The complaint alleges that the investigations into some of the nation's most prestigious academic institutions were designed to strong-arm the schools into cutting deals for political purposes. Outcomes of the investigations were "predetermined, without regard to the evidence" in a “politically mandated effort” to extract money from schools through settlement demands and funding freezes under the pretext of rooting out antisemitism, the complaint alleges.

The work of the multi-agency task force, launched by the Justice Department under then-Attorney General Pam Bondi in February 2025, was “marked by extraordinary procedural irregularities, predetermined outcomes without factual or legal support” and disregard for the law and Constitution, lawyers for the former government attorney wrote in seeking watchdog investigations into their client's complaints.

The complaint taps into a broader public discussion about the administration's efforts to confront allegations of antisemitism at colleges, a problem that received renewed attention during campus protests over Israel's war in Gaza that some Jewish students said made them feel unsafe. President Donald Trump returned to the White House with a goal of rooting out antisemitism that he said had gone unchecked during the Biden administration, but critics have called his government's response heavy-handed and said it infringed on free speech rights and coerced concessions from public institutions.

A key House Democrat is publicizing the whistleblower's allegations

Lawyers for the former Justice Department attorney, identified as Haley Van Erem, filed the disclosure Tuesday with the inspectors general at the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services and the Office of Special Counsel.

Van Erem spent nearly a decade working in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division before being involuntarily assigned to HHS to work on the Title VI investigations into the universities, the complaint says.

The health department assignees were initially told to scrutinize allegations of antisemitism at medical school commencement ceremonies — the lawyers were advised of a New York Post story describing antisemitic conduct at graduation events, the complaint says — but the inquiries were later expanded to focus on the entire schools in the cases of Columbia and Brown, according to Van Erem's account.

She left the Justice Department in May 2025 because she was "unwilling to be made vulnerable to further participation in politically motivated investigations unsupported by facts and contrary to law," says the complaint, which also accuses the task force of having targeted Muslim professors.

Kiersten Pels, a Justice Department spokesperson, said the department “stands behind the integrity” of its investigations. A spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment Tuesday.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote separately to Harmeet Dhillon, who as the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has been a public face of the department's efforts to counter antisemitism. In his letter, he said antisemitism at colleges and medical schools is a real problem that needs to be investigated.

“But,” he told Dhillon, “your 'investigation’ into antisemitism was fake, a pre-baked frame-up operation thoroughly political in nature.”

Raskin wrote that “the whole project was designed to harass professors and administrators at major universities, to curtail their freedom of speech and academic freedom, and to strip targeted institutions of hundreds of millions of dollars in grants that they had already been awarded on the merits of their applications.”

Scrutiny over the handling of investigations into elite schools

The whistleblower complaint deals chiefly with investigations into three Ivy League universities: Brown, Harvard and Columbia.

It alleges that in the case of Brown, the investigative team did not find evidence to support a violation of Title VI, the section of the Civil Rights Act that bars discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in programs that receive federal funding, but that “leadership refused to permit a notice of no violation and instead sought some form of settlement or resolution despite acknowledging the absence of a legal basis for doing so.”

Investigators did find evidence of discrimination at Columbia, the complaint says, but the investigation was done on an accelerated timetable before adequate factual development and legal review were completed and relied on allegations that “were unsupported, based on news reports or litigation filings, or that implicated protected First Amendment activity."

Columbia University agreed to pay the government $200 million as part of an agreement restoring access to federal funding. Brown University separately agreed to pay $50 million to Rhode Island workforce development organizations to end the three federal investigations involving allegations of antisemitism and racial bias in admissions, with no findings of wrongdoing.

In the investigation into Harvard, Trump administration officials discussed “extraordinary funding freezes and sweeping proposed settlement terms” before an investigation had been completed that could establish Title VI violations. Sean Keveney, then-HHS acting general counsel, said he believed Harvard would settle because they were “over a barrel,” according to the complaint.

A federal judge last year ordered the Trump administration to reverse its cuts of more than $2.6 billion in research funding for the university, saying the government “used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.” And a different judge last week dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit that accused Harvard University of turning a blind eye to harassment of Jewish students.

Location: Detroit, MI (Graham Media Group HQ)

About the Role

Graham Media Group is seeking a highly analytical, detail-oriented, and process-driven Revenue Planning & Analysis Analyst II to join our Revenue Operations team. Reporting directly to the Director of Revenue Planning & Analysis, this role serves as a critical bridge between Revenue Operations, Sales, Finance, Technology, and Market Leadership teams.

The ideal candidate combines strong analytical capabilities with expertise in data governance, quality assurance, process documentation, Salesforce and project management. This individual will champion data integrity across revenue systems, lead cross-functional initiatives, develop scalable operational processes, and leverage emerging AI technologies to drive efficiency and innovation across the organization.

Responsibilities:

• Conduct recurring audits of Salesforce, reporting platforms, and revenue datasets to ensure compliance with data standards
• Partner with stakeholders to improve data collection methods, system adoption, and overall data quality
• Monitor key data health metrics and build scorecards to measure accuracy and completeness
• Create and maintain user guides, training materials, process documentation, and standard operating procedures (SOPs) to support system adoption and operational consistency.
• Support onboarding and ongoing training efforts for revenue systems, reporting tools, and operational processes
• Partner with the Salesforce Administrator to support CRM enhancements, testing, user adoption, data hygiene, and reporting
• Assist in troubleshooting system issues and validating system changes and integrations
• Document processes, workflows, and system requirements to support ongoing optimization efforts
• Act as the Revenue Operations team’s project manager for key initiatives, coordinating efforts across Sales, Finance, Marketing, Technology, and Market Leadership.
• Gather business requirements, document processes, manage timelines, and communicate progress to stakeholders.
• Drive process improvement initiatives that increase efficiency, scalability, and operational effectiveness.
• Identify opportunities to leverage AI and automation to improve reporting, forecasting, documentation, and operational workflows
• Assist in the design, testing, and deployment of AI-powered solutions and agents that increase productivity and streamline business processes

Requirements:

• Experience creating and maintaining training materials, user guides, process documentation, and standard operating procedures
• Ability to communicate complex processes and technical concepts in a clear, user-friendly manner for both technical and non-technical audiences
• Experience facilitating training sessions and supporting user adoption of new tools, systems, and processes is a plus
• Highly organized with strong attention to detail — you catch errors before others do
• Collaborative, low-ego, and comfortable in a fast-moving, multi-market environment
• Media, broadcasting, or advertising industry experience a plus, but not required

Please send resumes to Becky Hollandsworth at rhollandsworth@grahammedia.com

Graham Media Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. In addition to complying with the requirements of federal law, GMG will comply with applicable state and local laws prohibiting employment discrimination. Any offer of employment is conditional upon the successful completion of a pre-employment drug screening, investigative background check, employment/education verifications and reference checks.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

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“Lindsay was struggling — we were all concerned,” said Susan Clancy, mother of Patrick Clancy, who found the Massachusetts couple's children after they had been strangled in the family basement in January 2023. Lindsay Clancy also attempted to take her own life that night, and was left paralyzed. Lindsay and Patrick Clancy are now divorced.

Susan Clancy, who, like Lindsay, worked as a labor and delivery nurse, said in Plymouth Superior Court that she and her former daughter-in-law were close and described Lindsay as a “wonderful mother” who was “very nurturing, very loving.” Her testimony echoed emotional accounts the day before from Lindsay Clancy’s mother and sister, who recounted for jurors how they saw her become increasingly anxious, paranoid and suicidal starting in the fall of 2022.

Susan Clancy said that Lindsay was open with her about struggling and asked for her mother-in-law's support. The jury was shown texts between Lindsay and Susan Clancy in which Lindsay spoke about fears that she had developed a dependence on benzodiazepines, but couldn't sleep without taking them.

“I'm not okay and I'm terrified of taking meds tonight,” Lindsay texted her mother-in-law on Nov. 30, 2022, two months before the killings.

The trial centers not on whether Lindsay Clancy killed her children, which her lawyers do not dispute, but on her state of mind at the time. The defense argues she should not be held criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis, while prosecutors say she planned the killings and understood what she was doing.

Lindsay Clancy's mother, Paula Musgrove, who lived in Connecticut, testified Monday that she often stayed with her daughter in Massachusetts from October into December 2022. She said Lindsay Clancy was scared of sleeping alone, became increasingly paranoid and believed the medications she was taking “were destroying her mind.”

Lindsay Clancy’s sister described a similar decline. Allison Ozga testified that at the end of December, Lindsay told her she had experienced suicidal thoughts every day for a month.

Musgrove also recalled a more alarming disclosure in December, when she was standing in the kitchen with Lindsay Clancy and her then-husband, Patrick Clancy. Musgrove said her daughter appeared nervous and told them she needed to tell them something.

“She told us she had thoughts of harming the children,” Musgrove said.

Prosecutors argue that Lindsay Clancy planned the Jan. 24, 2023, killings and contrived to get her husband out of the house by sending him to get takeout and to the pharmacy.

Lindsay Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington does not dispute that she killed the children. But he says she shouldn't be held criminally responsible because she had postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth. He said she also had bipolar disorder and that antidepressants prescribed after the birth of her third child worsened her condition.

Earlier in the trial, the jury heard that Lindsay Clancy had sought treatment for severe mental health problems, including admitting herself to a psychiatric hospital. But witnesses also noted she wouldn't always take the medications prescribed to help with her insomnia, anxiety and depression.

The defense has argued that Lindsay Clancy was overmedicated and that her care was disjointed, with doctors not speaking to one another or sharing notes. The defense also showed she was discharged from one facility after a day and denied a higher level of care at another when she couldn't show that she had a suicide plan.

Prosecutors have questioned the seriousness of Lindsay Clancy's suicide attempt and showed through texts and photos that she performed many normal activities the day of the killings, including taking her children to the doctor and playing with them in the snow.

Her doctors have testified they never saw her exhibit signs of mania or psychosis, though she did repeatedly talk of feeling suicidal.

At the start of the trial, Patrick Clancy described the horror of returning home to find his dead children. During his testimony, prosecutors played a harrowing seven-minute 911 call, which was not released to the public. Patrick Clancy can be heard checking on Lindsay Clancy in the backyard, before heading down to his basement and finding his children.

He screams and howls before telling a dispatcher, “She killed the kids!”

If convicted of murder, Lindsay Clancy faces life in prison without parole. If found not guilty because of a lack of criminal responsibility, she would be committed to a state mental health facility.

The Lakeland, Florida-based grocery giant confirmed it recently updated its express lane process, giving associates more flexibility in managing customer flow rather than enforcing a hard item limit.

“To better serve our customers and improve checkout efficiency, we recently updated our express lane process to provide associates with greater flexibility in managing customer flow. Rather than adhering to a specific item limit, our focus is on reducing wait times and ensuring customers can be served as efficiently as possible.”

Publix spokesperson

Publix did not clarify whether the change applies to self-checkout lanes, which have been rapidly expanding across its store locations in recent years.

The move comes as Publix navigates a challenging economic climate. The company reported second-quarter sales of $15.7 billion — up just 1% from $15.6 billion a year earlier — with comparable-store sales dipping 0.5% for the quarter.

Publix did not say when the policy took effect or whether it applies to all of its more than 1,400 stores across eight southeastern states.

The U.S. and Canada are negotiating ahead of Trump’s midnight deadline to impose 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian products starting Wednesday. The fate of the Gaza ceasefire remains unclear after Jared Kushner left a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with no firm Israeli commitment to the latest U.S.-proposed plan. And Trump’s pivot away from South Korea is raising broader concerns about U.S. security interests in Asia and elsewhere.

The Latest:

The lone Democrat on the FCC praises the lawsuit

The sole Democrat on the commission, Anna Gomez, commended ABC and Disney for pushing back against the FCC’s actions.

“For months, the FCC has waged a campaign of censorship and control against Disney’s ABC stations,” she said in a statement, “using the threat of broadcast license revocations to punish a company for speech this administration doesn’t like.”

“I have long called on companies to push back against this kind of government intimidation, and I’m glad Disney has shown courage and stepped up,” Gomez said. “This should be a welcome sign for every broadcaster who has felt the weight of this overreaching government pressure in silence.”

ABC says FCC’s challenge of its broadcast licenses present an ‘existential threat’

The FCC under Chairman Brendan Carr cited the network’s diversity practices as a reason for a rare early review of some of its local broadcast licenses, but it took the action shortly after a joke by ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel had infuriated the president.

“Again and again, the Administration has attacked ABC’s speech — the stories its journalists report and the viewpoints its network programs air,” the network alleges in its lawsuit filed Tuesday seeking to block the FCC action. “Those attacks have escalated into express demands that ABC be stripped of its broadcast licenses because of its speech.”

“If the Administration gets its way, the message to every media company in the country will be unmistakable: tell only the stories the Administration deems favorable, or face the coercive machinery of the federal government. In such a world, the press could in no way be described as free,” it says.

Forced out of the Kennedy Center, National Symphony Orchestra is going on the road

Forced from its concert hall, the orchestra announced Tuesday that it’s splitting its 2026-27 season among six venues in and around Washington, D.C.

Trump loyalists took control of the center named by Congress after President John F. Kennedy and added his name to the complex before a federal judge ordered it removed. Now the board plans a two-year renovation and a new name: “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.”

“For us to perform and to be somehow disconnected with the Kennedy Center probably will convince some of the audience who stayed away from the center to come back to our concerts, and not only that, even to increase the number of the audience,” music director Gianandrea Noseda said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Hormuz ship traffic is down sharply, despite Trump’s claims

While Trump insists the Strait of Hormuz remains “open and operating,” the numbers show vessel transit dropped significantly last week, with confirmed crossings falling 19.5% to 95, including just three on Sunday, according to shipping data platform Kpler.

The platform said the transited vessels used the Iranian-designated route, while no crossings were recorded through the Omani routes.

Iran refers to Trump’s ‘delusion’ about the strait

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi appeared to respond to Trump’s post on social media depicting the strait as American territory.

“Just as Trump correctly wrote the name of the eternal Persian Gulf, his delusion regarding the Strait of Hormuz will soon either be corrected, or we will correct this deluded man’s delusions for him,” Gharibabadi wrote on X.

Trump floats idea of declaring Strait of Hormuz a US territory

He posted a map on social media Tuesday depicting the strait as a U.S. territory. The president first mentioned the idea in an offhand comment last week. On Monday, he told reporters in the Oval Office, “I like the idea of declaring it a territory,” without providing details.

The White House on Tuesday referred to Trump’s remarks in the Oval Office and declined to comment further about Oman.

Tankers and cargo vessels are seen in the Gulf of Oman, along shipping routes linking the Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian Sea, Tuesday, June 16, 2026. (AP Photo)

US believes Oman has not been tough enough with Iran

The reason Trump threatened to bomb Oman is because he’s unhappy the country is close to a deal with Iran to manage ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, two regional officials said Tuesday.

The officials said the Trump administration has told Oman it is opposed to parts of the yet-to-be-announced deal, including the joint Iranian and Omani management of the exit route out of the passage that’s critical to global supplies of oil and natural gas. The officials were briefed on the U.S. position and how the administration views Oman’s position.

The U.S. believes Oman has not been tough enough in its negotiations with Iran and is unhappy with Oman’s agreement to collect voluntary fees from vessels, even if the charges are related to security and maritime environmental protection, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists.

Whistleblower alleges political pressure, lack of evidence in antisemitism probes

A whistleblower is alleging that a Trump administration task force created to combat antisemitism has rushed to push for settlements with Ivy League universities, despite incomplete investigations that failed to establish any violations of the law.

The complaint obtained by The Associated Press before it was made public Tuesday details allegations made by a former Justice Department attorney who was involved in the task force. It alleges that the investigations were designed to strong-arm the schools into cutting deals for political purposes.

Spokespeople for the Justice and Health and Human Services Departments did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment Tuesday.

▶ Read more

Trump says US has no planned talks with Iran

The president asserted that even as U.S. has no planned talks with Iran, the Strait of Hormuz remains “open and operating,” despite limited traffic and an attack Tuesday on a ship trying to exit the waterway.

Trump also wrote on social media Tuesday that a U.S. blockade of Iranian shipping remains “in full force and effect,” and asserted that all water mines have been removed.

His post comes after a 60-day negotiating period ended this week between the U.S. and Iran with no clear end to the war in sight.

Disney sues FCC, claiming broadcast licenses challenge is retaliation over ‘Jimmy Kimmel’

Disney’s suit filed Tuesday against the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission alleges a violation of its First Amendment rights.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr defended the agency’s early review of eight ABC local broadcast licenses well before they expire, saying Friday that broadcasters have a duty to “operate in the public interest” and the FCC is merely trying to restore that standard.

Carr has said the country should have a “trusted, respected news media, and we’re not there.”

ABC has accused the agency of a brazen attempt to chill its constitutionally protected free speech — and by extension, that of every media outlet in the country.

The 1930 tariff law Trump invoked against Canada made the Great Depression worse

After the Supreme Court ruled the president overstepped his authority by imposing double-digit import taxes on almost every country on earth as a national emergency, Trump last month imposed new import taxes of 10% to 12.5% on 59 countries and the European Union — which together account for 99% of U.S. imports, accusing them of allowing forced labor.

And to whack Canada, he invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to impose 50% tariffs, starting Wednesday.

These so-called Smoot-Hawley tariffs are notorious among economists and historians for limiting world commerce and making the Great Depression worse. Never before used, Section 338 allows for import taxes on products from countries that have discriminated against U.S. businesses.

Trump claimed Canada discriminates against U.S. exports of autos, alcohol and cheese.

US criticizes Israeli strikes on Syrian air base

Syrian state TV said eight Israeli airstrikes hit the runway of the Abu Duhur air base early Tuesday, causing damage without inflicting any casualties.

U.S. Ambassador Tom Barrack posted on X that Washington is “deeply concerned that the confirmed Israeli airstrikes” constitute “an unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability.”

There was no comment from the Israeli military on the attack and Turkish officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said foreign fighters used to stay at the base before they were recently asked to leave, and that Turkey, a main backer of Syria’s government, has been rehabilitating the base after the Syrian conflict left nearly half a million people dead.

Ship attacked in Hormuz strait as Iran throttles key waterway

A projectile has hit a ship sailing out of the Strait of Hormuz , according to the British military’s UK Maritime Trade Operations center, causing “a crew casualty” but no environmental damage.

Iranian threats to shipping effectively closed the strait after Israel and the U.S. started the war nearly six months ago.

An Iranian official said Tuesday that the waterway will remain closed until the U.S. meets Tehran’s conditions, which include ending a U.S. blockade on Iranian shipping, “releasing frozen assets, lifting oil sanctions (and) ending threats and military operations on all fronts.”

Turkey urges Trump to seek a diplomatic solution to the war

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Trump in a telephone call to continue to seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Iran.

The call came late Monday as the 60-day negotiating period to find a peace deal between the United States and Iran was expiring, with no word of an extension and both sides seemingly as far apart as they were at the start.

“President Erdogan said it is important to make maximum use of diplomacy amid tensions between Iran and the United States,” according to a statement from the Turkish presidential communications office.

The 60-day deadline for an Iran peace deal is expiring. Here’s where things stand

The deal that Trump signed at Versailles in June set an ambitious 60-day deadline for ending the war with Iran and reaching an accord on its nuclear program.

The deadline was Monday, and the two sides are further apart than they were then.

Talks, such as they are, have focused on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and lifting a U.S. blockade on Iran, both of which were supposed to have happened under the interim deal. There has been no sign of any compromise on the strait, or that detailed nuclear talks have even begun.

The U.S., meanwhile, has no good options for getting out of the war it started alongside Israel.

Acceding to Iran’s latest demands would mean giving it control over a critical international waterway that carried a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas before the war — and would be tantamount to admitting defeat. Escalating the deeply unpopular war would further draw down U.S. supplies of advanced missile interceptors, jolt the world economy, and drive up gas prices ahead of U.S. congressional elections.

So both sides have dug in, hoping the other will blink first. So far, neither has.

▶ Read more

Trump’s slight of South Korea in favor of the North raises broader US security concerns

Trump on Sunday ordered the U.S. military to downsize the 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, which began Monday as scheduled. It wasn’t known which parts of the training were being scaled back.

His announcement baffled many in South Korea, which has been closely allied with the U.S. for decades and where national security is a top priority due to threats from nuclear-armed North Korea.

Trump explained his decision by citing South Korea’s refusal to join his war against Iran and pointing to what he said was his good relationship with North Korea’s reclusive dictator, a transactional and personal approach to foreign policy that has defined the Republican’s presidency.

“There is no American interest that I can see in this,” said Dan Fried, an assistant secretary of state for European affairs in the George W. Bush administration. “On all levels it makes no sense. It undermines the South Koreans, undermines the Japanese, frightens the Taiwanese, unnerves NATO and emboldens the Chinese, not to mention the North Koreans.”

▶ Read more

Long meeting produces optimism but no Israeli commitment to US plan for Gaza

A marathon meeting Monday between U.S. negotiator Jared Kushner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left the fate of the Gaza ceasefire unclear, with officials signaling moderate optimism but offering no concrete commitment by Israel to the latest U.S.-proposed plan.

Hamas has already agreed to the proposal. American negotiators appeared to acquiesce to Israeli demands that Hamas disarmament must come before any reconstruction of the devastated Palestinian enclave. They did not publicly signal that Israel had made any commitments to withdraw from the 60% of Gaza that Israeli troops currently occupy.

That’s a major sticking point in the plan and one that Hamas had pressed negotiators to compel Israel to fulfill prior to the meeting. The talks came days after Netanyahu rejected the 15-point, U.S.-backed road map to move the ceasefire deal forward, saying there would be no withdrawal without disarmament.

A day earlier, Kushner met for two hours with Hamas’ leader in Egypt.

▶ Read more

Last-minute talks over 50% US tariffs on $20 billion in Canadian goods

The United States and Canada have wrangled for decades over trade, poking each other interminably over sore spots like Canadian softwood lumber imports and U.S. access to Canada’s protected dairy market.

President Donald Trump’s belligerent approach to dealing with Canada marks an extraordinary departure from the traditionally cooperative relationship between the two countries. Trump has hit Canadian goods with tariffs — in a push to bring manufacturing back to the United States — and has repeatedly made inflammatory comments about turning Canada into America’s 51st state.

Tension could hit new heights at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday if Trump goes ahead with his plan to impose 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian products, ranging from hockey sticks to tongue depressors.

As the deadline approaches, the two countries are seeking a truce that would avoid the new round of tariffs.

″We are negotiating,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters Monday, speaking in French. “The negotiations are very intense and delicate. This is not the time to talk about negotiations in public.”

▶ Read more

The Big Ten has eight players on the first team, led by Oregon quarterback Dante Moore and two of his teammates.

Defending national champion Indiana, Georgia and Oklahoma each has two players on the first team, as determined by media members on the AP Top 25 voting panel.

The Texas players on the team are offensive lineman Trevor Goosby, wide receiver Cam Coleman, defensive lineman Colin Simmons and linebacker Rasheem Biles.

Defensive lineman A’Mauri Washington and safety Koi Perich are the Oregon players joining Moore, who edged out Mississippi's Trinidad Chambliss for first-team honors.

Wide receiver Jeremiah Smith, the Big Ten preseason offensive player of the year, is the only selection from Ohio State, the No. 1 team in the preseason AP Top 25 poll.

Smith, Missouri running back Ahmad Hardy and Notre Dame cornerback Leonard Moore are returning AP first-team All-America picks who are on the preseason team.

Iowa's Kade Pieper was voted first-team center by a wide margin even though this will be his first season playing the position. He moved from right guard to replace 2025 consensus All-American Logan Jones.

The AP All-America team for this season will be released in December.

First team offense

Quarterback — Dante Moore, fourth year, Oregon.

Running backs — Kewan Lacy, third year, Mississippi; Ahmad Hardy, third year, Missouri.

Tackles — Carter Smith, fifth year, Indiana; Trevor Goosby, fourth year, Texas.

Guards — Evan Tengesdahl, fourth year, Cincinnati; Shadre Hurst, fifth year, Houston.

Center — Kade Pieper, fourth year, Iowa.

Tight end — Trey’Dez Green, third year, LSU.

Wide receivers — Jeremiah Smith, third year, Ohio State; Malachi Toney, second year, Miami; Cam Coleman, third year, Texas.

All-purpose player — Wayne Knight, fifth year, UCLA.

Kicker — Tate Sandell, fifth year, Oklahoma.

First team defense

Edge — Colin Simmons, third year, Texas; Dylan Stewart, third year, South Carolina.

Tackles — A’Mauri Washington, fourth year, Oregon; David Stone, third year, Oklahoma.

Linebackers — Rasheem Biles, fourth year, Texas; Xavier Atkins, third year, Auburn; Rolijah Hardy, third year, Indiana.

Cornerbacks — Leonard Moore, third year, Notre Dame; Ellis Robinson IV, third year, Georgia.

Safeties — KJ Bolden, third year, Georgia; Koi Perich, third year, Oregon.

Defensive back — Bray Hubbard, fourth year, Alabama.

Punter — Evan Crenshaw, fifth year, Troy.

Second team offense

Quarterback — Trinidad Chambliss, fifth year, Mississippi.

Running backs — Mark Fletcher Jr., fourth year, Miami; LJ Martin, fourth year, BYU.

Tackles — Cayden Green, fourth year, Missouri; Jordan Seaton, third year, LSU.

Guards — Greg Johnson, fourth year, Minnesota; Luke Montgomery, fourth year, Ohio State.

Center — Drew Bobo, fifth season, Georgia.

Tight end — Terrance Carter Jr., fifth year, Texas Tech.

Wide receivers — Duce Robinson, fourth year, Florida State; Charlie Becker, third year, Indiana; KJ Duff, third year, Rutgers.

All-purpose player — Cam Cook, fourth year, West Virginia.

Kicker — Lucas Carneiro, fifth year, Mississippi.

Second team defense

Edge — Anthony Smith, fifth season, Minnesota; John Henry Daley, fourth year, Michigan.

Tackles — Tyrique Tucker, fifth year, Indiana; Will Echoles, third year, Mississippi.

Linebackers — Sammy Brown, third year Clemson; Raylen Wilson, fourth year, Georgia; Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa, third year, Notre Dame.

Cornerbacks — Brandon Finney Jr., second year, Oregon; Zabien Brown, third year, Alabama.

Safeties — Brauntae Johnson, third year, Notre Dame; Ty Benefield, fourth year, LSU.

Defensive back — Kelley Jones, fourth year, Mississippi State.

Punter — Palmer Williams, fourth year, Baylor.

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Sign up for Top 25 poll alerts here, visit the Top 25 here and see AP’s full college football coverage here

Earlier this week, Trump also threatened to bomb Oman as the country sought a deal with Iran to manage shipping traffic through the strait, two regional officials said Tuesday, a day after Trump leveled the threat. Iran says the waterway will not be reopened until the U.S. meets its conditions.

As talks between Iran and Oman continue, a projectile hit a ship in the strait and Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed they fired drones at an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia.

Here’s a look at the latest developments Tuesday in the Iran war and the wider Middle East. Full coverage can be found here.

Trump looms over negotiations to reopen Strait of Hormuz

As Oman and Iran say they are nearing a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said on social media Tuesday that the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports remains “in full force and effect,” and asserted that all water mines have been removed.

Trump posted a map depicting the strait as U.S. territory.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi appeared to respond to Trump’s post.

“Just as Trump correctly wrote the name of the eternal Persian Gulf, soon his delusion regarding the Strait of Hormuz will either be corrected or we will correct the delusions of this deluded man," he wrote on X.

The Trump administration has told Oman it opposes parts of the yet-to-be-announced deal, according to officials briefed on the U.S. position. Those include joint Iranian and Omani management of the passage's exit route and the collection of voluntary fees from vessels, even if the money is used for security and maritime environmental protection.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists.

The White House on Tuesday referred to Trump’s remarks in the Oval Office and declined to comment further about Oman.

— By Samy Magdy in Cairo

Egypt says Iran-Oman agreement could open door to Iran-US deal

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the Iranian-Omani deal could pave the way for Washington and Tehran to return to negotiations for a “comprehensive and permanent deal that addresses all concerns and enhances regional security and stability.”

The statement came after a meeting between Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and Omani counterpart Badr al-Busaidi. But it did not address Trump’s latest threat against Oman.

The 60-day negotiating period ended this week between the U.S. and Iran with no clear end to the war in sight.

Ship traffic drops significantly in Strait of Hormuz

Ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz dropped significantly last week with confirmed crossings falling 19.5% to 95 transits. Only three vessels made it through the waterway on Sunday, according to shipping data platform Kpler.

The ships used the Iranian-designated route, with no crossings recorded through the Omani routes.

Crossings through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait increased 6.7% to 254 transits, while so-called dark transits, in which ships turn off the transponders that broadcast their location, fell from 40 to 16, Kpler said.

Projectile damages ship in strait causing casualty

An unidentified projectile damaged the engine room of a ship in the Strait of Hormuz near Oman and “resulted in a crew casualty," according to the British military’s UK Maritime Trade Operations center.

The maritime monitoring agency did not release any details about the ship or its cargo, and it was not clear whether the crew member was killed or wounded.

No environmental damage has been reported and the agency said the Omani Coast Guard was assisting other crew members and authorities were investigating.

Iran-backed Houthis claim an attack on a Saudi oil refinery

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed they fired drones at an oil refinery in neighboring Saudi Arabia, the latest attack threatening to reignite Yemen’s civil war and open another front in the Middle East.

The attack targeted a facility run by Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, according to a report by the Houthi-run SABA news agency. There were no immediate reports of damage or comment from Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis have escalated attacks against government forces in Yemen and oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, which supports the Yemeni government, and the kingdom’s shipping in the Red Sea, an important alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

A viewer told News 6 the manatees first beached themselves around 2 p.m. Witnesses said they began reaching out to wildlife authorities and marine rescue organizations at that time.

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, FWC received calls reporting the manatees had become stranded onshore during mating activity. FWC then contacted the Volusia County marine mammal response team, which responded to monitor the animals, assess their respiration and body condition, and take measurements.

“We sent a crew down to investigate,” a New Smyrna Beach battalion chief told News 6 hours before the manatees made it back into the river at high tide.

Responders ultimately determined the best course of action was to wait for high tide to see whether the manatees could return to the water on their own

The manatees were ultimately able to return to the water as the tide rose later by 11 p.m.

FWC says mating herds typically include one female pursued by a group of males and may remain together for hours or even days. Although manatees are often considered gentle giants, they are large, strong animals that can be quite active during mating — and that is normal behavior.

Manatees, especially exhausted females, may sometimes beach themselves during this activity. FWC urges anyone who witnesses this to watch from a distance and never attempt to approach, interfere with or push a manatee back into open water.

Anyone who spots a distressed, injured or stranded manatee is encouraged to call the FWC Wildlife Alert Hotline at 1-888-404-FWCC (3922).

In the lawsuit, ABC, its parent company Disney and the eight local stations whose licenses are affected asked a federal court to stop the early renewal proceedings.

The FCC under Chairman Brendan Carr, an ally of President Donald Trump, had ordered the early review in April — itself a rare move — of eight licenses owned by ABC, well before they are set to expire. It cited the network’s diversity practices as a reason, but the development came shortly after a joke by ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel — an outspoken Trump critic — had infuriated the president.

“Again and again, the Administration has attacked ABC’s speech — the stories its journalists report and the viewpoints its network programs air,” the network alleged in its lawsuit. “Over time, those attacks have escalated into express demands that ABC be stripped of its broadcast licenses because of its speech."

“Facing this existential threat,” it added, “Plaintiffs have no choice but to seek redress from the judicial branch for the Administration’s blatant retaliation for their First Amendment speech.”

It said ABC had “no alternative means to eliminate these ongoing and immediate threats other than total capitulation to the Administration’s demands." It asked the court to “immediately enjoin Defendants from taking or threatening to take any action against Plaintiffs in relation to the early license renewal applications.”

There are already clashes between ABC and the administration

The early license review is only one part of a long-simmering confrontation between ABC and the FCC.

The network has also been fighting Carr’s efforts to make the morning talk show “The View,” whose hosts and guests are often critical of Trump, subject to equal-time rules. That's a question ABC says the agency itself decided — in the network's favor — more than two decades ago.

The lawsuit Tuesday also spoke of ramifications that go well beyond one network.

“The consequences of the Administration’s campaign against free speech reach well beyond ABC,” it said. “If the Administration gets its way, the message to every media company in the country will be unmistakable: tell only the stories the Administration deems favorable, or face the coercive machinery of the federal government. In such a world, the press could in no way be described as free.”

It added: “The FCC Chairman has left little doubt that this is his goal.”

The lone Democrat on the FCC praises the lawsuit

The sole Democrat on the commission, Anna Gomez, commended ABC and Disney for pushing back against the FCC’s actions.

“For months, the FCC has waged a campaign of censorship and control against Disney’s ABC stations,” she said in a statement, “using the threat of broadcast license revocations to punish a company for speech this administration doesn’t like.”

“I have long called on companies to push back against this kind of government intimidation, and I’m glad Disney has shown courage and stepped up," she said. "This should be a welcome sign for every broadcaster who has felt the weight of this overreaching government pressure in silence.”

In late July, Carr defended his agency’s actions against ABC, saying broadcasters have a duty to “operate in the public interest.” The FCC, he said, was merely trying to restore that standard.

Broadcasters like ABC, Carr said in an interview on the Fox Business Network, “struck a deal with the American people. You broadcasters get subsidized access, free access to a valuable public resource, the airwaves, worth billions of dollars. In exchange, you have to operate in the public interest.”

“Look, as a country, we should have a trusted, respected news media, and we’re not there,” Carr said. “So I hope more broadcasters return to their public interest obligations.”

The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Trump has suggested the massive building be painted as part of his push to remake and beautify the nation’s capital. Planners said the paint job would cost at least $7.5 million.

The proposal to paint the building has alarmed preservationists, architects, historians and others who argue that granite is not meant to be painted and that paint would trap moisture and degrade the stone.

U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich said plaintiffs in an ongoing case had not shown that minimal tests planned for the historic building would cause irreparable harm if those tests go ahead.

The plaintiffs, which include cultural preservationist groups, had sought a restraining order and a temporary injunction to stop the Trump administration from conducting tests and other preparatory work.

At issue was whether that work would get ahead of a larger question before the court over whether the General Services Administration could delegate its authority for such a project to the Executive Office.

“The plaintiffs’ motion rises and falls on irreparable harm,” Friedrich said from the bench. The test areas would include about 8 square feet of the building's massive exterior and several panels that can’t be seen by the public, she said.

Friedrich said that while she was allowing that test to move ahead, she would not hesitate to step in and rule if the administration moved beyond the limited testing. She asked the parties to provide a status report by next Tuesday and ordered regular reports following that.

Gregory Werkheiser, a lawyer with Cultural Heritage Partners and one of the plaintiffs, said that while he and others challenging the painting plan were disappointed, “the reasons we brought this case are untouched by today’s decision.”

The larger issue, he said, is whether “the president has taken power illegally from the GSA and put it in his office in terms of this project and the implications of that. If that holds true for historic properties around the country, that could be devastating.”

Cosmic radiation comes from space. Only a small amount reaches the Earth's surface, but exposure is greater for people flying at high altitudes.

There’s been limited evidence from small studies suggesting that the exposure translates to higher cancer death rates among people who fly often — particularly pilots and flight attendants. The new study “brings important new evidence to bear on this question,” two Australian radiation experts who weren't involved in the research wrote in an accompanying commentary.

The latest study, published Monday by JAMA Internal Medicine, used national data from more than 12 million death certificates that included information about occupations. The authors looked at death rates from cancers that are tied to radiation exposures, including leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and cancers of the skin, breast, thyroid, prostate and central nervous system.

Among more than 500 occupations, flight attendants had the highest percentage of deaths from radiation-related cancers, and pilots were second, the researchers found. For those two occupations, the odds of dying were unusually high for each type of radiation-related cancer.

Neither group showed higher-than-normal death rates from cancers that aren't tied to radiation exposure, noted the commentary writers, Catherine Olsen and Ken Karipidis. That fact “supports the hypothesis that occupational radiation exposure, rather than lifestyle or socioeconomic factors, underlies the observed excess,” they wrote.

The researchers found that flight attendants had about 50% higher odds of dying from a radiation-related cancer than the general working population, and pilots had about 36% higher odds.

In terms of absolute risk, about 6.9% of flight attendant deaths were from these cancers — roughly 1 in 14. Among pilots, it was 6.7%. For the general working population, it was 5%, said the study's first author, Dr. Vishal Patel of Harvard Medical School.

The authors acknowledged some limitations in their study. They do not know how much exposure each flight attendant and pilot got in the air or from other sources. It's also possible occupations were misclassified on some death certificates.

They also could not account for another possible contributor specific to the professions: Cancer risk can be worsened by frequent disruption of the body’s internal clock, which can be affected by jet lag, crossing time zones and irregular work schedules.

The Federal Aviation Administration has acknowledged that aircrews are exposed to ionizing radiation, but the government does not set federal dose limits or require monitoring, the authors noted.

“You can't manage an exposure you've decided not to measure,” Patel said in an email.

Sara Nelson, who leads a union representing 55,000 flight attendants, said the report reinforces that radiation exposure needs to be taken seriously, as the union has suggested for years.

“The risk is known, but crew are not educated or informed. And, no one is taking responsibility,” said Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA.

Annual skin examinations may be warranted for all people working on high-altitude flights, and women in those jobs may want to get mammograms earlier or more frequently, Olsen and Karipidis wrote. Doctors who care for pilots and flight attendants also should have a “heightened index of suspicion” for cancer when evaluating these patients, they said.

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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.

Swalwell resigned from Congress amid sexual assault allegations earlier this year. Regardless of who is chosen to replace him, the 14th Congressional District seat is guaranteed to remain under Democratic control.

Florida's primary will choose candidates to complete the remainder of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s term in the U.S. Senate. There’s also an open contest to replace term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis, featuring Rep. Byron Donalds on the Republican side and former Rep. David Jolly as a Democrat.

Alaska voters will narrow down a wide field of candidates for a competitive U.S. Senate seat that’s expected to play a pivotal role in determining which political party will hold a majority in the Senate next year. Among the 16 candidates running in the all-party primary, the most notable are Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola. The top four vote-getters will advance to the general election regardless of party affiliation and the winner in November will be determined by ranked choice voting.

An unusually high number of open-seat races are on the ballot in Wyoming's primary after two prominent Republican officials announced their retirements. The upcoming departures of Gov. Mark Gordon and U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, along with U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman’s decision to run to replace Lummis, mark the first time in 32 years that Wyoming has had open seats for governor, U.S. Senate and U.S. House at the same time.

Wyoming GOP Senate race includes Hageman and 4 little-known candidates

The five Republicans competing to become Wyoming’s next U.S. senator include one with an overwhelming funding and name recognition advantage: Harriet Hageman.

Hageman seeks the GOP nomination after two terms as Wyoming’s representative in the U.S. House.

Through July, Hageman had over $900,000 still available to spend on her campaign, eight times more than the funding runner-up in the GOP race, rancher and business owner Sam Mead.

Former oil field services business owner Jimmy Skovgard had $3,200. The Federal Election Commission had no campaign finance records online for the other two Republican candidates — massage therapist Jill Edwards and U.S. Air Force veteran and attorney John Holtz.

Former state legislator Jim Byrd, one of two Democrats seeking the party’s nomination, had about $350 cash on hand, according to the FEC.

The winner will succeed Republican U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, who is retiring.

Republican incumbent faces independent newcomer for Alaska’s only House seat

Independent commercial fisherman Bill Hill is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Nick Begich in the race for Alaska’s only House seat.

Hill, a former educator, has focused on issues such as affordability and reining in the influence of ultra-wealthy people and special interests in politics. Hill lives in a fishing community of about 425 people in southwest Alaska, where goods are brought in by plane or barge.

In July, the highest-profile Democrat in the race, pastor Matt Schultz, suspended his campaign and urged voters to back Hill.

No other candidates in the crowded race have reported raising money. Begich has been endorsed by Trump.

Race to replace Swalwell reflects Democratic divide

The special general election pits California state Sen. Aisha Wahab, a progressive who’s championed housing issues, against San Francisco Bay Area transit leader Melissa Hernandez, a moderate who’s made cracking down on crime central to her campaign.

Hernandez, who is raising more money, has accused her rival of being too soft on crime, which Wahab denies. Wahab, who won the June primary decisively, says she’s better positioned to fight against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Democrats look for any foothold they can get in Florida

A generation ago, Florida decided a presidential race by mere hundreds of votes and court fights that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Yet Democrats haven’t won a presidential race, Senate contest or gubernatorial election there since 2012.

It’s gotten so dire for the party that they’re expected, for the second governor’s race in a row, to nominate a former Republican. The leading candidate this time is former Rep. David Jolly, a critic of President Donald Trump who joined Democrats in 2025 after shifting his position on abortion and the Affordable Care Act.

That kind of move didn’t work four years ago, though. Former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist won the nomination and got trounced by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Alaska has an unusual way of selecting its officeholders

Alaska has open primaries, meaning all candidates are listed on one ballot. It uses ranked choice voting in general elections.

In each race in the primary, voters get one pick. The four candidates with the most votes advance to the November election, where voters can choose to rank the candidates in order of preference. The top races on the ballot — for U.S. Senate, U.S. House and governor — each feature more than a dozen candidates. Few races for state legislative seats have more than four candidates running in Tuesday’s primary.

Alaska voters approved this system in 2020, which supporters say lends itself to more moderate candidates, and it was first used in 2022. There have been several efforts to repeal it, including one heading to the November ballot.

Revenue increased to $47.86 billion from $45.28 billion, edging out the $47.24 billion that Wall Street had expected, according to a survey by FactSet.

Globally, sales at stores open at least a year, a key indicator of a retailer’s health, climbed 1.7%. In the U.S., comparable store sales rose 1.3%.

“We saw broad based demand across the business as customers continued to engage in smaller projects,” Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail said in prepared remarks Tuesday.

Customer transactions slipped 1% in the quarter, but the amount shoppers spent rose to $92.50 per average receipt from $90.01 a year earlier.

Healthy spending on smaller projects during the quarter is encouraging, said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData.

“From our data, the number of smaller projects undertaken during the quarter increased by 1.5% over the prior year,” Saunders said in an email. “This may sound unimpressive, but it represents a step change from the declines of previous periods."

But Saunders also pointed out a potential weakness that is impacting almost all businesses where credit is sometimes required.

“The number of bigger-ticket projects undertaken remains down, falling by 2.1% over last year,” he said. "Concerns around financing and a previous lack of moving activity both remain major drags on the bigger-ticket segment.”

Homeowners that are currently considering taking out loans using home equity are realizing that it is considerably more expensive now compared with the ultra-low rates Americans could count on in the early 2020s. A home project that seemed within reach at a 4% to 5% borrowing rate looks a lot more daunting at 8% or higher.

McPhail remains upbeat about Home Depot’s ability to navigate current conditions.

“While consumer uncertainty and housing affordability continue to pressure demand for larger home improvement projects, we remain focused on what we can control,” he said during the company’s conference call.

While the average long-term U.S. mortgage rate fell slightly for the first time in six weeks, it is still up from last year and borrowing costs remain steeper than they were a year ago.

The U.S. housing market has been in a slump dating back to 2022, the year mortgage rates began climbing from historic lows that fueled a homebuying frenzy at the start of this decade.

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes slowed again in July as record prices and the highest mortgage rates in a year prove to be an insurmountable hurdle for many prospective buyers. Existing home sales fell 1.7% last month from June, the National Association of Realtors said last week.

Home prices continue to rise and hit unprecedented levels for the month of July, NAR said. The U.S. median sales price increased 2% from a year earlier, to $434,100.

For the three months ended Aug. 2, Home Depot earned $4.77 billion, or $4.79 per share. A year earlier the home improvement retailer earned $4.55 billion, or $4.58 per share.

Excluding one-time items, earnings were $4.92 per share. That’s much better than the $4.73 per share that Wall Street predicted.

McPhail, along with Ann-Marie Campbell, senior executive vice president, are overseeing operations while CEO Ted Decker takes a temporary medical leave of absence. The company said last week that it expects Decker to return within the next few months.

Home Depot also announced Tuesday that it is launching express delivery nationwide. The service will get orders to customers within three hours or less. It will be available for a small flat fee in the U.S., with no subscription or membership required.

The Atlanta company has posted solid back-to-back quarterly performances this year though many Americans have struggled to buy a home. Despite the solid performance, Home Depot stuck with its earlier sales growth guidance for fiscal 2026 of between 2.5% and 4.5%. It also left unchanged its expectations that comparable sales will be flat to up 2%.

Home Depot said that its outlook includes tariff refunds, which are expected to partially offset higher fuel, energy, and other product input costs throughout the year. Last year, the company said that it didn't expect to raise prices because of tariffs, but executive Billy Bastek said at the time that some products that were on Home Depot shelves may disappear.

McPhail said during the call that Home Depot received $730 million in tariff refunds. Of that, $685 million was put towards lowering the cost of goods sold.

The company's stock rose nearly 2% Tuesday.

The S&P 500 fell 0.5% and is on track for a third straight modest loss since setting its all-time high on Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 33 points, or 0.1%, as of 10:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.3% lower.

Leading the way lower were stocks that have been big winners in the boom around artificial-intelligence technology. They’ve been veering up and down this summer on worries that their prices shot too high in the AI frenzy and that the strong demand for memory, processors and other building blocks of data centers may fizzle out if AI proves less profitable than promised.

Micron Technology dropped 5.9%, and the seller of computer memory was one of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500. So were chip companies Nvidia, which fell 2.5%, and Broadcom, which sank 3.7%.

Even with their recent swings, such stocks remain big winners, and Micron has more than tripled this year.

But stocks that critics call too expensive get more scrutiny when interest rates are high, and yields remained that way in bond markets worldwide Tuesday.

The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury edged down to 4.71% from 4.72% late Monday. But it remains well above its 3.97% level from just before the war with Iran began. The 30-year Treasury yield also ticked lower, but it's still near its highest level since 2007.

Yields have jumped since the war began because high oil prices are pushing upward on inflation and raising the pressure on the Federal Reserve and other central banks to hike interest rates. All the while, continuing worries about huge debt loads for governments and their increases in borrowing keep yields high.

The bond market often runs in the background, but it’s powerful enough to sway markets and government leaders worldwide, including President Donald Trump. When yields are high, investors are less willing to pay high prices for stocks and other kinds of investments, particularly those seen as the most expensive.

Much of the pressure on yields has come from oil prices, and the price for a barrel of Brent crude ticked up by 0.1% to $91.00. It’s been swinging sharply on uncertainty about when and whether the United States and Iran can reach a deal to allow oil tankers to exit the Persian Gulf freely again. Brent was priced at $72.87 right before the start of the war.

High yields have already sent the average long-term U.S. mortgage rate near its highest level in a year, which has hurt the housing industry. A report on Tuesday said homebuilders broke ground on fewer new houses last month than economists expected.

Such data helped to restrain Home Depot's stock, which rose 0.8% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail said Home Depot saw its customers continue to pursue smaller projects.

High yields could also slow the tremendous borrowing Big Tech companies are doing to pay for data centers, putting at risk one of the big sources of growth for the U.S. economy.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Klarna fell 20.5% even though the payments company reported stronger results for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The buy-now, pay-later company cut some of its financial forecasts for the full year of 2026, largely because of expectations for Germany, its largest market by volume.

Meta Platforms fell 3.8%, with opening statements set to kick off in a pivotal trial in a California federal court, where states are seeking billions of dollars in damages for social media harms to children.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe and Asia.

South Korea’s Kospi has been home to some of the world’s sharpest AI-induced swings because it’s dominated by two tech giants, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. The index fell 1.5%, which counts as relatively modest move for it. It had swung by at least 2.4% in each of its three prior days.

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AP Business Writer Yuri Kageyama contributed to this report.

Meanwhile, a Russian missile strike on a village in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region killed at least 10 people and wounded 17 others as the barrage demolished homes, officials said.

The countries are locked in an escalating duel of long-range aerial strikes. Fighting on the roughly 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) front line in eastern and southern Ukraine is restricted by large numbers of drones and ground robots threatening troop movements, and neither side is making significant battlefield progress, analysts say.

Putin resists pressure for peace talks

In the past year, Ukraine has devised and deployed domestically produced long-range drones for strikes deep inside Russia. Its drone technology has impressed governments and defense manufacturers around the world.

Officials in Kyiv aim to make the Russian public feel the war’s consequences and pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into negotiating a peace settlement. Putin has so far shown no sign he intends to stop the invasion.

“Putin continues to drag out the war instead of accepting Ukraine’s realistic ceasefire proposals and ending the bloodshed,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X.

Russian air defenses overnight intercepted 791 Ukrainian drones over a number of regions, as well as annexed Crimea and the Black and the Azov seas, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said, in what was the second-largest drone attack since January 2025, according to an Associated Press tally.

More than 600 Ukrainian drones flew toward the Moscow region, where 180 were shot down, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said without elaborating.

Officials reported no deaths or major damage. Ukraine has increasingly launched swarms of hundreds of drones to try to overwhelm Russian air defenses.

In the region that surrounds the capital, three people were wounded, Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said.

Three people were also wounded in the adjacent Ryazan region where three private houses were damaged, Gov. Pavel Malkov said.

The overnight attack started a fire at a warehouse of Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer, in an industrial zone. Ukraine has repeatedly targeted the company, which it says helps supply the Russian military, an allegation Moscow denies.

Wildberries said its facility sustained “insignificant damage.”

Russian TV doesn't report news of the attack

Coverage of the attack in state and Kremlin-backed Russian media was mostly muted, as is often the case. Russia’s main TV channels — state-run Russia 1 and Channel One — did not mention the attack at all in their morning news bulletins.

But Russian state news agency RIA Novosti featured it among the main news on its website’s homepage, describing it as “one of the most large-scale attacks on Moscow since the beginning of the summer.”

State newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta on its website prominently featured a roundup of what Moscow regional Gov. Andrei Vorobyov reported about the attack, describing it as “massive” in the headline. Pro-Kremlin tabloid MK featured a news brief about it on its home page.

Zelenskyy accuses Russia of a ‘brutal attack’ on civilians

A Russian missile strike on the village of Pechenihy in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region killed 10 civilians, according to preliminary information, said Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv regional military administration.

Another 17 people were wounded, he said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it “a brutal attack” that damaged 10 homes, a cafe, a post office, a store and at least seven vehicles, according to Syniehubov.

“We will definitely respond to this Russian strike,” he said on social media.

Also, three people were killed and three others were wounded over the past day in Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Sumy region, Ukraine’s National Police said.

UK vows continued Ukraine support

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who took office last month, said the U.K. will continue to stand by Ukraine after Russia said that Kyiv’s reported use of British drones for attacks on Russian soil would bring unidentified consequences.

“We are providing support so that Ukraine can defend itself, and that’s been the British position all the way through this conflict by previous prime ministers," Burnham said. “It remains the case with me.”

British newspaper The Sunday Times reported that two U.K. companies made drones used by Ukraine to hit Russia.

Following the report, the Russian Embassy in the U.K. said in a statement that “London’s actions will inevitably carry consequences.”

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Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal. Brian Melley in London contributed.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

The NSO made its delayed 2026-27 season announcement Tuesday, 5 1/2 weeks before its opening concert on Sept. 26 and five months later than the release of its 2025-26 schedule.

The Kennedy Center, named by Congress after President John F. Kennedy, was taken over in 2025 by a board of Trump loyalists who added his name to the complex, only to be ordered to remove it by a federal judge. The board said last week it intends to close the complex for a two-year renovation and add Trump's name to the building’s facade so it would read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.”

NSO tickets sales declined from 72% of capacity in 2024 to 58% in 2025 to 41% last season, The Washington Post reported. The NSO did not confirm the figures.

“For us to perform and to be somehow disconnected with the Kennedy Center probably will convince some of the audience who stayed away from the center to come back to our concerts, and not only that, even to increase the number of the audience,” music director Gianandrea Noseda said in an interview with The Associated Press. “At least this is my hope.”

Noseda was the only NSO official who commented on the record about the season announcement. Trump's name was included twice in the joint statement by the NSO and the Kennedy Center, which cited his “strategic direction” as Kennedy Center chair and “vision for a revitalized institution.”

Entering his 10th season as music director, Noseda is signed through the NSO’s 100th anniversary season in 2030-31.

Tickets go on sale Aug. 28, leaving little time to start rebuilding an audience.

There are 64 scheduled NSO classical concerts in the upcoming season, including 56 in the D.C. area and eight on a U.S. tour from April 20-30. The total matches 2025-26, when there were 62 at the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall and two on tour.

Next season will include 24 concerts at George Washington's Lisner Auditorium in D.C. (1,350 available seats), 13 at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland, (1,925), nine at Northern Virginia Community College's Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center in Alexandria (900), eight at George Mason's Center for the Arts in Fairfax, Virginia, (1,850), and two each at the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park (1,050) and D.C.'s Lincoln Theatre (1,150).

“We’ll increase the ability of the orchestra to adjust very quickly to the acoustics. I’d like to think of this year of the National Symphony Orchestra as a regional touring orchestra,” Noseda said. “So we will be on tour and we will take and bring the music where the people are instead of inviting them to where we perform.”

Capacity of the venues will be below that of the Kennedy Center's Concert Hall, which had up to 2,465 available seats.

The orchestra still intends to rehearse at the Kennedy Center during the reconstruction and keep its office and music library there.

Noseda will conduct 20 concerts at five of the venues during his 10 weeks in the D.C. area starting with a gala Sept. 26 at Strathmore, and he also will lead the tour performances. He said just two of his programs were changed from his original plans, substituting Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 5 for Gioachino Rossini’s “William Tell” overture and one Ottorino Respighi composition for another, both to account for a smaller stage that could accommodate fewer musicians.

Five holiday performances of George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah” are the only concerts that require a chorus.

“I honestly would have preferred not to go through this, but the situation is the way it is and we have to be proactive,” Noseda said.

The special prosecutor’s investigation stems from an ethics complaint tied to the city’s BOOST 2.0 program, a public grant initiative aimed at helping small businesses recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The investigative report cleared Espinosa of several complaints but recommended impeachment related to funds she received through the BOOST 2.0 program. According to state investigators, Espinosa and her family own several businesses in Kissimmee.

Of the first $375,000 allocated for the program, which Espinosa voted to create, the mayor received $50,000 of the first round of funds, the report states.

The report also claims that Espinosa helped her family members and tenants receive grant money.

The special prosecutor wrote, “The BOOST 2.0 program was created to help Kissimmee’s small businesses survive a pandemic, not to enrich the official who controlled it.”

Kissimmee residents are anxious to see how the commission will vote. June Reyes, a Kissimmee resident, believes Espinosa should be removed.

“Well, if the money is for the community, for the people, then it should go to the people. It’s not for personal use or anything like that. If that’s not corruption, then what is, right?” Reyes said.

“Well, any corruption by government officials, first, it needs to be investigated, of course, and then if proven, then they need to step down. Just like that.”

Others in the community believe the mayor is being unfairly targeted.

“So, honestly, I see when I see something like that, I honestly feel that she’s either being targeted because she’s not playing by the rules or something like that,” Harsper Walker said. “Good luck to you. That’s all I can say, mayor.”

When the investigative report was released, Espinosa’s attorney said the mayor plans to defend herself.

“She remains confident that a fair and impartial review of the complete record will demonstrate that impeachment is neither legally justified nor supported by the evidence,” the attorney said.

The Commission will hold the special meeting Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. in the Commission Chambers at Kissimmee City Hall.

If the schools don't complete a review and terminate any arrangements deemed problematic within the next two weeks, they face losing funding. The goal is to protect taxpayer-funded research from theft and exploitation, the Pentagon said Monday.

“The Department of War has zero tolerance for academic partnerships that compromise our national security,” Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer, said in a news release.

The release didn't name the schools, but a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters said they include Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University.

The schools didn't immediately respond to emails from The Associated Press seeking comment.

Sarah Spreitzer, vice president at the American Council on Education, which represents college and university presidents, raised concerns that the announcement suggests, without any evidence, that the schools are engaged in wrongdoing.

The order comes after the Pentagon last month released an updated list of 130 foreign institutions it accused of engaging in “activities that increase the likelihood of U.S. government-funded research and development efforts being misappropriated.”

While the vast majority were Chinese, such as the University of Science and Technology of China and the country's Academy of Military Medical Sciences, several Iranian and Russian institutions also appeared on the list.

The first version of the list was developed during Trump's first term, with the help of the American Council on Education, Spreitzer said.

She said most of the council's member institutions moved away from research partnerships with those institutions in the years that followed. She said she worries U.S. schools will be held liable for partnerships that predate the creation of the list.

“We don’t appreciate the implication that we are not good partners on research security, given that we helped create this list, and given that we’ve always partnered with the federal government when there has been national security concerns,” she said.

The audit comes as the Trump administration continues to express deep concern about China’s activities in the Americas, pushing back on Chinese ownership of ports at either end of the Panama Canal, infrastructure projects funded by China’s Belt and Road initiative in the region and Chinese investment in the telecommunications sector.

The Justice Department also is investigating whether Harvard University is allowing Chinese donors to create scholarships that exclude American students, adding to the barrage of federal inquiries the Trump administration has opened in its battle against the Ivy League school.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy said in a statement that the country opposes what it described as the politicization of “normal scientific, educational, and academic exchanges.”

“The U.S. side,” the statement continued, “should abandon the Cold War mentality and foster an open, fair, and non-discriminatory environment for educational, scientific, and people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States.” ___

Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.

___

The Associated Press’ education 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 last leg of what is being billed as their farewell tour kicks off in September in Los Angeles and what likely will be an emotional homecoming is at the end of it — in San Francisco in November.

“I’m sure it’s going to be somewhat emotional because that’s where it all started,” says co-founder and lead guitarist Neal Schon. “I know the audience is going to be off the hook.”

The band has plenty of dates before that finale, with stops in Phoenix, Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston, Cleveland, Denver and Las Vegas, among others.

The tour's last show in San Francisco will cap more than 100 concerts this year, and the band frequently plays for more than two hours, adding deep cuts — like the spacy, melodic “Of a Lifetime” from the early ‘70s and songs from the album “Raised on Radio” from the ’80s — to the reliable hits, like “Faithfully.”

“I’m loving it because it’s the type of show I’ve been wanting to do with Journey,” says Schon, who is frustrated when the band is lumped in with other '80s bands like REO Speedwagon, Styx or Foreigner.

“I always felt like even though all those bands have contributed something that a lot of people like, we were much different. I thought musically we could go any place that we wanted to. And so now we’re doing that, finally.”

Expect hits and album tunes alike

Journey has had six Top 10 hits on the Billboard singles chart — including “Open Arms” and “Who’s Crying Now” — and eight albums in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200, including the 1981 No. 1 “Escape.”

Fans can expect to hear those hits as well as Journey's enduring anthem, “Don’t Stop Believin,’” which Schon wrote with keyboardist Jonathan Cain and then-lead singer Steve Perry.

It has shown up in the Broadway show “Rock of Ages,” the cut-to-black finale of “The Sopranos,” the TV show “Glee,” Brad Pitt’s “Moneyball,” the movie “Monster” and the Democratic National Convention roll call in 2024. Journey returns to the road this fall after a summer in which “Don’t Stop Believin’” was heard at the World Cup and as the New York Knicks won the NBA crown.

“'Don’t Stop Believin’' has surpassed our expectations,” says Cain. “Every band wishes they had one and we have one. So, I guess that’s our ‘Hey Jude’ calling card. So we’ll take it.”

In addition to Schon and Cain, the current Journey lineup includes singer Arnel Pineda, keyboardist Jason Derlatka, drummer Deen Castronovo and bassist Todd Jensen. Cain, Derlatka and Castronovo pick up the mic to give Pineda a break on some songs.

Band members say they look out and see five generations attending their shows. “I like to say Journey is certain music in uncertain times,” Cain says. “Journey is a soundtrack to a lot of people’s lives.”

Future is uncertain for band members

The band, born in San Francisco in the days of vinyl, have endured through huge changes in the music business — CDs, Napster, digital and streaming. Schon, who cut his teeth playing with Carlos Santana, remembers Journey in the early days opening for Kiss, Jeff Beck and Cheech and Chong

Touring seems to be the only way for most bands to make any money since each streaming song earns them a fraction of a penny. Journey has leaned into the tour, sometimes hitting three cities in one day.

“I feel bad for the new generation,” says Cain. “I remember when I got a big old fat royalty check and they were playing our songs on the radio and that a new album meant you would sell more tickets. Not so today.”

The end point — Nov. 28 at the Chase Center — looms, but the band isn't sure what that night will include. “It’ll be fitting to end there for sure,” says Cain. “Who knows who’s going to show up? I don’t know. There might be a reunion of sorts, I hope.”

After that, the band isn't certain. “The future kind of remains up in the air really,” says Cain. Schon agrees but isn't ready to make predictions.

“I’m not nearly done with what I want to do,” he says. “I think there’s many great opportunities in the future. Whether or not it’s with everybody that’s here right now, I’m not certain.”

Depending on who you ask, tending to the daily barrage of guinea pig needs can be either a fairy tale or a horror show. For Smothermon, it’s often a mix of both.

“If I could figure out how to get out of this at this point, I probably would,” Smothermon joked. “But I do believe that to a certain extent, I probably wouldn’t get out of bed if I didn’t have this.”

Smothermon is the owner of the Guinea Pig Sanctuary, in Salisbury, Massachusetts, roughly 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Boston. On any given day, 350 to 400 guinea pigs are housed in a modest workspace, split into cages stacked from the floor to ceiling.

The space is cramped and chaotic as volunteers and visitors squeeze past each other between the rows of cages in a converted office space. People constantly move throughout the space cleaning out cages and checking on any sick animals.

But there’s also joy. The squeals from the little piggies about to eat lettuce and other vegetation often spark laughter, while others cuddle and comfort some of the guinea pigs. Each animal has a name prominently displayed outside their cage, as volunteers tick off their personalities.

Maui is friendly and gives kisses. Gritty is older, but shy. Rio has spunk and likes to run around. They all remember the smell of their caretakers and gravitate toward their favorites.

“They’re very sensitive animals,” said Janet Woodman, a volunteer at the nonprofit. “I personally think they are probably the best therapy animal next to a horse.”

Smothermon’s operation is one of the handful of animal rescues in the U.S. devoted solely to taking in abandoned guinea pigs — filling a need as people become overwhelmed with the responsibilities required to take care of these pets. The sanctuary additionally offers boarding for guinea pigs when their owners are traveling, as well as encouraging rehoming of the animals when they can.

Measuring between 8-10 inches (20.32-25.4 centimeters) long, these small beasts originally came from South America derived from the Cavia porcellus species, according to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. After being domesticated in 5,000 B.C., there are now 13 different breeds that are distributed as both pets and for food.

According to Smothermon, guinea pigs often need to be adopted in pairs. They’re social and can’t be kept in cages full time.

Within minutes of opening the sanctuary earlier this year, an older woman walked through the door carrying two cages needing to “surrender” her guinea pigs. The woman’s husband had become sick, she explained to Smothermon, and she couldn’t properly take care of both him and her pets.

Smothermon hugged the woman and waived the usual fee.

“I tell people, just bring them here,” she said. “If that’s what you need to do, I’ll take on the responsibility.”

Other days, Smothermon is fielding calls from across the U.S., asking if she can take 11 piggies from Illinois, seven from Texas, and 97 from New York — where nearly half are expected to have babies.

It's a constant stress that Smothermon never imagined would consume her life. It initially began when her grandson, Alex, brought home a guinea pig. Alex had fallen into a fire as a child and experienced health problems, causing him to avoid most animals up until he was 12, when he discovered it was safe to interact with guinea pigs.

From there, Smothermon said, her family became a resource to take in abandoned guinea pigs. The family ran the rescue out of their New Hampshire house until a fatal fire burned it down in 2019. The fire resulted in the loss of Smothermon's other grandson, two dogs and dozens of guinea pigs.

The tragedy sent Smothermon into a depression, but when her family was living out of a hotel as they looked for a new home, people still kept dropping off guinea pigs that needed help.

Seeing the need gave Smothermon and her family the focus and motivation to continue Alex's dream, and eventually they relocated to Massachusetts.

Smothermon says the work is hard. She only gets a handful of days off a year, but the constant drumbeat of needing to take care of hundreds, if not thousands, of guinea pigs keeps her grounded.

“If I don’t get up, they don’t eat and they can die. So even though it’s not a choice, I have to," she said.

The officials said the Trump administration has told Oman it is opposed to parts of the yet-to-be-announced deal, including the joint Iranian and Omani management of the exit route out of the passage that’s critical to global supplies of oil and natural gas. The officials were briefed on the U.S. position and how the administration views Oman's position.

Meanwhile, a projectile hit a ship as it sailed out of the strait, according to the British military's maritime monitoring agency, and an Iranian official said the waterway would not reopen until the United States meets Iran’s conditions.

US believes Oman has not been tough enough with Iran

The U.S. believes Oman has not been tough enough in its negotiations with Iran and is unhappy with Oman’s agreement to collect voluntary fees from vessels, even if the charges are related to security and maritime environmental protection, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists.

Trump on Monday threatened to bomb Oman as it works with Iran on a deal to open the strait and pave the way for the U.S. and Iran to resume negotiations to end the war.

He posted a map on social media Tuesday depicting the strait as a U.S. territory. The president first mentioned the idea in an offhand comment last week. On Monday, he told reporters in the Oval Office, “I like the idea of declaring it a territory,” without providing details.

The White House on Tuesday referred to Trump’s remarks in the Oval Office and declined to comment further about Oman.

Iran refers to Trump's ‘delusion’ about the strait

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi appeared to respond to Trump’s post on social media depicting the strait as American territory.

“Just as Trump correctly wrote the name of the eternal Persian Gulf, his delusion regarding the Strait of Hormuz will soon either be corrected, or we will correct this deluded man’s delusions for him,” Gharibabadi wrote on X.

Trump's comment on Monday was not the first time he has threatened Oman. In May, he told reporters during a Cabinet meeting that Oman “will behave just like everybody else, or we will have to blow them up.”

Iran reiterated Tuesday that Tehran plans to maintain its grip on shipping traffic until Washington meets its conditions.

“Until the United States fulfills its commitments under the agreement, including lifting the blockade, releasing frozen assets, lifting oil sanctions, ending threats and military operations on all fronts, and implementing the other conditions to which it committed, the Strait of Hormuz will not reopen,” said Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker and negotiator in previous talks with the U.S.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the Iranian-Omani deal could pave the way for Washington and Tehran to return to negotiations for a “comprehensive and permanent deal that addresses all concerns and enhances regional security and stability."

The statement came after a meeting between Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and Omani counterpart Badr al-Busaidi. But it did not address Trump’s latest threat against Oman.

President insists strait is open as more attacks are reported

Trump said Tuesday the U.S. has no planned talks with Iran but insisted the strait is “open and operating,” despite limited traffic, the reported boat strike and the end on Monday of the 60-day negotiating period between the countries.

Trump wrote on social media that a U.S. blockade of the strait remains “in full force and effect,” adding that all water mines have been removed.

As the talks between Iran and Oman continue, more attacks were reported in the region.

An unidentified projectile hit a ship early Tuesday in the strait off the coast of Oman, damaging the engine room and causing a casualty, according to the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations center.

The monitoring agency did not release any details about the ship or its cargo, and it was unclear whether the crew member was killed or wounded. The agency said the Omani Coast Guard was assisting other crew members and that authorities were investigating.

And Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed they fired drones at an oil refinery in neighboring Saudi Arabia, the latest attack that threatened to reignite Yemen’s civil war and open another front in the Middle East.

The attack targeted a facility run by Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, according to a report by the Houthi-run SABA news agency. There were no immediate reports of damage or comment from Saudi Arabia.

The campaign featured over a dozen contenders in each of the top races — for Senate, U.S. House and governor. Under Alaska’s open primary system, all candidates appear on the same ballot, and the four who receive the most votes qualify for the ranked vote general election.

Tuesday's ballot also included candidates running for the Legislature and a statewide initiative that would reimpose campaign contribution limits in state and local elections.

Senate race includes 2 Dan Sullivans and a former congresswoman

The highest-profile candidates in a field of 16 were two-term Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola.

The race, which could help determine control of the Senate, has drawn significant attention from outside groups, with Republican and Democratic campaign organizations identifying it as a top target. Peltola shook up her campaign leadership days before the primary.

During the campaign, Sullivan, a veteran and ally of President Donald Trump, emphasized his support for the military, efforts to open more land for oil development and Trump's signature tax and spending bill passed last year. He accused Peltola of being aligned with Lower 48 “liberals.”

Peltola leaned into the “fish, family, freedom” slogan that first got her elected in 2022. She has criticized a political system that she said is rigged by special interests and allows politicians to enrich themselves.

But it was a third candidate, a Republican also named Dan Sullivan, who garnered much of the attention.

Dan J. Sullivan won a legal fight to appear on the ballot following claims by the senator and GOP allies that he was a sham candidate running at the behest of Democrats with the intent of causing confusion. Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher from the island community of Petersburg, denied that and said his run was spurred by frustration with the incumbent.

He appeared on the ballot as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., with no party affiliation — a decision that a state elections official said was intended to minimize possible confusion. Meanwhile, the senator was listed as Dan S. Sullivan, Republican and incumbent. The “incumbent” label does not accompany the names of any other candidates seeking reelection.

The drama involving the dueling Dan Sullivans caught the attention of Trump. In a social media post endorsing the senator days before the primary, he called the other's candidacy an attempt to trick voters and urged his followers to vote for “SULLIVAN, DAN S.”

Republican Begich faced challenge from independent fisherman

In the race for Alaska's only House seat, the most prominent candidates were Republican Rep. Nick Begich, seeking a second term, and independent Bill Hill, a fisherman and former educator from a small southwestern village.

Progressive Democrat Matt Schultz suspended his campaign last month but remained on the ballot. His campaign said Schultz would withdraw as a general election candidate if he makes the primary's top four.

Schultz urged support for Hill, who leaned into concerns about affordability. Begich, who was endorsed by Trump, cast himself as hardworking and effective in his role. House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared at a rally for Begich in a conservative part of the state this month, though the event was closed to news media.

Governor's race wide open

The campaign for the state’s top executive office was an open race this year because Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy was barred by term limits from seeking a third consecutive stint.

Two Democrats hope to emerge from a crowded, largely Republican field: former state lawmakers Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and Tom Begich, who is Nick Begich's uncle. If one of them wins in November, he would become Alaska's first Democratic governor since Tony Knowles left office in 2002.

Republicans in the race included Bernadette Wilson, a businessperson and conservative activist; Click Bishop, a former state labor commissioner and lawmaker; Dave Bronson, former mayor of Anchorage; and Adam Crum and Treg Taylor, two former members of Dunleavy's Cabinet.

Former Gov. Bill Walker, an independent, was also on the ballot.

Ballot measure addresses money in state politics

The lone measure before voters on the primary ballot asked them to reimpose campaign contribution limits five years after a divided federal appeals court struck down a number of caps.

The measure proposes a $2,000 limit on how much individuals can give to candidates in state and local elections and a $5,000 cap on what they can give to political parties. It would also limit spending by groups other than political parties and how much individuals and groups can give to joint campaigns for governor and lieutenant governor.

Supporters say such limits are needed to prevent special interests and wealthy donors from having outsize influence on a campaign or race. Opponents say the measure would favor candidates with name recognition and argue that restricting what someone can contribute limits their voice.

Political spending by wealthy people has become a flashpoint in races in Alaska and elsewhere. In 2025 in Wisconsin, billionaires Elon Musk and George Soros helped push spending in a state Supreme Court campaign past $100 million, the most ever for a court race in the U.S.

The area, which includes Lake Nona, is already experiencing heavy traffic. Narcoossee Road, a major north-south route through southeast Orlando, carries about 70,000 vehicles each day, according to city officials. The road’s intended capacity is slightly more than 50,000 vehicles.

“It’s tough. I mean, we like growth, but here it’s overgrown,” said Christine Nieves, who lives in St. Cloud.

Orlando currently has about 350,000 residents. About 143,000 live on the city’s southeast side, and that number is expected to increase by about 50,000 people by 2035.

Orlando District 1 Commissioner Tom Keen said affordability is one of the main reasons people are moving to the southeast area.

“People want to live here in Orlando, and they want to find a place to live that’s affordable — and that’s what this area is able to provide,” Keen said.

Keen said the city needs to add more housing to accommodate the growing population.

“We do need to build more housing stock so that everyone can participate in this great economy,” he said.

But the population increase is also expected to bring more vehicles to an already crowded road network.

“Congestion at all angles — through parking lots, through the main road — any hour of the day,” Nieves said.

City and state officials are planning several projects they say could help ease congestion.

The Boggy Creek Road expansion is expected to widen the road from two lanes to four. The project is expected to be completed within the next year.

State Route 534 is also expected to begin construction later this year or early next year. Keen said the project is expected to be completed by 2030.

But this year's Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise, one of the two main drills conducted by the allies annually, could be disrupted after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered his Pentagon chief to “substantially” scale it back just before its start Monday.

He cited what he said was a good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korea’s refusal to join the U.S. war against Iran. It was unclear what parts of the 11-day exercise were being cut and to what extent, but many experts say Trump's move threatens to hurt combined U.S.-South Korean readiness and eventually weaken their decades-long alliance.

The exercise is central to the US-South Korea alliance

The Ulchi Freedom Shield, or UFS, is a computer-simulated tabletop exercise meant to hone the allies' ability to deal with potential regional security threats like North Korean aggression. The two countries usually hold field training exercises during the tabletop exercise period.

South Korea's military had earlier said this year's exercise would be similar in scale to previous years, with the participation of about 18,000 South Korean soldiers. The U.S. military said it would incorporate lessons from recent conflicts such as North Korea’s battlefield experiences on the Russia-Ukraine front. Local media reported South Korea and the U.S. had planned 14 field training exercises.

The UFS, along with a similar joint war game in the spring, is a central pillar of the U.S. -South Korea alliance, which dates back to the 1950-53 Korean War. But it's also a long-running source of tensions with North Korea, which has denounced the exercises as a rehearsal for war and responded with provocative missile tests.

Last Friday, North Korea's Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. and South Korea of plotting more provocative drills this year and vowed to respond with “a new level of a deterrent.” The U.S. and South Korea have said their regular drills are defensive in nature.

Field training will likely be affected by Trump's decision

In a social media post, Trump called the exercise costly, "with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America.” During his first term, Trump complained about the cost of drills with South Korea, suspending joint exercises in 2018 to advance now-stalled nuclear negotiations with North Korea.

Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of about 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, visited South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back on Tuesday for talks likely focusing on the adjustment of this year’s drills, according to media reports. South Korea’s Defense Ministry said it couldn’t confirm the report.

Yang Uk, an analyst at Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said the U.S. will likely participate in the tabletop exercise but cancel “some costly field training that requires large-scale movements of troops."

Yang said that a downsizing or suspension of military drills matters because commanders of the allies change periodically. He said a one-year suspension of drills would see commanders unfamiliar with procedures of those drills taking part when they resume.

Trump's move could strain the US-South Korea alliance

Jung Chang Wook, head of the Korea Defense Study Forum think tank in Seoul, said Trump’s step could result in the U.S. downsizing other regular drills with South Korea, posing “a big, crippling blow” to their joint operation posture.

Lee Illwoo, an expert with the Korea Defense Network, said downsizing the exercise will likely delay the planned transfer to a system in which wartime operational control would be exercised by a binational command led by a South Korean general.

Under the current system, the U.S. military would command joint forces in the event of war.

The South Korean and U.S. militaries had earlier said the exercise would be an opportunity to support preparations for the transfer. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Tuesday stressed the need to complete the transition during his term that ends in 2030.

Many South Koreans view the transition to South Korean leadership of the combined forces in wartime to be a matter of national sovereignty, but others worry that could weaken the alliance.

The British government is backing the landmark airspace-scale trial, launched Tuesday, to avoid creating condensation trails, or contrails. Google UK is contributing its artificial intelligence-powered forecasts to identify the contrail regions.

When airplanes fly through cold and humid areas, ice crystals can form around the soot particles emitted from the engine, creating clouds that trap heat and warm the planet. The Shanwick Oceanic Control Area in the eastern half of the North Atlantic corridor, the location of the trial, is a busy gateway for air traffic between Europe and North America. It's also a hot spot for where contrails form.

The 30-month research program known as Operation Blue Skies includes test periods this winter and next, when air traffic controllers will tell some flights to deviate up to 2,000 feet (610 meters) to avoid areas where contrails are likely to form. These will be minor altitude adjustments within standard flight operations, coordinated through established air traffic control communication channels, according to the British government.

There will be about 20 to 40 test days per winter, when there is less air traffic. Around 10,000 flights are expected to pass through the Shanwick airspace during the testing. Hundreds of those flights would deviate their routes. That 1 % to 5% would be enough to demonstrate a statistically significant reduction in contrail formation on an airspace-scale, said Paul Hodgson, Google's technical lead for Operation Blue Skies.

Individual airlines have tested shifting altitudes to avoid contrail regions. Earlier this year, Google and American Airlines announced that the airline significantly reduced the climate impact of some flights using Google’s AI-based forecasting tool to help prevent contrails.

This new effort expands on individual airline trials to try mitigating contrails across an entire flight corridor.

The thin, white lines that form behind airplanes are responsible for a surprising amount of Earth’s warming — 1% to 2%, according to Contrails.org, a nonprofit research organization dedicated to reducing aviation’s climate impact through contrail management, as part of the Breakthrough Energy group founded by Bill Gates. Modeling shows that the Shanwick airspace accounts for about 5% of the total contributed by contrails, with a significant amount occurring during winter.

Keir Mather, the UK minister responsible for aviation, said the government is partnering with Google to back British experts and innovators to find practical ways to make flying cleaner. The government is paying for more than half of the 5 million pound ($6.76 million) study.

Google called contrails one of the most urgent yet solvable climate challenges facing aviation today.

Hodgson said testing over an airspace, versus individual airline trials, can show how it's possible to move multiple planes away simultaneously from an area where contrails will form, and can show if contrails can be reduced overall for a region. This could provide a blueprint for similar airspaces, he added.

Along with Google and the UK Department for Transport, the consortium includes the Met Office, the UK’s leading air navigation service provider NATS, Contrails.org, Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge.

An Imperial College London study in 2020 found that small changes to flight paths could reduce the climate impact of contrails. Professor Marc Stettler said Operation Blue Skies is a chance to test that idea in the real world, on a scale never seen before.

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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.

Also in the mix are a handful of scandal-plagued candidates, multiple people running with matching last names and several incumbents at risk of defeat.

Tuesday's contests will help shape the fiercely contested midterms this fall to determine control of Congress, where Republicans have a narrow edge, and offer a referendum on President Donald Trump's second term.

Here's a closer look at what to watch.

Historic slate of Black candidates for governor emerging

Trump-backed Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, a rising star in the Republican Party, is running to succeed term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis to become the first Black governor of the state. If Donalds wins, he'll become part of a historic slate of Black gubernatorial nominees that includes Republican Rep. John James in Michigan and Lisa Demuth, who defeated pillow-selling conspiracist Mike Lindell in Minnesota.

On the Democratic side, David Crowley won a razor-thin primary against a democratic socialist in Wisconsin, joining Attorney General Aaron Ford in Nevada, State Rep. Jermaine Johnson in South Carolina, and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who is running in Georgia to be the nation's first Black woman governor.

There is currently only one Black governor in the nation, Democrat Wes Moore of Maryland, who is seeking reelection in November.

The Florida GOP winner will likely face David Jolly, a former Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat.

Redistricting creates skirmishing for Democrats in Florida House races

A GOP-led redrawing scrambled Florida's congressional map, which has created some awkward matchups.

The most contentious pits veteran Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz against former U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick in a South Florida district that is almost majority Black. Cherfilus-McCormick resigned earlier this year under threat of House ethics sanctions, but now wants her seat back.

Wasserman Schultz, a former national party chair seeking a 12th term in Congress, is the only white candidate competing against four Black candidates in an area of Broward County that has helped send Black Democrats to Congress since 1992. Her decision to run has raised questions about representation and stirred deep animosity, including charges by one rival that “she stabbed us in the back."

Carpetbaggers and comebacks in the making in Florida?

The race to fill Donalds' House seat features a cast of characters akin to a reality show reunion, including several who have spent time in prison and a handful who have run in other states.

The field includes two former members of Congress who are mounting comeback bids after departing in scandal. Former North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn'stenure was marred by repeat traffic stops, guns at airport checkpoints and a claim he had been invited to a Washington orgy. Former New York Rep. Chris Collins, who resigned before pleading guilty to insider trading charges, served prison time before he was pardoned by Trump.

Trump-endorsed Catalina Lauf ran twice for Congress in Illinois. She lost the 2020 primary to Jim Oberweis, a former state senator, who has also decamped to Florida and is running for the seat.

Another candidate, Ola Hawatmeh, previously ran unsuccessfully for Congress in New York, while Linda Sawyer once tried in Michigan.

Also in the race: John Strand, a former television actor, underwear model and romance novel cover model, who served prison time for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 assault of the U.S. Capitol.

Progressive vs. establishment candidates at odds again

The internal battle between progressive and establishment candidates that has been roiling the Democratic Party in states like Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan, now arrives in more conservative territory.

Progressive state lawmaker Angie Nixon is facing retired Army Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, a former National Security Council official who delivered searing testimony against Trump in his 2019 impeachment trial. They're both running in the Florida special election to fill the last two years of Secretary of State Marco Rubio's former Senate term.

The winner is likely to face interim Sen. Ashley Moody, the Republican appointed by DeSantis to the seat.

Other races will also put fault lines on display. In South Florida, U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz is running for reelection in a new Republican-friendly district against union organizer and democratic socialist Oliver Larkin.

Meanwhile, Republican incumbents are facing their own challenges. Rep. Cory Mills, running for a third term, has been plagued by an ethics investigation stemming from allegations of assault, domestic violence and campaign finance violations, which he denies.

Double-checking the name in Alaska

In a Senate race that is expected to be one of the country's most closely watched this fall, incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Trump ally seeking a third term, is facing another candidate also named Dan Sullivan.

Republicans have argued the second Sullivan, who’ll be appearing on the ballot as “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.," is a sham candidate running at the behest of Democrats to cause confusion. Dan J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher, has denied the charge.

Also in the race is former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola. She was the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress, and she would become the first Alaska Native senator if she wins in November.

Under Alaska’s open primary system, all candidates appear on the same ballot, and the four who receive the most votes move on to a ranked-vote general election.

There are other surnames for Alaskans to keep straight.

Republican Rep. Nick Begich faces a crowded field in his bid for a second term in the state’s lone congressional seat. His uncle, former state Sen. Tom Begich, and former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins are the two Democrats in the race for governor. Tom Begich is the brother of Mark Begich, a former Democratic U.S. senator whom Sullivan defeated in 2014.

Seats open up in Wyoming

For the first time in more than 30 years, Wyoming has open seats for governor, U.S. Senate and U.S. House all up for grabs in a state where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by a 7-to-1 margin.

Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis' decision to retire after a single term has set off a chain reaction, with Rep. Harriet Hageman running to replace her.

She has an overwhelming fundraising advantage and became well-known after defeating former Rep. Liz Cheney, one of Trump's harshest Republican critics, in 2022.

Nine Republicans, meanwhile, are competing to replace Hageman as the state's lone U.S. representative.

Wyoming’s current governor, Republican Mark Gordon, considered seeking a third term and challenging a state term limit law but ultimately decided not to.

Pro-Israel group spending in former Swalwell seat

In California's Bay Area, voters will be picking a replacement for Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, whose resignation amid sexual assault allegations ended his run for governor.

California's 14th District will remain under Democratic control as state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Bay Area Rapid Transit Board President Melissa Hernandez advanced from a special open primary.

The race is reprising a theme that cropped up in other Democratic primaries this year: outside spending, particularly from pro-Israel lobbying groups. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee's super PAC has spent more than $2 million against Wahab and backing Hernandez, and another group with funding from the super PAC has spent nearly $2 million in support of Hernandez.

Pro-Israel group spending seemed to backfire in Michigan's recent Democratic Senate primary, where Abdul El-Sayed emerged victorious despite tens of millions of dollars backing his opponent Rep. Haley Stevens.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2026 election at https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/.

Last week, Putin visited Iturup, one of the four southernmost islands of the chain, which Japan calls the Northern Territories. The Soviet Union took them from Japan in the final days of World War II, and the dispute has kept the countries from signing a peace treaty formally ending their hostilities.

Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Putin’s visit, his first to the islands, was “incompatible with the Japanese position on the Northern Territories” and was “absolutely unacceptable.” She said the visit was a further blow to already-strained ties between the two countries over Ukraine, and that Moscow should understand the consequences.

Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said Tokyo “strongly protests” Putin’s visit to Iturup, which Japan calls Etorofu, noting that "the Northern Territories, including Etorofu Island, are Japan’s inherent territory both historically and from the perspective of international law.”

On Tuesday, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin met with Japanese Ambassador Akira Muto to lodge a formal protest over the “anti-Russia” statements by Takaichi and Motegi.

“Russia’s sovereignty and jurisdiction over the southern Kuril Islands are absolutely unshakable,” Galuzin told Muto, according to the Foreign Ministry.

“These territories passed to our country as a result of World War II that was enshrined in the relevant agreements of the Allied Powers and the U.N. Charter,” the ministry said. “Any attempts by the Japanese side to directly or indirectly call this obvious reality into question are absolutely unacceptable and unlawful.”

Galuzin told the ambassador that in view of Tokyo's adherence to Western sanctions against Russia and its support for Ukraine, “Moscow reserves the right to take appropriate countermeasures.”

The Japanese Embassy said in a statement that Muto, during his approximately 20-minute meeting with Galuzin, “appropriately explained the Japanese position on the Northern Territories and President Putin’s recent visit."

It gave no other details, including how Muto responded to Galuzin’s comment on Russia’s territorial claim of the islands or if Japan is considering taking a retaliatory step, citing the sensitivity of the issue.

Decades of diplomatic efforts to negotiate a settlement haven’t produced any visible results. Moscow over the years has also bolstered its military presence on the Kurils in moves that appeared to underscore its firm stance in the dispute.

Speaking last week aboard a Russian warship taking part in the drills in the Pacific, Putin said Moscow previously “had developed constructive relations with a number of Japanese leaders, including the tragically deceased former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who did much to bring Japan and Russia closer together, to align our positions.”

Japan imposed sanctions on Russia after it sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and “listed Russia as a source of primary threats,” a change in that constructive relationship, he added.

Russia remains ready “to cooperate with all its neighbors, including Japan and other states in the region,” Putin said.

Speaking at the start of the talks with President Min Aung Hlaing, Putin noted both countries have cooperated on foreign policy and security issues and developed economic projects.

They have held joint military drills and developed plans for Russia to build a nuclear power plant, a seaport, oil refineries and other facilities in Myanmar.

The visit is the latest in a series of trips by Min Aung Hlaing to foreign countries, including neighboring China, India, Laos and Thailand as he seeks to strengthen international recognition and regain diplomatic standing with other countries.

Despite the visits, Myanmar has remained largely isolated internationally since the military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.

Western nations have imposed economic and political sanctions in response to the takeover by the military, which he led, and its violent repression of the opposition, which has seen the deaths of thousands of civilians and given rise to a civil war.

Russia has defended Min Aung Hlaing’s military government in international forums while Myanmar’s ruling generals have generally supported Moscow’s foreign policy agenda.

During Tuesday's talks, Min Aung Hlaing thanked Putin for his political support and emphasized that Myanmar has remained a reliable partner.

Russia, along with China, is a major supporter and arms supplier to Myanmar. Russian-made fighter jets are used in attacks on territory under the control of ethnic minority groups, including many allied with pro-democracy resistance forces.

Russia's Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov told reporters that Moscow stands ready to increase supplies of oil products, fertilizers and equipment to Myanmar and boost imports of agricultural products and textiles from the country.

The trip marks Min Aung Hlaing’s seventh visit to Russia. Min Aung Hlaing previously met Putin on the sidelines of Moscow’s World Atomic Week Forum in September. Putin has never visited Myanmar.

Min Aung Hlaing was inaugurated in April following a general election judged by United Nations experts and rights groups to be neither free nor fair. Critics dismissed the polls, held in phases in December and January, as a sham designed to consolidate the military’s grip on power while ostensibly restoring civilian rule.

Attorneys general from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are seeking a financial penalty that could, in theory, total as much as $1.4 trillion plus changes to how the company operates Facebook and Instagram. Twenty-nine states sued the tech giant in 2023 over child safety and privacy — the other 25 will go to trial later. The company also faces lawsuits in state courts.

The lawsuit accuses the social media giant of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features that addict children to its platforms. It also argues that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of federal law.

“This week, we’re in court with the largest consumer protection lawsuit in American history. We’ll show a jury that Meta concealed what it knew about the harm its products cause young people because looking away was more profitable,” Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman said in a written statement.

Meta said it believes it has a strong case.

“We are proud of our record in protecting teens on our platforms and the amount of effort that we’ve put into developing protections over the years, even before these cases were ever filed, and continuing to the present day. We look forward to showing the judge and the jury those facts in court,” the company said in a written statement.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland will oversee the proceedings, which are expected to last six to eight weeks with testimony from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives and former employees. Gonzalez Rogers, appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama in 2011, has overseen a bevy of complex, high-profile cases involving Big Tech. These include Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and its founders as well as Epic Games' lawsuit against Apple over its app store.

If Meta loses the trial, the court would have wide discretion over the size of any financial penalty, and legal experts say anything close to $1.4 trillion would be unlikely.

The trial is the latest in an avalanche of lawsuits against Meta Platforms and other social media companies including Google’s YouTube, TikTok and Snap, over arguments that their platforms harm young people, illegally collect their data and are deliberately designed to addict them.

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AP Technology Writer Kaitlyn Huamani contributed to this story from Los Angeles.

The pop superstar has been nominated in every decade of her musical career. She has 19 competitive MTV VMA wins and in 1986 became the first solo female artist to receive the Video Vanguard Award.

She is up for 11 awards at this year's ceremony, including video, artist and song of the year as well as best collaboration, dance, direction, art direction, cinematography, editing, choreography and visual effects.

If she were to sweep, she'd tie Beyoncé and Taylor Swift for the title of most-awarded musician in VMA history. They have 30 each. (Eminem is the male artist with the most VMAs, with 15.)

Speaking of Swift: She follows Madonna with the second-most nominations, with nine. If she takes home even one award, she will become the most-awarded artist in VMA history.

Swift is up for video and artist of the year as well as best pop, direction, art direction, cinematography, editing, choreography and visual effects.

Madonna and Swift are followed by Ariana Grande and Sabrina Carpenter with seven nods to their name as well as Bruno Mars, PinkPantheress and Zara Larsson with five. Blackpink's LISA has four and Shakira, Tate McRae, GENER8ION and Yung Lean are tied for three.

Rounding out the artist of the year category nominees are Grande, Mars, Carpenter and Morgan Wallen, in addition to Madonna and Swift.

The top prize of the night, video of the year, sees Swift's “The Fate of Ophelia” compete against Madonna’s “Confessions II — The Film,” Grande’s “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” Mars' “I Just Might,” Carpenter’s “Tear” and GENER8ION’s “Storm” starring Yung Lean.

The two-hour show will broadcast live on CBS on Sunday, Sept. 27, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern and 4:30 p.m. Pacific, from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. It will also simulcast on MTV and be available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.

The show will become available to stream globally the next day on Paramount+ and MTV.

CBS is home to a number of award shows, including the Tony Awards and the American Music Awards. It has aired the Grammys since 1973, though that show will head to ABC in 2027.

This year’s Video Music Awards features 26 first-time nominees, which include GENER8ION and Yung Lean (with their aforementioned three nods, for their “Storm” collaboration) and the K-pop boy band CORTIS and viral “Boston” singer Stella Lefty with two each. Other notable first-time nominees include Don Toliver, Kali Uchis, Noah Kahan, Olivia Dean, Tucker Wetmore and Sienna Spiro.

The best dance category has returned for the first time in seven years. Nominees include McRae's “Nobody’s Girl,” Bebe Rexha and Faithless' “New Religion,” Harry Styles' “Aperture,” Lady Gaga and Doechii's “Runway,” Madonna's “Confessions II — The Film,” PinkPantheress' “Stateside” with Larsson and Slayyyter's “Dance …”

Fan voting began online Tuesday across 13 categories and ends Sept. 25 at 6 p.m. Eastern and 3 p.m. Pacific.

Voting in the best new artist category will remain active during the show.

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An earlier version of this story had an incorrect spelling of Lady Gaga and Doechii’s song “Runway.”

But textile researchers say it’s actually a little more complicated than that.

The fabric matters. But so does how heavy it is, how the clothing is made, how it fits and even what color it is. What works best also depends on what you're doing and how much you’re sweating.

With extreme heat a growing public health concern, scientists are developing and studying clothing designed to help people stay cooler. But clothing is only one component of the body’s response to heat.

Clothing should allow the body’s natural response to heat to work, said George Havenith, emeritus professor of environmental physiology and ergonomics at Loughborough University.

“It’s a really powerful mechanism from humans that we can defend our body temperature with,” Havenith said. “The most important thing in the selection of clothing would be to make sure you do not hamper sweat evaporation.”

Look for lightweight, breathable clothing

In hot weather, look for lightweight clothing that allows air to move through the fabric and reach the skin, which can help sweat evaporate. Researchers refer to this property as air permeability.

The fiber listed on the tag is only part of what determines that. How fibers are woven or knitted also affects how easily air passes through.

“For greatest airflow, open weave and loose knit structures are best, free of any water- or soil-repellent finishes. Cellulosic fibers, like cotton and flax (linen), tend to be more breathable and comfortable,” said Meredith McQuerry, a professor at Florida State University who studies clothing development and performance.

Linen can be a good option, but “linen” on the label doesn't tell the whole story. She said shoppers shouldn't rely on fiber content alone. A more open woven structure will generally be more breathable, regardless of the garment's fiber.

Wicking is slightly different. Wicking fabrics are designed to move sweat away from the skin and spread it across a larger surface area, which can help it evaporate faster. Engineered synthetic fibers are commonly used in sportswear, said Havenith.

But wicking and cooling are not necessarily the same. Moving sweat away from the skin can make clothing feel drier, but evaporation that happens farther from the skin can provide less direct cooling.

Fit matters too. Havenith recommends garments with enough room for ventilation, especially in hot outdoor conditions. McQuerry, however, noted that the right fit can depend on what you're doing. Someone exercising outdoors might prefer a tighter-fitting synthetic tank top, while someone sitting on a porch or doing light yard work might be more comfortable in looser cotton T-shirt.

“In casual settings, wearers may prefer a looser fit that allows for more airflow while standing or sitting. If performing physical activity, a tighter fit may be preferred to enable quicker sweat evaporation,” said McQuerry.

Cotton, polyester and why there is no perfect fabric

People choosing between cotton and polyester should consider how much they expect to sweat and what they'll be doing. Cotton absorbs sweat but can become heavy when saturated, while engineered polyester can move moisture across the fabric and dry quicker, one reason synthetic fabrics are so common in athletic clothing.

During exercise, polyester tends to continuously evaporate sweat, while cotton will work well for a short period until it has absorbed all it can, said Po-Chun Hsu, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago who studies materials and sustainability.

“Imagine you are wearing a wet T-shirt? Of course you get this evaporation going on, but then you also block the breathability and you won’t feel very comfortable when it’s completely wet,” he said.

Polyester is widely used because it is inexpensive, durable and versatile, but not all performs the same way.

It absorbs very little moisture naturally, which can make polyester that hasn’t been treated or engineered uncomfortable in hot conditions as sweat accumulates against the skin, said Jonathan Chen, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies textiles and apparel.

But it can be engineered to move sweat across the fabric and help it evaporate.

Chen suggests looking for lightweight polyester garments designed for breathability. A porous athletic shirt can behave very differently from a dense garment, even if both labels say 100% polyester.

Cotton can have another role in extreme heat. Havenith said deliberately wetting clothing can provide evaporative cooling, including for older adults who may not sweat as effectively.

Sunlight and “cooling” apparel

People spending extended time outdoors in direct sunlight should prioritize covering skin to protect against UV exposure and sunburn, Havenith said.

Loose, ventilated clothing can provide coverage without sacrificing airflow, such as a lightweight long-sleeved shirt.

Color can matter too. White, lighter-colored or highly reflective fabrics can reduce heat gain by reflecting sunlight instead of allowing as much energy to be absorbed, Hsu said.

Hsu said researchers have already made substantial progress in managing sweat and moisture, while engineering clothes to reflect more incoming sunlight remains a developing area.

Consumers should also look beyond the word “cooling” on labels. Hsu said some cooling fabrics are designed primarily to feel cold when they first touch the skin, an effect that can fade as the material warms.

“If it doesn’t really, let’s say, increase the evaporation of the surface area or reflect the sunlight or enhance the breathability, then it’s quite unlikely that it will have any continuous cooling effect,” Hsu said.

Some approaches go beyond the fabric itself. Fan-equipped clothing has become increasingly common among outdoor and factory workers in Japan. The garments use small fans to circulate outside air underneath the clothing, helping sweat evaporate.

Havenith said the garments can improve comfort and lower skin temperature, but don't do much to reduce core body temperature. Battery capacity is also a limitation because of the additional weight, although he expects improvements as battery technology develops.

How effective the fans are also depends on the conditions.

“It should work in all conditions where air temperature is below skin temp. ... In very dry air, the effect may be limited as the sweat evaporates anyway," said Havenith.

For shoppers, the researchers’ advice comes back to looking beyond a single word on the label. Consider whether a garment is lightweight, how easily air moves through it, how it handles moisture, how it fits, whether you will be in direct sun and what kind of activity you will be doing.

There may not be one perfect fabric for extreme temperatures, but there are ways to choose clothing that works with the body’s cooling system rather than against it.

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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.

But on his first day back at his home in the village of Qusra, Loui Ridi was ultimately told to go back inside because the area was a closed military zone.

Israeli soldiers asked the settlers to leave the area as well, but Ridi said he saw at least three settlers close enough to return and threaten his family if the army leaves.

“If I need to walk outside of my house, I’m not able. I have to get a permission and coordination and it’s going to take hours if it’s even possible to leave,” Ridi said.

Ridi yelled at one of the settlers to get off his property and pleaded with the soldiers to remove them, according to video he shared with The Associated Press. He told the settler that he wasn’t allowed to be there and called him a terrorist.

The soldiers who told Ridi to get back inside his home also pleaded with settlers to leave peacefully.

For Ridi, the exchange extinguished any sense of victory remaining after he managed, with the aid of a military escort, to enter his home on Monday. He said the encounter epitomized how the army has been unable or unwilling to clear the area of settlers.

“As soon as (Israeli soldiers) leave — like if they leave today — probably on the same day or a couple hours later, the settlers may come back and build the same tent in front of my house,” he said.

Qusra standoff is the latest violence in the West Bank

Some 2.8 million Palestinians live under Israeli military rule in the West Bank, with the Palestinian Authority exercising limited autonomy in population centers. Roughly 560,000 Israeli settlers who live in a growing number of communities and farming outposts across the territory. Emboldened by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, extremist settlers have routinely attacked villages and set homes, cars and mosques ablaze in the occupied West Bank this year.

The international community largely considers Israeli settlements to be illegal and obstacles to peace.

Few episodes garner as much international attention as the siege in Qusra. However, settlers have staged takeovers of other Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank. In the neighboring village of Jalud, settlers surrounded a home last month and prevented Palestinians from entering or exiting until they decided to escape and not come back.

Palestinian officials report 87 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers or soldiers this year. Three Israelis have been killed including two in a nearby clash last month.

Much like in Qusra, violent settlers rarely face arrest by Israeli police or prosecution in Israeli courts.

Ridi, a 46-year-old who lives with his family in Ohio but has a second home in the Qusra, arrived on Monday, climbing his stairs and raising an American flag on his roof.

The United States — Israel’s closest ally — has condemned the ongoing siege in Qusra, now in its tenth day. President Donald Trump has said he opposes Israeli efforts to annex the West Bank but signaled broad acceptance of settlements and, at the start of his second term, lifted sanctions on settlers accused of violence.

Ridi said he can’t go out to buy groceries without permission and has asked U.S. officials to help guarantee he can bring supplies back to his home in the closed military zone on Qusra's outskirts.

Video shows settlers demanding homeowner stay inside

Ridi said he slept for four hours in a room where he kept the shutters closed because settlers had previously thrown rocks toward the windows.

When he woke up Tuesday and went outside to confront the settlers and soldiers, one settler demanded in Hebrew that the soldiers make him go back inside, saying Ridi’s yard belonged to them.

“Take them to their home. You said it’s a closed military zone,” the settler told an Israeli soldier, according to Ridi’s video.

The soldiers told everyone to leave, saying, “We don’t need this commotion.”

Israel's military said Tuesday that the closed military zone had been cleared but did not answer questions about settlers' presence in and around the Palestinian village.

Soldiers have repeatedly dismantled their tents and shades in the area only to have the settlers return to area on the outskirts of a village 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the Palestinian city of Nablus.

One settler was detained last week but Israeli police have not reported any arrests. Ridi fears settlers could ramp up attacks on his home moments after Israeli soldiers leave, much like other areas where settlers have staged takeovers of Palestinian homes.

Ridi said his two daughters in Ohio have stayed up past their bedtimes worried for his safety, texting that they miss him and asking if he is all right.

“I have to lie and say, ‘No, I’m safe. I’m OK. It’s safe here,’ because I want her to sleep,” he said.

Council approved a five-year lease for eight automatic license-plate readers in September 2025. Police said all eight cameras were installed by February at entrances and exits to the city.

The cameras take still pictures of license plates and collect details including a car’s description. Oviedo police said that information is searchable for 30 days before it is automatically deleted. Information downloaded as evidence in a criminal case may be retained longer.

Nine of the 10 people who addressed council opposed the cameras.

“That’s how surveillance expands - not one giant leap, but one reasonable justification at a time,” Oviedo community member Lucas Kangas said. “And once it exists, there’s no taking it back.”

Opponents raised concerns about police officers elsewhere using license-plate databases to stalk partners and former partners, false alerts leading to dangerous encounters and the ability to reconstruct someone’s movements.

One speaker supported keeping the cameras.

“I want the security,” Charles Suber said.

Oviedo police said users must complete training before receiving access. Each user has an individual account and must enter a case number and select a reason before conducting a search.

The department’s policy requires quarterly audits, but police said a crime analyst currently conducts them weekly.

Police disclosed that one audit found an officer entering an incomplete case number. The officer was questioned, provided the correct case number, and was reminded to enter the complete number. Police said no additional issues have been found involving that user.

The department also acknowledged that the system can produce false hits.

“Does the system sometimes spit out misinformation about a tag that it sees? Yes, it does,” an Oviedo deputy police chief told council.

Police said officers cannot take action based solely on Flock information. They must visually confirm the license plate and independently verify the information first.

Council members also questioned whether Oviedo’s safeguards apply when outside law enforcement agencies search information collected by the city’s cameras.

Police acknowledged those outside users do not currently have to follow all of Oviedo’s restrictions. The department said Flock expects to release new controls within days that would allow the city to require outside users to provide a case number and limit searches to qualifying criminal investigations.

Police credited license-plate reader information with helping Oviedo officers investigate a domestic violence case involving a pregnant victim, identify burglary suspects and locate a missing juvenile in Titusville. The department also cited regional cases involving homicide suspects and kidnapped children.

No vote on the cameras was scheduled Monday night. The eight Flock cameras remain active.

Hichilema secured around 60% of the presidential vote in the southern African nation that has held largely peaceful elections since it returned to multiparty democracy in 1991.

Hichilema's main challenger, opposition leader Brian Mundubile, won around 38% of the vote, according to the electoral commission.

Zambia, a nation of 22 million people that is one of the world's leading copper producers, is a focus for Chinese investment because of its reserves of the critical mineral. It has also drawn interest from the United States under a Trump administration plan to increase U.S. access to copper and other critical minerals used in new technologies and renewable energy systems.

The results released early Tuesday followed days of heightened tensions since last Thursday's election.

The electoral commission suspended vote counting for hours on Friday, citing attacks on some polling station officials and what it called the theft of some ballot boxes.

It didn't say who might be responsible for the alleged violence and theft, but the suspension prompted the deployment of the army to parts of the capital, Lusaka — an unusual development for one of Africa's more stable democracies.

The Zambian government announced later that 11 opposition officials were detained in a law enforcement raid on election night at a property where opposition leader Mundubile was present, though he was not arrested, according to the government.

The raid involved an exchange of gunfire between occupants of the premises and law enforcement officers, the government said.

The government accused the opposition officials of being in possession of “high-grade military weapons, ammunition and other materials for use in armed insurrection” and said they were a national security threat.

Mundubile criticized the raid as an attempt on his life and denied allegations that the officials were part of a militia.

Hichilema said in a statement Tuesday that he and his party were humbled by the trust placed in them by voters and also reached out to opposition supporters.

“To those citizens who preferred the ideas presented by our opponents, we hear you, and we will continue to work for you to ensure that every Zambian benefits from the development we are delivering,” Hichilema said.

A preliminary report by a European Union observer team released before results were announced said the election was largely peaceful but the “broader electoral process took place in an environment that limited fundamental freedoms.”

“Late legal changes, legal uncertainty and unequal campaign conditions distorted the playing field,” said Michael McNamara, chief of the EU observer mission.

The 64-year-old Hichilema's campaign for a second term focused on an economic recovery plan for a country that was mired in a debt crisis when it defaulted on repayments in 2020. Hichilema was first elected in 2021, and Zambia has restructured debt payments, reined in inflation and stabilized its currency under his leadership.

One of Hichilema's main pledges has been to more than triple Zambia's copper production to 3 million tons a year by the end of his final term in 2031.

Critics, however, said the effects of those macroeconomic improvements were not being felt by ordinary Zambians who were growing frustrated with a high cost of living and electricity shortages.

Hichilema vowed “meaningful development for every single Zambian, in every corner of our country.”

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Magome reported from Johannesburg.

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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

The City of Apopka addressed the concerns in a Facebook post Friday, explaining that its Finance Department recently moved water payments to a temporary payment system while the city prepares to launch a new permanent financial operating system in October.

Among the changes residents are noticing: customers who pay their water bills by credit card online or by phone now see an additional service fee.

But Mayor Nick Nesta told News 6 the fee itself was actually approved months ago.

According to Nesta, city commissioners approved the fee in November 2025 and it was supposed to take effect Jan. 1, 2026. Because of limitations with the city’s older software, however, he said it was not properly implemented through the online system until this month.

That gap between approval and implementation is one reason some residents are only now realizing the additional charge exists.

Why is Apopka charging the fee?

Nesta said the city had previously been absorbing card-processing costs itself.

The mayor said continuing to cover those costs with city money was not sustainable and could eventually put pressure on the city’s reserves. The new setup instead passes much of the processing cost to the customer who chooses that payment method.

Nesta estimated the current credit-card fee at approximately 1.96%, although he did not have every payment-method fee immediately available during his interview with News 6.

The city also emphasized that the temporary payment website itself did not create the fee.

Rather, the fee was previously approved and is becoming visible now as Apopka transitions away from its older financial software.

The permanent system is expected to launch in October. According to the city’s Friday post, customers should expect the appearance and experience of the payment system to change again at that time, but the credit-card fee is not expected to go away.

Nesta said the larger software overhaul is intended to improve communication and efficiency between city departments, including utility billing.

Some residents question whether modernization should cost them more

Reaction underneath the city’s Facebook post was mixed, but several residents questioned why a system described as a modernization effort would result in an additional cost for customers.

News 6 spoke with longtime Apopka resident Melanie Smith outside the city’s utility office.

Smith said she normally goes to the office to pay her bill and was unaware of the new fee before speaking with News 6.

After learning about it, she said she would consider changing how she pays rather than take on another charge.

“If I’m gonna have to pay to use my debit card, I’ll pay cash. I’m not gonna pay extra,” Smith said.

Smith said she understands that processing electronic payments can cost money, but she questioned why those costs should be passed along to customers.

Her concerns echo some of the comments posted underneath the city’s announcement.

It is important to note, however, that comments on social media do not by themselves establish a widespread billing problem. Individual claims about unusually high bills or incorrect water usage would need to be compared with customers’ actual meter readings and billing histories.

Nesta also said the city’s internal experience does not necessarily mirror the volume of criticism visible online.

He said Apopka has actually seen fewer customer complaints since newer water meters have been installed, although he acknowledged the complaints that remain are legitimate concerns that the city must address.

Nesta also acknowledged another issue: communication.

He said residents should have been told more clearly and earlier about what was changing, why it was changing and when they would begin seeing the fee.

The mayor said there have been communication breakdowns within city government and that the administration is working to prevent similar situations in the future.

He specifically acknowledged residents’ frustration over the fee not being properly explained before it began appearing.

“Residents are frustrated that it wasn’t articulated properly to them,” Nesta said.

That concern prompted the city to publicly explain the transition Friday.

The city also told residents that detailed water-usage information is still available through individual customer portals, even though it may no longer appear in the same place customers were accustomed to seeing it while making a payment.

Officials say that experience should improve once the permanent system goes live.

Questions go beyond the payment fee

The discussion online also exposed a broader issue facing Apopka: some residents continue to question whether their water bills accurately reflect their actual usage.

Several commenters on the city’s Facebook post described bills or water-usage totals they believe are unusually high.

Nesta said the city is still trying to determine why some customers are experiencing large swings.

He said the causes can vary and could include software problems, older meters or equipment that previously was not transmitting readings correctly. In some situations, he said a newer or properly functioning meter could begin producing a more accurate reading than what a customer had been receiving before.

Nesta said the city is working to determine what the underlying data shows before drawing conclusions.

His stated goal is straightforward:

“It’s pretty simple, just charging people for what they’re using,” Nesta said. “Not more, not less.”

The mayor said Apopka is dealing with a combination of aging systems, malfunctioning equipment and meter antennas that do not always transmit information properly.

He said the city’s strategic goal is to get as close as possible to having 100% functioning water meters, although maintaining tens of thousands of meters makes that an ongoing challenge.

Nesta says he understands the billing concerns personally

Nesta told News 6 the issue is not abstract for him.

The mayor said he has looked at water bills for his own property that did not always appear to track with what he expected his normal usage to be.

“I am with the residents that living here, getting the same water bills that maybe don’t add up to my current usage,” Nesta said.

He said determining why customers experience those swings is one of his priorities.

Nesta also pointed to approximately $365,000 in water rebates he said were recently returned to residents after concerns involving charges that were not properly explained.

At the same time, he cautioned that the city has seen improvement since installing newer meters and said the overall number of complaints has fallen.

That leaves Apopka dealing with two issues at once: modernizing an aging utility-billing operation while convincing customers that the numbers appearing on their bills can be trusted.

What happens next?

For now, residents should expect the current payment system to remain temporary.

Another transition is expected in October when Apopka launches its permanent financial operating system. The city says that system is designed to provide a more modern and user-friendly experience, although the credit-card processing fee is expected to remain.

The larger question for city leaders will be whether the new technology can also resolve the billing and meter concerns some residents continue to raise.

Nesta told News 6 the standard he wants the city to follow is simple: Apopka should be able to explain and support what it charges customers.

And if it cannot, he said the city should make it right.

“If I can’t justify it, we’re not gonna charge it. We’re gonna pay it back.”

Alfred A. Knopf announced Tuesday that Gandhi's “Belonging: A Journey of Love” will be published Nov. 10.

“Much has been written about my family, but few narratives were able to reach into the truth of their motivations, their actions and even their very human failings,” Sonia Gandhi said in a statement issued through Knopf. “In many ways, this book is a homage to their humanness. My story also offers readers a unique perspective of the social and political changes I have witnessed for six decades in the beautiful country of my belonging.”

Gandhi, 79, is a native of Italy who was studying in Cambridge, England, when she met fellow student and future husband Rajiv Gandhi, grandson of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and son of India's first female prime minister, Indira Gandhi.

In “Belonging,” she writes of her life being upended when her mother-in-law is assassinated in 1984 and succeeded by Rajiv Gandhi, who seven years later was also murdered. She too would eventually enter politics and become the longest-serving president of the Indian National Congress Party while also turning down her party's offer to become prime minister. Her party lost power to current Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party in 2014.

“It was heartbreak and loss that threw me into the public world of politics. Up till then I had guarded my privacy fiercely,” she said in her statement.

“Writing about my life did not come easily to me. It meant opening myself up, sharing moments and experiences I had always held deep inside," she said. "Yet as I gradually removed myself from the political sphere and looked back at all I had seen, the thread of love and loyalty that wove through my story began to define itself, from the simplicity of my childhood in small-town Italy, to the complexity of my years in India as the wife of Rajiv Gandhi and the daughter-in-law of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.”

The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty remains active in politics. Both of Sonia Gandhi's children, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, are members of the Indian parliament's lower house from the Congress party.

The multimillion-dollar project is designed to slow traffic and improve safety at intersections that have a history of crashes.

According to a 2020 safety study from the Florida Department of Transportation, four intersections along Marigold Avenue were reviewed. The study found 107 crashes during the study period, including 70 injury crashes that resulted in 149 injuries.

Those findings helped lead to the improvements drivers are seeing now.

The intersection safety improvement project includes four intersections along Marigold Avenue in Osceola County: San Lorenzo Road, San Miguel Road, Laurel Avenue, and Peabody Road

The project includes three single-lane roundabouts, which are intended to force vehicles to slow down while traveling through the area. The county’s project plan also calls for high-visibility crosswalks, new lighting, drainage improvements, stormwater upgrades and utility work.

At San Miguel Road, the plan includes a new northbound left-turn lane to help drivers turn without blocking traffic behind them.

The total cost of the project is just over $9.5 million.

Construction is already underway, but Osceola County commissioners are expected to consider a change to an agreement with FDOT that helps fund the project. The vote is not about whether the roundabouts will be built, but rather how some of the utility work is being paid for.

County documents show the change would not add money to the project, leaving the total cost at about $9.5 million.

News 6 has reached out to the county for more information about the project’s cost. Updates will be provided as more details become available.

The city closed the Seabreeze beach approach after declaring the Plaza Hotel, which stands above it, non-compliant and unsafe due to a long list of code violations and public health and safety concerns. No reopening date has been announced.

Business owners and nearby residents say the approach is a lifeline for foot and vehicle traffic in the area.

“When they’re getting ready to leave the beach here they’re not going to be coming down Seabreeze and going to all the businesses here so that’s going to be a problem,” said Rick Kitt, a Seabreeze Boulevard business owner.

Kitt says the closure leaves beachgoers with few nearby options.

“There’s no close beach ramp for people to get on and off the beach. The closest one is on Zelda, which is several miles up the street,” Kitt said.

The frustration extends beyond the ramp closure. The Plaza Hotel has been closed since the 2022 hurricanes, and Kitt says little has been done to address the building’s condition.

“He hasn’t done any work on the hotel at all. He’s had it closed for four years and has not done any work on it,” Kitt said.

Unit owners in the condo-hotel have previously said they paid the building owner tens of thousands of dollars for repairs.

Tom Caffrey, a Main Street business owner, called the approach integral to the area’s identity and economy.

“This is integral to our history of the World’s Most Famous Beach. We need to keep this thing open; we need to get it back open as quickly as possible — I plead to whoever is in charge of getting this done, please get this back,” Caffrey said.

Caffrey would like to see the city and Volusia County reopen another closed beach access, such as the Main Street ramp, in the meantime to help offset the impact on local businesses.

“There’s really not going to be a lot of people down here. This is one of the busiest sections of our beach to drive year-round and to population so I think you’re going to see a massive decrease in revenue for a lot of these businesses,” Caffrey said.

The city has not said it would look into reopening alternate access. According to the city’s building department, repairs to the tunnel could take 60 to 90 days, depending on weather. The building owner has until Sept. 2 to bring the rest of the Plaza Hotel’s code violations into compliance or face a $1,000-per-day fine.

Sgt. David Ogletree with the Ocoee Police Department said officers have investigated about six to eight cases over the past three to four weeks, including some reported over the weekend.

He says the worst case involved someone losing four thousand dollars in a matter of seconds.

Police say criminals may target people carrying bank bags or envelopes that identify their bank. They then follow the person to another business or home, where they break into the vehicle and steal the cash.

“If you have a bank bag that says Truist or Bank of America or whatever bank of the day it is, and they’re following those people — whether it’s home, mostly it’s another business where they leave that money in a car — you go inside and in a matter of seconds they break into your car,” Ogletree said.

Ocoee police provided video showing two recent bank-jugging cases.

Authorities recommend taking cash with you if you have to make another stop after leaving the bank. Police also say people using ATMs should remain aware of their surroundings.

The department says the crimes are not limited to nighttime. Some of the cases have happened in broad daylight.

Anyone who believes they are being followed should avoid confronting the person and refrain from stopping to get out of their vehicle.

“Go to a well-lit, populated area or the police department,” Ogletree said. “Don’t stop at the red light and get out of your car and confront them. That can just lead to more problems.”

Residents can also contact the Ocoee Police Department’s non-emergency line.

The firing of FIFA chief operating officer Kevin Lamour late Monday came 17 days after his statement to the Associated Press criticizing Infantino’s $20 billion private equity project that helped to end it hours later.

“Now he is thrown out and we are supposed to move on. It’s unacceptable, it’s management by fear,” Klaveness told the AP in a telephone interview, describing Lamour as “the best football administrator I have ever met.”

“Now we also have to call upon FIFA leadership and the administration to not submit to orders you know are not in the interests of football,” Klaveness added, especially targeting FIFA secretary general Mattias Grafström.

She is a former Norway international player, a judge in Oslo and an elected executive committee member at European soccer body UEFA who has built on her country’s long-held reputation as a champion of good governance in soccer.

Lamour was a long-time colleague of Infantino, first as senior officials at UEFA from 2007-15, on his campaign team to be elected FIFA president in 2016, then moving two years ago from UEFA to oversee much of FIFA’s operations in Zurich.

Infantino in crisis

With a reputation among the most trusted executives in the often murky world of global soccer politics, Lamour’s pointed criticisms of Infantino’s leadership intensified a crisis for the FIFA president.

A backlash by UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and north American soccer body CONCACAF was provoked by a secretive plan to sell future World Cup profits to investors led by Joshua Kushner.

A $4.2 billion investment to take a 20% stake in a FIFA commercial spin-off was to fund offers of $20 million to each of its 211 national member federations. They already effectively own the non-profit soccer body, which has multibillion dollar reserves, and would have had a mid-September deadline to accept.

Lamour’s statement on July 31 spoke of FIFA staff being “deceived” by Infantino’s lack of openness over the now-failed sale and how they “deserve better than contempt and intimidation.”

The French executive called on soccer leaders worldwide "to make the right decisions” and signed off: “If that means I lose my job, then so be it. I will understand and respect that decision. At least I’ll sleep well tonight.”

Fired, not resigned

“This is a firing situation, it’s not a resignation,” Klaveness said of Lamour’s exit, suggesting it was done by Grafström “obviously being pressured by the president.”

In a statement, FIFA said it “thanks Kevin for his two years of service and wishes him the best of luck for the future.”

“His statement was necessary to kill the project,” Klaveness said of Lamour’s intervention. “He said something that was obvious, that was very important that someone within the staff told us the story so that we knew it was not FIFA, as such, but one person.”

Infantino called a meeting with senior management minus Lamour in Rabat, Morocco. After that Aug. 5 meeting, a FIFA statement apologized for errors and said those managers who attended “reaffirmed their full support” of Infantino’s presidency.

“We all got reports in Morocco, we know it’s a management of fear,” Klaveness said. “It’s not in football’s best interests.”

Until the uproar over Infantino's “FIFA Forward Enterprise” proposal, he seemed sure to be reelected unopposed next year in Morocco. The deadline is Nov. 18 for challengers to enter the contest.

___

See AP’s full soccer coverage here

[ELECTION 2026: Make sure you’re eligible to vote|How to vote by mail|Election Myths]

Florida has a closed primary system, which means only members of a political party may vote in those elections.

[WATCH: Election security, voter fraud and vote by mail: Central Florida supervisors answer tough questions]

What’s on the ballot?

Registered Democrats and Republicans will be choosing candidates to be on the ballot in the November general election. They include races for governor and other Florida cabinet seats, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, Florida House and Senate, and in some counties, county commission seats that are partisan.

If you are not a Democrat or a Republican, though, there are still lots of races on the ballot for you -- school board races, judicial races, and any nonpartisan county commission seats.

[SEE WHAT’S ON THE BALLOT: The Voting Central Florida Guide]

Your county elections supervisor will send out a sample ballot ahead of the primary, so watch your mailbox. That will tell you what races will be on your particular ballot.

You can also look up your ballot on the county election supervisors’ websites below.

• BREVARD COUNTY: View your sample ballot
• FLAGLER COUNTY: View Your Sample Ballot
• LAKE COUNTY: View Your Sample Ballot
• MARION COUNTY: View Your sample ballot
• ORANGE COUNTY: View your sample ballot
• OSCEOLA COUNTY: View your sample ballot
• SEMINOLE COUNTY: View your sample ballot
• SUMTER COUNTY: View your sample ballot
• VOLUSIA COUNTY: View Your sample ballot

“Yes, the president is an important election. Yes, the governor is at the general, but they’re not the ones worrying about your potholes, your schools, your roadways, your stormwater issues,” said Seminole County Supervisor of Elections Amy Pennock.

Pennock was one of six election supervisors who recently joined News 6 and other members of the News Collaborative of Central Florida for a wide-ranging discussion on election issues. Central Florida Public Media hosted the discussion.

In addition, some Florida House of Representatives races will be decided in August in what are called “universal primaries,” said Osceola County Supervisor Mary Jane Arrington.

“These are races where there’s only one party running, and that selection will be made,” Arrington said. “And in the primary, House District 47, in Osceola County, will be a universal primary for every voter.”

What you need to vote in person

In Florida, voting in person is not just for Election Day — you can also vote early.

To vote, you need to be registered. When you go to your polling place, you need to bring a current and valid photo and signature ID.

The following forms of picture identification are allowed if they are current:

• Florida driver’s license
• Florida identification card issued by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles
• United States passport
• Military identification
• Student identification
• Retirement center identification
• Neighborhood association identification
• Public assistance identification

If you do not have a proper photo ID, you will be given a provisional ballot, which will allow you to vote and then later provide documents to prove your identity to the supervisor of elections office.

Also, if your ID does not have a signature on it, you may be asked to provide more forms of identification.

NOTE: The Florida Legislature passed a law that will make changes to this, but it will not take effect until January of 2027.

Have questions about voting at the polls? We have an in-depth guide to voting in the 2026 Election HERE.

When to vote

The polling places will open at 7 a.m. and continue until 7 p.m. If you are in line at the polling place at 7 p.m. and have not yet voted, stay in line. The polls have to be kept open until all voters in line have voted.

Where to vote

To find your Central Florida Election Day polling place, use the links below.

To find information outside Central Florida, find your county supervisor of elections office HERE.

• BREVARD COUNTY: Find Your Election Day polling place
• FLAGLER COUNTY: Find Your Election Day polling place
• LAKE COUNTY: Find Your Election Day polling place
• MARION COUNTY: Find Your Election Day polling place
• ORANGE COUNTY: Find your Election Day polling place
• OSCEOLA COUNTY: Find your Election Day polling place
• SEMINOLE COUNTY: Find Your Election Day polling place
• SUMTER COUNTY: Find Your Election Day polling place
• VOLUSIA COUNTY: Find Your Election Day polling place

Six candidates are vying for the two positions, and while the cities are separate, the core issues driving each campaign are largely the same: development, flooding and the future of their communities.

In Edgewater, incumbent Mayor Diezel Depew — described as the youngest mayor in the state — is seeking re-election. His top priorities include growth management tied to new development, reducing utility costs and combating flooding.

Challenging Depew is Wayne McCloskey, a school crossing guard and volunteer with the local police department and animal shelter. McCloskey says his campaign is centered on flood control, smart growth and making the city safer for residents and youth.

Former NHL player, Stanley Cup winner and small-business owner Stephen Olesky has also entered the Edgewater race. Olesky lists his priorities as supporting local businesses, protecting nature and encouraging smart growth in the city.

[RELATED: Florida primary election: Everything you need to know]

All candidate information was gathered directly from the candidates or their official campaign websites, according to News 6.

In Deltona, three candidates are competing for the mayor’s seat — and again, growth management is front and center.

Incumbent Mayor Santiago Avila Jr. says his priorities are managing growth and development, creating the city’s first downtown and uptown districts to drive economic growth, and bringing family-centered facilities — including a maternity hospital and parks and recreation amenities — to Deltona.

Current Vice Mayor Maritza Vazquez is also running for the top seat. She says she wants to preserve green space in Deltona, slow the pace of new development, and identify flooding areas and find solutions to keep residents’ homes safe.

Rounding out the Deltona field is Jason Voelz, a veteran, former law enforcement officer, and small-business owner. Voelz says he wants less development, an end to what he calls overspending and high taxes and fees, and a halt to the “toilet to tap” initiative — arguing the city must prioritize clean water.

The San Francisco-based company says ChatGPT for Teens, which launches Tuesday, is tailored for kids aged 13 to 17 with stronger protections including content restrictions around things like suicide, self-harm and romantic or sexual chats. It also provides homework and study support designed to help students learn rather than spit out answers and school essays.

The idea is to guide teens toward healthy AI use in an age-appropriate environment, the company said.

“We want to treat teens like teens, which means that we have to make sure that we’re showing up with the right developmental stage when we’re not either talking down to them or treating them like kids, but we’re also making sure that they’re not exposed to material that they shouldn’t be exposed to,” said Ann O'Leary, vice president of global policy at OpenAI.

Risks abound in widespread teen usage of AI chatbots

Parents, educators and child development experts have been sounding alarms over children's use of AI chatbots, which have been blamed for facilitating cheating on schoolwork and even suicide. And while even adults can fall victim to anthropomorphizing AI and developing unhealthy relationships with it, teenagers' brains are not yet fully developed and they can be particularly vulnerable.

Last year, research from a watchdog group found that ChatGPT would tell 13-year-olds how to get drunk and high, instruct them on how to conceal eating disorders and even compose a heartbreaking suicide letter to their parents if asked. In interactions with researchers posing as vulnerable teens, ChatGPT typically warned against risky activity but went on to deliver startlingly detailed and personalized plans for drug use, calorie-restricted diets or self-injury.

In the U.S., more than 70% of teens are turning to AI chatbots for companionship and half use AI companions regularly, according to a 2025 study from Common Sense Media, a group that studies and advocates for using digital media sensibly.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that the company is trying to study “emotional overreliance” on the technology, describing it last year as a “really common thing” with young people.

For users of ChatGPT for Teens, the chatbot is prevented from suggesting it has personal feelings toward the user or implying that it is conscious or experiences emotions, according to OpenAI. That's in addition to blocking romantic or sexual chats.

“We went through and identified what are the hypothetical cues that a model could give that might make a teenager kind of develop a relationship to it,” said Allison Mishkin, head of child development at OpenAI.

A new version of the chatbot expands safety protections

OpenAI doesn't verify users' ages, but it already uses age assurance to estimate if someone is under 18 based on factors such as their types of queries. If someone is identified or identifies themselves as a minor, they are automatically placed into the teen version of the chatbot. This is similar to Meta's approach to teen accounts on Instagram, which have stricter content, chat and privacy restrictions than regular accounts.

To use parental controls, both the teen user and their parent or guardian have to opt in. But O'Leary said the idea with the teen chatbot is to “make sure that this is safe, even if you don’t use parental controls.” Parents with linked teen accounts can set “quiet hours” when their teen can't access ChatGPT, and receive safety notifications in limited high-risk situations, such as the possibility of a user hurting themself.

“We are adding additional notifications related to eating disorders, while limiting what is shared and focusing on moments when offline support may matter most,” OpenAI said.

For homework help, OpenAI said the teen chatbot is designed not to give easy answers but to guide students to come up with answers on their own. The company already offers a version of ChatGPT for teachers, and tailoring a model to help kids with studying and homework could give OpenAI more ways to bring its product to schools.

“We continue to also invest in expanding interactive learning because research shows that people learn more effectively when they actively engage and struggle with concepts,” Mishkin said.

The plunging prices, the White House said, resulted from the Republican president's “most favored nation” drug deals with pharmaceutical firms and the TrumpRx website, which it said are “delivering real relief to American families and putting patients first.”

The real picture is more complicated, said drug pricing experts, who noted that other factors, including a law from Democratic President Joe Biden's time in office that allowed Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies, are potentially more significant contributors to the latest consumer price index figures.

Also at play, they said, are generic and biosimilar products that have come onto the market, offering competition that drives down the price of expensive brand-name and biologic drugs. In addition, the prescription drug price index measured by the Labor Department and released last week doesn’t directly reflect how much consumers pay — it measures how much pharmacies get paid for the drugs, both by insurers and consumers.

“It’s difficult to know in one number what’s going on beneath the hood,” said Juliette Cubanski, a vice president and director of the Program on Medicare Policy at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF. “I don’t think we can attribute this price reduction to any one specific policy change or initiative.”

Here’s what to know about the decline in prescription drug prices:

Competition and policy both contribute to changing prices

Drug pricing experts said both market competition and various policy changes have influenced prescription drug prices in recent years.

On the market side, “when big blockbuster products face generic competition, their prices fall,” said Dr. Benjamin Rome, a health policy researcher at Harvard Medical School.

For example, he said, various biosimilar drugs have arrived on the market to treat the same autoimmune conditions as the brand-name drug Humira, offering similar treatment at a lower cost.

Similarly, competition has led to price reductions for Stelara, a popular biologic medicine that treats chronic inflammatory conditions, said Stacie Dusetzina, a professor of health policy at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

Biden-era federal policies also likely played a role — most notably the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which for the first time allowed Medicare to haggle with drugmakers over the cost of the top-selling prescription drugs in the program.

New prices for the first 10 of those negotiated drugs launched in January, a change Cubanski, Rome and Dusetzina all said likely made an impact on aggregate prices. The Trump administration has carried forward those negotiations, as mandated by law, and projects additional savings on prescription drugs in the years ahead.

A new Trump administration policy lowering the price of GLP-1 weight loss drugs for certain eligible Medicare enrollees could also be playing a role in driving down prices, the experts said. But that went into effect in July, so only its first month is reflected in the data.

It’s hard to measure the impact of MFN deals and TrumpRx

Trump has sought to attribute the drop in prescription drug prices to his “most favored nation” deals to bring U.S. pharmaceutical prices to the same level as other developed countries.

Drug pricing experts said the actual impact of those deals so far is unclear, since the contracts with drug companies have not been made public and the models designed to put MFN policies into practice in federal health programs have not gone into effect yet.

“These policies are under development and have not affected payers in the index,” Dusetzina told The Associated Press in an email. “Ultimately, I believe that the change is likely to be more directly related to the IRA’s policies and the Medicare drug price negotiation program than it is to current policies.”

Experts lauded TrumpRx, the White House’s website funneling Americans to the best deals on a variety of prescription drugs, for bringing a helpful resource and more price transparency to the public.

But they said it’s unclear how many Americans are making use of the service. In addition, many of the brand-name drugs it has featured are cheaper with insurance or have lower-cost generic versions sold elsewhere.

The White House said the website has generated $700 million in savings for patients but didn’t explain how it reached that figure. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts last week questioned that claim in a letter to the Trump administration, saying Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has admitted that TrumpRx doesn’t store patient, health or prescription information.

“Without this information, the accuracy of any claim of savings made by the Trump administration is unreliable,” she wrote.

Many consumers still face high drug costs – and rising health costs overall

Even as the consumer price index shows a year-over-year drop in drug prices, experts warned consumers aren't necessarily seeing that in their budgets.

That's because the Labor Department’s figures measure not what consumers pay directly but what pharmacies are paid by insurers and consumers. Insurers often eat much of the cost, and what patients pay can depend on a variety of factors, including whether they are insured and what plans they have. Plus, some Americans still rely on expensive drugs that don't have cheaper alternatives yet.

Higher health spending and federal policy changes are also resulting in higher insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs for many Americans. That could mean even as drug prices decline, they're paying more for healthcare than they once were.

“A price measure like the CPI is not going to adequately capture consumers' experience with healthcare and prescription drugs and other hospital services, the same way it would for groceries and gas and other tangible services that people go and pay for at the store,” Rome said.

More than 40,000 people were sheltering in tents, evacuation centers and makeshift camps after the earthquake struck off Flores, a remote island in East Nusa Tenggara province, early Saturday, damaging at least 11,925 homes, according to the National Disaster Management Agency.

The quake caused widespread destruction across the island, damaging 172 health facilities, 658 schools, 187 offices and 172 places of worship, the local disaster agency said.

At crowded evacuation camps across Flores on Tuesday, children played under tarpaulin shelters while aid workers and volunteers provided psychosocial support alongside food and medical assistance.

The quake occurred at a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles) shortly before 6 a.m. Saturday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and residents fled in panic as tsunami warnings were issued but later lifted. Authorities recorded more than 2,100 aftershocks into Tuesday, though only 70 were felt by residents.

Fear and painful memories haunt survivors

An aftershock that struck during an interview Tuesday prompted Vincentius Rano and his wife to instinctively duck and cover their heads. Nearby, their daughter began crying, a reminder of the fear that continues to haunt many survivors.

Rano is a resident of Lamba Leda, one of the hardest-hit villages in the lush hills of East Manggarai regency, where widespread damage was reported, with at least 50 homes shattered and trees toppled over. He recalled the terrifying moment the earthquake struck Saturday just after he and his wife had woken up.

“Suddenly, we felt a tremor that kept getting stronger,” said Rano, the father of a 5-year-old girl. The couple rushed to grab their sleeping daughter, but before they could escape, part of the house came down, causing injuries to his back and shoulder.

“We didn’t have time to get outside. Everything happened so fast. The roof collapsed on us, and all I could do was shield my wife and child with my back,” Rano said, gesturing toward his flattened home, a modest house, built of timber rather than concrete.

Children in shelters treated for trauma

Psychosocial support programs, which combine mental health treatment and social care, are being rolled out across the region hit by the earthquake. Children have been encouraged to read books and join counselors for games, educational activities and group activities designed to help them cope with fear and anxiety.

“For many survivors, especially children, the psychological impact has lingered long after the shaking stopped,” said local police chief Yudhi Franata, who organized trauma-healing sessions for children displaced by the disaster in Ende regency.

Parents at an evacuation center said many children were afraid to return indoors and woke up frightened whenever aftershocks rattled the island, he said.

Mieke Suharni, a police officer who was among 30 personnel deployed to Lamba Leda, said much of their work is focused on helping children cope with the disaster’s emotional aftermath. She said officers have organized trauma-healing activities at several evacuation camps, but emotional distress remained widespread among survivors.

Earlier Tuesday, she comforted a woman who was visibly shaken by memories of the quake and used a psychological support method known as Universal Spiritual Emotional Freedom Technique, which she learned during a police training.

“We are trying to help people manage their fear step by step,” Suharni said. “Some survivors continue to experience anxiety and excessive fear. Our goal is to help calm that trauma so they can begin to recover.”

Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because of its location on the Pacific Ring of Fire. Flores experienced one of the country’s deadliest disasters in 1992, when an earthquake and an ensuing tsunami killed about 2,500 people.

A heat advisory is in effect for Central Florida counties, while Marion and Flagler counties are under a rare Extreme Heat Warning as heat index values could climb even higher.

TUESDAY

Temperatures will soar into the mid-90s across much of Central Florida, with humidity pushing peak heat index values between 110 and 115 degrees.

The most extreme conditions are expected across Marion and Flagler counties, where the extreme heat warning is a rare alert for our area. Those locations could see especially dangerous heat conditions, making today the most intense day of the current heat wave.

There will be more moisture in the atmosphere today, allowing scattered showers and storms to develop during the afternoon and evening. Rain and storm chances will return closer to normal across East Central Florida.

The east coast sea breeze will develop later than usual and may struggle to move much farther inland than the I-95 corridor. Storms that develop will generally move eastward and offshore through the late afternoon and evening.

A few storms could become strong, producing frequent lightning, wind gusts between 45 and 55 mph, and heavy rainfall

THIS WEEK

A more active summer pattern will continue through the rest of the week and into early next week. Rain and storm chances will generally run between 60 and 70 percent each afternoon, with storms capable of producing lightning, gusty winds, and locally heavy rain.

Increasing clouds and storm coverage may help temperatures trend a little closer to normal later this week and into the weekend.

However, the heat will remain a concern, with heat index values continuing to climb well into the triple digits and additional heat alerts possible.

So when they heard rumors that Morocco’s border with Spain was open, they decided to join the rush to try to reach Europe.

All three died attempting to cross, becoming victims of the deadliest migration crisis between Morocco and Spain.

Fueled by misinformation, poverty and lack of opportunities, more than 70,000 would-be migrants from Morocco and beyond swam or climbed over a breakwater last month to try to reach Ceuta, a Spanish territory on the North African coast. At least 90 people died attempting to cross the border, according to official figures; rights groups reported a much higher toll. Many families still haven’t been able to retrieve the bodies.

Nearly all the survivors have returned to Morocco, and both countries have intensified security measures. Moroccan and Spanish authorities blamed social media rumors and human smuggling networks for the surge, while migrants cited unemployment and low wages as major factors.

The pull of the crowd

Akbili, 31, lived in Tangier, about an hour from the coastal Moroccan town of Fnideq. Migration had been on his mind for some time, but friends and family said he had never considered crossing illegally.

He held a college degree in physics, but couldn't find a job in his field and worked at a car parts factory. He earned about $421 a month, slightly above the median salary in the North African country.

Buoyed by ambitions to become a regional hub for the auto industry, Morocco’s economy is expected to grow by 4.5% this year. But policymakers face a persistent challenge: turning that growth into jobs that offer higher wages.

Akbili was working the 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift when he saw Facebook posts about people crossing into Ceuta. He wanted to try his luck in hopes of finding a job that could help his mother pay for hernia surgery.

“His mind changed completely. He went from someone who wasn’t thinking about illegal migration to wanting to go by all means,” Abdelhakim Saadaoui, a relative and Akbili’s apartment mate, told The Associated Press.

Akbili persuaded Saadaoui to go with him. On July 31, they paid a driver $129 to take them near the border with Ceuta — the equivalent of two months’ rent.

When they arrived, Saadaoui said, there was complete chaos. From a distance, the crowds looked like ants, he said, as streets filled with people heading toward the frontier. Police fired stun grenades and tear gas in an attempt to disperse them, he said.

Saadaoui decided not to continue. Akbili went on. The two remained in contact by phone.

Then Akbili stopped answering.

A Moroccan Interior Ministry document obtained by the AP says Akbili died at midnight on July 31. His death was classified as “unnatural,” attributed to “severe head trauma.” He was buried in his hometown of Khenifra.

His family was told he died after falling from a cliff. The Interior Ministry said one of the 11 deaths recorded on the Moroccan side was caused by a cliff fall.

But a cousin suspects foul play and wants further investigation.

“His phone and wallet stayed intact. How is it possible for someone who fell from a cliff?” Zakaria Akbili told the AP.

Soccer dreams drove one victim

Hamza Haibouri, who played soccer for Morocco's second-division Kenitra Athletic Club, was buoyed by dreams of making it big playing in Europe, said his childhood friend Bilal Ratib.

The 28-year-old Haibouri was vacationing in Martil, a Moroccan beach town about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from Ceuta, when he saw people heading there and decided to join them. His death in the frenzied attempt to cross was announced by the soccer team’s fan club.

Ratib said Haibouri visited France when he was young and had always wanted to return.

“He always had this idea of living abroad and going to France, to get better soccer and a better life,” Ratib said.

“He was a great man, even when we were young and reckless, he would always go to the mosque early for the first prayer,” Ratib said. “He was deeply religious.”

Haibouri, whose income came entirely from soccer, earned around $540 a month when he played, but he hadn't played at all this year, Ratib said.

Families learn of deaths through Facebook

Abdelouahed Iken, 19, was finishing high school in the southern city of Agadir. He regularly admired photos on Facebook posted by a friend who had migrated to Italy.

When he heard rumors the Ceuta border was open, he asked his mother for money to travel to his home village.

But instead of going home, Iken traveled more than 530 miles (850 kilometers) north to Ceuta with friends, according to family member Housine Zligui. Zligui said he learned about Iken’s death on Facebook, and the family is now working to bring his body home.

Iken could not swim, so he bought a life jacket for the crossing. Friends who returned told the family they saw him struggling in the water before he drowned, Zligui said.

For many Moroccans, Europe represents the possibility of work, stability and a better future. Those who make it abroad often return home with designer clothes, cars and euros, becoming symbols of success — and envy.

Money sent home by Moroccans living overseas reached $6.6 billion in the first six months of this year, according to government figures, equivalent to more than 3% of the country’s GDP.

Families asked to pay huge repatriation costs

Families were asked to pay some 2,500 euros ($2,900) in repatriation costs to bring the bodies of their loved ones home from Ceuta, according to Ratib and Zligui.

The AP was unable to confirm the cost. But repatriating a body from Spain to Morocco generally requires authorization from the Moroccan Consulate and a Spanish mortuary transit document. Moroccan rules typically call for a sealed coffin and a certificate confirming the death wasn’t caused by a contagious disease.

A spokesperson for Ceuta’s government said Friday the paperwork to repatriate the bodies of those who died in the crossing was complete, but Morocco’s government had not accepted it. The Moroccan government did not respond to an AP email with detailed questions about what was holding up repatriation, who was responsible for covering the costs and whether the Moroccan government would assist families in paying to have their loved ones returned.

Autopsies on 82 migrants brought ashore in Spain have been completed, said Manuel Aparcero, director of Ceuta’s forensic team.

Haibouri’s sister underwent DNA testing so that Ceuta authorities could confirm her brother’s identity. Authorities in Ceuta gave Haibouri’s sister his identification card and driver’s license but did not allow her to see his body, Ratib said.

“It will take around 20 days or more” for the body to be returned, he said. “You can’t imagine the families' suffering.”

The Trade Union Network for Migration in Morocco called on Morocco and Spain to cover the costs of returning the dead to their families.

Back in Tangier, Saadaoui moved in with co-workers. He couldn't bear living without Akbili.

“He was telling me at the border, ‘I will never come back,’” Saadaoui said. “And indeed, he will never come back.”

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Associated Press journalist Suman Naishadham in Madrid contributed.

Kabul police spokesman Khalid Zadran said late Monday that “a number of children” had been wounded, and said an investigation was underway. He did not provide further details.

Richard Bennett, the United Nations' special rapporteur for Afghanistan, on Tuesday condemned “the heinous attack harming numerous children near a school” the previous day.

Afghan media said around 50 children were hurt in the blast, which occurred in a part of the capital populated mainly by the Hazara ethnic minority. Hazaras, who make up around 9% of the Afghan population, have long suffered attacks and persecution in Afghanistan. Most are Shiite Muslims, and they have been targeted repeatedly in the past by Sunni Muslim radicals like the Islamic State group, while they have also faced discrimination in the Sunni majority country.

In May 2021, a few months before the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in the wake of a chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led troops, three bombings at a school in Kabul killed dozens of people, all of them from the Hazara community and most of them young girls leaving class.

That school, like the one where the explosion occurred Monday, was in Kabul’s Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood, the main Hazara district in the Afghan capital.

In a social media post on X, Bennett said an independent investigation to bring those responsible to justice was essential. “Once again this mainly Hazara part of Kabul has been targeted. Deplorable!” he wrote.

A new CBS News/YouGov poll finds that 60% of Americans describe the U.S. economic system as unfair when it comes to financial opportunities and chances to get ahead. Just 31% say it’s fair.

Life is harder than it was for mom and dad

That sense of unfairness isn’t abstract. When Americans compare their lives to their parents’ generation, 45% say their opportunities to succeed are worse — not better.

Prices top the list of what Americans say drives their view of the economy, with 89% saying they think about costs when evaluating whether things are going well or badly.

Six in 10 Americans rate the national economy as fairly bad or very bad. And 73% believe the income gap between the richest Americans and the middle class is growing.

Free market: yes. But the system still feels broken.

Despite all that frustration, two-thirds of Americans still see the free market as good for the economy. Capitalism draws a net-positive rating. Socialism is net-negative overall.

But the distinction matters: most people support the idea of free markets while saying the current system isn’t working fairly for them. It’s less about ideology and more about outcomes.

That gap shows up in what people want the government to do. Half of Americans say the government should do “a lot” to make the economic system fair. Another 31% say it should do “some.” Just 19% say not much — or nothing at all.

What does “socialism” even mean?

Labels like socialism mean very different things depending on who you ask.

The most common responses in the poll described it as some form of government control or ownership. But close behind were answers rooted in outcomes: equality, fairness, and helping people. Republicans and independents more often used terms like “government control.” Democrats more often described it as equality, public services, or fairness.

Democrats favor socialism over capitalism — a midterm flashpoint

Here’s where the poll gets politically significant heading into the fall.

While Americans overall are net-negative on socialism, Democrats break the other way. A majority of Democrats hold a positive view of socialism — and that favorable rating is higher than their view of capitalism.

Democrats also believe, by a wide margin, that socialist policies would make their personal finances better — while capitalism, on balance, makes them worse.

Among Democrats, 53% say the party is about as progressive as they want it to be. But 44% say it’s not progressive enough — and those voters are more likely to view socialism favorably.

What Democrats want from their party

The frustration inside the Democratic Party isn’t just about policy labels. It’s about intensity.

When asked what’s more important right now, 83% of Democrats say they want their party to show it is fighting for people — not showing off detailed policy plans.

And on economic direction, 68% of Democrats want the party pushing for big, fundamental changes — not smaller, easier ones.

Voters give both parties poor marks

Neither party is getting high marks from voters headed into November.

Among registered voters, 58% describe the Democratic Party as weak, and just 34% call it effective. The Republican Party fares differently but not better: 58% describe it as extreme, and 41% call it effective.

Both parties find only modest agreement with voters on economic and cultural issues, with just over half saying they agree with each party “at least a little.”

A fresh face appetite

One signal for both parties heading into the fall: 53% of Americans say politics would be better with more young people in elected office. Democrats are especially likely to hold that view. Moderates also draw broad positive sentiment — 47% say more moderates would improve politics.

The CBS News/YouGov poll was conducted August 12–14, 2026, with a nationally representative sample of 2,287 U.S. adults. The margin of error is ±2.6 points

Hundreds of students were evacuated after shots rang out in the high school building of the Ateneo de Zamboanga university campus in the southern port city of Zamboanga. Two other people were injured, police and city officials said.

The suspect, identified by police as grade 9 student Mohammad Mael Jalani, fired at a teacher sitting in front of a class but apparently missed. He then shot a student on the fourth floor of the building before going up one floor and killing himself, police said in an initial report.

“He entered and started indiscriminately firing, hitting a Grade 10 student at the fourth floor then subsequently went to the fifth floor and jumped from the said building and committed suicide,” Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla told reporters.

“He showed this on Facebook Live starting when he was climbing up the stairs but there were only snippets,” Remulla said. “We'll look into his gaming history and his chat history so we cannot come up with a complete answer why this happened until we do a complete forensic analysis.”

Zamboanga city Mayor Khymer Adan Olaso and the police said the suspect shot himself.

The high school building, where the gun attack happened, is in a secured campus, separate from a larger campus of the privately owned Catholic university where its colleges and professional schools are located in Zamboanga. One of the largest and most prestigious universities in the south, Ateneo suspended classes at all levels Tuesday and Wednesday following the attack.

Joe Darryl Jaron has just driven his child to the school when he heard the gunshots that prompted students to scream in panic and dash to safety. He took a video of the commotion and posted it on Facebook. “There are gunshots here in Ateneo, help! help,” he said.

A few hours after the shooting, police said the situation was under control. They asked parents and guardians of students to remain calm and follow the high school's advice and arrangements to pick up their children.

“Authorities are currently establishing the circumstances surrounding the incident,” national police chief Gen. Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. said. The police “will provide verified information as appropriate and appeals to the public to refrain from sharing unconfirmed reports, photos, or videos that may cause unnecessary concern.”

The national police “assure the public that the safety and well-being of the school community remain a priority. We thank the school administration, parents, guardians, and the community for their patience, cooperation and understanding as authorities continue to manage the situation,” Nartatez said.

One of the pistols carried by the suspect came from his father, who was the Bureau of Customs police commander in Zamboanga, Bureau of Customs deputy commissioner Nolasco Bathan told reporters. He added that he recommended the temporary suspension of the father, who may face administrative charges for failing to properly safeguard the government-issued pistol.

The shooting happened despite police assurances that security in schools across the country would be strengthened after a shooting in June in which three high school students were killed and at least 20 others were wounded in central Tacloban city. Police arrested two students, ages 14 and 15, and accused them of carrying out that shooting.

Crimes involving the use of firearms are prevalent in the Philippines, partly due to the proliferation of unlicensed firearms, but school shootings are relatively rare.

Days after the school shooting in Tacloban, Philippine authorities said they temporarily blocked an online gaming app to assess whether it played a role in fostering such violence. The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center said its decision to indefinitely block Gorebox was prompted by an ongoing police investigation which showed that one suspect was an avid user of the app.

The shooting in the Philippines also occurred less than two weeks after a school shooting in Thailand.

Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul took steps to restrict guns in the Southeast Asian country after a 14-year-old boy killed his grandparents, five school staff members and a 12-year-old girl in Nonthaburi province outside Bangkok.

Thailand’s high rate of gun ownership is second only to Pakistan in Asia, and far surpasses its Southeast Asian neighbors.

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Associated Press journalists Joeal Calupitan in Manila, Philippines, and Haruka Nuga and Jintamas Saksornchai in Bangkok contributed to this report.

But it is the scathing online reviews that seem to have prompted interest in “Niu Lai,” an animated film about a calf who had a dream about himself growing up with the help of his family, driving a surprising surge at the box office.

The film earned only about 10,000 yuan ($1,480) at the box office in the first 10 days after its Aug. 5 release. On some days, the film took in as little as 200 yuan ($30) at the box office, according to Maoyan, a movie-tracking platform. The figure was exceptionally low, particularly during the competitive summer movie season.

But its box office surged to 8.2 million yuan ($1.2 million) Monday, with nearly 300,000 admissions, according to Maoyan. Its total box office has reached 17.1 million yuan ($2.5 million).

Red Star News, a local news website in Chengdu, reported that the film was made over five years by just two people — director Xin Yumeng and his mother, Sun Lifan. The Associated Press was unable to reach Xin and could not independently verify this.

Posters seen at movie theaters featured a calf, hand-drawn in pen without color, alongside handwritten slogans: “Come on over if you’re into the bizarre” and “No refunds.”

A 'terrible' movie viewers recommend as a prank

On Douban, a popular Chinese movie-review platform, viewers piled on with mocking and bewildered comments.

Among the most popular: “unbelievably terrible and eye-opening,” “a symbol of the new internet troll culture,” and “a must-watch for Chinese stock market investors.” The last is a play on the film’s name, “Niu Lai,” which literally means “the bull is coming” in Chinese — a wish for a bull market.

Comments such as “over nine out of ten,” and “awesome and highly recommended” are also among the sarcastic reactions.

“My initial intention has always been to play pranks on my friends,” said Du Mingxi, a 19-year-old college student in Shanghai.

“If a friend asks me what I think about the movie, I’d say good and recommend them to watch,” he said, adding that he successfully tricked two friends to watch the movie with him. Both found it fun, but one fell asleep during the viewing.

Du compared young people going to the movies to see this kind of film to the mysterious “six-seven” craze in the U.S., saying that some are just drawn to things they find weird or funny, with many jumping on a trend whether they get it or not.

“They are just the same, it is funny but hard to describe what's funny about it, and young people just love spreading these memes virally,” said Du.

Despite the flood of criticism and memes, some viewers didn't mind the rudimentary production.

Zhong Jiaming, a vocational schoolteacher in Guangzhou, called it a rare find in an era when movies are often “visually exquisite and polished, but their stories can fail to engage.”

“This is a movie for the young at heart," said Zhong. "It is simple and honest, like a bedtime story for children.”

The outbreak unfolding in one of Congo’s most vulnerable regions is the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak ever, with 4,945 cases including 2,325 deaths, according to government data released overnight into Monday.

It's Congo’s 17th outbreak, with a toll that has eclipsed that of the country's 2018-2020 outbreak when 2,299 deaths out of 3,481 cases were recorded.

The latest data shows 101 new cases and 33 deaths reported in the previous 24 hours. Over 1,000 people have recovered, while 730 remain in hospitals or isolation.

The outbreak has infected and killed more people at a greater speed than any other outbreak in history. The World Health Organization has said it is on track to surpass the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the deadliest on record with more than 11,000 deaths.

Trish Newport, emergency coordinator with Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said the limited community engagement in the outbreak remains a key challenge.

“The community needs to be aware about the outbreak," she told The Associated Press, adding that people "need to be involved in the response, and they need to know what the signs and symptoms are and what to do if they get sick. And this today is not happening in every single place where there are Ebola cases.”

Starting from the first confirmed case, the outbreak reached the 2,000 death toll almost three times faster than in the 2014-16 outbreak.

Some families have lost up to 15 of their relatives in the epicenter, the Ituri province, said Newport.

“We rapidly need to scale up to be able to prevent more deaths from happening, more families and communities from being impacted,” she added.

There are no approved vaccines or treatments for the rare Bundibugyo virus responsible for the current outbreak across six provinces in Congo's east. Trials for those are ongoing in Ituri.

Most new cases and deaths are being reported outside of the people being monitored. Challenges facing medical teams dealing with the outbreak also include strikes by some unpaid health workers, threats by rebel groups, anger from long-traumatized communities, bad roads making it difficult to reach all the affected territories, and misinformation claiming that Ebola isn’t real.

WHO warned over the weekend that the outbreak is still moving at an “exceptional pace” ahead of efforts to track it, noting that it reached a weekly record of 579 cases and 304 deaths in the previous week.

“A substantial scaling up of response activities is underway to get ahead of the outbreak,” the U.N. health agency said.

Experts believe the virus was spreading in the mining town of Mongbwalu as early as February — months before authorities declared the outbreak on May 15.

On Friday, U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher announced the allocation of an additional $30.5 million and the deployment of 20 more staff to aid the response on the frontlines.

“This is a wake-up call,” Fletcher said. “We need speed, scale and solidarity before this virus gets even further ahead of us.”

“Let’s be clear, Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But he did plan the shooting in retaliation of the beating of his nephew,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors at the start of Davis' Las Vegas trial. “Remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself.”

Davis, 63, could get life in prison if he's convicted of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. He has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer in the defense opening called the prosecution's narrative “fiction.”

Palal showed jurors video of Shakur’s entourage attacking Davis’ nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson outside the boxing match at the MGM Grand hours before the shooting on Sept. 7, 1996.

Davis spent the next two hours planning how to get even, said Palal, and Shakur was gunned down “in an act of revenge.”

Shakur remains a cultural icon and is considered one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time, despite dying at 25.

What he told the FBI and investigators

In a 2008 interview with a federal task force investigating the killing of Shakur's rival, the Notorious B.I.G., Davis instead talked about the Shakur shooting. He described handing a gun to the men in the backseat of a white Cadillac that fired on a black BMW with Shakur and Marion “Suge” Knight inside.

As prosecutors played audio of Davis explaining the moment Shakur was shot, members of Shakur’s family, including his stepbrother Maurice “Mopreme” Shakur, stared ahead and listened intently from the audience.

Palal told jurors Davis held onto a visceral hatred for Shakur for decades that drove him to speak.

He said the defendant talked to the FBI in 1998 and again in 1999, admitting he had been in Las Vegas at the time of the shooting.

In 2009, he admitted to his role in the killing in an interview with Las Vegas police, Palal said.

“And now 30 years later, we’re going to ask you to finally hold Duane Davis accountable,” Palal said.

He also showed jurors the 2019 memoir that Davis co-authored, “Compton Street Legend,” that the prosecution will use and that the defense fought to keep out of the trial, along with several of the defendant's interviews.

How Davis' legal team is defending him

Davis, wearing a blue suit and tie, sat quietly with his hands folded on the table in front of him, occasionally nodding along as his attorney gave his opening, and often scanned the room during testimony to see who was in the gallery.

“What they are telling you, they are representing as fact, when it’s really fiction,” Michael Sanft said. “There’s no facts."

He said Davis wasn't previously charged because law enforcement knew that he was “full of crap.”

The defense attorney also pointed to missing documents in the original investigation and distrust between police departments.

He called one detective’s work “biased,” “sloppy” and “incomplete.”

Sanft said outside court at the end of the day that he thought the 30 years that had elapsed would help Davis.

“The length of time is going to be a huge problem for people trying to recall things, to remember things,” the lawyer said. “That’s just not how it works.”

Asked about the oddity of calling his client “full of crap" and similar things, he said, “We all have a family member who's like that.”

Briefly a suspect in Notorious B.I.G.'s death

Former Los Angeles Police Department detective Fred Miller — assigned to the investigation of the 1997 shooting death of the Notorious B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace — testified remotely and said that Davis had briefly been suspected in that shooting.

Davis admitted to being present at a party at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles where Wallace and Sean “Diddy” Combs were guests. Wallace was shot as he was leaving.

Sanft objected to the inclusion of the testimony. The judge, with prosecutors’ agreement, told jurors that police do not believe Davis was involved.

Most eyewitnesses are no longer alive

The story of the drive-by shooting has long gripped the hip-hop community, partly because no one was charged until Davis was indicted in 2023.

The other three men riding in the Cadillac have all died in the years since.

Retired Las Vegas police officer Garry Dale was the first of the 35 to 45 witnesses the prosecution plans to call at the trial expected to last about a month.

He testified that he and another officer stopped Knight and Shakur's car for missing a license plate, warned them and let them go.

About 10 minutes later the officers responded to a shooting call and found EMTs pulling Shakur from the car. Dale said Knight had been grazed by bullets, but told the officers to take care of Shakur.

Dale jumped in the ambulance and asked Shakur who shot him. The retired officer said that Shakur said something like “no, we’ll take care of it.”

Brent Becker, a former Las Vegas homicide detective, testified that Knight showed up to a police interview with attorneys, which he thought was odd because Knight was a victim. Knight was timid, his interview was practiced and he told investigators he knew nothing, Becker said.

“I thought he lied to us,” Becker said in video testimony.

Becker said it was difficult to get other witnesses to talk and they “were leaning on” Davis, Anderson, Deandrae “Freaky” Smith and Terry “Bubble Up” Brown as the men in the Cadillac, but had no living witnesses who could identify them.

Witnesses describe the night Tupac was shot

Ingrid Stokes testified that she and her friends were heading home from Las Vegas when they encountered Shakur and Knight, who were friends with a woman in Stokes’ group.

Knight invited them to a nightclub, she said, and they decided to meet them there.

The car Stokes was riding in was one lane over and a car length ahead of Knight's vehicle, when they heard gunshots.

Stokes said they drove off in fear and almost hit a white four-door vehicle in the process.

When they returned to the scene, police made them sit on the sidewalk and treated them like suspects, she said. Stokes was scared to be seen in public talking about the case, worried about poor treatment from law enforcement and the potential for retribution.

“Snitches get stitches,” she said.

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Associated Press journalists Ty ONeil in Las Vegas, Becky Boone in Boise, Idaho, John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, and Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

William Frances Silvia, 61, would be the 13th prisoner put to death this year in Florida, which has two more executions scheduled in September and has carried out more than half of the nation's 22 executions so far in 2026.

Silvia is scheduled to receive a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke starting at 6 p.m. local time.

A final appeal was still pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Courts twice sentenced Silvia to death

Silvia was sentenced to death after being convicted of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder for the deadly 2006 attack on Patricia Silvia, along with her mother, Betty Woodard.

According to court records, Silvia purchased a shotgun that year and then went to Woodard’s Orlando-area home, where his wife had been living since their separation two months earlier. The family was in the middle of a cookout when Silvia arrived, and after an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile, authorities said Silvia retrieved the shotgun from his truck and shot the two women.

William Silvia was first sentenced to death following his 2008 trial. A court later vacated that sentence following an appeal related to Florida's death penalty sentencing procedures, but after being granted a new death penalty phase in 2018, he was again sentenced to death.

A Florida state agency, the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, provides legal representation to death row inmates. Silvia's attorneys have argued that the agency couldn't provide adequate legal assistance because it was already helping another death row inmate. The Florida Supreme Court rejected the appeal.

Florida leads the way in executions

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with 19, a record in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

In July, Florida executed two prisoners in one day, the first state in nearly a decade to do so.

Two more executions are planned in Florida next month. Harold Gene Lucas, 74, is scheduled to die on Sept. 1, followed by Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, on Sept. 10.

Lucas was convicted of fatally shooting a 16-year-old girl who rejected his romantic advances and wounding two of her friends.

Conahan was convicted of kidnapping and strangling a man that he had paid to pose for nude photos, and authorities suspect him of similar homicides committed in the 1990s in southwest Florida.

All Florida executions are carried out via lethal injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell told reporters before practice that Adams will have surgery and stay in Minnesota for his rehabilitation so he can serve as a mentor to the younger players.

Adams, the sixth overall pick in the 2017 draft, made three Pro Bowls and was an All-Pro in 2019 with the New York Jets. He has been an excellent blitzer who set the NFL season record for sacks by a defensive back (9½) in 2020 after being traded to the Seattle Seahawks. Injuries have derailed him since then, with Minnesota becoming his fifth team in four years. Adams tore his left quadriceps in the 2022 season opener.

Adams, who transitioned to linebacker in a part-time role last year with the Las Vegas Raiders, has 55 tackles for loss, 22½ sacks, eight forced fumbles, four fumble recoveries and four interceptions in his career. He'd made a strong impact on the Vikings in the two-plus weeks he'd been with the team. The 30-year-old Adams was injured in his first exhibition game after signing just before the start of training camp.

“He’s a Minnesota Viking now, and we want to make sure that he knows how important he’ll be to our players and team,” O'Connell said.

The Vikings signed cornerback Bryce Phillips, who originally entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent with Kansas City following this year's draft. His brother, Clark Phillips III, plays cornerback for Atlanta after starring collegiately at Utah.

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See AP’s full NFL coverage here

The 1,300 residents of Kandersteg, in Switzerland’s Bern canton, live amid a quintessential Alpine landscape of sharp peaks, white glaciers, steep green valleys and the distant sound of cowbells.

But a catastrophe looms over the quiet village: a mountainside rock formation called Spitze Stei, part of a mountain landscape increasingly affected by thawing permafrost, threatens to collapse into the valley in a massive landslide.

“You are aware that it’s happening, but not afraid,” said Brigitte Jüni, an inhabitant of Kandersteg. She said authorities took all the precautions they could.

“But then it’s nature. It’s nature and you never know,” Jüni added.

As glaciers and permafrost — the frozen soil sediment and rock that acts like a glue holding mountains together — melt due to higher temperatures caused by climate change, the threat of landslides is rising in the Swiss Alps.

In May 2025, a huge mass of rock and ice from a glacier thundered down the mountainside in the nearby Loetschental valley, sending plumes of dust skyward and coating with mud nearly all of Blatten, which had been evacuated earlier as a precaution.

Markus Stoffel, professor for climate change and natural risks at the University of Geneva, said climate change leads to the melting of both glaciers and permafrost.

“In the mountains and in the unconsolidated debris, there is lots of ice,” Stoffel said. “Once this ice is melting, it acts like a cement. These mountain slopes will become increasingly unstable.”

Locals in Kandersteg say their situation is different from Blatten and that preparations made already allow them to live calmly.

“This isn’t the same case as in Blatten. It’s a different situation,” said local resident Rudolf Isler. “We are not afraid of the Spitze Stei rock. It’s been many years seeing stones falling from up there. The problem here is about global warming and rising temperatures.”

If the entire unstable section of the Spitze Stei — estimated at roughly 15--20 million cubic meters — were to collapse, it would trigger a massive natural disaster. But the rock is under constant monitoring, evacuation plans are prepared and experts say the rock is more likely to break down gradually than in one huge chunk.

Nathan Solothurnmann, a climate and energy expert for Greenpeace Switzerland, says that climate change means landslides or avalanches will become more common.

“Maybe even one day we will have to abandon certain valleys or certain villages because it’s becoming impossible to live there,” Solothurnmann said. “Or the measure you will need to take to protect infrastructure is so expensive, the efforts are so big, that it’s not worthwhile anymore living there.”

U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds is banking on President Donald Trump ’s endorsement in hopes of securing the Republican nomination and advance to the fall election. His opponents include Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and political newcomer James Fishback.

Democrats' leading candidate for governor is David Jolly, a former Republican congressman who switched parties last year.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a leading conservative figure who has clashed and collaborated with Trump over the years, is barred from running for a third consecutive term.

The primaries are giving final form to a November ballot whose races will test Trump’s grip on his adopted state and Democrats' ability to resurrect Florida as a national political battleground. Florida has moved notably to the right since Trump won his first election in 2016, though Democrats hope to regain ground from his slumping popularity ratings.

Two Democrats are battling for nomination in a U.S. Senate special election to complete Marco Rubio’s term after he became Trump's secretary of state last year. Progressive state lawmake r Angie Nixon matches up against retired Army Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, a former National Security Council official who testified in Trump's first impeachment case in 2019.

Meanwhile, Sen. Ashley Moody, the DeSantis appointee currently holding the seat, appears in a strong position as she seeks the Republican nomination with Trump's endorsement for the term's final two years.

For Congress, Tuesday's biggest nominating fight involves longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and others in a redrawn south Florida district.

Wasserman Schultz, who is white, wants voters in the new, plurality Black district to grant her a 12th term. Cherfilus-McCormick is seeking a comeback after resigning earlier this year under a pending federal indictment and threat of House ethics sanctions.

Donalds is trying to make history — and Jolly, too

There have been three elected Black governors in U.S. history. Yet the 47-year-old Donalds is more likely to tout his conservative credentials than the possibility of joining that select group.

He promises to push tax cuts, overhaul Florida's insurance regulations to lower consumer costs and seek greater price transparency from health care providers.

“The people of Florida want to make sure that the Florida dream is alive and well into the future,” he said recently. “Affordability is a problem for all Floridians. It doesn't matter what your politics are. It doesn't matter what the color of your skin is.”

Trump has had an inconsistent record on picks for governor in primaries this year, and a strong showing by Donalds would leave him, and Republicans in general, in a more commanding position for November. Though DeSantis coasted to reelection in 2022, he squeaked into office in 2018 by little more of 32,000 ballots out of 8.1 million cast.

Jolly is hoping ultimately to prove a party-switching former Republican can actually carry the Democratic banner in a state where that's failed before. Democrats nominated former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist in 2022 only to see him lose by nearly 20 percentage points to DeSantis.

Can Democrats make the Senate race interesting?

Moody, a former state attorney general tapped for Rubio's seat in 2025, is in a strong position seeking the GOP nomination. DeSantis, when he appointed her, praised her as a law-and-order prosecutor ready to help Trump “shut the border,” tame inflation, and overhaul a federal bureaucracy “run amok.”

Democrats face a familiar theme of 2026 primaries, with the progressive Nixon confronting Vindman from the party's center-left establishment. Vindman's testimony in 2019 was notable in the Democrat-led House impeachment case that led to Trump's acquittal in the Republican-led Senate. Trump ousted Vindman afterward.

Floridians haven’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2012.

Wasserman Schultz runs in a new plurality Black district

Serving in Congress since 2005 , she faces a new district — thanks to DeSantis' successful push for new congressional maps amid the national redistricting battle intended to boost Trump's midterm election prospects.

It’s not the first time Wasserman Schultz has had to convince new voters after Republicans tinkered with boundaries. But this time she’s the only white candidate in a plurality Black district. The redrawn Florida 20th is concentrated in the most Democratic and diverse parts of Broward County, and doesn't include her hometown of Weston, west of Fort Lauderdale.

Her four Black primary opponents — including Cherfilus-McCormick — have argued the district requires a Black representative. Wasserman Schultz disagrees.

“Representation matters and lived experience matters. But experience and making sure that you have someone who has the seniority and the seasoning to be able to deliver for a district, it matters as well,” she said.

Cherfilus-McCormick, meanwhile, wants to return to Congress despite a pending federal indictment that accuses her of stealing $5 million in federal disaster aid. She has plead not guilty and disputed alleged violations of House rules.

Republican Rep. Cory Mills faces primary challenges

DeSantis and other Republicans have bailed on Republican Rep. Cory Mills as he seeks a third term in Florida's 7th Congressional District at the same time he's denying domestic violence allegations. He faces three primary opponents.

“I have not endorsed Cory Mills, and I do not support Cory Mills,” DeSantis said recently in Mills' district.

Turnout could offer clues to November

Registered Republicans now outnumber Democrats in Florida, a relatively recent flip. That puts the burden on Republicans to outperform Democrats comfortably in overall primary turnout. If it’s close – with Democrats coaxing a clearly larger percentage of their voters to the polls – then the party would be more optimistic heading into November, as Democrats witnessed with primary turnout in other states this year. If Republicans buck national trends and dominate, then Democrats could be facing another rough fall campaign.

Miami-Dade will be especially notable. Democrats carried the county comfortably through 2016, when Trump lost it to Hillary Clinton by 30 percentage points. Four years later, Trump closed the gap to 7 points before carrying it in 2024 by more than 11 points.

The All-Star center fielder and MVP contender hit his fifth leadoff homer of the season to start the game. Then he ended it when he led off the 10th by driving a 2-1 slider from Hagen Smith (2-1) deep into the right-field patio area. It was the 30th homer of the season for Crow-Armstrong, one short of his career best from last year. With 31 stolen bases this year, he also has back-to-back 30-30 seasons.

Crow-Amstrong took his left hand off the bat after he connected and pointed it skyward as he began walking down the first-base line. He turned toward the dugout and celebrated before starting his slow, exuberant home run trot.

Seiya Suzuki also homered for the Cubs and Jacob Webb (5-2) left the bases loaded in the top of the 10th to set the stage for Crow-Armstrong, who drove in automatic runner Carson Kelly. The Cubs' leadoff batter finished 4 for 5 with a walk.

The Cubs snapped a two-game skid and ended the White Sox's three-game winning streak. Randal Grichuk and Andrew Benintendi homered for the White Sox, who had won six of eight and took two of three from the Cubs on the South side earlier this season.

Nico Hoerner’s RBI single tied the game in the bottom of the ninth. In the eighth, pinch-hitter Benintendi sent Ryan Zeferjahn’s first offering into the right-field basket for a two-run homer to give the White Sox a 5-4 lead.

Crow-Armstrong drove Luis Castillo’s first pitch down the right-field line and out. Suzuki belted one to deep left center four pitches later. Grichuk's three-run homer, his 10th, put the White Sox ahead 3-2 in the fourth.

Cubs starter Shota Imanaga allowed three runs on two hits and struck out 10 — one off his season high — in six innings.

Up next

RHP Kevin Gausman (6-11, 4.53 ERA) goes for the Cubs on Tuesday. The White Sox had not named a starter.

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See AP’s full MLB coverage here

The sisters nearly recovered from a 6-0 deficit in the match tiebreaker before a double-fault by Venus Williams ended their first doubles appearance in a non-Grand Slam event since the Italian Open in 2016.

“I thought it was fun,” Serena said. “I thought it was special. We kicked off a little rust in the middle of the match and just, you know (were) starting to feel it. I didn’t come out here to win this tournament. Winning is obviously great. But in this position just, you know, having fun. It was really cool to be able to do this again.”

Serena had been off the tour since 2022 before returning this summer at age 44. The sisters planned to play together at Wimbledon but had to withdraw after Serena injured her knee while losing her singles match. They entered Cincinnati as a wild card.

“Eventually we would find our way to each other,” the 46-year-old Venus said about the decision to play doubles again. “It's our first time playing together in forever. It was great for us to get out there and do it.”

Kostyuk and Stearns, both 24, are playing in their first tournament together. Kostyuk is from Ukraine. Stearns grew up in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason, where the tournament is played every year.

“I kind of expected it but it stung a little bit that this is my hometown,” Stearns said about the pro-Williams sisters crowd. “I won't hold it against anyone. The crowd was going for them but we used it to our advantage and flipped the script.”

After dropping the first set, the Williams sisters rolled in the second to force a match tiebreak.

Kostyuk and Stearns went ahead 6-0, but consecutive double-faults by Kostyuk helped the Williamses get within 8-7. It was 9-8 after Serena powerfully put away an overhead before Venus double-faulted.

“The crowd got the show,” Kostyuk said. “They probably couldn’t ask for anything better. At the end a tiebreak is a lottery. You never know which way it’s going to go.”

Venus and Serena have won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles and 22 total. Serena won one with Alexandra Stevenson in 2002 at Leipzig. All of Venus' doubles titles have been with her sister. They also have won three Olympic gold medals together.

Serena has won 23 singles Grand Slam titles. Venus has won seven.

Swiatek rallies for 3-set win and other results

In other results Monday, defending Cincinnati champion Iga Swiatek rallied from a set down to win her eighth consecutive match, beating Maria Sakkari, 4-6, 6-1, 6-1.

No. 2 seed Elena Rybakina beat Magdalena Frech, 6-4, 7-6. Third-ranked Jessica Pegula beat fellow American Emma Navarro, 7-5, 6-2.

World No. 3 and top seed Alexander Zverev won his ATP-tour leading 46th match this season, outlasting Terence Atmane, 7-6 (4), 7-6 (6).

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Lamour, who is based in Zurich, all but invited Infantino to fire him in a statement to The Associated Press on Aug. 1 that defended his colleagues amid intense fallout from the plan to sell stakes in future World Cup profits to private equity funds.

Lamour wrote that staff were “deceived” by Infantino’s lack of openness in planning. He released the statement on the say day Infantino’s senior adviser, Carlos Cordeiro, decided to walk away and described the $20 billion commercial subsidiary plan as “a bad deal for football.”

Britain's Press Association late Monday quoted a FIFA spokesperson as saying: “FIFA can confirm that the working relationship between FIFA and Kevin Lamour as FIFA’s Chief Operating Officer has ended.”

“FIFA thanks Kevin for his two years of service and wishes him the best of luck for the future. No further comment will be made on the matter.”

Infantino is seeking reelection as FIFA president but remains under pressure after the heads of three continental confederations — for Europe, Asia and for North, Central America and the Caribbean — issued an open letter last week saying his World Cup plan was a “fundamental breach of trust” and described it as “deception.”

Infantino withdrew the $20 billion proposal after a furious backlash by global soccer officials, including European body UEFA, which has warned of a boycott of all FIFA games and events.

Some national federations have withdrawn their support for Infantino, although the heads of six Arab soccer federations last week expressed their “full support” and “confidence” in the president.

Infantino has been FIFA president since 2016 and, until the backlash over the so-called FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal, seemed sure to be reelected unopposed next year in Morocco. FIFA has set a Nov. 18 deadline for challengers to come forward.

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See AP’s full soccer coverage here

Syrians have taken to social media and the streets in recent days to demand answers about the death of Mohammad Ghamira, who was buried Monday in his hometown of al-Haffah in coastal Latakia province.

When insurgents unseated former President Bashar Assad in December 2024 after a nearly 14-year civil war, they opened the country's notorious prisons. During Assad's rule, rights groups say, thousands of prisoners were killed in mass executions or died from injuries and disease. Detainees were subjected to torture, beatings and rape.

Officials with the government of interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa have promised accountability in Ghamira’s case, but rights groups say it is not an isolated incident and that abuses persist in detention centers.

The detainee had hemophilia, which affects blood clotting

Ghamira, a 29-year-old father of two, was a former volunteer with the White Helmets civil defense organization, which operated in opposition-held areas before Assad's fall.

He died in a hospital in Latakia on Sunday after being released from jail. He had been detained days earlier following an "allegation of theft involving a sum of money,” Latakia’s internal security command said in a statement, without giving more details.

Syria’s Minister of Emergency and Disaster Management Raed al-Saleh, who was previously head of the White Helmets, said on X that Ghamira had died of “complications from cerebral and gastrointestinal hemorrhaging” that “resulted from a beating he sustained after being detained at the al-Haffah police station.”

Al-Saleh and Ghamira’s relatives said he had hemophilia, a condition affecting the blood’s ability to clot.

Ghamira’s uncle, Issam Ghamira, said in a video interview with state news agency SANA that the family had told the police chief in al-Haffah that his nephew had hemophilia and warned against hitting him. Despite that, he said, his nephew was hit while in custody.

Syria’s interior ministry announced an investigation into Ghamira’s death and said seven interior ministry personnel were detained for questioning.

Syria’s Interior Ministry spokesperson Noureddine al-Baba, speaking to journalists, acknowledged “shortcomings and deficiencies” in some of the country's police departments but said others were doing “exceptional” work.

“God willing, this painful incident will serve as a catalyst for positive change in the operations of the ministry of interior," he said.

Watchdogs call Ghamira’s death part of a wider problem

In a report released in March, the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic said it had documented “torture and ill-treatment” in 18 official detention facilities and 12 “makeshift facilities” in different areas of Syria between January and October 2025, in the months following Assad's ouster as the new government asserted control.

The practices it documented included beating prisoners with rifle butts, sticks, pipes, bars and cables; the use of electric shocks and other forms of torture; mock executions; and sexual violence.

Syrians for Truth and Justice, a human rights organization that tracks abuses, in a report published earlier this month said that “severe beatings, electric shocks, humiliation, threats, deprivation of basic necessities, and deaths in custody continue to be common practices at the hands of multiple security and military actors.”

The group concluded that the incidents were too widespread to treat as isolated incidents but that there was no evidence of a “single centralized system equivalent in structure and direction to the torture apparatus entrenched by the Assad regime.”

“It is somehow widespread, but it’s not structured,” Bassam Alahmad, the group’s executive director, told The Associated Press. “For us, there is no evidence that these orders came from the commanders to torture people, but still (the authorities) have a responsibility to stop this behavior."

Syrians whose loved ones disappeared or died in detention centers during Assad’s rule said they were disturbed to see the patterns being repeated under the new government.

Families for Freedom, a group representing relatives of detainees, said in a statement, “What happened to Mohammed reopens the wounds of torture and death in detention for thousands of Syrian families — practices Syrians have struggled for years to end, and the recurrence of which cannot be accepted today.”

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Sewell reported from Beirut.

The globally recognized “Hips Don't Lie” musician made the pledge during a surprise visit to Quibdó, the capital of the Colombian province of Chocó, where she toured damaged schools, hugging students and taking photos with them.

"What worries me the most is that schools are not rebuilt once this emergency is over,” Shakira told journalists. “Every day that children don’t go to school is a day they miss out on their future.”

She was accompanied by Howard Buffett, son of billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett and longtime donor to Colombia who has helped Shakira set up schools there before. The Howard G. Buffett foundation will collaborate with Shakira's Fundación Pies Descalzos, or Barefoot Foundation, on reconstructing the 10 schools.

“When she calls, I come,” Buffett said during the visit.

The singer also told reporters she planned to dedicate her “personal efforts” to rebuilding a local technological university in Chocó and announced pledges of $500,000 each from the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund and Live Nation and $250,000 from CAF Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean toward rebuilding schools and getting children back into classrooms.

The 7.4 magnitude quake on Aug. 10 struck a vast swath of western Colombia, killing at least 287 people and destroying more than 26,000 dwellings, authorities said. The government has said 194 people are missing, while other civilian-run databases put the number at more than 4,100.

The epicenter was in Chocó, one of Colombia's poorest regions and where at least 3,100 homes were destroyed and over 265 educational sites affected, according to the regional government latest report Monday.

“It’s a place I love, a place where I’ve seen our students grow in our classrooms,” Shakira said in a video posted on X by the Colombian news outlet La FM. Her foundation, which focuses on educational access for youths in Colombia, has been in Chocó for 22 years, running two schools from which hundreds of students have graduated, she said. “I really want to see it rebuild again.”

Aid groups have struggled to assess the damage so far in Chocó, an area the size of Switzerland where communication is difficult. The province has few roads linking it to the rest of the country, and its towns and villages are connected mostly by rivers and unpaved roads.

Most of Chocó's 600,000 inhabitants live in poverty, according to figures published last year by Colombia’s national government, and it is largely inhabited by Indigenous tribes and Afro Colombian communities.

“There is not a way to alleviate the pain of so many, there are no magic solutions," Shakira, 49, said during her visit to a large high school in Quibdó. “But what there is, is commitment to be here alongside those from Chocó, to not abandon El Chocó like it historically has been abandoned, until every Colombian and every person from Chocó can return to their normal lives like they deserve and all the children can return to their schools and dream of the futures they deserve."

The Grammy award winner known for hits like “Whenever, Wherever,” “La Tortura,” and the 2026 FIFA World Cup anthem “Dai Dai” is a longtime supporter of educational access and advancement. She recently headlined the halftime show of the World Cup final match in July and performed in May on Brazil’s Copacabana Beach to a crowd of 2 million.

After Venezuela’s twin earthquakes in June, Shakira announced the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund would commit $500,000 to education recovery there.

Her announcement Monday is the latest of many commitments from prominent Colombians and other Latin American artists to help Colombia and Venezuela. On Sunday, Marc Anthony and Chayanne joined dozens of other artists at a Miami benefit concert and live fundraiser for both countries' earthquake relief.

Colombian singer Karol G pledged to match fan donations to her Con Cora Foundation during her three-night run at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles last weekend. She will also join Maluma, Sebastián Yatra and others at a benefit concert in Bogotá this Sunday.

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An earlier correction stated Shakira committed to building 10 new schools, not rebuilding 10 schools. She and Buffett are helping reconstruct the schools, not building new ones.

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Gabriela Aoun Angueira reported from San Diego.

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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.

Marte failed to show up for Arizona's game at Boston Monday night and manager Torey Lovullo was still searching for answers after it was over.

“It's been a crazy day. All I know is that he’s dealing with a personal issue — we’re just trying to figure that out,” Lovullo told reporters following the Diamondbacks' 11-1 loss to the Red Sox. “He didn’t show up today and he was put on the restricted list. That’s as much as I know right now. I'm sure in time we'll start to uncover some information.”

Lovullo said he spoke to Marte Monday morning and afternoon trying to find out what was going on, but didn't get any answers.

“There was very little coming back,” Lovullo said.

Marte traveled with the team to Boston and Lovullo thought he was still there, but wasn't certain.

This wasn't the first time Marte had a strange disappearance.

Last season, he went on the restricted list when his home in Arizona was broken into during the All-Star break. He missed three games after flying back to his home in the Dominican Republic and later apologized for his absence.

“I know there was a lot of discussions about it at different points of time in the clubhouse today — there was a lot of curiosity,” Lovullo said. “We care for Ketel and once we knew he was OK, I think everybody relaxed and started to focus on the game.”

A three-time All-Star, Marte is hitting .249 with 21 homers and 67 RBIs in 118 games this season.

Arizona recalled infielder Jose Fernandez to fill Marte’s roster spot. He was already in Boston in case third baseman Nolan Arenado wasn't able to play after leaving Sunday's game against Atlanta with what the team called “trunk discomfort.”

Arenado didn't play against the Red Sox, but his injury wasn't expected to be long term.

Marte's status — on the field and in the clubhouse — going forward is a bit foggier.

“I haven’t got that far,” Lovullo said. “I need a good night’s rest, a glass of wine and we’ll think about that.”

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See AP’s full MLB coverage here

The standoff, in the village of Qusra, has seen groups of settlers surround several Palestinian houses and prevent residents from leaving. The United States has condemned the siege and the Israeli military has deployed troops it says are there to maintain order.

The siege of Palestinian homes by Israeli settlers comes as violence in the West Bank has soared in recent months. The settlers, emboldened by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, have ramped up attacks on Palestinian towns and villages, harassing residents and setting homes, mosques and fields ablaze.

Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 87 Palestinians so far this year, according to Palestinian health officials. Palestinians have killed three Israelis, including two who were killed during clashes in the West Bank village of Tell last month.

As Loui Ridi, an Ohio-based owner of one of the houses, landed in Israel, settlers were still roaming near Qusra, according to video footage taken by his brother. It showed settlers driving ATVs and speaking with soldiers.

Ridi had also watched the scenes unfold from afar through his home security cameras.

“I've been watching this live for many days and now this is the second week. I can't sleep,” he told reporters at Israel’s main international airport. “I can’t let the settlers steal my house while I was watching."

He finally arrived in Qusra on Monday evening, where he first reunited with his mother and sister before moving on to his house. Ridi's brother, Qusai Abu Rida, and his teenage son had stayed inside the home to protect the property.

As Ridi waited for Israel’s military to escort him to the house, he said he believed little had changed since early last week, when the siege began.

Israel has since declared the neighborhood where Ridi’s home is located a closed military zone. But on Monday, his brother’s footage still showed soldiers interacting amicably with settlers.

“I should be able to go to my house freely, anytime I want,” he said. “It is a frustration and a nightmare for the entire family.”

__ Metz reported from Tel Aviv, Israel.

The ruling is the latest development in a yearslong battle over where to house the main office for the nation's premier law enforcement agency. A site in Greenbelt, Maryland, was picked during former President Joe Biden's administration, but Trump appointees sought to reverse that decision last year in favor of repurposing the Ronald Reagan Building, a federal office complex a few blocks from the FBI's existing headquarters.

U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang, an appointee of President Barack Obama, ruled that the move was “ not in accordance with law,” and blocked the Trump administration from moving the FBI to the Reagan building, renovating it for the FBI or repurposing funds.

“This is not the first time courts have tried to undermine the administration in its goal to make government more cost-effective for American taxpayers,” the FBI said in a statement. “The court has chosen to impermissibly intervene for political reasons. This FBI is mission focused and will continue the best course of action to meet the needs of law enforcement.”

The suit was brought by the state of Maryland and Prince George's County.

“Maryland and Prince George’s County committed more than a decade of work to earn the FBI headquarters and pledged hundreds of millions of dollars," Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, a Democrat, said in a statement. “By blocking the Trump Administration’s unlawful attempt to move the FBI to the Reagan Building and divert the funds Congress set aside for this project, the Court has cleared the path back to Greenbelt.”

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, also a Democrat, said, "Now it is time to stop the games and get to work building the world-class FBI headquarters that our public servants deserve, where it belongs: in Prince George’s County, Maryland.”

The FBI's current Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, was dedicated in 1975. Proponents of moving the headquarters have said the brutalist-style building, where nets surround the facility to protect pedestrians from falling debris, has fallen into disrepair.

The Maryland location was selected over nearby Virginia following an intense competition between the two states.

In central and east central Indiana, emergency operations were still ongoing after days of punishing storms, Gov. Mike Braun said at afternoon news conference, while other areas were shifting to recovery. He said the state had launched a disaster relief fund to provide $5,000 to individuals needing to buy basics such as clothing and food.

“We're tracking your needs, and we will get you resources,” he said. “We want displaced Hoosiers to have a hot meal, comfortable bed and get into air-conditioning.”

The National Weather Service said heavy rain would continue one more day before a cold front sweeps the weather pattern off the East Coast on Tuesday. Meanwhile, flash flood warnings were issued over parts of waterlogged West Virginia, where residents were cleaning up Monday after more than 4 inches (10 centimeters) of rain fell over the weekend, causing mudslides, tearing up roads, prompting water rescues and contributing to at least one death.

Elsewhere, hot weather posed more of a problem, particularly across the South and Southwest. The weather service issued extreme heat warnings for portions of Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Arizona, Nevada and California.

Indiana is seeking recovery after days of deadly storms

In Indiana, where days of storms and flooding left at least seven people dead, floodwaters receded in Indianapolis’ White River and rains eased around the state Sunday. But a flood warning remained in effect Monday night for several rivers, including part of Randolph County in east central Indiana, where thunderstorms had dropped between 1 and 2 inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) of rain. Residents of half a dozen counties were urged to stay off the roads except for essential travel.

“While we have seen encouraging trends, the work is far from over,” said Jacob Spence, director of the Metropolitan Emergency Services Agency in Indianapolis, where city officials launched a website to support affected residents.

Oliver Riggle, 33, said he had just moved into a camping trailer in Indianapolis a few months ago after living in his car.

“Just having privacy again was a huge deal. I mean, I had a door that locked. I had a roof that was mine,” he said. “No one was gonna take it from me, except for apparently Mother Nature.”

A neighbor told Riggle the trailer nearly tipped over as it floated in the flood waters. It was still full of water Sunday, but by Monday, the water had receded and he was busy throwing away waterlogged belongings.

A handyman whose trailer flooded wants to help others salvage their homes

A handyman who works for a general contractor, Riggle said he hopes to help others salvage their own homes.

"I’ve got tools that I can use to help be a part of the community,” he said. “We’re just gonna have to have faith that we’re going to be able to pull through because it’s not like we’ve got a safety net.”

Michael Daily, 23, said he won’t be moving back into his rental home after it flooded and instead has moved in with his parents about half an hour away.

“It’s not helpful that you see everything you’ve worked for get destroyed. I’m definitely out a good chunk of change,” he said. “You can already see mold growing in spots in there, just like little white fluff balls everywhere. It’s pretty gross.”

South of Indianapolis, officials in Madison Township said firefighters and others rescued 10 people from their homes Sunday night. Others had to be rescued from cars after attempting to drive through flooded roadways.

A 4-year-old boy, three men and three women were among those who had died since the storms that began Aug. 11, said spokesperson Liz Woods with the state Department of Homeland Security.

A cyclist is found dead on a washed-out road after the flooding

Also among the seven victims was a 31-year-old cyclist found dead early Sunday in a hole that opened up on a washed-out road east of Indianapolis. Henry County Coroner Brian Clark said the man, James Briar, appears to have gone around a barricade and fallen into the collapsed road.

Heavy rains hammered Indiana over the past week, causing rivers to crest and setting records as roads and bridges were seriously damaged or washed out entirely.

More than 94,000 utility customers statewide remained without power as of Monday night, down from a peak of around 300,000, according to utility tracker PowerOutage.us.

The drenching rains and destructive flooding were among the impacts of severe storms that have wreaked havoc across the Midwest and beyond in recent days. Tornadoes, heavy rains and flash flooding brought serious damage to communities from Illinois to western Pennsylvania.

In southern West Virginia, authorities on Monday found the body of a woman whose vehicle was swept away in floodwaters. Witnesses told police that the vehicle made a wrong turn and entered a flooded area Sunday. A tree branch broke the vehicle’s glass and the woman tried to escape but she fell into the floodwaters and was carried away by the current, according to a statement by Fayette County Sheriff Jess McMullen.

The National Weather Service forecasts heavy rain and thunderstorms across the upper Ohio Valley to the central Appalachians, with the possibility of severe storms late Monday across eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.

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Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire. Associated Press writer John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia, contributed to this report.

The league said in a statement Monday that the fans should have been free to wear the shirts.

“The WNBA is aware of interactions at (Sunday) night’s game in Atlanta in which fans were asked by league security to cover their shirts,” the statement said. “This should not have happened.”

Two people wore shirts with a message that women's and girls' sports should be restricted to those assigned female at birth, while one person was wearing a shirt in support of transgender people.

The WNBA has been the subject of recent debates on whether transgender women — people assigned male at birth who transition to align with their gender identity — should be allowed to participate in the league. There has never been such a player in the WNBA. Although the league's collective bargaining agreement says the WNBA is restricted to women, it contains no more specific language about gender identity or sex assigned at birth.

There have been players in the league who were assigned female at birth and later came out as transgender or nonbinary.

Sophie Cunningham of the Fever said in an ESPN profile published last month that she was opposed to transgender girls and women competing in girls' and women's sports. Her stance led to small rallies and protests outside Fever games at Seattle and Portland, and Storm minority owner Celeste Keaton was given a five-game ban for confronting two fans who had signs supporting Cunningham.

The league has informed the security workers from the Atlanta game that they were wrong to ask that the messages be covered up.

The Dream said the team was not involved in the security personnel's actions.

“The Atlanta Dream believes in creating a safe and inclusive environment for everyone. Unfortunately, at last night’s game, WNBA security took actions that fell short of that standard,” the Dream said in a statement “At no point was Dream personnel involved in the decisions made by WNBA security.”

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See AP’s full WNBA coverage here

ESPN and The Athletic first reported that the siblings had voted to sell the family trust's remaining interest in the 17-time NBA champion team purchased by their father, Jerry Buss, in 1979. The decision would end Jeanie Buss' tenure as the Lakers' governor because that job requires at least 15% ownership of the team.

Jeannie Buss' attorney, Adam Streisand, wrote to representatives for her five siblings to state that any decision to sell the family trust's ownership stake could not be “effectuated without approval of the current co-trustees, Jeanie, Janie and Joey Buss.”

The letter further states that the co-trustees “are bound to vote the Los Angeles Lakers, Inc. shares to ensure that the minimum 15% ownership requirement is maintained in order to ensure that Jeanie Buss may remain Controlling Owner. Any attempt by the co-trustees to do otherwise, and any attempt to aid or abet the co-trustees as such, would constitute a breach of trust, breach of fiduciary duty and be in contempt of court.”

Jeanie Buss has been the Lakers’ governor since Jerry Buss’ death in 2013, and she led the family’s decision to sell a controlling stake in the Lakers to Dodgers owner Mark Walter last year at a valuation of $10 billion. Walter, who is under federal investigation for tax issues, abruptly reached a deal earlier this month to flip the Lakers to Kushner and Iger at a valuation of $12.5 billion, another record for a pro sports team.

Venture capitalist Kushner and former Disney CEO Iger are reportedly buying about 65% of the team from Walter. They would own about 83% if they reach a deal with the Buss siblings — and Jeanie Buss would lose the governor role that she had been slated to keep at least through 2030 under the deal with Walter.

The Buss siblings have been in frequent conflict since their father’s death, with Jeanie firing Jim from his job as the Lakers’ head of basketball operations in 2017, followed a week later by a lawsuit against her brothers amid an attempt by Jim and Johnny to oust Jeanie from her role as the Lakers’ controlling owner.

Not all of the six Buss siblings were in favor of the sale to Walter, and Joey and Jesse were fired from their front-office jobs with the team last November.

The siblings say they voted this month to sell their family's remaining interest in the Lakers, but Jeanie Buss claims any vote is void. ESPN reported that Jeanie Buss was the only sibling who didn't support the final sale.

“We have decided as a family to sell the remaining Buss Family Trust shares to the Bob Iger group as part of the ongoing transaction,” the Buss family said in a statement. “We love the Lakers, Laker fans and will continue to support Los Angeles, but it is time to use this opportunity to move on and exit gracefully while we still can.”

In his letter, Streisand said Joey and Jesse Buss have leaked information to ESPN for many years “for the malicious purpose of doing harm to the Los Angeles Lakers so long as Dr. Buss’s chosen successor, Jeanie Buss, carries out her father’s wishes.”

Jerry Buss was a chemist and real estate investor who bought the Lakers, the NHL's Los Angeles Kings and the Forum arena from Jack Kent Cooke for $67.5 million. The Lakers quickly entered a renaissance in which they became known for their flashy “Showtime” style of play while winning five NBA titles between 1980 and 1988 behind Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

While the NBA and professional sports became increasingly more corporate, the Lakers remained essentially a family business despite their massive profile and steady success. Jerry Buss and the Lakers have employed many of the basketball world's greatest players and coaches of the past five decades, and Kobe Bryant led the Lakers to five additional championships between 2000 and 2010 before LeBron James added the 17th in 2020.

The sale agreement with Kushner and Iger still must be approved by the NBA's board of governors, and the process could take months.

___

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

Tyler's “If I Sing You A Love Song" played as her rose-covered coffin was carried into Swansea Minster for the invite-only funeral that was projected on a screen outside. Her “It’s a Heartache” played as the coffin was placed in front of the altar.

“Bonnie was always a star but never a diva,” her manager, Matthew Davis, said in one of several tributes. “She never forgot her roots or where she came from. She would have been amazed and very gratified at the massive outpouring of love from all over the world that has occurred since her sudden and unexpected passing.”

The Grammy-nominated pop star, beloved for her 1983 chart-topping power ballad “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” died last month in a hospital in Portugal at 75. She had been hospitalized in May in Faro, where she had a home, for emergency intestinal surgery.

The funeral was held less than a week after her signature song served as the soundtrack at celebrations marking a total eclipse that darkened skies across parts of Europe.

Crowds lined the streets Saturday in her seaside Welsh village of Mumbles as a hearse carried her coffin, draped in a Welsh flag, home.

Kathleen Davies, who joined the crowd outside the church, said she was starstruck when she first saw Tyler but later came to learn she was down to earth.

“She’s Welsh through and through,” Davies said. "Everything about her, she’s natural, there’s no fake stuff. When you see her on the interviews, she’s just who she is.”

Tyler was born Gaynor Hopkins, a coal miner’s daughter in public housing with an outside toilet in Skewen, Wales, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) outside Swansea. She grew up with three sisters and two brothers.

Canon Justin Davies said in a eulogy written by her family that she first performed in a contest at a rugby club in the late 1960s, singing ”Those Were The Days,” made famous by Mary Hopkin.

“She came in second and won just one pound, but was hooked," Davies said. “The rest, as they say, was history.”

Tyler went on to earn three Grammy nods and in 2013 represented Britain at the Eurovision Song Contest, where she came in 19th. She was honored as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2022 for her services to music by Queen Elizabeth II, thanks mainly to “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

The ballad shot to the top of the charts in Britain and the United States and has had more than 1 billion streams, boosted by real eclipses in 2017, 2024 and most recently during last week’s solar eclipse.

She was also known for “Holding Out For a Hero,” from the soundtrack of the film “Footloose.”

___

Melley reported from London.

Trump explained his decision by citing South Korea’s refusal to join his war against Iran and pointing to what he said was his good relationship with North Korea’s reclusive dictator, a transactional and personal approach to foreign policy that has defined the Republican’s presidency.

“There is no American interest that I can see in this,” said Dan Fried, an assistant secretary of state for European affairs in the George W. Bush administration. “On all levels it makes no sense. It undermines the South Koreans, undermines the Japanese, frightens the Taiwanese, unnerves NATO and emboldens the Chinese, not to mention the North Koreans.”

Danny Russel, former assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific in the Obama administration, said Trump's decision to side with North Korea, which strongly objects to the annual joint military exercises, is "firmly in the ‘hard-to see-how-it-could-be-worse’ category.”

“It is tragically upside-down. Trump is punishing an ally while encouraging an adversary,” said Russel, now a scholar at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York. “He is protecting Kim Jong Un’s sensitive feelings from an unfriendly signal at the expense of U.S.-South Korean security."

The message it sends to South Koreans

Trump on Sunday ordered the U.S. military to downsize the 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, which began Monday as scheduled. It wasn’t known which parts of the training were being scaled back.

His announcement baffled many in South Korea, which has been closely allied with the U.S. for decades and where national security is a top priority due to threats from nuclear-armed North Korea.

It also drew instant criticism from many Democrats in Congress.

“Treating one of America’s closest allies like an adversary weakens our alliances and benefits China and North Korea," said Rep. Greg Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a statement.

Trump on Monday doubled down, posting a photo of North Korea’s leader speaking on a phone. The caption read: “HEY DONALD ... WE COOL, RIGHT?”

Retired U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood, who served under Republican and Democratic presidents, said the joint military exercises are critical to deterring North Korea, which has shunned any talks with the U.S. over its nuclear program and has accelerated weapons testing.

“We also don’t want South Korea to draw the conclusion that a nuclear weapons capability is the only guarantee it has to ensure its security,” Wood said.

Matthew Kroenig, who previously served in defense and intelligence positions in Republican and Democratic administrations, said polls show that South Koreans have increasingly supported the idea of pursuing their own nuclear weapons.

“The United States has been working really hard to try to persuade South Korea that they are protected,” said Kroenig, who is now with the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. Scaling back the exercises “potentially undermines that message,” he said.

Seoul tried to flatter Trump

Trump's turnabout came even after the South Koreans worked to flatter the American president, eager to gain favor on critical issues such as trade and defense.

As soon as he sat down in the gilded Oval Office for his meeting with Trump last year, new President Lee Jae Myung praised the room’s elaborate decor. Laying it on thick, Lee affirmed Trump’s assertion that Kim would not have pursued his nuclear ambitions had Trump won a second consecutive term in 2020, while dangling the prospect of an eventual Trump Tower in North Korea.

Trump just hours earlier had appeared to show sympathy for Lee’s predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol, who had been ousted from office after imposing martial law in December 2024.

Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump's scaling back of the exercises may prompt longtime allies to think more about their own security without U.S. help.

“They are hoping that the American umbrella is there for the future,” said Kupchan, who worked on the National Security Council under Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, “but they have to at least contemplate the idea that Uncle Sam won’t be there for them.”

‘It’s like he wants to burn it all down'

Kupchan said Trump is not mistaken in wanting to have South Korea, as well as the Europeans, contribute more to their defense. But, he said, the president’s unpredictable approach cuts through the solidarity that undergirds those alliances “because he ends up insulting allies.”

Fried said Trump seems unwilling to "take a win” after brow-beating NATO members and Asian allies into increasing their defense spending.

“NATO is building up, South Korea is building up, Japan is building up. Trump has a problem with taking the win," said Fried, who is currently at the Atlantic Council. "It’s like he wants to burn it all down.”

John Herbst, a former ambassador to Ukraine under President George W. Bush, said the Korea decision shows how inconsistent the Trump administration can be in its policy pronouncements. But in general, he said, the U.S. has maintained long-term alliances.

“If these things grow in frequency and in importance, obviously we will be in the process of taking apart the alliance system, which has served us so well since the end of World War II,” said Herbst, who also is with the Atlantic Council. “But despite some statements which seem to head in that direction, we have not headed there in a consistent, strong way.”

Kupchan agreed.

While the president’s language could be taken as “we’re done with you,” Kupchan said, “the reality is that, at least as of today, Trump has left intact America’s forward bases and its core alliance relationships.”

Whether Trump’s message to South Korea will amount to a meaningful policy change or a fleeting social media post is up in the air.

“He’s an unpredictable president,” Kroenig said. “If we move on and the exercises go as planned and we never hear anything about this again, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

——

Associated Press reporters Collin Binkley, Jesse Bedayn, Lisa Mascaro and Seung Min Kim in Washington and Farnoush Amiri in New York contributed to this report.

Petrobras, Brazil's majority state-owned corporation, said on Friday that it had detected hydrocarbons during exploratory drilling about 180 kilometers (112 miles) off the coast of Amapa state. The country's coastal regions near the mouth of the Amazon are known as the Equatorial Margin.

The exploratory drilling began in October. Environmental and Indigenous groups have since sued the Brazilian government and Petrobras to halt exploration, arguing the licensing process failed to properly consult traditional communities, underestimated spill risks and did not adequately assess climate impacts. The company has long argued it has never caused spills in its drillings.

“When I say ‘passport,’” Lula said, “I’m not denying my commitment to the fight for a day when we no longer need fossil fuels, because Brazil will continue to be the king of biofuel innovation and will remain a major player in renewable energy.”

Lula, who faces what is expected to be a tight election in October for a fourth term as president, spoke at an official event in the municipality of Oiapoque in Amapa after visiting the vessel.

Lula has pushed both for drilling and alternative energy

Under Lula, Brazil has backed the need to transition away from fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas that heat the planet and impact its climate.

The position was touted at the U.N. climate summit Brazil hosted last year, and also in other forums, such as an April meeting in Colombia that focused on shifting away from fossil fuels. At the same time, the country is ramping up new drilling investments.

The Equatorial Margin is believed to hold significant oil and natural gas reserves, and preliminary estimates suggest the basin could contain up to 10 billion barrels of oil, with a potential value of about 3.8 trillion reais ($720 billion).

“All of our studies indicate substantial potential. This discovery confirms our findings, and we will continue exploring,” the Petrobras president, Magda Chambriard, said Monday about the latest find. The company still needs to conduct further research to determine how much oil the area contains, she added.

Still, according to Shigueo Watanabe Jr., an energy expert with the Brazilian nonprofit ClimaInfo, commercial drilling remains a distant prospect at this stage. Determining whether extraction would be commercially viable would require further research that could take up to a decade.

Lula's announcement appears to follow a political calendar

Lula spoke in Oiapoque a day after kicking off his election campaign at the Vila Euclides Stadium outside Sao Paulo — a city where he rose to political fame 47 years ago as a metalworkers union leader during the country’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship.

The leftist leader, who is running against Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro — the lawmaker son of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro — said Chambriard, the head of Petrobras, has told him the new-found oil is of high quality.

Lula, wearing the orange uniform of oil workers, held up a small bottle of black crude oil that he described as “blessed,” and said that he would like to keep it in a safe.

At stake, he said, are both “the interests of the country and the interests of the company,” referring to Petrobras.

“And Amapa’s right not to end up as merely an exporter of acai and tucunare,” he said, referring to the region's top products, the coveted berries and the freshwater fish.

Displayed behind him was a huge photo of Lula from his visit to the drilling vessel earlier Monday, showing the president holding up both hands stained with black crude — a gesture he famously made in 2008, when he announced the discovery of vast offshore oil reserves in southeastern Brazil.

Back then, Lula was at the height of his popularity. Now, he has become a polarizing figure, with opinion polls showing that nearly half of Brazilians approve of his administration, while a similarly large share disapprove of it.

Breno Rodrigues de Messias Leite, a political scientist and professor at the Federal University of Amazonas, said Lula's Monday trip sends an important message to voters, especially in northern Brazil and its state capitals, where he has faced criticism.

“For the Amazon, the possibility of gaining access to some of the world’s largest oil reserves changes the equation,” Leite said.

“Lula wants to be reelected, and he wants the states in the northern region, especially Amapa, to have an electorate that is favorable to him,” he added.

___

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 project through the national park in southern Texas has faced fierce bipartisan opposition by critics who say it is marring the area's pristine environment. They argue the region’s rugged and remote terrain already serves as a deterrent to migrants and smugglers. Border crossings in the area have historically been lower than other regions and have dropped even further over the past two years.

“CBP is pausing all construction activity in Big Bend National Park while I visit and conduct a personal, on-the-ground evaluation,” Rodney Scott, who heads Customs and Border Protection, said on X. Scott said over the next couple of days, he was going to “listen to local leadership, community members and stakeholders” to address what he said were “real” national security threats while protecting the park.

Customs and Border Protection did not respond to questions about how long the construction was paused or give any details on whom Scott would be meeting with in Texas.

A rare concession from Trump administration

While it isn’t clear whether the brief suspension portended a more permanent halt to the construction in the area, it reflected the intensity of the bipartisan opposition and was a rare concession from the administration on a signature promise of the president’s that it has raced to complete.

Congress gave the Trump administration $46 billion last summer to build a wall from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and the administration has been charging ahead and waiving numerous regulations in an effort to swiftly build the wall.

Scott has said he expects the first layer of the wall to be built by the end of next year.

But the administration has run into fierce opposition in Texas, especially when it comes to construction in and near Big Bend National Park and a state park to the west.

Customs and Border Protection earlier this year backed off plans to build a 30-foot-tall bollard wall through the parks but was still moving forward with other border protection measures such as a new road, lights, barriers designed to stop cars from crossing the border and technology such as buried fiber optic cables.

That has sparked opposition from Democratic and Republican sheriffs in the region, former national park officials, local residents who rely on the parks for their livelihood and some Texas elected officials. Critics have said it will scar the rugged landscape that attracts tourists who raft down the Rio Grande River and take advantage of some of the clearest night skies in the U.S. to gaze at stars.

The sheriff of Brewster County, which includes Big Bend National Park, said Monday that he'll be meeting with Scott during his trip and that he was glad the commissioner was going to have the opportunity to see the terrain with his own eyes and hear firsthand from people in the region.

Ronny Dodson is concerned about possible damage to archeological sites and Native American burial grounds caused by construction for the new road that's supposed to be built through the park. He hopes Scott will see how closely the new road mirrors an already existing road, and Dodson said he wants more information about the technology the agency plans to use to secure the border.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin over the weekend and suggested that the construction pause was a result of their talk. Abbott said the secretary committed to the governor that there would be no wall or barriers built in the park, but the governor made no mention of the road building that has concerned local residents.

Bulldozers seen recently in park clearing land

Last week, bulldozers were seen clearing land at the park, sparking even more concern and raising questions from one of the state's Republican senators.

At the time the bulldozers were seen, the Department of Homeland Security said on X that they were related to “survey and design work.”

Sen. John Cornyn, who lost the Republican primary to the state's attorney general, wrote to Mullin over construction concerns.

“My constituents believe that the 1,000-foot riverbank cliffs and remote Big Bend terrain offers its own source of deterrence for any illegal migrants crossing into the United States. The dangerous terrain includes steep mountains, deep canyons, and expansive deserts which they believe act a natural barrier that limits large-scale movements,” Cornyn wrote.

As the wall-building efforts have shifted into high gear this year along the roughly 2,000-mile border, opposition has spiked as well.

The administration has faced criticism from Native American groups saying wall contractors are desecrating religious sites, a small Texas town worried the wall will damage its levee system, and a Catholic archdiocese that says wall construction in the El Paso area mars an important religious site.

Activists praise the pause but say it's only a first step

Activists who have been rallying opposition to the administration's plans said they were encouraged by the pause but they would be watching closely to see if CBP makes any significant changes or simply goes back to its previous plans.

Bob Krumenaker was the superintendent of Big Bend National Park from 2018 to 2023 and now chairs the organization “Keep Big Bend Wild,” which aims to preserve the park's wild nature. He said he was “wary but optimistic” after news of the pause.

“They are paying attention to all of the objections that have been raised across the political spectrum,” he said.

But Krumenaker said it's unlikely that CBP is going to entirely abandon all its plans in the region. Krumenaker said he and others would be watching to see whether the equipment like the bulldozers is removed from the park, the agency outlines a clear plan going forward and it repairs any damage already done.

“Let’s hope they significantly modify their plans in response to what they hear, and make it transparent,” he said.

Another group, which sued Homeland Security over its decision to broadly waive regulations to speed up construction projects in the Big Bend region, called the announcement “welcome news” but warned that construction could resume “at any moment.”

“This temporary pause proves how much non-partisan public pressure is mounting in West Texas and across America to stop the irreversible destruction unfolding in this crown jewel national park,” said Laiken Jordahl with the Center for Biological Diversity.

“We’re not resting until these contracts are canceled, these workers are sent packing, the waivers are rescinded and every wall plan for the greater Big Bend region is scrapped for good.”

The Ravens announced Brigance's death on Monday.

“We are devastated by the awful news that we have lost O.J. Brigance,” Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti said in a statement. “O.J. was a beloved legend, mentor and man to everyone who was fortunate enough to know him. He was a vibrant person who became one of the first Ravens heroes with his passionate play, including the first tackle in the 2000 Super Bowl.”

Brigance was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, in 2007. Not long after that, he and his wife, Chanda, formed the Brigance Brigade Foundation, an organization whose mission is to “equip, encourage and empower” those afflicted with ALS.

Despite using a wheelchair and a communication device that translated his messages, Brigance served as senior adviser for player engagement with the Ravens, a job he started in 2004. In addition to assisting players in each phase of their career, Brigance proved a source of motivation within the organization.

“Every day I walk by, not just to tell him how much I love him, but to tell him that he is the one thing that lets me not complain about anything,” Ravens Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis said in 2012, his final pro season. “I played with that guy. His spirit is just awesome.”

Brigance is the only player to win a Canadian Football League title and a Super Bowl championship for a team in the same city, Baltimore.

“While winning CFL and NFL championships are great personal remembrances, I wouldn’t say any of these events define me,” he said. “Rather, they are part of an accumulation of life events which catapulted me to do what God wanted me to accomplish. If you were to remove any of those events, I wouldn’t be the same person or have the position of influence. With that being said, I consider the Brigance Brigade to be the most significant achievement of my life because of my ability to touch the lives of others.”

Brigance said his career as a professional football player — he played linebacker and on special teams — helped prepare him for the fight against ALS.

“Many people think football is all about strength and physical ability,” Brigance said in a 2012 interview with The Associated Press. “While these are integral parts of one’s success, the fortitude, discipline and the desire necessary to play the sport are characteristics that are readily transferrable to everyday life.”

Brigance didn’t set out to be an example of how to live under difficult circumstances, but he had no intention of letting ALS get him down. He and Chanda collaborated to help and encourage others with the disease.

“I have found that when adversity strikes, there is a decision to be made. We chose to respond and continue to live, and also help others living with ALS to respond also,” he said. “We have found that we have been a great encouragement not only to those within the ALS community, but to people in all walks of life.”

Orenthial James Brigance was born Sept. 29, 1969 and played in college at Rice in his hometown of Houston. He began his professional career in 1991 as a linebacker for the British Columbia Lions. He played three seasons with BC, making 20 sacks in 1993, before joining the Baltimore Stallions. In his second season in Baltimore, the team won the 1995 Grey Cup.

In 1996, Brigance was signed by the Miami Dolphins as a free agent. He was twice voted a team captain during his four seasons there and was the Ed Block Courage Award recipient in 1999. He was honored with the NFL Players Association's “Unsung Hero Award” that same season.

Brigance’s lone season with Baltimore was 2000. He had a team-high 10 tackles on special teams during Baltimore’s playoff run, which ended with a 34-7 win over the New York Giants in the Super Bowl.

Brigance played for the St. Louis Rams in 2001 and 2002, and his final game was with New England in 2002.

“I am devastated and at a loss for words. O.J. was one of the most genuine, sincere people I have ever known,” Ravens executive vice president Ozzie Newsome said. “From the moment he arrived in Baltimore, you could feel his energy. His amazing smile, welcoming nature and infectious personality made everyone around him feel like family.”

And his tenacity would serve him well long after his playing days ended.

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See AP’s full NFL coverage here

This is classic Chris Farley, but when he says ‘All other tropical storms must bow before El Niño, he wasn’t wrong. Well, on the Atlantic side anyway.

It was just last week we had two tropical waves highlighted east of the Caribbean. One had a medium chance. One had a chance. Neither of them developed.

We talked about this in last week’s newsletter. The model signal was bullish, but the Atlantic did not seem supportive.

Dry air and strong wind shear induced by El Niño, tore these storms apart.

The other thing that has plagued the Atlantic (thankfully) for years has been stability.

Storms need instability, cooler air on top of warmer air.

There hasn’t been much of that.

Take a look at this graph.

The blue line, current instability is way below the black line, average instability.

Basically this shows us that any tropical wave that rolls off Africa will face a decent amount of resistance.

The Google DeepMind ensembles over the next ten days suggest that some development is possible with new waves rolling off Africa.

At this point I will believe it when I see it. If a storm is going to develop and strengthen it will likely need to get itself into the subtropics near Bermuda to have any shot.

Always watching, of course!

For the Pacific side, El Niño supercharges storms. While Hawaii missed an official landfall from Hurricane Lala, the southern tip of the Big Island took the eyewall, the strongest part of the storm.

A whopping 43″ of rain fell on the windward side of Mauna Kea.

At the summit, nearly 14,000 feet up, a wind gust of 140mph was recorded.

There was a time, since it’s at elevation, that snow was falling on the summit. Truly extreme conditions.

Only one time in recorded history, and the report is sketchy from back in the 1800s, has a hurricane made landfall on the Big Island.

At least three more storms are forecast on the Pacific side over the next ten days.

Any questions feel free to hit me up at jkegges@wkmg.com

- Jonathan

Ways to stay connected this hurricane season

News 6+

If you live outside of Central Florida or don’t have cable, first of all thank you for finding the Tropics Watch newsletter! You can also watch the special on June 1st at 8 p.m. by downloading the FREE News 6+ app! You can watch all of the newscasts on here as well. You can download that on your smart T.V. or other streaming devices.

News 6 Weather App

Even if you are outside of Central Florida download this app! This is the best hurricane app on the market and its FREE. As soon as the National Hurricane Center names something, you’re going to know about. It’s a great way to follow the season if you like doing that. Search WKMG in your app store and make sure you find the hurricane one.

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If you love the weather whether you’re in Central Florida or not, subscribe to JustWeather!

Clickorlando.com/hurricane is also a great resource no matter where you live.

Alright. I have rambled on enough. Just wanted to make you aware of where you can find trustworthy and in-depth weather content this season.

One last thing. This is a two-way street. I/we are here for you. Any ideas? Like or hate something? Have any questions? Let me know. Shoot me an e-mail at jkegges@wkmg.com. Find me on facebook or twitter.

We’re in this together. We have families here too. You’re going to get the same info we give to them. Thank you for your trust. We don’t take that responsibility lightly.

The Lions, currently in 10th place in the Eastern Conference, are three points behind D.C. United for ninth place. A win Wednesday night against the Chicago Fire and a loss from D.C. would put the Lions back in.

The top seven seeds in each conference get into the first round of the playoffs, while eighth and ninth place play in a wild card match.

“We know where we want to go,” interim head coach Martin Perelman said after training Monday morning. “It’s one game at a time, especially when you have this congested calendar.”

Since the World Cup break, the Lions have lost only two of the last seven games, one loss on the road and the other in Leagues Cup play. In the last three weeks, the Lions have played six games.

Wednesday’s game against Chicago features a rematch of European rivals between Orlando City’s Antoine Griezmann and Chicago’s Robert Lewandowski. Griezmann played for Atletico Madrid in Spain, and Lewandowski played for Bayern Munich in Germany.

Kickoff is Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at Inter.co Stadium.

The league announced the approval Monday after a vote. Feliciano and Jones reached an agreement in May to buy the Padres from the family of late owner Peter Seidler at an MLB-record valuation of $3.9 billion. The deal is still contingent on the official closing of the transaction in the coming weeks.

“José and Kwanza understand the unique place the Padres hold in San Diego and the powerful bond between the club and its fans,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “We look forward to their leadership of the Padres and to working with them to build on the club’s strong foundation in a market that is so important to Major League Baseball.”

Seidler's family announced its intention to explore a sale of the Padres last November, two years after Peter Seidler's death. The 53-year-old Feliciano, a co-founder of Santa Monica-based private equity firm Clearlake Capital, emerged from the competition as the Seidler family's top choice.

Padres CEO Erik Greupner and general manager A.J. Preller will remain in charge of day-to-day operations, according to MLB's announcement.

“We are a family first, and becoming owners of the San Diego Padres means joining an even larger one,” Jones and Feliciano said in a statement. “We are grateful to the Seidler family, and especially to Peter, for raising the expectations of what this franchise can achieve. ... Our ambition is clear: to bring a World Series championship to San Diego and build an enduring organization capable of competing for championships year after year. We intend to be engaged owners, bringing our energy, experience and perspective while working alongside the talented team already in place and investing ambitiously and thoughtfully in the Padres’ future.

“We are all in and committed to winning.”

Peter Seidler assumed majority control of the Padres in 2020 after first joining their ownership group in 2012, but he became beloved in San Diego for his aggressive financial pursuit of winning and his eagerness to engage with the team's fan base. He died at 63 in November 2023.

The Padres dramatically increased their payroll under Seidler, allowing Preller to build the foundation for the current team, which has made four playoff appearances in the past six years and won at least 89 games in three of the last four seasons during the most successful stretch in franchise history. San Diego is currently in the playoff race again, winning 17 of its last 22 games entering Monday to surge into an NL wild-card position at 67-58.

“As far as the day-to-day operations, nothing changes for us," Padres manager Craig Stammen said in New York before San Diego's series opener against the Mets. "We’ve got to go out here and play the games, just like we have all season long. The ownership sale has kind of been something that’s been going on throughout the entire year. It doesn’t really affect the play on the field, but we’re excited to have José and Kwanza a part of the Padres and can’t wait to welcome them.”

The minority partners in the Padres' new ownership group include Joey and Jesse Buss, two sons of former Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss. Coincidentally, the six Buss siblings decided earlier Monday to sell their remaining minority ownership stake in the Lakers to incoming majority owners Josh Kushner and Bob Iger.

When Feliciano and Jones reached their agreement to purchase the Padres earlier this year, they praised the team as "a unifying force in San Diego, rooted in community, connection and belonging.” They've since been spotted at Padres games in San Diego and in Mexico City.

“It’s good to see people that care working with us, you know?” Padres outfielder Jackson Merrill said. "I mean, the Seidlers cared a lot. It’ll be fun to see how these people take it, mold it into their own, you know? Trust in them, as they trust in us on the field. So, full confidence in them. Excited to meet them.”

The Padres have never won a World Series, but they were a valuable commodity for potential owners as the only team in the four biggest North American sports leagues in a metropolitan area with roughly 3.3 million people. Downtown Petco Park has become one of the liveliest ballparks in the sport, and the Padres ranked second in the majors in attendance last season.

Feliciano, who was born in Puerto Rico, becomes the second Latino principal owner in baseball, along with the Los Angeles Angels' Arte Moreno. Latino and Hispanic players comprise roughly 30% of major league rosters.

Feliciano and Jones will hold an introductory news conference at Petco Park on Monday, Aug. 24.

___

AP Baseball Writer Mike Fitzpatrick in New York contributed to this report.

___

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB

Jaylen Edgar was 17 at the time of the shooting and was charged as an adult. He faces two counts of first-degree murder, seven counts of attempted first-degree murder, possession of a firearm by a minor, and culpable negligence with personal injury.

Edgar, now 18, is accused of fatally shooting Tyrek Hill, 25, and Timothy Schmidt Jr., 19, during Halloween celebrations in downtown Orlando, also injuring seven others.

Last month, Edgar wrote a letter to the judge presiding over his case claiming he was suffering from “extreme mental or emotional disturbance” at the time of the shooting.

In the letter, Edgar asked Judge Keith Carsten to consider the emotional state he was in at the time. He also wrote that he takes full responsibility for what happened and expressed regret over the impact his actions may have had on others.

Earlier this year, Edgar underwent a psychological evaluation. The results of that evaluation remain confidential on his criminal docket.

A rare extreme heat warning has been issued for Marion and Flagler counties for Tuesday.

Additional warnings and/or advisories will likely be issued for the rest of Central Florida later Monday or early Tuesday morning.

Actual air temperatures are expected to surge into the upper 90s.

With the humidity factored in, the heat index will climb into the 105-115 ballpark.

The heat index is important as the higher the index, the harder it is for your body to naturally cool itself.

Highs are expected to remain in the mid-to-upper 90s through Thursday before falling into the lower 90s for the weekend.

Trump made the accusation in a social media post on Sunday without saying why he believes it's the work of vandals instead of trampled turf from the Independence Day festivities. The Republican president posted a photo showing a once-grassy area by the World War II Memorial, now patchy and brown across much of the sprawling turf.

“Look what VANDALS did to the grass connecting the vandalized World War II Monument and the vandalized Reflecting Pool, which will be opened again, and better than ever, shortly,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

“Anybody who thinks the Reflecting Pool wasn’t vandalized should go back to Law School!” he added.

Trump has repeatedly blamed vandals for damage to his renovation projects in the nation's capital, often without evidence and sometimes despite opposing accounts from his officials. Trump lashed out at U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro this month after her office concluded that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was the result of poor construction and not the work of vandals, as Trump claimed.

The photo Trump posted matches what you'd expect to see with a large summer event, according to Penn State University turf professor John Kaminski.

“Nothing in the photograph clearly indicates vandalism. Jumping to that conclusion seems like a fairly large leap, although it is impossible to rule anything in or out,” he said.

Bradley S. Klein, a freelance journalist and golf course consultant, said the president's post didn't make clear what the problem was in detail.

“He sounds like every grumpy golfer who’s complaining about their golf course and actually has no idea what it takes to maintain it on a day-to-day basis,” he said.

Messages seeking more information were left with the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior.

Authorities on Friday announced an arrest in connection with vandalism at the World War II Memorial, after the words “Clean hands dirty $” were found painted on the monument and bubbles filled a fountain. Pirro said felony charges were being brought against Melissa L. Farris.

Farris, 41, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky remained in custody over the weekend, but court records Monday showed that U.S. District Court Federal Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh ordered her released on her own recognizance. Conditions include she stay away from the memorial and Washington, D.C., except for court or pretrial activities. She is due back for a pretrial hearing Sept. 3. A message left with her court-appointed lawyer, was not returned. Pirro's office asked the judge to reconsider its request that Farris be held in pretrial detention.

Charging documents in that case make no mention of the grassy area Trump is highlighting in his new claims. Authorities said Farris had previously been arrested for camping on federal property a few blocks from the World War II Memorial, but not the area cited by Trump.

That stretch of lawn is instead where a large stage was built and crowds gathered to hear from Trump and watch fireworks at a July 4 event celebrating the nation's 250th anniversary. Trump claimed without providing evidence that more than 400,000 people attended the event before a storm hit the area and delayed his remarks.

Extreme heat also hit the area with Washington setting an all-time record for July 4th, when temperatures rose to 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39.44 degrees Celsius). High temperatures forced organizers to shut down activities for several hours July 3 and delay the start July 4. Emergency personnel treated dozens of people for heat-related illnesses.

Photos from the time, taken by a streaming webcam atop the Washington Monument, show a large bandstand and seating areas covering nearly the entire lawn Trump now says has been vandalized. Associated Press photos from the days that followed showed workers removing the structures, revealing brown, damaged grass underneath.

On Aug. 1, Trump posted a different photo of the same area that appears to show the numbers “86 47” — which federal officials have said constitutes a threat against Trump, the 47th president — emblazoned into the grass. He cited it as evidence refuting Pirro's conclusion, calling it “a pure case of VANDALISM, that included the grass.”

“There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!” he wrote.

Those numbers are not visible in the photo Trump posted to social media on Sunday.

The fraction of kids exempted from vaccine requirements rose to 4.2%, up from 3.6% the year before. That’s an estimated 155,000 children nationally during the 2025-2026 school year.

It’s the fourth consecutive year that the national average exemption rate has reached a record, and the vast majority are parents withholding shots for nonmedical reasons. Exemptions increased in 41 states and the District of Columbia.

Experts point to turmoil caused by federal health officials.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a leading voice in the antivaccine movement before President Donald Trump put him in charge of federal health agencies. In the last 18 months, Kennedy and other federal officials have repeatedly tried to revise and reduce childhood vaccination guidance. Earlier this month, Trump called for revamped childhood vaccination recommendations that promote his discredited theory that childhood shots should be spaced out into separate medical visits.

“The root cause of this is primarily because there’s so much chaos and confusion in vaccination recommendation systems in the last year or so,” said Dr. James Campbell, of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Vaccination rates fell for many diseases

The CDC reported that 92.4% of 2025-26 kindergarteners got their required measles-mumps-rubella shots, down slightly from the previous year. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the vaccination rate was 95% — the level that makes it unlikely that a single infection will spark a disease cluster or outbreak.

Vaccination rates also fell for polio, for the combination shot against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, and for the first dose of the vaccine against chickenpox.

The rate held steady for protection against hepatitis B. But that's a vaccine given shortly after birth, and it will take a few years before recent federal efforts to upend infant hepatitis B vaccine recommendations would appear in the vaccination rates of kindergartners, Campbell said.

The vaccination numbers were posted as the U.S. experiences its worst year for measles since 1991.

The numbers indicate that more than a quarter of a million children entering kindergarten are susceptible to measles, said Campbell, a University of Maryland researcher who is chair of the AAP's infectious diseases committee.

Those at-risk kids are not evenly distributed — concentrations of unvaccinated children are higher in some places than others, which helps explain why measles waves vary in intensity.

This is when public health officials typically tout vaccines' benefits

The CDC data is coming out as school and health officials across the country are encouraging parents to get their children vaccinated as the school year starts.

“Back-to-school season is an important reminder that protecting our children’s health is both a shared responsibility and a shared goal,” North Carolina Health and Human Services Secretary Dev Sangvai said in a statement. “Vaccines help keep our children and teens healthy and in the classroom.”

In the past, the CDC has released the vaccination coverage data in its flagship publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. CDC officials usually speak to the trends and stress the importance of vaccinations.

But since the Trump administration took office early last year, the agency has posted the data online. This year, the agency issued a three-sentence statement that noted a small decline in vaccination coverage among children entering kindergarten and said: “CDC continues to encourage parents to discuss vaccination options with their doctors.”

Medical exemption rates are steady

Public health officials focus on vaccination rates for kindergartners because schools can be cauldrons for germs and launching pads for community outbreaks.

For years, those rates were high, thanks largely to school attendance mandates that required key vaccinations. All U.S. states and territories require that children attending childcare centers and schools be vaccinated against a number of diseases, including measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, whooping cough and chickenpox.

All states allow exemptions for children with medical conditions that prevent them from receiving certain vaccines. And most also permit exemptions for religious or other nonmedical reasons.

In the last decade, the percentage of kindergartners with medical exemptions has held steady, at about 0.2%. But the percentage with nonmedical exemptions has risen.

According to the CDC data, 17.5% of kindergartners had an exemption to one or more vaccines in Idaho in the last school year. But fewer than 0.5% did in Connecticut.

___

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.

After ordering the Pentagon to scale back annual joint military exercises with South Korea, claiming the nation declined to help with the United States’ war against Iran, Trump said that he has spoken with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un about a scheduled conversation.

Trump’s son-in-law and Mideast negotiator Jared Kushner held hourslong meetings with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday after talking with Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya in Egypt on disarmament. Netanyahu rejected a 15-point, U.S.-backed road map to move the truce deal forward in Gaza. Hamas says it has agreed to the road map, which includes disarmament.

The Latest:

ICE pitches legal insurance to help shield local officers who make immigration arrests

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is pitching a plan to help shield local police officers who make immigration arrests from possible financial consequences if they are accused of on-duty misconduct.

The agency is proposing to subsidize liability insurance for state and local officers who are trained and deputized to enforce federal immigration laws, according to a planning document published Friday.

ICE’s partnerships with local departments have soared since Trump returned to the White House last year and may get an additional boost with liability insurance by removing a hurdle that has made some local police departments reluctant to join. The Associated Press is the first to report on this insurance proposal.

Under the plan, officers would purchase insurance covering up to $500,000 in personal liability, which typically funds legal fees, settlements and judgments. Officers would be reimbursed up to $250 annually — roughly what the insurance is expected to cost.

▶ Read more

Lawmaker apologizes for ‘personal mistakes’ and will cooperate with Ethics probe

Gomez’s office issued the statement after the Ethics committee announced it was investigating allegations that he may have engaged in sexual misconduct, including inappropriate sexual conduct with a House staff member.

“I made personal mistakes outside my marriage. Although my actions were consensual in nature and haven’t violated the law or House Ethics rules, that doesn’t diminish the impact that these mistakes have made on those I care about the most,” Gomez said in a statement.

“I take full responsibility,” he said. “I have and continue to sincerely apologize to my family, friends, and the people that I have the privilege to serve. I am deeply sorry to my wife for the pain and embarrassment that I have brought into our lives.”

Gomez noted that he respects the committee’s process and is ready to cooperate with the inquiry.

Activists welcome Big Bend construction pause but say it’s only a first step

Activists rallying support against the Trump administration’s border construction plans in Texas welcomed news that the administration is pausing construction in Big Bend National Park but say the real question is what comes next.

Bob Krumenaker was the former superintendent of the Big Bend National Park from 2018 to 2023 and now chairs the organization “Keep Big Bend Wild.”

“It shows that they are paying attention to all of the objections that have been raised across the political spectrum,” he said.

But Krumenaker said it’s unlikely that Customs and Border Protection will entirely abandon its plans. He wants to see equipment like the bulldozers removed from the park and damage repaired and he’ll be looking to see how transparent the agency is in outlining a plan going forward.

Laiken Jordahl with the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement that the it was “welcome news” but warned that construction could resume “at any moment.”

Senator to file War Powers Resolution to halt Trump’s threats against Oman

Sen. Tim Kaine said Trump “is increasingly deranged in his one-man campaign to threaten and initiate wars all over the globe.”

The Virginia Democrat said Trump’s threats against Oman, a country the U.S. has diplomatic and trade relationships with, makes adversaries like China and Russia “rub their hands with glee.”

The senator said he would file a War Powers Resolution to prohibit military action against Oman as soon as lawmakers return to Washington from summer recess.

House Ethics committee investigating lawmaker for potential sexual misconduct

The House Ethics Committee says it is reviewing allegations that Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez of California may have engaged in sexual misconduct in violation of the code of official conduct.

In a release Monday, the committee said it is reviewing the allegations including inappropriate sexual contact with a House staff member.

It noted that the fact that it is investigating the allegations, and publicly disclosing its review, does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred.

The congressman’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It comes as the House is pursuing claims of misconduct and lawmakers have stepped aside this year during investigations of improper behavior.

Melania Trump helped reunite child and family separated by the war in Ukraine

According to the first lady’s office, it was the latest of 34 children that Melania Trump has helped reunite with their families after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Last year, the first lady penned a letter calling for peace to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which, she said at the time, led to an “open channel of communication” about the welfare of children caught up in the war.

“There is nothing more powerful than reuniting a mother with her child after an extended period of time,” Melania Trump said in a statement Monday.

‘I like the idea of declaring’ the Strait of Hormuz a territory

The president was asked about an offhand comment he made last week about the waterway crucial to oil shipping that’s become a centerpiece of negotiations over the war with Iran.

“I like the idea of declaring it a territory,” Trump said on Monday, without providing further details.

It’s not the first time Trump has toyed with the idea of expanding American territory. He has previously mused about taking over Greenland, Canada and Venezuela.

Trump likens his sentiment toward South Korea to his feelings about NATO

The U.S. president further explained his decision to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea, likening his relationship with Seoul to his often-frayed ties with the trans-Atlantic alliance.

Trump said the U.S. keeps tens of thousands of troops in South Korea for its protection, and was rebuffed when it asked Seoul for assistance regarding the war in Iran earlier this year.

As he discussed his decision on South Korea, Trump said “look at NATO” and later added, “all I want is fairness.”

“We can’t go around and protect all of these countries, especially when they’re not there to help us,” Trump said.

Trump says concerns about conditions on USS Lincoln are ‘fake’

Trump downplayed reports about conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln to reporters in the Oval Office. The aircraft carrier has been the subject of escalating concern over mental health and supply issues for American sailors enduring nearly nine months at sea.

Trump called it a “good period of time” but added that “over the years, we’ve had them out there much longer.”

The carrier has had a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 240 days.

But Trump said he spoke with a retired admiral over the weekend who recounted being on ships for “much longer.” Trump said the admiral assured him that the Lincoln is “beautifully maintained and beautifully taken care of.”

Trump did not name the admiral.

Trump administration pauses contentious border construction in Texas’ Big Bend National Park

The Trump administration says it is temporarily pausing construction of a controversial border construction project in the Big Bend National Park while the head of the agency tasked with building the wall visits Texas to do an “on-the-ground evaluation.”

The project through the national park in southern Texas has faced fierce bipartisan opposition by critics who say it is marring a pristine environmental area and that the region’s rugged and remote terrain already serves as a deterrent to migrants and smugglers.

Rodney Scott, who heads Customs and Border Protection which is tasked with building the wall, said in an announcement on X that he was visiting Texas to do an evaluation.

“CBP is pausing all construction activity in Big Bend National Park while I visit and conduct a personal, on-the-ground evaluation,” Scott said.

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Trump calls UK prime minister’s text exchange a ‘miscommunication’

The U.S. president was asked about a report that said new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham exchanged messages with someone posing as Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.

“I’m sure that he had a miscommunication,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

The report from Politico said Burnham thought he was messaging with Wiles before he became suspicious and cut off communications.

Earlier Monday, the White House said the incident had nothing to do with Wiles’ devices being hacked.

Trump says North Korea’s Kim has responded to request for a conversation

The U.S. president was pressed on whether he has had a conversation with the North Korean leader.

Trump said “yeah he has” responded to Trump’s request to have a conversation, referring to Kim Jong Un.

Trump offered no other details, but noted later during the Oval Office appearance that “I get along with him very well.”

Trump says his administration is taking a look at Flock cameras

The president said there are pros and cons to Flock Safety cameras, which have come under scrutiny from civil rights groups and lawmakers in both parties.

“It’s being studied right now,” Trump said when asked about the subject Monday at an Oval Office event. “We’ll have an answer soon as to our views on it.”

The company’s nationwide network of cameras record the license plate numbers and other characteristics of passing vehicles.

Thousands of police agencies can use Flock data to support investigations, and advocates call it an important crime-fighting tool. Critics say it amounts to needless mass surveillance.

Trump sits with 10-year-old and his lifeguard rescuer in Oval Office

Nathaniel Rai had been swept off his feet along the California coast, was rescued by a 16-year-old lifeguard and was now sitting in the Oval Office.

Rai wore a dark suit and maroon tie and sat on a gold couch aside his father and the president of the United States. Across from Rai was his rescuer Ryder Williams, both of whom watched Trump speak of their ordeal, a video of which went viral.

“He’s a real hero. I don’t know if I’d do it,” said Trump. “I wouldn’t probably. You’re lucky I wasn’t on the service that day.”

Trump meeting with teenage lifeguard who saved boy in dramatic viral video

A teenage lifeguard who saved a 10-year-old boy from pounding waves off the California last month is being honored at the White House on Monday.

President Donald Trump is meeting Ryder Williams after saying the teen deserved a civilian honor. Trump previously said on social media that he would be inviting Williams to the White House to reward his bravery.

Dramatic video of the rescue went viral last month. It showed Williams clinging to Nathaniel Rai as waves repeatedly crash over them. The pair disappeared from view and reemerged after several seconds as the wave receded.

A second lifeguard was eventually able to help get them both back to shore at Seabright Beach in Santa Cruz.

Trump initially commented on the video in response to a post from his son, Eric Trump, who said Williams deserved “the highest civilian honor.”

After killing hundreds in boat strikes, US military expands campaign on land

The Trump administration says it is seeking to expand its lethal campaign of bombing boats off Latin America’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts onto land.

It will be “like you saw with the strikes on the drug boats,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a military drill in the jungle in Panama last week. “Same effect on land.”

The government has lined up regional allies to let the U.S. military operate within their borders in a campaign to assert what it calls “American dominance over the Western Hemisphere.”

Critics say the expansion could pave the way for more civilian casualties and anger toward Washington that may outlast the Trump administration.

▶ Read more

Trump dwarfs his predecessors in ultra-rich appointees

Wealth, perhaps second only to loyalty, has been a prized attribute for Donald Trump during his second presidency.

The number of people worth at least $100 million whom the Republican president has appointed to his administration is more than four times the combined total of his three predecessors, according to a report from Public Citizen.

The consumer advocacy group’s report Monday says 57 Trump officials are worth at least $100 million, including 17 ambassadors and eight of his Cabinet members. Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick and Education Secretary Linda McMahon are billionaires.

The president, himself a billionaire, has described his deference to the financial success of the ultrawealthy. Yet Trump owes his White House comeback to support from middle-income working Americans drawn to his pledge to lower everyday costs, and now faces an electorate decidedly less keen on his handling of the economy.

▶ Read more

Public Citizen says ultra-wealthy White House can lead to corruption

Trump’s views are well established: Financial success is evidence of executive mastery and negotiating strength.

And to encourage billionaires to deliver future economic growth, Trump has pursued policies on artificial intelligence and financial regulation that could benefit wealthy people, along with tax cuts and reduced regulatory burdens for large-scale investments.

But a government populated by so many of the economic elite presents potential problems, the report’s authors said.

“When the people holding the reins of government are drawn overwhelmingly from the ranks of the ultra-rich, it leads to misplaced incentives and corruption, and begs the question, ’Whose interests they are truly serving?” said Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen’s co-president.

Trump’s scaling back military training with South Korea is ‘inane,’ senator says

Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Trump appears to be appeasing North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un while worsening relations with U.S. allies.

“This is another inane, haphazard decision by President Trump and his chaotic administration,” Reed said in a statement.

“America’s alliances are built on trust and strength,” he said. “When President Trump cuts military exercises to flatter a dictator or punishes South Korea for declining to join a war he started, all of our allies — and adversaries — think that America’s commitments are negotiable.”

Reed noted that the U.S. and South Korea have conducted joint military exercises since the 1950s as a show of strength and deterrence against aggression from North Korea. And he warned that warned that China and Russia are watching how easily Trump abandons America’s allies.

The buck stops somewhere else: A look at Trump’s tendency to avoid blame

President Harry Truman famously kept a “The Buck Stops Here” sign on his White House desk. The current Oval Office occupant often veers from that motto of taking responsibility.

Trump has blamed his predecessors for the weak economy, high inflation and the increasingly unpopular war in Iran that has kept oil prices high and his approval rating low while sending shock waves through the global economy.

He blames vandals for the problem-plagued Reflecting Pool renovation, and now the dead grass where his July 4th event was held on the National Mall.

All presidents try to shift some responsibility, but none in modern history has taken it as far as Trump.

The White House says Trump is working to correct long-festering challenges. But his unwillingness to accept blame sometimes leads him to deny problems, which could put GOP seats in jeopardy as Republicans face voters.

▶ Read more

Wall Street nears new records as big US companies report booming profits

Big U.S. companies in the S&P 500 index are on track to deliver growth of roughly 50% for earnings per share in the spring from a year earlier, according to FactSet. Still to come are profit reports from big retailers, including Home Depot, Target and Walmart this week.

They’re facing pressure. Customers’ incomes may be turning iffier after U.S. employers surprisingly cut more jobs last month than they added, as bills rise quickly with inflation much higher than anyone would like. Shoppers surprisingly spent less at U.S. retailers last month than in June.

And the wait continues to see what the Iran war will do with oil prices. Brent crude rose 0.7% to $89.15 a barrel Monday, a relatively modest move after jagged recent swings.

▶ Read more

Trump threatens Oman during interview with Fox News

Trump has warned Oman as the Gulf nation works with Iran on a plan for the Strait of Hormuz, telling Fox News reporter Trey Yingst that the U.S. would bomb Oman if it “gets in the way” using an expletive for emphasis.

Fox News did not provide audio of the Monday interview.

This is not the first time that Trump has threatened Oman. In May, he told reporters during a Cabinet meeting that “Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we will have to blow them up.”

Trump also said the expiration of the 60-day deadline on ending the war was irrelevant and said there was no timeline, Yingst said. And Trump said the U.S. has a backchannel for talks with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Yingst said.

The agency is proposing to subsidize liability insurance for state and local officers who are trained and deputized to enforce federal immigration laws, according to a planning document published Friday.

ICE’s partnerships with local departments have soared since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year and may get an additional boost with liability insurance by removing a hurdle that has made some local police departments reluctant to join. The Associated Press is the first to report on this insurance proposal.

Under the plan, officers would purchase insurance covering up to $500,000 in personal liability, which typically funds legal fees, settlements and judgments. Officers would be reimbursed up to $250 annually — roughly what the insurance is expected to cost.

One prominent critic of ICE’s immigration crackdown said the program would be yet another way for officers to avoid personal accountability for misconduct.

“The concern here is that ICE is going above and beyond to guarantee law enforcement does not have even the slightest risk of liability for violating Americans’ rights while helping ICE arrest people,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, who has called on Congress to make it easier to sue ICE agents for wrongdoing.

ICE outlined the plan in a document informing industry officials that it is considering hiring a contractor to help provide outreach, training and communications support for its so-called 287(g) partnerships with local departments, which are named for a section of a 1996 immigration law. The contractor would hire the insurance vendor and process the reimbursements, among other tasks.

ICE has asked for industry feedback by Thursday. The proposed timeline for launching the program and its estimated cost are unclear.

ICE had no immediate comment on the plan.

Arrests by ICE’s local partners have spiked since last year

During Trump’s second term, ICE has offered generous financial incentives to participating local agencies, increasing the number who have partnered with the federal government, as well as the number of arrests.

Nearly 1,600 agencies in 32 states now have agreements to participate in ICE’s task force model, in which trained local officers can interrogate, arrest and charge people suspected of being in the country illegally, according to ICE data.

Departments qualify for funding to help cover expenses like their officers’ pay, equipment and vehicles. With encouragement from state and local Republican officials, agencies in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and Georgia have been among the leaders.

Arrests made through such programs jumped to an average of 3,000 per month in the first two months of 2026, according to the most recent ICE data provided to the University of California Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project. That compares to a monthly average of 250 in 2024 under President Joe Biden.

Local departments, officers worried about liability for ICE work

As local officers increasingly carry out federal immigration work, they and their departments have expressed concerns about the civil liability that could result from claims alleging excessive use of force, wrongful arrest and illegal search and seizure, among other things.

That’s because insurance policies that cover their local work may not apply. Pennsylvania’s risk pool, for instance, recently made clear that it would exclude “proactive immigration enforcement activities” from coverage, forcing several participating counties to search for other insurance options.

Butler County Sheriff Michael Slupe said he found insurance to cover his 13 deputies participating in the program at a cost of $20,000 in annual premiums.

“I want to make sure the guys are additionally covered, so we had to spend the money,” he said, adding that federal funding would cover the cost.

Federal officers usually enjoy legal immunities and a government-funded defense when they face lawsuits. But those protections may not always apply to local officers, which has heightened their concerns over liability and the need for insurance.

While civil lawsuits are the main concern, professional liability insurance typically helps cover legal fees for officers facing criminal investigations as well.

Sheriffs’ group says ICE’s insurance idea sounds promising

Justin Smith, a former Colorado sheriff who is executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Association, said ICE’s plan sounds promising and that he was anxious to speak with ICE about how the plan would work.

Smith said he has shared concerns with ICE that some sheriffs are reluctant to join the partnerships because of the potential liability at a time when immigration enforcement faces intense public protests and media scrutiny. Smith said others who are partnering with ICE have already started facing legal claims tied to their immigration work, which can be costly whether or not deputies are ultimately found to have done anything wrong.

“Right now, any time you are working on immigration there is going to be a much higher potential for there being problems and having suits and issues,” he said. “They’re recognizing that it is a different environment. And I think trying to be good partners with us as best they can.”

Under their agreements, ICE warns local departments that they are responsible for the costs of incidents that give rise to liability. But it seeks to reduce the risk by saying local officers performing ICE-authorized functions are “acting under color of federal authority,” which would bar lawsuits against individual officers.

The agreements also state that local officers who face civil lawsuits can ask the U.S. Department of Justice to represent them, and that ICE will generally support their requests. But the final decision on whether to do so rests with DOJ.

“What you did was incredible, and everybody saw it,” Trump told the boys, referring to a viral video of the July rescue in Santa Cruz. “When I first saw it, I said, ‘roll that back, I want to see that again.’”

Seated alongside 16-year-old lifeguard Ryder Williams and 10-year-old Nathaniel Rai, Trump marveled at how each of them stayed cool in the dramatic ocean rescue in Santa Cruz in July. The boys' families joined the Oval Office reunion, along with lifeguard Aaron Bohnen, who aided in the rescue.

Online videos of the rescue have been viewed millions of times worldwide. The footage shows Williams clutching Nathaniel as heavy waves repeatedly smash into them. At one point, the boys disappear underwater for several seconds before emerging from the surf, Williams continuing to haul Nathaniel toward the shore.

Trump hailed Williams as a “real hero.” He told Nathaniel that “God was watching you.” Trump and Williams sat in chairs in front of the Oval Office fireplace, while Nathaniel and others sat alongside on a pair of couches.

Asked about the moment, Williams credited those who trained him how to snap into action.

“In those dangerous moments that we have, we always try to fall back on our training,” he said. “I really was thinking about how to get the boy out of the water as fast as I can.”

Wearing a black uniform with a California State Parks lifeguard patch, Williams said he hopes to train as a paramedic and become a firefighter.

Nathaniel, sitting next to his father and sister, nodded along as Trump described the rescue.

“Your father is the happiest man in the world,” Trump told him, adding that the boy deserved respect for how he faced the emergency. “The way Nathaniel handled it was — he was cool, considering the problems.”

Trump invited them to see the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House. When Williams mentioned his aspiration to become a firefighter, the president said he may be getting “some good recommendations.”

“He’s a real hero,” Trump said. “I don’t know if I’d do it. I wouldn’t probably. You’re lucky I wasn’t on the service that day.”

As the video drew attention online last month, Trump joined many who shared it. Posting the video on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the boys deserved to be honored.

“We’re going to bring this heroic young man, and his family, into the White House with, perhaps, the boy he saved, to give him a High Civilian Honor,” Trump wrote on July 28.

In a previous Associated Press interview, Williams described seeing Nathaniel lose his footing in shallow water at Seabright Beach. The water was too rough to get a rescue tube around Nathaniel, who went unconscious. They endured a series of pounding waves before Bohnen, the other lifeguard, helped them get ashore.

In the Oval Office, Trump remarked on Williams’ “tremendous grace” in the moment.

“It’s so amazing to see this happen, to see it before your eyes,” Trump said. “I’ve seen rescues before. I’ve never seen anything quite like this.”

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Jared Bridegan, 33, was killed in Jacksonville Beach in 2022 when he got out of his vehicle to remove a tire that was placed in the road while his 2-year-old daughter from a second marriage was strapped in her car seat.

More than four years later, Mario Fernandez Saldana, 38, is on trial for first-degree murder and solicitation of murder. He’s accused of arranging the death by hiring a gunman. Bridegan's ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, 39, faces her own trial in September. The alleged gunman, Henry Tenon, is slated to go to trial next year after backing out of a guilty plea.

“The killer was a stranger to Jared Bridegan. The murder was personal,” Assistant State Attorney Christina Simak Stifler said in Duval County court.

“A tire in the road, a dark place,” she said in her opening remarks. “No one would see and no one would know and no one would trace it back to those responsible. ... The architects of Jared Bridegan's murder intended it to be a perfect crime and it almost was.”

Defense says Fernandez Saldana didn't act like a mastermind

But defense attorney James Hill told jurors that Fernandez Saldana, an Army veteran, had no motive to get rid of Bridegan and his actions shortly after the killing — a road trip to Pennsylvania and back — didn’t resemble that of a criminal schemer “running from the law.”

“He had access to a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Hill acknowledged, referring to his wife Gardner's trust fund. “He could have fled the country.”

While addressing the jury, Stifler traced the bitter relationship between Bridegan and Gardner, the execution-style killing and the difficulty of trying to solve a shocking homicide with no witnesses. The victim, she said, had no obvious enemies and was a devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Bridegan and Gardner were divorced in 2015. The end of the marriage, however, led to years of acrimony about how to raise their twins, from disputes about religion to doctor's appointments and even school conferences, Stifler said.

“It was pretty terrible,” Bridegan's second wife, Kirsten Bridegan, testified. “There was absolutely no trust so everything was in writing. Texts, email. We did not speak in person, like at school events. Didn't do phone calls.”

Widow says she immediately suspected ex-wife

Bridegan married Kristen in 2017, and they had two children. Gardner, meanwhile, married Fernandez Saldana, who was a maintenance man at a gym where she worked out.

Bridegan was attacked shortly after returning 9-year-old twins to Gardner’s home from his “date night” with the children.

He was driving back to St. Augustine with another child when he stopped his Volkswagen Atlas and put on warning lights to remove a tire from the road. Bridegan was shot twice moments later.

Traffic began to back up. The first trial witness, Jonelle Cruz, said that she comforted Bridegan's daughter with a blanket in a separate vehicle while her boyfriend tried to figure out what had happened.

“She was shaking. She was very worried about her dad,” Cruz testified.

Later that night, Kirsten Bridegan said she followed her “gut instinct” and urged police to investigate Gardner and Fernandez Saldana.

A second tire gave police a big break

Stifler said police a few months later discovered a lead “that blew the case open.” A tire at a rental property owned by Fernandez Saldana was very similar to the tire that had blocked Bridegan's vehicle when he was shot.

Police matched DNA on those two tires to Tenon, a former tenant with a criminal record and financial problems. Records revealed that he was paid $10,000 by Fernandez Saldana after the murder, though the checks said the work was for landscaping, roof repair and a business idea.

Hill, the defense lawyer, disputed anything nefarious, telling the jury: “Mario Fernandez has hired him to do work, not murder.”

Tenon, 65, was charged with shooting Bridegan. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and had agreed to testify against Fernandez Saldana. He withdrew the plea earlier this year and will have his own trial.

Stifler said Gardner, who was from a wealthy family, relocated to Washington state with her children after Bridegan's death. Fernandez Saldana, meanwhile, moved to Orlando.

“Ms. Gardner got what she wanted: full control over her children and the freedom to move out of Jacksonville, Florida,” the prosecutor said.

Bridegan was chief technology officer at Utah-based Clean Simple Eats before working at Microsoft for less than a year before his death, his wife said.

Judge Gregory Carro issued an order Monday canceling the trial and giving the Manhattan District Attorney's office, which is prosecuting the state case, until Oct. 9 to respond to the defense's double jeopardy claims. A hearing will be held on Dec. 10, Carro said, about a week before Mangione is scheduled to be sentenced in the federal case.

Mangione, 28, pleaded guilty Friday in Manhattan federal court to a pair of stalking charges and admitted trailing Thompson to UnitedHealth Group’s investor conference and gunning him down outside a Manhattan hotel in 2024. Federal prosecutors said they would seek life in prison when Mangione is sentenced Dec. 18, though federal sentencing guidelines call for a term of 24 to 30 years.

“On the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan, and he died,” Mangione said.

Immediately after his plea, Mangione’s lawyers filed paperwork seeking to have the state case thrown out on double jeopardy and due process grounds. They described him as a “pawn in parallel prosecutions" and accused state and federal prosecutors of “trying to punish him twice for the exact conduct.”

Mangione has pleaded not guilty in the state case, which also carries the possibility of a life sentence.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said in a statement that it would fight efforts to end the state case, in part because Mangione’s federal sentence isn’t yet known.

Compared with federal law and that of other states, New York has uncommonly strong protections for defendants facing multiple prosecutions. A state prosecution can be barred if a federal case involving the same course of conduct or criminal transaction ends in a guilty plea or if a jury is sworn.

It will be up to Carro to decide if that applies to Mangione. However Carro rules, his decision will be subject to appeal.

Mangione pleaded guilty to federal charges that accused him of traveling across state lines by bus to stalk and kill Thompson. The charges alleged that he used a cellphone, the internet, interstate highways and a hostel serving out-of-state customers to plan and carry out the attack.

“The full range of conduct that comprises the stalking offense is coterminous with the conduct committed as part of the murder offense,” Mangione’s lawyers wrote in their double jeopardy filing.

That Mangione traveled from out of state "to be at the crime scene at the time of the shooting does nothing to eliminate the stalking of Mr. Thompson from the acts constituting his murder,” they added. “They are all part of the same criminal incident or criminal transaction.”

Bragg’s office contends that the state charges, including murder and firearms offenses, involve different legal elements and criminal conduct. In a letter last month, Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann objected to the possibility of a federal guilty plea wiping out the state case.

Any guilty plea, Seidemann wrote, “must account for the seriousness of defendant’s offenses” and for the state's interests in prosecuting Mangione, “including the sanctity of life principle that underpins the state homicide charges.”

The 12 events this year — New Orleans was previously postponed — is the smallest schedule for LIV since it was launched with massive Saudi Arabia funding in 2022 and featured eight tournaments.

Jon Rahm already has clinched the individual season title for the third straight year. LIV Golf Indianapolis, which starts Thursday at The Club at Chatham Hills, will determine who finishes second and third among the players, and the top team.

The Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, the financial muscle of the rival league from the start, decided in March this would be the final year of funding. LIV Golf announced earlier this month it has an agreement with a lead investor that would sustain a new version of the league for 2027.

“By concluding the season now, we can put our full resources behind what comes next and maintain the operational rigor this transition demands," LIV CEO Scott O'Neil said in a statement.

“We are reimagining LIV Golf as a fundamentally new league owned by the players and anchored in a sustainable business model, with an evolved fan experience built for the markets where the game is growing fastest across the globe and the support of world-class partners.”

The cancellation of LIV Golf Michigan was not surprising. There have been reports in recent weeks the tournament had not even started preparing with grandstands and other amenities. LIV Golf said ticket holders would get refunds.

In another cost-cutting move LIV attributed to “unavoidable changes in the entertainment program,” the league informed Thomas Rhett and Disco Lines their live performances would not take place at LIV Golf Indianapolis.

The final event with a $20 million purse that pays $4 million to the winner could be the last big payoff for LIV and its 57 players. LIV did not identify the lead investor or how much of a cash infusion was involved, or say whether it was an investment or a loan.

O'Neil has said the LIV 2.0 version for 2027 and onward would involve making players equity owners. He referred to it as a “second bite at the apple” being equity instead of cash.

But this likely is the end of $20 million purses for individual outcomes, and there already has been cutbacks. Rahm earned $6 million for winning the points title, down from $18 million the previous two years.

“As we concentrate on finishing the season strong and building the next chapter of LIV Golf, we’ll carry the energy and enthusiasm our fans have shown us into what comes next," O'Neil said.

The format for the 2027 season and the rosters also remain unclear. Still to be determined is whether Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau — the two biggest names — and other players who joined the league for its exorbitant prize money will want to stay for LIV 2.0.

As for the final event, Joaquin Niemann, Lucas Herbert and Tyrrell Hatton are in the mix for third place, which pays a $1 million bonus. DeChambeau is comfortably in second, which pays $3 million.

Dustin Johnson's 4Aces team has a narrow lead over Australia-based Ripper, with Rahm's Legion XIII and Bryson DeChambeau's Crushers team all in the mix for the team title.

___

See AP’s full golf coverage here

The S&P 500 fell 0.5% but remains near its all-time high set Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 272 points, or 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.3%.

Wall Street’s losses solidified in the afternoon when oil prices accelerated upward. The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, rose 2.7% to $90.87.

It’s been careening back and forth because of uncertainty about what the war with Iran will do to the global flow of crude. Last month alone, Brent zigzagged between $72 and $102 as hopes rose and fell that the United States and Iran could reach a deal that would allow oil tankers to freely exit the Persian Gulf again.

Monday’s rally for oil prices sent Treasury yields in the bond market higher, which in turn raised the pressure on the economy and prices for all kinds of investments.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.72% from 4.68% late Friday. It has shot up from just 3.97% before the war with Iran, largely because higher oil prices are worsening inflation and upping the probability that the Federal Reserve will have to hike interest rates.

Higher rates could keep a lid on inflation, but they do so by intentionally slowing the economy. The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate has already jumped near its highest level in a year because of the rise in the 10-year Treasury yield, though reports last week said that inflation in July was not as bad as earlier in the summer.

Usually around this time of year, anticipation is building on Wall Street to hear from the head of the Federal Reserve about where it may take interest rates. But the Fed’s new chairman, Kevin Warsh, may give little insight at this year’s economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at the end of this month, according to Thierry Wizman, a strategist at Macquarie Group

Warsh has been adamant about giving Wall Street less guidance about the Fed’s plans for interest rates.

Wall Street has run to records despite high inflation in large part because profits are booming for U.S. companies.

Those in the S&P 500 index are on track to deliver growth of roughly 50% for earnings per share in the spring from a year earlier, according to FactSet. That’s much better than analysts expected and would be the best since five years ago, when the economy was erupting out of the chasm created by the COVID pandemic.

Nearly all the companies in the S&P 500 have turned in their profit reports for the spring. Still to come are big retailers, including reports this week from Home Depot, Target and Walmart.

They’re facing pressure. Their customers’ incomes may be turning iffier after U.S. employers surprisingly cut more jobs last month than they added. At the same time, their customers are continuing to see bills rise quickly as inflation remains much higher than anyone would like.

A report last week said that shoppers surprisingly spent less at U.S. retailers last month than in June, and CEOs for retailers could give color this week on what they’re seeing.

On Wall Street, trading was relatively quiet Monday.

L3Harris Technologies fell 4.6% after the defense company said Christopher Kubasik stepped down as its CEO and chairman following “certain conduct by Kubasik that was not consistent with the values of the Company.” It gave few details but said the conduct was not related to its financial reporting, controls, customer relationships or operational performance.

Alphabet dipped 0.5% even though Berkshire Hathaway said it increased its investment in Google’s parent company, along with several homebuilders. Berkshire built a reputation for buying stocks at affordable prices under its former CEO, famed investor Warren Buffett.

Constellation Brands fell 6.2% after Berkshire said it sold all its holdings in the seller of Modelo beer and Robert Mondavi wine.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 40.70 points to 7,745.06. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 272.63 to 53,459.78, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 84.25 to 26,644.91.

In stock markets abroad, indexes dipped in Europe following a stronger finish in Asia.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.7% after a report said Japan’s economy grew at a slower pace in the April-June quarter than economists expected. Indexes jumped 1.3% in Hong Kong and 1.4% in Shanghai for some of the world’s biggest moves.

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AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Michelle Champan contributed to this report.

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Earlier versions of this story incorrectly reported that Japan’s economy grew slightly faster than expected in the April-June quarter.

The Trump administration is making it harder for the public to know, moving to toss aside a 60-year-old requirement for tens of thousands of private sector employers to submit workforce demographic reports each year to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency responsible for enforcing anti-discrimination laws in the workplace.

The EEOC's Republican majority voted 2-1 Tuesday to rescind the data collection requirement, submitting the proposal to a 30-day public commentary period before final approval. The proposal is a quiet but profound salvo in President Donald Trump's shake up of civil rights enforcement, ending a practice that has endured through 10 Republican and Democratic administrations.

EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, an outspoken critic of diversity and inclusion practices who has urged white men to come forward with discrimination complaints, argued that requiring companies to submit the annual demographic reports risks encouraging companies to justify discriminatory practices to diversify their workforce.

“It may promote racial stereotyping at work, and it may encourage employers to engage in discrimination," Lucas said during a hearing ahead of the vote.

Former Democratic EEOC commissioners and civil rights organizations have denounced the proposal, saying it will deprive the agency of a critical tool for uncovering discrimination patterns and tracking how women and racial minorities have fared since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which created the EEOC and prohibited employment discrimination based on race, color, sex, national origin and religion.

The EEOC, which receives more than 88,000 worker complaints each year, has historically used the data to guide its enforcement priorities and inform some of its investigations.

Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal, the sole Democrat left on the EEOC since Trump moved to wrest control of the agency, voted against the proposal.

“Today, the commission discusses whether to turn back time to a period before the civil rights movement, kneecapping its ability to protect workers,” Kotagal said.

Here's what to know about the reporting requirement and the proposal to end it:

How the EEOC has collected the data

Since 1966, the EEOC has required companies with at least 100 employees, or federal contractors with at least 50 workers, to submit a form called the EEO-1 each year.

The form, which has evolved over time, identifies 10 job categories from “Executive/Senior Level Officials and Managers” to “Laborers” and “Service Workers.” It asks employers to report on the number male and female workers in each job category, as well as the number of workers from different race and ethnicities: Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American, Asian, Native Hawaiian, American Indian or Alaska Native and two or more races.

The data typically covers more than 50 million employees and 73,000 employers nationwide.

A view into gender and race in the private sector

The EEOC launched during the Biden administration an interactive tool allowing the public to explore historical demographic metrics across industries and job categories. The most recent data is from 2023. Under the Trump administration, the EEOC last collected EEO-1 data for the year 2024 but has not publicly disclosed it. Collection of the year 2025 would have begun this year.

The data shows white men dominating executive and senior manager roles at private companies, though women and minorities have made inroads, especially in the years following the #MeToo and Black Lives Matters movements.

Women remain underrepresented in the top ranks of companies. While they make up nearly half the workforce at the companies surveyed, women held just 34.5% of executives and senior manager roles in 2023. That was up from 29.2% a decade earlier.

White and Asian women made the fastest gains, and by 2023, were no longer underrepresented in senior roles compared to their numbers in the overall workforce. In contrast, Black and Hispanic women remained sharply underrepresented in executive and senior manager roles despite making modest gains.

Asian men have been proportionally represented in senior roles for years, while Black and Hispanic men remained underrepresented in 2023.

Of those demographic groups, only one was overrepresented in senior roles: white men, who made up a third of the overall workforce at the companies surveyed but held 52.7% of executive and senior management roles.

Why the government wants to end the data collection

Lucas said the annual reporting requirements impose “hundreds of millions of dollars” on costs on employers, a burden she argued was unnecessary absent “any allegation, indication, or evidence of discrimination.”

The move was recommended by Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint that has guided many of the Trump administration’s policies.

A group of former Democratic EEOC commissioners and legal counselors said there is little evidence that companies are routinely using employment data to engage in quotas or race-based hiring.

“This is simply inaccurate and unsupported speculation, at odds with the ways in which this data is actually collected, managed and used,” the former officials said in a statement.

Instead, the officials said, tracking such data encourages companies to proactively examine their hiring, promotion, benefits and other policies to ensure they are not unnecessarily erecting barriers.

Kotagal said the agency has used the data to determine whether a discrimination charge might be part of a deeper pattern at a company. She cited a recent investigation of California supermarket chain Vallarta Food Enterprises, in which the EEOC alleges the grocer failed or refused to recruit, hire or promote non-Hispanic individuals. In that case, EEO-1 data showed that “nearly 100 percent of its employees were Hispanic,” Kotagal said. “It’s a key tool in our toolbox.”

The agency has also issued special reports on demographic employment trends across certain industries or roles.

Kotagal highlighted a 2024 report on the tech sector, which showed that women had made virtually no gains between 2014 and 2022, and that workers under 40 years old had actually lost ground. The report also found tech company workers were more likely that others to file age or pay discrimination charges, suggesting systemic barriers to women and older workers in the industry.

The report has been removed from the EEOC’s website.

Corporate retreat from demographic disclosure

The EEOC is prohibited from publicly releasing an individual company’s EEO-1 form, only publishing the information in the aggregate. In recent years, however, a growing number of the country’s top companies began publicly releasing their forms in response to pressure from shareholders and Democratic elected officials to show transparency in their diversity efforts.

Many of those companies have complained that job categories in the EEO-1 forms don't align with their internal structures, a point Lucas echoed Tuesday, saying the categories don't reflect the modern workforce. But advocates of EEO-1 disclosure argued it's the only standardized form that allows for comparison across companies, and offer more detail.

However, the trend toward transparency has started to reverse.

Companies have started to pull back on publicizing both EEO-1 forms and their own diversity reports, which conservative advocates and the Trump administration have seized on to argue that companies are using discriminatory tactics to add women and minorities to their ranks.

In 2025, 24 companies in the S&P 100 — the largest U.S. publicly traded companies — chose not to disclose their EEO-1 data after having done so the year before, according to Andrew Jones, principal researcher at The Conference Board Governance & Sustainability Center. Still, 60 S&P 100 companies did release the data.

Meanwhile, fewer companies are publicizing any form of demographic metrics. The number of Russell 3,000 companies that disclosed metrics on women in the workforce fell from 75% in 2024 to 62% in 2025, according to a study by The Conference Board using data from corporate governance data and analysis firm ESGAUGE. Those disclosing metrics on minority representation fell from 30.9% to 26.5%.

Why companies may keep gathering data

Companies are still likely to keep track of their demographic data, whether or not they disclose any of those metrics publicly, and even if they are no longer required to submit annual EEO-1 reports. That's because Title VII requires employers to keep records that could be pertinent to any discrimination investigation, and the EEOC is empowered to request them.

“What we are generally advising is to stay the course,” Jennifer Robins, counsel in law firm Saul Ewing’s Labor and Employment Group. “Private litigants, employment discrimination lawsuits are not going away, and this data is helpful to defending oneself.”

The EEOC has demanded extensive demographic data from companies to bolster Lucas' own marquee cases. Those include an investigation into diversity, equity and inclusion practices of sports giant Nike, which Lucas has alleged discriminate against white employees; a lawsuit against the New York Times for allegedly discriminating against a white man who was passed over for a promotion, and an investigation into alleged antisemitism against staff at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lucas emphasized Tuesday that the EEOC would continue to demand data in the course of its investigations. Kotagal warned employers that under future leadership, the EEOC could reinstitute the EEO-1 collection.

Jocelyn Frye, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, said she sees the elimination of EEO-1 data as part of an effort to obscure the prevalence of discrimination against racial minorities and women and create of a sense of urgency around protecting white workers from DEI-related policies.

But Frye said the data "doesn’t suggest that their top priority ought to be discrimination against white men.

"If the chair is moving forward with an agenda that thinks she ought to be focused on men and ought to be focused on white people, my answer is, ‘Well, does the data tell you that?’” Frye said.

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The Associated Press’ women in the workforce coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. 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.

Hamas has already agreed to the proposal. American negotiators appeared to acquiesce to Israeli demands that Hamas disarmament must come before any reconstruction of the devastated Palestinian enclave. They did not publicly signal that Israel had made any commitments to withdraw from the 60% of Gaza that Israeli troops currently occupy.

That’s a major sticking point in the plan and one that Hamas had pressed negotiators to compel Israel to fulfill prior to the meeting. The talks came days after Netanyahu rejected the 15-point, U.S.-backed road map to move the ceasefire deal forward, saying there would be no withdrawal without disarmament.

A day earlier, Kushner met for two hours with Hamas' leader in Egypt.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the director of the U.S.-created Board of Peace, Nickolay Mladenov, were also in the meeting with Netanyahu, according to a source familiar with the plans and a diplomatic source. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a closed-door meeting.

At stake are the lives of some 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, rebuilding plans and future control over the territory.

Netanyahu says talks were ‘deep and constructive’

In a statement, Netanyahu's office said the talks were “deep and constructive.” Israel and the board agreed to establish two working groups — one on the disarmament and demilitarization of Gaza and another focused on public health issues for Gaza.

Israel and the board agreed that the demilitarization “should be prompt and completed before any reconstruction," the statement said.

A Board of Peace official said they also agreed that the demilitarization must include “every weapon, light and heavy, and every tunnel.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door meeting.

“Backed by President Donald Trump, the parties share clear goals: a fully demilitarized and deradicalized Gaza that poses no threat to Israel, and where Gazans can pursue prosperity and dignity peacefully,” the official said.

Another Board of Peace official said the meeting was “very productive” and resulted in agreement on “a path forward.”

"The Israelis are going to give this a chance. Now it’s up to Hamas to show if it truly intends to comply,” said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

Asked if Israel had committed to the U.S. plan for Gaza, a spokesperson for Mladenov said it was a “work in progress.”

Meeting followed Kushner's conversation with Hamas

Kushner, who is Trump's son-in-law, met Sunday with Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya in Cairo on disarmament, according to a regional official and a Hamas official, who both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

Officials from mediating countries Egypt, Qatar and Turkey also were there.

The Hamas official said the Hamas leader demanded that Israel halt its attacks on Gaza and withdraw to the so-called “yellow line” dividing the territory before beginning implementation.

The yellow line was never precisely defined. Israeli forces have moved beyond it and now control about 60% of Gaza. In May, Netanyahu said the next step was to move to 70% control, with Israel “tightening the grip” on Hamas “from every direction.”

Several regional powers including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates issued a statement Sunday condemning Israel’s rejection of the road map. They said Israel "now bears responsibility for obstructing the efforts to bring peace in Gaza.” Other signers included Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia and the ceasefire mediators.

The foreign ministers’ statement called on the Board of Peace and the U.S. to take “immediate and concrete measures” to keep any party from obstructing the plan’s implementation.

Talks spark hope and doubt in Gaza

While some in Gaza hope that efforts to implement the road map will bring an end to the war sparked by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, others are skeptical.

Mohammad Abu al-Qombuz cast doubt on all talks and visits currently taking place.

“A conference here and there, it is all lies. We need a definitive solution that would work for everybody,” said Abu al-Qombuz, who lives in a Gaza City tent camp, part of the territory's vast displaced population.

Under the road map, Hamas would hand over weapons to the Palestinian technocratic committee meant to oversee daily operations in the territory. The committee has not yet entered Gaza.

But Hamas has linked the surrender of its heaviest weapons to the creation of a Palestinian state, and the road map entails the creation of a “credible pathway toward achieving Palestinian self-determination and statehood,” something Israel’s current government rejects.

Until the road map is agreed to, other elements of the ceasefire are on hold, including reconstruction and the deployment of international forces to separate Israeli forces from committee-controlled areas.

Netanyahu faces a challenging election on Oct. 27 as he tries to hold onto power with a coalition that includes ministers taking a harsh line on Gaza, and it’s not clear whether he will take decisive steps on the ceasefire before then.

Also coming up is the anniversary of the 2023 attack.

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Frankel reported from Jerusalem, Magdy from Cairo and Shurafa from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip. Associated Press journalists Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Israel; Collin Binkley in Washington; and Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.

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Clancy's mother, Paula Musgrove, sounding at times emotional, described her daughter as a dedicated and loving mother whose mental health began declining in October 2022 — about three months before Clancy strangled the children and attempted to kill herself.

“Mom, will you please come up and stay with me for a bit? I’m really sick. Something is wrong,” Clancy wrote in a text message displayed to the jury. “I had horrible insomnia all night, and I just don’t know how I am going to get through the day. ... It’s just really scary, and I don’t want to be alone.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

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Musgrove also recalled a more alarming disclosure in December, when she was standing in the kitchen with Clancy and her then-husband, Patrick Clancy. Musgrove said her daughter appeared nervous and told them she needed to tell them something.

“She told us she had thoughts of harming the children,” Musgrove said.

Musgrove, who lived in Connecticut, often stayed with her daughter in Massachusetts from October into December 2022. She said Clancy was scared of sleeping alone, became increasingly paranoid and believed the medications she was taking “were destroying her mind.”

Clancy’s sister described a similar decline. Allison Ozga testified that at the end of December Clancy told her she had experienced suicidal thoughts every day for a month.

The testimony came in the fourth week of Clancy's murder trial, soon after the prosecution rested their case.

Prosecutors argue that Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, planned the Jan. 24, 2023, killings and contrived to get her husband out of the house by sending him to get takeout and to the pharmacy.

Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington does not dispute that she killed the children. But he says she shouldn't be held criminally responsible because she had postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth. He said she also had bipolar disorder and that antidepressants prescribed worsened her condition.

‘How could a mother hurt her children?’

A former co-worker testified Monday about Clancy’s years as a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, describing Clancy as a “really good” nurse who loved her job and was “compassionate, kind and a patient advocate.”

“She was the type of nurse that you wanted taking care of you or your loved one when you walked onto our unit,” said Margaret Hamp.

Hamp said she and Clancy worked night shifts together and that Clancy regularly sought parenting advice from her co-workers, asking about everything from children’s sleeping habits and choosing a daycare provider to monogrammed lunch boxes.

Hamp also recalled a conversation from Clancy’s first year on the unit after a pregnant patient arrived with plans to harm herself. Hamp said she spoke with Clancy about mental health during pregnancy and postpartum and asked whether she had heard of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in 2001.

“I explained that to her, and she cried,” Hamp testified. “She said, ‘How could a mother hurt her children?’”

A disputed picture of her mental health

Earlier in the trial, the jury heard that Clancy had sought treatment for severe mental health problems, including admitting herself to a psychiatric hospital. But witnesses also noted Clancy wouldn't always take the medications prescribed to help with her insomnia, anxiety and depression, and that she expressed fears she was addicted to some of them.

The defense has argued that Clancy was overmedicated and that her care was disjointed, with doctors not speaking to one another or sharing notes. The defense also showed she was discharged from one facility after a day and denied a higher level of care at another when she couldn't show that she had a suicide plan.

Prosecutors have questioned the seriousness of Clancy's suicide attempt and showed through texts and photos that she performed many normal activities the day of the killings, including taking her children to the doctor and playing with them in the snow.

Her doctors have testified they never saw Clancy exhibit signs of mania or psychosis, though she did repeatedly talk of feeling suicidal.

Clancy hasn't testified and isn't required to do so, but jurors have seen her break down in sobs at several points, including when prosecutors showed the jury autopsy photos of the children.

At the start of the trial, Patrick Clancy described the horror of returning home to find his dead children. During his testimony, prosecutors played a harrowing seven-minute 911 call, which was not released to the public. Clancy can be heard checking on Lindsay Clancy in the backyard, before heading down to his basement and finding his children.

He screams and howls before telling a dispatcher, “She killed the kids!”

Meanwhile, the 60-day negotiating period to find a peace deal between the United States and Iran was expiring, with no word of an extension and both sides seemingly as far apart as they were at the start.

Here’s a look at the latest developments Monday in the Iran war and the wider Middle East. Full coverage can be found here.

Iran says it is near finalizing a deal with Oman

Iran said it has reached an agreement with Oman over a plan for ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz, which runs between the two countries, and they are now working to finalize details for a joint statement.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters in Tehran, Iran's capital, that “an understanding has been reached regarding the map of the transit route.”

He did not elaborate, but details that have previously emerged suggest the deal would reopen the strait with ships entering through a route close to Iran and exiting through a route close to Oman. Ships would transit without paying fees or tolls during an interim period.

The U.S. has sought an acceptable deal on opening the strait before ending its blockade of Iranian ports.

Iran effectively closed the strait — through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s traded oil supplies passed before the war — after Israel and the U.S. attacked the country on Feb. 28.

Trump says US will bomb Oman if it gets in the way

Trump told Fox News reporter Trey Yingst that the U.S. would bomb Oman if it “gets in the way,” using an expletive for emphasis.

Fox News did not provide audio of the interview.

This is not the first time that Trump has threatened Oman. In May, he told reporters during a Cabinet meeting that “Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we will have to blow them up.”

Trump also said the expiration of the 60-day deadline on talks to end the war was irrelevant and said there was no timeline, Yingst said. Trump said the U.S. has a back channel for talks with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Yingst added.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres wants Iran and the U.S. to resume peace negotiations, saying there is no military solution to the conflict, according to U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric.

Dujarric said the U.N. chief also thinks the countries need to “lower the rhetoric that we’ve been hearing in recent days.”

Kushner meets with Netanyahu over Gaza road map

Mideast negotiator Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, met on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the day after he had a rare, two-hour meeting with Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya in Egypt on disarmament of the Palestinian militant group.

Netanyahu last week rejected a 15-point, U.S.-backed road map to move the ceasefire deal forward in Gaza.

Hamas says it has agreed to the road map, which includes disarmament, and the group is urging mediators and the U.S.-created Board of Peace to “compel” Israel to sign on.

But Israel, which under the road map must gradually withdraw from Gaza, says Hamas must fully disarm before any Israeli withdrawal.

Israeli troops occupy about 60% of the strip, and Netanyahu has previously threatened to advance further.

Houthi rebels say they attacked boats in the Red Sea

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed that they attacked a ship and four military boats on Monday in the Red Sea off the Yemeni city of Mokha, near the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

The rebels fired a number of ballistic missiles at the vessels, resulting in the capsizing and burning of the boats, Yahya Saree, a military spokesperson for the Houthis, said in a statement.

The rebels claimed that the vessels belonged to Saudi Arabia, without providing evidence. There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia, and The Associated Press could not independently verify the Houthi claim.

Saree also said the rebels launched a drone attack on government forces in the central province of Marib.

Drone attacks target Iraqi officials

Two officials in northern Iraq were targeted in drone attacks that the regional counterterrorism service said were launched from the border with Iran.

One was fired at the office of Masrour Barzani, prime minister of Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, and the other targeted the home of a top regional intelligence official, the counterterrorism service said.

There were no casualties and no immediate claim of responsibility.

Since the beginning of the war in Iran, Tehran and Iranian-backed Iraqi militias have launched regular attacks on U.S. military and diplomatic facilities in Iraq, and on bases of exiled Iranian Kurdish dissident groups, but Monday’s direct attack on regional government buildings was unusual.

Barzani on X called the attack “a dangerous escalation and a direct threat to the security and stability" of the region.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi appeared to be trying to distance Iran from the attack. He said on social media that nothing justified the attack on Barzani and that “Kurdish friends should be vigilant against false-flag ploys to sow discord between neighbors.”

U.S. forces currently stationed in the Kurdish region of Iraq have begun withdrawing ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline agreed upon between Washington and Baghdad to end the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

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This story was corrected earlier to show that the first name of the prime minister of Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region is Masrour Barzani, instead of Masoud Barzani.

A forest ranger said the fire in Belgium could continue for months underground in peaty soil and sporadically flare up.

Europe is sweltering through one of its hottest and driest summers on record, which a recent study said was fueled by climate change.

Rain helps, but Belgian blaze is not yet under control

Belgium’s King Philippe interrupted his summer vacation to visit emergency services fighting the wildfire in the eastern High Fens, about eight kilometers (five miles) from the German border, as it spread east after moving into a pine forest on Sunday.

The fire in Liège province has burned an estimated 30 square kilometers (about 12 square miles), leaving blackened trees and smoldering ground.

While the fire did not significantly grow, due in part to favorable winds, it remained out of control in areas inaccessible to ground crews, the Wallonia region said in an update.

Some 500 firefighters were aided by aircraft sent from Norway, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands and local police with drones after a cold front brought overnight rain. Farmers were helping supply water to firefighting efforts, regional officials said. Helicopters emptied huge sacks of water over the flames as smoke billowed from forests.

“We managed to maintain the fire where the firemen are situated but there’s still a place which is totally inaccessible, where the fire is still going on in the direction of Monschau in Germany,” said Nicolas Yernaux, spokesperson for the Wallonia regional public services.

He said overnight rains helped contain the blaze and dampen the possibility that smoldering fires will flare up again, but he said they did not significantly impact the center of the fire.

A forest ranger from the region told The Associated Press that the blaze could continue for months underground because of the peaty soil.

“What we see here is that the grassland has burned and the fire has gone into the soil to a certain depth, into the peat, and it is still burning," said Yves Pieper. “It can go down very, very low in the peat layer.”

He said the fire can continue smoldering largely unseen underground for weeks or months before flaring up again, noting that new flames had already appeared nearby.

Precautionary evacuation orders remained in effect for hundreds of residents.

Veterinarian Hugues Guyvot, who was involved in animal rescue efforts, said large animals were able to flee but smaller ones like frogs and mice likely burrowed and were baked underground in a landscape of peat bogs.

“Maybe it will take decades to recover from this fire,” he said.

Greece quickly extinguishes fire near main airport

In Greece, fire department investigators examined the area on the island of Salamina where a fast-moving wildfire on Sunday killed two people, injured another nine and destroyed several homes. The island lies just west of the Greek capital.

New wildfires broke out elsewhere Monday. Dozens of firefighters along with two water-dropping planes and two helicopters raced to tackle one in Spata, an area east of Athens that includes the main international airport. The fire department said the blaze was contained within 30 minutes.

Separately, the fire department said an 80-year-old man was arrested in the northern town of Kavala on arson charges for allegedly deliberately setting fire to dried vegetation. It was among 302 fire-related arrests since Jan. 1 in Greece, including 31 for deliberate arson and 271 for negligence that sparked fires, the department said.

France says a fire in the southwest is under control

In southwestern France, authorities said a fire in the Landes region was under control after four days of battling the flames, allowing about half of the evacuated residents to begin returning home.

More than 600 residents evacuated last week as the fire burned about 17 square kilometers (6.6 square miles) during a prolonged spell of extreme heat. Some respite was on the way Monday as temperatures began to drop.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the state would provide a 12 million-euro ($13.9 million) aid package to Gironde and Landes, the regions hardest hit by the wildfires, to help rebuild homes and support affected businesses, including in Le Porge, where 183 homes were destroyed in a massive blaze last month.

Croatian police arrest arson suspects

In Croatia, four people are suspected of deliberately starting as many as 10 fires in the region around the coastal town of Zadar, a major tourism hub on the Adriatic coast.

The suspects were questioned by an investigative judge following their arrest on Saturday on a tip from residents.

The four are suspected of starting fires on Aug. 14 and 15 with an aim to “endanger lives and valuable property and inflict damage on a large number of residents in Zadar county,” police said in a statement. There was no word on a possible motive.

Police said they were assessing the extent of the damage caused.

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Corbet reported from Paris. Elena Becatoros in Argostoli, Greece, and Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia, contributed.

The Republican president’s lawyers had asked the justices to reconsider their refusal to hear his appeal. The court denied Trump’s petition along with several others.

It’s unusual — although not unheard of — for the court to grant such requests. Trump paid the judgment shortly after the court declined to take up his appeal in June.

Trump and the Justice Department are also asking the high court to toss out a second Carroll verdict totaling $83 million. They argue he’s immune from being sued over comments he made about her in 2019, when he was president. The court has not yet acted on that appeal.

Carroll is a longtime advice columnist and former TV talk show host. She testified at a 2023 trial that Trump turned a friendly 1990s encounter into a violent attack in the dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury retailer across the street from Trump Tower in Manhattan. The jury found Trump liable for defaming Carroll when he denied her allegation in 2022.

Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said they were pleased by the Supreme Court's decision.

"As a result, the jury’s unanimous verdict that Donald Trump sexually assaulted and then defamed E. Jean Carroll is now final and cannot be challenged in any court,” Kaplan said in a statement.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.

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

Many residents on Flores island in East Nusa Tenggara province spent the day mourning victims while military teams tried to deliver food, clean water and clothing to inaccessible communities by plane.

The Saturday morning quake left widespread damage, with buildings collapsed onto parked cars, homes shattered and trees and boulders blocking roads.

“My house is just rubble now,” said Rasyid Jafar, a clothing trader in the village of Reo, the hardest-hit area in Manggarai regency. "We need food, medicine and clean water urgently.”

During Indonesia’s Independence Day ceremony in the capital, Jakarta, President Prabowo Subianto asked participants to pray for people affected by disasters in East Nusa Tenggara and other parts of the country, while leading a nationwide moment of silence honoring the nation’s independence heroes.

More than 4,500 homes were damaged when the quake struck Flores island early Saturday. Some 19,000 people were forced into temporary shelters and 213 people were injured, according to the National Disaster Management Agency or BNPB. The disaster also damaged 122 health facilities, 252 schools and 84 places of worship.

The province's governor declared a 14-day state of emergency on Sunday.

The quake occurred at a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles) shortly before 6 a.m. Saturday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and residents fled in panic as tsunami warnings were issued but later lifted. Authorities have since recorded 1,576 aftershocks into Monday, though only 54 were felt by residents.

Thousands await aid amid devastation

Thousands of people on Flores camped outside collapsed homes under tarpaulin tents overnight into Monday, sleeping outside because of the danger of more aftershocks.

For many residents, the disaster revived painful memories of a powerful earthquake and tsunami that struck Flores in 1992, killing about 2,500 people.

As thousands of survivors remain in need of food, shelter and medical treatment, the government said more than 1,800 military and police personnel have been deployed across the disaster zone, supported by 10 aircraft and several vessels, to distribute more than 100 metric tons of emergency aid.

Nearly 5,400 food packages, two field hospital tents, medicines and clothing were being delivered to communities across the disaster zone, as logistical challenges slowed deliveries to some hard-hit communities, national disaster agency Deputy Chief Abdul Muhari said in a video statement.

Authorities set up two emergency field hospitals in the worst-hit town of Ruteng to treat earthquake victims after local hospitals were damaged, with two crisis management teams overseeing a health emergency operation center, Muhari said.

He also said rescue teams continued searching for victims in the affected areas, although no residents have reported any family members still missing.

Rescuers struggle to reach isolated communities

Aid workers reached tiny Palue Island, one of the areas closest to the earthquake’s epicenter, late Sunday, after a difficult sea and land journey through landslide-hit terrain, authorities said. Thousands of residents remained in urgent need of assistance.

"The roads are steep and many were blocked by landslides. It was a near-death journey,” said the deputy police chief of Sikka regency, Marselus Yugo Amboro, whose team was among the first to reach the island with emergency supplies.

He said initial assessments revealed extensive damage, with one villager killed, two seriously injured and nearly 150 homes destroyed.

Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped arc of seismic faults and volcanoes.

In 2018, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake triggered a tsunami on the island of Sulawesi that killed more than 4,400 people. In 2004, a magnitude 9.1 quake off Sumatra unleashed a tsunami that killed about 230,000 people in a dozen countries, nearly 170,000 in Aceh province alone.

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Karmini reported from Jakarta. Associated Press journalists Edna Tarigan, Dita Alangkara and Andi Jatmiko, in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this story.

The Southeastern Conference gets bragging rights with nine ranked teams, but the Big Ten isn’t far behind with eight.

Indiana finished the 2025 season at No. 1 in the rankings after a historic 16-0 run and national championship game victory. This season, Ohio State enters with the best odds (+600) to win it all. Notre Dame (+650), Texas (+650), Indiana (+800) and Oregon (+800) round out the top five.

The Top 25 voters are more than 60 journalists covering college football for AP members and other news organizations. They’re urged to base their votes on head-to-head results, not reputation, preseason speculation or regional bias.

What comes next?

Now comes the good part.

The first regular-season poll will be released at noon on Tuesday, Sept. 8, after the opening two weekends of college football. After that, the AP Top 25 will drop every Sunday at 2 p.m. ET through the end of the regular season.

The final regular-season poll will be released Dec. 6 at 11 a.m. ET, right before the College Football Playoff bracket is revealed. The final AP Top 25 of the season will be released at noon on Jan. 26, after the national championship game.

The CFP bracket based on the preseason AP Top 25

Based on the AP Top 25 preseason rankings, the CFP would open like this:

— No. 9 seed Mississippi at No. 8 Texas A&M. Winner vs. No. 1 Ohio State.

— No. 12 seed Boise State at No. 5 Texas. Winner vs. No. 4 Notre Dame.

— No. 10 seed Oklahoma at No. 7 seed Miami. Winner vs. No. 2 Oregon.

— No. 11 seed Texas Tech at No. 6 Indiana. Winner vs. No. 3 Georgia.

Music City Kickoff got a good one

Last year’s Week 1 featured three marquee matchups between ranked teams as Texas traveled to Ohio State, Miami faced Notre Dame and LSU took on Clemson.

This year, the inaugural Music City Kickoff game in Nashville will feature the only ranked-on-ranked matchup in Week 1. No. 9 Ole Miss and No. 24 Louisville meet at Nissan Stadium, home of the Tennessee Titans, on Sept. 6.

The ranked matchups pick up in Week 2 with two ranked matchups featuring SEC and Big Ten schools. Texas will host Ohio State in a rematch under the lights on Saturday, Sept. 12, while Oklahoma heads to Ann Arbor to face Michigan at noon.

No. 4 Notre Dame set to embark on revenge tour

No matter how Marcus Freeman wants to downplay it, Notre Dame is still smarting about not being selected for the CFP after winning 10 straight games following season-opening losses to Miami and Texas A&M.

Quarterback C.J. Carr returns and is being touted as a Heisman Trophy candidate. He’ll be working with a deep receiving corps led by Jordan Faison and Jaden Greathouse. Former Ohio State receivers Mylan Graham and Quincy Porter also are in the mix.

All-America candidate Leonard Moore returns at defensive back while defensive end Boubacar Traore and linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa add punch to the Notre Dame’s defense.

No. 2 Oregon appears set to break through

Oregon has the look of a team that could be ready to break through and win its first national championship.

The Ducks have one of the most seasoned teams in the nation with quarterback Dante Moore among six starters back on offense. Defensive lineman A’Mauri Washington and edge Matayo Uiagalelei lead a defense that returns eight starters.

Each of the last two years the Ducks have had their season end in the CFP with a loss to a Big Ten opponent they were playing for the second time that season.

In 2024, Oregon won the Big Ten title with a 13-0 record in its first year in the conference and was the No. 1 CFP seed. The Ducks, who beat Ohio State 32-31 in the regular season, lost 41-21 to the Buckeyes.

In 2025, Oregon’s only two losses were to Indiana – 30-20 in the regular season and 56-22 in a playoff semifinal.

“I think that speaks volumes about our league, especially when you’re talking about repeat games within our league,” coach Dan Lanning said. “We have some unbelievable coaches, great teams. There’s a lot of things we studied with ourselves in this offseason.

“Sometimes the ball has to bounce the right way. Sometimes you can do something schematically. We have studied other teams that have won games in their second opportunity. We’re looking for our opportunity to be a team like that.”

No. 1 Buckeyes are loaded but face tough schedule

Ohio State starts a season No. 1 for the ninth time. The Buckeyes didn’t end there the previous eight.

They have an excruciating schedule but are built for what awaits.

Jeremiah Smith is the most productive receiver in the nation, quarterback Julian Sayin is one of the most accurate passers and the offensive line is elite. There are plenty of talented transfers waiting to emerge for a defense replacing eight starters, all of whom were drafted.

The Buckeyes visit Indiana on Oct. 17 and host Oregon on Nov. 7. Those games will go a long way in deciding which teams make the Big Ten championship game in Indianapolis, not to mention impact CFP seeding.

Missouri only team that will play 5 of the preseason top 10 teams

No. 25 Missouri has the 12th-toughest schedule in the country, according to ESPN, but the Tigers are the only team that will play five of the top 10 in the AP Top 25 preseason poll.

All five of those are bunched into the Tigers’ final seven regular-season games. They play No. 8 Texas A&M on Oct. 10, at No. 9 Mississippi on Oct. 17, No. 5 Texas on Nov. 7, at No. 3 Georgia on Nov. 14 and No. 10 Oklahoma on Nov. 28.

Oklahoma, which plays four top-10 teams, has ESPN’s second-toughest schedule behind Arkansas. No. 5 Texas’ schedule is ranked third in degree of difficulty.

On the bubble

Clemson was the first team out with 112 points, five fewer than No. 25 Missouri. Florida, Boise State, Arizona, TCU, Navy and South Carolina were the next teams out, each received double-digit points.

The bubble teams enter the season in unique position to move up quickly in the ranks. With Clemson just points away at No. 26, a Week 1 win could easily do the trick.

The bad news? Clemson heads to No. 11 LSU for its season debut on Sept. 5.

Expectations remain high for Texas – just not as high as last year

After ranking No. 1 in last year’s preseason poll, the Longhorns enter the 2026 season at No. 5, behind Ohio State, Oregon, Georgia and Notre Dame.

Texas will be put to the test early, with a Week 2 rematch against Ohio State giving the Longhorns a chance to make a case for a higher ranking.

Arch Manning struggled under high expectations in his first career start last season against Ohio State, gaining momentum only in the fourth quarter of a 14-7 loss. After completing nine passes for 38 yards and an interception through the first three quarters, Manning finished the game with 17 completions for 170 yards.

A Week 2 win against the top-ranked team in the preseason poll would give the Longhorns the kind of start they desperately needed last year.

In the ACC, it’s Miami … and everyone else

Miami has a good-sized lead over the other ACC teams in the preseason poll. The Hurricanes came in at No. 7 and earned one first-place vote after a season that ended just shy of a national title.

SMU was the next-closest team at No. 19. Louisville squeaked in at No. 24.

The ACC also had three teams ranked in last year’s preseason poll. Clemson ranked No. 4 before what turned out to be a disappointing season. Miami ranked No. 10, and SMU came in at No. 16.

The ACC ended up being a weird one last year, with an unranked Duke team taking on then-No. 16 Virginia in the conference championship game. Duke delivered a 27-20 overtime win, but it wasn’t enough for the CFP committee to view them as a viable option. Miami instead earned an at-large bid, and James Madison and Tulane secured bids as two of the five highest-ranked conference champions.

Clemson left out of preseason poll for first time since 2011

Clemson is unranked in the AP preseason Top 25 for the first time since 2011.

The Tigers almost got in. They received the most voting points among teams left out. They’re five points behind No. 25 Missouri.

Clemson is coming off a 7-6 season, its worst since 2010. The offense struggled to get anything going in the ground game and was second-to-last in the ACC in third-down conversions. The defense underachieved.

Look for the offense to be much better with the return of offensive coordinator Chad Morris, who led some of the nation’s most potent offenses when he had the same job at Clemson from 2011-14. The defense should play with more confidence in Tom Allen’s second year as coordinator.

Clemson gets a measuring-stick game right away when they open at No. 11 LSU.

Five teams got first-place votes, but not No. 3 and No. 5

Of the top seven teams, five received first-place votes: Ohio State (40), Oregon (14), Notre Dame (6), Indiana (8) and Miami (1). Voters skipped over No. 3 Georgia and No. 5 Texas, which both fell into the top five but didn’t receive first-place votes.

Perhaps most notably, voters don’t see an SEC team breaking a three-year championship drought. After Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana took home the last three titles, faith in the Big Ten remains high.

Ohio State and Oregon, the top two teams in the poll, give the Big Ten its first preseason 1-2 since 1961 — a sign that voters expect the conference to bring home a fourth straight national title.

Sarkisian: Preseason polls great for conversation, and that’s about it

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, whose team landed No. 5 in the AP Top 25 preseason poll, doesn’t put much credence in the polls. The polls do have some value, though, he said.

“I love the polls for college football fans, for the excitement, for the marquee matchups, for all those things,” he said. “But the polls internally, they just don’t matter. They’re really irrelevant. I think we’ve gotten to a point now as a team to understand that what matters is how we play each and every Saturday.”

Georgia holds steady in the top five

Georgia enters the season at No. 3, marking the eighth straight year with a top-five preseason ranking.

The Bulldogs will have plenty of familiar faces taking the field this fall, with quarterback Gunner Stockton, running back duo Nate Frazier and Chauncey Bowens and tight end Lawson Luckie bringing valuable game experience to the offense. Expectations are high for linebackers Raylen Wilson and Chris Cole, while KJ Bolden, Kyron Jones and Ellis Robinson IV will hold down the secondary.

Georgia earned the No. 3 seed and a first-round bye in the 12-team College Football Playoff after beating Alabama in the SEC Championship game. The Bulldogs went on to fall 39-34 to Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl.

Conference breakdown

SEC (9): No. 3 Georgia, No. 5 Texas, No. 8 Texas A&M, No. 9 Mississippi, No. 10 Oklahoma, No. 11 LSU, No. 13 Alabama, No. 20 Tennessee, No. 25 Missouri

Big Ten (8): No. 1 Ohio State, No. 2 Oregon, No. 6 Indiana, No. T-14 USC, No. 16 Michigan, No. 17 Washington, No. 18 Penn State, No. 22 Iowa

Big 12 (4): No. 12 Texas Tech, No. T-14 BYU, No. 21 Utah, No. 23 Houston

ACC (3): No. 7 Miami, No. 19 SMU, No. 24 Louisville

Independent (1): No. 4 Notre Dame

No Group of 6 teams ranked

After two non-power conference teams (Tulane, James Madison) made the CFP in 2025, none cracked the preseason Top 25.

Since two were ranked in the preseason in 2022, only Tulane in 2023 and Boise State in 2025 have started a season in the Top 25.

Boise State, which has moved from the Mountain West to the new Pac-12, was the top vote-getter among Group of Six teams outside the Top 25. Nine others got at least one vote.

New coaches, same expectations

Four Top 25 teams have new coaches, and they’ve been given a short runway.

Pete Golding, who begins his first full season at No. 9 Mississippi, was able to keep key pieces of the staff and he brought back top players. He led the Rebels to the CFP semifinals after Lane Kiffin’s ugly departure, and another magical run is possible.

Speaking of Kiffin, much is expected at No. 11 LSU. The Tigers haven’t gone to the CFP since winning it all in 2019 and have lost at least four games in five of the six seasons since.

Penn State is No. 18, which seems generous given Matt Campbell will be relying on players he brought with him from Iowa State.

Morgan Scalley, entering his 19th year at No. 21 Utah, gets back QB Devon Dampier and RB Wayshawn Parker but not many other starters from an 11-2 team.

SEC has 9 ranked teams to Big Ten’s 8

Having Ohio State and Oregon enter the season Nos. 1 and 2 ahead of sixth-ranked defending conference and national champion Indiana is a flex for the Big Ten, which already is riding the momentum of winning the last three national titles.

Having five of the top 10 teams, and seven of the top 13, bolsters the SEC’s contention that it has greater depth. The SEC has nine ranked teams compared to the Big Ten’s eight.

The debate goes on over conference supremacy and will only heat up when the Big Ten and SEC square off in the first heavyweight games of the season Sept. 12. That’s when No. 10 Oklahoma visits No. 16 Michigan and No. 1 Ohio State goes to No. 5 Texas. Both are rematches of games won by the home team last year — OU 24-13 and Ohio State 14-7.

Longhorns, No. 1 in last year’s preseason poll, look to bounce back

The Longhorns entered the 2025 season at No. 1 after receiving 25 first-place votes — two more than No. 2 Penn State. But after a Week 1 loss to Ohio State, Texas found itself fighting upstream to maintain its top-ranked status. An October loss to a struggling Florida team didn’t help either, knocking Texas out of the rankings altogether.

The Longhorns, despite gutting out a few impressive wins, ultimately fell short of the 12-team College Football Playoff after Georgia handed them a third loss.

Eyes will be on quarterback Arch Manning, who the Longhorns hope makes the expected jump from year one to year two as a full-time starter. Manning, a favorite for the Heisman Trophy this year, will have to lead a team facing plenty of expectations once again.

Buckeyes are an early favorite

It’s the first time the Buckeyes have topped the list since the 2015 preseason.

Ohio State ranked No. 1 in the AP Top 25 for the entire regular season last year, only dropping after a Big Ten Championship game defeat from Indiana. With a 12-1 record, Ohio State still earned the No. 2 seed and a first-round bye in the College Football Playoff. The Buckeyes ultimately went on to drop 24-14 to eventual runners-up, Miami, in the Cotton Bowl.Gallery

This season appears promising with quarterback and receiver duo Julian Sayin and Jeremiah Smith returning to the offense. Veteran defensive end Kenyatta Jackson Jr. is expected to anchor the defense. Notre Dame and Texas are tied for the second best odds at +650. Indiana (+800) and Oregon (+800) round out the top five.

How are votes counted?

There was a time when voters called, emailed and faxed their votes to the AP. Long ago, the ballots were tabulated by hand.

Now voting is done online and all the tabulation is automated.

There is a 1-25 point system, with a team voted No. 1 receiving 25 points down to 1 point for a 25th-place vote. After that, it’s simple: The poll lists the teams with the most points from 1 to 25 and others receiving votes are also noted.

Where did we leave off?

After shocking the nation with a perfect 16-0 record, Big Ten title and national championship victory, the Indiana Hoosiers were unanimously voted No. 1 in the final poll of the season.

Runners-up Miami finished right behind after falling just short of a national title. Miami’s No. 2 ranking was its highest since the 2002 season.

Ole Miss, Oregon and Ohio State rounded out the top five.

But a lot can change from one year to the next.

Eight Hoosiers ascended to the pros, including Heisman winner and first-overall pick Fernando Mendoza. Miami had nine draftees, including three first-rounders.

Ole Miss, Oregon and Ohio State have the advantage of a returning quarterback in 2026 — each in the Heisman conversation ahead of the season.

The origin story

The Associated Press Top 25 college football poll started in 1936, the brainchild of former sports editor Alan J. Gould.

The number of teams ranked, the number of voters on the panel and how the ballots are tabulated has fluctuated over the years, but no news organization has been ranking teams and naming a major college football national champion longer than the AP. It has been the Top 10, Top 20 and, since 1989, the Top 25.

At a meeting on Monday, the city clerk is asking commissioners to give policy direction on how garage sale permits are administered and regulated by the city.

Currently, residents are required to obtain a no-cost permit from the city prior to conducting a garage sale.

The city clerk, however, has indicated the permitting process has been a strain on administrative resources.

As part of a review of ordinances, the city clerk’s office has recommended two policy options for commissioners to consider.

The first option, which staff recommends, would be to eliminate the permit requirement while retaining regulations governing garage sale activities.

A second option would be to retain the permit requirement and establish a fee.

According to the city’s study of 18 nearby municipalities, 11 require a garage sale permit and eight of those charge a permit fee between $1 and $10.

Based on the survey, the city found a fee of approximately $5 would be consistent with neighboring jurisdictions.

City staff would draft an ordinance once commissioners make a decision on a permit option.

The discussion is scheduled for Monday at 6 p.m.

The Team Penske driver is embracing the challenge of proving he can win a title in the format that puts a greater emphasis on banking consistently strong finishes.

“Do I have a little chip on my shoulder? That’s a clear yes,” Logano said with a chuckle after his victory Saturday at Richmond Raceway. “So much so that our team slogan is ‘4 the haters.’ That’s where we’re at. That’s good extra motivation.”

With an impressive surge from 20th to ninth in the standings over the past six races, Logano has flipped the narrative on the elimination playoffs that were in place for 12 years.

From 2014-25, the waning races of NASCAR’s regular season typically were a scramble to make the championship field as a win earned a berth.

But that safety valve has disappeared in the Chase, which will rely entirely on points to set the 16-driver field.

The top 16 in the provisional Chase have been unchanged for the past four races, and the grid for the 10-race title run likely will remain the same at New Hampshire Motor Speedway this weekend.

Shane van Gisbergen holds the 16th and final spot by 50 points over Ryan Preece, who dropped 21 points further below the Chase cutline with a 17th-place finish at Richmond.

The next three drivers ranked outside the Chase — Ross Chastain (12th at Richmond), Brad Keselowski (26th) and Erik Jones (27th) — also lost ground, diluting the potential drama of a surprise qualifier.

“The number of guys that feel the pressure of making the Chase is probably less,” said Christopher Bell, who is among seven drivers who have clinched Chase spots. “In years past, everybody on the outside still had an opportunity to get in, and now it’s kind of dwindled to a couple guys fighting for the spots.”

There’s been more intrigue toward the top half of the standings — particularly the progress of the Team Penske trio.

As Logano continued his push up the points ladder, teammate Ryan Blaney moved past Ty Gibbs into second in the standings at Richmond. Austin Cindric, Penske’s third driver, shored up his title eligibility with a career-best third on a short track to move up a spot to 15th in the points.

Denny Hamlin has a 115-point lead on Blaney and likely will clinch the Chase’s top seed Sunday at New Hampshire, which will be followed by the Aug. 29 regular-season finale at Daytona International Speedway.

The standings then will be reset for the Chase, which begins Sept. 6 at Darlington Raceway with the championship leader ahead by 25 points. Second will start 10 points ahead of third, and the remaining 14 spots will be separated by five-point increments.

“Getting to second is top of mind because every point is going to matter,” Blaney said.

There also is an emphasis on finishing the regular season in the top half of the points standings.

Racing Insights, a NASCAR analytics firm, ran more than 25,000 computer simulations of Chase outcomes, and the champion started in the top six 85% of the time.

Logano, who made the Chase only once while racing under the system in his first five Cup seasons from 2009-13, is 36 points from sixth-ranked Chase Elliott.

“We’ve been able to switch our goals from making the Chase to winning the championship,” said Logano, whose No. 22 Ford was ranked 17th before winning two of the past four races. “It’s quite the turnaround. I look at the last month and a half, we’ve been capable of winning all of them.”

Logano could be among several more drivers who lock into the championship Sunday with a solid result at New Hampshire.

Crew chief Paul Wolfe credited Logano with buoying morale when the team notched only two top-five finishes in the first half of the season.

“I’m proud of everyone sticking together,” Logano said. “There are times you see teams break, and it doesn’t take much longer running the way we were until something probably was going to break. We’ve been able to make quite the recovery to have a legit shot at the championship.”

Larson double duty

After finishing sixth at Richmond, Kyle Larson immediately flew to Iowa and scored his fourth victory in the Knoxville Nationals, a prestigious sprint car event. Larson qualified on the pole position last week by winning a preliminary race at the renowned dirt track in Knoxville, Iowa.

He had expected to miss Saturday's main event because of the schedule conflict with Richmond, but a rain delay at Knoxville Raceway allowed the two-time Cup Series champion to arrive in time to lead all 50 laps. “It’s extremely surreal just to talk about the day and the range of emotions,” Larson said.

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See AP’s full auto racing coverage here

The process launched by newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche is a victory for Second Amendment advocates who have long pushed for nonviolent people with felony convictions to be given a pathway to regain their legal right to own firearms.

“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and the federal government should not permanently deprive Americans of a constitutional right without regard to whether they pose a danger to public safety,” Blanche said in a statement. The attorney general said the new process will protect “public safety while giving deserving Americans a real path to restoration.”

It’s the latest move by President Donald Trump's administration to ease firearms restrictions. The Justice Department moved earlier this year to roll back and modify a slate of gun regulations. Separately, the department recently decided against challenging a court ruling that struck down regulations on firearm suppressors and certain guns.

Federal law has long allowed people who've had their gun rights stripped because of felony convictions to petition the government for the ability to own firearms again, but Congress since 1992 has effectively barred the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from processing applications.

The Trump administration's rule aims to circumvent that by establishing a new application system using an online portal.

The Justice Department says restoration will be granted on a case-by-case basis, weighing a person's record and reputation to determine whether they pose a likely threat to public safety. Officials say people who have been convicted of violent crimes, registered sex offenders, people living in the country illegally and others whom officials believe pose a danger to society will be denied “absent extraordinary circumstances.”

Kris Brown, the president of Brady, which advocates for stronger gun laws, said her group is still reviewing the administration’s final rule but has stressed the need for a “robust and thoughtful system that minimizes the risk to public safety."

“Yet the Trump administration has consistently shown us they have no such discretion, including by restoring gun rights to convicted domestic abusers and violent January 6 insurrectionists, and by tirelessly rolling back broad policies proven to prevent crime and gun violence,” Brown said in a statement.