Haitians and Syrians were among those from 17 countries with Temporary Protected Status, which allows migrants already in the U.S. to stay with work permits in 18-month increments, so long as the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security deems their country of origin unsafe for return.

Since President Donald Trump ’s second term began, Homeland Security has ended the protections for 13 countries, exposing their migrants to potential deportation.

The case focuses on whether the administration properly weighed conditions in Haiti and Syria when it ended TPS and if it prejudiced non-white immigrants.

Here's the latest:

Drilling down on consultations with State Department

A little bit more on that exchange between Arulanantham and Barrett.

She was drilling down into the question of how substantive the consultations have to be between the DHS secretary and State Department on whether country conditions are truly stable enough to terminate TPS.

“Let’s imagine the consultation happens. It’s a robust consultation. But everything that she hears cuts in favor of keeping TPS status and she says ‘I’m terminating it.’ Is that reviewable?” Barrett asked.

Arulanantham says in that case it’s not, but then goes on to argue that she really does have to make a substantive inquiry. And he argues that the consultation process makes for better decisions overall.

Barrett raises big-picture questions

Barrett comes in with a zoom-out question about the immigration attorney’s argument that Homeland Security didn’t follow the right process.

“Is this going to get you very much? If it’s just a box-checking exercise, why would Congress permit review of the procedural aspect when really what everybody cares about much more is the substance?”

Arulanantham says that it’s still important: “Congress, and us too, and the millions of people who live with TPS holders have some faith in government.”

TPS holders have two courtroom defenders

Two different lawyers are arguing for the TPS recipients.

Ahilan Arulanantham, a professor at the UCLA School of Law, is up now. He’s arguing the Syrian case.

Attorney Geoffrey Pipoly will represent people from Haiti.

Arguments turn to those defending TPS holders

Sauer has now finished his arguments. The court is now hearing from Ahilan Arulanantham, a professor at the UCLA School of Law who’s arguing for Syrian immigrants.

Arulanantham argues that the Trump administration’s is seeking an open-ended expansion of its immigration power. “The government reads this statue as a blank check,” he said.

Sauer: The T in TPS stands for ‘temporary’

Before wrapping up his argument, Sauer emphasized the issue of the temporary nature of TPS.

“Keep in mind this is temporary protected status,” he said.

He pointed out that a number of the TPS designations go back years, sometimes decades.

That goes to a key Republican complaint about TPS: they say that while it’s supposed to be temporary, it often ends up being extended repeatedly.

Kavanaugh asks about legislative/executive branch powers

Justice Brett Kavanaugh is asking why Congress would have barred courts from considering claims about TPS termination.

Sauer says those decisions should be left to the executive branch, arguing that the decision to grant to revoke protections can have foreign policy implications.

That’s an area where courts have generally given deference to the president.

How much research did Kristi Noem do before terminating TPS?

Some of the liberal justices have really pushed Sauer on the issue of how much the Homeland Security Secretary consulted with the State Department about country conditions.

Advocates have argued that former DHS chief Kristi Noem didn’t really conduct a substantive consultation with State about the conditions of the countries where they were terminating TPS and that means they’re potentially sending people back to countries where they’re at risk.

Sauer is arguing that the secretary can’t force the State Department to respond.

Justices question motives for terminating TPS

Liberal-leaning justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor

are questioning whether racial animus played a part in the administration’s decision to terminate TPS.

Sauer, the government’s lawyer, responded that he “strongly disagrees.”

Barrett asks about the racial dynamic

Justice Amy Coney Barrett jumps in with a question about constitutional claims the migrants have made, which include the argument that race played a role in the decision to end the protections.

She’s another key member of the conservative majority, and one with a personal connection to Haiti. Two of her seven children were adopted from the country.

The Trump administration has denied racial animus played a role in the decision, and Sauer argued the plaintiffs’ constitutional claims are “not a close call.”

Judges question administration lawyer

The three liberal-leaning justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, are grilling Sauer on his main argument.

Their focus: Even if judges can’t question the decision to terminate legal protections, why can’t they weigh arguments about whether Homeland Security followed the steps Congress laid out in the law?

Kagan losing voice & making jokes

Justice Elena Kagan is struggling with some voice issues.

She was questioning Sauer, stopped to cough, and then apologized.

Still struggling as she questioned Sauer further, she then joked that “the likelihood of me asking a follow-up is very diminished.”

That sparked some laughter in the court.

Sauer defends Kristi Noem’s decision-making

Sauer mentioned in his opening statement that when the secretary issued her TPS decisions the fact that her decisions were consistent was a “virtue and not a vice.”

That seemed to be in reference to criticism by immigration advocates that former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem wasn’t doing a substantive consultation with the State Department when it comes to assessing country conditions and deciding whether it was safe enough for them to return home.

Roberts questions link to Trump’s original travel ban

Chief Justice John Roberts questions whether Sauer is seeking a “significant expansion” of the court’s ruling in Trump v. Hawaii, the case where the court upheld Trump’s travel ban for Muslim-majority countries during his first term.

Roberts holds a key vote on the court as both the chief and a member of the conservative majority who has voted against the administration in some cases, like the ruling that stuck down Trump’s tariffs.

And they’re off!

Arguments have started in the TPS case.

The justices first released a number of opinions before launching into oral arguments in this key case.

First up is the federal government. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argues that the law doesn’t allow courts to block or delay Homeland Security decisions, or question any of the steps along the way.

Court voids majority Black congressional district in Louisiana

The Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s second majority Black congressional district in a decision that could open the door for Republican-led states to eliminate Black and Latino electoral districts that tend to favor Democrats and affect the balance of power in Congress.

The court’s conservative majority found that the district, represented by Democrat Cleo Fields, relied too heavily on race. Chief Justice John Roberts had described the district as a “snake” that stretches more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) to link parts of the Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette and Baton Rouge areas.

The decision weakens a landmark voting rights law’s protections against discrimination in redistricting. It’s unclear how much is left of the provision, known as Section 2, the main way to challenge racially discriminatory election practices.

But first, some opinions!

The court is releasing several opinions on previous cases before getting into the TPS-related arguments.

In the first opinion, The court sided with a faith-based pregnancy center that raised First Amendment concerns about an investigation into whether it misled people to discourage abortions.

The high court’s unanimous ruling is a procedural victory for First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, which is challenging a New Jersey probe of its practices.

The conservative-majority court has given abortion opponents high-profile wins in recent years, most notably the watershed case that overturned the nationwide right to abortion in 2022. First Choice, though, had also drawn support from the American Civil Liberties Union, which supports abortion rights but backed the group’s First Amendment concerns.

The Supreme Court’s decision lets First Choice sue over the subpoena in federal court.

TPS holders are demonstrating outside the Supreme Court

Dozens of immigrants who have been protected from deportation under a temporary status are beginning to gather in front of the Supreme Court to follow the arguments on the Trump administration’s attempt to end these protections for Haitians and Syrians.

The Supreme Court will weigh arguments at 10 a.m. The case has wider implications for more than 1.3 million people from 17 countries who have been living and working in the U.S., protected under TPS.

Immigrants and advocates outside the Supreme Court are demanding “equal justice under the law.”

TPS holders plan to offer their testimony. There are performances by musicians from TPS countries and by Los Jornaleros del Norte, a band from Los Angeles made up of current and former day laborers.

Who’s at the podium

Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the government’s top Supreme Court attorney, will argue the case for the Trump administration.

Two lawyers will argue on the other side, since the court is considering the future of legal protections for people from two countries. Ahilan Arulanantham, a professor at the UCLA School of Law, will argue the Syrian case and attorney Geoffrey Pipoly will represent people from Haiti.

The new secretary gets the blame

This lawsuit originally was directed at Kristi Noem, who was Trump’s first Homeland Security secretary.

But when she was fired, and Markwayne Mullin was sworn in as the new DHS secretary, he also got the honor of being the person named in all the lawsuits.

Lawsuits tend to follow the head of the agency or department so when those people change, the new secretary or agency head takes over the role of being named in all the lawsuits, even if they happened before he or she took office.

This even happens when administrations change. For example, advocates sued the first Trump administration over its efforts to terminate TPS, specifically naming his DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

But by the time the case concluded six years later, it was Biden’s DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas who was named in the suit.

How temporary is temporary?

One of the key complaints by conservatives about TPS is that something that is supposed to be temporary essentially becomes permanent.

Republicans often point to TPS designations that are extended repeatedly, even after the reason for the original designation has long passed.

The TPS designation for El Salvador, for example, was first designated in 2001 following devastating earthquakes in the country.

But immigration advocates say there’s no time limit on TPS use, and the administration is trying to send people back to countries still in turmoil.

Conditions in Syria

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, also known as the UN Refugee Agency, says that Syria’s operational contexts reflect a dual dynamic of large-scale returns and persistent humanitarian needs.

As of March 2026, 15.6 million Syrians required assistance, while over 1.5 million refugees and 1.8 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) have returned since December 2024, according to the agency.

“Internal displacement remains high (5.5 million), underscoring that returns are occurring within a still-fragile system with strained absorption capacity,” said the UN agency in a report.

Conditions in Haiti

Haiti has not had a president since Jovenel Moïse was killed in July 2021 at his private residence.

The government hopes to hold the first round of elections by year’s end, but experts say that’s unlikely given the surge in gang violence.

A recent assessment from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) assessment reveals “grave protection risks and rapidly shrinking access to public services” for civilians in Haiti, as the country faces one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

The report notes that conditions could deteriorate further as political instability and violence and clashes between gangs and security forces continue.

“Millions of people in Haiti continue to face a compounding crisis of food insecurity, forced displacement, deadly disease outbreaks, and surging violence,” said Alice Ribes, emergency country director for the IRC in Haiti. “Public services in many areas have collapsed under gang rule, leaving people with limited or no access to clean drinking water, food, medical care, and education.”

Bill to protect TPS

On April 16, in a rare bipartisan moment, the House passed legislation that would extend TPS for Haitians.

The bill, pushed forward by House Democrats with a group of Republicans over the objections of the GOP leadership, would require a three-year extension of temporary protected status for Haitians by the Trump administration. That would allow hundreds of thousands of qualifying immigrants to remain in the United States without fear of deportation.

But it faces uncertainty in the Senate, and President Trump would almost certainly seek to veto it.

Democratic lawmakers urge the SCOTUS to support TPS

Democratic Senator Edward J. Markey and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, both of Massachusetts, Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester, of Delaware, and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of Florida, asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to reject the administrations attempts to terminate TPS.

They were joined by a coalition of senior, workers and advocates from the American Business Immigration Coalition, and the National Domestic Workers Alliance, among other organizations.

“TPS holders serve as a backbone for families and our economy—caring for our elders and loved ones through illness, strengthening our communities, and making innumerable contributions daily,” Pressley. “Our message to the Supreme Court today is simple: do your job, uphold the law, save lives, and protect our communities.”

What the administration says

The administration’s claims that TPS holders can safely return to their home countries, where conditions have changed since the protection was originally granted.

Advocates argue that safe conditions do not exist for people to return to their countries of origin. They point out that the government is engaging in a contradiction, given that the State Department warns U.S. citizens not to travel to Haiti or Syria due to violence, instability, and limited access to basic services.

“These terminations have come without credible evidence that conditions have improved,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and Chief Executive Officer of Global Refuge, one of the largest faith-based nonprofit organizations serving refugees.

“The administration is essentially arguing two things at once: that these countries are too dangerous for American tourists, but safe enough to deport families to. Policy makers cannot credibly hold both positions at the same time,” Vignarajah said.

What advocates say

Immigrant advocates argue that the administration’s decision to end TPS is not based on conditions in the countries of origin. They contend that, on the contrary, it is part of a broader policy aimed at deporting not only those who entered the country illegally, but also hundreds of thousands of people who have been residing in the country legally.

“By trying to kill TPS, they are attacking people who are living and working here legally, paying fees and taxes, following all the rules,” said José Palma, coordinator at the National TPS Alliance. “They are de-documenting people… it’s cruel, arbitrary, pointless, needless, and wrong.”

Viles Dorsainvil, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Haitian Support Center, and a Haitian TPS holder, said “TPS provides dignity, stability, and hope... TPS represents more than protection. It represents the ability of families to stay together.”

Public Rights Project, a non-governmental that helps local governments with litigation, filed an amicus brief outlining the economic, workforce and public service impacts cities would face if TPS is revoked.

The brief was filed on April 13 on behalf of a coalition of 47 local governments, mayors and local leaders across the country urging the Court to preserve TPS.

Settle in for a lengthy session

The court has set aside 80 minutes for arguments, but it would be unsurprising if they last two hours or longer.

Justice Clarence Thomas goes first

In the post-pandemic era, the other justices allow the 77-year-old Thomas, the longest-serving member of the court, to pose a question or two before the free-for-all begins. In a second round of questioning, the justices ask questions in order of seniority. Chief Justice John Roberts, whose center chair makes him the most senior, gets the first crack.

Court begins at 10 a.m., Eastern time, but the livestream won’t start right away

The justices have some business to take care of before arguments get going. They’ll issue a decision in at least one case that was argued during the fall or winter, and the justice who wrote the majority opinion in each case will read a summary from the bench. Then, the court will ceremonially swear in lawyers to the Supreme Court bar. Once that’s done, the livestream should begin.

Cole Allen wore black pants, a black shirt and a red tie as he snapped the image in his room at the Washington Hilton, where Trump and hundreds of journalists were meeting for a gala Saturday night, authorities say.

The 31-year-old from Torrance, California, was captured when he tried to race past security barricades near the hotel's ballroom, prompting an exchange of gunfire with Secret Service agents tasked with safeguarding the event, investigators say.

New details emerged in a court filing made by prosecutors who want Allen to remain in custody. A hearing is set for Thursday.

The government said Allen repeatedly made online checks to keep track of Trump’s status that night, including live coverage of the president exiting his vehicle at the Hilton hotel. Investigators said preset emails with an “Apology and Explanation” attachment were sent at approximately 8:30 p.m.

“He intended to kill and fired his shotgun while trying to breach security and attack his target. Put simply, the defendant poses an uncommonly serious danger to the community if released pending trial. The defendant’s lack of criminal history and other personal circumstances do not alter this conclusion,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Jones wrote.

Trump, a Republican, was uninjured. A Secret Service officer wearing a bullet-resistant vest was shot in the vest and survived.

Allen appeared in court on Monday and was charged with the attempted assassination of the president as authorities suggested an attack that disrupted one of Washington’s glitziest events had been planned for at least several weeks. He did not speak at length during the quick court appearance, as is customary. One of his lawyers, Tezira Abe, noted he had no criminal record and said he “is presumed innocent at this time.”

Trump was rushed off the stage by his security team Saturday night and appeared at the White House two hours later, still in his tuxedo.

“When you’re impactful, they go after you. When you’re not impactful, they leave you alone,” he said. “They seem to think he was a lone wolf.”

An FBI affidavit filed Monday revealed other details about the planning behind the assault, with authorities alleging that Allen on April 6 reserved a room for himself at the Washington hotel where the event would be held weeks later under its typical tight security. He traveled by train cross-country from California, checking himself into the Washington Hilton a day before the dinner with a room reserved for the weekend.

The Republican administration adopted this strategy after federal courts thwarted President Donald Trump’s efforts to stop offshore wind development through executive action. Three agreements have been announced.

U.S. Reps. Jared Huffman of California, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, and Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, are demanding information about the first and largest of the three. Under a deal made public in March, French company TotalEnergies is getting $1 billion — essentially a refund of its leases for offshore wind projects off North Carolina and New York— if it invests the money in fossil fuel projects instead.

Huffman said that is a “scam” and the administration is going to "light a lot of federal taxpayer money on fire if we let them."

In a letter sent Wednesday to TotalEnergies and provided to The Associated Press, Huffman and Raskin are letting the company know that Democrats have begun an investigation, are demanding documents and communications and are advising the CEO not to take the money. The letter outlines the ways they think the deal appears to be illegal.

“You can’t come into the United States and do a backroom deal like this, that just essentially treats the treasury as a slush fund, and walk away with a billion dollars," Huffman said.

Asked for comment, TotalEnergies pointed to its news release when the payout was announced. CEO Patrick Pouyanné said at the time that TotalEnergies renounced U.S. offshore wind development in exchange for the reimbursement of the lease fees, “considering that the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country’s interest.”

Nearly $2 billion in payouts so far

In the latest deals announced Monday, the administration said Bluepoint Wind and Golden State Wind agreed to end their leases in exchange for reimbursements totaling nearly $900 million, provided they invest equally in fossil fuels. Trump has gone all in on fossil fuels for generating electricity, which he says will lower costs for families, increase reliability and help the U.S. maintain global leadership in artificial intelligence.

Both Bluepoint and Golden State are co-owned by Ocean Winds, a joint venture of EDP Renewables and French energy giant Engie. Michael Brown, CEO of Ocean Winds North America, said that when market conditions change, “we must adapt.”

Opponents of offshore wind projects praised the administration for being creative.

“This is the latest strategy and we think it’s a winner,” Robin Shaffer, president of Protect Our Coast New Jersey, said Wednesday. Shaffer said the administration “is well within their rights to do this and private businesses can’t be forced to build anything.”

But to the top Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, it is a "bailout for fossil fuel donors dressed up as a deal.”

“Donald Trump spent years calling offshore wind subsidies a waste of taxpayer money," Schumer said in a statement. “Now his administration is handing nearly $2 billion of those very same taxpayer dollars to companies to abandon clean energy projects that would have powered millions of American homes and created thousands of good-paying union jobs.”

Once the deals are complete, Ocean Winds will have one remaining U.S. offshore wind project, SouthCoast Wind off Massachusetts. Its development has slowed under Trump.

Amber Hewett, senior director of offshore wind energy at the National Wildlife Federation, said forcing developers to abandon offshore wind energy for more oil and gas sets the U.S. further behind in efforts to curb climate change. Burning coal, oil and gas is the largest contributor to global climate change by far.

Lease buyouts are part of a campaign against offshore wind

When Trump returned to office in January 2025 he ordered a temporary halt to leasing and permitting for wind energy projects. His administration has paused work wind farms under construction, canceled plans to use large areas of federal waters for new offshore wind development and added an extra layer of review for wind and solar projects.

Federal judges allowed construction on the wind farms to resume, struck down the Day One order blocking wind energy development, and stopped the administration from requiring that all solar and wind energy projects on federal lands and waters be personally approved by Trump's interior secretary.

Energy law expert Kristoffer Svendsen said that after the administration's losses in the courts, the lease buyouts appear to be a last attempt to close down as many offshore wind projects as possible. He was not aware of any other arrangements where energy projects owners have been paid to walk away.

“This saga never ends. They continue to surprise the industry and those of us following the industry,” said Svendsen, assistant dean for energy law at the George Washington University Law School.

Svendsen said he expects to see energy companies head to markets in Europe and Asia because the future for new offshore wind development in the United States is “quite bleak.”

“At this point if you’re interested in offshore wind, you’ll most likely go to a jurisdiction where they want you,” he said.

The global wind industry installed a record 165 gigawatts of onshore and offshore wind last year, with 138 countries now powering their economies with wind energy, the Global Wind Energy Council said last week in its annual report. That is enough to power 118 million households. The Asian market, led by China and India, had 80% of the global total.

David Carroll, CEO and chief renewables officer for Engie North America, also thinks offshore wind will not advance in the United States in the next few years. He cited the administration's pulling of permits that were granted after years of work and much money spent, and the stopping of fully permitted projects under construction, eroding business certainty.

“The offshore wind industry does not have a strong future here in the U.S. And that’s unfortunate,” Carroll, who is chair of the board at the American Clean Power Association, said in an interview this month. “The Northeast needs more energy and that is one of the very key ways we can get energy in the Northeast.”

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Almost two years later, federal authorities say a different man charged with attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner on Saturday was arrested with a shotgun and a semiautomatic pistol he brought with him to Washington, D.C., on an Amtrak train from California.

It's just the latest security incident involving long-distance public ground transportation — and it won't be the last unless Amtrak and other companies find a way to address passenger screening and security at their stations, union officials who represent on-train employees say.

An Amtrak spokesperson declined to discuss security or to say whether Cole Tomas Allen followed the company's protocol for transporting firearms. Amtrak is working with federal investigators to provide his travel information, the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. A lawyer representing Allen notes he has no criminal record and is presumed innocent.

Policy for transporting firearms

Amtrak requires firearms on its trains to be declared, unloaded, secured in a hard case and to meet certain size and weight requirements. Those weapons are only allowed in checked baggage, similar to policies for firearms being transported via passenger airplane.

But unlike airports where passengers undergo Transportation Safety Administration screening of their carry-on bags and their person, train passengers are not screened by security officials, whether they board at the unstaffed station in unincorporated Lamy, New Mexico, or at the bustling Union Station in Washington.

Sean Jeans-Gail, vice president of government affairs and policy at the Rail Passengers Association, said Amtrak and many other ground transportation companies barred weapons on trains and buses after 9/11, but none put security measures in place to detect or screen every passenger for firearms. In 2010, Congress passed a law requiring Amtrak and others to allow firearms to be transported as long as they are checked.

In most cases, that means weapons are secured and placed on baggage cars accessible only by employees. But not every train has dedicated baggage cars. Several former Amtrak employees said when they don't have baggage cars, the bags are zip-tied and labeled to show a firearm is present so workers can see if they are tampered with.

“It is a little hard to take a train hostage, to say it is different than the post 9/11 concerns raised regarding an airplane,” Jeans-Gail said. “Amtrak has been safe from gun violence largely. The main incidents have been police shootings or interdictions.”

Incidents of concern

Railway worker unions started requesting Amtrak and other companies look at security during the COVID-19 pandemic, when enforcing a mask mandate on trains was difficult at best. They asked again after an influx of participants in the Jan. 6 riots came to Washington by train and rowdy behavior on the way home raised concerns.

Jared Cassity, the national safety and legislative director for the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers — Transportation Division union, or SMART-TD, said Amtrak conductors and other on-train workers often don't speak publicly about incidents for fear of retribution from the company.

“Operator assaults are the most common conversations we have with our membership, but guns on trains is second or third in terms of concerns for workers,” Cassity said.

SMART-TD has had some luck pushing state legislation and has two bills pending before Congress. That legislation would clear up jurisdictional challenges making it easier to arrest and charge someone when a rail worker is assaulted during a trip and would make interfering with a rail worker during their duties a crime comparable to interfering with an airline employee on a flight.

Cassity said the conductor who identified the alleged potential mass shooter in 2024 had just taken union-sponsored security training. He received some recognition but the arrest didn't get much news coverage.

A 2022 fatal shooting on an Amtrak train near Lee's Summit, Missouri, did get media attention after the train didn't stop for staff to seek medical attention for the victim until it reached a station — delaying medical care. A federal jury said in 2024 that Amtrak should pay 90% of a $158 million award to the man's family, who had alleged negligence including failure to implement reasonable security measures.

Michael Callanan, a former Amtrak employee and now a rail safety consultant, said he's heard of other security incidents involving smuggling drugs and other illegal items because of the lack of security screenings.

“They never want to spend money on infrastructure or security,” Callanan said. “Maybe this shooter will be a significant enough of an event to push Amtrak to fund things.”

Callanan said Amtrak police officers are not comparable to TSA agents. He said they are mainly charged with patrolling stations, doing track checks and sometimes riding lines and walking trains, but one officer can have a huge amount of territory.

“There's one officer who I think patrols from Orlando to Miami,” he said. “Something has to be done to increase security.”

Geography presents a problem

Jeans-Gail said the Rail Passengers Association supports increasing Amtrak police patrols on trains, but isn't in favor of adding TSA-style security before boarding at the roughly 500 stations across the country.

“The thought of expanding that, even outside of the logistical issues, if you look at the experience of riding the Amtrak network it’s very impractical because it ranges from New York's Penn Station where it's very active, many points of access to the station, unlike an airport where all traffic is filtered to specific points,” he said. “Then you have Whitefish, Montana, on the other side of the spectrum — a rustic structure with not a lot of traffic.”

Cassity said that difference in security needs doesn't escape him. The union isn't expecting a one-size fits every station solution like airports, but he wants the conversation to start.

“We have to change the narrative about safety and realize something has to be done to prevent guns from getting onto the trains freely,” he said. “We sympathize with the challenge this is for Amtrak. ... When you start talking about how you secure the most rural places, and those being the majority of stations, it becomes a daunting, daunting task. ... But we need to have the conversation.”

Paris Saint-Germain's 5-4 win against Bayern Munich on Tuesday felt more like an NBA game than a traditional soccer match and set new goalscoring records for the sport's biggest club tournament.

And it might not be just a one-off. The thrilling first leg of the semifinals in Paris points toward a growing trend as some coaches embrace a high-risk, high-reward strategy that is leaving fans breathless.

PSG coach Luis Enrique summed it up perfectly, telling French broadcaster Canal+ that "we deserved to win, but we also deserved a draw, and we would have even deserved to lose, because this game was that incredible.”

Soccer's new age of entertainers

Despite being the world's most popular sport, soccer has been criticized, in the United States in particular, because of the low-scoring nature of games, which can result in single-goal victories or even goalless ties over 90 minutes of play.

Compare that to the high octane, high-scoring NBA or NFL and it is understandable why soccer has taken time to fully grab the attention of U.S. fans.

But Champions League holder PSG is at the vanguard of soccer's new entertainers, with Luis Enrique an uncompromising coach, determined to reach new levels of excitement in his pursuit of dominance.

PSG became champion of Europe for the first time last year by beating Inter Milan 5-0 in the final in one of the most spectacular performances in the tournament's history. It completed a trophy treble for the French club, which also won its national league title and cup last season.

Luis Enrique also won the Champions League with Barcelona in 2015 and on Tuesday became the fastest coach to record 50 victories in the competitions — proving his all-action approach is working.

The attacking trend is catching on

It is no surprise then that his methods are being echoed elsewhere. Not least by Bayern, which has blazed a trail through the Champions League this term under Vincent Kompany and already clinched the German title.

PSG, with 43 goals, is the highest-scoring team in the Champions League this season. Bayern is second with 42.

Tuesday's nine-goal thriller was the highest-scoring semifinal in the history of the competition and neither club is talking about changing its approach for the second leg in Munich next week.

“I asked my staff how many goals we think we’ll have to score, and we agreed on three,” said Luis Enrique. "We’ll show the same mentality. We’ll be going to win the match.”

PSG's Ballon d'Or winner Ousmane Dembele is also ready for another high-scoring affair.

“We won’t change our philosophy. We want to attack and so do they, so I think a great game is in the offing,” Dembele told Canal+.

Kompany, who was a serial title-winning defender for Manchester City in his playing days, is showing his offensive flair as a coach.

“It’s one thing to look at the goals conceded – normally, five goals away from home in a Champions League semi-final, you’re out,” he told Amazon Prime. "But if you look at the chances we created, we could have scored more. And that has to give us belief.”

A clash of styles

Soccer has always involved contrasting styles of attack and defense. Brazil has traditionally been a team that embraces the individual flair of its players. Italy has been more defensive and has nullified opponents' attacking strengths.

Two-time Champions League-winning coach Jose Mourinho has taken a more pragmatic approach to winning the competition — shutting opponents down with well-organized and powerful teams. Pep Guardiola, by contrast, has tried to dominate games with the ball and has won Europe's top prize on three occasions. That approach has sometimes been used to criticize him when, despite having some of the best players in the world at Man City, he has often fallen short in the Champions League.

It is refreshing to hear both Luis Enrique and Kompany accept the dangers associated with their all-out attacking soccer.

“It’s my job to accept nothing but perfection," said Kompany. "There was a part of the match that was inevitable, and that was the risks that we were both willing to take.”

More goals, more thrills

Higher scoring games are the trend in the Champions League. This season there is an average of well over three goals a game (3.51).

That is above last season's 3.27, which was the previous highest average.

Each of the last five seasons feature in the top seven high-scoring campaigns in the Champions Leagues, pointing to a clear trend toward more attacking soccer since the turn of the decade. In only one of those years did the average drop below three goals a game — in 2022-23 when it dipped to 2.98.

The European Cup was rebranded as the Champions League in 1992. During the 1990s the average goals per game was 2.69 and that figure dropped to 2.59 from 2000-10.

It rose to just under three goals a game (2.95) from 2010-20 and so far this decade the average is three goals a game, with teams loading their lineups with attacking talent.

PSG is led by Dembele, who is flanked by brilliant wingers like Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Desire Doue.

Bayern has England captain Harry Kane, who took his season's tally to 59 goals in 51 appearances for club and country this season when opening the scoring on Tuesday. The German giant has also paid big money for France star Michael Olise and Uruguay forward Luis Diaz. Both also scored at the Parc des Princes.

Barcelona is another leading proponent of thrill-first soccer, and features the spectacular Spanish teenager Lamine Yamal, Brazil winger Raphinha and goal-scoring icon Robert Lewandowski. But its German coach Hansi Flick has been criticized for being too open in Europe - most notably when losing 7-6 on aggregate to Inter Milan in last year's semifinals.

The good news for fans next week is that PSG and Bayern seem determined to stick to their attacking principles, which should serve up another thrilling clash.

“The game there will be the same game – a crazy game between two teams that want to win and score. We need to go there with the same mentality, the same personality, so we can do an amazing job there like we did here,” PSG captain Marquinhos said.

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James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson

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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

The hearing before the House Armed Services Committee was focused on the administration's 2027 military budget proposal, which would boost defense spending to a historic $1.5 trillion. Hegseth and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, stressed the need for more drones, missile defense systems and warships.

Democrats quickly pivoted to the ballooning costs of the war, the huge drawdown of critical U.S. munitions and the bombing of a school that killed children. Some lawmakers also questioned Trump's dealings with allies and President Donald Trump's shifting justification for the conflict.

In one tense exchange, Hegseth told Democratic Rep. Adam Smith that Iran’s nuclear facilities were obliterated in a 2025 attack by the U.S., prompting Smith to question the Trump administration’s reasoning for starting the Iran war.

“We had to start this war, you just said 60 days ago, because the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat,” said Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. “Now you’re saying that it was completely obliterated?”

Hegseth responded by saying that Iran “had not given up their nuclear ambitions” and still had thousands of missiles.

Smith said the war “left us at exactly the same place we were before.”

In his opening statement to lawmakers, Hegseth said dubious Democrats — and some GOP lawmakers — are one of the biggest problems facing America's military operations.

“The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans," Hegseth said.

The war has cost $25 billion so far, the chief financial official for the Pentagon told lawmakers. Jules Hurst III, the acting undersecretary of war for finances, said most of that money was spent on munitions. The military has also spent money on running the operations and replacing equipment.

While a fragile ceasefire is now in place, the U.S. and Israel launched the war Feb. 28 without congressional oversight. House and Senate Democrats have failed to pass multiple war power resolutions that would have required President Donald Trump to halt the conflict until Congress authorizes further action.

Republicans say they will keep faith in Trump’s wartime leadership, for now, citing Iran’s nuclear program, the potential for talks to resume and the high stakes of withdrawal. Still, GOP lawmakers are eager for the conflict to end, and some are eyeing future votes that could become an important test for the president if the war drags on.

Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the committee, opened Wednesday's hearing by focusing on Trump's call to increase military spending. He pointed to recent increases in defense spending by China, Russia and Iran.

“We don’t have enough munitions, ships, aircraft or autonomous systems to ensure dominance against every adversary," Rogers said. “They are spending more of their GDP on defense than we are.”

Iran's closing of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping corridor for the world's oil, has sent fuel prices skyrocketing and posed problems for Republicans ahead of the midterm elections. The U.S. has responded with a Navy blockade of Iranian shipping and further built up its military forces in the region. Three American aircraft carriers are in the Middle East for the first time in more than 20 years.

The countries appear locked in a stalemate, with Trump unlikely to accept Tehran's latest offer to reopen the strait if the U.S. ends the war, lifts its sea blockade and postpones nuclear talks.

Hegseth has avoided public questioning from lawmakers about the war, although he and Caine have held televised Pentagon briefings. Hegseth has mostly taken questions from conservative journalists, while citing Bible passages to castigate mainstream outlets.

Instead, a judge granted a motion to continue sentencing in Patrick Gamache’s Seminole Wekiva Trail sexual battery case, pushing the next court date to May 19.

Gamache, 20, is asking a judge to throw out his no-contest plea, just weeks before he was set to be sentenced.

No date has been set to hear that motion.

Gamache pleaded no contest in March to sexual battery charges. But his new attorney filed a motion last week to withdraw that plea, claiming Gamache’s previous attorney forced him into accepting it.

[WATCH: Video shows arrest of man accused in sex attack on Seminole Wekiva Trail]

Gamache was arrested in August after deputies say he forced a woman to the ground and assaulted her near the Seminole Wekiva Trail. Deputies found him less than 24 hours later — shirtless and shoeless — standing on the on-ramp to I-4 Eastbound near State Road 434.

At the time of his arrest, Gamache had just been released from jail in Miami days earlier. That release was connected to a 2023 robbery case.

Hegseth told the House Armed Services Committee that boosting next year’s Pentagon budget to an unprecedented $1.5 trillion will “maintain the world’s most powerful and capable military.”

Meanwhile talks on ending the war have stalled. Trump posted an image on social media showing himself carrying a weapon in a war zone, saying “NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!”

The Latest:

Joint Staff Chairman says Trump is making ‘tradeoffs’ in focusing military on Iran

Trump ordered three aircraft carriers into the Middle East — a number not seen since 2003. When asked why the U.S. military withdrew resources from Asia after identifying China as a top threat, the president’s top military advisor told lawmakers that Trump has to make “tradeoffs” when deploying troops.

“I’m confident that the president always carefully considers these readiness tradeoffs and I’m sure he has done so in this case based on the military options that we’ve presented with the associated risks and advice,” Caine said.

Rep. Joe Courtney, a Democrat, fired back by noting that the administration’s own National Defense Strategy released shortly before Trump launched the war said Iran was “weaker and more vulnerable than it has been in decades.” Putting that many troops to confront them, at the expense of other threats “does not, in my opinion, common sense,” Courtney said.

Hegseth engages in tense exchange over Iran’s nuclear program

Hegseth told Democratic Rep. Adam Smith that Iran’s nuclear facilities were obliterated in a 2025 attack by the U.S., prompting Smith to question the Trump administration’s reasoning for starting the Iran war.

“We had to start this war, you just said 60 days ago, because the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat,” Smith said. “Now you’re saying that it was completely obliterated?”

Hegseth responded by saying that Iran “had not given up their nuclear ambitions” and still had thousands of missiles.

Smith said the war “left us at exactly the same place we were before.”

Committee takes a break

The committee is taking a brief recess to vote, which is expected to take about 20-25 minutes.

Top defense official says Iran war costs are estimated at $25 billion so far

During a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, Jules Hurst III, the acting undersecretary of war for finances, said most of the expense has been on munitions, but the military has also spent money on running the operations and equipment replacement.

“We will formulate a supplemental through the White House that will come to Congress once we have a full assessment of the cost of the conflict,” Hurst added.

Caine says his goal is to tell civilian leaders what they need to hear

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the committee in his opening statement that he wants to emulate Gen. George C. Marshall, who served during World War II and later helped Europe recover from the conflict.

“His commitment to civilian control and military and nonpartisan military remains a constant standard in something I borrow from often,” Caine said. “I strive daily to emulate his candor, delivering the facts to our leaders and telling them always what they need to hear, not always what they want to hear.”

Hegseth slams Iran war critics as ‘biggest adversary we face’

“The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary, we face at this point are the reckless, feckless and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans,” the U.S. defense secretary told lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee.

Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat, told Hegseth that he finds it “absurd” to claim that the Pentagon’s strategy is built on realism when the war in Iran seems like “the exact opposite of realism.”

Smith also said Hegseth needs to explain what the Trump administration’s goals were for the conflict.

“We’ve seen the cost, and the cost is very, very high,” he said.

Hegseth argued that the historically high Pentagon budget request will maintain “the world’s most powerful and capable military as we grapple with a complex threat environment across multiple theaters.”

Democratic lawmakers calls on Hegseth to answer where the Iran war is going

Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that he finds it “absurd” to claim that the Pentagon’s strategy is built on realism.

“We started a full scale war in the Middle East against Iran to try to reshape the Middle East,” Smith said, adding that was the exact opposite of realism.

Smith said Hegseth needs to provide an explanation of what the Trump administration’s goals are in the Middle East.

“Where is this going? What is the plan to achieve our objectives? We’ve seen the cost, and the cost is very, very high,” he said.

Republican House armed services chair praises Trump’s historic military budget

Mike Rogers, the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, praised Trump’s $1.5 trillion plan to fund the military in 2027, stating that it “accounts for the true cost of American deterrence.”

“This will enable us to truly catch up in our modernization efforts by quickly fielding new munitions, aircraft, ships, land, space and autonomous systems to replenish and expand our arsenal,” Rogers said.

Pete Hegseth hearing is underway

A House hearing with the defense secretary has started with a packed hearing room and many other people crowded into the hallway outside.

“Let the public in,” several people chanted outside as lawmakers found their seats. They also yelled at Hegseth as he passed them in the hallway.

The hearing is officially to discuss the Pentagon’s proposed budget, but it will also be the first time that Hegseth publicly answers questions on the Iran war on Capitol Hill. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, is seated beside the defense secretary.

A deal between the US and Iran will take ‘political will’

Grossi said the IAEA participated in U.S.-Iran nuclear talks in February, but not the ceasefire negotiations mediated by Pakistan. He said the agency has been in discussions separately with the U.S. and informally with Iran.

The latest proposal from Iran would postpone discussions on its nuclear program but end its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. lifts its blockade and ends the war.

Grossi described that as an indication Iran wants to sequence how it confronts the objectives mandated by the U.S., including curbing its ballistic missile program and dealing with its proxies Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen.

“Where the frustration kicks in, apparently for both, is that they do not seem to come to agreement, or be at an eye-to-eye level on what needs to be done first, or on how,” he said.

IAEA has talked to Russia and others about taking Iran’s highly enriched uranium

The U.N. nuclear watchdog believes a large percentage of Iran’s highly enriched uranium was stored at Isfahan when Israel and the U.S. bombarded Iran in June 2025, “and it has been there ever since,” Grossi said.

Grossi said the IAEA has discussed with Russia and others the possibility of sending Iran’s highly enriched uranium out of the country — a complex operation that would require either a political agreement or a major U.S. military operation in hostile territory.

“What’s going to be important is that that material leaves Iran” or is blended to reduce its enrichment, he said.

Iran’s highly enriched uranium likely is at the Isfahan site, the UN nuclear chief tells the AP

The majority of Iran’s highly enriched uranium is likely still at its Isfahan nuclear complex, which was bombarded by U.S. airstrikes last year and faced less intense attacks in this year’s U.S.-Israeli war, the head of the U.N. nuclear agency told The Associated Press.

Rafael Grossi said in an interview on Tuesday that the International Atomic Energy Agency has satellite images showing the effects of the latest U.S.-Israeli airstrikes against Iran and that “we continue to get information.”

Iran has 440.9 kilograms (972 pounds) of uranium that is enriched up to 60% purity, a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%, according to the agency. Grossi has said the IAEA believes roughly 200 kilograms (about 440 pounds) is stored in tunnels at the Isfahan site. The stockpile could be weaponized into as many as 10 nuclear bombs, Grossi told the AP last year.

Moscow praises OPEC as stabilizing force as UAE announces plans to leave

Speaking to journalists Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia had no plans to leave OPEC+ and praised the organization’s work in stabilizing energy markets.

“This is a very important area of work and it is especially crucial at the current moment, when energy markets are, to put it mildly, in turmoil,” he said.

However, he stressed that Moscow respected the UAE’s decision. “We welcome statements from Abu Dhabi that the Emirates will continue to take a responsible position in the energy market,” Peskov said.

Merz says relationship with Trump is ‘as good as ever’

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said his relationship with President Donald Trump remains “as good as ever,” but that he had “had doubts from the very beginning about what was started there with the war in Iran.”

“We are suffering considerably in Germany and in Europe from the consequences of, for example, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz,” Merz said on Wednesday. This hurts energy supplies and the economy. “And in that regard, I urge that this conflict be resolved.”

Trump had earlier attacked Merz on his Truth Social platform: “The Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” Trump wrote.

Trump was responding to Merz’s comments on Monday, when the German Chancellor said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and criticized Washington’s lack of strategy in the war.

Trump says Iran ‘better get smart soon’

U.S. President Donald Trump criticized Iran’s handling of nuclear negotiations, saying it has failed to move toward a deal.

“Iran can’t get their act together. They don’t know how to sign a nonnuclear deal. They better get smart soon!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Trump’s post featured an AI-generated image of himself holding a weapon amid explosions with the caption “NO MORE MR. NICE GUY.”

Tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program rose before the war broke out, with Trump repeatedly vowing to ensure the country can’t build a nuclear weapon. Iran long has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, though it enriched uranium to nearly weapons-grade levels.

Iran has carried out at least 21 executions since start of war

The U.N.’s human rights chief said Iran has executed at least 21 people since the start of the war with the United States and Israel on Feb. 28.

Volker Türk says at least nine people were executed in connection with huge protests across Iran in January, while another 10 were executed for alleged membership in opposition groups, and two others on espionage charges.

More than 4,000 people have been arrested on national security-related charges in Iran since the end of February, his office says.

Lebanese army soldier killed in Israeli strike

A Lebanese army soldier was killed Wednesday along with his brother in an Israeli strike that targeted the motorcycle on which they were traveling from the soldier’s work post to his home in the village of al-Souaneh, the army said in a statement.

The Lebanese army has stood on the sidelines during the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, which began on March 2 when the militant group launched a salvo of missiles into Israel, two days after the U.S. and Israel launched their attacks on Iran. But soldiers have frequently gotten caught in the crossfire.

A total of 20 Lebanese army soldiers have been killed by Israeli strikes since March 2, most of them while en route to or from their duty stations, the army said. Altogether, more than 2,500 people have been killed in Lebanon during the war and during a shaky ceasefire implemented earlier this month that has reduced but not halted the fighting.

Iran’s highly enriched uranium likely at Isfahan, IAEA says

The majority of Iran’s highly enriched uranium is likely still at its Isfahan nuclear complex, which was bombarded by airstrikes last year and faced less intense attacks in this year’s U.S.-Israeli war, the head of the U.N. nuclear agency told The Associated Press.

Rafael Grossi said in an interview on Tuesday that the International Atomic Energy Agency has satellite images showing the effects of the latest U.S.-Israeli airstrikes against Iran and that “we continue to get information.”

IAEA inspections ended at Isfahan when Israel last June launched a 12-day war that saw the United States bomb three Iranian nuclear sites.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog believes a large percentage of Iran’s highly enriched uranium “was stored there in June 2025 when the 12-day war broke out, and it has been there ever since,” Grossi said.

Pakistan's weekly oil bill rises to $800M from $300M before Iran war

Pakistan’s weekly oil import bill has surged by about 167% due to soaring global prices, adding strain to the cash-strapped nation’s fragile economy, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Wednesday.

In televised remarks during a Cabinet meeting, Sharif said the weekly oil import bill had risen from $300 million before the conflict to $800 million.

He said the government is taking steps to conserve energy and reduce oil consumption, and that diplomatic efforts to promote peace are still ongoing.

Iran’s rial currency hits record low

Iran’s national rial currency hit a record hit Wednesday of 1.8 million to $1 as a shaky ceasefire with the U.S. and Israel still holds.

The rial had remained stable for weeks during the war, which began Feb. 28, in part because there was little trading or imports coming into the country.

The rial began to slide two days ago, hitting the record low Wednesday.

Experts warn the fall of the rial is likely to further fuel inflation in a country where many imported goods, from food and medicine to electronics and raw materials, are affected by the dollar rate.

The war is now in a ceasefire, but a U.S. blockade has continued to increase pressure on Iran’s already-battered economy, cutting into a key source of government revenue and hard currency by stopping or intercepting oil shipments.

Pakistan continuing efforts to ease US-Iran tensions, PM says

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Wednesday his government is continuing efforts to help ease tensions between the United States and Iran.

Speaking during a Cabinet meeting in Islamabad, he said a “marathon session” was held in the capital during an initial round of direct talks between the two sides on April 11, leading to progress on a ceasefire that remains in place.

He said Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi visited Pakistan over the weekend during the ceasefire, where another extended round of talks took place between Iran and Pakistan. Araghchi later traveled to Oman, returned briefly, and then departed for Russia, Sharif said.

Sharif said before leaving for Moscow, Araghchi spoke to him by phone and “assured me that after consulting with his leadership, he would respond as soon as possible.” He did not specify what Araghchi would respond to, but Pakistan has said it is seeking to host a second round of talks between the United States and Iran.

Hegseth to face Congress for the first time since Iran war began

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will face questioning from members of Congress for the first time since the Iran war began.

The hearing Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee will focus on the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion military budget for 2027.

Democratic lawmakers are likely to grill Hegseth on the Iran war’s costs and huge drawdown of critical munitions. While a ceasefire is now in place, the U.S. and Israel launched the war Feb. 28 without congressional oversight.

The Metropolitan Police said the attack in the Golders Green area left two men, ages 34 and 76, hospitalized with knife wounds.

Counterterrorism police are investigating whether the stabbings are linked to recent arson attacks on synagogues and other Jewish sites in the British capital.

Politicians condemned the stabbings. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that “attacks on our Jewish community are attacks on Britain," and called a meeting of the government's emergency committee to discuss the response.

Metropolitan Police chief Mark Rowley said that it was “another horrendous act of violence directed against our Jewish communities.”

But some British Jews expressed anger at authorities' failure to keep them safe. Rowley faced shouts of “shame on you” and “resign” from bystanders when he made a statement to media at the scene of the stabbings.

The security organization Shomrim said that a suspect “was seen running along Golders Green Road armed with a knife and attempting to stab Jewish members of the public." It said that the suspect was detained by Shomrim members and arrested by police, who used a stun gun on him.

Surveillance camera footage showed a man beside a bus stop donning a kippah, or traditional skullcap, before a passerby with a knife lunges at him.

Police said that the suspect also tried to stab police officers, but none was injured. Rowley said the suspect, whose name hasn't been released, had “a history of serious violence and mental health issues.”

Arson attacks in recent weeks targeted Jewish sites in London, including a charity's ambulances in Golders Green and a synagogue a few miles away.

“It happens in Israel, but happening on our own doorstep, of course it’s shocking,” Golders Green resident Moishe Grunfeld said. “I have kids, I have grandchildren.”

Britain’s Jewish community is long-established, but tiny as a percentage of the population, numbering about 300,000. The northwest London suburb of Golders Green is one of its epicenters, home to kosher restaurants, Jewish schools and several dozen synagogues, as well as large Asian and Middle Eastern communities.

“There must be absolutely no place for antisemitism in society,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan said.

No one was injured in the arson incidents. Several people, ranging in age from teens to people in their 40s, have been arrested and charged.

Counterterror officers are investigating whether the arson attacks were the work of Iranian proxies. The U.K. has accused Iran of using criminal proxies to conduct attacks on European soil targeting Iranian opposition media outlets and the Jewish community. Britain’s MI5 domestic intelligence service says that more than 20 “potentially lethal” Iran-backed plots were disrupted in the year ending in October.

Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, said that Jews face a campaign of violence and intimidation and that words of condemnation are no longer sufficient.

“This must be a moment that demands meaningful action from every institution, every community, every leader and every decent person in our country," he said. “This is a hatred that we must face down together."

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said that the world must “wake up” to a rising wave of anti-Jewish hatred.

“In one of the great capital cities of the West, it has become dangerous to openly walk the streets as a Jew,” Herzog posted on X. “This is an unacceptable situation.”

The number of antisemitic incidents reported across the U.K. has soared since the attack by Hamas-led militants on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza, according to the Community Security Trust. The group recorded 3,700 incidents in 2025, up from 1,662 in 2022.

In October 2025, an attacker drove his car into people gathered outside a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur and stabbed one person to death. Another person died during the attack after being inadvertently shot by police.

The Democrat with a personal fortune estimated at $2.4 billion wants wealthy people and corporations to pay higher taxes. He's endorsed by a progressive advocacy group that believes billionaires shouldn't exist. He founded one of the world's largest hedge funds yet he's the candidate taking the heaviest hits from business groups.

“I'm the billionaire who wants to tax other billionaires,” he's fond of saying, though he's given only tenuous backing to a billionaires' tax proposal likely to appear before California voters in November.

Steyer has long leaned into the contradictions between his business success and political views. While his hedge fund invested in fossil fuels, Steyer spent millions to protect a California law aimed at curbing planet-warming emissions. As a presidential candidate in 2019 vying to succeed President Donald Trump, another rich man, Steyer championed eliminating corporate money from politics.

“I’m not one of the people who begrudges people’s success,” Steyer told The Associated Press, referring to businesspeople who become wealthy in California. “If you’re going to come here and build a company and make a ton of money, great.”

“But you’re part of a system — you’re depending on a system built by, basically, poor people,” he continued. “If you aren’t willing to pay your fair share, I feel like you’re spitting on those people.”

His stances, often unpopular with other billionaires, have earned him staunch support from some and persistent skepticism from others. Despite his vast wealth, progressive supporters perceive him as “one of the good ones” who will stand up to monied interests. But critics in both parties view him as disingenuous and making unrealistic promises to appeal to voters. Democratic rivals accuse him of trying to buy the election, noting he's spending nearly 30 times the amount of his nearest party opponent on ads.

After decades of using his pocketbook to influence politics and policy, Steyer is now a leading contender in the race to govern the nation’s most populous state and one of the world’s largest economies ahead of the June 2 primary. His former hedge fund's investments have been a persistent topic of criticism from his Democratic rivals.

“You made the billions that you're using to fund your campaign off fossil fuels,” former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter charged during Tuesday night's debate. Steyer responded by noting business groups are spending to oppose him: “That's how you know I'm for real.”

From businessman to megadonor

Steyer, 68, founded Farallon Capital Management in 1986 in San Francisco. He earned the respect of business peers for the firm's rapid success and learned to weather criticism from environmentalists for the company’s stakes in oil and coal. In 2012, he left and founded NextGen America, a group encouraging young people to vote.

Much of his political giving has focused on climate change, including a $5 million donation in 2010 to oppose a California ballot proposition that would have suspended a law requiring the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The climate law prevailed. Starting in 2013, he used the political arm of NextGen to back governor and U.S. Senate candidates seen as strong on climate with mixed success.

Steyer has spent more than $62 million on California ballot measures, including an unsuccessful effort in 2020 to keep a law that eliminated cash bail. He was one of the largest donors to a successful 2016 measure to tax tobacco products to raise money for healthcare for low-income Californians.

His contributions have been met with some cynicism. Longtime Sacramento strategist Rob Stutzman, a Republican, pointed to an ad Steyer paid for last year that prominently features him urging voters to support a redistricting ballot measure. It was an initiative championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Steyer had no involvement other than simply spending on advertising.

Steyer “has always been a self-promoter with his dollars,” Stutzman said.

Making friends and enemies

Steyer says he wants to tackle three main crises: climate change, California's high cost of living and threats from the Trump administration.

Hundreds of people gathered at a ping-pong club and bar in San Francisco recently to drink cocktails and nibble on hors d’oeuvres — on the campaign dime — as Steyer touted his commitment to fighting climate change. His plan is light on specifics but includes defending the state’s cap-and-trade program.

Some major environmental groups have endorsed him. Progressive organizations have also backed him, including Our Revolution, which was founded by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and advocates for ridding politics of corporate and billionaire influence. State Assemblyman Alex Lee, chair of the progressive caucus, said he's backing Steyer in part due to his support for a government-run healthcare system, an idea that's failed repeatedly in Sacramento.

Lee was hesitant to back a billionaire but said Steyer is different.

“He is someone who became wealthy in his lifetime,” Lee said, “but didn’t go off and become (Mark) Zuckerberg level.”

Meanwhile, Pacific Gas & Electric, one of the nation's largest utilities, spent $10 million to oppose him. Steyer has vowed to “break up utility monopolies” to bring down Californians’ notoriously high electricity rates. One ad funded in part by PG&E says Steyer isn't a “different type of billionaire” as he claims. The California Chamber of Commerce says Steyer will raise costs, not lower them.

“His policy promises will cost billions, driving investment out of California and worsening the state’s affordability crisis,” chamber spokesperson John Myers said in a statement.

Steyer's 2020 presidential bid flopped

It remains to be seen whether money and endorsements will translate into votes. Some political observers say it would be evident by now if Steyer was poised to break away from the pack, given his spending blitz.

Money wasn't enough in the 2020 Democratic presidential contest. Steyer staked his campaign largely on appealing to voters of color, highlighting inequalities in healthcare access, the environment and criminal justice system. In South Carolina, he spent $24 million on ads — more than all the other candidates combined — but dropped out after finishing third.

He often garnered attention for his quirks over his policies — the red tartan tie and colorful belt he made part of his campaign trail uniform, his dance moves to a performance by rapper Juvenile.

Steyer had planned to spend $100 million, and his wealth proved a liability in a race where rivals including Sanders decried the existence of billionaires.

He's spent more in the California governor's primary alone, including on an ad attacking a rival. This time, he's being received differently.

“Tom Steyer is running on taxing the wealthy, supporting single-payer healthcare, and taking on corporate power — positions that are central to our movement,” Our Revolution Executive Director Joseph Geevarghese said in a statement. “That alignment with a pro-worker, anti-corporate agenda — and the urgency of this race — is why we are backing him.”

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Associated Press politics reporter Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.

The ride-hailing and delivery company said Wednesday that users of its app can now book hotel rooms. Uber is using hotel listings provided by Expedia Group, a booking service that works with 700,000 hotels and other properties globally. More than 1 million vacation rentals from Vrbo – which is owned by Seattle-based Expedia – will be added to the app later this year, the company said.

Sachin Kansal, Uber’s chief product officer, said hotel booking is a big step toward San Francisco-based Uber’s goal of becoming an “everything app” that serves many customer needs. Uber, which was founded in 2009, launched Uber Eats for restaurant deliveries in 2015 and expanded with grocery deliveries in 2020.

“Consumers are spending too much time coordinating their life, using multiple apps. AI is in the air and they’re all trying to figure out, how does AI help me or does it not help me?” Kansal told The Associated Press. “Our goal with these announcements is to bring everything into one app, to help them save time, and to also help them save money.”

Any Uber app user will be able to make hotel reservations. But Uber One members, who pay $9.99 per month for zero delivery fees and other perks, will get a 20% discount off a rolling list of 10,000 hotels plus 10% back in Uber credits they can use to book rides, Kansal said.

Kansal said Uber evaluated multiple partners before partnering with Expedia. Uber then spent months integrating Expedia’s technology into its own app. Kansal wouldn’t share the financial terms behind the partnership.

“They’re very excited because Uber brings a certain user base that is very travel-friendly,” Kansal said. “So I would say it’s going to mutually beneficial for both the parties.”

Travel is a big part of Uber users’ lives, he said. More than 100 million people use Uber to get to or from an airport each year. And last year, more than 1.5 billion Uber trips took place outside of a rider’s home city.

The hotel-booking feature was one of several travel-related announcements at Uber’s annual new product event Wednesday. Uber said an upgraded travel mode will help users find restaurants and other points of interest in the cities they visit.

Uber said users will soon get restaurant recommendations and be able to book tables in its app through OpenTable. Rival delivery service DoorDash recently began offering restaurant reservations in its app after buying hospitality platform SevenRooms.

Uber said it's also launching a service that will let users order a drink or snack that would be waiting for them when they get picked up by a driver using a premium Uber Black vehicle. The service is set to launch in the coming weeks in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and other cities.

The vote comes after a day of debate in committee on Tuesday, and a ruling in the U.S. Supreme Court that bolsters Gov. Ron DeSantis’ belief that taking minority representation when drawing district lines is inappropriate.

[POLITICALLY MOTIVATED: Florida’s special session on redistricting]

The bill could potentially cut Democratic representation in Florida’s 28 House seats to just four districts.

Democrats are slamming the move as a blatant power grab to try and retain control of the U.S. House in the midterm elections.

Stay with News 6 for updates throughout the day.

11:15 a.m.

The Florida House passed the HB 1-D largely on party lines, with an 83-28 vote.

Meanwhile, the Florida Senate is in recess, while they look at the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais.

The ruling, which came down Wednesday morning, ruled that a district drawn to favor minorities constituted an unconstitutional gerrymander.

The decision weakens provisions in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to protect against discrimination in redistricting.

[INTERACTIVE: Slide the middle bar to see how the district map would change if approved]

Democrats decry new Congressional map

Republican lawmakers advanced a major overhaul of Florida’s congressional districts Tuesday, a move that could reshape the political boundaries and legal landscape for redistricting in the state.

Over the objections of Democrats, who slammed the move as a blatant power grab designed to help the GOP retain the U.S. House in the midterm elections, House and Senate committees approved the new map (HB 1D, SB 8D) ahead of a floor vote later in the week.

“This is clearly unconstitutional,” Senate Democratic Leader Lori Berman of Boca Raton said. “This is gerrymandered map rigging and I don’t see how anybody can support it.”

In the House, the vote was along party lines and in the Senate, three Republicans, Sens. Jennifer Bradley of Fleming Island, Ileana Garcia of Miami and Erin Grall of Vero Beach voted against the map.

Berman pointed to the Fair Districts Amendment passed in 2010 by Florida voters, which bars lawmakers from drawing new districts to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent, or to diminish the voting power of racial or language minorities.

[WATCH: Florida lawmakers take up DeSantis’ Congressional map in redistricting special session]

But in a memo to lawmakers submitted by Gov Ron DeSantis on Monday when he issued the new map, his attorney argued the FDA isn’t enforceable. He pointed to a 2025 decision by the Florida Supreme Court, in a ruling that upheld the current congressional districts, that struck down the part of the FDA that prohibits the drawing of districts to favor racial minorities.

That ruling didn’t explicitly strike down all of the FDA, but Mohammed Jazil, who has represented the state in several cases involving election laws, argued it should in practice.

“It was packaged to the voters as this one big reform,” Jazil told the Senate Rules Committee.

Pushing for a challenge to all of the FDA seemed a stretch even to Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, who is sponsoring the bill (SB 8D).

“You don’t need the entirety of the FDA to be struck down,” Gaetz told Jazil. “You seem to be carrying a bit more of a burden than you need to in my judgment.”

DeSantis convened the special session to redraw the state’s 28 congressional districts, citing a pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a Louisiana redistricting case he believes will strike down part of the Voting Rights Act that allows race to be taken into account while drawing districts.

The map was made public Monday, with DeSantis’ office giving a map showing the potential partisan breakdown to Fox News before it was formally submitted to the Legislature. The new map could flip four districts, changing the current 20-8 Republican-Democrat makeup of Florida’s delegation to 24-4.

Democrats took umbrage at the move.

“Fox News receiving a map before the legislators is wild to me,” said Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens. “Y’all know what that means? He has no respect for us.”

At stake in the redistricting battle is control of the U.S. House. There are currently 217 Republicans, 212 Democrats, one independent and five vacancies in the chamber.

President Donald Trump’s has called on GOP-controlled states to change their districts ahead of the midterm elections. Texas and some others complied, but Democratic-led states responded, with California and Virginia responding in kind.

In Florida, though, the FDA is supposed to bar deliberately helping a particular party.

The map was drawn by Jason Poreda, an aide for DeSantis, who presented it to lawmakers along with Jazil.

Poreda said he used partisan data when drawing the map and consulted with other DeSantis staffers, but refused to name who they were. But he said he didn’t draw the map to intentionally favor the Republican Party and didn’t know who leaked the map with the partisan breakdown to Fox News.

The main reasons for redrawing the map, he said, were to draw districts in a race-neutral way, anticipating the pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and to account for an influx of more than 1.4 million people since the 2020 census took place, throwing some districts out of balance.

That led directly to a redraw of several districts in south Florida that were drawn to give Black and Hispanic voters the ability to elect a representative of their choice. That led to a “ripple effect” of district line changes throughout the rest of the state, Poreda said, with the exception of north Florida, where seven districts from the current map remain intact.

The new districts were approved after hundreds of opponents spoke against them, in protests outside the Capitol and inside the committee rooms.

Orlando resident Jenny Pawlowsky got on a bus and trekked to Tallahassee to protest the proposed redistricting maps, toting a sign that read, “If you have to rig the map, maybe your party sucks.”

“We knew it was coming down the pipeline, and of course I’m upset, and I feel that neither party should be doing it,” she told the News Service of Florida.

“It feels like cheating to me,” she added. “I just want fair elections.”

The British actor may not have grown up in a moviegoing family, but he was still very aware the Spielberg thing as a '90s kid. It’s just in our psyche, O’Connor told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

There were Blockbuster nights, of course, with viewings of “E.T.” and he’s since caught up with the classics. But even he was taken aback by just how ingrained those quintessential Spielberg images were on his first day shooting “Disclosure Day.” They were on a backlot, he said, and there were dripping pipes and big beams of light and smoke and mist. It was an environment he recognized so vividly. All he could think was, “Wow, I’m in a Steven Spielberg movie.”

While very little is known about the plot of “Disclosure Day,” which opens in theaters on June 12, it's territory that Spielberg knows well. And it has been suggested by Emily Blunt, and confirmed by O'Connor, that it answers some questions raised by “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” O’Connor plays a cybersecurity expert who has a mysterious connection with Blunt’s meteorologist. He holds some truths that the men in suits don't want the world to know.

O’Connor spoke to the AP about the film, the secrecy, the awe of watching it for the first time and having “the greatest Steven Spielberg story.” Remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity.

AP: Have you been able to take stock of this whole experience?

O’CONNOR: It’s sort of still quite surreal. There have been many directors for me where it’s felt like kind of intensely surreal in the lead up to going and doing a movie with a person and then once you start, it sort of settles down and then the next thing you know you’re best friends with that director and it’s all just very normal. I do feel very close to Steven, but it still feels surreal having shot it. And every aspect of making this film was like a pinch-me moment, including seeing it for the first time. It’s sort of a dream for anyone.

AP: Was he what you expected?

O’CONNOR: He was more than I expected. He’s got this energy about him. He’s still so excited. He’s still like a child. He’s inquisitive. He is excited about performance. You know, there’s nothing better in the universe than hearing Steven by a monitor, crying or laughing or shouting with joy. He’s still, I imagine, that same director he was when he made “Jaws” or “E.T.” or any of those other classics. So yeah, he’s still got it. I can confirm he’s still got it

AP: What can you tell us about your character?

O’CONNOR: Daniel’s got some special powers. I’m resistant to saying that because I think it sort of overplays him in some ways. He and Emily’s character have this special bond between them and they’re not even aware of it. And the film really is pulling these two characters together. That’s sort of like the drive for these two, even if they’re unaware of it for half the movie.

Daniel has never really computed it and that’s sort of bubbling away underneath Daniel’s character. But he’s sort of an unglamorous hero. He’s your everyday guy and he’s found himself in this situation and he has to adapt and he is able to adapt, but, you know, he’s not a natural Tom Cruise.

AP: There’s a lot of secrecy around “Disclosure Day.” Was it like that on your end too?

O’CONNOR: There was, of course, a level of secrecy. When I received the script I was filming “Knives Out” and I was in a hotel and a motorbike turned up with the script, and a motorbike turned up to take away the script the next morning. That’s the first time that’s happened for me. It’s a very strange experience but it makes sense. You know, anytime you hear that Steven’s got a film coming out, everyone, myself included, wants to know what it is, so I totally understand why.

AP: What was the setup for watching it? Did it involve a guy showing up on a motorcycle again?

O’CONNOR: No, actually, not this time. It was just me and Emily and we sat in a screening room. You know, seeing any movie you’re in for the first time is a nightmare. It’s impossible to enjoy it fully because all you’re seeing is like, “Why do my ears look so big” or “Why do I stand like that I’m such a freak.” All those things are natural and so there is a little bit of competing with that, but this experience was unlike any other I’ve ever had. Emily and I were just in awe.

AP: You’ve been able to work with such a varied group of filmmakers and in all these different forms in your career.

O’CONNOR: That’s the thing I’m most proud of, I think … Getting to work with diverse artists and people like Alice (Rohrwacher) and Kelly (Reichardt) and Steven and Rian Johnson. They all work in very different ways and make very different films and tell different stories and ultimately that was my dream. I looked up to people like Gene Wilder, or like Robin Williams who’s able to make us roar with laughter and then have us in tears. I think that flexibility, that versatility is what I’ve always wanted in my career.

AP: Do you have a favorite Spielberg story?

O’CONNOR: I have the greatest, in my opinion, the greatest Steven Spielberg story. When it happened, I was sort of like punching the air for this very reason, knowing that when it comes to doing press for this film, I can tell the story, which is that I was halfway through the shoot and we had a scene coming up, which is quite an emotional scene and I was struggling with it. I was in my hotel room trying to prep it, as Steven does so brilliantly, and it’s extraordinary he’s so available to talk about these things.

I reached out to Steven, we discussed the scene, we talked about the emotion of the scene and how to access that and what we’re ultimately aiming to show in the story. And I felt quite satisfied, but not completely with it. And then I got a text from him quite late at night, just saying ,“The door is on the latch, just push.” And it made so much sense. I was like, “of course.” The character’s kind of got all this emotion, it’s built up and it’s like a door on the latch and you just push and it all comes out and it’s an emotional release. I was so thrilled with that note and I came in the next day and said, “Steven, you totally unlocked it for me that was amazing.” And he was like, “What are you talking about?”

I said, “The text about ‘the door on the latch just push’ it’s incredible.” And he laughed and said that that text was supposed to be for his wife. It became a very big joke for all of us. But it did unlock the scene for me, so, fair play.

AP: It’s so good, I almost don’t believe it.

O’CONNOR: I know. It’s ridiculous.

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For more coverage of this summer’s upcoming films, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/movies

The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged in morning trading, a day after falling from its all-time high due to drops for artificial-intelligence stocks and worries about higher oil prices. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 222 points, or 0.5%, as of 10:45 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% higher.

Another procession of profit reports from companies showing stronger growth for the start of 2026 than analysts expected helped support the market.

Visa jumped 9.3% after delivering stronger results than analysts expected, and CEO Ryan McInerney said consumer spending remained resilient in the quarter. Starbucks climbed 7.8% after likewise reporting better results than expected, while saying customers spent more at each visit, particularly at its North American stores.

Most companies so far this earnings reporting season have been topping analysts’ expectations, which has helped the U.S. stock market rally to records despite the high gasoline costs and soured confidence among U.S. households caused by the Iran war.

But those not meeting expectations have gotten punished. GE Healthcare Technologies dropped 13.2% after falling short of analysts’ forecasts. Robinhood Markets tumbled 14.1% after reporting growth in profit that was not as strong as analysts expected.

Booking Holdings swung between losses and gains after the online travel company said the war with Iran is affecting its results and kept some potential customers from booking rooms during the latest quarter.

The company behind Booking.com, Priceline and other brands is expecting the conflict to continue affecting its business through the end of June. It could affect travel not only in the Middle East specifically but also in major transit corridors, such as between Europe and Asia.

The clearest result in financial markets of the war with Iran is how high oil prices have jumped. The price for a barrel of Brent crude to be delivered in June rose again Wednesday, up 5% to $116.77. Brent for delivery in July, which is where more of the trading is happening in the oil market, rose 4.6% to $109.21.

Brent’s price is approaching its high point of the war, slightly above $119 per barrel, and is well above its roughly $70 level from before the war began. A ceasefire is still in place between the United States and Iran, but so is a closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran and a U.S. blockade of Iran's ships. That's all keeping oil prices high.

Expensive oil is one of the main reasons virtually all of Wall Street believes the Federal Reserve will not announce a resumption of its cuts to interest rates in the afternoon. While lower rates can help the economy, they also risk worsening inflation.

The consensus among traders is instead that the Fed will hold the federal funds rate steady in what’s likely to be Jerome Powell’s final Fed meeting as its chair. The bigger question is whether Powell will say if he’s staying on at the Fed after ceding the chairmanship. He has been a target of President Donald Trump’s anger for not cutting interest rates more quickly and more sharply.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.39% from 4.36% late Tuesday following the latest rise in oil prices.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, several AI stocks held firmer ahead of reports due after trading ends for the day from the biggest spenders on AI technology. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Microsoft could help show whether all the investment in AI chips and data centers is providing the kind of profits and productivity that would make it all worth it. Worries are high on Wall Street that it may not be and that all the immense spending is just a bubble.

Broadcom added 0.4%, a day after falling 4.4%. Micron Technology rose 4% after Tuesday’s 3.9% slide.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe following a stronger finish in Asia. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 1.7% for one of the world’s strongest moves.

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AP Business Writer Chan Ho-him contributed to this report.

The court’s conservative majority found that the district, represented by Democrat Cleo Fields, relied too heavily on race. Chief Justice John Roberts had described the district as a “snake” that stretches more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) to link parts of the Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette and Baton Rouge areas.

It’s unclear how much is left of the provision, known as Section 2, but the ruling could open the door for Republican-led states to eliminate Black and Latino electoral districts that tend to favor Democrats and affect the balance of power in Congress. President Donald Trump has already touched off a nationwide redistricting battle to boost Republican chances.

The plaintiffs had argued that Louisiana’s second Black-majority congressional district, drawn to correct a previously discriminatory map, has an unconstitutional racial basis and did not follow the standards for drawing a district, including compactness.

Here's the latest:

One of two Black Democrats representing Louisiana in Congress calls the decision a ‘devastating blow’

“This ruling is about far more than lines on a map — it’s about whether Black Louisianians will have a meaningful opportunity to make their voices heard,” U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, whose predominately Black congressional district encompasses New Orleans, said in a written statement.

Carter said the consequences of the high court’s decision will be “immediate and severe” and that Louisiana’s two majority-Black congressional districts are now at risk of being dismantled.

“Without the protections of the Voting Rights Act, there is no evidence to suggest that Black voters in our state will be able to elect candidates of their choice,” Carter wrote.

Conservative Heritage Action’s Kevin Roberts welcomed the majority opinion from Justice Alito

“The Civil War Amendments were forged at tremendous human cost to secure a constitutional order grounded in equality before the law—not racial classifications,” Roberts said. “Today’s decision restores that understanding and reaffirms that the Constitution does not permit sorting Americans by race in the exercise of political power.”

A top House Democrat predicts the court’s ruling will backfire on conservatives

“Today’s appalling decision by the Supreme Court is the latest in a long line of attacks by the conservative Court, congressional Republicans, and President Trump against the fundamental right of every American citizen to vote,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, who leads Democrats’ campaign efforts for the U.S. House.

She said “Democrats remain poised to retake the House Majority in November.”

‘A devastating blow’

Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights group, said the high court’s decision delivers “a devastating blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act.”

The ruling is “a license for corrupt politicians who want to rig the system by silencing entire communities,” Johnson said Wednesday. “The Supreme Court betrayed Black voters, they betrayed America, and they betrayed our democracy.”

The ruling comes a month and a half after foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement marked 61 years to the day that voting rights marchers were brutally beaten by Alabama state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. The violence that became known as Bloody Sunday shocked the nation and helped spur passage of the landmark legislation that the Supreme Court has now weakened.

“This ruling is a major setback for our nation and threatens to erode the hard-won victories we’ve fought, bled, and died for. But the people still can fight back,” Johnson said. “Our democracy is crying for help.”

Voting rights group: Supreme Court decision lets states use partisanship to cloak racism

The decision “guts” voting rights protection while “pretending to uphold it,” said Lauren Groh-Wargo, executive director of Fair Fight Action, a Georgia-based voting rights group founded by Democrat Stacey Abrams.

She said the court rewrote the law to require a showing of intentional discrimination.

That’s after Congress in the early 1980s specifically rewrote the Voting Rights Act to overturn an earlier Supreme Court decision in an Alabama case that tried to do the same thing. At the time, Roberts was a Justice Department attorney advocating for a showing of intentional discrimination.

“It allows states, counties and cities to shield their discriminatory maps by claiming they are advancing their own partisan interests, ignoring that race and party are highly correlated in places across the country, particularly the South,” Groh-Wargo wrote in a text message to the AP.

White House hails the court’s decision

“This is a complete and total victory for American voters,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said.

“The color of one’s skin should not dictate which congressional district you belong in. We commend the court for putting an end to the unconstitutional abuse of the Voting Rights Act and protecting civil rights,” she said.

The Supreme Court decision could spur more states to join a national redistricting battle

More than a half-dozens states have already adopted new U.S. House districts since Trump urged Texas Republicans to redraw their districts last year in a bid to win more seats and maintain a slim House majority in the midterm elections.

The battle has been pretty even thus far. Republicans think they could gain up to nine more seats from new districts in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio — and perhaps four more if Florida lawmakers pass a new map. Democrats, meanwhile, think they could win 10 additional seats from new districts in California, Utah and Virginia.

The mayor of New Orleans condemns the Supreme Court decision

Mayor Helena Moreno, a Democrat who represents the largest city in Louisiana’s other predominantly Black congressional district, said the Supreme Court’s ruling was “a step backward.”

“For decades, the Voting Rights Act has served as a critical safeguard to ensure every voice, especially those historically marginalized, has a meaningful opportunity to be heard,” Moreno said.

“Striking down a district that reflected diversity suppresses voices and weakens our democracy. We should be working to expand representation, not roll it back,” she said.

The Voting Rights Act marked its 50th anniversary last year

AP took a closer look at the history of the act, which the NAACP’s Demetria McCain said last year was at “a critical juncture.”

▶ Read more

Florida is pressing ahead with redistricting votes after the Supreme Court decision

The Florida Senate reversed itself and took a brief break so senators could review the decision and talk with attorneys. But the Republican-dominated chamber is still expected to vote later Wednesday to approve a GOP gerrymander of the state’s congressional districts.

House Republicans have not broken to consider implications of the Louisiana case in their arguments, despite the Democratic majority’s urging.

The current Florida congressional map gave Republicans a 20-8 advantage in the 2024 election. Gov. Ron DeSantis’ proposal is designed to push that to as much as 24-4 in November.

▶ Read more about redistricting in Florida

Things to know about the Voting Rights Act

The 1965 voting rights law was the centerpiece legislation of the Civil Rights Movement. It succeeded in opening the ballot box to Black Americans and reducing persistent discrimination in voting.

Nearly 70 of the 435 congressional districts are protected by Section 2, election law expert Nicholas Stephanopoulos has estimated.

▶ Read more on what the Voting Rights Act did

Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the three liberal judges

“The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter,” Kagan stated in dissent.

The court split 6-3

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the six conservatives, said the Louisiana district at the heart of the case “is an unconstitutional gerrymander.”

Roberts, the chief justice, described the district as a “snake” that stretches more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) to link parts of the Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette and Baton Rouge areas.

Redistricting is also being debated in Florida

The court’s decision was released as Florida legislators debated a proposed redraw of the state’s congressional lines, submitted by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and intended to give the GOP a chance at as much as a 24-4 advantage in the state’s U.S. House delegation.

Senate Democrats urged the Republican supermajority to delay debate to at least offer lawmakers a chance to read the decision and consult attorneys on how it might affect DeSantis’ proposal. Florida Senate Republicans refused.

Legal experts are still poring over the decision

The AP contacted multiple law professors and redistricting attorneys in the minutes after the decision came out who said they were still reading the decision so did not yet know its full implications.

The vote was 13-11, with all Republican senators voting in favor and Democrats opposed.

Warsh is a former top Fed official but has also been a sharp critic of the institution and Powell’s leadership. He has called the inflation spike to 9.1% in 2022 the central bank’s biggest policy mistake in four decades. A vote on his nomination probably won’t take place until next month, but he could be confirmed by the time Powell’s term as chair ends May 15.

The Senate Banking vote is the first of two key events surrounding the future of the Fed’s leadership. Also Wednesday, Powell is presiding over what will probably be his last meeting of the Fed’s interest rate-setting committee. At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Powell may indicate whether he will remain as a member of the central bank’s board of governors after his term as chair ends.

It would be unusual for Powell to stay, but doing so would deprive the Trump administration of an opportunity to appoint a new member to the board. Powell may choose to stay if he sees it as necessary to protect the Fed’s independence, which has become part of his legacy as its leader.

Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican and chair of the committee, said Warsh is “battle tested” and added that, "It is incredibly important that we break the bind of Bidenomics on households across this nation.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, criticized the banking panel for voting on Warsh's nomination. Doing so “will bring the president one step closer to completing his illegal attempt to seize control of the Fed and artificially juice the economy,” she said, citing Trump's effort to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook and investigate Powell.

The Fed on Wednesday is widely expected to leave its key rate unchanged at about 3.6% for its third straight meeting, defying Trump’s calls for lower rates.

Warsh has called for “regime change” at the Fed and could alter many of its practices, including the economics models it focuses on, how it communicates with the public, and how large its bondholdings will be in the long run.

Those changes could affect financial markets, but otherwise won’t necessarily be visible to the general public. But Warsh has also advocated for additional interest rate cuts, which could potentially lower borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, and business loans. He will face barriers to implementing those cuts anytime soon, however, largely because the Iran war has caused a spike in gas prices, pushing inflation to a two-year high of 3.3%.

The Fed typically keeps rates elevated, or even raises them, to combat worsening inflation.

Most of the other 11 members of the Fed’s rate-setting committee have indicated they would prefer to wait and evaluate where inflation and the economy are headed before making any changes to rates. It could take time for Warsh to build up enough influence to push for rapid rate cuts. He will also replace Stephen Miran, a member of the Fed’s rate-setting committee who was appointed by Trump last September and is the most consistent advocate for rate reductions at the central bank.

Warsh also faces questions about his independence from the White House, a key issue that dogged him during a Senate Banking hearing last week. On Wednesday, Warren said, “Mr. Warsh is a Trump sock puppet who is so cowed by the president that he could not even say that Trump lost the 2020 election.”

Last December, Trump called for much lower interest rates in a social media post, and added that “anyone who does not agree with me will never be Fed chair!” And just last week he told Fox Business that he expects rates to head lower, “when Kevin gets in.”

Warsh denied at his hearing, however, that Trump had ever pressured him directly to cut rates.

Silent Tactic opened at odds of 13-1 on the morning line. His exit means Great White is in.

“You can’t run in the Kentucky Derby and not be 100%,” Casse said at his barn at Churchill Downs. “It’s very, very slight. It’s very slight, so that’s the good news. The timing’s poor, but it’s not a big deal and that’s the most important thing.”

Casse compared the horse’s ailment to a fingernail separation, which is painful and enough to lead to him and owner John Oxley to make the decision to scratch Silent Tactic more than 72 hours before the race.

"It wasn’t a tough decision," Casse said. “It’s not tough because we’re always going to try to do what we feel is best for the horse, Mr. Oxley and our entire group.”

The most difficult part for Casse is this means jockey Cristian Torres will have to wait to ride in the Kentucky Derby for the first time. Casse said the call to skip the Derby was made early to allow preparations to begin to run Silent Tactic in the Preakness Stakes at Laurel Park on May 16.

“Today we start preparing for the Preakness,” Casse said. “And the quicker we made the decision — we could’ve held on for another day or two — but then it would slow down our chances of getting to the Preakness.”

The timing is beneficial for those around Great White, who was first on the also-entered list and was initially set as a 50-1 long shot.

"We’re just delighted to have confirmation that we did get in and we draw in so early," trainer John Ennis told The Associated Press. “It’s only Wednesday, so everybody’s thrilled and over the moon.”

The big, and still growing, gray colt is coming off a fifth-place finish in the Blue Grass Stakes on April 4.

“He didn’t need to be on the lead,” Ennis said. “We kind of thought he’d run big in the Blue Grass, and he kind of disappointed. He was flat the week prior, of the Blue Grass. He was kind of quiet himself and lacking in energy.”

It has been an uncertain week for Ennis and his stable, not knowing if Great White would get to the starting gate on Saturday.

“It can be tough mentally in your mind to straighten things out and get things squared away,” Ennis said. “It's not easy when you’re kind of sitting on the fence like that.”

Jockey Alex Achard will make his Kentucky Derby debut aboard Great White, who by all accounts is doing well.

“The horse is fit and healthy and strong,” Ennis said. “Yes, he has to improve, but it’s the Kentucky Derby and if you’re not in, you can’t win.”

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AP horse racing: https://apnews.com/hub/horse-racing

The NCAA released a brief statement Tuesday in the wake of an ESPN report that cited unnamed sources saying a decision to add eight teams to the bracket is a mere formality that's expected in May.

“Expanding the basketball tournaments would require approval from multiple NCAA committees, including the men’s and women’s basketball committees, and no final recommendations or decisions have been made at this time,” the statement said.

Earlier this month at the Final Four, NCAA President Charlie Baker said the committees would, in fact, return to discussing the expansion once this year's tournament was over.

The tournaments have been at 68 teams since 2011, when four play-in games were added to the beginning of the first week of play. The new format would add eight more at-large teams and take eight more teams out of the main bracket for play-in games.

“People can criticize the NCAA all they want, but they put on a championship and an event like no other,” Michigan coach Dusty May said Wednesday. “If more young players and coaching staffs could have an opportunity to experience March Madness, then I’m for it. The traditionalists in me says, ‘No, let’s keep it at 64,’ and it’s slightly tilted toward keeping it as it is, but I could be easily persuaded.”

The expansion isn't expected to generate a lot more income because it will only add games early in the first week. The current TV deal runs through 2032 and could be tweaked slightly.

Regardless of finances, the expansion would give power conferences more chances to place teams in the bracket — a growing concern as those conferences seek more power and control over college sports in the era of name, image and likeness compensation and the transfer portal.

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AP Sports Writer Larry Lage in Ann Arbor, Michigan, contributed to this report.

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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness

After a near record hot weekend, rain chances will begin to increase late Saturday through most of Sunday as a front moves closer to Central Florida.

Storm coverage looks to become much more widespread, with rain chances climbing to around 60 to 70 percent throughout Sunday.

Latest rainfall models are showing the chance for beneficial rainfall, with some areas racking up 1-2 inches of rain from late Saturday through Sunday.

Along with the rain, there will be a chance for a few stronger storms to develop, producing lightning, gusty winds, and heavy downpours.

All this rain is certainly welcomed as drought concerns continue to grow, as burn bans are reissued and fire danger stays high. This weekend’s rain could certainly help put a slight dent in our ongoing drought.

The exact timing and totals of Sunday’s rain event is still being ironed out, so make sure to check back with the News6 Weather Team for the latest updates as we get closer.

In the meantime, make sure to have some indoor plans scheduled for Sunday.

In a 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservative majority found that the district, represented by Democrat Cleo Fields, relied too heavily on race. Chief Justice John Roberts had described the district as a “snake” that stretches more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) to link parts of the Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette and Baton Rouge areas.

“That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the six conservatives.

The decision weakens a landmark voting rights law’s protections against discrimination in redistricting. It’s unclear how much is left of the provision, known as Section 2, the main way to challenge racially discriminatory election practices.

Not much, Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent for the three liberal justices. “The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter,” Kagan wrote.

The 1965 voting rights law, the centerpiece legislation of the Civil Rights Movement, succeeded in opening the ballot box to Black Americans and reducing persistent discrimination in voting.

Nearly 70 of the 435 congressional districts are protected by Section 2, election law expert Nicholas Stephanopoulos has estimated.

Alito wrote that "allowing race to play any part in government decisionmaking represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context.” He said Section 2 is effectively limited to instances of intentional discrimination, a very high standard.

Kagan said the upshot of the decision is that states "can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power.”

The court heard the case for a second time in October and it’s not clear whether the decision was issued early enough for some states, including Louisiana, to consider a new round of redistricting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, in which Republicans are trying to preserve a thin majority.

President Donald Trump had already touched off a nationwide redistricting battle to boost Republican chances.

Legislatures already are free to draw extremely partisan districts because of a 2019 Supreme Court decision.

The court’s decision was released as Florida legislators debated a proposed redrawing of the state’s congressional lines, submitted by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and intended to give the GOP a chance to pick up as many as four seats in the state’s U.S. House delegation.

Democrats in the Florida Senate urged the Republican supermajority to delay debate to at least offer lawmakers a chance to read the decision and consult lawyers on how it might affect DeSantis’ proposal. Republicans refused.

In the Supreme Court's Louisiana ruling, the justices did an about-face from a decision in a similar case from Alabama less than three years ago that led to a new congressional map for the state that sent two Black Democrats to Congress.

Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberals to form a majority in the Alabama case. Both joined Alito's opinion Wednesday.

The Alabama decision also prompted Louisiana lawmakers to add a second majority Black district. About a third of Louisianans are Black and they now form majorities in two of the state’s six congressional districts. Alabama has a separate appeal pending at the Supreme Court.

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Associated Press writer Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, La., contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it summoned the Russian ambassador to its offices in London to inform him of the “reciprocal action.” The tit-for tat moves reflect spiraling tensions between Moscow and the West.

“This behavior is wholly unacceptable, and we will not tolerate harassment or intimidation of our diplomatic staff,’’ the Foreign Office said in a statement.

The move came after Russia last month expelled a British diplomat over spying allegations that the U.K. rejected as “complete nonsense.”

Russia’s top domestic security and counterintelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, said the British diplomat had sought to gather “sensitive information” about the Russian economy in “unofficial meetings” with Russian experts. The diplomat was ordered to leave Russia within two weeks.

Russia and NATO member states have carried out multiple rounds of mutual expulsions of diplomats since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, sending diplomatic relations to their lowest ebb since the Cold War.

At Tuesday’s state dinner honoring King Charles III and Queen Camilla, U.S. President Donald Trump said that during a private meeting earlier in the day the British monarch had agreed with him that Iran should never be allowed to have nuclear weapons.

“We’re doing a little Middle East work right now … and we’re doing very well,” Trump told the audience. “We have militarily defeated that particular opponent, and we’re never going to let that opponent ever — Charles agrees with me, even more than I do — we’re never going to let that opponent have a nuclear weapon."

While many Britons would agree with the president’s sentiment, the comment triggered mild consternation among pundits in the U.K.

In Britain, you see, this just isn't done.

By convention, people aren't supposed to relay private conversations with the monarch. That is partly because the king has to remain above the political fray, but also because the sovereign doesn’t have the ability to wade into a public debate and correct the record if he's misquoted.

“Generally, as a matter of protocol, I think I would expect discussions between heads of state to be sort of behind the scenes, in those closed meetings, for those to be sort of kept private,” said Craig Prescott, an expert on constitutional law and the monarchy at Royal Holloway, University of London. “And, you know, this was something that the U.K. government wanted to avoid.”

There had been a fair amount of jitters before the king’s trip to the United States, which comes amid Trump’s very public frustration with U.K. Prime Minster Keir Starmer over his failure to support U.S. actions in the Iran war.

Like all royal visits, this is a carefully choreographed diplomatic event carried out at the request of the U.K. government, which hopes that warm relations between the king and Trump, who seems to love all things royal, can help repair the rift.

But Trump is an unconventional leader who has a penchant for breaking protocol, and there were concerns about just what he might say or do.

At least in this case, the king’s comments seemed clearly within the bounds of existing U.K. government policy.

“The King is naturally mindful of his government’s long-standing and well-known position on the prevention of nuclear proliferation,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement designed to provide context to the president’s remarks.

Prescott said that “in a sense, this was always the issue, just what Trump would do or say — would he put the king in an embarrassing position,’’ Prescott said.

“You always had that sort of issue of what he would post on social media," he said. "And I think, you know, this could have been much, much worse.”

Before the state dinner, Charles gave a speech to a joint session of U.S. Congress. The king received repeated standing ovations during the address, which celebrated the longstanding bonds between the U.S. and Britain while nodding to differences over NATO, support for Ukraine and the need to combat climate change.

Now, from the U.K. government’s point of view, the trip is shifting to safer ground as the king and queen leave Washington behind and head to New York, where the focus will be on the city’s creative industries, rather than politics.

The most difficult part of the trip may be over, Prescott said.

“If this is the only controversy arising out of this phase of the state visit, I think overall this has been an enormous success for the king and the British government, because the king was able to make some quite pointed remarks in Congress and it hasn’t really yielded any sort of negative reaction from the president.”

“In a sense,” he said, “you get the feeling that the king (has) rather charmed Washington with his speech to Congress and, you know, his very witty speech at the state banquet.”

The ViaSat-3 F3 mission lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center.

Following stage separation, Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters landed at SpaceX’s Landing Zones 2 and 40 — known as LZ-2 and LZ-40 — at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Both side boosters carry a track record of previous flights. One previously supported the SDA-0A, SARah-2, Transporter-11 missions, as well as 18 Starlink missions. The second booster previously supported the launch of the GOES-U mission.

On Wednesday, the county’s Development Review Committee will discuss an application for a drone delivery operation at a Walmart near the intersection of State Road 426 and Deep Lake Road.

According to the project coordinator, the plans include the installation of a drone nest to support the operation, storage, and charging of several drones.

The area will also be fully enclosed with a security fence to ensure safety and restricted access for last-mile delivery operations.

Cody Herring lives near the Walmart location and was eager for the possibilities of drone deliveries.

“Let’s just give it a chance and see where it goes,” Herrings said. “You’re packing for a trip, and you need to hurry up; the convenience factor will play a role in it.”

The proposal comes a few months after Clermont approved zoning changes to allow Walmart to launch a drone hub, and city leaders in Orlando demonstrated how deliveries would happen.

The drones, which weigh about 11 pounds and can carry up to 2 pounds, are designed for small, everyday items, and it can deliver them right to your front door in about 30 minutes.

The drones can fly up to 60 mph, cruising 150 feet above the ground before dropping packages safely at customers’ feet.

The Seminole County Development Review Committee is expected to decide on the drone delivery application during a meeting on Wednesday at 9 a.m.

It will be the first time in nearly two decades — and in Russia’s 4-year-old war in Ukraine — that no military equipment will rumble through Moscow’s Red Square on May 9, the day Russia celebrates its most important secular holiday. The Kremlin has used it to showcase its military might and global clout, and it is a source of patriotic pride.

Victory Day parades on Red Square have involved military equipment and various weaponry every year since 2008. Smaller parades are held elsewhere across the country, including in cities like St. Petersburg.

The ministry cited the “current operational situation” as a reason for excluding military equipment, as well as cadets, from this year’s parade on the 81st anniversary of the victory. Ukraine has launched drone attacks deep inside Russia to counter Moscow’s more than 4-year-old invasion.

While the ministry did not elaborate, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday blamed Ukraine, accusing it of “terrorist activity,” in an apparent reference to the drone strikes. In recent months, attacks have reached locations deep inside Russia, like the Baltic port of Ust-Luga to the north of Moscow, the Samara region near the border with Kazakhstan, and the Perm region in the Ural mountains.

“All measures are being taken to minimize the danger,” he told reporters.

The parade will feature “servicemen from higher military educational institutions of all kinds and certain service branches of the Russian Armed Forces” and a traditional military aircraft flyover, the ministry said.

Boosting national pride

World War II remains a rare point of consensus in the nation’s divisive history under Communist rule, and the Kremlin has leveraged that sentiment to encourage national pride and underline Russia’s position as a global power.

The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in what it calls the Great Patriotic War in 1941-45, an enormous sacrifice that left a deep scar in the national psyche.

President Vladimir Putin, who has ruled Russia for over 25 years, has turned Victory Day into a key pillar of his tenure and has tried to use it to justify the war in Ukraine.

“Traditionally, the parade of tanks, missile systems and other military hardware across Red Square has been central to these celebrations, providing powerful optics and reinforcing Russia’s image as the heir to Soviet victory in World War II," said Natia Seskuria, associate fellow with the Royal United Services Institute.

"Removing this important element weakens the propaganda value of the event, particularly for domestic audiences, as it reduces one of the most visible symbols of Russian power and military prestige,” she told The Associated Press.

Security concerns are the most likely explanation, Seskuria said.

But there also could be practical military considerations, "including the need to preserve equipment, avoid highlighting battlefield losses, and reduce the exposure of valuable military assets,” she said,

"This decision signals a degree of vulnerability rather than strength, because even last year, Russia demonstrated a range of new tanks and drones in front of invited world leaders,” Seskuria added.

An 80th anniversary drew dignitaries

Last year’s parade on the 80th anniversary was the largest since Russia sent troops into Ukraine, and drew the most global leaders to Moscow in a decade, including high-profile guests like Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico.

Fico will attend this year, too, along with other foreign dignitaries, Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said Wednesday.

It featured over 11,500 troops and more than 180 military vehicles, including tanks, armored infantry vehicles and artillery used on the battlefield in Ukraine, as well as huge Yars nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles as well as drones carried on military trucks. Fighter jets flew over Red Square, too.

Putin had declared a unilateral 72-hour ceasefire starting May 7, 2025, and authorities blocked cellphone internet in Moscow for several days to avert Ukrainian drone attacks.

In 2023, the parade was scaled down, with fewer troops and military equipment on display and no flyover.

In the Soviet era, the first Red Square parade marking the defeat of Nazi Germany took place on June 24, 1945. Then it was held on May 9 several times after that, with the last Soviet-era parade taking place in 1990.

After the USSR collapsed, the parades resumed in 1995. That year, troops and veterans marched through Red Square, and a separate parade of military equipment took place at the sprawling Poklonnaya Gora World War II memorial. After that, parades were held every year. In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities moved the parade to a later date, and it was held on June 24.

The high court's unanimous ruling is a procedural victory for First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, which is challenging a New Jersey investigation of its practices.

The conservative-majority court has given abortion opponents high-profile wins in recent years, most notably the watershed case that overturned the nationwide right to abortion in 2022. First Choice, though, had also drawn support from the American Civil Liberties Union, which supports abortion rights but backed the group's First Amendment concerns.

The Supreme Court's decision lets First Choice sue over the subpoena in federal court.

Facilities often known as “crisis pregnancy centers” have been on the rise in the United States as Republican-controlled states enforce bans or restrictions on abortion and some steer tax dollars to the centers, which provide prenatal care and steer women to carrying pregnancies to term.

As Democratic-leaning states seek to protect abortion access, several have investigated whether the anti-abortion centers mislead women, including by implying they offer abortions.

In New Jersey, then-Democratic Attorney General Matthew Platkin sent a subpoena asking for donor lists and other information.

First Choice pushed back, arguing the investigation was baseless and the demand for donor lists threatened their First Amendment rights to free speech and association. They tried to challenge the subpoena in federal court, but a judge found the case was not yet far enough along. An appeals court agreed.

First Choice then turned to the Supreme Court.

They argued access to federal court is important in cases where government investigators are accused of misusing state power, and the ACLU agreed that subpoenas seeking donor information can scare away supporters.

The state argued that the information would only be used to ask donors whether they had been deceived about First Choice’s services, and the subpoena could not have threatened their First Amendment rights because the group hadn’t yet been required to turn over any information.

A court order is required to enforce the subpoena, and the judge overseeing the underlying case has so far only ordered the two sides to negotiate.

New Jersey also argued that allowing First Choice to sue could usher in a glut of lawsuits from the thousands of businesses that get similar subpoenas.

The Trump administration weighed in to support First Choice. The Justice Department argued that any impact would be relatively small since the decision would only apply to groups with similar First Amendment arguments.

“We will continue to insist that compliance alone is not enough; we must also report the figures to the public in the interest of transparency,” said Communication and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid.

Indonesia began implementing a new government regulationat the end of March banning children younger than 16 from accessing digital platforms that could expose them to pornography, cyberbullying, online scams and addiction.

Hafid said that young people in Indonesia spend up to eight hours a day online.

Not all social media and digital platforms immediately complied with the regulation, which affects some 70 million children and young people in Indonesia.

TikTok became the first platform to report measurable progress in compliance when it said it deactivated 1.7 million accounts belonging to children under 16.

The country’s large population likely "explains the platforms’ reluctance to accelerate compliance with this regulation,” Hafid said.

Seven of the eight platforms classified as high-risk, including YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live, have committed to restricting children’s access to their services.

Only Roblox, the gaming platform, has yet to agree to block access for children under 16. The company did not immediately reply to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

YouTube announced its commitment to restricting access for younger users three weeks after the restrictions took effect, but has not yet specified how many accounts belonging to children were identified and suspended.

“We remain focused on protecting the community and will continue working closely with the Indonesian government to support a secure digital future for the next generation,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday.

Restrictions on social media access for children under 16 first began in December in Australia, where social media companies revoked access to about 4.7 million accounts identified as belonging to children.

Indonesia became the first country in Southeast Asia to follow suit.

Some other countries — including Spain, France and the United Kingdom — are also taking or considering measures to restrict children’s access to social media amid growing concern that they are being harmed by exposure to unregulated social media content.

Hafid believes there are still challenges in implementing the regulation, and the Indonesian government has said it would allow platforms to determine their own methods for account verification.

“We understand the technology will continue to evolve rapidly. However, the platform is responsible for determining the best and most appropriate technology for its needs,” Hafid said.

Critics have highlighted the practical challenges of enforcing the rule. Reliable age verification often requires collecting sensitive personal data, prompting concerns over privacy and data security. Some children will find a way to use fake identification, such as using their parents’ account, said Nenden Sekar Arum, executive director of the Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network, or SAFEnet, a digital rights group.

Arum said that is why the government needs to oversee the user identity verification methods employed by each platform to ensure consistent compliance.

“The core problem is not the presence of children in the digital space, but how that digital space is shaped into a safe ecosystem. And how to ensure that those who are actually making this ecosystem harmful are held accountable. That is what needs to be addressed,” Arum said.

When that question appears on a Missouri ballot later this year, it will mark the first time since the modern income tax began over a century ago that a U.S. state legislature has asked voters whether to eliminate the tax. If they say “yes,” they will also be authorizing a sales tax expansion.

Missouri's unique proposal caps a five-year tax-cutting binge in states that flourished while governments were flush with cash during the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and only recently abated as some Democratic-led states embraced higher tax rates on millionaires. During that time, almost every state made either permanent or temporary reductions to some type of tax, whether on income, sales, property or gas. And more than half the states that levy income taxes reduced their top tax rate.

Those tax cuts seldom were offset by increasing other types of taxes. But Missouri's new measure implicitly acknowledges that it's hard to eliminate an income tax without raising other revenues to keep government running.

When did the income tax begin?

Congress gained the power to tax income with the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913. Many states adopted their own income taxes over the ensuing years, including Missouri in 1917.

But some states — Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming — never adopted an individual income tax, instead relying on sales taxes, oil taxes or other sources. New Hampshire and Tennessee, which taxed income from interest and dividends but not wages, each ended those taxes within the past five years.

Alaska is the only state so far to impose a general individual income tax and then repeal it. Lawmakers eliminated the tax in 1980 while rich with oil revenues.

Massachusetts voters rejected an income tax elimination in 2008 and 2002. But those ballot measures were initiated by citizens, not lawmakers responsible for building the state budget.

Which states are trying to phase out their income tax?

A 2022 Kentucky law reduced the state’s income tax rate and set a series of revenue-based benchmarks that could gradually lower the tax to zero. It also expanded the sales tax to some services, such as personal fitness training and website design. But the revenue triggers aren’t automatic, meaning the General Assembly must approve each additional income tax rate reduction.

A Mississippi law enacted last year gradually reduces the income tax rate from 4% to 3% by 2030 and sets revenue growth benchmarks that could trigger additional cuts. It could take over a decade to eliminate the tax, if all the benchmarks are hit.

Oklahoma also enacted a law last year that would trigger gradual income tax rate reductions based on revenue growth, until the tax is phased out. But the state won't know until next year whether it's met the revenue mark to trigger the first tax-rate reduction.

South Carolina joined the trend a month ago, when Republican Gov. Henry McMaster signed a law that could eventually phase out the individual income tax as revenues grow.

What does the Missouri proposal say?

Missouri's proposed constitutional amendment directs the General Assembly to eliminate the individual income tax through gradual reductions based on revenue growth. To spur that along, it gives lawmakers the authority to raise revenues by imposing the sales tax on “any goods and services” — sidestepping a constitutional ban on expanding the sales tax base that voters approved in 2016.

The legislature would have five years to decide which additional sales to tax without needing another vote of the people.

But some voters may not realize they are authorizing more sales taxes. The ballot wording asks whether to phase out the income tax and “modify” the sales tax — avoiding the words “increase” or “expand.”

The amendment, which was approved last week by the legislature, will appear on the November ballot, unless Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe sets an election sooner.

A businessman explains his move

Kehoe has made the individual income tax repeal a priority, arguing it will spur the economy while attracting businesses and new residents.

At a House committee hearing earlier this year, Will Spartin said he attended business college in St. Louis but located the headquarters of his beverage businesses in Florida because that state has no individual income tax. He would love to return to Missouri, but only if it makes financial sense, Spartin said.

“If Missouri moves in this direction, even gradually, it would be a meaningful signal to people like us that Missouri wants to compete for modern industries,” Spartin told lawmakers.

A retiree raises sales tax concerns

Retired elementary school teacher Sharon Wells, of suburban St. Louis, said she paid a few hundred dollars in state income tax this past year. She's worried her overall tax bill could rise if the income tax is replaced with a broader sales tax.

Wells pays someone to mow her lawn. She goes to a hair salon twice a month. She has periodic medical and dental visits and a car that needs maintenance. None of those services currently are taxed. But they all could be under the Missouri proposal.

“I think it’s a huge mistake,” she said. “We’re already paying far more than we have in the past for groceries, medicine, all kind of services. Everything has gone up.”

What does the data say?

A family earning between $49,000 and $78,000 annually would pay an average of $535 more in taxes if Missouri's income tax is repealed and replaced with higher sales taxes, according to an estimate by the nonprofit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Those earning less would pay even more, the group said.

“Pretty clearly, this is going to be a tax increase for most people,” said Carl Davis, the institute's research director.

Other data suggest that income tax policies — though not the primary motivation — can play a role in attracting people to states. Texas, Florida and Tennessee all ranked in the top five for net interstate migration of federal income tax filers in 2023, while the higher-tax states of California, New York and New Jersey ranked near the bottom, according to an analysis of IRS data by the nonprofit Tax Foundation.

If Missouri's referendum is approved by voters, “it could embolden other states to accelerate their own planned income tax reductions,” said Katherine Loughead, the foundation's director of state tax projects.

It was more than four decades ago and Mills, the first female prosecutor working in the state attorney general’s criminal division, secured a successful verdict in a murder trial. Yet a newspaper headline focused on a more trivial angle: “The prosecutor wore pale powder blue.”

“That wasn’t the first time someone underestimated me. And it certainly wasn’t the last,” Mills, now running for U.S. Senate, wrote in a recent memo to campaign donors.

The message is one the two-term governor is returning to frequently as she seeks the Democratic Senate nomination to take on longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins. Despite having decades in public office and the support of the party establishment in Washington, she's back to being the underdog ahead of the first Democratic primary debate next week.

Mills' top opponent in the June 9 primary, military veteran and oyster farmer Graham Platner, is drawing bigger, more enthusiastic crowds. He has raised more money than Mills, and has flooded airwaves with ads since entering the race last summer.

Mills argues she is the strongest candidate to face Collins in a race that is crucial to Democrats' effort to win the Senate. Her smaller, more intimate gatherings help her better connect to voters, Mills says. Their May 7 debate is scheduled to be the first of five, and Platner's past controversies will undoubtedly be a focus. She's leaning on her vast experience, while Platner has served no higher than the planning board in a small town.

Speaking after a Portland rally in support of Planned Parenthood, Mills noted she co-founded the Maine Women's Lobby, which has pushed for gender equity since the 1970s, and that she has been fighting for reproductive rights for years. Planned Parenthood Action Fund endorsed Mills earlier this month.

“He’s been nowhere on these issues,” Mills said of Platner. “He’s never walked the walk.”

Establishment vs. new face

Mills has a long track record of success. She’s been Maine’s first woman district attorney, first woman attorney general and the state’s first woman governor. In the Senate race, she is endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

But it's not clear that what has worked in the past will work in this year's Democratic primary, when the party is divided over whether establishment candidates or new faces offer the best way forward. Platner is endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, and other progressive leaders who say Democrats' 2024 losses prove the party needs a new direction.

Age also has surfaced as a factor. Mills, 78, has said she will only serve one term if elected. Platner, 41, argues voters should elect a senator who will stick around in Washington, where it often takes years to gain seniority and influence over policymaking and funding. Age is a double-edged sword in the race, as Maine has one of the oldest median ages in the country and many thousands of older voters, but Democrats have grown increasingly wary of older candidates since Joe Biden's aborted run for a second term at 81 years old.

“I’m really torn, I want the person who can win,” said Karen Tilbor, 79, who described herself as a supporter of Mills as governor but said she's unsure how she’ll vote in the primary. She said she thinks “many more young people” will vote for Platner.

While Platner has held large-scale rallies and events around the state, Mills supporters say the governor doesn't need to pack theaters or hold rallies because she already has the widespread name recognition and voters largely know her positions and personality.

For voters like Denham Ward, 79, that's important.

“She has got supporters who have known her for a long time, who know what she can do,” Ward said. “She's a known commodity for the state and has an organization that I think can take on Susan Collins.”

Emily Cain is a former Maine state lawmaker and former executive director of EMILY’s List, a group that supports female Democratic candidates and is backing Mills. She said the question ultimately facing primary voters is: “Who do you think has the best chance of beating Sen. Collins?”

Maine supported Democrat Kamala Harris for president over Donald Trump in 2024, but Collins has served for decades by winning as a moderate in a blue state.

“If it’s just about who you like better, or who makes you feel better, then that is different than who you think can win in the fall,” Cain said.

Political liabilities

Even Mills supporters like Cain hesitate in declaring that she holds the upper hand in the Democratic primary.

“I think the governor has a path to victory,” Cain said. “I think it’s going to be up to her, her team and her supporters to get across that finish line.”

Mills argues that Platner, who has courted controversy since entering the race, has political baggage that makes him the riskier candidate to send to the general election.

There have been lingering questions about inflammatory comments Platner made in old online postings, which he has since disavowed but that Mills highlighted in an attack ad where women described his statements as “disgusting.” He has been dogged by questions about the skull-and-crossbones tattoo recognized as a Nazi symbol that he said he got during a night of drinking when on military leave in Croatia. Platner has since covered up the tattoo.

Mills also faces challenges. Some liberal voters have criticized her opposition to a voter referendum to create a red flag gun law in the state. The referendum ultimately passed.

Separately, Mills has fashioned herself as an opponent of Trump, a position that may be helpful in much of Maine but could turn off voters in rural parts of the state. Trump won the presidential vote in the Republican-leaning 2nd Congressional District three times in a row.

Platner has centered his campaign on affordability issues such as housing and healthcare and focused his ire on billionaires and what he calls “oligarchy.”

On a recent Saturday, he was joined at a rally by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who told the crowd of hundreds that the country needs major change.

Mills, meanwhile, spent a recent Friday visiting with small business owners in Cape Elizabeth and South Portland, coastal communities just south of the state’s largest city of Portland.

The events were not designed to attract huge crowds, and they did not. One consisted of her chatting with a handful of patrons at a lunch restaurant and another of her speaking with the owner and staff of a floral shop. They attracted about five to 10 people each.

But some of the voters who were there said Mills' experience in office could benefit the state.

“Janet Mills has a ton more experience at many levels of government and I think has the best chance to hopefully give Maine a little bit of a leg up in terms of getting federal funding for us, and some federal recognition,” said Shelley Stevens, 51, who owns Fiddleheads, the florist in Cape Elizabeth. “It's just very pragmatic for me.”

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Kruesi reported from Providence, R.I.

The program, born in the grief of one of the nation’s worst mass shootings, teaches students how to identify warning signs among their peers and urges them to report any red flags to an anonymous tip system or a trusted adult to head off any violence.

Since that first class in a Columbus church, the program, “Say Something,” has been presented to thousands of students nationwide. Nearly 395,000 tips have been sent in, ranging from threats of school shootings and suicides to drug use and bullying. One tip last year led to the arrest of an Indiana student who threatened a shooting at her school.

“It’s been very successful,” said Hockley, whose son Dylan was among the 20 first graders and six educators who died at Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, 2012. “Having had direct experience of both of my children being in a school shooting and my youngest one dying, I feel very compelled to honor that legacy by doing all that I can to prevent future acts of violence and school shootings.”

Trainers with Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit founded in early 2013 by Hockley and other relatives of the Newtown victims, have traveled to all 50 states to show students how to spot signs of potential violence or self-harm — which can include threats on social media, an obsession with weapons or behavioral changes — as well as the importance of speaking up before something bad happens.

Shootings are on students' minds

For students who have grown up in an age where mass killings are often in the news and whose schools regularly run lockdown drills, having a way to take action can be comforting.

“School shootings are definitely very scary, and they do run through your head as a high school student,” said Addison Hunt, a 17-year-old junior at Hanover High School in Hanover, Massachusetts. “But I think being able to have these outlets where you can report things definitely makes me feel a lot safer.”

On a recent afternoon, a “Say Something” instructor took Hunt and her classmates through the program in the auditorium of the school, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) south of Boston.

Keely Rogers, a 28-year-old former high school music educator, explained to the group that research has found that nearly all school attackers showed warning signs beforehand, most commonly on social media.

“You are going to become the eyes and ears of your school through social media, right?” she said. “Your teachers and staff don’t follow the same people as you. They can’t keep an eye out. They can’t keep everyone safe.”

In a slideshow she pointed to an Instagram post, pulled from a real tip to the group’s reporting system, that said, “Don’t come 2 school tomorrow if you wanna live.” Rogers said someone reported the post within three minutes and action was taken.

Ava Khouri, Hanover’s senior class president, said one of the program’s key points, for her, was not to worry about what others will think about you if you speak up.

“I think that definitely students are wary to bring these issues up to adults and administration in the school, because they’re worried they’re either going to be made fun of for tattling or getting someone else in trouble,” she said. “So I think that this program definitely gave light to the fact that you’re not a tattletale if you’re helping someone and you’re helping others.”

Both Hunt and Khouri said they had reported troubling behavior to parents and educators before learning about the program.

A tip leads to an arrest

Trained crisis counselors staff the “Say Something” anonymous reporting system 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, referring serious situations to police and school officials. The most common tips are concerns about bullying, drug use, harassment and self-harm, according to Sandy Hook Promise.

Every once in a while, the system receives an alarming tip that is immediately passed on to law enforcement.

Last year in Indiana, among many examples, someone used the system to report that a student was planning a shooting at Mooresville High School, near Indianapolis, on Feb. 14. That's the anniversary of the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The student, 18-year-old Trinity Shockley, was arrested Feb. 12.

The tipster, a friend of Shockley, said Shockley was obsessed with the Parkland shooter and had access to an AR-15 rifle, according to a police report. Authorities said Shockley’s social media postings included one that said “Parkland part two. Of course. I’ve been planning this for a YEAR.”

Shockley pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced in November to 12 years in prison, though her lawyer insisted that Shockley would not have carried out the plan, local news outlets reported.

Sandy Hook Promise believes that its program and reporting system prevented a shooting in Mooresville, as well as in other communities, and has also stopped suicides.

“So it’s bittersweet,” said Hockley, the co-founder, “because I wish this had existed before Sandy Hook.”

And the Orlando Magic are in position to pull off a stunning upset.

Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs are through to Round 2 after eliminating the Portland Trail Blazers in their Western Conference quarterfinal series on Tuesday night and finishing off a five-game ousting.

The Spurs join Oklahoma City (4-0 winners over Phoenix) in the second round. San Antonio awaits the Minnesota-Denver winner. The Thunder could see James in the second round; James and the Los Angeles Lakers have a 3-1 series lead over the Houston Rockets going into Game 5 of that matchup on Wednesday.

Also Wednesday: The eighth-seeded Magic take a 3-1 series lead into Detroit for Game 5 of their Eastern Conference quarterfinal, while Toronto goes to Cleveland — with the winner of Game 5 in that series set to emerge with a 3-2 lead.

Tuesday recaps

— 76ers 113, Celtics 97 to get within 3-2 in series. Boston falls apart late.

— Knicks 126, Hawks 97 for a 3-2 series lead. Jalen Brunson broke out.

— Spurs 114, Trail Blazers 95 to win series 4-1.

Stories of note

— NBA moves closer to lottery changes

— Rockets' Kevin Durant out for Game 5

— Jones enters guilty plea in gambling case

— Edwards (knee) officially week to week

— NBA going through bids from Europe

— Pat Riley says Heat will be ‘aggressive’

— Taylor Jenkins set to return to Milwaukee

— AJ Dybantsa formally enters NBA draft

— Donovan steps down as Chicago's coach

— Warriors brace for possible Kerr departure

— Some news, notes going into the postseason

— Heat equipment manager needs transplants

Awards watch

Brad Stevens of the Boston Celtics has won the NBA's Executive of the Year award, his second time receiving that honor in the last three seasons.

Other awards being announced this week are the Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year on Wednesday and the Hustle Award on Thursday.

A breakdown on the awards handed out to this point:

— San Antonio's Victor Wembanyama became the youngest Defensive Player of the Year, and the first to win the award in a unanimous vote.

— Oklahoma City's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander nearly became the first unanimous winner of the Clutch Player of the Year award. He got 96 of a possible 100 first-place votes.

— San Antonio's Keldon Johnson topped Miami's Jaime Jaquez Jr. for Sixth Man of the Year, getting 63 first-place votes.

— Boston's Derrick White was revealed as the Sportsmanship Award winner, as selected by the league's players. Indiana's TJ McConnell — who got more first-place votes than anyone else — was second.

— Atlanta now has back-to-back Most Improved Player winners, with Nickeil Alexander-Walker taking that trophy this year. Dyson Daniels won for the Hawks last year.

— Dallas' Cooper Flagg edged fellow former Duke player Kon Knueppel of Charlotte for Rookie of the Year.

Among the announcements still to be scheduled:

— Most Valuable Player, which will be either Gilgeous-Alexander, Wembanyama or Denver's Nikola Jokic.

— Coach of the Year, which will be either Detroit's J.B. Bickerstaff, San Antonio's Mitch Johnson or Boston's Joe Mazzulla.

Wednesday's games

7 p.m. EDT — Game 5, Orlando at Detroit (Prime)

7:30 p.m. EDT — Game 5, Toronto at Cleveland (ESPN)

10 p.m. EDT — Game 5, Houston at LA Lakers (ESPN)

Thursday's games

7 p.m. EDT — Game 6, New York at Atlanta (ESPN)

8 p.m. EDT — Game 6, Boston at Philadelphia (Peacock/NBCSN)

9:30 p.m. EDT — Game 6, Denver at Minnesota (ESPN)

Betting odds

The defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder (-115) are favorites to win the NBA title, according to oddsmakers.

The Thunder are followed by San Antonio (+400), Boston (+550), Cleveland (+1500), New York (+2000), the Los Angeles Lakers (+2800), Denver (+3000) and Detroit (+5000).

Orlando, even with a 3-1 series lead on Detroit, is at +25000. Minnesota, even with a 3-2 series lead on Denver, is at +35000 after injuries to Donte DiVincenzo and Anthony Edwards.

Key dates

— May 2, 3 or 4: Conference semifinals begin.

— May 10: NBA draft lottery.

— May 10-17: NBA draft combine.

— May 17 or 19: Eastern Conference finals begin on ESPN and ABC.

— May 18 or 20: Western Conference finals begin on NBC and Peacock.

— June 3: Game 1, NBA Finals on ABC. (Other finals dates: June 5, June 8, June 10, June 13, June 16 and June 19).

— June 23: Round 1, NBA draft

— June 24: Round 2, NBA draft

Quote of the day

“He should get Executive of the Year for not making a move." — San Antonio star Victor Wembanyama, on Spurs general manager Brian Wright and how the team has stayed the course.

Stats of the day

— Boston has wasted leads of 13 or more points in four of its last six home playoff games, going back to last season. The Celtics in that scenario — up 13 or more, in Boston (not the bubble), and in the playoffs — were 66-3 in such games between 2002 and May 2025.

— Teams are shooting .450 from the floor so far in Round 1, on pace to be the worst-shooting conference quarterfinal round in the NBA since 2019 (.447).

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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/nba

Sixteen cities across the United States, Mexico and Canada will be hosting the 2026 World Cup in June and July. On average, July is the hottest month of the year for the contiguous U.S., according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and it’s only gotten warmer since record-keeping began in 1895. Wet bulb globe temperatures, which factor humidity, wind speed, sun angle and more, could exceed 90 F (32 C) in the afternoons in the Texas cities of Dallas and Houston and Monterrey, Mexico, research shows.

“Almost all of the host locations, 14 out of 16 of them, experience levels of extreme heat, which could be potentially dangerous to players, match officials and possibly spectators,” said Donal Mullan, a senior lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast who lead a paper last year examining the heat risks of this year's host cities. Some stadiums have the advantage of being fully covered, reducing the risks.

Exposure to heat, amplified during exertion, can lead to nausea, dehydration, headaches, stroke and, in extreme cases, death. Worries from some that millions of people could be exposed during the tournament were amplified in March, when record-breaking temperatures hit large swaths of the U.S. And with global temperatures rising because of pollution from burning oil, gas and coal, scientists have warned that staging soccer tournaments in the summer is getting more dangerous.

The 2022 World Cup tournament in Qatar was moved from summer to winter because of the threat of extreme heat. Last year's Club World Cup experienced a heat wave that sent temperatures soaring into the 90s F (32s C) and above in many areas. Following the event, the soccer players' global union warned that extreme heat would likely be an even bigger problem at the next two men’s World Cups. The 2030 World Cup will be co-hosted by Spain, Portugal and Morocco.

This year, host cities, stadiums and FIFA, the world governing body for soccer, are working to protect players and spectators by conducting heat risk assessments, enhancing shade, cooling zones and water access, stationing medical teams during events and more.

Some plans are still being finalized, but here’s a look at what to expect inside stadiums and at outdoor events:

Protecting athletes and FIFA personnel

Players will get 3-minute hydration breaks midway through each half, regardless of weather conditions, FIFA said. Other welfare plans include allowing teams the usual of up to five substitutions, a minimum of three rest days between matches, and staff and substitutes will have access to climate-controlled benches at outdoor matches. Climate conditions are factored into the match schedule.

“Outdoor matches during the hottest parts of the day have been strategically limited, kick-off times adjusted in certain markets, and matches expected in warmer windows prioritized for covered stadiums where possible,” FIFA said.

The federation has also created a Heat Illness Mitigation and Management Task Force made of medical and operational experts. Ahead of the games, they are finalizing heat-risk alert systems, coordinating stadium medical action plans and other standardized guidance.

Heat messaging, activating extreme heat plans and medical personnel

Officials will be monitoring weather conditions and be prepared to activate extreme heat plans if they determine that temperatures are too hot. If activated, plans will include sending out public safety messaging on how to protect yourself from heat and how to recognize signs of heat exhaustion and stroke.

If Canada's federal agency, Environment and Climate Change Canada, issues an official heat warning, for instance, the city of Vancouver will add more temporary drinking fountains, handwashing and misting stations outside to complement its multilanguage heat awareness campaign.

Along main tournament and festival routes, volunteers will also be providing heat safety information to attendees and workers.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said it will be disseminating heat safety and proper hydration information leading up to and during the games. It will also be launching a heat dashboard for the public with near-real-time data on heat-related emergency room visits in the county.

New York City will be prepared to send out notifications in 14 different languages to its 1.5 million public warning subscribers, as well as international visitors on the Everbridge app and WhatsApp channels.

Educational campaigns are helpful for promoting hydration, use of shade and more, but research shows passively disseminating information doesn't always have the intended effect, said William Adams, assistant professor in kinesiology at Michigan State University who researches exertional heat stress among athletes. It requires a more active approach, but that isn't really feasible with large events like this one, he said.

Medical personnel will also be stationed and available in FIFA Fan Festivals and around several stadiums during matches to manage heat-related illnesses, including at the Toronto Stadium in Canada and the Dallas Stadium in Texas.

At Dallas' outdoor events, all medical professionals will have access to ice and ice immersion bags, and the city’s festival site — where people can watch live matches — will also have two medical stations in climate-controlled locations.

Increased access to shade, water and cooling stations

Cities and stadiums will be increasing access to shade, cooling areas and water for spectators and workers.

In addition to being ready to implement its heat and smoke response plans if necessary, the Seattle Office of Emergency Management in Washington State is exploring using air-conditioned buses, tents and water misters at fan fests and matches.

In Vancouver, there will be shaded seating areas at all the various tournament events and locations around the city.

Volunteers and workers at outside events in Dallas will have mandated rest and hydration breaks. And officials will be working with volunteer organizations to hand out water.

These combined efforts hope to reduce heat‑related illnesses and help minimize strain on local hospitals during the tournament.

Stadium coverage and cooler hours

Some stadiums are covered, such as Canada’s BC Place Vancouver stadium that will host seven games. It is “one of only four 2026 World Cup stadiums which are fully covered so players and fans will not be exposed to weather conditions while inside the stadium,” the City of Vancouver said in a statement.

The Dallas venue has air conditioning and is also enclosed, “so we don’t anticipate any weather-related issues inside,” said Tim Ciesco with the Arlington Police Department.

In Santa Clara, California, all matches will be played in the evening, when weather conditions are cooler.

Elliot Arthur-Worsop, founding director For Football for Future, a group focused on creating environmental sustainability in soccer, said the tournament's organizers have a responsibility to keep people safe. “That’s a social contract that exists between the fans and football governing bodies,” he said. In a climate report they published ahead of this year's games, they found heat and other climate risks will intensify in most stadiums hosting games in 2050.

“By the next time the World Cup comes back and is awarded in this part of the world,” he said, “it will have to be structured differently and adapted.”

___

Associated Press writers Graham Dunbar and Seth Borenstein contributed to this report.

___

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

It’s part of a routine he and other weather observers at Blue Hill Observatory and Science Center, a weather station 15 miles (24 kilometers) south of Boston, have followed every day for the last 141 years. Using largely unchanged analog tools, they have built a continuous record of temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind and other measurements that can feed weather forecasts and scientific research.

“My routine is the same every day,” said chief weather observer Douglas, who has worked there since 1997, sporting a dark blue sweatshirt with the name of the observatory on the front. “The only thing that changes are the numbers and the weather itself.”

Blue Hill is the nation’s oldest continually operating weather observatory, according to executive director Alex Evans. Since 1885, staff and volunteers have relied on many of the same instruments, including mercury and alcohol thermometers, hygrometers that use human hair to measure moisture in the air, and that glass sphere on the roof tracking the hours of bright sunshine.

Keeping the same tools in the same place for nearly a century and a half, Douglas said, means that if they spot a change in weather patterns, they can be sure it’s real and not a result of new instruments measuring data differently than the old ones. Having a “tried and true database” as a reference is very important for climate research, he added.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is a collaboration between the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing and The Associated Press.

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As climate science has come under fire from the Trump administration, budget cuts and layoffs have swept through federal weather institutions since 2025. Blue Hill, as a private nonprofit, avoided much of this maelstrom. However, its continuing work is not a given. Funding opportunities are limited in this political environment, Evans said.

Blue Hill’s work, though seemingly outpaced by modern technology, serves not just to keep weather records, but also to connect ordinary people to climate science.

A continuous weather record in America makes climate change visible

Few weather observatories in the U.S. are as old as Blue Hill, and fewer still continue to collect data manually. Though similar methods are still used by networks of volunteers across the country that feed data to the National Weather Service, weather observatories — both private ones and those affiliated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — have adopted automated digital systems since at least the 1990s.

Blue Hill sends a daily summary of its observations to the National Weather Service, which chief scientist Michael Iacono said may contribute to weather forecasts in some circumstances, and monthly summaries to the National Centers for Environmental Information, where they can be distributed to climate researchers. Local television meteorologists also receive the daily summaries and may use the observations in their broadcasts in rare cases, he said.

Inside Blue Hill’s round tower, which stands three stories tall with castle-like notches at the top, two weather observers, Douglas and Amanda Joly, share an office filled with the results of their daily work. Boxes with sun cards line the walls, wind-speed charts drawn on EKG paper fill the cabinets and computers store the spreadsheets where Douglas and Joly meticulously record temperature and humidity.

Having records that stretch back over 100 years “is really unique,” said Chris Fiebrich, a meteorologist at the University of Oklahoma. This “dataset is golden,” he said, because climate change involves slow trends so “you can only see that clearly if you have measurements that go way back, from before we had satellites” and other modern equipment.

Blue Hill’s records show, for example, a 5-degree Fahrenheit (or about 2.8-degree Celsius) increase in the average annual temperature at the observatory since 1885, and that two local ponds remain frozen during winter nearly three weeks less than they did then.

Observers can also spot the impact of climate policies. Since the 1990s, Blue Hill has recorded an uptick in bright sunlight duration after it reached a low point in the 1980s. Because air pollutants like particulate matter interfere with sunlight, cleaner air means more sunshine, so this uptick can partly be traced back to the Clean Air Act — a federal law passed in 1970 and amended in 1990 to improve air quality by reducing emissions of pollutants.

A third of Americans believe climate scientists understand “not too well” or “not at all well” whether climate change is happening, according to a Pew Research Center survey from 2023. Trump called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly last September, and has sought to undermine climate science.

At a time when “the word ‘climate’ is politically demonized in some circles,” said Alan Sealls, president of the American Meteorological Society, places like Blue Hill can be “a small part of many possible solutions” to make weather and climate science relatable to people, including children.

Blue Hill connects people to science

The road to Blue Hill Observatory is a winding asphalt track that weaves through forest and borders a ski lift; making the drive, one needs to carefully wend between hikers and dog walkers. At the peak, visitors can enjoy the westward view over the treetops or slip through an open arch into the observatory’s courtyard.

Annie Hayes, a local from Milton who visited Blue Hill in mid-March with her husband and two children, said that seeing how observers collect data builds deeper trust in the science, which otherwise can seem “a little bit of a mystery.”

The mercury barometers in the observers’ office — one of which the observatory believes to be the oldest such instrument in active daily use in the United States — are a case in point. “If somebody’s standing there seeing it while you’re explaining it to them … it becomes a little less scary,” said chief scientist Iacono.

Blue Hill’s barometers, which measure atmospheric pressure, consist of glass tubes and small containers of mercury — a shiny, silver-white liquid — housed in a wooden case on the wall. As air presses down on the exposed mercury, it is forced up the tubes, and how far it travels reflects changes in atmospheric pressure. This is where the pressure unit “inches of mercury” comes from.

Another instrument popular with visitors is the Campbell-Stokes recorder, used to measure hours of bright sunshine. Its glass sphere, mounted in a curved metal frame, acts as a magnifying lens, focusing sunlight onto a paper card and burning a streak along it as the sun moves through the sky.

As she pointed to the glass sphere on display in the history room, Amanda Joly, Blue Hill’s deputy chief observer, explained that this recorder, which dates back to 1898, was stolen in 1993 and later recovered. The upside of that burglary is that, while a modern duplicate does the job on the building’s roof, visitors are now free to interact with the old sphere — something kids love to do — and the observers don’t have to worry about it affecting the measurements.

Hayes’ family, which lives nearby, was checking out some rain gauges in the gift shop when facilities head Don McCasland told them about a new Blue Hill citizen science program, which will allow residents to collect and add weather data to a central database. The family plans to start using their rain gauge this summer.

It’s “a great way to involve the kids and get them excited,” said Hayes. “And who knows? Maybe they’ll find an interest and want to pursue it on their own, too.”

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

America's most famous horse race says more than 125,000 mint juleps are consumed at the annual two-day festival at Churchill Downs, in Louisville, Kentucky. According to its website, that requires about 10,000 bottles of Kentucky bourbon, 2,250 pounds of freshly harvested mint and 475,000 pounds of ice.

But you don’t have to be there in person to enjoy this classic cocktail. The julep — a simple mix of sugar, water, fresh mint, crushed ice and bourbon — is accessible and easy to recreate.

First, a little history

Mint juleps have been drunk at the Kentucky Derby since it began in the late 19th century, but they became its signature drink in the 1930s. That's when the Derby created a commemorative cup to serve them in, and people began sneaking them home as souvenirs, says Martha Dalton, co-founder of Never Say Die bourbon.

“Instead of kind of fighting against that, they embraced it. And so from then on, (the mint julep) really became completely synonymous with the Derby," says Dalton, whose company is named after a Derby-winning racehorse said to have been revived with a shot of whiskey as a foal.

The julep’s roots, she says, are in ancient Persia, where sweetened rose water tonic called “gulab” was used for its medicinal properties. It spread to medieval Europe, where alcohol was brought into the mix, and on into the American South, where there was an abundance of mint and bourbon distilleries.

Why does the drink maintain its Southern charm?

“Every sip is slightly different,” says Angelos Bafas, bartender and co-founder of Cato bar in London. The bar is named after Cato Alexander, the 19th-century Manhattan bartender believed to have popularized juleps.

“The ice dilutes and the aromatics of the bourbon open up as the day proceeds,” says Bafas.

How to make one at home

For a traditional mint julep, Bafas says, stirring the ice is key to getting the right amount of cold and dilution. Keep stirring until the outside of the cup turns frosty.

“People tend to forget that water is an ingredient, and it’s actually one very active and important ingredient when it comes to juleps as it allows the bourbon to shine through. And also it allows the drink to be more palatable,” he says.

Plucking some mint from his homegrown plant and brushing it lightly against the side of the cup, he adds that the mint should be slapped (a light tap) not muddled (mashed).

“The mint has to release the delicate aromas,” says Bafas, explaining that muddling “can give you this kind of grassy very chlorophyll flavor.”

Variations

Bafas also suggests adding a few drops of aromatic bitters to “give a bit of flavor and to bring some body to the game.”

If you want to get creative, there are plenty of twists on the classic mint julep. Bafas makes a London Julep, which uses slightly less bourbon and adds a serve of elderflower liqueur for a sweeter, easier introduction to the drink, with a quintessentially English stamp.

He also suggests a highball julep, created by adding a bit of soda. “It’s technically a mojito made with bourbon, but you know, it’s based on the DNA of juleps,” he says.

Recipe for a Cato Classic Mint Julep

Single Serve

Ingredients:

2 oz bourbon whiskey

0.5 oz filtered water

0.5 oz simple syrup

3 dashes Angostura bitters

10 fresh mint leaves

4 drops of mint tincture (optional)

Crushed ice in a metal cup

Directions

Pour the whiskey into a julep cup, lightly slap the mint leaves to release their aroma, and add them in. Stir briefly, then add the remaining ingredients and crushed ice. Stir until the cup turns frosty on the outside, then top with more crushed ice, garnish with a fresh mint sprig, and serve with a straw.

The trick then is to take your time and make your drink last longer than the race record of 1 minute 59.40 seconds set by Secretariat in 1973.

Neck-strengthening exercises are integral in the fast-paced world of Formula 1 racing. Plenty of drivers will bring specialized training gear for that purpose when they arrive in Florida for Sunday's Miami Grand Prix, the next event of a lucrative, year-long championship which spans the globe.

Working out with weighted harnesses or using deep body-weight stretches stabilize their heads and help them stay focused on the track through high-speed corners while forces up to five times as strong as gravity heave their bodies from side to side.

Adults with “tech neck” don't work in such extreme conditions, but the training techniques of professional race car drivers highlight an often-overlooked muscle group. Paying greater attention to posture while using screens and adding neck-specific exercises to a fitness routine are small changes that could ease discomfort, according to Dr. Neeru Jayanthi, an Atlanta-based sports medicine specialist who works with athletes of all ages from a range of sports.

“Does a normal person need to have a neck like an F1 driver? Probably not,” Antti Kontsas, an experienced performance coach who worked with four-time F1 champion Sebastian Vettel and other stars of the sport, said.

Still, “the healthy foundations are the same for the normal person and for the driver. Where you would start is exactly the same," Kontsas told The Associated Press.

As with any other fitness activity, neck training needs to be practiced safely and with attention to an individual's physical needs and limitations. When in doubt, seek guidance from a doctor or other medical professional, especially if you have experienced neck injuries or don't know what might be causing your aching neck.

When you’re aware of your limits, “it’s just knowing the loading, exposing gradually. That’s the safe way to progress,” Konstas says.

How drivers train

The days when F1 drivers smoke and drank before a Grand Prix are long gone. Even in the 1990s, fitness was crucial to Michael Schumacher's success; the seven-time champion from Germany emphasized cardio and strength training. After all, fatigue causes mistakes.

A key element of Kontsas’ training programs is not overlooking the neck, otherwise known as the cervical spine, when exercising your back and core.

Body-weight exercises like keeping the head level with the shoulders in a lateral, or side, plank position can help. Another easy exercise can be done lying down.

“The most simple thing is lying on your back on a bench with your head hanging and then holding your head in a complete horizontal line. You’re holding your head still and seeing how long you can hold that. That’s a good way to train, particularly, the front musculature,” Kontsas said.

To increase the challenge, drivers typically use a resistance band or a weighted harness that straps around the head to work their neck muscles.

Beating the pain of ‘computer neck’

Training doesn't have to take up a lot of time. Even F1 drivers might only do neck exercises for 10 to 15 minutes a session, two or three times a week, according to Kontsas.

If you spend a lot of time at a desk for work, improving neck health can start with a simple reminder to be aware of your posture and simple stretches like tucking the chin back to compensate for leaning forward toward a screen.

“Computer neck,” a modern ailment that causes neck, shoulder and back pain, comes when “your head sits in different positions off the spine” while working, explains Jayanthi.

“You sit in front of the computer for two, three, four hours, and you never realize that your head was in the wrong position the entire time," he said. "So we can go back to positioning our neck and actually doing chin tucks and isometrics to push your head in the correct position on the spine. Just remind yourself every 30 to 60 minutes.”

There's evidence that having a strong neck and trunk can help with other serious issues, according to Jayanthi. For example, neck training is “one of the most accessible, least expensive” options for concussion recovery and prevention, he said.

Likewise, spine strength can be a predictor of injury prevention or mitigation in tennis players, Jayanthi said.

Life in F1 can be a pain in the neck

It’s hard to measure how much faster fitness makes a driver, but it's notable that one of Formula 1's most celebrated non-driver staff members of the last 15 years is Angela Cullen, longtime personal physiotherapist to seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton.

The physical challenge of racing at the top level can be shock to first-timers.

At age 18, British driver Oliver Bearman made his F1 race debut with two days’ notice as a replacement for Ferrari when regular driver Carlos Sainz, Jr. needed emergency surgery in 2024. Bearman was fit from racing in junior series Formula 2, but the strain on his body from going at F1 speed was in another league.

“Destroyed” was his response to being asked how he felt afterward.

“Physically it was a really difficult race. ... I think especially my lower back and my neck, it’s hurting,” Bearman added.

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Follow AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on all aspects of wellness, at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well

Six people were aboard the 145-foot (44-meter) ship, called the Mariana. Divers on April 21 recovered one crew member's body from the overturned ship.

“The decision to suspend the search is an incredibly difficult one that is only made after very careful consideration of all available information,” Cmdr. Preston Hieb of the U.S. Coast Guard Oceania District said in a video posted on X. “From working and communicating with the families, I know how devastated they are by this outcome.”

The search by sea, air and land lasted more than 100 hours and covered an area larger than the state of California, he said. Agencies from Guam, Japan and New Zealand assisted, looking for an orange, 12-person life raft.

The Coast Guard identified the six crew members who were aboard the Mariana as Frederick L. Nosek Jr., Landon Delos Reyes, Jose L. Ramirez, Mohammed A. Rahaman, Chet R. Brochon, and Vincent B. Agulto. Their ages and hometowns were not immediately available.

It also was not immediately known which crew member had been found dead.

“We offer our deepest prayers and ask for God’s comfort and strength to surround their families and friends during this incredibly difficult time,” the Roman Catholic Diocese of Chalan Kanoa in Saipan posted online Wednesday.

The diocese also expressed “profound gratitude” to the Coast Guard and all of the international and military partners in the search. “Thank you for your bravery and your service to our islands,” it said.

Community members held a shoreline vigil for the crew last week, near the 13 Fishermen Memorial Monument honoring the victims of a capsized vessel during a typhoon in 1986.

The suspension of the search came two weeks after the crew notified the Coast Guard that the ship had lost its starboard engines and needed assistance as Super Typhoon Sinlaku battered the Pacific island chain. The Coast Guard lost contact with the vessel the next day.

Heavy wind hindered initial search efforts, but the overturned ship was eventually spotted April 18 about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northeast of Pagan, one of the islands that make up the Northern Marianas, which is a U.S. territory.

The Coast Guard said debris included a partially submerged inflatable life raft was spotted about 110 miles (177 kilometers) from the ship.

“We offer our heartfelt condolences to the families of the Mariana crew, as well as the entire Saipan community,” Hieb said.

Super Typhoon Sinlaku battered the Northern Mariana Islands, causing wind damage and flooding.

Work Location: Detroit, MI

Description

The Client Experience Manager leads a high-performing team of Client Experience Account Managers and a Digital Solutions Planner to drive client satisfaction, retention, and revenue growth. The Manager is responsible for overseeing all aspects of client support, building scalable processes, and fostering a culture of excellence. This role blends leadership, customer engagement, project management, and data-driven strategy to ensure clients receive exceptional service and measurable results.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and manage a team that focuses on the client experience through advisement of result-based solutions, execution of campaigns and recommendations for optimization and future growth.
• Develop, implement, and refine workflows that streamline pre- and post-sale processes.
• Establish best practices for client deliverables, including reporting cadence, onboarding, and project management.
• Foster team growth through training on campaign strategy, optimization, and industry trends.
• Track and analyze team KPIs to measure impact and identify areas for improvement.
• Partner with Director of Digital, Digital Sales Strategist and Account Executives to develop and deliver compelling, data-driven presentations using tools like Claritas.
• Support revenue growth by building retention strategies and strengthening client relationships.
• Collaborate with leadership to align client experience strategies with organizational goals.
• Travel for market visits to support client retention and business growth.
• Design and deliver training for Account Executives on Ad Operations processes and data-driven reporting.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in marketing, advertising, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
• Minimum of 5 years of account management experience, preferably within media or digital advertising.
• Minimum of 2 years of experience managing direct reports.
• Strong project management skills with the ability to juggle multiple priorities and deadlines.
• Excellent presentation and communication skills, both pre- and post-sale.
• Proven ability to think critically, proactively solve problems, and adapt to change.
• Strong digital acumen and understanding of marketing trends.
• Ability to train, coach, and inspire team members and sales partners.
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A dyslexic teenager from a working-class background, Welch struggled with his college entry exams and took a job installing tires after leaving school at age 15. When he lost that gig, he lined up at the Liverpool job center. The job board featured a funeral director's listing — a “great career," he's sure, but “pretty grim" — and an advertisement for a charity event where entrepreneurs could win business grants.

Welch took that one and, less than 24 hours later, found himself inside a church filled with vintage furniture and friendly grandparents. It looked nothing like ABC's “Shark Tank," but he recalls feeling very much like one of the reality show's contestants as he described his proposal to sell cheaper tires to niche customers like his friends who drove souped-up cars.

That was Welch's first interaction with the then-Prince's Trust, which became known as The King's Trust when King Charles III became Britain's ruling monarch in 2023. “It wasn’t a well thought out plan, really,” said Welch, who is now based in Florida. “But they backed me. And they backed my enthusiasm. And they gave me a chance.”

Generations of Brits can tell stories similar to Welch, thanks to The Prince's Trust and The King's Trust, which have been supporting young people launch their careers since 1976, when then-Prince Charles took his Royal Navy severance pay and established the charity at a time of great economic distress for the United Kingdom. In the past 50 years, the King's Trust says it has reached more than 1.3 million young Brits through its education and employment initiatives, creating countless success stories that include those of celebrated actor Idris Elba and noted fashion designer Ozwald Boateng.

As Charles and Queen Camilla make their first state visit to the U.S. since he became king, their visit will also include a nod to The King's Trust, as the charity works to deepen its impact in more than two dozen countries including the United States. On Wednesday, The King's Trust will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a gala in New York.

Members of the British Royal Family have traditionally served as patrons of charities, boosting awareness and fundraising for existing organizations in the areas where they rule as nobles. Observers say that Charles' lasting interest in young people's employment is evident in his decision to establish his own foundation and continue lending his title to its expanding work even as he ascended the throne.

“The harsh reality today is that the need for the work of people like the trust is growing at a rate far faster than we can grow,” said Jeremy Green, a trustee of the King's Trust Group Company and chair of the King's Trust USA.

Giving young people an opportunity

The trust's geographic footprint largely consists of countries that, at one point or another, fell under British rule.

Its programs reach young people through schools and established nonprofit partners. They include Get Hired, which helps young people — oftentimes without college educations — land their first jobs, and the Development Awards, a grant that helps them afford purchases to advance their careers such as a laptop or professional clothing.

The Enterprise Challenge is an afterschool program where students develop businesses that address a problem in their community.

“What we see every time is that young people want to be helped. They want to be taken seriously,” Green said. "And it’s not just giving them money. It’s giving them opportunity.”

LaKenya Sharpe, principal of The Collins Academy High School in the Chicago neighborhood of North Lawndale, said being taken seriously by The King's Trust has meant the world to her students, who won The King's Trust US' Enterprise Challenge for launching C2C: Crops2Customers. Their business grows and sells fresh vegetables to stores in their area, which lacked access to stores that sold produce.

“A lot of times our babies, especially in this community, feel like no one’s watching, no one is looking, no one is paying attention," Sharpe said. “This shows that they can achieve anything. Their belief now is ‘Oh, other people are watching. Other people are seeing this.’ And they ask ”How far can this go?" My answer is, “It can go as far as you guys take it. Don’t let anything limit you.'”

Highlighting philanthropic ties between the US and UK

Wednesday's gala aims to showcase “the very best of British-American philanthropy through the individual arts, culture, investments between the two countries,” according to The King’s Trust USA CEO Victoria Gore.

The gala arrives at a moment of unusual tension between the elected leaders of the two longstanding allies. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s refusal to support the United States’ war in Iran has angered President Donald Trump.

The trust’s leaders emphasized that the anniversary celebrations have been in place long before the recent rift. But Charles' emphasis on the country’s deep philanthropic ties could serve as a reminder of their shared interests, according to JP Tribe, a senior lecturer in law at the University of Liverpool who has written about royal patronages.

“Hopefully the gala is a kind of event which shows that both countries have and can continue to engage in very positive public benefit activity that helps the most disadvantaged in our society,” Tribe said.

Expanding in the United States

The King's Trust US has set a goal to reach 1,000 young people in the United States this year.

Their biggest partner in that effort is City Year, the education nonprofit that introduced The Collins Academy to The King’s Trust and sends young adults to help teach in schools nationwide. AmeriCorps members are helping them pilot a version of the “Get Hired” program. They're also relying on the nonprofit Per Scholas and Maryland school districts to test some other programs.

Gore said student participants tend to be very focused on their immediate communities. The goal is to show them they can have an impact where they live.

"Keeping employment in communities and keeping people in communities is actually the key to everyone’s success," Gore said.

Welch said it doesn't require giant investments to make an impact. He received a 500 pound ($677) grant and, perhaps more importantly, a mentor who provided office space for the nascent company that he’d eventually sell for 50 million pounds ($68 million) to Michelin.

He said the blueprint for The King's Trust's expansion to succeed already exists. It's just a matter of building relationships with on-the-ground partners who can reach the people with the most need.

“What we see in Chicago, what we see in Orlando, is really no different -- with obvious local nuances," said Welch, who launched his latest venture the Anglo Atlantic advisory and investment firm. "But it’s not very different to what we see in Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester.”

___

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

The Brevard County School Board voted unanimously on Tuesday to terminate the contract of Kirsten Rose, 37, a teacher at Cocoa Beach Junior Senior High School.

According to the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, the relationship between Rose and the student began in November through Instagram. Investigators say it did not become sexual until February.

The case broke open when the student’s parents checked his location and noticed he was at an address they did not recognize. When confronted, investigators said he told his parents he was at his girlfriend’s house — and later identified that person as Rose.

In a release, Palm Bay Fire Rescue said that the Florida Forest Service and Brevard County Sheriff’s Office STAR helicopter — the latter of which is used to dump water — came in to help with the fire.

“At this time, we are asking everyone to stay out of The Compound for safety reasons,” the release reads. “There are currently no reports of damage to homes or property, and no reported injuries.”

[RELATED: Man arrested after human remains found in suitcase in Palm Bay’s ‘Compound’]

On Wednesday, Palm Bay police said that while it has not been confirmed, they “believe the fires were intentionally set”.

“The fires were at different locations, separate from each other. We do not have any suspect information, but ask anyone with information to contact the Palm Bay Police Department, or CrimeLine to remain anonymous.”

Palm Bay Police Department

No additional information has been provided at this time.

The Compound has become notorious in recent years after investigators revealed that several high-profile homicides emerged from the area.

More recently, human remains were found in suitcases, leading to the arrest of 19-year-old Lucas Jones.

[RELATED: New homicide revitalizes debate over finally developing the Compound]

Thirteen women and children from four families last week left Roj camp, a remote facility near the border with Iraq that houses relatives of suspected militants, on Friday and traveled to Syria's capital.

An official at the camp at the time said that the families were expected to remain in Damascus for around 72 hours and then be sent to Australia.

In response to an Associated Press inquiry about their status, Syria's information ministry said in a statement that after the families left the camp, the foreign ministry was informed that "the Australian government had refused to receive them.”

They were turned back from reaching Damascus International Airport, the information ministry's statement said.

“These families are still awaiting a solution, which can only be achieved through coordination with the relevant international parties.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at a news conference on Wednesday that “we are providing no support for repatriation and no assistance for these people.”

Syria's information ministry said that the families, through a lawyer, had obtained passports that were delivered by an “individual” that it didn't identify while they were still in northeastern Syria in an area under the control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.

A Lebanese-Australian doctor, Jamal Rifi, previously told Australian media that he was helping to coordinate the repatriation effort. Rifi couldn't be reached for comment.

A previous attempt to return 34 women and children to Australia from the camp in February was turned back by Syrian authorities.

Former IS fighters from multiple countries, along with their wives and children, were held in a network of camps and detention centers in northeast Syria after the militant group lost control of its territory in Syria in 2019. Though defeated, the group still has sleeper cells that carry out deadly attacks in Syria and Iraq.

The larger al-Hol camp has now been closed down, and thousands of suspected IS militants previously held in Syria were transferred to Iraq by the U.S. military to stand trial there.

The moves came after fighting between government forces and the SDF in January. Government forces seized much of the territory formerly held by the SDF. Amid the chaos, many detainees fled al-Hol and some prisoners escaped from a detention center.

Australian governments have repatriated Australian women and children from Syrian detention camps on two occasions. Other Australians have also returned without government assistance.

___

Rod McGuirk contributed to this report from Melbourne, Australia.

The rial had remained stable in the early weeks of the war that began Feb. 28, in part because there was little trading or imports.

The rial began to slide two days ago. Experts warn that its fall is likely to further fuel inflation in a country where many imported goods, from food and medicine to electronics and raw materials, are affected by the dollar rate.

A U.S. naval blockade during the ceasefire has increased pressure on Iran’s already battered economy, cutting into a key source of government revenue and hard currency by stopping or intercepting oil shipments.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Wednesday his government was continuing efforts to help ease tensions between the U.S and Iran following an initial round of direct talks on April 11.

The latest slide of Iran's currency comes months after a currency shock helped fuel nationwide protests in January. At the time, the rial weakened from about 1.4 million to 1.6 million to the dollar in less than a week, deepening public anger over rising prices and fears about the country’s economic future.

Iran’s economy has faced decades of sanctions, chronic inflation and a widening gap between official and open-market exchange rates.

Prices of basic household goods had already been rising before the rial's latest fall, adding to pressure on Iranian families. Over the past two weeks, people buying daily essentials have faced higher prices for milk, yogurt, cooking oil, bread, rice, cheese and detergents.

The increases point to broader inflationary pressure in the economy driven by uncertainty, supply disruptions, higher transport and production costs and the continuing impact of the U.S. blockade. The rial’s latest slide is likely to add further pressure particularly on goods tied to imports, packaging and raw materials.

The economic pressure also has extended to the labor market. The reformist Shargh newspaper reported Monday that 500 workers at Pinak in Rasht and 700 workers at Borujerd Textile Factory had been laid off since the beginning of the new Iranian calendar year in late March after their contracts ended.

The reported layoffs add to concerns that rising costs, weaker demand and uncertainty after the war and blockade are forcing some companies to cut jobs or avoid renewing temporary contracts.

___

Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.

It won’t be the original, but it’ll be a dead ringer.

For a savings bond drive in 1950, the Treasury Department commissioned copies of the famously broken bell, one for each U.S. state and several territories. Except for the serial numbers, they were faithful replicas — right down to the Pass and Stow trademark and a faux crack.

There’s a small but growing group of “bell hunters” who’ve dedicated themselves to visiting as many of the replicas as possible. If they were a gang, Tom Campbell would be the ringleader.

“It was a casual thing that turned into an obsession,” Campbell, a graphic designer, said.

Let freedom ring!

Although Fort Collins, Colorado, is now his home, Campbell was born and raised in Philadelphia and visited the original Liberty Bell as a boy.

Ordered for the Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall, the bell cracked on its first test ring in the 1750s, was melted down and cast anew. There’s no evidence it was even rung on July 4, 1776; abolitionists rechristened it in the 1830s for the Bible verse encircling its crown, “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof.”

No one knows exactly when or how the bell cracked again, but the last major attempt to restore it to ringing condition was in the 1840s.

Campbell didn’t know about the replicas until he moved to Denver in the late 1990s.

“I was wandering around, meeting a friend at a bar for a drink, and cut across the Capitol lawn and saw a full-size Liberty Bell sitting there,” he recalled. He read about the bond drive on a small bronze plaque, and a quest was born.

As Campbell and his wife, Dawn Putney, traveled the country, they began building bell trips into their itinerary. One day, she surprised him with his own website: tomlovesthelibertybell.com

“It was just a kind of a fun goof,” he said.

But three decades after he stumbled on that first bell, Campbell has become the go-to expert on these pieces of Americana.

From France, avec amour

The replicas were cast by the Paccard Foundry, run by a family who've been making bells in southeastern France since 1796.

They weigh the same as the original — 2,080 pounds (944 kilograms) — but differ from the OG bell in one very important respect: metallurgical makeup.

According to the National Park Service, the original was 70% copper, 25% tin and “small amounts of lead, gold, arsenic, silver, and zinc.” In a bell, those other metals amount to “impurities,” said Anne Paccard, the foundry’s communications director and chief for “art of sound” projects, like sculptures that feature bells.

“I must say that the original Liberty Bell is a very poor quality bell, metallurgically speaking,” she told The Associated Press in a recent email. “The bells we delivered in 1950 are made of a specific alloy of bronze called ‘airain’: 78% copper, 22% tin, nothing else.”

The Treasury bells toured the country on the backs of flatbed Ford trucks equipped with loudspeakers and festooned with red-white-and-blue banners.

“You could buy a savings bond, ring the Liberty Bell, have a party,” Campbell said.

At drive’s end, Treasury gifted the bells to the 48 states and the then-territories of Alaska, Hawaii, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. The District of Columbia and the Treasury Department each got one as well. (Three others went to Tokyo, a church in Paccard’s hometown and the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri, giving that state two bells.)

Trouble is, they came with no guidance and no funds to preserve them.

“A local or state historian described it to me as an 'unaccessioned artifact,’” Campbell said. “Not every state wanted them necessarily, and not every state knew what to do with them.”

Virginia held a contest, and the people voted to send the bell to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. It later went into a storage shed until finally finding a home outside a local fire station.

More than half have spent most of their lives outdoors. Time, neglect and exposure to the elements have taken their toll.

Some of the painted-on cracks have faded or disappeared completely. Others bells are displayed without their clappers and/or yokes, or in steel frames that prevent them being rung.

“At that point, it really transitions to more of a monument than a functional bell,” Campbell said. “And, to me, that’s kind of sad.”

But as the nation prepares to celebrate 250 years of liberty, some of those orphan bells are getting a new life.

Just like new... sorta

Kansas’ bell languished, disassembled, for years in a Capitol parking garage until state Sen. Elaine Bowers got involved. In October, the reassembled bell — resting on a heated concrete pad and supported by a custom-made wooden yoke, but still sans clapper — was given a place of honor outside the new Docking State Office Building.

“It just belongs here,” said a beaming Bowers as she stood beside bell No. 21. “It’s a fascinating piece of artwork, but also history that we all should be proud of.”

The Alabama and Idaho bells were shipped to the Bell Foundry Christoph in Charleston, South Carolina, for restoration and are expected to be home in time for the Fourth. Several other bells have also received recent touchups.

Campbell doesn’t set out to guilt states into fixing up and displaying their bells. But if his website happens to nudge them a bit, “maybe I’ll take a little credit for that.”

He’s also helped inspire a new generation of bell hunters.

By age 4, Zoe Murphy of Morris County, New Jersey, knew all the state capitals and their flags. At 5, she saw her first replica in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Now a 14-year-old high school freshman, she has her own website zlovesamerica.com. She’s visited 39 of the bells over the years, from Alabama to Wyoming and even far-off Alaska.

Zoe says traveling the country has given her a deeper appreciation for America’s “collective mix of people and our culture.”

Meanwhile, Campbell's recent visit to Arizona’s newly restored bell — which was touring the state, complete with a rope for the tugging — brought his toll up to 40. Why does the Liberty Bell resonate with him?

“The fact that a cracked bell is the symbol of the United States is really the perfect symbol of an imperfect union,” he said.

Nothing to see here

Try as they might, it’ll be nearly impossible for these Liberty Bell fans to check all the replicas off their list. Three replicas remain totally unavailable to the public this anniversary year, as far as Campbell can tell. Ironically, one of them is Pennsylvania’s.

For many years, the Treasury bell was the centerpiece of a museum in the former Zion’s Reformed Church of Allentown, where the original was briefly hidden to prevent the British redcoats from melting it down for munitions. But the building changed hands in 2023, and the bell is no longer accessible to the general public while the church is being renovated. (Local officials are placing a lighter, taller replica in front of the church for the anniversary.)

Last June, North Carolina’s bell was hoisted from its spot across from the Legislative Building in Raleigh amid a multiyear renovation of the state history museum. When the AP asked to see it, the request was politely denied.

“Our Liberty Bell is in a secure storage facility,” spokeswoman Mary Huntley said.

The only replica that's truly lost is the one sent to Washington, D.C., which went missing from storage in the early 1980s. Campbell suspects it’s long since been melted down.

“That’s 2,080 pounds of bronze,” he says. “So, that has a scrap value.”

But if anyone has information about the capital bell, feel free to give Campbell a ring.

___

Associated Press writer John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; and video journalists Thomas Peipert in Fort Collins, Colorado; and Ted Shaffrey in Mount Olive, New Jersey, contributed to this report.

More than three dozen bills supporting raw milk have been introduced in statehouses across the nation, The Associated Press found. A growing number of states are making it legal to sell. Dairy farmers say they can barely keep it in stock, even though prices can exceed $10 or $20 a gallon.

Top government officials and internet influencers are helping drive this momentum. U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. downed shots of raw milk at the White House last May and previously promised to halt “aggressive suppression” of the product. On social media, posts about raw milk have surged in recent months, often touting unproven claims about its health benefits.

All of this alarms public health officials, who have long warned that unpasteurized milk can harbor risky germs. The current outbreak — tied to raw milk cheddar cheese from California-based Raw Farm — has sickened nine people with E. coli, half of them children younger than 5. One victim developed a serious complication that can impair kidney function for life.

Petra Anne Levin, a biology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said she doesn’t understand the products' appeal.

“If you wouldn’t lick a cow’s underneath, why would you drink raw milk?” she said. “There’s a reason pasteurization is around.”

Pasteurization kills germs by heating the milk, commonly to at least 161 degrees Fahrenheit (71.7 degrees Celsius) for at least 15 seconds. Experts say it has no significant impact on milk’s nutritional quality and has saved millions of people from foodborne illness.

But some consumers would rather drink their milk raw despite the risk. Recognizing this trend, advocates and critics alike are increasingly calling for federal regulation of the product.

“People want access,” said Mary McGonigle-Martin, co-chair of Stop Foodborne Illness, a consumer advocacy group. “Public health has lost the battle on raw milk.”

Raw milk legislation pops up across the nation

Bills favoring raw milk have been introduced in the current legislative session in 18 states, including those controlled by Democrats and Republicans.

AP searched legislation in all 50 states using the bill-tracking software Plural and analyzed bills for whether they expand or streamline access to unpasteurized milk or products made from it. More than 40 bills introduced as of late April would make it easier to buy, sell or consume raw milk.

Some would allow raw milk to be sold for human consumption for the first time. A bill in New Jersey’s Senate, for example, would create a raw milk permitting program.

“You can buy cigarettes. You can buy alcohol. You can buy quote-unquote legalized marijuana,” said state Sen. Michael Testa, a Republican sponsor. “Why shouldn’t someone be able to consume raw milk?”

If the bill becomes law, New Jersey would join more than three dozen states in allowing raw milk sales. Wider access will probably mean more outbreaks, said Donald Schaffner, a Rutgers University food science professor.

Other bills seek to manage, guide or expand already legal sales. A bill advancing in the Iowa House would make it easier for farmers to sell unpasteurized products by offering them at farm stores alongside foods like meat.

Its sponsor, Republican state Rep. Chad Ingels, said he was initially opposed to legalizing raw milk because of safety concerns.

“But it’s law now, and I’m very pro-local foods,” said Ingels, who expects the current bill to pass. “I just thought it made sense to allow those farm businesses to sell all their products in one location.”

Two bills in Missouri would allow unpasteurized dairy products to be sold in grocery stores, farmers’ markets or similar places as long as they include a label warning of the potential for harmful bacteria and herds are tested.

“We just want to make it more accessible, so that way, people have the freedom of choice,” said Republican state Rep. Bryant Wolfin, who sponsored one of the bills.

The legislation specifically invokes the Raw Milk Institute, defining “retail raw milk or cream” as being produced on dairy farms that in one bill meet standards set by the California-based organization, and in the other “have obtained listed status” from the institute.

The organization, headed by Raw Farm owner Mark McAfee, says its mission is to improve the safety and quality of raw milk, which is how Wolfin sees it. But Schaffner said the organization focuses on raw milk advocacy rather than managing risk. He pointed out that McAfee’s farm has been linked to numerous outbreaks.

It’s unclear how many raw milk bills will pass in statehouses this year. But there is also legislation being considered on a national level.

A bipartisan bill in the U.S. House would prevent federal departments, agencies or courts from restricting the movement of raw milk between two states where its sale is legal. Called the Interstate Milk Freedom Act, it was introduced in March by Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie and Maine Democrat Chellie Pingree.

Whether it passes or not, there are steps the federal government could take to make raw milk more available, legal experts say. The FDA could revoke the ban on interstate sales. The agency could also create national raw milk standards and urge or incentivize states to enforce them.

FDA officials did not respond to questions about whether such actions are likely.

Raw milk risks are well-documented

Despite raw milk's popularity, scientists and public health experts warn against drinking it. Websites run by the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention point to the well-documented risks of serious illness from a host of germs, including campylobacter, listeria, salmonella and E. coli.

A CDC review counted more than 200 outbreaks tied to raw milk that sickened more than 2,600 people and sent 225 to hospitals between 1998 and 2018.

Another analysis found that raw dairy products cause 840 times more illness and 45 times more hospitalizations than their pasteurized counterparts.

Children are especially vulnerable to such illness, because their immune systems are immature and because they drink milk frequently, noted Alex O’Brien, food safety and quality coordinator for the Center for Dairy Research in Madison, Wisconsin.

Before milk standards were adopted more than a century ago, about 25% of foodborne illnesses in the U.S. were related to dairy consumption, O’Brien said. Now, dairy products account for about 1% of such illnesses. In European and American societies of the early and mid-19th century, research shows infant mortality rates were 30-60 times greater than today. In one example, thousands of infants died every year from a condition known as “summer diarrhea,” which was primarily caused by bacterial contamination in milk that worsened in the heat.

O’Brien, who grew up on a farm, said he knows people who drink raw milk and has consumed it himself in the past. Drinking it once might not hurt you, he said, but the risk increases with every exposure.

Understanding and accepting the risks of raw milk has become more difficult in this political climate, said Martin, the consumer advocate.

“They can’t grasp it, or they think it’s so rare it won’t happen to them,” she said.

Martin’s son, Chris, nearly died in 2006 after drinking raw milk contaminated with E. coli sold by Organic Pastures, Raw Farm's previous name. For two decades, Martin has worked to raise awareness of the dangers and hold suppliers accountable.

Mari Tardiff, of Ashland, Oregon, was hospitalized for five months after drinking raw milk contaminated with campylobacter in 2008. She said she tried it because she was interested in “a natural probiotic.”

Doctors diagnosed her with Guillain-Barré syndrome, caused by her campylobacter infection. She spent time on a ventilator and was temporarily paralyzed and unable to talk. When she got home, she used a wheelchair and slept in a hospital bed, relying on her husband to turn her every two hours so she wouldn’t get pressure sores.

“Your whole life is completely blown apart,” she said.

Still, she said she wouldn't tell other adults whether to drink raw milk — although she worries about giving it to kids.

“If you make a mistake, it’s one thing to come to terms with when you’re the one dealing with the consequences,” said Tardiff, now 70. “But holy moly … if I did something like that and one of my kids or my grandchildren was going through what I went through, I would never forgive myself.”

Raw milk supporters see an ‘exciting’ future, but concerns remain

Proponents of raw milk are gratified that it’s becoming more available. Even in states where it can’t be sold in stores for human consumption, people can get raw milk marketed for pets or join a “herd share” in which consumers buy a partial ownership in a dairy herd.

“I’ve been involved in raw milk for roughly 14 years,” said Ben Beichler, of Creambrook Farm in Middlebrook, Virginia, which relies on herd shares. “To see how public perception and political perception has altered over the years with raw milk is quite exciting.”

Beichler said safety is key.

“My family and my wife, who’s currently pregnant, drink about a gallon of our own raw milk every single day,” he said. “So if there’s anybody who has a vested interest in making sure our milk is safe, it is us.”

Beichler said his 150-cow farm works with a veterinarian on regular herd checks and has a safety process that includes sending milk samples to labs every week to test for common germs.

In Foristell, Missouri, Tony Huffstutter said his family tests their milk daily for bacteria in an on-site lab at their Twisted Ash Farm & Dairy, where they keep 15 cows and sell raw milk for $29 a gallon.

“You can’t just go out there, throw a bucket under the cow and start milking it,” he said. “There are so many steps in doing it right.”

He said raw milk shouldn’t be treated differently from other natural products such as spinach, which has been associated with past foodborne outbreaks.

“They don’t pasteurize the salad,” he said. “They don’t force you to only buy cooked salad.”

With raw milk gaining a foothold, Martin said she believes that the best action might be for the FDA to regulate it as strictly as pasteurized dairy products.

McAfee agrees. “High standards and testing should be part of that,” he said.

Schaffner, the food safety expert, also favors regulation. Although he has serious reservations about giving raw milk to kids, he calls himself “a raw milk libertarian” when it comes to adults.

“It’s kind of like legalization of weed, right?” he said. “If people want it, we should find a way to regulate it and do it safely.”

Then again, he said, there’s already a dependable way of making raw milk safe.

“It’s called pasteurization,” he said. “And it works really well.”

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Rafael Grossi said in an interview on Tuesday that the International Atomic Energy Agency has satellite images showing the effects of the latest U.S.-Israeli airstrikes against Iran and that “we continue to get information.”

IAEA inspections ended at Isfahan when Israel last June launched a 12-day war that saw the United States bomb three Iranian nuclear sites.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog believes a large percentage of Iran's highly enriched uranium “was stored there in June 2025 when the 12-day war broke out, and it has been there ever since,” Grossi said.

“We haven't been able to inspect or to reject that the material is there and that the seals — the IAEA seals — remain there,” he said. “I hope we'll be able to do that, so what I tell you is our best estimate.”

Images from an Airbus satellite show a truck loaded with 18 blue containers going into a tunnel at the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center on June 9, 2025, just before the start of the June war. Those containers, believed to contain highly enriched uranium, likely remain there.

Grossi says all Iran's nuclear sites must be inspected

The IAEA also wants to inspect Iran's nuclear facilities at Natanz and Fordo, where there is also some nuclear material, the IAEA director-general added.

Iran is a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, whose five-year review is underway at U.N. headquarters. Under its provisions, Iran is required to open its nuclear facilities to IAEA inspection, Grossi said.

Iran has 440.9 kilograms (972 pounds) of uranium that is enriched up to 60% purity, a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%, according to the agency. Grossi has said the IAEA believes roughly 200 kilograms (about 440 pounds) is stored in tunnels at the Isfahan site.

The Iranian stockpile could allow the country to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program, Grossi told the AP last year, should Iran choose to rush for the bomb.

Tehran long has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful. President Donald Trump said one of the major reasons the United States went to war was to deny Iran the ability to develop nuclear weapons even as he has insisted that the strikes last June “obliterated” the country's atomic program.

IAEA has talked to Russia and others about taking Iran's highly enriched uranium

Grossi said the IAEA has discussed with Russia and others the possibility of sending Iran's highly enriched uranium out of the country — a complex operation that would require either a political agreement or a major U.S. military operation in hostile territory.

“What's going to be important is that that material leaves Iran” or is blended to reduce its enrichment, he said.

Grossi said the IAEA participated in the last cycle of U.S.-Iran nuclear talks in February but hasn’t been part of recent ceasefire negotiations mediated by Pakistan. He said the agency has been in discussions separately with the U.S. and informally with Iran.

The latest proposal from Iran would postpone discussions on its nuclear program but end its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial sea route for oil and natural gas shipments, if the U.S. lifts its blockade and ends the war.

Grossi described that as an indication that Iran wants to sequence how it confronts the objectives mandated by the U.S., including curbing its ballistic missile program and dealing with its proxies Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen.

“What is indispensable is that we address it,” the IAEA director-general said of Iran’s nuclear program.

A deal between the US and Iran will take ‘political will’

This will take “political will” from Tehran, he said, stressing that “Iran has to be convinced that it is important to negotiate.”

Iran's leaders say they are willing to negotiate and so does the Republican U.S. president, Grossi said, but “where the frustration kicks in, apparently for both, is that they do not seem to come to agreement, or be at an eye-to-eye level on what needs to be done first, or on how.”

Calling himself a negotiator who likes to see a “flicker of hope,” Grossi noted that “one important thing is that there is apparently an interest on both sides to come to an agreement.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News Channel this week that preventing Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon “remains the core issue” that must be confronted.

Asked if he thinks the Iranians are serious about making a deal, Rubio said that they are skilled negotiators looking to buy time and that any agreement must be "one that definitively prevents them from sprinting towards a nuclear weapon at any point.”

Grossi said in any political agreement, full IAEA inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities must take place.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin will sit before a Senate committee Wednesday, the last of three budgetary hearings this week, to argue for sharply reduced funding for an agency that has already seen its staffing reduced to its lowest level in decades under his leadership. He took an aggressive approach, responding to Democratic lawmakers with his own questions and at times accusing them of being unprepared or failing to care about the agency’s track record.

Zeldin has eliminated major climate change programs, promoted deregulatory efforts he calls the biggest in American history and canceled billions of dollars in Biden-era environmental justice grants to halt what he calls “EPA’s radical diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.”

The Republican administration’s proposed $4.2 billion EPA budget would sharply reduce support for state environmental programs and state-administered loans for water projects. It also would halt what it calls “radical climate research” and slash resources for enforcement and compliance. Officials also asked for more money for faster project permitting and to address drinking water disasters.

Zeldin aggressively responded to questioning from Democrats

Congress gets final say, which commonly departs from White House requests. Last year, lawmakers rejected most of Trump’s proposed cuts, reducing agency spending by just 3.5% despite an administration request to cut spending by more than half. Democrats said the budget plan shows that Zeldin is a friend to industry and ignores the cancers, asthma and other consequences of pollution.

“The budget proposal reads like a climate change deniers’ manifesto,” said Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. At a hearing Monday, she asked how the EPA can justify abandoning its duty to protect Americans “under the false flag of economic growth?”

The EPA has proposed rescinding a landmark finding that climate change is dangerous, loosened Biden-era rules limiting pollution from coal plants and proposed scrapping greenhouse gas emission limits for certain vehicles.

In response to DeLauro, Zeldin asked where the Clean Air Act mentions fighting climate change and whether she had heard of a recent Supreme Court decision that restricted the EPA’s authority to write aggressive regulations.

“You do not have the right to say climate change does not exist, that it’s a hoax,” DeLauro said.

Zeldin said that he understood she was upset and that she should know about major Supreme Court decisions. “You’re just somebody who likes to have the microphone on,” he said.

It devolved from there. DeLauro said that the Trump administration's behavior is “arrogant” and that it was ”making a mockery of what the agencies are all about.”

Zeldin told California Democratic Rep. Josh Harder that data he cited on the agency's rollback of certain coal plant emissions limits was worthless — “Have your dog pee on it. It is not accurate.” Harder's office later provided the EPA report that it said the numbers came from.

Zeldin's vision for the EPA

Zeldin argued that even with less money, the agency has continued to enforce environmental laws and achieved significant wins: an agreement with Mexico to reduce sewage flows into the heavily polluted Tijuana River and sped-up work to address radioactive contamination in the St. Louis region, as examples.

That work complements strict adherence to the law, a departure from what Zeldin says was the regulatory overreach of President Joe Biden's Democratic administration that wanted to strangle vital industries such as coal.

Republicans were largely supportive of Zeldin’s message that, “Not only will we be able to fulfill all of our statutory obligations, we will be able to do more with less.”

The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law provided tens of billions of dollars for drinking and wastewater loans through programs administered by states. That boost, however, ends this year, and the EPA’s proposed budget would cut off most of the agency’s support.

“It was never intended to be a new norm for spending,” said Virginia Republican Rep. Morgan Griffith.

But that would choke off money to remove harmful PFAS from drinking water. The agency’s contention that better technology could do the job for less was unpersuasive, according to Democratic Rep. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts.

“How do we get rid of PFAS in municipal water supplies with 90% fewer dollars?” he asked.

Zeldin responded that technologies were promising and then mentioned congressional earmarks, which members have used to fund projects in their districts with money that would otherwise go to states for loans — a practice many experts have criticized.

“I know that members of Congress are going to raid it, and they have been doing it for a long time,” said Zeldin, a former New York congressman.

Auchincloss replied that Zeldin wasn’t in charge of earmarks and that “hope is not a strategy.”

Zeldin was also questioned about industry influence on policymaking, with a particular focus on the Make America Healthy Again movement, which has attacked environmental harms from products like fertilizer. The movement's biggest champion is Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Maine Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree asked Zeldin whether he understood concerns from those advocates about industry influence at the EPA and the Trump administration's support of more pesticides.

He called much of the lengthy question inaccurate and then mentioned plans to look at microplastics as a potential contaminant in drinking water and an upcoming review of the high-profile herbicide glyphosate.

“I get it, you have an agenda," Zeldin said. “I mean, I understand you’d like to have a gavel in your hand.”

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Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of the AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.

Bongos, rare antelopes known for their striking stripes, have been declared critically endangered due to poaching and diseases. There are fewer than 100 mountain bongos left in the wild, according to the Kenyan government. Many were sent to Europe in the 1980s after a major rinderpest disease outbreak killed thousands.

The returnees arrived from Dvur Kralove Zoo in wooden crates at Kenya’s main airport and were received by the Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi and Tourism Minister Rebecca Miano, who hailed it as a “homecoming of the majestic bongos.”

It's the third such return in recent years, with the previous one in February 2025. After a period of quarantine and acclimatization, the bongos will be sent to the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy, which houses 102 bongos, before being released into the wild.

The conservancy runs a national recovery plan for the mountain bongo in collaboration with the government and plans to use the four bongos to interbreed and strengthen the gene pool.

Kenyan-raised nature explorers and filmmakers Jahawi and Elke Bertolli told The Associated Press that the bongos will bring genetic variation that is critical for their conservation, adding that the species plays a key role in protecting the forests that are vital to Kenya’s water supply.

Czech Republic Ambassador Nicol Adamcova said the relocation reflects a long-standing partnership between the Czech Republic and Kenya in conservation and a shared commitment to protecting endangered species.

Mudavadi said such milestones show what can be achieved when policy, science, and collaboration come together in pursuit of a shared conservation goal.

Performance and driving experience

As the de facto replacement for the recently retired Challenger, the two-door Dodge Charger is significantly longer, wider and heavier than the coupe it replaces. But some of that additional heft can be attributed to its all-wheel-drive system, a standard feature on all current Charger models, which provides better all-weather capability as well as improved off-the-line acceleration.

Both the Charger R/T and Charger Scat Pack come with a new turbocharged inline six-cylinder engine. The R/T’s makes 420 horsepower and the Scat Pack’s high-output version produces 550 horsepower. That’s enough grunt to get the Scat Pack to 60 mph from a standstill in just 4.2 seconds, which is several tenths quicker than both the 480-horsepower Mustang GT and 500-horsepower Mustang Dark Horse models we’ve tested. But we were underwhelmed by the Charger’s lengthy braking distances, and light steering with minimal feedback also makes it difficult to pinpoint the tires’ limit of grip in corners.

Although we tend to associate the name with muscle cars, the modern Mustang has been inching toward sports-car territory for years. That evolution is exemplified by the Dark Horse model, which is tuned for road courses rather than drag strips. The GT and Dark Horse deliver nimble handling, responsive straight-line performance, and massive stopping power. The Mustang’s V8 also sounds better and can be had with a manual transmission for greater driver engagement.

Winner: Mustang

Comfort and convenience

Without an adaptive suspension on the options sheet, the six-cylinder Charger models make do with a solid balance between ride quality and body control. Combined with a nicely calibrated throttle pedal, a smooth-shifting eight-speed automatic gearbox, and a hatchback-style rear liftgate that makes it easy to load and unload bulky cargo, this is a car that’s ultimately at its best when cruising or dispatching daily errands.

Technology is arguably where the Charger makes its strongest case, though. There’s no shortage of USB ports throughout the cabin, along with a wireless charging pad up front, and the 12.3-inch central touchscreen display offers sharp graphics, fast response, and a robust feature set. Dodge also earns bonus points for retaining physical controls for frequently used climate functions.

The level of comfort on offer in the Mustang really comes down to how it’s optioned. Both the GT and Dark Horse are available with adaptive suspensions that are tuned for performance, but the systems allow you to adjust ride stiffness on the fly. No matter how you option it, though, the Mustang’s comparatively svelte proportions equate to tight confines for rear passengers as well as limited cargo capacity.

On the tech front, the Mustang’s big 13.2-inch touchscreen gives its cabin a more contemporary vibe than the outgoing model’s, but all of the climate controls have been moved to this central display. This makes adjustments more cumbersome and distracting.

Winner: Charger

Features and value

With a starting price of $48,645 including destination, the Mustang GT comes in a few grand cheaper than the base 420-horsepower Charger R/T, which starts at $51,990. But stepping up to the Dark Horse requires a substantial outlay of $66,075, and tacking on options can easily push the price to over $70,000.

By contrast, the Charger Scat Pack has a starting price of $56,990, making it a compelling value for those who’re primarily concerned with straight-line performance and creature comforts. But if you’re not judicious with the options, the price can quickly rise into similar territory.

Winner: tie

Edmunds says

Dodge’s reimagined Charger offers turbocharged hustle, a spacious interior, and a level of modernity that its predecessor lacked. But it falls short of the Mustang GT and Dark Horse in a number of performance categories, and its six-cylinder powerplant simply cannot match the extroverted charisma of the Mustang’s V8. The Charger certainly has its virtues, but in this comparison, the Mustang is the clear winner.

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This story was provided to The Associated Press by the automotive website Edmunds. Bradley Iger is a contributor at Edmunds.

The facility is in the Perm region of Russia, located in the Ural mountains more than 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) from Ukraine. Ukraine’s Security Service, known as the SBU, said it had struck a Russian oil pumping station near the city of Perm as part of efforts to target Russia’s energy infrastructure.

Russian media also reported the attack, though Perm Gov. Dmitry Makhonin said only that a drone hit an unspecified industrial facility, sparking a fire.

Russian officials have not been forthcoming about Ukrainian claims that Kyiv is carrying out more long-range attacks and that its domestically developed drones are increasingly accurate.

Advanced drone technology has become a defining feature of the battle as Russia’s bigger army presses its more than four-year invasion of its neighbor. Ukraine’s response has included a drive to develop new drones for attack and defense.

Ukraine claims it hit a key Russian oil hub

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday posted a video on the Telegram messaging app showing a large plume of black smoke rising into the sky in countryside near a built-up area. Without specifying it was the reported Perm attack or what was hit, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was expanding the range of its long-distance strikes, describing them as a new phase in efforts to limit Russia’s ability to wage war by denying it crucial oil revenue.

It was not possible to independently verify the video.

The SBU claimed that most oil storage tanks at the facility, which it said is owned by Russia’s pipeline operator Transneft and is a key hub in the country’s oil transportation system, were ablaze. The claims could not be independently verified.

Zelenskyy thanked the SBU for the precision of its strikes.

“The straight-line distance is more than 1,500 kilometers. We will continue to increase these ranges,” he said.

The attack came a day after Ukraine struck the Tuapse oil refinery and terminal on the Black Sea for the third time in less than two weeks, prompting the evacuation of local people and threatening what Russian President Vladimir Putin said could be “serious environmental consequences.” Local authorities said the fire at the Tuapse had been “contained” by Wednesday.

Ukrainian drones exploit Russian vulnerabilities

Ukraine has escalated its long-distance strike campaign against Russian oil facilities in an effort to stop Moscow gaining a financial windfall from a U.S. waiver on sanctions amid global supply restrictions caused by the Iran war, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

Kyiv is exploiting the vulnerabilities of Russia’s large land mass, it said.

“Ukrainian forces will likely continue to exploit the large attack surface of Russia’s deep rear and overstretched Russian air defenses to launch more frequent and larger strikes against Russian oil infrastructure and military assets, supported by increased Ukrainian domestic drone production,” the institute said late Tuesday.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday that its air defenses overnight intercepted 98 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions and Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

Ukraine's weapon surplus could go to partner countries

After years of relying heavily on foreign military support, Ukraine is now poised to export its sought-after drone know-how.

Zelenskyy said that Ukraine is producing a surplus of up to 50% in some types of weapons.

Military cooperation with partners supporting Ukraine “is already underway” with countries in the Middle East, the Gulf, Europe and the Caucasus, he said on Telegram late Tuesday.

The deals involve the production and supply of drones and missiles as well as software and technology, according to Zelenskyy.

Kyiv has also handed a proposal to the United States for cooperation on drones, defense systems and other types of weapons for use in the air, on land and at sea, he said.

Russian nighttime attacks wound civilians

Russia, meanwhile, hasn’t eased up on its own long-range attacks on Ukrainian civilian areas, damaging homes and infrastructure, regional authorities said.

Eight people were injured in an overnight attack on the northeastern Kharkiv region, the regional prosecutor’s office said.

In the northeastern Sumy region, officials said a 60-year-old woman died of carbon monoxide poisoning as a result of an attack.

In the southern Odesa region, Russian forces struck Izmail, damaging infrastructure facilities in the city, according to the local administration. A district hospital building was damaged.

Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 154 of the 171 drones launched by Russia overnight.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

In a memo late Tuesday to lawmakers, the Office of Management and Budget said money that President Donald Trump tapped to pay Transportation Security Administration and other workers through executive actions will be exhausted by May. It called on the House to quickly approve the budget resolution senators approved in an all-night session last week that would pave the way for full funding for the department.

“DHS will soon run out of critical operating funds, placing essential personnel and operations at risk,” the memo said.

The pressure from the Trump administration could help House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose narrow Republican majority has been stalled out, tangled in internal party disputes on a range of pending issues, including the Homeland Security funding. They have left the chamber at a virtual standstill.

The House is expected to vote as soon as Wednesday on the Senate budget resolution that is designed to unlock a multistep process to eventually fund the department, and the administration warned GOP lawmakers off making changes that could prolong passage.

“Restoring funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has never been more urgent, as demonstrated by recent events,” the memo said, a nod to the situation over the weekend when a man armed with guns and knives tried to storm the annual White House correspondents' dinner that Trump, the vice president and top Cabinet officials were attending.

Homeland Security shutdown is longest ever

Homeland Security has been operating without regular funds for more than two months after Democrats refused to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol without changes to those operations after the deaths of Americans protesting Trump’s deportation agenda.

While immigration enforcement workers have largely been paid through the flush of new cash — some $170 billion — that Congress approved as part of Trump's tax cuts bill last year, others, including TSA, have had to rely on Trump’s intervention through executive action to ensure their paychecks.

But with salaries topping $1.6 billion every two weeks, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said recently, those funds are drying up.

Complicated budget strategy ahead

House and Senate Republicans have embarked on a go-it-alone strategy, attempting to approve funds for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol without Democrats. They want to provide $70 billion for those immigration operations for the remainder of Trump's term to ensure no further interruptions.

It's a cumbersome process, the same that was used last year to approve Trump's tax cuts bill, that will play out over several weeks.

The Senate launched the process last week, and is now waiting on the House to act. Once that budget resolution is approved, both the House and Senate are expected to draft the actual funding bill, a process that can take weeks.

In the meantime, Johnson is expected to quickly turn this week to legislation that would fund the other parts of Homeland Security, including TSA, the Coast Guard and other agencies.

That bipartisan bill has support from Democrats and already passed the Senate a month ago, when Republicans reluctantly agreed to carve out the immigration-related funds that Democrats had opposed. But it has been stalled out in the House, as Republicans in that chamber disagreed with the Senate's approach.

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Follow the AP's coverage of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security at https://apnews.com/hub/us-department-of-homeland-security.

NASA’s Artemis II capsule returned to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, almost a month after blasting off on humanity’s first lunar trip in more than a half-century.

Following its splashdown in the Pacific on April 10, the Orion capsule was trucked from San Diego to Cape Canaveral. Engineers will examine the capsule’s heat shield in more detail along with everything else in preparation for next year’s Artemis III docking demo in orbit around Earth. The capsule’s electronic boxes will be removed and recycled, along with research equipment.

The capsule, dubbed Integrity by its U.S.-Canadian crew, carried astronauts deeper into space than humans have ever traveled before. Aside from a finicky toilet, the capsule appeared to perform well during the nearly 10-day voyage, according to NASA.

Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen are finally getting a break after medical exams and other tests that followed their mission.

“Been waiting for this moment,” Wiseman said via X late last week, posting a video of himself relaxing on the beach. “There is a lot in my head that I must process and very little has to do with leaving the planet. Today is my first step. I have never in my life felt peace like this.”

Until Artemis II, astronauts had not flown to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Artemis III will feature a fresh capsule and crew. They will remain in orbit around Earth for docking exercises with lunar landers still in development by SpaceX and Blue Origin. That will set the stage for a moon landing by two new astronauts as early as 2028.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

WEDNESDAY-FRIDAY

The main story for the rest of the week is going to be the heat as high pressure settles in, keeping Central Florida hot and dry.

Each afternoon will feel more like summer, with highs reaching the low 90s for inland neighborhoods and upper 80s along the coast, with heat risk gradually on the rise.

SATURDAY-SUNDAY

By Saturday, the heat sticks around with highs again in the low to mid-90s. Winds pick up out of the west southwest ahead of the next cold front.

Most of the day stays dry, but a few scattered showers and storms may begin to develop late in the afternoon.

Rain chances increase quickly overnight and into Sunday as the front pushes into Central Florida. By Sunday, storm coverage becomes widespread, with rain chances climbing to around 60 to 70 percent. Periods of rain and storms are likely, and some areas could see heavy rainfall at times.

This setup could also bring much-needed rain, with some models hinting at locally higher totals between 1-2″.

Temperatures will respond to the clouds and rain, dropping significantly compared to the heat earlier in the week, with highs near 80.

NEXT WEEK

Into early next week, the front continues to move south, keeping a small chance for lingering showers Monday into Tuesday. Cooler conditions hold for a bit before another warming trend begins later next week.

The popular separately ticketed event at Magic Kingdom runs Aug. 7 through Oct. 31, spanning select weekend and weekday evenings throughout the fall season, according to the Disney Parks Blog.

Party-goers can expect exclusive entertainment, Halloween-themed food and beverages, character greetings, trick-or-treating, and more.

New this year, Stitch is taking over the Rockettower Plaza Stage in Tomorrowland with a costume-themed dance party alongside Lilo and Angel.

The Cadaver Dans will also return, performing soulful harmony sets for guests making their way through the park.

Returning fan favorites include Mickey’s Boo-to-You Halloween Parade, set for 8:15 p.m., and the Hocus Pocus Villain Spelltacular, featuring the Sanderson Sisters and Disney Villains including Hades, Cruella De Vil, Jafar, Dr. Facilier, and the Evil Queen.

Disney’s Not-So-Spooky Spectacular fireworks show will once again transform Cinderella Castle with dazzling projections and appearances by Ursula, the Queen of Hearts, and Oogie Boogie.

Trick-or-treating remains a cornerstone of the event, with more than a dozen candy stops throughout the park. Cast members will hand out Mars Wrigley favorites, including M&Ms, Snickers, and Starburst. Complimentary treat bags will be provided to all guests — costumes not required to participate.

Character meet-and-greet highlights include Jack Skellington and Sally, Mickey and Minnie in Halloween costumes at Town Square Theater, Pooh in his bumblebee costume, and festive royal couples such as Ariel and Eric and Aladdin and Jasmine.

Tickets go on sale May 5 for guests staying at select Walt Disney World Resort hotels, the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Hotels, and Shades of Green. All other guests can purchase tickets beginning May 12.

The cauldrons have begun to bubble 🖤 A shriek peek at merchandise arriving for Halloween time 🎃 https://t.co/vCZ4wFM20P pic.twitter.com/M9hokFnYj0

— Disney Parks (@DisneyParks) April 28, 2026

Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party tickets start at $119 to $229 per ticket (plus tax), depending on the date.

Discounts are available for Annual Passholders and Disney Vacation Club members. Tickets and more information are available by clicking here or by calling the Disney Reservation Center at 407-934-7639.

Guests with party tickets may enter Magic Kingdom as early as 4 p.m., and this year, Halloween lands on a Saturday.

Information on treats is expected at a later time.

Science & Wine – Orlando Science Center | April 25 | 7–10 p.m.

This is not your typical wine night. Science & Wine blends hands-on STEM experiences with gourmet food and wine tastings from around the world. Enjoy live music, interactive science demos, and even a silent auction featuring luxury experiences. Tickets start at $100 for members and $125 for general admission, with VIP options available.

Central Florida Earth Day – Lake Eola Park | April 25 | 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

A free, family-friendly celebration focused on sustainability and education. Expect colorful exhibits, live activities, a photo booth, and guided nature walks throughout the day. It’s also pet-friendly, alcohol-free, and fully vegan.

Orlando Pickle Fest – Festival Park | April 25 | 12–9 p.m.

A quirky, fun-filled event dedicated to all things pickles. Try unique treats like pickle ice cream and cocktails, shop local vendors, and enjoy live music. There are also activities like a pickle-eating contest, mechanical bull, axe throwing, and a kids zone for families.

Mermaids, Pirates & Seafood—Oh My! – New Smyrna Beach | April 25 | 10 a.m.–3:30 p.m.

Dress up and dive into a sea-themed adventure at the Marine Discovery Center. This free, family-friendly festival features seafood, food trucks, and local vendors with nautical and pirate-inspired goods. Parking is just $5.

Leesburg Bikefest – Downtown Leesburg |April 24–26

One of the biggest motorcycle rallies in the Southeast, this three-day event features live music from national acts, stunt shows, bike displays, and vendors. Admission is free, with VIP upgrades available for premium experiences.

Mount Dora Blueberry Festival – Donnelly Park | April 25-26 | 9 a.m.–5 p.m.

Celebrate blueberry season with fresh berries, baked goods, live music, and over 100 vendors. Don’t miss the popular pancake breakfast or the blueberry pie-eating contest. This event is free and perfect for families.

It’s about 400,000 square feet of retail shopping and shopping, but with more development in the area that’s already been dubbed one of Central Florida’s fastest growing communities, that begs the question: Will there be more traffic?

Lake Nona West is right off Lake Nona Boulevard, between Narcoossee Road and Boggy Creek Road. Both roads see thousands of cars accumulate every day.

“It’s an issue that Orlando faces in general,” said Joanne Ling. She’s the senior director of commercial sales and leasing at Tavistock Development Company - that’s who developed Lake Nona West. “I don’t think you can drive on a roadway in Orlando right now where you’re not seeing the roadways respond to the growth.”

Respond is exactly what they’re doing.

“You’re going to notice some new roundabouts that keep traffic flowing just east of us,” explained Jessi Blakley. That’s the vice president of Tavistock. “The Central Florida Expressway will open to State Road 534 in just a few years. So, there are going to be an abundance of options to improve traffic and mobility in the region, and also sustainable options.”

Those leading the project say commuter mobility is the top priority, stating many of the things in Lake Nona West will be walkable, which should relieve the need to drive.

“We want to be a place that’s convenient, easily accessible, and that’s what we’re doing and creating the robust infrastructure in and around Lake Nona West and Lake Nona Town Center,” said Blakley.

Lake Nona West will include restaurants, retail therapy, and places to indulge in a nice beverage.

Those in charge tell News 6 it will potentially become a hub for not just Lake Nona, but surrounding communities as well.

“We’re bringing everyday needs to the community,” said Blakley. “I like to say it’s where errands meet everyday life. So, whether you’re visiting here, you’re working in the neighborhood, or you live right down the street, this is where you can come and shop.”

Retailers that will be part of Lake Nona West include Target, Total Wine, Sephora, and more.

The first retailers will be opening up in May. Many more are expected to open this fall.

Things feel a bit different now, with the Wild going home for Game 6 on Thursday night with a chance to eliminate the Dallas Stars and advance to the second round for the first time since 2015.

“I think it’s important just to stay calm. You know, don’t overthink it,” said Zuccarello, the 16-year NHL veteran in his seventh season with the Wild. “Don’t read whatever you guys (media) say about we haven’t gotten out of the first round in a couple of years. Just calm and collected.”

Zuccarello scored the first goal less than four minutes into Game 5 on Tuesday night in Dallas, which was the 38-year-old top-line forward’s return from a three-game absence with an upper-body injury. The Wild, in their 12th playoff appearance over 14 seasons, went on to a 4-2 win for a 3-2 series lead.

The only other time Minnesota has ever had a 3-2 series lead was that first round in 2015, when they beat St. Louis in six games. The Wild have since lost nine consecutive playoff series, including to Dallas in 2016 and 2023.

“We’ve got to just look to control our emotions in Game 6 and in front of our home crowd, a place where we had a good feeling leaving last time,” said forward Marcus Foligno said, who is in his ninth season. “I think it's a little bit different. I think we have a lot of leadership and guys that are experienced. ... It’s a close group but a really hard working group and a confident one right now.”

Wild captain Jared Spurgeon and fellow defenseman Jonas Brodin are the only two current players who have taken part in a postseason series victory in Minnesota. Spurgeon was then a 25-year-old in his fifth of his 16 NHL seasons — all with the same team. Brodin's status is uncertain for the potential clincher at home after leaving Game 5 with a lower-body injury.

If Minnesota can't wrap up the powerhouse first-round series at home, where it won Game 4 in overtime, a deciding Game 7 would be Saturday in Dallas.

The series winner will advance to play well-rested top-seeded Central Division foe Colorado, which finished off a sweep of its first-round series against the Los Angeles Kings last Sunday.

Kirill Kaprizov had two assists on Tuesday night, two days after his 29th birthday, before an empty-net goal with two minutes left. His second goal in this series was the 17th playoff goal of his career, breaking a tie with Zach Parise for the most in franchise history. His ninth career multipoint playoff game also surpassed Parise.

Matt Boldy, the 25-year-old budding standout, had the tiebreaking power-play goal in the final minute of the second period after having one taken away because of a goalie interference challenge at the end of the first.

Jesper Wallstedt, their 23-year-old rookie who has started every game in net over Filip Gustavsson in this series, had 20 saves in Game 5. He has allowed only three goals against the Stars in five-on-five situations, with neither coming that way.

“We’re very confident of where we’re at. ... Now we get to bring the series home,” Wallstedt said. “I’ve never played in a game of that type of magnitude. I’m very excited. I’m looking forward to it so much.”

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AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Prodded by his son, Mattingly decided to give baseball another go, and accepted a job over the winter as Philadelphia's bench coach, where he would be reunited with his old friend from their New York Yankees days in manager Rob Thomson.

But manage again when the Yankees great known as Donnie Baseball was about to turn 65?

“I don’t think I have the energy for that anymore,” Mattingly said in January.

Mattingly seemed candid about his future at the time because all logic and recent history showed that he was joining a heavyweight World Series contender in Philadelphia. Why even toss around the idea of ever filling out a lineup card again, especially with a high-priced, postseason-tested roster brimming with talent including Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber and Zack Wheeler?

Fast forward four months and the Phillies' season has come to this: Mattingly's last best shot at winning his first World Series ring after more than 40 years in baseball starts with managing one of the worst teams in the National League.

Mattingly is indeed the manager for the rest of the season, taking the interim job Tuesday hours after the Phillies fired Thomson — and openly flirted with the idea of replacing him with former Red Sox manager Alex Cora — with the stout belief that a championship team beats in the heart of this underachieving roster.

The job either comes with a perk or the potential for awkwardness with Mattingly also the father of his new boss, Phillies general manager Preston Mattingly.

“I know how competitive he is,” Mattingly said. “Him and I are a little different. He looks at things, he's a little outside the box at times, which I appreciate. It's helped me grow.”

Also give 11-year-old son Louis Mattingly the bulk of the credit for flipping dad’s decision in the offseason.

Mattingly — who wore a white pinstriped suit in the 1980s Hit Man poster that was a staple in many a 1980s New York kid's bedroom — is off to a fine start in Philly.

Thomson, who led the Phillies to four straight postseason berths, including the 2022 World Series, would still have his job had Philadelphia regularly played as well at it did in a 7-0 win over San Franciso in Mattingly's debut.

“I’m going to watch our game,” Thomson said in a video call with reporters shortly before the game. “I really am.”

Thomson surely enjoyed the result — even if it perhaps came with a bit of frustration the Phillies failed to play more consistent complete games throughout April.

Turner became the first Phillie all season with a four-hit game. Jesús Luzardo, just two starts after the lefty allowed nine runs and 12 hits against the Cubs, tossed two-hit ball, struck out eight and walked none over seven shutout innings. He teamed with two relievers for the Phillies' first shutout of the season.

The Phillies lost 10 straight games and 11 of 12 in Thomson's final stretch of an otherwise successful tenure. Mattingly kept the coaching staff intact — notably beleaguered hitting coach Kevin Long, who took most of the heat for the Phillies' woes — and third base coach Dusty Wathan was promoted to bench coach.

“I don't know if I'm a whole lot different from Rob, honestly,” Mattingly said. “I trust players, I believe in players, I like players. But I want us to play better baseball.”

Mattingly, who managed the Dodgers from 2011-15 and the Marlins from 2016-22, also didn't seem to mind he was Philadelphia's second managerial choice.

Dave Dombrowski, the Phillies’ president of baseball operations, made it clear Tuesday that Cora was his first choice to succeed Thomson. Dombrowski ran the front office in Boston when Cora managed the Red Sox to a World Series championship in 2018. A Philly reunion made sense on paper, though Cora ultimately passed.

“I came to the conclusion that if he took it, I would make a change. I thought he would take it," Dombrowski said. "Until Monday morning it was apparent from his perspective he wanted to take time with his family. He wanted to be a father first and foremost and so that’s what he had decided.”

The Phillies' woes stretch way beyond the manager.

From former All-Star third baseman Alec Bohm to second baseman Bryson Stott, the Phillies underperformed for a team with $284.7 million payroll. The Phillies are aging and the rotation was a disaster — which led to the decision to release Taijuan Walker — all part of a recipe for a team that used Tuesday's win to move to 10-19.

The Phillies, of course, have been here before, notably in 2022 when Dombrowski fired Joe Girardi after a 22-29 start and they went 65-46 the rest of the season under Thomson. The schedule works in Mattingly's favor to duplicate that run with nine of the next 13 games at home with only the Athletics (out of three other teams) holding a winning record.

Mattingly thought he was out. He's now all the way back in — and the Phillies' World Series hopes are firmly pinned on a manager who's never won one.

“This is not about how I'm going to do,” Mattingly said. “It's really about club.”

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB

The conviction for obstruction of justice and other charges comes on top of a life sentence he has already received on rebellion charges stemming from his baffling authoritarian push, which triggered the most serious crisis for the country’s democracy in decades.

Judge Yoon Sung-sik of the Seoul High Court said the conservative former president sidestepped a legally mandated full Cabinet meeting before declaring martial law, falsified documents to conceal the lapse, and deployed security officials “like a private army” to resist law enforcement efforts to arrest him in the weeks following his impeachment. Former President Yoon stood quietly as the verdict was delivered and made no comment.

Yoo Jeong-hwa, one of Yoon’s lawyers, called the verdict “very disappointing” and said the legal team would appeal to the Supreme Court. Yoon has also appealed his life sentence.

A lower court in January sentenced Yoon to five years in prison but partially cleared him of abuse-of-power charges tied to the Cabinet meeting ahead of the martial law declaration, finding he was not responsible for the failure to attend of two members who were invited.

The Seoul High Court reversed that acquittal, finding him guilty on all counts and ruling that he violated the rights of those two as well as seven other Cabinet members who weren’t notified by convening only a select few to simulate a formal meeting.

Though brief, Yoon’s Dec. 3, 2024, martial law decree threw the country into a severe political crisis, paralyzing politics and high-level diplomacy and rattling financial markets. The turmoil eased only after his liberal rival, Lee Jae Myung, won an early presidential election in June.

Yoon was suspended from office on Dec. 14, 2024, after being impeached by the liberal-led legislature and was formally removed by the Constitutional Court in April 2025.

Following his suspension from office, he refused to comply with a Seoul court's warrant to detain him for questioning, setting up a standoff in which dozens of investigators arrived at the presidential residence in early January 2025 but were blocked by presidential security forces and vehicle barricades. He was detained later that month, released by another court in March, and was then re-arrested in July.

He remained in custody after that as a series of criminal trials, which are continuing, began.

Wednesday’s ruling came a day after the same court increased to four years the sentence of Yoon’s wife, Kim Keon Hee, for charges including accepting luxury gifts from the Unification Church, which sought political favors from Yoon’s government, and involvement in a stock price manipulation scheme.

Prosecutors in a separate trial last week also requested a 30-year prison term for Yoon over allegations that he deliberately tried to escalate tensions with North Korea in 2024 by ordering drone flights over Pyongyang as he sought to create justifiable conditions for martial law at home.

The candidate — Republican challenger James Fishback — initially released a statement early last month after he claimed the fast-food chain had barred him from all Florida Waffle House locations.

“In January, I announced on The Tucker Carlson Show that I would visit every Waffle House in Florida to meet voters where they are. I was grateful that Waffle House Corporate gave us permission to do exactly that.

This morning, Waffle House abruptly revoked our permission, and criminally trespassed us from all of their Florida locations.

I am disappointed in Waffle House’s decision, especially since they had given us explicit permission to visit their restaurants just 3 weeks ago.

I want to thank the Waffle House staff who greeted me and our supporters with warmth, kindness, and awesome food. I’ll cherish the memories and friends we made at the Waffle Houses in Madison, St. Pete, Bonifay, Marianna, and Jacksonville.

Waffle House can revoke our permission, but they can’t stop our motion. We’ll soon launch the ‘Fishback Waffle Home’ — a no-cost pop-up restaurant coming to select cities across Florida — so we can keep meeting voters over hot coffee and warm waffles."

"STATEMENT BY JAMES FISHBACK ON THE WAFFLE HOUSE TOUR" (March 4, 2026)

Fishback told News 6 that he was told his campaign stops had drawn crowds that were too large for the chain.

But on Tuesday afternoon, Fishback came back to social media with a question for his followers following a recent campaign event in Orlando:

Where should we stop next?

A. Denny's
B. Taco Bell
C. Waffle House (and take the charge) https://t.co/9aYTUmyjJu

— James Fishback (@j_fishback) April 28, 2026

Users gave mixed answers to the post, which received over 6,000 views as of Tuesday evening.

In Florida, simply trespassing is considered a second-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to 60 days in jail.

News 6 has reached out to Fishback for more information and received a two-word response.

“Stay tuned!”

Fishback, a Republican competitor for Ron DeSantis’ position, is campaigning to stop H-1B visas for foreign workers, cancel A.I. data centers, and abolish property taxes, much in the same vein as current Gov. Ron DeSantis.

[RELATED: News 6 interviews David Jolly]

However, he’s also made some eye-catching proposals in recent months, including the following:

• Major Sin Tax: A 50% tax on OnlyFans creators in the state, with funding going toward public education and crisis pregnancy centers
• Mandatory School Uniforms: Required uniforms in all public schools, with families receiving $250 stipends per child to help purchase the necessary clothes
• Mamdani Tax: A $50,000 tax levied on out-of-state buyers trying to purchase a single-family home in Florida
• Homeless Sweep: Sending the National Guard to remove every single homeless person from Florida’s streets
• High School Graduation: Requiring students to get up in front of class and explain who their favorite president is and why for five minutes without notes

[RELATED: Byron Donalds on affordability, property taxes]

The primary election is slated for Aug. 18.

Meanwhile, the general election is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 3.

But that begs the question: when are these merging drivers supposed to get over?

[RELATED: Does using your turn signal give you the right of way?]

Well, according to the Central Florida Expressway Authority (CFX), merging traffic should use the “Zipper Merge” method. This involves a couple of tips:

1. USE BOTH LANES

To start out with, merging drivers should use both lanes, waiting until they hit the merge point to get over. And no, this doesn’t involve “cutting in line.”

“Using both lanes means the highway has more ‘capacity’ to keep traffic moving along,” the CFX guide reads. “Everybody wins.”

1. TAKE TURNS

The CFX guide also urges drivers in the flow lane to yield to merging vehicles, though not all at once.

By taking turns — allowing one vehicle to go at a time — drivers can minimize traffic jams and keep their wheels going.

[RELATED: What is the difference between merging and yielding?]

That’s not the only benefit here, though.

“It feels good to give someone a break, and get a break in return,” the guide continues. “That’s one reason why the Zipper merge has been shown to reduce road rage.”

Below are some other useful tips CFX provides for merging at highway speeds:

• Drive Ahead — Merging onto the highway? Changing lanes to exit? Put down the phone (you already did that, right?) and look ahead to find an open spot.
• Who’s on First? — The through-lane has the right-of-way. If you are merging into traffic, it’s your job to find the right place to fit in.
• Match the Pace — Increase your speed to match the flow of traffic. Use the length of the onramp; that’s what it’s there for. If you’re in a travel lane, you might need to slow down a little to fall in place behind a fast-moving car. No one likes to be cut off.
• That thing. You know. Your turn signal? — There’s a time for mystery. Merging is not one of them. Use your turn signal so the cars around you know what you’re planning to do.

For more information on the Zipper Merge, click here.

[RELATED: Trooper Steve explains rules surrounding merge lanes and passing]

Earlier this week, the Pine Meadows Conservation Area issued a warning about the mating season after one such gator attacked a cow, resulting in the bovine being euthanized.

According to local officials, “courtship” between alligators begins in early April, and the actual mating typically happens in May or June.

During this time, female alligators build nests and can lay dozens of eggs by late June or early July.

[RELATED: New details after woman mauled to death by alligator at Lake Kissimmee]

“During this time, alligators are more active, making it especially important for residents and visitors to remain alert near water,” the statement reads.

While alligator attacks aren’t common, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has recorded over 450 of them stemming back to 1948, with around 30 being fatal.

Of the deadly attacks, over half of them occurred during breeding or nesting season.

“We have many bodies of water in the city, including ponds, lakes and rivers, making ideal habitats for the reptiles,” Oviedo officials added.

[RELATED: Lake County conservation area closed off after alligator mauls cow]

Several children — including a 3-year-old at Lake Ashby and a 10-year-old at the Loxahatchee River — have been killed by alligators after getting too close to the water.

Just a few years ago, an 85-year-old woman was killed by an alligator after it attacked her dog while she was out for a walk.

To reduce the risk of alligator attacks, local officials have provided the following tips:

• Never feed alligators — it’s dangerous and illegal
• Keep pets on a leash and never walk them at the edge of a body of water
• Never swim outside of posted swimming areas and swim only during daylight hours
• Closely supervise children when they are playing in and around water
• Pay attention to your surroundings and be aware of possible presence
• If you see a baby alligator, know the mother is close by watching. Never handle the babies — they are not pets

If you have concerns about an alligator in your neighborhood, call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Nuisance Alligator Hotline at (866) 392-4286.

The EU's executive branch said Meta Platforms lacked effective measures to prevent children younger than 13 from signing up, and that it was not doing enough to identify and remove children after they had opened accounts.

Meta's own minimum age to open an account on Facebook or Instagram is 13.

The problem is not just that children are getting access. The European Commission said Meta is also inadequately assessing the risk of children younger than 13 being exposed to “age-inappropriate experiences” on the platforms.

Meta disagreed with the decision, saying that it has measures in place to detect and remove accounts for anyone younger than 13.

“Understanding age is an industry-wide challenge, which requires an industry-wide solution, and we will continue to engage constructively with the European Commission on this important issue,” the company said in a statement, adding it will have more to share next week about additional measures it plans to roll out soon.

Brussels is targeting the Meta with the Digital Services Act, a sweeping set of regulations that requires tech companies operating in the 27-nation bloc to do more to clean up online platforms and protect internet users.

Meta now has the chance to respond to the preliminary findings, before the commission issues its final decision. Violations can result in hefty fines worth up to 6% of a company's worldwide annual revenue.

Henna Virkkunen, an executive vice president at the European Commission, said the bloc's investigation launched in 2024 found that Instagram and Facebook “are doing very little” to prevent children from getting access despite their own terms and conditions indicating “their services are not intended for minors under 13."

“The DSA requires platforms to enforce their own rules: terms and conditions should not be mere written statements, but rather the basis for concrete action to protect users – including children,” she said in a statement.

The government released draft legislation Tuesday it intends to introduce to Parliament by July 2 that would create a financial incentive for the social media companies to strike deals with news organizations to pay for journalism.

The platforms’ criticisms included that the proposal was a “digital services tax” that misunderstood the evolving advertising industry and would fail to deliver a sustainable news sector.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said a monetary value needed to be attached to journalists’ work.

“It shouldn’t just be able to be taken by a large multinational corporation and used to generate profits for that organisation with no compensation appropriate for the people who produce that creative content,” Albanese told reporters.

“We think that investment in journalism is critical to a healthy democracy,” he added.

It’s Australia's second legislative attempt to make the platforms pay for the Australian news text and images that their users view.

Digital platforms had been pressured to strike deals with Australian news publishers to pay for journalism by legislation passed in 2021 that created the country's News Media Bargaining Code.

The platforms chose to reach commercial deals with news creators rather than be forced into arbitration and have a judge set the price.

But they have since avoided renewing those deals by removing news from their services.

The proposed News Bargaining Incentive would charge major platforms that choose not to strike commercial deals with news publishers a 2.25% tax on their Australian revenue.

The platforms would be given offsets and their overall costs would be lowered if they agree to pay publishers for journalism, the government said.

The government expects the incentive would raise between 200 to 250 million Australian dollars ($144 million-$179 million) a year. That was about as much as the platforms paid news outlets when the News Media Bargaining Code was working at its peak.

The government would distribute that income among news organizations based on how many journalists each organization employed, Communication Minister Anika Wells said.

The tax would apply to Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, Google, which is owned by Alphabet Inc., and TikTok, which is majority-owned by U.S.-backed investors.

Opposing the proposed legislation, Meta said news organizations “voluntarily post content on our platforms because they receive value from doing so.”

“The idea that we take their news content is simply wrong. This proposed legislation, which would apply to platforms regardless of whether news content even appears on our services, is nothing more than a digital services tax,” Meta said in a statement.

“A government-mandated transfer of wealth from one industry to another, with no connection to the value exchanged, will not deliver a sustainable or innovative news sector. Instead, it will create a news industry dependent on a government-administered subsidy scheme,” Meta added.

Google said “we reject the need for this tax.”

“It ignores the fact that Google already has commercial agreements with the news industry, misunderstands how the ad market changed and mandates payments from some companies while arbitrarily excluding platforms like Microsoft, Snapchat and OpenAI -- despite the major shift in how people consume news,” a Google statement said.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

All the targeted platforms are American. U.S. critics have argued that Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code had disproportionately cost American corporations.

Albanese was not concerned by potential pushback from the United States.

“We’re a sovereign nation and my government will make decisions based upon the Australian national interest,” Albanese said.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino pushed for changes after Benfica’s Gianluca Prestianni tried to hide verbal insults toward Vinícius Júnior in a Champions League game and Senegal's team walked off the field to protest a referee's decision in a heated and chaotic Africa Cup of Nations final.

Soccer’s rulemaking panel, the International Football Association Board, agreed that players can be penalized with a red card if they cover their mouths when verbally confronting another player.

The rule is not mandatory within The Laws of the Game but gives competition organizers like FIFA the option to use it.

It was unanimously approved by IFAB officials from FIFA and the four British soccer federations at a special meeting Tuesday in Vancouver, British Columbia, ahead of the FIFA Congress on Thursday.

FIFA's proposal followed Vinícius, backed by Real Madrid teammate Kylian Mbappé, accusing Prestianni of making a racially charged insult while raising his jersey to cover his mouth during the game in February.

Last week, UEFA handed Prestianni a six-game ban — three of the games deferred for a probationary period — for the verbal abuse, which it said was homophobic. UEFA could not prove the racial insult which Prestianni denied, though he admitted using a homophobic slur.

If Prestianni is selected for Argentina's World Cup squad, he must sit out the defending champion's first two matches in June, although the ban can be appealed.

“At the discretion of the competition organizer, any player covering their mouth in a confrontational situation with an opponent may be sanctioned with a red card,” IFAB said.

IFAB also agreed any player who leaves the field in protest of a referee's decision can be sanctioned with a red card. The rule also applies to team officials who urge players to leave the field.

Senegal players left the field during stoppage time of the AFCON final in January to protest host nation Morocco being awarded a penalty when the score was 0-0. Play was delayed for nearly 15 minutes before Morocco's spot-kick was saved. Senegal scored in extra time to win the title.

Senegal was later stripped of the title by an appeals panel of African soccer's governing body, and the case will now be judged at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.

IFAB said the amendments will be communicated to all 48 teams playing in the World Cup starting June 11, hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.

___

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

“A little bit of rain is going to help us, but it’s not going to get us out of this situation,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp told a news conference after touring the fire areas Tuesday. “We’re going to be in this for a while.”

A fire that has burned roughly 35 square miles (90 square kilometers) and destroyed more than 80 homes in rural Brantley County was 32% contained, the command team overseeing the fire response said Tuesday. That's up from just 6% containment reported Monday.

Rains on Sunday slowed the fire enough to give crews an opening to widen containment lines along the perimeter and to snuff out some smoldering pockets, said Johnny Sabo, director of the Georgia Forestry Commission.

“As that number increases, our confidence at holding it in that footprint increases,” Sabo told reporters. He added: “We have a long way to go. I just want to stress that.”

A larger wildfire in sparsely populated Clinch and Echols counties has charred more than 50 square miles (130 square kilometers) at the Georgia-Florida line. Sabo said crews have held that fire to roughly the same footprint for four days. It was considered 23% contained Tuesday.

One home and several dozen sheds and other smaller structures were destroyed, said Don Thomas, a Georgia Forestry Commission spokesperson.

An unusually large number of wildfires are burning this spring across the Southeast. Scientists say the threat of fire has been amplified by a combination of extreme drought, gusty winds, climate change and dead trees and other vegetation.

No fire injuries or deaths have been reported in Georgia. A volunteer firefighter in Nassau County, Florida, died last week after suffering an unspecified medical emergency while suppressing a brush fire.

Progress made against the Brantley County blaze prompted local officials to lift evacuation orders Monday for roughly 1,500 people who had fled their homes. About 2,500 remained displaced, said Susan Heisey, a spokesperson for the fire command team.

Local officials have warned people returning home to be prepared to evacuate again if necessary.

Both Georgia fires ignited as the state's worst drought in two decades has rendered vast pine forests and swampy lowlands tinder dry and highly combustible.

Investigators concluded the Brantley County fire began April 20 when a foil balloon touched a power line, creating an electrical arc that set the ground ablaze. The fire in Clinch and Echols counties started April 18 by a falling spark as a man was welding a gate, according to state officials.

Forecasts showed a high chance of more rain over the fires this weekend. There's also a possibility of thunderstorms, which can produce lightning that causes new fires.

Officials haven't said how long the Georgia fires might burn, only that it will take significant rainfall to extinguish them.

Sabo noted that a vast fire sparked by lightning in the nearby Okefenokee Swamp in 2011 burned for just shy of a year.

The 31-year-old two-way superstar gave up two runs, one earned, and five hits while walking three against the Miami Marlins. He threw 104 pitches — his most for the Dodgers — with 67 for strikes before leaving trailing 2-0. The Dodgers lost 2-1.

“Stuff-wise, it wasn’t that great,” Ohtani said through a translator. “I wasn’t happy with how the runs scored, too. So overall, it wasn’t that great of an outing.”

It was the second time in three weeks Ohtani only pitched and wasn't in the batting order as the designated hitter.

“It’s almost like a half-day for him,” manager Dave Roberts said before the game. “I think that in itself is a win for his mind and body.”

Dalton Rushing replaced Ohtani as both the DH and leadoff hitter. Rushing was 0 for 4 with a run scored and a strikeout.

Roberts said the lineup's performance when Ohtani isn't the DH won't figure into decisions on when to use him solely as a pitcher.

“Even without him in the lineup, we should have won the game,” Roberts said.

The Dodgers are trying to carefully manage Ohtani's workload in his first full season with them as a two-way player on a team that is attempting to win a third straight World Series championship.

“Obviously having him do both duties, theory, practice, it’s great,” Roberts said beforehand. “But how sustainable is it without kind of taking a little bit off his plate? That’s the question and it’s not exact science.”

It's too early for Ohtani to tell whether sometimes being a one-way player will preserve him for a potential run deep into the postseason.

“We're only going to find out in the totality if it’s a plus or a minus,” he said. “I think for players who want to do two-way and want to DH, they should get the option to do DH. But at the same time, it’s hard to tell now. We’ll see how it goes at the end of the season.”

Ohtani said he will respect any decisions that are made about when he pitches and hits or just hits.

“I also understand the importance of getting to the end of the season with everybody healthy,” he said. “So talking with the training staff, talking with the team, I think it’s really important that the team makes the decision on what’s good for the team.”

Struggling with his command at times, Ohtani gave up his second earned run in 30 innings over five starts this season, bumping his ERA from 0.38 to 0.60.

“I don’t think he felt completely in sync,” Roberts said. “There was a lot of misfires and bad misses. It was probably with him a delivery situation. But for him to find a way to still navigate six innings and then give up two runs, we should win the game.”

Ohtani was pitching on five days’ rest for the first time this year instead of his usual six or more.

“From the bullpen (onward), I didn’t exactly feel like my stuff was in line with where I wanted to be,” Ohtani said. “I feel great physically. I think it’s something to do with my mechanics.”

Ohtani joined Fernando Valenzuela in 1981 and himself last season as the only Dodgers pitchers to allow just one run over their first five starts of a season. In 2025, Ohtani did so while tossing only 9 1/3 innings.

Ohtani will return to hitting Wednesday afternoon in the series finale.

The four-time MVP is batting .278 with six home runs, 13 RBIs and 32 strikeouts in 108 at-bats. He has an .898 OPS.

“I do feel like over the course of my career it’s just a reality that I’m not exactly hitting at the best of my ability at this time of year,” Ohtani said. “At the same time as a player, I do want to be better and get to that position where I’m feeling really good. It’s a balancing act of the two.”

___

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

De'Aaron Fox had 21 points, Julian Champagnie added 19 and Dylan Harper scored 17 for the Spurs, who led by as many as 28 in winning their third straight game in the best-of-seven series to advance to the second round.

“We didn’t want to go back to Portland,” Champagnie said. “That was kind of the emphasis for the guys on the team. We just didn’t want to fly back to Portland. It's a four-hour flight. So being up 3-1 and playing at home, it’s a good chance to close it out and not go back. So, that was all of the motivation we needed tonight.”

San Antonio advances to the Western Conference semifinals for the first time since 2017, when it beat the Houston Rockets before losing Kawhi Leonard to an ankle injury and then getting swept by Golden State in the conference finals.

The Spurs will face the winner of the series between the Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Timberwolves. The Timberwolves lead that series 3-2, with Game 6 scheduled for Thursday.

Leonard’s injury and subsequent trade led to a rapid descent in the Spurs’ fortunes. That futility allowed San Antonio to draft Wembanyama, and the 7-foot-4 center from France was stellar in closing out the Blazers.

“It’s extremely difficult,” Portland coach Tiago Splitter said of Wembanyama's defense. “You've got to do a lot of tricks and try to set back screens and seals and spin actions. It's not easy, because he can contest the 3 and the rim at the same time, basically. He's going to create a lot of problems for a lot of teams for a long time.”

Portland cut its deficit to 91-82 with eight minutes remaining following an 11-0 run. But the Spurs stuffed the rally, including Wembanyama sending Deni Avdija’s floater off the top of the backboard and into the crowd in the final minutes.

Avdija finished with 22 points, but was 1 for 6 from 3-point distance as the Trail Blazers shot 23% from long range.

Portland’s Scoot Henderson scored five points. He was limited to 10 points after a skirmish with Harper in the final minute of the third quarter in San Antonio’s 120-108 win in Game 3 on Saturday.

It was one of several skirmishes during a physical and chippy series between the second-seeded Spurs and No. 7 seed Trail Blazers.

Coach Mitch Johnson said the Spurs could not afford another early double-digit deficit as they had in the third and fourth games. San Antonio responded by charging to a 17-4 start, fueled by a pair of 3-pointers and eight points from Champagnie.

“It’s never perfect, of course, but that’s exactly what we said we wanted to do before the game,” Wembanyama said.

Champagnie finished 5 for 7 from long distance and San Antonio shot 40% from 3-point territory.

___

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA

Sure enough, there was David Pastrnak already heading toward Buffalo’s zone.

Set up by Lindholm, Pastrnak scored on a breakaway 9:14 into overtime, and the Bruins avoided elimination with a 2-1 win in Game 5 of their first-round playoff series on Tuesday night.

“He’s pretty special when it comes to those opportunities, too, so it was fun to see it go in,” Lindholm said.

Pastrnak said the chemistry he has with Lindholm is a result of them being neighbors.

“We always call it the neighbor connection,” Pastrnak said. “Seems like anytime he has the puck and I have an opening, I have the confidence that he’s gonna find me.”

The series shifts back to Boston for Game 6 on Friday night, with Buffalo still seeking to clinch its first playoff series victory since eliminating the New York Rangers in six games of a 2007 second-round series. The Sabres are in the playoffs for only the third time since, and after snapping an NHL record 14-season playoff drought this year.

Elias Lindholm also scored for Boston which overcame a 1-0 deficit. Jeremy Swayman stopped 25 shots, including foiling Jason Zucker set up in front 3:30 into the extra period.

Rasmus Dahlin scored for Buffalo and Alex Lyon stopped 27 shots.

“He’s always lurking,” Lyon said of Pastrnak, whom the goalie robbed on several chances. “Obviously, he’s one of the best players in the league,” Lyon added of a player who reached the 100-point mark for a fourth straight season. “It’s just one play at the end from a really good player. That’s usually how these things go. And now it’s just incumbent on us to move forward.”

The Sabres were caught up ice, and the Bruins jumped into making a line change, with Pastrnak coming off the bench as the turnover occurred.

Accepting Lindholm’s pass in stride as he crossed Buffalo’s blue line, Pastrnak drove in on net a step ahead of Buffalo’s Mattias Samuelsson. He faked cutting across the front and nearly lost his balance before slipping the puck inside the right post.

“He always gets it done. And what a nice finish from him,” coach Marco Sturm said of the 12th-year player. “I’m just very happy because this guy puts a lot of pressure on himself and he wants to be the difference. And today he was.”

The goal was the 41st of Pastrnak’s playoff career, and second in overtime. He scored Boston’s last overtime goal, also coming in an elimination game, to seal the Bruins’ 2-1 win over Toronto in Game 7 of their 2024 first-round series.

Lindholm tied it 9:24 into the second period after his bad-angle shot bounced into the slot. Lindholm got to the loose puck first and, with his back to the net, spun around and fired in a low shot through a crowd.

Dahlin opened the scoring at 3:35 with his first playoff goal, and Buffalo’s first power-play goal in nearly a month. Driving up the left wing, Zucker’s initial pass attempt was blocked before recovering the puck and feeding Dahlin for a one-timer in the right circle.

The Sabres had gone 0-of-17 with the man advantage this series, and entered the playoffs failing to convert 22 straight chances, dating to a 4-3 win over the New York Islanders on March 31.

The Bruins played without second-line forward Viktor Arvidsson, who was hurt in the first period of Game 4 on Sunday.

Buffalo lost rookie forward Noah Ostlund to a lower-body injury in the first period.

Coach Lindy Ruff didn’t reveal what the injury was, but said, “it doesn’t look good.” Ostlund had just returned to the lineup from an upper-body injury in Game 3, in which he had a goal and assist.

The Bruins have won back-to-back outings in Buffalo after squandering a 2-0 lead in the final 7:58 of a 4-3 loss in Game 1. The Sabres won both outings in Buffalo, and were coming off a 6-1 win on Sunday.

“We’re in a good spot. We should be ready for the next one,” Dahlin said. “It’s a tight game and stuff happens, so we’re ready for going to Boston.”

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AP NHL playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

The government is appealing lower court orders that blocked the Department of Homeland Security from quickly ending temporary protected status for people from Haiti and Syria. If the justices agree with the Trump administration, authorities could potentially strip protections from up to 1.3 million people from 17 countries, exposing them to possible deportation.

The court has sided with the administration before and allowed the end of the program for people from Venezuela as lawsuits continue to play out, though the justices did not detail their reasoning.

The Justice Department argues that the Homeland Security secretary has the power to end the program known as TPS, and the way the law is written bars judges from questioning those decisions. “’No judicial review’ means no judicial review,” federal attorneys wrote in court documents.

But lawyers for about 350,000 migrants from Haiti and 6,000 from Syria say judges can consider whether authorities followed all the steps laid out in the law. They contend that in both cases, the government short-circuited the process.

Since the start of President Donald Trump's second administration, Homeland Security has ended the protections for 13 countries. Some people who have lived and worked in the U.S. legally for more than a decade have lost jobs and housing in a matter of weeks, attorneys said. Going back to Haiti and Syria is out of the question for many people because those countries remain wracked with violence and instability, said Sejal Zota, co-founder and legal director of Just Futures Law.

“This really is life or death,” she said. Four Haitian women who were deported from the U.S. in February were found beheaded and dumped in a river several months later, lawyers said in court documents.

The Trump administration appealed to the high court after judges in New York and Washington, D.C., agreed to delay the end of protections. One found that “hostility to nonwhite immigrants” likely played a role in the decision to end protections for Haitians. During his presidential campaign, Trump amplified false rumors that Haitian immigrants were abducting and eating dogs and cats. Federal authorities have denied racial animus played any role in the TPS decisions.

Protections for Syrians were first granted protected status in 2012, during a civil war that lasted for more than a decade before the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government in late 2024.

Haitians joined the program in 2010 after a catastrophic earthquake and have been extended multiple times amid ongoing gang violence that has displaced more than a million people, according to court documents.

Maryse Balthazar was on vacation in the U.S. when the earthquake hit her home country of Haiti. She’s now been in the U.S. for 16 years with temporary legal status. She has two children and works as a nursing assistant to the elderly. The field relies on Haitian immigrants like her, and would be hobbled by a Supreme Court decision that allowed their status to end, an industry group said in court papers.

For Balthazar, losing those protections would be devastating. She lost her home in Haiti to the earthquake, and another house she could have lived in was destroyed in a fire, possibly due to gang involvement. “I’d be homeless,” she said. “I’m scared … it’s a fear we are all living with.”

Other immigration cases the high court is considering this year include Trump's push to restrict birthright citizenship and the administration's power to revive a restrictive asylum policy.

The royal couple’s swing through the city comes midway through a four-day trip marking 250 years of American independence. It will be the first trip to New York by a reigning British monarch since Queen Elizabeth II visited in 2010.

They are expected to take part in a wreath-laying ceremony at the National 9/11 Memorial, where they will meet with first responders and the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other dignitaries are also expected to attend the ceremony, which comes ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks.

The queen is then scheduled to visit the New York Public Library, where she’ll deliver a new “Roo” doll to add to the library’s famed collection of Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animals, as the beloved children’s character turns 100 this year.

The five dolls currently on display -- Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore and Kanga -- were the inspiration for the characters in A.A. Milne’s children’s books. They were owned by the English author’s son, the real-life Christopher Robin, in the 1920s. The dolls were donated to the library in 1987 and are a centerpiece of the library’s collection of children’s literature. Roo, in the books, was a small brown kangaroo and son of Kanga.

The king, meanwhile, was expected to visit an after-school, urban farming effort that works with young people affected by food insecurity, as well as meet later with business and financial leaders in Manhattan.

The royal couple are then expected to attend a reception for the King's Trust, a charity Charles founded in 1976.

The four-day trip is Charles’ first state visit to the U.S. since he became king. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, made four state visits to the U.S.

Monday, the king and queen joined President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump for tea at the White House.

On Tuesday, Charles and Trump had a closed-door meeting in the Oval Office. The king then delivered a rare speech before Congress -- the first by a British monarch since his late mother in 1991 -- followed by a formal state dinner at the White House.

The monarchs are also expected to make stops in Virginia before wrapping up their U.S. visit back at the White House on Thursday with a formal farewell from Trump. Charles then travels solo to Bermuda on his first visit as king to a British overseas territory.

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Follow Philip Marcelo at https://x.com/philmarcelo

“It would be to avoid media,” said Cohen, an independent voter who has opposed Trump since he announced his 2016 presidential campaign.

Although Cohen has given up, others have not. A new Media Insight Project survey finds that about 6 in 10 U.S adults say they actively try to avoid news stories about Trump “often” or “sometimes.”

Most aren't finding hope in the news — particularly the people who are more apt to dislike Trump. Republicans are more likely to say the news they consume gives them a hopeful view of the world, while few Democrats say this is how they feel.

The findings from the new survey reflect divisions in an American electorate at a time when increased polarization and social media are changing the way people consume news.

David Sterrett, a principal research scientist at the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which was a partner on the project, said Democrats may be exercising wishful thinking when they say they try to avoid news about Trump.

“They would like to avoid Trump news, but they’re probably not because most national politics news is somewhat connected to the president,” he said.

Most Democrats follow political news, but it doesn't make them hopeful

Democrats tend to have more faith in media, particularly national news outlets, compared to Republicans, and they're also more likely to regularly follow national political news, the survey found.

But Republicans are more likely to say the news they consume gives them a hopeful view of the world, while Democrats are more likely to say the news is too stressful to read or watch.

About two-thirds of Democrats and independents say that they “often” or “sometimes” actively try to avoid news stories about Trump. Among them is Fernando Ocegueda, a Democrat in Los Angeles who said he recently cut back on consuming political news for precisely that reason.

“I don’t agree with his decisions,” the 50-year-old phlebotomist said of the president. “I don’t think he’s fit, so I don’t even want to bother in paying attention to what he has to say.”

Cohen, the retiree, said he thinks the president has created a sense of instability that puts many Americans in fight-or-flight mode. He thinks that’s part of what keeps people coming back for more.

“People don’t want to know, but they sort of want to know, because of the imminent sense of threat that is attached to him,” he said. “You know it’s a train wreck, and you just can’t take your eyes off of it.”

Even Republicans say they at times try to avoid Trump news

It's not just Democrats. About half of Republicans in the survey said they “often” or “sometimes” actively try to avoid news stories about Trump. Nicole Pratt, who identifies as a moderate Republican, is one of them.

The 62-year-old in Torrance, California said she supports some things the Trump administration is doing and wants to know the news, but she doesn’t need to read any more stories about what she views as the president's narcissism.

“His fights with other people, his arguments — I don’t bother with that anymore,” she said. “It’s like, I have other things to do.”

Sterrett said some Republicans might say they avoid news about Trump not because they're tired of Trump updates but because they distrust traditional news sources.

“A lot of his followers do get news directly from him via social media, and his posts and announcements,” he said.

Both parties get news on social — even as they say it's a misinformation haven

About 4 in 10 Republicans and Democrats say they get news from social media at least “daily,” but they also recognize the pitfalls of what’s shared there.

Most Democrats and Republicans point to social media users as having “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of responsibility for the spread of misinformation about events and important issues.

They're more divided on where to place the blame otherwise.

About three-quarters of Democrats say politicians have a high amount of responsibility for misinformation spreading, compared to 65% of Republicans. Another 64% of Democrats say that about social media companies such as Facebook or Meta, X, and YouTube, compared to 53% of Republicans.

Most Democrats, 58%, also see at least “quite a bit” of responsibility for misinformation coming from artificial intelligence companies that create and develop AI chatbots. A smaller share of Republicans, 47%, see AI companies as responsible.

Most Republicans, meanwhile, point to national news media as having “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of responsibility for the spread of misinformation about events and important issues. About half of Democrats say the same.

Partisans are hooked on news. Independents, not as much

While Americans aligned with one of the two major parties often differ on their specific views of trust in media, it's independents who are less engaged.

About 8 in 10 Democrats and Republicans regularly follow various news and information topics, compared to roughly 7 in 10 independents.

Other than Trump-related news, partisans are similarly likely to report avoiding news about celebrities, news in general, or news on their various devices — such as on social media or on their phone. Most on both sides of the aisle try to avoid the news when talking with friends or family at least sometimes.

Sterrett said even as the political parties differ in their news preferences, the survey shows some areas of overlap. For example, Americans in both parties are similarly likely to say they follow sports news, weather news or crime news.

“Especially when it comes to local issues and the stuff that affects people’s daily lives, it does seem like Republicans and Democrats are following similar sources and following similar topics,” Sterrett said.

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Swenson reported from New York, and Kinnard reported from Columbia, South Carolina. ___

The Media Insight Project survey is an initiative of the American Press Institute, Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, Local News Network at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The poll of 2,101 Americans included 1,092 U.S. adults ages 18 and older and 1,009 teenagers ages 13 to 17 but partisanship was only asked of U.S. adults. The poll of adults was conducted Feb. 5-8 and the poll of teens was conducted Feb. 2-16 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points and the margin of sampling error for teenagers overall is plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.

Powell will preside over what will probably be his last meeting as chair and hold a news conference Wednesday afternoon, when he may say whether he will take the unusual step of remaining on the central bank's board of governors, even after his term as chair ends May 15.

Separately, the Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to vote on the nomination of Kevin Warsh to succeed Powell. The nomination is expected to be approved on a party-line vote, and will then be taken up by the full Senate next month. President Donald Trump nominated Warsh, a former top Fed official, in January. Last year, Warsh echoed Trump's calls for the Fed to lower its key interest rate, leading many Democrats in Congress to question how independently he will operate as Fed chair.

The Fed is widely expected to keep its key rate unchanged Wednesday for a third straight meeting at 3.6%. Most policymakers believe at that level, the rate can still cool inflation by slowing borrowing and spending, but not so much that it will drag down hiring or raise unemployment.

Still, a key issue for the news conference Wednesday is what Powell says, if anything, about his future. Powell serves a separate term as a governor that lasts until January 2028. Chairs typically leave the board when their leadership terms end, but Powell has signaled he could remain. He would be the first chair to do so since 1948.

If Powell, who has made protecting Fed independence a key part of his legacy, chooses to stay, he would deprive Trump of the opportunity to pick his replacement and fill another seat on the Fed’s seven-member board. Three of the seven current governors are Trump appointees.

At the same time, it could worsen tensions with the Trump administration and would create what some analysts refer to as a “two Popes” scenario, with a chair and former chair both on the Fed’s board. In that case, divisions among policymakers could increase, if some decided to follow Powell's lead rather than Warsh's.

Warsh argued for rate cuts last year, but is unlikely to be able to reduce borrowing costs anytime soon, given that most policymakers have signaled they would prefer to wait and evaluate the Iran war’s impact on the economy.

The leadership turmoil comes while the economy remains unusually murky, putting the Fed in a difficult spot. Inflation has jumped to 3.3%, a two-year high, as the war has sharply raised gas prices. That makes it harder for the central bank to reduce rates. The Fed typically leaves rates unchanged, or even raises them, if inflation is worsening.

At the same time, hiring has ground almost to a halt, leaving those without jobs frustrated by the difficulty of finding new ones. Typically, the Fed cuts rates when the job market is weak, to spur more spending and job gains.

But layoffs also remain low, as employers appear to be following a “ low-hire, low-fire ” strategy. Many Fed officials have suggested that as long as the unemployment rate is low, the central bank doesn't need to cut rates to spur more spending and hiring. Unemployment declined to 4.3% in March, from 4.4%.

A key change economists will look for Wednesday is whether the Fed alters the statement it issues after each meeting to signal that it is possible that their next move could be either a rate cut or a hike. Right now, the statement indicates that any change to its rate would be a cut. According to minutes of its last meeting in March, many of the 19 participants on the Fed’s rate-setting committee support considering a hike, though it's likely short of a majority.

With their second straight lopsided victory, the Knicks positioned themselves to win the series Thursday night in Atlanta. They would have another chance at home in Game 7 if they need it — and it's getting harder to picture why they should.

The Hawks took a 2-1 lead in the series with one-point victories in Games 2 and 3, but a pretty sizable gap between the teams has appeared since. The Knicks led by 24 on their way to a 114-98 win in Game 4 in Atlanta and by 32 on Tuesday, when the lead was never below double digits in the second half.

“I know they’re going to try to bring a lot of force down there,” Knicks reserve Jordan Clarkson said. “So we've got to be prepared and we know what’s coming, so we’ll be ready.”

Brunson already had eight 40-point games in his first three postseasons with the Knicks. He hadn't even cracked 30 in this series until pouring in 17 points in the fourth quarter to prevent any chance of Atlanta making it a game.

Brunson said the Knicks have picked up their play in the last two games and said they were confident, but also cautious.

“Anything can happen in this series, so we’ve just got to be locked in for Game 6,” he said.

OG Anunoby added 17 points and 10 rebounds for the Knicks, while Karl-Anthony Towns had 16 points, 14 rebounds and six assists. The Knicks need one more victory to reach the second round for the fourth straight season, which would continue their longest streak since advancing nine straight times from 1991-92 through 1999-2000.

Jalen Johnson had 18 points, 10 rebounds and six assists for the Hawks. Dyson Daniels scored 17, but CJ McCollum, the catalyst of both Atlanta victories, had just six.

The Knicks outrebounded the Hawks 48-27 and had a 13-4 advantage in fast-break points against an Atlanta team that needs to win the transition game.

“I just think that their mindset was to come out and try to bully us and be physical, and they did that," Daniels said.

The Knicks made eight of their first 12 shots, then broke free with a 9-0 run late in the first quarter and were ahead 35-22 at the end of the period. Brunson had the last two baskets of an 8-0 surge in the second that pushed it to 59-37, and the Knicks led 64-48 at the break after making 58.5% their shots.

Leading by 18 after three, they put it away when Brunson had a three-point play and 3-pointer to ignite a 12-0 spurt that made it 110-82.

Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Onyeka Okongwu both had 16 points for the Hawks.

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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba

The message is not one of punishment but of unceasing support. The men start to perk up.

“We’re going to talk about keeping you and those you love alive and free,” Jim Hopkins, emeritus pastor of Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, says he told the men who gather at his church. “If you put down the gun, start taking the (city's) services, we’ll help you find another way.”

The California city has driven homicides to historic lows, and experts say part of the credit goes to a program that identifies people who are most likely to get pulled into gang violence and pairs them with life coaches to help turn their lives around.

City officials meet weekly to review recent shootings and identify the participants. The city's Department of Violence Prevention finds and talks to those people, one-on-one or in a group session at the church, and offers a host of services, including a life coach.

There is no single reason why a city’s homicide rate falls, but officials say the Oakland Ceasefire-Lifeline program has been key, making a difference one person at a time.

Oakland records lowest homicide rate since the '60s

Homicides rates have plummeted in major cities across the U.S. in recent years but the shift in Oakland has been particularly dramatic.

Homicide rates have not been this low in the city of roughly 400,000 people since 1967, when the Black Panthers were a powerful force and hippies overran nearby San Francisco for the Summer of Love.

For nearly 25 years, Oakland ranked among the nation's most dangerous cities. City police recorded annual homicide rates ranging from 16.2 up to 36.4 deaths per 100,000 people, while the U.S. rate hovered around five per 100,000.

Oakland adopted the lifeline program, which originated in Boston, after gun violence in 2011 took the lives of three children ages 1, 3 and 5 in separate incidents. The city recorded a 43% reduction in homicides from 2012 to 2017.

Officials subsequently watered the program down until it was essentially dismantled during the pandemic, according to an audit in 2023.

It wasn’t until city officials implemented changes recommended in the audit that the number of homicides declined, from 118 in 2023 to 78 in 2024.

Last year, Oakland hit a record low of 57 homicides.

Meeting people whose lives were changed by violence

Police are not involved except to provide the names of people expected to retaliate for a shooting that wounded or killed a friend or relative, or to be a victim of retaliation.

“People may underestimate how little the clients believe in themselves, and how little they value their own lives,” said Holly Joshi, chief of the violence prevention department.

Once selected, the men meet or learn of people whose lives have been forever changed by gang violence, such as parents who have lost a child, or someone left paralyzed able to communicate only by clicking their tongue.

Last year, Bernard, a 27-year-old former gang member, was among 200 people matched with a life coach. He was contacted as he was leaving prison after serving six years for attempted robbery. Today, he has a full-time job, an apartment and a new outlook.

He’s more aware of community ties, he says.

“When I was younger, I didn’t realize I wasn’t only hurting myself. I was hurting everybody around me, everybody who cared for me,” said Bernard, who asked that his last name not be used because he fears sharing his background could hurt his future opportunities.

Ready to turn his life around

At first, Bernard was standoffish with his life coach, 35-year-old LaSasha Long.

But then the young man who missed his mother’s funeral because he was still behind bars when she died suffered another loss. A close childhood friend had died. He had to talk to someone.

“As soon as I called Sasha, she was there with advice,” he says.

Long understood. She had a chaotic upbringing, bouncing between relatives after a stray bullet killed her mother when she was a toddler. She told him what she felt would have helped her move forward: That he'd lost a lot, but had a lot to live for too. And she reminded him his friend would have wanted him to live.

He listened.

“I can’t take the credit for it because it was all him. He was the pilot,” she says, adding that she helped with rides and reminded him of upcoming appointments. “But he wanted to change. He wanted that.”

Now, they chat on the phone every day. He makes goofy faces at her while posing for photographs for The Associated Press. She says she'll be the best man at his wedding one day. He says she's not a man. She says he hasn't seen how good she looks in a suit.

Long describes life coaching as “heart work,” helping someone see light in a dark tunnel.

Wanting to inspire others

Bernard aspires to be like Long one day, a coach who can offer a lifeline to others who grew up surrounded by violence and with bills to pay. His mother was loving but addicted to drugs. His father was in and out of jail.

He has discovered the joy of helping people.

On a recent day, Bernard was on break from his job cleaning streets in San Francisco when he saw a teen crash his bike. The old him would not have rushed over, much less reassured the embarrassed boy that everyone falls sometimes.

But Bernard helped wash the gravel burn on the boy’s face and told him jokingly: “Tell your girl you got jumped.”

“All some of us need is to see or know that people care,” he said. “Once people realize that, I believe they start to do better, they want to do better. They figure there’s more to life.”

The unruly format underscored the instability in a crowded race that has no clear leader, with mail ballots going to voters in less than a week.

Candidates sparred over questions ranging from how to cut gas prices to potential state charges against federal immigration agents to how best to contend with wildfires. Several sought to show their working-class roots, pitching themselves as the candidates who truly understand affordability woes.

The debate brought together the two leading Republicans, conservative commentator Steve Hilton and county sheriff Chad Bianco; and six Democrats, former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, billionaire Tom Steyer, former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state schools superintendent Tony Thurmond.

The candidates were asked to address the state's long-running homeless crisis, wildfire insurance shortages, projected budget shortfalls and staggering housing costs. Voters, meanwhile, are saddled with growing everyday costs for groceries, utility bills and gas.

A mostly mannerly debate last week without Villaraigosa and Thurmond on stage proved largely inconclusive, with no candidate managing a breakaway moment. It was the same case again Tuesday, but for different reasons.

With time running out to make an impression with voters, candidates appeared eager for conflict, and many questions resulted in interruptions as they tried to speak over each other. Answers were cut short, sometimes by moderators.

“Wow, that was a bit of a mess,” said a college student in the crowd who was given an opportunity to poise a question to the candidates.

Becerra was targeted repeatedly, suggesting that other candidates see him gaining momentum. They and one of the moderators pressed him whether he could legally declare a state of emergency his first day in office and freeze home insurance rates, as he has pledged to do.

Hilton accused him of misunderstanding state law. But Becerra, who is also a former state attorney general, said his proposal is legal and noted that he led through states of emergency during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The governor’s office is not a place with training wheels,” he said.

President Donald Trump, who has a long-strained relationship with the heavily Democratic state, came up in exchanges, though he was not the major focus of the night. Hilton and Bianco support the president, while Democrats have vowed to stand in the way of federal immigration raids and Trump’s conservative agenda.

Becerra, alluding to the president's endorsement of Hilton, referred to Trump as “Steve Hilton’s daddy.”

Hilton responded: “All these big things that affect us on a daily basis, these are decisions made here in California by our politicians. And we’ve had the same people in charge for 16 years now.”

The debate largely hewed along partisan lines, with Hilton and Bianco saying heavy regulations and taxes supported by Democrats are to blame for the state's challenges. The Democrats, meanwhile, each tried to sell themselves as having practical solutions and the right experience.

Porter stressed that she is the only one who refuses corporate campaign donations, saying, “I am not for sale.” That came after she hit Steyer for his former hedge funds investments in fossil fuels.

Steyer, who left the firm in 2012, said utilities and other business interests are spending money to attack him because he is unafraid to take them on.

The race is to replace outgoing Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is barred by law from seeking a third term.

California puts all candidates on a single ballot, and the two with the most votes go on to the November general election regardless of party. Democrats have worried that their crowded field could result in two Republicans advancing, which would be a historic calamity for the party.

Democrats have dominated state government in California for years. The GOP has not won a statewide election in two decades, and registered Democrats outnumber Republicans about 2-to-1.

The race was shaken up this month after the dramatic downfall of U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell over sexual assault allegations. When he left the race — and then Congress — he was among the leading contenders.

The debate was hosted by CBS LA and aired on the network's state TV stations and websites.

___

Austin reported from Sacramento, California.

“Right now we use fresh water for our drinking water. And in the future, we will need to look at different alternative water supplies,” said Public Works Director Sandra Reller.

She shared how the options could help with a major issue, the ongoing drought the area is facing.

“Right now, we’re in a drought. I’m sure everyone knows that. So some of these options are drought resistant,” Reller said.

Tuesday’s presentation included part of the city’s “Annual Sustainability Action Plan.”

Those alternative water supplies introduced include, turning reclaimed water into drinking water. It’s a move critics have called “toilet-to-tap.”

“It’s actually probably the cheapest and most environmentally friendly,” Reller said.

But this one... was not quite a fan favorite.

“But I would not recommend moving forward with it at this time because public perception, they don’t want it and I just don’t. It’s hard to recommend,” said Reller.

Another option would be the use of seawater or brackish water.

Brackish water is a mix of fresh and sea water.

“It’s a reliable water source and it you get superior water quality from it because it it treats issues like PFAS,”- says Reller.

PFAs is another term for “forever chemicals.”

“I think my thing would be just to how can we ensure that the water is up to good quality,” said Council Member Dr. Sarah Stoeckel.

Public Works posed to council to fund a feasibility study for brackish water. And they also proposed council re-evaluate the use of storm water, something some members say hasn’t done since the 80s and a move that would cost more than $740,000 to fund.

Both measures passed Tuesday night.

And that was good enough for the Philadelphia 76ers to avoid elimination in their first-round playoff series against the Boston Celtics.

Less than three weeks after an emergency appendectomy knocked Embiid out for the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs, the Sixers center scored 33 points as Philadelphia beat Boston 113-97 in Game 5 on Tuesday night.

“He was dominant. Especially the second half, he was extremely dominant,” said Sixers guard Tyrese Maxey, who had 25 points and 10 rebounds. “He did a really good job of just inserting himself. I was proud of him tonight, man. That's the dominance that you go into a playoff game with: He did that.”

After scoring two points in the first quarter on 1-of-6 shooting, Embiid scored 13 in the second, 10 in the third and eight in the fourth, when the Sixers went on a 12-0 run to turn a three-point lead into a 15-point runaway.

“I feel like he had too many easy baskets," said Celtics guard Jaylen Brown, who scored 22 points. "We’ve got to make him work. ... Tonight he got a bunch of easy baskets, and I feel like that propelled him.”

Paul George had 16 points and nine rebounds for the seventh-seeded Sixers, who lost Games 3 and 4 at home to fall behind 3-1 in the series before returning to Boston to keep their season alive.

Jayson Tatum had 24 points and 16 rebounds and Neemias Queta had eight points and 14 boards for the Celtics, who will try again to eliminate the Sixers back in Philadelphia in Game 6 on Thursday night. Game 7, if necessary, would be back in Boston on Saturday.

“No need to put any extra pressure on ourselves,” Brown said. “There’s enough of that as it is.”

Earlier Tuesday, Celtics president Brad Stevens was named NBA Executive of the Year for the second time in three seasons after disassembling the team that won it all two years ago and getting Boston back to the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference.

The Celtics did it despite missing Tatum for all but 16 regular-season games as he recovered from a torn Achilles tendon.

The Sixers missed the playoffs last year after seven straight postseason appearances, but earned the No. 7 seed this year with a victory over Orlando in a play-in game. After losing by 32 in Game 1, they coasted to a win at Boston in Game 2 but then lost both at home — with another 32-point blowout in Game 4 on Sunday, despite Embiid finishing with 26 points and 10 rebounds in his first game since April 6.

“Our fans deserve a win at home. We lost a tough one, then we got blown out of the water,” Maxey said. “After that performance that we put on last time in front of our fans, that was a disgrace and it was unacceptable.”

The Celtics led by 11 in the second quarter and held a 13-point edge early in the third. Both times Philadelphia rallied within a basket, using a 15-3 run to make it 66-65 Boston midway through the third.

It was still a one-point Celtics lead heading into the fourth, when George hit a 3-pointer to give Philly its first lead since the first quarter. After a pair of 3-pointers by Sam Hauser kept Boston close, Hauser fouled Quentin Grimes while he was shooting a 3; the three free throws started the Sixers on a game-ending 19-5 run.

“We got a little rocky start there in the third,” Sixers coach Nick Nurse said. “But then we really, really got going. And then once we closed the gap, we we’re pretty solid.”

Boston scored just 10 points in the fourth quarter on 3-of-22 shooting after making almost half its shots in the first 36 minutes.

“When you have empty possession, empty possession, and you’re not getting stops, it’s frustrating," Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said.

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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba

Investigators with the Altamonte Springs Police Department said 50-year-old Alexis Weber was taken into custody Tuesday morning on a charge of criminal mischief after being linked to at least one incident in the Spring Oaks neighborhood.

Residents say the incidents have been happening for nearly a week, with homeowners discovering what appeared to be human feces on vehicles, mailboxes and in yards.

Ivette Gomez said her family contacted police last Thursday after finding feces smeared along the driver’s side of her husband’s work van.

“My husband texted me that his work van is full of feces,” Gomez said. “I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, there is poop on my van,’ and I just couldn’t believe it.”

Gomez said she provided investigators with surveillance video that appears to show a person matching Weber’s description stopping near the vehicle. She added she has seen Weber multiple times while she exercises in the neighborhood.

“When I look back through my cameras, guess what, that is she,” Gomez said.

Neighbors said the vandalism was not limited to one incident. Some residents reported finding feces near a shared food pantry in the neighborhood over the weekend.

“Crap all over,” one resident said. “Whoever did this is probably a disgusting person and I was very shocked.”

Police said a detective witnessed Weber defecating in the front yard of her home early Tuesday before placing her under arrest in connection with the vehicle incident.

Spring Oaks Homeowners Association Vice President John Battle said residents worked together to report the incidents and involve law enforcement.

“If you call and say someone is doing this on your car, it’s Florida, you aren’t going to believe it,” Battle said.

No one at the home where police said she was arrested responded when News 6 showed up on Tuesday.

Speaking Tuesday to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, Charles repeatedly highlighted the historical and cultural ties that he said have cemented an enduring bond between the United States and the United Kingdom. But even as he spoke in unifying, optimistic terms, he delivered a series of nuanced warnings encouraging leaders in the U.S. to remain collaborative and engaged in global affairs.

He said the alliance between the U.S. and the U.K., tested anew by President Donald Trump's war in Iran, “cannot rest on past achievements.” Charles urged “unyielding resolve” in backing Ukraine against Russia and heralded the NATO alliance that Trump has consistently undermined.

The king praised religious pluralism and interfaith dialogue in terms that are rare in Trump's Washington. As the White House rolls back regulations aimed at denting climate change, the king encouraged those in power to “reflect on our shared responsibility to safeguard nature, our most precious and irreplaceable asset.”

At one point, Charles traced the notion of checks and balances on executive power to the Magna Carta, the foundational legal document sealed by King John in 1215. Trump told The New York Times earlier this year that he was constrained only by “my own morality.”

And acknowledging a scandal that has roiled politics in both the U.S. and U.K., Charles subtly alluded to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender with ties to British officials, including the king's brother, Andrew.

King celebrates independence and focuses on repairing a frayed relationship

Charles is on a four-day visit to the U.S. intended to both celebrate American independence and to repair the country's fraying relationship with the U.K. He hardly arrived in Washington as an oppositional figure to Trump. Joined by Queen Camilla, Charles had a warm greeting with the president and first lady Melania Trump at the White House earlier Tuesday.

In his welcome remarks, Trump also highlighted the shared history between the two countries.

“American patriots today can sing, ’My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty,’ only because our colonial ancestors first sang, ‘God save the king,’” Trump said.

The leaders met privately in the Oval Office for a meeting Trump later described as “really good,” adding that Charles is a “fantastic person.”

Trump hosted the royal couple for a jovial state dinner later Tuesday in the East Room of the White House. About 130 guests were seated at two long tables that were decorated with low floral arrangements. The guests included tech leaders such as outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, along with conservative Supreme Court justices and several Fox News journalists and hosts.

Charles and Camilla will continue their U.S. tour this week with stops in New York City and Virginia.

During his roughly 20-minute speech to Congress, the king, who is expressly apolitical, never directly criticized Trump. Still, the contrast was apparent at times and some British commentators described his speech as more political than they had expected.

Just two months earlier, Trump stood at the same lectern and chided Democrats for not standing during part of his State of the Union address. The king, for his part, elicited multiple standing ovations from Democrats and Republicans who listened with rapt attention.

Charles is just the second British monarch to address a joint session of Congress. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, delivered a similar speech in 1991 highlighting the historic ties between both countries and the importance of their democratic values.

Charles acknowledges a ‘more volatile and more dangerous’ world

While the king paid tribute to those remarks, he acknowledged that today's environment is “more volatile and more dangerous than the world to which my late mother spoke."

Many of the lawmakers in the room were at Saturday's White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which was disrupted by a shooting that authorities have described as an attempted assassination against Trump.

“Let me say with unshakeable resolve,” Charles said. “Such acts of violence will never succeed.”

Meanwhile, Trump's up-and-down relationship with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has taken a particularly sour turn over the past several months as the Republican president has sought to rally international support for the war in Iran. Trump criticized Starmer, who has largely resisted his overtures, by saying, “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.”

Trump has also imposed tariffs on the U.K. and warned of additional levies despite a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that has made such unilateral moves more challenging. Trump threatened just last week to slap a “big tariff” on the U.K. if it doesn’t scrap a digital services tax on U.S. technology companies.

Trump has more broadly challenged the traditional trans-Atlantic alliance with efforts to annex Greenland and threats to walk away from NATO. He has repeatedly imposed tariffs on and taunted Canada, a member of the British Commonwealth.

Ahead of his speech, the king had faced some calls on Capitol Hill to meet with Epstein's victims while he is in the U.S. He didn’t make a direct mention of the convicted sex offender, but did reference the “collective strength” in the U.S. and the U.K. to “support victims of some of the ills that, so tragically, exist in both our societies today.”

If Charles offered low-key criticism of Trump, the president didn't seem to mind. He said later that the king “made a great speech.”

“I was very jealous,” he said.

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Associated Press writers Stephen Groves and Aamer Madhani in Washington and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.

The row of paintings, like much of Gaza life itself, was displayed outdoors, open to the weather and curious stares. There was a painting of a dove, a bullet hole, a person’s silhouette in a territory where the war between Israel and the militant Hamas group has killed well over 70,000 people.

It was a sunny day in Bureij in central Gaza. Children shouted and played as admirers of the paintings took photos and reflected.

“They painted their feelings, their ambitions, their hopes, their visions, over four months during a continuous workshop in my studio,” said Ghanem Al-Din, who organized the exhibit of dozens of paintings.

One artist was displaced seven times

Obay Al-Qarshali, 21, was one of the artists. He said he fled his home in Gaza City in late 2023 after the war began, sparked by the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. He took only what he could in his hurry, leaving over 30 of his paintings behind.

They are now lost in the bombing and destruction, he said.

His painting on display showed broken glass, cars topped with mattresses and other belongings and the debris of buildings. All are too familiar for him and hundreds of thousands of fellow Palestinians who have been displaced, often more than once.

Al-Qarshali said he had changed locations at least seven times in the war.

“Because of how much we were displaced and suffered in moving and carrying our belongings, the tents, the crowds, and so much more, I wanted to express something that deeply troubled me: that we left our homes and our safe places, forced to flee, scatter, and change our location. This piece expresses so much,” he said.

The timing of next steps in Gaza's ceasefire is unclear. The disarming of Hamas is a major challenge before the territory’s shift in governance, stabilization and reconstruction can begin in earnest.

“Critical demilitarization talks with Hamas are continuing," former British prime minister Tony Blair, a key member of the U.S.-created Board of Peace meant to focus on Gaza, told a U.N. Security Council meeting on Tuesday.

Reconstruction likely will cost over $70 billion and take a decade, a report by the United Nations and the European Union said last week.

It said Gaza’s economy has contracted by 84%. More than 371,000 housing units have been destroyed. Over half of Gaza’s hospitals are “non-functional.” Nearly all schools are destroyed or damaged in the territory of over 2 million people.

In a report on Tuesday, Doctors Without Borders said Israel has destroyed or damaged about 90% of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure. And a Mercy Corps study found only 7% of Gaza’s agricultural infrastructure remains functional.

A child collecting firewood is among the dead

While large-scale fighting has eased since the ceasefire took effect in October, Israeli forces have continued near-daily strikes and fire around military-held zones, killing over 800 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry, part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. It does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants.

On Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike hit a car in Gaza City, killing four men, according to Shifa Hospital.

The strike happened away from the so-called Yellow Line that separates Israeli-controlled areas from the rest of Gaza. Israel’s military said it struck a “terrorist” in the location, with no details.

The bodies were wrapped in white and placed on the ground, outdoors, so a crowd could mourn.

And a 9-year-old boy was killed by Israeli fire while gathering firewood in the southern city of Khan Younis, about 400 meters (1,312 feet) west of the Yellow Line, Nasser Hospital said. Israel’s military did not immediately comment.

Associated Press video showed siblings crying over the boy at the morgue.

“What is the guilt of those children,” a woman said during the funeral. “God is plaguing you, Israel.”

Durant didn’t participate in practice with the Rockets on Tuesday before they left for California, trailing 3-1 in the first-round series. But he was seen running on an antigravity treadmill as the team wrapped up its work before heading to the airport.

Coach Ime Udoka was asked if there was a possibility that Durant would play in Game 5 after missing the last two games with a sprained left ankle and bone bruise.

“We’ll see,” Udoka said. “It is day to day, game to game. But we’ll have to get on the court and do some things, and he didn’t participate in practice today. But he’s doing the conditioning and other aspects to try to get back.”

Durant sat out the opener with a bruised right knee, as well as Games 3, 4 and 5. He returned for Game 2, scoring 23 points in 41 minutes of the 101-94 loss, during which he injured his ankle late in the game.

The Rockets won Game 4 115-96 despite missing their superstar to avoid elimination.

Durant's injury problems this postseason came after the 37-year-old ranked second in the league in the regular season by playing 2,840 minutes.

Durant, who is in his first season in Houston after an offseason trade from Phoenix, is the fifth-leading scorer in NBA history.

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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s domestically developed long-range attack drones struck a Russian oil refinery and terminal on the Black Sea for the third time in less than two weeks, prompting the evacuation of local people and a Russian warning of possible “environmental consequences.”

Ukraine has developed cutting-edge and battle-tested drone technology that has proved essential in holding back Russia’s bigger army and has drawn military interest from around the world.

Interceptor drones as part of a comprehensive air defense system are now being sought by Middle East and Gulf countries amid the Iran war, according to Ukrainian officials.

Ukraine is scaling up supplies of interceptor drones to thwart Russian aerial attacks, and its military has introduced a new command within the air force to boost the country’s capabilities, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in a post on Telegram late Monday.

Ukraine says its deep-strike range is growing

Ukraine’s offensive capabilities have also improved, with the Defense Ministry saying Tuesday that the country’s forces have more than doubled the range of their deep-strike capabilities since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

At that time, Ukrainian forces were able to hit military targets about 630 kilometers (400 miles) away, it said. They are now striking targets as far as roughly 1,750 kilometers (1,100 miles) behind enemy lines, the ministry said in a statement.

That improvement has allowed Ukraine to hit Russian oil installations that provide crucial revenue for Moscow’s war effort. It has also targeted manufacturing plants that supply Russia’s armed forces.

A Russian refinery is struck

Ukraine struck a Russian oil refinery at the Black Sea port of Tuapse for the third time this month in a coordinated operation involving multiple branches of the country’s defense and security services, its Unmanned Systems Forces said Tuesday.

The two strikes earlier this month destroyed 24 oil storage tanks and damaged four others, it said. Independent verification of the claims was not possible.

Video from Tuapse released Tuesday by Krasnodar regional Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev showed a massive plume of black smoke rising from the refinery and black, steaming puddles on an adjacent street. An emergency official reported to the governor that boiling oil products had spilled onto the street from one of the oil tanks, damaging several cars.

People who live near the Tuapse refinery were being evacuated, Kondratyev said. He didn’t provide details about how many were evacuated or for how long.

Speaking about the strikes on Tuapse, Russian President Vladimir Putin said they could “cause serious environmental consequences,” Russian news agency Interfax reported.

Putin also said Kondratyev had reported there were no serious threats in Tuapse and people were "dealing with the challenges they face on the ground.”

Both sides carry out drone attacks

The Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday its air defenses overnight intercepted 186 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions, the annexed Crimea and the Black and the Azov seas.

In the Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine, three people were killed and three more were wounded in a drone attack, Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

Russian drone attacks on Ukraine, meanwhile, killed three civilians and wounded five others, Ukrainian authorities said.

Two people were killed in the city of Chuhuiv in the northeastern Kharkiv region, according to the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Syniehubov.

A 40-year-old man died and five other men sustained injuries in Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

A rare daytime drone attack on Kyiv on Tuesday wounded two people, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Another Russian attack on Konotop, in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, knocked out the city’s power and water supply.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

McDavid, who led the NHL in points this season, did not participate in the team's morning skate ahead of a must-win game for Edmonton and was a game-time decision, according to coach Kris Knoblauch.

The 29-year-old McDavid has looked uncomfortable at times since rolling his ankle in the second period of Game 2 when he collided with teammate Mattias Ekholm.

The Oilers are trying to avoid elimination and rally from a 3-1 deficit in the best-of-seven series. Edmonton reached the Stanley Cup final in each of the last two seasons before losing to the two-time champion Florida Panthers.

Edmonton forward/center Jason Dickinson, also a game-time decision, was also in the lineup released shortly before gametime.

Knoblauch said earlier Tuesday that Connor Ingram would start in net after Tristan Jarry started in Game 4.

McDavid, who led the league with 138 points, scored his first goal in Game 3 and had his first multi-point games in the third and fourth games of the series in Anaheim. McDavid didn’t participate in Saturday’s off-day skate in Anaheim.

McDavid was nominated Tuesday for the Ted Lindsay Award, along with San Jose Sharks forward Macklin Celebrini and Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov. The award is for the league’s “most outstanding player” as voted by NHL players. McDavid is a four-time winner.

Ingram returns to the Edmonton net on Tuesday after Jarry made 34 saves in a 4-3 overtime loss in Game 4. Ingram started the first three games of the series. He earned a 4-3 victory in Game 1 before allowing 11 goals in consecutive losses behind a leaky Edmonton defense.

“Nothing against Jarry,” Knoblauch said early Tuesday. “I thought he had a solid game the other night, but going down this last few weeks or months, Ingram’s been our starter. He’s been our guy. Now that our season’s on the line, we felt that we would go with our guy.”

Dickinson sat out the second and third games of the series due to injury. He scored twice in Edmonton’s win in the opener and assisted on the Oilers’ first goal in the Game 4 loss.

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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/NHL

No details about possible crimes were disclosed, though armed agents were seen at childcare centers in the Minneapolis area. KSTP-TV said one crew even had a battering ram.

The searches occurred months after right-wing influencer Nick Shirley posted a video that said members of Minnesota’s Somali community were running fake childcare centers to collect federal subsidies. It caught the attention of the administration and conservative activists, though inspectors said the centers were operating as expected.

Minnesota has been dogged by fraud: At least 65 people, many of them Somali Americans, have been convicted of ripping off a federal program that was meant to provide food to children. The investigation began during the Biden administration.

Separately, a federal prosecutor in December said as much as $9 billion in federal funds that supported 14 Minnesota-run programs since 2018 may have been stolen.

Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who has been on the defensive about not doing enough to root out fraud, welcomed the raids Tuesday. Minnesota’s child welfare agency said it shared key information with law enforcement to “hold bad actors accountable.”

“We catch criminals when state and federal agencies share information. Joint investigations work, and securing justice depends on it,” Walz said.

The searches were being conducted at day cares, businesses and some residences, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.

Various state and federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, participated in searches. At least two of the sites were in Shirley's video. Officers from Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension were removing boxes at some locations.

Federal officials justify searches as smoking out fraud

“The American people deserve to know how their taxpayer money was abused. ... No stone will be left unturned,” said DHS, which also noted the cooperation of local and state authorities.

On social media, FBI Director Kash Patel mocked Walz for taking credit “while we smoke out the fraud plaguing Minnesota under your governorship.”

Jason Steck, an attorney who represents childcare centers, said some of the targeted businesses were operated by Somali immigrants. They were not his clients.

“A few childcare centers, a few autism centers, a few healthcare agencies of some type,” Steck said, adding that it appeared to be a “particular sweep for fraud.”

The executive director of Child Care Aware of Minnesota, a nonprofit that serves childhood educators, said the publicity is unflattering.

“The majority are in business to do good business. You’re going to come across individuals who try to capitalize on systems that are broken and need to be fixed,” Candace Yates said.

Walz ended his bid for a third term as governor in early January amid President Donald Trump’s relentless focus on fraud allegations and the state’s Somali community. Trump has used dehumanizing rhetoric, calling Somali immigrants “garbage” and “low IQ.”

Tensions between Walz and the federal government subsequently rocketed during an extraordinary immigration crackdown that led to the deaths of two people before Operation Metro Surge was eased in February.

In February, Vice President JD Vance said the government would temporarily halt $243 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota over fraud concerns. Minnesota sued in response, warning it may have to cut healthcare for low-income families, but a judge on April 6 declined to grant a restraining order.

Walz told Congress in March that he wanted to work with the federal government in fraud investigations, but that the immigration surge had made it more difficult.

“The people of Minnesota have been singled out and targeted for political retribution at an unparalleled scale,” he said at the time.

Governor discusses fraud in State of the State

Walz touched on the searches Tuesday night when he delivered his final State of the State speech, noting that he promised to devote his energies to fighting fraud back in January when he dropped out of the governor’s race.

“I’ve said the buck stops with me,” he told a joint meeting of the state House and Senate. “Some of you will take that as an open invitation to play politics with every incident of fraud that takes place here in Minnesota, even though I have to tell you, statistics show it’s happening in red states more than here. But so be it.”

The governor said that if lawmakers take fraud seriously, they should help him out by passing the anti-fraud package he unveiled in February.

But Republican legislative leaders said afterward that Walz failed during his speech to take adequate responsibility for fraud on his watch.

“While the governor made hints at taking accountability, he immediately turned to pointing fingers — to pointing fingers at other states,” House GOP Floor Leader Harry Niska told reporters.

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Durkin Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Steve Karnowski in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Corey Williams and Ed White in Detroit contributed.

The UAE's decision had been rumored as a possibility for some time, as it pushed back in recent years against OPEC production quotas it felt had been too low — meaning it wasn't able to sell as much oil to the world as it had wanted.

“Having invested heavily in expanding energy production capacity in recent years, the bigger picture is that the UAE has been itching to pump more oil,” Capital Economics wrote in an analysis. “The ties binding OPEC members together have loosened,” it said, particularly after Qatar withdrew from the cartel in 2019.

Regional politics are also likely at play. The UAE has had increasingly frosty relations with Saudi Arabia, OPEC's largest producer, over political and economic matters in the Mideast, even after both came under attack by fellow OPEC member Iran during the war.

No immediate impact likely for world oil markets

The UAE’s withdrawal from OPEC won’t necessarily have any immediate effects in markets. That’s because world oil supplies are sharply constrained by the war in Iran, which has closed off the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which one-fifth of global oil supplies — including much of the UAE's — is transported. On Tuesday, Brent crude, the international benchmark, traded above $111 a barrel, or more than 50% above its prewar price.

OPEC accounts for roughly 40% of the world's oil output, but its market power had been waning in recent years as the United States ramped up production. While Saudi Arabia had been producing more than 10 million barrels of oil a day before the war, the U.S. pumps more than 13 million barrels a day.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been a steady critic of the cartel during his two terms in the White House.

The UAE, which joined OPEC through its emirate of Abu Dhabi in 1967, had been producing around 3.4 million barrels of crude a day just before the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began on Feb. 28. Analysts say it has capacity to produce roughly 5 million barrels a day.

In its announcement on Tuesday, made via its state-run WAM news agency, the UAE said it also would leave the wider OPEC+ group, which Russia had led to try to stabilize oil prices.

“This decision reflects the UAE’s long-term strategic and economic vision and evolving energy profile, including accelerated investment in domestic energy production,” the UAE said, adding that it would bring "additional production to market in a gradual and measured manner, aligned with demand and market conditions.”

The UAE’s withdrawal removes one of OPEC’s few members with the ability to quickly increase production, said Jorge Leon, head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy.

“A structurally weaker OPEC, with less spare capacity concentrated within the group, will find it increasingly difficult to calibrate supply and stabilize prices," he said.

Saudi Arabia, UAE increasingly at odds

Saudi Arabia and the UAE increasingly have competed over economic issues and regional politics, particularly in the Red Sea area. The two countries had jointly fought against Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels in 2015. However, that coalition broke down into recriminations in late December, when Saudi Arabia bombed what it described as a weapons shipment bound for Yemeni separatists backed by the UAE.

As tensions rose in recent months, Saudi broadcasters long based in Dubai, the economic hub of the UAE, have pulled back to the kingdom.

“This exit of OPEC fits into the UAE need for flexibility with key energy consumers as well -- including a future relationship with China and a more competitive relationship with Saudi Arabia," said Karen Young, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

While Saudi Arabia and OPEC had no immediate reaction, Emirati Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei insisted his country's decision did not stem from any dispute with its Gulf neighbor.

“We’ve been working together for years and years. We have the highest respect for the Saudis for leading OPEC,” al-Mazrouei told CNBC.

However, the UAE sent its foreign minister rather than its ruler to a Gulf Arab leaders' meeting held Tuesday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, hosted by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The UAE hosted the United Nations COP28 climate talks in 2023, a conference that ended for the first time with a pledge by nearly 200 countries to move away from planet-warming fossil fuels. But the UAE still plans to increase its production capacity in the coming years, even as it pursues more clean energy at home, a move decried by climate activists.

“The demand for power is going to go up and up and up,” U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told an Abu Dhabi oil conference in November. “Today’s the day to announce that there is no energy transition. There is only energy addition.”

He drew widespread applause from his Emirati hosts.

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Associated Press writer David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed to this report.

Iran offered to end its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. lifts its blockade on the country and ends the war in a proposal that would postpone discussions on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, two regional officials said Monday. U.S. President Donald Trump seems unlikely to accept the offer, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to rule out any deal that excludes Iran’s nuclear program.

Here is the latest:

Bahrain minister says it’s time to find solutions to restore peace after Iran strikes

Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani urged the international community at this critical time “to shift from crisis management to finding solutions” to the Iranian crisis.

This should include constructive dialogue that ensures Iran’s compliance with principles of good neighborliness and international law, respect for the sovereignty of states and freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and other vital waterways, he said.

Al-Zaysni, who chaired a ministerial meeting of the U.N. Security Council, told diplomats Iran must also halt its nuclear, missile and drone programs, refrain from arming or financing proxies and armed militias, and stop attacking Bahrain and other Gulf countries and Jordan.

An Israeli military contractor is killed by drone strike in Lebanon

A brief statement by the Israeli army said the civilian employee of an engineering company was working with the military on projects in southern Lebanon.

An Israeli military official confirmed the contractor was a civilian and died in a drone attack. The official spoke on condition of anonymity under military briefing rules.

Despite a ceasefire in Lebanon, Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have been intermittently attacking each other in the south, where Israeli soldiers are occupying a slice of territory along the border. — By Josef Federman

Israeli strike on a Lebanese army patrol killed 5, including 3 paramedics, and wounds 2 soldiers

That’s according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, which said the toll is still preliminary. The Israeli strike was in the southern town of Majdal Zoun, near the coastal city of Tyre.

Israeli forces hit an army patrol that was accompanying Civil Defense medical teams and bulldozers during a rescue operation at the site of a previous Israeli strike, the Lebanese army and Civil Defense said. Some of the responders were trapped under rubble by the second strike, they said.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the strike, saying it was part of a pattern of Israeli attacks on rescue and emergency workers in violation of international law.

The Western-backed Lebanese army has largely stood on the sidelines during the recent rounds of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, although dozens of its soldiers have been killed.

Israeli president invites Netanyahu and prosecutors for talks on settling corruption charges

President Isaac Herzog’s office asked for a response by Sunday to his invitation, which came days after he announced he would not decide on Netanyahu’s request for a pardon and instead urge the sides to reach a settlement.

Netanyahu asked Herzog last November to cancel his trial, saying that dropping the charges would help unify the country. Trump has made multiple appeals to Herzog to end the trial.

Herzog’s invitation says he believes that efforts to reach a settlement “must be exhausted first” before he can consider the pardon request. There was no immediate comment from Netanyahu’s office or the attorney general’s office.

Netanyahu is charged with breach of trust, fraud and accepting bribes in three separate cases accusing him of exchanging favors with wealthy associates. He denies all charges.

The trial has dragged on for six years in a case that has bitterly divided the Israeli public. Netanyahu and his supporters claim he is the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt by the media, police and prosecutors.

Gulf Arab countries jointly condemn Iran’s actions in the Strait of Hormuz

The leaders of several wealthy Gulf nations rejected Iran’s “illegal actions” to close the strait and threaten navigation, warning against any disruption to shipping or charging fees for safe passage.

The statement followed a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia, chaired by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and attended by leaders from Qatar and Bahrain, Kuwait’s crown prince, and the United Arab Emirates’ foreign minister.

They called for restoring “security and freedom of navigation” to prewar levels and urged deeper military integration, including joint infrastructure projects and a ballistic missile early warning system.

US budget airlines seek billions in aid amid soaring fuel costs

Their trade group is asking the Trump administration for $2.5 billion to offset rising jet fuel costs and keep ticket prices affordable. The Association of Value Airlines said smaller carriers are being hit hardest by the jump in fuel prices, despite carrying more than 90 million passengers last year.

“Temporary government support” would help “preserve vital industry competition,” the association said.

The trade group represents Frontier, Allegiant, Avelo and Sun Country. Another member, Spirit, is separately in talks with the U.S. government on a potential financing deal aimed at keeping the struggling carrier flying as it navigates fuel price shocks during its second bankruptcy since 2024.

Protesters urge boycott of Eurovision Song Contest over Israel’s participation

Dozens of protesters gathered outside the Serbian state RTS broadcaster on Tuesday, waving Palestinian flags and accusing Israel of atrocities in Gaza while demanding that the Balkan country pull out of the Eurovision Song Contest because of Israel’s participation.

The year’s main competition with 35 competing countries is scheduled to be held May 12-16 in Vienna. Serbia, which has close ties with Israel, will be represented by Lavina, a six-member metal band.

The contest strives to put pop music before politics but has repeatedly been embroiled in world events. Russia was expelled in 2022 after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The decision to allow Israel to compete prompted the walkout of Slovenia, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain.

RTV Slovenia said it will air a Palestinian program at the time of the Eurovision contest.

Israeli ambassador says Lebanese government must disarm Hezbollah

Lebanon’s government has demanded that Hezbollah disarm, but Israel says this has not happened. A ceasefire in the latest Israeli-Hezbollah conflict was recently extended for three weeks.

Danon said that if the U.N. Security Council wants to help Lebanon, it should ask the government how many Hezbollah weapons it has seized, “which tunnels have been destroyed and what is being done to stop arms smuggling from Iran.”

“International support for Lebanon must depend on results on the ground and not more empty statements,” Danon said.

Israel’s UN envoy says Hezbollah is 'Lebanon’s greatest obstacle to sovereignty’

Ambassador Danny Danon said it’s impossible to talk about peace in Lebanon without mentioning Hezbollah, the militant group with areas of influence in the south bordering Israel and elsewhere in the country.

“Hezbollah is not just set on Israel’s destruction. It is Lebanon’s greatest obstacle to sovereignty. It has weakened the Lebanese government,” he told a ministerial meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

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This item has been updated to correct the quote. The previous quote was in remarks distributed by Israel’s U.N. Mission but was changed when the ambassador delivered his speech to the U.N. Security Council.

Palestinian minister tells UN that Israel must stop killing civilians

Varsen Aghabekian accused Israel of seeking the collapse of the Palestinian Authority and Israeli settlers of terrorizing Palestinians in the West Bank on a daily basis.

“This has to stop immediately,” she said. “The situation of the Palestinian civilian population must be a top priority.”

Aghabekian said there is no justification for Israel preventing shelter materials from entering Gaza and restricting aid and access for humanitarian workers.

Palestinian minister says 'Palestine must remain a priority’ for action toward an independent state

Foreign Minister Varsen Aghabekian said the ceasefire in Gaza must be upheld and Israel’s pursuit of “forcible displacement and annexation,” not only in Gaza but in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, must be stopped.

As phase two of the Gaza peace plan gets underway, she said, “We reiterate our vision of one state, one government, one law and one gun and the need for full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.”

Aghabekian told a ministerial meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that Gaza’s transition must be in line with its reunification with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, “leading to Palestinian self-determination and independent statehood.”

Gaza hospital director’s detention is extended

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel says a court in Israel has indefinitely extended the detention of Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya, who became the face of health workers’ struggle in Gaza to keep treating patients under Israeli bombardment.

The Israeli military has said Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, was being investigated on suspicion of cooperating with or working for Hamas. Staff and international aid groups that worked with him have denied the claims.

The rights group in a statement Tuesday says he is held in harsh conditions in Negev Prison. It says the Beersheba District Court approved the extension of his detention without charges having been filed, after his defense had sought his immediate release.

BP earns online backlash as its profit more than doubles during Iran war

The British energy giant reported quarterly earnings Tuesday of $3.84 billion, or $1.47 per share, far exceeding last year’s $687 million, or 26 cents per share. The huge profits beat analysts’ heightened expectations and generated immediate online vitriol.

“Families are being pushed to the brink by spiraling energy bills, while fossil fuel companies turn a war into a windfall,” wrote Clémence Dubois, global campaigns director at 350.org.

“These astronomical profits are a startling reminder that when conflict drives up the price of oil and gas, energy companies profit and households pay,” wrote Simon Francis, coordinator with End Fuel Poverty Coalition.

BP shares rose more than 1%, close to a 52-week high, as did shares of other major oil producers. It was BP’s first earnings report since the Iran war began, previewing what to expect when Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips report earnings later this week.

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Israeli strike wounds 2 soldiers, traps 3 rescuers in southern Lebanon

Two Lebanese soldiers were wounded and three Civil Defense personnel were trapped under rubble after an Israeli strike targeted an army patrol accompanied by rescue teams and two bulldozers in the southern town of Majdal Zoun, near Tyre, according to the Lebanese Army and Civil Defense.

The Israeli army has not immediately commented on the attack, which came as clashes and intermittent air strikes continue despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire.

At least seven Lebanese army soldiers have been killed since the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel reignited on March 2.

Oil prices climb again amid more uncertainty over the Iran war

Another climb in oil prices because of the Iran war is helping to halt Wall Street’s record-setting rally. The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil to be delivered in June climbed 2.7% to $111.18. Brent to be delivered in July, which is where traders are focusing more in the oil market, rose 2.6% to $104.33 Tuesday.

After sitting around $70 in late February, Brent prices are moving closer to their peak of $119, reached when worries about the war were at their heights.

The Trump administration seemed unlikely Tuesday to accept Iran’s offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. lifts its blockade. Iran also wants to postpone discussions on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, which Rubio appeared to rule out.

Average U.S. gasoline prices reached $4.18 a gallon on Tuesday, the most since 2022, according to the auto club AAA.

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US envoy says Hamas is the ‘obstacle’ to Palestinians in Gaza living in peace and prosperity

Ambassador Mike Waltz urged countries with influence on Hamas to press the militant group to demilitarize and accept that it will not have a direct or indirect role in Gaza “through weapons and terrorism and violent intimidation.”

“The moment Hamas agrees to demilitarize, a new chapter in Gaza’s history will be written,” he told a ministerial meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the Middle East.

“Every day we either move closer to a future where Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank live in freedom and prosperity, at peace with Israel — or we drift back toward chaos, rockets, hostages and rubble,” Walz said.

He said there is a plan for reconstruction and development of Gaza and financing, and there is a pathway to peace and eased security restrictions, but Hamas is holding Gaza back.

US military boards another ship as it enforces blockade on Iranian ports

The U.S. military said Tuesday in a social media post that it boarded and released another commercial ship that was suspected of heading for Iran.

The post by U.S. Central Command on X included a video showed marines fast-roping from a helicopter onto the vessel, which it said was the Comoros-flagged M/V Blue Star III. It happened in the Arabian Sea, east of the Strait of Hormuz.

“U.S. forces released the vessel after conducting a search and confirming the ship’s voyage would not include an Iranian port call,” the command said.

The command said it has now redirected 39 vessels since start of the blockade on ships going to and from Iranian ports.

Israel destroys alleged Hezbollah tunnel network in southern Lebanon

The military detonated a large explosion late Tuesday in Qantara, and Israel’s Geological Survey said the blast was so powerful it registered as a “seismic event.”

The army said the network included two large tunnels — one about 800 meters (yards) long and the other 1.2 kilometers (0.7 miles) — that were equipped with sleeping rooms, toilets, kitchen facilities and launchers aimed at Israel. It released photos and video footage of what it said were the tunnels.

An Israeli military official said the network included large rooms where over 100 Hezbollah fighters could gather at once. He also said it ran underneath and alongside a mosque, school and soccer field.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity under military briefing rules.

In a statement, Defense Minister Israel Katz said the army has been instructed to destroy any Hezbollah infrastructure it finds, “just like in Gaza.”

— By Josef Federman

Amnesty International urges Israel to stop destroying civilian property in southern Lebanon

The human rights organization made the statement Tuesday after a video circulated on social media showing Israeli military excavators destroying solar panels for the Lebanese border village of Debel and its water station.

On Saturday, the Israeli military said it was investigating the incident after the footage emerged. Debel is the same village where a soldier was filmed earlier this month smashing a statue of Jesus, prompting international condemnation.

“Amnesty International has previously documented extensive destruction by the Israeli military along Lebanon’s border before and after the November 2024 ceasefire,” the group said, adding it had called for reparations and war crimes investigations. “So far, neither has appeared.”

Away from the spotlight, the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is ‘steadily worsening,’ UN official says

U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Khiari said Gaza is facing “ongoing and deadly Israeli strikes and dire humanitarian conditions,” with 1.8 million people — nearly its entire population — living in camps and dependent on aid.

He told a U.N. Security Council ministerial meeting Tuesday that in the West Bank, “violence, including rampant settler attacks, displacement and accelerating settlement activity, is threatening entire communities and further eroding prospects for a political process” toward a two-state solution.

In Gaza, he said, “the ceasefire is increasingly fragile as Israeli strikes and armed activity by Hamas and other groups continue.”

Khiari, whose portfolio includes the Middle East, warned that while diplomatic efforts are underway to consolidate the ceasefire and implement Phase II of the peace plan, “talks on the disarmament of Hamas and other armed groups have thus far not resulted in an agreement, raising concerns over the potential return to widespread hostilities.”

The UAE’s exit from OPEC won’t expand global oil supplies right away

The UAE’s move appears to be part of an effort to assert themselves as leaders and independent actors in the region, and sell oil and gas when and how they see fit, said Karen Young, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

“This exit of OPEC fits into the UAE need for flexibility with key energy consumers as well — including a future relationship with China and a more competitive relationship with Saudi Arabia,” she said.

The exit won’t immediately change export capacity, since the UAE’s lone pipeline around the Strait of Hormuz to the port at Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman is already running at full capacity, she noted.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry raises death toll of Israel-Hezbollah war to 2,534

The ministry added on Tuesday that 7,863 have been wounded since the war broke out on March 2.

The war has displaced more than 1 million people and caused destruction worth billions of dollars.

Peak oil means sell barrels now or leave money on the table

Leon said the approaching peak in global oil demand has shifted the incentive for producers from collective restraint to earning money from their reserves now.

He said the UAE, with its 4.8 million barrels per day of production capacity and potential to increase output, is “particularly well positioned to pursue such a strategy outside the group.”

An OPEC without the UAE could increase global energy supply volatility, analyst says

The UAE’s withdrawal removes one of OPEC’s few members with ability to quickly increase production — the mechanism through which the cartel manages oil prices, said Jorge Leon, head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy.

“A structurally weaker OPEC, with less spare capacity concentrated within the group, will find it increasingly difficult to calibrate supply and stabilize prices,” Leon said. “The net effect points to a more fragmented supply landscape and a potentially more volatile oil market over time as OPEC’s capacity to smooth imbalances diminishes.”

Trump claims Iran has ‘just’ informed the US it’s in a ‘State of Collapse’

“They want us to ‘Open the Hormuz Strait,’ as soon as possible, as they try to figure out their leadership situation,” Trump posted on social media.

He added that he believes they will be able to sort out reported divisions within the Islamic Republic government about negotiations with the U.S.

The White House did not immediately respond to questions about who on the Iranian side delivered the message, who in the Republican administration received it and whether the communications were conducted directly with the U.S. or through an intermediary.

Israel to investigate ship carrying what Ukraine says is ‘stolen grain’

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Tuesday that Israel’s tax authority has opened an investigation into a ship expected to dock in the Haifa port that Ukraine said carries stolen grain.

Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on X that Ukraine is preparing sanctions against companies that profit from grain harvested from areas of Ukraine under Russian control. Saar dismissed Zelenskyy’s comments as “Twitter diplomacy” and said Ukraine had not provided information about the cargo’s contents or a request for legal assistance.

“The vessel has not entered the port and has yet to submit its documents. It is not possible to verify the truth of the Ukrainian claims regarding the forgery of the bill of lading,” Saar said.

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Israel has ‘no territorial ambitions’ in Lebanon, Israel’s foreign minister says

Gideon Saar said the Israeli military-occupied “buffer zone” that stretches 10 kilometers (6 miles) into Lebanon is necessary to protect residents in Israel’s north.

“Hezbollah has transformed the entire front line of southern Lebanon into a network of terrorist infrastructure, and this threat has not been properly addressed by the Lebanese government,” he said during a press conference with Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Đurić in Jerusalem.

Saar refused to comment on the fragile ceasefire with Hezbollah, which both sides have violated multiple times since Trump announced it last week, and whether Israel might expand its military operations beyond southern Lebanon. He did note Israel’s first direct negotiations with Lebanon in decades.

Iran’s economy has been battered. Its leaders still think Trump will blink first

U.S. and Israeli airstrikes crippled thousands of factories in Iran, and the economic damage is reverberating — millions more Iranians could lose their jobs. Most damaging, Israeli strikes knocked out most steel and petrochemical production, causing a surge in prices for metals and plastic. Things could get worse as the U.S. blockades Iranian ports.

Economic woes sparked the mass protests that were crushed before the war and could again push Iranians into the streets. But Iran’s leaders are betting that economic self-reliance built under decades of sanctions can help them endure the pain longer than Trump.

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According to county officials, the gator attempted to pull the cow into the water.

The cow had severe injures and had to be euthanized.

An uninjured calf was transported to the Lake County Animal Shelter.

The county warns residents to use caution around bodies of water.

“Out of an abundance of caution, Pine Meadows Conservation Area will remain closed until the alligator is located and removed. Lake County will notify the public when the property reopens,” according to a statement from the county.

The statement goes on to say, “Alligator mating season in Florida begins in April with courtship, followed by peak mating activity in May and June. During this time, alligators are more active, making it especially important for residents and visitors to remain alert near water.”

Safety tips:

• Only swim in designated areas during daylight hours
• Never approach or feed an alligator
• Keep pets on a leash and away from shorelines

And yet that is the position Tracy Sturdivant will enter when she succeeds Teresa Younger as the president and CEO of the first national philanthropy run by and for women. The Ms. Foundation introduced Sturdivant on Tuesday at its annual New York City gala, where feminists such as #MeToo founder Tarana Burke were honored.

The foundation is “not in crisis,” but “ready for what’s to come” with Sturdivant in charge, Younger said in a statement shared ahead of the announcement. The foundation built a $100 million-plus endowment and explicitly centered women and girls of color during her tenure.

With that strong footing Sturdivant sees an opportunity to expand the coalition of people who see gender justice as their charge, too. As many funders disinvest from Black-led nonprofits, she is committed to “unapologetically” supporting marginalized groups while simultaneously inviting others to join the fight for economic equality and bodily autonomy.

“We need all hands on deck to make sure that we're supporting women in the midst of what I call this perfect form of instability that they're experiencing,” Sturdivant told The Associated Press in an interview.

The Detroit native comes to the foundation from The League, the nonprofit she founded to inspire civic engagement through culture. She credits past Ms. Foundation president Marie Wilson — who helped start “Take Our Daughters to Work” day to boost adolescent girls' self esteem — with showing her the power of large-scale narrative change campaigns. They worked together on the White House Project, a nonprofit that aimed to advance women's leadership across all sectors.

Narrative change has become a more necessary part of the foundation's work, she said, as conservative movements nationwide seek to prohibit funding for diversity, equity and inclusion. Sturdivant sees the Ms. Foundation, a legacy institution that she said has weathered “many cultural shifts” since its 1973 founding, as poised to engage this next generation of feminists through more modern storytelling.

She pointed to Blair Imani, a historian and creator honored at Tuesday's gala, as an example of the new voices she wants to elevate. Imani's viral web series “Smarter in Seconds” offers a progressive education on issues of race and gender in short-form videos.

“They are leading the culture and being able to take some of our cues from them, I think, is gonna be really helpful," Sturdivant said.

She's also considering ways to increase grantmaking around equal pay, family leave and childcare — issues she championed as the co-founder of the Make it Work Campaign, a three-year initiative to improve women's economic lives in the United States.

Men’s earnings are rising faster than women’s, and the gender wage gap has widened for two years in a row, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. A recent AP-NORC poll found that most working women in the U.S. believe they are disadvantaged when it comes to earning competitive wages — though the country is deeply divided over how to confront those disparities, with many men holding a different view.

“We're really talking about what does it mean for folks to be able to lead a life where they are not just surviving but thriving, they feel safe and they're secure," Sturdivant said. “That's going to be the work of the foundation under my tenure.”

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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

In a boost for the prime minister, the House of Commons rejected a move by opposition politicians to trigger a parliamentary standards investigation into Starmer. But a former senior official said he could not confirm that “due process” was followed when Mandelson, a friend of Jeffrey Epstein, was given the key diplomatic job despite failing security checks.

Reverberations from the ill-fated appointment have left Starmer fighting for his job, and at odds with his civil service. The prime minister is angry he wasn’t told that Mandelson had failed security vetting, while senior officials say they felt pressure from Starmer’s office to confirm the appointment quickly at the start of President Donald Trump ’s second term.

“I was presented with a decision and told to get on with it,” said Philip Barton, who was top civil servant in the Foreign Office when the choice of Mandelson was announced in December 2024. “The prime minister had been made aware of the risks and had accepted the risks.”

Starmer’s former top aide says sorry

Starmer’s former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, acknowledged Tuesday he’d made a “serious mistake” by recommending Mandelson, but denied pressuring officials to ignore security concerns.

McSweeney told lawmakers on the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee that “the prime minister relied on my advice, and I got it wrong.” He apologized to Epstein’s victims, saying “I am sorry for any part this controversy has played in causing further hurt or distress.”

But he insisted that he didn’t “ask officials to ignore procedures, request that steps should be skipped, or communicate explicitly or implicitly that checks should be cleared at all costs.”

Starmer fired Mandelson in September after new details emerged about the ambassador’s friendship with Epstein, a convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019.

Police opened an investigation into Mandelson in February over allegations that he passed sensitive government information to Epstein when he was a member of the U.K. government in 2009. He denies wrongdoing and hasn’t been charged.

McSweeney, who called Mandelson an adviser and confidant, resigned in February, saying he took responsibility for the ambassadorial appointment.

McSweeney said that he felt Mandelson’s experience as a former European Union trade commissioner would serve the U.K. well in striking a trade deal with the Trump administration.

“I don’t think the prime minister would have chosen Mandelson if Kamala Harris had been elected president,” he said.

Government denies pressuring officials

But McSweeney denied allegations that Starmer’s staff pressured officials to rush through the confirmation.

He said that at the time of the appointment, he had the impression that Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein was “a passing acquaintance.” When emails were published showing the friendship was close, “it was a knife through my soul,” McSweeney said.

Starmer fired top Foreign Office official Olly Robbins earlier this month after the revelation that Mandelson was approved for the job against the recommendation of the government’s security vetting agency. Starmer has called it “staggering” that Robbins failed to tell him about the security concerns.

Robbins says he was bound by confidentiality rules. He has said the concerns didn’t relate to Epstein, though he hasn’t disclosed what they were about.

It’s rare but not unknown for U.K. ambassadors to be political appointees rather than career diplomats. Barton, who was Robbins’ predecessor at the Foreign Office until January 2025, told the Foreign Affairs Committee that he was concerned Mandelson’s known links to “toxic, hot potato” Epstein “could become a problem.”

“There was pressure to get everything done as quickly as possible,” said Barton — though he denied there was pressure for a specific outcome.

Starmer has denied that anyone in his office put pressure on the civil service.

Opponents tried to force an inquiry

Critics say Starmer’s decision to appoint Mandelson is evidence of bad judgment by a prime minister who has made repeated missteps since he led the center-left Labour Party to a landslide election victory in July 2024.

Starmer already defused one potential crisis in February, when some Labour lawmakers urged him to quit over the Mandelson appointment. He could face a new challenge if, as expected, Labour takes a hammering in May 7 local and regional elections, which give voters a chance to pass a midterm verdict on the government.

He managed to win a vote Tuesday in the House of Commons, where lawmakers rejected by 335 votes to 223 a demand by the opposition Conservative Party for Parliament’s Privileges Committee to investigate Starmer’s claim that “due process” was followed in Mandelson’s appointment.

The committee has the power to suspend lawmakers, including the prime minister, for breaches of the rules, and a finding of deliberately misleading Parliament is usually a resigning offense.

“It’s clear that full due process was not followed,” Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said, adding that “appointing a known national security risk to be ambassador to the United States is a profound failure of government.”

Badenoch urged Labour lawmakers not to be complicit in a “cover-up.”

Starmer urged Labour legislators to “stick together” and vote against the motion, calling it a “stunt” timed to damage the party before the May elections.

Many heeded the call, but several criticized Starmer during debate in the House of Commons. Labour lawmaker Emma Lewell said that “like the public, I feel let down, disappointed and I am angry.

“Peter Mandelson should never have been appointed,” she said. “This was a fundamental failure of judgment.”

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Associated Press writer Sylvia Hui contributed to this story.

The unanimous ruling from a panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City sets the stage for a possible U.S. Supreme Court appeal. That's because panels on the 8th and 5th circuit courts have already upheld the policy put in place by President Donald Trump's administration last July.

“Today, although we part ways with two other circuits that have addressed this question, we join the overwhelming majority of federal judges across the Nation to consider it and conclude that the government’s novel interpretation of the immigration statute defies their plain text,” Judge Joseph F. Bianco wrote for the panel, which included Judges Alison J. Nathan and Jose A. Cabranes.

Mandatory detention for all is a new and contentious approach

Under the policy, the Department of Homeland Security has been denying bond hearings to immigrants arrested across the country, including those who have been in the U.S. for years without any criminal history. That's a departure from the practice under previous administrations, when most noncitizens with no criminal record who were arrested away from the border were given the opportunity to request a bond hearing while their cases moved through immigration court.

In those cases, bond was often granted to people who were deemed not to be flight risks, and mandatory detention was limited to those who had just entered the country.

Federal courts are flooded with detainees seeking relief

The new approach has strained the federal courts, with judges across the country facing more than 30,000 lawsuits from immigrants locked up under the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign. Left with no way to request bond in immigration court, many immigrants have turned to the federal courts instead, requesting bond through a process known a habeas corpus petition.

Attorneys for the Trump administration say the mandatory detention policy is legal under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act passed in 1996. That law streamlined the process to deport people who were newly arriving in the U.S. without permission, but immigrants who were already in the country were still allowed to seek bond from an immigration judge under a different law.

That changed in July, when Todd Lyons, acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said all immigrants targeted for deportation would be treated the same way as new arrivals.

The three-judge panel found that the government’s interpretation of the 1996 law defies the plain text of the law, its purpose and its history, and noted that Congress had set up a tiered system for immigration cases based in part on how long an immigrant had been in the country.

The lower courts have widely rejected mandatory detention

So far, more than 370 federal judges — or about 90% — to consider those habeas cases have also rejected the government's new approach, Bianco wrote. Bianco was nominated by Trump, Nathan by former President Joe Biden and Cabranes by former President Bill Clinton.

The 2nd Circuit case involves a man from Brazil who entered the U.S. around 2005, applied for asylum in 2016 and was granted work authorization while his application was under review.

Ricardo Aparecido Barbosa da Cunha has never been arrested or charged with a crime, owns his own home in Massachusetts where he lives with his wife and two U.S. citizen children, and runs a small construction business. He was arrested on an administrative warrant in September 2025 and placed in removal proceedings, and filed a habeas petition after an immigration judge found he was subject to mandatory detention.

The mandatory detention of noncitizens like Barbosa da Cunha for a substantial period of time would “raise serious constitutional questions, especially because the government has failed to explain how it would bear a ‘reasonable relation’ to any legitimate, non-punitive purpose,” Bianco wrote.

DHS suggests an appeal could be coming

“Today’s ruling rightly affirms that the Trump administration’s policy of detaining immigrants without any process is unlawful and cannot stand,” said Amy Belsher, director of Immigrants’ Rights Litigation at the New York Civil Liberties Union. “The government cannot mandatorily detain millions of noncitizens, many of whom have lived here for decades, without an opportunity to seek release. It defies the Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and basic human decency.”

In a statement emailed to The Associated Press, the Department of Homeland Security pointed to a Board of Immigration Appeals ruling upholding the mandatory detention policy, and said Trump and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin “are now enforcing this law as it was actually written to keep America safe.”

“Regarding decisions from federal courts about mandatory detention, judicial activists have been repeatedly overruled by the Supreme Court on these questions. ICE has the law and the facts on its side and will be vindicated by higher courts,” DHS said.

___ Boone reported from Boise, Idaho.

Jamie Ernesto Alvarez-Gonzalez admitted to following a Border Patrol agent on Jan. 8 while he was driving in a neighborhood in San Diego, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of California.

Prosecutors said Alvarez-Gonzalez’s black Ford F-150, a model also used by undercover federal officers, had a license plate with federal truck written on the frame in small letters, though the word federal was misspelled. He put a Border Patrol sticker in the windshield and non-working radio communications antennae on the roof, according to the complaint. Handcuffs were hung from the rearview mirror.

The agent aborted his mission when he saw Alvarez-Gonzalez following him, falsely believing other agents were responding, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

When Alvarez-Gonzalez was confronted by real agents, he “shouted obscenities and demanded agents leave the community of Linda Vista," prosecutors said. Three other cars also arrived at one point and began harassing departing agents and chasing them on the highway.

Prosecutors said Alvarez-Gonzalez had made a recording where he said he was actively looking for federal agents working on immigration enforcement and had brought in his “reinforcements.” He also had a fake FBI badge.

He pleaded guilty to one count of impersonating a federal agent and three counts of illegally possessing firearms. His federal public defender did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Alvarez-Gonzalez overstayed his tourist visa, which he used decades ago to enter the country, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

The two-day segment of ministers and senior officials marks the political centerpiece of the First Conference on Transitioning away from Fossil Fuels, where more than 50 countries have been discussing how to move away from oil, gas and coal — the main drivers of global warming — toward cleaner energy.

“The conclusion is unavoidable, we must transition away from fossil fuels — not just because it’s good for climate, but because it strengthens our energy independence and security,” said Stientje van Veldhoven, minister for climate policy and green growth for the Netherlands, which is co-hosting the conference with Colombia.

The meeting reflects growing frustration among some governments and advocates that decades of U.N. climate negotiations have failed to directly address fossil fuel production, prompting the Santa Marta summit to push the issue outside formal talks. Recent negotiations have acknowledged the need for a transition, but countries remain divided over how to implement it and how to finance the shift.

Before the president took the stage, members of the Indigenous Arhuaco community from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta — who have long defended their ancestral lands from outside development — opened the ceremony with a traditional harmonization ritual, a spiritual ceremony in which they spoke in their native language and played ancestral instruments.

Colombian president warns Amazon at tipping point

Speaking in the afternoon, President Petro warned that “the Amazon rainforest is burning,” adding that “without it we reach a point of no return.”

The leftist leader questioned the global economic model underpinning fossil fuel use, asking whether “capitalism can really adapt to a way of life that is not fossil-based.” He said U.N. climate talks have fallen short, arguing that “the unity of states has failed” and calling for broader action beyond governments.

Petro also linked current conflicts to energy dependence, saying “the wars we are seeing are driven by desperate geopolitical strategies around fossil resources.”

Colombia's Environment Minister Irene Vélez Torres said in opening comments before Petro's address that the conflict in the Middle East has revealed that “we are not only dealing with a climate and environmental crisis, but also an economic and national security crisis.”

Petro has positioned Colombia as a leading voice calling for a global shift away from fossil fuels, while pushing for a gradual transition at home that balances climate goals with economic realities.

A key moment for international cooperation

Outside the conference venue in the morning, members of a mining union protested against Petro and the event, chanting through megaphones and holding signs that read: “I arrive at the conference by plane to criticize the oil industry,” “More oil, less Petro,” and “Defend your oil barrels.”

With elections in a month's time, outgoing Petro kept his pledge since taking office to halt new oil and gas exploration and steer the country toward a post-fossil fuel economy, even as the Andean nation remains heavily dependent on oil and coal exports.

Minister Vélez Torres framed the gathering as a key moment for international cooperation.

“Let this conference be the moment when ambition becomes solidarity and when cooperation becomes the path toward a future beyond fossil fuels,” she said on Tuesday morning. “Let’s make this a turning point in history.”

Yuvelis Morales Blanco, a 25-year-old activist from Puerto Wilches, Colombia, spoke at the opening plenary and called for urgent action and a transition rooted in communities.

“We are called to make real the world we have imagined,” she said, urging governments to take “direct and concrete actions” to move away from fossil fuels and protect nature. “We demand energy justice, climate justice and justice for youth and children.”

Discussions in Santa Marta so far have highlighted the central challenge of funding the transition, particularly for developing countries facing high borrowing costs and limited access to capital.

Van Veldhoven of the Netherlands said access to affordable financing would be critical to ensuring the transition can happen globally, particularly for developing countries facing high debt and limited fiscal space.

Participants have also debated the role of policy tools such as carbon markets and government subsidies, as well as how to ensure the transition does not repeat patterns of land use and resource exploitation that have harmed communities in the past.

Organizers say the conference will not produce binding agreements, but that it is intended to build political momentum and bring together countries willing to accelerate the transition outside the formal U.N. process. It is also seen as a steppingstone toward upcoming global climate negotiations, where financing and timelines for reducing fossil fuel use are expected to remain key points of debate.

On Monday, Tuvalu, a tiny, low-lying Polynesian island nation in the South Pacific Ocean, announced it will host the next conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Small island nations are highly susceptible to climate change, with Tuvalu expected to be submerged by 2100 due to rising sea levels, according to scientists and the U.N.

___

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

The visit comes at a challenging moment for U.S.-UK relations. U.S. President Donald Trump’s up-and-down relationship with Prime Minister Keir Starmer has taken a particularly sour turn over the past several months as the president has sought to rally international support for the war in Iran.

The king, accompanied by Queen Camilla, began his day with a meeting at the White House with President Donald Trump. The King then addressed the U.S. Congress, the body’s first address from a British monarch since Queen Elizabeth II ’s in 1991. The day will end with an expectedly buzzy dinner at the White House.

Here's the latest:

King Charles met with tech leaders earlier in the day at Blair House

The monarch met with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su and NVIDIA President and CEO Jensen Huang on Tuesday afternoon. The tech leaders are expected to be guests at the dinner.

Benioff, Su, Cook and Huang were all at a White House formal dinner last November honoring the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman.

Trump confesses he was ‘jealous’ about the king’s speech

As the royals arrived for the state dinner, the president revealed he enjoyed Charles’ speech to Congress.

“He made a great speech. I was very jealous,” Trump said about Charles during a photo op outside the White House.

Both first lady and queen embrace shades of pink

First lady Melania Trump donned head-to-toe Christian Dior, in a pale delphinium pink silk strapless gown from the designer’s haute couture collection, with off-white suede gloves and pale delphinium silk pumps.

Britain’s Queen Camilla wore a deep pink Fiona Clare evening gown with the family jewels — an amethyst and diamond necklace gifted by a former Duchess of Kent to Queen Victoria.

Dessert includes beehive-shaped confectionary

State dinner guests will be served a four course meal, which includes a velouté sauce with crisp toasted shallots, spring herbed ravioli made with herbs from the White House kitchen garden, and a classic dover sole meunière, which is a seared fish.

For dessert, guests will be served a beehive-shaped chocolate confectionary with crème fraîche ice cream and honey from the White House beehive. The dessert is a nod to the king and queen, who are avid supporters of beekeeping.

King Charles III urges ‘unyielding resolve’ in defense of Ukraine, heralds NATO

The monarch reminded the audience that the only time that the NATO military alliance’s collective defense has been invoked was after the the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

“Today, Mr. Speaker, that same, unyielding resolve is needed for the defense of Ukraine and her most courageous people. It is needed in order to secure a truly just and lasting peace,” King Charles III told the lawmakers and other dignitaries in the chamber.

The reminder seemed a subtle defense of the transatlantic military alliance that Trump has soured on and repeatedly threatened to pull the U.S. out of.

“We do not embark on these remarkable endeavors together out of sentiment,” he said. “We do so because they build greater shared resilience for the future, so making our citizens safer for generations to come.”

King Charles III says US-UK alliance ‘cannot rest on past achievements’

The call on the allies to continue work on their alliance comes as differences over the Iran war tests the relationship, perhaps the lowest point in the so-called “special relationship” since the 1956 Suez Crisis, when the U.S. opposed Britain’s attempt to seize the Suez Canal.

Charles then went on to quote British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who Trump has sharply criticized for Britain’s refusal to provide greater support to the U.S. and Israel in its war against Iran.

“As my Prime Minister said last month: ’ours is an indispensable partnership. We must not disregard everything that has sustained us for the last 80 years. Instead, we must build on it,” Charles added.

King Charles III decries ‘acts of violence’ after White House Correspondents’ Dinner incident

Charles nodded to what law enforcement authorities say was an attempt to assassinate Trump over the weekend when he attended a dinner with members of the White House press corps.

“We meet, too, in the aftermath of the incident not far from this great building that sought to harm the leadership of your Nation and to foment wider fear and discord,” he said. “Let me say with unshakeable resolve: such acts of violence will never succeed.”

Trump was on stage at the head table at Saturday’s dinner when Secret Service personnel apprehended a man armed with a gun after he broke through a security checkpoint.

Selfies with the King

King Charles III received an extended standing ovation from members of Congress when he walked into the House chamber, with many lawmakers filming his entrance on their phones or taking selfies.

It’s an unusual display of unity in the chamber — very different from the annual State of the Union, when half of the room is usually clapping and the other sitting down.

King Charles speaks of ‘interlinked’ destinies of US and UK

King Charles III acknowledged “times of great uncertainty” as he expressed gratitude to the American people and marked the 250th anniversary of independence from Britain in a speech to the U.S. Congress that highlighted the bonds between the two countries at a time of political turmoil.

“For all that time,” Charles said, “our destinies have been interlinked.”

Charles is only the second British monarch to address a joint session of Congress. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, delivered a similar speech in 1991 highlighting the historic ties between both countries and the importance of their democratic values.

All the King’s escorts...

King Charles III will be accompanied by an “escort committee” of lawmakers when he enters the chamber to address Congress. That includes leadership from both parties and other members chosen for the occasion.

Also in attendance at the speech are members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, military leaders, select ambassadors and former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

Members of the House and Senate gathering ahead of King Charles III’s address

As is customary for any joint address, the Senate walked across the Capitol and filed into the House chamber together, taking seats in the front of the room.

Military leaders were also in attendance, sitting near the rostrum where the king will speak. Lawmakers mingled across the aisle as they prepared to greet the king, a rare bipartisan moment amid the usual tensions in the Capitol.

King Charles III has arrived in the US Capitol and is meeting with congressional leaders

House Speaker Mike Johnson walked through the Capitol with the king and escorted him to a reception room just outside the House chamber where he will address a joint session of Congress at 3 p.m.

The two then met with other congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

Johnson engaged in friendly conversation with the king at the beginning of the meeting, where he appeared to be explaining something to him.

Trump returns to his hospitality sector roots with King Charles III’s visit

With a background in casinos, hotels and golf clubs, Trump seemed to enjoy hosting King Charles III at the White House.

The president often reverts to his hospitality sector roots when VIPs visit, whether they’re championship sports teams, business titans or foreign leaders that merit some pomp.

Trump guided the British monarch along the White House South Lawn to inspect the honor guard formations. His speech was all charm, as he called the king “very elegant.” And in what was supposed to be a private moment, Trump and his wife, Melania, escorted the king and Queen Camilla to an awaiting BMW just outside the Oval Office.

The queen showed her appreciation by politely waving her hand before the sedan departed, with Trump giving his signature thumbs up as it moved along. Construction of the White House ballroom continued during the visit, a sign of Trump’s ambitions as a host going forward.

In UK, coverage of Charles’ visit overshadowed by headlines on Starmer political storm

While King Charles visits the White House, back in the U.K. the news headlines are dominated by the continuing fallout over Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s decision to appoint the scandal-tainted politician Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington.

British lawmakers are debating Tuesday whether Starmer should face a parliamentary probe on whether the right procedures were followed in the appointment of Mandelson, a friend of Jeffrey Epstein.

Starmer fired Mandelson in September, but the relentless questions over his judgment has left the prime minister fighting for his job.

Spruced up tennis pavilion takes center court during royal visit

The first lady took on the project of refurbishing the White House tennis courts during Trump’s first term, building a pavilion inspired by the East and West Wings to replace a smaller structure.

Planning for the project -- which was paid for by private donations -- began in early 2018, followed by approval in June 2019 by the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission.

Trump hosts King for brief Oval Office meeting

Trump said the meeting with Charles was “really good” and said the king is a “fantastic person.”

The president has made a habit during his second term of turning Oval Office meetings with foreign officials into freewheeling events full of criticism about how leaders are managing their national affairs.

But Tuesday’s Oval Office meeting was held largely out of public view, reducing the potential of such an exchange with the king.

Epstein survivors speak at Capitol ahead of King’s visit

Several survivors of sexual abuse from Jeffrey Epstein spoke at the Capitol ahead of an address from King Charles III on Tuesday afternoon.

They called for further legislation to protect victims of sex trafficking and a deeper acknowledgement from those in power.

Sky Roberts, the brother of the late Virginia Giuffre who was a prominent abuse survivor, said that survivors are “still fighting to be heard, still pushing for real accountability, while many of the powerful connected to these systems remain just out of reach, unable to acknowledge survivors face to face.”

First lady and Camilla talk to students about history — and AI

The queen and the first lady joined students at the tennis pavilion of the White House. The students looked at a World War II map, a portrait of President John Adams, and a letter from Queen Elizabeth II to President Dwight Eisenhower with AI-enabled glasses and headsets -- an exercise the first lady’s office said explored the history of the bilateral relationship.

Melania Trump has made artificial intelligence part of her portfolio of issues.

Later on, the king was slated to meet a group of chief executives from the technology sector to talk about investments, according to his schedule. Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang was spotted among the guests for the official arrival ceremony.

What to expect from the King’s speech to Congress

The king’s speech to Congress will likely mark his most extensive public remarks during his four-day visit to the U.S.

He’s expected to address the Saturday shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in a sign of solidarity and support.

He will also acknowledge tensions that have surfaced between Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, noting that the two countries have not always agreed but “have always found ways to come together.”

King Charles is expected to acknowledge Epstein survivors

King Charles III is expected to acknowledge the survivors of abuse from Jeffrey Epstein when he speaks to Congress on Tuesday afternoon, but declined to meet with survivors of his abuse, according to Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who has been a leader of the charge on Capitol Hill for a reckoning over Epstein.

Khanna had pushed for the king to meet with the survivors during his visit, but said that he was told by the British ambassador to the U.S, that instead there would be an acknowledgement of the survivors.

Allegations of sexual abuse had roiled the British royal family, and King Charles eventually stripped his brother, the former Prince Andrew, of his royal titles and privileges over his links to Epstein.

“I thought it would have been a incredible moment and statement to show that it doesn’t matter how much wealth you have, how much power you have, no human being is dispensable and the survivors deserve justice.”

UK envoy’s unguarded comments are leaked

As King Charles III celebrates the transatlantic relationship, Britain’s ambassador in Washington has appeared to downplay the uniqueness of the so-called “special relationship” in leaked comments.

Ambassador Christian Turner told a group of British students that “I think there is probably one country that has a special relationship with the United States — and that is probably Israel.”

He said, though, that the U.K. and the U.S. share “a deep history and affinity,” and that “particularly on our defense and security, we are intertwined.”

A recording of the comments was published Tuesday by the Financial Times, which said they were made in February.

Turner also called it “extraordinary” that scandals around Jeffrey Epstein had brought down a member of the royal family and senior officials in Britain – and could yet topple Prime Minister Keir Starmer – “and yet here in the U.S., it really hasn’t touched anybody.”

The Foreign Office said “these were private, informal comments” and “certainly not any reflection of the U.K. government’s position.”

Trump says he wanted to go to the Capitol for the King’s speech

Trump said he wanted to be there for the first address to a joint meeting of Congress by a British king, but he’ll stay behind and watch instead.

“I was thinking of going, but they said, I don’t know, that might be a step too far. I would love to go. It’s not supposed to be protocol, but I would love to be with you,” Trump said during his own speech at the welcome ceremony for Charles and Camilla.

Trump says the magic words: ‘our special relationship’

Part of the king’s mission on this state visit is to try to mend a rift over issues including the Iran wa r and bolster what is known as the “special relationship” between the two countries. In his remarks, Trump explicitly linked Charles to that relationship.

“Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt famously met on a ship in the North Atlantic to outline a vision for the free world after World War Two. That understanding of our nation’s unique bond and role in history is the essence of our special relationship, and we hope it will always remain that way,” Trump said.

“The ship where the two great leaders met was called the Prince of Wales, the very title that His Majesty the king held longer than any other individual in British history,” he said.

Trump tells Charles his mother ‘had a crush’ on him

Trump talked about his late mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was born in Scotland and loved watching the royal family on television at ceremonies and events.

“I also remember her saying very clearly, ‘Charles, look young Charles, he’s so cute,’” Trump said, looking back at the king sitting behind him on the dias.

“My mother had a crush on Charles -- can you believe it?”

‘What a beautiful British day this is,’ Trump quips

Trump welcomed the king and queen noting the drizzle weather that had guests wiping off seats and huddling under umbrellas.

Trump paid tribute the Brits who first traveled to America, then a “wild and untamed continent,” and walked through a history of the “special relationship” between the two nations.

Trump says it’s a ‘tremendous privilege’ to host King Charles

The president paid homage to the king’s mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, as he welcomed the royal couple to the White House.

Trump said Elizabeth was “an incredible woman who I had the privilege of getting to know,” noting that she planted a tree at the White House years ago.

“Look at it now,” he said.

The remarks were part of a broader effort by Trump to note the long history between the U.S. and the U.K.

“Like our nation itself,” Trump said of the tree, “it was laid with British hands but grew in American soil.”

Ballroom construction keeps going during royal visit

Nothing gets in the way of the president’s ballroom construction. Not even a visit from Britain’s king and queen.

Work on the project was continuing ahead of the royal visit to the White House. Ballroom construction cranes were swinging and the sound of clangs could be heard.

In the wake of Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump has said the ballroom is needed to hold secure events. The construction, however, is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit.

Grey skies in Washington ahead of White House welcome

Washington’s finicky spring weather is on display ahead of King Charles and Queen Camilla arriving at the White House. They’ll be greeted by President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump on the South Lawn.

Ahead of their arrival, skies are grey with a light breeze. Drizzle and rain is possible over the next hour.

Members of the audience are shielding themselves with umbrellas to stay dry as the Marine band plays.

Trump delights in allegedly being a 15th cousin of King Charles III

Is the U.S. president actually a distant royal?

The U.K.-based Daily Mail reported this week that Trump and King Charles III have a shared distant ancestor that would make the two 15th cousins.

According to research conducted for the tabloid, Trump and Charles are both related to the 3rd Earl of Lennox, who is a great-grandson of King James II of Scotland.

“Wow, that’s nice. I’ve always wanted to live in Buckingham Palace!!!” Trump posted on his social media site Tuesday morning shortly before he was to formally greet the king and Queen Camilla at the White House. “I’ll talk to the King and Queen about this in a few minutes!!!”

Charles has faced some calls to meet with victims of Jeffrey Epstein

Charles has faced some calls on Capitol Hill to meet with victims of Jeffrey Epstein while he is in the U.S. There’s no indication that he will do so, even as the scandal involving the convicted sex offender has ensnared his brother, the former Prince Andrew, who was arrested in February over misconduct allegations, which he denies.

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., urged the king over the weekend to at least address the issue during his congressional speech.

Trump has maintained warm relations with the King

The president has spoken in glowing terms about Charles, repeatedly referring to the monarch as his “friend” and a “great guy.”

He also continues to mention his “amazing” trip to the U.K. in September with Melania Trump for an unprecedented second state visit. Starmer hand-delivered the invitation from the king in the Oval Office five weeks after Trump returned to office, in a very public attempt to woo the Republican president.

The U.K. royal family laid on pomp and pageantry for the Trumps, with scarlet-clad guardsmen, brass bands and a sumptuous banquet at Windsor Castle.

“President Trump has always had great respect for King Charles, and their relationship was further strengthened by the president’s historic visit to the United Kingdom last year,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told The Associated Press.

The visit comes at a challenging moment for US-UK relations

Trump’s up-and-down relationship with Prime Minister Keir Starmer has taken a particularly sour turn over the past several months as the president has sought to rally international support for the war in Iran. Trump lamented that Starmer, who has largely resisted his overtures, was “no Churchill.”

Trump has also imposed tariffs on the U.K. and warned of additional levies despite a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that has made such unilateral moves more challenging. Still, Trump threatened just last week to slap a “big tariff” on the U.K. if it doesn’t scrap a digital services tax on U.S. technology companies.

Trump has more broadly challenged the traditional trans-Atlantic alliance with efforts to annex Greenland and threats to walk away from NATO. He has repeatedly imposed tariffs on and taunted Canada, a member of the British Commonwealth.

A rare royal address to Congress

King Charles III will become the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress since his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in 1991. Her speech highlighted the shared history of both countries and the importance of their democratic values, themes Charles will likely reinforce on Tuesday.

Such addresses are an opportunity afforded to only the most prominent world leaders, including Pope Francis, Václav Havel and Winston Churchill. It will likely mark the most extensive public remarks Charles will deliver during a four-day visit to the U.S. that’s intended to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary of independence from Britain.

King Charles III and Queen Camilla head to the White House

The king, accompanied by Queen Camilla, will begin his day with a meeting at the White House with Trump. The Oval Office encounter offers the potential for the freewheeling, sometimes controversial meetings with foreign leaders that have become routine during Trump’s second term.

Given the expressly apolitical nature of the British monarch and Trump’s fondness for the royal family, the likelihood of an awkward meeting may be reduced.

Trump will host Charles on Tuesday evening for a state banquet at the White House.

Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, entered the plea in Manhattan federal court after he was charged with the unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud and making an unlawful monetary transaction.

He was released on $250,000 bail and his travel was restricted to portions of New York, North Carolina, California and points necessary to travel between.

Prosecutors said evidence in the case will include information resulting from grand jury subpoenas, cryptocurrency exchange records, search warrants and social media accounts.

Defense attorney Zach Intrater told Judge Margaret M. Garnett he doubts there will be many disputes arising from “the actual event,” but suspects the case will rise and fall on motions he will make on behalf of his client.

The judge ordered Van Dyke to return to court on June 8 for a pretrial conference.

The case comes during heavy scrutiny on prediction markets, which allow people to trade or wager on almost anything, as policymakers call for stricter regulation of the platforms amid concerns about insider trading.

The Trump administration has been supportive of the prediction market industry’s expansion. The president’s eldest son is an adviser for both Polymarket and its main competitor, Kalshi, and he is a Polymarket investor. Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, is launching its own prediction market called Truth Predict.

Prosecutors said Van Dyke was involved in the planning and execution of Maduro's capture and had signed nondisclosure agreements centered on the operations, but he eventually placed a series of bets related to Maduro being out of power by Jan. 31.

According to a criminal complaint, the bets totaling $33,000 were placed over a three-day period and resulted in “more than $404,000 of profits.”

Polymarket, one of the largest prediction markets, flagged the suspicious activity and turned it over to the government, according to CEO Shayne Coplan.

Van Dyke, who is stationed at Fort Bragg near Fayetteville, North Carolina, was granted bond after a court hearing in North Carolina last week and will continue his case in New York. He was represented in court by attorney Zach Intrater.

In a release, USAO officials said that the woman — identified as Colleen Kieran, 57 — oversaw the accounting department of a business based in Seminole County.

Over the course of nearly 13 years, she reportedly used her position to siphon out over $3.9 million from the company’s accounts into her own personal PayPal account, officials added.

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“After taking the money, Kieran spent it on clothing, travel, entertainment, dining, consumer electronics, and entertainment media,” the release reads. “Throughout the scheme, Kieran obtained loans in the company’s name to conceal the stolen money.”

In addition, Kieran provided false information about the company’s finances to her employers and the company’s tax prepare, investigators noted.

On Tuesday, the USAO revealed that Kieran had been charged by federal indictment with six counts of wire fraud.

“The indictment also notifies Kieran that the United States is seeking the forfeiture of $3.9 million, the proceeds of the misconduct,” the release continues.

If convicted, Kieran faces up to 20 years in federal prison on each count.

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The concept for the special passport, including a rendering of Trump’s stern-looking visage, had been under consideration for months before finally being approved late Monday. Between 25,000 and 30,000 of the new passports will be available to applicants at the Washington, D.C., passport office beginning shortly before July 4.

It’s the latest instance of Trump having his name and likeness added to buildings, documents and other highly visible tributes. There are efforts to put Trump’s signature on all new U.S. paper currency, also a first for a sitting president, as well as to include his image on a gold commemorative coin to celebrate the country's founding.

The commemorative passport will be the default document for people applying in person at the Washington office, although those who want a standard passport will be able to get one by applying online or outside Washington, officials said.

“As the United States celebrates America’s 250th anniversary in July, the State Department is preparing to release a limited number of specially designed U.S. passports to commemorate this historic occasion,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said.

“These passports will feature customized artwork and enhanced imagery while maintaining the same security features that make the U.S. passport the most secure documents in the world,” he said.

The limited release passport will feature Trump’s picture over a gold imprimatur of his signature to an interior page, while the cover will feature the words “United States of America” in bold gold print at the top and “Passport” at the bottom — a reversal of the standard cover.

In addition, a small gold laminate American flag, with the number 250 encircled by stars, will be at the bottom of the back cover.

The Bulwark reported earlier on the commemorative passports.

The only presidents featured in current U.S. passports are in a double-page depiction of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Other depictions include the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and scenes of the Great Plains, mountains and islands. Current passports also contain quotations from Martin Luther King Jr. as well as Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower.

The addition of Trump's picture and signature to the passport book is the newest step his aides have taken to increase the president's visibility, including adding his name to the U.S. Institute of Peace building and the Kennedy Center performing arts venue.

Trump also has made waves with his plans for a new White House ballroom and a massive arch to be built at one of the entrances to Washington from Virginia.

Edward Eastland’s words came as dozens of the girls’ family members sat just feet behind him during the second day of a special legislative hearing in which state lawmakers posed tough questions about Camp Mystic's lack of emergency planning before the devastating July 4 flood. A report of findings is expected later this year.

“We tried our hardest that night. It wasn’t enough to save your daughters,” said Eastland, a camp director and a member of the family that owns the 100-year-old camp along the Guadalupe River. “I’m so sorry.”

Eastland said he and his father Richard Eastland were on the campsite that night, and that they made a desperate attempt to save the girls when they realized that heavy rain had created a raging flood that ripped through the camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River. Richard Eastland died in the flood and Edward survived only after being swept into a tree.

“These girls were our youngest campers and their amazing counselors who we watched grow up,” Eastland said. “The world was a better place with them in it and the anger at us for not being able to keep them safe is completely reasonable.”

The apology came at the outset of the hearing before he and several members of the Eastland family were questioned for about four hours by state lawmakers who at times said the family remained unprepared to reopen the camp and repeatedly questioned the lack of emergency training for staff last year. Legislators also questioned several of the decisions made during the flood that delayed an evacuation and ultimately cost lives.

Lawmakers press camp owners on emergency training

Britt Eastland, another director, said the camp will dramatically improve training for counselors and stage drills for campers to prepare for floods, fire, tornadoes and intruders. Legislative investigators on Monday noted the camp’s previous lack of flood training as a critical problem that contributed to the deaths.

"All of these things should have been being done in the first place,” said Sen. Charles Perry.

The panel pressed the Eastlands on why they didn't make a last-ditch effort to get on the camp PA system and order everyone to head to higher ground.

Edward Eastland said it didn’t even occur to him to leave the girls they were trying to rescue to go back to the camp office and make such an announcement.

“Every minute was spent trying to get to the next cabin,” he said. “If we had a little more time, we could have gotten everybody out.”

Camp owners make plans to reopen

Camp Mystic’s owners want to reopen in late May and have said they will only use the parts of the camp that didn’t flood. They expect nearly 900 attendees this summer. Those plans have angered victims’ families, and some prominent state officials have called for regulators to deny or delay renewal of the camp’s license, which is under review.

Another of the sons, named Richard Eastland after his father, said while the family doesn't plan to open the camp if their license isn't renewed, they would likely appeal if that was the state's decision.

“We will not open Cypress Lake if we do not have a license,” he said.

But that seemed to spark disagreement among the victims' family members. Britt Eastland quickly interjected that it would be a “family decision.”

The special legislative committee does not control the review of Camp Mystic’s license. Because the camp has applied to renew its previous license, it could reopen while its application is pending. If denied, it still could operate while its case is under appeal.

The Eastland family also said it’s still an open question whether they would eventually try to reopen the river camp. If they do, no campers would be placed in buildings that flooded.

“We’re praying about that every day. We don’t know what to do,” Britt Eastland said.

Camp's readiness to host girls questioned

Several lawmakers questioned how the camp could be ready to reopen this summer.

State regulators last week notified Camp Mystic of 22 deficiencies in its emergency plan. Mary Liz Eastland, the camp’s medical director, acknowledged Tuesday she has not officially reported last summer’s deaths to state health officers.

“Are you ready to take on 500-plus children,” for camp this summer, asked Sen. Lois Kolkhorst. She noted state agencies have shut down licensed residential living centers for a single death, let alone dozens.

“The license is a privilege to have," Kolkhorst said.

“We are ready,” Britt Eastland said, adding that he believes Camp Mystic’s broader community will ultimately “be glad we had camp this summer.”

That drew an audible gasp from some in the room, and several of the victims' family members walked out.

Julie Sprunt Marshall, whose 9-year-old daughter was swept out of her cabin and rescued more than a mile down river, said the survivors continue to suffer trauma. She asked the lawmakers to not let the camp open under the Eastland family “who failed our daughters.”

“The camp will be conducting an incredibly dangerous experiment on children," Marshall said, “testing what will happen with the first drop of rain, the first clap of thunder, at the first time a noise startles them awake.”

U.S. District Judge Susan Brnovich, a Trump appointee, wrote that Arizona's statewide voter registration list is “not a document subject to request by the Attorney General" under federal law. The judge dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice because, she wrote, “amendment would be legally futile.”

The dismissal of the Arizona lawsuit follows a string of other rulings against the Department of Justice in similar cases in other states. The DOJ has sued at least 30 states and the District of Columbia seeking to force release of detailed voter data, which includes dates of birth, addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.

In addition to Arizona, judges have rejected those attempts in Rhode Island, California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon. In Georgia, a judge dismissed a DOJ lawsuit because it had been filed in the wrong city, prompting the government to refile elsewhere.

The DOJ sued Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes in January for failing to comply with its request for the detailed voter information.

“This moment is a win for voter privacy,” Fontes said in a statement. “I will never comply with illegal requests that put Arizona voters in harms way.”

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At least 13 states have either provided or promised to provide their detailed voter registration lists to the department, according to the Brennan Center and Associated Press reporting: Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.

Federal officials say they need the voter data to ensure that states are complying with federal election laws related to maintaining voter registration lists. In the Rhode Island case, a Justice Department attorney acknowledged that the department was seeking unredacted voter roll information so it could be shared with the Department of Homeland Security to check citizenship status.

Democratic and some Republican officials have objected to the requests and said such a demand violates state and federal privacy laws.

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the facility known as “Sloth World” faced mounting backlash in recent days, prompting state leaders to confirm the attraction will not move forward.

State Rep. Anna Eskamani said public pressure played a key role in the decision to close the business before it opened.

Investigators say the animals were not housed at the main attraction site, but instead kept at a separate facility about a mile away along International Drive.

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An incident report from FWC details what happened in December 2024, when the owners were expecting a shipment of several dozen sloths from Guyana and Peru. A staff member told investigators the animals arrived before the facility was properly prepared to house them.

According to the report, the building where the sloths were kept did not have electricity at the time. During a cold spell, workers attempted to use space heaters powered by an extension cord from a neighboring building, but the effort was not enough.

In total, 31 sloths died, investigators said.

The remaining animals have since been relocated. Officials at the Central Florida Zoo say they received a call earlier this week asking if they could take in 13 surviving sloths.

Zoo staff spent days preparing a temporary habitat before transporting the animals Friday morning.

“Our team went out there and picked the animals up, and it took maybe three hours to move them out of their exhibit and back here,” said CEO Richard Glover.

The sloths are now being held in quarantine for 30 days, where they will undergo testing to check for any potential illnesses. Zoo officials say special care was taken to prepare the enclosure to meet the animals’ needs.

“Sloths need things to climb on and things to be comfortable on,” Glover said. “We had a team that worked all day to get things ready.”

The closure has also drawn attention from federal leaders. On Friday, U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost posted on social media that the facility “has been shut down and will not open,” thanking local officials and advocates for raising awareness.

It remains unclear when Sloth World had planned to open. Workers at the site said they had not been informed about the decision to cancel the project, and the interior of the building appears unfinished.

Attempts to reach the owners for comment have been unsuccessful.

News 6 Orange County Community Correspondent Jayna Manohalal spoke briefly with Sloth World founder Ben Agresta last week regarding the 31 reported deaths and how they died.

During that call, Agresta said the sloths died from an “unknown virus.” He also denied wrongdoing and said investigators had not found any issues involving staff.

“But they’ve also found, you know, wrongdoing by any of our staff or anybody. We’ve just been dealing with a foreign-born virus,” Agresta said

A former Sloth World employee disputes that account.

“He’s lying about that. There were no viruses. It was bad conditions in him not taking care of his property. His business,” the former employee said.

The employee also said the company’s priorities were misplaced during its buildup.

“That was the thing he was most worried about was selling merch and selling pre-sale tickets,” he said. “Ben had plans to use the money towards the construction of Sloth World.”

The former employee also said he raised concerns internally about the animals’ wellbeing while the project continued moving forward.

The Sloth World website remains online, though ticket links now direct users to an email sign-up page.

The settlement announced Tuesday allows Oakland’s airport to be called “Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport,” but it bars the city from spotlighting “San Francisco” or “San Francisco Bay” in fonts, highlights, different colors or any other way. It also requires Oakland to use the word “bay” right after “San Francisco” and bans it from using the word “International” in the airport’s name, even though it provides international flights.

The spat began in 2024 after Oakland, a diverse port city often seen as the underdog in the Bay Area compared to its richer neighbor to the west, changed its airport’s name to “San Francisco-Oakland Bay Airport,” prompting San Francisco officials to sue over what they said was a trademark violation.

The two airports are across from each other on the San Francisco Bay and about 30 miles (48.28 kilometers) driving distance.

Oakland officials said the name modification was necessary to help travelers unfamiliar with the region place the city in the Bay Area. They said visitors often fly into San Francisco’s airport even if their destination is closer to the Oakland airport. The airport’s three-letter code OAK did not change.

“We’re proud Oakland fought for, and preserved the right to retain our airport’s full name that puts Oakland first and recognizes OAK’s location on the San Francisco Bay,” Mary Richardson, attorney for the Port of Oakland, which manages the airport, said in a statement.

San Francisco argued having “San Francisco” in Oakland’s airport name would confuse travelers, especially those flying in from abroad and those unfamiliar with the Bay Area. But on Tuesday, San Francisco officials had a friendlier tone.

“We are grateful to have reached a resolution in this matter,” San Francisco International Airport Director Mike Nakornkhet said. “This agreement provides clarity for travelers to make informed decisions about travel through our respective airports.”

Neither side admitted liability, and there was no monetary settlement.

San Francisco International Airport, known as SFO, is owned by the city, though technically located south of it.