News in brief

By The Associated Press

McConnell called Trump ‘stupid’ and ‘despicable’

in private

WASHINGTON | Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said after the 2020 election that then-President Donald Trump was “stupid as well as being ill-tempered” and a “despicable human being.” That’s according to a new biography of McConnell that’ll be released this month.

McConnell made the remarks in private as part of a series of personal oral histories that he made available to Michael Tackett, deputy Washington bureau chief of The Associated Press.

Tackett’s book, “The Price of Power,” draws from almost three decades of McConnell’s recorded diaries and from several years of interviews with the normally reticent Kentucky Republican.

Prosecutors ask court to allow murder retrial

for Karen Read

BOSTON | Prosecutors called on the highest court in Massachusetts not to support dropping two charges against Karen Read who is accused of killing her Boston police officer boyfriend based.

Read is accused of ramming into John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him for dead in a snowstorm in January 2022. Read’s attorneys argue she is being framed and that someone else is responsible for O’Keefe’s death.

A judge declared a mistrial after jurors couldn’t reach agreement on her case and a second trial on the same charges is set to begin in January.

—From AP reports