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PORTLAND, Maine — His U.S. Senate campaign under fire, Maine Democrat Graham Platner said Wednesday that a tattoo on his chest has been covered to no longer reflect an image widely recognized as a Nazi symbol.

The first-time political candidate said he got the skull and crossbones tattoo in 2007, when he was in his 20s and in the Marine Corps. It happened during a night of drinking while he was on leave in Croatia, he said, adding he was unaware until recently that the image has been associated with Nazi police.

Platner, in an Associated Press interview, said that while his campaign initially said he would remove the tattoo, he chose to cover it up with another tattoo due to the limited options where he lives in rural Maine.

“Going to a tattoo removal place is going to take a while,” he said. “I wanted this thing off my body.”

The initial tattoo image resembled a specific symbol of Hitler’s paramilitary Schutzstaffel, or SS, which was responsible for the systematic murders of millions of Jews and others in Europe during World War II. Platner didn’t offer details about the new tattoo, but offered to send the AP a photo later Wednesday.

The oyster farmer is mounting a progressive campaign against Republican Susan Collins, who has held the Senate seat for 30 years. The crowded Democratic primary field includes two-term Gov. Janet Mills.

Platner said he had never been questioned about the tattoo’s connections to Nazi symbols in the 20 years he has had it. He said it was there when he enlisted in the Army, which requires an examination for tattoos of hate symbols.

“I also passed a full background check to receive a security clearance to join the Ambassador to Afghanistan’s security detail,” Platner said.

Questions about the tattoo come after the recent discovery of Platner’s now-deleted online statements that included dismissing military sexual assaults, questioning Black patrons’ gratuity habits and criticizing police officers and rural Americans.

Platner has apologized for those comments, saying they were made after he left the Army in 2012, when he was struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

He has resisted calls to drop out of the race and has the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who has described Platner as a stronger candidate for the seat than Mills. Another primary rival, Jordan Wood, a onetime chief of staff to former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., said Wednesday that Platner should drop out because “Democrats need to be able to condemn Trump’s actions with moral clarity” and Platner “no longer can.”

Platner said he was not ashamed to confront his past comments and actions because it reflects the lessons he needed to take to get where he is today.

“I don’t look at this as a liability,” he told the AP. “I look at this as is a life that I have lived, a journey that has been difficult, that has been full of struggle, that has also gotten me to where I am today. And I’m very proud of who I am.”

Platner planned a town hall Wednesday in Ogunquit, Maine.

Kruesi and Whittle write for the Associated Press. Kruesi reported from Providence, R.I.

JERUSALEM — Palestinian Oscar-winning director Basel Adra said Israeli soldiers conducted a raid at his home in the occupied West Bank over the weekend, searching for him and going through his wife’s phone.

Israeli settlers attacked his village Saturday, injuring two of his brothers and one cousin, Adra told the Associated Press. He accompanied them to the hospital. While there, he said that he heard from family in the village that nine Israeli soldiers had stormed his home.

The soldiers asked his wife, Suha, of his whereabouts and went through her phone while his 9-month-old daughter was home. They also briefly detained one of his uncles, he said.

Adra spent the night outside the village, unable to get home and check on his family because soldiers were blocking the village entrance and he was scared of being detained, he said.

Israel’s military said soldiers were in the village after Palestinians had thrown rocks, injuring two Israeli civilians. It said its forces were still in the village, searching the area and questioning people.

Adra said settlers attacked the Palestinians on their land, and denied throwing rocks or seeing anyone from the village do so.

Videos recorded by Adra’s cousin and viewed by the AP showed settlers attacking a man Adra identified as his brother, Adam, who was hospitalized with bruising to his left hand, elbow and chest, according to hospital records shared with the AP.

In another video, a settler chases a solidarity activist through an olive grove, tackling her to the ground.

Adra has spent his career as a journalist and filmmaker chronicling settler violence in Masafer Yatta, the southern reaches of the West Bank where he was born. After settlers attacked his co-director, Hamdan Ballal, in March, he told the AP that he felt they were being targeted more intensely since winning the Oscar.

He described Saturday’s events as “horrific.”

“Even if you are just filming the settlers, the army comes and chases you, searches your house,” he said. “The whole system is built to attack us, to terrify us, to make us very scared.”

Another co-director, Yuval Abraham, said he was “terrified for Basel.”

“What happened today in his village, we’ve seen this dynamic again and again, where the Israeli settlers brutally attack a Palestinian village and later on the army comes, and attacks the Palestinians,” Abraham said.

“No Other Land,” which won an Oscar this year for best documentary, depicts the struggle by residents of the Masafer Yatta area to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages. Ballal and Adra made the joint Palestinian-Israeli production with Israeli directors Abraham and Rachel Szor.

The film has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. It has also drawn ire in Israel and abroad, such as when Miami Beach proposed ending the lease of a movie theater that screened the documentary.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East War, along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. The Palestinians want all three for a future state and view Jewish settlement growth as a major obstacle to a two-state solution.

Israel has built well over 100 settlements, home to more than 500,000 settlers who have Israeli citizenship. The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centers.

The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered residents, mostly Arab Bedouins, to be expelled. Around 1,000 residents have largely remained, but soldiers regularly move in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards, and Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time.

During the war in Gaza, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank during wide-scale military operations. There has also been a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians, as well as a surge in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

Frankel writes for the Associated Press.

President Trump has approved federal disaster aid for six states and tribes following storms and floods that occurred this spring and summer.

The disaster declarations, announced Thursday, will allow federal funding to flow to Kansas, North Carolina, North Dakota and Wisconsin, and for tribes in Montana and South Dakota. In each case except Wisconsin, it took Trump more than a month to approve the aid requests from local officials, continuing a trend of longer waits for disaster relief noted by a recent Associated Press analysis.

Trump has now approved more than 30 major natural disaster declarations since taking office in January. Before the latest batch, his approvals had averaged a 34-day wait from the time the relief was requested. For his most recent declarations, that wait ranged from just 15 days following an aid request for Wisconsin flooding in August to 56 days following a tribal request for Montana flooding that occurred in May.

The AP’s analysis showed that delays in approving federal disaster aid have grown over time, regardless of the party in power. On average, it took less than two weeks for requests for a presidential disaster declaration to be granted in the 1990s and early 2000s. That rose to about three weeks during the last decade under presidents from both major parties. During Trump’s first term in office, it took him an average of 24 days to approve requests.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the AP that Trump is providing “a more thorough review of disaster declaration requests than any Administration has before him” to make sure that federal tax dollars are spent wisely.

But delays mean individuals must wait to receive federal aid for daily living expenses, temporary lodging and home repairs. Delays in disaster declarations also can hamper recovery efforts by local officials uncertain whether they will receive federal reimbursement for cleaning up debris and rebuilding infrastructure.

Trump’s latest declarations approved public assistance for local governments and nonprofits in all cases except Wisconsin, where assistance for individuals was approved. But that doesn’t preclude the federal government from later also approving public assistance for Wisconsin.

Preliminary estimates from Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ administration said more than 1,500 residential structures were destroyed or experienced major damage in August flooding at a cost of more than $33 million. There was also more than $43 million in public sector damage over six counties, according to the Evers administration.

Evers requested aid for residents in six counties, but Trump approved it only for three.

“I will continue to urge the Trump Administration to approve the remainder of my request, and I will keep fighting to make sure Wisconsin receives every resource that is needed and available,” Evers said in a statement in which he thanked Democratic officeholders for their efforts, but not Trump or any Republicans.

Trump had announced several of the disaster declarations — including Wisconsin’s — on his social media site while noting his victories in those states and highlighting their Republican officials. He received thanks from Democratic North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein and Republican officials elsewhere.

Trump’s approval of six major disaster declarations in one day would have been unusual for some presidents but not for him. Trump approved seven disaster requests on July 22 and nine on May 21.

But Trump has not approved requests for hazard mitigation assistance — a once-typical add-on that helps recipients build back with resilience — since February.

Lieb and Wildeman write for the Associated Press. AP writers Gabriela Aoun Angueira, Scott Bauer, Jack Dura and Gary D. Robertson contributed to this report.

CATO, N.Y. — Federal agents forced open the doors of a snack bar manufacturer and took away dozens of workers in a surprise enforcement action that the plant’s co-owner called “terrifying.”

Video and photos taken at the Nutrition Bar Confectioners plant Thursday showed numerous law enforcement vehicles outside the plant and workers being escorted from the building to a Border Patrol van. Immigration agents ordered everyone to a lunchroom, where they asked for proof the workers were in the country legally, according to one 24-year-old worker who was briefly detained.

The reason for the enforcement action was unclear. Local law enforcement officials said the operation was led by U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, which did not respond to requests for information. Nutrition Bar Confectioners co-owner Lenny Schmidt said he was also in the dark about the purpose of the raid.

“There’s got to be a better way to do it,” Schmidt told the Associated Press on Friday at the family-owned business in Cato, N.Y., about 30 miles west of Syracuse.

The facility’s employees had all been vetted and had legal documentation, Schmidt said, adding that he would have cooperated with law enforcement if he’d been told there were concerns.

“Coming in like they did, it’s frightening for everybody — the Latinos … that work here, and everybody else that works here as well, even myself and my family. It’s terrifying,” he said.

Cayuga County Sheriff Brian Schenck said his deputies were among those on scene Thursday morning after being asked a month ago to assist federal agencies in executing a search warrant “relative to an ongoing criminal investigation.”

He did not detail the nature of the investigation.

The lack of explanation raised questions for state Sen. Rachel May, a Democrat who represents the district.

“It’s not clear to me, if it’s a long-standing criminal investigation, why the workers would have been rounded up,” May said by phone Friday. “I feel like there are things that don’t quite add up.”

Worker describes raid

The 24-year-old worker, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution, said that after he showed the agents he is a legal U.S. resident, they wrote down his information and photographed him.

“Some of the women started to cry because their kids were at school or at day care. It was very sad to see,” said the worker, who arrived from Guatemala six years ago and became a legal resident two years ago.

He said his partner lacked legal status and was among those taken away.

The two of them started working at the factory about two years ago. He was assigned to the snack bar wrapping department and she to the packing area. He said he couldn’t talk to her before she was led away by agents and didn’t know Friday where she had been detained.

“What they are doing to us is not right. We’re here to work. We are not criminals,” he said.

Schmidt said he believed immigration enforcement agents are singling out any company with “some sort of Hispanic workforce, whether small or large.”

The raid came the same day that immigration authorities detained 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals, at a manufacturing site in Georgia where Korean automaker Hyundai makes electric vehicles.

Without his missing employees, Schmidt estimated production at the food manufacturer would drop by about half, making it a challenge to meet customer demand. The plant employs close to 230 people.

“We’ll just do what we need to do to move forward to give our customers the product that they need,” he said, “and then slowly recoup, rehire where we need.”

Dozens held

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said the workers detained included parents of “at least a dozen children at risk of returning from school to an empty house.”

“I’ve made it clear: New York will work with the federal government to secure our borders and deport violent criminals, but we will never stand for masked ICE agents separating families and abandoning children,” she said in a statement.

The advocacy group Rural and Migrant Ministry said 50 to 60 people, most of them from Guatemala, were still being held Friday. Among those released late Thursday, after about 11 hours, was a mother of a newborn who needed to nurse her baby, said the group’s chief program officer, Wilmer Jimenez.

The worker who was briefly detained said he has been helping to support his parents and siblings, who grow corn and beans in Guatemala.

He said he took Friday off but plans to get back to work Monday.

“I have to go back because I can’t be without work,” he said.

Hill writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco and Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, N.Y., contributed to this report.

Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of sexual abuse.

IOWA CITY, Iowa — The U.S. gymnastics world was only just recovering from a devastating sexual abuse scandal when a promising young coach moved from Mississippi to Iowa to take a job in 2018 at an elite academy known for training Olympic champions.

Liang “Chow” Qiao, the owner of Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, thought highly enough of his new hire, Sean Gardner, to put him in charge of the club’s premier junior event and to coach some of its most promising girls.

But four years later, Gardner was gone from Chow’s with little notice.

USA Gymnastics, the organization rocked by the Larry Nassar sex-abuse crisis that led to the creation of the U.S. Center for SafeSport, had been informed by the watchdog group that Gardner was suspended from all contact with gymnasts.

The reason for Gardner’s removal wasn’t disclosed. But court records obtained exclusively by the Associated Press show the coach was accused of sexually abusing at least three young gymnasts at Chow’s and secretly recording others undressing in a gym bathroom at his prior job in Mississippi.

Last week, more than three years after being suspended from coaching, the FBI arrested Gardner, 38, on a federal child pornography charge. But his disciplinary case has still not been resolved by SafeSport, which handles sex-abuse cases in Olympic sports.

In cases such as Gardner’s, the public can be in the dark for years while SafeSport investigates and sanctions coaches. SafeSport requires that allegations be reported to police to ensure abusers don’t run unchecked outside of sports, but critics say the system is a slow, murky process.

“From an outward operational view, it seems that if SafeSport is involved in any way, the situation turns glow-in-the-dark toxic,” said attorney Steve Silvey, a longtime SafeSport critic who has represented people in cases involving the center.

While acknowledging there can be delays as its investigations unfold, SafeSport defended its temporary suspensions in a statement as “a unique and valuable intervention” when there are concerns of a risk to others.

Nevertheless, in 2024, Gardner was able to land a job helping care for surgical patients at an Iowa hospital — two years after the abuse allegations against him were reported to SafeSport and the police.

And it was not until late May that West Des Moines police executed a search warrant at his home, eventually leading to the recovery of a trove of photos and videos on his computer and cellphone of nude young girls, court records show.

Authorities in Iowa sealed the court documents after the AP asked about the investigation earlier this month, before details of the federal charge were made public Friday. Gardner, Qiao and Gardner’s former employer in Mississippi did not respond to AP requests for comment.

‘The job that I’ve always wanted’

Chow’s Gymnastics is best known as the academy where U.S. gymnasts Shawn Johnson and Gabby Douglas trained before becoming gold medalists at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.

Qiao opened the gym in 1998 after starring on the Chinese national team and moving to the United States to coach at the University of Iowa. The gym became a draw for top youth gymnasts, with some families moving to Iowa to train there.

Gardner moved to Iowa in September 2018, jumping at the opportunity to coach under Qiao.

“This is the job that I’ve always wanted. Chow is really someone I have looked up to since I’ve been coaching,” Gardner told the ABC affiliate WOI-TV in 2019. “And you can tell when you step foot in the gym, just even from coaching the girls, the culture that he’s built. It’s amazing. It’s beautiful.”

A year later, Gardner was promoted to director of Chow’s Winter Classic, an annual meet that draws more than 1,000 gymnasts to Iowa. He also coached a junior Olympics team during his four-year tenure at Chow’s.

Several of his students earned college gymnastics scholarships, but Gardner said he had bigger goals.

“You want to leave a thumbprint on their life, so when they go off hopefully to school, to bigger and better things, that they remember Chow’s as family,” he said in a 2020 interview with WOI-TV.

Coach accused of sexual misconduct in Iowa and Mississippi

Gardner is accused of abusing his position at Chow’s and his former job at Jump’In Gymnastics in Mississippi to prey on girls under his tutelage, according to a nine-page FBI affidavit released Friday that summarizes the allegations against him.

A girl reported to SafeSport in March 2022 that Gardner used “inappropriate spotting techniques” in which he would put his hands between her legs and touch her vagina, the affidavit said.

It said she alleged Gardner would ask girls if they were sexually active and call them “idiots, sluts, and whores.” She said this behavior began after his hiring in 2018 and continued until she left the gym in 2020 and provided the names of six other potential victims.

SafeSport suspended Gardner in July 2022 — four months after the girl’s report — a provisional step it can take in severe cases with “sufficient evidentiary support” as investigations proceed.

A month after that, the center received a report from another girl alleging additional “sexual contact and physical abuse,” including that Gardner similarly fondled her during workouts, the FBI affidavit said. The girl said that he once dragged her across the carpet so hard that it burned her buttocks, the affidavit said.

SafeSport shared the reports with West Des Moines police, in line with its policy requiring adults who interact with youth athletes to disclose potential criminal cases to law enforcement.

While SafeSport’s suspension took Gardner out of gymnastics, the criminal investigation quickly hit a roadblock.

Police records show a detective told SafeSport to urge the alleged victims to file criminal complaints, but only one of their mothers contacted police in 2022. That woman said her daughter did not want to pursue criminal charges, and police suspended the investigation.

Victims of abuse are often reluctant to cooperate with police, said Ken Lang, a retired detective and associate professor of criminal justice at Milligan University.

“In this case you have the prestige of this facility,” he said. “Do they want to associate their name with that, in that way, when their aspirations were to succeed in gymnastics?”

Police suspended the investigation, even as Gardner was on probation for his second offense of driving while intoxicated.

A dormant case reopened, and a year later, an arrest

The case stayed dormant until April 2024 when another former Chow’s student came forward to the West Des Moines Police Department to report abuse allegations, according to a now-sealed affidavit signed by police detective Jeff Lyon. The AP is not identifying the student in line with its policy of not naming victims of alleged sexual abuse.

The now 18-year-old told police she began taking lessons from Gardner when she was 11 or 12 in 2019, initially seeing him as a “father figure” who tried to help her get through her parents’ divorce. He told her she could tell him “anything,” the affidavit said.

When she moved in 2021, she told police, he gave her a hug and said she could text and follow him on Instagram and other social media sites, where he went by the nickname “Coach Seanie,” because gym policy barring such contact no longer applied.

According to a summary of her statement provided in Lyon’s affidavit, she said Gardner fondled her during exercises, repeatedly touching her vagina; rubbed her back and butt and discussed his sex life; and made her do inappropriate stretches that exposed her privates.

She told police she suspected he used his cellphone to film her in that position.

Reached by the AP, the teen’s mother declined comment. The mother told police she was interested in a monetary settlement with Chow’s because the gym “had been made aware of the complaints and they did nothing to stop them,” according to Lyon’s affidavit. The gym didn’t return AP messages seeking comment.

It took 16 months after the teen’s 2024 report for the FBI to arrest Gardner, who made an initial court appearance in Des Moines on Friday on a charge of producing visual depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, which can carry up to 30 years in prison. A public defender assigned to represent him didn’t return AP messages seeking comment.

It’s unclear why the case took so long to investigate and also when the FBI, which had to pay $138 million to Nassar’s victims for botching that investigation, got involved in the case.

Among evidence seized by investigators in late May were a cellphone, laptop and a desktop computer along with handwritten notes between Gardner and his former pupils, according to the sealed court documents.

They found images of girls, approximately 6 to 14 years in age, who were nude, using the toilet or changing into leotards, those documents show. Those images appear to have come from a hidden camera in a restroom.

They also uncovered 50 video files and 400 photos, including some that appeared to be child pornography, according to the FBI affidavit. One video allegedly shows Gardner entering the bathroom and turning off the camera.

Investigators also found images of an adult woman secretly filmed entering and exiting a bathtub, and identified her as Gardner’s ex-girlfriend. That woman as well as the gym’s owner, Candi Workman, told investigators the images appeared to come from Jump’In Gymnastics’ facility in Purvis, Miss., which has since been closed.

SafeSport’s power has limits

SafeSport has long touted that it can deliver sanctions in cases where criminal charges are not pursued as key to its mission. However, Gardner’s ability to land a job in healthcare illustrates the limits of that power: It can ban people from sports but that sanction is not guaranteed to reach the general public.

While not commenting about Gardner’s case directly, it said in a statement provided to AP that a number of issues factor into why cases can take so long to close, including the 8,000 reports it receives a year with only around 30 full-time investigators. It has revamped some procedures, it said, in an attempt to become more efficient.

“While the Center is able and often does cooperate in law enforcement investigations,” it said, “law enforcement is not required to share information, updates, or even confirm an investigation is ongoing.”

USA Gymnastics president Li Li Leung called the center’s task “really tough, difficult to navigate.”

“I would like to see more consistency with their outcomes and sanctions,” Leung said. “I would like to see more standardization on things. I would like to see more communication, more transparency from their side.”

A case that lingers, even after the SafeSport ban

As the investigation proceeded, Gardner said on his Facebook page he had landed a new job in May 2024 as a surgical technologist at MercyOne West Des Moines Medical Center. It’s a role that calls for positioning patients on the operating room table, and assisting with procedures and post-surgery care.

Asked about Gardner’s employment, hospital spokesman Todd Mizener told the AP: “The only information I can provide is that he is no longer” at the hospital.

Meanwhile, the case lingers, leaving lives in limbo more than three years after the SafeSport Center and police first learned of it.

“SafeSport is now part of a larger problem rather than a solution, if it was ever a solution,” said attorney Silvey. “The most fundamental professional task such as coordination with local or federal law enforcement gets botched on a daily basis, hundreds of times a year now.”

Foley and Pells write for the Associated Press. AP reporter Will Graves contributed.

The U.S. Court of Appeals on Tuesday denied an appeal by the Associated Press for a hearing on its efforts to restore full access to cover presidential events, not ending its case but allowing the White House to continue its control over access to President Trump.

The news outlet wanted the court to overturn a three-judge panel’s June 6 ruling not to let AP back into the events until merits of the news organization’s lawsuit against Trump was decided. But the court on Tuesday declined to hear that appeal.

It all stems from Trump’s decision in February to keep AP journalists out of the Oval Office, Air Force One and other events too small for a full press corps, in retaliation for the news outlet’s decision not to follow his lead in changing the Gulf of Mexico’s name.

The AP sued in response. In April, a district court ruled that the administration could not exclude journalists based on their opinions. The Trump administration immediately turned to the U.S. Court of Appeals to successfully delay implementation of the ruling before the court could consider the full merits of the case.

Next up: This fall, the appeals court considers those full merits.

“We are disappointed by today’s procedural decision but remain focused on the strong district court opinion in support of free speech as we have our case heard,” said Patrick Maks, an AP spokesman. “As we’ve said throughout, the press and the public have a fundamental right to speak freely without government retaliation.”

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.

Since the start of the case, the White House has instituted new rules for access to the limited-space events. AP photographers have been regularly permitted back, but its reporters only occasionally.

On Monday, the White House said it would not allow a reporter from the Wall Street Journal onto Air Force One to cover Trump’s weekend trip to Scotland because of the outlet’s “fake and defamatory conduct” in a story about the president and late financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Bauder writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — Martin Cruz Smith, the best-selling mystery novelist who engaged readers for decades with “Gorky Park” and other thrillers featuring Moscow investigator Arkady Renko, has died at age 82.

Smith died Friday at a senior living community in San Rafael, “surrounded by those he loved,” according to his publisher, Simon & Schuster. Smith revealed a decade ago that he had Parkinson’s disease, and he gave the same condition to his protagonist. His 11th Renko book, “Hotel Ukraine,” was published July 8 and billed as his last.

“My longevity is linked to Arkady’s,” he told Strand Magazine in 2023. “As long as he remains intelligent, humorous, and romantic, so shall I.”

Smith was often praised for his storytelling and for his insights into modern Russia; he would speak of being interrogated at length by customs officials during his many trips there. The Associated Press called “Hotel Ukraine” a “gem” that “upholds Smith’s reputation as a great craftsman of modern detective fiction with his sharply drawn, complex characters and a compelling plot.”

Smith’s honors included being named a “grand master” by the Mystery Writers of America, winning the Hammett Prize for “Havana Bay” and a Gold Dagger award for “Gorky Park.”

Born Martin William Smith in Reading, Pa. , he studied creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and started out as a journalist, including a brief stint at the AP and at the Philadelphia Daily News. Success as an author arrived slowly. He had been a published novelist for more than a decade before he broke through in the early 1980s with “Gorky Park.” His novel came out when the Soviet Union and the Cold War were still very much alive and centered on Renko’s investigation into the murders of three people whose bodies were found in the Moscow park that Smith used for the book’s title.

“Gorky Park,” cited by the New York Times as a reminder of “just how satisfying a smoothly turned thriller can be,” topped the Times’ fiction bestseller list and was later made into a movie starring William Hurt.

“Russia is a character in my Renko stories, always,” Smith told Publishers Weekly in 2013. “‘Gorky Park’ may have been one of the first books to take a backdrop and make it into a character. It took me forever to write because of my need to get things right. You’ve got to knock down the issue of ‘Does this guy know what he’s talking about or not?’”

Smith’s other books include science fiction (“The Indians Won”), the Westerns “North to Dakota” and “Ride for Revenge,” and the “Roman Grey” mystery series. Besides “Martin Cruz Smith” — Cruz was his maternal grandmother’s name — he also wrote under the pen names “Nick Carter” and “Simon Quinn.”

Smith’s Renko books were inspired in part by his own travels and he would trace the region’s history over the past 40 years, whether it be the Soviet Union’s collapse (“Red Square”), the rise of Russian oligarchs (“The Siberian Dilemma”) or, in the novel “Wolves Eats Dogs,” the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

By the time he began working on his last novel, Russia had invaded Ukraine. The AP noted in its review of “Hotel Ukraine” that Smith had devised a backstory “pulled straight from recent headlines,” referencing such world leaders as Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin of Russia and former President Joe Biden of the U.S.

Smith is survived by his brother, Jack Smith; his wife, Emily Smith; three children and five grandchildren.

Italie writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Jeffrey Epstein did not maintain a “client list,” the Justice Department acknowledged Monday as it said no more files related to the wealthy financier’s sex trafficking investigation would be made public despite promises from Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi that had raised the expectations of conservative influencers and conspiracy theorists.

The acknowledgment that the well-connected Epstein did not have a list of clients to whom underage girls were trafficked represents a public walk-back of a theory that the Trump administration had helped promote, with Bondi suggesting in a Fox News interview earlier this year that such a document was “sitting on my desk” in preparation for release.

Even as it released video from inside a New York jail meant to definitively prove that Epstein died by suicide, the department also said in a memo that it was refusing to release other evidence investigators had collected. Bondi for weeks had suggested that more material was going to be revealed — “It’s a new administration and everything is going to come out to the public,” she said at one point — after a first document dump she had hyped angered President Trump’s base by failing to deliver revelations.

That episode, in which conservative internet personalities were invited to the White House in February and provided with binders marked “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” and “Declassified” that contained documents that had largely already been in the public domain, has spurred far-right influencers to lambast and deride Bondi.

After the first release fell flat, Bondi said officials were pouring over a “truckload” of previously withheld evidence she said had been handed over by the FBI. In a March TV interview, she claimed the Biden administration “sat on these documents, no one did anything with them,” adding: “Sadly these people don’t believe in transparency, but I think more unfortunately, I think a lot of them don’t believe in honesty.”

But after a months-long review of evidence in the government’s possession, the Justice Department determined that no “further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,” the memo says. The department noted that much of the material was placed under seal by a court to protect victims and “only a fraction” of it “would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial.”

The two-page memo bore the logos of the Justice Department and the FBI but was not signed by any individual official.

“One of our highest priorities is combatting child exploitation and bringing justice to victims,” the memo says. Perpetuating unfounded theories about Epstein serves neither of those ends.”

Conservatives who have sought proof of a government cover-up of Epstein’s activities and death expressed outrage Monday over the department’s position. Far-right influencer Jack Posobiec posted: “We were all told more was coming. That answers were out there and would be provided. Incredible how utterly mismanaged this Epstein mess has been. And it didn’t have to be.”

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones wrote that “next the DOJ will say ‘Actually, Jeffrey Epstein never even existed,’ calling it “over the top sickening.” Elon Musk shared a series of photos of a clown applying makeup appearing to mock Bondi for saying the client list doesn’t exist after suggesting months ago that it was on her desk.

Among the evidence that the Justice Department says it has in its possession are photographs and more than 10,000 videos and images that officials said depicted child sex abuse material or “other pornography.” Bondi had earlier suggested that part of the reason for the delay in releasing additional Epstein materials was because the FBI needed to review “tens of thousands” of recordings that she said showed Epstein “with children or child porn.”

The Associated Press published an article last week about the unanswered questions surrounding those videos.

Multiple people who participated in the criminal cases of Epstein and former British socialite girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell told AP that they had not seen and did not know of a trove of recordings along the lines of what Bondi had referenced. Indictments and detention memos also don’t allege the existence of video recordings and neither Epstein nor Maxwell were charged with possession of child sex abuse material even though that would have been easier for prosecutors to prove than the sex trafficking counts they faced.

The AP did find reference in a filing in a civil lawsuit to the discovery by the Epstein estate of videos and pictures that could constitute child sex abuse material, but lawyers involved in that case said a protective order prevents them from discovering the specifics of that evidence.

The Justice Department did not respond to a detailed list of questions from AP about the videos Bondi was referencing.

Monday’s memo does not explain when or where they were located, what they depict and whether they were newly found as investigators scoured their collection of evidence or were known for some time to have been in the government’s possession.

Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in August 2019, weeks after his arrest on sex trafficking charges, in a suicide that foreclosed the possibility of a trial.

The department’s disclosure that Epstein took his own life is hardly a revelation even though conspiracy theorists have continued to challenge that conclusion.

In 2019, for instance, then-Atty. Gen. William Barr told the AP in an interview that he had personally reviewed security video that revealed that no one entered the area where Epstein was housed on the night he died and Barr had concluded that Epstein’s suicide was the result of “a perfect storm of screw-ups.”

More recently, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino have insisted in television and podcast interviews that the evidence was clear that Epstein had killed himself.

Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — The New York Knicks fired coach Tom Thibodeau on Tuesday just days after their first trip to the Eastern Conference finals in 25 years, a person with knowledge of the decision told the Associated Press.

The Knicks were eliminated by the Indiana Pacers with a loss in Game 6 on Saturday night. They then decided to move on from Thibodeau, who led them to the postseason in four of his five seasons in New York.

The decision was made by team president Leon Rose with approval from owner Jim Dolan, the person told the AP on condition of anonymity because no announcement had been made. The firing was first reported by ESPN.

It’s a strange decision by the Knicks, who had been one of the league’s worst franchises for most of the 2000s until Thibodeau was hired in 2020. He promptly led the Knicks to the playoffs in his first season, winning his second NBA Coach of the Year award, and they have been a solid contender in the East in recent seasons.

Their big breakthrough came in 2024-25, when they knocked off defending champion Boston in the second round to reach the conference finals for the first time since 2000 — when Thibodeau was an assistant under Jeff Van Gundy.

After they were eliminated Saturday, captain Jalen Brunson expressed his support for Thibodeau, bristling at a question about whether he believed the coach was right for the team.

Three days later, Thibodeau was gone with a 226-174 record in New York. He has the fourth-most wins by a Knicks coach.

WASHINGTON — President Trump used a White House meeting to forcefully confront South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, accusing the country of failing to address Trump’s baseless claim of the systematic killing of white farmers.

Trump even dimmed the lights of the Oval Office to play a video of a far-left politician chanting a song that includes the lyrics “kill the farmer.” He also leafed through news articles to underscore his point, saying the country’s white farmers have faced “death, death, death, horrible death.”

Trump had already cut all U.S. assistance to South Africa and welcomed several dozen white South African farmers to the U.S. as refugees as he pressed the case that a “genocide” is underway in the country.

The U.S. president has launched a series of accusations at South Africa’s Black-led government, claiming it is seizing land from white farmers, enforcing anti-white policies and pursuing an anti-American foreign policy.

Experts in South Africa say there is no evidence of white people being targeted for their race, although farmers of all races are victims of violent home invasions in a country that suffers from a very high crime rate.

“People are fleeing South Africa for their own safety,” Trump said. “Their land is being confiscated and in many cases they’re being killed.”

Ramaphosa pushed back against Trump’s accusation. The South African leader had sought to use the meeting to set the record straight and salvage his country’s relationship with the United States. The bilateral relationship is at its lowest point since South Africa enforced its apartheid system of racial segregation, which ended in 1994.

“We are completely opposed to that,” Ramaphosa said of the behavior alleged by Trump in their exchange. He added, “that is not government policy” and “our government policy is completely, completely against what he was saying.”

Trump was unmoved.

“When they take the land, they kill the white farmer,” he said.

At the start of the Oval Office meeting, Trump described the South African president as a “truly respected man in many, many circles.” He added: “And in some circles he’s considered a little controversial.”

Ramaphosa chimed in, playfully jabbing back at a U.S. president who is no stranger to controversy. “We’re all like that,” Ramaphosa said.

Trump issued an executive order in February cutting all funding to South Africa over some of its domestic and foreign policies. The order criticized the South African government on multiple fronts, saying it is pursuing anti-white policies at home and supporting “bad actors” in the world like the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran.

Trump has falsely accused the South African government of a rights violation against white Afrikaner farmers by seizing their land through a new expropriation law. No land has been seized, and the South African government has pushed back, saying U.S. criticism is driven by misinformation.

The Trump administration’s references to the Afrikaner people — who are descendants of Dutch and other European settlers — have also elevated previous claims made by Trump’s South African-born advisor Elon Musk and some conservative U.S. commentators that the South African government is allowing attacks on white farmers in what amounts to a genocide.

That has been disputed by experts in South Africa, who say there is no evidence of white people being targeted, although farmers of all races are victims of violent home invasions in a country that suffers from a very high crime rate.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday said Trump remains ready to “reset” relations with South Africa, but noted that the administration’s concerns about South African policies cut even deeper then the concerns about white farmers.

South Africa has also angered the Trump White House over its move to bring charges at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Ramaphosa has also faced scrutiny in Washington for his past connections to MTN Group, Iran’s second-largest telecom provider. It owns nearly half of Irancell, a joint venture linked with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Ramaphosa served as board chair of MTN from 2002 to 2013.

“When one country is consistently unaligned with the United States on issue after issue after issue after issue, now you become — you have to make conclusions about it,” Rubio told Senate Foreign Relation Committee members at a Tuesday hearing.

With the deep differences, Ramaphosa tried mightily to avoid the sort of contentious engagement that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky experienced during his late February Oval Office visit, when the Ukrainian leader found himself being berated by Trump and Vice President JD Vance. That disastrous meeting ended with White House officials asking Zelensky and his delegation to leave the White House grounds.

The South African president’s delegation included golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen in his delegation, a gesture to the golf-obsessed U.S. president. Ramaphosa brought Trump a massive book about South Africa’s golf courses. He even told Trump that he’s been working on his golf game, seeming to angle for an invitation to the links with the president.

Luxury goods tycoon and Afrikaner Johann Rupert was also in the delegation to help ease Trump’s concerns that land was being seized from white farmers.

Ramaphosa turned to the golfers, Rupert and others to try to push back gently on Trump and make the case that the issue of crime in South Africa is multidimensional problem.

At one point, Ramaphosa called on Zingiswa Losi, the president of a group of South African trade unions, who told Trump it is true that South Africa is a “violent nation for a number of reasons.” But she told him it was important to understand that Black men and women in rural areas were also being targeted in heinous crimes.

“The problem in South Africa, it is not necessarily about race, but it’s about crime,” Losi said. “We are here to say how do we, both nations, work together to reset, to really talk about investment but also help … to really address the levels of crime we have in our country.”

Musk also attended Wednesday’s talks. He has been at the forefront of the criticism of his homeland, casting its affirmative action laws as racist against white people.

Musk has said on social media that his Starlink satellite internet service isn’t able to get a license to operate in South Africa because he is not Black.

South African authorities say Starlink hasn’t formally applied. It can, but it would be bound by affirmative action laws in the communications sector that require foreign companies to allow 30% of their South African subsidiaries to be owned by shareholders who are Black or from other racial groups disadvantaged under apartheid.

The South African government says its long-standing affirmative action laws are a cornerstone of its efforts to right the injustices of the white minority rule of apartheid, which denied opportunities to Black people and other racial groups.

Imray and Madhani write for the Associated Press. Imray reported from Johannesburg. AP writers Seung Min Kim, Chris Megerian and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.