In a brief exchange with reporters before flying to New York for an event to highlight falling violent crime rates across the U.S., Trump refuted that family members have raised concerns about the deployment’s length and even said that the deployment — which includes a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 240 days — is “not nearly long enough.”

"That ship is moving right now, or very shortly, and it’s being replaced with another very similar ship,” Trump said when asked about the lengthy deployment. The acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, said the Lincoln “will return home soon” in a social media post on Friday.

Trump strode into office for a second term vowing to avoid lengthy and expensive military entanglements. And after launching the Iran war, alongside Israel, Trump and his advisers said the conflict would last a matter of weeks. The war is now more than five months old.

But on Friday, during his crime address in Garden City, New York, he acknowledged that he's used the U.S. military “a little bit more than I wanted to," while asserting anew that the U.S. operation against Iran is going well. He even said, seemingly in jest, that “pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States.”

“I’ll never apologize," Trump added about the war and its impact on oil prices. “I did the right thing.”

Democrats demand Pentagon briefing on USS Lincoln

Extended deployments of carriers during the Iran conflict have raised concerns about the impact on service members who are away from home for long periods as well as the increasing strain on the ships and their equipment.

Several Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Ruben Gallego of Arizona, are pressing for accountability from the Pentagon over conditions aboard the Lincoln, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday said were “completely misrepresented.”

Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division and 75th Ranger Regiment before being elected, took to social media to criticize Trump’s comments, saying on X that “President Trump does not care about our servicemembers or their families."

Top Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have requested a classified briefing on the ship’s food inventory, sanitation issues and healthcare availability, as well as an assessment of how much longer it would be deployed before relief arrives.

Republicans have been less outspoken about the situation on the Lincoln. The GOP chairmen of the House and Senate armed services committees did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

While hostilities between the U.S. and Iran have calmed in recent weeks, the Navy has reimposed a blockade on Iranian ports in the crucial Strait of Hormuz, and the Trump administration has offered no clarity on how it intends to wind down the war. Hegseth said the U.S. military can maintain the blockage of Iranian ports “indefinitely.”

Another aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington, left port in Da Nang, Vietnam, last week, and is expected to replace the USS Lincoln, one of two aircraft carriers currently deployed in the Middle East.

After reports emerged that sailors on the Lincoln are struggling with mental health concerns, the Navy said it has “not observed an increase in suicidal ideations or attempts aboard the ship,” though officials have declined to provide data, citing operational security and patient privacy concerns.

A Navy official said a sailor aboard the Lincoln went overboard in early August but the person was quickly recovered, treated by the ship’s medical department and transferred off ship for follow-on care. The official would not say whether it was being considered a suicide attempt.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, has also pushed back on reports about poor conditions.

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AP writers Collin Binkley in Garden City, New York, and Michelle L. Price and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

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This story has been corrected to show that the USS Abraham Lincoln has spent more than 240 days of uninterrupted time at sea and its overall deployment has exceeded 260 days.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, D.C., denied the Tohono O’odham Nation's request for a court-ordered halt to border wall construction on its 2.8-million-acre reservation. Leon ruled the tribe hasn't established that a border wall will change its reservation boundaries without congressional authority.

The judge also rejected the tribe's claim that the planned border wall would illegally trespass on its reservation.

“And in any event, I find that the Government’s interests in securing the border, enforcing immigration laws, and ensuring public safety outweigh any surviving irreparable harms at this juncture,” Leon wrote.

A tribe spokesperson didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the decision.

The O’odham reservation in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona abuts 62 miles of the Mexico border. The tribe has over 37,000 members, including thousands who live in Mexico.

Building the border wall would led to “significant devastation” on the reservation, including the destruction of mountain peaks that are sacred to the O’odham, tribe attorneys said.

“It would fray the ties between O’odham communities and families on opposite sides of the border, interfere significantly with O’odham religious rituals and practices, and destroy plant and animal resources sacred to the O’odham,” the lawyers wrote.

In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a proclamation reserving a 60-foot strip of public land along the U.S.-Mexico border for a buffer zone called the “Roosevelt Reservation,” which was formed a decade before the reservation's establishment.

Tribe attorneys say it is “fanciful at best” to suggest that border wall construction can be confined to a 60-foot-wide corridor.

During a July 22 hearing, Leon appeared to be skeptical that U.S. laws tip in favor of the tribe’s bid for a preliminary injunction, calling it an “extraordinary” request. Leon, who was nominated to the bench by Republican President George W. Bush, said he couldn’t find a previous court ruling under comparable circumstances.

“This is a novel case with novel issues,” the judge said.

The Lincoln has been supporting the U.S. war against Iran, and its deployment has included a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 240 days. Several Democratic lawmakers are pressing for accountability from the Pentagon over conditions aboard the carrier, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday said were “completely misrepresented.”

Extended deployments of carriers during the Iran conflict have raised concerns about the impact on service members who are away from home for long periods as well as the increasing strain on the ship and its equipment. While renewed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran have calmed in recent weeks, the Navy has reimposed a blockade on Iranian ports in the crucial Strait of Hormuz, and the Trump administration has offered no clarity on how it intends to wind down the war.

Hegseth told reporters that the U.S. can maintain the blockade “indefinitely.”

A new aircraft carrier is heading west from the Asia-Pacific

The USS George Washington left port in Da Nang, Vietnam, last week, a Navy statement said. The carrier, along with a cruiser and a destroyer, have since been spotted crossing the Singapore Strait.

A Navy official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail sensitive ship details, confirmed that the Washington was in the Strait of Malacca, which links the Pacific and Indian oceans and puts the carrier on a course to head into the Indian Ocean. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that the Washington would replace the Lincoln as one of the two aircraft carriers now stationed in the Middle East.

The move would leave the waters of the Pacific without a U.S. carrier presence for an unknown period of time. The Trump administration sees China, the dominant power in the region, as “a settled force” that only needs to be deterred from dominating the U.S. or its allies and not the top global adversary that it was under the Biden administration.

The Lincoln originally deployed Nov. 21 from San Diego, and it arrived in the Middle East in January, ahead of the launch of the Iran war on Feb. 28. The Navy conceded that the conflict created a “highly contested environment where traditional supply hubs in the Middle East were disrupted by combat actions.” That, in turn, led to shortages and loss of mail aboard the aircraft carrier, the Navy said in a statement.

“Leadership prioritized mission-critical supplies: first food, then hygiene items, then mail,” the statement said, before assuring that sailors aboard the ship now have access to clean water and “healthy meal options.”

Democrats call for scrutiny, while the Pentagon defends conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln

Democratic lawmakers are calling for investigations, more information and greater visibility into conditions aboard the ship, which was originally set to return home in May.

“The Lincoln’s prolonged deployment is especially significant because it is occurring in the context of continuing military operations against Iran and the possibility that substantial US naval forces will be required in the region for an extended period,” Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote in a letter to Navy leadership asking for a response to several questions.

Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, a Marine Corps veteran, said on social media that he is looking to take a bipartisan delegation on an official oversight visit to the ship and that the way sailors are being treated is “not just disgusting; it’s dangerous.”

Hegseth told reporters during ​a visit to Panama that he wants the Lincoln's sailors home and crews rotated as quickly as possible but pushed back against reports of problems aboard.

“We make sure that every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment. Some deployments are longer than others, and ​I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than ​anybody. What they do in those high seas in those austere ⁠conditions with less port calls — it’s incredible.”

Navy leaders, including acting Secretary Hung Cao, last week held a tense town hall for families of troops aboard the USS Lincoln, at which the commanders of the Navy’s air and surface forces promised to do everything they could to relieve the aircraft carrier. MS NOW reported earlier on the meeting.

When reports of food shortages aboard the ship first surfaced in April, the Navy pushed back, calling those reports “false.”

Reports of mental health concerns and more aboard the ship

Reports have since emerged that sailors on the Lincoln are struggling with mental health concerns. The Navy said in its statement that it has “not observed an increase in suicidal ideations or attempts aboard the ship,” but officials declined to provide data, citing operational security and patient privacy concerns.

The Navy official said that a sailor aboard the Lincoln went overboard in early August but that the person was quickly recovered, treated by the ship’s medical department and transferred off ship for follow-on care. The official would not say if it was being considered a suicide attempt.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, pushed back on reports about poor conditions.

“The Sailors and Marines of the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group remain resilient and resolved after more than 260 days at sea, 10,000 aircraft flights, and 1.5 million pounds of ordnance expended,” the command said on social media.

Other carriers also have had long runs that have raised concerns about morale. The USS Gerald R. Ford returned home in mid-May after an 11-month deployment, the longest since the Vietnam War, during which it supported the U.S. war with Iran and the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

During its deployment, the Ford experienced a fire in a laundry space that forced the carrier to turn around and return to the Mediterranean Sea for repairs and left hundreds of sailors without places to sleep.

Concerns about the demands of battle and the dangers of overextending ships and their crew predate the Iran war, with a number of mishaps on ships battling Houthi rebels in Yemen in 2024 and 2025, including the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman on a longer-than-expected deployment.

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Associated Press writer Ben Finley contributed to this report.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org. ___

This story has been corrected to show that the USS Abraham Lincoln has spent more than 240 days of uninterrupted time at sea and its overall deployment has exceeded 260 days.

Mangione, 28, said he made a gun with the aid of a 3D printer, traveled to New York and used a ruse — posing as an investor at a multibillion-dollar firm — to contact the company for details on the event.

"On the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan, and he died,” Mangione told the Manhattan federal court, which he entered shackled at the feet but not handcuffed in his beige jail uniform.

Listening in the audience, Thompson's wife, Paulette, took several deep breaths and repeatedly wiped tears from her eyes.

Prosecutors plan to seek a life prison term at Mangione's sentencing, set for Dec. 18. When U.S. District Judge Margaret M. Garnett asked whether he understood that he could spend the rest of his life behind bars, Mangione answered neutrally: “Yes.”

In a statement, Thompson’s family called the plea “an important step toward justice” and noted that Mangione still faces other cases, including a New York state murder prosecution. It carries the potential for a separate long sentence.

Mangione still faces a state murder case

Federal prosecutors didn’t give Mangione any deal or incentive to plead guilty, they and his lawyers said. Nor did Mangione plead guilty to avoid a potential death sentence. That possibility was taken off the table when a federal murder charge was tossed out this winter.

Mangione’s lawyers didn’t explain why he choose to plead guilty now, but after he entered the plea at Friday’s hastily scheduled hearing, they quickly sought to have the New York case thrown out on double jeopardy grounds. The state’s double jeopardy protections can kick in if a prior prosecution ends in a guilty plea.

“Mr. Mangione has accepted full responsibility for the death of Brian Thompson,” defense lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo said outside court, arguing that her client shouldn’t face two prosecutions over a “single tragic event.”

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is handling the state prosecution, said it remains committed to its case and would contest the defense’s efforts to shut it down.

Mangione alludes to back pain in explaining his actions

Surveillance video of the ambush showed a masked gunman shooting Thompson, 50, from behind. Police say “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.

That detail — and revelations that Mangione's private writings lambasted health insurers as greedy, according to authorities — made the case a fulcrum for debate about the industry and made Mangione a cause célèbre for some of its critics.

A University of Pennsylvania graduate from a wealthy Maryland family, Mangione told the court Friday that he pursued Thompson “after years of enduring severe pain from a broken back, navigating the obstacles of the health insurance system and witnessing similar experiences of countless others.”

Friedman Agnifilo later said her client “believed that the system had failed him and destroyed his life.”

Authorities say Mangione's grievances are no excuse for killing

Mangione never was a UnitedHealthcare customer, according to police and the company.

“To those who idolize Luigi Mangione, I say this. Violence is not a cause. Murder is not a message. And a killer is certainly not a hero,” New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said outside court Friday.

U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald, whose office handled the federal case, added: “There can be no celebrity in assassination."

Thompson led one of the United States' largest health insurers, but he wasn't well known outside the industry. Trained as an accountant, he worked at parent company UnitedHealth Group Inc. for 20 years and became CEO of its insurance arm, UnitedHealthcare, in 2021. He and his wife had two sons, who were in high school when their father was killed.

Thompson's violent death “devastated everyone who knew and loved him,” the company said in a statement Friday, thanking law enforcement for bringing Mangione to justice.

His defense had lost some disputes over evidence

Mangione was arrested five days after the shooting, when he was spotted at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (370 kilometers) west of Manhattan. Police had released various images of the suspected shooter, including one showing his face as he checked into a hostel.

Although his lawyers got the federal murder charge dismissed, Garnett also delivered some setbacks to the defense, ruling in January that prosecutors could use items collected from Mangione’s backpack during his arrest as evidence against him. They included a 3D-printed pistol that investigators said matched the one used to kill Thompson and a notebook in which authorities say Mangione described his intent to kill an insurance executive.

Similarly, the judge in the state case threw out terrorism charges against Mangione but agreed to let the gun and notebook be used as evidence. The case has been heading toward a September trial, but his lawyers' new bid to dismiss it could complicate the timeline.

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Associated Press writers Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed.

Mercy Support Services held a groundbreaking Friday on 34 additional units for families experiencing homelessness.

It will be called Mercy Village.

Mercy Support Services is one of the only organizations in Clay County working toward solutions for families experiencing or facing homelessness.

They say they do so by providing supportive housing while program participants are in a self-sufficiency program.

The Florida Department of Transportation has scheduled lane closures with a flagging operation on the bridge from 8 p.m. Friday Night through 5 a.m. Saturday to allow for maintenance work.

The Shands Bridge carries State Road 16 over the St. Johns River, linking Clay County near Green Cove Springs along U.S. 17 to St. Johns County.

Officials are urging drivers to use caution and allow extra travel time to reach their destinations.

Motorists can check FL511.com or download the FL511 app for real-time traffic updates during the closure window.

Macdonald made it clear he was not ducking inquiries about Arnold, who is facing eight felony charges stemming from allegations he orchestrated the abduction and beating of three men in February. The 23-year-old became a free agent in June, when the Detroit Lions released him a few days after the kidnapping, armed robbery and conspiracy charges were levied.

“I understand the situation,” Macdonald said Friday. “So, I’m glad that we had the opportunity to talk about it.”

Macdonald explained why the reigning Super Bowl champions felt compelled to add Arnold, who prosecutors in Florida said arranged for men to be pistol-whipped after he wrongly suspected them of stealing $100,000 in cash and luxury goods from him.

Police called Arnold the “primary conspirator” in the Feb. 4 attack, and a judge set his bail at $1 million.

Defense attorney R. Timothy Jansen said in Hillsborough County court earlier this summer that Arnold is “absolutely denying these allegations.” Denise White, the CEO of EAG Sports Management, an agency that represents Arnold, said there’s “no credible evidence” against him, only accounts from others who may have an incentive to get a lighter sentence.

“We also understand that it’s a serious situation with a legal matter,” Macdonald said. “There’s a process behind it, so we respect that. And, that’s how we’ll operate, too, is just letting that process play out. And, let the league decide if and when his return to play is. And we’ll just kind of understand that that’s at play.”

Macdonald said the timetable for the NFL ruling on Arnold’s eligibility for the 2026 season is still being worked out. To Macdonald’s understanding, Arnold visited at least eight teams, and it is unclear when he will join the Seahawks.

“We have an agreement with him, and we’ll see,” Macdonald said. “But I just really don’t know how we’re going to do it.”

Should Arnold be permitted to play for the Seahawks this season, he could bolster what was arguably the NFL’s best defense last season. No team allowed fewer points per game (17.2), and Seattle finished in the top seven in the league in sacks and interceptions.

Arnold should add depth to a secondary that lost cornerback Riq Woolen to free agency and has been without second-year safety Nick Emannwori, who had offseason ankle surgery, during training camp.

Arnold has played in 25 NFL games, including playoffs, since the Lions took him with the 24th pick of the 2024 draft out of Alabama.

“We think his skill set fits in our secondary,” Macdonald said. “He plays with a lot of energy, physicality. ... And then, personality-wise, I think there’s an opportunity there if he’s the best version of himself that he could be a fit for us.”

A number of Seahawks players have already spent plenty of time around Arnold.

Backup quarterback Jalen Milroe and fullback Robbie Ouzts were college teammates of Arnold for three seasons at Alabama. Cornerback Josh Jobe overlapped with Arnold for one season with the Crimson Tide.

Macdonald also said the Seahawks' decision-makers held informal, one-on-one conversations with some team leaders. He also spoke highly of his discussion with Arnold during his visit on Sunday.

Macdonald did not get into specifics, but said the Seahawks leaned on people who could vouch for Arnold’s character before deciding to offer him a deal.

“It’s overwhelmingly positive. It really is,” Macdonald said. “And, again, it’s a serious situation, that there’s allegations there that are serious. But, if you separate that from the person that they talk about on a daily basis and their history with him, it’s been really overwhelmingly positive.”

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See AP’s full NFL coverage here

The Swiss star, who was given a spot in the final after falling in the semifinal a day earlier, finished in 1 minute, 54.81 seconds at Alexander Stadium.

Hodgkinson closed the gap down the stretch but Werro willed herself across the line for gold ahead of her British rival. Dutch star Femke Broeders-Bol took bronze.

Werro, sporting a small bandage on her right hip, took the lead in the first lap and never let up. Werro in late June ran the third-fastest women’s time ever: 1:53.80.

In one of Thursday's semifinal heats, Anais Bourgoin’s left hand made contact with Werro’s right foot and Werro tumbled on the last bend.

Hodgkinson had won the past two 800 titles at the European championships.

Married man ‘Mondo’ Duplantis into pole vault final

Swedish pole vaulter Armand “Mondo” Duplantis is hoping to break the world record — as a married man.

Duplantis, who tied the knot with Desiré Inglander in June, needed just one successful attempt at 5.60 meters to qualify for Sunday night’s final.

The world record is 6.31, which the Louisiana-born Duplantis vaulted in March. That was his 15th world record. He first broke it in 2020 and has eclipsed his mark by 1 centimeter every time since.

The two-time reigning Olympic champion looked fully recovered from a thigh issue that forced him to stop competing at the London Diamond League meet one month ago.

“I’ve worked really hard the past few weeks to try and make sure I am ready for this competition, so I feel good out there. I feel hopeful and confident for Sunday,” he said. "The jump was clean, good. Nothing too out of the ordinary. Now it’s just about going up there and doing what I normally do in the final on Sunday."

After his jump, the world record holder signed autographs and shook hands with fans. Organizers sold special ‘Mondo’ children’s tickets priced at 6.31 pounds — the figure representing his latest world record height — for Friday morning’s session.

Duplantis also revealed on Friday he usually keeps his wedding band “in between my laces (of) my spikes” while he competes.

He said his marriage proposal and wedding day were more nerve-wracking than vaulting himself into rarefied air going for a world record.

“When I attempt a world record, it's just like the cherry on top," he said. "I don’t really even get that nervous, it's more like I won the competition and whatever happens after that is really nice.”

Duplantis competes for his mother’s native Sweden and has won the past three European championship titles.

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See full AP coverage of European sports here

Even as the Israeli army took positions around him and the homes of two other Palestinian families that settlers had blockaded for most of this week, the settlers remained close enough that Abu Rida feared they would again return after the army left and try to take over the home owned by his Palestinian American brother in Ohio.

“I just don’t know when this will end,” he said.

The standoff in Qusra between Palestinian families and Israeli settlers who apparently want to push them out entered a new stage Friday as activists supporting the Palestinians marched toward the besieged homes to replenish their dwindling food and water supply. But Abu Rida said he was growing tired of the pattern, with Israeli forces removing the settlers, only for them to return and reestablish their positions after the troops withdrew.

“It’s like a kids’ game, like cat and mouse,” Ziv Stahl, the executive director of the Israeli rights group Yesh Din, said. “It’s clearly not a matter of capability but a matter of will.”

The siege of the homes is the latest episode in a wave of settler violence convulsing the occupied West Bank, which Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war and which would make up the main part of a future Palestinian state. Israel's military said the village — roughly 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the Palestinian city of Nablus — was a closed military zone.

More than 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlements to be illegal and obstacles to peace.

Both Israel’s military and Israel’s police referred questions about the situation in Qusra to the other.

The West Bank has become more dangerous for Palestinians as Israel, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has approved more than 100 new settlements. Extremist settlers routinely enter Palestinian towns, clashing with villagers, burning homes, mosques and cars.

Netanyahu is courting blocs of ultranationalist voters ahead of what’s expected to be a difficult reelection campaign in October. He and members of his cabinet have largely dismissed concerns about settler violence as overblown and attributed it to fringe groups of a few hundred youths. Yet rights groups and Palestinians say the government's policies have made it more difficult to restrain settlers, who are rarely punished for attacks.

Qusra siege reflects broader violence

The standoff in Qusra began on Sunday when dozens of settlers arrived and blocked the doors to the three houses, preventing occupants from leaving, according to the families inside.

Israeli troops intervened multiple times and arrived in large numbers Thursday.

Abu Rida and his teenage son were temporarily moved by the army on Thursday but allowed to return hours later. He told his brother in Toledo, Ohio, that he planned on staying to defend the home.

Loui Ridi, the home's owner who spells the family name differently, has been in constant contact with his brother and watching the siege unfold on security cameras until they went offline Thursday.

He plans to travel to the West Bank next week in hopes of delivering more food and “to do whatever I can to protect my brother and my house," Ridi told The Associated Press on Friday.

“We want it to be resolved and permanent, not just for a couple of days,” he said.

For many, the scene unfolding in Qusra — now in its sixth day — reflected broader failures by Israeli authorities to curb the violence in the West Bank.

Itamar Weil, an Israeli human rights activist from the group Bnei Avraham, said the army had threatened to use tear gas against the activists and forced them to leave, even as settlers remained in the valley below Qusra.

“The army used to prevent settlers from carrying out this kind of violence,” he said. “Now, with a government that fully supports them, they’re not doing their job. They should be protecting both sides from violence, but instead they’re removing activists while barely doing anything about the settlers.”

Palestinian officials have reported 1,476 attacks by Israeli settlers in 2026, including several earlier instances in which settlers staged takeovers of Palestinian homes on the outskirts of other West Bank towns.

A total of 87 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank this year, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Health Ministry. Israel says some were involved in terrorism, which it defines broadly to include militancy and rock-throwing. Three Israelis were killed by Palestinians, including two in a July clash during which four Palestinians were also killed.

Katz strips army of enforcement power against settlers

Before calm was restored in Qusra, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced on Friday that he would transfer all enforcement powers against Israeli civilians in the West Bank from the army to Israel’s police.

“The (Israeli military’s) role is to fight Palestinian terrorism, focus on protecting the borders and settlements against threats, deal with the borders and the territory itself and security threats to the settlements and the State of Israel, and not chase after boys on the hills,” Katz said in a statement.

Historically, the army has been able to arrest Palestinians and bring those accused of crimes before military courts. But when it comes to Israeli civilians, in most circumstances it can only use temporary detention for those suspected of crimes, leaving arrests, investigations and prosecutions to police and civilian courts.

Katz’s move comes after he ended the use of administrative detention against Israeli civilians in November 2024. The military had used the policy as a tool to contain settler violence, allowing it to detain suspects without charge and remove them from the West Bank.

Much like with that move, rights groups said transferring all powers to the police was unlikely to restore order or ensure Palestinian safety.

Some 2.8 million Palestinians live under Israeli military rule in the West Bank alongside more than 560,000 Israeli civilians who live in settlements that the international community largely considers illegal and an obstacle to peace.

Though the Palestinian Authority exercises limited autonomy and policing power in the territory’s largest cities, agreements that date back to the 1990s give Israel security control over large swaths of the territory, including agricultural areas and communities such as Qusra.

Stahl, Yesh Din's executive director, said Katz's announcement wouldn't change or help stem the violence because police will still require army escorts to operate in Palestinian areas.

“Unless (Katz) means he’s going to apply Israeli law and have the police control the West Bank, the military is still the main body in charge,” she said.

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Associated Press reporter John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.

Jason Arday, who was 37 when he became Cambridge's youngest Black professor in 2023, resigned after he came under intense media pressure, with weeks of allegations about plagiarism in his academic work and questions surrounding claims about his athletic and fundraising accomplishments.

The Times and Telegraph newspapers, along with the BBC and Sky News, reported that Arday, 41, was found “unresponsive” inside a home in Battersea, south London, on Friday afternoon.

In a statement issued by his publisher Simon & Schuster U.K., Arday's family said they were “in shock to have lost this amazing father, partner, brother, uncle and son.”

“The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and who always wanted to see the best in everyone,” the family said, adding that for three years Arday was “subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse ... by those who would leave no stone unturned in their quest to undermine him.”

The Metropolitan Police said only that a 41-year-old man was pronounced dead in Battersea, without naming the man, in accordance with its policy.

“At this time his death is being treated as unexpected, but is not believed to be suspicious," the police statement said.

Cambridge Vice-chancellor Deborah Prentice, who earlier announced that the university will investigate the circumstances around Arday's employment, said she was “desperately saddened” by the news.

“Our heartfelt sympathies go to Jason Arday’s family and friends at this incredibly difficult time," she said.

In resigning as professor of sociology of education, Arday wrote in a statement that "the relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and on those I love.”

He said his stepping down should not “be mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me.” He has denied plagiarism, but admitted to some mistakes when working on his doctorate.

Supporters, including more than two dozen academics and politicians, had described the plagiarism allegations as a “smear campaign” designed to undermine Arday and other Black people who hold “positions of influence.”

Arday’s appointment at Cambridge highlighted his personal story of overcoming dyslexia, developmental delays and autism that he said left him non-verbal until the age of 11 and illiterate until his late teens.

Cambridge has opened investigation into plagiarism accusations

Questions about Arday's qualifications were raised publicly last month by Nathan Cofnas, a one-time Cambridge philosophy researcher who left the university after his critique of diversity, equity and inclusion programs sparked widespread protests.

On July 24, the Times of London published an analysis of Arday’s 2015 Ph.D. thesis highlighting what it said were multiple examples of passages that were “identical or near-identical” to an earlier paper written by another researcher.

British media also raised questions about Arday’s claims that he had raised 5.5 million pounds ($7.4 million) for charity through feats such as running 30 marathons in 35 days and 600 miles in six days.

Dozens of Cambridge academics had signed a letter calling for an independent inquiry into how Arday was appointed. Cambridge initially stood by Arday, saying that the plagiarism allegations had been investigated by Liverpool John Moores University, which awarded Arday’s doctorate.

The university then changed its stance and said it opened an investigation “following new information about Professor Arday’s qualifications and honorary appointments.”

Prentice, the university's vice-chancellor, said this week that Cambridge will run a review of its hiring processes. She stressed that “our staff of color are highly valued, for their scholarship, their achievements and the contributions they make to the institution and the wider academic community.”

“This particular case is an aberration and should not be used to cast aspersions on their work or the legitimacy of their roles at Cambridge," she said Thursday.

Experts note that national violent crime rates have been declining since 2022, and pinpointing an exact reason is difficult. They say multiple factors contribute to decreases in crime rates seen in the FBI report, which is based on data reported voluntarily by many but not all law enforcement agencies across the country.

“The homicide drop is historic and crystal clear. But right now, what’s driving it is about as clear as a glass of milk,” said Adam Gelb, president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, a think tank based in Washington.

“Rates are falling in cities with very different public safety strategies, economic conditions, and political leadership," Gelb said. "The consistency across the map should make us cautious about handing credit to any one leader, party, policy, or program before the evidence catches up.”

President Donald Trump announced the decreases in the annual crime numbers during a visit to a New York police academy Friday.

Trump proclaimed his role in lowering violent crime rates, taking a swing at his predecessor and at so-called sanctuary cities, while touting what he said was his overwhelming support of law enforcement and his tough-on-crime moves such as deploying the National Guard in Washington and elsewhere.

“We ended the war on police, and we declared a very strong war on crime,” Trump said during the Long Island appearance.

Regardless of the contributing factors, criminologists who have been tracking violent crime and property crime in a few dozen cities had been predicting that the homicide rate might drop to 4 per 100,000 residents, which would have dropped the rate to the lowest since 1900, when those rates began to be tracked.

The rate came close when the numbers from thousands of departments were calculated, reaching 4.1 homicides per 100,000 people. That rate is tied with 1955 and 1956, according to Friday's report, as the lowest rate since 1900.

The report showed murder and nonnegligent manslaughter decreased 18.1% between 2024 and 2025, while overall property crime declined by 12.4% during the same period.

Motor vehicle theft, which had spiked in 2022 and 2023 following a social media challenge that helped people exploit a manufacturing issue in some models of Kia and Hyundai vehicles, dropped by almost 23% to the lowest levels in more than 20 years.

In an unusual move just a few months before the midterm elections as many Republicans continue to tout the drop in crime, the FBI report also noted that violent and other crime has continued to drop during the first six months of 2026. The federal agency normally waits until all of the yearly data is reported to suggest a drop in crime.

Groups like the Council on Criminal Justice have also said 2026 could see an even larger decline than 2025, with homicides dropping 18% in those cities during the first six months of this year, compared with the same timeframe in 2025.

Crime surged during the coronavirus pandemic, with homicides increasing nearly 30% in 2020 over the previous year, the largest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping records. Violent crime across the U.S. dipped to near pre-pandemic levels around 2022.

The FBI collects standardized crime data from law enforcement agencies across the country through its Uniform Crime Reporting Program, though not all agencies participate. The 2025 report includes data from more than 17,000 agencies, or more than 87% of the agencies in the FBI's program, serving communities including almost 329 million Americans.

The jury, made up of seven women and five men, will hear the state’s case against Fernandez in the February 2022 ambush killing of 33-year-old Jared Bridegan, the ex-husband of Fernandez’s now-estranged wife, Shanna Gardner.

NOTE: His attorneys refer to him as Mr. Fernandez, so News4JAX will use only Fernandez on second reference.

The father of four was fatally shot while on his way home after dropping off the twin children he shared with Gardner at her home in Jacksonville Beach. The two were in ongoing custody disputes over their twins.

RELATED | Who was Jared Bridegan? A father, a creative builder, a believer — and so much more

With his 2-year-old daughter, Bexley, strapped in her car seat, Bridegan stopped to remove a tire that had been left in the road. Prosecutors say the tire was part of a ruse to make Bridegan an easy target.

They say Henry Tenon was the man who pulled the trigger, missing Bexley by mere inches, and that Tenon’s DNA was found on the tire.

They also say Tenon was not alone that night. Someone drove off in a truck from the shooting scene, while Tenon ran away on foot.

According to prosecutors, the only link between Tenon and Bridegan was Fernandez, who was Tenon’s landlord and boss in 2022.

The state has accused Fernandez and Gardner of hiring Tenon to kill Bridegan. All three are under indictment for first-degree murder and other charges and have each pleaded not guilty.

Fernandez is the first of the three to go on trial. His trial is scheduled for Aug. 17-28.

Gardner will go on trial after Fernandez, with jury selection from Aug. 31-Sept. 4, and the trial from Sept. 8-25.

Tenon will go on trial in March 2027.

Neither Gardner nor Tenon will testify in Fernandez’s trial.

Attorney Gene Nichols, who is not connected with the case, explained what to expect during Monday’s opening statements.

“The state is going to lay out their case step by step by step. They are going to go ahead and preview all of the evidence so that way when they get up for closing, they’re going to say, ‘We told you what you were going to see. We told you the evidence that will convict him, and we presented all of that,’” Nichols said. “What I expected you will hear from the defense is, ”Don’t just listen to direct examination; you have to listen to cross-examination. I expect the defense to rely upon what the rules are when it comes to witnesses’ credibility and taking all of it or taking none of it, and don’t forget to listen to the cross-examination."

Jury selection

After narrowing a pool of about 150 potential jurors down to around 80 this week, attorneys asked deeper questions of the men and women who responded for jury duty.

Nichols said both sides did a good job getting detailed responses from the potential jurors.

Assistant State Attorney Alan Mizrahi wanted to know about the prospective jurors’ personal backgrounds, any experiences they’ve had with police or the courts, personal beliefs that might be considered controversial, and any issues that might affect their ability to be impartial.

He also asked if they’d ever had to fire an employee, if they or a family member or friend had experienced a bitter divorce involving children, and whether they understand the difference between free speech and someone asking them to commit a crime.

Defense attorney Jesse Dreicer asked the potential jurors if they understood the presumption of innocence, the burden of “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and the fact that Fernandez has the right not to testify and not have that held against him.

“The State Attorney’s Office will always try to portray that finding someone guilty beyond a reasonable doubt is not that hard, while the defense is always saying this is the highest standard you could possibly meet, so there is a fight between whether or not it’s easy to show reasonable doubt or hard to show reasonable doubt, and you will hear that from both the state and the defense,” Nichols said.

Dreicer also asked the jurors if they believed that someone can know a person who committed a crime without being guilty of the crime themselves, and he asked several individuals about their ability to be impartial based on their own experiences and the experiences of their loved ones.

At one point, Dreicer questioned the jurors about whether they would be able to weigh equally any competing evidence presented by opposing “expert witnesses.”

During the process, at least two jurors were excused because people reported that they had been talking about the case outside of court.

Judge London Kite repeatedly explained to the potential jurors this week that they could not look up anything about the case or talk about it with anyone.

Those rules still apply heading into trial on Monday.

As part of the preparation for trial, Kite previously ordered that the seated jurors’ names be kept anonymous until 60 days after the trial, which is typical in high-profile cases. The jurors were referred to only by their numbers during questioning to protect their identities.

Timeline: How we got here

More than four years ago, Jared Bridegan dropped his then-9-year-old twin children off at the home of his ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, after a “date night” with their dad.

He left Gardner’s Jacksonville Beach home on Feb. 16, 2022, with his 2-year-old daughter, Bexley, strapped in her car seat in the back of his dark-colored SUV. They were headed back to St. Augustine.

But the 33-year-old Microsoft employee never made it home.

Following his normal route through the Sanctuary neighborhood, Bridegan suddenly had to stop in the area of Jacksonville Drive, America Avenue and Sanctuary Boulevard.

A tire was in the road.

When Bridegan stepped out of his SUV, he was ambushed by gunfire. At least one bullet missed Bexley by mere inches in her car seat.

In previous interviews, Kirsten Bridegan said Bexley described the loud noise of the gunfire, calling it “the boom.”

“She says, ‘Boom! Boom! Boom! Daddy on the ground,’” Kirsten explained.

RELATED | Murder-for-hire plot included practice run along Jared Bridegan’s normal route home: prosecutors

Neighbors’ surveillance cameras from the Sanctuary subdivision caught the sound of those gunshots just before 8 p.m.

Jared Bridegan was left lying in the street next to the SUV with the door wide open, and the shooter seemed to melt into the shadows just as quickly as he had launched his ambush attack.

None of the 911 callers that night mentioned seeing a shooter or a vehicle leaving the scene.

LISTEN: Press play below to hear 911 calls from night of Jared Bridegan’s murder (WARNING: May include graphic content)

The state has since said that the shooter ran off on foot and someone else drove away from the scene in a pick-up truck. Prosecutors also said they have Tenon’s DNA on the tire that was left in the road.

NEW INFORMATION: Prosecutor drops bombshell in Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire case: Accused gunman was not alone on night of shooting | RELATED: Defense attorneys for Mario Fernandez briefly discussed plea deal with state in Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire case

“When the victim was killed, there is a person that fled on foot and a person that fled in a vehicle. We know that Henry Tenon left his DNA behind on that tire. And we know that Henry Tenon was not driving the pick-up truck that fled the scene,” Mizrahi said during a hearing before jury selection began. He was arguing that this was proof of a deeper conspiracy in the case.

Eventually, detectives tracked down the man they say pulled the trigger.

Investigators say that it was all part of a murder-for-hire plot set in motion by Gardner and her second husband, Mario Fernandez. It was a conspiracy that began in November of 2021, according to court documents.

Interactive Timeline

Alleged murder-for-hire scheme

According to detectives, Gardner was tired of sharing custody of her twin children with Bridegan.

Fernandez, she knew, could “take care of him” because of his military background, Gardner told a friend. At least that’s what the friend told investigators as she detailed the strained marriage between Gardner and Fernandez and the contentious ongoing custody battle between Gardner and Bridegan.

RELATED: A friend of Shanna Gardner said she could help in Jared Bridegan’s murder case. Here’s what she told investigators | How investigators say they untangled conspiracy to kill Jared Bridegan

Investigators say that’s exactly what Fernandez did, hiring Henry Tenon, a tenant at one of his properties, to kill Bridegan.

In his initial interview with police in July 2022, Tenon told investigators that he had been renting a home from Fernandez in Jacksonville’s Biltmore neighborhood for several years.

Tenon’s original court records said he became involved in the conspiracy on Jan. 4, 2022 -- just over a month before Bridegan was killed.

The state says it has evidence of communications between Tenon and Fernandez in the days, weeks and “on the day of the particular crime.”

Investigators said when Tenon was arrested on an unrelated felony driving charge in August 2022, they questioned him about Bridegan’s murder and a Ford F-150 truck they had been searching for since the shooting.

RELATED | Follow the money: Checks written to Jared Bridegan’s admitted killer connect him to 2 accused in ‘murder-for-hire plot’ | Jared Bridegan’s wife files wrongful death lawsuit against 3 accused in his murder

Tenon was later arrested in Bridegan’s murder, and investigators said the single link between Tenon and Bridegan was Fernandez.

In 2023, Tenon pleaded guilty and admitted to being the gunman who killed Bridegan, but he has since backtracked, and Judge Kite granted his motion to withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial.

He is now under indictment for some of the same charges as Gardner and Fernandez.

Gardner is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation to commit a capital felony and child abuse.

Tenon is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, child abuse, possession of a firearm by a felon and accessory after the fact.

State prosecutors initially said they would be seeking the death penalty against Gardner and Fernandez if they were convicted, but they have since taken the death penalty off the table, with the support of Bridegan’s widow, Kirsten, and his family.

Multiple crews responded to JAX Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery on Beach Boulevard near San Pablo Road South to put out the flames and assess the damage.

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Crime Scene Unit and the ATF, a specialized national team that helps federal, state and local investigators determine what caused major fires and explosions were also called to the scene.

Several News4JAX viewers who live in nearby neighborhoods said they heard and felt what seemed like an explosion, reporting their homes shook around the time crews were called.

One neighbor and patient, Manny Toledo, said he knows the doctor who works there.

“I know him. He’s a great guy, a great doctor,” Toledo said. “I just hope everything’s well. I’m pretty sure there was no one there, but I just — I just feel sorry for the crew. They were great.”

Not everyone nearby knew what was happening at first.

Some slept through it entirely, others assumed it was a thunderstorm, but for many, the sound and rumble left no doubt that something was wrong.

“Woke me up. All the dogs got really scared and I was just wondering what’s going on. So I just came outside and looked with my girlfriend, and we could see the smokestack,” Taylor Surette, a resident said.

JFRD has not released information on what may have caused the fire or whether anyone was hurt. The investigation is ongoing.

Trump was visiting the Nassau County police academy in suburban Long Island, where he was expected to promote new FBI crime statistics being released Friday showing a decrease in violent crime for 2025. But despite the setting and an array of uniformed local police officers behind him on stage, the event was overwhelmingly a political one, with Trump lashing Democrats and promoting his record and his party's candidates.

Trump's visit aimed at boosting Republicans in closely contested races across his home state, but just how much his presence will help is in question as he faces lagging approval ratings and a deeply unpopular war in Iran with no end in sight.

Trump briefly touched on the new crime statistics, but before long he was returning to familiar attacking lines, calling his opponents “Radical left Democrats” and his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, “Sleepy Joe."

“We call them Dumb-ocrats now because their policies are so dumb. Fighting to defund the police. Does that play well in this room?” Trump said at one point, turning around to look at the officers behind him.

Trump slams Democrats and promotes policies on crime, tariffs and more

He criticized the state’s Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and insulted the state’s Attorney General, Letitia James, as “a real slob” and “a disgrace.”

James successfully sued the president and his companies for financial fraud. The Justice Department last year secured a mortgage fraud indictment against James, but the case was dismissed after a judge concluded that the prosecutor who charged her and another Trump adversary, former FBI Director James Comey, was illegally appointed.

He touted his deployment of the National Guard to cities around the U.S., including in the nation's capital. Trump repeatedly said that “young, beautiful girls in the White House" have thanked him for making Washington safer. It was not clear who he was referring to, but he said, “These young, these gorgeous, beautiful girls are — they want to be safe.”

“Two years ago, we were in a hellhole, and now we have one of the safest cities,” he said.

The new FBI statistics released Friday showed the homicide rate in the United States dropped to the lowest it’s been in 75 years. The report on 2025 crime statistics also showed that overall violent crime dropped 9.3% last year. Experts note that national violent crime rates have been declining since 2022, and pinpointing an exact reason is difficult.

Trump also promoted his tariff policies, along with his tax cuts and spending law passed last year and suggested that the tax breaks on overtime would be popular with police officers. Many of his lines, especially the political attacks, didn’t get as much of a reaction from the uniformed officers as it did from the crowd of regular Trump supporters in the audience, who enthusiastically cheered and booed on cue.

To the side of the stage during his remarks were the new U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel, who each spoke to warm up the crowd before the president. Their appearance at an event that in part was designed to help Republican candidates broke longstanding norms in which the nation’s law enforcement generally tried to steer clear of participating in overtly political events.

Also seated among the guests of honor was actor Kelsey Grammer.

Trump narrowly won Nassau County in 2024, flipping the county in the largely Democratic state to Republicans for the first time in more than two decades.

It's home to one of the largest police forces in the nation and two Democratic House seats that Republicans now see as winnable this fall, and it's home turf for Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the Trump-endorsed Republican challenging Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Crime becoming a theme in New York races

It's the second time this year Trump has visited New York in support of Blakeman and other Republicans. He stopped by the Hudson Valley area in May for a speech in which he said Blakeman would curb “out of control” crime.

Crime has emerged as a significant issue in the governor's race, with both candidates claiming to have the better track record of making New Yorkers safe. Hochul visited a different Long Island police department in July to announce a statewide investment in policing technology.

Blakeman, who briefly took the stage during Trump's remarks, said he was honored Trump was visiting.

In a Fox Business interview on Thursday, Blakeman downplayed concerns that Trump's visit would be unpopular with voters in New York City.

“When the most powerful person in the world comes to visit you and shows that you have a relationship together, I think that’s a very good thing,” Blakeman said, adding that even voters who disagree with Trump might appreciate a governor with a direct line to the president.

Hochul campaign spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki said the governor “has invested billions in public safety to protect New Yorkers — ‘MAGA all the way’ Bruce Blakeman is bringing Donald Trump to tour the county where he let violent crime spike to decade highs and Trump’s unaccountable ICE agents abuse their power.”

For GOP, safety is seen as a winning issue

Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist, said Trump's visit stands to boost Blakeman along with Republican challengers looking to unseat a pair of Democratic incumbents in Nassau County districts. Michael LiPetri Jr. is challenging Rep. Tom Suozzi in New York's 3rd Congressional District, while Jeanine Driscoll is opposing Rep. Lauren Gillen in the 4th Congressional District.

The focus on crime is seen as a cornerstone issue for Republicans that appeals to Trump's base along with suburban swing voters, Gorman said.

“On the strategic level, crime is an issue that Republicans feel comfortable going on offense with, where the country kind of broadly agrees with them,” he said.

Trump is touting the issue as he faces low approval ratings on a number of other issues, including the economy and the Iran war. An AP-NORC poll from August 2025 found that Trump’s handling of crime was among his strongest issues, though his approval on the issue had fallen by 10 points by December 2025.

___

Price reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington and Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.2% from its record set the day before. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 107 points, or 0.2%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 0.3%.

Stocks gave up modest gains from early in the morning after oil prices swung higher. The price for a barrel of Brent crude rose 1.7% to $88.52 as uncertainty continues about when the war with Iran will allow oil tankers to freely exit the Persian Gulf again.

Also raising uncertainty was a report showing shoppers spent less at U.S. retailers last month than the month before. That surprised economists, who were forecasting another month of growth.

On the bright side for financial markets, such a pullback in spending could take pressure off inflation. Inflation remains much higher than anyone would like, but reports earlier this week suggested the pace of increases in prices is decelerating.

If inflation keeps trending that way, it could encourage the Federal Reserve to hold off on hikes to interest rates. Higher rates would help keep a lid on inflation, but they do so by intentionally slowing the economy and making it more expensive for everyone to borrow money.

The downside of such data, including last week’s surprisingly weak report on the U.S. job market, is that they raise the risk of a slowing economy. The Fed has no good tool to fix both a stagnating economy and high inflation at the same time, which is why what’s called “stagflation” is seen as a worst-case scenario.

Some on Wall Street cautioned against overreacting to the weak data on U.S. retail sales, even if it was broad based. It could simply be a snap back after retail sales in earlier months were boosted by unusual factors such as big tax refunds, the World Cup and even an earlier Prime Day event at Amazon, according to Jennifer Timmerman, senior investment strategy analyst at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

U.S. consumers nevertheless appear to be getting more discouraged about the economy. A preliminary survey by the University of Michigan suggested sentiment among them is weakening by more than economists expected.

The survey said drops occurred across the political spectrum and showed up particularly among older, lower-income and other groups who can be hurt most by inflation.

On Wall Street, Reddit jumped 12.6% after learning its stock will join the S&P 500 index on Tuesday. Many professional investors and funds closely track the index, either mimicking it or at least measuring their performance against it. That can push many to buy a stock automatically when it enters the index.

Applied Materials fell 5.1% even though the company, whose technology helps make semiconductors, reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. CEO Gary Dickerson said global hunger for artificial-intelligence technology helped it deliver another record quarter.

But its stock had already more than doubled this year and built expectations very high, which helped pressure the stock on Friday.

AI stocks in general have been swinging sharply on worries that their prices shot too high because of AI euphoria and that their strong growth in revenue may not be sustainable.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 13.23 points to 7,785.76. Despite the loss, it nevertheless closed out a third straight winning week, its longest such streak since a nine-week run that ended in May.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 107.58 to 53,732.41, and the Nasdaq composite sank 73.86 to 26,729.16.

In the bond market, Treasury yields ticked higher and followed the price of oil. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.69% from 4.63% late Thursday.

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

London’s FTSE 100 slipped 0.2% after Nigel Farage regained the seat in Parliament he quit a month ago, beating trash-can wearing comic candidate Count Binface in a special election.

South Korea’s Kospi again had one of the world’s sharpest moves and jumped 2.4% for its third straight gain of at least that much. Seoul has been at the center of the world’s swings for AI stocks because its market is dominated by two tech giants, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.

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AP Business Writers Michelle Chapman and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.

Retail sales fell 0.6% last month, marking the biggest decrease since May 2025, compared with a revised gain of 0.2% in June, according to the Commerce Department data released Friday. Economists were projecting a small increase.

The decline followed a notable bump in spending in both April and May as Americans dipped into their government tax refunds.

The drop in spending for July, however, raised concern among some economists about the resiliency of consumers who have powered the economy forward despite nagging inflation and soaring gasoline prices. Yet, it may be too early to declare a retreat by one of the strongest and most consistent forces in the U.S. economy of late.

Still, the weak sales report follows unexpectedly sluggish jobs figures last week, and both suggest the economy could be slowing after strong consumer and business spending in the first half of the year.

Separately, consumers turned more pessimistic about the economy this month, likely driven by stubbornly high prices, according to the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index, released Friday.

While most economists still expect solid economic growth in the July-September quarter, many have lowered their forecasts in the wake of the retail sales report.

Prices in July, which were not adjusted for inflation, were impacted by falling sales at gas stations. Fuel prices remained low until later in the month when evidence of a stalemate between the U.S. and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz began to grow. Business at gas stations fell 0.9% last month, according to the report.

Gas prices have been rising since the final week of July and ticked higher again overnight to $4.08 per gallon, up from $3.85 a month ago, according to motor club AAA. That's 92 cents more per gallon than Americans were paying last year at this time.

Gas prices typically begin to recede in August as the driving season comes to a close and the AAA said this week that the high cost of fuel for Americans this late in the year is unprecedented.

Excluding sales at gas stations and auto dealers, retail sales in July fell 0.2%.

Business at motor vehicle and parts dealers saw a 1.8% drop from a 1.9% increase in June, which was helped by auto makers' promotion incentives.

Electronics and appliance sales declined 0.5%. Online sales fell 2.2% from June when they were fueled by spending surrounding Amazon’s four-day Prime Day event that began in late June, earlier than previous years.

The drop in online sales weighed heavily on the so-called control group—which excludes food services, autos, building materials and gas station sales and is used to calculate economic growth. That figure fell 0.4% last month.

“American consumers are showing signs of fatigue, “ Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote Friday. “July retail sales were disappointing on all levels.”

But the weak sales seemed to be concentrated in a few areas.

Among some of the bright spots in the report: clothing and accessories stores, furniture and home furnishing stores as well as building material and garden supplies merchants all posted gains last month.

The data offers only a snapshot of consumer spending and doesn’t include activities like travel and hotel stays. But the lone services category – restaurants – registered a healthy 0.5% increase

“Though the latest numbers warrant a downgrade to the spending forecast, it’d be premature to write off the consumer,” Bernard Yaros, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics said.

He noted the job market is “broadly balanced,” and wealthy households, boosted by strong gains in the stock market, continue to spend.

New data this week showed that inflation declined slightly in July as gas and grocery prices slipped, though it is still rising more quickly than before the Iran war.

Consumer prices increased 3.4% in July from a year ago, down slightly from 3.5% in June, the Labor Department said Wednesday. Inflation had fallen to 2.4% before the Iran war. On a monthly basis, prices rose just 0.1% from June to July.

The modest decline marked the second straight decrease after sharply higher gas prices pushed inflation to 4.2% in May, a three-year high.

Given the volatile economic environment, economists are closely watching how families spend behind Christmas.

Shopping has been steady, though Americans have dialed in on sales as they grow more careful with their money.

Off-price retailers, consumer electronics and office supply retailers have had a “strong early start” to the back-to-school season, said Elizabeth Lafontaine, director of research at Placer.ai.

“Consumers have looked to take advantage of early deals to check off their lists,” Lafontaine said.

Walmart, Target and other retailers have been pushing discounts for the fall season, seeking to lure inflation-weary shoppers.

Target, for example, says that 95% of prices for school supplies are at or below last year’s levels.

Retailers begin reporting quarterly earnings next week.

Stephen Yalof, CEO of the outlet mall operator Tanger, noted an increase in foot traffic this summer because of the World Cup festivities.

More Americans were shopping too, Yalof said, because more people are vacationing close to home to save money.

“We’re rewarding with value, and we’re getting customers to come in … and shop more frequently,” Yalof told The Associated Press.

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AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report from Washington.

The former LSU coach and athletic director passed away in a Baton Rouge hospital, LSU spokesman Michael Bonnette said.

“Few people have had a greater impact on LSU than Skip Bertman,” LSU Athletic Director Verge Ausberry said in a written statement. “As the greatest college baseball coach of all time, and later as our athletics director, Skip developed a championship standard and culture that still guide us today.”

The LSU Tigers, now synonymous with college baseball's elite and known for fielding numerous Major League Baseball prospects, had never won a national title when Bertman, a native of Miami, took over the program in 1983.

The College Baseball Hall of Famer's legacy now includes the current Alex Box Stadium, which opened in 2009, holds about 11,000 and routinely is filled to capacity. The field in the stadium was named for Bertman in 2013. The Tigers also have won three national championships under two of Bertman's successors, most recently in 2025.

“Coach Bertman was so far ahead of his time while leading the LSU Tigers, and as a young coach just starting my journey, I watched, studied, and admired his incredible skills of leading, motivating, teaching, coaching, and ultimately cultivating what became ‘The Powerhouse’ of college baseball," said current LSU baseball coach Jay Johnson, who guided the Tigers to their past two national titles in 2023 and 2025. “The impact he made and legacy he has left on the state of Louisiana and college baseball is beyond remarkable and will never be duplicated.”

Since 2013, the College Baseball Foundation's annual award for the nation's top coach has been named the Skip Bertman Coach of the Year Award. Bertman won it six times between 1986 and 2000.

Bertman coached a total of 18 seasons, retiring in 2001 with a record of 870-330-3 and 11 College World Series appearances. He then served as athletic director until 2008 and Athletic Director Emeritus after that, continuing to live in Baton Rouge, support the university and attend LSU events for the rest of his life.

Bertman coached the Tigers to their first five NCAA College World Series championships in 1991, ’93, ’96, ’97, ’00. His tenure as coach also included seven Southeastern Conference championships. His NCAA Tournament winning percentage of .754 is the highest in the history of the event.

Bertman also was head coach of the 1996 U.S. Olympic team, which at that time included only amateur players and won a bronze medal in Atlanta.

Bertman played baseball at Miami before going into coaching, starting at the high school level in Miami Beach. His final job before taking over at LSU was as an assistant at Miami under then coach Ron Fraser.

Bertman was preceded in death by his wife, Sandy, and daughter, Lisa.

Funeral arrangements were pending Friday.

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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports

The Justice Department announced last year that it had issued more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics that provide gender-affirming care as part of an effort to investigate healthcare fraud. Federal judges have quashed many of the subpoenas as illegitimate efforts to intimidate providers into ending care.

In a 2-1 decision, a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the efficacy and long-term risks of the treatments are "uncertain," and the president has the power to align the Justice Department's enforcement priorities with his broader policy goals.

“Every President has law enforcement priorities, just as every President has signature policies (often, the former are components of the latter)," Judge Carlos Bea wrote.

Bea, a nominee of Republican President George W. Bush, was joined in the opinion by Daniel Bress, a Trump nominee. They reversed a ruling that quashed the subpoena against telemedicine provider QueerDoc, sending the case back to the district court to consider other arguments.

The subpoena seeks QueerDoc's personnel files, billing documents, communications with drug manufacturers and records of patients who were prescribed puberty blockers or hormone therapy, among other information, according to the 9th Circuit decision.

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Adrien Leavitt, who represented Washington state-based QueerDoc, said the ACLU would continue fighting the subpoena in district court. QueerDoc has also argued the subpoena is overbroad and burdensome. The Justice Department has said it has reason to believe the company may be misleading people about puberty blockers and hormones.

"We’re ready to continue defending one of the most fundamental principles of healthcare: every patient’s right to confidential medical care,” Leavitt said in a statement.

He said the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit was the first appeals court to weigh in on the subpoenas.

Trump has signed one executive order defining sex as only male or female — and as unchangeable — and another that seeks to end federal funding of the care for patients under 19. The latter order also directs the Justice Department to “prioritize investigations” into violations of a drug safety law by “any entity that may be misleading the public about long-term side effects of chemical and surgical mutilation.”

Gender-affirming care includes a range of medical and mental health services to support a person’s gender identity, including when it’s different from the sex they were assigned at birth. It encompasses counseling, medications that block puberty and hormone therapy to produce physical changes as well as surgeries to transform chests and genitals, though those are rare for minors.

Most major medical groups say access to the treatment is important for those with gender dysphoria and see gender as existing along a spectrum.

The 9th Circuit majority called discussion around gender-affirming care "an unsettled scientific debate," and said the Trump administration could also justify its opposition to the treatment on ethical or philosophical grounds.

Pearce was arrested in February following a domestic dispute with his ex-girlfriend and WNBA player, Rickea Jackson. The incident took place in Doral, Florida.

Pearce's charges of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, fleeing police and resisting arrest, and misdemeanor stalking could be dropped if he cooperates in a pretrial intervention program requiring random drug tests, distance from Jackson and staying out of legal trouble for one year.

Pearce will be available to participate in preseason games and all team activities until the suspension takes effect on Sunday, Aug. 30 — ell

The second-year defensive end can be reinstated on Monday, Nov. 2, following Atlanta's Week 8 road game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Falcons are set to play the Cincinnati Bengals in Madrid, Spain, the following week.

The Falcons' pass rush has taken a hit recently following Jalon Walker's season-ending ACL tear. The group is left with Christian Harris, JD Bertrand, Samson Ebukam, Kendal Daniels and Bralen Trice. The Falcons also added Cameron Sample after Walker's injury.

Atlanta traded back to the No. 26 pick in the first round of the 2025 draft to select Pearce. The former Tennessee Volunteer has played a substantial role in transforming the Falcons' pass rush, leading the team with 10 1/2 sacks during his rookie season.

Other suspensions

Pearce was one of four suspensions the NFL handed out on Friday.

The NFL also suspended Commanders edge rusher Dorance Armstrong, Tennessee Titans safety Nazeeh Johnson and Buffalo Bills defensive tackle Phidarian Mathis.

Armstrong was suspended one game for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy. He will miss the Commanders season-opening game against Philadelphia on Sept. 13.

Armstrong opened training camp on the physically unable to perform list, but has since been activated to resume practicing. He was limited to playing seven games last season before tearing a knee ligament.

He’s entering his ninth NFL season, and third with Washington.

Johnson was suspended six games for violating the league’s policy on performance-enhancers. Mathis was issued a three-game suspension for violating the league’s substances of abuse policy.

Under league rules, the players are allowed to practice and play with their respective teams through Aug. 30, when NFL teams are required to set their 53-player rosters.

Johnson is eligible to return for the Titans’ home game against Cleveland on Oct. 25. Mathis can return for Buffalo’s home game against New England on Oct. 4.

Johnson has three previous seasons of NFL experience, all with the Kansas City Chiefs, and signed with the Titans on July 27, just before the opening of training camp.

The 28-year-old had six starts in 29 NFL games with the Chiefs since being selected by Kansas City in the seventh round of the 2022 draft. A shoulder injury limited Johnson to appearing in just two games last season. He also missed the entire 2023 season with a torn ACL in his right knee.

The 28-year-old Mathis appeared in six games with the Bills last season. He spent his first three NFL seasons appearing in 23 games with Washington.

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See AP’s full NFL coverage here

The main opposition leader claimed he had been questioned by the army, and police said one person was killed at a polling station during Thursday's vote. Police identified the person as a party official and said they had arrested nine suspects.

While the counting was suspended, riot police and soldiers in armored vehicles were deployed to parts of the capital, Lusaka, including the main vote tallying center, though there were no immediate reports of any major unrest.

It was an unusual set of developments for the southern African country of 22 million people, which has held largely peaceful elections since it returned to multiparty democracy in 1991.

“The violence is targeted at poll staff and in some instances has resulted in the theft of marked ballot papers in ballot boxes,” the Electoral Commission of Zambia said in a statement announcing vote counting had been halted.

It did not say who was responsible for the violence or the alleged theft of ballot papers.

Counting restarts after security threat is ‘contained’

Electoral commission head Mwangala Zaloumis later announced counting would start again and said the violence affected a small number of polling stations in Lusaka.

“Following a review of the security situation and consultations with the relevant law enforcement agencies, I’m pleased to inform you and to inform the nation that the security threat to the electoral process has been contained,” she said at a press briefing.

The main opposition candidate, Brian Mundubile, said in a video statement that his alliance of parties had “received deeply troubling reports from several parts of the country” and called into question the credibility of the election.

He later said on social media that he was being interrogated by the army.

The president calls for peace and patience

Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, who ran for a second five-year term, called for Zambians to “remain peaceful, patient and patriotic as we await the official outcome from those entrusted with managing the vote” in a statement on X.

Thursday's election was seen as a test of Hichilema's economic recovery plan after the copper-rich nation was plunged into a debt crisis in 2020. Hichilema was elected in 2021 and oversaw the restructuring of Zambia's sovereign debt while reining in inflation and stabilizing the currency.

But critics say that economic stability has not trickled down to many people in Zambia, where poverty is widespread and frustration has grown over the high cost of living and electricity shortages.

The government was under scrutiny before the election

There was also criticism of Hichilema ahead of this election by the opposition and independent rights groups, which said his government was squeezing dissent. Mundubile’s alliance accused the government of being behind a law enforcement agency raid on its offices days before the election and claimed the action was designed to hurt the alliance’s campaign.

Hichilema, 64, was one of 14 candidates in the presidential election, but his biggest challenge was thought to come from Mundubile, a 55-year-old law graduate who emerged this year as the leader of the opposition alliance.

Zambians also voted for members of Parliament and local government councilors. About 8 million people were registered to vote at more than 13,500 polling stations. Final results were expected by Monday, according to the electoral commission.

The opposition claims election interference

Mundubile had said the suspension of the vote counting could lead to “an opportunity for interference with or manipulation of the results.”

“Put the records before the nation and allow every number to be reconciled. The people of Zambia voted. Their decision must be respected,” he said.

Mundubile said he had received information that members of the military had taken control of vote counting stations in at least one town and boxes containing ballots had been taken away from stations in other places, though he did not provide any evidence for those claims.

Zambia gained independence from Britain in 1964 and was a one-party state from 1973 to 1991. It has held largely peaceful votes and transfers of power between parties and political alliances since then.

Hichilema himself was once imprisoned on charges of treason when he was an opposition leader in 2017 during a bitter rivalry with then-President Edgar Lungu. He was held for four months after his motorcade did not give way to Lungu’s on a road and claimed he was tortured during his imprisonment.

Hichilema was released after international condemnation of the arrest and beat Lungu in an election in 2021.

Mundubile served in Lungu's government and rose to lead the opposition alliance challenging Hichilema after Lungu died last year.

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AP video journalist Alfonso Nqunjana contributed to this report.

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

Audio of the incident shortly after midnight Friday shows how he found a solution to ensure the planes that were both called American 2482 maintained proper separation as one plane arrived from Chicago shortly after the other had taken off in Phoenix.

“I’ve been working air traffic for 25 years. I’ve never seen two aircraft pretty much merge with the same call sign. That’s pretty incredible,” the controller said after the departing plane had safely cleared the area.

If both pilots thought the controller was telling them to fly at the same altitude as they headed toward each other, they might have collided, so it was crucial they knew which plane he was directing.

Quick thinking ensured the controller’s instructions were clear

The audio posted by ATC.com shows how the controller quickly started referring to “American 2482 on the arrival” and “American 2482 on the departure” to keep the two planes straight.

The controller kept the arriving plane safely above the departing plane even as their flight paths converged and made sure that the pilots of both airlines saw each other when they were still miles apart. He also directed the departing plane not to climb too high, so a gap would remain between the planes.

“It could have been disastrous, but I’m glad it worked out,” the controller said afterward.

Expert says airline must have missed that the flights would overlap

Aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said it’s likely that someone inside the airline’s dispatch center failed to catch that both planes would be in the air at the same time with identical flight numbers when both the dispatcher and the pilots signed off on the flight plan.

“You can drop the ball and that shouldn’t happen, but it’s nice to see that the system is resilient and we have all the safeguards,” said Arroyo, who has only seen this type of issue a couple times in his four decades with United Airlines. Arroyo started his career as a dispatcher before becoming a pilot.

Flight 2482 is a round-trip route that often flies back and forth between Chicago and Phoenix. Typically the same plane goes back and forth, but the flight out of Chicago was delayed by weather, so American found a second plane in Phoenix and that flight left on time. The result was that both planes briefly shared the same airspace before the arriving flight landed.

The government and airline will determine how this occurred

The Federal Aviation Administration and American Airlines will investigate how this happened, and they both emphasized how glad they were that everyone remained safe.

“The diligence and professionalism of air traffic controllers and our pilots ensured required separation was always maintained and the issue was identified and addressed. Both flights continued safely and without incident,” American Airlines said in a statement.

Joining the S&P 500 is considered an achievement for a company because the index is a widely followed measure of the broader U.S. stock market’s health. A company is selected for the index based on several criteria that demonstrate stability, including market size and consistent profitability.

Reddit's stock surged 12.6% Friday.

Aside from status, inclusion means more investments. The index tracks 500 of the biggest U.S. stocks, and trillions of dollars in investments benchmark themselves against it. Those investments include mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. Essentially, those funds will have to buy the stock once it becomes part of the index that the fund is tracking or mimicking.

Investors are depending more than ever on funds that simply mimic indexes such as the S&P 500. It’s a lower-cost way to invest, allowing savers to keep more of their investments. Partly because of that, such index funds have usually proven to be better performers than funds that try to pick and choose individual stocks.

Reddit will join the benchmark index as of Tuesday. A stock must trade publicly for at least 12 months to join the S&P 500. The operator of the index, S&P Dow Jones Indices, stuck to that guideline recently when it declined to fast-track SpaceX into the index after the space exploration company's massive initial public offering in June.

Reddit's inclusion comes weeks after it posted strong financial results for the second quarter. That included its highest-ever quarterly revenue. The company has been posting profits almost every quarter since it went public in 2024.

Wall Street expects profits to more than double overall in 2026 on a surge in revenue.

Scattered showers and thunderstorms are developing across northeast Florida and southeast Georgia. The Atlantic sea breeze is approaching I-95 and will collide with the storms, leading to strong to isolated severe storms with locally heavy rainfall, damaging wind gusts and lightning.

These will continue from the beaches to near and along I-95 before slowing drifting west and weakening after 8 p.m. The heaviest rain is expected west of I-95 and the River.

A Heat Advisory will be in effect from 11 a.m. - 8 p.m. Saturday with Advisories and Warnings possible on Sunday and into next week..

In the tropics: The two areas of potential development are unwinding as they move into dry air and increasing wind shear.

Tonight: Heat Advisory, showers and thunderstorms through early evening.

Saturday: Hot and humid. Heat Advisory, Heat Warning 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. Heat indices up to 110 degrees. Isolated showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 2 p.m., 30-50 percent. Morning lows in the 70s to low 80s. Afternoon highs in the 90s inland, upper 80s to low 90s along the beaches. Wind: W/SW 5-10 mph.

Sunday: The heat continues with possible heat advisories. Isolaated afternoon showers and thunderstorms, 20 percent. Morning lows in the 70s with highs in the mid to upper 90s inland, upper 80s to 90s along the beaches. Feels Like temperatures 105-110 degrees. Wind: WSW 5 -10 mph.

Looking ahead: The heat and humidity linger with temperatures hovering near advisory levels next week.

Sunrise: 6:53 p.m.

Sunset: 8:09 p.m.

Crump and the Bennett family are calling on JSO to release all body-camera footage, 911 calls and dispatch records related to the shooting.

[RELATED: ‘She’s the sweetest’: Outraged mom identifies 22-year-old woman shot and killed by JSO]

What JSO says happened

According to JSO, officers were called to a home on Westdale Drive near Pine Bluff Drive on Tuesday around 10:45 p.m. for a report of a battery with injuries.

Investigators said a man approached an officer as she arrived and told her he had argued with his girlfriend (Bennett), who was still inside the home and armed with a knife.

As the officer turned toward the home, JSO said, Bennett came outside carrying multiple items.

JSO said the officer told her to drop everything in her hands. The woman put some items down, but still held a large kitchen knife, according to the JSO.

JSO said the officer gave loud, verbal commands for Bennett to drop the knife, but she moved toward the officer. The officer then fired one shot, JSO said.

Bennett fell to the ground but did not drop the knife, and then tried to get up and again moved toward the officer, prompting a second shot, according to JSO.

A backup officer arrived and also gave loud, verbal commands to drop the knife.

Investigators said Bennett eventually dropped the knife, and she was taken into custody. Jacksonville Fire and Rescue treated her at the scene before she was taken to a hospital, where she died.

JSO said five other people were inside the home at the time. The boyfriend was treated for minor injuries.

This is the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office’s 13th officer-involved shooting of the year, JSO said.

Attorney Ben Crump Responds

Crump released the following statement:

“Asia Bennett was 22 years old and weighed just 110 pounds. She is dead, and the only account the public has comes from the agency whose officer fired the shots. Within hours, that agency was at a podium talking about an arrest from April. The State Attorney’s own Special Victims Unit read that evidence and refused to prosecute Asia.

“The body-camera footage and the 911 calls can show whether there was any way this ended with Asia alive. Release them.

“This family deserves justice and truth. They will not accept a version of events they are asked to take on faith.”

Crump is also asking JSO to confirm whether Bennett’s boyfriend has been interviewed and whether he can be located.

Mother wants answers

Bennett’s mother told News4JAX her daughter was a domestic violence victim and she believes police should have been helping her.

Crissy Duncan said she got a call from someone with the State Attorney’s Office just before 4 a.m. Wednesday. They asked if she knows an Asia Bennett.

“I said, ‘I’m her mother. What did she do?’ She goes, ‘No, she had a domestic dispute.’ I said, ‘Is she ok?’ They’re like, ‘No, she’s not OK. Miss Duncan, your... your daughter’s dead. Asia Bennett’s dead. She died.’”

Duncan said she is outraged by the shooting, saying her daughter was not violent or dangerous and only weighed 110 pounds.

“I would have never thought JSO would have killed my kid. She is so tiny… she’s the sweetest. You would never hear nothing from Asia,“ said Duncan. ”They killed my kid. In vain."

The State Attorney’s Office is investigating the shooting. A JSO use-of-force review is expected to follow.

The investigation was launched after concerns were raised about a toxic work environment, possible retaliation and whether race played a role in how employees were treated.

The JEA Board of Directors met Friday to discuss the results of the investigation and, by the end, said Cavey should keep her job, but needs coaching.

“I think the board is pretty clear they’re not looking to replace Vickie,” JEA Board Chair MG Orender said.

Cavey is currently on an extended leave of absence for health reasons, and Jody Brooks has taken the reins as interim CEO.

READ: Results of City Council’s JEA employee survey

An outside investigation into JEA’s workplace culture found Cavey can be difficult to work for, but investigators did not substantiate claims that she created a toxic workplace, retaliated against employees or treated workers differently because of their race.

The investigation began after former JEA Chief of Staff Kurt Wilson raised concerns, and both the City Council and JEA launched their own external investigations in response.

“Racism, toxic environment, in that law firms and HR experience, that doesn’t exist. But looking at the other one and going through the comments, there are some people who have issues, and we’re going to try and address those and be the best we can be,” Orender said.

City Council surveyed 138 employees, 46 of whom said they interacted with Cavey regularly.

On key trust and fairness items:

• 55% of employees feel that employees who disagree with the CEO are treated fairly
• 14% of employees have observed the CEO speaking negatively about employees behind their backs
• 14% have observed behavior they would describe as intimidating or hostile,
• 32% confirm fear of negative consequences for speaking up about CEO related concerns.

At the same time, 86% of employees are satisfied with the company, and 81% would refer a friend or family member to work for JEA.

“We’re going to move forward. We have a really good board. We’ve got a great group of employees here. And they love JEA. And that came through in the report,” Orender said. “Even if someone says, ‘I didn’t like this,’ they love this place. Did you see the percentage? It said they would refer a family member to work here.”

Because of the nature of the allegations made by Wilson, JEA brought in an outside investigator with no connection to the utility.

An attorney based in Tampa interviewed 65 JEA employees who work closely with Cavey, including two JEA board members.

The report says the evidence did not substantiate allegations of toxicity and racism, but it does provide a look inside Cavey’s management style.

Employees described her as demanding and, at times, difficult to work for. Some said she can be reactive and interrupts employees while they are speaking.

The attorney said that behavior was not characterized as disrespectful, but some employees said it has made them reluctant to speak up.

“To have 15% or 20% that are not happy, we’re gonna try and improve on that. So we’ll work with our C-Suite and try and coach and improve those scores in the future,” Orender said.

Cavey has to return from her leave within 60 days. If she does return, the board is expected to recommend executive coaching.

Tens of thousands of houses were damaged or destroyed, according to the government. Authorities have also reported damage to thousands of schools, medical facilities and community centers in more than 400 cities.

“There is no place to live, we lost everything,” Ebert Jonathan Morales, 38, said Friday in a shelter in Cali, one of the hardest-hit cities along with Pereira, Manizales and Quibdo.

Morales is one of the 102,263 people whose lives have been upended by the 7.4 magnitude quake that struck the South American country Monday. The government says more than 280 people died, nearly 4,000 people were injured and hundreds remain missing. Private groups estimate the number of missing is in the thousands.

Morales said he, his wife and four children are trying to rebuild from scratch.

“The earthquake destroyed several neighborhoods in the city. Many houses were damaged, and buildings collapsed,” he said. “We are going to stay here until the government gives us some help, some support.”

The government focuses on providing shelter

The devastation has tested Colombia’s President Abelardo de la Espriella, who was inaugurated just days before the earthquake shook the country's west. De la Espriella acknowledged Thursday night that “the situation is complex” and announced a plan to partner with private companies to rebuild the nation, as well as subsidies for families who are homeless.

“We will not overcome this tragedy alone as a government,” he said. “We need the private sector to rebuild Colombia together.”

Monday’s earthquake was the most powerful to hit Colombia this century. Government aid has yet to arrive in some areas, where many people are relying on volunteers and neighbors for help.

“A neighbor is giving me shelter,” Olga Castro, a mother of five in Cali, told The Associated Press. “At least we survived, but right now we are practically on the street because we don’t have a home anymore.”

De la Espriella said national and international funds raised in response to the disaster will focus on the reconstruction of hospitals, schools, homes, roads and airports.

Rebuilding the country requires a “serious technical assessment” to determine which buildings can be used, which can be repaired and which must be demolished and rebuilt, said Yezid Alvarado Vargas, a professor in construction engineering at Javeriana University, in Bogota, Colombia.

“Before even discussing reconstruction, we must guarantee temporary housing, food, healthcare, continuity of basic services and economic support for families who lost their homes or livelihoods,” Alvarado said.

In Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, around 500 volunteers gathered at a reception center to sort food, toiletries and pet food before distributing the supplies in the most affected areas. From youngsters to the elderly, everyone diligently participated in the challenging relief efforts.

“We all have to help. Today is for you, tomorrow might be for me,” volunteer Jorge Muñoz, 85, said. One of the oldest helpers at Bogotá's Vive Claro aid collection, Muñoz has witnessed the devastation caused by other earthquakes, including one in 1999 that killed more than 1,180 people.

National and international aid keeps coming

Local authorities opened schools, parks and public buildings as shelters, providing tents, mattresses and food to the displaced. In other parts of the hardest-hit cities, residents improvised shelters in the streets, while hundreds of volunteers rush to help those in greatest need, particularly in less accessible areas.

“These are isolated, neglected territories, historically lacking in institutional support, already plagued by violence, and now they are hit by an earthquake of this magnitude,” said María Mercedes Liévano, director of Save the Children in Colombia.

“It’s a crisis on top of a crisis, leaving the population in a situation of extreme vulnerability,” she added, citing communities including Buenaventura, the country’s main port, and Chocó, the earthquake’s epicenter.

Many buildings in Pereira have limited or no access to electricity and water, and volunteers have been delivering hygiene kits to displaced families in the city's shelters, said Pamela Londoño, a technical adviser with Project HOPE. Of the five or six shelters in the city, at least one is already full and no longer accepting new residents. The nonprofit is also assessing medical supply needs.

Other areas are also suffering, such as the town of Roldanillo, where approximately 60% of residents do not have access to clean water.

“The main concern is the lack of basic services for multiple communities,” Londoño said. “This is a really critical situation.”

De la Espriella visited several cities to track relief efforts and aid distribution, including Quibdó, in the Chocó region, and Pereira. Authorities are still waiting for tons of supplies and humanitarian aid from countries that have pledged their support, including Peru, China, the United States and the United Arab Emirates.

Speaking to reporters in Quibdó, de la Espriella proposed implementing a Marshall Plan — the 1948 U.S. initiative that provided $13.3 billion to help European nations rebuild their economies after World War II.

“My heart, my strength and my spirit are with all the victims and with all these territories that have been forgotten and now devastated by nature,” he said. “We must rebuild them. There is a great task ahead and I am committed to it.”

___

Suarez reported from Bogota, Colombia and Batschke reported from Santiago, Chile.

A jury deadlocked in June over whether to convict Jonathan Rinderknecht of intentionally sparking the fire that killed 12 people as it incinerated much of the Pacific Palisades and other neighborhoods in Malibu. Ten out of 12 jurors wanted to acquit him on all three felony charges, leading the judge to declare a mistrial. Federal prosecutors vowed to try again, and a second trial is set to start in the fall.

In a new indictment filed Thursday, prosecutors reduced their case against Rinderknecht to two charges and narrowed their scope.

Prosecutors allege that Rinderknecht used a barbecue lighter on Jan. 1, 2025, to spark a fire that burned undetected deep in root systems before flaring back up Jan. 7 to become the Palisades fire, which destroyed more than 6,800 buildings.

All three charges in the first trial blamed Rinderknecht for setting both the Jan. 1 fire and the Palisades Fire. In the new indictment, only one charge references both fires. The other only focuses on the destruction caused by the first fire.

Rinderknecht’s attorney and a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment on the new indictment. U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang is holding a status conference for an arraignment on Wednesday.

Throughout the first trial, prosecutors argued that Rinderknecht was the only person in the area when the Jan. 1 fire began and presented a digital trail seeking to show he was motivated by a desire to take revenge on society over rampant economic inequality. They also presented hours of recorded interviews with Rinderknecht in which he offered inconsistent recollections about his movements that night.

Rinderknecht's attorneys argued that prosecutors lacked direct evidence showing that he started the fire and that they failed to consider fireworks as a potential cause of the first fire.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill made the ruling Thursday, writing that Idaho's “Defense of Life Act" and “Fetal Heartbeat Act” — which together create a near-total ban on abortion — violate the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. Physicians who violate the laws can lose their license and face up to five years in prison.

Both laws include narrow exceptions, including abortions done to prevent the death of a pregnant woman or in some cases of rape or incest where the pregnant person has filed a police report.

The case isn't about bodily autonomy or reproductive choice, Winmill wrote in the 81-page decision, but rather the “limit of the state's power to make a woman suffer for the sake of an unborn child.”

The state can't pick and choose which life-threatening conditions justify abortion, he wrote.

“A pregnant woman’s health is not a state resource to be allocated at the legislature’s whim,” Winmill wrote.

Idaho's attorney general plans to appeal

Dr. Stacy Seyb, a Boise maternal-fetal medicine specialist who sued over the law in 2024, said the ruling will allow him to practice medicine without fear of prosecution, and to offer patients with serious medical conditions the option of ending a pregnancy without having to leave the state.

Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador said he would appeal, and is “confident this decision will be overturned.”

“The Supreme Court made clear that abortion policy belongs to the people and their elected representatives, not a single federal judge," Labrador wrote in a statement.

A doctor says the ban forced patients out of state

In the lawsuit, Seyb said he wanted to provide abortions to patients facing serious health risks, including those at high risk of self-harm from mental illnesses. He also said he should be able to provide abortions when the fetus has been diagnosed with a fatal or grave condition, when a miscarriage is inevitable, or in multi-fetal pregnancies where reducing the number of fetuses would increase the likelihood that the others would survive.

Attorneys for county prosecutors and the Idaho Attorney General argued that Seyb misunderstood the state's abortion ban, and that the ban already allows most health-preserving abortions. But Winmill said there is a gap between life-saving abortions and abortions performed to prevent non-lethal harm, and noted that Seyb said he has to refer patients in that gap to other states for care — including several with grave pregnancy complications who had to be flown to Utah for treatment.

Judge: Idaho can't force women to bear permanent damage for a fetus

Winmill said just like the state can't force a mother to donate a kidney to her toddler, it can't force a pregnant woman to suffer serious harm for a fetus.

The judge also said there is no reason to treat mental illness differently than other health conditions. Barring a pregnant woman from life-saving care for mental illness threats is “an affront to human dignity,” Winmill wrote.

Seyb noted suicide and overdose are among the leading causes of death for pregnant and post-partum people in the U.S., and that between 2018 and 2021 mental health conditions were the most common underlying cause of maternal death in Idaho according to the state's Maternal Mortality Review Committee.

In cases where there is no elevated health risk for the mother — including situations where the fetus will die shortly after birth or in multi-gestation pregnancies where aborting one fetus will help the others survive — there is no fundamental right at stake, Winmill found.

That's because in these cases, the law is rationally related to the state's interest in preventing abortions based on mistaken fetal diagnoses and affirming the dignity of people with profound disabilities, Winmill wrote.

And physicians could still face civil penalties for performing abortions under another state law, which allows extended family members of an aborted fetus to sue the provider for at least $20,000.

Abortion is on the ballot this fall in Idaho and other states

Idaho voters will decide this fall whether to roll back the state's abortion ban. If approved, the voter-led initiative would allow abortion until fetal viability, which is generally considered to be after 21 weeks.

Voters in Virginia and Nevada, where abortion is legal through at least 24 weeks, will consider state constitutional amendments creating a right to abortion. In Missouri, voters are being asked to override a constitutional amendment passed in 2024 in order to bring back an abortion ban.

Trump’s solicitor general petitioned the high court to suspend last week’s decision by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Chief Justice John Roberts set a deadline of Tuesday for a response by plaintiffs challenging the ballroom project.

The divided appeals court panel ruled last week Trump must stop the White House ballroom’s construction because Congress has not approved the project. The panel’s majority said Trump doesn’t have the unilateral authority to build a 90,000-square-foot (8,400-square-meter) ballroom where the White House’s East Wing stood before he ordered its demolition last fall.

The lower court suspended its own ruling for two weeks to give Trump's Republican administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court. Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to rule on its stay petition before the appeals court panel’s decision takes effect on Aug. 21.

"This case involves an extraordinary and unlawful injunction that will halt the ongoing construction of the integrated military complex, including a totally secure ballroom space, at the East Wing of the White House, which is vitally required by national security,” Sauer wrote.

Friday's court filing includes the administration's first confirmation that a threatened missile attack on Air Force One prompted the Secret Service to secretly fly Trump out of Turkey last month on an alternate military aircraft. In arguing for the need for a secure ballroom space, the filing cites “the threat of a missile attack against Air Force One on July 8” in a list of recent assassination attempts against Trump.

The filing also asserts that the project is “on time and under budget” with approximately $400 million in private donations obviating the need for any taxpayer dollars to be spent. However, Democrats in Congress have said it appears that funds from Trump's “ big, beautiful ” tax cuts bill appear to be paying for ballroom work. The administration also has requested additional funding from Congress for the project, but lawmakers haven’t approved it.

In April, a district court judge ordered a stop to aboveground construction of the planned ballroom. But the judge stressed that the White House was free to proceed with underground work, including the construction of any bunkers, military installations and medical facilities.

The D.C. Circuit panel’s 2-1 decision upheld an order to pause aboveground construction on the project, siding with historic preservationists who sued to stop construction of the ballroom.

“Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help,” wrote the majority's two judges, both appointed by Democratic presidents.

A third judge disagreed, finding that the preservationist group that challenged the project had no legal right to sue.

“The district court elevated the aesthetic displeasure of a single passerby over the government’s security interests in the ballroom,” wrote Judge Neomi Rao, who was appointed by Trump.

The Trump administration argues that the president, not Congress or the courts, has unimpeded authority to renovate the White House. The current state of the project, essentially an open construction site, makes it harder to protect the White House, the Justice Department contends.

The administration also says the National Trust for Historic Preservation does not have the legal right, or standing, to sue over the ballroom, which is part of Trump’s plans to quickly remake Washington. The solicitor general said the ballroom project “should be a matter for the President and the political process, not construction-by-injunction.”

In response to the petition, the trust accused the White House of trying to “outrun the courts" by accelerating construction work, pointing to the administration's plans to install 1 million pounds of rebar and pour another 3,000 cubic yards of concrete in the next week alone.

“The Administration’s transparent efforts to evade the rule of law, frustrate judicial review, and limit the availability of meaningful relief in the courts must stop here,” the plaintiffs said in a statement.

During an appeals court hearing in early June, an administration lawyer defended a broad view of presidential control over iconic public facilities. The government could bulldoze the Statue of Liberty and the White House, Justice Department lawyer Yaakov Roth said in response to a hypothetical question, and the descendants of immigrants who came through Ellis Island and the enslaved people who built the White House would not have standing to sue.

The D.C. Circuit panel upheld a ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, who was nominated by Republican President George W. Bush. Leon concluded that a pause wouldn’t jeopardize national security. He also exempted any construction work that is necessary for the safety and security of the White House.

The ballroom has been under construction for 10 months. The administration says the work is roughly 65% finished.

“Given those developments, the injunction promises chaos in service of nothing,” Sauer wrote.

The Taliban regained control of Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021, after it launched an offensive as the U.S. and other NATO troops withdrew from the country after two decades of war. The withdrawal led to chaotic scenes at and around Kabul’s airport with thousands wanting to leave.

“Thank God, the past five years have passed in safety,” said Mohammad Qasim, 30, reflecting on the anniversary that comes against a backdrop of economic hardship in a conflict-stricken country. “Our wish and hope from the government is to create job opportunities for the youth.”

“We, along with the entire nation, call upon the government to create employment opportunities for the youth and to encourage them to pursue education,” he added.

Taliban curbs women's rights despite pledge

Before the takeover, the Taliban stated that, upon assuming power, it would allow women access to education, employment and public participation, albeit in accordance with its interpretation of Islamic principles.

Soon after it seized power, the Taliban imposed an indefinite ban on girls’ education beyond the sixth grade and, a few months later, also banned higher education for women until “further notice.”

Women also were banned from entering gyms, parks and public baths, from taking part in sports and traveling to distant locations without a “mahram,” or male guardian.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid has repeatedly said the administration is working to establish conditions under which girls and women can attend classrooms or university campuses in line with Islamic Sharia laws. The restrictions, nevertheless, remain in force.

While the United Nations has acknowledged that the country has become more stable since the takeover, it has warned that lasting stability cannot be possible unless the Taliban rulers — who remain isolated internationally — lift restrictions on women and girls, protect basic rights and address terrorism concerns.

“A reduction in conflict has brought tangible benefits for many Afghans and created opportunities to focus on recovery, development and regional economic cooperation,” the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA, said in a statement ahead of the anniversary. It added, however, that the restrictions on women and girls impede Afghanistan’s recovery and its reintegration with the international community.

UN says Afghanistan in world's most severe women's rights crisis

In a statement this week, the U.N.'s agency on women’s rights said Afghan women and girls are living under the world’s most severe restrictions, which not only violate their rights but also threaten the country’s social and economic future.

“Half a decade after the Taliban takeover in August 2021, Afghanistan has systematically dismantled the rights of half its population, making it a global outlier with no parallel in the modern world,” U.N. Women said.

“In the past year alone, this exclusion of women and girls from education, employment, public life, justice systems and healthcare has only intensified, entrenching what remains the world’s most severe women’s rights crisis,” it said.

Fazila Soroush, a 39-year-old Kabul-based entrepreneur and an advocate for women’s rights, said the government had “demonstrated its worth to the people through its actions in every area.”

“We consider it essential that the officials of the Islamic Emirate who had announced the closure of schools and universities until further notice, now make a clear and practical decision regarding this matter,” she said.

In the streets of Kabul, preparations for the anniversary celebrations were underway. Vendors sold the Taliban’s white with black scripted flags while painters were busy writing slogans in praise of Islamic laws on walls, including: “The Islamic system has been achieved at the cost of the martyrs’ blood” and “Our commitment stands firm: Consolidation and implementation of Islamic Sharia.”

Taliban says it brought security and stability

Molvi Hayatullah Mahajar Farahi, deputy minister in the Taliban government for broadcasting at the Ministry of Information and Culture, said in the five years the administration has delivered security, stabilized the currency, improved infrastructure and formed industrial parks that have created jobs.

“Naturally, challenges and difficulties exist, yet we can highlight several accomplishments,” Farahi told The Associated Press.

Farahi, when asked, did not address the issue of the education of girls and women but said “the level of investment made in universities surpasses anything seen in the past.

“The Emirate continues its efforts to further organize and improve services for our citizens in the fields of education and other sectors,” he stated.

The deputy minister rejected a U.N. report that documented terrorist networks in Afghanistan, saying “these are merely enemy propaganda, spread to portray the country as unstable.”

Asked to comment about its international isolation, Farahi insisted the Taliban government was engaged with some 40 countries. The Taliban government currently is only formally recognized by Russia.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has fulfilled all the requirements necessary for official recognition. It is now up to the international community and others to step forward and take the appropriate action,” he said.

UN points to broader educational crisis

The bans have left an estimated 2.4 million girls excluded from secondary education, UNESCO, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, said this week — a 200,000 increase from last year. The restrictions have reversed two decades of progress that Afghanistan had made in education, the agency said.

Pointing at a broader educational crisis, the agency said 53% of primary school-aged children are out of school. Schools lack basic infrastructure such as water, sanitation or heating, while natural disasters have also led to hundreds of school closures.

Meanwhile, the U.N. World Food Program said child malnutrition has reached critical levels in a third of Afghanistan’s provinces and is expected to worsen as funding shortfalls force cuts in food distributions and other support.

Speaking Friday from Kabul, the special representative for the U.N. women's agency Sarah Ferguson urged donors not to abandon Afghan women and girls, saying the agency is getting only a quarter of what it needs. She said more than half the 74 women's organizations surveyed in April in Afghanistan said they were close to suspending or halting work because of aid cuts.

In Kabul, Dost Mohammad Khan expressed support for the Taliban administration, saying the past five years have brought stability. He said, however, that the country needs trained professionals such as doctors and engineers, urging the authorities to keep “all sectors operational.”

“We also call upon the Islamic Emirate to permit women to attend school under the sharia dress code and we urge the public to heed the directives of the Emirate also,” said the 38-year-old.

___

Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey.

News4Jax spoke with two people at a polling location on Friday.

“I’d rather see those kinds of things be fee based rather than just rolled into a blanket property tax,” one man said.

Another woman added, “My property taxes continue to increase, and I’m not interested in additional increases.”

News4Jax reached out to the Matanzas Riverkeeper. The organization said:

On Tuesday, the St. Johns County Commissioners will decide whether to ask voters if saving lands that protect water, wildlife habitat, farms, and forests is a priority for them or not. Most of these lands are likely at risk of development without this measure. There will be a transparent process to prioritize properties to be protected, which will be open to the public and subject to review by an advisory committee, the County Commission, and our community.

If referred to the ballot, voters will be able to decide whether to increase funding for the Land Acquisition and Management Program (LAMP) which was established a few years ago but only has annual allocation of $500,000.

The big challenge for St. Johns County is that without a more significant dedication of funds, they can’t move quickly when a critical conservation property becomes available. Without dedicated funding, many key natural lands that protect places like the Matanzas River, the St. Johns River, and lands important to our drinking water, wildlife, and beaches will be lost to development.

The ballot measure would authorize the county to have access to capital to move quickly, and specifies 0.15 mills - $15 on every $100,000 of assessed value - from local property taxes as the funding source. For the typical homeowner in St. Johns County that translates to around $3.35 per month on a home assessed at $268,394 after all current exemptions. People who don’t pay property taxes will not pay for this directly.

Bonds are a mechanism to provide access to that capital up front, but need not be used if the county chooses to dedicate impact fees, grants, or other funding sources. There are 25 existing county land conservation programs across Florida that are voter authorized, and every one of them uses a combination of funding sources and partners to achieve their goals. If run effectively, St. Johns County can turn $100 million locally into $300 million or more with regional, state, and federal matching funds and private donations.

We also reached out to Trust for Public Land who tells News4Jax they helped the county with the measure and their polling suggests overall in the county 5-1 people support the measure.

The proposal, if approved by commissioners, would appear as a referendum question in the Nov. 3, 2026, General Election.

Voters would decide whether the county should issue general obligation bonds to fund the acquisition, restoration and management of conservation lands through its Land Acquisition and Management Program, known as LAMP.

What the bond would fund

If passed by voters, the bonds, issued in one or more series, would finance the purchase and stewardship of lands that protect drinking water resources, wildlife habitat, coastal areas, working farms and forests, and outdoor recreation. The measure also aims to reduce flooding.

The bonds would mature within 20 years of each issuance and carry interest rates no higher than the legal maximum.

Repayment would come from a property tax levy of up to 0.15 mills on all taxable property in the county. For context, a mill equals $1 for every $1,000 of taxable property value, meaning the proposed rate would amount to $15 annually for every $100,000 of taxable value on a property.

We spoke with County Commissioner Ann Taylor who said, “That money would be put into a bond up to I believe it’s $100 million. That’s substantial. So, that actually could purchase a decent amount of land. And when any property, of course it would have to be a willing seller, and then that property would go before the lamp board.”

How LAMP fits in

St. Johns County established LAMP through Ordinance No. 2021-38 as the county’s dedicated framework for identifying, evaluating, acquiring, restoring and managing environmentally significant lands.

The bond program would operate entirely within that structure, meaning acquisitions and land management decisions would follow LAMP’s existing criteria and oversight processes.

How the bonds would be issued

The county would have the flexibility to issue the bonds in one or more series rather than all at once, allowing it to pace borrowing in line with acquisition opportunities and program needs.

Each series would carry its own 20-year maturity window from the date of issuance, and interest rates would be capped at the legal maximum under Florida law.

Developers in St. Johns County

The conservation effort comes as St. Johns County faces intensifying development pressure, including from SB 686, a new state law that took effect July 1, giving agricultural landowners a faster path to residential development.

Six properties in the county are already in line for certification under the law, including more than 4,000 acres near Nocatee in northern St. Johns County.

St. Johns County Growth Management Director Mike Roberson has acknowledged the law significantly shifts local authority.

“This is less authority. This is a removal of authority,” Roberson said. “I think there’s just been a general trend from the state producing laws that have given, as you say, a little more leeway or more flexibility for developers to maybe get entitlements.”

Once a property is certified under the law, the county cannot reject development based on land use, zoning or traffic, and those rights are permanent.

“Once they achieve those rights or those entitlements, they’ll get them in perpetuity,” Roberson said.

Commissioners have begun pushing back. Rather than immediately pursuing a lawsuit, the board voted 5-0 to direct the County Attorney’s Office to explore the cost and viability of an injunction against the law.

“A motion was made and seconded to move forward to ask our legal department to do two things. We wanted to get a consultation with an outside consultant to find out the viability of getting an injunction. The second thing is we wanted to find out how much it was going to cost,” Murphy said.

A public hearing on the agricultural enclave applications is scheduled for Aug. 19 — one day after commissioners vote on the conservation bond referendum.

What commissioners will vote on

On Aug. 18, commissioners will vote on whether to formally place the measure on the November ballot.

If they approve it, the question goes to St. Johns County voters on Nov. 3 — and they will have the final say.

YELLOW SHADED AREA: Central Tropical Atlantic (AL92) Showers and thunderstorms associated with a tropical wave located about 650 miles east of the Lesser Antilles have continued to become less organized.

This system is moving into a region of increasing upper-level winds and dry air, and the possibility of development is decreasing.

Regardless of development, interests in the Lesser Antilles should continue to monitor the progress of this system since gusty winds and areas of heavy rain are possible across these islands Friday night and Saturday.

The chance of formation through 48 hours is 10 percent and the chance through 7 days is 10 percent.

ORANGE SHADED AREA: Eastern Tropical Atlantic (AL94) is a tropical wave located several hundred miles southwest of the Cabo Verde Islands is producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms.

Environmental conditions are forecast to be generally conducive for gradual development, and a tropical depression could form late this week or this weekend while the wave moves westward or west-northwestward across the eastern and central tropical Atlantic.

Formation chance through 48 hours remains at 30 percent and the chance through 7 days is 40 percent.

One important reminder

The percentages displayed by the National Hurricane Center represent the chance that a tropical depression or storm will form—not the likelihood of a hurricane, landfall or impacts at a particular location. Right now, there is no reason for alarm in Florida, but we are entering the portion of hurricane season when tropical activity typically increases, so checking the forecast regularly is always a good idea.

News4JAX is not naming the driver because he is charged with a misdemeanor.

The man was taken into custody around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 12, just west of the intracoastal bridge, according to his arrest report.

According to the report, an officer was monitoring westbound traffic when he observed a vehicle traveling at an extreme high rate of speed. The officer then stopped the vehicle and placed the driver under arrest, according to the report.

The man was charged with operating a motor vehicle at 100 mph or more in a manner that threatened persons or property, a second-degree misdemeanor.

The four whales, named Caspian, Peekachu, Rain and Secord, were the second group of belugas sent to Chicago's Shedd Aquarium from Marineland, in Ontario near Niagara Falls, after an initial four arrived in July.

They are among a total of 30 whales and four dolphins that will be transported from Marineland after the Canadian government approved of the rescue plan, which might have saved them from mass euthanasia.

Marineland announced in early 2023 that it was for sale and closed to the public in late summer 2024. Twenty whales — 19 belugas and one killer whale — have died at Marineland since 2019, according to provincial government data obtained through freedom-of-information laws and official statements.

As part of the rescue efforts, the whales have been making their international trips in custom-built slings and temperature-controlled transport containers. A team of experts flew to Canada to meet the whales’ previous caretakers months prior and pored over years of their health records in preparation for the trip.

“This is a very complex and unprecedented rescue effort. This has never been done before,” said Charlie Jacobsma, the director of animal behavior and training at the Shedd Aquarium.

The new arrivals first interacted with other whales already at the aquarium through gates to find the best aquatic roommates, he said. The whales for now live in the same space as three other belugas, and they trade “signs of affiliation” and sounds with each other.

“Belugas are very social animals,” he said. “It was really special to be able to see some of our animals pairing up with these new animals.”

Dr. Karisa Tang, Shedd’s lead veterinarian, said all the belugas are taking the adjustment to their new home “day by day.”

Tang said the whales are monitored “hour by hour, minute by minute,” including their food intake, interactions with other animals and signs of their mood, like “relaxed swimming.” Caretakers look for signs of soreness or bruises on their bodies.

Belugas have “great personalities” and expressive faces, she said.

“Every single day it is an absolute joy to work with belugas,” she added. “There’s something about them that seems magical.”

Under the plan, the belugas and dolphins are being relocated to five marine parks: Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, SeaWorld locations in San Antonio and San Diego, and Oceanografic Valencia.

___

Mayes-Osterman is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

The attacks caused no casualties but underlined the dangers faced by vessels moving cargo through the critical waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the open oceans, as Iran keeps a firm grip on the passage.

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

2 oil tankers hit by drones as they transited Strait of Hormuz

Two tankers owned by Abu Dhabi’s state-owned oil and gas company ADNOC were attacked Thursday evening while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the company said. It added that the attack caused no injuries and that “the situation has been brought under control.”

The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center said two vessels were reported to have suffered minor damage when attacked by drones while transiting the Strait of Hormuz. It did not identify them as the ADNOC ships, but it appeared to be the same incident.

The UAE's Foreign Ministry blamed the attacks on Iran and said they were a “flagrant violation” of the United Nations' principles of freedom of navigation.

“Targeting commercial shipping and using the Strait of Hormuz as a tool of economic coercion or blackmail represents acts of piracy by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the Foreign Ministry said.

There was no immediate response from Iran.

Activists bring food and water to Palestinians under siege by Israeli settlers

Activists from Israel and other countries marched through the occupied West Bank, bringing food and water to Palestinians who have been under siege by Israeli settlers for days.

Three Palestinian families in the town of Qusra have been unable to leave their homes for nearly a week after settlers surrounded the area. Israeli troops intervened multiple times, but the settlers have kept returning.

The standoff in the northern West Bank town of Qusra is the latest in a wave of settler violence in the territory, which Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war and which would make up part of a future Palestinian state.

Defense Minister Israel Katz instructed the army to prepare a plan to transfer power to the police to enforce civilian-related matters, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Yemen says it disrupted a Houthi attack as fighting continues

Yemen’s military said its forces thwarted Houthi attacks early Friday in southwestern Yemen amid ongoing fighting with the Iran-backed rebels.

Forces affiliated with Yemen’s internationally recognized government said in a statement that dozens of Houthis were killed and injured in fighting that disrupted plans to attack military reinforcements in Taiz province with drones, explosives and artillery.

The Associated Press was unable to independently verify that toll.

A fire broke out Friday at the port in Mokha, where Houthis launched missiles targeting the port’s infrastructure, according to a spokesman for Yemen’s joint military forces. The spokesman, Wadah al-Dubaish, could not immediately say if anyone was killed or wounded.

The Houthis said Friday they targeted Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company, with a drone strike in the city of Najran near Yemen's border. There was no immediate comment from Aramco or Saudi Arabia.

Recent Houthi attacks on government-held areas across Yemen have raised fears that the country’s civil war could reignite and open another front in the Middle East.

Kushner will head to Middle East for talks on Gaza

U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and negotiator Jared Kushner will travel to the Middle East next week to try to advance plans for an end to the conflict in Gaza after a deal recently announced by the Trump administration ran into Israeli opposition.

An official with the Board of Peace, the body Trump established to oversee the fragile ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, said Kushner, board high representative Nickolay Mladenov, and executive board member and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would arrive in Israel on Sunday.

The group will then travel to Cairo, where meetings of a Palestinian technocratic group set to assume control of Gaza under a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal have been taking place for the past several months, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because planning for details of the trip has not yet been finalized.

The trip was reported earlier by Axios.

— Matthew Lee in Washington

Extreme Heat Warning for Camden and Glynn counties 11 a.m.-8 p.m.

Heat Advisory for remaining SE GA/NE FL counties 11 a.m.-8 p.m.

Scattered showers could produce strong to severe thunderstorms this afternoon (after 2 p.m.) as temperatures climb back into the mid-90s. Feels like temperatures will range from 107 to 113 degrees.

More steamy heat and stormy weather to continue into the weekend. Temperatures remain in the mid-upper 90s with heat advisories likely.

Tropics: What was an 80%/high chance of development for AL92 is now only 20% as weakening occurs. AL 94 remains at a medium/30-50% chance of development over the next 2-7 days. This system is moving WNW and could form into next tropical system over the weekend.

Begay, one of the last two living Code Talkers, made the eight-hour drive from his home on the Navajo Nation, the vast reservation extends into New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, to the Arizona State Capitol. Dozens of descendants of the Navajo Code Talkers and others gathered to remember the Navajo military recruits who used a code based on their native language to keep military secrets.

“I am so damn proud,” said Begay, in a wheelchair and wearing a Navajo Code Talkers cap dotted with pins and a golden shirt showing emblems he earned. “We used our language in World War II and won the battles.”

The Marine Corps recruited over 400 Navajos during World War II to communicate confidential information using their then-unwritten language. It was the largest code-talking program in the military at the time. In 2021, Arizona became the first state adopting Navajo Code Talker Day as a state holiday.

Between 1942 and 1945, they sent thousands of secret messages on battle tactics and enemy troop movements and ultimately helped save the lives of thousands of Allied soldiers.

The program remained secret for decades and in 1982, President Ronald Reagan signed a proclamation designating Aug. 14 as the official day to honor the Navajo Code Talkers and all Native Americans who served in the war.

“The U.S. was being defeated. Without that code, that war could have been different," said Dawn Manuelito, a granddaughter of one of the first 29 Navajo Code Talkers who developed the code. “Our language saved this country."

Navajo soldiers were sworn to secrecy

When the Code Talkers were discharged after the war, they couldn't tell anyone — even family members — about their secret mission. The program remained classified until 1968 and then efforts began to formally recognize the soldiers for their contributions.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon sent a letter of appreciation to the Navajo Tribal Council. Code Talker veterans participated in the bicentennial parade in Washington in 1976 and then Begay and other Code Talkers made a written request for recognition that resulted in a 1982 joint congressional resolution and Reagan's proclamation.

In the proclamation, Reagan also acknowledged that members of the Choctaw, Chippewa, Creek, Sioux, and other tribes used their tribal languages as effective battlefield codes in the two world wars.

At least 20 tribes have had members participate in the code talking programs, according to the National Museum of the American Indian.

During World War II, over 40,000 Native American men and women enlisted in the U.S. armed forces. Of the hundreds of Code Talkers deployed, the Comanches participated in operations in Europe, including the D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France.

Advocates work to keep the legacy alive

Following President Donald Trump’s executive order to end federal diversity and equity programs, the Defense Department deleted thousands of pages honoring contributions by women and minority groups, including the Navajo Code Talkers and other Native American veterans.

Tribes condemned the action. The Pentagon restored some webpages, saying the Navajo Code Talker material was erroneously removed.

“They left their home, their sheep, their loved ones, to serve a country. They came back home and most of them have PTSD, like my dad. But they continued to do the best they can — and the Trump administration wiped them out of the map,” Ronald Begay, 70, the oldest son of Thomas H. Begay, said. “It just makes your blood boil."

Laura Tohe, the Arizona poet laureate and daughter of a Navajo Code Talker, said her father went to a boarding school where students were punished for using their native languages. But when he joined the Army, Tohe said, he and other men were told that the military would use their language to devise a code.

“It's a huge contradiction,” Tohe said. “Despite the complicated and dark history and relationship that we have with the U.S., these men were willing to step up because many of them felt like it was their responsibility to serve."

There's no dedicated museum to honor the group. Attempts to build one on the Navajo Nation haven't come to fruition.

New Mexico officials announced on Friday that the state would invest $20 million in a museum in Farmington.

Only two Navajo Code Talkers remain

Thomas H. Begay grew up speaking only the Navajo language with his parents. At 13, like many Native American Code Talkers, he first learned English when he was sent to boarding school.

Begay left the Marines in 1946 but joined the U.S. Army a year later. He worked as a communication specialist and was a paratrooper during the Korean War. The experience in Korea convinced him to leave the military in 1953.

The other surviving Navajo Code Talker is Peter MacDonald. He joined the Marine Corps at 15. He was two years too young, so he lied about his age.

After the war, MacDonald worked as an engineer at a defense contractor company and eventually became a powerful and controversial politician on the Navajo Nation. In November 2017, MacDonald, along with other World War II veterans, met Trump in the Oval Office and shared the history of the Navajo Code Talkers.

——

Associated Press writer Savannah Peters contributed from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Catania’s airport will remain closed until Saturday afternoon, which falls on the Ferragosto holiday that marks the height of the Italian summer holiday season when millions flock to the sea and mountains, deserting Italian cities.

While Etna’s activity often interrupts flights at the airport, located 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of the volcano, this is the longest emergency since 2002.

“Volcanic ash can be a great risk for aircraft,” said Boris Behncke, a researcher at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology’s Etna Observatory. “It can be sucked into the motors, and force them to stall. This is why everyone is so very cautious with aircraft when there is a volcanic ash emission."

Etna is the largest active volcano in Europe. The latest activity has been unusual for its persistence and sustained ash emissions. Northerly winds have spread light amounts of ash to Malta and northern Africa.

“There have been many shorter interruptions — and stronger eruptions — over the past few decades, but this event is different because the ash emission from Etna’s summit has been much more persistent,” Behncke said.

The closure has forced planes to be rerouted to other airports on the island, which has pushed up taxi fares and car rental prices, according to the Corriere della Sera daily. The Codacons consumer association has announced it will file a complaint with Italy’s competition authority following complaints about price gouging.

The SAC airport operator said 36% of nearly 2,000 flights scheduled to arrive in Catania from Aug. 6-12 had been canceled, while more than 600 were diverted to Palermo, Trapani and Comiso in Sicily and Lamezia Terme in Calabria. Flights were able to depart Catania over the weekend, but the airport was officially closed to both incoming and outgoing flights Monday. Comiso also was briefly closed.

The Italian train company Trenitalia has added six trains along the Palermo-Messina-Catania route to help ease the travel pressure.

Italy's federation of travel agencies and tour operators has called for a task force to coordinate responses to disruptions caused by Mount Etna and said it would ask for a review of how airlines handled the cancellations and passenger assistance.

“Operators are working around the clock to provide assistance, cancellations and alternative travel arrangements, but they cannot bear the burden of structural shortcomings and the management responsibilities of others," FIAVET President Gian Mario Pilieri said in a statement.

The Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department marine unit joined the Coast Guard boat crew to dewater the vessel. Station Mayport’s boat crew then towed it back to a local boat ramp.

The vessel’s owner is working with commercial salvage to have the boat removed from the water.

Fuel spill risk prompts environmental monitoring

The Coast Guard said the vessel had several hundred gallons of fuel on board, posing a potential threat to the marine environment as the boat continued to deteriorate. Coast Guard Sector Jacksonville’s Incident Management Division says it closely monitored the vessel’s condition for pollution concerns.

A Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office marine unit and a good Samaritan also responded to assist.

“Coast Guard Southeast crews are proud to work alongside our partner agencies and good Samaritans to protect lives, safeguard the maritime environment, and ensure the safety of our maritime communities,” officials said.

A Leon County judge last week ordered the ballot summary and title of the proposal to be rewritten, as the originals were misleading and filled with political rhetoric. The new version swaps out the florid rhetoric with staid, straightforward wording.

For example, the initial title was “Save Our Homes From Excessive Property Taxes,” and the new version is “Increased Homestead Exemption, Lower Cap on Increases in Non-Homestead Property Assessments.”

In a statement, Uthmeier said law enforcement officials, many of whom have criticized the proposal for slashing revenues for public safety, should’ve been included in discussions to draft the property tax cut plan.

“Under Florida law, we don’t have the ability to rewrite the full amendment, just the ballot summary and title consistent with the court’s ruling,” Uthmeier said. “The amendment could certainly have been rolled out with greater transparency and the meaningful involvement of key stakeholders, including our law enforcement agencies. No one wants to defund our incredible sheriffs, yet there were no discussions to involve them in this process.”

For more than a year, Gov. Ron DeSantis has toured the state harping on the need for a major cut to property taxes, at times questioning why property taxes should exist at all. He noted the sharp increase in property tax revenues received by local governments in the last six years, from $31 billion in 2019 to $55 billion in 2024.

DeSantis also touted the move as a way to cut costs for homeowners facing rampant inflation, but as the idea formed into a distinct policy during a special session in June, sheriffs and law enforcement groups voiced greater opposition, concerned it would slash the available revenues for public safety.

One of the recent voices has been Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who called the amendment a “train wreck.”

The measure would increase the $50,000 property tax exemption for homestead properties to $150,000 in 2027 and to $250,000 in 2028, but the portion of the property bill that goes to K-12 public schools would be exempt from the exemption.

Another provision lowers the cap on annual assessments increases for non-homestead properties from 10 percent to 5 percent.

Under state law, the measure requires 60 percent support from voters to pass in November.

Three different groups sued over the ballot summary, and Leon County Judge David Frank agreed, ordering the redrafting of the amendment’s title and summary.

Groups opposed to the measure welcomed the new draft.

“We applaud the Court for its thorough review of Amendment 3 and its ballot language. Judge David Frank’s ruling and the subsequent ballot language rewrite confirm what we’ve long known – this amendment is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said Edie Ousley, spokeswoman for Vote No on 3, a group campaigning against the measure.

“Amendment 3 is not tax relief – it’s a tax shift. The proposal doesn’t eliminate the cost of local services – it shifts more of the burden onto renters, businesses and other property owners while leaving communities to make up the difference,” she added.

Lawrence Mayor Brian DePena was charged Friday with one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering.

DePena, 61, is accused obtaining a COVID-19 small-business loan worth $1.5 million for his tire sales business. Rather than using the money for the business, DePena allegedly spent more than $880,000 to pay off high-interest mortgages on various businesses and put $90,000 into his mayoral campaign fund ahead of the 2021 election. DePena has been mayor since 2021 and previously served on the Lawrence City Council.

Ted Docks, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston Division, accused DePena of “cashing in on a public health crisis and blatantly defrauding a government program meant to keep businesses afloat during the pandemic.”

“When elected officials misuse federal funds for personal gain, they’re breaking the trust of their constituents — and breaking the law,” Docks said in a statement. “Together, with our partners, the FBI will continue to doggedly pursue anyone who defrauds the federal government. You’ll be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and that ‘easy money’ won’t seem so easy after all.”

DePena made an initial appearance in federal court in Boston Friday afternoon. DePena was released after agreeing to several conditions, including turning over his passport and not seeking any loans without court approval.

After leaving court, DePena's lawyer Carlos Apostle repeatedly responded with “no comment” to questions. DePena, who is a citizen of the United States and Dominican Republic, responded with “God bless” when asked if he would resign. He made no other comments.

In 2020 and 2021, DePena obtained a government disaster loan for Tenares Tire Services Inc., a tire sales and automotive services in Lawrence. During the pandemic, the Small Business Administration offered loans to qualified business that were suffering financial losses.

He used a loan of $150,000 for the business. A year later, prosecutors say, DePena's mayoral campaign was running short of cash, he owed back taxes and was under pressure to pay back high-interest loans on several of his properties in Lawrence. He then requested several increases to the government loan and allegedly used $1.5 million to cover those expenses unrelated to his tire business.

If convicted on the wire fraud charge, DePena faces up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000. He faces a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000 if convicted on the money laudering charge.

House Majority PAC’s move is expected to raise the group’s campaign advertising in the Cleveland area to roughly $7 million, the group announced in an email obtained by The Associated Press.

Miller’s decision to press on even after calls from within his own party to step aside also prompted the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, House Democrats’ main campaign arm, this week to move Democratic challenger Brian Poindexter on to the group’s list of priority candidates.

The House Ethics Committee said last week it had opened an investigation into domestic abuse allegations against Miller. The embattled Ohio congressman also last week spoke with Trump, who did not suggest he exit the race but suggested it would be difficult.

President Donald Trump won Ohio’s 7th District in 2024 by 11 percentage points, though Democrats see the swath of suburban Cleveland and rural northeast Ohio as within reach in light of the renewed accusations from Moreno, the daughter of Ohio Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno.

Miller, whose deadline to drop from the race passed Monday, has denied the abuse claims and said he would inject $1 million of his own into his campaign.

Officials with the National Republican Congressional Committee, the GOP's House campaign arm, said Friday they would support Miller's reelection campaign.

While discussions between Iran and Oman, as well as between Iran and Pakistan, Turkey and Qatar, persist at an uneven and unpredictable pace, the U.S. administration quietly has expanded its outreach to include perhaps unlikely interlocutors in Europe.

Just this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio met in person in Washington with the foreign minister of Austria on Tuesday and held a call with the foreign minister of Greece on Wednesday.

Those interactions were not notable beyond the normal course of relations between the U.S. and two close European allies. The official State Department readouts of the discussions were bland and vague and did not mention Iran by name as a topic of conversation.

But it then emerged that both foreign ministers — almost immediately after their talks with Rubio — spoke Thursday with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

The apparent new tack to break the negotiation logjam comes as the U.S. and Iran are both pushing for control of the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial oil shipping corridor. President Donald Trump faces little wiggle room in his next steps as the economic fallout from the war and dwindling stockpiles of key weapons pose political problems for Republicans ahead of November’s midterm congressional elections.

A desperate push is on to break the diplomatic logjam between the US and Iran

The entry by Austria and Greece is likely less of a formal mediation attempt, analysts say, and more reflective of a desperate push to halt the conflict because of the impact it has on an increasing number of countries, beyond those in the Middle East.

“Everyone is just urging both sides to stop this reckless game of chicken,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group.

It also shows how much Iran's effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has forced countries, which otherwise were neutral bystanders to the larger conflict, to exercise any diplomatic sway they may have on their Iranian and American counterparts to kick-start a lasting resolution.

Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, warned that any efforts by Greece, Austria or any other non-mediating country could prove to be futile.

“While the calls to both sides may entail encouraging both Iran and the U.S. back to the negotiating table, such efforts fall short of mediation, which is a very complex endeavor and requires trust to be built by the mediator with both sides," Yacoubian said.

She added that it’s not something that any country can “just jump into.”

Rubio discussed Iran with his Austrian and Greek counterparts

The State Department said Friday that it could not comment on the timing of calls by other countries' foreign ministers and maintained that Rubio had made no requests of either to get in touch with Iran or pass messages to Araghchi.

One European diplomat, who was briefed on the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity to detail sensitive diplomatic conversations, said the timing of the calls was not an accident.

The State Department did allow, however, that Iran had been a topic of conversation in Rubio's discussions, which occurred as Trump is facing serious political headwinds over a war for which he has offered shifting objectives.

No longer purely about making Iran incapable of producing a nuclear weapon, the immediate goal has become reopening the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world's oil usually passes through and which was open before the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran on Feb. 28.

“That’s goal number one: keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over our country,” Vice President JD Vance said in an interview Thursday on Fox News Channel. But he did not say anything about the strait being open and toll-free for transiting ships, as he had in the past.

The second goal, Vance said, is to ensure that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon.

The two European countries have key connections to the war's fallout

Austria and Greece may not be obvious choices to assist on the Iran portfolio, but Vienna is home to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which will play a key role in any resolution to the Iran’s nuclear program, and hosted the final negotiations that resulted in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Greece is a major maritime nation in the Mediterranean and has significant shipping interests in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.

In statements from the Austrian, Greek and Iranian foreign ministries, it was clear that Iran had been a top topic in all of the conversations this week.

The Greek foreign ministry said Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis had been briefed by Araghchi on “regional developments, and in particular on the ongoing talks regarding the Strait of Hormuz.” It said Gerapetritis “underlined the importance of freedom of navigation and maritime security.”

The Austrian foreign ministry offered Austria’s services as a venue for further potential talks with Iran and said Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger had stressed to Araghchi “the urgency of restoring stability in the region through serious diplomatic efforts.”

“There can be no military solution,” it said. “A diplomatic solution remains possible. Our priority is to safeguard freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.”

Iran’s foreign ministry, expectedly, took a different tack in explaining the calls.

It said Friday that in Araghchi’s calls with his European counterparts they discussed “mechanisms for the future management of the Strait of Hormuz,” which he said had been disrupted by the “unlawful aggression by the United States and the Israeli regime against Iran.”

In both calls, he accused the U.S. of violating the interim deal signed by both sides in June to end the immediate hostilities and begin broader talks to end the war.

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Amiri reported from New York. Associated Press writers Derek Gatopolous in Athens and Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw, Poland, contributed to this report.

Christopher Coppock was taken into custody at approximately 3:55 p.m. on Aug. 10 by Duval County School Police, according to his arrest report. He faces one count of possession of a weapon on school property, a third-degree felony, and one count of trespassing on school grounds, a second-degree misdemeanor.

What happened on school grounds

According to the arrest report, a school safety officer spotted Coppock on campus riding a bicycle and carrying a bat. The officer described him as wearing a red hoodie, red shorts and a black backpack, and said he appeared to be angry.

The officer made contact with Coppock in the school parking lot after observing him approach the gym entrance. During the encounter, the officer said he asked Coppock whether the bat was the only weapon he had.

“Coppock stated that he was also in possession of a kitchen knife that was wrapped in a towel inside his backpack,” according to the report.

Coppock then consented to a search of his bag. The officer recovered a red fixed-blade knife with a blade measuring more than 5 inches.

According to his arrest report, Coppock was read his Miranda rights and agreed to speak with the officer. He told investigators he had no children attending Lake Shore Middle School and said he was on campus only to look around and read signs posted on the door.

“Coppock further advised that he did not see any signs posted no weapons on school grounds,” the report states.

Investigators determined Coppock did not have a legitimate reason for being on school grounds. The knife was booked into evidence. Coppock was also formally trespassed from all Duval County schools.

Lake Shore Principal’s message to families

The principal of Lake Shore Middle School sent a message to families, notifying them about the security incident, saying:

“This is Principal Clark. While we had a wonderful first day of school, I want to inform you of a security incident that occurred just before dismissal.

Thanks to the safety and security protocols we have in place, we were able to prevent an individual who was outside our building from gaining access to campus. This individual was identified by our security team as someone who was neither a parent nor a staff member. When searched, a knife was found in the individual’s possession.

Our School Police Department responded quickly and placed the individual under arrest without incident. At no time did this person have any interaction with students or gain access to the school. I am grateful for the swift actions of our security personnel and for the safety measures we have in place, including locked doors and controlled access points, which helped keep our students and staff safe.

While this is not the type of message we want to send on the first day of school, I believe it is important to keep our families informed about any potential threats to student and staff safety. Thank you for your continued support, and I hope you have a wonderful remainder of your day.

Club owner Fenway Sports Group (FSG) said in a statement it entered into a “definitive agreement” for the sale to 1892 Holdings.

The investor group is led by Amit Bhatia, who is married to a daughter of Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, and has taken a stake of more than 30% in the 20-time English champion, according to Sky News. The deal reportedly values Liverpool at around $6 billion.

Boston-based FSG paid 300 million pounds ($400 million) to take over Liverpool in 2010 and also owns the Boston Red Sox. FSG said in July that it had been approached by the Bhatia-led consortium regarding a “strategic minority investment” in the club.

“As we considered this opportunity, it became clear that Amit and the consortium shared our long-term philosophy and appreciation for what makes Liverpool special,” FSG president Mike Gordon said in the statement.

It marks the first foray into soccer by Bezos, who, according to Forbes, is the fourth richest person in the world with a net worth of around $280 billion. He founded Amazon in 1994 and has been executive chairman since 2021.

Saverin is a Brazilian businessman worth around $36 billion, according to Forbes.

Bhatia, a British-Indian entrepreneur, was the co-owner of second-tier English team Queens Park Rangers for 18 years before stepping down recently.

“We are making this investment because we believe deeply in Liverpool and its leadership, and we look forward to supporting the club’s continued success for years to come,” Bhatia said in the statement.

Under the leadership of FSG and its principal owner John Henry, Liverpool ended a 30-year wait to be English champion in 2020 and added another Premier League title last year. That tied Manchester United on 20 English top-flight league championships.

The club was European champion for a sixth time — a record for an English team — in 2019.

The Premier League is one of the biggest competitions in sports, with its teams now largely owned by oil-rich gulf states or private equity.

Can Liverpool now start spending heavily?

Liverpool now has three of the richest people in the world as minority owners.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the club can simply start spending recklessly in the transfer market on new players.

That’s because the Premier League has financial rules in place to protect the competitive balance of the competition and ensure the financial sustainability of clubs.

In broad terms, a club’s on-pitch spending is related to 85% of its “football-related revenue and net profit/loss from player sales,” the Premier League says.

Instead, the difference will come in how Liverpool — already one of the top teams in world soccer — is marketed more around the world under Bezos and Saverin, especially.

The deal is likely to bring more commercial revenue into the club, thereby improving its profits.

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See AP’s full soccer coverage here

Those two massive sociological forces had already joined up, Voltron-style, early in the 20th century with the development of the drive-in restaurant – that classic scene evocative of “Happy Days” where customers sat in their cars while servers (ideally on skates) brought out food that was consumed on site from window trays.

But the real innovation dates to the late 1940s and is the brainchild of either (depending on which source you trust) an In-N-Out Burger in California in 1948 or Red’s Giant Hamburg in Springfield, Missouri in 1947. (In comparison, the first reported drive-thru in Europe didn’t open until 1985 in Dublin.)

By the mid 1960s, this had mushroomed into a robust American market, spawning imitators and innovators. Jack in the Box pioneered the drive-thru exclusive restaurant with no indoor seats and no parking — and a talking mechanical clown to take your order. In Western states, residents of a certain age will recall the Wienershnitzel chain with its distinctive A-frame structures specially built with a tunnel down the middle for cars.

The innovation sparked unexpected knock-on developments. Restaurant menus shifted heavily toward sandwiches, fries, chicken strips and other portables that could be consumed on the go. The cars themselves adjusted over the years to accommodate larger and larger drink holders. What sociological (and nutritional) impact this has all had on the actual consumers would be the subject of a much longer essay.

The innovation hasn’t stopped. Modern drive-thrus have evolved into tightly coordinated multi-lane affairs. At Chick-fil-As around the country, actual humans with electronic tablets now stand – breathing in exhaust fumes all day – to ensure a seamless ordering process with no mechanical speaker garbles.

The drive-thru, with its distinctly American creative spelling, has become woven into the fabric of the culture. It has been enshrined in the Smithsonian Museum of American History and has played a memorable role in recent and successful Presidential campaigns.

As one historian put it, somewhat pointedly: “The drive-in was less a pure novelty than an expression of great American passions that go hand in hand: speed, efficiency and, sometimes, laziness.”

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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.

The settlement, which still needs a judge's approval, came after the family filed a lawsuit against the city.

Police have said that Jazmir Tucker was carrying a loaded weapon when he was shot in November 2024. They said two officers heard gunshots, later spotted Tucker and ran after him before one fired multiple times.

Akron Mayor Shammas Malik said Officer Davon Fields was fired for multiple policy violations, including failing to properly provide medical aid and violating the department’s policy for body-worn cameras. The mayor also cited other issues related to a separate criminal allegation involving Fields.

“The loss of life and the circumstances in this case were absolutely tragic, with enormous human and financial costs,” Malik said in a statement. "We have a responsibility to make policy changes that reduce the likelihood of cases like this happening in the future.”

The head of Akron's police union called the firing unjust and said the officer was being used as a “political scapegoat.” The union plans to fight the firing, said Brian Lucey, president of the local Fraternal Order of Police.

A grand jury decided against indicting the officer nearly a year ago.

Weeks after the shooting, Akron's mayor said the bodycam video of the shooting raised questions, including why officers didn’t immediately turn on their cameras and why it took so long to provide first aid.

In the video, the shooting officer’s arms and long gun block his camera’s view, obscuring Tucker in the moments before he was shot. Another officer’s camera recorded police unzipping the jacket pocket of the wounded teenager and pulling out a handgun.

Thompson, 50, was shot outside a New York City hotel on Dec. 4, 2024, as he walked to UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference. Mangione was arrested five days later at a McDonald’s restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 233 miles (375 kilometers) west of New York City.

Here is a timeline of key events:

2024

Nov. 24: A man prosecutors say is Mangione arrives in New York City on a Greyhound bus. He takes a taxi to the area of the New York Hilton Midtown, where Thompson is later shot, then goes to a hostel where he stays until the morning of the shooting. While checking in, prosecutors say, the man presents a fake New Jersey driver’s license bearing the name Mark Rosario.

Dec. 2: Thompson arrives in New York. He is staying at a hotel across the street from the Hilton.

Dec. 4: Thompson is shot and killed. The shooter, later identified by prosecutors as Mangione, waits in the area for about an hour before ambushing Thompson. He then flees through Central Park to upper Manhattan before taking the subway to Penn Station and boarding an Amtrak train to Philadelphia, police say. The shooting is captured on surveillance video.

Dec. 5: In the days after the shooting, police release various images of the suspected shooter, including one showing his face as he checked into the hostel.

Dec. 6: Police find a backpack in Central Park that they say the shooter discarded as he fled. It contains Monopoly money and a black Tommy Hilfiger jacket.

Dec. 9: Altoona police are dispatched to a McDonald’s for a report of a man matching the description of the suspect in Thompson's killing. The man provides a fake ID and name, Mark Rosario, before identifying himself as Luigi Mangione. He is arrested. In his backpack, police find a 3D-printed pistol prosecutors say matches the one used to kill Thompson and a notebook that describes wanting to “wack” a health insurance executive.

Dec. 11: Mangione shouts about an “insult to the intelligence of the American people” and writhes in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as they lead him into an Altoona courthouse.

Dec. 17: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announces that Mangione has been indicted on state charges including murder as an act of terrorism, calling the killing “a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation.”

Dec. 19: Mangione is extradited from Pennsylvania and flown to New York. He is led up a Manhattan pier by armed officers in a highly choreographed perp walk in front of news cameras. The mayor at the time, Eric Adams, and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch look on. Mangione is taken to federal court, where he is charged with stalking and murder.

Dec. 23: Mangione is arraigned on state murder and terror charges. He pleads not guilty while his lawyer complains that the dueling federal and state prosecutions had turned him into a “human ping-pong ball.”

2025

April 1: Then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi says she has directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty against Mangione, calling Thompson's killing “a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America” and “an act of political violence.”

April 25: Mangione pleads not guilty to a federal murder charge as prosecutors formally declared their intent to seek the death penalty against him.

Sept. 16: The judge in the state case, Gregory Carro, throws out Mangione's terrorism charges, rejecting the prosecution’s theory that the killing was “intended to evoke terror.” The ruling eliminated the top two charges in Mangione’s state case, sparing him the possibility of a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole. Carro keeps other charges in place, including second-degree murder.

Dec. 1: A three-week evidentiary hearing kicks off in Mangione’s state case. Prosecutors call 17 witnesses, many of them police officers and other personnel involved in his arrest, and play body-camera footage of officers arresting Mangione and a 911 call from the McDonald's manager about a man resembling “the CEO shooter.” They also reveal notes about a “survival kit” and “intel checkin” and possible escape plans that they say Mangione had with him.

2026

Jan. 30: U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett bars federal prosecutors from seeking the death penalty against Mangione, dismissing a federal murder charge that enabled them to seek capital punishment. Garnett also rules that prosecutors can use evidence collected from Mangione’s backpack during his arrest.

Feb. 6: Mangione speaks out in court against the prospect of back-to-back trials, telling Carro: “It’s the same trial twice. One plus one is two. Double jeopardy by any commonsense definition.”

May 18: Carro rules that prosecutors in the state case can use the gun, notebook and other items that police found in Mangione’s backpack after his arrest. However, the judge bars items that officers took from the bag before Mangione was taken into custody, including a loaded gun magazine, cellphone, passport and wallet.

June 17: Carro discloses that Mangione plans to assert a psychiatric defense at his state murder trial, claiming he was suffering from extreme emotional disturbance when he killed Thompson. The next day, Mangione's lawyers reverse course and tell Carro he wouldn't be pursuing a psychiatric defense.

Aug. 14: Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges and admits he targeted and killed Thompson. Prosecutors say they intend to seek a sentence of life in prison. Mangione's lawyers immediately file paperwork seeking to have the state murder case dismissed on double jeopardy grounds.

The strike came a day after the United Nations said July was the deadliest month for Ukrainian civilians since the weeks following Moscow's all-out invasion of its neighbor more than four years ago.

At least 437 civilians were killed and 2,610 wounded last month, the U.N. monitoring mission in Kyiv said, as Russia escalated its bombing of Ukrainian towns and cities. That was 70% higher than in July last year and 30% up on June of this year.

Overall, since Russia's invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, U.N. human rights monitors say the war has killed at least 16,874 civilians, including 820 children, and wounded 51,273, including 3,126 children.

“Every month this year the number of killed and injured civilians has increased. That trend accelerated sharply in July,” said Danielle Bell, head of the U.N. human rights monitoring mission in Kyiv. “The number of civilian casualties in July was the highest we documented in a single month since March 2022.”

The Russian strike in northern Ukraine’s Sumy region early Friday also wounded four other people, including the dead boy’s father and grandmother, who were hospitalized with severe burns, the regional military administration chief Oleh Hryhorov said.

Russia's top diplomat says Moscow will intensify its aerial attacks

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that Moscow is planning to escalate its strikes on Ukraine, even as U.S. diplomatic efforts to end the war are set to continue.

“We will use much harsher methods to destroy everything that feeds Kyiv’s war machine from the West,” Lavrov said in an interview with Russian state TV broadcast Friday, referring to military aid Kyiv receives from abroad.

Officials in Washington said last month that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s main envoys, would travel to Kyiv sometime in the future. No date for the trip is publicly known, as the U.S. focuses on the Iran war.

Zelenskyy has accepted an unconditional ceasefire demanded by Trump, but Putin has refused, demanding a comprehensive peace agreement first, and Lavrov said that position hasn’t changed.

“We will only stop when there’s a long-term, reliable and sustainable settlement,” he said.

Russian glide bombs hit residential areas near front line

In Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, a Russian glide bomb demolished six floors of a 10-story apartment block, killing one person and wounding 16 others, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

Russia is launching around 220 glide bombs every day against settlements near the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, Zelenskyy said in a social media post Friday.

Russian forces crush settlements with the brute force of 3,000-pound (1,300-kilo) glide bombs, artillery, missiles and drones, then send in infantry units to attack the exposed defenders. The tactic has rendered many towns and villages uninhabitable.

In addition, Russian forces struck two tugboats in the Black Sea that were escorting cargo ships carrying Western weapons for Ukraine, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said.

It also said that its drones overnight hit the railway station in Ukraine’s southern port of Izmail that it said is used for transporting military cargo and fuel for the Ukrainian armed forces.

In all, Russia attacked 12 Ukrainian regions overnight, wounding dozens of people, Zelenskyy said.

Ukrainian drones strike a major port north of Moscow

Ukrainian forces, meanwhile, extended their long-range strike campaign against Russian infrastructure, hitting the port of Ust-Luga in the Leningrad region north of Moscow and starting a brief fire, its governor Alexander Drozdenko said.

Ust-Luga is one of Russia’s largest oil and gas export terminals located more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) from Ukraine.

It has been a frequent target of Ukrainian drone attacks this summer, as Kyiv seeks to undermine Russian oil exports that provide Moscow with vital revenue for its war effort.

Ukraine also launched another attack on the premises of Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer, which Kyiv says helps supply the Russian military.

The attack damaged a wall of a Wildberries warehouse in the Tver region north of Moscow, the region’s acting governor, Vitaly Korolyov, said.

Wildberries reported “insignificant damage” and said the goods stored at the site were not damaged.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday its air defenses overnight intercepted 553 Ukrainian drones over 18 Russian regions, as well as occupied Crimea and the waters of the Azov and the Black seas.

NATO warplanes shoot down a drone over Latvia

NATO fighter jets shot down a drone that entered Latvian airspace in the early hours of Friday, the Latvian army and an official for the military alliance said.

Latvian authorities did not say what the origin of the drone was, but said it had entered Latvia “as a result of Russian electromagnetic warfare.”

Several drones have previously crossed the border into Latvia. Most of them are thought to be Ukrainian drones that strayed off course due to Russian electronic jamming.

Two Italian Eurofighter jets were scrambled to tackle the drone and one of them shot it down, NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said.

Two Turkish fighter jets were also deployed, she said.

Residents in five municipalities in eastern Latvia were warned about the threat to airspace and told to take shelter.

Another drone crashed in woodland in Romania 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) from the border with Ukraine, the NATO member’s Defense Ministry said Friday.

Military radars did not detect the drone, which landed in eastern Tulcea County, because it was flying at a “very low” altitude, it said without providing details about the drone’s origin.

The ministry said later that another drone was found Friday in the village of Plauru, also in Tulcea County, which is situated across the Danube River from Ukraine’s port of Izmail. A specialist team was deployed to the area, which was secured, it added.

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Associated Press reporters Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw, Poland, Lorne Cook in Brussels and Stephen McGrath in Leamington Spa, England contributed to this report.

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

A statement from the Italian Carabinieri’s art recovery squad said the artworks were discovered in the possession of one of the suspects during searches ordered by prosecutors in the Parma province and neighboring provinces. The five suspects detained are believed to belong to an organized crime group responsible for numerous thefts of homes, businesses and other properties. Police also recovered stolen goods worth tens of thousands of euros.

Meanwhile, Brazilian police said late Thursday they located eight stolen works by Matisse following an apartment raid outside Sao Paulo. There were no apparent links between the two thefts.

The three artworks recovered in Italy are “Fish,” a painting by Auguste Renoir, “Still Life with Cherries,” a pencil and watercolor by Paul Cézanne, and “Odalisque on the Terrace,” a color aqatint by Henri Matisse. Authorities said the Cézanne was valued at 6 million euros ($7 million), the Renoir at 3 million euros ($3.5 million), and the Matisse at 20,000 euros ($23,000).

The heist at the Magnani Rocca Foundation, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Parma, took place on the night of March 22-23, police said. Video distributed by authorities showed the thieves entering through a broken door window and then taking the three artworks down from adjacent walls before exiting and escaping through the gardens in a matter of minutes.

Investigators said they retrieved important evidence at the scene, including a pickaxe and fire extinguisher with their serial numbers removed. Forensic officers were able to reconstruct the serial numbers, which linked them to an apartment building accessible to one of the alleged members of the criminal gang.

The suspects were all born in Moldova and resided in the Parma area, authorities said.

Established in 1977, the foundation hosts the collection of art historian Luigi Magnani and includes works by Dürer, Rubens, Van Dyck, Goya and Monet.

The museum believes a structured and organized gang was responsible for the theft, which the alarm interrupted, local media reported.

The crime followed a series of high-profile heists at major European museums, including the theft in October of French crown jewels and other items valued at 88 million euros ($101 million) from the Louvre in Paris.

Brazilian police said the eight stolen works by Matisse were valued at more than 1 million reais ($193,000) and found in the city of São Bernardo do Campo, outside Sao Paulo.

Sao Paulo police said in a statement they arrested one man at the scene for allegedly holding the prints for another person who was taken into custody in April during an unrelated art theft probe.

The recovery of the artwork marks a major breakthrough in a case dating back to December 2025, when two intruders broke into São Paulo’s Mário de Andrade library. A total of 13 pieces of art and history were stolen. Five works by Brazilian artist Cândido Portinari are still missing.

Matisse (1869-1954) is one of the most celebrated artists of the colorful expressive style. Brazilian police recovered eight prints which are named “Le Clown,” “Le Cirque,” “Monsieur Loyal,” “Cauchemar de L’Eléphant Blanc,” “Le Codomas,” “La Nageuse Dans L’Aquarium,” “L’Avaleur de Sabres” and “Le Cowboy.” They were made for an artbook named “Jazz.”

Fry finished third in a special primary held Tuesday, when Graham and U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman advanced to the Aug. 25 runoff. His backing follows that of other powerful Republicans who have supported Graham, including Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Trump, whose early endorsement helped propel his own congressional career.

“President Trump needs fighters and allies in the Senate who will show up every day and get results,” Fry said in a news release. “I believe Darline Graham will be exactly that.”

Graham's brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, died suddenly last month. Darline Graham, was appointed to serve out the remainder of his current term, then opted to run for the seat, winning the biggest share of votes but not the majority needed to avoid a runoff.

The special primary, which took place just a month after Lindsey Graham's death, meant a compressed and sometimes chaotic campaign for the 10 candidates who ran to replace him.

Much of the most heated rhetoric volleyed back and forth between Fry and a political action committee supporting Darline Graham, which ran ads pointing out that Trump — who initially said Fry would be an “outstanding” pick for the seat — passed him over to back Graham instead.

Graham's brother was a top Senate ally for Trump, to whom she has also closely tied herself in her campaign. Both Fry and Graham have often mentioned their humble origins as a touchpoint for understanding kitchen table issues, something Fry noted he had in common with Graham.

“Darline knows what it means to struggle, persevere, and keep fighting when life deals you a difficult hand," Fry said of the 62-year-old Graham, who had a hardscrabble upbringing and was ultimately adopted by her older brother after their parents died when she was young. “Those experiences shaped her, and I believe they give her a real understanding of the challenges families across South Carolina face.”

Trump had stumped for Fry in his first House campaign in 2022, when the state lawmaker ousted a five-term GOP congressman who had voted to impeach Trump a year earlier.

Matt Gorman, a GOP strategist and former senior adviser to Scott, suggested that Fry's endorsement of Graham was a political calculation for the 41-year-old, two-term congressman, who has seen the ramifications for some Republicans who have crossed Trump.

“Russell is a smart guy with a long career ahead of him," Gorman said. "It makes zero sense to get crosswise with either President Trump or Tim Scott. If he wants to, Fry will get another shot at the seat because Graham or Norman won’t be there multiple decades.”

The GOP runoff’s winner will face Democratic nominee Dr. Annie Andrews in November’s general election. No Democrat has won a U.S. Senate seat in South Carolina in decades.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.

In July, U.S. President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on hundreds of Brazilian exports, with duties reaching up to 37.5% in some products. The Trump administration has accused Brazil of unfair trade practices, but Lula has denied the accusations, insisting they are politically motivated ahead of the October election.

Lula is seeking reelection against Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, a Trump ally who met with U.S. officials, including Trump, in Washington weeks before the administration proposed higher tariffs on Brazilian goods.

“Yesterday, we invoked the reciprocity law to show that we are not to be taken lightly," Lula said in an interview with Brazilian podcasters. “We respect ourselves. I am very calm knowing what could happen, and I am prepared to debate the defense of Brazil anywhere in the world.”

Brazil’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement late Thursday it is requesting diplomatic consultations with its U.S. counterparts on the issue, as a sign of Lula's aim “to privilege dialogue and negotiation in its international relations.”

The beginning of the proceedings does not necessarily mean Brazil will retaliate against U.S. tariffs.

“I don’t want any fight with the United States," Lula said Friday. “Unfortunately, they are spreading falsehoods."

Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department revoked the visa of Brazil’s ambassador to Washington in retaliation for Brazil’s denial of visas last month for two American diplomats who sought to visit ahead of the October election.

The U.S. government also has accused Brazil of stalling approval of Trump’s nominee for ambassador in Brasilia, while Brazilian officials say the U.S. should have first sought the government’s approval before submitting the nomination to Congress, as diplomatic protocol requires.

Since U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked the Brazilian ambassador’s visa in response to Lula’s actions but did not order her expelled, U.S. officials have said the Trump administration does not want the dispute to escalate.

These officials, who have spoken on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations, have said on multiple occasions that Rubio’s limited response was intentionally designed to give Lula time and space to back down.

At the same time, they have said that the U.S. will respond quickly should Lula's government choose to escalate the matter and that declaring the Brazilian ambassador “persona non grata” and expelling her from the U.S. would be a logical next step.

Lula said once again Trump has treated him well, but warned any foreign governments “who come here to meddle in the election, will lose.”

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Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed from Washington.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

The rookie quarterback, however, is already well-versed in how his head coach's mind works. Yes, McCarthy was pleased after watching Allar throw for a pair of scores and run for another.

Yet the final product on a given play is only a piece of the puzzle. McCarthy is just as fixated on the process it takes to get there, which is why the 22-year-old Allar couldn't help but grin when asked about how his fundamentals are coming along, perhaps knowing the feedback he was going to receive in the aftermath.

“I’ll probably get a minus grade on some of my footwork,” Allar said. “It was kind of a crazy reverse out under center exchange. Other than that, I felt pretty good.”

Just as importantly, he looked pretty good while leading three long scoring drives. The third-round pick was accurate while completing 10 of 13 passes. He frequently made the right decision on where to go with the ball and showcased his athleticism while diving over for a 3-yard touchdown run.

Not bad for his first game action since last fall, when his final year at Penn State ended prematurely with a left ankle injury.

“I feel like the first rushing touchdown I had was the first hit I’ve had in, I don’t know how long, but since mid-October,” Allar said. “I feel like that kind of got the physical part out of the way. I feel like going against our defense every day in practice really helped me mentally prepare for the game.”

Allar wasn't the only student of McCarthy's “quarterback school” who aced their first test. Will Howard, playing for the first time since leading Ohio State to the College Football Playoff championship in early 2025, had no issues running the two-minute offense. He connected with tight end Robert Tonyan frequently and didn't panic during a fourth down call near midfield that required him to roll to his left, where he flipped the ball to wide receiver Ben Skowronek for a first down.

The result was great, sure. So was the jolt of confidence felt when Howard heard the play call.

“You’re, like, man, ‘Coach is throwing the ball on fourth-and-1, and he’s putting the ball in my hands,’” he said. “That feels great. I knew they were going to really trigger on that run. I think Aaron (Rodgers) had a little input on getting that play out there, and I appreciate him for that.”

Rodgers, watching from the sideline with a headset on, promised to crack some dad jokes to keep the mood light. The reality is he spent most of the night serving as an experienced resource for Allar, Howard, and Mason Rudolph, as no clear front-runner to win the quarterback derby to serve as Rodgers' backup emerged.

McCarthy appears to be in no hurry to make any sort of decision. Rudolph got the start and settled in after some shaky play by the first-team offensive line early. He consistently found rookie wide receiver Germie Bernard and did his best to keep plays alive to give the young playmakers around him time to get open.

“Not to be a broken record, I’ve been talking about it pretty much since the spring ... I really like the room,” McCarthy said. “I think it’s a really good quarterback room, and I thought they played that way tonight.”

The guys behind center weren't the only ones who stood out. Tonyan, who caught 11 touchdown passes from Rodgers when both were in Green Bay in 2020, finished with four receptions for 61 yards. Bernard caught four passes for 51 yards, and rookie Kaden Wetjen showed his elusiveness on a 74-yard catch-and-run and later pulled in a touchdown pass from Allar.

Sure, it was just an exhibition game, and both sides were more focused on getting through it healthy than on coming up with some elaborate game plan. The scheming will come later.

The preseason opener was mostly just a progress report. Plenty of work remains, but for a first-year coaching staff trying to lay a foundation and for three quarterbacks trying to prove their worth, it was a promising start.

“We have a lot to clean up, but the passing game ... I know the numbers were pretty good,” McCarthy said. “I liked the way our quarterbacks ran the offense, and that’s a big thing.”

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See AP’s full NFL coverage here

Pirro announced on X that her office was filing two felony charges against Melissa L. Farris. Pirro said the felony charges are “Depredation Against Property of the United States and Destruction of Veterans’ Memorials.” The offenses carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison.

On Thursday, the words “Clean hands dirty $” were found painted on the monument and bubbles filled a fountain.

“Vandalizing our World War II Memorial is a despicable attack on a sacred monument honoring the Americans who fought and died for our freedom. Those Americans include my father and grandfather,” Pirro wrote.

A woman identified on her Facebook page as Melissa Lovewell posted a video Thursday in which she is seen taking cans of spray paint from her bag and then painting the monument.

“I will wait here to be arrested for spraying our veterans’ fountain,” she says. “It was me, I’m doing it, it’s on camera."

In a video posted Friday, the woman, who in a separate post said she had been in Washington for three weeks, said she was turning herself in.

The arrest warrant filed in the case indicated that witnesses took pictures of the vandalism occurring, which were circulated among U.S. Park Police officers.

One officer recognized the suspect as someone they arrested Aug. 10 “for unlawfully camping on federal property” just blocks away. She livestreamed that arrest, the warrant said.

The suspect was identified by her Kentucky driver's license as Melissa L. Farris, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky.

Farris was expected to be arraigned Friday. The Public Defender’s office said she was not yet listed in the system and had not been assigned an attorney.

The incident sparked harsh rebukes from both Pirro and President Donald Trump and comes after the president blamed damage to the nearby Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on vandals, without providing evidence. That case prompted charges against multiple people which were dropped when Pirro said evidence showed the damage came from botched repairs after Trump's renovation at the site.

“Our beautiful World War II Memorial was just hit by Spray Painting Vandals,” Trump said on Friday on his Truth Social site. “First the Reflecting Pool, now this.”

The Interior Department said that the U.S. Park Police were on the scene following the Thursday vandalism and an investigation was ongoing. "The public should know we will find the person responsible for this disgusting act,” the department said.

The Friends of the National World War II Memorial, a nonprofit organization that helps maintain the site, said: “There are many places in our country for expression, debate, and disagreement. A national memorial honoring those who served and those who never returned home should never be used as a canvas for vandalism.”

The Veterans of Foreign Wars called the vandalism “an act of profound disrespect, a slap in the face to the veterans who served and sacrificed and to the families who carried that burden at home.”

A former Olympian was charged in late July with deliberately damaging the Reflecting Pool, but the Justice Department later moved to dismiss that case, saying evidence prosecutors had received refuted the idea that vandals were to blame.

Trump sharply criticized Pirro’s assessment that damage to the Reflecting Pool was the result of shoddy construction and not the work of vandals, as he claimed.

The case dismissal was an embarrassing setback for a Justice Department that had previously echoed Trump’s claims and billed the prosecution as accountability for damage at a Washington landmark, a pet project of Trump. Pirro’s decision to drop the case was also a rare moment during Trump’s second term of an aide or political appointee openly defying him.

The Department of Defense Education Activity operates about 160 schools across 11 countries and educates roughly 70,000 students who are children of active-duty military or civilian service members. Conservatives have eyed the schools — which, unlike most public schools, are run by the federal government — as a testing ground for reshaping education.

The Western civilization course planned for this fall will use a textbook published by Encounter Books, a conservative publishing house. Titled "The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition, Volume I: The Ancient World and Christendom," it includes suggested lesson plans created in partnership with Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school in Michigan.

Historians and educators who reviewed excerpts of the text told The Associated Press it depicts points throughout history in misleading ways, representing Western civilization and Christianity as one and the same and casting Islam as a threat to both.

“You’ve got to wonder a bit whether Western civilization is a Trojan horse for classical Christian education,” said Phil Gorski, a historical sociology professor at Yale University.

The course is part of a wider reshaping of the Defense Department's schools. They have begun hiring classical learning teachers, and the department has brought in new academic chiefs with ties to classical learning charter schools and to Republican-led efforts to promote more patriotic and civic education.

In a written statement, the Pentagon said it “remains committed to providing all of its military-connected students with the best possible education and opportunities.” It did not respond directly to a series of questions about the textbook and the broader push for classical learning.

Classical education broadly refers to a teaching style built on the liberal arts, with an emphasis on critical thinking and citizenship. Students are taught to imitate the rhetoric and style of great thinkers and writers. Critics have argued the movement focuses too heavily on foundational texts from Greek, Roman and other Western writers.

Conservatives see classical learning as an antidote to unflattering depictions of US history

Conservative politicians have embraced classical learning, especially as the Trump administration and Republican-led states have pushed schools to emphasize patriotism and put boundaries around how they teach unflattering parts of American history.

In his writing and public remarks since before becoming defense secretary, Hegseth has advocated for parents to embrace classical Christian education.

In his 2022 book “Battle for the American Mind,” Hegseth, a former Fox News host, describes a history of progressives working to remove God and religion from public and private schools.

Many classical Christian schools focus on reclaiming Western civilization from external threats. But across the broader field of classical education — including secular private schools — the field is increasingly split on this point, said Susan Wise Bauer, the author of a popular classical homeschooling program.

“Whenever you have a system of education where that is the impulse, ... 'This is us, and they are them over there,'” she said, “then the idea of a shared literary heritage becomes a weapon.”

Textbook casts Western civilization as under threat

In the Pentagon's system, high school students can take the new course, Western Civilization to 1500, to fulfill a world history graduation requirement, according to a news release. The course is offered through the department's virtual school.

In the textbook’s introduction, the authors write: “When citizens of Western countries are utterly ignorant of history, as most now are, they are left unarmed against the general hostility to their own tradition that has become so destructive a force in contemporary culture."

The book describes Islam as inherently more violent than Christianity.

In a section titled “Holy War and Martyrdom in Battle,” the book describes wars fought by Christians, such as the Crusades, as intended to defend and protect other Christians. Islam, in contrast, glorifies violence and war, the book says, invoking the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and 9/11.

Matthew Gabriele, a history and religion professor at Virginia Tech, said the book's description of the Crusades and the conflicts with the Islamic world strips out important details and context to depict Islam as an aggressive religious tradition and downplays the religious motivations and violence of the Christian church.

The book's publisher, Roger Kimball, said it was peer-reviewed by 15 experts. “As the proud publisher of this incomparable work, I stand behind it in every detail,” he said.

One of the book's co-authors, Harvard emeritus professor James Hankins, said the text does not attempt to characterize Christianity and Western civilization as one. Segments of the book acknowledge the West’s cultural debts to the Islamic world, said Hankins, who now teaches at the University of Florida's Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education, a conservative-backed project to teach Western civilization.

The Trump administration aligned the military’s education system with its political vision

President Donald Trump's administration also has moved to align the military's education apparatus with its broader vision for American schools. Admissions offices at U.S. military academies now accept the Classical Learning Test, a college entrance exam that positions itself as a classical alternative to the SAT. And last year, the ACLU sued the defense school system over its decision to ban hundreds of books that covered topics like race, gender and democracy.

In March, the department abruptly changed the leadership of Department of Defense Education Activity schools, replacing Beth Schiavino-Narvaez with Paul Craft as director. In a news release at the time, Hegseth described Craft as the right leader to reorient the school system "toward patriotic values and classical learning.”

The Pentagon also replaced the education activity's chief academic officer, hiring Tiffany Hoben, who previously worked in the Florida Department of Education under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. In Florida, she oversaw the rollout of a civics curriculum that was criticized for claiming America's founders did not intend for a full separation of church and state.

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

The Department of Defense Education Activity operates about 160 schools across 11 countries and educates roughly 70,000 students who are children of active-duty military or civilian service members. Conservatives have eyed the schools — which, unlike most public schools, are run by the federal government — as a testing ground for reshaping education.

The Western civilization course planned for this fall will use a textbook published by Encounter Books, a conservative publishing house. Titled "The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition, Volume I: The Ancient World and Christendom," it includes suggested lesson plans created in partnership with Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school in Michigan that has also developed influential materials for K-12 schools.

Historians and educators who reviewed excerpts of the text told The Associated Press it depicts points throughout history in misleading ways, representing Western civilization and Christianity as one and the same and casting Islam as a threat to both.

“You’ve got to wonder a bit whether Western civilization is a Trojan horse for classical Christian education,” said Phil Gorski, a historical sociology professor at Yale University.

The course is part of a wider reshaping of the Defense Department's schools. They have begun hiring classical learning teachers, and the department has brought in new academic chiefs with ties to classical learning charter schools and to Republican-led efforts to promote more patriotic education.

In a written statement, the Pentagon said it “remains committed to providing all of its military-connected students with the best possible education and opportunities.” It did not respond directly to a series of questions about the textbook and the broader push for classical learning.

Classical education broadly refers to a teaching style built on the liberal arts, with an emphasis on critical thinking and citizenship. Students are taught to imitate the rhetoric and style of great thinkers and writers. While some classical educators have pushed to incorporate diverse scholars, critics have argued the movement focuses too heavily on foundational texts from Greek, Roman and other Western writers and gives short shrift to achievements in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Conservatives see classical learning as an antidote to unflattering depictions of US history

Conservative politicians have embraced classical learning, especially as the Trump administration and Republican-led states have pushed schools to emphasize patriotism and put boundaries around how they teach unflattering parts of American history.

In his writing and public remarks since before becoming defense secretary, Hegseth has advocated for parents to embrace classical Christian education.

In his 2022 book “Battle for the American Mind,” Hegseth, a former Fox News host, describes a history of progressives working to remove God and religion from public and private schools. For parents, he writes, not sending their children to classical Christian schools would be to admit defeat.

“It is certainly not sustainable, merely passing the same losing hand to the next generation,” Hegseth writes. “With this approach, we lose. We lose America — and Western Civilization.”

Many classical Christian schools focus on reclaiming Western civilization from external threats. But across the broader field of classical education — including secular private schools — the field is increasingly split on this point, said Susan Wise Bauer, the author of a popular classical homeschooling program. She said there is a range of approaches on which texts are worth studying.

“Whenever you have a system of education where that is the impulse, ... 'This is us, and they are them over there,'” she said, “then the idea of a shared literary heritage becomes a weapon.”

Textbook casts Western civilization as under threat

In the Pentagon's system, high school students can take the new course, Western Civilization to 1500, to fulfill a world history graduation requirement, according to a news release. The course is offered through the department's virtual school.

In the textbook’s introduction, the authors write: “The dangers presented by the neglect of Western history are not trivial.”

“When citizens of Western countries are utterly ignorant of history, as most now are, they are left unarmed against the general hostility to their own tradition that has become so destructive a force in contemporary culture,” they write.

The idea that external forces will displace the dominant culture is a common right-wing political narrative, said Curtis Dozier, a professor of Greek and Roman studies at Vassar College.

"It’s this right-wing idea that when immigrants come to a country, they care more about their own traditions and history and seek to replace the tradition of the place,” he said.

The textbook's authors credit early Christianity with promoting the idea that all people must be treated humanely. It argues that “Christian faith also supported a humane cosmopolitanism."

The book describes Islam as inherently more violent than Christianity. In a chapter on the Middle Ages, the text describes Arabs as resentful or bitter toward Christians and Jews.

In a section titled “Holy War and Martyrdom in Battle,” the book describes wars fought by Christians, such as the Crusades, as intended to defend and protect other Christians. Islam, in contrast, glorifies violence and war, the book says, invoking the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and 9/11.

“In recent decades, Islam as a religion has, understandably, aroused acute hostility from a great many non-Muslims around the world thanks to the behavior of radical Muslim terrorists. Sometimes referred to as Islamists, their atrocities have been applauded by depressingly large numbers of ordinary Muslims,” the book says.

Matthew Gabriele, a history and religion professor at Virginia Tech, said the book's description of the Crusades and the conflicts with the Islamic world strips out important details and context to depict Islam as an aggressive religious tradition and downplays the religious motivations and violence of the Christian church.

“It’s trying to make a contemporary political point by continuously referencing things that happened in the 21st century,” Gabriele said. “The fact that (the book) does this very selectively and only when it suits a particular political project suggests to me that this is not a scholarly history in any kind of real sense.”

The book's publisher, Roger Kimball, said it was peer-reviewed by 15 experts. “As the proud publisher of this incomparable work, I stand behind it in every detail,” he said.

One of the book's co-authors, Harvard emeritus professor James Hankins, said the text does not attempt to characterize Christianity and Western civilization as one. Segments of the book acknowledge the West’s cultural debts to the Islamic world, said Hankins, who now teaches at the University of Florida's Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education, a conservative-backed project to teach Western civilization.

An emphasis on the study of Western civilization was standard until the 1970s, Hankins said. He criticized the move away from teaching it, noting that other countries such as China study their own civilization.

“Abandoning it has been foolish in my view, and is one cause of the growing cultural disorientation of the last couple of generations,” he said in an email. “People no longer know where they come from or where they belong in the story of our civilization.”

The Trump administration aligned the military’s education system with its political vision

In speeches and interviews, Hegseth has drawn a line from the country's founding to Western civilization and early Christianity, a religion he describes as under attack by outside forces. He often argues the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation and troops should embrace God.

At an event last September recognizing a civics education initiative, Hegseth emphasized the need to teach these values to children early on.

“That type of brilliance didn’t come out of thin air," he said of the Founding Fathers. “It was first inspired by God (and) inspired by an understanding of human history, an understanding of biblical history (and) an understanding of Western civilization philosophy and theology and civics poured into a generation of men and poured into an American experiment — it wasn’t an accident.”

President Donald Trump's administration also has moved to align the military's education apparatus with its broader vision for American schools. Admissions offices at U.S. military academies now accept the Classical Learning Test, a college entrance exam that positions itself as a classical alternative to the SAT. And last year, the ACLU sued the defense school system over its decision to ban hundreds of books that covered topics like race, gender and democracy.

In March, the department abruptly changed the leadership of Department of Defense Education Activity schools, replacing Beth Schiavino-Narvaez with Paul Craft as director. In a news release at the time, Hegseth described Craft as the right leader to reorient the school system "toward patriotic values and classical learning.”

The Pentagon also replaced the education activity's chief academic officer, hiring Tiffany Hoben, who previously worked in the Florida Department of Education under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. In Florida, she oversaw the rollout of a civics curriculum that was criticized for claiming America's founders did not intend for a full separation of church and state.

This summer, the department announced the hiring of Matthew Kirby as the system's Americas regional director. Kirby is the CEO of Liberty Classical Schools, an Atlanta-based network of charter schools.

In an all-hands meeting after his appointment, Craft described classical learning as a priority that came directly from Hegseth.

“He has tasked us with taking the best that we can from the lessons learned from classical learning in a private school setting to say, ‘How do we expose our kids to that in a public school setting like us?’” Craft said.

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

The trio, who star at Texas, Notre Dame and UConn respectively will be joined by KK Arnold — Strong's teammate with the Huskies — Ohio State's Jaloni Cambridge, South Carolina's Joyce Edwards, Michigan's Olivia Olson and the LSU pair of Jada Williams and Mikaylah Williams.

“We’re proud to continue investing in the future of women’s basketball through our ‘Future is Unrivaled’ initiative and are thrilled to be working with this talented group of athletes,” general manager Clare Duwelius said on Friday. “The excitement we’ve seen from these players to be part of this year’s summit is deeply matched at the league level. We can’t wait to welcome all nine athletes to Miami and continue building meaningful relationships as they become part of the Unrivaled ecosystem.”

It's the third year that Unrivaled has had NIL deals with college players.

WNBA rookies Olivia Miles and Flau'Jae Johnson were part of the 2025 Unrivaled college class and have signed on to play with the organization this winter. Just because a player has a deal with the basketball league, it doesn’t guarantee they’ll join the group in Miami to play. Azzi Fudd opted to play for Project B this upcoming winter instead of Unrivaled.

The nine college players will head down to Miami and meet at Unrivaled's headquarters this weekend. The summit will include skill development sessions, content and merchandise shoots as well as group bonding activities.

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See AP’s full college sports coverage here

That wait continues but the hope for change does, too.

More than a month after that Senate Bill 538 took effect, only one district (Bay) has gone public with its plans to incorporate booster clubs being able to give extracurricular leaders like coaches the ability to earn more money.

Men or women who coach sports receive supplemental pay for their work. The supplements for a head football coach in the News4JAX 11-county Florida coverage region range from $3,809 (Putnam) to $7,217 (Nassau).

Those supplements are collectively bargained. SB 538 gave extracurricular leaders the ability to go to their superintendents and ask for more money above their union-negotiated supplement.

But since school districts have been hemorrhaging money due to public school students fleeing for private and charter schools, money for raises hasn’t been there.

That’s why the most realistic option for pay increases for coaches or band directors has been to seek pay from booster clubs. Some smaller districts already allow that. That’s not the case in many places, though, including districts like Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns.

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Mandarin head football coach Toby Bullock earns the same supplement ($4,699) as head coaches in Duval County made in the 1990s.

“Good Lord, I hope so,” Bullock said when asked if he thought coaches here could see a pay increase. “Why can other states do it when we can’t, I guess would be my question.”

Clay High head coach and Florida Coaches Coalition director Jeff Gierke said the group has had conversations with numerous school districts about the law.

The reality is that what works in one county may not apply in another.

The Coalition has aimed to have as many conversations with as many districts as possible since the House and Senate overwhelmingly voted to pass the bill and send it to DeSantis.

There’s also an equitability element involved. While 11-man tackle football is the sport cited in many cases regarding staffing and hours involved, Gierke said coaches in girls sports are long overdue for pay increases as well.

“We would have liked everything to get done after it passed the House and give more time to the counties to put something out. But I really think now that the genie’s out of the bottle, they want to make sure that it’s right,” Gierke said. “I would think this time next year, you’re going to have more than half of the state already have their stuff in place and the other ones will be working to get something out.”

News4JAX reached out to four local school districts (Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns) on their status with implementing Senate Bill 538. Only St. Johns responded by our deadline.

Deputy Superintendent Paul Abbatinozzi said the district was still in an exploratory phase of seeing how something like SB 538 would work in its entirety.

“There has been no decision made to date. At this current stage, we are continuing to offer the supplements identified within our existing negotiated agreement, which includes the extended season component for our athletic coaches.

Looking ahead, we are also examining current facility use practices through Facilitron that could provide additional fiscal opportunities for staff offering camps, clinics, etc. for children in St. Johns County.

Although our recent focus has been negotiation efforts for 2026/2027 school year with the St. Johns Education Association and St. Johns Education Support Personnel Association, it remains our intent to continue to look closely at all aspects of Senate Bill 538, analyzing both the pros and cons of how it will reshape our athletic and extra-curricular programs moving forward.

I want to reiterate that we are incredibly grateful for the dedication of our staff and adjuncts who work hard to keep the focus on our athletic and extra-curricular programs.

St. Johns County School District Deputy Superintendent Paul Abbatinozzi

Delayed raise or no raise at all, Mandarin’s Bullock said that coaches are conditioned to keep leading and making an impact on young athletes because someone did it for them, too.

“The problem is people think we’ll continue to do it and we will,” he said. “Point blank. We’re going to keep coaching whether we get paid or not, but it shouldn’t be that way.”

Shippers including FedEx and UPS that acted as customs brokers for imported packages and received tariff refunds from the U.S. government have started to pass on those refunds to the customers that originally paid the tariffs.

The refunds to consumers are the last step in a monthslong process that kicked off in February when the Supreme Court struck down sweeping tariffs implemented by President Donald Trumpin March 2025 under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act on goods from almost every country. The court ordered the government to return the tariffs it collected.

So far, about $100 billion in tariffs have been refunded to companies who paid them under a system set up by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

That doesn't mean Americans will get anywhere close to what they paid in tariffs, since most were paid indirectly. In 2025, the Trump tariffs amounted to an average tax increase of $1,000 per U.S. household, according to the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C., group that studies taxes.

But some consumers are getting some of what they paid directly back from shippers including UPS, DHL and FedEx. The refunds are being rolled out in phases based on what date they were paid. Shippers have said they'll return the refunds on a rolling basis as they receive them.

Tariff refunds from shippers will be directly refunded to credit cards or bank accounts

Most big overseas retailers paid the tariffs themselves and passed them along to retailers with a line item in their invoice that was part of the total bill, or indirectly by raising prices. But some smaller sellers left the tariff to be paid when it reached the U.S. In those cases, shippers paid the bill and charged the recipient of the package.

FedEx said it has begun the process of issuing $800 million in tariff refunds it received from the government back to the customers that paid them. Customers don’t need to apply to receive their refund, but they can enter tracking numbers for purchased items into a portal on the FedEx website to see whether or not they are due a refund.

UPS said in April it had paid $5 billion in tariffs on behalf of clients and would begin the process of applying to the government for refunds. In the first phase, it applied for $500 million in refunds and said customers should get refunds one to three months after it receives reimbursement from the Treasury.

DHL similarly said that it has filed claims for almost all eligible shipments where it served as the importer of record and is returning the refunds it has received.

“The volume and pace of refunds continue to depend on CBP’s processing of claims,” DHL said in a statement.

Major retailers say they could give back some refunds but mostly will use them to lower prices

Unlike shippers who collected tariffs directly from customers, most big retailers passed on tariffs in indirect ways, changing their product lineups or partly absorbing higher costs, making a consumer refund unlikely.

Amazon executives said last week the company received $600 million in tariff refunds in the second quarter.

In a call with investors, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said the company isn't the importer of record on most of the goods it sells and that it has absorbed some tariff costs. But he said the company has “identified a limited set of circumstances where we can trace that we pass specific import charges on to customers.” In those circumstances, he added, “we will proactively contact affected customers and automatically issue refunds to them.”

Otherwise, he said, Amazon will use tariff refunds to lower prices for customers.

That echoes what other large retailers have said. In May, Corie Barry, outgoing CEO of Best Buy, the nation’s largest consumer electronics chain, said the retailer is an importer of record of only about 2% to 3% of what it sells and that the company would use any refund it gets to “deliver value back to our customers.”

And Costco CEO Ron Vachris said the company planned to return “in some form” the tariffs that were passed on to consumers.

“How much we return and when depends on a variety of factors, including how much refund money we receive and when it arrives as well as developments in the lawsuit filed against the company regarding the return process,” he said in a quarterly earnings call in May.

Dozens of class-action lawsuits have been filed

Some shoppers are suing to get the tariffs they paid in the form of higher prices back from companies. More than 80 class-action lawsuits have been filed by customers across the country against retailers including Costco, Nike, Amazon, Walmart and others.

The lawsuits will face difficulty because plaintiffs will have to prove they paid for price increases that were specifically tied to the tariffs, according to Lori Leskin, partner and co-chair of law firm Arnold & Porter’s Consumer Products Practice Group. None of the lawsuits have yet been certified as class action, which would mean they apply to all customers.

“It’s going to be very hard for anyone to establish that the price increase they paid was due to tariffs and not some other market force,” she said. “Most of them are just talking about price increases, and to be able to trace a price increase due to a single factor is going to be really difficult given the multifactorial approach that most companies take.”

López Beltrán announced the visa revocation in a letter to Trump posted on Instagram on Thursday, saying U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Under Secretary Christopher Landau “ordered the withdrawal of my permission to enter the United States,” despite having “no evidence against me regarding any immoral or criminal act.”

The U.S. government has not publicly disclosed the reason for the visa revocation, and it was not clear from López Beltrán's post what kind of a visa was revoked.

A U.S. Embassy spokesperson in Mexico, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly, told The Associated Press on Friday that visa records are confidential under U.S. law and declined to comment on the individual case.

Washington’s decision comes less than four months after another setback for Mexico's ruling party, Morena, when federal prosecutors in New York brought a case against 10 current and former Mexican officials, including Sinaloa Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya of the ruling party, over alleged links to drug trafficking.

Addressing the visa revocations of Mexican politicians at her morning news conference Friday, Sheinbaum urged the United States to provide evidence of any allegations against them but said the issue would not lead to a conflict with Washington.

“All we ask for is respect,” she said.

López Beltrán — known as Andy — was one of his father’s closest aides before his 2018 presidential victory. Local media reported that he managed his father’s private schedule and oversaw Morena’s activities in Mexico City and the neighboring State of Mexico.

For much of López Obrador’s six-year presidency, from 2018 to 2024, López Beltrán, the second of his four children, stayed out of party politics and focused on a chocolate business. But in September 2024, weeks before his father left office, he was elected Morena’s secretary of organization.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

The forest gave way to giant holes gouged into the earth and filled with opaque, muddy water, gasoline and other chemicals glistening on the surface. Makeshift wooden mining platforms straddled the pools, surrounded by pumps and thick plastic tubes used to suck up and sift through sediment for tiny particles of gold.

As the troops closed in, several miners stood watching from a distance. The officer leading the patrol fired a warning shot into the air. Within seconds, they vanished into the forest.

The raid over several days this week was part of an intensified government campaign against illegal gold mining in Madre de Dios, one of Peru’s most biodiverse regions, as authorities try to stop the activity from advancing into protected areas of the Amazon. Mining has stripped away vast areas of rainforest, leaving behind a scarred landscape of contaminated pools and altered rivers in the hunt for lucrative gold. Mercury used to separate gold from sediment has contaminated waterways, wildlife and people, including Indigenous communities that depend heavily on fish.

Behind them was a camp abandoned in haste. Crushed beer cans and empty liquor bottles littered the ground alongside mattresses, clothes and tools. That day’s lunch — rice and plantain — still sat in plastic containers. Freezers and fuel containers dotted the camp, alongside live chickens and guinea pigs kept for food.

The troops were one of eight patrols, flown by helicopter to separate points along the Malinowski River. The aircraft touched down only long enough to drop each group before lifting off and moving to the next site.

Illegal mining is advancing toward protected areas of the Amazon

Edy Reynaldo Dariquebe, an official with FENAMAD, an Indigenous federation representing communities in Peru’s Madre de Dios region, said criminal groups linked to illegal mining have been operating near or inside protected Indigenous communities. He said mining is destroying forests and contaminating rivers with mercury that accumulates in fish, spreading the impact to communities far from the mining sites.

Ronald Flores Yáñez, a deputy prosecutor for Peru’s Office of the Attorney General, said illegal mining has advanced close to military monitoring points and into protected areas.

“We can attest today that they have already entered the Tambopata National Reserve,” Flores told The Associated Press. “We are inside the reserve and around us we see dredges numbering in the hundreds.”

Illegal mining declined in parts of Madre de Dios after Peru launched a major military and police crackdown known as Operation Mercury in 2019. But miners have since moved back toward protected areas, prompting authorities to intensify operations.

Global Conservation, a U.S.-based nonprofit working with Peruvian authorities, said ongoing operations will combine satellite monitoring, aerial reconnaissance and law enforcement raids over the coming year to identify and dismantle illegal gold mining camps and equipment.

Destroying the motors hits miners where it hurts most

Before setting out Tuesday, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Renato Miranda told troops at a briefing that the mission’s objective was to “neutralize and dismantle” illegal mining activities. Once on the ground, that meant searching for anything that allowed the mines to function: pumps, batteries, fuel, dredging equipment and makeshift infrastructure.

“The most important thing is to destroy the main machinery,” Miranda said. “And the main machinery is the motors.”

The powerful engines are among the most valuable pieces of equipment at a mining site and a key economic pressure point for authorities trying to make it more expensive for miners to restart operations. Miranda said larger engines can cost around $30,000 to $45,000. He estimated that motors targeted in the raids can extract 30 to 50 grams of gold a day. At current gold prices, that would be worth about $4,000 to $7,000.

Miranda told AP the three-day operation destroyed 56 motors, 78 mining rafts and 13,751 gallons (52,050 liters) of fuel, with the destroyed material valued at more than 15 million soles ($4 million). On the ground, soldiers said they had destroyed around 115 motors over the previous three months during operations carried out nearly every week.

The remote sites give miners time to hear approaching boats or helicopters and flee, often hiding motors in sand, behind trees or in muddy pools to recover later. Specialized navy divers search the murky pools for submerged engines, entering water where mercury and other chemicals may be present. When they find one, they attach explosive charges and destroy it.

At one site, as troops prepared to leave, a soldier spotted disturbed sand and began digging. He uncovered a motor, threw it onto a pile with a mattress and chainsaw, doused it with gasoline and set it alight. A dog abandoned at the site fared better: soldiers took a liking to it, bringing it along for the rest of the day’s mission and eventually back to their military base.

Elsewhere, troops used dynamite-like explosives to destroy equipment and burned structures and supplies that could be used to keep the mining camps running.

A 10-minute boat ride away, another, larger camp offered a glimpse of daily life at the mining sites. A chest freezer was packed with meat, while wooden shelves held plates and coffee mugs. Several separate sleeping areas were strewn with personal belongings: a ledger filled with lists of needed supplies, freshly washed underwear hanging from string to dry, bottles of vitamins and even pills marketed as increasing penis size and sexual endurance. All was set alight by the troops. Before moving on, some of the soldiers cooked and ate food they found in the abandoned camp.

The expensive machinery and valuable gold contrasts with the precarious conditions of many living and working in the camps.

During the operation, another patrol encountered a woman with her 1-year-old child at a mining site. Flores told AP she had come to Madre de Dios from Cusco after failing to gain admission to university and, after being left by the father of her child, needed work. She responded to an advertisement seeking a cook and ended up preparing food for illegal miners.

Authorities say raids alone will not stop the mining

The destruction of machinery is intended to hit miners where it hurts most: the cost of restarting. But authorities themselves acknowledge that raids alone are not enough.

Miranda said that with gold prices high and mining highly profitable, operators can acquire another engine, rebuild their equipment and return to the same location or move elsewhere.

“Every day they are advancing more and more and more, and we are being very slow," said Flores, adding that their strategy needs to change.

Prosecutors, he said, are now pursuing two fronts: continuing operations against dredges, motors and other equipment while also following the money behind the mines — identifying the financiers who provide the capital for expensive machinery and tracing the profits generated by the gold.

That approach could be critical to breaking the cycle visible along the Malinowski River: authorities destroy equipment, leave and miners find the money and machinery to start again.

“These operations have to be permanent,” Flores said. ___

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

The team announced Friday that the ceremony will take place following the Feb. 28 game at Target Center against the Celtics, who retired Garnett's jersey in 2022.

Garnett will become just the second player in the 37-year history of the franchise to have his number retired, following the late Malik Sealy, a close friend and teammate of Garnett's who died in a car crash in 2000.

Garnett had a falling out with former Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor, but the club under new ownership made amends and hired him last year as a team ambassador. He made his first appearance at Target Center in April during the Minnesota's final game of the 2025-26 regular season.

Garnett won the NBA MVP award for the 2003-04 season while leading the Timberwolves to the Western Conference finals. After playing the first 12 years of his career for Minnesota, he was traded to the Celtics in 2007 and won an NBA title with them in his first year. He returned to Minnesota in 2015 and played his last of 21 seasons in the league there.

Garnett is the all-time Timberwolves leader in numerous statistical categories, including points, rebounds, blocks, assists and steals.

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See AP’s full NBA coverage here

Earlier this month, The Associated Press highlighted Maisa Lopes Eliaser as one of dozens of spouses or parents of U.S. troops who had been detained after President Donald Trump’s administration rolled back protections for military families amid its push for mass deportations. Following the AP’s reporting, a group of Congressional Democrats launched an investigation into deportations of military service members and their families.

Eliaser was placed on a deportation flight Wednesday to her native Brazil when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on the plane received a phone call about her mid-flight, she told the AP. She said she was then asked by an ICE officer whether she wanted to continue on to Brazil or go back to the U.S.

“Who made the call? We don’t know,” said Eliaser’s husband, Army Staff Sgt. Alexis Jaramillo. “But someone made the phone call, and then she came back.”

While other detainees were led off the plane in Brazil, Eliaser stayed on board and returned to Louisiana. ICE officers told her that she was “famous” because there were videos about her case, she said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

DHS previously told AP that Eliaser, 32, had been issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge on April 15, after overstaying the tourist visa she used to enter the U.S. in 2019.

Jaramillo, a 43-year-old aviation operations specialist who has served in the Army for more than a decade, took leave of his duties training soldiers in Fort Polk, Louisiana, to care for Eliaser's 5-year-old son after she was detained on July 8.

Jaramillo said Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former Navy officer, also looked into his wife’s case. Kelly’s office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

“This family’s reunion is proof of what’s possible when people set politics aside and do right by those who serve,” Danitza James, who heads Repatriate Our Patriots, a nonprofit that supports military families facing deportation and helped with Eliaser’s case, said at a news conference. “We won’t stop until every military family facing detention gets the same chance at justice.”

Eliaser, who was detained in July while at an immigration appointment, has another appointment scheduled for Monday in an effort to reopen her case and advance her green card application. Jaramillo is a U.S. citizen and the couple have been married since 2024.

Jaramillo said he has been told that there will be no further issues with Eliaser’s case, but the couple is still concerned.

“We are really, really, really scared about it, but you know, we have to go,” Jaramillo said. “I told the person who gave me the appointment, ‘Hey sir, don’t play with me, I’ve been through a lot.’”

Eliaser said she is still struggling to sleep and is afraid she will be sent back to the detention facility, where she said she was treated like “an animal.”

“It felt like I was in a nightmare,” Eliaser said. “I could not believe what was happening until I returned to my house. Day by day, I’m trying to recover from this trauma.”

There have been similar interventions in other high-profile cases over the past year. Annie Ramos, 22, was detained by immigration authorities as her husband, an Army staff sergeant, was preparing to deploy. She was released after a public outcry. Around the same time, U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat and combat veteran, told the AP that she personally contacted DHS to call for the release of Deisy Rivera Ortega, the immigrant wife of an Army sergeant who did three tours in Afghanistan, after learning about her case from advocacy groups. She was eventually released from custody.

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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Kevin Rideout “is in good health in the care of U.S. officials,” SIM International, an Evangelical mission organization, said in a statement.

He will soon be reunited with his extended family, the statement added.

Rideout was back in U.S. custody on Friday, the country’s President Donald Trump said in a post on social media.

“Kevin, the United States of America looks forward to welcoming you HOME. Glad to have helped!” Trump wrote.

Rideout was kidnapped in the West African country's capital, Niamey, on Oct. 21 by three armed individuals and was probably driven out of town, according to information provided by a security official at the time.

No armed group claimed responsibility for the abduction.

Niger has long faced attacks from armed groups including jihadis linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State organization.

The U.S. Embassy in Niamey issued a security alert a day after Rideout's kidnapping, warning that U.S. citizens “remain at a heightened risk of kidnapping throughout Niger, including in the capital city.”

Niger is ruled by a military junta that took power in 2023 after deposing the democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum. The new authorities ousted Western partners including the United States, which had soldiers in Niger, and forged a new security and diplomatic alliance with Russia.

In June, more than 30 people were killed when gunmen attacked the main airport in Niamey. It was the second attack this year at the airport, a strategic hub that serves as the ruling military’s command, hosting its air force base and most of its drones and aircraft. It’s also the headquarters of the regional alliance that brings together troops from Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso.

The violence is the latest sign of armed groups increasingly targeting cities and urban centers in Africa’s Sahel region.

The latest alert covers the area near Kingsley Plantation, north of the Fort George River, following a water sample collected Aug. 11.

A previous alert was issued for the Fort George Inlet area after a sample taken Aug. 6. Residents and visitors are urged to exercise caution in and around both affected areas.

What to do if you’re near the affected areas

Anyone near either impacted location should look for informational signage posted at most public beaches or check current water quality status at Protecting Florida Together. The public is advised not to wade or swim in or around red tide, as it can cause skin irritation, rashes, and burning or sore eyes.

“Wash your skin and clothing with soap and fresh water if you have had recent contact with red tide, especially if your skin is easily irritated,” the department advises.

People with chronic respiratory conditions should stay away from the affected areas entirely. Residents living near the beach are encouraged to close windows and run the air conditioner, making sure filters are maintained according to manufacturer specifications.

When it comes to seafood, the public should not harvest or eat molluscan shellfish or any distressed or dead fish from either location. If finfish are caught alive and healthy, they are safe to eat as long as they are filleted and the guts are discarded — fillets should be rinsed with tap or bottled water.

Red tide can also pose a danger to animals. Pets and livestock should be kept out of the water and away from any sea life or dead marine animals. If a pet swims in affected waters, owners should wash them with soap and water as soon as possible.

What is red tide?

Red tide is caused by high concentrations of a toxin-producing organism called Karenia brevis, a type of microscopic algae found in the Gulf of Mexico. It typically forms naturally offshore — commonly in late summer or early fall — and is carried into coastal waters by winds and currents. At high concentrations, it can discolor water, giving it a red or brown hue.

Why is red tide harmful?

Karenia brevis produces potent neurotoxins called brevetoxins that can be harmful to humans, pets, fish, and wildlife. Wind and wave action can break open the algae cells and release those toxins into the air, making it important to monitor conditions even if you’re not in the water. People can experience varying degrees of eye, skin, and respiratory irritation. Sensitive groups — including children, the elderly, those who are immunocompromised, and those with chronic respiratory conditions — may face more severe symptoms.

How to stay informed

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission routinely collects and analyzes red tide samples from around the state. Up-to-date information on Florida’s water quality status and public health notifications for harmful algae blooms and beach conditions is available at Protecting Florida Together. Residents can also subscribe to receive notifications when water quality changes in their area.

To hear a recorded update on red tide conditions statewide, call the toll-free hotline at 866-300-9399. For local licensed shellfish harvesting status, visit the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services website.

[CLICK HERE TO SEE MAP OF CURRENT RED TIDE SAMPLES]

How to report red tide-related concerns

Anyone experiencing symptoms from exposure to a harmful algae bloom or aquatic toxin should contact the Florida Poison Information Center at 800-222-1222 to speak with a poison specialist.

Pet owners who believe their animal has become ill after contact with red tide-contaminated water should contact their veterinarian.

Dead, diseased, or abnormally behaving fish or wildlife should be reported to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission online or by calling 800-636-0511.

For other health questions or concerns related to red tide, contact DOH-Duval at 904-253-1280.

If you weren’t aware, the national ROH promotion now records all its shows in Jacksonville at WJCT studios.

That’s where we caught up with Turbo Floyd and Truth Magnum.

Host Scott Johnson puts his foot in his mouth when he says they look like they’re stuck in the 1980s. You won’t want to miss one of the most entertaining interviews we’ve ever had!

It’s like being at an amusement park.

The Jaguars have heard it, too. And they’ve decided to make a change.

For the 2026 season, the team is introducing a value menu with some of EverBank Stadium’s most popular items available for $4.99 in the general bowl and Gallagher Clubs East and West.

Free packaged snacks will also be available to Club ticket holders, the team said.

Here’s what will be available for under $5 on the “Fan First Favorites” value menu:

• Hot dogs
• Popcorn
• Pretzels
• Nachos
• Candy
• 16.9 oz. bottled water
• 12 oz. canned beer

The menu will be offered at the four “Stadium Classics” concession stands on the Main Concourse level and the “Stadium Classics” locations in the upper East and West Clubs. The free snacks at the Club area concessions will vary from game to game.

One asterisk to note is that the value menu concessions will be available “while supplies last.”

The Jags said they wanted to add value for ticket holders and that the value menu is a glimpse at the new food and drink model for the Stadium of the Future.

That model will feature more local food offerings and pricing of select items that are comparable to what is found in the marketplace, the Jags said.

“The Fan First Favorites menu offers an array of fan-favorite concession items at a great price,” said Jaguars President Mark Lamping. “From the beginning of the Stadium of the Future planning process, the Jaguars set out to create a better fan experience, including the variety and price of food and beverages. We’re proud to begin delivering on that commitment this season.”

The Jaguars will continue to allow outside food to be brought to the stadium provided it is unwrapped and placed inside a one-gallon clear plastic bag, and two 16.9 oz. factory-sealed water bottles.

To learn more about the value menu, check out the Jags’ Concessions Guide webpage at www.jaguars.com/stadium/concessions.

Sly moved into the Kapuzinerkloster, a Capuchin monastery about 1,550 feet (470 meters) above sea level, 7 1/2 weeks ahead of the Aug. 4 opening of Romeo Castellucci’s new Salzburg Festival production timed for the 800th anniversary year of St. Francis’ death.

Sly climbs the steps from the city center or walks up a road several times daily and sleeps without air conditioning in a summer of record European heat waves.

“Just being here has been extremely important because I’m going to Lauds every morning,” the 37-year-old Canadian bass-baritone said in a reference to Franciscan morning prayers.

“I’ve taken on all these habits that they have here and now I long for it," he said in an interview with The Associated Press outside the monastery on the morning after the first performance. "It’s weird. I’m excited to come back to the monastery and be present for Vespers or for the Eucharist Mass.”

Messiaen, a prolific 20th century French composer, spent nearly a decade creating his only opera, which premiered in 1983, nine years before his death.

His score for the 6-hour, 20-minute, eight-tableaux opus (including a pair of one-hour intermissions) depicts episodes in St. Francis' spiritual journey, including his encounter with a leper and his sermon to birds. The score calls for two raised percussion sections on either side of the stage and three ondes Martenots. The electronic instruments figure prominently in the 45-minute “Sermon to the Birds,” the sixth tableau, reflecting Messiaen's devotion to his Catholic faith.

Conductor Maxime Pascal leads 120 musicians and a chorus of 90 in six performances through Aug. 23. A second conductor in the pit waves a baton capped by a white light, signaling percussion beats at odds with the other instruments’ markings.

“It’s 2,500 pages of music, sometimes very, very complex,” Pascal said. “There is never one transition. It’s a succession of infinity of moments and so each moment, it can be short or long, but each moment is like a work by itself.”

The staging features a peacock, sheep and baking bread

Castellucci’s production features a Czechoslovakian Wolfdog, a female peacock and seven sheep who romp across the stage near the end as the roof opens at the Felsenreitschule, a 1,400-seat theater built in the Mönchsberg rock quarry and famous for its appearance in the film “The Sound of Music.”

In the Franciscan tradition of bread for the poor, a pair of MIWE four-level ovens are moved on stage and bake 33 sourdough loaves, their aroma wafting through the audience. Each oven weighs 2,650 pounds (1,200 kilos). The bread is later made available to the backstage crew.

“In the New Testament, often there’s quotes of Jesus saying that the kingdom of God is like yeast,” Sly said.

José van Dam originated the title role at the Paris Opéra, with Seiji Ozawa conducting. Peter Sellars directed a 1992 Salzburg production starring van Dam with Esa-Pekka Salonen leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

“Messiaen had these pictures of colors and dimensions of time and space. Pretty exhilarating,” said Sellars, who first heard the music when Ozawa conducted three tableaux in concert with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1986.

“Most opera is about stabbing the girl in the back," Sellars told the AP. "This is just about what are the revelations in your life, what are the moments when you have another idea of how to live and what it means to be human and what it means to be part of nature.”

Performing the opera for the first time, the Vienna Philharmonic started with five rehearsals back home followed by 12 more in Salzburg. The orchestra is known for Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler and Strauss, not contemporary compositions.

“It’s very important for an orchestra today to play also modern music,” said double bassist Michael Bladerer, the Vienna Philharmonic’s general manager.

Large orchestra and chorus make performances rare

There has been just one major U.S. staged production, by the San Francisco Opera in 2002 starring Willard White with Donald Runnicles conducting. Then-general director Pamela Rosenberg believed the city named after St. Francis should stage the portrayal of him.

“It’s one of the two or three most compelling pieces of the second half of the last century,” she said. “For me it was almost distressing — being dramatic — that it hadn’t been shown in the Western hemisphere yet.”

“He’s just so unique,” she added of Messiaen. “In spite of being part of the spectral music movement, he wasn’t continuing the footsteps of anyone with his musical language and he really created something that had an enormous artistic impetus in the music world.”

White, now 79, sings the shorter role of Frère Bernard in the new production and was able to pass on his experience to Sly.

“It was partly technical but it’s also a mindset,” White said. “I basically said that in this life we got to go from one moment to the next and in the acceptance of the moment that we’re in it actually guides us to the approach of the next moment.”

Soprano Lauranne Oliva (The Angel), tenor Sean Panikkar (The Leper) and baritone Russell Braun (Frère Léon) are part of a standout cast dominated by Sly’s quivering, self-mutilating performance as he gets smothered with dirt and blood.

Pascal thinks Messiaen chose St. Francis as a subject because of their mutual interest in birds and faith, then created the opera as a synthesis of his use of orchestral color.

“Messiaen was convinced while composing the work that it would be his last work," Pascal said. "He thought it was his swan song.”

Priority Evac is a membership service that offers customers a pre-secured seat on a flight out of Florida before certain hurricanes, with membership starting at $1,250.

The company says the service is designed to help people avoid the packed highways, airport closures and last-minute scramble that can come with evacuating ahead of a major storm.

“We want to make sure that people have a plan prior to the storm, so you’re not thinking about it when it’s too late,” Priority Evac COO Tim Houston told News4JAX.

Under the program, members work with a case manager who helps coordinate the evacuation. The company says customers are told which airport to use, where to meet the aircraft and are flown to Atlanta.

Priority Evac says it has not yet flown its first evacuation. The service is launching in South Florida, and the company says it has received interest from people concerned about evacuating elderly parents, college students, pets and those with medical needs.

Houston said the idea came from seeing people begin thinking about evacuation only after a storm is already approaching.

“People experience the storms and then that’s when they start thinking about evacuation,” he said.

The concept has also drawn some criticism online, with some questioning whether evacuation should be something people have to pay for.

One TikTok creator compared the service to the Titanic, saying first-class passengers were being prioritized over working-class passengers. The video was viewed over 1 million times. Another commenter called the concept “dystopian.”

Houston said the service is not intended to be an option for everyone.

“It’s a first-of-its-kind service, so it’s a new concept, but really it’s about being prepared,” he said. “It’s an option. It may not be for everybody, but I think there’s a lot of people in Florida that want this service.”

The company says its evacuation triggers are based on criteria from the National Hurricane Center.

Priority Evac is not currently offering flights out of Jacksonville.

Houston said the service is not intended to replace official hurricane evacuation orders or emergency management guidance. Instead, the company says it is designed to give members another option to leave before traditional evacuation routes become overwhelmed.

For Floridians who choose to evacuate, emergency officials continue to recommend having an evacuation plan in place before a storm threatens the area.

Gary Glowacz’s arrest came after he reportedly called Clay County Sheriff’s Office dispatch on July 8 and told them he wanted to provide information about Ellison’s death. By the end of that day, he was in handcuffs.

Glowacz was taken into custody by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit and charged with murder and burglary with a battery. He was booked into the Duval County jail with no bond.

Criminal background

Glowacz has a criminal history spanning multiple counties and several decades.

In Duval County, he was found guilty of purchasing cocaine in both 1989 and 1996, and in 1998 was convicted of burglary. In 1986, adjudication was withheld on a separate burglary charge — a legal outcome in which the court does not formally enter a conviction.

More recently, Glowacz was charged with DUI in Clay County in 2016 and later pleaded guilty.

Victim found dead in her home

On Dec. 28, 1987, at approximately 4:40 a.m., Jacksonville patrol officers responded to a call for a dead person at a home on Colejean Road. When they arrived, officers found 20-year-old Melissa Ellison lying in her bed, suffering from blunt force trauma.

Ellison’s two roommates told officers they went to check on her after finding Ellison’s toddler crying alone on the living room couch.

Ellison’s daughter, who is now in her early 40s, said the long-awaited announcement of an arrest is making her “see the world differently.”

“I know that it’s never going to bring my mom back, but it does have a ridiculous release of closure,” she said.

The Duval County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the manner of death a homicide, with the cause of death determined to be blunt force trauma to the head. JSO’s Homicide Unit and Crime Scene Unit detectives launched an investigation, reviewing all available evidence and conducting multiple interviews. No arrests were made at the time, and the case eventually went cold.

Phone call cracks cold case nearly 40 years later

Thirty-nine years later, on July 8, Glowacz called Clay County Sheriff’s Office dispatch and advised he wanted to provide information about the death of Ellison, according to his arrest report. What he told investigators is redacted in his arrest report, but after talking with Cold Case detectives, he was informed that he was being arrested for murder and burglary with assault/battery.

Glowacz was transported to JSO headquarters, where he was interviewed by detectives. An arrest warrant was subsequently issued. He was 31 years old at the time of the 1987 killing.

“We are thankful to our community partners — First Coast Crime Stoppers, State Attorney’s Office, Project Cold Case, and the Clay County Sheriff’s Office — who all helped keep this case at the forefront and renewed the call for information,” JSO said in a statement. “We’re also incredibly proud of our Cold Case Unit detectives for their hard work in this case.”

JSO added that it will continue to work alongside the State Attorney’s Office to ensure Glowacz faces the consequences of his actions.

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred made the announcement Friday that the 2028 Midsummer Classic will be at Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants. The 2007 game was played in the picturesque waterfront ballpark, featuring Hall of Famer Ichiro Suzuki's famous inside-the-park home run that bounced off the tricky wall in right-center field.

“With its passionate fanbase, world-class ballpark, and rich baseball history, San Francisco will be an outstanding host for All-Star Week, which culminates in one of Major League Baseball’s best traditions, the Midsummer Classic,” Manfred said in a statement. "We look forward to bringing the excitement of All-Star Week and the celebration of baseball to the Bay Area.”

This will mark another major sporting event for the Bay Area recently after the Super Bowl and World Cup this year and the NBA All-Star Game in February 2025.

The Giants will host the Midsummer Classic for a fourth time overall after Candlestick Park held the first All-Star Game of the 1961 season and also baseball's summer showcase in 1984.

Oracle Park is set to become the eighth active ballpark to hold the All-Star Game multiple times, joining Fenway Park in 1946, 1961 and 1999, Wrigley Field (1947, 1962, 1990), Angel Stadium (1967, 1989, 2010), Dodger Stadium (1980, 2022), Progressive Field (1997, 2019), Coors Field (1998, 2021) and T-Mobile Park (2001, 2023).

Giants President and CEO Larry Baer said the club is “incredibly honored” and expressed his gratitude.

“This is a tremendous opportunity to showcase our organization, our city, and the incredible passion of our fans on baseball’s biggest summer stage,” he said in a statement.

“Hosting the All-Star Game is more than celebrating the game’s brightest stars, it’s a chance to highlight the people, neighborhoods, and culture that make our community so special. Few cities offer the unique combination of sports, culture, innovation, entertainment, and natural beauty that defines San Francisco. We look forward to welcoming players, families, fans, and visitors from around the world for a week that will create lasting memories and have a meaningful impact throughout our region.”

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See AP’s full MLB coverage here

Proofpoint users flood Down Detector with outage reports

Proofpoint, which delivers enterprise cybersecurity solutions including email security, threat protection, cloud security, anti-spam filtering, email archiving and data loss prevention services for organizations worldwide, saw a surge in outage reports Friday morning.

According to Down Detector, reports peaked at approximately 9 a.m., with around 400 users flagging problems. Of those reports, 54% cited issues with the app, 23% reported login problems and 22% experienced issues with the website.

Proofpoint had not publicly commented on the outages as of the time of publication.

Microsoft Outlook users report similar issues

Microsoft Outlook users also flooded Down Detector with outage reports Friday morning. Reports peaked at around 10 a.m., reaching approximately 450 reported outages.

Of those reports, 56% said they were having trouble sending messages, 32% reported issues receiving messages and 7% cited problems with the app.

Microsoft Outlook had not publicly commented on the outages as of the time of publication.

And thus, “A Very Laufey Day” was born. Each year, the Grammy-winning singer curates itineraries for different locations across the globe for her listeners to follow. It's “anywhere I have been and loved,” she says. It allows them to live what she refers to as “a perfect day,” but also to connect with their community offline and in person. And as she approaches its fourth edition, it has only grown larger.

“It became much bigger than I anticipated, really,” she says. She sought to inspire her audience to find “third spaces,” and explore some of her favorite locales: museums, bookstores, cafes, concerts and the like, and foster community in the process. And each year, it has only grown bigger, with fans dressing up in their favorite Laufey-themed vintage fashions to celebrate the unofficial holiday.

And Aug. 23 will mark the fourth annual “A Very Laufey Day.”

“It is a fun puzzle every year,” she says.

‘A Very Laufey Day’ 2026

This year, “A Very Laufey Day” will include experiences in 75 cities across 25 countries, centering on the theme of “A Celebration of the Arts.”

Those include performances spanning symphony orchestras, ballet, jazz, opera and theater as well as events with libraries, bookstores, coffee shops, yogurt/ice cream shops and more. Her concert film “A Night at the Symphony: Hollywood Bowl” will be screened at select theaters. And she's partnered with many museums around the world, including New York City's Guggenheim, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, London's Tate Modern and National Gallery, Chile's Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Seoul's Daelim Museum and more. At some participating businesses, fans will be able to acquire limited edition merchandise and Laufey-themed specialty drinks.

“This year it was really about focusing on the arts and culture and finding ways to bring this barrier of entry down between my audience — which is mostly Gen Z and Gen A — and these kind of so-called high cultural experiences,” she says. “Whether it’s going to see an orchestra show … museums or galleries, we really want to find ways to connect with those institutions.”

Some of these spaces can be intimidating for younger fans, and Laufey says this year was all about making these rooms, some of her favorites, inviting to her audience.

“It doesn’t have to be this scary thing. And so, I’ve kind of made it my life’s mission to make spaces like that fun and accessible,” she says.

Police said officers, paramedics and firefighters were at the scene near Wickford train station in Essex, about 30 miles east of London (48 kilometers), after receiving reports that the rear carriages of a train derailed. The carriages were in an “upright position," police said, and no injuries were reported.

National Rail said officials were working to understand what happened, and major disruptions to train services were expected through Friday afternoon.

The incident came less than 24 hours after a train from London to Eastbourne went off the tracks outside the southern English town of Lewes. Three carriages overturned, seriously injuring two people and causing minor injuries for 18 others.

All passengers were evacuated within about three hours, the transport police said.

The cause of the derailment is under investigation.

The drop is driven by federal work requirement expansions and funding cuts from the 2025 federal budget law.

Sadaf Knight, CEO of Florida Policy Institute, joined us on The Morning Show to discuss the implications. He says it impacts nutrition and health care at a time when affordability is a major problem for many Floridians.

The season itself is in no danger; climate change, mainly caused by the burning of oil, gas and coal, is warming the weather year-round. Viewed this way, summer-like weather is ascendant. It's setting records across the globe — melting Arctic ice, driving droughts, intensifyingwildfires, spinning up storms and endangering millions of people who can't affordair conditioning, time off work or “coolcations.” The heat is so extreme in Asia that Japan has coined a new meteorological category for the danger: kokusho-bi — or “cruelly hot day.”

What seems as dead as the grass in England this year is the summertime ideal — lazy days, warm nights and escape, however temporary, from classes or parents or work or rules. During the Summer of '26, people are grieving that freedom. And perhaps, the versions of ourselves we become when our senses tell us that we are safe.

“I mourn for the way summer used to be,” author Debra Denker, who writes “cli-fi,” or climate fiction, wrote in an essay last month recalling leisurely days and July Fourth block parties of the 1960s. “Unless we change the trajectory we're on, today's children will never know the gentle and balmy summers of my childhood ... I feel sad that they may never know the truly carefree summers that the more privileged among us enjoyed.”

In 2026, summertime is a different kind of blast

No one needs meteorologists to confirm that this summer is different and our rituals are changing. Downwind from wildfires in North AmericaandEurope, the sky turns orange and the air tastes gritty. Life under Paris' famous gray rooftops can be deadly. Nights can be a sullen cycle of sleep, showering and opening a window — only to close it later to block out the urban noise.

Everywhere, life-giving sun hurts during much of the day. Checking the air quality index has become part of the act of stepping outside. We get things done earlier in the day and stay up later at night. And a full day at the beach — or an August holiday in Europe — is more a matter of risk management than it used to be.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that Americans are more likely to say extreme heat has had either a “major impact” or “minor impact” on their travel or vacation plans, electricity bills, their sleep, their family’s outdoor activities and more parts of their day-to-day life than in July 2024. Research at Oxford University published in July found that the intense heat influences daily behavior globally, with such “everyday adaptations” to daily activities occurring across seven of the countries most at risk of heat waves: Brazil, France, India, Nigeria, Turkey, the U.S. and China.

For some, it's a summer of discontent

Amber Risebrow, a teacher in Britain’s Channel Islands, said she yearned for England’s idyllic warm season — that period when the sunlight lingers.

“I wanted the long light evenings and the sunshine and the not-dark-at-4pm of it all,” she posted recently on Instagram. “What I did not want was to feel like a rotisserie chicken every single time I stepped outside. Slowly rotating. Gently basting. Questioning my life choices by 10am.”

For those who care to look, the data is plentiful and the weight of it is moving toward hotter and stormier summers. This week alone, intense heat hammered the U.K. and France as temperatures soared toward 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). It was the fifth heat wave of the year in a region where air conditioning is sporadic at best. And the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the contiguous United States sizzled to its hottest month ever in July.

Globally so far, this is the third-hottest year, behind 2024 and 2025, climate statistics show.

But 2026 still has time to catch up. Thanks to the one-two punch of accelerated human-caused global warming and a supersized El Nino — a periodic warming of parts of the Pacific that leads to temperature variations around the globe — there’s an increasing chance that by the end of the year, 2026 could become the hottest year on record, scientists said.

“And it’s not just extreme heat,” the World Meteorological Organization’s Clare Nullis told reporters in Geneva. “We’re also seeing extreme rainfall, tropical cyclones. So we’re not in holiday mode at all.”

Is summer an ‘outdated sham’?

Somewhere deep, there's a sense of acceptance that life-threatening, trip-canceling heat waves and their rippling effects aren't a one-off fluke. So management has ensued, with the hope that escaping hot weather might somehow allow the return of that summertime feeling — for now.

Advisories urging tourists to limit outdoor activity during peak heat hours have become a standard part of trip planning from Cambodia to Cambridge, England. Dog walking is becoming a dawn-or-dusk activity, with governments in high heat zones advising owners against midday walks. Employers and workers are adapting, with work hours especially for agricultural and construction workers shifting to the morning, and policies in some places allowing employees to work from home when the heat becomes extreme.

But home doesn't offer much solace for workers with no air conditioning. Only about 4% of British homes have “air-con,” compared to about 90% of American homes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

So achieving old-fashioned summertime bliss is, and perhaps always has been, mostly a matter of privilege.

In “An Open Letter to the Person Who Asked Me What I'm Doing For The Summer As If I Didn't Have to Work,” comedy writer Elizabeth Simone addressed the issue in the Weekly Humorist last year.

“You do know that summer vacation is an outdated sham, right?” she wrote. “Obviously it's because of what summer meant back when we were kids.”

___

Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi contributed from Tokyo.

Farage, leader of the anti-immigration Reform UK party who some see as a possible next prime minister, abruptly quit his seat in July amid an investigation into whether he failed to report a 5 million pound ($6.7 million) gift from an overseas crypto billionaire.

He denied wrongdoing and ran again for the seat to prove he had voters’ support, regaining it with 63% of Thursday’s vote in an unusual election on the hottest day of the year. Binface, a serial candidate who has challenged prime ministers past and present, represented a protest vote and finished second in a field of 34 candidates — many of them also jokers — with about 27%, according to the results announced Friday.

Farage hailed the result as an “overwhelming win” that increased his vote share over the last election, but it’s hard to draw broad conclusions from the election given the lack of genuine rivals and the fact that Farage has long been popular in the conservative constituency on the east coast of England.

“Today the voters in Clacton have stuck up two fingers to the entire political establishment,” Farage said, referring to the British equivalent of a crude gesture that employs the middle finger in other cultures.

The result will send him back to the House of Commons, but an investigation by a parliamentary watchdog that was suspended when he stepped down was resumed hours after the result was announced. That means Farage could be forced out of Parliament — and face yet another election.

Farage reshaped UK politics

Farage, the chief cheerleader in getting Britain to vote to leave the European Union a decade ago, has shattered the country's longstanding two-party system by positioning himself to the right of the Conservative Party.

With Farage’s win, Reform has just eight of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, but he has made the party a major political force by drawing on a mix of cultural grievances and a vow to stop what he has called an invasion of migrants crossing the English Channel in inflatable rafts. The party has frequently changed the national conversation and forced the governing center-left Labour Party and the Conservatives, long the dominant parties, to address Reform’s key issues.

But with Farage under scrutiny and a Labour leadership shake-up that installed Andy Burnham as prime minister, there’s room for Labour to regain some ground.

Farage still faces investigation over an undeclared donation

Pressure will continue to mount on Farage as Parliament’s standards watchdog investigates an undeclared donation he got in 2024 from Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based cryptocurrency billionaire. Farage says he didn’t need to declare the money because it was a personal gift he used to fund his security and was made before he was elected.

When he resigned on July 7, he complained of an “establishment hit job” and a media-driven “witch-hunt.”

Farage also faces an investigation into his financial relationship with George Cottrell, an aristocratic crypto-gambling entrepreneur who served eight months in a U.S. prison for fraud a decade ago after offering to launder money for undercover agents posing as drug traffickers.

Cottrell remains close to Farage and has reportedly given him money for security and staff. Farage has denied wrongdoing and stood by the man he calls “Posh George.”

Labour Party chairwoman Bridget Phillipson said the election was no victory for Farage, and he needs to come clean over his finances and relationship with Cottrell.

“The mountain of sleaze and scandal he and Reform are now engulfed in has grown and grown while he’s been trying to distract the public by fighting a by-election against a bin,” Phillipson said.

Farage was a no-show at the vote count

Farage’s gambit to resign and run again backfired when other parties refused to participate and he was left facing a massive field of independent and small-party candidates, including novelty acts such as Howling Laud Hope of The Official Monster Raving Loony Party and Marcus White from the Everyone is God Party.

Farage declared victory in the early morning and blew off the official declaration where he would have had to stand alongside the other candidates — a time-honored tradition in British politics.

“I’m damned if I’m going to stand on a stage, having won a resounding victory ... and be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies,” Farage told supporters at a victory party.

Farage also said he didn’t attend because police told him about an “organized campaign to disrupt and degrade the result.” A spokesperson for Reform said there was a credible threat against him, though police disputed that.

Fiona Byrne, who wouldn’t say who she voted for, said Farage shouldn’t have called the election, which she said was an expensive joke.

“It’s just been a complete waste of money and time for everybody here, and he just needs to face the music,” she said.

But John Fairclough said he was happy Farage won because he’s what the country needs.

“To my mind he hasn’t done anything wrong,” Fairclough said. “He’s a threat to the main media and government who want to just control us and control everything.”

Binface, who ran on a wacky platform that included a vow to “cut your taxes, and raise everyone else’s,” build one affordable home, and nationalize singer Adele, declared himself the "winning candidate of the candidates who bothered to turn up for the results."

Under the black cape, trash can helmet and ample body armor straight out of a low-budget sci-fi film, Binface’s alter-ego is Jon Harvey, a middle-aged comedian who spent most of the campaign doing media interviews and trying to stay cool in the costume during a sweltering summer.

Binface has hinted that if Farage faces another election, he could return to run again.

“Over one in four people in this constituency would rather have Count Binface as their MP than the leader of Reform UK,” Binface said in a video on X. “Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Clacton by-election.” ___

Melley reported from London.

“No, it's not going to be my biggest challenge,” Makhachev said. “He's just good, you know? I give him respect. He has good skills. But everybody knows my game.”

Fight fans know Makhachev as a two-division champion and reigning title holder at 170 pounds.

They might soon know Makhachev as the fighter with the longest winning streak in UFC history.

Makhachev can indeed topple Anderson Silva and set the UFC record for most consecutive wins at 17 should he defeat Machado Garry in the main event title fight at UFC 330 on Saturday night in Philadelphia.

Makhachev (28-1) has not lost since UFC 192 in 2015 and has gone on from that defeat to win the UFC lightweight title in 2022. He made four straight successful title defenses before he surrendered the title. Makhachev won the welterweight crown in his first attempt when he beat Jack Della Maddalena at UFC 322 in November 2025.

The win put Makhachev on par with Silva, a Hall of Famer who won a championship match in UFC's first Philadelphia show in 2009.

Makhachev joined a short list in UFC history — the company was founded in 1993 — of male fighters who won championships in two weight classes. The others: Henry Cejudo, Daniel Cormier, Randy Couture, Georges St-Pierre, B.J. Penn, Conor McGregor, Jon Jones, Alex Pereira and Ilia Topuria.

The 34-year-old Makhachev is smart enough to know that, even as a heavy betting favorite to defend his title, Machado Garry is more than “just good."

Machado Garry (17-1) just might be the biggest threat yet to end Makhachev's winning streak and walk out of Philadelphia as the new champion. His only career loss came in a 2024 decision, and he rebounded with two straight wins that thrust the Irishman into a title fight against Makhachev.

“For me to go out there against him, who many consider to be a generational talent, they're starting to talk about him in the GOAT conversation,” Machado Garry said, “for me to go out there and have that as the challenge that I have to go out there and beat to prove I'm not only the champion of the world, but I really truly am the best on the planet, that's what I want.”

Machado Garry lacks a finishing punch but has enough of a versatile skill set to win the bulk of his fights by decision. He is not the near the elite level of wrestler of Makhachev and has to stay on his feet to keep the fight in his favor. Machado Garry does have about 4 inches in height and reach to the challenger.

“He acts like he's a bad boy,” Makhachev said. “We will make him humble. We will make him a good guy.”

Mackenzie Dern defends 115-pound title against Gillian Robertson

Mackenzie Dern (16-5-0) is set for her first title defense after she won the vacant strawweight belt in her last fight at UFC 321.

She already had to make one adjustment as the champ.

“It's definitely a little bit different doing the faceoffs with the belt in my hand,” Dern said. “I'm like, how do I shake her hand? Just getting used to having the belt over my shoulder most of the week during fight week.”

Gillian Robertson (17-8) holds the record for the most UFC submission wins by a woman and has won five straight fights going back to 2024. Robertson has won five straight bouts and six of seven overall since returning to the strawweight division and she is tied with Amanda Nunes for the most overall finishes on the women’s side of the sport with 10.

New kind of Broad Street Bullies set to usher in UFC's return to Philadelphia

UFC is running only its third numbered card in Philadelphia.

UFC 101 was held in August 2009, and UFC 133 was in August 2011.

Justin Gaethje, who won the lightweight title in the main event of the June card at the South Lawn of the White House in front of President Donald Trump, beat Edson Barboza in a 2019 Fight Night event on ESPN.

Barboza is back on Saturday's 330 card and fights Esteban Ribovics in a lightweight bout.

Machado Garry thought his title fight deserved a location more associated with big-time UFC bouts such as Las Vegas. He came around to Philadelphia once he brushed up on the city's fight history — though boxing is more the name of the game, and the city boasts statues of Joe Frazier and the fictional Rocky Balboa.

“Philadelphia is going to have a special place in my heart come Saturday night for the rest of my life because it's where I'm going to win a world title,” Machado Garry said.

One fight of note on the main card includes Dustin Stoltzfus, a native of Amish country in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, taking on Mansur Abdul-Malik in a middleweight bout.

“I love this area,” Stoltzfus said. “Less Philadelphia. I'm more of a country bumpkin from Lancaster."

___

AP MMA: https://apnews.com/hub/mixed-martial-arts

They also want to announce that as a celebration of Othello’s 2nd year anniversary, the restaurant will be transformed into a party ground on Sat 9/12, with no dinner service but folks could purchase tickets for entry fee to come to a buffet with food stations, music, and charity donations.

To receive more info as they have it later, send them a DM on their IG @othellospringfield.

FREE Community Beach Yoga

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Do you agree just to avoid conflict? Apologize when you haven’t done anything wrong? That may be more than just being nice. It may be people pleasing.

Saying yes can make you seem helpful, easygoing, and kind. But if you’re constantly putting other people’s needs ahead of your own just to avoid conflict, disappointment, or guilt, experts say you may be people pleasing.

“Normally when people are people pleasers, they have learned that their needs are in direct conflict with relationships,” said Cristina Ally, a licensed mental health counselor who owns Flourish Counseling Co.

Experts say people pleasing is often a survival strategy and women are more likely to fall into this pattern.

“Women, though, them sacrificing their needs. That’s seen as a positive characteristic because it’s seen as feminine, it’s seen as caring, as nurturing,” explained Ally.

People pleasing can show up at work too, taking on too much, agreeing to deadlines you know aren’t realistic, or staying quiet in meetings.

So how do you start breaking the people-pleasing habit?

First, pause. People-pleasers often say yes automatically before they’ve even checked in with themselves.

Next, check your body. A tight chest. A knot in your stomach. That instant feeling of dread. Those can be clues that you’re agreeing out of pressure, not desire.

Then ask yourself: “Do I actually want to do this?”

And start small. Instead of an automatic yes, try: “Let me think about that.” Or “I need to check my schedule.”

Because being kind is one thing, and constantly abandoning your own needs is another.

And people-pleasing doesn’t stop at the office. It can show up with friends, when you go along with plans you don’t want to do. With family, when you feel like it’s your job to keep everyone happy. Or in relationships, when you swallow your feelings just to avoid rocking the boat.

Also, pay attention to resentment. If you say yes then immediately feel annoyed, overwhelmed, or taken advantage of, that’s a big warning sign. Experts say that’s often your inner boundary trying to speak up.

And probably more than anything when it comes to time, most of us try to manage it — in our everyday lives and on a global scale, from the biology of our circadian rhythms to what constitutes a work day. Clocks. Calendars. Pendulums. Hourglasses. Sundials. Time zones.

For something that's been a pretty universal impulse to mark the shift of light and dark, the movement of the stars and the rhythms of the tides, the cycles of summer heat and winter cold, one might assume there's been a universal way of measuring time. That assumption would be wrong.

Take the shifting of the clock twice a year in most of the United States, once forward and then back again, a system that “moves” the time to let people enjoy daylight hours later into the evening.

While people love the light, a lot of them loathe having to make the change. So much so that the House of Representatives last month overwhelmingly passed legislation calling for the shift to become permanent year-round. Its prospects for passage in the Senate aren’t high, and when the country tried it in the 1970s it was wildly unpopular and short-lived. But it continues to be brought up, an indication that the way we keep the clock counts.

The methods different peoples and communities have used to track their lives haven't existed in a vacuum. They've been impacted by culture, by religion, by economics and technology, by the governing principles both within nations and among them.

Turns out, like pretty much anything where people are involved, there’s a politics to time.

Measurements of time are made up, but they matter

“Every measurement of time is arbitrary,” says Elizabeth Cohen, a political science professor at Boston University who has written about how we chronicle time and how it impacts the way people relate to each other. “Every deadline could have been a fraction of a second or a large increment of time different than it was,” she says. “None of it is natural.”

Take calendars. We use them to give a structure to our lives, but the spectrum of what that has looked like is vast through human existence. Some followed the sun, others the moon, and others still a combination of both. Maybe all the months were the same length, maybe they weren’t. What we call a seven-day week might have had four, or six, or some other number of days in other timekeeping systems.

Even today, when the main calendar in use globally is what we know as the Gregorian calendar, with its 12 months and leap years, other calendars are still consulted for religious or cultural purposes in places from Israel to Thailand. And daylight saving time? With its connection to our perceptions of what hours of light become available to us, it reflects “a desire for natural time,” says Michael O’Malley, professor of history at George Mason University.

People “are outside longer, so they feel it as a connection to nature,” he says. “But it only makes sense in a society that’s completely hypnotized by clocks so you think the clock is time.”

The culture of the clock is evolving

It's not just about the how. When we think about how culture evolved around time, there's also the why.

For most of human history, there were ties to the rhythms of the natural world: the phases of the moon, the rising and setting of the sun, the ebb and flow of the tides. And in agricultural societies, the importance of when to plant and when to harvest.

Tracking the sun's journey across the sky was a local endeavor. While the idea of a day broken down into 24 equal segments was important to groups like astronomers or seafarers, daily life was broken into “systems that tended to expand and contract based on the time of year and the location,” says Kevin Birth, a professor of anthropology at Queens College.

“But since people weren’t really traveling back and forth with any great rapidity back," he says, "then it really didn’t matter.”

Industrialization — in the form of the Industrial Revolution that started in 18th-century England and spread — pushed people to shift notions of time. No longer was it about the sun's cycle or the turn of the seasons. Industrial production meant schedules — people paying attention to the clock because they were due for specific shifts.

“It was one of the goals of industrialization to instill in people this regular, unvarying sense of time,” O'Malley says.

Contrast that to a preindustrial farmer, he says. “You could have an ethic of hard work, but that work is not going to be governed by a clock. It’s typically going to be governed by natural cues. The clock establishes this external authority that’s not you."

In the United States, by the mid-1800s, another issue arose: time zones. There were more than 40 based around cities, which O'Malley says forced railroad companies to switch dynamically as trains traveled.

Worried that other entities would standardize the zones and disrupt their businesses, the companies acted. “The American Railway Association got all the American railroads to agree that on Nov. 18, 1883, they would declare a four-zone system in effect in America,” O'Malley says. “And they just announced it.”

Time can be a cudgel

It's hardly the only occasion where the perception of time has involved national or global concerns.

Take the Prime Meridian, the entirely made-up longitude line running from the North Pole to the South Pole, that divides Earth into eastern and western hemispheres and is used as the basis for global timekeeping as well as navigation.

It runs through Greenwich, England, and was selected at an international conference in 1884. Was that because Greenwich was the ideal place? No, Birth says — it simply was established during “a period when the British Empire was one of the dominant empires in the world.”

Time zones themselves “are about politics,” he says, pointing out that they are not divided in a standard format. Countries decide their own, and in the U.S., the individual states can decide if they observe Daylight Saving or not.

A prime example is China, which stretches more than 3,000 miles (5,000 kilometers) across Asia. It has one official time zone for the country, instituted when the Communist Party took power in 1949 as a form of national unity.

The entire country runs officially on Beijing time, but the reality on the ground when the sun rises in eastern China hours before it rises in western China is people adjust with their own local times for daily life, Birth says.

Time can also be a tool used in a society to manage dissent and protest, Cohen says. She pointed to examples like governments instituting curfews or protesters engaging in slowdowns or strikes.

“Time has a lot of power," she says, “and people are battling over it to try and impose themselves on others or remove the yoke that has been imposed on them.”

Colón’s death was confirmed in statements by the World Boxing Council and the World Boxing Organization late Thursday.

In October 2015, Colón suffered a brain bleed in a light-middleweight fight against Terrel Williams in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Fairfax, Virginia.

Colón underwent surgery to relieve pressure on his brain and the WBC said he sustained “irreversible neurological damage” because of what the governing body described as “severe, illegal blows to the back of the head.”

He never fought again and was later pictured in a wheelchair. The WBC named him an honorary world champion.

“The ‘Champion of the Heart’ became a global symbol of resilience, faith, and dignity,” said the WBC, which added that the incident involving Colón inspired the governing body to reinforce its safety regulations and implement stricter medical protocols.

The WBC praised his family for its support in “one of the most moving and outstandingly brave battles for life the world has ever witnessed.”

The WBO described Colón as “a warrior until the very end” and said his “courage, strength and fighting spirit transcended the ring.”

“His greatest fight became a testament to resilience and the unwavering love of his family,” the WBO added.

Before the fight against Williams, Colón collected 16 straight wins, including 13 knockouts.

He lost by disqualification against Williams because his cornermen removed his gloves after the 10th round, believing the contest to be over.

___

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

The historic temperatures are linked to human-caused climate change, and are hitting countries more used to long cold seasons and ill-equipped for this sort of heat, with limited air conditioning.

More evacuations in France as fire affects more regions

With France experiencing its driest year ever, a new fire raced through woodlands overnight in the Landes region on the southwest coast. The blaze forced more than 500 people to evacuate their homes in the town of Luglon as hundreds of firefighters deployed to the area, the regional administration said Friday.

It’s one of several fires scorching forests around France this week, including in normally cooler and wetter regions in the north and Brittany. A historic fire devoured forests near Bordeaux last month and pushed a quarter of a million people from their homes.

France also has shut down six nuclear reactors in recent days because of extreme heat and drought — and because a mass of jellyfish washed up outside one power plant on the English Channel coast, utility company EDF said. Large numbers of jellyfish are appearing on many French beaches in connection with unusually warm sea temperatures.

In a statement, the company said the shutdowns had minimal impact on France’s electricity production. It said extreme weather poses no safety risks to the reactors themselves.

UK wildfires come as London records its hottest day of the year

In the central English town of Stourbridge, where a huge blaze started Thursday, TV footage showed the fires consuming houses, with many left without roofs as flames burned inside the charred walls. About 20 to 30 homes were completely destroyed, Stourbridge lawmaker Cat Eccles told the BBC.

A woman who was evacuated from her Stourbridge home said police knocked on her door and urged her to leave immediately.

“They thought the fire was changing directions, and they didn’t know which direction it was going in,” Jane Baxter told BBC Radio. “So, it was literally ‘grab what you need and get out.’”

Simon Tuhill, chief fire officer of West Midlands Fire Service, said an investigation will be launched but the fire was believed to have started in the grassland before spreading to homes nearby.

Nineteen people and six firefighters were hospitalized for smoke inhalation and other injuries from multiple wildfires in the West Midlands region. In nearby Stoke-on-Trent, a 23-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman were arrested Friday on suspicion of arson over a large grass fire that spread quickly.

The Met Office, the official weather agency, said 38.1C (100.6 F) was recorded in west London on Thursday, marking the hottest day of the year. While temperatures cooled slightly on Friday, many parts of the country have seen little to no rain for weeks. This July has been the driest in England and Wales since records began in 1836.

Spain moves kings' remains to avoid fire

Spanish authorities on Thursday night transferred the remains of three 11th Century kings from a monastery in the northeastern Aragón region near an active wildfire.

The remains were taken to a museum about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of the 10th-century San Juan de la Peña monastery, which remained unharmed Friday, according to regional authorities.

Paintings, liturgical objects and the clothes of a notable 18th-century Spanish count were among the other items removed from the monastery.

The wildfire was not yet contained midday Friday with some 800 residents evacuated. Temperatures were expected to cool slightly Saturday.

A separate, much larger wildfire in southern Spain has burned more than 300 square kilometers (120 square miles) in the province of Huelva, also forcing evacuations.

Firefighters battle forest fire in Germany

All 1,800 residents of the village of Gey in western Germany were evacuated after a wildfire with shifting winds in the nearby Hürtgen forest threatened to reach their homes. Nearly 300 hectares (1.16 square miles) of forest were ablaze on Friday morning, local authorities said.

Unexploded ordnance from World War II in the forest hampered firefighting efforts, German news agency dpa reported.

The fire advanced to within 300 meters (1,000 feet) of Gey, which sits on the edge of the forest near the Belgian border. The cause of the blaze remains unknown.

Germany has set a new record for heat-related deaths so far this year, surpassing the 2018 level for the entire year, the Robert Koch Institute said Thursday. An estimated 12,500 people died from heat-related causes between Jan. 1 and Aug. 2.

Fire in Croatia leaves 1 dead, 14 hospitalized

In Croatia, one person was killed and 14 people were hospitalized, of whom seven remained in life-threatening condition early Friday, from a fire that raged overnight by the coastal town of Omis and forced more than 1,000 people to evacuate their homes. The person's body was found as police combed through the burned-out area.

The fire erupted late Thursday in an Omis suburb and quickly spread because of strong wind. The regional maritime authorities said 194 people, including children, were plucked from the sea and from various boats as they tried to flee the fire.

Firefighters put out the blaze by Friday morning as other crews in planes headed further south toward the Peljesac peninsula, where another wildfire broke out overnight.

Firefighters keep Albania's largest wildfire from spreading to homes

Albania has been battling dozens of wildfires in recent weeks, with 11 active fires reported across the country Friday.

The largest fire is in the Gure-Lure area, where the perimeter near residential homes has been brought under control.

Three people have been prosecuted over that fire, which engulfed Lura National Park. They are suspected of failing to take measures to protect the territory from fire, authorities said.

Meanwhile, in northern Greece, more than 300 vacationers and residents were evacuated by sea Thursday after a wildfire swept through a pine forest and threatened seaside homes, authorities said.

Belgium expected to set another heat record

Belgium was expecting to hit its highest temperature of the summer on Friday, climbing to 37 C (98.6 F) in the capital, Brussels.

The mercury was also set to hit 37 C (98.6 F) in the neighboring Netherlands. The country is suffering from severe drought, with water shortages in some areas, but Dutch authorities have held off declaring a water crisis as rain is expected in the coming days.

___

Hui reported from London. Stefanie Dazio in Berlin; Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw, Poland; Zana Cimili in Pristina, Kosovo; Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia; Lorne Cook in Brussels; and Suman Naishadham in Madrid contributed to this report.

The 7.4 magnitude earthquake affected a large swath of western Colombia, from urban centers like Cali and Pereira to remote and rugged areas in the department of Chocó. As of Friday morning, authorities had confirmed more than 280 dead, thousands injured and over 12,000 dwellings destroyed. Responders have managed to rescue about 350 people, but hundreds remain missing.

Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella has promised a robust governmental response. But with so much need spread across a large area, aid groups will also play important roles helping those needing shelter, supplies and economic assistance.

“Institutional capacity does not remove the humanitarian need,” said Catalina Vargas, Colombia country director for the humanitarian group CARE. “The most severely affected area, Chocó, is also one of the most isolated and underserved parts of the country, so access remains the binding constraint regardless of the strength of national institutions.”

For those who can help, giving cash is often ideal to give groups flexibility and agility, said Abe Diaz, head of disaster relief for Amazon, which is providing requested supplies to partners.

"Unrequested product donations overwhelm communities and force responders to divert resources from life-saving work just to sort and store unwanted supplies,” Diaz said.

Here are some organizations collecting donations for Colombia earthquake recovery, including U.S. groups responding on the ground and some local organizations accepting outside funds.

U.S.-based groups already on the ground

All Hands and Hearts has provided search and rescue tools like jackhammers and pickaxes to the Pereira fire department as well as blankets and rehydration supplies for those affected. Link to donate.

CARE has a longtime presence in Colombia. Its immediate support will focus on food assistance through cash and vouchers, emergency supply care packages, and protection and emotional support for affected families. Link to donate.

Direct Relief is funding medical responders on the ground and preparing to deliver requested medications and healthcare supplies. Link to donate.

GEM is joining with local partners to provide essential kits with food, water, and hygiene necessities. Link to donate.

Operation Blessing is focusing its initial response on providing food and water, as well as solar lanterns, to displaced people. Link to donate.

Save the Children has worked in Colombia for over 40 years and has begun psychosocial support activities and set up multiple child-friendly spaces in affected areas. Link to donate.

World Central Kitchen is providing food and water for displaced people, first responders and volunteers, including in more remote mountain communities. Link to donate.

Marc Anthony leads Sunday benefit concert for Colombia and Venezuela

Latin music stars Marc Anthony, Luis Fonsi, Chayanne, Feid, Jay Wheeler and many more will perform at an international benefit concert for Venezuela and Colombia on Aug. 16 at 6 p.m. EDT at Miami’s Kaseya Center. It will be carried live on Univision, ViX, WAPA and TelevisaUnivision radio stations, iHeartLatino and Venevision Play in Venezuela.

Viewers can donate by scanning onscreen QR codes, texting UNIDOS to 707070 or visiting univision.org during the broadcast. Proceeds will go to All Hands and Hearts, CARE, GEM, TECHO and World Central Kitchen.

Colombia-based groups accepting outside donations

Abaco Colombia, an association of 26 food banks across Colombia, is distributing food to affected families across the impacted regions. They accept online donations, though the payment processor requires a passport number.

Cruz Roja Colombiana teams are doing search and rescue, offering medical attention and psychosocial support, and filling other needs. They accept online donations, though the payment processor requires a passport number.

Fundación Solidaridad por Colombia supports youth initiatives, nutrition and health, and community building. It's helping deliver relief supplies and food to displaced people in Pereira and other locations. They accept PayPal.

Fundación Semillas de Oportunidades supports youth through art and sport from its base in Quibdó, Chocó. They are supporting families of young people across Chocó. They accept PayPal.

Manos Visibles, a network of organizations dedicated to racial and territorial equity, is collaborating with a local trade school with a goal to restore at least 100 homes in the city of Buenaventura. They accept online donations, though the payment processor requires a passport number.

Presentes Corporation, a 43-year-old organization in Colombia focused on community resilience, is partnering with the Miami-based nonprofit Give to Colombia to facilitate donations from the U.S. Their Colombia Se Levanta fund accepts online donations.

Refugio Huellas de Amor in Pereira is supporting rescue animals already in their care as well as other impacted animals. Huellitas Callejeras Barranquilla is sending vets and medical supplies to affected areas. Both accept PayPal.

_______

Associated Press staff writer Megan Janetsky contributed reporting from Mexico City.

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

The conservative voter from northeast Iowa said he didn't know Zach Lahn before the political newcomer “came out of nowhere" with a surprise GOP primary win over the candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump. So when Lahn came to his farm last week, Burrack questioned him on his approach to agriculture.

“I hit him pretty hard,” said Burrack, who was considering whether to vote for Lahn in November or not vote at all.

It wasn't the first skeptical audience for the self-described “change candidate” in the state led by Republicans.

Lahn won the June primary even though an “entire establishment was set up against me,” he said. He criticizes politicians in both parties, accusing them of being bought by corporate interests. His bid for governor will test how an anti-establishment conservative fares with a general electorate — and with traditional Republicans — a decade after Trump’s own brand of populism reshaped the GOP.

While Iowa Republicans have an electoral advantage, Lahn entered the general election with a lower public profile than his Democratic opponent, state Auditor Rob Sand. Democrats see an opportunity to win this cycle in once-competitive Iowa, where high costs, health clinic closures, manufacturing job losses and a struggling agricultural economy weigh on voters.

Lahn talks about bringing a “different message” to Iowans who aren't satisfied with the trajectory of Iowa's small towns, public education or cancer rates, even after years of Republican control of state government. But only three months before Election Day, Lahn acknowledged he needs to keep getting out in front of people to address their questions and concerns.

“I think, for the most part, a lot of people just have never heard my message,” Lahn said after the event at Burrack's farm in Arlington. “The more we’ve met with people, the more they understand where our priorities lie, the more they say, ‘We are with you.’”

In farm country, Lahn has to answer for his positions on ‘big ag’

Some of Lahn's ideas challenge the Republican Party's status quo. Among them is his approach to agriculture and embrace of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, which has prompted questions in the state that's among the nation's top producers of corn, soybeans, red meat and ethanol. Lahn promotes regenerative farming; emphasizes a link between high nitrate-loaded water and cancer; and questions the safety of agrochemicals.

Before Lahn took the stage in Arlington to talk agriculture, farmer Lance Lillibridge, a former president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association, told the couple hundred Iowans there that the goal was to “get the air clear."

In front of a huge American flag and sandwiched between two freshly washed John Deere tractors, Lahn said, “We farm a bit weird” on his own Iowa acres, growing oats, alfalfa and einkorn along with corn and beans.

But he told the crowd he wants to fund farmers’ efforts to diversify their operations, not force Iowans to farm like him. He said targeting “big ag” means filing antitrust lawsuits against corporate conglomerates that sell seed and fertilizer and taxing out-of-state investors consolidating Iowa acres, not stepping on family farms. He wants to see more incentives to improve water quality but wouldn’t try to outright ban agrochemicals.

Burrack, like Lahn, says that they won’t agree on everything. But after talking with Lahn, he called himself a supporter.

Lahn pushes back on claims that he's a ‘part-time Iowan’

At another stop, a few dozen faces crowded at the back of a coffee shop in Hampton, Iowa, just after the lunch rush. Many of them were familiar with each other but less so with the candidate they came to see. Among them were Jay and Sally Van Wert, retired farmer and teacher, who said Lahn seemed like a nice guy, but they didn't know much else.

Several Iowans attending some of Lahn's first publicly advertised events since the primary said they only knew what they’ve seen in advertisements from Sand's campaign. The ads call Lahn a “part-time Iowan" and reference dozens of occasions where Lahn piloted his private plane to and from Kansas since launching his campaign.

“Is he going all the time to Kansas?” asked Larry Streicher, 84, a Republican farmer in the front row in Arlington. “We don’t know anything about him.”

Lahn said he left Iowa for college like so many others but wanted to come home, amplifying a nostalgia for Iowa culture and heritage that resonated with voters, not unlike Trump's “Make America Great Again” message.

He left Iowa again to start a private school funded by the Koch family, which opened in Kansas in 2018. He co-founded the school with his now-wife, Annie, who had been married to Chase Koch, son of conservative billionaire Charles Koch.

Lahn told the crowds he and Annie moved into their Belle Plaine, Iowa, homestead in 2023 after finishing renovations. Lahn bought the farm that had been in his family for a century but sold it after his great-grandmother died.

Douglas Puffett, a farmer from Strawberry Point and member of his county’s GOP central committee, said Lahn's story is like so many other Iowans’ and his vision for Iowa is driven by what drew him back.

“That’s how you inspire the next generation,” said the 40-year-old, who appreciates that Lahn, also 40, is young and has young kids.

Lahn has explained that trips to Kansas are due to his blended family, which includes children from his and Annie’s previous marriages. He doesn't comment on whether he would travel or use taxpayer resources to do so if elected governor, saying it would not impact his ability to govern.

Puffett, who attended Lahn’s Arlington event, thinks 10 years of Republican trifecta have given Sand an opening to appeal to people who might be unhappy with the “Republican establishment,” he said, but Lahn “stacks up really nice” with his calls for reform.

“I think it’s time to kind of roll over the leadership of the Republican Party here in Iowa," he said.

A grassroots campaign receives ‘full embrace’ from the establishment

Gov. Kim Reynolds’ decision to not seek a third term gave Republicans their first wide-open primary since 2010, and five candidates were on the ballot. Lahn overtook U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra by less than a percentage point, or about 1,650 more votes.

Lahn told crowds that he only met Reynolds after the primary, a signal of his distance from Iowa politics. Speaking at the state party’s fundraiser in July, he joked about all the donors who “haven’t been returning my calls” all being in one room.

Since his primary win, Lahn has met with party leaders and Iowa's prominent industry groups. His campaign spent the summer ramping up fundraising, staff and organizing infrastructure.

State Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, who is the majority leader of House Republicans, said there may be some differences of opinion or “curiosities, not concerns" about Lahn's positions, but added that's always the case.

Kaufmann met Lahn earlier this year, voted for him in June and said there's been a “full embrace” of the nominee. He said Lahn is not a traditional candidate, but that's what makes his campaign energizing for Republicans who are “constantly craving new leadership."

“I think it began back in 2016 with President Trump,” Kaufmann said. “Republicans don’t rest on our laurels."

JSO says they were called out around 9:45 p.m. after reports of gunfire. A short time later, a man with multiple gunshot wounds showed up at a hospital.

Police said the victim is in his early 20s and was shot several times in his lower and upper body. His injuries are considered life-threatening, and he was last listed in critical condition.

According to JSO, witnesses heard at least 5-6 gunshots in a parking lot on Kernan Boulevard.

They also told investigators they saw a woman holding a gun with another man walking behind her. JSO said the pair got into a dark-colored sedan and drove off.

JSO said the victim is currently intubated and has not been able to speak with detectives. Investigators said the shooting appears to be an isolated incident and they do not believe there is an ongoing threat to the public.

Investigators are asking anyone with information to contact JSO.

If you have information, you can call JSO’s non-emergency number at 904-630-0500 or contact Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-866-845-TIPS.

It is just one way officials across the country are trying to tackle the growing issue, while families navigate a patchwork of local laws and guidance on what kind of souped-up cycles and scooters are safe or even legal for their kids to ride.

New York City’s mayor recently sent cease-and-desist notices to dozens of online retailers for selling products marketed as “e-bikes” that aren’t street legal after a 17-year-old died in a crash on an illicit vehicle. In neighboring New Jersey, new regulations require e-bike riders to be at least 15 and obtain a license and vehicle registration.

But do the measures hit the mark? Cycling advocates worry regulations might be too broad — demonizing low-powered e-bikes instead of speedier motos — while some parents question whether localized, piecemeal strategies are enough.

Monica Stafford, a San Francisco-area mother whose teen daughter fractured her skull falling off an e-bike, said officials are “missing the mark” if they’re seeking to lay the blame solely on parents. The San Rafael resident said a unified, national set of rules is needed.

“We’re in a total Wild West of laws,” Stafford said. “Being for common sense laws doesn’t mean that you’re against e-bikes, just like you can be for cars but not think that it’s safe to put keys in the hands of a 10-year-old.”

E-bike injuries disproportionately impact children, experts say

The two-wheeled machines have become nearly ubiquitous in recent years, from packs of teens zipping around California beach towns to the army of delivery drivers dodging traffic on the congested streets of Manhattan.

Hospital visits for injuries from e-bike, e-scooter and other motorized rides have, as expected, soared as they have grown in popularity, study after study has shown. But researchers stress that the more concerning trends are the severity of the injuries and the fact that they’re especially pronounced among children.

“The big takeaway is that people are generally more severely injured than they would be if they were on a traditional, pedal bicycle,” said Dr. John Austin, a doctor at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine who led a recently published statewide study. “Overall, these patients tend to be younger, they tend to be unhelmeted and, in turn, be more severely injured.”

Recent youth deaths prompt officials to take action

Most e-bikes are classified as nonmotorized vehicles akin to traditional bicycles under federal law, meaning riders don’t need a license, insurance or to even wear a helmet. Most states, though, have enacted additional requirements for higher powered machines, including minimum age and helmet requirements.

In New York City, the death of the 17-year-old just steps from City Hall has spurred renewed debate about the bikes. Gabriel Nacato had been riding a vehicle advertised as an “e-bike” but wasn't legal on city streets.

Earlier this month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani warned more than 40 online retailers, including Amazon, Walmart and Target, that they could face fines of up to $2,000 for each sale of an e-bike that exceeds city regulations.

New York state requires riders of all forms of e-bikes to be at least 16, and New York City imposes additional restrictions, including a 15 mph (24 kph) speed limit. California, in contrast, has no statewide minimum age for lower-powered bikes, though riders must be at least 16 to use e-bikes that can go up to 28 mph (45 kph).

New Jersey and Illinois are among the states that have enacted statewide regulations recently, and Massachusetts is weighing measures. Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in June vetoed a 10 mph (16 kph) speed limit and other e-bike regulations, saying the measures would lead to “enhanced surveillance” of citizens.

Other jurisdictions seek to hold parents accountable

In Southern California, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer says his office has more than two dozen open investigations against parents after launching a new unit focused on e-bike and e-motorcycle cases involving children.

The office has already brought charges against four, including the mother of a 14-year-old boy accused of killing an elderly pedestrian while riding an e-motorcycle.

That mother’s attorney declined to comment, but Mitchell Krems, the lawyer for another parent, dismissed the charges against his client as “absurd,” suggesting his client was being made a “scapegoat.”

Richard Eyssallenne pleaded not guilty to child endangerment charges after prosecutors say he bought his 12-year-old son an e-motorcycle and helped him illegally modify it to make it go faster. The boy ran through a red light and was injured by a car.

Other jurisdictions have also taken steps to hold parents liable. In Ohio, a Columbus suburb recently issued new e-bike rules making it clear that parents who knowingly allow their children to break the rules are subject to the same penalties as the rider.

Cycling advocates blame electronic motorcycles

PeopleForBikes, a national bicycle advocacy group that tracks state e-bike regulations, stressed that many of the problematic vehicles are actually electronic motorcycles with heavy frames, sturdy tires and sizable motors that are falsely marketed as e-bikes.

Lower-powered and pedal-assisted e-bikes have been used safely for decades on U.S. streets and are key to reducing society's reliance on cars, advocates argue.

“Many of the dangerous behaviors people cite — running red lights, riding on sidewalks, not wearing helmets — are already illegal,” added Chloé Lauer, executive director of the San Diego County Bike Coalition. “We’d rather see those laws enforced than add new restrictions that limit mobility for kids who are riding responsibly.”

Anya Dalal, a San Francisco-area high school senior who has been advocating for better safety measures, believes the problem requires multiple solutions, including setting age limits.

“It should be a mix of parental accountability, accountability from the manufacturers and retailers and also education for kids to understand e-bike laws and road rules,” said the 17-year-old Hillsborough resident.

Sharon Franke, a San Diego-area mother, agreed, though she said the first step starts at home, with parents doing their research, accompanying their children on rides and reinforcing safety once they set off on their own.

“We want them to have fun, but we also want them to come back safe and we don’t want them to hurt anybody,” she said as her 15- and 12-year-old sons prepared to attend a safety training last weekend. “How do you balance all of it? It’s just overwhelming right now.”

___

Associated Press reporters Amy Taxin and Christopher Weber in California and Anthony Izaguirre in New York contributed to this story.

___

Follow Philip Marcelo at https://x.com/philmarcelo

It is just one way officials across the country are trying to tackle the growing issue, while families navigate a patchwork of local laws and guidance on what kind of souped-up cycles and scooters are safe or even legal for their kids to ride.

New York City’s mayor recently sent cease-and-desist notices to dozens of online retailers for selling products marketed as “e-bikes” that aren’t street legal after a 17-year-old died in a crash on an illicit vehicle. In neighboring New Jersey, new regulations require e-bike riders to be at least 15 and obtain a license and vehicle registration.

But do the measures hit the mark? Cycling advocates worry regulations might be too broad — demonizing low-powered e-bikes instead of speedier motos — while some parents question whether localized, piecemeal strategies are enough.

Monica Stafford, a San Francisco-area mother whose teen daughter fractured her skull falling off an e-bike, said officials are “missing the mark” if they’re seeking to lay the blame solely on parents. The San Rafael resident said a unified, national set of rules is needed.

“We’re in a total Wild West of laws,” Stafford said. “Being for common sense laws doesn’t mean that you’re against e-bikes, just like you can be for cars but not think that it’s safe to put keys in the hands of a 10-year-old.”

E-bike injuries disproportionately impact children, experts say

The two-wheeled machines have become nearly ubiquitous in recent years, from packs of teens zipping around California beach towns to the army of delivery drivers dodging traffic on the congested streets of Manhattan.

Hospital visits for injuries from e-bike, e-scooter and other motorized rides have, as expected, soared as they have grown in popularity, study after study has shown. But researchers stress that the more concerning trends are the severity of the injuries and the fact that they’re especially pronounced among children.

“The big takeaway is that people are generally more severely injured than they would be if they were on a traditional, pedal bicycle,” said Dr. John Austin, a doctor at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine who led a recently published statewide study. “Overall, these patients tend to be younger, they tend to be unhelmeted and, in turn, be more severely injured.”

Recent youth deaths prompt officials to take action

Most e-bikes are classified as nonmotorized vehicles akin to traditional bicycles under federal law, meaning riders don’t need a license, insurance or to even wear a helmet. Most states, though, have enacted additional requirements for higher powered machines, including minimum age and helmet requirements.

In New York City, the death of the 17-year-old just steps from City Hall has spurred renewed debate about the bikes. Gabriel Nacato had been riding a vehicle advertised as an “e-bike” but wasn't legal on city streets.

Earlier this month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani warned more than 40 online retailers, including Amazon, Walmart and Target, that they could face fines of up to $2,000 for each sale of an e-bike that exceeds city regulations.

New York state requires riders of all forms of e-bikes to be at least 16, and New York City imposes additional restrictions, including a 15 mph (24 kph) speed limit. California, in contrast, has no statewide minimum age for lower-powered bikes, though riders must be at least 16 to use e-bikes that can go up to 28 mph (45 kph).

New Jersey and Illinois are among the states that have enacted statewide regulations recently, and Massachusetts is weighing measures. Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in June vetoed a 10 mph (16 kph) speed limit and other e-bike regulations, saying the measures would lead to “enhanced surveillance” of citizens.

Other jurisdictions seek to hold parents accountable

In Southern California, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer says his office has more than two dozen open investigations against parents after launching a new unit focused on e-bike and e-motorcycle cases involving children.

The office has already brought charges against four, including the mother of a 14-year-old boy accused of killing an elderly pedestrian while riding an e-motorcycle.

That mother’s attorney declined to comment, but Mitchell Krems, the lawyer for another parent, dismissed the charges against his client as “absurd,” suggesting his client was being made a “scapegoat.”

Richard Eyssallenne pleaded not guilty to child endangerment charges after prosecutors say he bought his 12-year-old son an e-motorcycle and helped him illegally modify it to make it go faster. The boy ran through a red light and was injured by a car.

Other jurisdictions have also taken steps to hold parents liable. In Ohio, a Columbus suburb recently issued new e-bike rules making it clear that parents who knowingly allow their children to break the rules are subject to the same penalties as the rider.

Cycling advocates blame electronic motorcycles

PeopleForBikes, a national bicycle advocacy group that tracks state e-bike regulations, stressed that many of the problematic vehicles are actually electronic motorcycles with heavy frames, sturdy tires and sizable motors that are falsely marketed as e-bikes.

Lower-powered and pedal-assisted e-bikes have been used safely for decades on U.S. streets and are key to reducing society's reliance on cars, advocates argue.

“Many of the dangerous behaviors people cite — running red lights, riding on sidewalks, not wearing helmets — are already illegal,” added Chloé Lauer, executive director of the San Diego County Bike Coalition. “We’d rather see those laws enforced than add new restrictions that limit mobility for kids who are riding responsibly.”

Anya Dalal, a San Francisco-area high school senior who has been advocating for better safety measures, believes the problem requires multiple solutions, including setting age limits.

“It should be a mix of parental accountability, accountability from the manufacturers and retailers and also education for kids to understand e-bike laws and road rules,” said the 17-year-old Hillsborough resident.

Sharon Franke, a San Diego-area mother, agreed, though she said the first step starts at home, with parents doing their research, accompanying their children on rides and reinforcing safety once they set off on their own.

“We want them to have fun, but we also want them to come back safe and we don’t want them to hurt anybody,” she said as her 15- and 12-year-old sons prepared to attend a safety training last weekend. “How do you balance all of it? It’s just overwhelming right now.”

___

Associated Press reporters Amy Taxin and Christopher Weber in California and Anthony Izaguirre in New York contributed to this story.

___

Follow Philip Marcelo at https://x.com/philmarcelo

On Saturday, August 15, 2026, the community is invited to join The Root Walk at Riversedge Park (1915 Riversedge Blvd., 32207) beginning at 8:00 AM — a completely free event open to all, featuring vendors on site and a walk in solidarity with those who have experienced hair loss or love someone who has.

Registration starts at 7:30AM for the Root Walk. Stretching starts at 7:30AM. The weekend continues Sunday, August 16, 2026 with the Discover the Root™ Awareness Brunch at Hotel Indigo Jacksonville-Deerwood Park from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM, featuring an expert panel of a Medical Doctor, Nutritionist, Mental Health Therapist, and Inspirational Speaker.

Advanced Hair Care & Wellness Spa serves the Jacksonville community through two locations in San Marco and Jacksonville Beach, offering corrective scalp wellness, trichology services, and clinical headspa treatments — because we don’t cover up the problem, we discover the root.

To register for the event, learn more, or book a scalp consultation, visit events.ahcwspa.com, follow @ahcwspa on social media, or call your nearest location today.

The 24-year-old Kolbe, who is white, spoke out Thursday after her semifinal heat in the 800 meters at Alexander Stadium.

“Let me say one thing. I read so many comments and I’m really happy about all the support we’re getting,” Kolbe began, speaking to German broadcaster ZDF.

“But I see some really unbelievable comments under some athletes, and I wish — we’re representing Germany here and getting support from everyone watching — but I expect a little more respect, and I’m delighted that so many people support me, but I don’t want to imagine what it would be like if I wasn’t as white as I am.”

Kolbe, who competed at the University of North Florida, finished sixth in her heat and didn't qualify for Thursday night's final.

“It’s important for me to say this,” Kolbe added, “and I expect everyone watching to give the respect due to celebrate the amazing achievements of our athletes.”

___

See full AP coverage of European sports here

Roughly 97 million people from the central Plains to the Southeast face heat advisories. Dangerous temperatures are expected in more than a dozen states in the Southern Plains and lower Mississippi Valley through Wednesday, the National Weather Service said.

Some places could hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius), forecasters said. But the combination of soaring temperatures and high humidity could make it feel as hot as 115 F (46 C) in portions of the Southeast.

That heat dome effect is created by high-pressure systems sitting above a region, trapping heat and humidity closer to the ground.

And there will be little nighttime relief, with overnight lows predicted to remain in the 70s in many places, forecasters said.

“The nighttime lows are not going to get below about 80 Fahrenheit for a lot of urban areas,” said meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections. “So that's really going to bump up the mortality from this heat wave. It's going to be deadly because of all these factors: Long lasting, intense, and high humidity.”

People were urged to stay indoors when possible and keep hydrated.

Early days of the heat wave force workers to cope with risks

In Little Rock, Madi Ramos wore a large straw hat as she shoveled an irrigation ditch outside the state Capitol building on Thursday morning when temperatures had already reached 90 F (32 C).

“This heat is stronger than last year’s,” said Ramos, 21, who works with her stepfather at a landscaping company.

The forecast comes after July became the hottest month on record in the contiguous United States. Extreme heat events are increased and exacerbated by climate change, which comes from the burning of fuels like gasoline, oil and coal.

During a July heat wave, Ramos said she felt nauseous and had to pause for a break. One of her colleagues took three days off after falling ill from heat.

Ramos said she usually drinks seven to eight bottles of water that she sometimes mixes with electrolyte packets during her 12-hour outdoor shifts. She’s preparing for this week’s heat wave by wearing breathable clothing.

But sometimes the heat can be too much and, Ramos said, the company encourages her to take breaks.

“When I feel I can’t take it anymore, I take a break and then I come back,” Ramos said in Spanish.

Communities offer residents places to cool off or stay hydrated

When the heat gets oppressive, communities across the country typically offer public libraries, community centers and senior centers as air-conditioned places to cool down. Other places try to make sure residents are hydrated.

Donna Schillinger expected dozens of visitors to WayStation, a resource center in Rogers, Arkansas, as the heat wave lingers. The center had already provided bags filled with food and bottled water to nearly two dozen people by Thursday afternoon. Schillinger, the executive director of nonprofit Micah 6:8, said the center typically sees six people per day for to-go bags.

“Everybody is commenting about how hot it is outside,” Schillinger said. “I mean it’s just crazy hot.”

Heat arrives with a new school year and sports activities in full swing

The heat wave is coinciding with the start of the new school year in much of the country, forcing discussions about how to keep students comfortable on buses, in classrooms and even on school playground equipment.

In some school districts, parents are urged to send bottled water to school with their students. One Central Arkansas district implemented a policy this year mandating that students remain indoors, including during recess, when the heat index reaches 95 F (35 C).

Young athletes and professionals preparing for a new football season also are having to take precautions against overheating.

In South Carolina, where an extreme heat warning was in place, two school districts canceled a series of football scrimmages involving more than a dozen high schools Friday evening due to the forecast.

Nationwide, at least 58 players died from exertional heat stroke between 1992 and 2024, the latest year available, and thousands more are sickened each year, according to the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut. Most of the deaths involved younger athletes.

The institute is named after the Minnesota Vikings player who died of heat stroke in 2001, prompting changes in safety protocols.

Sweltering heat is ongoing in Europe

Hot weather is taking its toll abroad as well.

The United Kingdom recorded its hottest day of the year Thursday, coming during an excessively dry stretch that saw multiple fires break out as an intense stretch of sizzling weather continued to grip Europe.

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Raby reported from Charleston, West Virginia.

A rescue operation was launched after a sudden rush of water and debris entered the tunnel at the Vishnugad-Pipalkoti hydroelectric project in Chamoli district later Thursday night, said top district official Gaurav Kumar.

Of 22 people who were working in the tunnel, 12 have been rescued alive and another three are still missing, the chief minister of Uttarakhand state Pushkar Singh Dhami told reporters.

Rescue teams from the national and state Disaster Response Force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police and fire services are fighting rising water and debris with as they search for the remaining workers, officials said.

“When our team reached the site and started the operation, there was a lot of water inside the tunnel and water was also seeping from the sides. Since then, the water level has increased considerably,” said the commander of the National Disaster Response Force team, Amrit Lal Meena.

Construction accidents are common in India, where rapid infrastructure growth often collides with fragile geology, construction lapses, extreme weather and safety standards.

In the Himalayan region, fragile mountains, seismic activity and unpredictable underground conditions make tunnel projects especially risky. An explosion inside a coal mine in neighboring Meghalaya state in February killed at least 18 workers. In 2023, a tunnel section in northern Uttarakhand state collapsed, trapping 41 workers for 17 days before they were rescued.

The line will weaken as it moves south, over Clay and central St. Johns counties through 10 p.m.

Locally heavy rainfall, damaging wind gusts and lightning will be the main hazards.

A Heat Advisory will be in effect from 11 a.m. - 8 p.m. Friday with Advisories and Warnings possible this weekend.

The oppressive heat and humidity along with scattered showers and thunderstorms are expected Friday and Saturday with less storm coverage, but still piping hot on Sunday.

In the tropics: Tropical Storm Cristobal is a remnant storm. One of the two areas we are watching is weakening while the other system could become a short-lived storm.

Tonight: Heat Advisory, showers and thunderstorms through early evening.

Friday: Hot and humid. Heat Advisory, Heat Warning 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. Heat indices up to 110 degrees. Isolated showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 2 p.m., 30-40 percent. Morning lows in the 70s to low 80s. Afternoon highs in the 90s inland, upper 80s to low 90s along the beaches. Wind: W/SW 5-10 mph.

Weekend: The heat continues with possible heat advisories. Lows in the 70s, highs in the mid to upper 90s inland, upper 80s to 90s along the beaches. Feels Like temperatures 105-110 degrees. Wind: WSW 5 -10 mph.

Looking ahead: The heat and humidity linger with temperatures hovering near advisory levels next week.

Sunrise: 6:53 p.m.

Sunset: 8:09 p.m.

The storm is forecast to bring rain to the Hawaiian Islands starting late Friday as well as high winds and dangerous surf, the National Hurricane Center said.

A hurricane warning is in effect for Hawaii County and a tropical storm watch is in place for Maui County including the islands of Maui, Lanai, Molokai and Kahoolawe, forecasters said.

Lala was about 455 miles (735 kilometers) east-southeast of Hilo, Hawaii, and about 670 miles (1,075 kilometers) east-southeast of Honolulu with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (95 kph) while moving west-northwest, the Miami-based center said.

Lala is forecast to strengthen into a hurricane as it approaches the Big Island. It's expected to be near the island Saturday. A hurricane warning means hurricane conditions are expected, and it is typically issued 36 hours before potential tropical-storm-force winds.

The system could bring rainfall totals of 8 inches to a foot (up to about 30 centimeters) across Maui and the Big Island, with as much as 25 inches (nearly 64 centimeters) possible across the Big Island, forecasters said. That could produce life-threatening flooding and mudslides, the center said.

Also in the Pacific, Tropical Storm Hernan formed Thursday but wasn't threatening land and was weakening while moving south.

Hernan was about 1,505 miles (2,420 kilometers) west-southwest of the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula of Mexico with maximum sustained winds around 40 mph (65 kph), the center said.

In the Atlantic Ocean, former Tropical Storm Cristobal weakened and degenerated into a post-tropical remnant low on Thursday, the center said. It was about 500 miles (805 kilometers) west of the Azores and didn't threaten land.

The backing came from 2030 World Cup co-host Morocco, Qatar, Egypt, Mauritania, Lebanon and Sudan, with four of the signatories being FIFA council members.

“We, the undersigned leaders of our respective football associations, express our full support for Mr. Gianni Infantino, President of FIFA, and reaffirm our confidence in his leadership and continued commitment to the development of football worldwide,” the statement read.

“We deeply appreciate Mr. Infantino’s sustained efforts to advance football globally, expand opportunities across all regions and strengthen the game’s role in bringing people and communities together.”

The statement said the signatories “look forward to continuing our close cooperation with him towards a stronger and more prosperous future for world football, expanding opportunities and further enhancing Arab football’s contribution to the global game.”

Infantino is facing a revolt after his plan to sell stakes in the World Cup to private equity investors. He withdrew the $20 billion proposal after a furious backlash by global soccer officials, including European body UEFA, which has warned of a boycott of all FIFA games and events.

UEFA teamed up with CONCACAF — the confederation for North, Central America and the Caribbean — and the Asian Football Confederation — and issued an open letter Monday saying Infantino’s plan was a “fundamental breach of trust” and described it as “deception.”

And on Thursday, the Football Association of Ireland said in a statement it has withdrawn its support for Infantino to be re-elected as FIFA president in March, saying “recent events have raised significant concerns regarding governance, transparency and the lack of meaningful consultation.”

The soccer federations in England and Wales did the same last week, while Northern Ireland said it was backing UEFA's stance.

New Zealand Football issued a statement Friday local time saying it had withdrawn its support for the candidature of Infantino and was seeking an independent review of steps taken to develop the FIFA Forward Enterprise scheme.

New Zealand Football broke ranks with its Oceania confederation, saying it “formed the view that decisions and actions within FIFA have contributed to a breakdown in trust and increased division within international football, and that an independent review is required to restore confidence and trust.”

Without commenting on Infantino's position, the OFC said it welcomed FIFA’s decision to withdraw the FFE proposal and its commitment to review the issues surrounding the project.

“OFC recognizes the progress achieved over the last decade in advancing football development in Oceania under FIFA’s leadership and encourages FIFA to use the review as an opportunity to identify and implement any changes that may be necessary," the statement said.

Schism in Asian bloc over Infantino support

By expressing support for Infantino, Qatar and Lebanon aligned against the Asian Football Confederation. Infantino’s official Instagram account previously has posted letters of support from several member federations, including Morocco, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The four FIFA council members among the signatories were Qatar Football Association president Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Egyptian Football Association president Hany Abo Rida, Moroccan Football Federation president Fouzi Lekjaa and Mauritanian Football Federation president Ahmed Yahya.

The other two were Lebanese Football Association president Hashem Haidar and Moatasem Gafar, president of the Sudan Football Association.

Infantino has been FIFA president since 2016 and seemed sure to be re-elected unopposed next year in Morocco.

FIFA has set a Nov. 18 deadline for challengers to come forward.

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See AP’s full soccer coverage here

Many Christians in Israel, who make up less than 2% of the country’s population, are worried visible signs of their faith will draw harassment, which has increased as multiple conflicts grip the region.

“I’m scared after the sister was beat up,” said Sister Mayela, a Mexican nun who’s lived in Jerusalem on and off for more than two decades. “Before, one could live with more confidence. Some people spat, some said hi. Now we have to live trusting in God.”

She finds resilience in her faith — and in support from Israelis like the volunteers. Even that, though, didn’t prevent a teen from spitting right behind her as they passed a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews recently. The teen said she was only clearing her throat, but the volunteer reported it to police.

Incidents like that are among the challenges for Christians in Israel, particularly since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, plunged the country back into war and polarization. But interfaith leaders and researchers are encouraged by better policing and prosecution as well as the recent appointment of a government envoy to the Christian world, who is Greek Orthodox.

In northern Israel, many Christians say they feel the state isn’t doing enough to protect them from crime because they’re not Jewish. But those concerns didn’t stop groups of Catholics from joining a recent joyous pilgrimage on Mount Tabor, where the Gospels say Jesus appeared transfigured alongside the Jewish prophets Moses and Elijah.

“In a world where darkness is filling the hearts of people, we need to diffuse God’s light to other people,” said Sister Muna, the nun who led one youth group.

For many Christians and Jews, protecting coexistence in the Holy Land is a moral imperative after their own long histories of religious persecution.

“I don’t want Christians to go out of their house in Jerusalem … and have fear,” said Yisca Harani, the Jewish Israeli educator and activist who escorted Sister Mayela. “I’ve gone through this 2,000 years in my Jewish history. I’m not going to let that happen.”

Occasional flare-ups occur in multifaith Old City

In the Old City, Jewish men in black hats and tzitzit tassels, Muslim women in hijabs and Christian priests in flowing robes walk past each other daily in the maze of stone alleyways. Many are headed to pray at the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. These are some of the most sacred sites respectively for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and they are close to each other.

“If you stroll around in your habit, sooner or later you’ll get some spitting next to you,” said the Rev. Alberto Pari, who leads interfaith dialogue and Christian-Jewish relations as secretary to the Custody of the Holy Land, the Catholic order ministering to holy sites across the region. “But it’s important not to generalize, because that unleashes antisemitism.”

Religious Freedom Data Center, the organization that Harani founded to track harassment of Christians, has recorded a near-tripling of incidents in Jerusalem from four years ago to the last three months recorded — about one a day now — virtually all by Jewish religious nationalists.

A Jewish man from a settlement in the occupied West Bank was indicted in the violent attack on the nun in April. The French Biblical and Archeological School of Jerusalem where the nun is a researcher expects “effective prosecution at the criminal and civil levels,” said the school’s director, Friar Olivier Poquillon.

Israel's government tackles anti-Christian incidents

Among those reaching out to Catholic leaders to denounce the attack and offer support was Ambassador George Deek, Israel's new envoy tasked with building what he calls the “special relationship” between Christians and the country, to both keep Christians safe and partner on issues like fighting antisemitism.

“We believe that every incident against Christians is immoral, illegal and should be prosecuted. That’s exactly what we are going to do,” Deek told The Associated Press. “We want to make sure that Israel continues to prosper and grow as a place where Christians can not only survive, but they can thrive.”

Around the time that the nun was attacked, two other incidents drew global condemnation. An Israeli soldier smashed a crucifix in a family garden and another stuck a cigarette in the mouth of a statue of the Virgin Mary in southern Lebanon, where the military is fighting Hezbollah militants. The soldiers involved received military prison sentences.

Most Israelis find harassment unacceptable. But Jewish religious nationalists, particularly uneducated young men, remain a threat, said John Munayer of the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, an interreligious organization in Jerusalem.

Their hostility to Christians is grounded in the history of persecution of Jews in Christian-majority European countries, in faith practices they see as idol-worshipping, and in a “general intolerance” for anyone who’s not Jewish near sacred areas like the Western Wall, Munayer said.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict spills over in Christian-Jewish tensions

Then there’s the overhanging trauma of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since most local Christians in Israel and the occupied West Bank are Palestinian.

In Taybeh, the last entirely Christian village in the West Bank, Jewish settlers recently cut through house fences and destroyed fruit and vegetable gardens, said the Rev. Bashar Fawadleh, parish priest of Christ the Redeemer Catholic Church.

“All the people here are afraid,” he said. “Settlers come and go every day.”

Israel’s army declared the village a closed military zone earlier this week to curb the attacks. But concerns about Israel’s ability and willingness to rein in the settlers remain even among evangelicals, who are among the staunchest Christian supporters of Israel.

“What happens in Taybeh is really troubling,” said David Parsons, spokesperson for International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. “Israeli leaders have realized for some time that Christian support for their nation is not only vital, it’s a strategic interest.”

And yet since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, “generalized fear and skepticism” pervaded all interreligious work, Pari said. The interfaith music institute he directs, Magnificat, was invited to play at a peace march in Jerusalem. But when the Palestinian members saw that the stage had been set up by an Old City gate flanked by Israeli flags, they refused to play.

“I felt a real failure,” Pari said. “We think that as Christians, we have a very important role to patch things back together. ... It will be difficult, but we can do it.”

Israeli Christians hold tight to faith and identity

That faith-grounded resilience prevailed among the Mount Tabor pilgrims, who gathered on the mountain to celebrate the feast of the Transfiguration last week. Rising interfaith tensions and crime have driven many of the area’s Christians to emigrate, several said.

“It’s very difficult that we keep our identity as Christians in the Middle East, but it’s the most important,” said John Akleh, 20, who came with Sister Muna’s group.

Ten pilgrims from nearby Nazareth — where Jesus grew up — started the climb at 4:15 a.m. led by the Rev. Fadi Shallufi in a yearly tradition they’ve maintained even in wartime.

“We will have a lot of sacrifice, but you will be sure in this land something will change,” Shallufi told them as he celebrated Mass in the mountaintop basilica.

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Associated Press journalists Ibrahim Hazboun and Moshe Edri contributed from Jerusalem.

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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 Dodgers took a two-run lead into the ninth inning Thursday night with Diaz, the highest-paid closer in baseball, on the mound. The defending champions left one inning later with a 5-4 loss to the NL-leading Milwaukee Brewers, who wreaked havoc on Los Angeles’ already beleaguered relief corps with a clutch three-run, five-hit rally.

Diaz (2-2) blew a save for the third time in his last four appearances for the Dodgers, giving up four consecutive one-out singles and three runs.

The normally imperturbable Roberts was clearly annoyed after this brutal loss in a game that would have pulled the Dodgers even with the Brewers atop the National League standings. Instead, Los Angeles has lost nine of 13.

When Roberts was asked whether Diaz would be allowed to continue to work through his struggles as the closer, Roberts snapped: “Give me another option.”

“I can’t just say, ‘Change (Diaz) to low leverage,'” Roberts added. “I have to have other options, and to be quite honest, none of those guys really have thrown the baseball great. That’s just kind of the way it is.”

That’s the dilemma facing Roberts, whose bullpen doesn’t currently contain a reliever he completely trusts. While the Dodgers’ overall bullpen statistics aren’t glaringly bad, Diaz’s struggles and a series of poor performances in recent high-leverage situations have clearly taxed Roberts’ problem-solving ability.

“You look back at the last week, and guys have struggled,” Roberts said. “I’m not going to sit here and play carousel and chase my tail ... when a guy is struggling, and then when he doesn’t pitch well, then it’s, ‘Why are you pitching him?’ I don’t do that. Everyone has got a role. They all have jobs to do, and they all have to do their job. That’s it.”

The trumpets that herald Diaz’s entrance into games have sounded more like a dirge lately while his ERA ballooned to 11.57. The three-time All-Star and longtime Mets closer has been frequently awful since returning late last month from a three-month absence for elbow surgery, giving up eight runs and 12 hits in only seven appearances.

“It’s frustrating, because I know my ability,” Diaz said. “I know what I can do on the mound. To not be able to do it (stinks). I've just got to come tomorrow and try to keep getting better.”

Diaz realizes he could be in danger of losing his job as the Dodgers' closer.

“I've just got to see what they want to do,” he said. “I want to do the best thing for the team. At the end of the day, if they give me the ball in the ninth, I will try to do my job. If they give me the ball in another inning, I will try to do my job. Got to get better, be consistent.”

Despite Roberts’ protestations, the clearest option to replace Diaz is left-hander Tanner Scott, who earned 16 saves this season before Diaz returned. But Scott’s miserable 2025 season is still top of many minds in Los Angeles, and his 2026 performance has mildly declined in recent weeks.

Roberts realizes he could consider a closer-by-committee plan, but that’s also difficult when any choice will be concerning.

“We’ve got to get other guys on track to even have that be even a valid conversation, to be honest with you,” Roberts said.

The bullpen’s struggles are magnified because the Dodgers’ talent-laden lineup hasn’t blown out anyone in weeks. Los Angeles has won just two games by more than two runs since July 19, repeatedly putting its relievers into perilous situations.

The Dodgers are trying to become the first NL team to win three straight World Series, and their fans still remember their team barely scraping through last season with a patchwork bullpen that finished 21st in the majors in ERA. In the postseason, LA improbably converted rookie starter Roki Sasaki into a closer.

Diaz was supposed to be the foundation of a return to a strong bullpen for the Dodgers, who hadn’t had a standout closer for years. Instead, he’s the central figure in another mess in mid-August.

Roberts is frustrated, but he’s also got perspective.

“I know people don’t want to hear it, but it’s baseball,” Roberts said. “Offenses go in lulls, and the bullpens go in lulls, and sometimes you get in a run where the starting pitching isn’t there. It is what happens, and it just doesn’t feel good. And it certainly is more highlighted when the ’pen doesn’t throw the baseball well, because it costs you games.”

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See AP’s full MLB coverage here