Pierce Brosnan, whose fictitious movie character James Bond has been in hot water plenty of times, is now facing heat in real life, charged with stepping out of bounds in a thermal area during a recent visit to Yellowstone National Park.

Brosnan walked in an off-limits area at Mammoth Terraces, in the northern part of Yellowstone near the Wyoming-Montana line, on Nov. 1, according to two federal citations issued Tuesday.

Brosnan, 70, is scheduled for a mandatory court appearance on Jan. 23 in the courtroom of the world’s oldest national park. The Associated Press sent a request for comment to his Instagram account Thursday, and email messages to his agent and attorney.

Yellowstone officials declined to comment. Brosnan was in the park on a personal visit and not for film work, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Wyoming said.

Mammoth Terraces is a scenic spot of mineral-encrusted hot springs bubbling from a hillside. They’re just some of the park’s hundreds of thermal features, which range from spouting geysers to gurgling mud pots, with water at or near the boiling point.

Going out-of-bounds in such areas can be dangerous: Some of the millions of people who visit Yellowstone each year get badly burned by ignoring warnings not to stray off the trail.

Getting caught can bring legal peril too, with jail time, hefty fines and bans from the park handed down to trespassers regularly.

In addition to his four James Bond films, Brosnan starred in the 1980s TV series “Remington Steele” and is known for starring roles in the films “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “The Thomas Crown Affair.”

Grieving families confronted the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter at his sentencing hearing Thursday, one day after a jury determined that capital punishment was appropriate for the perpetrator of the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history.

The hearing at the federal courthouse in Pittsburgh got underway, with some 22 witnesses — survivors of the 2018 massacre and relatives of the 11 people who were fatally shot — expected to deliver victim impact statements.

U.S. District Judge Robert Colville was expected to formally sentence Robert Bowers to death later Thursday.

“Mr. Bowers, you met my beloved husband in the kitchen. Your callous disregard for the person he was repulses me,” testified Peg Durachko, wife of 65-year-old Dr. Richard Gottfried, a dentist who was shot and killed. “Your hateful act took my soulmate from me.”

Mark Simon, whose parents, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, were killed in the attack, testified he still has their bloodied prayer shawl. He said he remains haunted by the 911 call placed by his mother, whom Bowers shot while she was on the line.

“My parents died alone, without any living soul to comfort them or to hold their hand in their last moments,” said Simon, condemning “that defendant” as evil and cowardly and urging the judge to show him no mercy.

“You will never be forgiven. Never,” Simon told Bowers.

Bowers, a 50-year-old truck driver from suburban Baldwin, ranted about Jews online before carrying out the attack at Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018. He told police at the scene that “all these Jews must die” and has since expressed pride in the killings.

Jurors were unanimous in finding that Bowers’ attack was motivated by his hatred of Jews, and that he chose Tree of Life for its location in one of the largest and most historic Jewish communities in the nation so he could “maximize the devastation, amplify the harm of his crimes, and instill fear within the local, national, and international Jewish communities.” They also found that Bowers lacked remorse.

The jury rejected defense claims that Bowers has schizophrenia and that his delusions about Jewish people spurred the attack.

Bowers, who was armed with an AR-15 rifle and other weapons, also shot and wounded seven, including five responding police officers.

He was convicted in June of 63 federal counts, including hate crimes resulting in death and obstruction of the free exercise of religion resulting in death.

Native American nations say the Supreme Court’s rejection of a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act has reaffirmed their power to withstand threats from state governments.

They say the case conservative groups raised on behalf of four Native American children was a stalking horse for legal arguments that could have broadly weakened tribal and federal authority.

“It’s a big win for all of us, a big win for Indian Country. And it definitely strengthens our sovereignty, strengthens our self-determination, it strengthens that we as a nation can make our own decisions,” Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said Monday.

In fact, the 7-2 ruling released Thursday hardly touched on the children, who were supposed to be placed with Native foster families under the law. The justices said the white families that have sought to adopt them lack standing to claim racial discrimination, in part because their cases are already resolved, save for one Navajo girl whose case is in Texas court.

Instead, the justices focused on rejecting other arguments aimed at giving states more leverage, including sweeping attacks on the constitutional basis for federal Indian Law.

“This was never a case about children,” Erin Dougherty Lynch, senior staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, told The Associated Press. “The opposition was essentially trying to weaken tribes by putting their children in the middle, which is a standard tactic for entities that are seeking to destroy tribes.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s majority opinion said these plaintiffs wrongly claimed that “the State gets to call the shots, unhindered by any federal instruction to the contrary.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch spent 38 pages explaining how up to a third of Native children were taken from their families and placed in white homes or in boarding schools to be assimilated. In response, the 1978 law requires states to notify tribes if a child is or could be enrolled in a federally recognized tribe, and established a system favoring Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings.

The state Senate has confirmed Gov. John Carney’s two nominees for the Delaware Supreme Court, including a lawyer tapped by Carney for the high court after he was arrested for drunken driving.

Carney’s nominations of Abigail LeGrow and N. Christopher Griffiths were confirmed Wednesday with no support from Senate Republicans. Despite Griffiths’ DUI arrest in January, GOP lawmakers were primarily outraged that, for the first time in decades, there will be no resident of Kent County on the state’s highest court.

“The governor of this great state threw us under the bus,” said Sen. Eric Buckson, a Kent County Republican.

Senate Minority Whip Brian Pettyjohn of Georgetown described Carney’s decision to forego nominating a justice from central Delaware as “insulting.”

Last week, members of the Democrat-controlled House unanimously passed a bipartisan bill mandating that the five-member Supreme Court include at least one justice from central Kent County, one from southern Sussex County, and two from northern New Castle County. The state Senate declined to take up the bill before voting on Carney’s nominees. Two Dover-area Democratic senators who cosponsored the bill, Trey Paradee and Kyra Hoffner, voted Wednesday to confirm Carney’s picks.

“Judge LeGrow and Chris have the experience, knowledge, and commitment to public service necessary to serve on the Supreme Court,” Carney said in a statement issued after they were confirmed.

Before the Senate vote, Pettyjohn questioned Griffiths during a Senate Executive Committee hearing about the traffic stop that led to his arrest, but Griffiths offered few details.

“The bottom line is this, I had too much to drink, and I should not have drove,” said Griffiths, who said he complied with the trooper who stopped him.

Griffiths, who will be the first black man to serve on the Supreme Court, also indicated that he feared that the trooper, whom he nevertheless described as “a complete gentleman,” might physically abuse him because of his race.

“I’m a black man driving around in lower Delaware at a mostly white beach, and I want to go home to my family,” Griffiths said. “There’s a lot of things in the national news that are burned in our minds and our hearts, and I wanted that officer to know “we’re on the same team.’”

“I have images in my brain from the biases I bring to that situation of, man, I want to make sure I go home tonight. I want to make sure there’s not a knee in my back but that I go home alive,” Griffiths added.

Griffiths pleaded guilty in March to reckless driving that was alcohol-related, an offense he compared to “a simple traffic ticket.” He was fined and ordered to complete an education course for those charged with driving under the influence.

LeGrow and Griffiths replace Tamika R. Montgomery-Reeves, who now sits on a federal appeals court, and Justice James T. Vaughn Jr., a Kent County resident who retired effective this week.

LeGrow has served as Superior Court judge since February 2016. She previously served as a Master in Chancery on the Delaware Court of Chancery. LeGrow received her law degree from the Pennsylvania State University. Griffiths has been a partner at the Wilmington law firm of Connolly Gallagher, which also employs Democratic state Sen. Kyle Evans Gay. He previously was a wealth manager for Wilmington Trust Company and the Vanguard Group. Griffiths, who received his law degree from Villanova University, is the son of Norman Griffiths, a retired DuPont attorney who served 20 years on the Wilmington City Council.

Former Louisiana Democratic Party leader Karen Carter Peterson, who resigned from the state Senate last year year citing depression and a gambling addiction — and later pleaded guilty to federal wire fraud — was sentenced on Wednesday to 22 months in prison.

Peterson, who served in the Louisiana Legislature for more than 22 years, admitted in August to taking more than $140,000 in funds from her reelection campaign and from the state Democratic Party. The ex-lawmaker spent a “substantial amount” of that money on casino gambling, according to court documents.

Although the felony charge of federal wire fraud carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance sentenced Peterson to significantly less, The Advocate reported.

“People trusted me and I breached that trust,” Peterson said in court, WDSU-TV reported.

At the sentencing, Peterson cried at the podium and repented for her criminal wrongdoing — apologizing to her constituents, family and friends.

Ahead of the sentencing, Peterson’s lawyers implored U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance to consider an alternative to prison — such as probation or home confinement.

They said her gambling addiction resulted in “diminished mental capacity,” which can qualify a defendant for a reduced sentence, according to court filings obtained by The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate. In addition, they pointed to her Christian faith, her acceptance of responsibility for the crimes and her participation in Gamblers Anonymous.

An American woman who left the U.K. after killing a teenager in a road accident was given an eight-month suspended prison sentence on Thursday, though she declined to come to Britain for the court hearing.

Anne Sacoolas, 45, was sentenced over an August 2019 accident in which 19-year-old Harry Dunn was killed when his motorcycle collided with a car outside RAF Croughton, an air base in eastern England that is used by U.S. forces. Sacoolas was driving on the wrong side of the road at the time.

Sacoolas and her husband, an American intelligence officer, returned to the U.S. days after the accident. The U.S. government invoked diplomatic immunity on her behalf, prompting an outcry in Britain and causing tensions between the governments in London and Washington.

Sacoolas admitted causing death by careless driving, which carries a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment. Justice Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said Sacoolas’ actions were “not far short of deliberately dangerous driving,” but she reduced the penalty because of Sacoolas’ guilty plea and previous good character.

The suspended sentence means that Sacoolas faces jail if she commits another offense within a year — though the judge acknowledged the sentence could not be enforced if she remains in the U.S.

The sentencing follows a three-year campaign by Dunn’s family, who met with politicians on both sides of the Atlantic in a campaign to get Sacoolas to face British justice. American authorities refused to extradite her.

Sacoolas entered a guilty plea in October, but the U.S. administration advised her not to come to Britain for sentencing. She attended the hearing at London’s Central Criminal Court by video link.

Lawyer Ben Cooper said Sacoolas had not asked for the diplomatic immunity asserted on her behalf by the U.S. government. He read a statement from Sacoolas in which she said she was “deeply sorry for the pain I have caused.”

“There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about Harry,” the statement said.

The judge said the “calm and dignified persistence” of Dunn’s parents had led Sacoolas to acknowledge guilt and appear before the court.

Dunn’s mother Charlotte Charles said in a victim impact statement that her son’s death “haunts me every minute of every day and I’m not sure how I’m ever going to get over it.”

“As a family we are determined that his death will not have been in vain and we are involved in a number of projects to try to find some silver lining in this tragedy and to help others,” she said. “That will be Harry’s legacy.”