Federal prosecutors will not seek the death penalty for a man accused of fatally shooting nearly two dozen people in a racist attack at a West Texas Walmart in 2019.

The U.S. Department of Justice disclosed the decision not to pursue capital punishment against Patrick Crusius in a one-sentence notice filed with the federal court in El Paso on Tuesday.Crusius, 24, is accused of targeting Mexicans during the Aug. 3 massacre that left dozens wounded and killed 23 people. The Dallas-area native is charged with federal hate crimes and firearms violations, as well as capital murder in state court, and has pleaded not guilty.

Federal prosecutors did not explain in their court filing why won’t to seek the death penalty for Crusius, although he could still face execution if convicted in state court.

The decision not to pursue the death penalty in Crusius’ case could be a defining moment for the Justice Department, which has sent mixed signals on policies regarding the federal death penalty that President Joe Biden pledged to abolish during his presidential campaign. Biden is the first president to openly oppose the death penalty and his election raised the hopes of abolition advocates, who have since been frustrated by a lack of clarity on how the administration might end federal executions or whether that’s the objective.

The decision comes weeks after Jaime Esparza, the former district attorney in El Paso, took over as U.S. attorney for West Texas. Esparza said when he was district attorney that he would pursue the death penalty in Crusius’ case. A spokesman for Esparza’s office referred questions to the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., where another spokesman declined to comment.

Crusius surrendered to police after the attack, saying, “I’m the shooter,” and that he was targeting Mexicans, according to an arrest warrant. Prosecutors have said he published a screed online shortly before the shooting that said it was “in response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

Lawyers for Cruisus did not immediately respond to requests for comment. His case is set for trial in federal court in January 2024.

Although the federal and state cases have progressed along parallel tracks, it is now unclear when Crusius might face trial on state charges.

The district attorney who had been leading the state case, Yvonne Rosales, resigned in November over accusations of incompetence involving hundreds of cases in El Paso and slowing down the case against Crusius. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last month appointed a new district attorney to “restore confidence” in the local criminal justice system.

The decision to seek death in Saipov’s case came under Trump, who during his last six months in office oversaw a historic spree of 13 federal executions. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a moratorium on carrying out federal executions in 2021, but he allowed U.S. prosecutors to continue to seek the death penalty against Saipov while the department reviews Trump era death penalty procedures.

Tarm reported from Chicago. Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed.

WASHINGTON — The White House brushed aside criticism Tuesday of its fragmented disclosures about the discovery of classified documents and official records at President Joe Biden’s home and former office, saying it may withhold information to protect the Justice Department’s investigation.

Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House counsel’s office, told reporters that the White House was releasing information as it deemed it “appropriate.” Responding to criticism of the piecemeal disclosures, Sams said the White House was trying to be mindful of the “risk” in sharing information “that’s not complete.”

“We’re endeavoring to be as transparent and informative to you all in the media, to the public as we can consistent with respecting the integrity of an ongoing Justice Department investigation,” he said.

The discovery of the documents in Biden’s possession complicates a federal probe into former President Donald Trump, who the Justice Department says took hundreds of records marked classified with him upon leaving the White House in early 2021 and resisted months of requests to return them to the government.

While the two cases are different — Biden for example, willingly turned over the documents once found — it still has become a political headache for a president who promised a clean break from the operations of the Trump administration.

On Saturday, the White House disclosed that Biden attorneys found classified documents and official records on four separate occasions — on Nov. 2 at the offices of the Penn Biden Center in Washington, on Dec. 20 in the garage of the president’s Wilmington, Delaware home, and on Nov. 11 and 12 in the president’s home library.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had said before the additional discovery that Americans could assume the investigation had completed. On Tuesday, she referred questions to the Justice Department or White House counsel’s office on whether more documents existed and whether they would be disclosed if discovered.

“The president and his team rightfully took action,” she said of the turning over the documents after they were discovered.

After the initial disclosure, the president said he was “briefed about this discovery and surprised to learn that there are any government records that were taken there to that office.”

He said that he takes the handling of classified documents very seriously. Biden has not commented publicly on the further existence of documents. Jean-Pierre said that president was focused on his job.

“He wants to make sure that he’s continuing to deliver for the American people,” she said.

Attorney General Merrick Garland last week appointed Robert Hur, a former Maryland U.S. attorney, to serve as special counsel to oversee the Justice Department’s inquiry into the documents.

Separately, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was managing director of the Penn Biden Center for two years, echoed Biden by saying he was surprised government records were located at the institute’s office.

“I had no knowledge of it at the time,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “The White House, of course, has indicated that the administration is cooperating fully with the review that the Justice Department has undertaken, and I, of course, would cooperate fully with that review myself.”

Among the questions still unanswered by the White House or Biden’s private attorneys: Exactly how many documents were found; whether there may be other documents out there, what was contained in them and why the public wasn’t notified until months after they were discovered.

Sams referred those questions to the Justice Department, insisting that neither the White House nor Biden’s personal attorneys are aware of the contents.

Randall Park made a pact with himself some years ago that he wouldn’t attend the Sundance Film Festival if he didn’t have a project there. But the “Fresh Off the Boat” star never imagined that his first time would be as a director and not as an actor.

His adaptation of “Shortcomings,” Adrian Tomine’s graphic novel about three young-ish Asian Americans finding themselves in the Bay Area, is among the films debuting in competition at the festival, which begins Thursday night in Park City, Utah.

“Sundance is the pinnacle to me,” Park said in a recent interview. “I still can’t believe we’re going.”

Park is just one of hundreds of filmmakers putting finishing touches on passion projects and making the sojourn to Park City this week, looking to make a splash at the first in-person edition of the storied independent film festival in two years.

Festivalgoers will see some unexpected turns from stars, like Jonathan Majors as an amateur bodybuilder in “Magazine Dreams,” Emilia Clarke as a futuristic parent in “Pod Generation,” Daisy Ridley as a cubicle worker in “Sometimes I Think About Dying” and Anne Hathaway as a glamourous counselor working at a youth prison in 1960s Massachusetts in “Eileen.”

“Bridgerton” star Phoebe Dynevor also breaks out of her corset leading the contemporary adult thriller “Fair Play” as an ambitious woman working at a high stakes hedge fund with a boyfriend played by Alden Ehrenreich. Sundance will be her first film festival ever and she’s especially excited that it’s with one of the best scripts she’s ever read.

“It’s quite a polarizing one,” Dynevor said. “I can’t wait to see how everyone responds to it.”

The slate of over 100 films premiering around the clock (from 8am to midnight) over 10 days are as diverse as ever. There are three films about Iranian women (“The Persian Version,” “Joonam” and “Shayda”), stories about transgender sex workers (“The Stroll,” “KOKOMO CITY”), indigenous people (“Twice Colonoized,” “Bad Press”), women’s rights and sexuality (“The Disappearance of Shere Hite”) and the war in Ukraine (“20 Days in Mariupol,” a joint project between The Associated Press and PBS “Frontline.”)

And, as always, there are intimate portraits of famous faces, like Michael J. Fox, Little Richard, Stephen Curry, Judy Blume, the Indigo Girls and Brooke Shields.

Lana Wilson (” Miss Americana “) directed the much-anticipated Shields documentary “Pretty Baby,” in which Shields reflects on her experiences from child model to teen superstar and beyond, including her complex relationship with her mother, Andre Agassi and the time Tom Cruise publicly criticized her for taking antidepressants.

“I kept coming back to this idea of agency and of her slowly gaining agency first over her mind, then over her career and then over her identity,” Wilson said.

If the past two years have proved anything, it’s that Sundance doesn’t need its picturesque mountainside location to thrive. After all, it was at a virtual edition that the festival hosted the premiere of ” CODA,” which would become the first Sundance movie to win best picture at the Oscars. “Summer of Soul,” another virtual Sundance premiere, also won best documentary last year, and both are getting encore, in-person screenings this year.

But even so, the independent film community — from the newcomers to the veterans — has felt the lack of the real thing. There is, after all, a certain magic about seeing a new film from an unknown in the dead of winter at 7,000 feet elevation wondering, as the lights go down in a cinema overflowing with puffy coats if you might just be among the first to witness the debut of the next Ryan Coogler or Kelly Reichardt.

Erik Feig, the founder and CEO of Picturestart, joked that he’s been going to the festival for “a billion years.” It’s where he saw “Thirteen” and hired Catherine Hardwicke to direct “Twilight,” and, years later, “Whiplash,” beginning a relationship with Damien Chazelle that would lead to “La La Land.” Sundance also is where he saw “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Little Miss Sunshine” for the first time, too, and others that “feel iconic and have been part of the cultural zeitgeist forever. That moment of discovery was at Sundance.”

This year, his company is coming armed with a new comedy that could very well enter that canon of Sundance discoveries: “Theater Camp,” a heartfelt satire of the musical theater world set at a crumbling upstate New York summer camp (AdirondACTS). The film is a collaboration of longtime friends Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman, Ben Platt and Noah Galvin.

“I felt so inspired by so many collectives of people that had come up together like Christopher Guest, The Groundlings, The Lonely Island, who made stuff with their friends,” Gordon, who co-directed and stars, said. “We thought, let’s make something about a world that we know really well and a world that we love. And because we love it, we can make a lot of fun of it.”

Some films offer moody genre escapes, like William Oldroyd’s adaptation of author Otessa Moshfegh’s award-winning “Eileen” starring Thomasin McKenzie and Hathaway.

“It plays into the fantasy that I had as a young woman, like, can I run away and be a different person,” Moshfegh said. “I still kind of have that, especially in cinema because we watch movies in order to run away and be different people.”

Others promise to open minds about the lives of marginalized communities. Vuk Lungulov-Klotz, who is a transgender filmmaker of Chilean and Serbian descent, is hoping to push trans masculine narratives forward with his film “Mutt,” about a trans man who encounters three significant people he hasn’t seen in some time one hectic day in New York City.

“It’s really exciting to see people want to see stories about trans masculine people and also understand that they can see themselves reflected in us and that we’re not very different,” Lungulov-Klotz said.

Veteran indie filmmakers will be there with fresh offerings too like Ira Sachs (“Passages”) and Sebastián Silva (“Rotting in the Sun”). “Once” director John Carney has a new musical with Eve Hewson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“Flora and Son”), Nicole Holofcener reunites with Julia Louis-Dreyfus in “You Hurt My Feelings” and Susanna Fogel adapts the viral New Yorker story “Cat Person” with Emilia Jones and Nicholas Braun.

With COVID-19 outbreaks still happening, some events and gatherings are requiring tests and proof of vaccination. People like Luis Miranda Jr., coming with a documentary he helped produce, “Going Varsity in Mariachi,” is planning to mask up while celebrating the movie.

“We’re bringing real mariachis to Utah and will have a party with real mariachi music,” Miranda said excitedly.

The festival is embracing a different kind of hybrid approach after the success of previous years. Starting on Jan. 24, five days in, many of the films will be available to watch online for people who bought that now sold-out package.

Some films already have distributors in place but many do not and onlookers are interested to see how those acquisitions play out. After several years of deep pocketed streaming services making big plays, the market may have stabilized. Streamers are more cautious and traditional studios have learned how to compete.

Producer Tommy Oliver, the CEO and founder of Confluential Films, has four movies at the festival up for sale: “Fancy Dance,” “Young. Wild. Free,” “To Live and Die and Live” and “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project.” He knows as well as any that Sundance isn’t just a place for celebration and discovery, but for connections too.

His advice for any first timers is simple: “Talk to everyone. Talk to the people who haven’t made stuff yet. Talk to the people who are hustling,” he said. “And be patient, because you’re going to look up in five, 10 years and they’ll have made ‘Fruitvale Station,’ they’ll have made ‘Beale Street.’”

The Sundance Film Festival runs from Jan. 19 through the 29.

BEIJING — China’s population shrank for the first time in decades last year as its birthrate plunged, official figures showed Tuesday, adding to pressure on leaders to keep the economy growing despite an aging workforce and at a time of rising tension with the U.S.

Despite the official numbers, some experts believe China’s population has been in decline for a few years — a dramatic turn in a country that once sought to control such growth through a one-child policy.

Many wealthy countries are struggling with how to respond to aging populations, which can be a drag on economic growth as shrinking numbers of workers try to support growing numbers of elderly people.

But the demographic change will be especially difficult to manage in a middle-income country like China, which does not have the resources to care for an aging population in the same way that one like Japan does. Over time, that will likely slow its economy and perhaps even the world’s, and could potentially keep inflation higher in many developed economies.

“China has become older before it has become rich,” said Yi Fuxian, a demographer and expert on Chinese population trends at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A slowing economy could also pose a political problem for the ruling Communist Party, if shrinking opportunities foment public discontent. Anger over strict COVID-19 lockdowns, which were a drag on the economy, spilled over late last year into protests that in some cases called for leader Xi Jinping to step down — a rare direct challenge to the party.

The National Bureau of Statistics reported Tuesday that the country had 850,000 fewer people at the end of 2022 than the previous year. The tally includes only the population of mainland China, excluding Hong Kong and Macao as well as foreign residents.

Over 1 million fewer babies were born than the previous year amid a slowing economy and widespread pandemic lockdowns, according to official figures. The bureau reported 9.56 million births in 2022; deaths ticked up to 10.41 million.

It wasn’t clear if the population figures were affected by a widespread COVID-19 outbreak following the easing of pandemic restrictions last month. China recently reported 60,000 COVID-related deaths since early December, but some experts believe the government is likely underreporting deaths.

The last time China is believed to have experienced a population decline was during the Great Leap Forward, a disastrous drive for collective farming and industrialization launched by then-leader Mao Zedong at the end of the 1950s that produced a massive famine that killed tens of millions of people.

China’s population has begun to decline nine to 10 years earlier than Chinese officials predicted and the United Nation projected, said Yi, the demographer. At 1.4 billion, the country has long been the world’s most populous nation, but is expected to soon be overtaken by India, if it has not already.

China has sought to bolster its population since officially ending its one-child policy in 2016. Since then, China has tried to encourage families to have second or even third children, with little success, reflecting attitudes in much of east Asia where birth rates have fallen precipitously. In China, the expense of raising children in cities is often cited as a cause.

Zhang Huimin bemoaned the “fierce competition” young people face these days — a fairly typical attitude toward starting a family among her age group.

“Home prices are high and jobs are not easy to find,” said the 23-year-old Beijing resident. “I enjoy living by myself. When I feel lonely, I can take pleasure in staying with my friends or keeping pets.”

Yi said that his own research shows China’s population has actually been declining since 2018, indicating the population crisis is “much more severe” than previously thought. The country now has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, comparable only to Taiwan and South Korea, he said.

That means China’s “real demographic crisis is beyond imagination and that all of China’s past economic, social, defense and foreign policies were based on faulty demographic data,” Yi told The Associated Press.

The looming economic crisis will be worse than Japan’s, where years of low growth have been blamed in part on a shrinking population, Yi said.

The statistics bureau said the working-age population between 16 and 59 years old totaled 875.56 million, accounting for 62% of the national population, while those aged 65 and older totaled 209.78 million, accounting for 14.9% of the total.

It also reported China’s economic growth fell to its second-lowest level in at least four decades last year, although activity is reviving after the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions that kept millions of people at home.

Any slowdown has wider implications. China became a global manufacturing powerhouse in the early 2000s. With millions of its citizens flocking from the countryside to its cities, China’s seemingly endless supply of cheap labor lowered costs for consumers around the world for computers, smartphones, furniture, clothes and toys.

Its labor costs have already begun to rise — and changing demographics will likely accelerate that trend. As a result, inflation could creep higher in countries that import China’s products, though production may also move to lower-cost countries such as Vietnam, as it already has.

On top of the demographic challenges, China is increasingly in economic competition with the U.S., which has blocked the access of some Chinese companies to American technology, citing national security and fair competition concerns.

If handled correctly, a declining population does not necessarily translate to a weaker economy, said Stuart Gietel-Basten, professor of social science at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi.”It’s a big psychological issue. Probably the biggest,” Gietel-Basten said.

According to the data from the statistics bureau, men outnumbered women by 722.06 million to 689.69 million, the bureau reported, a result of the one-child policy and a traditional preference for male offspring to carry on the family name.

The numbers also showed increasing urbanization in a country that traditionally had been largely rural. Over 2022, the permanent urban population increased by 6.46 million to reach 920.71 million, or 65.22%.

The United Nations estimated last year that the world’s population reached 8 billion on Nov. 15 and that India will replace China as the world’s most populous nation in 2023. India’s last census was scheduled for 2022 but was postponed amid the pandemic.

“The population of India is much younger and is growing. But there are many reasons why you wouldn’t necessarily automatically bet your entire fortune on India surpassing China economically in the very near future,” he said.

Among India’s many challenges is a level of female participation in the work force that is much lower than China’s, Gietel-Basten said.

“Whatever the population you have, it’s not what you’ve got but it’s what you do with it … to a degree,” he said.

Associated Press writers Huizhong Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, Kanis Leung in Hong Kong, and Chris Rugaber in Washington, and AP video journalist Emily Wang Fujiyama and video producer Olivia Zhang in Beijing contributed to this report.

ATLANTA — America has honored Martin Luther King Jr. with a federal holiday for nearly four decades yet still hasn’t fully embraced and acted on the lessons from the slain civil rights leader, his youngest daughter said Monday.

The Rev. Bernice King, who leads The King Center in Atlanta, said leaders — especially politicians — too often cheapen her father’s legacy into a “comfortable and convenient King” offering easy platitudes.

“We love to quote King in and around the holiday. … But then we refuse to live King 365 days of the year,” she declared at the commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where her father once preached.

The service, sponsored by the center and held at Ebenezer annually, headlined observances of the 38th federal King holiday. King, gunned down in Memphis in 1968 as he advocated for better pay and working conditions for the city’s sanitation workers, would have celebrated his 94th birthday Sunday.

Her voice rising and falling in cadences similar to her father’s, Bernice King bemoaned institutional and individual racism, economic and health care inequities, police violence, a militarized international order, hardline immigration structures and the climate crisis. She said she’s “exhausted, exasperated and, frankly, disappointed” to hear her father’s words about justice quoted so extensively alongside “so little progress” addressing society’s gravest problems.

“He was God’s prophet sent to this nation and even the world to guide us and forewarn us. … A prophetic word calls for an inconvenience because it challenges us to change our hearts, our minds and our behavior,” Bernice King said. “Dr. King, the inconvenient King, puts some demands on us to change our ways.”

President Joe Biden was scheduled Monday to address an MLK breakfast hosted in Washington by the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. Sharpton got his start as a civil rights organizer in his teens as youth director of an anti-poverty project of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“This is a time for choosing,” Biden said, repeating themes from a speech he delivered Sunday at Ebenezer at the invitation of Sen. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer who recently won re-election to a full term as Georgia’s first Black U.S. senator.

“Will we choose democracy over autocracy, or community over chaos? Love over hate?” Biden asked Monday. “These are the questions of our time that I ran for president to try to help answer. … Dr. King’s life and legacy — in my view — shows the way forward.”

Other commemorations echoed Bernice King’s reminder and Biden’s allusions that the “Beloved Community” — Martin Luther King’s descriptor for a world in which all people are free from fear, discrimination, hunger and violence — remains elusive.

In Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu talked about a fight for the truth in an era of hyper-partisanship and misinformation.

“We’re battling not just two sides or left or right and a gradient in between that have to somehow come to compromise, but a growing movement of hate, abuse, extremism and white supremacy fueled by misinformation, fueled by conspiracy theories that are taking root at every level,” she said.

Wu, the first woman and person of color elected mayor of Boston, said education restores trust. Quoting King, she called for overcoming the “fatigue of despair” to enact change. “It is sometimes in those moments when we feel most tired, most despairing, that we are just about to break through,” Wu told attendees at a memorial breakfast.

Volunteers in Philadelphia held a “day of service” focused on gun violence prevention. The city has seen a surge in homicides that saw 516 people killed last year and 562 the year before, the highest total in at least six decades.

Some participants in the effort’s signature project, led by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, worked to assemble gun safety kits for public distribution. The kits include “gun cable locks and additional safety devices for childproofing,” according to organizers. They also include information about firearm storage, health and social services information, and coping in the aftermath of gun violence.

Other kits being assembled highlighted Temple University Hospital’s “Fighting Chance” program and included materials to enable immediate response to victims at the scene of gunfire, organizers said. Recipients are to be trained in the use of the materials, which include tourniquets, gauze, chest seals and other items to treat critical wounds, they said.

In Selma, Alabama, a seminal site in the civil rights movement, residents were commemorating King as they recover from a deadly storm system that moved across the South last week.

King was not present at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge for the initial march known as “Bloody Sunday,” when Alabama state troopers attacked and beat marchers in March 1965. But he joined a subsequent procession that successfully crossed the bridge toward the Capitol in Montgomery, punctuating efforts that pushed Congress to pass and President Lyndon Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Pettus Bridge was unscathed by Thursday’s storm.

Maine’s first Black House speaker urged residents Monday to honor King’s memory by joining in acts of service.

“His unshakable faith, powerful nonviolent activism and his vision for peace and justice in our world altered the course of history,” Rachel Talbot Ross said in a statement. Talbot Ross is also the daughter of Maine’s first black lawmaker, and a former president of the Portland NAACP.

“We must follow his example of leading with light and love and recommit ourselves to building a more compassionate, just and equal community,” she added.

At Ebenezer, Warnock, who has led the congregation for 17 years, hailed his predecessor’s role in securing ballot access for Black Americans. But, like Bernice King, the senator warned against a reductive understanding of King.

“Don’t just call him a civil rights leader. He was a faith leader,” Warnock said. “Faith was the foundation upon which he did everything he did. You don’t face down dogs and water hoses because you read Nietzsche or Niebuhr. You gotta tap into that thing, that God he said he met anew in Montgomery when someone threatened to bomb his house and kill his wife and his new child.”

King, Warnock said, “left the comfort of a filter that made the whole world his parish,” turning faith into “the creative weapon of love and nonviolence.”

But, Warnock said, “Because of what Dr. King and because of what you did … I now sit in his seat.”

Associated Press journalists Will Weissert in Washington, David Sharp in Portland, Maine, and Ron Todt in Philadelphia contributed.

Cordeiro died Friday, according to Radio Television Hong Kong, where he worked until 2021. It gave no cause of death.

Cordeiro, who was born in Hong Kong in 1924 of Portuguese descent, was recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s longest-working DJ.

He joined Hong Kong’s public broadcaster in 1960 after working as a prison warden and bank clerk. His “All the Way With Ray” show of easy listening music was on RTHK Radio 3 for 51 years until his retirement.

“The audience followed me, grew up with me, and they’re all over the world now,” Cordeiro told The Associated Press in 2021 after his retirement. “They still listened to me on the internet.”

Cordeiro interviewed the Beatles, then the world’s biggest music act, in 1964 following a study course in London with the British Broadcasting Corp. He said John Lennon recounted their early days in Hamburg, Germany, where they lived in relative poverty and played in clubs.

Cordeiro said all four members of the Beatles autographed a magazine cover for him.

The broadcast of the Beatles interview on Hong Kong radio made Cordeiro a celebrity. He also interviewed other stars and met Elton John and Tony Bennett.

WASHINGTON — Jill Biden’ s advocacy for curing cancer didn’t start with her son’s death in 2015 from brain cancer. It began decades earlier, long before she came into the national spotlight, and could now be further energized by her own brush with a common form of skin cancer.

The first lady often says the worst three words anyone will ever hear are, “You have cancer.” She heard a version of that phrase for herself this past week.

A lesion that doctors had found above her right eye during a routine screening late last year was removed Wednesday and confirmed to be basal cell carcinoma — a highly treatable form of skin cancer. While Biden was being prepped to remove the lesion, doctors found and removed another one from the left side of her chest, also confirmed to be basal cell carcinoma. A third lesion from her left eyelid was being examined.

While it’s too early to know when and how Biden might address her situation publicly, her experience could inject new purpose into what has become part of her life’s work highlighting research into curing cancer and urging people to get regular screenings.

Personal experiences can add potency to a public figure’s advocacy.

“Nothing like ‘I’ve been there, done that’ and being personally involved,” said Myra Gutin, a first lady scholar at Rider University.

Biden’s spokesperson, Vanessa Valdivia, said “the first lady’s fight against cancer has always been personal. She knows that cancer touches us all.”

Biden’s advocacy dates to 1993, when four girlfriends were diagnosed with breast cancer, including her pal Winnie, who succumbed to the disease. She said last year in a speech that “Winnie inspired me to take up the cause of prevention and education.”

That experience led her to create the Biden Breast Health Initiative, one of the first breast health programs in the United States, to teach 16-to 18-year-old girls about caring for their breasts. Biden was among staffers who went into Delaware’s high schools to conduct lectures and demonstrations.

Her mother, Bonny Jean Jacobs, and father, Donald Jacobs, died of cancer, in 2008 and 1999, respectively. A few years ago, one of her four sisters needed an auto-stem cell transplant to treat her cancer.

In May 2015, Beau Biden, President Joe Biden’s son with his late first wife, died of a rare and aggressive brain cancer, leaving behind a wife and two young kids. Joe Biden was vice president at the time and the blow from Beau’s loss led him to decide against running for president in 2016. Jill Biden, who had helped raise Beau from a young age after she married his dad, was convinced he would survive the disease and later described feeling “blinded by the darkness” when he died.

After their son’s death, the Bidens helped push for a national commitment to “end cancer as we know it.” Then-President Barack Obama — Biden’s boss — put the vice president in charge of what the White House named the Cancer Moonshot.

The Bidens resurrected the initiative after Joe Biden became president and added a new goal of cutting cancer death rates by at least 50% over the next 25 years, and improving the experience of living with and surviving cancer for patients and their families.

“We’re ensuring that all of our government is ready to get to work,” Jill Biden said at the relaunch announcement at the White House last February. “We’re going to break down the walls that hold research back. We’re going to bring the best of our nation together — patients, survivors, caregivers, researchers, doctors, and advocates — all of you — so that we can get this done.”

In the years between Biden serving as vice president and running for president, the Bidens headed up the Biden Cancer Initiative, a charity.

Jill Biden, 71, has been using her first lady platform to highlight research into a cancer cure, along with other issues she has long championed, including education and military families.Her first trip outside of Washington after the January 2021 inauguration was to Virginia Commonwealth University’s Massey Cancer Center in Richmond to call for an end to disparities in health care that she said have hurt communities of color.

She has toured cancer centers, including those for children, in New York City, South Carolina, Tennessee, Costa Rica, San Francisco and Florida, among others. She joined the Philadelphia Eagles and Phillies — two of her favorite professional sports teams — for events, including during the World Series, to highlight efforts to fight cancer through early detection and to honor patients.

For Breast Cancer Awareness Month last October, Jill Biden hosted a White House event with the American Cancer Society and singer Mary J. Blige, who became an advocate for cancer screening after losing aunts and other relatives to various forms of cancer.

The first lady also partnered with the Lifetime cable channel to encourage women to get mammograms. A Democrat, she gave an interview last year to Newsmax, the conservative cable news channel, to discuss the federal investment in accelerating the cancer fight.

She regularly encourages audiences to schedule cancer screening appointments they skipped during the pandemic out of fear of visiting doctor’s offices.

Asked on Friday how the first lady was doing, the president flashed a thumbs-up to reporters.

The Skin Cancer Foundation says the delicate skin around the eyes is especially vulnerable to damage from the sun’s ultraviolet rays, which makes basal cell carcinoma on and around the eyelids particularly common.

Actor Ezra Miller pleaded guilty Friday to a charge stemming from a break-in and theft of alcohol at a neighbor’s home in Vermont, one of a string of arrests and reports of erratic behavior last year that stretched from Hawaii to New England.

Miller, who appeared in several “Justice League” movies and stars in the upcoming film “The Flash,” agreed that by entering the plea and abiding by the conditions, they would avoid a three-month jail sentence for a misdemeanor charge of unlawful trespass, but pay a $500 fine and a court fee, get a year of probation, and abide by a number of conditions including continued mental health treatment.

Two other charges were dropped, including a felony burglary count that could have carried a sentence of 25 years in prison, but Vermont Superior Court Judge Kerry Ann McDonald-Cady told Miller the felony charge could be refiled if they fail to abide by the details of probation.

During the nearly 30-minute hearing in Bennington, Miller, 30, answered the judge’s questions but declined to make a statement. However, after the hearing, Miller’s attorney, Lisa Shelkrot, sent a statement on the actor’s behalf.

“Ezra would like to thank the court and the community for their trust and patience throughout this process, and would once again like to acknowledge the love and support they have received from their family and friends, who continue to be a vital presence in their ongoing mental health,” the statement said.

Miller pleaded not guilty in October to stealing liquor from a neighbor’s home in Vermont. State police responded to a burglary complaint in Stamford on May 1 and found that several bottles of alcohol had been taken while the homeowner was away.

Miller was arrested twice last year in Hawaii, including for disorderly conduct and harassment at a karaoke bar.

NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s company was fined $1.6 million Friday for a scheme in which the former president’s top executives dodged personal income taxes on lavish job perks — a symbolic, hardly crippling blow for an enterprise boasting billions of dollars in assets.

A fine was the only penalty a judge could impose on the Trump Organization after its conviction last month for 17 tax crimes, including conspiracy and falsifying business records. The amount was the maximum allowed by law. Judge Juan Manuel Merchan gave the company 14 days to pay. A person convicted of the same crimes would’ve faced years in prison.

Trump himself was not on trial and denied any knowledge that a small group of executives were evading taxes on extras including rent-free apartments, luxury cars and private school tuition. Prosecutors said such items were part of what they dubbed the Trump Organization’s “deluxe executive compensation package.”

The company denied wrongdoing and said it would appeal.

“These politically motivated prosecutors will stop at nothing to get President Trump and continue the never ending witch-hunt which began the day he announced his presidency,” the company said in a statement after the fine was announced.

Neither the former president nor his children, who helped run the Trump Organization, were in the courtroom.

While the fines — less than the cost of a Trump Tower apartment — aren’t big enough to impact the company’s operations or future, the conviction is a black mark on the Republican’s reputation as a savvy businessman as he mounts a campaign to regain the White House.

Outside the courtroom, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, said he wished the law had allowed for a more serious penalty.

“I want to be very clear: we don’t think that is enough,” he said. “Our laws in this state need to change in order to capture this type of decade-plus systemic and egregious fraud.”

Besides the company, only one executive was charged in the case: former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty last summer to evading taxes on $1.7 million in compensation. He was sentenced Tuesday to five months in jail.

The criminal case involved financial practices and pay arrangements that the company halted when Trump was elected president in 2016.

Over his years as the company’s chief moneyman, Weisselberg received a rent-free apartment in a Trump-branded building in Manhattan with a view of the Hudson River. He and his wife drove Mercedes-Benz cars, leased by company. When his grandchildren went to an exclusive private school, Trump paid their tuition. A handful of other executives received similar perks.

When called to testify against the Trump Organization at trial, Weisselberg said that he didn’t pay taxes on that compensation, and that he and a company vice president conspired to hide the perks by having the company issue falsified W-2 forms.

Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass told jurors Trump had a role, showing them a lease that the Republican signed himself for Weisselberg’s apartment.

“Mr. Trump is explicitly sanctioning tax fraud,” Steinglass argued.

Weisselberg also attempted to take responsibility on the witness stand, saying nobody in the Trump family knew what he was doing. He choked up as he told jurors, “It was my own personal greed that led to this.”

At the trial, Trump Organization lawyers repeated the mantra, “Weisselberg did it for Weisselberg.” In its statement Friday, the company took a different tone.

“Allen Weisselberg is a victim,” it said. “He was threatened, intimidated and terrorized. He was given a choice of pleading guilty and serving 90 days in prison or serving the rest of his life in jail — all of this over a corporate car and standard employee benefits.”

A jury convicted the company of tax fraud on Dec. 6.

The Trump Organization was charged through two corporate entities: The Trump Corporation, which was fined $810,000; and Trump Payroll Corporation, which was fined $800,000.

Those fines “constitute a fraction of the revenue” generated by Trump’s real estate empire, Steinglass said in court. It could face more trouble outside of court from reputational damage, such as difficulty finding new deals and business partners.

“We all know that these corporations won’t go to jail, as Allen Weisselberg has,” Steinglass said. “The only way to deter such conduct is to make it as expensive as possible.”

The Trump Organization’s sentencing doesn’t end Trump’s battle with Bragg, who said the sentencing “closes this important chapter of our ongoing investigation into the former president and his businesses. We now move onto the next chapter.”

Bragg, in office for little more than a year, inherited the Trump Organization case and the investigation into the former president from his predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr.

At the same time, New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing Trump and the Trump Organization, alleging they misled banks and others about the value of its many assets, including golf courses and skyscrapers — a practice she dubbed the “art of the steal.”

James, a Democrat, is asking a court to ban Trump and his three eldest children from running any New York-based company and is seeking to fine them at least $250 million. A judge has set an October trial date and appointed a monitor for the company while the case is pending.

Trump faces several other legal challenges as he ramps up his presidential campaign.

A special grand jury in Atlanta has investigated whether Trump and his allies committed any crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.

Last month, the House Jan. 6 committee voted to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department for Trump’s role in sparking the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The FBI is also investigating Trump’s storage of classified documents.

By Ken Ritter | Associated Press

LAS VEGAS — Robbie Knievel, an American stunt performer who set records with daredevil motorcycle jumps following the tire tracks of his thrill-seeking father — including at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in 1989 and a Grand Canyon chasm a decade later — has died in Nevada, his brother said. He was 60.

Robbie Knievel died early Friday at a hospice in Reno after battling pancreatic cancer, Kelly Knievel said.

“Daredevils don’t live easy lives,” Kelly Knievel told The Associated Press. “He was a great daredevil. People don’t really understand how scary it is what my brother did.”

As a boy, Robbie Knievel began on his bicycle to emulate his famous father, Evel Knievel, who died in 2007 in Clearwater, Florida.

But where Evel Knievel famously almost died from injuries when he crashed his Harley-Davidson during a jump over the Caesars Palace fountains in Las Vegas in 1967, Robbie completed the jump in 1989 using a specially designed Honda.

Robbie Knievel also made headline-grabbing Las Vegas Strip jumps over a row of limousines in 1998 at the Tropicana Hotel; between two buildings at the Jockey Club in 1999; and a New Year’s Eve jump amid fireworks in front of a volcano attraction at The Mirage on Dec. 31, 2008.

After a crash-landing to complete a motorcycle leap over a 220-foot chasm at an Indian reservation outside Grand Canyon National Park in 1999, Robbie Knievel noted that his father always wanted to jump the spectacular natural landmark in Arizona, but never did. Robbie Knievel broke his leg in his crash.

Evel Knievel instead attempted to soar over a mile-wide Snake River Canyon chasm in Idaho in September 1974. His rocket-powered cycle crashed into the canyon while his escape parachute deployed.

Robbie Knievel’s brother recalled other stunts including a 2004 jump over a row of military aircraft on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, a museum in New York.

Robbie Knievel, who promoted himself as “Kaptain Robbie Knievel,” set several stunt records, but also failed in several attempts. In 1992, at age 29, he was injured when he crashed into the 22nd of 25 pickup trucks lined up across a 180-foot span in Cerritos, California.

“Injuries took quite a toll on him,” Kelly Knievel said Friday.

Kelly Knievel lives in Las Vegas. He said his brother died with three daughters at his side: Krysten Knievel Hansson of Chicago, Karmen Knievel of Missoula, Montana, and Maria Collins of Waldport, Oregon.

Services were not immediately scheduled, but Kelly Knievel said his brother will be buried with other family members in Butte, Montana.