By JACQUES BILLEAUD

PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona jury has found Lori Vallow Daybell guilty of conspiring to murder her estranged husband, meaning the mother with doomsday religious beliefs faces another life sentence after she was already convicted in Idaho in the killings of her two youngest children and a romantic rival.

Prosecutors said she conspired with her brother, Alex Cox, in the July 2019 shooting death of Charles Vallow at her home in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler.

She was trying to collect money from his life insurance policy and planned to marry her then-boyfriend Chad Daybell, an Idaho author who wrote several religious novels about prophecies and the end of the world, prosecutors said.

Cox, who claimed he acted in self-defense when he fatally shot Vallow, died five months later from what medical examiners said was a blood clot in his lungs. Cox’s account was later called into question.

Jurors deliberated for a total of three hours over two days.

Vallow Daybell, who isn’t an attorney but chose to defend herself at trial, told jurors that during the encounter inside the house, Vallow chased her with a bat, and Alex shot Vallow in self-defense after she left the house.

Vallow Daybell is already serving three life sentences in the Idaho case. In Arizona, she faces a life sentence without the possibility of release until serving at least 25 years.

Anthony Edwards received a $50,000 fine from the NBA, the league announced Tuesday.

This one was for “directing inappropriate language and making an obscene gesture toward a fan.”

Video surfaced on social media this week of Edwards getting into a verbal back and forth with a fan while at the scorer’s table during Minnesota’s Game 1 win over the Lakers in Los Angeles.

Edwards was seemingly defending teammate Rudy Gobert, as he repeatedly shouted that Gobert has “$300 million” — the approximate figure the center has made in salary in his NBA career (it’s actually a bit more than that).

But the NBA took issue with what came next, when Edwards said that his genitals were bigger than the spectator’s.

The fine was Edwards’ seventh of the season from the NBA, which add up to $350k on the season.

Clutch?

Edwards is one of three finalists for the NBA’s Clutch Player of the Year award, along with Denver center Nikola Jokic and New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson.

The winner will be announced on TNT’s NBA pre-game show at 5:30 p.m. CDT Wednesday.

This is the third year of the award’s existence, and voters are still wading through how to determine who fits the description.

Edwards led the NBA in raw scoring in the clutch this season, tallying 157 points in the final five minutes of games that had margins within five points. But the guard’s shooting numbers weren’t great in those situations, and Minnesota was a team that struggled mightily in the clutch as a team throughout the season.

By JOSH BOAK

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday he has no plans to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, just days after his statement that he would like to terminate the head of the U.S. central bank caused a stock market selloff.

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“I have no intention of firing him,” Trump told reporters.

The U.S. president had previously insinuated otherwise as he said he could fire Powell if he wanted to, having been frustrated by the Fed putting a pause on cuts to short-term interest rates. Powell has said that Trump’s tariffs are creating uncertainty about slower growth and higher inflationary pressures, while the president maintains that inflationary worries are essentially non-existent.

The president maintains that energy and grocery prices are falling, so the Fed should cut its benchmark rates because inflation is no longer a threat to the U.S. economy, Trump said. His remarks indicated that he still plans to use the bully pulpit to pressure a U.S. central bank that is committed to resisting political pressure as part of its mandate to stabilize prices and maximize employment.

“It’s all coming down,” Trump said. “The only thing that hasn’t come down, but hasn’t gone up much, are interest rates. And we think the Fed should lower the rate. We think that it’s it’s a perfect time to lower the rate. And we’d like to see our chairman be early or on time, as opposed to late. Late’s not good.”

By LARRY NEUMEISTER

NEW YORK (AP) — Three more federal prosecutors who had been involved in the now-dismissed corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams resigned on Tuesday, saying they felt pressured into admitting wrongdoing or regret as a condition for being reinstated to their jobs.

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“We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none,” Celia Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach and Derek Wikstrom wrote in a letter to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The three assistant U.S. attorneys had been placed on leave after a number of prosecutors in New York and Washington refused to follow orders to end the case against Adams, a Democrat.

The letter was published by several news outlets. Its authenticity was confirmed to The Associated Press by a person who received the letter.

The resignations came the same day that Jay Clayton, former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, was sworn in as the New York office’s new top prosecutor.

Adams was indicted last year, accused of taking illegal campaign contributions and travel perks from a Turkish official and others seeking to buy influence when he previously served as Brooklyn borough president.

In February, after President Donald Trump took office, the Justice Department ordered then-acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, to drop the charges against Adams — not due to the merits of the case, but rather so the mayor could assist in the Trump administration ’s immigration agenda.

Sassoon opted to resign instead, as did several other career prosecutors who objected to the criminal case being dismissed for political reasons. The case was eventually dismissed in April.

Cohen, Rohrbach and Wikstrom wrote in their resignation letter that it had become clear to them that one of the “preconditions” Blanche placed on them returning to work was to “express regret and admit some wrongdoing by the Office in connection with the refusal to move to dismiss the case.”

The new leaders of the Justice Department, they wrote, had “decided that obedience supersedes all else, requiring us to abdicate our legal and ethical obligations in favor of directions from Washington. That is wrong.”

Blanche said in a statement that there was nothing illegal or unethical about “dismissing the flawed prosecution against Mayor Adams.”

“Any suggestion to the contrary by anybody, especially former federal prosecutors, is wrong and disingenuous,” he wrote.

Emil Bove, then the acting deputy attorney general, had argued previously that Adams was being prosecuted because he had criticized former President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

In dismissing the case, Judge Dale E. Ho noted that the record showed the prosecutors who worked on the case had followed all guidelines.

“There is no evidence — zero — that they had any improper motives,” Ho wrote in his ruling.

Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report from Washington.