WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S., a senior administration official said Tuesday.

The shipment was supposed to consist of 1,800 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs and 1,700 500-pound (225-kilogram) bombs, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, with the focus of U.S. concern being the larger explosives and how they could be used in a dense urban setting. More than 1 million civilians are sheltering in Rafah after evacuating other parts of Gaza amid Israel’s war on Hamas, which came after the militant group’s deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

The U.S. has historically provided enormous amounts of military aid for Israel. That has only accelerated in the aftermath of Hamas Oct. 7 attack that killed some 1,200 in Israel and led to about 250 being taken captive by militants. The pausing of the aid shipment is the most striking manifestation of the growing daylight between Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the administration of President Joe Biden, which has called on Israel to do far more to protect the lives of innocent civilians in Gaza.

Biden’s administration in April began reviewing future transfers of military assistance as Netanyahu’s government appeared to move closer toward an invasion of Rafah, despite months of opposition from the White House. The official said the decision to pause the shipment was made last week and no final decision had been made yet on whether to proceed with the shipment at a later date.

Earlier Tuesday, U.S. officials declined to comment on the halted transfer.

Just last month, Congress passed a $95 billion national security bill that included funding for Ukraine, Israel and other allies. The package included more than $14 billion in military aid for Israel, though the stalled transfer was not related to that measure.

The State Department is separately considering whether to approve the continued transfer of Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, which place precision guidance systems onto bombs, to Israel, but the review didn’t pertain to imminent shipments.

The U.S. dropped the 2,000-pound bomb sparingly in its long war against the Islamic State militant group. Israel, by contrast, has used the bomb frequently in the seven-month Gaza war. Experts say the use of the weapon, in part, has help drive the enormous Palestinian casualty count that the Hamas-run health ministry puts at more than 34,000 dead, though it doesn’t distinguish between militants and civilians.

The U.S.-Israel relationship has been close through both Democratic and Republican administrations. But there have been other moments of deep tension since the founding in which U.S. leaders have threatened to hold up aid in attempt to sway Israeli leadership.

President Dwight Eisenhower pressured Israel with the threat of sanctions into withdrawing from the Sinai in 1957 in the midst of the Suez Crisis. Ronald Reagan delayed the delivery of F16 fighter jets to Israel at a time of escalating violence in the Middle East. President George H.W. Bush held up $10 billion in loan guarantees to force the cessation of Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories.

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A cruise ship worker from South Africa was arrested Tuesday in Alaska’s capital city, accused of attacking a woman and two security guards with scissors on board the vessel, according to authorities.

The U.S. attorney’s office says the man is charged with assault with a dangerous weapon within maritime and territorial jurisdiction. Online court records do not show an attorney for the 35-year-old man.

According to an affidavit from FBI Special Agent Matthew Judy, the man was recently hired by a cruise line and joined the ship, the Norwegian Encore, in Seattle on Sunday. The ship set off that day for a weeklong trip with scheduled stops in Alaska ports, including the capital of Juneau, and British Columbia.

The alleged incident happened west of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, as the ship was sailing to Alaska. According to the affidavit, during the ‘late evening” Sunday, ship personnel saw the man trying to deploy a lifeboat, and he was taken by security to a medical center for an evaluation.

While there, he “became irrational and attempted to leave,” and “physically attacked” a guard and a nurse, the affidavit states. He ran into another room, where he grabbed a pair of scissors and stabbed a woman who was being examined, as well as two guards who tried to intervene before being subdued and held in a “shipboard jail,” the affidavit says. None of the injuries were considered life-threatening.

The ship arrived in Juneau on Tuesday, when he was arrested by the FBI, the U.S. attorney’s office says.

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump squirmed and scowled, shook his head and muttered as Stormy Daniels described the unexpected sex she says they had nearly two decades ago, saying she remembered “trying to think of anything other than what was happening.”

It was a story Daniels has told before. This time, Trump had no choice but to sit and listen.

Years in the making, the in-person showdown between the former president and the porn actor who has become one of his nemeses happened Tuesday in a New York courtroom that has become the plainspoken stage for the historic spectacle of Trump’s hush money trial, where the gravitas of the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. commander-in-chief butts up against a crass and splashy tale of sex, tabloids and payoffs.

It’s often said that actual trials are not like the TV drama versions, and in that way, this one is no exception — a methodical and sometimes static proceeding of questions, answers and rules. But if Tuesday’s testimony wasn’t an electric scene of outbursts and tears, it was no less stunning for its sheer improbability.

Daniels’ testimony had been speculated about for as long as Trump has been under indictment. But when it would happen was still a mystery until Tuesday morning, when her lawyer Clark Brewster confirmed in an email to an Associated Press reporter that it was “likely today.”

But even after the trial resumed, Daniels still had to wait.

The first witness of the day was a publishing executive who read passages from some of Trump’s business books.

Then, when the judge asked for the prosecution’s next witness, Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger matter-of-factly declared, “The people call Stormy Daniels.”

Daniels strode briskly to the stand, not looking at Trump, her shoes clunking on the floor. The former president stared straight ahead until the moment she had passed his spot at the defense table, then tilted his head slightly in her direction.

As is standard in court proceedings, Daniels was asked if she saw Trump in the courtroom and to identify him. Before answering, Daniels, wearing eyeglasses, shuffled in her seat for a beat, looking around the courtroom. She then pointed toward him, describing his navy suit coat and gold tie, and said he was sitting at the defense table. Trump looked straight forward, lips pursed.

Dozens of reporters and a handful of public observers packed the courtroom gallery.

In one row alone: CNN anchor Erin Burnett, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell and Andrew Giuliani, the son of Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who wore a media credential from WABC Radio, where he and his dad host shows. Trump’s son Eric sat elsewhere in the courtroom.

As she testified, Daniels spoke confidently and at a rapid clip, the sound of reporters typing reaching a frenetic tempo.

She spoke so quickly, at least six times during her testimony she was asked to slow down so a court stenographer could keep pace.

Jurors seemed as attentive as they’ve been all trial as Daniels recounted her path from aspiring veterinary student to porn actor.

One juror smiled when Daniels mentioned one of the ways into the industry was by winning a contest, like “Ms. Nude North America.” Another juror’s eyes widened as he read along on the monitor displaying a Truth Social post in which Trump said he “did NOTHING wrong” and used an insulting nickname to disparage Daniels’ looks.

Trump denies her claims and has pleaded not guilty in the case, in which he’s charged with falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payment to Daniels to keep quiet.

Many of the jurors jotted notes throughout her testimony, peering up from notepads and alternating their gaze from Daniels in the witness box to the lawyers questioning her from a lectern.

Guided by prosecutors, Daniels drew a detailed scene of her alleged evening with Trump at a hotel suite in Lake Tahoe in 2006, delving frankly into details that Judge Juan M. Merchan would later concede “should probably have been left unsaid.”

She recalled entering the sprawling suite to find Trump in a pair of silk pajamas. She sheepishly admitted to snooping through his bathroom toiletries in the bathroom, finding a pair of golden tweezers. Daniels even acted out part of her interaction with Trump, reclining back in the witness box to demonstrate how she said he was positioned on the bed of his hotel suite when she emerged from the restroom.

Her willingness to provide extra details prompted an usual moment: Trump’s lawyers consented to allowing a prosecutor to meet with Daniels in a side room, during a break in testimony, to give her some instructions to — as Judge Merchan put it — “make sure the witness stays focused on the question, gives the answer and does not give any unnecessary narrative.”

Out of the earshot of the jury, or the reporters in the room, Merchan also asked Trump’s lawyers to stop him from cursing as Daniels spoke.

“I understand that your client is upset at this point, but he is cursing audibly, and he is shaking his head visually and that’s contemptuous. It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that,” the judge said. “I am speaking to you here at the bench because I don’t want to embarrass him,” Merchan added.

“I will talk to him,” said one of Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche.

Peppy and loquacious when she was being questioned by prosecutors, Daniels was feistier on cross-examination, digging in when defense lawyer Susan Necheles questioned her credibility and motives.

Daniels forcefully denied Necheles’ suggestion that she had tried to extort Trump, answering the lawyer’s contention: “False.”

Daniels left the witness stand just before 4:30 p.m. She didn’t look at Trump as she trod past. He didn’t look at her, either, instead leaning over to whisper to Necheles.

Moments later, Merchan adjourned court until Thursday — with Wednesday the trial’s usual off day. Trump left the courtroom with his entourage of lawyers and aides.

“This was a very revealing day in court. Any honest reporter would say that,” Trump said to journalists in the hallway outside the courtroom. He is limited by court order from saying much more about Daniels to the media.

Inside the courtroom, the witnesses to history reconciled their thoughts, gathered their belongings and waited for Trump to leave the building, so they could, too.

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — State experts have found the man charged with shooting and killing 10 people at a Colorado supermarket in 2021 had untreated mental illness but was legally sane at the time of the attack, lawyers said Tuesday.

The results of the sanity evaluation of Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa done at the state mental hospital are not public but were discussed during a court hearing as Alissa, dressed in a jail uniform and his wrists in shackles, and relatives of some of those killed listened.

According to the defense, the evaluators found that the attack would not have happened but for Alissa’s untreated mental illness, which attorney Sam Dunn said was schizophrenia that included “auditory hallucinations.” He also said the evaluators were “less confident” in their sanity conclusion than they would be in other cases but did not elaborate on why.

Prosecutors did not provide any details of their own about what the evaluators found during the hearing. District Attorney Michael Dougherty, who said he is limited to commenting on what has been made public about the evaluation, declined to comment on Dunn’s description of the evaluation’s findings.

“I look forward to the trial, and these are issues that are going to be litigated fully at trial,” Dougherty said after the hearing.

Alissa has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the March 22, 2021, shooting at a King Soopers store in the college town of Boulder. The plea means his lawyers are claiming he did not understand the difference between right from wrong at the time of the shooting and therefor should not be convicted of a crime.

Investigators say he researched how to carry out a mass shooting before he launched his own attack and targeted moving people, killing most of the 10 victims in just over a minute using a gun with a high-capacity magazine.

Alissa’s mental health was raised as an issue by his lawyers right after the shooting, and the issue of whether he was mentally competent to stand trial — able to understand court proceedings and help his lawyers in his defense — put proceedings on hold for about two years. After Alissa was forcibly medicated and then deemed mentally competent to proceed, he entered the not guilty by reason of insanity plea in November.

On Tuesday, Judge Ingrid Bakke granted the defense’s request for Alissa’s sanity at the time of the shooting to be evaluated a second time by their own expert, but she rejected their proposal to delay the trial until March 2025 to give them time for that process. Instead, she delayed the trial by only about a month, scheduling it to start Sept. 2, after hearing strong objections from relatives of the victims and in letters submitted to the court.

As Alissa sat nearby with his lawyers, Erika Mahoney, whose father Kevin Mahoney was killed in the shooting, urged Bakke to allow the families to enter the fall with the trial behind them so they could go on to celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah with that chapter closed.

During a prolonged discussion among the lawyers and Bakke, Erika Mahoney was not feeling hopeful, but she was relieved when the judge only delayed the trial by a month.

“It’s funny the things you that become grateful for,” she said after the hearing, “but I am grateful to know that this is moving forward.”

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Transgender activists have flooded a Utah tip line created to alert state officials to possible violations of a new bathroom law with thousands of hoax reports in an effort to shield trans residents and their allies from any legitimate complaints that could lead to an investigation.

The onslaught has led the state official tasked by the law with managing the tip line, Utah Auditor John Dougall, to bemoan getting stuck with the cumbersome task of filtering through fake complaints while also facing backlash for enforcing a law he had no role in passing.

“No auditor goes into auditing so they can be the bathroom monitors,” Dougall said Tuesday. “I think there were much better ways for the Legislature to go about addressing their concerns, rather than this ham-handed approach.”

In the week since it launched, the online tip line already has received more than 10,000 submissions, none of which seem legitimate, he said. The form asks people to report public school employees who knowingly allow someone to use a facility designated for the opposite sex.

Utah residents and visitors are required by law to use bathrooms and changing rooms in government-owned buildings that correspond with their birth sex. As of last Wednesday, schools and agencies found not enforcing the new restrictions can be fined up to $10,000 per day for each violation.

Although their advocacy efforts failed to stop Republican lawmakers in many states from passing restrictions for trans people, the community has found success in interfering with the often ill-conceived enforcement plans attached to those laws.

Within hours of its publication Wednesday night, trans activists and community members from across the U.S. already had spread the Utah tip line widely on social media. Many shared the spam they had submitted and encouraged others to follow suit.

Their efforts mark the latest attempt by advocates to shut down or render unusable a government tip line that they argue sows division by encouraging residents to snitch on each other. Similar portals in at least five other states also have been inundated with hoax reports, leading state officials to shut some down.

In Virginia, Indiana, Arizona and Louisiana, activists flooded tip lines created to field complaints about teachers, librarians and school administrators who may have spoken to students about race, LGBTQ+ identities or other topics lawmakers argued were inappropriate for children. The Virginia tip line was taken down within a year, as was a tip line introduced in Missouri to report gender-affirming health care clinics.

Erin Reed, a prominent trans activist and legislative researcher, said there is a collective understanding in the trans community that submitting these hoax reports is an effective way of protesting the law and protecting trans people who might be targeted.

“There will be people who are trans that go into bathrooms that are potentially reported by these sorts of forms, and so the community is taking on a protective role,” Reed said. “If there are 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 form responses that are entered in, it’s going to be much harder for the auditor’s office to sift through every one of them and find the one legitimate trans person who was caught using a bathroom.”

The auditor’s office has encountered many reports that Dougall described as “total nonsense,” and others that he said appear credible at first glance and take much longer to filter out. His staff has spent the last week sorting through thousands of well-crafted complaints citing fake names or locations.

Despite efforts to clog the enforcement tool they had outlined in the bill, the Republican sponsors, Rep. Kera Birkeland and Sen. Dan McCay, said they remain confident in the tip line and the auditor’s ability to filter out fake complaints.

“It’s not surprising that activists are taking the time to send false reports,” Birkeland said. “But that isn’t a distraction from the importance of the legislation and the protection it provides women across Utah.”

The Morgan Republican had pitched the policy as a safety measure to protect the privacy of women and girls without citing evidence of threats or assaults by trans people against them.

McCay said he hadn’t realized activists were responsible for flooding the tip line. The Salt Lake City senator said he does not plan to change how the law is being enforced.

LGBTQ+ rights advocates also have warned the law and the accompanying tip line give people license to question anyone’s gender in community spaces, which they argue could even affect people who are not trans.

Their warnings were amplified earlier this year when a Utah school board member came under fire — and later lost her reelection bid — for publicly questioning the gender of a high school basketball player she wrongly assumed was transgender.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two Republican lawmakers said they believe the security clearance of Rob Malley, who is on unpaid leave from his post as U.S. special envoy for Iran, was suspended because he allegedly sent classified documents to his personal email account and downloaded them to his personal mobile phone.

Senator Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul did not provide any source for the allegations in a May 6 letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The letter was first reported by the Washington Post and reviewed by Reuters on Tuesday.

“We understand that Mr. Malley’s security clearance was suspended because he allegedly transferred classified documents to his personal email account and downloaded these documents to his personal cell phone,” said the letter, which gave the most detailed potential public explanation to date for the suspension of Malley’s security clearance.

“It is believed that a hostile cyber actor was able to gain access to his email and/or phone and obtain the downloaded information,” they added, criticizing the Department for not providing more information about Malley’s case and posing 19 questions about it to Blinken.

A State Department spokesperson said Malley remains on leave, adding that “under longstanding policy going back for decades, the Department does not comment on individual security clearances.”

Malley declined to comment on the letter in an emailed response to Reuters.

Appointed soon after U.S. President Joe Biden took office in 2021, Malley had the task of trying to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal after then-President Donald Trump’s 2018 decision to abandon the pact and reimpose U.S. sanctions on Tehran.

That effort has failed, and the United States and Iran are increasingly at odds on issues from Iran’s nuclear program to its support for proxy forces across the Middle East and its first direct attack on Israeli territory on April 13.

(Reporting By Patricia Zengerle and Arshad Mohammed; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Stephen Coates)

By Jeffrey Dastin

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is piloting artificial intelligence to train officers who review applicants for refugee status in the United States, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters on Tuesday.

The work addresses what Mayorkas said is “labor-intensive” instruction that typically involves senior personnel. In this pilot, he said, DHS is training machines to act like refugees so officers can practice interviewing them.

“Refugee applicants, given the trauma that they have endured, are reticent to be forthcoming in describing that trauma,” he said. “So we’re teaching the machine to be reticent as well” and to adopt other “characteristics” of applicants.

The remarks, made on the sidelines of the security-focused RSA Conference in San Francisco, elaborate on AI initiatives that DHS announced earlier this year. The department has said it planned to develop an interactive app to supplement its training of immigration officers, drawing on so-called generative AI that creates novel content based on past data.

Specifically, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency within DHS, would build an AI program that tailored training materials to officers’ needs and prepare them to make more accurate decisions, the department said.

AI will not make immigration decisions themselves, DHS told Reuters. The AI will know country-specific conditions and other information to help officers, Mayorkas said.

The pilot adds to the many tests in industry and government seeking to reduce costs and improve performance through AI, particularly after ChatGPT’s viral launch in 2022. Such experimentation has not been without problems, including issues with translation, incorrect timeframes and pronouns.

Among more “advanced” deployments of AI, Mayorkas said the department has worked to spot anomalies when commercial trucks and passenger vehicles make border crossings. The goal, he said, is to help the department detect smuggling attempts for bringing fentanyl and other contraband into the United States.

(Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco, Ted Hesson in Washington and Mica Rosenberg in New York; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A woman who fell from the stands to her death during a graduation ceremony at Ohio State University last weekend has been identified as a Georgia resident, authorities announced Tuesday.

The Franklin County Coroner’s Office said Larissa Brady, 53, was pronounced dead at the scene, just outside Ohio Stadium in Columbus on Sunday. The Columbus Dispatch reported the death was being investigated as an apparent suicide, citing coroner documents.

An investigation continues into how Brady fell from the stadium, which the school says is 136 feet (41 meters) tall, to the pavement below. However, Ohio State police do not suspect foul play and believe the fall was not accidental, university spokesperson Ben Johnson said Tuesday.

It happened around midday, near the stadium’s Bell Tower, as the last graduates were filing into the stadium. According to the commencement program, Brady’s daughter was among those graduating.

The commencement continued without mention of what happened, but some students and others at the ceremony were visibly upset after the fall. A spokesman said the university has contacted all graduates and staff who volunteered at graduation to offer counseling services.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Seven more Republican-led states sued Tuesday to challenge a new federal regulation that seeks to protect the rights of transgender students in the nation’s schools. Republican plaintiffs call the effort to fold protection for transgender students under the 1972 Title IX law unconstitutional.

The lawsuits filed in federal courts in Missouri and Oklahoma are the latest GOP attempts to halt the new regulation seeking to clarify Title IX, a landmark 1972 sex discrimination law originally passed to address women’s rights and applied to schools and colleges receiving federal money. The rules spell out that Title IX bars discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, too.

Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota joined as plaintiffs in the Missouri lawsuit.

The cases come as many Republicans seek to limit the rights of transgender youth, including restricting which bathrooms or pronouns they can use in school. Such prohibitions that could be invalidated by the new federal regulation. The GOP states suing argue that the new federal rules goes beyond the intent of Title IX and that the Biden administration doesn’t have the authority to implement them.

“The interpretation of the Biden administration is completely inconsistent with the statute and the way it’s been interpreted for decades,” Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said at a news conference with Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

The federal regulation applies to all schools that receive federal funding. The latest filings bring to at least 21 the number of GOP states challenging the new rules. Officials in several states, including Arkansas, have said they don’t plan to comply with the regulation.

The U.S. Department of Education said it does not comment on pending litigation.

An Arkansas high school athlete, Amelia Ford, also joined the Missouri case, saying she doesn’t believe transgender women should be allowed to compete on women’s sports teams.

The Biden administration’s new rules broadly protect against discrimination based on sex, but they don’t offer guidance around transgender athletes. Most of the states challenging the regulation have laws restricting what teams transgender athletes can play on.

Lawsuits also have been filed in federal courts in Texas, Alabama, Louisiana and Kentucky. The multiple challenges give the states suing a better chance that one of the cases will put the rule on hold nationally.

NEW YORK (AP) — One-time movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was returned to a New York City jail in what his publicist said Tuesday was the result from a published report claiming he was getting VIP treatment during his 10-day stay at a hospital.

The publicist, Juda Engelmeyer, said Weinstein was moved late Monday from Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan to an infirmary at the city’s Rikers Island jail complex.

The move came hours after The City, a nonprofit news outlet, reported that Weinstein was housed in a private room in the hospital’s intensive care unit with a television, phone and a bathroom rather than a separate floor where inmates normally reside.

Engelmeyer disputed the account, saying Weinstein “wasn’t getting preferential or VIP treatment” and wasn’t housed in what could be characterized as a hospital suite. Engelmeyer said he’d been housed on the floor for inmates where everyone has access to a room with phones and a television room.

“He’s been moved back to Rikers largely due to pressure, I believe, due to pressure because of the news about what somebody thought was VIP treatment,” he said.

Weinstein was brought to Bellevue Hospital only hours after he was transferred on April 26 from the Mohawk Correctional Facility, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Albany, to Rikers less than a day after the New York Court of Appeals vacated his conviction.

The appeals court ruled that a Manhattan trial judge permitted jurors to see and hear too much evidence not directly related to the charges he faced, and it ordered a new trial, negating his 23-year prison sentence. However, he remained jailed because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

While prosecutors have asked for a September retrial on charges that he forcibly performed oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 and raped an aspiring actor in 2013, it was unclear if key trial witnesses would return for a new trial. Weinstein has disputed the allegations.

Frank Dwyer, a New York City Department of Correction spokesperson, said Weinstein was originally taken to Bellevue for medical care and was returned to the West Facility, a Rikers Island jail in Queens, when the treatment was completed.

The West Facility houses 140 specially air-controlled housing units for inmates with contagious diseases such as tuberculosis, according to a city website, though the jail has reportedly also been used for inmates that need to be isolated from the general jail population for other reasons.

Craig Rothfeld, a jail consultant working with Weinstein attorneys, responded to an email sent to a Weinstein lawyer by saying the decision to return Weinstein to Rikers was made by medical staff “who are more than qualified to make these medical decisions.”

He said there are no more updates to provide regarding Weinstein’s health, and all of his health conditions continue to be closely monitored by city jail and health officials.

“We have every confidence in their decision-making ability regarding Mr. Weinstein’s safety and well-being and are grateful for their continued communication,” Rothfeld said.

Engelmeyer said Weinstein had been treated at the hospital for pneumonia, a recurring issue related to his heart troubles, along with his other medical issues, including diabetes.

“He appreciates the care he was getting in Bellevue,” he said.

Engelmeyer said Weinstein was “disappointed” at his return to Rikers and was “uncomfortable” there, where the spokesperson described Weinstein’s housing as “more like an infirmary.”

He said Weinstein was regularly speaking by phone with his lawyers when he was at the hospital as other inmates awaiting trial are allowed to do.

“He didn’t get any treatment different from others. He wasn’t talking to his friends and buddies and having a good time,” Engelmeyer said.

Engelmeyer said Weinstein gained some “relief and hope” from the appeals ruling, but he knows he faces a long prison term from the California case and an appeal of that conviction won’t be heard for another year.

“His spirits are up, but he also knows he has a long, long trip ahead of him,” Engelmeyer said. “He knows that he won’t be getting out soon.