(FORT BRAGG, N.C.) (AP) — Legal experts say Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s brutal captivity by Taliban allies carried significant weight in a judge’s decision to spare him prison time for leaving his post in Afghanistan.

Criticism by President Donald Trump also appeared to push the judge toward leniency.

Army Col. Jeffery Nance didn’t explain how he formulated his sentence that also included a dishonorable discharge. But the judge had to consider complex arguments for and against leniency.

Prosecutors unsuccessfully fought for a prison sentence. They cited soldiers who were injured when they searched for Bergdahl. But the defense argued that Bergdahl had suffered enough. He spent five years as a captive of the Taliban and also suffered from mental illnesses.

Former Army lawyer Eric Carpenter says an unusual amount of factors were in Bergdahl’s favor.

President Donald Trump called the sentence “a disgrace.”

(Miami) — The National Hurricane Center says Irma’s projected path is continuing to shift to the west, just a few crucial miles, that should keep its eye just off Florida’s west coast on a track to hit St. Petersburg, not Miami or even Tampa.

The hurricane’s leading edge was already lashing the Florida Keys with hurricane force winds. If the center of the storm keeps moving over warm Gulf of Mexico water, it may regain more strength before making landfall again.

St. Petersburg, like Tampa, has not taken a head-on blow from a major hurricane in nearly a century. Clearwater would be next, and then the storm would finally go inland northwest of Ocala.

At midnight, the storm had top sustained winds of 120 mph  and is moving northward at about 6 mph.

(Newport News, Va.) — Democrat Ralph Northam’s lead over Republican Ed Gillespie has narrowed in the contest to be Virginia’s next governor, according to a tracking poll released Tuesday by the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University. Northam, now lieutenant governor, is the choice of 48% of the likely voters surveyed, while…