used AI to plot attack

The highly decorated soldier who exploded a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas used generative AI including ChatGPT to help plan the attack, Las Vegas police said Tuesday.

A laptop, cellphone and watch are still under review nearly a week after 37-year-old Matthew Livelsberger fatally shot himself just before the truck blew up on News Year’s Day.

A review of Livelsberger’s searches through ChatGPT indicate he was looking for information on explosive targets, the speed at which certain rounds of ammunition would travel and whether fireworks were legal in Arizona.

Livelsberger, an Army Green Beret who deployed twice to Afghanistan and lived in Colorado Springs, Colo., left notes saying the explosion was a stunt meant to be a “ wake up call ” for the nation’s troubles, officials said last week.

He left cellphone notes sAying he needed to “cleanse” his mind “of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.”

Stowaways found dead in plane’s wheel well

Two bodies were found in the landing gear compartment of a JetBlue aircraft at a South Florida airport, the latest security breach involving the nation’s aviation system, authorities said.

The bodies were discovered in the wheel well area during a routine post-flight inspection on Monday night at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, the airline said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The aircraft had arrived in Fort Lauderdale shortly after 11 p.m. from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

“At this time, the identities of the individuals and the circumstances surrounding how they accessed the aircraft remain under investigation,” JetBlue’s statement said.

“This is a heartbreaking situation, and we are committed to working closely with authorities to support their efforts to understand how this occurred,” the airline added.

Paramedics declared both people dead at the scene, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday. The agency’s homicide and crime scene units are investigating, it said.

Venezuelan politician says in-law kidnapped

Self-exiled Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González, who claims to have defeated President Nicolás Maduro in last year’s presidential election, said his son-in-law was kidnapped Tuesday in Venezuela’s capital.

González, who was traveling in the United States, said Rafael Tudares was kidnapped while on his way to drop off González’s two

grandchildren at school in Caracas.

In a post on X, González said “hooded men, dressed in black” intercepted the vehicle and loaded Tudares “into a gold-colored van.” He did not say what happened to his 6- and 7-year-old grandchildren.

The kidnapping occurred despite a significant increase in police and military presence across Caracas ahead of Friday’s swearing-in ceremony for Maduro, who the government says won a third term in the July election. The government’s centralized press office did not respond to a request for comment.

AI mogul Sam Altman’s sister alleges sex abuse

The sister of Sam Altman accused the OpenAI chief executive officer of sexually abusing her for almost a decade, in a lawsuit filed in federal court.

Ann Altman, 30, alleged that Sam Altman abused and manipulated her while they were growing up in Missouri in the late 1990s to early 2000s. According to the lawsuit filed Monday, the alleged abuse began when she was 3 years old and the last instance allegedly occurred when he was almost an adult but still a minor. Ann Altman has previously claimed on social media that Sam Altman abused her.

Sam Altman, 39, posted a statement on behalf of himself, his mother and brothers on X on Tuesday, calling the claims “utterly untrue.”

“This situation causes immense pain to our entire family,” the statement read.

Sam Altman, a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor, gained a global profile with the massive success of artificial intelligence startup OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, which sparked an AI frenzy upon its release in late 2022.

Bloomberg News last year estimated Sam Altman’s personal fortune as more than $2 billion.

Fatal-burning suspect says he was drunk

The man charged with burning a woman to death on the New York City subway last month told investigators that he did not remember the incident because he was blackout drunk at the time, according to a transcript of his interrogation released by prosecutors Tuesday.

The man, Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, 33, pleaded not guilty to five counts, including first- and second-degree murder, in a five-minute hearing Tuesday morning in Kings County Supreme Criminal Court.

During his interrogation, which was conducted on the day of the attack, he described an all-night bender that ended in a blackout and then his arrest the next day in the death of the woman, Debrina Kawam of Toms River, N.J.

“I am very sorry,” Zapeta-Calil said, according to the transcript, which was translated from Spanish. “I didn’t mean to. But I really don’t know. I don’t know what happened, but I’m very sorry for that woman.”

Kawam, 57, had recently stayed in a shelter in the Bronx. She was asleep on an F train early on Dec. 22 when Zapeta-Calil pulled out a lighter and set her on fire, police said.

— From news services