WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer for an Army private who fled to North Korea and was later charged with desertion and possessing sexual images of a child said Wednesday that he was in negotiations with military prosecutors to resolve the case against his client.

Army Pvt. Travis King had been scheduled for a preliminary hearing Tuesday in Fort Bliss, Texas. But the hearing was canceled to give the two sides room to negotiate a resolution, King’s attorney, Franklin D. Rosenblatt, told The Associated Press.

He declined to discuss the details of the discussions or what any deal might entail, but said a request had been made to postpone the hearing by two weeks and that the negotiations could result in no preliminary hearing being necessary.

King in July 2023 ran across the heavily fortified border from South Korea and became the first American detained in North Korea in nearly five years.

Officials said King was taken to the airport and escorted as far as customs. But instead of getting on the plane, he left and later joined a civilian tour of the Korean border village of Panmunjom. He ran across the border, which is lined with guards and often crowded with tourists, in the afternoon.

After about two months, Pyongyang abruptly announced that it would expel him. He was flown on Sept. 28 to an Air Force base in Texas.

In October, he was charged with desertion and also accused of kicking and punching other officers last year, unlawfully possessing alcohol, making a false statement and possessing a video of a child engaged in sexual activity.

His mother, Claudine Gates, said in a statement at the time that she loved her son unconditionally and was extremely concerned about his mental health.

“The man I raised, the man I dropped off at boot camp, the man who spent the holidays with me before deploying did not drink and would never have had anything to do with child pornography,” she said. “A mother knows her son, and I believe something happened to mine while he was deployed.”

CHICAGO (AP) — Federal authorities have charged a former Loretto Hospital executive in a scheme to embezzle $15 million from the health care facility.

In an indictment filed late last week, Anosh Ahmed was charged with eight counts of wire fraud, four counts of embezzlement, 11 counts of aiding and abetting embezzlement and three counts of money laundering.

Ahmed was chief financial officer and CEO of the safety-net hospital when he resigned in 2021 for his involvement in questionable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, a controversy that’s not part of the federal indictment.

Criminal charges have also been filed against Sameer Suhail, of Chicago, who owns a medical supply company and allegedly participated in the fraud, and Heather Bergdahl, the hospital’s former chief transformation officer. She and Ahmed are from Houston.

The indictments allege that Ahmed, Bergdahl and Suhail engaged in a scheme from 2018 to 2022 to siphon money from the hospital. They allegedly made requests for hospital payments to vendors for goods and services never provided. They directed the money through a computerized system to accounts they controlled, authorities said.

Suhail is charged with six counts of wire fraud, six counts of aiding and abetting embezzlement, and two counts of money laundering.

Bergdahl, who was charged with embezzlement in May, also has been charged with 14 counts of wire fraud, 21 counts of embezzlement, and one count of money laundering.

A voicemail message seeking comment was left for the lead attorney listed for Bergdahl. Court documents do not list attorneys for Ahmed or Suhail.

Ahmed made news in 2021 when Block Club Chicago reported that Loretto was making COVID-19 vaccines available at affluent locations where Ahmed lived and visited instead of providing the vaccines in the economically distressed Austin neighborhood that the hospital served. At the time, the vaccine was new and scarce and reserved for people in most need of it.

FLORESVILLE (AP) — A judge on Monday cleared the way for the demolition of the small Texas church in Sutherland Springs where a gunman killed more than two dozen worshippers in 2017 in what remains the deadliest church shooting in U.S. history.

Following the shooting at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, the church turned the sanctuary where the attack took place into a memorial. Members of First Baptist then voted in 2021 to tear down the building but church leaders have not publicly said when it would be razed.

A new church was completed for the congregation about a year and a half after the shooting.

State District Judge Jennifer Dillingham earlier this month granted a temporary restraining order sought by some families who wanted to stop the planned demolition. But on Monday, state District Judge Russell Wilson denied a request to extend that order, again raising the prospect that the church could soon be torn down.

Attorneys for the church said during the hearing in Floresville that the church was within its rights to demolish the memorial, the San Antonio Express-News reported. “This is a question of church governance on how the church is going to proceed with its own property,” church attorney Matthew Swantner said.

Sam Fugate II, an attorney for the church attendees who sought the restraining order, has said the goal of the lawsuit filed in May was to get a new vote on the fate of the building. In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged that some church members were wrongfully removed from the church roster before it was taken.

Fugate told reporters after the hearing that without the temporary restraining order, they “no longer have an order preventing the church from being destroyed,” but they hope “the defendants will honor the suit and not take the church down while we deal with some of these issues.”

Some who visited the memorial this month after news spread of the impending demolishment said it was a place that brought solace. But the church said in a court filing last week that the structure was a “constant and very painful reminder” and that church members voted in 2021 to build an open-air memorial there. Authorities put the number of dead in the Nov. 5, 2017, shooting at 26 people, including a pregnant woman and her unborn baby.

In a court filing, the church denied the allegations in the lawsuit. A request for comment left on a voicemail at the church by The Associated Press was not immediately returned Monday and one of the attorneys for the church told AP after the hearing that they had no comment. The San Antonio Express-News reported that church officials and members who supported the demolition left the hearing without talking to the media.

Sandy Ward, a supporter of the plaintiffs’ efforts, emerged optimistic from the hearing. Ward, who lost three family members in the shooting, told the Express-News: “As long as the building is still there, there’s hope.”

The man who opened fire at the church, Devin Patrick Kelley, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after he was chased by bystanders and crashed his car. Investigators have said the shooting appeared to stem from a domestic dispute involving Kelley and his mother-in-law, who sometimes attended services at the church but was not present on the day of the shooting.

Communities across the U.S. have grappled with what should happen to the sites of mass shootings. Last month, demolition began on the three-story building where 17 people died in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. After the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, it was torn down and replaced.

Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York, and the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where racist mass shootings happened, both reopened. In Colorado, Columbine High School still stands — though its library, where most of the victims were killed, was replaced.

In Texas, officials closed Robb Elementary in Uvalde after the 2022 shooting there and plan to demolish the school.

DALLAS (AP) — With around 270,000 homes and businesses still without power in the Houston area almost a week after Hurricane Beryl hit Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday said he’s demanding an investigation into the response of the utility that serves the area as well as answers about its preparations for upcoming storms.

“Power companies along the Gulf Coast must be prepared to deal with hurricanes, to state the obvious,” Abbott said at his first news conference about Beryl since returning to the state from an economic development trip to Asia.

While CenterPoint Energy has restored power to about 2 million customers since the storm hit on July 8, the slow pace of recovery has put the utility, which provides electricity to the nation’s fourth-largest city, under mounting scrutiny over whether it was sufficiently prepared for the storm that left people without air conditioning in the searing summer heat.

Abbott said he was sending a letter to the Public Utility Commission of Texas requiring it to investigate why restoration has taken so long and what must be done to fix it. In the Houston area, Beryl toppled transmission lines, uprooted trees and snapped branches that crashed into power lines.

With months of hurricane season left, Abbott said he’s giving CenterPoint until the end of the month to specify what it’ll be doing to reduce or eliminate power outages in the event of another storm. He said that will include the company providing detailed plans to remove vegetation that still threatens power lines.

Abbott also said that CenterPoint didn’t have “an adequate number of workers pre-staged” before the storm hit.

Following Abbott’s news conference, CenterPoint said its top priority was “power to the remaining impacted customers as safely and quickly as possible,” adding that on Monday, the utility expects to have restored power to 90% of its customers. CenterPoint said it was committed to working with state and local leaders and to doing a “thorough review of our response.”

CenterPoint also said Sunday that it’s been “investing for years” to strengthen the area’s resilience to such storms.

The utility has defended its preparation for the storm and said that it has brought in about 12,000 additional workers from outside Houston. It has said it would have been unsafe to preposition those workers inside the predicted storm impact area before Beryl made landfall.

Brad Tutunjian, vice president for regulatory policy for CenterPoint Energy, said last week that the extensive damage to trees and power poles hampered the ability to restore power quickly.

A post Sunday on CenterPoint’s website from its president and CEO, Jason Wells, said that over 2,100 utility poles were damaged during the storm and over 18,600 trees had to be removed from power lines, which impacted over 75% of the utility’s distribution circuits.

HOUSTON (AP) — The damage left by Hurricane Beryl in Texas and requests for federal help have opened a rift between the White House and the state’s GOP leaders following the storm that pummeled the coast and knocked out power to millions of residents this week around Houston.

President Joe Biden said he tried tracking down Republican Gov. Greg Abbott — who has been in Asia on a trade mission since last week — to get the state to formally request a major disaster declaration that unlocks federal aid. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, Biden also said he tried reaching Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has served as acting governor since Beryl made landfall Monday, before they eventually connected the next day.

Both Texas leaders have sharply pushed back on Biden’s version of events in the middle of a hurricane recovery that has left some coastal residents facing the possibility of days or weeks without electricity.

“I’ve been trying to track down the governor to see — I don’t have any authority to do that without a specific request from the governor,” Biden told the newspaper on Tuesday.

Abbott, in an interview from Japan on Wednesday with Austin television station KTBC, said Biden has reached him him multiple times on the same number following previous disasters in Texas but that the president this time never called that phone during Beryl.

“I know for an absolute 100% certainty, the only person to drop the ball is Joe Biden by making up some bizarre lie,” Abbott told the station. “And why he would do that? I have no idea.”

Patrick said he spoke with Biden on the phone on Tuesday and that the president granted Texas’ request for a disaster declaration. Patrick has said the state needed to first determine its needs before making a formal ask. Texas has previously requested federal help before hurricanes have made landfall, including before Hurricane Harvey struck in 2017.

Rafael Lemaitre, FEMA’s former national director of public affairs, told the newspaper that major disaster declarations do not need to wait for a thorough on-the-ground assessment. Governors are the lead requesters but can change their request as more information becomes available, Lemaitre said.

FEMA typically positions responders and aid before a hurricane makes landfall, said Beverly Cigler, a professor emerita at Penn State University who specializes in intergovernmental policies, including emergency management.

Once the disaster hits, an initial damage assessment is usually completed. If it reaches the threshold for an emergency declaration, the governor sends that assessment to the White House for review, she said.

“Everything is done well ahead of time,” Cigler said. “But a president has to wait to have a disaster request from the state to really get aid going in a big way.”

About half a million Houston-area homes and businesses will still be without electricity next week, the city’s largest utility said Thursday, stoking the frustration of hot and frustrated residents.

So far it has found that the compromised data includes files containing AT&T records of calls and texts between May 1, 2022 and Oct. 31, 2022.

The company said Friday that it has launched an investigation and engaged cybersecurity experts to understand the nature and scope of the criminal activity.

The company said that the compromised data also includes records from Jan. 2, 2023, for a very small number of customers. The records identify the telephone numbers an AT&T or MVNO cellular number interacted with during these periods. For a subset of records, one or more cell site identification number(s) associated with the interactions are also included.

AT&T said that the data doesn’t contain the content of calls or texts, personal information such as Social Security numbers, birth dates, or other personally identifiable information. It also doesn’t include some information typically seen in usage details, such as the time stamp of calls or texts. The data doesn’t include customer names, but the company said that there are often ways, using publicly available online tools, to find the name associated with a specific telephone number.

AT&T said it is working with law enforcement on the incident and that it understands that at least one person has been apprehended so far.

The company’s stock fell more than 2% before the market open.

HOUSTON (AP) — A suspect was arrested and charged with the fatal shooting of a Houston-area sheriff’s deputy while police were conducting a manhunt following an assault at a pizzeria, authorities said.

Deputy Fernando Esqueda, 28, was killed early Thursday morning by a suspect who allegedly pistol-whipped a pizzeria clerk hours earlier, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said.

Ronald Palmer Jr. was arrested around 7 p.m. Thursday after a manhunt during which Esqueda was killed, Gonzalez said during a news conference Thursday night.

Palmer was charged with aggravated assault against the Little Caesars Pizza employee. Gonzalez said at the news conference that he was not charged with Esqueda’s death, but a social media post by Gonzalez later said Palmer had been charged with capital murder.

Harris County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a report of an assault on a clerk at a Little Caesars Pizza in the Houston area just after 10 p.m. Wednesday. A customer who came in to pick up a pizza he ordered got upset because the order was incorrect and pistol-whipped the clerk and fled, Harris County Chief Deputy Mike Lee said.

The clerk provided a description of the customer’s vehicle and its license plate number, which was traced to a location where deputies began searching for the vehicle, Lee said.

Esqueda located the vehicle around 12 a.m. Thursday, Gonzalez said. Officers found Esqueda shot multiple times and rushed him to a hospital.

“We don’t know exactly what transpired at that point. Again, we’re still trying to put the pieces together,” Gonzalez said. “But at that point, it appears he was ambushed. He sustained serious gunfire and was subsequently pronounced deceased at the hospital upon arrival.”

Esqueda was “very well thought of” as a member of an elite task force focused on violent people and had been with the sheriff’s office for about five years, Lee said.

The deputy had been working 12-hour shifts along with all other sheriff’s department staff to provide security and prevent looting after Hurricane Beryl, Lee said.

HOUSTON (AP) — Authorities in the Houston-area are searching for a man suspected of fatally shooting a sheriff’s deputy in an apparent ambush after pistol-whipping a pizzeria clerk, authorities said Thursday.

Harris County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a report of an assault on a clerk at a Little Caesars Pizza in the Houston area just after 10 p.m. Wednesday, Chief Deputy Mike Lee said at a news conference.

A customer who came in to pick up a pizza he ordered got upset because the order was incorrect and pistol-whipped the clerk and fled, Lee said.

The clerk provided a description of the customer’s vehicle and its license plate number, which was traced to a location where deputies began searching for the vehicle, Lee said.

A deputy notified others that he had found the vehicle, and was communicating with another deputy when he was apparently ambushed, Lee said. When others arrived, they found the deputy shot multiple times and rushed him to the hospital, where he died, he said.

Lee did not identify the deputy, but said he was a member of an elite task force focused on violent people, and had been with the sheriff’s office for about five years.

“He was very good at his job, very well thought of,” Lee said.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said in a statement that the deputy was 28 years old and that authorities would not rest until the suspect in the shooting is caught.

“None of us are ever prepared for such an untimely death and our members need your prayers and support,” Gonzalez said. “Our thoughts are with his family as they come to terms with this horrible news.”

The deputy had been working 12-hour shifts along with all other sheriff’s department staff to provide security and prevent looting after Hurricane Beryl, according to Lee, the chief deputy.

Authorities believe they have a good idea who the suspect is and SWAT teams have been set up at two locations, Lee said, expressing confidence that he’ll be taken into custody in a “timely manner.”

“If the suspect happens to see this, he needs to do the right thing and turn himself in,” Lee said.