By PHILIP MARCELO

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (AP) — George Santos ′ former campaign treasurer was sentenced Wednesday to three years’ probation for her role in fabricating campaign finance reports for the disgraced ex-congressman from New York.

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Nancy Marks was also ordered to pay more than $178,000 in restitution by U.S. District Court Judge Joanna Seybert.

The veteran Long Island political operative, who resigned as Santos’ campaign treasurer in 2023, pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges last year.

“I thought I had found a friend in George Santos,” she said Wednesday. “But everything about him was a lie. I thought it was a true friend and a true person. He was not.”

She has admitted to helping Santos inflate his campaign donations during the 2022 election cycle in order to hit the fundraising thresholds needed to qualify for backing from the national Republican Party.

Prosecutors say Marks filed campaign finance reports that listed a number of false donors, including at least 10 members of her family and Santos’ family.

The reports to the Federal Election Commission and the GOP National Committee also falsely claimed Santos had loaned his campaign $500,000 when in reality he didn’t have the money to make that kind of loan.

Marks faced up to five years in prison. In a filing ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, prosecutors had recommended the Shirley resident be sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $178,000 in restitution.

Marks’ lawyers filed their sentencing request under seal, meaning it wasn’t revealed prior to her appearance in Central Islip federal court.

Marks worked on more than 150 Republican campaigns on Long Island, including for the current head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, during his successful campaigns for Congress and a failed gubernatorial run.

Santos was sentenced last month to more than seven years in federal prison after pleading guilty to federal wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.

He’s due to report to prison July 25.

Sam Miele, a former fundraiser for Santos, was sentenced in March to one year and one day in prison for his role in the campaign fraud, which included impersonating a high-ranking congressional aide.

Santos served less than a year in Congress before becoming just the sixth member of the House to be ousted by colleagues after it was revealed he’d fabricated much of his life story.

The political unknown had painted himself as a successful business owner who worked at prestigious Wall Street firms, when in reality he was struggling financially.

The revelations led to congressional and criminal inquiries into how he had funded his campaign.

Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — A large elephant seal took a wrong turn and was seen lumbering along a street in a coastal town in South Africa early Tuesday, surprising residents and inspiring a rescue effort to get him back to sea.

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The two-ton seal, which an animal welfare group said was a young male, was making his way through a suburb of Gordon’s Bay near Cape Town.

Locals came out of houses and recorded videos.

“This is unreal. Hi, bro, how did you get here?” one woman asked.

Police and a local security company attempted to contain the seal by parking patrol cars around him. He rested his huge head on the hood of one car and half-climbed over another before slipping free, crossing a road and carrying on up a sidewalk.

An elephant seal that found its way into a residential area in Gordon’s Bay, near Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday, May 27, 2025. (AP Photo)

The seal eventually stopped next to a shopping mall. Animal welfare officials worried he was too far from the ocean to find his way back and might become exhausted and dehydrated. They estimated he weighed around two tons (4,400 pounds). Elephant seals can grow to twice that size.

A team of marine wildlife specialists and a city veterinarian sedated the seal and guided him into an animal transport trailer to be returned to his natural habitat at a nearby bay.

Staff members of the Marine Unit with Shark Spotters facilitate the transportation of an elephant seal that found its way into a residential area in Gordon’s Bay, near Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday, May 27, 2025. (AP Photo)

The local Cape of Good Hope SPCA later posted a video on social media of the seal making his way down a beach and toward the ocean.

“Sea you later,” the video said.

AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

By JOSH FUNK

The problems that disrupted flights at New Jersey’s largest airport this spring could be repeated anywhere across the country, so Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is trying to sell Congress on his plan to overhaul the nation’s air traffic control system that will cost “tens of billions.”

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Duffy provided an update Wednesday on the repairs and staffing efforts that are underway to help eliminate the problems affecting Newark Liberty International Airport, which has been running more smoothly in the past few weeks since the airlines started to cut the number of flights they operate there.

And Duffy emphasized that the Newark radar outages and air traffic control shortage are a prime example of why the antiquated system needs to be improved.

“I’m concerned that we could have more Newarks. And again, why it’s so important that we actually begin this build with the money that Congress is going to send us,” he said.

Duffy still wouldn’t give a price tag of his expansive overhaul of the air traffic control system that he said is clearly needed after the deadly midair collision over Washington, D.C., in January that killed 67 people and all the problems affecting Newark this spring. But he said the $12.5 billion the House included President Donald Trump’s massive bill won’t be enough because “it’s going to be tens of billions of dollars.”

Duffy has been meeting privately with lawmakers since he unveiled the plan. But he said he wants to let Congress “do the dance the way the Congress dances” to develop a plan to pay for the program.

Problems ease at Newark airport

The problems that led to hundreds of cancellations and delays at Newark do seem to have improved since the Federal Aviation Administration limited the number of flights at the airport so they could handle it with the number of controllers available. The already short-staffed air traffic control facility in Philadelphia that directs planes in and out of Newark lost five controllers to trauma leave after the first radar and communications outage on April 28 and another one is out on medical leave.

That left the facility with only 16 certified controllers and five supervisors. But Duffy said there are another 16 experienced controllers in training that he hopes will start to get certified between now and October.

That is an example of how the FAA remains about 3,000 short on the number of air traffic controllers it wants, so Duffy has also tried to speed up the hiring and training process while offering incentives to keep experienced controllers from retiring early.

The FAA has said that it expects to be able to bump up the number of flights daily in Newark to 34 arrivals and 34 departures once a runway construction project is completed in mid-June. That is also about the time that some of the controllers on a 45-day trauma leave might be scheduled to return. The FAA will revisit the limits in October because it hopes to have more controllers trained by then.

The government also upgraded the software at the air traffic control facility after a second radar outage on May 9. That helped prevent a repeat problem on May 11.

FAA addresses telecommunications problems

The FAA is also working on the telecommunications problems. Duffy said Verizon worked quickly to install a new fiber optic line between Philadelphia and New York over the past month, but the FAA wants to thoroughly test it out before switching over, so that likely won’t be available until July. After that, the FAA plans to also improve the lines between New York and the Newark airport because some of them are still copper wires.

“Clearly something wasn’t going right when we experienced these outages,” acting FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau said. “Right now, part of this effort, part of this initiative, is to ensure we’re acting with decisiveness, right — with focus — to make sure the lines get in, to make sure those redundancies are put in, to make sure the controllers have the tools they need to make the system safe, to operate safely.”

In the meantime, Duffy said it would be a good idea for pilots to brush up on their procedures of how to handle an outage because they can happen. In addition to the problems in Newark, controllers in Denver lost their radios for a couple minutes earlier this month. Duffy said there were also several other outages affecting Newark last year that didn’t get public attention.

“We have to look at the real world around us and some of the issues that come up and make sure we are brushed up and ready to go, should there be a brief outage,” Duffy said. “And again, that there’s a lot of redundancy and a lot of procedures that keep people safe should this happen.”

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Wednesday he is nominating his former criminal defense lawyer Emil Bove, who as a high-ranking Justice Department official was behind the controversial move to drop the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, to become a federal appeals court judge.

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As acting deputy attorney general, Bove has been at the center of some of the department’s most scrutinized actions since Trump’s return to the White House in January.

Bove ordered the dismissal of charges against the Democratic leader of America’s biggest city, accused FBI officials of “insubordination” for refusing to hand over the names of agents who investigated the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, and ordered the firings of a group of prosecutors involved in the Jan. 6 criminal cases.

He also moved aggressively to align the department with Trump’s agenda around immigration and other matters, ordering federal prosecutors to investigate for potential criminal prosecution state or local officials who are believed to be interfering with the Republican administration’s immigration crackdown.

Trump picked Bove to fill a vacancy on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The nomination, which is subject to Senate confirmation, comes just months into Bove’s contentious tenure at the department.

“Emil is SMART, TOUGH, and respected by everyone,” Trump said in a social media post announcing the nomination. “He will end the Weaponization of Justice, restore the Rule of Law, and do anything else that is necessary to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. Emil Bove will never let you down!”

When Todd Blanche, another former criminal defense attorney for Trump, was sworn in as deputy attorney general, Bove became Blanche’s top adviser, serving as the principal associate deputy attorney general.

Bove, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, was on the defense team during Trump’s New York hush money trial and defended Trump in the federal criminal cases brought by the Justice Department. The Justice Department abandoned Trump’s federal 2020 election interference case and the classified documents case after Trump won the election in November.

Bove’s order to dismiss the Adams case roiled the department. Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon, and several high-ranking department officials resigned rather than carrying out Bove’s order. In remarkable departure from long-standing department norms, Bove said the case should be dropped because it was interfering with the mayor’s ability to aid the president’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

Bove clerked for two federal judges appointed by President George W. Bush, a Republican. He then spent nine years at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan where he specialized in prosecuting drug kingpins and alleged terrorists.

He was involved in multiple high-profile prosecutions, including a drug-trafficking case against the former Honduran president’s brother, a man who set off a pressure cooker device in Manhattan and a man who sent dozens of mail bombs to prominent targets across the country.

Bove’s actions at the New York office, however, rankled some fellow prosecutors and defense attorneys. In 2018, the federal public defender’s office compiled complaints about his behavior from defense attorneys and sent them to two top officials in the U.S. attorney’s office. About 18 months after the email was sent, Bove was promoted to be co-chief of the office’s national security and international narcotics unit.