By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Rhode Island man accused of faking his death and fleeing the United States to evade rape charges was found guilty late Wednesday of sexually assaulting a former girlfriend in his first of two Utah trials.

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An eight-person jury in Salt Lake County found Nicholas Rossi guilty of a 2008 rape after a three-day trial in which his accuser and her parents took the stand. Rossi, 38, declined to testify on his own behalf. He will be sentenced on Oct. 20 and is set to stand trial in September on another rape charge in Utah County.

First-degree felony rape carries a punishment in Utah of five years to life in prison, said Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill.

“We are grateful to the survivor in this case for her willingness to come forward, years after this attack took place,” Gill said in a statement. “It took courage and bravery to take the stand and confront her attacker to hold him accountable.”

Utah authorities began searching for Rossi, whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian, when he was identified through a decade-old DNA rape kit in 2018. He was among thousands of rape suspects identified and later charged when Utah made a push to clear its rape kit backlog.

Months after he was charged in Utah County, an online obituary claimed Rossi died on Feb. 29, 2020, of late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma. But police in his home state of Rhode Island, along with his former lawyer and a former foster family, cast doubt on whether he was dead.

He was arrested in Scotland the following year while receiving treatment for COVID-19 after hospital staff recognized his distinctive tattoos from an Interpol notice.

Extradited to Utah in January 2024, Rossi insisted he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who was being framed. Investigators say they identified at least a dozen aliases Rossi used over the years to evade capture.

He appeared in court this week in a wheelchair, wearing a suit and tie and using an oxygen tank.

Rossi’s public defender denied the rape claim and urged jurors not to read too much into his move overseas years later.

“You’re allowed to move, you’re allowed to go somewhere else, you’re allowed to have a different name,” attorney Samantha Dugan said. She declined further comment following the verdict.

Prosecutors painted a picture of an intelligent man who used his charm to take advantage of a vulnerable young woman. The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly.

FILE- Nicholas Rossi leaves Edinburgh Sheriff and Justice of the Peace Court during his extradition hearing in Edinburgh, Scotland, June 30, 2023. (Andrew Milligan/PA via AP, File)

The woman was living with her parents and recovering from a traumatic brain injury when she responded to a personal ad Rossi posted on Craigslist. They began dating and were engaged within about two weeks.

She testified Rossi asked her to pay for dates and car repairs, lend him $1,000 so he wouldn’t be evicted, and take on debt to buy their engagement rings. He grew hostile soon after their engagement and raped her in his bedroom one night after she drove him home, she said.

Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Brandon Simmons told jurors Wednesday that the woman did not consent. “This is not romantic, this is not her mistaking things.”

The woman said her parents’ dismissive comments convinced her not to go to the police. She came forward a decade later after seeing him in the news and learning he was accused of another rape from the same year.

Rossi’s lawyers said the woman built up years of resentment after he made her foot the bill for everything in their monthlong relationship. They argued she accused him of rape to get back at him years later when he was getting media attention, and sought to undermine her credibility with jurors.

Rossi’s accuser in the Utah County case, who testified at this week’s trial, is also a former girlfriend. She went to police at the time of that alleged rape. He is accused of attacking her at his apartment in Orem in September 2008 after she came over to collect money she said he stole from her to buy a computer.

When police initially interviewed Rossi, he claimed she raped him and threatened to have him killed.

Rossi grew up in foster homes in Rhode Island and returned there before allegedly faking his death. He was previously wanted in the state for failing to register as a sex offender. The FBI says he faces fraud charges in Ohio, where he was convicted of sex-related charges in 2008.

By PATRICK WHITTLE

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A network of clinics that provides health care in Maine is expected to ask a judge Thursday to restore its Medicaid funding while it fights a Trump administration effort to keep federal money from going to abortion providers.

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President Donald Trump’s policy and tax bill, known as the “ big beautiful bill,” blocked Medicaid money from flowing to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. The parameters in the bill also stopped funding from reaching Maine Family Planning, a much smaller provider that offers health care services in one of the poorest and most rural states in the Northeast.

A federal judge ruled last month that Planned Parenthood clinics around the country must continue to be reimbursed for Medicaid funding as the provider wrangles with the Trump administration over efforts to defund it.

Maine Family Planning filed a federal lawsuit last month seeking to restore reimbursements.

Lawyers and representatives for Maine Family Planning say its 18 clinics provide vital services across the state including cervical cancer screenings, contraception and primary care to low-income residents. They also say the funding cut occurred even though Medicaid dollars are not used for its abortion services.

“Without Medicaid, MFP will be forced to stop providing all primary care for all patients — regardless of their insurance status — by the end of October,” the organization said in a statement, adding that about 8,000 patients receive family planning and primary care from the network.

It also said many Maine Family Planning clinics “provide care in very rural areas of the state where there are no other health care providers, and around 70% of their patients rely exclusively on MFP and will not see any other health care provider in a given year.”

In court documents, Anne Marie Costello, deputy director for the Center for Medicaid & CHIP Services, called the request to restore funding “legally groundless” and said it “must be firmly rejected.”

“The core of its claim asks this Court to revive an invented constitutional right to abortion — jurisprudence that the Supreme Court decisively interred — and to do so in a dispute over federal funds,” Costello said.

While advocates of cutting Medicaid for abortion providers focused on Planned Parenthood, the bill did not mention it by name. Instead it cut off reimbursements for organizations that are primarily engaged in family planning services — which generally include things such as contraception, abortion and pregnancy tests — and received more than $800,000 from Medicaid in 2023.

The U.S. Senate’s parliamentarian rejected a 2017 effort to defund Planned Parenthood because it was written to exclude all other providers by barring payments only to groups that received more than $350 million a year in Medicaid funds. Maine Family Planning asserts in its legal challenge that the threshold was lowered to $800,000 this time around to make sure Planned Parenthood would not be the only entity affected.

It is the only other organization that has come forward publicly to say its funding is at risk.

Planned Parenthood’s legal fight with the Trump administration over Medicaid funding is still in the court system also.

By WAFAA SHURAFA and SAM METZ, Associated Press

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — More than 100 nonprofit groups warned Thursday that Israel’s rules for aid groups working in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank will block much-needed relief and replace independent organizations with those that serve Israel’s political and military agenda — charges that Israel denied.

At the same time, hospital officials reported more deaths from Israeli airstrikes and an increasing toll from malnutrition.

The mounting backlash over aid restrictions and the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza have been cited by several countries as a factor in their moves toward recognizing Palestinian statehood. Yet on Thursday, Israel advanced plans for a new settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, with one far-right government minister describing the move as a way to “bury the idea of a Palestinian state.”

Letter accuses Israel of ‘weaponizing aid’

The nonprofit groups, including Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders and CARE, were responding to registration rules announced by Israel in March that require organizations to hand over full lists of their donors and Palestinian staff for vetting. They contend doing so could endanger their staff and give Israel broad grounds to block aid if groups are deemed to be “delegitimizing” the country or supporting boycotts or divestment.

The aid groups stressed on Thursday that most of them have not been able to deliver “a single truck” of life-saving assistance since Israel implemented a blockade in March. Their letter called on other countries and donors to pressure Israel “to end the weaponization of aid, including through bureaucratic obstruction.”

The aid that the groups provide supplements assistance from the United Nations, airdrops organized by foreign governments and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — the new Israel and U.S.-backed contractor that since May has been the primary distributor of aid in Gaza.

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Despite those channels, the amount of aid reaching Gaza remains far below what the U.N. and relief groups previously delivered.

Meanwhile, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said Thursday that dehydration is increasing in Gaza amid limited water supplies and a heatwave that has pushed temperatures above 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius).

U.N. agencies and a small number of aid groups have resumed delivering assistance, but say the number of trucks allowed in remains far from sufficient.

COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, denied the claims in the NGOs’ letter. It said 380 trucks entered Gaza on Wednesday. And on Thursday, the Israeli military said, 119 aid packages containing food for Gaza residents were airdropped by six different countries.

During the two-month ceasefire, aid groups demanded Israel allow entry for 600 trucks per day.

“The alleged delay in aid entry … occurs only when organizations choose not to meet the basic security requirements intended to prevent Hamas’s involvement,” COGAT said.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Israel has pressed U.N. agencies to accept military escorts to deliver goods into Gaza, a demand they’ve largely rejected, citing their commitment to neutrality. The standoff has been the source of competing claims: Israel maintains it allows aid into Gaza that adheres to its rules, while aid groups that have long operated in Gaza decry the amount of life-saving supplies stuck at border crossings.

U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff had met with U.N. humanitarian officials in New York about the “need to, speedily, scale up aid into Gaza.”

Death toll mounts from airstrikes and malnutrition

Hospitals throughout Gaza on Thursday reported casualties from Israeli strikes on Gaza City, which Israel identified as a combatant stronghold last week when it announced plans to launch a new offensive against Hamas. An Israeli strike on Gaza City killed one person and wounded three others, an official at Shifa Hospital said. A separate strike killed five people in Gaza City on Thursday morning, according to al-Ahli hospital, which received the casualties.

Israel’s military did not immediately respond to questions about the strikes.

The casualties add to the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed since the war started when Hamas-led terrorists stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and abducting 251 people.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed more than 61,700 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not specify how many were fighters or civilians but says around half were women and children. Most of the hostages have been released in ceasefires or other deals but 50 remain inside Gaza. Israel believes around 20 of them to be alive.

The health ministry is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. The U.N. and independent experts consider it the most reliable source on casualties. Israel disputes its figures but has not provided its own.

The ministry on Thursday also reported four additional malnutrition-related deaths, raising the total to 239, a toll that includes 106 children.

Israel announces settlement expansion in West Bank

In the occupied West Bank, Israel’s far-right finance minister on Thursday announced the construction of a new settlement expansion that Palestinians and rights groups worry will scuttle plans for a future Palestinian state by effectively cutting the West Bank into two separate parts.

Minister Bezalel Smotrich said doing so “buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize.”

“Anyone in the world who tries today to recognize a Palestinian state – will receive an answer from us on the ground,” he said, referencing the many countries moving toward recognition.

The 3,500 apartments in question would expand the settlement of Maale Adumim into an open tract of land east of Jerusalem known as E1. Development in the area has been under consideration for more than two decades, but was frozen due to U.S. pressure during previous administrations. The E1 plan has not yet received its final approval, which is expected next week.

Rights groups swiftly condemned the plan. Peace Now called it “deadly for the future of Israel and for any chance of achieving a peaceful two-state solution.”

Italy evacuates Palestinians from Gaza, including injured kids

As European countries amplify their criticisms of Israel and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, some are expanding evacuations.

Italy’s foreign affairs ministry said it received 114 Palestinian evacuees from Gaza on Wednesday, including 31 children suffering from either severe injuries and amputations or serious congenital diseases.

Since the beginning of the war Italy has evacuated more than 900 Palestinians from Gaza, including those who have arrived as part of a family reunification program.

Metz reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut, Lebanon, Farnoush Amiri at the United Nations and Andrea Rosa in Rome contributed reporting.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

By AMY TAXIN

LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) — It’s a beach run, a coastal row and a music party rolled into one, and it’s about to become an Olympic event.

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On a sunny Southern California morning, nearly two dozen athletes gathered to try their hand at beach sprints at a camp run by USRowing in Long Beach, not far from where the inaugural Olympic races will be held in 2028.

Many were long-time flatwater rowers who wanted to take a shot at something new. Others were already hooked on the quick-paced and unpredictable race format and have been training with an eye on LA28. Two at a time, athletes run to the waterline, hop in a boat, row a slalom course, then turn around and return to shore to jump out and dash across the sand to hit a finish-line buzzer — all in about three minutes.

“You don’t just have to be a good rower — you also have to be a good athlete, and what that means is you’ve got to be able to be dynamic and adapt to whatever Mother Nature throws at you,” said Maurice Scott, a long-time rower from Philadelphia who moved to Long Beach to prepare for the Olympics.

The next summer Olympics will be held in Los Angeles and nearby cities. Interest in beach sprints has risen since the International Olympic Committee announced its inclusion, especially since the games will no longer feature a lightweight rowing category popular among smaller athletes.

Athletes train at a beach sprints camp organized by USRowing in Long Beach, Calif., Sunday, Aug. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Rowing officials developed the beach sprint format a little over a decade ago hoping to engage spectators in a sport that’s otherwise removed from people watching from the shore. A standard 2,000 meter-flatwater race is typically only visible closer to the finish line.

In beach sprints, athletes compete close to the crowds in a dynamic and much shorter race that fans can easily track from the sand. Guin Batten, chair of World Rowing’s coastal commission, said the vision is to have a fun, lively event on the beach where spectators can listen to good music, be close to the action and follow their favorite athletes. The entire event runs just an hour.

“It’s knockout. It’s chaotic,” said Batten, an Olympic rower who helped develop the format. “Until you cross a finish line, anyone can win that race.”

Many traditional flatwater rowers accustomed to steady strokes on calm waterways have no interest in the ups and downs of wind and waves.

But other long-time rowers are hooked. Christine Cavallo, a beach sprinter on the U.S. national team, said she loves the unpredictability of the waves, which can humble even the most incredible athletes.

Athletes train at a beach sprints camp organized by USRowing in Long Beach, Calif., Sunday, Aug. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

“You could be the best rower in the world and get flipped by the wave,” Cavallo said.

Coastal rowing has long been popular throughout the world but different cultures have used different boats and rules. Part of the appeal of beach sprints is the boat has been standardized and is provided at competitions, which makes it easier for more athletes to try it.

The first major international beach sprints competition was at the 2015 Mediterranean Beach Games in Italy.

Head of the Charles, known for its yearly October flatwater regatta in Massachusetts, hosted its first beach sprints event in July. About 100 rowers, twice as many as expected, participated, said Brendan Mulvey, race director.

Since the Olympic announcement, Tom Pattichis, British Rowing’s head coach for beach sprints, said he now has athletes training full-time in the event.

An athlete trains at a beach sprints camp organized by USRowing in Long Beach, Calif., Sunday, Aug. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Meanwhile, Marc Oria, the USA Beach Sprint head coach, said camps in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Long Beach aim to bring the race to long-time rowers and others who haven’t tried it. Athletes find it exhilarating because it requires them to be agile and adaptive as well as superb rowers, he said.

“It’s growing exponentially in the last four years all around the world,” Oria said. “Our goal for U.S. rowing is to create more events, more opportunities, and to create a good pipeline for 2028.”

At the camp in Long Beach, competitors included a teacher, an Olympic rower, a marketing professional who began rowing a few weeks earlier and a high school senior.

“I tried it and I really loved it, so I came back,” said Bridgette Hanson, a 17-year-old rower from Arizona who raced in beach sprints for the first time this year in Florida. “It requires a lot more brute force.”

Veronica Toro trains at a beach sprints camp organized by USRowing in Long Beach, Calif., Sunday, Aug. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

John Wojtkiewicz, coach of the Long Beach Coastal Team, called out to racers to help guide them through the course. He said he’s eager to see how the Olympic venue is set up and hopes spectators can get a good view like they do at surfing events.

“What is great about the beach sprint — and this may have helped its development — is you can watch the entire race,” Wojtkiewicz said. “Anything can happen.”