By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — A military veteran whose Capitol riot case was erased by a presidential proclamation was convicted Tuesday of charges that he illegally possessed guns and ammunition in his van when he was arrested near President Barack Obama’s home in the nation’s capital.

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U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols also convicted Taylor Taranto of recording himself making a hoax threat to bomb a government building in Maryland. The judge decided the case without a jury after a bench trial that started last week in Washington, D.C.

Taranto was arrested in Obama’s neighborhood on the same day in June 2023 that Trump posted on social media what he claimed was the former president’s address. Investigators said they found two guns, roughly 500 rounds of ammunition and a machete in Taranto’s van.

Taranto was livestreaming video on YouTube in which he said he was looking for “entrance points” to underground tunnels and wanted to get a “good angle on a shot,” according to prosecutors. He reposted Trump’s message about Obama’s home address and wrote: “We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.” He was referring to John Podesta, who chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Democratic presidential campaign.

Taranto wasn’t charged with threatening Obama or Podesta. But the judge convicted him of making a hoax bomb threat directed at the Gaithersburg, Maryland-based National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Taranto’s lawyers said he didn’t have any bomb-making material and wasn’t near the institute when he made those statements on a livestreamed video. During the trial’s opening statements, defense attorney Pleasant Brodnax said the video shows Taranto was merely joking in an “avant-garde” manner.

“He believes he is a journalist and, to some extent, a comedian,” Broadnax said.

But the judge concluded that a reasonable, objective observer might have believed Taranto’s statements on the video. While some viewers may have thought his words were of a “madcap nature,” others could have interpreted them as coming from “an unbalanced narrator willing to follow through on outlandish claims,” Nichols said.

Nichols, who was nominated by Trump, didn’t immediately schedule a sentencing hearing for Taranto. He has been jailed for nearly two years since his arrest because a judge concluded that he poses a danger to the public.

After reading his verdict from the bench, the judge said he would entertain a request by defense attorney Carmen Hernandez to release Taranto from custody until his sentencing. Nichols said he intends to rule on that request later this week.

Taranto, a Navy veteran from Pasco, Washington, is one of only a few people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol who remained jailed after President Donald Trump ‘s sweeping act on clemency in January. Trump pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or ordered the dismissal of charges for all of the more than 1,500 people charged with crimes in the riot.

Before Trump’s pardons, Taranto also was charged with four misdemeanors related to the Jan. 6 attack. Prosecutors said he joined the crush of rioters who breached the building. He was captured on video at the entrance of the Speaker’s Lobby around the time that a rioter, Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed by an officer while she tried to climb through the broken window of a barricaded door.

By MEAD GRUVER

Chasing a loose kangaroo is getting to be part of the job for police in a southwestern Colorado town.

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Irwin, the pet kangaroo, wasn’t difficult to nab when he got loose last fall in Durango, Colorado. Still quite young at the time, he leapt into a bag similar to a mother kangaroo’s pouch.

On Monday, Irwin got loose again. A police caller was worried he might get hit by a car.

This time, Irwin had grown too big for a bag.

“That technique wasn’t going to work. The officers were debating whether they needed to lasso it or what the plan was,” police Cmdr. Nick Stasi said Tuesday.

Officer Shane Garrison — described by Stasi as a “farm boy” with animal-handling experience — figured it out after following Irwin down an alley and into a backyard.

This still image from video provided by the Durango Police Department shows Irwin the pet kangaroo is seen on the loose Monday, March 19, 2025, in Durango, Colo. (Durango Police Department via AP)

Irwin was still small enough, about as big as a medium-sized dog, for Garrison to corner him near a house, sneak up close and grab him. He carried the kangaroo to a police truck’s back seat and shut the door, as seen in a different officer’s body camera video.

Kangaroos are among the unusual but legal animals to keep in Colorado.

Irwin was taken home to his family in downtown Durango, a tourism hub of 20,000 residents that is known for mountain tours on a narrow-gauge train.

Stasi wasn’t sure how Irwin got out, but this 2-year-old pet will get only harder to catch.

This still image from video provided by the Durango Police Department shows Irwin the pet kangaroo is seen on the loose Monday, March 19, 2025, in Durango, Colo. (Durango Police Department via AP)

By age 4 or 5, kangaroos can grow taller than most men and weigh 200 pounds. They can hop much faster than a person runs and deliver a powerful kick.

“We want all pet owners to be responsible with their pet, how they keep it and keep it safe,” said Stasi.

By JONATHAN J. COOPER

Former President Joe Biden’s “last known” prostate cancer screening was in 2014, and he had never been diagnosed with the disease before last week, his office said Tuesday.

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Biden’s aides released the new details about his diagnosis amid intense scrutiny of Biden’s health during his presidency and skepticism that the disease could have progressed to an advanced stage without being detected.

Although Biden’s cancer can possibly be controlled with treatment, it has spread to his bones and is no longer curable.

The brief statement from Biden’s office did not disclose the results of his 2014 PSA blood test. PSA stands for prostate-specific antigen.

“President Biden’s last known PSA was in 2014. Prior to Friday, President Biden had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer,” the statement said in its entirety.

Biden’s cancer was announced on Sunday, prompting a wave of sympathy but also suggestions from some of his critics, including his successor Donald Trump, that the former president and his aides covered up the disease while he was in the White House given the severity of the cancer when it was announced. Tuesday’s statement appeared aimed at tamping down that speculation.

Asked about Biden during an appearance at the White House, Trump said, “it takes a long time to get to that situation” and that he was “surprised that the public wasn’t notified a long time ago.”

“It’s a very sad situation and I feel very badly about it,” Trump said.

A memo from the White House physician released following Trump’s annual physical exam in April listed a normal PSA. Biden’s White House doctor did not include PSA results in the health summaries he released.

Screening with PSA blood tests can lead to unnecessary treatment with side effects that affect quality of life, and guidelines recommend against prostate cancer screening for men 70 and older. Biden is 82.

When caught early, prostate cancer is highly survivable, but it is also the second-leading cause of cancer death in men. About one in eight men will be diagnosed over their lifetime with prostate cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.

By JOSH FUNK

The flight restrictions that have been in place at New Jersey’s largest airport ever since air traffic controllers first lost their radar and radios briefly last month will remain in place into June, the Federal Aviation Administration announced Tuesday.

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The interim rule will cap the number of arrivals and departures at Newark Liberty International Airport at 28 apiece per hour. That’s in line with the limits imposed after about half a dozen controllers went on a 45-day trauma leave following the first outage on April 28.

In mid-June, the limit might be bumped up after a runway construction project largely wraps up, and the controllers on leave would be scheduled to return. After that, the FAA has said it might be able to increase the limit to 34 arrivals and 34 departures an hour, which would bring it closer to the 38 or 39 flights that typically took off and landed hourly before the problems.

The FAA has taken a number of steps to address the technical problems with a software update and new fiber optic lines that seemed to have helped keep the radar online even during subsequent disruptions. But a longer-term fix of building a new radar system at the Philadelphia facility that directs planes in and out of the airport will likely take months, and even after that, the aging infrastructure may remain vulnerable.

“Our goal is to relieve the substantial inconvenience to the traveling public from excessive flight delays due to construction, staffing challenges, and recent equipment issues, which magnify as they spread through the National Airspace System,” acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau said.

For now, the airlines that fly out of Newark will likely have to cut their schedules to match the limits. Once fewer flights are scheduled each day, there will likely be fewer cancellations, although operations at the airport have been much smoother this week with many fewer cancellations and delays.

Twice in the past month, the radar and communications systems that Philadelphia air traffic controllers who direct planes in and out of Newark rely on failed for a short time. That happened because the main line that carries the radar signal down from another FAA facility in New York failed, and the backup line didn’t work immediately.

The controllers were unable to see or communicate with the planes around Newark Airport for as long as 90 seconds on April 28 and May 9.

The lines — some of which were old copper wires — failed a third time May 11, but the backup system worked and the radar stayed online. The FAA said a fourth outage Monday knocked out radio communications for two seconds, but the radar stayed online.

After the initial outage, the already shorthanded control center in Philadelphia lost five to seven controllers to trauma leave. That left the airport unable to handle all the scheduled flights, leading to hundreds of cancellations and delays.

The FAA quickly limited the number of flights in Newark to between 24 and 28 arrivals and the same number of departures every hour to ensure the remaining controllers could handle them safely. At times when controller staffing has been especially lean because of sick leave, the FAA has limited traffic even further.

Officials have said the problems affecting the Newark airport are a prime example of why the entire air traffic control system nationwide needs to be overhauled.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced a multibillion-dollar plan to upgrade the nation’s aging air traffic control system earlier this month. The House tentatively included $12.5 billion in the overarching bill that Republicans are trying to pass now, but officials have called that amount just a down payment on the overall plan.