The microreactor being developed by Antares Nuclear Inc. at the Idaho National Lab reached “criticality” on Thursday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said. The milestone occurs when a nuclear reactor achieves a self-sustaining chain reaction capable of producing a steady release of energy.

Antares is the first private company to bring an advanced reactor to criticality under a pilot program begun last year by the Trump administration meant to supercharge nuclear energy production in the U.S. The demonstration was conducted in partnership with the Energy Department and other contractors with support from the U.S. Army.

“We are very excited by this news today,” Wright said Friday on a call with reporters. “I think June 4th will be a historic day in the American nuclear renaissance.”

Antares and its partners "have shown America can do bold things,” Wright added. “America has great technology, great entrepreneurs that are ready to drive energy innovation to power our future, lower energy costs and make our country more powerful."

The achievement shows that the Trump administration’s push to remove regulatory barriers is helping to advance new nuclear technologies, Wright said.

President Donald Trump signed executive orders in May 2025 intended to speed up the development of nuclear power, including steps that grant Wright authority to approve some advanced reactor designs and projects. Trump's orders limit some authority of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the independent safety agency that has regulated the U.S. nuclear industry for five decades.

Skeptics warn that nuclear energy poses risks and say microreactors may not be safe or feasible and have not proved they can meet demand for a reasonable price.

While the Antares system is years away from commercial use, achieving criticality is a notable step. The California-based company, which is initially targeting military applications, said it expects to begin producing electricity by late 2027 and see its systems deployed in the field by the end of 2028, CEO Jordan Bramble said Friday.

"Nuclear in America has been defined for too long by delays, by companies that said they would and then didn’t,” Bramble said in a written statement.

At a briefing on Friday, Bramble said achieving criticality “is the first step on a roadmap toward producing electricity ahead of deploying this technology for customer sites.”

“Microreactors are a technology that’s here today," he added. “2026 is the year where microreactors are becoming real. We’re months to years out from being able to start deploying this technology to military installations.”

The Trump administration has set a goal of achieving the criticality milestone in at least three test reactors by July 4 — the nation's 250th anniversary.

Officials have selected 11 advanced reactor projects, including Antares, to move their technologies toward deployment.

In February, the Pentagon and the Energy Department for the first time airlifted a small nuclear reactor from California to Utah, demonstrating what they say is the country's potential to quickly deploy nuclear power for military and civilian use. The nearly 700-mile flight transported a 5-megawatt microreactor manufactured by Valar Atomics in southern California to Hill Air Force Base in Utah.

The reactor — which did not have nuclear fuel — eventually will be able to generate up to 5 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 5,000 homes, said Isaiah Taylor, CEO of Valar Atomics. The company hopes to start selling power on a test basis next year and become fully commercial in 2028, he said.

Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the transport flight, which attracted significant news coverage, was little more than a publicity stunt.

He offered a similar response to the claims by Antares and Wright.

“This stunt is a rudimentary first step that has absolutely no bearing on whether the Antares reactor will be safe or commercially viable,” Lyman said in an email Friday.

The Energy Department's statement that the test “confirms that the reactor can operate safely” is false, Lyman said, adding that more testing of the reactor is needed.

The comments came as the Israeli military struck multiple parts of southern Lebanon and issued evacuation warnings for nine villages, including one that has sheltered thousands of people displaced by the three-month war between Israel and the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah. The strikes killed nine people in six locations in southern Lebanon, the state news agency reported.

Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard issued a statement Thursday vowing that “there will be no calm in the region" if Israel doesn't withdraw its troops from Lebanon. In an interview with CNN, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun responded: “It’s not your job to interfere into our country. I reject the statement totally because our people (are) being killed, our houses being destroyed.”

In separate remarks, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called on the Lebanese people to put their country's interest first, saying that Lebanon "should not remain a battlefield for others.”

Both he and Aoun complained that Iran was treating their nation as “a bargaining chip” in talks with Washington about ending the U.S.-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic. Iran has demanded that any lasting truce should extend to Lebanon.

Some Lebanese return to ruined villages

Even as new evacuation warnings forced hundreds of Lebanese families to flee from some areas, people elsewhere began returning to their homes to survey the aftermath of fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah. The militant group has rejected the ceasefire deal and demands a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.

An Associated Press team traveling in southern Lebanon Friday saw multiple villages in ruins, including Dibbine, near Marjayoun town, from which Israeli troops withdrew a day earlier. It was the first time Israeli troops exited an area in southern Lebanon since the latest Israel-Hezbollah war began in early March.

U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese troops were at an entrance to Dibbine, clearing rubble and opening roads. The Lebanese army set up barbed wire at one of the entrances, preventing some residents from returning.

At least one family arrived to search the rubble of its home along the road leading to the village, while the owner of a petrol station in Dibbine looked at his destroyed property and called village residents to report on the destruction he saw from behind the barbed wire.

Shrapnel and pieces of missiles were seen in the wreckage of homes lining the road into Dibbine. Israeli troops entered the village weeks ago for the first time and were engaged in heavy clashes with Hezbollah fighters in the area. The troops returned this week, before withdrawing Thursday.

The road to Dibbine was dotted with villages entirely emptied of residents and destroyed by Israeli strikes, including Khiam. But no Israeli troops were visible from the road.

Nearby Christian villages were largely untouched, and many of their residents decided to stay. The strategic Beaufort castle, recently captured by Israel, appeared in the distance, with a flag of the Israeli Golani Brigade. Smoke from strikes around the nearby Nabatiyeh city billowed above.

New evacuation warnings and strikes

The Israeli military issued a new set of evacuation warnings on Friday, prompting people to leave the village of Anqoun and the area of Aarnaya, on the edge of the predominantly Christian community of Maghdoucheh, near the southern port city of Sidon.

Nearly three hours after the warning, Israeli warplanes struck Lebanese villages, including Anqoun. About 2,500 people displaced by the fighting were sheltering in Anqoun, the Lebanese news agency NNA reported.

Israel had warned Lebanese residents against returning to villages in the south, saying the area is still a combat zone.

The U.S. brokered the ceasefire agreement Wednesday in Washington. The deal sought to pull Lebanon away from Iran with a statement that any agreement to cease hostilities must be reached directly through Lebanon and Israel “and not through any separate track.”

Aoun said Hezbollah should understand that negotiations and diplomacy are the only way “to save what’s left” of Lebanon. Its government accuses Hezbollah of dragging the country into war and had made efforts to disarm the group before the latest hostilities.

Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally who has been acting as a mediator on behalf of the group, echoed the militants' demands for a broad Israeli withdrawal. In his first comments since the agreement was announced, Berri said the ceasefire should be “complete and comprehensive,” without any exceptions for land, sea or air, and “without bulldozing and demolishing everything that exists.”

Israeli troops have seized around a fifth of Lebanon, pushing further into the country’s south than at any time since the end of Israel’s 1982-2000 occupation.

More than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since the war began. The fighting has killed at least 29 Israeli soldiers and three civilians.

The Israeli military said two soldiers were wounded, one severely, in an encounter Friday with militants in southern Lebanon, where another officer was severely wounded Thursday by a suspicious aerial object or projectile.

US forces board tanker linked to Iran

The war in Lebanon threatens efforts to end the Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a globally important conduit for oil, natural gas, fertilizer and other commodities.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces elections later this year, wants to press ahead with Israel’s offensive until Hezbollah no longer poses a threat.

In Iran-related developments, the U.S. military said Friday that its forces boarded a sanctioned oil tanker linked to the Islamic Republic in the Indian Ocean.

U.S. forces around the world have sought to prevent Iran from profiting off its oil and other goods. They have been directed to stop ships tied to Tehran or those suspected of carrying supplies that could help its government.

The U.S. Navy has imposed a blockade of Iran’s ports as part of an effort to force Tehran to open the strait and accept a deal to extend a tenuous ceasefire in the war.

The U.S. also targeted Iran’s energy sector Friday with new sanctions on a group of people, firms and tankers. The Treasury Department said they were associated with exporting Iranian-origin liquid petroleum gas disguised as an Omani product to customers in South and East Asia.

___

Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Ben Finley and Fatima Hussein in Washington contributed to this report.

Brendan Banfield, a former IRS law enforcement officer, claimed he shot Joseph Ryan after he came across Ryan attacking his wife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. But prosecutors said Brendan Banfield and au pair Juliana Peres Magalhães set Ryan up in a scheme to get rid of Christine Banfield, a pediatric intensive care nurse.

Judge Penney Azcarate called Banfield’s actions evil and calculated.

“The disregard of the life of your wife, someone you supposedly loved, is almost unfathomable,” she said in handing down the sentence, which is mandatory in Virginia for an aggravated murder conviction. The scheme involved “luring a completely innocent man into your deadly trap; continuing on after the murders without a care; and not once — not once — thinking of the impact” on the Banfields' 4-year-old daughter. Brendan Banfield “took everything from her,” Azcarate said.

In addition to murder, jurors in February convicted Banfield of child endangerment because the couple’s daughter was home during the killings. Azcarate sentenced Banfield to an additional five years on that charge and three more years on a firearms charge.

Speaking at his sentencing, Banfield proclaimed his innocence. Banfield said he loved his wife and, although he had affairs, he never intended to leave her.

Azcarate was unmoved, citing his lack of remorse as a reason she felt no hesitation in ordering him to remain behind bars for life.

During Friday's hearing, Christine Banfield’s older sister, Danielle Hocker, described her sister as kind, caring, reliable and selfless. She said they grew up chasing fireflies and sleeping next to each other on the floor in sleeping bags.

“When she was born, 'I' became ‘we’,” Hocker said. “I haven’t stopped saying ‘we’ when I speak about my childhood after her death, except now when I do, it takes my breath away — a pause filled with love that has nowhere to go.”

Ryan’s mother, Deidre Fisher, told the court that her son was an “extremely caring” person who was a caretaker for his grandmother and other loved ones.

“Joe was a guy who believed in fighting for the underdog, and even actual neglected dogs,” Fisher said, with a small laugh. “He would walk into an animal shelter and ask for the oldest, ugliest dogs, bring them home and love them for years.”

Ryan's aunt, Sangeeta Ryan, said Banfield “didn’t just take Joe and Christine from us. He tried to erase the truth of who they were.”

During Banfield's trial, Magalhães testified he had told her he wanted to marry her and have children with her, but he needed to “get rid of” his wife first. He didn’t want a divorce because “she would have more money than he would” and because he wanted custody of the couple’s daughter, said Magalhães, who was 21 when she started working for the Banfields in 2021.

Magalhães also testified that she and Brendan Banfield staged the scene at the home in Herndon, Virginia, to look as if they had shot a violent intruder. The pair had pretended to be Christine Banfield on a fetish website to lure Ryan to their house for a sexual encounter involving a knife.

On the day of the killings, Magalhães waited in a car outside the house with the daughter. When Ryan arrived, she called Brendan Banfield, who was waiting at a nearby McDonald's. The pair took the child to the basement and then went to the bedroom, where they encountered Ryan. Brendan Banfield shot Ryan and then stabbed Christine Banfield with the knife Ryan had brought. When Magalhães saw Ryan moving, she fired a second shot that killed him.

On Friday, Banfield emphasized that there was dissent within the police department over the theory that he had impersonated his wife, saying it would have been impossible for him to send some of the messages.

Some media have dubbed the case the “au pair affair.” Magalhães pleaded guilty to manslaughter after agreeing to testify against Banfield. Magalhães was sentenced to 10 years in prison after Banfield's trial.

Trump noted that the size of the office has been “way too high for way too long” and that “if he cut, I wouldn’t mind that."

“He'll do a very good job,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he traveled to Wisconsin for an event on agriculture. “He'll watch it closely, but Bill Pulte is very good, he's very talented.”

The Republican president said in an earlier interview with The Wall Street Journal that he has asked Pulte to start the process of firing employees. In the interview, Trump said he has already conveyed his view to Pulte, who has served as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency but has no apparent national security expertise.

“I’d like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” Trump said, which the Journal said was in reference to intelligence community officials who had served in the Democratic administrations of Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

Trump told the Journal that he wants Pulte to “start the process” of firing personnel and that the eventual permanent director of national intelligence should continue it. The president has indicated that he would not formally nominate Pulte for the position.

“Frankly, it might be good for him to shake it up before people come,” Trump said. “Because, if he (Pulte) reduced the size, in conjunction with me … and in conjunction with possibly the person coming in … he can do a lot of the hard work and we wouldn’t have to saddle somebody that goes in.”

Pulte was tapped by the president earlier this week in a surprising move that has been met with bipartisan resistance in the Senate, which confirms presidential nominations. The temporary appointment has now snarled the renewal of a critical national security surveillance program on Capitol Hill, with Democrats key to the vote pointing out that they did not trust Pulte — whose office oversees 18 intelligence agencies — to help administer the surveillance program.

Trump told reporters on Air Force One that Pulte will stay in the position depending on how long it takes to get his successor confirmed. The president also said he was considering five people who were “all very good, all people that you know very well, all people that do that kind of thing.”

“They're very respected people,” Trump said of his intelligence candidates, without naming them.

Under Pulte’s predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, the DNI office had already taken steps to scale back its size. In August, the Trump administration said that the office’s budget would be cut by more than $700 million per year, while slashing the size of its workforce.

At the time, Gabbard said the office had become “bloated and inefficient” while she announced the roughly 40% workforce reduction.

Gabbard resigned last month after revealing her husband’s cancer diagnosis.

___

Kim reported from Washington.

The defendant, David J. Rush, has both the means and motive to flee while the case against him is pending, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick ruled, citing Rush's professional experience.

“He's in a different position than most people to flee and avoid detection by law enforcement,” Fitzpatrick said.

Rush is charged with fraudulently claiming tens of thousands of dollars in compensation for military leave after he was honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy in 2015. He was arrested last month after investigators searched his home and seized more than 300 gold bars, roughly $2 million in U.S. currency and about 35 luxury watches, according to an FBI agent's affidavit.

Rush's attorney, Jessica Carmichael, noted that Rush isn't charged with any crimes related to the discovery of the gold bars, which she referred to as “basically a non-issue” and “nothing more than a sensational tidbit.” She said Rush properly obtained the gold bars and kept them locked in a safe in his basement.

“Mr. Rush never claimed they were his,” she said.

Between last November and March, Rush requested and received a “significant quantity" of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for "work-related expenses,” according to the FBI affidavit. Justice Department prosecutor Gavin Tisdale said Rush wasn't supposed to have the gold bars at his home.

“That's the issue — his skirting of rules and regulations,” he said.

Tisdale briefly summarized the case against Rush in open court after a portion of the hearing was sealed from the public. The evidence against Rush “grows stronger by the day,” Tisdale told the magistrate.

“Mr. Rush simply cannot be trusted to abide by this court's conditions,” he said.

Rush enlisted in the Navy in 1997 and was honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy Reserves as a lieutenant in 2015, according to the affidavit.

Authorities claim Rush lied about his education and military background on job applications, falsely claiming to be a former Navy pilot who graduated with a bachelor's degree from Clemson University in South Carolina and a master's degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

Investigators determined that he didn't serve as a Navy pilot and didn't attend either school.

The judge said the policy threw countless immigrants' lives “into indeterminate legal limbo,” and accused the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services of ignoring the law.

The Senate passed legislation to fund President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agencies early Friday morning, after weeks of delays and fierce backlash to an unrelated $1.776 billion settlement fund that threatened to derail the bill.

The American job market continues to show surprising strength, shrugging off the high costs of the Iran war. Employers added 172,000 jobs in May – roughly double what forecasters had expected – and the unemployment rate remained at a low 4.3%.

Here's the latest:

US boosts Ebola funding in Africa by $38 million

The Trump administration says it is contributing another $38 million toward efforts to end the growing Ebola virus outbreak in Africa, bringing its total contribution since last month to more than $200 million.

The State Department said Friday that the money, in addition to bilateral assistance already being provided to affected countries like the Congo and Uganda, would go to U.N. agencies like the International Organization for Migration, UNICEF, and the World Food Program, as well as to private relief groups like World Vision and the International Medical Corps.

The administration has been criticized for slashing foreign aid and dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development but officials have said the new process is more efficient and cost effective.

Trump, a former New Yorker, has a couple of favorite Knicks players

“Brunson is fantastic. Towns is fantastic,” Trump said of NBA All Stars Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns. “They just have a great team.”

Trump is expected to travel to New York on Monday to catch Game 3 between the Knicks and San Antonio Spurs.

Trump says baseball should have adopted a salary cap ‘a long time ago’

Asked about major league baseball potentially imposing a salary cap after this season, Trump said, “You don’t have a salary cap, you don’t have a sport.”

“Because they can’t help themselves,” he said. “You know, in sports, they can’t help themselves.”

The president added, “I know so much about sports. they should have done it a long time ago.”

Baseball’s five-year collective bargaining agreement expires on Dec. 1.

The sport’s owners last week made their first proposal of a salary cap since 1994, when a 7 1/2-month strike caused the cancellation of the World Series.

Trump says he’s exploring arrangements to give the federal government a financial stake in AI companies

The president said Friday that executives from leading AI companies will visit the White House “probably next week” to discuss the concept, which was pitched by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last year.

Trump described it as a partnership “where the American people can benefit from the success of AI.”

“There’s something very interesting about it, where it almost becomes a partnership with the American public,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One.

It comes days after Trump signed an order on AI establishing a framework for the federal government to vet advanced AI systems for security risks before they’re made public.

Trump leaves open the possibility of calling Taiwan’s president

The president isn’t backing away from the possibility of speaking directly with Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te, a move that would be seen as provocative by Beijing.

Trump first said in May he intended to talk to Lai as he weighs whether to approved $14 billion arms sale for Taipei that China is urging him to scrap.

Asked on Friday if a call is still planned, Trump responded, “I’ll always talk to him.”

Such a call would mark the first direct dialogue between sitting American and Taiwanese presidents in many decades. Trump raised China’s ire when he took a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s then-President Tsai Ing-wen after winning the 2016 presidential election but before taking office.

Roughly 1,000 US troops in limbo after canceled deployment

About 1,000 American troops who’ve been sent to Poland are in limbo after their deployment was canceled, said a U.S. military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.

The troops are part of an armored brigade combat team of some 4,000 troops whose deployment to Poland was called off amid Trump’s shifting pronouncements on troops levels in Europe. They are still awaiting confirmation they’ll be sent back home, the official said.

The military also is still waiting for details from the Pentagon on how to satisfy Trump’s latest order to send 5,000 troops to Poland, that official said. The working assumption is that they will come from units already in Europe, rather than an additional deployment from the U.S., the official said.

— By Emma Burrows

Trump isn’t too sympathetic about fans who can’t afford high ticket prices for the NBA Finals

Asked what his message is to Americans who can’t afford to attend the NBA Finals because of high ticket prices, Trump responded, “They can watch it on television.”

He noted to reporters aboard Air Force One that watching the games on television was “semi-free” for many people, adding of high ticket costs, “That’s the way life is, you know.”

Trump plans to attend Game 3 between the Knicks and Spurs in New York – meaning he won’t have to follow his own advice about watching it on television. As president, however, he also doesn’t have to buy a ticket.

US military spent $32M to send gear ahead of nixed deployment, military says

The U.S. military spent $32 million to send equipment to Poland for a 4,000-soldier deployment that was canceled last month, according to U.S. Transportation Command, the military agency largely responsible for moving troops and gear across the globe.

A ship was chartered to take one unit of troops to Europe and bring another back, Transportation Command said. It’s hard to say how much money would have been saved if the deployment was canceled before the troops and equipment began to move.

However, a U.S. military official said the unscheduled move of personnel and equipment back from Europe is most likely not a cost the Pentagon budgeted for and would be an additional expense. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.

— By Emma Burrows and Konstantin Toropin

Trump confirms he’ll be at NBA Finals in New York on Monday

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, Trump said he plans to be at Madison Square Garden to see the New York Knicks take on the San Antonio Spurs on Monday. He clarified his plans a day after saying he was going to a game, possibly on Monday.

A New York native, Trump has said he was invited by Knicks owner James Dolan. “They just have a great team,” Trump said of this year’s squad.

Asked about sky-high prices for tickets to the Finals, Trump said it’s a product of the Knicks’ success. “They can watch it on television,” he said of fans. “That’s the way life is, you know.”

Trump wants to see more cuts in the intelligence community

Trump said Friday that he wants Bill Pulte, his new acting director of national intelligence, to cut the office, which has already been significantly scaled back during the president’s second term.

Trump noted that the size of the office as been “way too high for way too long,” and that “if he cut, I wouldn’t mind.”

“Bill Pulte is very good, he’s very talented,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he traveled to Wisconsin. The president said in an earlier interview with the Wall Street Journal that he has asked Pulte to start the process of firing employees.

Trump’s zig zag on US troops in Europe is potentially costing millions, officials say

U.S. defense officials say Trump’s recent back-and-forth on troop levels in Europe is upending service members’ lives and potentially costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

Trump first said he would pull 5,000 troops from Germany after a spat with its chancellor. The Pentagon then cancelled an impending deployment of a similar number of troops to Poland. That was followed by Trump saying that he would be sending 5,000 U.S. troops to Poland.

The abrupt changes are forcing the military to “retroactively engineer” a policy in line with the president’s latest pronouncement, one of the officials said. Both officials were briefed on the decisions and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.

— By Emma Burrows

Legal advocacy group reacts to the ruling on Trump immigration policies

The policies are part of a ongoing efforts by the administration to tighten U.S. entry standards for travel and immigration, in what critics say unfairly prevents travel for people from a broad range of countries.

“This ruling reaffirms a basic principle: the federal government cannot shut down lawful immigration pathways or discriminate against people based on where they come from,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which represented the plaintiffs in the case.

“These unlawful policies caused enormous harm to families, workers, asylum seekers, and communities across the country,” he said, “who were left in limbo, unable to work, access protections, or move forward with their lives.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Who did these Trump immigration policies affect?

The halted policies apply to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which approves applications for immigrants to work and become citizens.

The agency, which resides in the Homeland Security Department, often grants asylum but only for those already in the United States when they apply.

Immigration judges grant asylum for those who are stopped at the border; the ruling does not affect them and neither did the policies that sparked the lawsuit.

Judge blocks a Trump policy that made it harder for immigrants to stay and enter the country

The policies enacted after the National Guard shooting last year meant that immigrants from 39 African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries have been “categorically barred” from receiving final decisions on, among other things, their asylum, work permit, green card, and citizenship applications.

In Friday’s ruling harshly criticizing the administration, U.S. District Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. said the policy “threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo,” and he accused the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services of ignoring the law.

▶ Read more

Rubio meets top Philippine diplomat over the South China Sea and other issues

Secretary of State Marco Rubio affirmed the strength of the two countries’ alliance to Philippine Foreign Minister Theresa Lazaro during Friday’s meeting in Washington.

A State Department statement said their discussion included economic priorities and the South China Sea, where Beijing has been aggressive in its territorial claims over disputed islands and atolls.

The South China Sea is a vital global trade route with rich undersea deposits of gas and oil.

In particular, Beijing and Manila have clashed over Scarborough Shoal, which China prefers to call Huangyan Dao.

On Sunday, the Chinese naval and air forces conducted “readiness patrols” near the shoal, after Philippine and U.S. forces conducted a five-day drill in the same waters.

Treasury warns banks of ‘red flags’ tied to customers in the US illegally

The Treasury Department’s financial crimes arm wants banks to help identify payroll schemes tied to people living in the country illegally, as part of the Trump administration’s latest measure to clamp down on immigration.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — also known as FinCEN — issued an advisory Friday to banks that tells them to watch out for identity theft, payroll tax fraud, and money laundering schemes tied to hiring unauthorized workers.

This comes after President Trump in May signed an executive order that requires banks to take a closer look at the citizenship of their customers.

The order directs bank regulators and government departments to look for signs that people without legal status are opening accounts or obtaining loans or credit cards. However, the order is less aggressive than banks had previously expected, as earlier reports suggested the White House was drafting an order that would make collecting customers’ citizenship information mandatory.

▶ Read more

Democratic Wisconsin senator says Trump’s stop in the swing state shows he’s nervous

Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin says President Trump’s visit to a rural swing district in Wisconsin shows he knows Republicans are in trouble in the midterms.

The stop on Friday for a farmer-focused round table in Chippewa Falls marks the first time Trump has visited Wisconsin in his second term. It comes just four days after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. toured a dairy farm in the congressional district held by Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden.

“They know they’re in trouble,” Baldwin said of Republicans. “They know across the country they’re in trouble.”

Baldwin says Trump’s visit is “not going to do the job in convincing our farmers they are doing better than they’re doing. They know the reality.”

Trump is scheduled to be joined by Van Orden, one of his most vocal supporters. Democrats have targeted that district this year.

US boards an oil tanker linked to Iran in the Indian Ocean

American forces have boarded a sanctioned oil tanker linked to Iran in the Indian Ocean, the U.S. military said Friday as the U.S. pushes to prevent the Islamic Republic from profiting off its oil and other goods.

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command posted on X that the U.S. forces boarded the MT Davina. The post lacked further details, but U.S. forces around the world have been directed to stop ships tied to Tehran or those suspected of carrying supplies that could help its government.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy is enforcing a blockade of Iran’s ports as part of an effort to force Tehran to open the Strait of Hormuz and accept a deal to extend a tenuous ceasefire in the war.

US set to hold latest oil and gas lease sale for Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

The Trump administration’s push to expand oil and gas development in Alaska faces a new test Friday, with the latest lease sale set for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Opponents of drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain have pointed to a lack of industry interest in the prior two sales held there and ongoing changes in Alaska’s Arctic region due to climate change as proof the region should be off-limits to drilling. But supporters of drilling see the coastal plain, which is roughly the size of Delaware, as a potential untapped resource that could boost U.S. oil production and generate new revenue and jobs.

A coalition of conservation groups this spring sent a letter to leaders of 11 petroleum companies including major ConocoPhillips and Hilcorp, both major players in Alaska, urging them to not participate in the sale. The letter cited ongoing litigation over the leasing program, dating to President Trump’s first term, and warned of “financial, operational and reputational risks.”

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Trump looms large over upcoming primary elections in Washington, DC

The last time Washington, D.C., residents chose a new delegate to Congress and a new mayor in the same election, gas was $1.33 a gallon and George H.W. Bush was president.

This fall they’ll do it again — under starkly different circumstances.

As the city heads toward pivotal primaries this month to pick candidates for those roles, President Trump’s influence on the nation’s capital is shaping up as a major campaign issue. The fresh slate of candidates is weighing how best to approach Trump’s Republican administration and congressional control over the heavily Democratic city’s affairs.

“It’s going to be a big sea change in city politics, no matter how the elections shake out,” said Amanda Huron, a professor at the University of the District of Columbia who teaches courses on D.C. history and politics. But Washington’s lack of full autonomy brings “all sorts of peculiarities around the city’s governance.”

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Trump says he will attend NBA Finals game in New York to root for his hometown Knicks

Trump, a longtime New York Knicks fan, said he plans to attend an NBA Finals game at Madison Square Garden next week at the invitation of the team’s owner.

Describing himself as a “big fan” of the team and owner James Dolan, Trump said Thursday that he will be in the arena for at least one game next week. The NBA believes it would make him the first sitting president to attend an NBA Finals game.

“The answer is yes — he’s invited me, I’m going,” Trump said of Dolan’s invitation. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said he was eyeing Game 3 on Monday but didn’t rule out Game 4 on Wednesday. “Maybe I’ll do both.”

Trump, who is simultaneously contending with a war in Iran, strife in Congress and looming midterm elections, said he made sure to catch some of Game 1 on Wednesday as the Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs and took a 1-0 lead in the series.

▶ Read more

Water begins refilling Reflecting Pool after Trump’s renovation to repaint it ‘American flag blue’

Water began refilling the recently renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Thursday, Trump announced from the Oval Office.

Trump showed a video during an unrelated event with water bubbling into the freshly painted basin at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial.

“That’s clean, beautiful water,” the president said.

Live video showed water accumulating in the center of the basin, with workers and trucks still inside the pool.

Trump noted the work to paint the shallow basin a deep shade, which he calls “American flag blue,” was completed Wednesday. The administration said in a court filing that it was set to be filled with water no later than Sunday.

Trump also announced a plan to build a “promenade” that would allow pedestrians to walk from the back of the Lincoln Memorial to the Potomac River.

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Trump says Pulte won’t be his nominee for director of national intelligence

Trump said Thursday that federal housing finance regulator Bill Pulte, his pick for acting director of national intelligence, would not be his “permanent” choice for the critical security post.

The Republican president’s disclosure that he was ruling out installing Pulte in the position full-time came after bipartisan pushback on Capitol Hill in recent days over Pulte’s lack of national security experience. The position requires Senate confirmation, something that lawmakers indicated was unlikely if Pulte were the nominee.

“He’s not going to be permanent because, you know, I don’t think he’d want to be permanent,” Trump said while taking questions in the Oval Office after an event on coal. He called Pulte a “very smart guy” and said he may look at past elections that Trump claims, without credible evidence, were “rigged” against him.

Senate OKs $70B immigration bill after rejecting efforts to permanently ban Trump’s settlement fund

The Senate passed legislation to fund Trump’s immigration enforcement agencies early Friday, after weeks of delays and fierce backlash to an unrelated $1.776 billion settlement fund that threatened to derail the bill.

Senators voted 52-47 to pass the $70 billion legislation to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol for the next three years, through the end of Trump’s term, after Democrats had blocked the money for months. The bill will now head to the House, which is expected to take it up next week.

The final vote came just before 5 a.m., after Republicans narrowly defeated multiple attempts by members of both parties to add language to the bill that would permanently ban Trump’s settlement fund for allies who believe they’ve been politically persecuted.

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In a ruling harshly criticizing the administration, U.S. District Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. said the policy “threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo,” and he accused the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services of ignoring the law.

“In enacting its latest immigration policies, USCIS: claims statutory and regulatory authority that it does not possess; makes decisions without the reasoned explanations that it must provide; acts without regard for the reliance interests of applicants that it must consider; and justifies its actions with pretextual concerns of ‘national security’ that mask anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making,” he wrote. “In legal terms that means USCIS’s actions are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The policies enacted after the National Guard shooting last year meant that immigrants from 39 African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries have been “categorically barred” from receiving final decisions on, among other things, their asylum, work permit, green card, and citizenship applications.

“This ruling reaffirms a basic principle: the federal government cannot shut down lawful immigration pathways or discriminate against people based on where they come from,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which represented the plaintiffs in the case. “These unlawful policies caused enormous harm to families, workers, asylum-seekers, and communities across the country who were left in limbo, unable to work, access protections, or move forward with their lives.”

The policies apply to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services or USCIS, which approves applications for immigrants to work and become citizens. The agency, which is within the Homeland Security Department, often grants asylum, but only for those already in the United States when they apply. Immigration judges grant asylum to those stopped at the border; the ruling does not affect them, nor do the policies that sparked the lawsuit.

The broad ruling would impact all pending cases at USCIS involving people from the travel ban countries, not just those included in the lawsuit, Shev Dalal-Dheini, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“It is an important legal victory to ensure that legal immigration pathways remain open and that USCIS is held accountable to doing their congressionally mandated job of adjudicating applications,” she said.

It is part of an ongoing effort by the administration to tighten U.S. entry standards for travel and immigration, which critics say unfairly prevent travel for people from a broad range of countries. The administration suggested it would expand the restrictions after the arrest of an Afghan national suspect in the shooting of two National Guard troops over Thanksgiving weekend.

In its motion to dismiss, which the court denied, the government argued that Congress gave the executive branch broad authority over immigration policy, including “the entry of aliens into the United States as well as discretion within the statutory scheme to confer as well as withdraw various discretionary benefits.”

“This case rests on a remarkable premise: that a federal court should prevent an agency from issuing the very policy guidance that provides government personnel with the guardrails necessary to ensure consistent, non-arbitrary, and individualized decisionmaking consistent with federal law,” the government wrote in its brief.

Immigration groups celebrated the ruling.

“This ruling sets a powerful precedent that the administration cannot ignore the law as laid down by Congress and cannot arbitrarily bar immigration benefits on the basis of national origin by fiat,” Jamal Abdi, president at the National Iranian American Council, said. “Fortunately, this is still a nation of laws, and those who uphold America’s values have recourse to challenge and push back on such discriminatory, arbitrary policies.”

Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran who heads a coalition that supports Afghan resettlement efforts called #AfghanEvac, said the ruling was a “significant victory for the rule of law and for thousands of Afghan allies and other immigrants who followed every requirement asked of them.”

“Just this week in Dallas and Fort Worth, we met people who feared losing jobs because delayed work permit renewals threatened their livelihoods, families who postponed education, travel, and homeownership because they did not know when their cases would be resolved, and future Americans who had expected to become citizens only to see their applications stall without explanation,” VanDiver said.

The nearly $70 billion package, which cleared the Republican-held Senate in a middle of the night vote and now heads to the House, was declared a “rotten bill” by the Democratic leader and an "ATM for ICE” by pro-immigrant advocates.

But for those aligned with Trump’s campaign promise for the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, it all but guarantees an uninterrupted flow of money to carry out the administration's immigration enforcement operations — and comes on top of some $170 billion Congress already approved for the department last summer, as part of Trump's big tax breaks bill.

“We’re going to continue to arrest people, we’re going to continue to detain people and we’re going to keep deporting people,” Trump border czar Tom Homan told CBS News on Friday.

He hinted at summer sweeps of enforcement actions coming next to New York City.

More money, fewer guardrails

The work of Congress comes at a pivotal time for the Republican president and his party as they face restless voters before the midterm elections. About one in three U.S. adults know someone who has been impacted by Trump’s immigration operations, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in April. And as America celebrates its 250th anniversary, most say it’s no longer a great place for immigrants.

The funding package from Congress is just a slim dozen-page bill that carries none of the usual guardrails or directives typically demanded in legislation. It turns loose $30 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, nearly $20 billion for the Border Patrol, and others, prepaying the department’s operations into 2029.

“Their options are limitless in terms of what they can do with this money,” said Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director at America's Voice, a longtime advocacy organization for immigrants.

“That is such a hard thing to accept as a taxpaying citizen that our dollars are going to this massive, mass deportation machine, while Americans are struggling to meet health care costs, and have access to food and they’re paying so much in gas.”

The administration has sought to shift the debate over its immigration operations, installing new leadership at Homeland Security in the aftermath of violent scenes of immigration enforcement earlier this year and the shooting deaths of Americans Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Rather than the dramatic street sweeps, the administration is working behind the scenes on actions that are stripping immigrant groups of their ability to remain in the U.S., by doing away with Temporary Protected Status or making it more difficult to secure green cards.

The so-called Dreamers, young immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children, have reported delays in renewing their Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, exposing them to potential deportation.

But protests on American streets continue, including over detention conditions at the Delaney Hall facility in New Jersey.

At the same time, Homeland Security continues to hire more ICE agents — it's hosting an employment fair next month in Florida — build more detention facilities and partner with countries around the world to take people who are being deported from the U.S.

In a statement, the department said Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin are “laser focused on ensuring the hardworking men and women” of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol are fully funded. It said the package from Congress “will ensure our critical national security operations continue despite any Democrat attempts to hold our great patriotic employees hostage in the future.”

Power of the purse becomes a blank check

Typically a funding package from Congress would run hundreds pages or more, with a range of specific instructions about how the money can be spent and on what timelines.

Congress, after all, holds the power of the purse, and often uses that constitutional role to put checks on the administration.

But after Democrats refused to fund Homeland Security earlier this year following the violence in Minnesota, Republicans retaliated by using the congressional budget resolution process to muscle the package through on their own, outside of the traditional appropriations channels.

It’s the same process both parties have used in the past, most recently on Trump’s 2025 tax cuts bill.

“All this important oversight doesn’t happen,” said Bobby Kogan, a former staff member of the Senate Budget Committee and now at the Center for American Progress, a think tank.

Overnight, Democrats in the Senate worked to exert that authority, offering amendments to ensure Congress had some say in the process. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, for example, sought to protect “Dreamers” from deportation as their DACA renewals are being delayed. But those efforts all failed.

Deportations not enough, for some

Meanwhile the administration is under enormous pressure to deliver on its promise to boost deportations to some 1 million a year, after the Republican president's first year numbers fell short.

Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, is a leader of the Mass Deportation Coalition that is pushing the Trump administration to stick to its promises.

“Everyone’s talking about ICE is going to get another massive cash injection, and that’s not how I see it at all," he said. "They're getting like life-support money.”

“We’re not asking them to keep going,” Howell said. “We're asking them to start.”

Howell said there's little chance the Trump administration will be able to reach the president's deportation goals unless it drops its priority to go after what it calls the “worst of the worst.”

His group put out a framework earlier this year that proposes more comprehensive sweeps to arrest immigrants, particularly in the workplace. He also wants to see the Trump administration make it more difficult for immigrants who are in the U.S. to use the banking system, get social services and obtain drivers licenses. Republicans in Congress have offered bills tackling some of those issues.

The administration has been amping up its own rhetoric and recently posted a new website that characterizes immigrants as “aliens” — with outer-space themes — and suggests ways the White House is working to prevent people from staying in the U.S.

The 104th-ranked Arnaldi withdrew before the first all-Italian men's Grand Slam semifinal against Flavio Cobolli on Friday at Roland Garros.

Arnaldi believed he caught a virus and said he could not play competitive tennis.

“I think it’s a virus because I was feeling pretty cold,” he said. “I had a fever. I just know that I can’t move, and I can’t eat, and I can’t drink.”

His withdrawal handed Cobolli a place in Sunday's final against second-seeded Alexander Zverev.

Arnaldi said he felt fine during practice on Thursday, until he had dinner.

“I started to feel so-so with my stomach,” he told a press conference also attended by Cobolli, who sat at the other end of the interview desk.

“I was, like, ‘All right, just didn’t digest very well.’ But then I woke up at 1 a.m. and I started vomiting. Then I tried to sleep. I couldn’t sleep at all. At 6, 7 a.m. I vomited again. This time was pretty bad.”

He summoned a doctor to his room and took medicine.

“I was hoping that it would just be something from dinner or something like that, but then throughout the day I couldn’t eat," Arnaldi said. "Every time we did something or would drink, I would go back to the bathroom."

He reached the semifinals after countryman Matteo Berrettini retired in their quarterfinal due to a hip injury before the end of the second set. Arnaldi spent a total of 19 hours, 42 minutes on court, more than any other player has taken to make the semifinals at any major tournament since the ATP Tour began recording match times in 1991.

“It’s tough, because for how the tournament was, for how many hours I spent on court, I was feeling actually very good,” Arnaldi said.

“To have to withdraw from the first slam semifinal is not something that you wish to anybody. I tried to get ready and tried to stay as much as I could here and tried to see if I could go on court, but every time I get up, I feel dizzy, and I don’t feel like the best. I’m pretty sure if I eat again, I’m not going to feel, like, good. That was the right decision for me to take."

Cobolli said he was saddened by the news.

“When he came to me almost one hour ago, I almost cried,” he said. “Matteo is a big inspiration for all of us.”

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AP Tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis

Click here for more Addressing A4dability coverage.

The investment, made through a partnership with Northern Trust, was announced as the nonprofit celebrated another milestone: the completion of its first home in Baker County.

The organization, formerly known as HabiJax, recently expanded its service area beyond Jacksonville into Nassau and Baker counties and rebranded as First Coast Habitat for Humanity to reflect its broader regional footprint.

“We’ve been in Jacksonville for many, many years, almost 40,” CEO Chris Folds said. “There is a real need for affordable housing not just in Jacksonville but in our whole region.”

The newly completed Baker County home marks the nonprofit’s first closing in the county.

The home’s new owner, Charity Cobb, officially became the first person to purchase a First Coast Habitat for Humanity home in Baker County.

News4JAX spoke with Cobb by phone minutes after she signed the closing documents. She said owning the home will cost less than renting and provide long-term stability for her family.

“Oh absolutely, it is very, very affordable,” Cobb said when asked whether the home would be more affordable than rent. “Just exciting and to be able to have something to leave to my son is amazing.”

Folds said the agreement with Northern Trust involves the securitization of some Habitat mortgages, generating nearly $4 million that can be reinvested into future homebuilding efforts.

“That’s enough money to basically provide the subsidy for 100 families to purchase a home,” Folds said.

The announcement comes as affordability challenges continue to affect residents across Northeast Florida. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, more than half of Jacksonville renters are considered cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing.

At the same time, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta shows a household needs to earn approximately $107,000 annually to afford a median-priced home in the Jacksonville area.

Habitat leaders say those market conditions make affordable homeownership programs increasingly important for working families.

The nonprofit is now searching for additional land in Duval, Nassau and Baker counties to support future developments.

“We need land,” Folds said. “We’re searching for land in Baker, we’re searching for land in Nassau, and we’re searching for land in Duval.”

In addition to land, the organization is seeking families interested in purchasing homes through the program.

“If you’re somebody who is paying a lot of rent and you want to maybe save some money, but also own a home and build equity that you can pass on to your children, we would love to talk to people that are interested in affordable homeownership,” Folds said.

First Coast Habitat for Humanity said households with annual incomes as low as $38,000 may qualify for its homeownership program. Homes are sold at their appraised value, which the organization said is typically around $200,000.

More information about eligibility requirements and available programs can be found through First Coast Habitat for Humanity.

The pressure has been on Alexander Zverev to finally win an elusive Grand Slam title and now the second-seeded German is only one victory away from raising the French Open trophy.

Zverev reached the fourth major final of his career after beating 20-year-old Jakub Mensik 7-5, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 in the Roland Garros semifinals on Friday.

In Sunday’s final, Zverev will face 14th-ranked Flavio Cobolli.

Cobolli advanced when 104th-ranked Matteo Arnaldi withdrew before their all-Italian semifinal due to a virus.

Arnaldi spent 19 hours, 42 minutes on court to reach the semifinal — more than anyone at a Grand Slam since 1991. He said he was vomiting overnight.

“I tried to get ready ... but every time I get up I feel dizzy,” Arnaldi said. “I can’t move and I can’t eat and I can’t drink. So there was really no way that I will be able to play.”

Zverev has been an overwhelming favorite for the title ever since the top-ranked Sinner struggled in the first week’s heat wave and wasted a two set and 5-1 lead against Juan Manuel Cerundolo in the second round.

Alcaraz, the two-time reigning champion, withdrew before the tournament with an injured right wrist.

The 27th-ranked Mensik, who was playing in his first Grand Slam semifinal, struggled with five double faults.

Mensik overcame post-match cramps that landed him in a wheelchair last week, got past Andrey Rublev in five sets, and beat rising Brazilian João Fonseca in straight sets in the quarterfinals.

“He beat so many unbelievable players. I knew it was going to be the toughest challenge that I had so far. And I managed. I won. I’m happy,” Zverev said.

It will be Zverev’s second French Open final, having wasted a lead of two sets to one against Alcaraz in the 2024 championship match.

Zverev had an even bigger advantage — two sets to none — in the 2020 U.S. Open final and lost that one, too, to Dominic Thiem. He was also beaten in straight sets by Sinner in the 2025 Australian Open final.

“That’s in the past,” Zverev said of his loss to Thiem. “I don’t try to think too much about it before Sunday.”

Wind and mishits

Despite overcast and windy conditions at the start, the roof was open on Court Philippe-Chatrier and both players struggled with mishits early on.

Mensik relied often on serve-and-volley tactics while Zverev was more solid from the baseline of the red clay court.

Mensik double-faulted twice late in the first set, leading to the first break.

Zverev broke again early in the second after running down a drop shot from Mensik and then went ahead 5-2 when Mensik double-faulted again.

Mensik's medical timeout

Early in the third, Mensik had his neck treated by a trainer and then left the court for a medical timeout.

When play resumed, Zverev moved Mensik off the court with well-angled shots and the Czech player threw his racket in desperation at a ball he knew he couldn’t reach.

There were more shouts for “Sascha” — Zverev’s nickname — but the crowd attempted to help Mensik back into the match with chants of “Let’s go, Mensik, Let’s go.”

When Mensik produced two well-executed drop shots to finally break Zverev’s serve and take a 4-2 lead in the third, he pumped his fist as the crowd came to life.

It was just the second set that Zverev dropped in the tournament.

“He started playing amazing the third set,” Zverev said. “This is best-of-five-set matches: You know things (are) going to happen. Opponents are going to play better. You have to deal with it. You have to manage it. I did. And I hope to play another great match on Sunday.”

When Mensik rushed the net after a slice serve to the deuce court midway through the fourth set and Zverev used his long wingspan to produce a looping cross-court return that dipped over the net beyond his reach, Mensik just smiled — perhaps realizing in that moment that Zverev simply had too much game for him.

Abuse allegations

Moments after Zverev’s last Grand Slam final in Australia in 2025, a person in the stadium yelled out the names of two of his ex-girlfriends who accused him of physical abuse.

One case was resolved following an agreement between German prosecutors, lawyers for Zverev and his former partner. The ATP Tour investigated another case and concluded there was insufficient evidence.

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

The disappearance of the girl identified by police as Lyhanna and days of searches that ended with the discovery of her body in a disused grain silo have gripped national and, increasingly, political attention since she went missing in the southwestern Gers region on May 29.

Police notices said she'd been wearing a black-and-white striped top, black shorts and yellow socks with branding from the Japanese manga series “One Piece.”

After six days of searching by police and volunteers, authorities announced Thursday that a child's body dressed in “similar clothes” had been found.

Police were led to the grain silo by a tip-off that the suspect in custody had previously worked there, Gers-region prosecutor Olivier Naboulet said in a statement on Friday evening.

DNA matching confirmed the body was Lyhanna's but more autopsy work is needed to determine the cause of death, Naboulet said.

Speaking earlier Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron joined the outpouring of dismay, saying the case revealed cracks in the system and that he was “shocked.”

“Things didn't happen as they should have done. That is clear. And so it is unacceptable,” Macron said. “We cannot look her family in the face and say everything went well."

French media reported that the 41-year-old man taken into custody was seen in front of Lyhanna's school in the Gers town of Fleurance and, on surveillance cameras, later spotted driving with her in his car. He told investigators that he dropped her off near the municipal swimming pool, media reports said.

Another Gers-region prosecutor, Clémence Meyer, said this week that young girls and their families had previously lodged multiple complaints about the suspect, including allegations of rape.

An allegation that the man raped a minor at his Gers-region home in 2020 was looked into, with medical evaluations and police interviews, but authorities closed the case in 2024 for lack of evidence, the prosecutor said.

The man was the subject of another, still ongoing police investigation for alleged rape when Lyhanna disappeared. The child in that case alleges that the suspect raped her repeatedly at his home in 2024 and 2025, the prosecutor said. That case has bounced between jurisdictions.

She said another allegation of raping a minor was lodged against the man this week.

The government has launched an investigation. Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said officials will look at the time it took for casework to be transferred between jurisdictions, why information is transmitted on paper, not electronically, why police seemingly didn't follow orders and “why we didn’t intervene despite many months of complaints against the man.”

“It’s completely unacceptable,” Darmanin said, speaking Thursday. “We are all terrified by this malfunction."

He said it reveals "our poor organization and without doubt, the fact that at the Justice Ministry and elsewhere, we don’t take the words of children seriously.”

The S&P 500 fell 1.7% and is headed for its first losing week in the last 10 and its biggest one-day drop since March. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 410 points, or 0.8%, as of 1:56 p.m. Eastern. The Nasdaq composite slumped 2.9%.

Tech stocks dragged the broader market lower as companies that had powered the S&P 500 to a series of records the past two months saw losses. Nvidia fell 5%, Broadcom dropped 5.7% and Micron Technology slid 9.4%. Stocks within the S&P 500 were close to evenly split between gainers and losers. But, many of the bigger tech stocks have pricey values that tend to have an outsized influence on the broader market.

Meanwhile, bond yields jumped after a report showed the U.S. added a surprising 172,000 jobs in May, according to the Labor Department. It is the latest report showing that employment remains solid, despite the squeeze inflation is putting on businesses and consumers.

The latest reading on employment comes two weeks before Kevin Warsh heads his first policy meeting as chair of the Fed. Policymakers are widely expected to keep rates steady at the June 16-17 meeting despite pressure from President Donald Trump to lower borrowing costs. Longer-term, the market sees a better than 60% chance the Fed will push rates higher by the end of the year, according to CME FedWatch, and little to no chance of a cut.

“Any hopes of a Fed rate cut have effectively been eliminated with this morning’s strong jobs report,” said Ronald Temple, chief market strategist at Lazard, in a research note.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.54% from 4.50% just before the report was released. The yield on the 2-year Treasury, which more closely tracks the Fed’s actions, jumped to 4.17% from 4.04% just prior to the report.

The Fed has been holding interest rates steady as it tries to gauge the ongoing impact from rising inflation. Prices were already ticking higher from the impact of tariffs. The U.S. war with Iran has essentially blocked crude oil shipments from moving through the Strait of Hormuz.

The price of Brent crude, the international standard, fell 2.2% to $92.97. It was about $70 per barrel before the war. The surge in oil prices prompted a jump in gasoline prices. That has fueled a broader rise in inflation as prices for anything being shipped move higher and threaten to slow economic growth.

A measure of inflation preferred by the Fed showed that prices rose 3.8% overall in April. That marked the biggest increase in two years.

Wall Street has been anticipating that negotiations to end the war will eventually be successful. American and Iranian negotiators reached a tentative deal last week to extend their ceasefire, but the agreement has not been finalized.

The latest round of corporate earnings is coming to a close. Lululemon slumped 7.9% after trimming its revenue and profit forecasts.

Most reports from companies have been surprisingly good and helped Wall Street on its record run. Encouraging profits and forecasts helped overshadow lingering worries about the direction of the economy amid tariffs and high energy costs because of the U.S. war with Iran.

With earnings now in the background, analysts have been warning that the tech companies benefiting from interest in artificial intelligence may have become too expensive. That could result in a slowdown for a market that has surged in 2026, with the S&P 500 up nearly 9% for the year.

Markets were mixed in Europe after markets in Asia fell.

___

AP Business Writers Chan Ho-Him and Matt Ott contributed to this report.

Head’s daughters, actors Emily and Daisy Head, told the Press Association news agency that the actor passed away due to complications from pneumonia.

The stage and TV performer became well known to British audiences in the 1980s as one half of a will-they, won’t-they romantic couple in a series of ads for Nescafe Gold Blend instant coffee. The ads were later re-shot for a U.S. audience for Taster's Choice.

Head achieved wider fame as librarian Rupert Giles, mentor to the title character in the cult-favorite supernatural series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which ran from 1997 to 2003.

He most recently played Rupert Mannion, the villainous ex-husband of Hannah Waddingham’s character Rebecca, in “Ted Lasso.”

“Our grief is far greater than the hole he has left behind, but we know his legacy will live on, in the shows he was a part of, and in the audiences that love them,” his daughters said. “How lucky we are to know we are able to watch him doing what he loved, even when he is no longer with us.”

Head was born in London on Feb. 20, 1954 to Seafield Head, a documentary filmmaker, and Helen Shingler, an actor. His older brother, Murray, is also an actor.

Other notable roles included playing Geoffrey Howe, the deputy to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, played by Meryl Streep, in the Oscar-winning “The Iron Lady.”

Head portrayed a prime minister himself in the sketch comedy show “Little Britain,” as well as King Uther Pendragon, the father of Prince Arthur, in the “Merlin” TV series. He also appeared in “Motherland," Manchild,” and “Silent Witness,” along with acting in many plays, musicals, and recording music as a singer.

He was predeceased by his longtime partner, animal welfare activist Sarah Fisher, 61, in 2025.

The Block Jax owner, Daniel Moffatt, told News4JAX that parking instantly became his biggest challenge after the grand opening weekend back in March.

Visitors’ complaints rolled in about the limited space and the need for more parking that wouldn’t put their vehicles at risk of being towed.

MORE | The Block Jax owner continues working on parking solutions ahead of busy sports weekend

In an Instagram post, venue officials outlined the latest parking plan:

• There are roughly 200 additional spaces at the Acosta Group building on 6651 Gate Parkway, which is 0.2 miles north of the food hall, just past the Dunkin’ Donuts and St. Vincent’s Urgent Care.
• This parking is only available on Wednesday - Friday after 5 p.m. and all day on Saturday and Sunday
• Visitors are also welcome to park at the Community First Credit Union, next door to The Block, for overflow parking after business hours, which are 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. on Monday - Thursday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday and 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. on Saturday. The branch is closed on Sundays.

The latest parking options are in addition to the 125 spaces available in The Block Jax lot.

If you park anywhere outside of those guidelines, you will be at risk of being towed.

Joseph Magnano, 23, did not speak during the arraignment at Superior Court in Hartford but later hugged officers outside the courtroom. Many displayed badges over their street clothes.

Magnano was fired by the Hartford mayor after the fatal shooting of Steven Jones on Feb. 27. The shooting drew wide public outcry and questions about the police department’s policies when responding to people in mental distress.

The president of the local police union continued to defend Magnano while speaking to reporters Friday. The union has filed several grievances with the city over his firing, seeking to have him reinstated.

“They told him he was a criminal for doing what he was trained to do,” James Rutkauski said.

Magnano's lawyer, Patrick Tomasiewicz, declined to comment after the hearing. Free after posting $50,000 bail following his arrest last month, Magnano is due back in court on July 21. He is expected to enter a not guilty plea at some point.

Jones, 55, who had a history of mental illness, was holding a large knife on a city street when officers arrived on that winter day.

Police body camera video shows three officers, over several minutes, repeatedly telling Jones to drop a knife. The officers also tell him they’re there to help.

“Steve, you’re OK. We’re going to make sure you’re OK,” Officer James Prignano says. “Just drop the knife. We’re going to go talk to somebody, OK?”

Jones can’t be heard saying anything in the videos.

About 12 minutes after the 911 call, Magnano arrives, draws his pistol and shouts at Jones to drop the knife, telling him, “You’re going to get shot.” A woman is heard screaming, “Don’t shoot him!”

The videos show Prignano motioning at Magnano, appearing to tell him to back away. As Jones slowly walks toward Magnano, the officer gives a final warning before shooting at him nine times, about 30 seconds after he got out of his cruiser. Jones died four days later.

Connecticut Inspector General Eliot Prescott, who filed the manslaughter charge and is prosecuting the case, said an investigation found Jones was not an imminent threat and the shooting was not justified.

In his own incident report, Magnano, who had been on the force for a year and four months, said he was “fearful of Jones making a sudden lunge towards either an officer or citizen.”

Hartford Police Chief James Rovella has not commented publicly on the shooting. He and several high-ranking officers also went to court Friday. “It's too early to comment,” he said.

Jones’ relatives did not attend the hearing but local NAACP officials were present Friday.

“They take an oath to protect and serve,” Corrie Betts, president of the Greater Hartford NAACP branch, said of police. “So when they’re called to a mental health call and an individual ends up dead, is that protecting and serving?”

The five astronauts moved into the SpaceX capsule that is docked at the station while cosmonauts worked to fix the leak, which is on the Russian side of the orbiting laboratory.

The decision was made “out of an abundance of caution,” NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens said via X.

The crew left the capsule and returned to regular operations after repair work was paused.

That part of the space station has suffered from cracks and leaks over the years. NASA said Roscosmos decided to do a more extensive repair after fresh problems were found.

The space agencies have been working to determine the cause of the cracks.

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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.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — also known a FinCEN — issued an advisory Friday to banks that tells them to watch out for identity theft, payroll tax fraud, and money laundering schemes tied to hiring unauthorized workers.

This comes after President Donald Trump in May signed an executive order that requires banks to take a closer look at the citizenship of their customers.

The order directs bank regulators and government departments to look for signs that people without legal status are opening accounts or obtaining loans or credit cards. However, the order is less aggressive than banks had previously expected, as earlier reports suggested the White House was drafting an order that would make collecting customers’ citizenship information mandatory.

Still, without encouraging a blanket debanking of broad segments of the population, the order and latest advisory acts to discourage people in the U.S. illegally from interacting with the larger U.S. financial system.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement that the Trump administration "will not allow illegal aliens to abuse financial institutions to steal billions of dollars from hardworking American taxpayers.”

“Schemes to pay unlawful workers often rely upon access to the U.S. financial system, including U.S. banks," he said.

Since banks have never collected any information about their customers’ citizenship or immigration status, there are no reliable public figures on how much risk these customers pose to the financial system.

The banking industry had been aggressively lobbying for months to stop the White House from issuing an executive order that would have made collecting customers’ citizenship status mandatory, arguing it would be expensive and require vast amounts of paperwork. Since the order only offered guidance to the banks instead of a mandate, it appears the banks were able to win over the White House.

The advisory calls on financial institutions to be alert for more than a dozen so-called '"red flags" that indicate an individual is in the U.S. illegally.

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Sweet reported from New York.

Cooper, 28, was held on suspicion of two counts of domestic violence and one count of criminal mischief, according to Douglas County jail records. He was arrested by Parker Police at 11:16 p.m. Thursday and booked into jail at 2:38 a.m. Friday.

Cooper had his first appearance Friday in the 23rd Judicial District Court and is due back in that court Monday for a disposition hearing.

The Broncos said in a statement to The Associated Press that they “are aware of the matter and are gathering more information.”

The AP left a message with Cooper's agent seeking comment.

A seventh-round draft pick out of Ohio State in 2021, Cooper is entering his sixth season with the Broncos. He has started every game since 2023 and has 31 1/2 career sacks, including eight last season when he also registered a sack in the playoffs.

He had a career-best 10 1/2 sacks in 2024 and late that season signed a four-year, $54 million contract extension.

The Broncos began the football field portion of their offseason program earlier this week and Cooper participated in the Thursday practice that was open to media members.

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

Thursday's letter, the first public message Zelenskyy has written directly to Putin since Russia sent troops into Ukraine in 2022, was a sweeping critique of the Russian leader’s 26 years in power as well as some taunts about his age.

Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin described Zelenskyy’s open letter proposing the meeting as “boorish.”

“Is it a way to create conditions for personal meetings and talks, or create an environment which makes any personal meetings impossible?” Putin said at a question-and-answer session at his annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “I think it’s the second.”

Putin added that a Russian businessman whom he didn’t identify traveled to Kyiv last month and met with Zelenskyy to hear his offer of a personal meeting.

However, Putin said that he currently sees “no point” in such a meeting, especially after a May 22 drone attack by Ukraine on a college dormitory in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region that Moscow said killed 21 and wounded scores of others.

In response to Zelenskyy’s barbs about his age and long stay in power, the 73-year-old Putin pointed at other global leaders who are older, adding that “the main thing isn’t age; the main thing is the ability to work.”

He also mocked Zelenskyy's rocky Oval Office meeting in 2025 and thanked U.S. President Donald Trump for “educating” Zelenskyy “before the eyes of the whole world” and teaching him a proper dress code.

“There is still a lot to be done,” he said.

Zelenskyy acknowledged shifting U.S. priorities, saying it would be wrong to simply wait for the Trump administration to return its attention to ending the fighting in Ukraine while it remains heavily focused on the Iran war.

In Washington, Trump said Thursday it “would be great” if Putin and Zelenskyy meet.

Putin has previously offered for Zelenskyy to come to Moscow for talks, an offer that the Ukrainian leader pointedly rejected. Putin said last month he doesn’t exclude a meeting in a third country, but only when there is a deal to sign.

On Thursday, Putin again rejected Zelenskyy’s push for an immediate ceasefire, arguing that Moscow wants a comprehensive settlement, not a temporary truce.

Putin said Russia is open for a compromise on Ukraine in line with understandings reached at his last year’s summit with Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, adding that Ukraine needs to accept them to make a deal to end the conflict.

“Naturally, the Ukrainian side would like us to suspend the advances made by Russian troops,” he said. “But it would be better to end the war by agreeing to the compromises that were discussed in Anchorage.”

Asked about Iran, Putin voiced hope for an eventual deal to secure lasting peace. He shrugged off claims that Moscow provided Iran with satellite images, saying that Tehran could use widely available commercial ones.

"As for weapons, Iran hasn’t asked us for them and we haven’t supplied any weapons to Iran,” he said, adding that Russia stands ready to take enriched uranium for storage as part of a potential peace deal, and that Moscow has stayed in contact with Iran, the U.S. and Israel.

Global turbulence

In a speech earlier Friday at the forum, Putin said developing countries have gained an increasingly important role in the global economy, while the share of output by Western countries has shrunk.

He accused the West of undermining the global economy and finances with unilateral sanctions. By freezing Russian assets abroad through sanctions, Western nations eroded trust in their own currencies, he said.

“The sanctions and blocking of Russia’s sovereign reserves have irreversibly impacted the standing of international currencies, the dollar and the euro,” he said. “Just like Russia, any other country could lose access to their legitimate assets in dollars or euros, as well as Western financial and payment systems.”

He alleged that high state debt had helped undermine global trust in Western institutions.

“The roots of the current global turbulence lie in the transition from a vertical, hierarchical model, which served the interests of a small number of states, to a more complex, distributed and multipolar one,” Putin said. “Russia views global changes not only as a threat but also as immense opportunities. And to capitalize on them, we aim to act swiftly and pragmatically.”

The Russian leader said the world needed a “modern, flexible and responsible financial architecture — free from risks, bans and barriers.”

Putin stresses Russia's macroeconomic stability

Putin played down Russia’s economic slowdown and sought to emphasize its macroeconomic stability. He noted that Russia’s state debt is a fraction of that in Western countries and its budget deficit is considerably smaller, compared with the West.

The forum comes at a time when Russia’s economic outlook has clouded amid the conflict in Ukraine. The government raised taxes and increased domestic borrowing to keep its budget deficit under control.

On Thursday, Putin told heads of international media on the forum's sidelines that it was an exaggeration to say Russia's economy was struggling. He noted that his government had taken deliberate steps to cool the economy to keep inflation under control.

Putin has used the St. Petersburg forum, likened to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to showcase his country’s economic advances and encourage foreign investment. While Western officials and business leaders have stayed away after Putin sent troops into Ukraine in 2022, Russia has sought guests from elsewhere to underline its declared goal of promoting a “multipolar world.”

Saudi Arabia sent a large delegation this year, and the presidents of Uzbekistan and Tanzania and vice president of China also gave speeches Friday. A U.S. official, Rodney Mims Cook Jr., head of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, is attending for the first time in years.

Cook was singled out in the audience during a question-and-answer session following Putin's speech. Cook praised the beauty of St. Petersburg and Putin thanked him for the remarks about his hometown and asked to convey his greetings to Trump.

Hours before the forum opened Wednesday, a Ukrainian drone attack set ablaze an oil terminal in St. Petersburg and also hit a nearby naval base.

Putin declared that Russia was “calmly and resolutely” moving to reach its goals in Ukraine. He acknowledged the damage from Ukrainian drone attacks deep inside Russia and vowed to build up defenses.

“They do inflict a certain damage,” he said. “For us, it means only one thing: we need to strengthen our security, strengthen air defenses, and we will do that.”

It turned garages into impromptu rehearsal spaces for would-be rock stars across the American suburbs. For those who couldn’t play, couldn’t try to play or couldn’t get some friends with instruments together, there was always the air guitar. (Does anyone ever play an acoustic air guitar?)

Nearly 100 years ago, Americans' love of tinkering, music and just making things louder combined when George Beauchamp created and Adolph Rickenbacker produced the first commercially successful electric guitar. That was “the Frying Pan.”

The tinkering continued. Musician and inventor Les Paul put strings and pickups on a block of wood called “the Log” and made it one of the first solid body electric guitars. And now we’re talking.

Imagine the intro to Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” without the electric guitar. Would that song about a guitar player even exist? It’s the engine powering Jimi Hendrix’s version of “All Along the Watchtower” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” It spawned the ax man, the guitar god and the apotheosis of look-at-me American exceptionalism, the guitar solo.

It’s in your face and loud. It goes to 11, after all.

It was so provocative that many felt deep betrayal when Bob Dylan plugged in.

It became so ubiquitous, so essential to rock and pop music, that MTV created its successful “Unplugged” franchise, where bands were forced to play nonelectric instruments as an acoustic counterprogramming novelty.

And like all the best American inventions, it was exported around the world, where it still has the power to make kids dream. As long as they have somewhere to plug in.

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Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more American objects, click here. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.

In true “Torts” fashion, he is not explaining why.

"I like our team, where we’re at," Tortorella said Friday. “We’re good. We’re ready to play. I like a lot of things about what’s gone on in the first two games. I’m not giving you specifics.”

Tortorella and the Golden Knights return home for Game 3 against the Hurricanes on Saturday night with plenty of lessons to learn from. It's the first time in NHL history that each of the first two games of a Cup final featured a team erasing a multigoal deficit to win.

Vegas trailed 2-0 in the opener and won 5-4, then led 2-0 on Thursday night until past the midway point of the third period. After Carolina scored three times in just over five minutes, it took captain Mark Stone tying it 6 on 5 with goaltender Carter Hart pulled for an extra skater to force overtime.

“We have pretty good control, and then some minor mistakes and it ends up in the back of the net,” center William Karlsson said. “Just kind of ride it out all game long and hopefully not give Carolina any chances to come back.”

Teammates credited the crowd in Raleigh for aiding the Hurricanes' comeback, and with that came an appreciation to be playing the next two games at the arena on The Strip nicknamed the Fortress. The Golden Knights have only been in existence for nine years, but their home-ice advantage quickly became one of the best in the league.

“We feed off the crowd,” forward Keegan Kolesar said. "You can tell from (Game 2), once things started going their way, they’re playing a lot faster, a lot harder when their crowd is involved. Go back to even the COVID year, it makes you realize how important fans are because when they’re not in that building, it can be pretty miserable, so really excited to have that back in our building.”

The Knights are 6-2 at home during the playoffs. They are also 7-3 on the road.

Tortorella has preached consistency since taking over when Bruce Cassidy was fired in late March, and that applies to not changing much depending on where games take place.

“There’s no difference," Tortorella said. "We’re going to play. We know how to play. We know how we want to play.”

Carolina went a perfect 6-0 on the road through the first three rounds, including the Eastern Conference Final at hockey-mad Montreal.

“I don’t think we really care, to be honest, where we play," said Hurricanes goaltender Frederik Andersen, who has a 1.27 goals-against average and .931 save percentage away from home in the playoffs this spring. “We’re really just focused on our foundation in our game, and that’s really what sets us up for success.”

Lingering over Vegas is the potential absence of top-pairing defenseman Brayden McNabb, who took an 87.3 mph slap shot to the face 11 minutes into Game 2 and did not return. If McNabb is unable to play in Game 3, fellow left-handed shooter Ben Hutton or righty Kaedan Korczak are likely replacements.

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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

According to the American Hiking Society, National Trails Day® is an annual call to action, prompting trail enthusiasts to engage in trail maintenance projects, advocate for public land conservation, and participate in cleanups and outdoor education events.

In a time when outdoor spaces require our attention more than ever, the American Hiking Society calls on individuals of all ages and abilities to reconnect with nature and their communities.

Tyler Ray, the senior director for programs and advocacy for the American Hiking Society, joined the Friday Weather Authority Weekday show on News4JAX+.

Ray spoke about the importance of National Trails Day, saying “it’s an opportunity to get out and explore either trails that they love and go to on a regular basis or find a hidden gem they may not have been to before.”

Watch the entire interview here (can fast forward to 10:30 mark)

In addition to finding that hidden gem or enjoying the same trail over and over, Ray stresses the need to leave a trail cleaner than you found it and being respectful of the surrounding nature.

Duval County has largest urban parks system in US

We are fortunate in Southeast Georgia and Northeast Florida to be surrounded by both land and water.

But did you know that between the ocean and the river in Duval County alone, there are over 400 parks and preserves, which total more than 80,000 acres of parkland?

“Jacksonville has the largest urban parks system in the country. You can visit Jacksonville.gov to see a map of parks and filter by the amenities the parks offer,“ Jolie Friedrich said. ”All City of Jacksonville parks are free to visit except for our oceanfront parks, Huguenot Memorial Park and Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park, which have a $5 entry fee.”

Friedrich has worked for JaxParks for over a decade and is the lead naturalist for the City of Jacksonville. She has a master’s degree in Wildlife Forensics and Conservation and is an instructor for the Florida Master Naturalist Program.

Some of Friedrich’s best tips (and mine!) for hiking in Northeast Florida are: “Always bring more water than you think you will need while hiking in Florida! Bug spray and sun protection are recommended for a more comfortable experience.”

Let’s go for a hike

A few local events happening on Saturday and trails you can visit are:

Fee-free day at Osceda Forest: https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2026/05/13/forest-service-announces-additional-2026-fee-free-day-june-6

Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Canoe Pole Trail Hike

S-Line Trail Clean-Up: https://www.groundworkjacksonville.org/event/s-line-cleanup-jun2026/

In its announcement Thursday, S&P Dow Jones Indices said its index committee weighed responses received from a “wide range of market participants,” but ultimately decided not to make any changes to its criteria for determining when a company should be added to the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400, or S&P SmallCap 600 indexes.

Some of the criteria for inclusion include headquarters in the United States, listing on NYSE or Nasdaq and profitability over the past year.

S&P also requires companies that complete IPOs to be traded on an “eligible exchange” for at least 12 months before they can be considered for inclusion into an index. The committee weighed shortening that requirement to six months, but opted not to do so.

The committee also decided against creating exceptions to its guidelines solely based on market capitalization, or how the stock market gauges a company’s value.

The move by S&P comes as other major U.S. index operators have taken steps to add very large companies soon after they make their stock market debut.

In March, Nasdaq announced new guidelines that allow for expediting the addition of large companies fresh off their initial public offerings into its benchmark Nasdaq 100 Index.

Nasdaq's guideline change is meant to ensure that the index, which tracks the 100 largest, non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq, accurately reflects the market sooner, rather than possibly months after a very large company goes public.

In its decision, S&P noted that there may be trade-offs in sticking to its guidelines for index eligibility, but said its current approach provides its indexes “substantial market coverage and sector balance.”

Many pension plans and mutual funds use S&P and Nasdaq indexes as an investing benchmark.

The moves by S&P and Nasdaq come as several of the biggest artificial intelligence companies in the U.S. are setting the stage for blockbuster IPOs this year.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is expected to go public this month with plans to raise up to $75 billion, which would make it the largest-ever stock market debut.

Meanwhile, Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot, announced Monday its plans for a proposed IPO, while OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, is planning an IPO as soon as this fall.

The drone that self-detonated in the port of Constanta exploded at around 10:30 a.m., after the area had been secured and isolated by the Romanian Intelligence Service, coast guard and the Defense Ministry, authorities said.

“Immediately after identifying the drone, the Ministry of Defense contacted its Ukrainian counterparts, who confirmed that they had lost control of the operation of four drones,” the Romanian government said in a statement. “The other three drones self-detonated — two offshore and the third outside the port.”

“Confirmation of these events came from both the Ukrainian side and from data obtained by the Romanian authorities,” it added.

Romanian President Nicusor Dan said in a statement online that the Ukrainian forces “lost control of the assets as a result of electronic warfare actions by Russia," likely jamming, and that the drone's incursion into “Romanian sovereign space is a direct consequence of the war waged by Russia” against Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Navy confirmed in a statement that it had lost control of an unmanned naval boat “while performing tasks in the Black Sea operational zone,” and that its military was in contact with Romanian authorities "to prevent losses among the civilian population.

The incident took place a week after a Russian aerial drone that was part of an attack on Ukraine went astray and struck an apartment building in Romania’s eastern Danube port city of Galati, injuring two people in the NATO member country.

Raed Arafat, the head of Romania's Department for Emergency Situations, told a news conference Friday morning that helicopters had been deployed to search for more drones and that the authorities had issued text message alerts to residents.

“There is a possibility that there may be other drones,” he said. “We are not panicking. These are preventive measures. If there are other drones, we want to make sure there is not another explosion in an area where people are not evacuated.”

After the port explosion, more than 1,300 people were evacuated from several Black Sea beaches and the routes leading to them were temporarily blocked. Just before 3 p.m., the emergency authorities announced they had suspended evacuation measures.

The Russian Embassy in Bucharest accused Romania on Friday of intentionally releasing “incomplete information” regarding the drone's origin, and said “three other similar drones” belonging to Ukraine were drifting toward Romanian territorial waters.

“These are Ukrainian unmanned maritime vehicles, used by the Kyiv regime to commit terrorist acts against civilian ships and to create threats to the safety of navigation in the Black Sea,” the embassy said. “Any attempts to associate, directly or indirectly, these drones with Russia and to assign it responsibility for the incident are without any reason.”

The recent incidents in Romania are some of the latest in a series of drone incursions — from both Russia and Ukraine — to hit NATO members since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

A month ago, Greece made a formal complaint to the Ukrainian government after a military sea drone carrying explosives was discovered off a Greek island. Greece determined that it was Ukrainian-built. Greek Defense Minister Nikos Dendias called it “an extremely serious issue," and the complaint was forwarded to both NATO and the EU.

Romanian forces destroyed another maritime drone in the Black Sea on Wednesday. Since the beginning of the war next door, the Defense Ministry said that the Romanian navy has neutralized nine of the 156 sea mines in the Black Sea basin.

For its part, the European Union was giving “full solidarity and support to Romania,” European Council President António Costa said Friday.

“The EU condemns the repeated violations of airspace of Member States and reaffirms its unwavering commitment to the security of all Member States,” he said in an online statement Friday. “This is the third significant security incident in Romania in recent weeks. These incidents are a direct consequence of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”

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McGrath reported from Leamington Spa, England. Associated Press writers Sam McNeil in Brussels and Derek Gatopoulos in Athens, Greece, contributed to this report.

The district plans to equip about 30 elementary schools each year with CEIA OPENGATE walk-through systems, the same detectors that were installed at all Duval middle schools during the 2025-26 school year.

Duval County School Police Chief Jackson Short asked families to be patient during the rollout, saying there will be an adjustment period as students and staff learn the new procedures.

“Students and staff at our elementary schools deserve the same level of safety found at our secondary schools,” Duval County School Police Chief Jackson Short said. “By adding weapons detection technology to our elementary schools, we remain true to one of our core values — keeping students and staff safe.”

The portable CEIA OPENGATE units are designed to detect knives, firearms, explosives and other potential threats while allowing people to keep personal items with them to maintain a steady flow of entry. Up to three systems will be placed at entry points at each school, and the units can be used indoors or outdoors.

School police officers, security personnel and trained school-based staff will operate the equipment and receive specific training on its use. Students will walk through one at a time; if a system alerts, the student will be directed to a nearby area for a brief secondary screening so the main line can continue moving.

Many everyday items, such as laptops, metal eyeglass cases, umbrellas or metal lunchboxes, may trigger an alert and prompt a secondary screening that could include a handheld check or a backpack or bag search.

If a weapon or illegal substance is found, law enforcement will take possession of the item and the individual may face law enforcement action and school disciplinary measures under the Student Code of Conduct. If a student refuses to comply with the screening process, a parent or guardian will be contacted and the student may be sent home.

The district said the systems are designed to provide fast, efficient screening and maintain a natural flow of entry, but minor delays may occur during initial implementation.

A list of the initial elementary schools scheduled to receive OPENGATE systems will be released later this summer, and families can expect advance communication from school administrators before installation.

The district has said all students and visitors entering an elementary school will be required to pass through the weapons detection system.

Without directly saying the idea was to replace Pride, the governors of Indiana and Tennessee rebranded June as Nuclear Family Month to celebrate units made up of “one husband, one wife and any biological, adopted or fostered children.”

In Alabama, it's Strong Families Month, intended to coincide with Father's Day. Gov. Kay Ivey's proclamation says fathers are “the head of the household” and “homes led by a father and mother provide children with the structure and discipline necessary to succeed throughout life.”

The governors of Utah and Arkansas deemed it Fidelity Month, which emphasizes fidelity to faith, country and family — without comment on how those families might be comprised.

Last week, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' X account posted a link to an article about her proclamation that declared, “Another Red State is Counter-Programming Pride Month.”

She and the other governors haven’t answered questions from The Associated Press about why their proclamations are all set in June.

Family focus for June has come on strong this year

Republican lawmakers in at least four other GOP-controlled states have introduced legislation this year calling for June to be Fidelity Month.

An organization pushing that concept was founded by Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence who has long been a leader on conservative thought. His group did not respond to interview requests.

He told the National Catholic Register about the idea in 2023, saying “nobody gets a monopoly on a particular day or a particular month.”

June Pride celebrations, which often include parades, festivals and performances, began in 1970 to mark the first anniversary of the violent police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a New York City gay bar, and have since expanded to cities worldwide.

“You can call it whatever you want, but one thing you’re not going to do is take away our pride or take away our joy," said Jordan Braxton co-president of USA Prides.

Every Democratic president since Bill Clinton in 1999 has signed a Pride proclamation each year — and no Republican president has.

Last year, President Donald Trump’s Education Department began declaring June to be Title IX Month – and using it to open investigations into schools that allow transgender students to use the bathrooms or locker rooms that align with their gender identities.

One of the few GOP governors who has proclaimed Pride is Utah's Spencer Cox, who did so in 2021, 2022 and 2023. In 2024, he deemed June a “Month of Bridge Building” before switching to Fidelity Month this year.

A poll released this week found that a two decade-long increase in acceptance of same-sex marriages and relationships has flattened — largely because more Republicans oppose them.

Conservatives say they're ‘reclaiming the culture’

Last year, U.S. Rep. Mary Miller, an Illinois Republican, introduced a resolution to make June Family Month — and to unrecognize Pride Month, saying “Americans are inundated with perverse Pride Month displays and events throughout the month of June that denigrate the nuclear family.” It never got a vote.

Some backers view the state measures as an opportunity for a cultural reset.

Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, said in an interview that it's good to have the conservative recognitions because Pride celebrations “were going so far as to make it difficult to celebrate traditional marriage."

The resolution approved by Tennessee’s Legislature and governor does not mention Pride Month specifically, while saying the “nuclear family is under attack in our beloved State and nation.”

But Lakie Derrick, a conservative activist who authored the measure with a friend, said she did indeed target it to June to counter Pride Month, which she said “goes against” American values.

“We’re just reclaiming the culture, and there’s no better month to do that than in a month where the culture says we’re gonna celebrate something so opposite to what we know to be right,” Derrick said.

Marina Lowe, who leads legal and legislative affairs for the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Utah, said that Pride Month is not the antithesis of other values-based recognitions. Many LGBTQ+ people also value faith and family, she said, so “I don’t think that these positions need to be in conflict with one another.”

In Wenatchee, Washington, a school’s Turning Point USA chapter was able to get Family Month banners posted on light poles that in the past had displayed rainbow flags during June. A local gay rights group, Out NCW, struck back by buying two billboards and passing out yard signs supporting Pride, its president, AJ Soto, said.

For some, this is why Pride Month exists

Josh Coleman, president of Central Alabama Pride, which has 42 events planned over two weeks, said the celebrations, which culminate with a parade on June 13 and festival June 14, won't be affected by the proclamation.

“It's not lost upon LGBTQ people when elected leaders don't recognize or value the visibility of the community,” he said. “That's why Pride started in the first place — to make sure the community had a community.”

Alex Richardson, chair of the board of directors at Indy Pride in Indianapolis, said he sees the governor's proclamation there as a “swipe.” But he also believes the events there this month are celebrating some of the things the governor supports.

“Sure, the governor's right, the nuclear family is worth celebrating,” Richardson said. “But I think so is the grandmother who raises her grandchildren, or the chosen family that shows up when a biological family can't, or won't, ... or the weird blended households that are held together by love and effort.”

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Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Mulvihill from Haddonfield, New Jersey.

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This story has been updated to correct ‘blended family’ to ‘biological family’ in a quote by Alex Richardson.

The company behind the Claude chatbot said in a blog post Thursday that as cutting-edge AI gets increasingly faster at carrying out tasks, “it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause” its development.

Anthropic said its internal research institute plans to explore the issue in collaboration with others and “take actions" to help build the systems for a credible slowdown or pause, without being more specific.

Anthropic rival OpenAI argued for a different approach in a report published Wednesday, saying that “democratic governments — not private companies acting alone — must ultimately determine the rules, safeguards, and accountability mechanisms.”

“Our view is that decisions about the pace of AI innovation should not be left to any one lab, company, or special interest group,” it said.

AI models are getting faster, with rapid increases in how quickly they can carry out software tasks like coding on their own, Anthropic said in its post. Based on current trends and given enough computing power, an AI system could be able to design and develop its own successor, in what is known as “recursive self-improvement.”

Self-building AI would be a major technological milestone that would bring benefits in science, healthcare and other areas, Anthropic said, but it “also might increase the risks of humans losing control over AI systems.”

Some tech industry figures have long warned of such a scenario.

Anthropic’s post comes after a different warning this week from a team of researchers at the University of Toronto who showed how AI tools could be used to create a new kind of AI “worm” that adapts its hacking strategy as it spreads from device to device and takes over a vast computing network.

“I think it’s really important that people understand that it’s not just the biggest, most powerful language models that pose the security concerns,” lead researcher Nicolas Papernot said in an interview.

The authors of the Anthropic post, company co-founder Jack Clark and Marina Favaro, head of its research institute, said the pause would be used to enable “societal structures and alignment research" to keep up with AI advances. Alignment is industry shorthand for making sure the technology matches human values and intentions.

The proposed coordination would let advanced AI labs verify that global rivals have actually stopped or slowed their work, “and that a bad actor could not use the auspices of a coordinated slowdown to jump ahead in secret.”

The company said a coordinated global mechanism is needed because without it a slowdown in AI development could let the “least cautious” players catch up and add to pressure on companies and governments as they make tough choices about AI safety.

Anthropic's post comes as the company and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI race to sell shares on the stock market, in an IPO that could value Anthropic at nearly a trillion dollars.

Papernot notified Canadian cybersecurity authorities prior to releasing his report, which shows how researchers developed the worm in a laboratory by using an “open-source” AI tool that is easy for software developers to cheaply access and modify.

“In the past, cyber attackers would focus on targets that are very high value,” he said. “Banking systems, hospitals, electricity grids, water treatment systems, schools.”

Papernot agreed that there should be more collaboration between companies, government agencies and academic researchers to develop countermeasures as AI-powered hacking tools supercharge the search for computer vulnerabilities.

“That old laptop you have in your basement that you don’t check on regularly doesn’t seem like a very high-value target, but It can be used as a launch pad to attack these higher-value targets,” he said. “Anything connected to the internet is now at risk because of how low the cost has become to mount these cyberattacks.”

Hi, it’s Katie Garner, your News4JAX meteorologist with The Weather Authority. Let me walk you through what you can expect in Jacksonville, Northeast Florida, and South Georgia as we roll into the weekend.

Today, we’re starting out mild with temperatures in the 50s, 60s, and 70s — you’ll feel it especially if you’re out early in Jacksonville, St. Augustine, Brunswick, or Waycross. Temps are expected to climb quickly, hitting 86 degrees this afternoon under sunny skies.

The coastal areas are forecast to stay a little milder, around the 70s, while inland spots like Clay County could get closer to 90. Going into the weekend, Saturday should bring us 89 degrees with sun and clouds, and Sunday looks even warmer at 92 degrees.

Overnight, you’ll feel those lows dip into the mid-60s, so you can expect a solid cool-down once the sun goes down.

It’s going to be a beautiful stretch, but remember: this is above average heat, especially by Sunday and Monday. If you’re spending time outside—maybe working in the yard or heading to the beach—don’t forget the sunscreen and plenty of water!

Boater Skip Day: Safety first

If you’re one of the folks heading out for Boater Skip Day, listen up. You’ll see partly cloudy skies, highs that are talking 87 degrees by late morning and up to 92 by 3 p.m. Winds are expected to stay light, around 6 mph, with a few breezy gusts mixed in—nothing to worry about, but it could feel pretty nice out on the water.

My biggest tip: keep that cooler stocked with water. The combo of heat and sun while you’re boating can sneak up on you. Dehydration isn’t just a hassle, it can ruin your whole day out there. So keep drinking, be smart, and enjoy!

Tropical update: Watching the Atlantic

Let’s talk tropics for a second. We’re on day five of hurricane season, and so far, the Atlantic and The Gulf are both quiet—no active systems, and that’s just the way we like it.

There is some activity out in the Pacific, but at this point it isn’t expected to impact us. Of course, I’m always keeping an eye on any new developments, so I’ll have updates for you if anything changes.

Looking ahead: Good now, rain next week

The weekend is shaping up great for any outdoor plans, but looking ahead, we could see rain return during the week—likely just a single day with showers in the mid-80s. I’ll keep you posted on Exact Track 4D as we get closer.

Enjoy the weather, stay safe on the water, and if you catch any stunning sunrises or fun moments this weekend, send them to us through SnapJAX!

NATO allies were bewildered in May when Trump said he would send 5,000 U.S. troops to Poland just weeks after ordering the same number pulled from Europe, following a spat with Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the Iran war. The Trump administration says troop reductions in Europe have long been planned and coordinated with allies.

The Republican president announced on social media two weeks ago that he was sending troops to Poland — the same day the Pentagon had officially ordered the cancellation of a rotation of soldiers heading there, one of the defense officials said.

The unit's equipment was already on the way. Sending it cost the military $32 million, said U.S. Transportation Command, the military agency largely responsible for moving troops and gear across the globe.

The abrupt changes are forcing the military to “retroactively engineer” a policy in line with the president’s latest pronouncement, the official said. Both officials were briefed on the decisions and, along with others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.

The uncertainty is not only rattling European allies worried about the message being sent to Russia, but it also risks hurting morale among American troops — some of whom had their rotations canceled shortly before departure — and comes as the Army budget is already strained.

Changes to troop deployments to Poland add up

The rotational deployment to Poland of 4,000 troops from the Army’s 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, based in Fort Hood, Texas, was canceled in a memo sent to the military at the beginning of May. European allies found out mid-month.

Some of those troops were told shortly before traveling not to get on a flight to Poland, while those who had been sent ahead — initially around 1,000 troops — are still waiting for confirmation they are being sent back, a U.S. military official said.

The military also is still waiting for details from the Pentagon on how to satisfy Trump's order to send 5,000 troops to Poland, that official said. The working assumption is that they will come from units already in Europe, rather than an additional deployment from the U.S., the official said.

U.S. Transportation Command had chartered a ship to take the team's equipment from Texas to Poland and transport a departing unit's gear back to America. The incoming team's portion of the cost was $32 million, including chartering the ship and loading and unloading the gear.

Because the ship was chartered to take one unit to Europe and bring another back, it is hard to say if that amount would have been saved had the decision to halt the deployment been made before the new team had already begun moving overseas.

However, the military official said the unscheduled move of personnel and equipment back from Europe is most likely not a cost the Pentagon budgeted for and would be an additional expense.

Total costs of canceling the rotation are hard to quantify because of many factors, said Joe Costa, a former senior Pentagon official who now focuses on challenges faced by the U.S. military as director of the Atlantic Council’s Forward Defense program.

They most likely stem from returning equipment and troops sent ahead of the deployment and would probably be on the low end of the rotation’s overall cost, Costa said. The greater impact is on the readiness of troops who were trained for one mission and may be deployed on another, he said.

U.S. military contracts with private companies to transport troops and equipment contain cancellation clauses that often add extra fees if a deployment is called off, said John Deni, a senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council who has studied such costs.

“The question is what additional costs were incurred by deciding to send them back prematurely, changing the arrangements, changing the plan?” said Deni, a former U.S. military adviser and planner who focused on forces in Europe.

It is not clear if the Pentagon can recoup those costs or those associated with moving the unit to Europe. The Defense Department did not answer questions about the costs of changing the deployment plans, and the White House referred a request for comment to the department.

Pentagon officials have repeatedly said they planned to lower troop levels to have Europe shoulder more of its own defense and that the decision was part of a “comprehensive, multilayered process.”

Last month's memo also led to the cancellation of a deployment to Germany of a battalion trained in firing long-range rockets and missiles.

Pulling troops stationed in Germany would be more expensive

When Trump first threatened to remove 5,000 troops from Europe, Pentagon officials initially suggested pulling back the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, which is based permanently in Germany, the defense official said.

Instead, officials decided to cancel the rotation of the other unit to Poland. Then Trump threw that plan into confusion as well.

Pulling the troops stationed in Germany could cost in the low billions because there is no dedicated space and infrastructure in the U.S. to accommodate them and their families, Costa said.

“The other option is basically breaking up the unit,” Costa said. “They move the equipment in different places. They move the people to different places. That carries significant readiness costs because now you’re artificially jamming pieces of units into places where they don’t necessarily belong.”

Pulling or pausing deployments also can hurt morale among soldiers and families because they plan for them months and years in advance, Deni said. The uncertainty can be disruptive.

"That’s often the last thing you want to do to military families,” Deni said.

It is still unclear what will happen to U.S. troops stationed in Europe, the two officials said. Options include moving military units assigned to Germany to Poland, but that could take several years and cost more, the military official said.

Troop changes happen during an Army budget shortfall

The moves come as the Army is facing a budget shortfall, which the service's top uniformed officer, Gen. Christopher LaNeve, recently acknowledged to Congress.

Estimates put the deficit somewhere between $2 billion and $6 billion, according to an Army official who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive defense matters. One impact has been cutting training courses for soldiers nationwide, which ABC News earlier reported.

In a statement, the Army said it has issued guidance to its commands to “make tough and sound resource decisions that optimize and prioritize resources toward their most critical requirements, to include major training and readiness events.”

The Army official also noted that the service has been tasked with missions like the National Guard deployment in Washington, a bolstered presence along the U.S.-Mexico border and its part in the Iran war — all of which have strained its budget.

The Department of Homeland Security expects to reimburse the Army for its role in the border mission.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told lawmakers at a May 15 hearing that he was “optimistic” there would progress on those payments “within a week or two.” But to date, the Army has not been reimbursed.

“We want those backfilled payments," Driscoll said then.

The U.S. military in Europe also is scaling back support for non-combat related training and ruthlessly prioritizing critical functions, the military official said.

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Burrows reported from London.

The district plans to equip about 30 elementary schools each year with CEIA OPENGATE walk-through systems, the same detectors that were installed at all Duval middle schools during the 2025-26 school year.

Duval County School Police Chief Jackson Short asked families to be patient during the rollout, saying there will be an adjustment period as students and staff learn the new procedures.

“Students and staff at our elementary schools deserve the same level of safety found at our secondary schools,” Duval County School Police Chief Jackson Short said. “By adding weapons detection technology to our elementary schools, we remain true to one of our core values — keeping students and staff safe.”

The portable CEIA OPENGATE units are designed to detect knives, firearms, explosives and other potential threats while allowing people to keep personal items with them to maintain a steady flow of entry. Up to three systems will be placed at entry points at each school, and the units can be used indoors or outdoors.

School police officers, security personnel and trained school-based staff will operate the equipment and receive specific training on its use. Students will walk through one at a time; if a system alerts, the student will be directed to a nearby area for a brief secondary screening so the main line can continue moving.

Many everyday items, such as laptops, metal eyeglass cases, umbrellas or metal lunchboxes, may trigger an alert and prompt a secondary screening that could include a handheld check or a backpack or bag search.

If a weapon or illegal substance is found, law enforcement will take possession of the item and the individual may face law enforcement action and school disciplinary measures under the Student Code of Conduct. If a student refuses to comply with the screening process, a parent or guardian will be contacted and the student may be sent home.

The district said the systems are designed to provide fast, efficient screening and maintain a natural flow of entry, but minor delays may occur during initial implementation.

A list of the initial elementary schools scheduled to receive OPENGATE systems will be released later this summer, and families can expect advance communication from school administrators before installation.

The district has said all students and visitors entering an elementary school will be required to pass through the weapons detection system.

The jury found both Rebecca Grossman and Scott Erickson, a former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher, negligent in the deaths of 11-year-old Mark Iskander and 8-year-old Jacob Iskander.

The damages awarded Wednesday were for wrongful death and emotional distress. The trial judge will ultimately determine how much each defendant has to pay.

Court was scheduled to resume Friday as jurors must still decide whether to award punitive damages to the boys' parents, Nancy and Karim Iskander.

Grossman was sentenced in 2024 to serve 15 years to life in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder, gross vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run driving in a separate criminal trial. She is a co-founder of the Grossman Burn Foundation and the wife of a prominent burn doctor.

The boys' parents also filed lawsuits in civil court against both Grossman and Erickson, who was driving ahead of her when the Iskander brothers were killed. That trial began in April.

The deadly crash occurred on the evening of Sept. 29, 2020, in Westlake Village, a city on the western edge of Los Angeles County.

Brian Panish, the Iskander family's attorney, argued that Grossman and Erickson were both driving recklessly after drinking margaritas together. The two were dating at a time when Grossman and her husband were separated.

Panish said Grossman was driving 73 mph (117 kph) when her car struck the boys in a crosswalk on a road where the posted speed limit was 45 mph (72 kph).

He said Grossman was following Erickson, who was also speeding and narrowly missed the family.

“This was a totally preventable collision," Panish told the jury in closing arguments Wednesday. “They went out for a walk and they never came home.”

Grossman's attorney, Esther Holm, denied that her client was intoxicated. She said Grossman was distracted when she saw the boys' mother dive out of the way of Erickson's vehicle.

“Ms. Grossman was not driving impaired," Holm told the jury. “She did not see the children, as her attention was diverted by Ms. Iskander.”

Erickson's attorney, Jeff Braun, called the boys' deaths a tragedy but emphasized that the vehicle he was driving "made no contact with the children.”

Berlin Open organizers said Williams will compete in doubles at the grass-court event starting on June 13. Her partner and the date of her first match will be announced later.

The 23-time Grand Slam singles champion stepped away from tennis in 2022. She has yet to say whether she plans to play at Wimbledon or the U.S. Open.

She will make her eagerly anticipated return to professional tennis playing doubles alongside Victoria Mboko at Queen’s Club next week. Berlin is the week after. Wimbledon is two weeks after that.

“Every tournament I add to my schedule right now feels special, and Berlin is no exception," she said. "I’m excited to compete in front of the German fans and continue building momentum throughout the grass-court season.”

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

Employers added 172,000 jobs in May – roughly double what forecasters had expected – and the unemployment rate remained at a low 4.3%, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Job growth was down slightly last month from a revised 179,000 in April.

Hiring has bounced back this year from a miserable 2025, showing resilience in the face of economic uncertainty and painfully high energy prices since the Iran war started in late February.

The job gains are broad-based. Local governments added 55,000 workers, restaurants and bars 48,000, healthcare companies 35,000.

In another sign of job market strength, Labor Department revisions added a combined 93,000 jobs in March and April. Job growth averaged 188,000 a month from March through May, marking the best three months of hiring since early 2024.

“The hiring recession is over. American firms are hiring again,’’ said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. "The job rebound is happening in almost every industry ... This is encouraging news for job seekers and for the U.S. economy. The labor market has stabilized and is showing early signs of a genuine rebound.’’

With just five months to go before consequential midterm elections in the U.S., Americans have grown increasingly frustrated by rising costs, and it’s unclear if the strong job numbers this year will change their gloomy view of the economy.

Inflation data last week showed that in addition to gasoline, prices for groceries, clothing and electricity are also on the rise, indicating that inflation may be growing more entrenched.

Polls show that Trump’s approval rating on the economy is falling sharply after being reelected largely on the promise of taming inflation.

And despite the pickup in hiring, wage gains were modest. Average hourly wages rose 0.3% from April and 3.4% from May 2025.

Many young people are still finding it tough to catch a break on a job, and workers who have been laid off have struggled to find another. Nearly 28% of the unemployed in April had been jobless for more than six months, the largest share since December 2021.

But the labor market is clearly improving. Last year, employers added just 9,700 jobs a month, the fewest outside of a recession since 2002. Hiring has rebounded, averaging 114,000 new jobs a month so far this year.

Friday's report "really is a positive surprise, particularly given the headwinds from the Iran conflict, which clearly led to much higher energy prices and which are going to act to slow economic activity to some degree,’’ said Ryan Nunn, research director at Yale University’s Budget Lab.

The economy, Nunn said, has been boosted by a surge in investment in artificial intelligence. Also helping are lower tariff rates since President Donald Trump has effectively lowered the massive import taxes he imposed last year – and the Supreme Court in February struck down his most sweeping levies, setting the stage for businesses to get back money they'd paid.

Big tax refunds — the product of Trump’s 2025 tax cuts — have given the economy a lift, offsetting the impact of higher energy prices. But the refunds have mostly been pocketed, and gasoline prices have remained above $4 per gallon since March.

U.S. financial markets retreated after the jobs data was released Friday. Healthy hiring has raised the odds that the Fed's next move will be an interest rate increase, a sharp change from the start of the year when central bank officials had still penciled in two rate cuts for 2026.

Wall Street now expects a rate hike in December, which would be sharply at odds with Trump’s repeated demands for a cut. An increase by the Fed could lead, over time, to higher borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, and business loans.

“Higher rates are coming, particularly when inflation is above target and clearly moving in the wrong direction,” said Dario Perkins, an economist at TS Lombard. “The only question is when.”

Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace, which operates 12 grocery stores across New York and New Jersey, is on a hiring spree. President Mike Nelson announced last fall that he wanted to add 1,000 workers over the next year, pushing the company's payroll over 3,500.

Nelson says his problem is finding skilled workers.

“We’re looking for a butcher who can cut meat in the store and engage with our customers and give them cooking ideas and speak to them about what makes the product special,” he said. “You don’t find that everywhere now.”

Like other grocery stores, Uncle Giuseppe’s has benefited as Americans cut back on dinners out as the cost of living marches higher. The company is marketing specials to lure inflation-scarred shoppers, like a $39.99 chicken Parmesan and pasta meal for a family of four that includes a loaf of bread and a salad.

Michael Wieder, the co-founder of the baby products maker Lalo, is also hiring a few new workers.

Wieder is feeling optimistic because he expects $2 million in tariff refunds after the trade policies of President Trump were shot down by the courts. He is planning to use that money for hiring, but gotten less than $50,000 back to date.

He has roughly 20 employees who work in marketing, operations, customer service and other areas for his New York company. He said he's looking for applicants that will embrace artificial intelligence. Lalo has already been using AI tools in areas like marketing and plans to launch an AI tool on Monday that helps parents potty train their children.

“We’re evaluating the type of people we hire in this rapidly changing environment,” he said.

_____

AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.

Anne D'Innocenzio reported from New York.

Paul Quinn, 52, was found guilty in April following a six-week trial at Manchester Crown Court on two counts of rape, one count of choking with intent, and one count of grievous bodily harm. Quinn’s sentence comprises 21 years in custody with an extended license of three years when he will be let out of prison but subject to release conditions. He will be eligible for parole in 14 years.

“You sat back and enjoyed your liberty at the expense of an innocent man,” Justice Robert Bright told Quinn at Friday’s sentencing hearing.

Quinn was aged 29 at the time of the rape but had been a sex offender from the age of 12.

Andrew Malkinson, 60, had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal in July 2023 after DNA evidence linked Quinn to the crime. Malkinson spent 17 years behind bars for the brutal 2003 attack on a 33-year-old woman in Greater Manchester, who had picked him out from a police lineup.

Malkinson, who was working as a security guard at a local shopping center at the time of the attack, was found guilty in 2004 and sentenced to a life sentence, with a minimum term of seven years. He always maintained his innocence and as a result served ten years more in jail than the minimum sanctioned by the judge in the case. He was eventually released from prison in 2020, but his name remained on Britain’s sex offenders register.

Malkinson voiced his fury at the fact that Quinn did not get a life sentence.

“I hope that this man does not get parole and that he serves longer than me," he said in a statement released through Appeal, a U.K. charity that campaigns against wrongful convictions. “Anything less is not justice.”

Advancements in genetic technology allowed Malkinson’s legal team and Appeal to find Quinn’s DNA on fragments of the victim’s clothing.

Malkinson is seeking recompense from British authorities for the time he spent in prison and has mulled whether the victim had been unduly pressured by police during the lineup.

“While Andy is relieved this chapter of his ordeal is now closed, it is not the end of this matter as far as he is concerned,” said Toby Wilton, of law firm Hickman & Rose, which represents Malkinson.

Fallout from the case continues, with a public inquiry now underway after a 2024 review found failings that could have exonerated Malkinson a decade before he was eventually released.

Five former Greater Manchester Police officers, and one currently serving with the force, are under investigation while two top officials at the body that assesses potential miscarriages of justice have resigned.

The police force has since apologized to Malkinson.

“We know this outcome has come two decades too late for those impacted by this case," said Detective Chief Superintendent Rebecca McKendrick, the senior investigating officer on the case. “However, we will not allow time to be a barrier to justice for anyone who has further information about Paul Quinn and any further potential sexual offending.”

Leaders from across the EU were joined by their Western Balkan counterparts in Montenegro's Adriatic Sea coastal town of Tivat, where they discussed the bloc's enlargement into a region seen as a key area in countering security and economic threats posed by Russia and China.

The summit brought together leaders including President Emmanuel Macron of France and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as well as the heads of Balkan candidate countries.

High on the agenda was Montenegro's EU accession, a process that is approaching its final stages and which von der Leyen said Friday was “within reach."

“If I had to sum up this summit in two words, they would be determination and confidence,” von der Leyen told a news conference. “Confidence that our union will grow in the years ahead.”

The EU has already formed a working group to draft an accession treaty for Montenegro, whose president, Jakov Milatovic, said the summit had given him “even greater confidence” that his country will fulfill its aim of joining the EU by 2028.

"This goal is realistic and achievable. It is strongly supported by all our European partners,” Milatovic said.

Enlargement to boost economy and defense

Adding members to the EU — which can bring the bloc more single market economic benefits and stronger security capabilities — has gained urgency in recent years as the continent faces a series of challenges, such as lopsided trade with China, migration pressures, the war in Ukraine and increasing hybrid threats from Russia.

With the Trump administration viewed as less committed to its NATO allies, EU countries have also pushed to boost their military capabilities to ward off future threats without the potential backing of the U.S..

Against that backdrop, von der Leyen on Friday described EU expansion into the Western Balkans as “a geostrategic imperative,” but that candidate nations are still expected to carry out reforms such as tackling corruption and shoring up democratic institutions — steps viewed as benefiting both the candidate nations and the EU as a whole.

Yet the lengthy process of carrying out such reforms and advancing the process of membership has frustrated some candidate countries, leading to some calls to find ways to accelerate the procedure.

Von der Leyen also emphasized that EU membership would be “merits-based, but merits-based does not mean slow, it means fair and predictable.” She added that the bloc seeks to "reward reforms with real integration.”

European Council President Antonio Costa, who hosted the Tivat summit, said the EU was “considering new ideas to streamline and accelerate the process” to increase trust in the EU and "increase the motivation of the Western Balkan partners.”

Many now aspire to join the bloc

Montenegro, a small, mountainous country that was once a part of Yugoslavia and which this week marked the 20th anniversary of its independence from a union with neighboring Serbia, is considered the front-runner among the region’s other candidate countries of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and North Macedonia.

After joining NATO in 2017, the country of 623,000 people is now set on fulfilling its ambitious agenda of becoming the the EU's 28th member. The motto “28 by 28” has even been inscribed on one of the planes of Montenegro’s national airline.

EU candidate countries must bring their laws into line in 35 policy areas or “chapters,” ranging from justice standards to farm and fishing rules. All 27 EU members must agree before each chapter can be opened, and then again for it to be closed.

Ukraine and Moldova are also among about 10 countries aspiring to join the bloc, while Iceland will hold a referendum in August on whether to apply.

Serbia's populist leader, Aleksandar Vucic, said Friday that he had high hopes for the summit and accession paths for Balkan countries after recently meeting with EU leaders like Merz and Macron.

“We will see a lot of progress of Western Balkan countries in the future. Of course, we need to do a lot of reforms," he said. "We are on our EU path.”

New rules to avoid growing pains

The gathering in Tivat was the first to bring together EU leaders since the stunning defeat in April of Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s former Russia-friendly prime minister who, during his 16-year rule, flouted the EU’s standards on democracy and the rule of law and forged close ties with other autocrats.

Orbán's successor, Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar, did not attend the summit, which would have been his first since winning the election. The press department for his center-right Tisza party did not respond to a request for comment.

With the painful experience of Orbán’s democratic backsliding and historic use of the veto in the European Council, the EU is devising new ways to use financial penalties or restricted access to the single market to pressure incoming nations to carry out reforms and adapt to the bloc's standards, said Faruk Bašić, a researcher at the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics.

“The EU is trying to find a way how to admit a country that isn’t fully ready to be admitted without losing the ability to hold it accountable after the fact,” he said, pointing to Ukraine’s accession bid as well as nations in the Western Balkans like Serbia and Kosovo.

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McNeil reported from Brussels.

His trip will be the latest in a series of steps by China to reinforce its close ties with its nuclear-armed neighbor. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has reached out to Russia in recent years, notably by sending troops and conventional weapons to support its war against Ukraine.

But in the past year, Kim has likewise been trying to improve ties with China, the North’s biggest trading partner and provider of aid.

“As North Korea builds closer ties with Russia, China seeks to use Xi’s trip to reassert its influence over Pyongyang and safeguard its strategic interests in northeast Asia,” said William Yang, an analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Xi will make a state visit from Monday to Tuesday, Chinese and North Korean state media said in brief dispatches. His last visit was in June 2019.

The trip will serve to advance ties and strengthen regional peace and stability, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Friday.

“The traditional friendly and cooperative relations between China and the DPRK have continued to develop in a sound and stable manner, bringing tangible benefits to both countries and their peoples,” spokeswoman Mao Ning said, using the abbreviation for North Korea's full name.

The trip is coming just a few weeks after Xi hosted U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in quick succession in Beijing.

North Korea's nuclear weapons program has long been a major concern for the United States, which opposes it. The U.N. has imposed economic sanctions on North Korea because of its nuclear and missile development.

The announcement of the trip came a day after North Korea unveiled a new facility to produce the material for nuclear bombs. It is believed to be a uranium enrichment plant, though North Korea has not confirmed that.

During a visit to the plant, Kim announced plans to bolster the country’s nuclear forces “at an exponential rate.” Experts say the plant’s disclosure implies that Kim was eager to cement his country’s status as a nuclear weapons state ahead of Xi’s visit.

The experts say Kim wants international recognition as a nuclear state so he can demand the lifting of the sanctions. They say Kim would ultimately push for arms reductions talks with the U.S. to win concessions in return for a partial surrender of his country's nuclear capability.

Kim has been focusing on expanding his nuclear arsenal since his high-stakes diplomacy with Trump collapsed in 2019.

Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to restore diplomacy with Kim, but the North Korean leader has said the U.S. must first drop its demand for North Korea to denuclearize as a precondition for talks.

Analysts will be watching to see what if anything China says during Xi's visit about calls for North Korea’s denuclearization.

Xi and Kim met in Beijing in September and pledged mutual support and enhanced cooperation. Kim was in the Chinese capital to attend a Chinese military parade alongside other foreign leaders including Putin.

Russia and China, both veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council, have previously frustrated efforts by the U.S. and others to toughen international sanctions on North Korea, despite its banned weapons tests.

At their meeting in Beijing last month, Putin and Xi expressed their opposition to “foreign policy isolation, economic sanctions, military pressure and other methods of creating threats to the security” of North Korea, according to a statement from the Kremlin.

Embracing the ideas of a “new Cold War” and a multipolar world, Kim has pushed for a more assertive foreign policy by expanding ties with countries locked in confrontation with the United States.

The trip abroad is a relatively rare one for Xi, who has curtailed his international travel sharply since the COVID-19 pandemic. His last overseas visit was to South Korea last fall for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, where he met Trump.

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Kim reported from Seoul, South Korea. Associated Press writer Simina Mistreanu contributed from Taipei, Taiwan.

Demings delivered the news following his final State of the County address on Friday, saying that he is going to focus on his health.

“I received some bad news from my doctor, who confirmed that I have prostate cancer, said Demings. ”And because of that, I’m going to suspend my campaign for governor.”

Demings announced his campaign for governor last November, stating that he was eyeing a role at the state level to tackle rising costs of living and improve public safety.

Jerry Demings has spent 45 years in public service — rising through the ranks from Orlando police chief to Orange County sheriff before becoming the county’s mayor. Now finishing out his second and final term, Demings says he has no intention of slowing down.

Despite suspending his campaign for Florida governor, Demings says he plans to spend the next six months “running through the finish line” as mayor before leaving office in November.

Demings made history in 2018 when he became the first African American mayor of Orange County. He has led the county for eight years.

During his time in office, Demings guided Orange County through the COVID-19 pandemic. That included expanding testing efforts as cases surged.

He also led the county through a tourism boom, with record revenue generated by the Tourist Development Tax — a key funding source.

Demings also pushed to address the county’s affordable housing shortage, including initiatives that used public dollars to support housing projects.

Not every effort succeeded. After voters repeatedly rejected a proposed sales tax increase aimed at funding transportation projects, Demings ultimately dropped the plan.

Demings leaves office as Orange County faces potential financial uncertainty. If Florida voters approve a property tax reduction in November, county leaders could be forced to consider significant budget cuts.

The tickets were “allocated at no charge (0 USD) due to a prior payment issue during the checkout process,” FIFA said in a statement Thursday.

“FIFA regrets the error and any inconvenience caused,” soccer's ruling body said. “The tickets requested by these fans remain reserved, and the affected fans have been invited to complete payment of the correct amount.”

It is the latest glitch in an often controversial World Cup ticketing program that the attorneys general of New York and New Jersey are investigating for possible violations of consumer protection laws.

The mispriced tickets were sold through the official World Cup site on May 21, FIFA said in an email message to buyers.

That date was more than three months after FIFA President Gianni Infantino said all 104 World Cup games had sold out.

Tickets are still being sold by FIFA for games at the World Cup, which opens next Thursday in Mexico City. It is unclear if seats for games in less demand will drop in price under FIFA’s surge pricing model that has been controversial for fans.

FIFA also is operating its own resale platform — and taking 15% commission from both buyers and sellers — in order to cut out ticket dealers from the market. However, sales platforms such as Seat Geek were offering widespread availability Friday for many games.

Tickets for the 2026 World Cup are wildly more expensive than any previous edition, which FIFA has justified as helping earn billions of dollars it will give to member federations for developing the game globally.

FIFA took control of pricing and selling tickets as part of bringing World Cup operations in-house. The long-time model at previous editions was working with host nations’ local organizing committees.

When the soccer federations of the United States, Canada and Mexico won hosting rights in 2018, they promised to sell hundreds of thousands of tickets at $21 each for group-stage games.

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AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup

Marie has denied the allegations and cannot be prosecuted over Otis' case because of France’s statute of limitations. But the complaint could allow other women, whether their cases are time-barred or not, to join the proceedings, Otis’ lawyer, Mathias Darmon, said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The complaint, seen by the AP, alleges rape of a minor and human trafficking.

Sent to Paris in 1986 by Elite Model agency, Otis, who was then 17, was housed in Marie’s apartment, “mistakenly believing that he wanted to support her modeling career,” according to the complaint. “While living in the apartment, she alleges that she was raped on multiple occasions by the accused, who subsequently arranged for her to be provided to other wealthy men across Europe.”

Otis was never paid for her modeling work, the complaint said.

“The goal is to give other victims the opportunity to find the courage to join our complaint,” Darmon said. “We are opening the door for all those affected by this internationally significant case to come forward and have their voices heard.”

Otis, 58, became a supermodel in the late 1980s and early 1990s, appearing on the covers of Elle, Vogue and Vanity Fair and featuring in the Pirelli calendar.

Marie, a 76 year-old French national, supervised operations at Elite from 1985 to 2010, during a period when the agency dominated the modeling industry. He helped launch the careers of some of the world’s best-known supermodels.

French broadcaster France Info reported Friday that Otis said she wanted to “denounce an entire system of sexual abuse of models that lasted for years in the fashion industry,” drawing parallels to the fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein case.

A complaint previously filed in 2021 by Otis and several other former models alleging rape and sexual assault by Marie in the 1980s was dismissed because the claims were beyond the statute of limitations.

Under French law, victims who were minors at the time of alleged sexual abuse can file a criminal complaint until 30 years after reaching adulthood, allowing them to do so until age 48.

The Duval County School District Police Department issued 3,197 citations in May at $225 each, totaling roughly $719,000 in fines issued in a single month. May was the first month drivers received fines under the new program.

Cameras mounted on Duval County school buses use artificial intelligence to flag drivers who pass a bus with its stop arm extended and red lights flashing.

Each video clip is reviewed by an officer before a ticket is mailed. The district says more than 800 citations were denied last month after that review process.

Where violations happened most

The violations span roads across Duval County. The top four areas for citations were:

• Blanding Boulevard: 89
• Merrill Road: 35
• West Beaver Street: 33
• U.S. 90: 32

The majority of violations were issued to drivers traveling in the opposite direction of the stopped bus.

Under Florida law, drivers must stop for a school bus with its stop arm extended, regardless of direction — with limited exceptions.

The only exception is if there is a raised median between the driver and the bus, or if the median is more than 5 feet wide.

Chief says data is promising

Chief Jackson Short with the Duval County School Board Police Department says the cameras and citations are designed to make students safer — and early data from the company behind the technology suggests the approach works.

“So we can say this particular company is all across the country — BusPatrol — and what they have found with their data across the country is that 90 to 95% of drivers do not get a second ticket,” Short said. “So that’s why we think the program is successful, because drivers do not repeat the violation, they do not reoffend.”

Short acknowledged that it is too early to draw conclusions about Jacksonville specifically.

“Here in Jacksonville, it’s too early to say how effective the program is going to be,” he said. “For the month of May, I can tell you we saw about 4,000 drivers that violated the stop arm — and that was only with 95% of our buses equipped.”

Short says the full picture will emerge when students return in the fall.

“So the true numbers will come when we come back to school in the fall — August, September, October — when all of our buses are equipped, all the buses are on the road and all the students are in session,” he said. “This fall will be our opportunity to really look at the numbers and see what we can do to improve student safety.”

One driver is fighting his citation

Not everyone who received a citation is accepting it.

Jerry Wilkes, 79, is contesting his $225 fine. He insists the only bus he passed was parked on private property — not on a public road.

“This is another gimmick,” Wilkes said. “I was doing nothing illegal. Nothing. If that bus had been in the roadway, like the statute says it ought to have been, I would have stopped.”

Wilkes says he is requesting all photos and video taken of the incident and has not yet heard back from the district.

“They haven’t even responded to me yet, so I don’t know what they’re going to do,” he said.

Short says Wilkes has every right to contest the citation. Instructions for doing so are listed on the citation itself. Drivers who still disagree after that process can contact Duval County School Board Police directly.

What drivers should know before August

Since school is currently out for summer, no citations are being issued.

But Short and district officials are urging drivers to review the rules now — because the cameras will be back on the road when school resumes in August, and all buses will be fully equipped.

Under Florida law, drivers must stop when a school bus has its stop arm extended and red lights flashing. When in doubt, stop.

“There were two who were chained,” said nursing home worker Danuja Chathuranga. “You only have to take your eyes away for one moment, they run away. One of them had gone one day with the chair he was tied (to) and was found entangled in a barbed wire fence. Another with sores in (their) legs was brought back from a muddy field.”

“Our intention was not to harm them. They were patients taking psychiatric treatment. If they run away or fall into a pit, well or get run over by a vehicle, we have to take that responsibility,” he added.

His comments came amid growing public outrage over the treatment allegedly meted out to the residents at the home in in Anguruwatota where 13 people are now known to have died in the blaze which started late Wednesday.

The nursing home for people with mental health conditions lay abandoned on Friday. Glasses cases, medicines and reclining chairs lay strewn around the burned-out shell in the small town about 55 kilometers (34 miles) southeast of the capital, Colombo.

The surviving residents have been moved to a nearby nursing home.

Video footage by The Associated Press showed the building gutted with its charred furniture and equipment. Bodies lay nearby.

Local television channels showed image of firefighters, police and residents trying to contain the raging fire. Police and soldiers put those rescued on buses to be taken to a safe location.

According to police, 71 people were staying at the home at the time of the fire, of which 50 were rescued by neighbors, firefighters and police. Seven other remain in hospital.

Chathuranga said it is thought the fire was caused by an electric short circuit in a wiring attached to a water pump.

“The fire initially caught a pile of mattresses and pillows and then quickly spread across the house,” he said, adding that the majority of the residents were rescued, but 10 people were caught in the fire and burned to death. Three others have since died in hospital.

The director of the home has been arrested on suspicion of causing deaths through negligence. He appeared before a court on Thursday and was ordered to be detained for a week pending an investigation.

Chathura Mihudum, director of Sri Lanka's National Secretariat for Elders, said the facility was not registered as a nursing home and had been warned to follow laws and guidelines. He said it was overcrowded, with enough beds for about 15 people in a space where 71 people were living.

Government officials had previously visited the institution and had instructed the management to follow laws, he said, without elaborating.

Amala Rajapaksa, an administrator at the nursing home, said the institution was in the process of being registered as requested by government officials.

The move rescinds a 2021 policy implemented by the Biden administration that required ICE to report to Congress and investigate deaths of detainees that occur within 30 days of their release.

The goal of the 2021 policy was to ensure that ICE could not avoid accountability for deaths by releasing severely ill people from custody. Detainees who were brain-dead or suffering from infection, for instance, have died shortly after ICE released them in the past.

Two health experts who have investigated ICE custody deaths criticized the change Friday.

“Tracking deaths immediately after custody is a standard approach that allows health systems in jails, prisons and immigration detention to learn about gaps in care that may occur before a person leaves a facility,” said Dr. Homer Venters, former chief medical officer of the New York City jail system. “Eliminating reporting of these deaths represents a willful act of ignoring the most serious health outcome that can reflect inadequacies in care or help track outbreaks."

ICE detainees also routinely die at hospitals where they are taken for treatment after their conditions deteriorate inside detention facilities, records show. Those detainees, however, have generally been considered to remain in ICE custody.

The Washington Post first reported the policy change Thursday. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, later confirmed the move in a statement that framed it as “common sense.”

“Under this updated policy, when an individual is no longer in ICE custody then ICE will no longer be responsible for monitoring or reviewing deaths that may occur,” the statement said.

The statement said ICE remained committed to transparency and that the revised policy includes procedures for “timely notification, review and reporting of deaths occurring in ICE custody.” ICE did not immediately release its full updated policy.

The decision to limit death reporting comes as a greater number of ICE detainees have been dying. At least 18 detainees have died since Jan. 1, which is on pace to surpass last year’s death toll, which was the highest in two decades. Detainees are dying by suicide at an unprecedented pace, and experts say many other deaths from natural causes likely would have been preventable with timely medical care.

Dr. Sanjay Basu, a University of California-San Francisco epidemiologist who recently published an analysis of more than 270 ICE custody deaths, said the policy change will “make the mortality statistics appear lower without any actual improvement in care.”

“The period immediately following release is when deaths attributable to inadequate care during confinement become apparent,” he said. “Missed diagnoses, interrupted medications, untreated infections, and decompensating chronic conditions don’t always kill someone while they’re still in the building.”

As of early April, ICE was holding more than 60,000 detainees across its national network of detention facilities, up from around 40,000 at the start of President Donald Trump's second term. ICE denies allegations that detainees suffer from medical neglect, saying they receive comprehensive health care services.

Before announcing Thursday’s policy change, DHS acting assistant secretary Lauren Bis told the AP on Tuesday that no detainees died in its custody in May. That was the first month without a detainee death since November. At the time, Bis did not address AP questions about whether any death reporting policies had changed.

“As we have repeatedly stated, deaths in ICE custody are exceedingly rare,” she said then.

___

Associated Press reporter Michael Biesecker in Washington, D.C., contributed.

At least 63 people have died from 397 confirmed cases, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. Yet the outbreak has been challenged by skepticism, attacks on health workers and misinformation.

Vérité Johnson, a journalist and editorial secretary at the Radio Télévision Mont Bleu station in Bunia, the capital city of the eastern Ituri province where the outbreak is concentrated, decided to produce a new program to combat rumors.

The radio show has emerged as a vital tool to win over some residents who have been unaware or skeptical about the facts of Bundibugyo.

WHO chief says misinformation almost as dangerous as the virus

The 45-minute program runs daily at 10 a.m., reminding people of the dangers of Ebola and regularly featuring health specialists who provide updates and answer questions. The show’s jingles about the virus play intermittently throughout the day and residents are able to call in with questions.

“So far, there’s still a layer of resistance within the population, and that’s where the media plays an important role,” Johnson said.

“Misinformation is almost as dangerous as the virus itself and spreads just as fast. Earning and keeping the trust of communities is at the heart of everything we do,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday as WHO and the Africa CDC launched an Ebola response plan with partners.

Tedros said the new plan aims to raise $518 million to “stop the outbreak where it is, support countries that are responding today and ensure that neighboring countries are ready to detect and act quickly if cases appear.”

Resistance to protocols during public health emergencies is common in Congo, which is battling its 17th Ebola outbreak since the virus was first identified there in 1976. There currently is no approved vaccine or treatment for the Bundibugyo type of Ebola, which has added another layer of fear.

Widespread rumors, often arising from fear and misinformation, discourage residents from adhering to health warnings or seeking medical help during an outbreak, health officials say.

Mistrust among residents leads to delays in seeking care

Many residents remain distrustful of health authorities, with some alleging that officials are profiting from the outbreak.

“I can never take the vaccine, I prefer to die because if the vaccine arrives, it can scare us even more," said Samson Gerson, a 52-year-old Bunia resident and father of seven children.

Analysts say some people in Congo have been receptive to disinformation due to mistrust of the healthcare system and because some local officials have not become actively involved in containing the disease.

“What is key is to involve the local actors at all levels. If we try to impose what we think is right to the community, we are running towards failure,” said Basile Rambaud, emergency programs director for Mercy Corps in Congo. “If people do not trust the response, they end up delaying to seek care, rejecting protective measures, or avoiding working with health teams, giving the virus more time to spread.”

Ituri province residents have launched at least three attacks against health centers, demanding the bodies of deceased patients. Some people who are believed to have Ebola left the centers during the attacks and health workers could not account for their whereabouts.

“We don’t even know what the body of a person who died of Ebola looks like, but we just see images and montages on our phone,” said Bunia resident Chantal Francine, who expressed doubts over the reported deaths.

Full scale of the outbreak is unknown

The virus has rapidly spread from an initial three health zones to 24, according to WHO chief Tedros.

Experts and WHO officials have warned the numbers might not reflect the true scale of the epidemic as weeks of testing for the wrong type caused a delay in containing the virus.

The outbreak has been worsened by an ongoing armed conflict between Congo's government and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group, as well as attacks by the Islamic State-affiliated group the Allied Democratic Force, which killed 16 people in Beni territory in North Kivu on Tuesday.

The attacks by both groups have caused massive displacement of people living in the conflict areas, officials said.

Despite the growing Bundibugyo outbreak and the conditions that are enabling the disease to spread, Johnson said Radio Télévision Mont Bleu continues providing residents with vital facts.

“Everyone is free to think what they want, but the information remains the same. The epidemic is here,” Johnson said.

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Adetayo reported from Lagos, Nigeria.

___

For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The 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.

Let’s Feckin Go, USA!!

Their scratch kitchen stays open late for every World Cup match, creating an authentic international sports pub experience where guests can enjoy world-class football, incredible food, and the energy of the game all night long.

Chef Brian would love to highlight their signature World Cup Tacos—fresh, bold, and made from scratch—along with the atmosphere that has made Culhane’s a Jacksonville favorite for over 21 years. They will be featuring World Cup Tacos with Australian Lamb, Norwegian Salmon, Fish N’ Chip (Cod), Nashville’s Hot Chicken and many more infusions!

Plus they have both pubs decked out with monster World Cup flags!

The conversation...

Their scratch kitchen stays open late for every World Cup match

Signature World Cup $5 Taco and game-day specials like $1 Baked or Fried Wings made with homemade sauces - and many European Pints like Guinness, Magners Cider, Tennants, Carlsberg, Bitburger, Old Speckled Hen and many more on tap (over 20 drafts)

The energy of live international football at Culhane’s• Our women-owned, family-run story, Irish heritage - and 5 Sisters Cocktails

Father’s Day is coming up, too!

With over 30 monster TVs, award-winning food, and our family-owned Irish hospitality, they’ve created the ultimate place where Jacksonville comes together to celebrate the world’s biggest sporting events.

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Eden and Rance are always up for a fitness adventure, so they decided to take flight and immerse themselves in the experience. Was their landing soft or a complete crash?

www.jetsetpilates.com

Senators voted 52-47 to pass the $70 billion legislation to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol for the next three years, through the end of Trump’s term, after Democrats blocked the money for months. The bill will now head to the House, which is expected to take it up next week.

The final vote came just before 5 a.m., after Republicans narrowly defeated multiple attempts by members of both parties to add language to the bill that would permanently ban Trump’s settlement fund for allies who believe they've been politically persecuted.

Republicans cleared the last major hurdle overnight when they defeated an amendment proposed by one of their own members, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, that would have redirected payments from the settlement to members of law enforcement who were injured when a mob of Trump supporters seeking to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The amendments were a test of party unity that complicated what should have been an easy vote for Republicans who wanted to keep the focus on immigration enforcement in an election year. Instead, they spent almost a full day haggling among themselves over whether to block the settlement fund, even after acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had said earlier this week that it would not go forward.

“This would have been done several hours ago if we weren’t having to deal with some of the issues around the fund,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said shortly before midnight.

Thune himself has criticized the fund, which was part of a settlement that resolves Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns and has angered many of his GOP colleagues. But he has been pushing GOP senators for weeks to keep the bill focused on the funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol and to avoid adding new provisions that could complicate its passage in the House.

Still, a group of Republican senators pushed all day and into the night to block the fund’s payouts through legislation. That effort came after Trump, who has been at odds with the Senate in recent weeks, raised new doubts about the fund’s future on Wednesday when he told reporters that it is “very important” and said “I don’t know” whether it is dead or on hold.

The final 52-47 vote on the bill was nearly party line, with Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska the only Republican to oppose it. Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado missed the vote.

Senators push back multiple attempts to ban settlement fund

The first vote on Thursday morning, a Democratic effort to ban the settlement fund, was held open for several hours while Cassidy and two other Republican senators decided whether to support it. The Democratic motion was narrowly defeated when Cassidy eventually voted against it and the two other senators — Jon Husted of Ohio and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, both of whom are up for reelection this year — voted for it.

The Senate then rejected a second amendment from Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina that would also have banned the settlement fund but would have moved the money to a separate anti-fraud fund at the Department of Justice. Most Democrats voted against the amendment, guaranteeing its defeat, but more than 10 Republicans supported it.

Tillis said the fund is a political liability for the party.

“If Blanche says this is largely inoperative, why not use this moment to codify that?” Tillis said. “Otherwise, you’re exposing every one of our members who are in cycle to having to deal with this between today and Election Day, and that makes no sense for something that the DOJ says they’re not moving forward with.”

Cassidy's amendment to compensate the injured police officers was a pointed rebuke, as payouts from Trump's fund could have potentially gone to Trump supporters who beat police and attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. Cassidy lost reelection last month after Trump endorsed a primary opponent.

He said that, despite Blanche's comments, the fund is still part of an active settlement and “absolutely can be used.”

The Senate rejected several other Democratic efforts to try to block or limit the fund, including amendments to ban payments to Jan. 6 defendants who injured law enforcement officers.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Republicans are now “leaving taxpayers to rely on nothing more than a promise from Donald Trump’s personal fixer. That is not accountability. That is a permission slip.”

ICE and Border Patrol money has been delayed for months

Enactment of the bill to fund ICE and the Border Patrol would end the blockade by Democrats who demanded policy changes after the fatal shootings of two protesters by federal agents in January.

Senate Republicans used a complicated procedural maneuver to get around the filibuster and pass the budget legislation with no Democratic votes. But it took weeks to get the bill to the Senate floor as Republicans navigated various obstacles to passage created by Trump and the White House — including a $1 billion proposal for White House security and Trump’s ballroom that they eventually scrapped and the fierce bipartisan backlash to the settlement fund.

Democrats say any funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security should place restraints on federal immigration authorities, including better identification for federal officers and more use of judicial warrants, among other asks.

After federal agents shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Trump agreed to a Democratic request that the Homeland Security bill be separated from a larger spending measure that became law. But bipartisan negotiations went nowhere, and the department funding lapsed in mid-February with no agreement on changes to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.

Congress eventually funded the rest of DHS at the end of April with Democratic support, but ICE and Border Patrol have remained without regular funding.

___

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

His Vegas Golden Knights appeared to score with five minutes left in regulation, but referee Jean Hebert waved it off immediately, citing goaltender interference. Hebert announced that he and the other on-ice officials thought Ivan Barbashev pushed Carolina Hurricanes goaltender Frederik Andersen to knock the puck into the net.

Tortorella after some deliberation decided to challenge the play, and it did not take long for officials and the on-site NHL situation room to stick with the call on the ice of no goal. The Hurricanes scored on the ensuing power play 25 seconds later and went on to win 4-3 in overtime to tie the series.

“I saw a loose puck in front of Freddie," Tortorella said. "Our player stabbed it, didn’t move the goalie and it goes through him into the other side. I’d challenge it 10 out of 10 times.”

The next morning, he expressed no regrets.

“That’s been explained by the league, and I stand behind my decision," Tortorella said Friday.

It was purely a video review of goalie interference and had nothing to do with whether the whistle was blown before the puck crossed the goal line.

“The ruling on the play was goaltender interference,” Stephen Walkom, executive vice president and director of officiating, told a pool reporter. “He waved it (off) immediately. He believed that it was under the goalie, and the Vegas player went after the puck and interfered with the goalie and his ability to freeze the puck and waived it off immediately.”

Mark Jankowski had just tied it for the Hurricanes a few shifts earlier after Logan Stankoven started the comeback from down 2-0. On the opposing bench, Carolina players and coach Rod Brind'Amour were not sure how the review was going to go.

“Obviously, you’re hoping for the best,” center Sebastian Aho said. “You can’t really control it. I didn’t have a really good view of it, so I had no clue. So, I was just hoping for the best.”

Brind'Amour decided not to challenge for goalie interference in Game 1 on Tuesday night because there were too many variables at play. His thinking turned out to be right again.

“It happened to us in I guess the first game: When it’s called a goal or no goal on the ice, it better be 100% to challenge it,” Brind'Amour said. “That’s the rule we go by. So, they called no goal on the ice, so that’s kind of how I think it worked out. I don’t know. I don’t know what the explanation is. It looked like he had it covered, and then all of a sudden it was in the net. I don’t know. I haven’t really looked at it. I was just happy that it went our way.”

Andersen went full extension to make a paddle save to deny Barbashev on the initial shot. A scrum ensued around the crease, with players diving at the puck hoping to knock it in or keep it out.

“To me, it felt like a no goal,” Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal said. "Obviously, I’m on the other side, but I’m sure they have a different opinion. My gut was like, ‘Man, there’s no way.’ What an incredible effort by Freddie just staying with that one and finding a way to get a piece of that. I was flopping everywhere. I didn’t know what was going on. Freddie just stuck with it. The guy’s an absolute animal. That was a pretty crazy play and obviously a game-changer for us.”

The punishment for a failed coach's challenge is a two-minute minor penalty. Vegas was 4 for 4 on the penalty kill against Carolina's power play to that point in the series.

“I’m not sure how they go about their thought process, Brind'Amour said. “They’ve obviously killed all the penalties. That’s a big one.”

Staal made sure the Golden Knights didn't kill this one, tipping defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere's point shot in for the Hurricanes' eighth power-play goal of the playoffs. Seth Jarvis made it nine when he scored in overtime, though it may have never gotten to that point had Tortorella not challenged.

“You’d like to make them pay every time," Aho said. "It’s a big swing because the other option is going down a goal. But other than that, every time you get a power play, you’re trying to score. So, it’s not that different, but obviously it was a big swing.”

___

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Coach John Tortorella had no update on McNabb on Friday other than to confirm the 35-year-old was traveling home with the team. Game 3 is Saturday in Las Vegas.

McNabb left Thursday night's game after taking an 87.3 mph slap shot from Nikolaj Ehlers square in the face just past the midway point of the first period. McNabb dropped his stick, went down to the ice and grabbed his nose as he skated immediately off and down the tunnel.

“It’s a scary play," forward Brett Howden said. ”You never want to see that. Just hope he’s doing all right."

Vegas went the rest of the way with just five defensemen. McNabb’s exit had a domino effect that led those guys to playing more minutes than usual, and in particular Jeremy Lauzon was on the ice for all four Carolina goals, with one shot banking in off him, another partially the result of him losing a one-on-one battle with William Carrier and Seth Jarvis' overtime winner going past him.

“You lose a guy like Nabber who logs heavy minutes, such a good teammate, plays the game so hard, it’s tough," captain Mark Stone said. "They battled as hard as they could.”

McNabb was coming off the first three-assist performance of his NHL career in Game 1. He is one of three original Golden Knights players who have been around for the franchise's entire nine-year existence and are in the final for a third time.

“He’s a vital part of this team," said center William Karlsson, who also has been around since the beginning. “He’s been here for a long time and has been vital every year. I think he is extremely good defensively, helps us out in PK situations and stuff like that. Of course, tough to not have him for the remainder of that game.”

The Golden Knights had their optimum, healthy lineup back for the series opener when Lauzon returned from his puck-to-the-head injury that had sidelined him since the second round. That did not last long.

Either Ben Hutton, a left-handed shooter, or Kaedan Korczak, who was playing in place of Lauzon, figures to play in Game 3 on Saturday if McNabb is unavailable.

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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Here's everything you need to know about “I Knew It, I Knew You.”

Taylor Swift goes country ... again

Swift doesn't sing with a familiar twang on “I Knew It, I Knew You,” but no matter — the song features some elements inextricable from the country genre: Live instrumentation, plucky banjo and harmonica that opens the track.

Most view Swift's last official foray into the country music genre to be 2012's “Red,” though the album is much more of a crossover experiment. It would be more astute to label “Speak Now” as her last true-blue, full-length, country music release — and that was more than 15 years ago.

Additionally: “I Knew It, I Knew You” is also Swift's first original material since “The Life of a Showgirl” was released in October.

The song is also co-produced by Jack Antonoff, her former, frequent collaborator. Swift started working with Antonoff on 2014's “1989” through 2024's “The Tortured Poets Department.”

Notably, the pair started their long collaboration after Swift's country era, perhaps with the rare exception of “Betty” from her 2020 “Folklore” album.

“Writing this song felt like a musical departure and coming home at the same time. Creating something for Jessie was a new challenge and also felt like second nature all at once,” Swift wrote on social media Friday, referencing the beloved cowgirl character. “And being a ‘Toy Story’ kid from the age of 5 til now… is an adventure I plan to be on, to infinity and beyond.”

The ‘I Knew It, I Knew You’ rollout

Last weekend, billboards with the initials “TS,” stylized like the “Toy Story” logo, appeared in Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Toronto, Mexico City and London — fitting, as “TS” works both for the beloved franchise and the musician.

On Monday, Swift confirmed the song was forthcoming, writing on Instagram, “I’ve always dreamed of getting to write for these characters who I’ve adored since I was a 5-year-old kid watching the first Toy Story movie. I fell instantly in love with Toy Story 5 when I was lucky enough to see it in its early stages, and I wrote this song as soon as I got home from the screening. Sometimes you just know, right?”

She also shared that preorders for three CD single versions of the track were available on her site. They quickly sold out: One features the song as it appears in the film, another is an acoustic version and the last is a piano version.

“It’s incredible just how meaningful it’s been having Taylor write and perform this song. Her connection to Jessie and the immediate way she understood what the character was going through was undeniable,” “Toy Story 5” director and writer Andrew Stanton said in a press statement at the time. “The song is so deeply connected to ‘Toy Story.’ So much so that on first listen, it instantly felt like it had always belonged there, like a long-lost family member. It was kismet.”

Is Taylor Swift headed to the Oscars?

Some fans online have begun speculating: Could this be an Oscar contender in the original song category?

Quite possibly, if it adheres to all relevant rules and regulations! For 2027 Academy Awards consideration, a feature film — and its song submissions — must have a qualifying theatrical release between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 this year. “Toy Story 5” will be released in theaters worldwide on June 19, so it qualifies there.

It also depends on when “I Knew It, I Knew You” is placed in “Toy Story 5.” There's a new rule this year: If the song plays over the end credits, it must also overlap with the last 15 seconds of the film before the credits actually begin.

At any rate, if Swift's song is submitted — and if she were to win — she'd be just that much closer to an EGOT. She has 14 Grammys and an Emmy. An Oscar would mean she'd only need a Tony. Could Broadway be next?

This time, however, it's different for some superfans, who say organizers have made this summer’s World Cup the least welcoming one they have experienced. Ticket prices, expensive cross-country travel and concerns about entering the U.S. have prompted some of them to stay home.

London-based IT worker Mike Wilson has been to four World Cups over the past 20 years. This summer, he'll be staying in Europe and watching part of the tournament from a Portuguese beach.

Argentine doctor Emiliano Becerra likes to follow his team through every step of the elimination round. This time he’ll attend two early matches and then fly home.

Dutch-born finance manager Peter Bergakker flew to South Africa to watch the Netherlands play in the 2010 World Cup final. But no matter how far the "Oranje" advance this summer, he said he won’t travel to the U.S.

Exactly how many fans are staying away is unclear, but the warning signs are there.

Hotel bookings have been lighter than expected in many U.S. host cities. Meanwhile, the president of the travel agency association in soccer-mad Uruguay said they have arranged tour packages for about 3,000 fans, significantly fewer than attended recent World Cups.

A financially inaccessible tournament

The number of fans able to travel and take weeks off of work to cheer on their team during the World Cup understandably skews to the wealthy. But previous tournaments have remained accessible for fans who, in some cases, would save for years for their flights and match tickets.

Four years ago, lower-tier Category 3 tickets to group stage matches were $69. This year, FIFA has been selling them for as much as $265.

The last two tournaments in Russia and Qatar offered match-going fans free transportation between host cities, though many matches were much closer than the vast area covered by the 16 stadiums hosting matches across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

And while fans there were not permitted by FIFA to sell their tickets on the official resale site for above face value, the sports governing body has taken a different approach this time — encouraging fans to resell tickets for as high as they want, with FIFA pocketing 30% in fees along the way. FIFA did not respond to a request for comment Thursday but has previously defended ticket prices as a reflection of “record-breaking” demand.

Tomonori Akutsu, who lives outside Tokyo, said if he had realized how expensive this tournament would be when he started making plans, he might have reconsidered attending his sixth straight World Cup.

Without question, he believes, the U.S. has been the worst host, and tournament organizers have demonstrated a “complete lack of hospitality in every aspect,” citing things like ticket prices, an inflated resale market, expensive hotel prices and fan festivals that cost money to attend.

“Simply, my impression is ‘this is America,’ the ultimate capitalism,” Akutsu said.

Becerra, of Argentina, spent $1,100 to see Argentina defeat France in the 2022 final in Qatar. For the past three World Cups, he followed Argentina through the knockout stages.

Not this time.

This year, he paid even more — $1,200 — for a resale ticket to see Argentina’s match against low-ranked Jordan in Dallas.

“It’s absolutely crazy – it’s just a group stage match,” said Becerra, a 64-year-old ophthalmologist who lives in Neuquén, in northern Patagonia.

Becerra will head home before the knockout stage begins. The prices, he said, are “just not possible for me.”

Will ticket prices cost the World Cup some of its culture?

Wilson, the IT specialist from England, said he and his friends opted to skip this summer's tournament because they couldn’t justify spending the prices they were seeing.

Wilson had never spent more than $200 for any World Cup match, a price that, on the resale market, barely buys a nosebleed seat at a group stage match between two obscure teams. Instead, he and his friends have booked a Portugal getaway.

For Wilson, the World Cup is more about the atmosphere than the matches.

“That’s the great thing about these tournaments: You’re sitting at a hostel, chatting with U.S. fans, and then you go to a bar up the road and there are loads of Chileans who have just taken over the place," Wilson said, recalling a memorable night in Johannesburg in 2010. "It’s stuff like that which makes the World Cup. But now they’ve just priced everyone out.”

Mark Doidge, a sociologist at England’s Loughborough University, said World Cups have long been defined by their traveling supporters, pointing to Colombia's famous “Birdman” and the sea of St. George’s crosses at every England match. Rising costs, he said, risk losing exactly those fans.

“Most of those buying expensive tickets are not those passionate fans, but wealthy people paying for an experience,” he said.

Expensive World Cup won’t deter some ardent fans

There is at least one group of supporters that appears determined to come regardless of the cost: the Scots, who are eager to see their team compete in their first World Cup in 28 years.

Campbell Lewis and his friends began booking refundable accommodations across the U.S. as soon as Scotland qualified last year before prices rose.

With tens of thousands of Scottish fans expected to attend, tickets for their team's matches have proven harder to obtain.

But after prices began to drop in recent weeks, Lewis bought two tickets for Scotland’s second match for him and his 10-year-old son. He and his friends are still waiting until the final days to get tickets to the team's opener against Haiti, though. As of Thursday, the cheapest resale ticket for that match outside Boston exceeded $600.

“For a lot of Scottish people of my generation, this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” he said. “We were all kids the last time we qualified. And even though the prices have gotten out of hand, there’s just this determination that we want to go.”

Fans have concerns about traveling to the U.S.

U.S. entry requirements may also be limiting international visitors.

Unlike Russia in 2018, which waived visa requirements for ticketholders, and Qatar in 2022, which streamlined entry for fans, many traveling to the U.S. still face strict visa requirements. Until the U.S. reversed course last month, ticket-holding fans from Algeria, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Tunisia were even going to have to pay as much as $15,000 in bonds to enter the country.

Carlos Pera, president of Uruguay’s travel agency association, recently told Uruguay's Subrayado that U.S. visa requirements were among the reasons fewer Uruguayans are making the trip this year.

U.S. officials have pushed back on concerns about visitors encountering an unwelcome environment, and the White House’s World Cup task force has highlighted efforts to prioritize visa interviews for fans with tickets. Andrew Giuliani, who leads the task force, dismissed concerns Thursday that traditional traveling supporters may be staying away.

“We want superfans and first-time visitors alike to know: America welcomes you to what will be the greatest World Cup yet,” he said in a statement.

For some fans, however, the concern goes beyond visas and cost.

Bergakker, a 48-year-old Dutch financial controller who lives near Heidelberg, Germany, said President Donald Trump’s “hostile” approach toward European allies has changed his view of traveling to the U.S.

Bergakker has attended two World Cups and four European Championships and said he is extremely susceptible to “Oranjekoorts” — the orange fever that grips Dutch fans as a tournament progresses.

A deep Netherlands run usually would be all it takes to get him on a plane, no matter the price of tickets. But Bergakker said he worries his criticism of Trump on social media could lead to problems at the border, a concern the White House rejected. A spokesperson said Thursday that a Customs and Border Protection proposal to scrutinize World Cup visitors’ social media accounts was never enacted.

Still, Bergakker said that as long as Trump is president, "this Oranje fan won’t be visiting.”

___

Rico reported from Atlanta. Associated Press reporters Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo; and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands; and Gisela Salomon in Miami contributed to this report.

Closures are set for Saturday, June 6, through Friday, June 12, from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. FDOT said not all ramp closures will happen at the same time.

Planned nightly closures and detours include:

• I-95 south to eastbound Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway (Exit 354A): Drivers will be detoured to continue south on I-95 to the Eighth Street exit, then go north on Main Street to reach the eastbound MLK on-ramp.
• Westbound Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway to I-95 south: Drivers will be detoured to take I-95 north, exit at Golfair Boulevard and head west to access the I-95 south on-ramp.
• Eighth Street to westbound Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway (Exit 345B): Drivers will be detoured north to I-95, exit at Golfair Boulevard, then continue south on I-95 to the eastbound Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway exit.
• Eastbound Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway under I-95: Drivers will be detoured to take I-95 south, exit at Eighth Street, then go west to Main Street and head north to reach eastbound MLK.
• Westbound Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway from Boulevard Street to Moncrief Street: Drivers will be detoured to take I-95 north, exit at Golfair Boulevard, then take I-95 south to the westbound MLK exit (Exit 354B).
• I-95 south to westbound Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway (Exit 354B): Drivers will be detoured to take Exit 354A to eastbound MLK and use the Boulevard Street ramp to reach westbound MLK.

Webber LLC is expected to complete the $79 million interchange improvement project by early 2027, weather and other conditions permitting.

FDOT recommends checking FL511.com for real-time traffic updates.

What started as a Facebook event years ago for people just to play hooky has grown to an annual event held every first Friday in June.

Hundreds of boats packed with revelers fill Bayard Point in Clay County for an all-day party on the water.

But even though it’s a day to relax. The Clay County Sheriff’s Office is really urging everyone to be safe.

Deputies say everyone on board should have a U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket, and children under 6 are required to wear theirs whenever the boat is underway.

If alcohol is part of the celebration, deputies say the most important step is making sure there’s a sober operator behind the wheel.

Two years ago, there were 21 arrests during Boater Skip Day, and last year, there were around 8. Deputies want that number down to zero this year.

Boaters are also being encouraged to stay hydrated and apply sunscreen throughout the day and to be vigilant when it comes to the wind.

“My main concern right now, after being out setting up the emergency lanes, is make sure your boats are secured properly and make sure everybody is hydrated,” Deputy Brooks Morrell said. “Have a good time, bring all of your safety equipment. We talked about it last year, everyone have a good time with no mishaps and just be safe out here.”

Boaters are also urged to follow local waterway rules and plan ahead for a safe ride home.

“Be mindful of the no-wake zones and the minimum wake zones in the county. Always have a sober driver and a safe plan to get home,” Clay County Marine Deputy Adam Kent said. “We want you to have a good time but also be safe.”

Boaters should also be aware that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is closing the Shands Boat Ramp on Friday, June 5, for official use only during the event.

Avril always comes back to Jacksonville to see family this time of year and to host his annual “Family Fun Day” and Flag Football game, both designed to empower area kids.

Avril joined us on The Morning Show to talk about his mission to empower youth in the community.

Teen takeovers are large, social‑media‑organized gatherings of youths at places such as malls, beaches and parks that have recently led to fights, shootings and other forms of violence.

Most recently, the St. Augustine Beach Police Department moved to proactively discourage an event before it happened.

There have also been “Takeovers” recently at Jacksonville Beach, The Avenues Mall and Blue Cypress in Arlington.

Travis Harrell, the Assistant Chief of Police with St. Augustine Beach PD, joined us on The Morning Show to discuss the challenges for law enforcement and the community. He says public safety is the priority.

The stars were stars.

The finals, though, tends to get won by the sum of the other parts.

Game 2 of the title series is Friday night in San Antonio, with the Spurs hoping to pull into a tie before the series heads to New York — and the Knicks aiming at becoming the first team since Houston in 1995 to start the NBA Finals with two road wins.

Tipoff is at 8:42 p.m. EDT and the game will be aired on ABC. The Spurs are 6.5-point favorites.

New York got 30 points from Brunson in the Game 1 win, in which the Knicks rallied from 14 points down in the third quarter and closed the game on an 11-0 run. And while Brunson got tons of credit, the Knicks pointed to other efforts, like the one from Josh Hart.

He had three points. That's not what mattered. It was everything else — 15 rebounds, six assists and four steals. The only other player to have that many rebounds, assists and steals in a finals game since all those stats began being tracked was Larry Bird in 1986.

“His energy is just relentless. It doesn’t stop,” Brunson said of Hart, his former Villanova teammate. “I mean, he eats candy all the time. That tells you who he is. He’s a big kid with an absurd amount of energy.”

The Knicks are trying to win their 13th consecutive playoff game, which would be the second-longest single-season streak in NBA history. Golden State won 15 consecutive playoff games in 2017.

“We know it’s a long series,” Spurs guard De'Aaron Fox said. “Obviously you want to win every game that you have on your home court, but it’s not the way it happens every day. We try to go in and fix the things we need to fix. Obviously, we want a different outcome.”

___

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

Anthony J. Moore, 53, was driving a route in Aiken County, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the Georgia border, last Friday when a woman ran directly into his path with her hands cuffed behind her back.

The video, which has no sound, shows the drama unfold: The woman passes in front of the truck, and a man in a Cadillac that had been on the side of the road swerves in front of the truck before taking off. The woman then runs down the road, and the man drives off.

“I just see it as a divine assignment from God, because had not I been there with the dashcam ... they probably wouldn’t have caught the footage that needed to be catched,” Moore told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “It was another assignment from God, a special assignment from God. That a life needed to be saved.”

Authorities arrested Jonathan Willard, 39, of New Ellenton, on one count each of kidnapping and impersonation of a law enforcement officer. He was being held Thursday at the Aiken County Detention Center.

According to an incident report from the Aiken County Sheriff's Department, the woman was taking a walk when a man in a green Cadillac “came from behind her and told her he was with the police.” She said he took her phone and Social Security card, put her in handcuffs and placed her in the back seat of the car.

The woman told police that the man pulled over by a gated property and got out. She said she tried to open the rear doors, but they were locked.

As the man rummaged through the trunk, she said, she climbed over the seat and escaped through the open driver's side door.

Moore was driving south of Aiken when he saw the woman running toward him.

“I let my window down and she said, ‘Please help me. He’s trying to kidnap me,’” Moore said.

As the woman swerved, Moore said, the man chasing her pulled up beside him and showed “what looks to be a badge.”

“And he said, ‘I’m with law enforcement, and she jumped out of my car,’” Moore recounted. The man then left in the Cadillac.

Bystanders called 911, helped get the cuffs off the woman and gave her water. Moore said she told him that she had just graduated the day before, and that the man had also taken her diploma.

She asked Moore if he would accompany her back to the spot where she escaped, to see if the man had might have dumped her belongings. He said they found nothing.

The Aiken County Solicitor’s Office said Willard had not yet been assigned a defense attorney and no court dates had been scheduled. The AP called the jail to speak with Willard, but the request was denied.

Moore is pastor of Amazing Grace Ministries in Denmark, South Carolina. Moore is also a 27-year Army veteran, said his wife, Betty, an associate pastor at the church.

“When I learned that he was caught the next day I was relieved of a lot of things that he didn’t get away,” he said, “to go try that again someplace else.”

And you might not even know you’re using it!

One study found only about 33% of consumers think they are using AI platforms — but the actual usage is 77%!

While it can make life easier, some research shows AI may be harmful to your mental health.

Today, more than 1 in 5 Americans has a mental illness.

“The rates of things like anxiety and depression and burnout have skyrocketed,” said Dr. Emily Anhalt, a psychoanalytic psychologist.

And, it’s also a global issue.

“There’s a 25% increase in mental health problems worldwide,” said Dr. Jodi Halpern, co-director of the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science and the Public School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. “That’s an enormous number when you think of all the people in the world.”

New research suggests AI could be adding to the problem.

In a 2026 study in JAMA Network Open, researchers found AI usage was linked to a higher risk of depression, anxiety, and irritability. Specifically, the odds of moderate depression were 30% higher among those who used AI at least daily.

But the recent trend has been using AI to help with mental illnesses.

People are using chatbots for online therapy in place of real therapists. The pros are that it’s accessible, easy, cheap, and private. But experts warn there’s not enough scientific data or oversight when it comes to AI therapy.

In short, AI shouldn’t be a substitute for therapy with a real person.

“If what you’re getting is an artificial relationship, then what you’re getting is artificial healing,” Anhalt says.

Earlier this year, character.ai and Google settled multiple lawsuits alleging that their chatbots contributed to mental health crises and suicides among teenagers.

“Technology is a good thing, but everything needs to be used in a way that cares about people,” Halpern said.

Resources

Here is a list of mental health resources available in Florida.

• UF Health St. Johns Behavioral Health Resource Center - open  24/7 with clinicians on staff and available to assist during a crisis. No appointment is needed.
• EPIC Behavioral Health Rapid Response Team – 24/7 service for individuals 26+, dial 988, and a response will occur within 60 minutes of the request.
• EPIC Access Support Center – Walk-in services for mental health at their North Campus, Northwest Campus, and Flagler Campus. If this service is needed, walk-in during hours or call (904) 495-7001.
• Mobile Response Team – 24/7 service for individuals 5-25 years old. Dial 988 or 911 and a response will occur within 60 minutes of the request.
• Vinson Foundation - A support group for St. Johns, Jacksonville, Fernandina Beach, and Orange Park, for families who lost someone to suicide.
• St. Augustine Youth Services: 904-829-1770
• Call 211 - Local experts are available 24/7 to help. Calls to 211 are confidential and can be anonymous.
• Hope for Healing Florida - Hope for Healing navigates the many ways Floridians can access help for mental health and substance abuse

These resources can be accessed nationwide.

• 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline - Call or text 988 for help. The Lifeline provides 24/7, free, and confidential support for people in distress, prevention, and crisis resources for you or someone you know.
• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) provides resources for issues with mental health, drugs, or alcohol.
• Veterans Crisis Line - Text 838255 or call 1-800-273-8255 and press 1
• Crisis Text Line - Text “Home” to 741741
• Teen Line - Text “Teen” to 839863

If you or anyone you know needs help, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.

There’s barely time to rejoice. As Kemp raises his trophy for a picture, the charter boat’s captain rushes over and then drives a knifelike tool into the fish’s gas-filled bladder. The procedure, required by federal law, is intended to improve the fish’s chances of survival after release.

“Send it overboard,” orders the captain. And with that, Kemp's hopes of bringing the fish home to eat was lost.

Recreational fishermen like Kemp are pitched against commercial fishermen and environmentalists in a legal dispute that has halted what was expected to be the longest snapper season in years, reflecting broader tensions over the Trump administration's efforts to loosen fishing rules and deregulate the seas.

As part of those efforts, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in May exempted states from some restrictions under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the landmark law that guides fisheries management. But the decision was halted at the last minute by a federal judge in Washington who blocked the plan.

The Atlantic red snapper is known for both its fighting ability and popularity at the dinner table. After decades of overfishing, regulators in 2010 restricted recreational fishing to only a handful of days each year — when not banned altogether.

Starting last year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis led a charge with officials in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina to take over management of the recreational Atlantic snapper fishery, casting the effort as guaranteeing anglers’ “God-given right to fish.”

In May, NOAA issued special permits exempting the states from some legal requirements to protect fish. Instead of imposing wholesale fishing bans on bottom fishing each winter, as NOAA had proposed last year, the agency set up an Atlantic snapper season in four states ranging from 39 to 62 days, allowing anglers to keep one fish per day.

“We were excited,” said Kemp, who booked a charter to coincide with the season’s opening day.

Court battle pits recreational anglers against commercial fishermen

The conflict landed in court just before the season was about to begin May 22, and U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras issued an injunction based in part on environmental concerns. He relied on estimates from the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy suggesting recreational catches could reach up to 485,000 in Florida alone during the expanded season — 20 times the number of landed catch allowed.

Kemp learned about the judge's order from a text message sent by a friend while driving to the marina.

“Originally we thought it was a joke, given the severity,” said Kemp.

The ruling sparked immediate backlash. Florida wildlife officials denounced the decision as the work of a “rogue federal judge,” while some fishermen involved in the lawsuit reported receiving threats after DeSantis falsely accused them of trying to commandeer the quota all for themselves.

One of the plaintiffs, North Carolina fisherman Jeff Oden, said commercial fishermen are struggling to survive amid rising costs and competition from imported seafood. He worries that expanded recreational harvests could leave too few snapper available when the commercial season begins later this year.

“We’re vanishing,” Oden said. “You as a consumer, you’re the loser.”

Stock is rebounding but scientists urge caution

The dispute stems in part from disagreements over the health of the fishery. NOAA estimates that roughly one-quarter of released red snapper die, despite techniques designed to improve their survival like puncturing the bladder to reduce gases that build up in their bladder when pulled up, hindering them from returning to the ocean’s depths where they live.

Yet many fishermen argue the stock is thriving. Kemp’s group hooked about a dozen fish within 40 minutes of arriving to a reef off Florida’s coast.

“To be completely honest, we have never seen an unhealthy stock,” said Haley Stephens, who with her husband operates the Sea Spirit, a charter boat in Ponce Inlet, Florida.

Scientists counter that the abundance of younger fish is misleading and point to biological sampling that indicates most fish being caught haven’t reached the peak of their reproductive maturity.

“It’s tricky because this is a rebuilding fish stock,” said Meredith Moore, a program director at Ocean Conservancy. “So people out in the water are seeing more of the fish than they have seen in a long time, and so that gives them the sense that everything is great.”

NOAA declined to comment on the snapper dispute, citing ongoing litigation. However, it said that it is working with fisheries managers across the country “to better prioritize work around existing resources, explore efficiencies, and streamline operations” in accordance with the “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness” executive order signed last year by President Donald Trump.

The judge, in his ruling, faulted Florida and the other states for declining to provide their own harvest projections. Officials, however, argued that existing federal estimates were unreliable and would eventually be replaced with improved state-collected data.

Oden said he understands the frustrations of recreational anglers but believes everyone must share the burden of conservation.

“There’s only so many fish to go around,” he said.

___

Wieffering reported from Washington. Serginho Roosblad contributed from Washington.

—-

The Associated Press 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.

Police said the boy had last been seen Thursday night around 9:30 p.m. leaving his home on West 45th Street near Moncrief Road.

JSO thanked everyone who helped bring the boy home safely.

NOTE: News4JAX has removed the child’s name and photo from this story because he is no longer missing.

The filing asks the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the main human rights body of the African Union, to order Equatorial Guinea to immediately halt any further deportations, transfers or removals and improve detention conditions. It also asks the body to grant compensation to people who already have been returned to their home countries.

The case is being brought by several rights groups, including the Global Strategic Litigation Council coalition, on behalf of 14 African migrants deported from the U.S. to Equatorial Guinea between November 2025 and April 2026.

Advocates call it a landmark case

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights can issue decisions and urgent measures, as well as refer cases to the Africa Court on Human and Peoples' Rights but these orders are not binding. Nonetheless, advocates say this is a landmark case that could exercise pressure on governments of African countries who have taken in deportees from the U.S.

It is the first of its kind in the region involving people who had legal protection from removal but were still sent to countries where they face persecution, said Beatrice Njeri, the Global Strategic Litigation Council's regional litigator for Africa.

In March, the commission had already allowed a suit challenging the unlawful and prolonged detention of third country deportees in the African kingdom of Eswatini to proceed.

A month later, Eswatini’s Supreme Court ruled that four of the men sent there could finally meet with a lawyer after they were denied in-person legal counsel for nine months while held at a maximum-security prison.

Under a series of often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to nearly two dozen countries that are not their own, advocates say, all part of the broad U.S. crackdown on immigration. Immigration lawyers said the Trump administration uses deportations to third countries as a legal loophole to indirectly force asylum seekers back to their home countries.

Equatorial Guinea is one of at least eight other African nations that the U.S. has struck third-country deportation deals with.

Deportees returned to countries where they face persecution

Last week, Equatorial Guinea authorities transferred six deportees to their country of origin in eastern Africa, which lawyers say amount to “chain refoulement,” the indirect return of people to places where they face persecution, despite legal protections by courts in the United States.

The lawyers said the migrants face political, religious and ethnic persecution in their home countries, as well as violence based on sexual orientation. Some had previously been arrested or detained by police or military there, and many had experienced torture and sexual violence. All had previously been protected by U.S. immigration judges from being sent back to their home countries under federal immigration law.

Upon arrival in their home country, two of the deportees later fled to another country and have gone into hiding.

Three others were returned to Equatorial Guinea after their country of origin refused to admit them because they lacked valid travel documents and had not been notified of their arrival.

The migrants were then sent back to Equatorial Guinea, where they remain in legal limbo.

“They have effectively been rendered stateless,” said Bella Mosselmans, director of the Global Strategic Litigation Council, describing the process as a “a cycle of hell.”

Equatorial Guinea is a key U.S. partner despite rights concerns

Under an opaque $7.5 million deal with Washington, at least 32 people were deported from the U.S. to Equatorial Guinea, which the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jeanne Shaheen, has called “one of the most corrupt governments in the world.”

The Associated Press reported on the conditions of deportees who were forced back to their home countries. It also got exclusive access to a hotel turned into a prison for asylum seekers deported from the United States by Equatorial Guinea’s all-powerful president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

Equatorial Guinea is one of the richest countries in Africa thanks to its oil resources. It is also rife with corruption and human rights abuses, according to U.S. officials.

There are virtually no critical voices in Equatorial Guinea, where the government has been accused by rights groups and the U.S. State Department of detaining, torturing and even killing those that dare to speak out.

The country's largest foreign investors are U.S. businesses, and its military receives funding for training from the U.S. government.

And they’re not done digging.

JSO said it’s believed more bones from the same person are still buried in the backyard of the home on Lincrest Drive in the Harborview neighborhood.

It appears the remains have been there for a “long time,” according to Sgt. Steve Rudlaff.

According to JSO, this all started when a resident spotted what appeared to be a human bone lying on Lincrest Drive around 10 p.m. Wednesday.

After the medical examiner’s office confirmed the bone was from a human leg, JSO began a search on Thursday, which led to the discovery of buried human remains wrapped in a carpet-like material in the backyard of the home, JSO said.

Investigators believe an animal dug up the leg bone and carried it to the street.

JSO obtained a search warrant to search the property and later was able to get in contact with the homeowner, who has not lived at the house for a long time. They have rented it out for a while.

Rudlaff said investigators need to get an understanding of who has been living in the house over the years.

They are also trying to get in touch with the construction company that had been doing work at the property to determine when they stopped working and how long they had been working.

Anyone with information on this is urged to call 904-630-0500.

The results of the PET scan that determines the effectiveness of my chemotherapy treatments are in.

Dr. Telivala has the results, and it’s time for me to find out if this chapter of my cancer journey ends with encouraging news.

Watch the video above to see the results. But regardless, I know “cancer has a mind of its own.”

Catch up with Bruce’s journey:

The victims, all Nigeriens, were returning home from a religious festival in Mali when the truck stopped running more than 80 kilometers (49 miles) west of Assamaka, near the borders with Mali and Algeria, Niger's Agadez region governorate said in an online post late Thursday.

Two men survived after trekking more than 50 kilometers (31 miles) to a water source and then continuing to Assamaka, where they alerted authorities, the governorate said.

A delegation sent to the scene by the Agadez Region Governor Gen. Ibra Boulama Issa learned the truck had traveled for several days from the Malian town of Talhandek about 300 kilometers (187 miles) from the Nigerien border.

It was not immediately clear what led to the breakdown or how long the passengers waited.

“On the spot, the findings were particularly disturbing. Dozens of lifeless bodies were found under the immobile truck and in its surroundings,” the Agadez governorate said.

Photos published by the governorate showed bodies in the desert with pieces of clothing and other belongings scattered around.

“Deprived of water and unable to repair the vehicle despite the efforts of the driver, his apprentice and passengers, travelers found themselves trapped in the heart of a hostile environment where extreme temperatures and lack of supply points make survival extremely difficult,” the governorate said.

The 49 victims were buried in mass graves at the scene in what officials called a “particularly delicate and emotionally exhausting task” for the survivors.

This fall they will do it again — under starkly different circumstances.

As the city heads toward pivotal primaries this month to pick candidates for those roles, President Donald Trump's influence on the nation's capital is shaping up as a major campaign issue. The fresh slate of candidates is weighing how best to approach Trump's Republican administration and congressional control over the heavily Democratic city's affairs.

“It’s going to be a big sea change in city politics, no matter how the elections shake out,” said Amanda Huron, a professor at the University of the District of Columbia who teaches courses on D.C. history and politics. But Washington’s lack of full autonomy brings “all sorts of peculiarities around the city’s governance.”

Since Trump returned to office last year, the National Guard is on an open-ended deployment as part of what he calls a crime-fighting mission. He is putting his personal imprint on the city’s storied landmarks. And major cuts to the federal workforce have compounded economic pressures on the capital, which has one of the country’s highest unemployment rates.

The city has long had a unique, if fraught, relationship with the federal government: While residents can vote for their local leaders, they are limited by Washington’s status as a federal district in how much influence they can actually have on the city’s affairs. That limited autonomy has been further squeezed under Trump and his federal law enforcement takeover, launched last year.

This fall, current council members Janeese Lewis George and Kenyan McDuffie are the frontrunners vying to replace Mayor Muriel Bowser, elected in 2014. The leading candidates in the race to succeed long-serving congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton are Robert White Jr. and Brooke Pinto, also D.C. council members.

On June 16, primaries will be held for those roles, which in an overwhelmingly Democratic city usually dictate who will take the top spot come November.

Washington, and its elected officials, have limited autonomy

Washington, unlike other cities, does not control its fate.

What choices voters have is through a limited home rule agreement passed by Congress in 1973 that allowed residents to elect their local government leaders.

But Congress retains control over local affairs, including the approval of the budget and laws passed by the city council. Congressional members elected by voters from thousands of miles away routinely introduce measures to impact city affairs.

That has meant local leaders must balance pressures from their constituents with the demands of Congress and the administration — an act Bowser was forced to perform repeatedly.

During Trump's first term, she ordered the painting and naming of Black Lives Matter Plaza, just north of the White House, in 2020. Just months after Trump’s inauguration to his second term, she agreed to remove it in response to pressure from congressional Republicans.

That act, the decimation of the federal workforce by the Department of Government Efficiency and the surge by federal law enforcement and the National Guard into the city have emerged as central themes in the election season. Right now, about 3,500 troops are in the city — a number authorities say will climb to 5,000 as the country's 250th anniversary celebrations approach.

Trump has routinely said his intervention has made Washington “one of the safest" and most beautiful cities in the country, enjoying a historic drop in crime.

Candidates campaign on promise of resistance to Trump

George told The Associated Press that her top priority is addressing “the affordability crisis here in D.C., which the Trump administration has only made worse by unjustly firing federal employees en masse and militarizing our streets.”

McDuffie said his top priority is public safety as crime continues to be an issue. He has said he would add 1,000 police officers over four years, fully staff the 911 call center after years of chronic staffing shortages and take a public health approach to violence reduction.

“We cannot have an affordable city," he said, “without public safety as its foundation.”

Both said they would bolster the city’s legal defenses against federal overreach and said Bowser should have been less cooperative with federal authorities as they targeted members of the city's immigrant communities.

Alex Dodd, co-founder of Free DC, an activist group supporting city independence, said the organization endorsed George because of her willingness to be more aggressive in opposing Trump and congressional Republicans.

“When our leaders comply with this administration before being forced, they are giving this regime an enormous advantage,” he said.

Pat Wheeler, a native Washingtonian and communications consultant who served as a department head at Morgan State University, applauded Bowser for cooperating with the Trump administration on some aspects. She noted failure to do so could have sparked retribution and a loss of what little control city officials have.

“Trump can snap his finger and the whole Republican Congress will say, ‘Let’s put a federal control board over the mayor,’” she said.

Affordability and social issues also concerns

The D.C. delegate position is a nonvoting one, but it grants the nearly 700,000 people of the district, who have no other representation in Congress, a voice through speechmaking on the House floor and bill introduction.

But critics said the 88-year-old Norton was diminished during the second Trump administration and not visible enough in the fight against administration and congressional overreach on the city’s autonomy. She filed paperwork to end her campaign for reelection in January.

Norton, who has served 18 terms, has had a storied career. She and her predecessor, Walter Fauntroy Jr., both had national standing coming out of the civil rights era.

“Eleanor Holmes Norton is maybe one of the last major political figures who comes out of the civil rights movement,” said Matt Dallek, a political historian at The George Washington University. "It’s a real passing of the torch.”

The campaigns of candidates running to replace her have centered on local control, Trump and affordability. Frontrunners and council members Pinto and White have also engaged in personal skirmishes questioning the origins of campaign contributions and connections to Republicans.

Pinto told the AP her top priority for the city is self-governance, something that has “never been a true reality for the people of D.C.”

She said affordability for the middle-class and working families is another concern.

White's campaign has said he's “not willing to continue to see our tax dollars used to allow DC police to cooperate and conspire with federal agents to trample our constitutional rights and to terrorize our communities.”

Brenda Manley, a longtime resident of Ward 7, an area with a storied Black history across the Anacostia River, said the city was well managed despite the tensions with Trump. But she said she hoped all the candidates would spend more time on the campaign focusing on programs that are beneficial to all residents, like a tuition grant program championed by Norton or major strides made in education during Bowser's tenure.

“Those type of programs matter,” Manley said.

I finished my last chemo session.

Then came the waiting for answers to the big question: Was it effective?

Watch the video above for my personal insights and thoughts as I await the results of a PET scan that will determine my future.

MORE: See the results of Bruce’s PET scan

Catch up with Bruce’s journey:

Melissa Ganey English, also known as Melissa Ganey Rhoden, 45, served as financial secretary at Amelia Baptist Church, located on Buccaneer Trail in Fernandina Beach, for about 11 years. Authorities say that from January 2019 to October 2024, English used her position to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars in church funds toward her own personal expenses.

On June 3, a judge ordered English to pay $20,000 in restitution to Amelia Baptist Church within 60 days. The order also notes the court may order additional payments at a later date.

If English is placed on probation or parole, full satisfaction of the restitution order will be a required condition — and failure to comply could result in revocation of that supervision.

How the alleged theft was uncovered

The alleged scheme unraveled in October 2024 when two new church financial committee members reviewed bank documents and noticed the church’s funds were lower than they should have been.

When investigators examined credit card statements tied to a church card issued directly to English, they found hundreds of thousands of dollars had been charged for personal use. English was fired, and the church hired an outside contractor to review all financial transactions from 2019 to 2024. That review turned up numerous discrepancies and fraudulent charges.

According to the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office, English embezzled:

• Nearly $40,000 in 2019
• Nearly $90,000 in 2020
• More than $100,000 in 2021
• Nearly $125,000 in 2022
• Just over $123,000 in 2023
• More than $90,000 in 2024

Fraudulent charges included purchases from Amazon and Walmart, SeaWorld tickets, concert tickets, baseball tickets, Hey Dude shoes, hotel stays, flights, cruises, Airbnb rentals and a helicopter flight over the Grand Canyon.

Arrest, charges, restitution

A warrant was issued March 25, 2025. English was located and detained in Baker County.

She has been charged with grand theft over $100,000, a first-degree felony.

“This is a significant breach of trust that has deeply impacted the church community,” Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper said. “The suspect abused her position of trust for years, using church funds meant for ministry and community service to instead fund her personal lifestyle. Our office is committed to seeking justice for the victims of this extensive financial crime.”

Church’s initial response to arrest

Pastor Forrest Jones addressed the congregation following the discovery of the theft.

“In October of 2024, the leadership of Amelia Baptist Church discovered evidence of financial irregularities,” Jones said. “The employee overseeing the financial operations of the church admitted to wrongdoing and her employment was terminated immediately.”

Jones said the church fully cooperated with investigators and confirmed no other members, employees or pastors were implicated.

According to JSO, a resident spotted what appeared to be a human bone lying on Lincrest Drive in the Harborview neighborhood around 10 p.m. Wednesday. The medical examiner’s office later confirmed the bone was from a human leg.

UPDATE: JSO says identifying human remains in backyard of Northside home could take months if not years

After the medical examiner’s office confirmed the human remains, JSO began a search on Thursday, which led to the discovery of buried human remains wrapped in a carpet-like material in the backyard of the home, JSO said.

Investigators believe an animal dug up the bone and carried it to the street.

JSO was unable to locate the homeowner but obtained a search warrant to search the property.

Detectives are now working to collect and identify the remains.

News4JAX spoke with neighbors in the area, who asked not to be identified.

One man said he believed the house had been undergoing construction, and he hadn’t seen people living there for a while.

Another woman said she was in shock and called the discovery unbelievable. She said it’s a quiet neighborhood with mostly elderly people and a couple of kids running around. She also didn’t think anyone lived in the house where the remains were found.

Anyone with information on this is urged to call 904-630-0500.

Dawa Sherpa was found Thursday crawling in the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above Everest base camp, a week after he went missing. The 57-year-old was flown to a Kathmandu and reunited with his family. He was being treated for frostbite, dehydration and problems in his thighs but was stable and recovering, HAMS Hospital said in a statement.

His family said they were upset that the search had not begun earlier and filed a police case against Dawa's employer, the Kathmandu-based Himalayan Traverse company, and a complaint at the Department of Tourism, which handles mountaineering in Nepal.

“Action needs to be taken by the mountaineering department. It was negligence of the company that resulted in so much delay in starting rescue,” Dawa's nephew, Karma Gelje Sherpa, said. “If he had been a foreign climber, rescue would definitely have been organized much faster and prompt, but he happened to be an old Nepali.”

Himalayan Traverse could not be immediately reached for comment Friday.

Dawa was last seen around May 29 descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though two other foreign climbers who were with him did. They were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled.

Dawa's last location was a spot called Yellow Band above the Camp 3, which is located at 7,200 meters (23,622 feet). The base camp is at 5,300 meters (17,388 feet).

Dawa was last seen with British climber Chris Thrall and a Polish climber identified by local media as Mariusz Chmielewski. Thrall said in his Instagram post that he had to help the Polish climber down the mountain because he was in bad shape and had frostbites.

“He (Dawa) had been in death zone for 19 hours and at that point, a decision was made that we needed to descent through the Icefall,” he said earlier this week, explaining why he did not go up the mountain to look for Dawa.

When helicopters were finally sent to look for him, they could not find him.

It was not clear why the men were on the mountain when authorities had removed the ladders on the path on May 29.

Dawa's family had already given up hope and they were on the second day of a funeral ritual, which lasts for several days.

The team that spotted him was part of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, which lays the ladders and ropes on the route at the start of each climbing season and then removes the equipment and cleans up the site after climbers have left.

One thing they are unlikely to debate is the politics of many Southern Baptists, the vanguard of broader white conservative evangelical support for President Donald Trump.

Officials for the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, say more than 11,000 church representatives have preregistered for the two-day meeting in Orlando.

Revisiting a ban on churches with women pastors

In the previous three annual meetings, a majority of representatives voted to amend the SBC constitution to ban churches with women in any pastoral role. But the measures failed to get a two-thirds supermajority in two consecutive years that is required to pass an amendment.

The denomination’s statement of belief, the Baptist Faith and Message, declares that the office of pastor is limited to men. While nonbinding on churches, this has prompted the SBC to expel some churches with women in leading pastoral roles. Now the focus is those who preach or serve in subordinate pastoral roles.

This year, an amendment proposed by Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, would exclude any church that acts “to affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, specifically preaching to the assembled congregation.”

Mohler noted the debate has consumed too much time and attention. “Clarity in the constitution would settle that,” he said.

The outgoing SBC president, Clint Pressley, supports the amendment, as do both candidates running to succeed him.

Another nonbinding resolution with similar language will be considered. It requires only a simple majority to pass.

As an association of independent congregations, the SBC can’t tell them what to do. But it can expel any church deemed not to be in “friendly cooperation.” The convention has ousted churches in recent years that appointed women to top pastoral positions or asserted the right to do so. But the status of churches with female assistant pastors is still debated.

On his own podcast, Mohler recently said it would even be a “problem” for a church podcast to include a woman answering questions about that week’s sermon.

Array of issues queued up for debate

That view drew pushback online, including from prominent Bible teacher Beth Moore, who left the SBC after she faced criticism for advocating for victims of sexual abuse and criticizing evangelical support for Trump despite such things as his crude sexual boasts.

“How in heaven’s name a woman discussing a sermon on a podcast could be objectionable to some is beyond me and what I believe to be beyond scripture,” she posted on X.

She added later: “Which has been the greater problem: women trying to become your senior pastors or pastors misusing or abusing women?”

Amy Sims, associate pastor of preschool and children at Sugarland Baptist Church in Sugarland, Texas, described a now-yearly contrast of preparing for vacation Bible school just as Southern Baptists are debating women's ministry.

“I preach. I teach. I disciple children and families,” she wrote on the independent site Baptist News Global. “I walk with parents through crises. I visit hospitals. I help lead people to faith in Christ. I perform baptisms. ... I serve now at a church that is beautifully supportive of my work and calling as a woman and pastor.”

Every June, Sims added, "there are those who seem determined to remind me they do not believe God could have called me to do the very work I am doing.”

Even as the convention's membership shrinks, the annual meeting serves as a bellwether for religious and political trends among evangelicals. And as is typical, the biggest attention will be on whether the already-conservative SBC decides to move further rightward.

The upcoming meeting follows the release of internal statistics showing a continuation of a nearly two-decade-long decline in membership. It’s down to 12.3 million, the lowest since 1973.

Southern Baptists have, however, seen a bump in baptisms. They consider this a key spiritual vital sign because it measures conversions, though the increase is not enough to stem the overall decline.

Southern Baptists will consider other policy statements. One proposed resolution calls for humane treatment of immigrants and rejecting nativistic and dehumanizing rhetoric while also affirming the government's responsibility for immigration enforcement.

Another denounces antisemitic violence and conspiracy theories, notably those arising since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. At the same time, the resolution affirms Southern Baptists' hope for Jews' conversion to Christianity.

In 1996, an SBC resolution called for the evangelization of Jews, prompting major Jewish leaders to call it a setback for interfaith relations.

Baptists' long ties to conservative politics

Beyond denominational politics, the majority-white SBC is a core part of the wider, predominately white evangelical constituency that has coalesced behind Trump. Prominent Southern Baptists say they see little change in that.

They like Trump’s official policy recognizing only two, biologically determined genders, though they worry about his administration’s moderation on abortion. Baptist leaders have largely supported his war against Iran, but were quick to move on from Trump’s posting in April of a social media meme they deemed to be blasphemous.

Trump won the support of about 8 in 10 white evangelical Christian voters in 2020 and 2024, according to AP VoteCast, a large voter survey.

About two-thirds of white born-again Protestants approved of Trump’s overall performance in April, compared to about one-third of U.S. adults overall. That’s according to survey findings from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Mohler said evangelicals were widely appalled at the Trump social-media meme depicting himself as a healing savior.

“You had the vast majority of evangelicals saying this is fundamentally wrong,” Mohler said. But that's “within the context of the fact that overwhelmingly evangelicals supported President Trump as president."

Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of the large First Baptist Church in Dallas and a longtime Trump supporter, said he appreciated that the president “had enough sensitivity to remove” the meme after the backlash.

Emphasizing that he was speaking for himself and not his church or the SBC, Jeffress added that he supported Trump's creation of a Religious Liberty Commission, where Jeffress testified about what he contended was unfair scrutiny of his church by the IRS.

Jeffress also supported Trump's decision to go to war against Iran, saying a president has “not only the right but the God-given duty to protect our nation.”

Mohler agreed, but sought to temper expectations. He said he supported past wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but now realizes that some of their objectives, such as nation-building, were not realistic. A just war needs “limited and honest aims,” he said.

Dwight McKissic, senior pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, has criticized fellow Southern Baptist leaders for both their political slant and their gender focus.

The Black pastor posted on X that the SBC and its theologians have been wrong about issues ranging from slavery and segregation to the mistreatment of sexual-abuse survivors.

“And now they expect us to just blindly trust them on gender theology and women in ministry issues?" McKissic wrote.

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Associated Press religion coverage 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.

The ratification was widely expected and a walkout never seemed to be in the cards during drama-free negotiations, but the vote assures there will be no repeat of the 2023 actor and writer strikes that seriously shook the entertainment industry.

More than 90% of votes from members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists approved of the agreement, with about 19% of eligible voters casting ballots.

Like the Writers Guild of America, whose members approved their own contract on April 24, the actors’ new deal is for four years instead of the usual three, providing an extra layer of labor stability in the industry.

Actor Sean Astin, president of SAG-AFTRA, said in a statement that the contract “delivers meaningful gains in compensation, strengthens protections around artificial intelligence and digital identity, reinforces the long-term security of members’ benefit plans and recognizes the realities of how performers work today.”

The contract says AI performers must bring “significant additional value” over a live actor or a digital capture of them if producers are to use them. Union leaders say this and other provisions will keep use of AI actors minimal.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates for a coalition of Hollywood’s major studios, streamers and production companies, congratulated the union on the ratification.

“SAG-AFTRA’s leadership brought a genuine commitment to partnership, and together with the WGA agreement, these deals demonstrate what is possible when the industry works toward practical solutions,” the alliance said in a statement.

AMPTP negotiators have been in contract talks with the Directors Guild of America since May 11. The negotiations are the first under new DGA president Christopher Nolan. That contract is set to expire June 30.

The day quickly warms up, with highs today expected to reach 86 degrees under sunny skies. Tonight, look for things to cool down to about 66 degrees with partly cloudy conditions.

On Saturday, the forecast is for 89 degrees with a mix of sun and clouds. Sunday will be even warmer, likely topping at 92 degrees.

That’s a good 20 degrees warmer than those early morning lows, and it’s a bit above average for this time of year.

Every day this weekend is shaping up to be a beautiful one to get outdoors—just the way we like it in Jacksonville!

Boater Skip Day: hydration and heat

If you’re heading out for Boater Skip Day, you’ve picked the perfect weather. The forecast is partly cloudy for most of the day, with sustained winds around 5 to 6 mph and just a few stronger gusts that should feel pretty nice out on the water.

Temperatures by 3 p.m. are expected to hit 92 degrees.

If you’re packing a cooler, make sure you bring plenty of water—a hot day like this can sneak up on you!

Dehydration is a real risk, so keep hydrating all day. Don’t forget to slather on the sunscreen, too—SPF is a must this weekend.

Tropics quiet, rain returns midweek

The Atlantic and the Gulf are both clear of any tropical activity right now, which is great news as we get into the early days of hurricane season.

The Pacific is a little more active, but nothing there is expected to affect us here at home.

We aren’t seeing much in terms of rain this weekend or the start of next week.

That changes a bit midweek, when I expect a new system to move in and bring some much-needed rain—though, at this point, it looks like just one day of showers before we dry back out.

Enjoy these sun-filled days while they last, and if you spot something interesting out there, share your weather photos and videos with us on SnapJAX!

Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal were facing off in the Champions League final, and by 9:20 a.m. — less than a half hour into the game — the patrons inside this crowded bar had already purchased $1,300 in alcohol.

“It’s just a better vibe when you’re a little buzzed,” said Madeline Guillen, 28, who was drinking a mimosa with friends. “That’s a big thing about sports. I think sports and drinking go hand-in-hand.”

Drinking alcohol while watching sports is common in many countries, and millions of soccer fans will be doing so this summer during the FIFA World Cup games in Mexico, Canada and the United States. But imbibing boozy drinks during what could be a sizzling June and July has some experts worried. They say mixing alcohol with extreme heat poses extra risks, especially people drinking excessively who may not be hydrating enough, staying cool, or have underlying health conditions.

Here's what to know about the science of extreme heat and drinking alcohol, plus tips from experts if you’re going to be drinking while watching soccer on a hot summer's day.

When summer, sports and booze collide

Climate change, caused by burning coal, oil and gas, is making heat deadlier worldwide, especially in the summer, and that's raising worries about soccer players and fans suffering heat stress during the games. Heat also influences how people drink alcohol and whether they end up in the hospital.

Various studies from around the world show that drinking alcohol peaks in the summer, and that people living in hotter climates are more likely to binge drink, according to a study from Mexico.

There is also sometimes a “hedonic effect” where people drink to ease the discomfort of feeling hot, said Nathan Morris, assistant professor in thermoregulation at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. “We drink alcohol, we feel good, and so it masks that normal drive to do something to cool yourself down,” which can lead to heat stress.

“Maybe we stay out in the heat longer. Maybe we drink less cold water. Maybe we’re less likely to use a fan or seek an air conditioned space,” he added. “I think that might be where we’re seeing more of the strain on the body.”

International research has also established links between heavy drinking and sports spectators. One paper from Australia found that participants self-reported consuming an average of five drinks in just over two hours while watching Australian football games. In a 2023 study, researchers found that higher temperatures resulted in more alcohol-related hospital visits in New York state.

Heat and alcohol, a riskier mix

Heat exhaustion happens when your body loses too much water and salt from excessive sweating. When the body can no longer cool itself, heat stroke occurs, which can cause confusion, loss of consciousness and even death. Heat combined with humidity — the kind of weather in host cities like Miami, Houston and Monterrey, Mexico — makes it harder for sweat to evaporate to cool the body.

Alcohol primarily affects the central nervous system — your body's master processing center responsible for your thoughts, feelings and movements. It can cause headaches, vomiting, dizziness, a loss of coordination and balance. It also makes you pee more.

When you combine fluid loss from sweating on a hot day with increased urination from drinking alcohol, it can lead to dehydration, which can make you feel the effects of drinking faster, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Additionally, studies show drinking on a hot day makes it less likely you'll wear sunscreen, and that alcohol reduces the amount of heat exposure needed to get sunburnt.

“If you put together hot weather, summer, crowd, during the World Cup, people are sweating more, so they’re losing liquids from their body," said Dr. Lorenzo Leggio, physician and scientist with the National Institutes of Health. “On top of that, you drink excessive amount of alcohol that is leading you to more urination."

When high temperatures are combined with drinking, it can have a “synergistic effect" that can cause symptoms including thirst, headaches and dizziness, he said.

Fabiano Amorim, associate professor at the University of New Mexico, has studied the effects of alcohol in hot environments among construction workers. He and other researchers found that if workers drank the night before, health markers including blood pressure, core and skin temperatures and heart rate were elevated, and their urine and sweat production were lower at work the next day.

“Alcohol on the previous night effects your ability to deal with heat and stresses your kidneys ... putting you in a higher risk of heat-related illness,” he said. Although World Cup fans won't be physically exerting themselves like construction workers, their findings still apply, Amorim said. Spectators could be in crowded places with limited air flow or exposed to the sun for hours.

“People are going to accumulate days of drinking,” he said. “They want to have fun, they come from one game to the other, they watch games, etc. It means there is a cumulative effect from one day to the other.”

The elderly, people with alcohol disorders, heart conditions and other chronic health issues are among the most vulnerable.

Tips for drinking safely when it's sizzling out

The best way to mitigate risks is to not drink at all, said Leggio. But if you're going to, eat a meal before, drink plenty of water, pick drinks with low concentrations of alcohol, and imbibe in moderation.

Before taking your first sip, Morris suggests taking regular precautions such as putting on a hat and sunscreen and ensuring you have other cold, non-alcoholic beverages at hand. Also, have a friend with you who can jump into action if you start feeling unwell. “Buddy systems are always really important with heat stress," he said.

Amorim recommends seeking shade, which can reduce heat stress on the human body between 25% and 35% throughout the day and can be 20 F to 45 F (11 C to 25 C) cooler than surfaces without it. He echoed to drink plenty of water and apply some on your skin to help cool you off. Eating cold slushies and popsicles are a good idea, too.

Leggio suggests being aware of early signals from your body.

“Feeling dizzy, feeling a little confused, having blurred vision, not being able to see well in your surrounding," he said. “And if you do feel any of these symptoms, ask for help right away.”

Medical staff will be stationed throughout the stadiums and at Fan Festivals.

Back at the bar in Los Angeles, Daniel Tran, 41, was calming his nerves with a cold beer Saturday morning while rooting for Arsenal. He plans to attend several World Cup games and Fan Festivals in L.A.

“If it's a really hot day, I’ll try to either hydrate the night before, make sure I get electrolytes, and also maybe not drink as much," he said, adding: “Pace yourself.”

There will be 104 games, after all.

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

The music stars will perform Dai Dai, the official song for the tournament, ahead of the opening game between co-host Mexico and South Africa on Thursday.

FIFA has planned opening ceremonies for each host nation, with curtain-raisers ahead of games in the United States and Canada as well.

World soccer’s governing body has revealed the line-up for the show in Mexico, which also includes Alejandro Fernández, Belinda, Danny Ocean, J Balvin, Lila Downs, Los Ángeles Azules, Maná and Tyla. It said more artists would be announced for the ceremonies in the U.S. and Canada.

Alanis Morissette and Michael Bublé headline in Toronto on June 12 ahead of Canada vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Later that day Katy Perry, global pop star LISA, Nigerian Afrobeats star Rema, Brazilian pop artist Anitta, and hip-hop artist Future are performing in Los Angeles before the U.S. faces Paraguay.

The trio of shows is being created by Italian producer Marco Balich, who was behind the spectacular opening ceremony for this year’s Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. Each show will be held about 90 minutes before kickoff.

Shakira is also among headliners performing at a Super Bowl-style halftime show for the World Cup final along with Madonna and boy band BTS.

Diana Ross performed at the opening ceremony in Chicago when the World Cup was last held in the U.S. in 1994 and famously missed a penalty kick as part of the show.

The song Dai Dai aims to raise $100 million in support of the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund.

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

It was somehow an even crazier finish than the series opener 48 hours earlier, when Vegas' Tomas Hertl scored the winner with 3:24 left. It's all tied up after the Hurricanes overcame a multigoal deficit in thrilling fashion.

Here is how it happened:

10:20 left in regulation

Down 2-0 after having almost nothing going offensively for the first two periods and much of the first half of the third, the Hurricanes hemmed the Golden Knights in their own end, getting three shots on net and testing goalie Carter Hart. Vegas iced the puck, and the crowd could sense the home team was buzzing.

"The building got going," captain Jordan Staal said. “Obviously, we just needed a spark.”

9:40 left

Logan Stankoven, who has been one of the Hurricanes' best players all postseason, took it upon himself to make a difference. He stole the puck from Rasmus Andersson behind the net, skated toward the crease and banked the puck in off defender Jeremy Lauzon.

“It’s tough to find goals,” Staal said. “We got a bounce. That’s kind of all it took.”

7:14 left

The momentum turned quickly, and the fourth line kept it going. William Carrier somehow stayed onside, and while getting tangled up with Lauzon, passed the puck to streaking linemate Mark Jankowski, who fired a shot past Hart to tie it.

“I didn’t have a lot of time, honestly," said Jankowski, who scored his first of the playoffs after having two called off. "Just got it on my stick, got my head up and just tried to give my best shot possible. Didn’t have a lot of thought behind it, honestly. Instinct half kicked in there.”

5:00 left

With Vegas forward Ivan Barbashev, a two-time Cup champion, around the net with room to maneuver, Carolina goaltender Frederik Andersen stretched across the crease to get the paddle of his stick on the puck and keep it out. Players converged, and puck eventually went in the net and referee Jean Hebert immediately waved it off, announcing it was goalie interference because Andersen was pushed.

Golden Knights coach John Tortorella challenged that it was not. Officials and the NHL's on-site situation room quickly confirmed the call on the ice, putting the Hurricanes on the power play.

“I saw a loose puck in front of Freddie," Tortorella said. "Our player stabbed it, didn’t move the goalie and it goes through him into the other side. I’d challenge it 10 out of 10 times.”

4:35 left

Carolina's power play was 0 for 4 in the series to that point and 7 for 60 in the playoffs. Shayne Gostisbehere took a shot from the point, Staal redirected it in from just in front of Hart and Carolina had the lead for the first time all game.

"Just shooting pucks and finding ways to get it to the net," Staal said. “Just finding ways to get a good, quality shot.”

3:29 left

Jackson Blake interfered with Barbashev, putting Vegas on the power play. The Hurricanes' penalty kill got the job done, improving to 56 for 60, a 93.3% success rate.

1:21 left

Mere seconds after the power play expired and with Hart on the bench, pulled for an extra skater, Golden Knights captain Mark Stone tied it. The puck went off him, and Carolina's Jaccob Slavin knocked the puck into his own net.

3:56 into overtime

Hertl tripped Staal 3:17 into overtime, putting the Hurricanes back on the power play.

Gostisbehere found Seth Jarvis, who had struggled so much coach Rod Brind'Amour moved him down to the the third line. Jarvis ripped a one-timer past Hart to give his team a 4-3 win.

“It’s huge,” Jarvis said. “To be able to contribute to win and help the team out like that is nice, get the power play going even more after Jordo, follow his lead. Just keep this wave rolling now.”

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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

They're the Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco.

On game nights, they're called the Spurs Nuns.

New York has Ben Stiller, Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan among its superfans; San Antonio has a group of nuns who wear Spurs jerseys over their habits. It's a relationship that goes back at least 20 years or so, and to the sisters it makes perfect sense.

“We’re serving the poor and the young," said Sr. Bernadette Mota, the director of the department of mission advancement for the Salesian Sisters. "And in order to reach the young where they’re at, you have to love what they love and then they’ll love who you love. So, we have that affinity with the Spurs because it gives us an avenue to do our mission with the young people that we serve.”

This tale started in a most unique way.

As the story goes, a couple decades ago, some of the retired sisters — who happened to be native Texans and big Spurs fans — would watch the games on television or listen on the radio, some even doing so while hospitalized. They would cheer for all the players, and for coach Gregg Popovich. But Popovich would sometimes seem a bit angry on the sidelines, prompting some of the sisters to reach out with letters.

“They would write to Coach Popovich and let him know when they thought he was he doing great and let him know when he lost his temper — but they were really supporting him," Mota said. "He's the one that actually responded back to them, thanking them for their support for him and for the Spurs. It was really just a very organic conversation that started all of this.”

Yes, it's true: The nuns would scold Pop for bad behavior.

“They would, in a nice way, in a very nice way," Mota said. “They’d be like, ‘Coach, you lost your temper there, come on, we’re praying for you, you can do better.’”

Popovich and the Spurs have kept a relationship with the sisters since. Popovich's late wife Erin, who died in 2018, also had close ties to the sisters and their work. It has been a mutually beneficial relationship; the Spurs love having the sisters at games, and the story of what the nuns do when they're not watching basketball has led to many people offering to help their mission.

“We’ve had a number of individual people reach out and they’ve been donating anywhere from $10 to $100 and we’ve had a few ones who have larger capacity reach out, too," Mota said. “All of this is divine providence, God’s gift, because we’re actually very much in need. Our mission, we rely on the generosity of people who are our partners and collaborators in our mission.”

The sisters aren't the only fan group that the Spurs have embraced. This season also brought the Jackals — a group that was envisioned by Wembanyama with hopes of simulating what happens in European soccer matches, with organized chants, drumming and the like throughout the game.

The nuns pray. The Jackals chant “Olé, Olé, Olé.”

Different approach, same intentions.

“I’ve known for years that the Spurs community had this strength in them,” Wembanyama said. “Now to finally see it being channeled into something organized and efficient and effective, it’s a great joy.”

Joy. That's the word the sisters use as well.

It was certainly noted by those around the Spurs that the sisters gave Luke Kornet a special blessing during the Western Conference finals and he came up with an incredible chasedown block midway through the fourth quarter of Game 7 in Oklahoma City, helping to ensure that San Antonio would win that game and earn this finals trip.

Divine intervention? Maybe.

It's also not lost on the sisters that Pope Leo XIV's prayer intention for June is on the value of sports and how they can promote peace and respect across the globe.

“I don’t know if his people who helped him out in terms of creating prayer intentions were also in tune with what’s going on with the sisters and the San Antonio Spurs," Mota said. "Maybe, maybe not. I have no idea. But I just thought it was pretty awesome that his prayer intention for June is for sports.”

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

These rocky, remote outposts of Europe have struggled with the arrival of tens of thousands of mostly African migrants through some of the world's deadliest migration routes. Even as numbers decreased this year, especially in the Canaries, the issue continues to roil politics in these historically Catholic countries.

Many Catholics and migrants hope the upcoming papal trips will refocus attention on solidarity and support — and away from divisive political debate that is splitting the right in addition to pitting it against the left.

“Stuck in the middle are the migrants,” said the Most Rev. José Mazuelos, the bishop of Canarias, whose diocese includes several of the islands. “So the church says, ‘Let’s give them a face, because we’re talking about people, not numbers.’"

Among them is Eslim Jallow, 27. Dreaming of a more prosperous future, Jallow and his younger brother left Gambia and landed in the Canary Islands in 2023. At first, Jallow struggled to adapt, but he quickly learned Spanish, took courses and now earns a living as a programmer and web developer in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

“Perhaps the pope will change the way in which people here look at immigrants,” Jallow said. “Immigrants should be treated with dignity and respect, not ignored.”

Like most migrants arriving in the islands, he isn’t Catholic. But he feels that Leo “speaks for us, he reminds the world we are also human beings.”

The Catholic Church’s ministry to migrants

Advocating for migrants globally was a priority for Pope Francis. He went to Lampedusa in 2013 on his first pastoral visit outside Rome and, three years later on the Greek island of Lesbos, he brought back with him a dozen Syrian Muslim refugees.

Under Leo, the Catholic Church has continued to call for their humane treatment around the world, including decrying mass deportations in his home country, the United States.

“Pope Leo is signaling how important immigration is to him by doing these two trips early in his papacy,” said Michele Pistone, a Villanova University professor who leads its new center on immigration.

In the Canaries, Leo is expected at the port of Arguineguín, on the island of Gran Canaria, on June 11 to pay homage to thousands of migrants who died or disappeared en route. The next day, he will meet migrants at a camp on the island of Tenerife.

The archipelago has been the epicenter of a humanitarian crisis that in 2024 saw the arrival of nearly 47,000 migrants from North and West Africa, including several thousand unaccompanied minors.

Like Jallow, half of them landed in El Hierro island — nearly triple its population, said the Most Rev. Eloy Santiago, bishop of Tenerife, whose diocese includes that smaller island. Its resources were strained to a breaking point, even though most migrants only stayed a few days.

“If a boat arrives, the couple of local doctors have to go out running to take care of them, and then the local residents who had their medical appointments can’t have them,” Santiago said.

Catholic organizations are among those that aid migrants from the moment they step out of rickety, overcrowded boats.

Arrivals have slowed dramatically this year, in part due to stricter controls along the African coast. But the most challenging task remains — how to help those who arrived as minors, were entrusted to state care, and are thrown out into the streets when they turn 18, often with no job prospects and no support.

Caya Suárez, secretary-general for the Catholic charity Caritas in the Canaries, has seen firsthand how migrants coming of age on the islands are the most vulnerable.

“That’s a very bad moment, even though they’d been waiting for it with hope, because they see they are still stuck without alternatives,” she said.

Caritas tries to help the young adults find housing and jobs, she added. It’s also relocated a few young migrants to Madrid, a small village in the largely rural region of Galicia, and elsewhere on the mainland, with the help of parishes there even as the governments of other Spanish regions have been reluctant to take on underage migrants.

Spain’s migrant amnesty and continuing challenges

Many residents in the Canaries feel like they’ve been abandoned to cope with an unsolvable problem — how to stretch even farther resources for migrants who thought they’d be within reach of economic prosperity and free to travel across the European Union, and instead end up on the street, struggling to send remittances home but also to leave.

Compounded with the perception that national and European political institutions tend to see it as an exclusively “island problem,” the situation is generating a growing malaise even among generous islanders who have long been accustomed to migration to and from Latin America, the Canaries’ bishops said.

“The pope’s word can help so that in the middle of this fatigue, people can buck up again because they see they are supported,” said Santiago, who was born and ordained a priest on the islands.

At the national level, Spain’s Catholic Church also backed a new measure giving temporary residency permits to potentially more than half a million foreigners in the country illegally, many from Latin America.

They often work in hospitality, agriculture and eldercare, boosting the economy, according to the socialist government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez — and to the church.

“In the matter of immigration, the church’s position gets into a head-on collision with the position of the right,” said Pablo Simón, a political science professor at University Carlos III in Madrid.

That has created a rift between the church and far-right parties, like Vox in Spain, which has criticized the church on immigration, despite often couching its anti-migrant rhetoric in religious terms.

Days before she is expected to meet Leo, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the firebrand Popular Party conservative regional leader of Madrid, described the migrant legalization push as “importing mass poverty.”

The Rev. Fernando Redondo, who leads the migration department of the Spanish bishops’ conference, said the church’s stance is in line with the Christian mandate to welcome the stranger. But he added it needs better understanding among the many faithful who believe migrants come to steal jobs or live off welfare.

“We have a big challenge, which is raising awareness among our faithful … that from the viewpoint of faith, to welcome a migrant person is to welcome Christ himself,” Redondo said. “Then, of course, there needs to be ways, proper social and political ways, so that migration doesn’t become a total mess.”

Hoping for words of reconciliation in the Canary Islands

In the Canaries, ordinary people have been on the front lines of that often life-endangering chaos — fishermen who hand out drinking water to migrants on ramshackle rafts, sunbathers who run into the sea to help landing migrants, the volunteers who greet them in more than a dozen languages.

But they have also seen that integration can work, as in a small mountain village that was emptying out until a center for three dozen migrant children was opened, creating jobs and filling up the school — and the local church’s annual feast day procession.

That’s why many look forward to Leo bringing a simple but crucial message of reconciliation that focuses on the people impacted, not on the politics.

“The pope doesn’t support this slogan of ‘let’s go, open doors for the whole world here.’ Nobody supports that,” Mazuelos said. “When here comes a gentleman in a wooden boat after five days in the Atlantic, what are we supposed to do, kick him back? We’ve got to find a way to welcome him.”

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Dell'Orto reported from Minneapolis.

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Associated Press religion coverage 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.

It also disclosed that his daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, live in rent-controlled palace properties paid for by their uncle, King Charles III.

The National Audit Office report said Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor received income from renting out the cottages on the Royal Lodge estate, his home near Windsor Castle for more than 20 years. A lease for Royal Lodge signed in 2003 shows he paid only a nominal fee known as a “peppercorn rent” for the property, which included a 30-room mansion and eight cottages, three of which he was allowed to sublet.

The amount of income was not included in the report, an omission that Margaret Hodge, a Labour member of the House of Lords and former head of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, said was concerning.

“It’s shocking that the National Audit Office was not able to establish how much money Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor secured from the properties he let,” she said.

The audit office review was carried out at the request of lawmakers after Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his royal titles and evicted from Royal Lodge by his brother, the king, following revelations about his friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Mountbatten-Windsor moved earlier this year to the king’s Sandringham Estate in eastern England.

In February, the former prince, 66, was arrested and questioned by police about allegations of misconduct in public office. Mountbatten-Windsor has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, and has not been charged.

The royals' housing arrangements

The audit office report shows that 11 working royals receive free housing within palaces in return for their official duties. They include the king and Queen Camilla, Prince William and his wife Catherine, and the king’s youngest brother, Prince Edward, and his wife Sophie.

William and Kate also have a family home near Windsor, for which they pay rent of 307,200 pounds (about $413,000) a year.

The rents on Eugenie’s cottage in Kensington Palace and Beatrice’s apartment in St. James’s Palace are set at a portion of open-market value that has ranged in recent years between 50% and 68%. Both rents are paid out of the Privy Purse, the monarch’s private funds.

The pair are not considered “working” royals who carry out public duties, and both have outside jobs.

Buckingham Palace said the audit office report “is in line with the royal household’s commitment to transparency. We hope that the findings will help correct, clarify or contextualize a number of points regarding royal properties.”

Critics of the monarchy cited the findings as evidence the royal family does not pay its way.

“It shows an absolute total contempt for the taxpayer, not only that Andrew was able to have a peppercorn rent for a gigantic property, but then to make potentially millions on the side from subletting properties,” said former Liberal Democrat lawmaker Norman Baker, a longtime critic of royal finances.

The prince's links to Epstein

Mountbatten-Windsor has featured in millions of pages of documents about Epstein released by the U.S. Department of Justice in January, showing how the wealthy financier used an international web of rich, powerful friends to gain influence and sexually exploit young women and girls.

British police are looking into claims that Mountbatten-Windsor sent confidential trade information to the disgraced financier when he served as U.K. trade envoy from 2001 to 2011. Detectives say they may broaden their investigation to include allegations of sexual misconduct and have appealed for witnesses to come forward.

Mountbatten-Windsor has rarely been seen in public since he moved to the Sandringham Estate, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of London. He was photographed Thursday in a car with a large bruise on his face.

The Times of London said, without citing sources, that the bruise was the result of a “nonserious medical condition.”

An estimated 60,000-70,000 Bosnians live in St. Louis, with many arriving in the early 1990s during the Bosnian War and the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Bosnia faces Panama on Saturday in an international friendly at St. Louis' Energizer Park and plays World Cup group matches in Toronto (vs. Canada), Los Angeles ( vs. Switzerland) and Seattle (vs. Qatar).

“We should be able to create an atmosphere like a home match,” said Elvir Kafedžić, a Bosnia-born St. Louisan and an assistant coach for the city’s MLS team, St. Louis City SC.

He was only 9 1-2 when he fled Bosnia in 1992 with his mother and brothers to escape the war.

“Unfortunately, I remember a lot of it,” said Kafedžić, whose story mirrors many who rebuilt in St. Louis after meandering across Europe.

“We kind of tumbled through some different countries like Montenegro, the Czech Republic, Sweden and wound up in Germany," Kafedžić explained.

That ended when Germany stopped granting temporary protection to Bosnians in the late 1990s.

“We didn’t have anywhere to go back to in Bosnia. And we already had some relatives living in St. Louis. So in 1999 we made the move with my mom and two older brothers."

Bosnia defeated Italy

Bosnia qualified for the World Cup two months ago, defeating four-time World Cup champion Italy 4-1 on penalties after a 1-1 draw. The deciding penalty was converted by Esmir Bajraktarević, a Bosnian-American from Appleton, Wisconsin.

“That day you could see cars flying Bosnian flags in the streets,” Kafedžić said of the St. Louis scene. “All the restaurants, all the coffee shops were packed wall-to-wall with strangers hugging each other. For me, this goes beyond soccer. This shows who we are, the pride, where we come from and how deeply we’re connected to our roots.”

Bosnia's World Cup team is led by 40-year-old captain Edin Džeko and 18-year-old winger Kerim Alajbegović. Džeko has scored at least 50 goals playing in the English Premier League, Italy’s Serie A, and the German Bundesliga.

Bosnia’s only other World Cup appearance was at Brazil in 2014, where it was narrowly eliminated in the group stage. The team’s first World Cup goal was scored by Vedad Ibišević in a 2-1 loss to Argentina.

Ibišević played high school soccer in St. Louis, starred at Saint Louis University and followed up with a successful professional career, primarily in the Bundesliga.

“Little Bosnia” in St. Louis

St. Louis surfaced as a destination for Bosnian refugees because it offered jobs, reasonable housing prices and had a small community in place.

“We all came looking for a better life because everything was taken away from us at home,” Kafedžić said. “You can’t put in words how thankful we are.”

A swath of the city’s South Side is known as “Little Bosnia,” anchored by rows of tidy red-brick houses, bars, cafes and bakeries and a replica wood fountain that mimics one in the capital Sarajevo, known as the Sebilj.

“It represents Sarajevo in the heart,” said Jasmina Silić, working across the street from the monument at the Skala Bar on Gravois Avenue, the fulcrum of the community.

A reminder of the war

Skala is located just a few doors away from the “Association of Survivors of the Srebrenica Genocide,” a constant reminder of the war and the ethnic cleansing committed by Bosnian Serb forces.

More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims died in Srebrenica, which was declared a genocide by the United Nations, the International Court of Justice and others. It’s estimated that 104,000 died from the war, 2 million were displaced, and 83% of the civilian deaths were Bosnian Muslims.

Bosnian imprint

Bosnia's influence is all over St. Louis, a metropolitan area of almost 3 million on the banks of the Mississippi River.

The best-selling food at St. Louis’ MLS stadium is Bosnian fare from a restaurant called the “Balkan Treat Box.” Saint Louis University houses the Center for Bosnian Studies, and several books document the diaspora including “Bosnian St. Louis: Between Two Worlds” by Patrick McCarthy and Akif Cogo.

It tells of tragedy, resilience and the community’s ties to Europe.

“One woman in St. Louis still carries the keys to her house in Bosnia,” they wrote. “Another man describes his feelings toward Bosnia as a divorce he did not want from a woman he still loves.”

Bosnia was a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation before the war, predominantly Muslim but with a large number of Croatian Roman Catholics and Serbian Orthodox Christians.

The mix binds the World Cup team, a symbol of pride and reconciliation.

“A lot of people from here go to Bosnia every year to see families,” said Silić, speaking at the Skala Bar. ”The team represents unity because it’s all three religions and everybody is one like it used to be when it was still Yugoslavia.”

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AP World Cup: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup

Speaking in response to a question from The Associated Press during a meeting with heads of international news agencies, Putin acknowledged the damage from Ukrainian drone attacks.

“To our regret, some of them break through,” Putin said of the drone strikes. “Russia has an air defense system, we need to improve it, strengthen it, and we will do that.”

The wide-ranging media session came on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, his annual showcase for investment. Hours before the forum opened Wednesday, a Ukrainian drone attack set ablaze an oil terminal in the city and also hit a nearby naval base.

Putin also said Russia is open for a compromise on Ukraine in line with understandings reached at his summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, adding that Ukraine needs to accept them to make a deal to end the conflict, now in its fifth year.

Zelenskyy proposes talks

Also on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed face-to-face negotiations in a public letter addressed directly to Putin. Zelenskyy acknowledged shifting U.S. priorities, saying it would be wrong to wait for the U.S. to return its attention to Ukraine while it remains heavily focused on the Iran war.

In Washington, Trump said it “would be great” if Putin and Zelenskyy meet.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin hadn’t seen the letter yet and repeated his statement that Zelenskyy could come to Moscow if he wants talks. Putin said last month he doesn’t exclude a meeting in a third country, but only when there is a deal to sign.

Putin dismissed the idea that European Union countries could mediate Russia-Ukraine peace talks because “mediation assumes neutrality. Where is the neutrality here?”

Any potential third-party mediators needed to be trusted by both sides, Putin said.

“How can Russia trust people who have been harping about the need to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia for years?” he said.

Putin's battlefield update

Commenting on Russia's use of its Oreshnik intermediate range ballistic missile, Putin said it was fired at targets that allowed it to test its capability and precision before using it against objectives closer to residential areas.

“We hit the area where it was convenient to see the results,” he said. “It was important for making a decision on the future on the full-format use of the Oreshnik on designated targets, including those in populated areas.”

Putin emphasized his push for control of the entire Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, noting that Ukraine controls about 15% of its territory.

Putin declared that the “patriotism and will of the Russian people” will ensure the achievement of goals that Moscow set in Ukraine.

“Russian troops are advancing along the entire line of contact,” he said.

Putin said he has accepted Trump’s compromise proposals from the Alaska summit, saying they could “serve as a basis of agreements between Russia and Ukraine and put an end to the conflict."

Moscow wants a comprehensive settlement, not a temporary truce, he said.

“There is no need to suspend the hostilities to start negotiations,” he said. “Naturally, the Ukrainian side would like us to suspend the advances made by Russian troops. But it would be better to end the war by agreeing to the compromises that were discussed in Anchorage.”

Putin dismisses sabotage accusations

Asked about an AP investigation tracking 191 incidents across Europe, including sabotage, cyberattacks, attempted assassination and other activity that Western officials say are part of a Russian-masterminded campaign, Putin replied there was no detailed proof of Moscow's involvement.

“What are the specific facts? What has been proven?” he said, adding that the accusations showed that Europe was not ready to talk to Russia as an equal partner.

“This only shows that certain political figures in the West are trying to carry out aggressive plans against the Russian Federation,” he said.

Asked whether Russia could contribute to a settlement of the war in Iran, Putin responded that Moscow’s proposal to take enriched uranium from Iran for storage remains on the table. He noted Russia did so as part of the 2015 deal between Iran and world powers, "and we are ready to do it now.”

His future as president

Putin, 73, who has held power in Russia for over a quarter-century, was asked if he planned to run for another term that would keep him in office until 2036, when he'll be 83. He laughed and said he’s “not even thinking about it.”

“Only God knows if any of us will be healthy enough ... to survive until tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, much less solve the problems we face and achieve the goals we set for ourselves,” he said.

In 2020, Putin ordered amendments to the Russian Constitution that essentially reset his term limits, keeping him in power.

Drone attacks on St. Petersburg

Wednesday's drone attack hit the nearby Kronstadt naval base and an oil terminal, sending a plume of black smoke above Russia’s second-largest city — an embarrassing blow to Putin's efforts to cast the conflict as a distant event that doesn’t affect Russian daily life.

It also underscored Kyiv’s growing ability to hit deep inside Russia and showed the vulnerability of its cities. Scores of flights were delayed or diverted at St. Petersburg’s airport and authorities cut cellphone internet service to try to prevent drone attacks.

Putin had scaled down Russia’s annual Victory Day parade on May 9, fearing Ukrainian strikes. Days later, a massive drone attack on Moscow’s suburbs killed three and showed the capital’s vulnerability.

Peskov said Russia’s forces were carrying out “systematic” strikes on Kyiv. On Tuesday, Russia launched deadly attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

Russia's version of Davos

Putin has used the St. Petersburg forum, likened to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to showcase his country’s economic advances and encourage foreign investment. While Western officials and business leaders have stayed away after Putin sent troops into Ukraine in 2022, Russia has sought guests from elsewhere to underline its declared goal of promoting a “multipolar world.”

Saudi Arabia sent a large delegation this year, and the presidents of Uzbekistan and Tanzania and vice president of China also are present. A U.S. official, Rodney Mims Cook Jr., head of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, is attending for the first time in years.

Russia’s economic outlook has clouded as the initial boost from military spending has fizzled. The government raised taxes and increased domestic borrowing to keep its budget deficit under control.

Asked at the media session if Russia’s economy was struggling because of the military action, Putin paraphrased Mark Twain that “rumors of my death are highly exaggerated.”

He said the economy was growing but admitted that inflation was a concern.

“We’ve deliberately taken steps to cool the economy,” Putin said of Russia’s Central Bank putting the country’s key interest rate at 14.5%, which he called “a difficult decision.”

“You can say we’ve cooled off, or you can say we haven’t done everything yet, but these are deliberate steps. We don’t want inflation — hyperinflation — to reach 60-80%, as it is some countries,” he said. “We’re fighting for the health of the Russian economy as a whole.”

Opponents of drilling in the refuge's coastal plain have pointed to a lack of industry interest in the prior two sales held there and ongoing changes in Alaska’s arctic region due to climate change as proof the region should be off-limits to drilling. But supporters of drilling see the coastal plain, which is roughly the size of Delaware, as a potential untapped resource that could boost U.S. oil production and generate new revenue and jobs.

A coalition of conservation groups this spring sent a letter to leaders of 11 petroleum companies including major ConocoPhillips and Hilcorp, both major players in Alaska, urging them to not participate in the sale. The letter cited ongoing litigation over the leasing program, dating to President Donald Trump's first term, and warned of “financial, operational and reputational risks.”

The letters, signed by groups including The Wilderness Society, Sierra Club and Earthjustice, called the refuge a crown jewel in the country's public lands system and said there is strong support for protecting it, “making any action there especially visible and consequential.”

A spokesperson for ConocoPhillips Alaska, Megan Olson, said the company doesn't discuss its lease sale plans. A Hilcorp spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration has taken a keen interest in Alaska, and his tax and spending bill passed by Congress last year included provisions mandating lease sales in three regions of the state. In addition to the refuge's coastal plain, leases have also been offered in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and in Cook Inlet, an aging basin that's provided natural gas for Alaska's most populous region for decades.

There were no takers in the Cook Inlet auction in March. But there were hundreds of bids, including from major oil companies, for what was the first sale since 2019 in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska — despite pending litigation challenging the leasing program. The Trump administration has moved to open more lands to drilling in the reserve and roll back protections there. The petroleum reserve is where ConocoPhillips Alaska is developing the large Willow oil project.

On Alaska's vast, petroleum-rich North Slope, the major oil fields of Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk lie between the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

A state corporation, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, currently holds leases in the refuge but there is no active drilling. The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that the coastal plain could contain 4.25 billion to 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil, but there is limited information about the amount and quality of oil.

The coastal plain, bordering the Beaufort Sea in northeast Alaska, features rolling hills and tundra and provides habitat for wildlife including musk oxen and migratory birds. It is considered sacred by the Gwich'in, because the caribou herd they rely upon calve there. Leaders from Gwich’in villages near the refuge have vowed to continue fighting to prevent drilling there.

But some Alaska Native communities have embraced development and see it as essential to the regional economy.

Nagruk Harcharek, president and CEO of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, an advocacy group whose members include leaders from Alaska Native communities on the North Slope, said there’s a long history of balancing development with culturally important practices, such as subsistence hunting. Responsible development is a key part of self-determination, particularly for residents in Kaktovik, the only community within the refuge, who support drilling, he said.

Kaktovik residents hunt and fish on the coastal plain and “will be a big part of whatever project moves forward in making sure that all of those resources are protected and that their people are taken care of," he said.

The haul of Madagascar hissing cockroaches and dubia cockroaches, worth 200,000 Australian dollars ($142,000), was seized in May from a commercial breeder in the city of Bathurst in New South Wales state, according to Australia’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water.

The Madagascar hissing species is one of the world’s biggest cockroaches, measuring 2 to 3 inches (5 to 8 centimeters) in length. Photos released by the department showed a shiny, brown invertebrate larger than a person’s finger.

It's much bigger than the country's common Australian cockroach, which measures between 0.9 and 1.4 inches (2.3 and 3.6 centimeters) long. Cockroaches flourish in Australia due to its sub-tropical climates and the country is home to hundreds of species.

Bathurst snake catcher Stefanie Lesser told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the larger exotic species were likely being sold as as a cost-effective reptile food because their large size meant fewer insects were needed. Officials urged pet owners to seek out crickets or wood roaches to feed their lizards instead.

Both Madagascar hissing and dubia cockroaches are illegal to import into Australia. They can’t be legally kept, bred or sold no matter how they were obtained, the department said in a statement.

Australia has strict biosecurity controls at its borders to protect its agriculture and horticulture sectors and native wildlife from pest infestations. Those smuggling in undeclared or illegal animal, insect or plant material can be fined thousands of dollars.

Exotic cockroaches “have not been subject to an environmental risk assessment” and they could spread disease or harm native wildlife, the statement said. Officials warned of prosecutions against those caught with the invertebrates.

A spokesperson said charges weren’t laid against the Bathurst breeder. The cockroaches seized would be euthanized, the department said.

“Somebody had to step up and make a play,” coach Rod Brind’Amour said simply.

A shocking third-period comeback changed everything, both in getting the Hurricanes back in the Stanley Cup Final and setting the stage for Jarvis and that power-play unit to get a needed breakthrough moment.

Jarvis blasted a one-timer past Carter Hart on a power play at 3:56 of overtime to lift the Hurricanes past the Vegas Golden Knights. 4-3 on Thursday night. That ended a night that saw Carolina trail 2-0 entering the third period after looking outmatched through the second, rally with three unanswered goals, then regroup after giving up a tying goal late to force the OT.

Just as importantly, the Hurricanes went from staring at an 0-2 series deficit after losing twice at home to heading West for Game 3 on Saturday in a tied series after an abrupt turn of fortune.

The time was coming, the Hurricanes kept insisting, when their top-line guys and the power play would make big plays.

Turns out, they were right.

“This is exciting, this is what playoff hockey is all about," said Jarvis, who admitted the winning score was a “huge” weight off his shoulders. "It's tight games and momentum swings and you never really know what's going to happen next.”

Unexpected comeback

Indeed, Vegas' roster filled with Cup winners from 2023 looked every bit in control of this one. Yet the Hurricanes pulled off a comeback that will earn a spot in franchise lore alongside moments like the 2002 “Molson Miracle” at Montreal — when they rallied from a 3-0 hole entering the third before winning in 4-3 OT in Round 2 — or the 2009 first-round shocker at New Jersey when the Hurricanes scored twice in the final 80 seconds for another 4-3 win in Game 7.

It started with a tough effort by Logan Stankoven to beat Rasmus Andersson for a puck along the boards before coming behind the net to throw one off the skate of Jeremy Lauzon in the crease to slip by Hart for a life-infusing score at the 10:20 mark.

Mark Jankowski followed, coming when linemate William Carrier kept the entry alive while tussling with Lauzon and fed him for a score. This one stuck, coming after Jankowski had an overtime winner waved off in Game 2 of the first-round series against Ottawa and a second goal later waved off against Philadelphia for a goaltender-interference review on Carrier.

“It's nice to sit on the bench and look over and see they're not challenging it,” Jankowski said.

Even more surprising, the power play carried the Hurricanes home.

Jarvis, power play come through in clutch

Carolina's power play entered the night just 7 of 58 (12.1%) in the playoffs after ranking fourth in the regular season at 24.9%. But, that unit struck twice to change everything on Thursday night, first with captain Jordan Staal redirecting Shayne Gostisbehere's shot to beat Carter Hart from the top of the crease for a 3-2 lead with the man advantage.

Then, after Vegas got a tying goal off Mark Stone's skate with 1:21 left in regulation — coming when Hurricanes defenseman Jaccob Slavin knocking a loose rebound past Frederik Andersen into the net while clear the crease — Carolina came up with a rousing response in OT.

The fact it was Jarvis who got it only magnified the scope of the moment. The winning blast marked only the fourth goal of the playoffs for Jarvis, a top-line forward who led the team with 32 regular-season goals and played for Canada's silver-medalist team at the Milan Cortina Olympics.

Brind'Amour had said multiple times in recent weeks that the Sebastian Aho-centered line featuring Jarvis and Andrei Svechnikov had largely played other top lines to even. The Hurricanes had rolled to a 12-1 record through the Eastern Conference playoffs while the Stankoven-centered second line or the third line featuring open-ice speedster Nikolaj Ehlers carried the scoring.

But Brind'Amour cautioned Wednesday: “We need them to get going.”

And after Vegas went ahead 2-0 on Brett Howden's second terrific individual effort, Brind'Amour swapped Jarvis with Jordan Martinook midway through the second period to put Jarvis alongside Ehlers and Staal — a move that led to an immediate goal for Jarvis in Game 2 of the second-round series against the Flyers.

This time, Jarvis buried the shot from the left circle off a feed from Gostisbehere up top. A crowd buzzing since the start of the third-period comeback erupted, with Jarvis skating toward the blue line and dropping to one knee to slide across the ice.

The win improved Carolina to 6-0 in overtime during the playoffs. That includes all four Game 2s in this postseason at home.

“It was desperation," Stankoven said. "I think we needed to try to get that split tonight."

___

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

The finance committee deferred the ordinance this week, delaying a decision on whether voters will get to weigh in on extending the 1-mill property tax that first passed in 2022. The school board voted 6-1 in March to send the renewal to city council.

The measure needs council approval to appear on the November ballot.

Some council members pointed to the proposed statewide property tax cut from state lawmakers in Tallahassee as a reason for the delay. Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan addressed the holdup at a news conference Thursday, saying she does not believe the council has grounds to stall.

“The role of the council, in what I’ve been told, is to simply be in a ministerial and managerial role — just making that request happen,” Deegan said. “So I don’t think council has a role here beyond saying ‘this is what you want, we’ll put it on the ballot.’ I don’t really understand the debate.”

The 1-mill tax will generate about $121 million a year and will fund teacher and employee pay, arts programs, and athletics. It is not a tax increase — it would maintain the current rate. For a home valued at $300,000, the tax amounts to about $300 a year.

John Meeks, a teacher and first vice president of Duval Teachers United, said the delay puts educators’ livelihoods in jeopardy.

“I think the only result of these delays could be the endangerment of our teachers’ well-being,” Meeks said. “There’s no increase. It’s just a keeping of the status quo, which has allowed our school system to have the A grade that it has today. I don’t think we can afford to go backwards.”

Tiffany Clark, a parent and advocate with Parents Who Lead, said the holdup is pulling focus away from what matters.

“This is getting tied up in a way that it shouldn’t,” Clark said. “This is only about teachers and that’s it, and that is where the focus needs to be.”

Jacksonville City Council President Kevin Carrico acknowledged the deferral but said he expects the full council to vote on the measure as soon as Tuesday, after the bill is discharged from the finance committee to the floor.

“I anticipate that’s what’s going to happen,” Carrico said. “Then the full body can vote on this referendum.”

Carrico pushed back on the idea that the delay signals the measure is in trouble.

“I think there’s a cause for concern about the stall. I think people are reading into it a little bit too much,” he said. “I’m pretty sure whether I vote for it or not, it goes to the ballot for the people to decide.”

Superintendent Dr. Christopher Bernier said the district is working to understand what the deferral means and how to move forward.

“Over the next several days, we will consult with council and our attorneys to understand what this deferral means procedurally and how to determine a path for success moving forward,” Bernier said at the June school board meeting. “We’ll continue to work on behalf of our teachers, school police, and other staff — all who rely on the millage to make ends meet.”

Two city council members are hosting separate public meetings to discuss the referendum on Friday. Councilman Raul Arias will hold a meeting at 10:30 a.m. at City Hall in the Don Davis Room. Councilman Matt Carlucci’s meeting is set for 1 p.m. at City Hall in council chambers.

Voters would have the final say on the renewal if the measure reaches the November ballot.

Jarvis’ heroics 3:56 into OT came after a thrilling third period that included four goals being scored and another getting called off because of goaltender interference. Carolina became the first team since 1994 to win a Cup final game when trailing by multiple goals in the final 10 minutes.

“It was lot,” said Jarvis, who scored for just the fourth time this playoffs. “We did a great job controlling our emotions. We never got too high, never got too low. Just kept responding, and that’s what I love about this group is we always bounce back.”

Game 3 is Saturday night in Las Vegas. There is now a guarantee the series will return to Raleigh for a Game 5 next week.

That did not look anything close to certain when Hurricanes had almost nothing going for the first 45 minutes, falling behind by two goals as the Golden Knights took advantage of a couple of scoring chances and locked down defensively. A couple of strong shifts in the offensive zone just before the midway point of the third brought the crowd back to life because the Hurricanes were buzzing.

“The building is a tough building to play in when it gets going,” captain Jordan Staal said. “Obviously, we just needed a spark.”

Logan Stankoven, one of the team's best players this spring, provided he. Stankoven made a terrific individual effort to get them on the board, taking the puck away from Rasmus Andersson, going to the net and banking a shot off Jeremy Lauzon and in with 9:40 remaining in regulation.

Less than three minutes later, Mark Jankowski fired a shot past Carter Hart to tie it, flipping the script from Game 1, when Vegas erased a multigoal deficit and won. This is the first time each of the first two games of a Cup final featured a team falling behind by more than a goal and winning.

“Stanky did a great job getting it going and Janks with a great shot, and it just carried on from there,” Jarvis said.

A big decision by Vegas coach John Tortorella with five minutes left paved the way for it to happen.

Frederik Andersen initially went full extension to deny Ivan Barbashev with the paddle of his stick, and a scrum ensued in the crease that ended with the puck eventually in the net. Referee Jean Hebert waved it off immediately, saying Andersen was pushed into the net and ruling it was goaltender interference.

“I saw a loose puck in front of Freddie," Tortorella said. "Our player stabbed it, didn’t move the goalie and it goes through him into the other side. I’d challenge it 10 out of 10 times.”

Tortorella after some deliberation opted to use his coach’s challenge, and the on-ice officials in consultation with the NHL’s situation room confirmed the call on the ice stood.

“The ruling on the play was goaltender interference,” executive vice president and director of officiating Stephen Walkom told a pool reporter. “He waved it (off) immediately. He believed that it was under the goalie, and the Vegas player went after the puck and interfered with the goalie and his ability to freeze the puck and waived it off immediately.”

The punishment for a failed challenge is a 2-minute minor penalty. The Hurricanes went on the power play, where they had been so ineffective all night and most of the playoffs.

Not this time. Staal redirected Shayne Gostisbehere’s point shot in on the power play. with 4:35 left in regulation.

The Hurricanes killed off a penalty in the intervening time before allowing Stone to tie it with 1:21 left at 6 on 5 with Hart pulled for an extra skater. Carolina defenseman Jaccob Slavin actually knocked the puck into his own net on the play.

Eearly in overtime, Tomas Hertl tripped Staal to put Carolina back on the power play. That allowed Jarvis to score just Carolina’s ninth power play goal of the playoffs.

“That’s a step in the right direction,” Jarvis said. “Our power play found our groove tonight. It started with Jordo in the third, and there just making the right plays, playing smart and being aggressive and it worked out.”

Instead of Vegas going home looking to move to the verge of a second championship in nine years of existence, the series is all square, despite Hart making some big saves and Brett Howden scoring his playoff-leading 12th and 13th goals.

Asked what changed, a tight-lipped Tortorella said: “I have my thoughts. I’m not discussing it here.”

___

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

The “60 Minutes” correspondent’s searing rebuke of CBS management this week, in which he questioned his bosses’ credentials and motives, may have ended in his firing, but amounted to the sort of mouthing-off that workplace peons typically only fantasize about.

“That’s the American dream — to be able to tell off your boss and walk out the door,” says Zach Tyra, a 40-year-old data analyst from Jones, Oklahoma, who found a kindred spirit in the newsman, recalling his own experience with a former boss he said was clueless. “I couldn’t do what Scott Pelley did because I didn’t have the safety net or the resources or the network that he has. I couldn’t tell my boss to stick it. I just had to sit there and eat it.”

Pelley's message may have been delivered in the measured baritone of someone polished by decades on the airwaves. But his backtalk stirred many who’ve felt the simmering rage of feeling a clueless boss was turning their days into a nightmare.

“It’s also kind of weird, like, Pelley isn’t some blue-collar hero. There’s a wide gap between, like, Pelley and your local everyday guy down at the hardware store,” Tyra says. “But I think everyone can relate to standing up for what they believe.”

A staff meeting that went deeply awry

Pelley's dressing-down came in a Monday staff meeting with the new executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Nick Bilton, brought aboard by Bari Weiss, who became CBS News’ editor-in-chief in October. The correspondent reportedly grilled Bilton about the firings last week of Bilton’s predecessor, Tanya Simon, and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, accusing management of “murdering” the program, a revered cornerstone of TV journalism and a mainstay of Sunday nights for nearly six decades.

“She has no qualifications for her job,” Pelley said of Weiss, according to the media news site Status, which reported he then turned his ire at Bilton. “You have slender qualifications for this job.”

In firing Pelley, Bilton called his outburst an “ambush” of “remarkable incivility and contempt.” But, with Pelley becoming a proxy for the American worker, others cheered.

Parry Headrick, who runs a public relations firm in Boston, was immediately transported to his days as a young reporter at a small newspaper, where he had been carefully chronicling the trials of people who fell ill from what was believed to be exposure to toxic waste.

He had earned the trust of one family only to find editors plastered a headline on the story that reduced the sick child to a “toxic boy” and caused Headrick to lose all faith in his bosses. He screamed at the paper’s publisher and editor-in-chief before quitting.

“I lost my goddamn mind when they did that. And the story with Pelley resonated so hard specifically because of that,” says 57-year-old Headrick, who thinks many people can see Pelley’s point of view. “There exists in most Americans the desire to speak truth to power.”

That such an outburst arose in the news business may be no surprise; journalists pride themselves as a truth-to-power, voice-for-the-voiceless bunch. Staff meetings with reporters sassing editors are common, and in newsrooms everywhere, managers have been subjected to the type of tough questions they pay their people to ask others.

The threshold for dismissal varies from place to place

The line separating acceptable discourse with fireable offense is as different in each workplace as the settings themselves, whether a dive bar or diocesan chancery.

“In the real world, there are layers of politeness and cordiality that don’t really exist in journalism,” says Headrick, who cheered Pelley “pushing back on something larger.”

Clare Haynes had a middle-management role at a nonprofit when she had her Pelley moment two decades ago. She was three weeks into a job where she thought she’d been brought aboard to institute changes that would achieve an innovative work culture. But every suggestion she made was dismissed. Her boss said his boss wouldn’t buy the idea.

“Are you saying you’re too weak to ask?” she snapped. His mouth fell open. He stared at her silently for a full minute.

Haynes survived, lasting three more years at the firm, but things were never the same.

“I didn’t lose my job, but I paid the price, being seen as maverick,” says 55-year-old Haynes, of Royal Leamington Spa, England, who now runs a coaching firm that trains executives how to handle difficult workplace conversations.

Johan Konst was working at a Swedish media company when he felt pushed to the limit seven years ago. After years of high-stress, hard-selling days pushing advertising he didn’t believe in, he finally said his piece, delivering a blunt, profanity-dotted message to his boss.

He was promptly shown the door.

“It’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” says 34-year-old Konst, of Amsterdam, who walked away with a nice severance check. “At some point, this had to happen.”

___

Matt Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://x.com/sedensky

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The House of Mirth,” “The Custom of the Country” and other probing stories of New York society was living in Paris at the time and soon set out to help those imperiled by the clash between Allied and German forces. She set up a workroom for seamstresses and others who had lost their jobs, established hostels that aided thousands of refugees and even reported from the trenches for a series of dispatches that ran in the American periodical Scribner's Magazine.

But Wharton eventually — and inevitably — channeled her observations and experiences into fiction. She worked on a novel published after the war, “A Son at the Front,” and attempted a story about an affluent couple in the French countryside who decide that the war is going well enough that they can resume the social gatherings of the past. “The Men Who Saved the World” — unfinished and never before published — appears Friday in the new issue of The Strand Magazine, which has released rare works by Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and many others.

“The boom of guns can be heard in the distance. A few young soldiers sit among the guests. And the hostess wants to know whether they might have dancing,” Strand Managing Editor Andrew Gulli writes in a brief introduction. “Wharton asks a question that is as relevant today as it was over a century ago: what is the cost of refusing to see the horrors beyond the softly curtained windows — and who pays it?”

Wharton had long scrutinized the rich from the inside. Born into a wealthy New York City family in 1862, she knew firsthand the manners and codes and traditions that she picked apart in her best known work. In “The Men Who Saved the World,” believed to be written in 1918, she shifts the narrative from the New York drawing rooms of her early fiction to a French chateau within miles of a battlefield.

The author had a deep affinity for France and French culture, which she regarded as “one of the greatest cultures in the world, perhaps the greatest culture,” Wharton scholar Julie Olin-Ammentorp wrote in an email, adding that she was unsure why the author never finished “The Men Who Saved the World.” The German attack stirred Wharton's conscience, and her imagination.

“The Men Who Saved the World” dramatizes the separation between civilian and military life, and what happens when they merge. It's told through the perspective of a young American nurse, Milly Arden, a guest at the home of Fred and Madge Upshall, who are preparing a dinner party in the same setting where they had once permitted an army surgeon to perform amputations. Arden finds herself seated next to a war hero, Capt. Sherman Wake, regarded by Mrs. Upshall as one of the “real people.” Capt. Wake proves eager to discuss the “catastrophic horror and waste” he has seen nearby.

“You hear the guns pretty distinctly here,” Wake tells Arden. "They must make the windows rattle when everything’s quiet, don’t they?”

“Yes, they do,” she responded, looking out on an orchid “which the cannonade had displaced just before dinner.”

Last weekend, his campaign wrestled with stories about sexually explicit messages that Platner sent to several women while he was married. Then on Thursday, The New York Times reported about his relationships with previous girlfriends. Some viewed him positively but others described him as volatile and insulting.

One woman said Platner twisted her arm during an argument and locked her in a room. Platner called that allegation untrue.

But with Maine's primary around the corner Tuesday and Democrats desperate to rally behind a candidate who can defeat Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November, there's been little sign of voters or political allies backing away from Platner, who has pitched himself as an imperfect person who has redeemed himself.

Some dismissed news of the text messages as a private matter, one that should be addressed solely by the married couple. Others argue that the need for Democrats to take back control of the U.S. Senate from Republicans is too important to cast aside imperfect candidates.

Yet they're also wrestling with the question of whether more controversial information surrounding Platner could come out ahead of the November election.

“I think a lot of people are afraid,” said Deb Dagnan, chair of Maine’s Piscataquis County Democrats. “They’re waiting for the other shoe to drop after he gets the nomination. Then what do we do?”

Key to the Senate

Platner is key to Democrats hopes' to take back the U.S. Senate this year. Yet he's been bedeviled by near-constant controversies involving his disclosure of a since-covered tattoo of a Nazi symbol, his history of inflammatory online comments and the texting revelations.

Nevertheless, Platner's most prominent supporters have continued to back the candidate, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Ruben Gallego. Platner is scheduled to appear in Bar Harbor Friday evening with progressive Rep. Ro Khanna of California, as well as Democratic candidates for U.S. House and governor, as a part of a “get out the vote” rally in the coastal resort town.

The event is taking place just days ahead of the state's June 9 primary election, where Platner is expected to secure the Democratic nomination. His top opponent, Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her campaign in late April.

He'll do so under reignited scrutiny amid reports that he and his wife, Amy Gertner, have had marital difficulties and sought counseling after he allegedly sent sexually explicit text messages to other women.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Gertner had told the campaign in August about the messages, which she had discovered on his phone last year, to make sure they weren’t a liability to the campaign. Platner’s campaign team reportedly decided that the texts were private and being handled by the couple, who were married in 2023.

Genevieve McDonald, a former campaign staffer for Platner, told The Associated Press that the candidate was “sexting multiple women while married” and that “the campaign tried to assess that as an election vulnerability.”

Shortly after the news came out, Platner posted a five-minute video taken by Gertner, who avoided speaking directly about her husband’s reported texts but dubbed the broader coverage as “gossip” and said “being married is hard.”

Voters worry that more scandals lurk

Gertner's emotional comments about working on her marriage have resonated with some women, who say they are shocked that a former campaign aide would betray someone's trust and the issue should remain between the couple.

“It’s none of my business as far as I’m concerned,” said Joanne Mason, a local Democratic leader from south-central Maine. “And I would hope that people wouldn’t judge any one person on their own private marriage.”

Valerie Tate, a Democrat from Belfast, described Gertner's honesty about trying to work on their mental health and marriage as admirable.

“That is not a scandal,” Tate wrote in an email. “That is integrity. Personal growth is not a disqualification from public life. For many of us, it is precisely what made us worthy of it.”

However, Tate conceded that her mind wasn’t fully at ease. With the public still learning about Platner’s past, there is a chance something could emerge as a dealbreaker for voters.

“Of course, there is that concern as there would be in any race with somebody we don’t know all the dramas and the journeys they’ve been on," she wrote. "Something could come out that would be disqualifying.”

Past controversies simmer

This isn’t the first time Platner has faced questions about his past. He had a tattoo recognized as a Nazi symbol, which he had covered up after starting his campaign.

Platner has said he didn't realize the meaning of the tattoo. However, a former girlfriend told the Times he joked about it being a Nazi symbol and called it “my Totenkopf.”

There’s also been much attention on Platner's former Reddit posts, which were dismissive of military sexual assaults and used homophobic slurs, for which he has apologized.

Platner has never held elected office and has fashioned a straight-talking, progressive, populist-style campaign focusing on issues such as income inequality, lack of health care accessibility and the rising cost of housing. In return, he's attracted thousands at his rallies and campaign events and collected millions in campaign funds to further boost his messaging.

“People want somebody new,” said Paige Zeigler, a former Maine Democratic lawmaker and head of the Waldo County Democrats, on why Platner's staying power has remained strong. “They want somebody that they feel that they can embrace. And Platner is riding that wave.” ___

Kruesi reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

The 29-year-old Kupcho has four career LPGA Tour wins, but just one since 2022, when she earned her only major victory in The Chevron Championship at Mission Hills. She missed the cuts of her three previous U.S. Open starts, but charged ahead at Riviera with three straight birdies in her afternoon group before adding back-to-back birdies after the turn.

“I just really, really like the golf course,” Kupcho said. “It’s kind of a ball-striker’s paradise. Just hit it down the fairway, hit it on the green and make the putts.”

Play began under a heavy cloud cover at the 100-year-old country club in Pacific Palisades just two miles from the ocean, but the sun broke through around lunchtime as wind picked up. The conditions weren’t oppressive at any point, but the players realized Riviera’s setup presents a formidable challenge in any weather, and the scores reflected it.

The entire field managed just one eagle in the first round — Allisen Corpuz holed out from 86 yards on the 17th.

Mexico’s Gaby Lopez and Japan's Hinako Shibuno joined South Korea's Hyunjo Yoo, Ina Yoon and Minji Kang in the group at 68. Lopez made five birdies in her first eight holes and was the only player to get to 6 under, but she fell back with three bogeys.

Kupcho gained 4.27 strokes on her approach shots to lead the field in the first round, highlighted by a gorgeous 133-yard shot inside a foot on the second hole. She doesn't normally do extensive pre-tournament research on courses despite the encouragement of her parents, but she came down to Riviera on a scouting trip when the LPGA Tour stopped 13 miles away in Tarzana two months ago.

“When I showed up this week, it was just like I knew where everything was,” Kupcho said. “I knew what I was doing. So I think it actually helped. Parents are always right, right?”

The 33-year-old Kim has played pretty well in sprawling Los Angeles this season: At that JM Eagle LA Championship held at El Caballero in April, she led after the second and third rounds — leading by eight strokes at one point — before blowing a three-stroke lead over the final eight holes and losing a playoff to Australia’s Hannah Green.

“This course is really famous in the world, so I’m very happy to play here this week,” said Kim, who also got a head start on Riviera in practice last weekend. “Also, the course is not easy. Every hole is putting me to the test.”

Kim birdied her first two holes, but her round didn’t pick up steam until the final four holes, when she made three consecutive birdies — including two exceptional approach shots and a 29-foot birdie putt — before drilling another 29-foot par putt to end it.

World No. 1 Nelly Korda made a rough start at 2 over, struggling off the tee. She also couldn't get used to a new pair of shoes sent to her this week Nike and LeBron James, a Korda fan who is becoming an avid golfer himself.

Korda started the day in the new shoes, but changed playing the first six holes — although she said they didn't affect her play.

“It wasn’t a great day,” Korda said. “I hit it really good Monday through Wednesday, so I have honestly no idea where this came from. So I’m going to go to the range.”

Aphrodite Deng, a 16-year-old amateur, was in contention for the lead before playing two late holes at 3 over and carding a 70.

Deng was born in Canada to Chinese parents before growing up in New Jersey and eventually settling in Florida. A competitive child figure skater for several years before the COVID-19 pandemic, Deng took up golf only seven years ago, but won the U.S. Girls’ Junior last year.

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AP golf: https://apnews.com/golf

The three-time AL MVP was out of the lineup earlier in the day for a third straight game and the Yankees were awaiting clarity about what they said was a bone bruise in one of the slugger’s right ribs that is causing right shoulder pain.

The team later announced Judge was diagnosed with the stress fracture of the first rib on his right side and will need to rest and have limited activity. He'll be re-evaluated after having additional imaging in about four to six weeks. The Yankees said in a statement that Judge is expected to return “at some point this season.”

After avoiding a three-game sweep with a 2-1 victory over Cleveland on Thursday, manager Aaron Boone said the team was awaiting the findings of Dr. Gregory Pearl, a vascular surgery specialist in Dallas.

“Look, it’s a lot of smart people in a specialized area and (the) guy’s several states aways,” Boone said. “We just got to be patient.”

Judge underwent a CT scan on Thursday morning and had an MRI earlier in the week when he met with a specialist. The bruise was first revealed when Judge underwent testing on the team’s off day on Monday.

“I’m obviously not a doctor, I don’t know how it all works, but there’s a lot of people involved in trying to make sure we get the right diagnosis,” Boone said Thursday morning.

Judge was diagnosed with a stress fracture in one of his right ribs in March 2020. The injury occurred when he dived for a ball in September 2019, but Judge didn't miss any time because of the 2020 season being delayed by the pandemic.

He is hitting .248 with 17 homers and 38 RBIs. But he has just one homer in his last 18 games since May 10 and ended an 11-game homer and RBI drought with a game-ending, two-run drive on May 24 against the Tampa Bay Rays.

Judge entered the game against Tampa Bay in a 1-for-24 slump that dropped his batting average to .246. He was hitless in 15 at-bats before singling in the first inning.

Judge won the batting title last season when he hit a career-high .331 with 53 homers and 114 RBIs in 152 games. He missed 10 games from July 26-Aug. 4 with a flexor strain in his right elbow that he sustained on a throw to home July 22 in Toronto. He underwent a plasma-rich injection and did not require offseason surgery.

When Judge was hurt last season, Giancarlo Stanton played 17 games in the outfield. Stanton has been out since April 24 with a strained right calf and started taking live at-bats on the field Wednesday, though he was ruled out for New York’s upcoming road trip.

José Caballero started the first two games against Cleveland and has made four starts in right field since being acquired from Tampa Bay at the July 31 trade deadline. Max Schuemann made his first career start in right field Thursday and made a diving catch on Steven Kwan in the second along with a leaping catch on Brayan Rocchio in the seventh.

Judge had started 52 of New York’s first 59 games in right field. Rookie Spencer Jones made four starts in right field before getting sent down May 22 and Cody Bellinger has started two games.

___

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

She argued against the proposed property tax cut, warning that it would severely impact city services, including road maintenance, libraries, and public safety.

Watch Deegan’s full news conference above.

“This hastily conceived, short-sighted overhaul of how cities are funded will hurt more people than it helps,” Deegan said, emphasizing that the toll of the impact would hit low-income communities the most.

According to the House joint resolution approved by lawmakers, the amendment would:

• Increase the homestead exemption for non-school property taxes:
• • $150,000 beginning Jan. 1, 2027
  • $250,000 beginning Jan. 1, 2028
• Keep school district taxes out of the expanded exemption
• Reduce the cap on annual assessment increases for many non-homestead properties (including certain residential and other properties not covered by the homestead cap), from 10% to 5% beginning Jan. 1, 2027.
• Limit how counties and cities can use ad valorem tax revenue, restricting it to “core services,” including public safety, education and schools, infrastructure, natural resource projects, debt service, retirement obligations and basic operations of constitutional offices and local government administration.

Deegan said the tax overhaul would remove roughly 1/3 — equivalent to $300 million — of the city’s budget. It’s a massive price cut that she said had no replacement plan to cover the loss.

“Now the state wants to take that money away with no solutions for services that you rely on every single day,” she said. “This proposed reduction will inevitably result in roads deteriorating, libraries, pools, and parks closing, public safety response times going up, housing affordability worsening, and more homeless on our streets.”

She also emphasized that local government should be the community’s voice — but said it’s repeatedly stifled by state government.

“Here’s the plain truth: this is not conservative government or being fiscally responsible. It’s a Tallahassee takeover,” Deegan expressed. “It moves all the important decisions about quality of life, your quality of life away from you to unknown representatives in Tallahassee.”

The mayor plans to continue to educate residents about the effects of the proposal if it is passed in November. She also urged voters to educate themselves beyond the headlines.

To take effect, the proposed amendment would need 60% voter approval.

Included in the sanctions are Alejandro Castro Espín, the sole son of former Cuban President Raúl Castro and Vilma Espín. He served as an adviser to Cuba’s Defense and National Security Commission and was present when Raúl Castro greeted then-U.S. President Barack Obama in Havana during a historic March 2016 meeting. Castro Espín's son, Raúl Alejandro Castro Calis, also was listed.

The new penalties come as U.S. President Donald Trump has been threatening military action in Cuba since ousting Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January and then ordering an energy blockade that choked off fuel shipments to Cuba. That has led to severe blackouts, food shortages and an economic collapse across the island.

The threats took on additional weight after the U.S. announced criminal charges against Raúl Castro last month. Thursday's penalties, which follow Trump signing an executive order expanding sanctions against the island, freeze individuals’ property and bank accounts in the U.S. But it’s unclear how intertwined their finances are with the U.S. financial system.

It’s “pretty unlikely” Cuba’s president and others have assets in the U.S., said Richard Feinberg, former U.S. national security adviser on Latin America and professor emeritus of international political economy at the University of California, San Diego.

He said the sanctions “could be seen as preliminary to an intervention or increasing pressure on the regime to cut a deal,” adding that the rhetoric of Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio “could take you in either direction.”

Díaz-Canel accused Trump of making “new threatening statements against Cuba” and said “these measures are aimed at reinforcing the blockade and escalating the conflict between Cuba and the United States.”

“This political blindness adds to the coercive measures applied in recent weeks against our country, designed to harm the Cuban people,” he wrote on X. “The aggression and perversion of the U.S. government will clash with our resolve to confront the worst-case scenarios and resist the imperial onslaught.”

Trump says about Cuba, 'We’re going to handle that'

Asked Thursday if his sanctions were meant to accelerate Cuba’s collapse, Trump said, “We just want them to be a nicely run country.”

“The country is starving and it’s got no energy, it’s got no oil, it’s got no money, it’s got nothing. It’s got a beautiful piece of land. You could have beautiful resorts,” Trump told reporters at an unrelated event in the Oval Office.

Asked whether Cuba is close to collapsing, he said, “It’s sort of collapsed” and added that “we’re going to handle that as soon as we’ve finished” military operations in Iran.

“I like to do one thing at a time,” Trump said.

Trump has ratcheted up talk of regime change in Cuba after pledging to conduct a “friendly takeover” of the country if its leadership did not open its economy to American investment and kick out U.S. adversaries.

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who has long taken a hardline against Cuba’s socialist leadership, has said Trump’s preference is to reach a deal but has said he is doubtful the U.S. can find a diplomatic resolution with the current government.

Those “designated today direct or fund the regime and its efforts to mobilize its radical revolutionary movements in the United States and around the world,” Rubio said in a statement.

Rubio has defended the Trump administration’s decision to slap escalating sanctions on Havana, the largest of which is against Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A., a business conglomerate operated by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces.

Cuba's top diplomat condemns new sanctions as ‘creating a scenario of conflict’

In addition to Diaz-Canel, Bruno Rodríguez, Cuba’s minister of foreign affairs, said “the vile inclusion” of Díaz-Canel and others, including Cuban institutions and civil society organizations, “is the latest example of the U.S. interventionist plan to portray Cuba as a threat to U.S. national security."

“Every U.S. action aimed at creating a scenario of conflict between the two countries is destined to fail,” he wrote on X. “Every threat against Cuba’s independence and sovereignty will be met with even greater unity and determination from our people.”

The new sanctions, which freeze any assets that those targeted may have in U.S. jurisdictions or any that come into U.S. jurisdictions, also apply to non-American entities that might do business with them.

In addition to the individuals, the sanctions also target Cuba's defense ministry; its Institute for the Friendship with the Peoples, which promotes people-to-people talks; Amistur Cuba, an arm of the institute that oversees specialized tourism on the island; and the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.

Cuba's president, Castro relatives and others are on the list

Díaz-Canel was handpicked in 2018 to succeed Raúl Castro and was the first person in decades to lead Cuba without bearing the name Castro.

Under him, the island plunged into the worst economic and energy crisis in recent history, a situation worsened by heightened sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

Díaz-Canel's wife, Lis Cuesta Peraza, also appeared on the sanctions list. She does not hold the title of first lady, a title abolished during the revolution, but in practice she acts as such, receiving other spouses such as Queen Letizia of Spain and accompanying her husband on official trips.

Her son Miguel Anido Cuesta, who is Díaz-Canel's stepson, also faces sanctions.

Lis Cuesta Peraza wrote on X late Thursday that “it is almost an honor to be on this ‘list.’ They never tire of ridicule and political stupidity.”

The new action boosts pressure on the Cuban government but is far from the first time the U.S. has imposed sanctions against heads of state or government and their relatives.

The U.S. hit former Sudanese President Omar Bashir and former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in the early 2000s and, more recently, targeted Maduro and his wife with sanctions.

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Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. AP writer Andrea Rodríguez in Havana contributed to this report. Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Dawa Sherpa was last seen around May 29 descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled.

Dawa was located by a cleaning crew Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above base camp, said Pemba Sherpa of 8K Expeditions, which coordinated the search.

He was quickly carried down to safety and given food and water. A rescue helicopter flew him to HAMS Hospital in Kathmandu, where his wife and daughter, who already had begun funeral rituals for him, were waiting.

"We first heard that he was still alive on the local news and from a person we know who called with the news that ... he is being brought down," said his wife, Damu Sherpa.

Though Dawa had been missing since last week, there was a delay in organizing a search team. No reasons were given for the delay, but when helicopters were finally sent to look for him, they could not find him.

His family had given up hope. Dawa’s teenage daughter, Mendo Lhamu Sherpa, said they were on the second day of a funeral ritual, which lasts for several days.

“When we first heard about it (the rescue), we could not be sure if that person was indeed our father,” Mendo Lhamu said. “So to be certain we asked for photos to be sent and then only we were sure and very happy.”

The team that spotted him was part of the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, which lays the ladders and ropes on the route at the start of each climbing season and then removes the equipment and cleans up the site after climbers have left.

Dawa was last seen at spot called Yellow Band above the Camp 3, which is located at 7,200 meters (23,622 feet). The base camp is at 5,300 meters (17,388 feet).

Dawa, 52, works for a small Kathmandu-based company called Himalayan Traverse, and he was guiding a Polish climber. He comes from the town of Okhaldhunga, south of Everest.

Nepal's mountaineering community has hailed Dawa's survival as miraculous.

“This is nothing short of a miracle surviving so many days on the mountains facing such harsh condition,” said Ang Tshering Sherpa, a leading figure in the community.

“Sherpas are built tough growing up in the mountains,” Ang Tshering said. “If there was someone else in his place they might not have survived.”

Members of the Sherpa community were mostly yak herders and traders living deep within the Himalayas until Nepal opened its borders in the 1950s. Their stamina and familiarity with the mountains quickly made them sought-after guides and porters, eventually allowing them to dominate the Himalyan climbing business.

More than 1,000 climbers and their guides scaled Everest this May, which was the busiest climbing season ever on the world's highest mountain. It began late because of a massive ice block on the route just above the base camp that took about two weeks to clear.

The 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) high peak was first climbed on May 29, 1953, by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay.

But Republicans still faced a gauntlet of amendments before the bill could advance, a test of party unity that could go late into the night. The biggest threat to the bill could be another amendment to ban the settlement fund — this time from Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who lost reelection last month after Trump endorsed his primary opponent.

“I feel optimistic that we’ll get there in the end," Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Thursday evening, while acknowledging he was not sure how the votes would turn out.

Thune has been pushing GOP senators for weeks to keep the bill focused on the funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, which Democrats have blocked since early this year, and to avoid adding new provisions that could complicate its passage.

If an amendment limiting the settlement were to pass, Thune said, it would be “problematic” when they send the bill to the House. It could also mean a White House veto of the immigration spending bill, which has otherwise unified Trump and Republicans.

The last time the Senate abruptly changed a Homeland Security funding package, in March, the House simply refused to accept it and left town.

Settlement fund roils Senate GOP conference

Still, the judgment fund, which was part of a settlement that resolves Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns, has angered many Republican senators.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said this week that the fund would not move forward. But Trump, who has been at odds with Senate Republicans in recent weeks, raised new doubts about the settlement’s future Wednesday afternoon — just after the Senate had voted to start debate on the immigration bill — when he told reporters that the settlement is “very important” and said “I don’t know” whether it is dead or on hold.

“I’d have to ask the lawyers,” he said.

The Democratic effort to ban the fund, the first vote of the day, was held open for around three hours as Cassidy, Jon Husted of Ohio and Dan Sullivan of Alaska withheld their votes. In the end, Cassidy voted against the Democratic motion and the two other GOP senators — both of whom are up for reelection this year — voted for it.

Senators defeated a second amendment from Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina that would also ban the settlement fund but would move the money to a separate anti-fraud fund at the Department of Justice. Most Democrats voted against the amendment, guaranteeing its defeat, but more than 10 Republicans supported it.

Tillis said the settlement fund, some of which could potentially go to Trump supporters who beat police and attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is a political liability for the party.

“If Blanche says this is largely inoperative, why not use this moment to codify that?” Tillis said. “Otherwise, you’re exposing every one of our members who are in cycle to having to deal with this between today and Election Day, and that makes no sense for something that the DOJ says they’re not moving forward with."

Amendments will be offered late into the night

It was unclear how Republicans would vote on additional amendments.

Cassidy, who had been in discussions all day with the Senate parliamentarian, said he still planned to offer an amendment to ban payouts from the settlement. He told reporters he may also offer an amendment to block a separate part of the settlement that would grant Trump and his family immunity from IRS audits.

Several Republican senators said they supported the idea but would have to see the final language before they decide. Sen. John Cornyn, who also lost reelection last month after Trump endorsed his opponent, said he agrees with the “thrust of it” but would wait to see the amendment. Republican Sen. John Curtis said the same.

Thune said it wasn't yet certain whether the final bill could pass without some sort of prohibition on the settlement.

“We’re going to find out soon enough,” he said Thursday evening.

Democrats planned other votes through the night, including on Trump's tariffs, his war with Iran and his immigration enforcement campaign.

“Amendment after amendment, vote after vote, Republicans are going to have to answer to the American people,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said.

ICE and Border Patrol money has been long fight

Passage of the roughly $70 billion bill to fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol would end the blockade by Democrats who demanded policy changes after the fatal shootings of two protesters by federal agents in January. The bill would fund the agencies for three years, through the end of Trump’s term.

Senate Republicans are using a complicated procedural maneuver to get around the filibuster and pass the budget legislation with no Democratic votes. But it has taken weeks to get the bill to the Senate floor as Republicans navigated various obstacles to passage created by Trump and the White House — including a $1 billion proposal for White House security that they eventually scrapped and the fierce bipartisan backlash to the settlement fund.

Democrats say any funding bill for the Homeland Security Department should place restraints on federal immigration authorities, including better identification for federal officers and more use of judicial warrants, among other asks.

After federal agents shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Trump agreed to a Democratic request that the Homeland Security bill be separated from a larger spending measure that became law. But bipartisan negotiations went nowhere, and the department funding lapsed in mid-February with no agreement on changes to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.

Congress eventually funded the rest of the Homeland Security Department at the end of April with Democratic support. But ICE and Border Patrol remained without regular funding, and Republicans launched a new effort to pass three years of funding for those agencies with no Democratic votes.

The ruling came weeks before Aaron Spencer, who will be on the November ballot, had been set to face a jury on a second-degree murder charge. He won a March primary over the local three-term sheriff whose office had arrested Spencer in Lonoke County, which has roughly 76,000 residents and is heavily Republican.

Spencer’s attorneys do not deny that he shot and killed Michael Fosler in 2024, saying he did so to protect his child. Special Circuit Court Judge Ralph Wilson Jr. granted a motion by Spencer's attorney to dismiss the charge over a dash camera memory card that may have captured the shooting and was lost by law enforcement.

“The court finds that conduct by law enforcement was so egregious that dismissal of this case is warranted,” Wilson wrote.

At the time of the shooting, Fosler, 67, was out on bond after being charged with dozens of sexual offenses against Spencer’s then-13-year-old daughter.

Court documents show on the night of the shooting, Spencer had woken up to find his daughter missing, and later found the girl in the passenger seat of a vehicle Fosler was driving. Spencer forced Fosler’s truck off the road and, after an altercation, called 911 to report he had shot the man.

Prosecutors said Spencer planned the killing and that he could have called police while pursuing Fosler. But Spencer pleaded not guilty and maintained he acted to protect his child from a predator.

Spencer’s attorney, Erin Cassinelli, said she is thankful for the court’s decision.

“No member of this family should ever again be forced to walk into a courtroom and relive this horror,” she said in a statement. “This father should have never been charged for protecting his child.”

Spencer said he is grateful this chapter is over and that his focus is now on his family and returning to normal life.

“There’s still work to do in Lonoke County, and I’m more committed to it than ever,” he said in a statement. “Together we can build a safer and stronger Lonoke County.”

Lonoke County Prosecuting Attorney Chuck Graham did not return messages Thursday seeking comment on the decision.

The Associated Press typically does not identify sex abuse victims, but Spencer has made his daughter’s experience with the criminal justice system a central part of his campaign for sheriff, pledging to establish a dedicated team to combat sex crimes against children.

Spencer's attorneys filed the motion seeking to have the case dismissed, contending that video and audio of the dash camera from Fosler's truck may have contained evidence that would have cleared Spencer of any wrongdoing. According to court records, a detective with the Lonoke County Sheriff's Office removed the dash camera from the truck when responding to the scene of the shooting.

But the camera's internal settings were not preserved and the battery of the camera was allowed to drain, and as a result the camera went back to its default settings. When the camera was sent to the attorney general's office for a forensic exam, the memory card that was in it when it was collected from the truck was missing. The detective who collected the camera later admitted that it was not logged into evidence right away, but was instead stored in his personal office rather than the evidence room, according to court records.

Wilson replaced the original judge handling the murder case in January after the Arkansas Supreme Court removed Judge Barbara Elmore from the case, finding she had issued an overly broad gag order that violated Spencer's First Amendment rights.

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Boone reported from Boise, Idaho. Associated Press reporter Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.

Rivera, the Varsity 4 All-News4JAX Girls Golfer of the Year, began play Thursday in the U.S. Women’s Open at Riviera Country Club, becoming the youngest golfer from Northeast Florida to ever compete in the prestigious championship.

The amateur earned her spot in the 155-player field by winning a U.S. Women’s Open qualifier in April at Sugar Mill Country Club, beating a field of 70 golfers. Now, she is competing alongside many of the game’s biggest stars on one of golf’s most iconic stages.

“Being in California all the way across the country is just amazing,” Rivera said. “The way the players get treated here. The course. Just everything about it is just amazing.”

The tournament appearance is the latest milestone in a breakout year for Rivera. In January, she became just the sixth local girls golfer to win an individual state championship, capturing the Class 3A title by four strokes.

“It’s been rewarding because I didn’t have the best year last year, but I felt like I was improving,” Rivera said. “I just wasn’t seeing it out in tournaments in my scores. This year so far has just really shown me my hard work and everything that I’ve done. It’s translating into good play and good results.”

Rivera, who committed to Indiana University, fell in love with golf when she was 6 years old. She practices six days a week at several Northeast Florida courses, including St. Johns Golf and Country Club, Deercreek Country Club and Glen Kernan Club.

Despite the magnitude of the event, Rivera is approaching the week with a familiar mindset.

“Kind of treat it like a normal tournament,” Rivera said. “I mean it’s kind of hard to when you’re playing at Riviera and you see all the stars when you’re out here, but it’s just golf at the end of the day. I still have to hit the golf shots, so that’s kind of my mindset going into the week.”

One of Rivera’s biggest advantages this week is walking alongside her uncle, Russell Knox, a two-time PGA Tour winner who now competes on the Korn Ferry Tour. Knox caddied for Rivera during qualifying and is back on the bag for the U.S. Women’s Open. The two share a close bond, and Rivera credits his experience as a major asset.

“A superpower I have,” Rivera said of having Knox as her caddie. “We have such a good relationship. It’s awesome to have him out here and the knowledge that he has just in golf, not only on this golf course, but just golf in general. He’s played out here quite a few times as well, so it’s just nice to have him here.”

Rivera said there has been an adjustment to Riviera’s grass conditions, which differ from the courses she typically plays in Florida. Still, she believes she belongs among the elite field.

“It’s kind of cool to see myself stack against them, but I feel like I belong out here,” Rivera said. “Definitely in the beginning it’s like, ‘Woah, I’m playing alongside these girls,’ but seeing that I can compete with them, it’s really nice.”

As Rivera begins her first U.S. Women’s Open, her expectations remain simple. Her goal is to make the cut and continue proving that one of Northeast Florida’s brightest young golfers can compete on golf’s biggest stage.

It’s not surprising that those have yet to be resolved, along with several closely contested congressional races, because the state routinely takes days, or even weeks, to fully tally races. Nor is it unusual for President Donald Trump to complain about the pace of the count and allege fraud, as he did Thursday. It’s something he’s done repeatedly in the past.

What was unusual was that Trump announced that his Department of Justice was investigating the count: “Why the vote counting DELAY???,” the president posted on his social media account.

He suggested that the state's Democrats were somehow cheating so two candidates he favors — Republican Steve Hilton in the governor's race and Spencer Pratt in the nonpartisan mayor's race — would be bumped from the top two slots and therefore ineligible for the November general election.

“You see what’s happening in California, they’re rigging the election," he told reporters during an Oval Office gathering Thursday.

Trump's posts prompted a response from Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose press office posted a clip of a CNN video explaining how the nation’s most populous state prioritizes accuracy and accessibility over speed, drawing out the count.

“For the record: we wish the votes were counted faster, too,” Newsom’s office posted.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles declined to comment on whether it was investigating the ballot counting.

Slow count is designed to ensure accuracy, but opens door to election lies

The law in California practically mandates a drawn-out count. Ballots are mailed to every eligible voter — some 23 million of them — and the state has permissive rules for returning them. They will be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day and arrive at an election office within seven days.

Only after the polls have closed and most of the country has gone to sleep can local election workers begin the lengthy process of verifying the legitimacy of the late-arriving mail ballots and then start to tabulate them.

If a voter’s signature on the ballot envelope doesn't match what's on file, election officials are required to give those voters a chance to come in and prove their identity so the ballot will count, delaying a final tally further.

“We might not like how California administers its elections (and I don’t),” wrote Stephen Richer, a former Republican election official in Maricopa County, Arizona, on the social platform X. “But that doesn’t make it fraud.”

Last year, Newsom signed a bill requiring the vote count to be completed within 13 days, rather than the previous 30 days. To get an extension, counties must inform the Secretary of State's Office of the reason for the delay.

That's not quick enough for the president: “The Dumocrats are at it again!” the president wrote on his social media platform. “They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS.”

In a video posted on X, Hilton slammed the state’s counting as “just another shambles brought to you by California Democrats.” Notably, he said that so far his campaign has seen nothing to indicate it will need to go to court. He urged his supporters to take advantage of the state, allowing voters to fix any issues with their mail ballots — one of the steps that drags out the count.

State Assemblymember Marc Berman, a Democrat who wrote the bill to accelerate ballot counting, said Trump’s comments about the counting process were disappointing and “a lie.”

“While Trump is laser focused on lying about our elections and undermining voters’ faith in our democracy, so that Republicans can then try to pass policies like Voter ID laws that make it harder for people to vote, our priority is to make sure that every validly cast ballot is counted,” he said in a statement.

Many Democratic voters waited until the last minute to cast their ballots

Some experts warned that the count from Tuesday's primary might take even longer than after previous elections.

“What compounds things this time around is that Democrats have been holding on to their ballots,” said Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor.

The state's millions of Democrats this year were exceptionally slow to send in their ballots, apparently waiting until the last minute to make a selection in the ever-evolving governor's race. The state operates a primary in which the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election, and Democrats had been fretting for months that having so many Democrats in the race would splinter the vote, allowing two Republicans to claim the top two spots.

Democratic voters appeared to wait until the end to see which of their candidates was emerging as a favorite. The high number of late ballots will likely make the delay in getting final counts even greater.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber issued a statement Thursday saying the state's priority was ensuring the tally is done correctly. “Accuracy comes before speed,” she said.

While millions of ballots have been counted by now, it's the uncounted ones that loom largest for close races.

Despite being an overwhelmingly Democratic state, California has featured some of the nation's closest congressional elections, sometimes decided by just a few hundred votes, so there's often no way to determine a winner until the weekslong ballot count has concluded. In 2024, one House race wasn't called until December.

Things get even more complicated in a primary election, such as Tuesday's. That's because the news isn't just the top vote-getter but also the second-place finisher. To know the true outcome of any race, enough votes need to be tallied to know for certain who finished in first and second.

Later ballots skew toward Democrats, feeding conspiracy theories

Another side effect of the enormous crush of late mail ballots that get tallied last is that the final vote gets more and more Democratic. That’s because Republicans are more likely to return their ballots early or vote in person on Election Day. Those ballots get counted first.

The gradual shift in the vote toward Democrats as ballot counting continues has sparked all sorts of conspiracy theories.

Republicans have long complained about the California count, even though the GOP did well in close House races in the state in 2024. The Republican National Committee filed lawsuits in other states challenging the legality of counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day and the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to rule on the issue sometime this month.

But worries about the California vote count aren't only a partisan issue. Voting advocates have urged state lawmakers to better fund local election offices so they can process the avalanche of late-arriving ballots faster.

“The Legislature needs to throw a lot more money to get the count quicker,” Hasen said.

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Associated Press writers Christopher Weber in Los Angeles and Sophie Austin in Sacramento contributed to this report.