In a Facebook post, the restaurant expressed its gratitude for the staff members who worked at the location over the past seven years. It didn’t give a reason for the closure.

Tasty’s also thanked the community for its continued support over the years. The restaurant says it hopes its final week in business is filled with familiar faces, favorite meals and good memories.

Tasty’s has three other locations in Yulee, Fernandina Beach and Kingsland. Those will remain open.

The project through the national park in southern Texas has faced fierce bipartisan opposition by critics who say it is marring the area's pristine environment. They argue the region’s rugged and remote terrain already serves as a deterrent to migrants and smugglers. Border crossings in the area have historically been lower than other regions and have dropped even further over the past two years.

“CBP is pausing all construction activity in Big Bend National Park while I visit and conduct a personal, on-the-ground evaluation,” Rodney Scott, who heads Customs and Border Protection, said on X. Scott said over the next couple of days, he was going to “listen to local leadership, community members and stakeholders” to address what he said were “real” national security threats while protecting the park.

Customs and Border Protection did not respond to questions about how long the construction was paused or give any details on whom Scott would be meeting with in Texas.

A rare concession from Trump administration

While it isn’t clear whether the brief suspension portended a more permanent halt to the construction in the area, it reflected the intensity of the bipartisan opposition and was a rare concession from the administration on a signature promise of the president’s that it has raced to complete.

Congress gave the Trump administration $46 billion last summer to build a wall from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and the administration has been charging ahead and waiving numerous regulations in an effort to swiftly build the wall.

Scott has said he expects the first layer of the wall to be built by the end of next year.

But the administration has run into fierce opposition in Texas, especially when it comes to construction in and near Big Bend National Park and a state park to the west.

Customs and Border Protection earlier this year backed off plans to build a 30-foot-tall bollard wall through the parks but was still moving forward with other border protection measures such as a new road, lights, barriers designed to stop cars from crossing the border and technology such as buried fiber optic cables.

That has sparked opposition from Democratic and Republican sheriffs in the region, former national park officials, local residents who rely on the parks for their livelihood and some Texas elected officials. Critics have said it will scar the rugged landscape that attracts tourists who raft down the Rio Grande River and take advantage of some of the clearest night skies in the U.S. to gaze at stars.

The sheriff of Brewster County, which includes Big Bend National Park, said Monday that he'll be meeting with Scott during his trip and that he was glad the commissioner was going to have the opportunity to see the terrain with his own eyes and hear firsthand from people in the region.

Ronny Dodson is concerned about possible damage to archeological sites and Native American burial grounds caused by construction for the new road that's supposed to be built through the park. He hopes Scott will see how closely the new road mirrors an already existing road, and Dodson said he wants more information about the technology the agency plans to use to secure the border.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin over the weekend and suggested that the construction pause was a result of their talk. Abbott said the secretary committed to the governor that there would be no wall or barriers built in the park, but the governor made no mention of the road building that has concerned local residents.

Bulldozers seen recently in park clearing land

Last week, bulldozers were seen clearing land at the park, sparking even more concern and raising questions from one of the state's Republican senators.

At the time the bulldozers were seen, the Department of Homeland Security said on X that they were related to “survey and design work.”

Sen. John Cornyn, who lost the Republican primary to the state's attorney general, wrote to Mullin over construction concerns.

“My constituents believe that the 1,000-foot riverbank cliffs and remote Big Bend terrain offers its own source of deterrence for any illegal migrants crossing into the United States. The dangerous terrain includes steep mountains, deep canyons, and expansive deserts which they believe act a natural barrier that limits large-scale movements,” Cornyn wrote.

As the wall-building efforts have shifted into high gear this year along the roughly 2,000-mile border, opposition has spiked as well.

The administration has faced criticism from Native American groups saying wall contractors are desecrating religious sites, a small Texas town worried the wall will damage its levee system, and a Catholic archdiocese that says wall construction in the El Paso area mars an important religious site.

Activists praise the pause but say it's only a first step

Activists who have been rallying opposition to the administration's plans said they were encouraged by the pause but they would be watching closely to see if CBP makes any significant changes or simply goes back to its previous plans.

Bob Krumenaker was the superintendent of Big Bend National Park from 2018 to 2023 and now chairs the organization “Keep Big Bend Wild,” which aims to preserve the park's wild nature. He said he was “wary but optimistic” after news of the pause.

“They are paying attention to all of the objections that have been raised across the political spectrum,” he said.

But Krumenaker said it's unlikely that CBP is going to entirely abandon all its plans in the region. Krumenaker said he and others would be watching to see whether the equipment like the bulldozers is removed from the park, the agency outlines a clear plan going forward and it repairs any damage already done.

“Let’s hope they significantly modify their plans in response to what they hear, and make it transparent,” he said.

Another group, which sued Homeland Security over its decision to broadly waive regulations to speed up construction projects in the Big Bend region, called the announcement “welcome news” but warned that construction could resume “at any moment.”

“This temporary pause proves how much non-partisan public pressure is mounting in West Texas and across America to stop the irreversible destruction unfolding in this crown jewel national park,” said Laiken Jordahl with the Center for Biological Diversity.

“We’re not resting until these contracts are canceled, these workers are sent packing, the waivers are rescinded and every wall plan for the greater Big Bend region is scrapped for good.”

Boylan said the legislation was deferred in committees as possible amendments and a substitute are developed for consideration in the coming weeks. Any changes would still require committee votes and approval by the full City Council before they could take effect.

The proposal comes as Wolfson Children’s Hospital reports a sharp rise in serious injuries tied to e-bike and e-scooter crashes.

Wolfson Trauma Center patient totals (serious cases):

• 2022: 3 patients
• 2023: 23 patients
• 2024: 74 patients
• 2025: 115 patients
• 2026 (Jan. 1–July 30): 106 patients

Wolfson says these numbers reflect patients injured badly enough to be transferred to Wolfson for care and/or admitted to the hospital.

Public comment at City Council meetings has reflected competing concerns. Some residents have urged the city to pass the ordinance and strengthen rules around sidewalk riding and safety.

“E-bikes, scooters and even motorcycles … think the sidewalks are extra two way highways,” one speaker said during a recent meeting.

Others have warned that stricter rules could create unintended consequences, particularly for students who use e-bikes as transportation.

“This is a popular mode of transportation at this moment, so by adding restrictions you are limiting their access to get to and from school,” another speaker said.

Boylan said discussions helped shape the proposed changes. “It boiled down to essentially two issues — number one, they’re concerned about the age limit and then secondly with respect to the speed limit,” Boylan said.

Boylan said he intends to propose removing the ordinance’s age-limit language and to adjust the sidewalk speed limit to align with state law, which he said sets a 15 mph limit in sidewalk areas. He said the goal is to craft rules that are clear and workable, and he added that an education-focused approach is the goal that remains, including a possible safety video or class option for some first-time offenders.

Enforcement questions have also surfaced elsewhere in Florida. Our sister station in Orlando reported that in Deltona an ordinance banning minors under 18 from riding e-bikes and e-scooters was suspended days after Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood said his office would not enforce it and questioned whether the age restriction would hold up in court.

JSO has said it does not comment on proposed legislation, but provided News4JAX a statement that said in part:

“We are currently reviewing the bill to determine whether it provides any useful enforcement mechanisms. In the meantime, our agency will continue to actively enforce pre-existing laws and regulations governing the operation of e-bikes throughout Duval County.”

Boylan said proposed changes to Jacksonville’s ordinance are expected to be considered by council committees in the weeks ahead.

Trout’s months-long fight included surgery, blood transfusions and weeks in the hospital.

Now his owner hopes his story will help other pet owners spot the warning signs and act quickly.

When Shayna Rogers rescued Trout in December, she knew the Golden Retriever needed help.

She found him along the Trout River in Jacksonville’s Northside thin, malnourished and clearly unwell.

“He was probably 49 pounds when we got him in the same body. He’s now 95 pounds, so he was in not great condition, but I figured he was just sick. You know, worms. Something that was making him malnourished,” Rogers said.

After months of testing, Rogers finally got an answer, and it was one she never expected.

“The vet said his prognosis was limited, and that’s all I heard. I stopped hearing anything else. I just lost my mind for a second. And so we waited for biopsies to come back. And it was Pythiosis,” she said.

Pythiosis is a rare fungal disorder that thrives in warm, stagnant or slow-moving water, making places like ponds, swamps and wetlands prime areas for exposure.

Florida’s warm climate creates an environment where the organism can thrive. For dogs, drinking or even swimming in contaminated water can pose a serious threat.

In dogs, Pythiosis can attack the gastrointestinal tract or cause lesions on the skin and once it takes hold, it can be incredibly difficult to treat and, in some cases, fatal.

Rogers says pet owners should know what to look for.

“If your dog is vomiting, having diarrhea throughout the night, not eating well, won’t eat hard foods, definitely take them into the vet. You’d rather be safe than sorry,” she said.

For Trout, the diagnosis led to a long and painful road to recovery.

He underwent exploratory stomach surgery, received multiple medications and immunotherapy, then came more complications, adding weeks in the hospital.

Working with Dr. Walker, a specialist based in Nassau County, Trout was put on an aggressive treatment plan. The family finally received the news they had been waiting for.

“Now Trout was almost nothing. I mean, his Pythiosis numbers are lower than five, which is negative,” Rogers said.

For Rogers, the journey was as emotional as it was exhausting.

“When I was going through all this, all I could think was I was losing my best friend and I was losing the most important thing to me,” she said.

Veterinarians say there are steps pet owners can take to reduce the risk of Pythiosis:

• Avoid letting dogs swim in or drink from stagnant or questionable water
• Keep cuts and scrapes clean and protected
• After walking through wet or muddy areas, check your dog’s paws and skin for cuts, irritation or other injuries

One challenge Rogers didn’t anticipate finding blood for Trout’s transfusions. She says veterinary blood shortages are a real problem, and getting what Trout needed took significant effort.

Trout will continue to be closely monitored for the rest of his life, but for now, his family is celebrating a milestone they never thought they would see.

The Truth in Millage, or TRIM, notices were mailed Friday, Property Appraiser Joyce Morgan said. Some homeowners have already received them, while others should receive theirs by next week.

The notices can look like junk mail, but Morgan said homeowners should carefully review the information because errors could affect their property tax bills.

Duval County has more than 400,000 properties that are reviewed by the Property Appraiser’s Office each year, Morgan said.

Homeowners should check their name, ownership information, exemptions and taxable value. That includes making sure a homestead exemption is listed if the property is their primary residence.

The notice also includes the property’s current taxable value, its previous year’s taxable value and proposed millage rates, or tax rates.

Jacksonville City Council approved the city’s millage rate in July, and Morgan said it remains the same as last year. However, homeowners can still see higher property tax bills because of increases in property values.

The notice also includes information about appealing the proposed value or other information.

The deadline to contact the Property Appraiser’s Office is Sept. 8, Morgan said. Homeowners who disagree with something on their notice should first contact the office for an informal review.

If the issue is not resolved, homeowners can take their case to the Value Adjustment Board, where a magistrate reviews evidence from both the property owner and the Property Appraiser’s Office.

Morgan said homeowners should not wait until the deadline to begin the process.

What homeowners should know about homestead exemptions

Homeowners who recently purchased a primary residence also should make sure they have applied for a homestead exemption.

Morgan said homeowners can apply online through the Duval County Property Appraiser’s Office or in person.

Homeowners generally do not have to reapply every year as long as there has been no change in their circumstances. However, they must notify the Property Appraiser’s Office if the property is no longer their primary residence or if other circumstances affecting the exemption change.

The office also sends homeowners a separate notice each year asking them to report changes that could affect their homestead exemption.

Morgan said homeowners who miss the filing deadline may qualify as late filers in some circumstances.

For more information, homeowners can visit the Duval County Property Appraiser’s Office website.

Amendment 3 not on August primary ballot

Morgan also addressed confusion surrounding a proposed property tax amendment.

She said Amendment 3 will not appear on the August primary election ballot. The measure is scheduled to appear on the November general election ballot.

The Property Appraiser’s Office has posted frequently asked questions about the amendment for voters looking for information about the proposal.

News4JAX I-TEAM investigator John Asebes set out to find out.

Testing the detectors

News4JAX used ChatGPT to generate a photo of Asebes holding the Stanley Cup — then ran it through three AI detector sites to see if artificial intelligence could spot its own work.

“The face looks transplanted,” Asebes said.

The detectors, however, didn’t all agree on whether the image was real or fake. Two flagged it as likely AI-generated. One called it “uncertain.” That inconsistency became a pattern.

For transparency, each tool’s score was recorded and compared across platforms — and against real photos known to be genuine. A photo of Asebes with News4JAX reporter Andrea Snody, confirmed to be real, was also run through the same detectors. For the most part, the tools indicated the image appeared real — though none would give it a perfect score. ChatGPT also suggested it was more than likely real but stopped short of certainty.

The bottom line: detectors help, but they don’t always deliver a clean yes or no.

When uncertainty has real stakes

The stakes get higher when the subject isn’t a lighthearted Stanley Cup photo. Consider the conversation surrounding Sen. Mitch McConnell’s health. McConnell had not been publicly seen for some time. He was hospitalized in June after a fall. His office released a photo of McConnell at a rehabilitation center in early July, then another later that month. Those photos sparked debate over whether the images were real — or AI-generated as part of an effort to conceal his declining health.

News4JAX ran those same images through the same AI detectors — and got inconsistent results. One site said it wasn’t sure. Another said one of the photos was probably AI-generated. A third concluded both photos were most likely real.

“You’re trusting whoever is pushing out that image, even if it is associated with an official account,” one source said. “We already know, for instance, that politicians on their official accounts have put out AI-generated media, and sometimes they disclose that, other times they don’t.”

Expert weighs in

News4JAX spoke with AI expert Dr. Josh Gellers, Dean of Professional and Lifelong Learning at the University of North Florida, to talk about how society is grappling with the rapid expansion of generative AI.

“I feel like in this conversation, we’re just scratching the surface on AI, and then simultaneously, the world is just scratching the surface of how big AI is going to be,” Asebes said.

“We haven’t fully grappled with the magnitude of changes that this is going to cause society,” Gellers said.

Gellers said that reflection needs to happen at every level.

“Organizations, institutions, and individuals should really be thinking about as they contemplate how much we want AI to be infused in our everyday lives,” he said.

And the risk isn’t theoretical. Generative AI already landed one local business owner in hot water after an AI-generated photo of Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence resulted in a letter from the NFL.

“People have a right to retain their own image and likenesses under the law,” the source said. “And someone could potentially threaten their livelihood, their reputation, because they are putting something out there in the world that’s not real.”

Florida fights back with new laws

Florida has seen the consequences of AI misuse firsthand. Brooke Curry, daughter of former Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry, fought back after someone posted an AI-generated fake nude photo of her without her consent.

“You have to go through that to really understand the trauma it brings, and that was probably the hardest part — people not understanding behind closed doors how it affects you,” Brooke Curry said.

Brooke’s Law, passed in June 2025, requires online platforms to remove AI-generated sexually explicit images of a person without their consent after receiving a valid request from the victim.

Beyond Brooke’s Law, Florida has passed additional generative AI-related measures, including making AI-generated child sexual abuse material illegal and requiring disclaimers on certain AI-altered political ads.

Florida lawmakers also considered an Artificial Intelligence Bill of Rights. It passed the Senate but ultimately failed to advance in the House.

What you can do

Gellers said it’s important for individuals to stay engaged as AI continues to spread into nearly every corner of daily life.

“It’s being infused in so many different aspects of life — the public sector, the private sector, our personal lives, education, religion and so on — that it’s very difficult to envision it all going away instantly,” Gellers said. “And yet we still need to maintain our sense of personhood, humanity, and think about places where we absolutely do not want AI to be involved.”

If something online looks off, don’t rush to share it. When in doubt, think before you click.

St. Johns County Fire Rescue was called to The Blake at St. Johns at 2430 County Rd 210 at about 9 p.m., according to SJCFR Public Information Officer Chris Naff.

Naff said that when firefighters got to the scene, they saw flames pushing through the roof.

Based on early indications, Naff said the fire may have started after lightning struck a chimney.

Firefighters evacuated residents on the west side of the building, while residents on the east side were able to shelter in place, Naff said.

“When you have a fire alarm going off, and you see firemen coming in with hatchets, and you’re bedridden and can’t walk, it’s scary,” one resident told News4JAX. “They moved us down a hallway against the fire. I don’t think it took that long to get the fire out. They just kept us in the hallway for a while.”

The Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department also responded to assist St. Johns County crews.

Naff said the fire was brought under control later in the night.

The facility’s managment team shared the following statement with News4JAX:

“Out of an abundance of caution, some areas of the community are not yet cleared for re-entry while fire officials and qualified professionals assess conditions. We are communicating directly with residents’ families and will provide additional information as it is confirmed.”

News4JAX saw families scrambling to get their loved ones a place to stay on Monday morning, just hours after the fire.

One person was transported from the scene, but Naff said it was not related to the fire and that the patient was reported in stable condition.

Naff said buses were being used to relocate residents who did not have family nearby to other facilities. Naff said the Red Cross and Emergency Management have been dispatched to assist those who have been displaced.

As of 11:45 Sunday evening, emergency response crews were beginning to leave the facility as remaining fire rescue personnel kept an eye on any lingering hot spots.

Ryan Daniels, 30, was found stabbed and bleeding on the front porch of a home on Davis Road near Finley Road in the Oceanway area Saturday. Despite efforts to save his life, Daniels died at a local hospital, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. His brother, 38-year-old Eric Mincey, was arrested Sunday and charged with murder.

‘The best leader’

One of Daniel’s friends Sonnie Blanco described Daniels as someone who would give everything he had to the people he loved.

“He’s one of, you know, how to say somebody that gave you the last shirt off their back. He’s one. That’s that’s Ryan right. There was a great leader,” Blanco said.

That leadership extended beyond friendship — it showed up on the football field, too.

“Football was like his main sport. But yeah, just such a great leader,” Blanco said.

Blanco laughed recalling just how physical Daniels could be during backyard games growing up.

“I always laugh…when we were coming up where we would be playing football in the backyard, you know, like a backyard football. Ryan was always a quarterback because he hit hard,” he said.

A father, a friend, a brother

To Blanco, Daniels was family. But Daniels also had a family of his own — including a daughter he adored.

“He had a little girl. It’s actually really special. So her birthday is actually the day before mine. So we always thought I was so unique. Where her birthday is December 31st, in January 1st. And it was, like, two of your best people, you know? Yeah, but, yeah, you had a beautiful daughter that he loved,” Blanco said.

When asked how he hopes Daniels will be remembered, Blanco’s answer was simple.

“To be honest with you. I would say just the kindness,” he said.

Brother charged with murder

Daniels died Saturday night after first responders attempted to save his life.

Detectives identified Mincey as the attacker after reviewing evidence and speaking with witnesses, JSO said.

“Our hearts are with Daniels’ loved ones, and we will continue to seek justice for him,” JSO said in a statement.

Mincey is currently being held in Duval County Jail on a murder charge.

A GoFundMe has been set up to help Daniels’ family as they work to bring him back to his home state of New Jersey.

The Ravens announced Brigance's death on Monday.

“We are devastated by the awful news that we have lost O.J. Brigance,” Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti said in a statement. “O.J. was a beloved legend, mentor and man to everyone who was fortunate enough to know him. He was a vibrant person who became one of the first Ravens heroes with his passionate play, including the first tackle in the 2000 Super Bowl.”

Brigance was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, in 2007. Not long after that, he and his wife, Chanda, formed the Brigance Brigade Foundation, an organization whose mission is to “equip, encourage and empower” those afflicted with ALS.

Despite using a wheelchair and a communication device that translated his messages, Brigance served as senior adviser for player engagement with the Ravens, a job he started in 2004. In addition to assisting players in each phase of their career, Brigance proved a source of motivation within the organization.

“Every day I walk by, not just to tell him how much I love him, but to tell him that he is the one thing that lets me not complain about anything,” Ravens Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis said in 2012, his final pro season. “I played with that guy. His spirit is just awesome.”

Brigance is the only player to win a Canadian Football League title and a Super Bowl championship for a team in the same city, Baltimore.

“While winning CFL and NFL championships are great personal remembrances, I wouldn’t say any of these events define me,” he said. “Rather, they are part of an accumulation of life events which catapulted me to do what God wanted me to accomplish. If you were to remove any of those events, I wouldn’t be the same person or have the position of influence. With that being said, I consider the Brigance Brigade to be the most significant achievement of my life because of my ability to touch the lives of others.”

Brigance said his career as a professional football player — he played linebacker and on special teams — helped prepare him for the fight against ALS.

“Many people think football is all about strength and physical ability,” Brigance said in a 2012 interview with The Associated Press. “While these are integral parts of one’s success, the fortitude, discipline and the desire necessary to play the sport are characteristics that are readily transferrable to everyday life.”

Brigance didn’t set out to be an example of how to live under difficult circumstances, but he had no intention of letting ALS get him down. He and Chanda collaborated to help and encourage others with the disease.

“I have found that when adversity strikes, there is a decision to be made. We chose to respond and continue to live, and also help others living with ALS to respond also,” he said. “We have found that we have been a great encouragement not only to those within the ALS community, but to people in all walks of life.”

Orenthial James Brigance was born Sept. 29, 1969 and played in college at Rice in his hometown of Houston. He began his professional career in 1991 as a linebacker for the British Columbia Lions. He played three seasons with BC, making 20 sacks in 1993, before joining the Baltimore Stallions. In his second season in Baltimore, the team won the 1995 Grey Cup.

In 1996, Brigance was signed by the Miami Dolphins as a free agent. He was twice voted a team captain during his four seasons there and was the Ed Block Courage Award recipient in 1999. He was honored with the NFL Players Association's “Unsung Hero Award” that same season.

Brigance’s lone season with Baltimore was 2000. He had a team-high 10 tackles on special teams during Baltimore’s playoff run, which ended with a 34-7 win over the New York Giants in the Super Bowl.

Brigance played for the St. Louis Rams in 2001 and 2002, and his final game was with New England in 2002.

“I am devastated and at a loss for words. O.J. was one of the most genuine, sincere people I have ever known,” Ravens executive vice president Ozzie Newsome said. “From the moment he arrived in Baltimore, you could feel his energy. His amazing smile, welcoming nature and infectious personality made everyone around him feel like family.”

And his tenacity would serve him well long after his playing days ended.

___

See AP’s full NFL coverage here

The legislation requires 10% of new jobs created with the help of city incentives to go to veterans, National Guard members, reservists and active-duty military spouses.

“This is a workforce we always want to see grow,” City Council President Nick Howland said.

Howland, a Navy veteran, said veterans bring valuable skills to the workforce and contribute to the community.

“It’s important to note that veterans earn more than civilians, they give to charity more than civilians, they also vote more than civilians,” Howland said.

Council member Chris Miller said the ordinance sends a message to military families and companies considering Jacksonville.

“What it also does is send the message that we do value our veterans, our military, and any new company that comes here, they know what that mark on the wall is,” Miller said.

Employment experts say military families often face unique workforce challenges, including translating military experience into civilian job skills. Frequent relocations also can disrupt military spouses’ careers.

The ordinance includes a second economic development provision focused on Cecil Airport. It directs Jacksonville’s economic development office to give additional consideration to projects and incentives that benefit Cecil.

City officials say the goal is to expand Jacksonville’s aviation and aerospace industries.

“We’ve got a lot of industrial jobs,” said Harrison Conyers of the Jacksonville Department of Veterans Affairs. “There’s even jobs working with the federal government, like at NAS Jacksonville, going back and working on the engines and the aircraft that come in there.”

Conyers said veterans bring employers strong work habits and other valuable qualities.

“They bring a tremendous skill set of loyalty, of knowing how to get to work on time, of high character,” he said.

Companies looking to relocate or open near JaxPort also will receive additional consideration for economic development incentives under the legislation.

Investigators say that on Feb. 16, 2022, as Bridegan was headed home from dropping off his twin children at his ex-wife’s home, he was forced to stop because a tire was in the road. They say it was placed there deliberately in a plot to distract and kill Bridegan, 33, in Jacksonville Beach.

Prosecutors say it was part of a murder-for-hire scheme involving Bridegan’s ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, and her current husband, Mario Fernandez.

RELATED: He’s the first to face trial in Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire case. What do we know about Mario Fernandez?

Both are charged with first-degree murder in Bridegan’s death, along with the man investigators say pulled the trigger, Henry Tenon, who lived at a property owned by the couple on Potomac Avenue in Jacksonville.

Fernandez, 38, is the first of the three to face trial, which began Monday with opening statements from the prosecution and defense, followed by testimony from two witnesses and a Jacksonville Beach Police sergeant who were at the scene.

They described Bridegan being found face down in a pool of blood next to his SUV and his toddler, who was in the back seat, telling them she heard a boom and that her daddy was hurt.

Bridegan’s widow, Kirsten, was the fourth witness called by the state. She testified to the contentious ongoing custody battle that prosecutors say was at the heart of the murder scheme.

“There was absolutely no trust, so everything was in writing. Text, email, we did not speak in person, like at school events, didn’t do phone calls,” Kirsten said on the stand. “When it was something where all four of us were at, it was very tense. You could just feel the tension. Jared, he would kind of retreat into himself and be quiet and not want to make eye contact. So it was not a comfortable experience ever.”

When prosecutors went through the night of the murder with Kirsten, she choked up as she remembered the moment an officer -- and not Jared -- answered the phone she’d been calling repeatedly after Jared had not made it home.

She cried when the prosecutor showed her a photo of Jared and asked her to confirm it was her husband.

Prosecutors also showed Kirsten a video from surveillance cameras at the Jacksonville Beach Police Department headquarters.

A man is seen walking in front of the police station and then down the street. During opening statements, the defense indicated that man is believed to be Henry Tenon.

The prosecutor asked Kirsten if she recognized the man in the video, and she said no.

On that same video, just seconds after the man walks out of frame, Kirsten is seen arriving at the station in the family’s Suburban after speaking with the officer who answered Jared’s phone.

It was unclear if Kirsten had ever seen the video before or knew how close she’d come to the man police believe shot her husband that night.

Bridegan’s family was in court on Monday. His siblings, sitting in the second row behind State Attorney Melissa Nelson, were visibly emotional during testimony from those who described the scene on the night Bridegan was killed.

Fernandez’s family was also in court.

In her opening statement, Assistant State Attorney Christina Stifler laid out the state’s case against Fernandez in the killing of Bridegan, a Microsoft design manager.

She pointed to the tire in the road as proof of a planned attack.

“A targeted ambush, a planned tactical ambush with a tire in the road in a dark place where no one would see and no one would know and no one would trace it back to those responsible,” Stifler told the jury in her opening statement. “The architects of Jared Bridegan’s murder intended it to be the perfect crime, and it almost was.”

Stifler acknowledged there were no eyewitnesses to the crime but said surveillance video captured a man later identified as Tenon running from the scene -- and someone else driving away in Tenon’s truck.

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

Defense attorney James Hill told the jury in his opening that the state can’t prove who was driving the truck.

“They don’t know who’s driving the truck. They don’t know who actually solicited Henry Tenon. There’ll be no evidence to suggest they do,” Hill said.

Fernandez is accused of paying Tenon, now 65, at least $10,000 for fatally shooting Bridegan. Investigators say Tenon’s DNA was on the tire that was blocking Bridegan’s path.

When police obtained Tenon’s bank records, they found three checks totaling $10,000 written from First Choice Home Rentals LLC — all signed by Fernandez. They were for $2,000 and $3,000 dated March 28, 2022, and $5,000 dated April 4, 2022. The memo lines described work such as landscaping, roof upkeep and “Kickstarter Good Luck!!,” according to copies released by prosecutors.

“There are no eyewitnesses; there’s no video footage that captures the individuals or individual in the truck clearly enough to make them out. These things are all true,” Stifler said. ”But it cannot change the fact that there is no connection between the shooter and Bridegan other than this defendant (Fernandez). It cannot change that this defendant paid a man $10,000 for work that didn’t happen and a Kickstarter that doesn’t exist."

But Hill said there is video evidence that Tenon did do work at the property.

“Man, Henry Tenon, he’s a workhorse. That guy tilled up the front yard, chopped down trees. You’ll actually see video of him unloading tile from the back of his truck at Potomac, doing work,” Hill said. “Henry Tenon is a worker. Mario Fernandez has hired him to do work, not murder, tree work, roof work, landscaping, tile work.”

Tenon had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2023 and agreed to testify against Fernandez. But he withdrew the plea earlier this year and will get his own trial in March 2027.

Fernandez’s trial is scheduled to last through Aug. 28.

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

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

The first day of the trial ended with testimony from the medical examiner who confirmed what no one had disputed: That Jared Bridegan died from gunshot wounds and that his death was a homicide.

The case has garnered national attention, and Judge Kite has repeatedly explained to the 12 jurors and four alternates that they can not look up anything about the case or talk about it with anyone.

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 jury selection 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 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,” Assistant State Attorney Alan 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.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The league announced the approval Monday after a vote. Feliciano and Jones reached an agreement in May to buy the Padres from the family of late owner Peter Seidler at an MLB-record valuation of $3.9 billion. The deal is still contingent on the official closing of the transaction in the coming weeks.

“José and Kwanza understand the unique place the Padres hold in San Diego and the powerful bond between the club and its fans,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “We look forward to their leadership of the Padres and to working with them to build on the club’s strong foundation in a market that is so important to Major League Baseball.”

Seidler's family announced its intention to explore a sale of the Padres last November, two years after Peter Seidler's death. The 53-year-old Feliciano, a co-founder of Santa Monica-based private equity firm Clearlake Capital, emerged from the competition as the Seidler family's top choice.

Padres CEO Erik Greupner and general manager A.J. Preller will remain in charge of day-to-day operations, according to MLB's announcement.

“We are a family first, and becoming owners of the San Diego Padres means joining an even larger one,” Jones and Feliciano said in a statement. “We are grateful to the Seidler family, and especially to Peter, for raising the expectations of what this franchise can achieve. ... Our ambition is clear: to bring a World Series championship to San Diego and build an enduring organization capable of competing for championships year after year. We intend to be engaged owners, bringing our energy, experience and perspective while working alongside the talented team already in place and investing ambitiously and thoughtfully in the Padres’ future.

“We are all in and committed to winning.”

Peter Seidler assumed majority control of the Padres in 2020 after first joining their ownership group in 2012, but he became beloved in San Diego for his aggressive financial pursuit of winning and his eagerness to engage with the team's fan base. He died at 63 in November 2023.

The Padres dramatically increased their payroll under Seidler, allowing Preller to build the foundation for the current team, which has made four playoff appearances in the past six years and won at least 89 games in three of the last four seasons during the most successful stretch in franchise history. San Diego is currently in the playoff race again, winning 17 of its last 22 games entering Monday to surge into an NL wild-card position at 67-58.

“As far as the day-to-day operations, nothing changes for us," Padres manager Craig Stammen said in New York before San Diego's series opener against the Mets. "We’ve got to go out here and play the games, just like we have all season long. The ownership sale has kind of been something that’s been going on throughout the entire year. It doesn’t really affect the play on the field, but we’re excited to have José and Kwanza a part of the Padres and can’t wait to welcome them.”

The minority partners in the Padres' new ownership group include Joey and Jesse Buss, two sons of former Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss. Coincidentally, the six Buss siblings decided earlier Monday to sell their remaining minority ownership stake in the Lakers to incoming majority owners Josh Kushner and Bob Iger.

When Feliciano and Jones reached their agreement to purchase the Padres earlier this year, they praised the team as "a unifying force in San Diego, rooted in community, connection and belonging.” They've since been spotted at Padres games in San Diego and in Mexico City.

“It’s good to see people that care working with us, you know?” Padres outfielder Jackson Merrill said. "I mean, the Seidlers cared a lot. It’ll be fun to see how these people take it, mold it into their own, you know? Trust in them, as they trust in us on the field. So, full confidence in them. Excited to meet them.”

The Padres have never won a World Series, but they were a valuable commodity for potential owners as the only team in the four biggest North American sports leagues in a metropolitan area with roughly 3.3 million people. Downtown Petco Park has become one of the liveliest ballparks in the sport, and the Padres ranked second in the majors in attendance last season.

Feliciano, who was born in Puerto Rico, becomes the second Latino principal owner in baseball, along with the Los Angeles Angels' Arte Moreno. Latino and Hispanic players comprise roughly 30% of major league rosters.

Feliciano and Jones will hold an introductory news conference at Petco Park on Monday, Aug. 24.

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AP Baseball Writer Mike Fitzpatrick in New York contributed to this report.

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB

In central and east central Indiana, emergency operations were still ongoing after days of punishing storms, Gov. Mike Braun said at afternoon news conference, while other areas were shifting to recovery. He said the state had launched a disaster relief fund to provide $5,000 to individuals needing to buy basics such as clothing and food.

“We're tracking your needs, and we will get you resources,” he said. “We want displaced Hoosiers to have a hot meal, comfortable bed and get into air-conditioning.”

The National Weather Service said heavy rain would continue one more day before a cold front sweeps the weather pattern off the East Coast on Tuesday. Meanwhile, flash flood warnings were issued over parts of waterlogged West Virginia, where residents were cleaning up Monday after more than 4 inches (10 centimeters) of rain fell over the weekend, causing mudslides, tearing up roads and prompting water rescues.

Elsewhere, hot weather posed more of a problem, particularly across the South and Southwest. The weather service issued extreme heat warnings for portions of Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Arizona, Nevada and California.

Indiana is seeking recovery after days of deadly storms

In Indiana, where days of storms and flooding left at least seven people dead, floodwaters receded in Indianapolis’ White River and rains eased around the state Sunday. But a flood warning remained in effect Monday morning for part of Randolph County in east central Indiana, where thunderstorms had dropped between 1 and 2 inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) of rain by 8 a.m., and residents of half a dozen counties were urged to stay off the roads except for essential travel.

“While we have seen encouraging trends, the work is far from over,” said Jacob Spence, director of the Metropolitan Emergency Services Agency in Indianapolis, where city officials launched a website to support affected residents.

Oliver Riggle, 33, said he had just moved into a camping trailer in Indianapolis a few months ago after living in his car.

“Just having privacy again was a huge deal. I mean, I had a door that locked. I had a roof that was mine,” he said. “No one was gonna take it from me, except for apparently Mother Nature.”

A neighbor told Riggle the trailer nearly tipped over as it floated in the flood waters. It was still full of water Sunday, but by Monday, the water had receded and he was busy throwing away waterlogged belongings.

A handyman whose trailer flooded wants to help others salvage their homes

A handyman who works for a general contractor, Riggle said he hopes to help others salvage their own homes.

"I’ve got tools that I can use to help be a part of the community,” he said. “We’re just gonna have to have faith that we’re going to be able to pull through because it’s not like we’ve got a safety net.”

Michael Daily, 23, said he won’t be moving back into his rental home after it flooded and instead has moved in with his parents about half an hour away.

“It’s not helpful that you see everything you’ve worked for get destroyed. I’m definitely out a good chunk of change,” he said. “You can already see mold growing in spots in there, just like little white fluff balls everywhere. It’s pretty gross.”

South of Indianapolis, officials in Madison Township said firefighters and others rescued 10 people from their homes Sunday night. Others had to be rescued from cars after attempting to drive through flooded roadways.

A 4-year-old boy, three men and three women were among those who had died since the storms that began Aug. 11, said spokesperson Liz Woods with the state Department of Homeland Security.

A cyclist is found dead on a washed-out road after the flooding

Also among the seven victims was a 31-year-old cyclist found dead early Sunday in a hole that opened up on a washed-out road east of Indianapolis. Henry County Coroner Brian Clark said the man, James Briar, appears to have gone around a barricade and fallen into the collapsed road.

Heavy rains hammered Indiana over the past week, causing rivers to crest and setting records as roads and bridges were seriously damaged or washed out entirely.

More than 102,000 utility customers statewide remained without power as of Monday afternoon, down from a peak of around 300,000, according to utility tracker PowerOutage.us.

The drenching rains and destructive flooding were among the impacts of severe storms that have wreaked havoc across the Midwest and beyond in recent days. Tornadoes, heavy rains and flash flooding brought serious damage to communities from Illinois to western Pennsylvania.

The National Weather Service forecasts heavy rain and thunderstorms across the upper Ohio Valley to the central Appalachians, with the possibility of severe storms late Monday across eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.

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Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire.

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Unlike in early voting, when you could vote at any early voting location in your county, on Election Day, you must vote at your assigned precinct.

Early voting ended this weekend after more than a week of in-person advance voting opportunities. According to data from the Florida Division of Elections, statewide turnout currently sits just below 15 percent. Nearly 16 percent of the state’s Republicans have cast a ballot so far, and more than 20 percent of the state’s registered Democrats have already voted.

Florida is a closed primary state, meaning that in most cases, you must already be registered with a specific party to vote in one of that party’s primary contests.

However, the primary also includes numerous races that will be open to all voters, regardless of party affiliation. That includes school board and judicial contests, as well as races for certain local offices.

In addition, in races where all of the candidates are of one party, with no unaffiliated or write-in candidates, the party primary will be open to all voters, since the primary will decide the office-holder.

To find your sample ballot so you can see what races you’re eligible to vote in, go to your county’s supervisor of elections page (linked below). You can also read about the candidates on the ballot in the News4JAX Voter’s Guide, which includes responses from the candidates in their own words.

In order to vote, you must bring one or two forms of valid and current identification that include your signature and photo.

Acceptable forms of ID include:

• Florida Driver License
• Florida ID Card (issued by DHSMV)
• U.S. Passport
• Debit or Credit Card
• Military ID
• Student ID
• Retirement Center ID
• Neighborhood Association ID
• Public Assistance ID
• Veteran Health ID (issued by the US Department of Veterans Affairs)
• Concealed Weapon License (issued pursuant to F.S. 790.06)
• Employee ID card issued by any branch, department, agency, or entity of the Federal Government, the state, a county, or a municipality.

If you show up without an ID, you can cast a “provisional” ballot, which is then evaluated by a canvassing board that decides if the ballot is eligible.

Vote-by-mail ballots must be received by your county’s supervisor of elections by 7 p.m. on Tuesday in order to be counted.

Find your polling precinct:

• Alachua County
• Baker County
• Bradford County
• Clay County
• Columbia County
• Duval County
• Flagler County
• Nassau County
• Putnam County
• St. Johns County
• Union County

Once polls close at 7 p.m., we will have results here on News4JAX.com as they come in. We will also have special coverage on Channel 4 and streaming on News4JAX.com and News4JAX+ starting at 8 p.m.

Varsity 4 News4JAX coaches Super 10 rankings, Week 1

Rank, school, record last year, classification, points, (first-place votes)

1. Raines (14-0, Class 3A), 116 (10)

This week: at Oakleaf.

2. Bolles, (13-2, Class 2A), 92 (2)

This week: vs. (9) Columbia.

3. St. Augustine (11-2, Class 4A), 86

This week: at Palatka.

4. Mandarin (11-2, Class 5A), 75

This week: at McArthur (Broward County Showcase).

5. White (9-3, Class 4A), 58

This week: vs. (7) Trinity Christian.

6. Nease (9-3, Class 5A), 57

This week: at Creekside.

7. Trinity Christian (9-5, Class 1A), 50

This week: at (5) Ed White, 6:30 p.m.

8. Oakleaf (8-3, Class 5A), 35

This week: Columbia vs. (1) Raines.

9. Columbia (9-3, Class 4A), 18

This week: at (2) Bolles.

T10. Fletcher (6-4, Class 5A), 17

This week: at Sandalwood, 6:30 p.m.

T10. Beachside (8-4, Class 5A), 17

This week: at KIPP Bold City, 6:30 p.m.

Others receiving votes: University Christian, 16; Bishop Kenny, 16; KIPP Bold City, 10 (1); Baldwin, 9; Jackson, 8; Bradford, 6; Ribault, 5; Ponte Vedra, 4; Bartram Trail, 3; Middleburg, 2.

Trump made the accusation in a social media post on Sunday without saying why he believes it's the work of vandals instead of trampled turf from the Independence Day festivities. The Republican president posted a photo showing a once-grassy area by the World War II Memorial, now patchy and brown across much of the sprawling turf.

“Look what VANDALS did to the grass connecting the vandalized World War II Monument and the vandalized Reflecting Pool, which will be opened again, and better than ever, shortly,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

“Anybody who thinks the Reflecting Pool wasn’t vandalized should go back to Law School!” he added.

Trump has repeatedly blamed vandals for damage to his renovation projects in the nation's capital, often without evidence and sometimes despite opposing accounts from his officials. Trump lashed out at U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro this month after her office concluded that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was the result of poor construction and not the work of vandals, as Trump claimed.

The photo Trump posted matches what you'd expect to see with a large summer event, according to Penn State University turf professor John Kaminski.

“Nothing in the photograph clearly indicates vandalism. Jumping to that conclusion seems like a fairly large leap, although it is impossible to rule anything in or out,” he said.

Bradley S. Klein, a freelance journalist and golf course consultant, said the president's post didn't make clear what the problem was in detail.

“He sounds like every grumpy golfer who’s complaining about their golf course and actually has no idea what it takes to maintain it on a day-to-day basis,” he said.

Messages seeking more information were left with the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior.

Authorities on Friday announced an arrest in connection with vandalism at the World War II Memorial, after the words “Clean hands dirty $” were found painted on the monument and bubbles filled a fountain. Pirro said felony charges were being brought against Melissa L. Farris.

Farris, 41, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky remained in custody over the weekend, but court records Monday showed that U.S. District Court Federal Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh ordered her released on her own recognizance. Conditions include she stay away from the memorial and Washington, D.C., except for court or pretrial activities. She is due back for a pretrial hearing Sept. 3. A message left with her court-appointed lawyer, was not returned. Pirro's office asked the judge to reconsider its request that Farris be held in pretrial detention.

Charging documents in that case make no mention of the grassy area Trump is highlighting in his new claims. Authorities said Farris had previously been arrested for camping on federal property a few blocks from the World War II Memorial, but not the area cited by Trump.

That stretch of lawn is instead where a large stage was built and crowds gathered to hear from Trump and watch fireworks at a July 4 event celebrating the nation's 250th anniversary. Trump claimed without providing evidence that more than 400,000 people attended the event before a storm hit the area and delayed his remarks.

Extreme heat also hit the area with Washington setting an all-time record for July 4th, when temperatures rose to 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39.44 degrees Celsius). High temperatures forced organizers to shut down activities for several hours July 3 and delay the start July 4. Emergency personnel treated dozens of people for heat-related illnesses.

Photos from the time, taken by a streaming webcam atop the Washington Monument, show a large bandstand and seating areas covering nearly the entire lawn Trump now says has been vandalized. Associated Press photos from the days that followed showed workers removing the structures, revealing brown, damaged grass underneath.

On Aug. 1, Trump posted a different photo of the same area that appears to show the numbers “86 47” — which federal officials have said constitutes a threat against Trump, the 47th president — emblazoned into the grass. He cited it as evidence refuting Pirro's conclusion, calling it “a pure case of VANDALISM, that included the grass.”

“There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!” he wrote.

Those numbers are not visible in the photo Trump posted to social media on Sunday.

The fraction of kids exempted from vaccine requirements rose to 4.2%, up from 3.6% the year before. That’s an estimated 155,000 children nationally during the 2025-2026 school year.

It’s the fourth consecutive year that the national average exemption rate has reached a record, and the vast majority are parents withholding shots for nonmedical reasons. Exemptions increased in 41 states and the District of Columbia.

Experts point to turmoil caused by federal health officials.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a leading voice in the antivaccine movement before President Donald Trump put him in charge of federal health agencies. In the last 18 months, Kennedy and other federal officials have repeatedly tried to revise and reduce childhood vaccination guidance. Earlier this month, Trump called for revamped childhood vaccination recommendations that promote his discredited theory that childhood shots should be spaced out into separate medical visits.

“The root cause of this is primarily because there’s so much chaos and confusion in vaccination recommendation systems in the last year or so,” said Dr. James Campbell, of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Vaccination rates fell for many diseases

The CDC reported that 92.4% of 2025-26 kindergarteners got their required measles-mumps-rubella shots, down slightly from the previous year. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the vaccination rate was 95% — the level that makes it unlikely that a single infection will spark a disease cluster or outbreak.

Vaccination rates also fell for polio, for the combination shot against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, and for the first dose of the vaccine against chickenpox.

The rate held steady for protection against hepatitis B. But that's a vaccine given shortly after birth, and it will take a few years before recent federal efforts to upend infant hepatitis B vaccine recommendations would appear in the vaccination rates of kindergartners, Campbell said.

The vaccination numbers were posted as the U.S. experiences its worst year for measles since 1991.

The numbers indicate that more than a quarter of a million children entering kindergarten are susceptible to measles, said Campbell, a University of Maryland researcher who is chair of the AAP's infectious diseases committee.

Those at-risk kids are not evenly distributed — concentrations of unvaccinated children are higher in some places than others, which helps explain why measles waves vary in intensity.

This is when public health officials typically tout vaccines' benefits

The CDC data is coming out as school and health officials across the country are encouraging parents to get their children vaccinated as the school year starts.

“Back-to-school season is an important reminder that protecting our children’s health is both a shared responsibility and a shared goal,” North Carolina Health and Human Services Secretary Dev Sangvai said in a statement. “Vaccines help keep our children and teens healthy and in the classroom.”

In the past, the CDC has released the vaccination coverage data in its flagship publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. CDC officials usually speak to the trends and stress the importance of vaccinations.

But since the Trump administration took office early last year, the agency has posted the data online. This year, the agency issued a three-sentence statement that noted a small decline in vaccination coverage among children entering kindergarten and said: “CDC continues to encourage parents to discuss vaccination options with their doctors.”

Medical exemption rates are steady

Public health officials focus on vaccination rates for kindergartners because schools can be cauldrons for germs and launching pads for community outbreaks.

For years, those rates were high, thanks largely to school attendance mandates that required key vaccinations. All U.S. states and territories require that children attending childcare centers and schools be vaccinated against a number of diseases, including measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, whooping cough and chickenpox.

All states allow exemptions for children with medical conditions that prevent them from receiving certain vaccines. And most also permit exemptions for religious or other nonmedical reasons.

In the last decade, the percentage of kindergartners with medical exemptions has held steady, at about 0.2%. But the percentage with nonmedical exemptions has risen.

According to the CDC data, 17.5% of kindergartners had an exemption to one or more vaccines in Idaho in the last school year. But fewer than 0.5% did in Connecticut.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

“Let’s be clear, Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But he did plan the shooting in retaliation of the beating of his nephew,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors at the start of Davis' Las Vegas trial. “Remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself.”

Davis, 63, could get life in prison if he's convicted of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. He has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer in the defense opening called the prosecution's narrative “fiction.”

Palal showed jurors video of Shakur’s entourage attacking Davis’ nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson outside the boxing match at the MGM Grand hours before the shooting on Sept. 7, 1996.

Davis spent the next two hours planning how to get even, said Palal, and Shakur was gunned down “in an act of revenge.”

What he told the FBI and investigators

In a 2008 interview with a federal task force investigating the killing of Shakur's rival, the Notorious B.I.G., Davis instead talked about the Shakur shooting. He described handing a gun to the men in the back seat of a white Cadillac that fired on a black BMW with Shakur and Marion “Suge” Knight inside.

As prosecutors played audio of Davis explaining the moment Shakur was shot, members of Shakur’s family, including his stepbrother Maurice “Mopreme” Shakur, stared ahead and listened intently from the audience.

Palal told jurors Davis held onto a visceral hatred for Shakur for decades that drove him to speak.

He said the defendant talked to the FBI in 1998 and again in 1999, admitting he had been in Las Vegas at the time of the shooting.

In 2009, he admitted to his role in the killing in an interview with Las Vegas police, Palal said.

“And now 30 years later, we’re going to ask you to finally hold Duane Davis accountable,” Palal said.

He also showed jurors the 2019 memoir that Davis co-authored, “Compton Street Legend,” that the prosecution will use and that the defense fought to keep out of the trial, along with several of the defendant's interviews.

How Davis' legal team is defending him

Davis, wearing a blue suit and tie, watched the presentation while sitting next to his attorney. He sat quietly with his hands folded on the table in front of him, occasionally nodding along as his attorney gave his opening, and often scanned the room during testimony to see who was in the gallery.

“What they are telling you, they are representing as fact, when it’s really fiction,” Sanft said.

He said Davis wasn't previously charged for the 1996 killing because law enforcement knew that he was “full of crap.”

“There’s no facts,” he said, to back up what Davis said in his book.

The defense attorney also pointed to missing documents in the original investigation and distrust between police departments.

He called one detective’s work “biased,” “sloppy” and “incomplete.” He said retired Detective Clifford Mogg read portions of Davis’ book into the record as if it were fact, but said Mogg didn’t verify its claims.

Most eyewitnesses are no longer alive

The story of the drive-by shooting has long gripped the hip-hop community, partly because no one was charged until Davis was indicted in 2023.

The other three men riding in the Cadillac have all died in the years since.

“When he says he’s the only person who can tell what happened, he’s right,” Palal said.

Shakur remains a cultural icon and is considered one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time, despite dying at 25. He was nominated for six Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017.

Witnesses describe the night Tupac was shot

Retired Las Vegas police officer Garry Dale was the first of the 35 to 45 witnesses the prosecution plans to call at the trial expected to last about a month. He recounted how he and another officer stopped a car carrying Knight and Shakur because the vehicle didn’t have a license plate. They let the pair go with a warning.

About 10 minutes later the officers responded to a shooting call and found EMTs pulling Shakur from the car. Dale said Knight had been grazed by bullets, but told the officers to take care of Shakur.

Dale jumped in the ambulance and tried to get Shakur to tell him who shot him. The retired officer said that Shakur said something like “no, we’ll take care of it.”

The trial's first day moved quickly. Defense objections were rare, and the prosecution let witnesses be dismissed without redirect questioning after cross-examination.

Brent Becker, a former Las Vegas homicide detective, testified that Knight showed up to a police interview with attorneys, which Becker and other law enforcement officers thought was weird because Knight was a victim. Knight was timid, and his interview was practiced, Becker said.

“It was not the ‘Suge’ Knight I expected,” the detective said

Knight told investigators that he didn’t know anything.

“I thought he lied to us," Becker said.

Becker described the difficulty of getting witnesses to talk. The four names of the people inside the Cadillac that investigators “were leaning on” were Davis, Anderson, Deandrae “Freaky” Smith and Terry “Bubble Up” Brown, the detective said. But he noted he had no living witnesses to tell him who was in the Cadillac.

Ingrid Stokes testified that she and her friends were heading home from Las Vegas when they encountered Shakur and Knight, who was friends with a woman in Stokes’ group.

Knight invited them to a nightclub, she said, and they decided to meet them there.

The car Stokes was riding in was one lane over and a car length ahead of Knight's vehicle, when they heard gunshots while stopped at an intersection.

Stokes said they feared more gunfire and drove away, almost hitting a white four-door vehicle in the process.

When they returned to the scene, police made them sit on the sidewalk and treated them like suspects, she said. Stokes was scared to be seen in public talking about the case, worried about poor treatment from law enforcement and the potential for retribution.

“Snitches get stitches,” she said.

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Associated Press journalists Ty ONeil in Las Vegas, Becky Boone in Boise, Idaho, John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, and Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

After ordering the Pentagon to scale back annual joint military exercises with South Korea, claiming the nation declined to help with the United States’ war against Iran, Trump said that he has spoken with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un about a scheduled conversation.

Trump’s son-in-law and Mideast negotiator Jared Kushner held hourslong meetings with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday after talking with Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya in Egypt on disarmament. Netanyahu rejected a 15-point, U.S.-backed road map to move the truce deal forward in Gaza. Hamas says it has agreed to the road map, which includes disarmament.

The Latest:

ICE pitches legal insurance to help shield local officers who make immigration arrests

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is pitching a plan to help shield local police officers who make immigration arrests from possible financial consequences if they are accused of on-duty misconduct.

The agency is proposing to subsidize liability insurance for state and local officers who are trained and deputized to enforce federal immigration laws, according to a planning document published Friday.

ICE’s partnerships with local departments have soared since Trump returned to the White House last year and may get an additional boost with liability insurance by removing a hurdle that has made some local police departments reluctant to join. The Associated Press is the first to report on this insurance proposal.

Under the plan, officers would purchase insurance covering up to $500,000 in personal liability, which typically funds legal fees, settlements and judgments. Officers would be reimbursed up to $250 annually — roughly what the insurance is expected to cost.

▶ Read more

Lawmaker apologizes for ‘personal mistakes’ and will cooperate with Ethics probe

Gomez’s office issued the statement after the Ethics committee announced it was investigating allegations that he may have engaged in sexual misconduct, including inappropriate sexual conduct with a House staff member.

“I made personal mistakes outside my marriage. Although my actions were consensual in nature and haven’t violated the law or House Ethics rules, that doesn’t diminish the impact that these mistakes have made on those I care about the most,” Gomez said in a statement.

“I take full responsibility,” he said. “I have and continue to sincerely apologize to my family, friends, and the people that I have the privilege to serve. I am deeply sorry to my wife for the pain and embarrassment that I have brought into our lives.”

Gomez noted that he respects the committee’s process and is ready to cooperate with the inquiry.

Activists welcome Big Bend construction pause but say it’s only a first step

Activists rallying support against the Trump administration’s border construction plans in Texas welcomed news that the administration is pausing construction in Big Bend National Park but say the real question is what comes next.

Bob Krumenaker was the former superintendent of the Big Bend National Park from 2018 to 2023 and now chairs the organization “Keep Big Bend Wild.”

“It shows that they are paying attention to all of the objections that have been raised across the political spectrum,” he said.

But Krumenaker said it’s unlikely that Customs and Border Protection will entirely abandon its plans. He wants to see equipment like the bulldozers removed from the park and damage repaired and he’ll be looking to see how transparent the agency is in outlining a plan going forward.

Laiken Jordahl with the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement that the it was “welcome news” but warned that construction could resume “at any moment.”

Senator to file War Powers Resolution to halt Trump’s threats against Oman

Sen. Tim Kaine said Trump “is increasingly deranged in his one-man campaign to threaten and initiate wars all over the globe.”

The Virginia Democrat said Trump’s threats against Oman, a country the U.S. has diplomatic and trade relationships with, makes adversaries like China and Russia “rub their hands with glee.”

The senator said he would file a War Powers Resolution to prohibit military action against Oman as soon as lawmakers return to Washington from summer recess.

House Ethics committee investigating lawmaker for potential sexual misconduct

The House Ethics Committee says it is reviewing allegations that Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez of California may have engaged in sexual misconduct in violation of the code of official conduct.

In a release Monday, the committee said it is reviewing the allegations including inappropriate sexual contact with a House staff member.

It noted that the fact that it is investigating the allegations, and publicly disclosing its review, does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred.

The congressman’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It comes as the House is pursuing claims of misconduct and lawmakers have stepped aside this year during investigations of improper behavior.

Melania Trump helped reunite child and family separated by the war in Ukraine

According to the first lady’s office, it was the latest of 34 children that Melania Trump has helped reunite with their families after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Last year, the first lady penned a letter calling for peace to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which, she said at the time, led to an “open channel of communication” about the welfare of children caught up in the war.

“There is nothing more powerful than reuniting a mother with her child after an extended period of time,” Melania Trump said in a statement Monday.

‘I like the idea of declaring’ the Strait of Hormuz a territory

The president was asked about an offhand comment he made last week about the waterway crucial to oil shipping that’s become a centerpiece of negotiations over the war with Iran.

“I like the idea of declaring it a territory,” Trump said on Monday, without providing further details.

It’s not the first time Trump has toyed with the idea of expanding American territory. He has previously mused about taking over Greenland, Canada and Venezuela.

Trump likens his sentiment toward South Korea to his feelings about NATO

The U.S. president further explained his decision to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea, likening his relationship with Seoul to his often-frayed ties with the trans-Atlantic alliance.

Trump said the U.S. keeps tens of thousands of troops in South Korea for its protection, and was rebuffed when it asked Seoul for assistance regarding the war in Iran earlier this year.

As he discussed his decision on South Korea, Trump said “look at NATO” and later added, “all I want is fairness.”

“We can’t go around and protect all of these countries, especially when they’re not there to help us,” Trump said.

Trump says concerns about conditions on USS Lincoln are ‘fake’

Trump downplayed reports about conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln to reporters in the Oval Office. The aircraft carrier has been the subject of escalating concern over mental health and supply issues for American sailors enduring nearly nine months at sea.

Trump called it a “good period of time” but added that “over the years, we’ve had them out there much longer.”

The carrier has had a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 240 days.

But Trump said he spoke with a retired admiral over the weekend who recounted being on ships for “much longer.” Trump said the admiral assured him that the Lincoln is “beautifully maintained and beautifully taken care of.”

Trump did not name the admiral.

Trump administration pauses contentious border construction in Texas’ Big Bend National Park

The Trump administration says it is temporarily pausing construction of a controversial border construction project in the Big Bend National Park while the head of the agency tasked with building the wall visits Texas to do an “on-the-ground evaluation.”

The project through the national park in southern Texas has faced fierce bipartisan opposition by critics who say it is marring a pristine environmental area and that the region’s rugged and remote terrain already serves as a deterrent to migrants and smugglers.

Rodney Scott, who heads Customs and Border Protection which is tasked with building the wall, said in an announcement on X that he was visiting Texas to do an evaluation.

“CBP is pausing all construction activity in Big Bend National Park while I visit and conduct a personal, on-the-ground evaluation,” Scott said.

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Trump calls UK prime minister’s text exchange a ‘miscommunication’

The U.S. president was asked about a report that said new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham exchanged messages with someone posing as Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.

“I’m sure that he had a miscommunication,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

The report from Politico said Burnham thought he was messaging with Wiles before he became suspicious and cut off communications.

Earlier Monday, the White House said the incident had nothing to do with Wiles’ devices being hacked.

Trump says North Korea’s Kim has responded to request for a conversation

The U.S. president was pressed on whether he has had a conversation with the North Korean leader.

Trump said “yeah he has” responded to Trump’s request to have a conversation, referring to Kim Jong Un.

Trump offered no other details, but noted later during the Oval Office appearance that “I get along with him very well.”

Trump says his administration is taking a look at Flock cameras

The president said there are pros and cons to Flock Safety cameras, which have come under scrutiny from civil rights groups and lawmakers in both parties.

“It’s being studied right now,” Trump said when asked about the subject Monday at an Oval Office event. “We’ll have an answer soon as to our views on it.”

The company’s nationwide network of cameras record the license plate numbers and other characteristics of passing vehicles.

Thousands of police agencies can use Flock data to support investigations, and advocates call it an important crime-fighting tool. Critics say it amounts to needless mass surveillance.

Trump sits with 10-year-old and his lifeguard rescuer in Oval Office

Nathaniel Rai had been swept off his feet along the California coast, was rescued by a 16-year-old lifeguard and was now sitting in the Oval Office.

Rai wore a dark suit and maroon tie and sat on a gold couch aside his father and the president of the United States. Across from Rai was his rescuer Ryder Williams, both of whom watched Trump speak of their ordeal, a video of which went viral.

“He’s a real hero. I don’t know if I’d do it,” said Trump. “I wouldn’t probably. You’re lucky I wasn’t on the service that day.”

Trump meeting with teenage lifeguard who saved boy in dramatic viral video

A teenage lifeguard who saved a 10-year-old boy from pounding waves off the California last month is being honored at the White House on Monday.

President Donald Trump is meeting Ryder Williams after saying the teen deserved a civilian honor. Trump previously said on social media that he would be inviting Williams to the White House to reward his bravery.

Dramatic video of the rescue went viral last month. It showed Williams clinging to Nathaniel Rai as waves repeatedly crash over them. The pair disappeared from view and reemerged after several seconds as the wave receded.

A second lifeguard was eventually able to help get them both back to shore at Seabright Beach in Santa Cruz.

Trump initially commented on the video in response to a post from his son, Eric Trump, who said Williams deserved “the highest civilian honor.”

After killing hundreds in boat strikes, US military expands campaign on land

The Trump administration says it is seeking to expand its lethal campaign of bombing boats off Latin America’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts onto land.

It will be “like you saw with the strikes on the drug boats,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a military drill in the jungle in Panama last week. “Same effect on land.”

The government has lined up regional allies to let the U.S. military operate within their borders in a campaign to assert what it calls “American dominance over the Western Hemisphere.”

Critics say the expansion could pave the way for more civilian casualties and anger toward Washington that may outlast the Trump administration.

▶ Read more

Trump dwarfs his predecessors in ultra-rich appointees

Wealth, perhaps second only to loyalty, has been a prized attribute for Donald Trump during his second presidency.

The number of people worth at least $100 million whom the Republican president has appointed to his administration is more than four times the combined total of his three predecessors, according to a report from Public Citizen.

The consumer advocacy group’s report Monday says 57 Trump officials are worth at least $100 million, including 17 ambassadors and eight of his Cabinet members. Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick and Education Secretary Linda McMahon are billionaires.

The president, himself a billionaire, has described his deference to the financial success of the ultrawealthy. Yet Trump owes his White House comeback to support from middle-income working Americans drawn to his pledge to lower everyday costs, and now faces an electorate decidedly less keen on his handling of the economy.

▶ Read more

Public Citizen says ultra-wealthy White House can lead to corruption

Trump’s views are well established: Financial success is evidence of executive mastery and negotiating strength.

And to encourage billionaires to deliver future economic growth, Trump has pursued policies on artificial intelligence and financial regulation that could benefit wealthy people, along with tax cuts and reduced regulatory burdens for large-scale investments.

But a government populated by so many of the economic elite presents potential problems, the report’s authors said.

“When the people holding the reins of government are drawn overwhelmingly from the ranks of the ultra-rich, it leads to misplaced incentives and corruption, and begs the question, ’Whose interests they are truly serving?” said Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen’s co-president.

Trump’s scaling back military training with South Korea is ‘inane,’ senator says

Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Trump appears to be appeasing North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un while worsening relations with U.S. allies.

“This is another inane, haphazard decision by President Trump and his chaotic administration,” Reed said in a statement.

“America’s alliances are built on trust and strength,” he said. “When President Trump cuts military exercises to flatter a dictator or punishes South Korea for declining to join a war he started, all of our allies — and adversaries — think that America’s commitments are negotiable.”

Reed noted that the U.S. and South Korea have conducted joint military exercises since the 1950s as a show of strength and deterrence against aggression from North Korea. And he warned that warned that China and Russia are watching how easily Trump abandons America’s allies.

The buck stops somewhere else: A look at Trump’s tendency to avoid blame

President Harry Truman famously kept a “The Buck Stops Here” sign on his White House desk. The current Oval Office occupant often veers from that motto of taking responsibility.

Trump has blamed his predecessors for the weak economy, high inflation and the increasingly unpopular war in Iran that has kept oil prices high and his approval rating low while sending shock waves through the global economy.

He blames vandals for the problem-plagued Reflecting Pool renovation, and now the dead grass where his July 4th event was held on the National Mall.

All presidents try to shift some responsibility, but none in modern history has taken it as far as Trump.

The White House says Trump is working to correct long-festering challenges. But his unwillingness to accept blame sometimes leads him to deny problems, which could put GOP seats in jeopardy as Republicans face voters.

▶ Read more

Wall Street nears new records as big US companies report booming profits

Big U.S. companies in the S&P 500 index are on track to deliver growth of roughly 50% for earnings per share in the spring from a year earlier, according to FactSet. Still to come are profit reports from big retailers, including Home Depot, Target and Walmart this week.

They’re facing pressure. Customers’ incomes may be turning iffier after U.S. employers surprisingly cut more jobs last month than they added, as bills rise quickly with inflation much higher than anyone would like. Shoppers surprisingly spent less at U.S. retailers last month than in June.

And the wait continues to see what the Iran war will do with oil prices. Brent crude rose 0.7% to $89.15 a barrel Monday, a relatively modest move after jagged recent swings.

▶ Read more

Trump threatens Oman during interview with Fox News

Trump has warned Oman as the Gulf nation works with Iran on a plan for the Strait of Hormuz, telling Fox News reporter Trey Yingst that the U.S. would bomb Oman if it “gets in the way” using an expletive for emphasis.

Fox News did not provide audio of the Monday interview.

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

Trump also said the expiration of the 60-day deadline on ending the war was irrelevant and said there was no timeline, Yingst said. And Trump said the U.S. has a backchannel for talks with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Yingst said.

The outbreak unfolding in one of Congo’s most vulnerable regions is the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak ever, with 4,945 cases including 2,325 deaths, according to government data released overnight into Monday.

It's Congo’s 17th outbreak, with a toll that has eclipsed that of the country's 2018-2020 outbreak when 2,299 deaths out of 3,481 cases were recorded.

The latest data shows 101 new cases and 33 deaths reported in the previous 24 hours. Over 1,000 people have recovered, while 730 remain in hospitals or isolation.

The outbreak has infected and killed more people at a greater speed than any other outbreak in history. The World Health Organization has said it is on track to surpass the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the deadliest on record with more than 11,000 deaths.

Trish Newport, emergency coordinator with Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said the limited community engagement in the outbreak remains a key challenge.

“The community needs to be aware about the outbreak," she told The Associated Press, adding that people "need to be involved in the response, and they need to know what the signs and symptoms are and what to do if they get sick. And this today is not happening in every single place where there are Ebola cases.”

Starting from the first confirmed case, the outbreak reached the 2,000 death toll almost three times faster than in the 2014-16 outbreak.

Some families have lost up to 15 of their relatives in the epicenter, the Ituri province, said Newport.

“We rapidly need to scale up to be able to prevent more deaths from happening, more families and communities from being impacted,” she added.

There are no approved vaccines or treatments for the rare Bundibugyo virus responsible for the current outbreak across six provinces in Congo's east. Trials for those are ongoing in Ituri.

Most new cases and deaths are being reported outside of the people being monitored. Challenges facing medical teams dealing with the outbreak also include strikes by some unpaid health workers, threats by rebel groups, anger from long-traumatized communities, bad roads making it difficult to reach all the affected territories, and misinformation claiming that Ebola isn’t real.

WHO warned over the weekend that the outbreak is still moving at an “exceptional pace” ahead of efforts to track it, noting that it reached a weekly record of 579 cases and 304 deaths in the previous week.

“A substantial scaling up of response activities is underway to get ahead of the outbreak,” the U.N. health agency said.

Experts believe the virus was spreading in the mining town of Mongbwalu as early as February — months before authorities declared the outbreak on May 15.

On Friday, U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher announced the allocation of an additional $30.5 million and the deployment of 20 more staff to aid the response on the frontlines.

“This is a wake-up call,” Fletcher said. “We need speed, scale and solidarity before this virus gets even further ahead of us.”

The agency is proposing to subsidize liability insurance for state and local officers who are trained and deputized to enforce federal immigration laws, according to a planning document published Friday.

ICE’s partnerships with local departments have soared since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year and may get an additional boost with liability insurance by removing a hurdle that has made some local police departments reluctant to join. The Associated Press is the first to report on this insurance proposal.

Under the plan, officers would purchase insurance covering up to $500,000 in personal liability, which typically funds legal fees, settlements and judgments. Officers would be reimbursed up to $250 annually — roughly what the insurance is expected to cost.

One prominent critic of ICE’s immigration crackdown said the program would be yet another way for officers to avoid personal accountability for misconduct.

“The concern here is that ICE is going above and beyond to guarantee law enforcement does not have even the slightest risk of liability for violating Americans’ rights while helping ICE arrest people,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, who has called on Congress to make it easier to sue ICE agents for wrongdoing.

ICE outlined the plan in a document informing industry officials that it is considering hiring a contractor to help provide outreach, training and communications support for its so-called 287(g) partnerships with local departments, which are named for a section of a 1996 immigration law. The contractor would hire the insurance vendor and process the reimbursements, among other tasks.

ICE has asked for industry feedback by Thursday. The proposed timeline for launching the program and its estimated cost are unclear.

ICE had no immediate comment on the plan.

Arrests by ICE’s local partners have spiked since last year

During Trump’s second term, ICE has offered generous financial incentives to participating local agencies, increasing the number who have partnered with the federal government, as well as the number of arrests.

Nearly 1,600 agencies in 32 states now have agreements to participate in ICE’s task force model, in which trained local officers can interrogate, arrest and charge people suspected of being in the country illegally, according to ICE data.

Departments qualify for funding to help cover expenses like their officers’ pay, equipment and vehicles. With encouragement from state and local Republican officials, agencies in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and Georgia have been among the leaders.

Arrests made through such programs jumped to an average of 3,000 per month in the first two months of 2026, according to the most recent ICE data provided to the University of California Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project. That compares to a monthly average of 250 in 2024 under President Joe Biden.

Local departments, officers worried about liability for ICE work

As local officers increasingly carry out federal immigration work, they and their departments have expressed concerns about the civil liability that could result from claims alleging excessive use of force, wrongful arrest and illegal search and seizure, among other things.

That’s because insurance policies that cover their local work may not apply. Pennsylvania’s risk pool, for instance, recently made clear that it would exclude “proactive immigration enforcement activities” from coverage, forcing several participating counties to search for other insurance options.

Butler County Sheriff Michael Slupe said he found insurance to cover his 13 deputies participating in the program at a cost of $20,000 in annual premiums.

“I want to make sure the guys are additionally covered, so we had to spend the money,” he said, adding that federal funding would cover the cost.

Federal officers usually enjoy legal immunities and a government-funded defense when they face lawsuits. But those protections may not always apply to local officers, which has heightened their concerns over liability and the need for insurance.

While civil lawsuits are the main concern, professional liability insurance typically helps cover legal fees for officers facing criminal investigations as well.

Sheriffs’ group says ICE’s insurance idea sounds promising

Justin Smith, a former Colorado sheriff who is executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Association, said ICE’s plan sounds promising and that he was anxious to speak with ICE about how the plan would work.

Smith said he has shared concerns with ICE that some sheriffs are reluctant to join the partnerships because of the potential liability at a time when immigration enforcement faces intense public protests and media scrutiny. Smith said others who are partnering with ICE have already started facing legal claims tied to their immigration work, which can be costly whether or not deputies are ultimately found to have done anything wrong.

“Right now, any time you are working on immigration there is going to be a much higher potential for there being problems and having suits and issues,” he said. “They’re recognizing that it is a different environment. And I think trying to be good partners with us as best they can.”

Under their agreements, ICE warns local departments that they are responsible for the costs of incidents that give rise to liability. But it seeks to reduce the risk by saying local officers performing ICE-authorized functions are “acting under color of federal authority,” which would bar lawsuits against individual officers.

The agreements also state that local officers who face civil lawsuits can ask the U.S. Department of Justice to represent them, and that ICE will generally support their requests. But the final decision on whether to do so rests with DOJ.

“What you did was incredible, and everybody saw it,” Trump told the boys, referring to a viral video of the July rescue in Santa Cruz. “When I first saw it, I said, ‘roll that back, I want to see that again.’”

Seated alongside 16-year-old lifeguard Ryder Williams and 10-year-old Nathaniel Rai, Trump marveled at how each of them stayed cool in the dramatic ocean rescue in Santa Cruz in July. The boys' families joined the Oval Office reunion, along with lifeguard Aaron Bohnen, who aided in the rescue.

Online videos of the rescue have been viewed millions of times worldwide. The footage shows Williams clutching Nathaniel as heavy waves repeatedly smash into them. At one point, the boys disappear underwater for several seconds before emerging from the surf, Williams continuing to haul Nathaniel toward the shore.

Trump hailed Williams as a “real hero.” He told Nathaniel that “God was watching you.” Trump and Williams sat in chairs in front of the Oval Office fireplace, while Nathaniel and others sat alongside on a pair of couches.

Asked about the moment, Williams credited those who trained him how to snap into action.

“In those dangerous moments that we have, we always try to fall back on our training,” he said. “I really was thinking about how to get the boy out of the water as fast as I can.”

Wearing a black uniform with a California State Parks lifeguard patch, Williams said he hopes to train as a paramedic and become a firefighter.

Nathaniel, sitting next to his father and sister, nodded along as Trump described the rescue.

“Your father is the happiest man in the world,” Trump told him, adding that the boy deserved respect for how he faced the emergency. “The way Nathaniel handled it was — he was cool, considering the problems.”

Trump invited them to see the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House. When Williams mentioned his aspiration to become a firefighter, the president said he may be getting “some good recommendations.”

“He’s a real hero,” Trump said. “I don’t know if I’d do it. I wouldn’t probably. You’re lucky I wasn’t on the service that day.”

As the video drew attention online last month, Trump joined many who shared it. Posting the video on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the boys deserved to be honored.

“We’re going to bring this heroic young man, and his family, into the White House with, perhaps, the boy he saved, to give him a High Civilian Honor,” Trump wrote on July 28.

In a previous Associated Press interview, Williams described seeing Nathaniel lose his footing in shallow water at Seabright Beach. The water was too rough to get a rescue tube around Nathaniel, who went unconscious. They endured a series of pounding waves before Bohnen, the other lifeguard, helped them get ashore.

In the Oval Office, Trump remarked on Williams’ “tremendous grace” in the moment.

“It’s so amazing to see this happen, to see it before your eyes,” Trump said. “I’ve seen rescues before. I’ve never seen anything quite like this.”

In January 2025, after President Donald Trump began his second term, Senator Marco Rubio was named Secretary of State, vacating his Senate seat. Gov. Ron DeSantis then appointed the state’s attorney general, Ashley Moody, to Rubio’s seat. The appointment would last until after the next general election, which is the November 2026 election. The winner of this year’s election will serve the remaining two years of Rubio’s original term.

The winners of the Republican and Democratic primaries will advance to the November ballot, along with one candidate running without party affiliation.

Varsity 4 Independent coaches poll

Rank, (previous), school, record, points, (first-place votes)

1. (1) West Nassau, (1-0, SSAA), 88 (6)

Last week: beat (4) Paxon, 35-20. This week: vs. Charlton County (0-0).

2. (3) Fernandina Beach (1-0, SSAA), 57

Last week: Beat Keystone Heights, 65-14. This week: at Tallahassee Leon (0-0).

3. (2) Union County, (1-0, SSAA), 55 (1)

Last week: Beat Lafayette, 21-7. This week: at Rutherford (0-0).

4. (6) Christ’s Church Academy (1-0, SSAA), 49 (1)

Last week: Beat St. Joseph, 48-21. This week: vs. First Coast Christian (0-1).

5. (T4) Paxon, (0-1, SSAA), 39

Last week: lost to (1) West Nassau, 35-20. This week: at Wolfson (0-0), 6:30 p.m.

6. (NR) Episcopal, (1-0, SSAA), 33

Last week: beat Westminster Academy, 27-26. This week: at Providence (0-0).

Others

Old Plank Christian Academy, (1-0, SSAA), 24; Interlachen, (0-0, SSAA), 14; Providence (0-0, FHSAA), 12; Bishop Snyder, (0-1, SSAA), 6; St. Joseph, (0-1, SSAA), 6; Stanton, (1-0, SSAA), 6; Crescent City (1-0, SSAA), 5.

Authorities say all four suspects were in the country without legal immigration status at the time of the arrest.

The shooting

On July 16, District 3 Patrol officers responded to a reported shooting at Jacksonville Drew Park off Barnes Road. Upon arrival, officers say they found 18-year-old Marvin Oporta Garcia suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Oporta Garcia died from his injuries before receiving medical treatment. He was a legal refugee in the United States.

The suspects

JSO says Homicide Unit detectives launched an immediate investigation and identified four suspects: 16-year-old Jose Hernandez Bermudez, 17-year-old Kleber Martinez, 18-year-old Daniel Ramirez Mato and 21-year-old Russell Oliva Reyes.

Investigators say they determined that Martinez and Oliva Reyes are from Honduras, Ramirez Mato is from Cuba, and Hernandez Bermudez is from Nicaragua.

The arrests

On Aug. 15, authorities arrested Hernandez Bermudez, Martinez and Ramirez Mato. Oliva Reyes was arrested the following day. All four were booked into Duval County Jail. Federal authorities were also notified.

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office says it will continue pursuing justice for Oporta Garcia.

“We will continue working to seek justice for Oporta Garcia and our thoughts are with his loved ones during this difficult time,” the agency said.

The decision Monday by the six children of late owner Jerry Buss will end the family's 47 years in an ownership role with the 17-time NBA champion franchise. The move also appears to end Jeanie Buss' tenure as the Lakers' governor.

“We have decided as a family to sell the remaining Buss Family Trust shares to the Bob Iger group as part of the ongoing transaction,” the Buss family said in a statement issued to ESPN. “We love the Lakers, Laker fans and will continue to support Los Angeles, but it is time to use this opportunity to move on and exit gracefully while we still can.”

Jeanie Buss, the Lakers' governor since Jerry Buss' death in 2013, led the family's decision to sell a controlling stake in the Lakers to Dodgers owner Mark Walter last year at a valuation of $10 billion.

Not all of the six Buss siblings — Jeanie, Jim, Johnny, Janie, Joey and Jesse — were in favor of the deal despite retaining their family trust's minority ownership stake, and Joey and Jesse were fired from their front-office jobs with the team last November.

The siblings have been in frequent conflict since their father's death, with Jeanie firing Jim from his job as the Lakers' head of basketball operations in 2017, followed a week later with a lawsuit against her brothers amid an attempt by Jim and Johnny to oust Jeanie from her role as the Lakers' controlling owner.

Walter, who is under federal investigation for tax issues, abruptly reached a deal earlier this month to flip the Lakers to Kushner and Iger at a valuation of $12.5 billion, another record for a pro sports team. Venture capitalist Kushner and former Disney CEO Iger reportedly bought about 65% of the team from Walter, but will now own about 83% of the Lakers — and Jeanie Buss apparently will no longer be able to serve as their governor.

She had been allowed to keep the role at least through 2030 under the deal with Walter, and Iger said last week that the new group planned to honor that arrangement — but governors are required to control at least 15% of team ownership.

Jerry Buss was a chemist and real estate investor who bought the Lakers, the NHL's Los Angeles Kings and the Forum arena from Jack Kent Cooke in 1979 for $67.5 million. The Lakers quickly entered a renaissance in which they became known for their flashy “Showtime” style of play while winning five NBA titles between 1980 and 1988 behind Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

While the NBA and professional sports became increasingly more corporate, the Lakers remained essentially a family business despite their massive profile and steady success. Jerry Buss and the Lakers have employed many of the basketball world's greatest players and coaches of the past five decades, and Kobe Bryant led the Lakers to five additional championships between 2000 and 2010 before LeBron James added the 17th in 2020.

The sale agreement still must be approved by the NBA's board of governors, and the process could take months.

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

Jared Bridegan, 33, was killed in Jacksonville Beach in 2022 when he got out of his vehicle to remove a tire that was placed in the road while his 2-year-old daughter from a second marriage was strapped in her car seat.

More than four years later, Mario Fernandez Saldana, 38, is on trial for first-degree murder and solicitation of murder. He’s accused of arranging the death by hiring a gunman. Bridegan's ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, 39, faces her own trial in September. The alleged gunman, Henry Tenon, is slated to go to trial next year after backing out of a guilty plea.

“The killer was a stranger to Jared Bridegan. The murder was personal,” Assistant State Attorney Christina Simak Stifler said in Duval County court.

“A tire in the road, a dark place,” she said in her opening remarks. “No one would see and no one would know and no one would trace it back to those responsible. ... The architects of Jared Bridegan's murder intended it to be a perfect crime and it almost was.”

Defense says Fernandez Saldana didn't act like a mastermind

But defense attorney James Hill told jurors that Fernandez Saldana, an Army veteran, had no motive to get rid of Bridegan and his actions shortly after the killing — a road trip to Pennsylvania and back — didn’t resemble that of a criminal schemer “running from the law.”

“He had access to a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Hill acknowledged, referring to his wife Gardner's trust fund. “He could have fled the country.”

While addressing the jury, Stifler traced the bitter relationship between Bridegan and Gardner, the execution-style killing and the difficulty of trying to solve a shocking homicide with no witnesses. The victim, she said, had no obvious enemies and was a devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Bridegan and Gardner were divorced in 2015. The end of the marriage, however, led to years of acrimony about how to raise their twins, from disputes about religion to doctor's appointments and even school conferences, Stifler said.

“It was pretty terrible,” Bridegan's second wife, Kirsten Bridegan, testified. “There was absolutely no trust so everything was in writing. Texts, email. We did not speak in person, like at school events. Didn't do phone calls.”

Widow says she immediately suspected ex-wife

Bridegan married Kristen in 2017, and they had two children. Gardner, meanwhile, married Fernandez Saldana, who was a maintenance man at a gym where she worked out.

Bridegan was attacked shortly after returning 9-year-old twins to Gardner’s home from his “date night” with the children.

He was driving back to St. Augustine with another child when he stopped his Volkswagen Atlas and put on warning lights to remove a tire from the road. Bridegan was shot twice moments later.

Traffic began to back up. The first trial witness, Jonelle Cruz, said that she comforted Bridegan's daughter with a blanket in a separate vehicle while her boyfriend tried to figure out what had happened.

“She was shaking. She was very worried about her dad,” Cruz testified.

Later that night, Kirsten Bridegan said she followed her “gut instinct” and urged police to investigate Gardner and Fernandez Saldana.

A second tire gave police a big break

Stifler said police a few months later discovered a lead “that blew the case open.” A tire at a rental property owned by Fernandez Saldana was very similar to the tire that had blocked Bridegan's vehicle when he was shot.

Police matched DNA on those two tires to Tenon, a former tenant with a criminal record and financial problems. Records revealed that he was paid $10,000 by Fernandez Saldana after the murder, though the checks said the work was for landscaping, roof repair and a business idea.

Hill, the defense lawyer, disputed anything nefarious, telling the jury: “Mario Fernandez has hired him to do work, not murder.”

Tenon, 65, was charged with shooting Bridegan. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and had agreed to testify against Fernandez Saldana. He withdrew the plea earlier this year and will have his own trial.

Stifler said Gardner, who was from a wealthy family, relocated to Washington state with her children after Bridegan's death. Fernandez Saldana, meanwhile, moved to Orlando.

“Ms. Gardner got what she wanted: full control over her children and the freedom to move out of Jacksonville, Florida,” the prosecutor said.

Bridegan was chief technology officer at Utah-based Clean Simple Eats before working at Microsoft for less than a year before his death, his wife said.

Judge Gregory Carro issued an order Monday canceling the trial and giving the Manhattan District Attorney's office, which is prosecuting the state case, until Oct. 9 to respond to the defense's double jeopardy claims. A hearing will be held on Dec. 10, Carro said, about a week before Mangione is scheduled to be sentenced in the federal case.

Mangione, 28, pleaded guilty Friday in Manhattan federal court to a pair of stalking charges and admitted trailing Thompson to UnitedHealth Group’s investor conference and gunning him down outside a Manhattan hotel in 2024. Federal prosecutors said they would seek life in prison when Mangione is sentenced Dec. 18, though federal sentencing guidelines call for a term of 24 to 30 years.

“On the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan, and he died,” Mangione said.

Immediately after his plea, Mangione’s lawyers filed paperwork seeking to have the state case thrown out on double jeopardy and due process grounds. They described him as a “pawn in parallel prosecutions" and accused state and federal prosecutors of “trying to punish him twice for the exact conduct.”

Mangione has pleaded not guilty in the state case, which also carries the possibility of a life sentence.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said in a statement that it would fight efforts to end the state case, in part because Mangione’s federal sentence isn’t yet known.

Compared with federal law and that of other states, New York has uncommonly strong protections for defendants facing multiple prosecutions. A state prosecution can be barred if a federal case involving the same course of conduct or criminal transaction ends in a guilty plea or if a jury is sworn.

It will be up to Carro to decide if that applies to Mangione. However Carro rules, his decision will be subject to appeal.

Mangione pleaded guilty to federal charges that accused him of traveling across state lines by bus to stalk and kill Thompson. The charges alleged that he used a cellphone, the internet, interstate highways and a hostel serving out-of-state customers to plan and carry out the attack.

“The full range of conduct that comprises the stalking offense is coterminous with the conduct committed as part of the murder offense,” Mangione’s lawyers wrote in their double jeopardy filing.

That Mangione traveled from out of state "to be at the crime scene at the time of the shooting does nothing to eliminate the stalking of Mr. Thompson from the acts constituting his murder,” they added. “They are all part of the same criminal incident or criminal transaction.”

Bragg’s office contends that the state charges, including murder and firearms offenses, involve different legal elements and criminal conduct. In a letter last month, Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann objected to the possibility of a federal guilty plea wiping out the state case.

Any guilty plea, Seidemann wrote, “must account for the seriousness of defendant’s offenses” and for the state's interests in prosecuting Mangione, “including the sanctity of life principle that underpins the state homicide charges.”

The 12 events this year — New Orleans was previously postponed — is the smallest schedule for LIV since it was launched with massive Saudi Arabia funding in 2022 and featured eight tournaments.

Jon Rahm already has clinched the individual season title for the third straight year. LIV Golf Indianapolis, which starts Thursday at The Club at Chatham Hills, will determine who finishes second and third among the players, and the top team.

The Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, the financial muscle of the rival league from the start, decided in March this would be the final year of funding. LIV Golf announced earlier this month it has an agreement with a lead investor that would sustain a new version of the league for 2027.

“By concluding the season now, we can put our full resources behind what comes next and maintain the operational rigor this transition demands," LIV CEO Scott O'Neil said in a statement.

“We are reimagining LIV Golf as a fundamentally new league owned by the players and anchored in a sustainable business model, with an evolved fan experience built for the markets where the game is growing fastest across the globe and the support of world-class partners.”

The cancellation of LIV Golf Michigan was not surprising. There have been reports in recent weeks the tournament had not even started preparing with grandstands and other amenities. LIV Golf said ticket holders would get refunds.

In another cost-cutting move LIV attributed to “unavoidable changes in the entertainment program,” the league informed Thomas Rhett and Disco Lines their live performances would not take place at LIV Golf Indianapolis.

The final event with a $20 million purse that pays $4 million to the winner could be the last big payoff for LIV and its 57 players. LIV did not identify the lead investor or how much of a cash infusion was involved, or say whether it was an investment or a loan.

O'Neil has said the LIV 2.0 version for 2027 and onward would involve making players equity owners. He referred to it as a “second bite at the apple” being equity instead of cash.

But this likely is the end of $20 million purses for individual outcomes, and there already has been cutbacks. Rahm earned $6 million for winning the points title, down from $18 million the previous two years.

“As we concentrate on finishing the season strong and building the next chapter of LIV Golf, we’ll carry the energy and enthusiasm our fans have shown us into what comes next," O'Neil said.

The format for the 2027 season and the rosters also remain unclear. Still to be determined is whether Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau — the two biggest names — and other players who joined the league for its exorbitant prize money will want to stay for LIV 2.0.

As for the final event, Joaquin Niemann, Lucas Herbert and Tyrrell Hatton are in the mix for third place, which pays a $1 million bonus. DeChambeau is comfortably in second, which pays $3 million.

Dustin Johnson's 4Aces team has a narrow lead over Australia-based Ripper, with Rahm's Legion XIII and Bryson DeChambeau's Crushers team all in the mix for the team title.

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See AP’s full golf coverage here

The S&P 500 fell 0.5% but remains near its all-time high set Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 272 points, or 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.3%.

Wall Street’s losses solidified in the afternoon when oil prices accelerated upward. The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, rose 2.7% to $90.87.

It’s been careening back and forth because of uncertainty about what the war with Iran will do to the global flow of crude. Last month alone, Brent zigzagged between $72 and $102 as hopes rose and fell that the United States and Iran could reach a deal that would allow oil tankers to freely exit the Persian Gulf again.

Monday’s rally for oil prices sent Treasury yields in the bond market higher, which in turn raised the pressure on the economy and prices for all kinds of investments.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.72% from 4.68% late Friday. It has shot up from just 3.97% before the war with Iran, largely because higher oil prices are worsening inflation and upping the probability that the Federal Reserve will have to hike interest rates.

Higher rates could keep a lid on inflation, but they do so by intentionally slowing the economy. The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate has already jumped near its highest level in a year because of the rise in the 10-year Treasury yield, though reports last week said that inflation in July was not as bad as earlier in the summer.

Usually around this time of year, anticipation is building on Wall Street to hear from the head of the Federal Reserve about where it may take interest rates. But the Fed’s new chairman, Kevin Warsh, may give little insight at this year’s economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at the end of this month, according to Thierry Wizman, a strategist at Macquarie Group

Warsh has been adamant about giving Wall Street less guidance about the Fed’s plans for interest rates.

Wall Street has run to records despite high inflation in large part because profits are booming for U.S. companies.

Those in the S&P 500 index are on track to deliver growth of roughly 50% for earnings per share in the spring from a year earlier, according to FactSet. That’s much better than analysts expected and would be the best since five years ago, when the economy was erupting out of the chasm created by the COVID pandemic.

Nearly all the companies in the S&P 500 have turned in their profit reports for the spring. Still to come are big retailers, including reports this week from Home Depot, Target and Walmart.

They’re facing pressure. Their customers’ incomes may be turning iffier after U.S. employers surprisingly cut more jobs last month than they added. At the same time, their customers are continuing to see bills rise quickly as inflation remains much higher than anyone would like.

A report last week said that shoppers surprisingly spent less at U.S. retailers last month than in June, and CEOs for retailers could give color this week on what they’re seeing.

On Wall Street, trading was relatively quiet Monday.

L3Harris Technologies fell 4.6% after the defense company said Christopher Kubasik stepped down as its CEO and chairman following “certain conduct by Kubasik that was not consistent with the values of the Company.” It gave few details but said the conduct was not related to its financial reporting, controls, customer relationships or operational performance.

Alphabet dipped 0.5% even though Berkshire Hathaway said it increased its investment in Google’s parent company, along with several homebuilders. Berkshire built a reputation for buying stocks at affordable prices under its former CEO, famed investor Warren Buffett.

Constellation Brands fell 6.2% after Berkshire said it sold all its holdings in the seller of Modelo beer and Robert Mondavi wine.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 40.70 points to 7,745.06. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 272.63 to 53,459.78, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 84.25 to 26,644.91.

In stock markets abroad, indexes dipped in Europe following a stronger finish in Asia.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.7% after a report said Japan’s economy grew at a slower pace in the April-June quarter than economists expected. Indexes jumped 1.3% in Hong Kong and 1.4% in Shanghai for some of the world’s biggest moves.

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AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Michelle Champan contributed to this report.

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Earlier versions of this story incorrectly reported that Japan’s economy grew slightly faster than expected in the April-June quarter.

The Trump administration is making it harder for the public to know, moving to toss aside a 60-year-old requirement for tens of thousands of private sector employers to submit workforce demographic reports each year to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency responsible for enforcing anti-discrimination laws in the workplace.

The EEOC's Republican majority voted 2-1 Tuesday to rescind the data collection requirement, submitting the proposal to a 30-day public commentary period before final approval. The proposal is a quiet but profound salvo in President Donald Trump's shake up of civil rights enforcement, ending a practice that has endured through 10 Republican and Democratic administrations.

EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, an outspoken critic of diversity and inclusion practices who has urged white men to come forward with discrimination complaints, argued that requiring companies to submit the annual demographic reports risks encouraging companies to justify discriminatory practices to diversify their workforce.

“It may promote racial stereotyping at work, and it may encourage employers to engage in discrimination," Lucas said during a hearing ahead of the vote.

Former Democratic EEOC commissioners and civil rights organizations have denounced the proposal, saying it will deprive the agency of a critical tool for uncovering discrimination patterns and tracking how women and racial minorities have fared since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which created the EEOC and prohibited employment discrimination based on race, color, sex, national origin and religion.

The EEOC, which receives more than 88,000 worker complaints each year, has historically used the data to guide its enforcement priorities and inform some of its investigations.

Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal, the sole Democrat left on the EEOC since Trump moved to wrest control of the agency, voted against the proposal.

“Today, the commission discusses whether to turn back time to a period before the civil rights movement, kneecapping its ability to protect workers,” Kotagal said.

Here's what to know about the reporting requirement and the proposal to end it:

How the EEOC has collected the data

Since 1966, the EEOC has required companies with at least 100 employees, or federal contractors with at least 50 workers, to submit a form called the EEO-1 each year.

The form, which has evolved over time, identifies 10 job categories from “Executive/Senior Level Officials and Managers” to “Laborers” and “Service Workers.” It asks employers to report on the number male and female workers in each job category, as well as the number of workers from different race and ethnicities: Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American, Asian, Native Hawaiian, American Indian or Alaska Native and two or more races.

The data typically covers more than 50 million employees and 73,000 employers nationwide.

A view into gender and race in the private sector

The EEOC launched during the Biden administration an interactive tool allowing the public to explore historical demographic metrics across industries and job categories. The most recent data is from 2023. Under the Trump administration, the EEOC last collected EEO-1 data for the year 2024 but has not publicly disclosed it. Collection of the year 2025 would have begun this year.

The data shows white men dominating executive and senior manager roles at private companies, though women and minorities have made inroads, especially in the years following the #MeToo and Black Lives Matters movements.

Women remain underrepresented in the top ranks of companies. While they make up nearly half the workforce at the companies surveyed, women held just 34.5% of executives and senior manager roles in 2023. That was up from 29.2% a decade earlier.

White and Asian women made the fastest gains, and by 2023, were no longer underrepresented in senior roles compared to their numbers in the overall workforce. In contrast, Black and Hispanic women remained sharply underrepresented in executive and senior manager roles despite making modest gains.

Asian men have been proportionally represented in senior roles for years, while Black and Hispanic men remained underrepresented in 2023.

Of those demographic groups, only one was overrepresented in senior roles: white men, who made up a third of the overall workforce at the companies surveyed but held 52.7% of executive and senior management roles.

Why the government wants to end the data collection

Lucas said the annual reporting requirements impose “hundreds of millions of dollars” on costs on employers, a burden she argued was unnecessary absent “any allegation, indication, or evidence of discrimination.”

The move was recommended by Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint that has guided many of the Trump administration’s policies.

A group of former Democratic EEOC commissioners and legal counselors said there is little evidence that companies are routinely using employment data to engage in quotas or race-based hiring.

“This is simply inaccurate and unsupported speculation, at odds with the ways in which this data is actually collected, managed and used,” the former officials said in a statement.

Instead, the officials said, tracking such data encourages companies to proactively examine their hiring, promotion, benefits and other policies to ensure they are not unnecessarily erecting barriers.

Kotagal said the agency has used the data to determine whether a discrimination charge might be part of a deeper pattern at a company. She cited a recent investigation of California supermarket chain Vallarta Food Enterprises, in which the EEOC alleges the grocer failed or refused to recruit, hire or promote non-Hispanic individuals. In that case, EEO-1 data showed that “nearly 100 percent of its employees were Hispanic,” Kotagal said. “It’s a key tool in our toolbox.”

The agency has also issued special reports on demographic employment trends across certain industries or roles.

Kotagal highlighted a 2024 report on the tech sector, which showed that women had made virtually no gains between 2014 and 2022, and that workers under 40 years old had actually lost ground. The report also found tech company workers were more likely that others to file age or pay discrimination charges, suggesting systemic barriers to women and older workers in the industry.

The report has been removed from the EEOC’s website.

Corporate retreat from demographic disclosure

The EEOC is prohibited from publicly releasing an individual company’s EEO-1 form, only publishing the information in the aggregate. In recent years, however, a growing number of the country’s top companies began publicly releasing their forms in response to pressure from shareholders and Democratic elected officials to show transparency in their diversity efforts.

Many of those companies have complained that job categories in the EEO-1 forms don't align with their internal structures, a point Lucas echoed Tuesday, saying the categories don't reflect the modern workforce. But advocates of EEO-1 disclosure argued it's the only standardized form that allows for comparison across companies, and offer more detail.

However, the trend toward transparency has started to reverse.

Companies have started to pull back on publicizing both EEO-1 forms and their own diversity reports, which conservative advocates and the Trump administration have seized on to argue that companies are using discriminatory tactics to add women and minorities to their ranks.

In 2025, 24 companies in the S&P 100 — the largest U.S. publicly traded companies — chose not to disclose their EEO-1 data after having done so the year before, according to Andrew Jones, principal researcher at The Conference Board Governance & Sustainability Center. Still, 60 S&P 100 companies did release the data.

Meanwhile, fewer companies are publicizing any form of demographic metrics. The number of Russell 3,000 companies that disclosed metrics on women in the workforce fell from 75% in 2024 to 62% in 2025, according to a study by The Conference Board using data from corporate governance data and analysis firm ESGAUGE. Those disclosing metrics on minority representation fell from 30.9% to 26.5%.

Why companies may keep gathering data

Companies are still likely to keep track of their demographic data, whether or not they disclose any of those metrics publicly, and even if they are no longer required to submit annual EEO-1 reports. That's because Title VII requires employers to keep records that could be pertinent to any discrimination investigation, and the EEOC is empowered to request them.

“What we are generally advising is to stay the course,” Jennifer Robins, counsel in law firm Saul Ewing’s Labor and Employment Group. “Private litigants, employment discrimination lawsuits are not going away, and this data is helpful to defending oneself.”

The EEOC has demanded extensive demographic data from companies to bolster Lucas' own marquee cases. Those include an investigation into diversity, equity and inclusion practices of sports giant Nike, which Lucas has alleged discriminate against white employees; a lawsuit against the New York Times for allegedly discriminating against a white man who was passed over for a promotion, and an investigation into alleged antisemitism against staff at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lucas emphasized Tuesday that the EEOC would continue to demand data in the course of its investigations. Kotagal warned employers that under future leadership, the EEOC could reinstitute the EEO-1 collection.

Jocelyn Frye, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, said she sees the elimination of EEO-1 data as part of an effort to obscure the prevalence of discrimination against racial minorities and women and create of a sense of urgency around protecting white workers from DEI-related policies.

But Frye said the data "doesn’t suggest that their top priority ought to be discrimination against white men.

"If the chair is moving forward with an agenda that thinks she ought to be focused on men and ought to be focused on white people, my answer is, ‘Well, does the data tell you that?’” Frye said.

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The Associated Press’ women in the workforce coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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

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

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

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the director of the U.S.-created Board of Peace, Nickolay Mladenov, were also in the meeting with Netanyahu, according to a source familiar with the plans and a diplomatic source. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a closed-door meeting.

At stake are the lives of some 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, rebuilding plans and future control over the territory.

Netanyahu says talks were ‘deep and constructive’

In a statement, Netanyahu's office said the talks were “deep and constructive.” Israel and the board agreed to establish two working groups — one on the disarmament and demilitarization of Gaza and another focused on public health issues for Gaza.

Israel and the board agreed that the demilitarization “should be prompt and completed before any reconstruction," the statement said.

A Board of Peace official said they also agreed that the demilitarization must include “every weapon, light and heavy, and every tunnel.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door meeting.

“Backed by President Donald Trump, the parties share clear goals: a fully demilitarized and deradicalized Gaza that poses no threat to Israel, and where Gazans can pursue prosperity and dignity peacefully,” the official said.

Another Board of Peace official said the meeting was “very productive” and resulted in agreement on “a path forward.”

"The Israelis are going to give this a chance. Now it’s up to Hamas to show if it truly intends to comply,” said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

Asked if Israel had committed to the U.S. plan for Gaza, a spokesperson for Mladenov said it was a “work in progress.”

Meeting followed Kushner's conversation with Hamas

Kushner, who is Trump's son-in-law, met Sunday with Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya in Cairo on disarmament, according to a regional official and a Hamas official, who both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

Officials from mediating countries Egypt, Qatar and Turkey also were there.

The Hamas official said the Hamas leader demanded that Israel halt its attacks on Gaza and withdraw to the so-called “yellow line” dividing the territory before beginning implementation.

The yellow line was never precisely defined. Israeli forces have moved beyond it and now control about 60% of Gaza. In May, Netanyahu said the next step was to move to 70% control, with Israel “tightening the grip” on Hamas “from every direction.”

Several regional powers including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates issued a statement Sunday condemning Israel’s rejection of the road map. They said Israel "now bears responsibility for obstructing the efforts to bring peace in Gaza.” Other signers included Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia and the ceasefire mediators.

The foreign ministers’ statement called on the Board of Peace and the U.S. to take “immediate and concrete measures” to keep any party from obstructing the plan’s implementation.

Talks spark hope and doubt in Gaza

While some in Gaza hope that efforts to implement the road map will bring an end to the war sparked by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, others are skeptical.

Mohammad Abu al-Qombuz cast doubt on all talks and visits currently taking place.

“A conference here and there, it is all lies. We need a definitive solution that would work for everybody,” said Abu al-Qombuz, who lives in a Gaza City tent camp, part of the territory's vast displaced population.

Under the road map, Hamas would hand over weapons to the Palestinian technocratic committee meant to oversee daily operations in the territory. The committee has not yet entered Gaza.

But Hamas has linked the surrender of its heaviest weapons to the creation of a Palestinian state, and the road map entails the creation of a “credible pathway toward achieving Palestinian self-determination and statehood,” something Israel’s current government rejects.

Until the road map is agreed to, other elements of the ceasefire are on hold, including reconstruction and the deployment of international forces to separate Israeli forces from committee-controlled areas.

Netanyahu faces a challenging election on Oct. 27 as he tries to hold onto power with a coalition that includes ministers taking a harsh line on Gaza, and it’s not clear whether he will take decisive steps on the ceasefire before then.

Also coming up is the anniversary of the 2023 attack.

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Frankel reported from Jerusalem, Magdy from Cairo and Shurafa from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip. Associated Press journalists Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Israel; Collin Binkley in Washington; and Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.

Location: Remote in MI, TX, or FL

Description

Graham Media Group is searching for its next Sales Support Coordinator who will be responsible for assisting the sales team with the processing and fulfillment of sales orders, strategically process makegoods, troubleshoot scheduling problems and traffic issues, solve billing discrepancies, manage program changes, provide weekly reports and correspondence with clients.

The key function of this role is to assist management, account executives and the sales team in reaching annual budgets for TV, Digital and New Business. Qualified candidates must be able to multi-task and get their task assignments done accurately and efficiently.

Responsibilities

• Work closely with Account Executives to coordinate advertising campaigns
• Input and manage broadcast orders into Wide Orbit – for local, national, paid programming, pay-for-delivery, and political campaigns
• Work makegoods with buyers/agencies and input into order management systems
• Monitor network and station schedules for program changes
• Resolve billing discrepancies and assisting with collections
• Regularly monitor campaign performance to ensure clients’ goals are being met
• Pull TV post reports to ensure campaign delivery is on track
• Provide in-depth reporting tailored to each client’s goals and objectives
• Troubleshoot scheduling problems, preemptions and traffic issues
• Communicate with advertisers for video and traffic instructions, scheduling changes and campaign performance as needed. Encourage upsell opportunities where appropriate
• Serve as backup coverage for other national and/or local sales support as needed
• Provide reports for clients and management
• Establish and maintain high retention rates and a high level of customer satisfaction by exceeding customer expectations and proactively anticipating their shifting needs
• Responsible for Political order entry as well as maintaining our FCC files related to Political
• Other duties as assigned

Requirements

• Minimum of 1 year of related work experience in media sales preferred or equivalent combination of education and experience
• Bachelor’s degree in marketing or related field preferred
• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Strong organizational, multi-tasking and time management skills a must!
• A team player who can work with others toward common goals
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• Experience in a television station’s sales/traffic department preferred
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• Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite, especially Excel/spreadsheets and PowerPoint or presentation tools. Comfortable learning new software and processes as needed

Please send resumes to Brittany Salyers at bsalyers@grahammedia.com

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

Location: Detroit, MI (Graham Media Group HQ)

About the Role

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

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

Responsibilities:

• Conduct recurring audits of Salesforce, reporting platforms, and revenue datasets to ensure compliance with data standards
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• Support onboarding and ongoing training efforts for revenue systems, reporting tools, and operational processes
• Partner with the Salesforce Administrator to support CRM enhancements, testing, user adoption, data hygiene, and reporting
• Assist in troubleshooting system issues and validating system changes and integrations
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• Act as the Revenue Operations team’s project manager for key initiatives, coordinating efforts across Sales, Finance, Marketing, Technology, and Market Leadership.
• Gather business requirements, document processes, manage timelines, and communicate progress to stakeholders.
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Requirements:

• Experience creating and maintaining training materials, user guides, process documentation, and standard operating procedures
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Please send resumes to Becky Hollandsworth at Bhollandsworth@grahammedia.com

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

Clancy's mother, Paula Musgrove, sounding at times emotional, described her daughter as a dedicated and loving mother whose mental health began declining in October 2022 — about three months before Clancy strangled the children and attempted to kill herself.

“Mom, will you please come up and stay with me for a bit? I’m really sick. Something is wrong,” Clancy wrote in a text message displayed to the jury. “I had horrible insomnia all night, and I just don’t know how I am going to get through the day. ... It’s just really scary, and I don’t want to be alone.”

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

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

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

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

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

The testimony came in the fourth week of Clancy's murder trial, soon after the prosecution rested their case.

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

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

‘How could a mother hurt her children?’

A former co-worker testified Monday about Clancy’s years as a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, describing Clancy as a “really good” nurse who loved her job and was “compassionate, kind and a patient advocate.”

“She was the type of nurse that you wanted taking care of you or your loved one when you walked onto our unit,” said Margaret Hamp.

Hamp said she and Clancy worked night shifts together and that Clancy regularly sought parenting advice from her co-workers, asking about everything from children’s sleeping habits and choosing a daycare provider to monogrammed lunch boxes.

Hamp also recalled a conversation from Clancy’s first year on the unit after a pregnant patient arrived with plans to harm herself. Hamp said she spoke with Clancy about mental health during pregnancy and postpartum and asked whether she had heard of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in 2001.

“I explained that to her, and she cried,” Hamp testified. “She said, ‘How could a mother hurt her children?’”

A disputed picture of her mental health

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

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

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

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

Clancy hasn't testified and isn't required to do so, but jurors have seen her break down in sobs at several points, including when prosecutors showed the jury autopsy photos of the children.

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

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

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

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

Iran says it is near finalizing a deal with Oman

Iran said it has reached an agreement with Oman over a plan for ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz, which runs between the two countries, and they are now working to finalize details for a joint statement.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters in Tehran, Iran's capital, that “an understanding has been reached regarding the map of the transit route.”

He did not elaborate, but details that have previously emerged suggest the deal would reopen the strait with ships entering through a route close to Iran and exiting through a route close to Oman. Ships would transit without paying fees or tolls during an interim period.

The U.S. has sought an acceptable deal on opening the strait before ending its blockade of Iranian ports.

Iran effectively closed the strait — through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s traded oil supplies passed before the war — after Israel and the U.S. attacked the country on Feb. 28.

Trump says US will bomb Oman if it gets in the way

Trump told Fox News reporter Trey Yingst that the U.S. would bomb Oman if it “gets in the way,” using an expletive for emphasis.

Fox News did not provide audio of the interview.

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

Trump also said the expiration of the 60-day deadline on talks to end the war was irrelevant and said there was no timeline, Yingst said. Trump said the U.S. has a back channel for talks with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Yingst added.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres wants Iran and the U.S. to resume peace negotiations, saying there is no military solution to the conflict, according to U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric.

Dujarric said the U.N. chief also thinks the countries need to “lower the rhetoric that we’ve been hearing in recent days.”

Kushner meets with Netanyahu over Gaza road map

Mideast negotiator Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, met on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the day after he had a rare, two-hour meeting with Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya in Egypt on disarmament of the Palestinian militant group.

Netanyahu last week rejected a 15-point, U.S.-backed road map to move the ceasefire deal forward in Gaza.

Hamas says it has agreed to the road map, which includes disarmament, and the group is urging mediators and the U.S.-created Board of Peace to “compel” Israel to sign on.

But Israel, which under the road map must gradually withdraw from Gaza, says Hamas must fully disarm before any Israeli withdrawal.

Israeli troops occupy about 60% of the strip, and Netanyahu has previously threatened to advance further.

Houthi rebels say they attacked boats in the Red Sea

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed that they attacked a ship and four military boats on Monday in the Red Sea off the Yemeni city of Mokha, near the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

The rebels fired a number of ballistic missiles at the vessels, resulting in the capsizing and burning of the boats, Yahya Saree, a military spokesperson for the Houthis, said in a statement.

The rebels claimed that the vessels belonged to Saudi Arabia, without providing evidence. There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia, and The Associated Press could not independently verify the Houthi claim.

Saree also said the rebels launched a drone attack on government forces in the central province of Marib.

Drone attacks target Iraqi officials

Two officials in northern Iraq were targeted in drone attacks that the regional counterterrorism service said were launched from the border with Iran.

One was fired at the office of Masrour Barzani, prime minister of Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, and the other targeted the home of a top regional intelligence official, the counterterrorism service said.

There were no casualties and no immediate claim of responsibility.

Since the beginning of the war in Iran, Tehran and Iranian-backed Iraqi militias have launched regular attacks on U.S. military and diplomatic facilities in Iraq, and on bases of exiled Iranian Kurdish dissident groups, but Monday’s direct attack on regional government buildings was unusual.

Barzani on X called the attack “a dangerous escalation and a direct threat to the security and stability" of the region.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi appeared to be trying to distance Iran from the attack. He said on social media that nothing justified the attack on Barzani and that “Kurdish friends should be vigilant against false-flag ploys to sow discord between neighbors.”

U.S. forces currently stationed in the Kurdish region of Iraq have begun withdrawing ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline agreed upon between Washington and Baghdad to end the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

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This story was corrected earlier to show that the first name of the prime minister of Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region is Masrour Barzani, instead of Masoud Barzani.

A forest ranger said the fire in Belgium could continue for months underground in peaty soil and sporadically flare up.

Europe is sweltering through one of its hottest and driest summers on record, which a recent study said was fueled by climate change.

Rain helps, but Belgian blaze is not yet under control

Belgium’s King Philippe interrupted his summer vacation to visit emergency services fighting the wildfire in the eastern High Fens, about eight kilometers (five miles) from the German border, as it spread east after moving into a pine forest on Sunday.

The fire in Liège province has burned an estimated 30 square kilometers (about 12 square miles), leaving blackened trees and smoldering ground.

While the fire did not significantly grow, due in part to favorable winds, it remained out of control in areas inaccessible to ground crews, the Wallonia region said in an update.

Some 500 firefighters were aided by aircraft sent from Norway, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands and local police with drones after a cold front brought overnight rain. Farmers were helping supply water to firefighting efforts, regional officials said. Helicopters emptied huge sacks of water over the flames as smoke billowed from forests.

“We managed to maintain the fire where the firemen are situated but there’s still a place which is totally inaccessible, where the fire is still going on in the direction of Monschau in Germany,” said Nicolas Yernaux, spokesperson for the Wallonia regional public services.

He said overnight rains helped contain the blaze and dampen the possibility that smoldering fires will flare up again, but he said they did not significantly impact the center of the fire.

A forest ranger from the region told The Associated Press that the blaze could continue for months underground because of the peaty soil.

“What we see here is that the grassland has burned and the fire has gone into the soil to a certain depth, into the peat, and it is still burning," said Yves Pieper. “It can go down very, very low in the peat layer.”

He said the fire can continue smoldering largely unseen underground for weeks or months before flaring up again, noting that new flames had already appeared nearby.

Precautionary evacuation orders remained in effect for hundreds of residents.

Veterinarian Hugues Guyvot, who was involved in animal rescue efforts, said large animals were able to flee but smaller ones like frogs and mice likely burrowed and were baked underground in a landscape of peat bogs.

“Maybe it will take decades to recover from this fire,” he said.

Greece quickly extinguishes fire near main airport

In Greece, fire department investigators examined the area on the island of Salamina where a fast-moving wildfire on Sunday killed two people, injured another nine and destroyed several homes. The island lies just west of the Greek capital.

New wildfires broke out elsewhere Monday. Dozens of firefighters along with two water-dropping planes and two helicopters raced to tackle one in Spata, an area east of Athens that includes the main international airport. The fire department said the blaze was contained within 30 minutes.

Separately, the fire department said an 80-year-old man was arrested in the northern town of Kavala on arson charges for allegedly deliberately setting fire to dried vegetation. It was among 302 fire-related arrests since Jan. 1 in Greece, including 31 for deliberate arson and 271 for negligence that sparked fires, the department said.

France says a fire in the southwest is under control

In southwestern France, authorities said a fire in the Landes region was under control after four days of battling the flames, allowing about half of the evacuated residents to begin returning home.

More than 600 residents evacuated last week as the fire burned about 17 square kilometers (6.6 square miles) during a prolonged spell of extreme heat. Some respite was on the way Monday as temperatures began to drop.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the state would provide a 12 million-euro ($13.9 million) aid package to Gironde and Landes, the regions hardest hit by the wildfires, to help rebuild homes and support affected businesses, including in Le Porge, where 183 homes were destroyed in a massive blaze last month.

Croatian police arrest arson suspects

In Croatia, four people are suspected of deliberately starting as many as 10 fires in the region around the coastal town of Zadar, a major tourism hub on the Adriatic coast.

The suspects were questioned by an investigative judge following their arrest on Saturday on a tip from residents.

The four are suspected of starting fires on Aug. 14 and 15 with an aim to “endanger lives and valuable property and inflict damage on a large number of residents in Zadar county,” police said in a statement. There was no word on a possible motive.

Police said they were assessing the extent of the damage caused.

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Corbet reported from Paris. Elena Becatoros in Argostoli, Greece, and Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia, contributed.

The Republican president’s lawyers had asked the justices to reconsider their refusal to hear his appeal. The court denied Trump’s petition along with several others.

It’s unusual — although not unheard of — for the court to grant such requests. Trump paid the judgment shortly after the court declined to take up his appeal in June.

Trump and the Justice Department are also asking the high court to toss out a second Carroll verdict totaling $83 million. They argue he’s immune from being sued over comments he made about her in 2019, when he was president. The court has not yet acted on that appeal.

Carroll is a longtime advice columnist and former TV talk show host. She testified at a 2023 trial that Trump turned a friendly 1990s encounter into a violent attack in the dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury retailer across the street from Trump Tower in Manhattan. The jury found Trump liable for defaming Carroll when he denied her allegation in 2022.

Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said they were pleased by the Supreme Court's decision.

"As a result, the jury’s unanimous verdict that Donald Trump sexually assaulted and then defamed E. Jean Carroll is now final and cannot be challenged in any court,” Kaplan said in a statement.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.

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

A Heat Advisory and Extreme Heat Warning will be in effect from 11 a.m. - 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Isolated showers and thunderstorms, mainly south of I-10, will continue through early evening and then dissipate after sunset.

The pattern continues with triple-digit Feels Like temperatures and afternoon showers and thunderstorms through the week. Locally heavy rain, gusty wind and lightning remain the main hazards.

Near record highs along with the heat and humidity combination will keep heat indices around 105 - 110 degrees.

In the tropics: Tropical activity is not expected for the next few days, however, the GFS is showing potential development in the Atlantic later this week. The EURO is not showing anything in the same area, but it’s something to watch.

Tonight: Heat Advisory, Heat Warning through 8 p.m. Isolated showers and thunderstorms through early evening.

Tuesday: Hot and humid. Heat Advisory, Heat Warning 11 a.m. - 8 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: WSW 5-10 mph.

Wednesday - Friday: Near record highs with possible heat advisories and warnings. Scattered afternoon showers and thunderstorms daily. 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: Temperatures return to near seasonal this weekend with a chance of afternoon showers and thunderstorms.

Sunrise: 6:55 p.m.

Sunset: 8:05 p.m.

Many residents on Flores island in East Nusa Tenggara province spent the day mourning victims while military teams tried to deliver food, clean water and clothing to inaccessible communities by plane.

The Saturday morning quake left widespread damage, with buildings collapsed onto parked cars, homes shattered and trees and boulders blocking roads.

“My house is just rubble now,” said Rasyid Jafar, a clothing trader in the village of Reo, the hardest-hit area in Manggarai regency. "We need food, medicine and clean water urgently.”

During Indonesia’s Independence Day ceremony in the capital, Jakarta, President Prabowo Subianto asked participants to pray for people affected by disasters in East Nusa Tenggara and other parts of the country, while leading a nationwide moment of silence honoring the nation’s independence heroes.

More than 4,500 homes were damaged when the quake struck Flores island early Saturday. Some 19,000 people were forced into temporary shelters and 213 people were injured, according to the National Disaster Management Agency or BNPB. The disaster also damaged 122 health facilities, 252 schools and 84 places of worship.

The province's governor declared a 14-day state of emergency on Sunday.

The quake occurred at a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles) shortly before 6 a.m. Saturday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and residents fled in panic as tsunami warnings were issued but later lifted. Authorities have since recorded 1,576 aftershocks into Monday, though only 54 were felt by residents.

Thousands await aid amid devastation

Thousands of people on Flores camped outside collapsed homes under tarpaulin tents overnight into Monday, sleeping outside because of the danger of more aftershocks.

For many residents, the disaster revived painful memories of a powerful earthquake and tsunami that struck Flores in 1992, killing about 2,500 people.

As thousands of survivors remain in need of food, shelter and medical treatment, the government said more than 1,800 military and police personnel have been deployed across the disaster zone, supported by 10 aircraft and several vessels, to distribute more than 100 metric tons of emergency aid.

Nearly 5,400 food packages, two field hospital tents, medicines and clothing were being delivered to communities across the disaster zone, as logistical challenges slowed deliveries to some hard-hit communities, national disaster agency Deputy Chief Abdul Muhari said in a video statement.

Authorities set up two emergency field hospitals in the worst-hit town of Ruteng to treat earthquake victims after local hospitals were damaged, with two crisis management teams overseeing a health emergency operation center, Muhari said.

He also said rescue teams continued searching for victims in the affected areas, although no residents have reported any family members still missing.

Rescuers struggle to reach isolated communities

Aid workers reached tiny Palue Island, one of the areas closest to the earthquake’s epicenter, late Sunday, after a difficult sea and land journey through landslide-hit terrain, authorities said. Thousands of residents remained in urgent need of assistance.

"The roads are steep and many were blocked by landslides. It was a near-death journey,” said the deputy police chief of Sikka regency, Marselus Yugo Amboro, whose team was among the first to reach the island with emergency supplies.

He said initial assessments revealed extensive damage, with one villager killed, two seriously injured and nearly 150 homes destroyed.

Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped arc of seismic faults and volcanoes.

In 2018, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake triggered a tsunami on the island of Sulawesi that killed more than 4,400 people. In 2004, a magnitude 9.1 quake off Sumatra unleashed a tsunami that killed about 230,000 people in a dozen countries, nearly 170,000 in Aceh province alone.

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Karmini reported from Jakarta. Associated Press journalists Edna Tarigan, Dita Alangkara and Andi Jatmiko, in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this story.

The Southeastern Conference gets bragging rights with nine ranked teams, but the Big Ten isn’t far behind with eight.

Indiana finished the 2025 season at No. 1 in the rankings after a historic 16-0 run and national championship game victory. This season, Ohio State enters with the best odds (+600) to win it all. Notre Dame (+650), Texas (+650), Indiana (+800) and Oregon (+800) round out the top five.

The Top 25 voters are more than 60 journalists covering college football for AP members and other news organizations. They’re urged to base their votes on head-to-head results, not reputation, preseason speculation or regional bias.

What comes next?

Now comes the good part.

The first regular-season poll will be released at noon on Tuesday, Sept. 8, after the opening two weekends of college football. After that, the AP Top 25 will drop every Sunday at 2 p.m. ET through the end of the regular season.

The final regular-season poll will be released Dec. 6 at 11 a.m. ET, right before the College Football Playoff bracket is revealed. The final AP Top 25 of the season will be released at noon on Jan. 26, after the national championship game.

The CFP bracket based on the preseason AP Top 25

Based on the AP Top 25 preseason rankings, the CFP would open like this:

— No. 9 seed Mississippi at No. 8 Texas A&M. Winner vs. No. 1 Ohio State.

— No. 12 seed Boise State at No. 5 Texas. Winner vs. No. 4 Notre Dame.

— No. 10 seed Oklahoma at No. 7 seed Miami. Winner vs. No. 2 Oregon.

— No. 11 seed Texas Tech at No. 6 Indiana. Winner vs. No. 3 Georgia.

Music City Kickoff got a good one

Last year’s Week 1 featured three marquee matchups between ranked teams as Texas traveled to Ohio State, Miami faced Notre Dame and LSU took on Clemson.

This year, the inaugural Music City Kickoff game in Nashville will feature the only ranked-on-ranked matchup in Week 1. No. 9 Ole Miss and No. 24 Louisville meet at Nissan Stadium, home of the Tennessee Titans, on Sept. 6.

The ranked matchups pick up in Week 2 with two ranked matchups featuring SEC and Big Ten schools. Texas will host Ohio State in a rematch under the lights on Saturday, Sept. 12, while Oklahoma heads to Ann Arbor to face Michigan at noon.

No. 4 Notre Dame set to embark on revenge tour

No matter how Marcus Freeman wants to downplay it, Notre Dame is still smarting about not being selected for the CFP after winning 10 straight games following season-opening losses to Miami and Texas A&M.

Quarterback C.J. Carr returns and is being touted as a Heisman Trophy candidate. He’ll be working with a deep receiving corps led by Jordan Faison and Jaden Greathouse. Former Ohio State receivers Mylan Graham and Quincy Porter also are in the mix.

All-America candidate Leonard Moore returns at defensive back while defensive end Boubacar Traore and linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa add punch to the Notre Dame’s defense.

No. 2 Oregon appears set to break through

Oregon has the look of a team that could be ready to break through and win its first national championship.

The Ducks have one of the most seasoned teams in the nation with quarterback Dante Moore among six starters back on offense. Defensive lineman A’Mauri Washington and edge Matayo Uiagalelei lead a defense that returns eight starters.

Each of the last two years the Ducks have had their season end in the CFP with a loss to a Big Ten opponent they were playing for the second time that season.

In 2024, Oregon won the Big Ten title with a 13-0 record in its first year in the conference and was the No. 1 CFP seed. The Ducks, who beat Ohio State 32-31 in the regular season, lost 41-21 to the Buckeyes.

In 2025, Oregon’s only two losses were to Indiana – 30-20 in the regular season and 56-22 in a playoff semifinal.

“I think that speaks volumes about our league, especially when you’re talking about repeat games within our league,” coach Dan Lanning said. “We have some unbelievable coaches, great teams. There’s a lot of things we studied with ourselves in this offseason.

“Sometimes the ball has to bounce the right way. Sometimes you can do something schematically. We have studied other teams that have won games in their second opportunity. We’re looking for our opportunity to be a team like that.”

No. 1 Buckeyes are loaded but face tough schedule

Ohio State starts a season No. 1 for the ninth time. The Buckeyes didn’t end there the previous eight.

They have an excruciating schedule but are built for what awaits.

Jeremiah Smith is the most productive receiver in the nation, quarterback Julian Sayin is one of the most accurate passers and the offensive line is elite. There are plenty of talented transfers waiting to emerge for a defense replacing eight starters, all of whom were drafted.

The Buckeyes visit Indiana on Oct. 17 and host Oregon on Nov. 7. Those games will go a long way in deciding which teams make the Big Ten championship game in Indianapolis, not to mention impact CFP seeding.

Missouri only team that will play 5 of the preseason top 10 teams

No. 25 Missouri has the 12th-toughest schedule in the country, according to ESPN, but the Tigers are the only team that will play five of the top 10 in the AP Top 25 preseason poll.

All five of those are bunched into the Tigers’ final seven regular-season games. They play No. 8 Texas A&M on Oct. 10, at No. 9 Mississippi on Oct. 17, No. 5 Texas on Nov. 7, at No. 3 Georgia on Nov. 14 and No. 10 Oklahoma on Nov. 28.

Oklahoma, which plays four top-10 teams, has ESPN’s second-toughest schedule behind Arkansas. No. 5 Texas’ schedule is ranked third in degree of difficulty.

On the bubble

Clemson was the first team out with 112 points, five fewer than No. 25 Missouri. Florida, Boise State, Arizona, TCU, Navy and South Carolina were the next teams out, each received double-digit points.

The bubble teams enter the season in unique position to move up quickly in the ranks. With Clemson just points away at No. 26, a Week 1 win could easily do the trick.

The bad news? Clemson heads to No. 11 LSU for its season debut on Sept. 5.

Expectations remain high for Texas – just not as high as last year

After ranking No. 1 in last year’s preseason poll, the Longhorns enter the 2026 season at No. 5, behind Ohio State, Oregon, Georgia and Notre Dame.

Texas will be put to the test early, with a Week 2 rematch against Ohio State giving the Longhorns a chance to make a case for a higher ranking.

Arch Manning struggled under high expectations in his first career start last season against Ohio State, gaining momentum only in the fourth quarter of a 14-7 loss. After completing nine passes for 38 yards and an interception through the first three quarters, Manning finished the game with 17 completions for 170 yards.

A Week 2 win against the top-ranked team in the preseason poll would give the Longhorns the kind of start they desperately needed last year.

In the ACC, it’s Miami … and everyone else

Miami has a good-sized lead over the other ACC teams in the preseason poll. The Hurricanes came in at No. 7 and earned one first-place vote after a season that ended just shy of a national title.

SMU was the next-closest team at No. 19. Louisville squeaked in at No. 24.

The ACC also had three teams ranked in last year’s preseason poll. Clemson ranked No. 4 before what turned out to be a disappointing season. Miami ranked No. 10, and SMU came in at No. 16.

The ACC ended up being a weird one last year, with an unranked Duke team taking on then-No. 16 Virginia in the conference championship game. Duke delivered a 27-20 overtime win, but it wasn’t enough for the CFP committee to view them as a viable option. Miami instead earned an at-large bid, and James Madison and Tulane secured bids as two of the five highest-ranked conference champions.

Clemson left out of preseason poll for first time since 2011

Clemson is unranked in the AP preseason Top 25 for the first time since 2011.

The Tigers almost got in. They received the most voting points among teams left out. They’re five points behind No. 25 Missouri.

Clemson is coming off a 7-6 season, its worst since 2010. The offense struggled to get anything going in the ground game and was second-to-last in the ACC in third-down conversions. The defense underachieved.

Look for the offense to be much better with the return of offensive coordinator Chad Morris, who led some of the nation’s most potent offenses when he had the same job at Clemson from 2011-14. The defense should play with more confidence in Tom Allen’s second year as coordinator.

Clemson gets a measuring-stick game right away when they open at No. 11 LSU.

Five teams got first-place votes, but not No. 3 and No. 5

Of the top seven teams, five received first-place votes: Ohio State (40), Oregon (14), Notre Dame (6), Indiana (8) and Miami (1). Voters skipped over No. 3 Georgia and No. 5 Texas, which both fell into the top five but didn’t receive first-place votes.

Perhaps most notably, voters don’t see an SEC team breaking a three-year championship drought. After Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana took home the last three titles, faith in the Big Ten remains high.

Ohio State and Oregon, the top two teams in the poll, give the Big Ten its first preseason 1-2 since 1961 — a sign that voters expect the conference to bring home a fourth straight national title.

Sarkisian: Preseason polls great for conversation, and that’s about it

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, whose team landed No. 5 in the AP Top 25 preseason poll, doesn’t put much credence in the polls. The polls do have some value, though, he said.

“I love the polls for college football fans, for the excitement, for the marquee matchups, for all those things,” he said. “But the polls internally, they just don’t matter. They’re really irrelevant. I think we’ve gotten to a point now as a team to understand that what matters is how we play each and every Saturday.”

Georgia holds steady in the top five

Georgia enters the season at No. 3, marking the eighth straight year with a top-five preseason ranking.

The Bulldogs will have plenty of familiar faces taking the field this fall, with quarterback Gunner Stockton, running back duo Nate Frazier and Chauncey Bowens and tight end Lawson Luckie bringing valuable game experience to the offense. Expectations are high for linebackers Raylen Wilson and Chris Cole, while KJ Bolden, Kyron Jones and Ellis Robinson IV will hold down the secondary.

Georgia earned the No. 3 seed and a first-round bye in the 12-team College Football Playoff after beating Alabama in the SEC Championship game. The Bulldogs went on to fall 39-34 to Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl.

Conference breakdown

SEC (9): No. 3 Georgia, No. 5 Texas, No. 8 Texas A&M, No. 9 Mississippi, No. 10 Oklahoma, No. 11 LSU, No. 13 Alabama, No. 20 Tennessee, No. 25 Missouri

Big Ten (8): No. 1 Ohio State, No. 2 Oregon, No. 6 Indiana, No. T-14 USC, No. 16 Michigan, No. 17 Washington, No. 18 Penn State, No. 22 Iowa

Big 12 (4): No. 12 Texas Tech, No. T-14 BYU, No. 21 Utah, No. 23 Houston

ACC (3): No. 7 Miami, No. 19 SMU, No. 24 Louisville

Independent (1): No. 4 Notre Dame

No Group of 6 teams ranked

After two non-power conference teams (Tulane, James Madison) made the CFP in 2025, none cracked the preseason Top 25.

Since two were ranked in the preseason in 2022, only Tulane in 2023 and Boise State in 2025 have started a season in the Top 25.

Boise State, which has moved from the Mountain West to the new Pac-12, was the top vote-getter among Group of Six teams outside the Top 25. Nine others got at least one vote.

New coaches, same expectations

Four Top 25 teams have new coaches, and they’ve been given a short runway.

Pete Golding, who begins his first full season at No. 9 Mississippi, was able to keep key pieces of the staff and he brought back top players. He led the Rebels to the CFP semifinals after Lane Kiffin’s ugly departure, and another magical run is possible.

Speaking of Kiffin, much is expected at No. 11 LSU. The Tigers haven’t gone to the CFP since winning it all in 2019 and have lost at least four games in five of the six seasons since.

Penn State is No. 18, which seems generous given Matt Campbell will be relying on players he brought with him from Iowa State.

Morgan Scalley, entering his 19th year at No. 21 Utah, gets back QB Devon Dampier and RB Wayshawn Parker but not many other starters from an 11-2 team.

SEC has 9 ranked teams to Big Ten’s 8

Having Ohio State and Oregon enter the season Nos. 1 and 2 ahead of sixth-ranked defending conference and national champion Indiana is a flex for the Big Ten, which already is riding the momentum of winning the last three national titles.

Having five of the top 10 teams, and seven of the top 13, bolsters the SEC’s contention that it has greater depth. The SEC has nine ranked teams compared to the Big Ten’s eight.

The debate goes on over conference supremacy and will only heat up when the Big Ten and SEC square off in the first heavyweight games of the season Sept. 12. That’s when No. 10 Oklahoma visits No. 16 Michigan and No. 1 Ohio State goes to No. 5 Texas. Both are rematches of games won by the home team last year — OU 24-13 and Ohio State 14-7.

Longhorns, No. 1 in last year’s preseason poll, look to bounce back

The Longhorns entered the 2025 season at No. 1 after receiving 25 first-place votes — two more than No. 2 Penn State. But after a Week 1 loss to Ohio State, Texas found itself fighting upstream to maintain its top-ranked status. An October loss to a struggling Florida team didn’t help either, knocking Texas out of the rankings altogether.

The Longhorns, despite gutting out a few impressive wins, ultimately fell short of the 12-team College Football Playoff after Georgia handed them a third loss.

Eyes will be on quarterback Arch Manning, who the Longhorns hope makes the expected jump from year one to year two as a full-time starter. Manning, a favorite for the Heisman Trophy this year, will have to lead a team facing plenty of expectations once again.

Buckeyes are an early favorite

It’s the first time the Buckeyes have topped the list since the 2015 preseason.

Ohio State ranked No. 1 in the AP Top 25 for the entire regular season last year, only dropping after a Big Ten Championship game defeat from Indiana. With a 12-1 record, Ohio State still earned the No. 2 seed and a first-round bye in the College Football Playoff. The Buckeyes ultimately went on to drop 24-14 to eventual runners-up, Miami, in the Cotton Bowl.Gallery

This season appears promising with quarterback and receiver duo Julian Sayin and Jeremiah Smith returning to the offense. Veteran defensive end Kenyatta Jackson Jr. is expected to anchor the defense. Notre Dame and Texas are tied for the second best odds at +650. Indiana (+800) and Oregon (+800) round out the top five.

How are votes counted?

There was a time when voters called, emailed and faxed their votes to the AP. Long ago, the ballots were tabulated by hand.

Now voting is done online and all the tabulation is automated.

There is a 1-25 point system, with a team voted No. 1 receiving 25 points down to 1 point for a 25th-place vote. After that, it’s simple: The poll lists the teams with the most points from 1 to 25 and others receiving votes are also noted.

Where did we leave off?

After shocking the nation with a perfect 16-0 record, Big Ten title and national championship victory, the Indiana Hoosiers were unanimously voted No. 1 in the final poll of the season.

Runners-up Miami finished right behind after falling just short of a national title. Miami’s No. 2 ranking was its highest since the 2002 season.

Ole Miss, Oregon and Ohio State rounded out the top five.

But a lot can change from one year to the next.

Eight Hoosiers ascended to the pros, including Heisman winner and first-overall pick Fernando Mendoza. Miami had nine draftees, including three first-rounders.

Ole Miss, Oregon and Ohio State have the advantage of a returning quarterback in 2026 — each in the Heisman conversation ahead of the season.

The origin story

The Associated Press Top 25 college football poll started in 1936, the brainchild of former sports editor Alan J. Gould.

The number of teams ranked, the number of voters on the panel and how the ballots are tabulated has fluctuated over the years, but no news organization has been ranking teams and naming a major college football national champion longer than the AP. It has been the Top 10, Top 20 and, since 1989, the Top 25.

The Team Penske driver is embracing the challenge of proving he can win a title in the format that puts a greater emphasis on banking consistently strong finishes.

“Do I have a little chip on my shoulder? That’s a clear yes,” Logano said with a chuckle after his victory Saturday at Richmond Raceway. “So much so that our team slogan is ‘4 the haters.’ That’s where we’re at. That’s good extra motivation.”

With an impressive surge from 20th to ninth in the standings over the past six races, Logano has flipped the narrative on the elimination playoffs that were in place for 12 years.

From 2014-25, the waning races of NASCAR’s regular season typically were a scramble to make the championship field as a win earned a berth.

But that safety valve has disappeared in the Chase, which will rely entirely on points to set the 16-driver field.

The top 16 in the provisional Chase have been unchanged for the past four races, and the grid for the 10-race title run likely will remain the same at New Hampshire Motor Speedway this weekend.

Shane van Gisbergen holds the 16th and final spot by 50 points over Ryan Preece, who dropped 21 points further below the Chase cutline with a 17th-place finish at Richmond.

The next three drivers ranked outside the Chase — Ross Chastain (12th at Richmond), Brad Keselowski (26th) and Erik Jones (27th) — also lost ground, diluting the potential drama of a surprise qualifier.

“The number of guys that feel the pressure of making the Chase is probably less,” said Christopher Bell, who is among seven drivers who have clinched Chase spots. “In years past, everybody on the outside still had an opportunity to get in, and now it’s kind of dwindled to a couple guys fighting for the spots.”

There’s been more intrigue toward the top half of the standings — particularly the progress of the Team Penske trio.

As Logano continued his push up the points ladder, teammate Ryan Blaney moved past Ty Gibbs into second in the standings at Richmond. Austin Cindric, Penske’s third driver, shored up his title eligibility with a career-best third on a short track to move up a spot to 15th in the points.

Denny Hamlin has a 115-point lead on Blaney and likely will clinch the Chase’s top seed Sunday at New Hampshire, which will be followed by the Aug. 29 regular-season finale at Daytona International Speedway.

The standings then will be reset for the Chase, which begins Sept. 6 at Darlington Raceway with the championship leader ahead by 25 points. Second will start 10 points ahead of third, and the remaining 14 spots will be separated by five-point increments.

“Getting to second is top of mind because every point is going to matter,” Blaney said.

There also is an emphasis on finishing the regular season in the top half of the points standings.

Racing Insights, a NASCAR analytics firm, ran more than 25,000 computer simulations of Chase outcomes, and the champion started in the top six 85% of the time.

Logano, who made the Chase only once while racing under the system in his first five Cup seasons from 2009-13, is 36 points from sixth-ranked Chase Elliott.

“We’ve been able to switch our goals from making the Chase to winning the championship,” said Logano, whose No. 22 Ford was ranked 17th before winning two of the past four races. “It’s quite the turnaround. I look at the last month and a half, we’ve been capable of winning all of them.”

Logano could be among several more drivers who lock into the championship Sunday with a solid result at New Hampshire.

Crew chief Paul Wolfe credited Logano with buoying morale when the team notched only two top-five finishes in the first half of the season.

“I’m proud of everyone sticking together,” Logano said. “There are times you see teams break, and it doesn’t take much longer running the way we were until something probably was going to break. We’ve been able to make quite the recovery to have a legit shot at the championship.”

Larson double duty

After finishing sixth at Richmond, Kyle Larson immediately flew to Iowa and scored his fourth victory in the Knoxville Nationals, a prestigious sprint car event. Larson qualified on the pole position last week by winning a preliminary race at the renowned dirt track in Knoxville, Iowa.

He had expected to miss Saturday's main event because of the schedule conflict with Richmond, but a rain delay at Knoxville Raceway allowed the two-time Cup Series champion to arrive in time to lead all 50 laps. “It’s extremely surreal just to talk about the day and the range of emotions,” Larson said.

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See AP’s full auto racing coverage here

The process launched by newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche is a victory for Second Amendment advocates who have long pushed for nonviolent people with felony convictions to be given a pathway to regain their legal right to own firearms.

“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and the federal government should not permanently deprive Americans of a constitutional right without regard to whether they pose a danger to public safety,” Blanche said in a statement. The attorney general said the new process will protect “public safety while giving deserving Americans a real path to restoration.”

It’s the latest move by President Donald Trump's administration to ease firearms restrictions. The Justice Department moved earlier this year to roll back and modify a slate of gun regulations. Separately, the department recently decided against challenging a court ruling that struck down regulations on firearm suppressors and certain guns.

Federal law has long allowed people who've had their gun rights stripped because of felony convictions to petition the government for the ability to own firearms again, but Congress since 1992 has effectively barred the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from processing applications.

The Trump administration's rule aims to circumvent that by establishing a new application system using an online portal.

The Justice Department says restoration will be granted on a case-by-case basis, weighing a person's record and reputation to determine whether they pose a likely threat to public safety. Officials say people who have been convicted of violent crimes, registered sex offenders, people living in the country illegally and others whom officials believe pose a danger to society will be denied “absent extraordinary circumstances.”

Kris Brown, the president of Brady, which advocates for stronger gun laws, said her group is still reviewing the administration’s final rule but has stressed the need for a “robust and thoughtful system that minimizes the risk to public safety."

“Yet the Trump administration has consistently shown us they have no such discretion, including by restoring gun rights to convicted domestic abusers and violent January 6 insurrectionists, and by tirelessly rolling back broad policies proven to prevent crime and gun violence,” Brown said in a statement.

Rodri was expected to undergo a medical on Tuesday as Barcelona and City exchanged documentation to finalize the agreement.

Barcelona agreed to a deal worth 76.5 million euros ($88.5 million), a person with knowledge of the transaction confirmed to the Associated Press on Sunday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the transfer have not been made public.

“Very happy to arrive. There have been some very intense days, but I'm happy that everything has been resolved,” Rodri told reporters briefly. “For me it's a dream to play for Barcelona. I'm excited about being with my teammates, many of them I already know. Now it's time to get to work and give my best.”

The 30-year-old Rodri helped Spain secure its second World Cup title last month and will join international teammates Lamine Yamal, Dani Olmo, Pau Cubarsí, Gavi and Pedri at Barceclona.

Rodri won the Golden Ball as the World Cup’s best player. He had one year left on his contract at City. His deal with Barcelona reportedly will go until 2030.

Real Madrid was also reportedly interested in signing Rodri, and he had loudly praised the Barcelona rival in the past.

Hansi Flick's Barcelona, chasing a three-peat in La Liga, has already boosted its squad with England forward Anthony Gordon, who will help to make up for the departures of Robert Lewandowski and Ferran Torres, who scored the winning goal in extra time in the World Cup final against Argentina.

The club is also set to add defender João Cancelo in the next few days.

Rodri joined City from Atletico Madrid in 2019. He scored the winning goal in the Champions League final victory over Inter Milan in 2023, and won the Ballon d'Or as the world's best player the following year after being part of Spain's European Championship-winning team.

His departure further weakens City's midfield, with Bernardo Silva having left for Real Madrid this offseason.

Rodri did not play on Sunday in City’s 3-0 defeat to Arsenal in the Community Shield. He is recovering from minor back surgery he underwent after the World Cup.

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AP Sports Writers Steve Douglas and Joseph Wilson contributed to this report.

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See AP’s full soccer coverage here

Coen said the Jaguars intended to go full pads and get in a “good bang workday,” but the circumstances changed that around.

“We’re trying to get some good work this week, so, I think some good things were able to happen today, but obviously not the full practice we wanted to have,” Coen said.

It wasn’t the cleanest day at the office for the Jaguars. There were too many dropped passes and a few too many missed throws. In fact, the practice ran long and ended with Trevor Lawrence’s final throw of the day essentially a spike because the play didn’t develop properly. Coen said he wasn’t bothered by that final play even though it felt like an abrupt end to the day.

After Saturday’s 24-20 preseason win over the Saints, the Jaguars have a few growing issues to confront. The offensive line remains a bit of a question after Chuma Edoga left injured on the team’s first play. Coen said Edoga could come back before the end of training camp. And backup quarterback Nick Mullens struggled against New Orleans, leaving the game injured and missing practice Monday.

The team also placed linebacker Parker Hughes on injured reserve, meaning the seventh-round rookie will miss the season. Coen said Jacksonville is kicking around the idea of Trevor Lawrence and the starters playing in Friday’s preseason game against the Panthers. Those teams will hold a joint practice on Wednesday.

“I’m trending towards us potentially playing Friday night a little bit with the ones. Yeah, so that’s the goal right now, is to look at potentially playing him a little Friday night. You just look at the amount of padded days that we actually have left until the game week and it’s very few and far between,” Coen said. “So, you set a schedule, you set it, and you’re like, well, timing and circumstances, things change and when you have to pivot a little bit. I think we need a little bit more work in terms of coming off of the Saints joint and the Saints game, I think we just need a little bit more padded work against each other, good on good.”

QB tracker:

Trevor Lawrence: 19 for 34.

Carter Bradley: 3 for 4.

Joey Aguilar: 1 for 3.

RB tracker:

Bhayshul Tuten: Two carries, both with Lawrence.

Chris Rodriguez: Four carries, all with Lawrence.

Ameer Abdullah: One carry with Lawrence.

Notebook from Monday

• Nick Mullens didn’t practice.
• Ezra Cleveland spent most of his day at right tackle. This is the most interesting point of the day. As the Jags continue to shift pieces to try and find the best five, Cleveland shifted to tackle for the day. It was only a few years ago that he started at left tackle in a game for the Jags, so not the craziest move in the world.
• The beneficiary of Cleveland sliding is Emmanuel Pregnon. The rookie played well in the Jags preseason game; clearly well enough that the coaches wanted a look at him with the top group.
• Could Anton Harrison, Pregnon, Robert Hainsey, Jonah Monheim, and Cleveland be the Jags starting five for Week 1? … Maybe.
• Dennis Gardeck played well for the Jags last year, but he has been a consistent pressure player for the Jags this camp. Gardeck was coming off a series injury last training camp; now with that injury a year behind him, Gardeck looks like a guy that can be more impactful than he was even a year ago.
• Keep an eye on Bryan Thomas Jr. The other BT. The UDFA has been working to make his mark on special teams. He is a guy that has caught some attention and had some nice reps during the preseason game.
• I’m starting to think linebacker might end up being more of a rotation than a clear winner. Ventrell Miller and Branson Combs are locked into the tightest position battle on the team, but I’m starting to think there won’t be a clear winner. Both guys have their strengths, and neither has been able to truly separate themselves.

The hearing lasted only a few minutes.

McGrew was sentenced to 5 years with credit for 411 days of time served on the charge of tampering with evidence.

She was sentenced to 45 years with credit for 411 days of time served on the charge of second-degree murder.

The sentences will run concurrently.

Sentencing was originally scheduled to happen last month, but Judge Lindsay Tygart said that the court needed more time to review the materials and testimony presented in the case before giving a sentence.

“The court has been presented with an extensive amount of materials of evidence of testimony that the court is required to consider...the court is going to take a bit of time to re-review the materials and the evidence has been presented in the case not just today, but candidly from our prior hearings...,” Tygart said.

In an earlier sentencing hearing, Journee McGrew, 22, told the court that Waduta Woodley, whom she had known since she was a child, molested her multiple times for years, starting when she was in elementary school.

Woodley’s blood-soaked body was discovered by police in the breezeway of an apartment complex on Jacksonville’s Westside in July 2025.

RELATED: Woman describes killing man with hammer, testifies that he molested her for years as a child

McGrew was arrested that same day in connection with the discovery and charged with murder and concealing evidence.

McGrew originally pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and tampering with evidence. She later changed her plea to guilty in December 2025, and has been awaiting sentencing ever since.

McGrew’s mother takes the stand, reads statements from family

On July 31, McGrew’s mother, Jennifer Owens, took the stand and read prepared statements from McGrew’s brothers who could not attend in person. They described McGrew as a gentle person who has shown care for others and never hesitated to help.

Her older brother, Victor McGrew, who she was living with at the time of the incident, said that Journee McGrew was motivated and goal-oriented and was passionate about becoming a dental assistant.

“The conversations were always about getting ahead in life. Being a strong individual and conquering her mental health struggles. She was here with me and would always tell me about her dreams and aspirations and all the things she wanted to do in life,” Victor McGrew said in a prepared statement.

He also said he watched over her because he knew how vulnerable she is.

“This is the absolute last thing I would expect for my sister,” the statement continued. “I knew that she was struggling with her mental health. People have assaulted her, took advantage of her vulnerability and it took a toll on her mind. I’m in no way trying to justify her actions. I urge the court to consider the things she struggled with.”

Owens said her daughter was diagnosed with schizophrenia disorder, bipolar disorder and PTSD and witnessed her get treatment for it.

The state argued that McGrew didn’t tell her mother about the alleged abuse until 2024, and they never went to the police about it.

Dr. Kathrin Ritter is a clinical neuropsychologist who helped treat McGrew. She talked about how the multiple disorders may have affected her decision-making.

“At the time of the event, she maintained some understanding, but her judgment, her ability to regulate her behavior, her ability to manage impulses, her threat perception, her ability to think and reason through consequences of behavior. All of that was significantly diminished,” Ritter said.

State recommends life sentence

The state recommended a life sentence for McGrew.

“McGrew decided last year to be judge, jury, and executioner. She decided she was going to take the law into her own hands. She decided to be a vigilante, to be retaliatory and to impose a sentence,” the state said.

The prosecutor said that McGrew didn’t call the police about the abuse, but she told her family years later. She also argued that because of her conditions, she needs to be under constant medication and the only way for her to do that is to be incarcerated.

“She has indicated that when she feels paranoid and delusional, this defendant responds in acts of violence,” the prosecutor said. “Any sort of probation or community release that allows her to go off of her medication allows her to become a danger to the public at large.”

Defense recommends reasonable sentence to be released

The defense said that because of her mental conditions and Ritter’s testimony that McGrew’s thought process was disorganized because of them, the court should consider a reasonable sentence so that she can continue treatment.

“Her cognitive reasoning was impaired to the point where it affected her decision making in this case [Ritter] describes her behavior as self-preservation due to those delusions and due to her diseases,” the defense said.

Her lawyer said that she is currently being treated while she’s in jail and should be offered an opportunity to re-enter society.

“She has an opportunity to heal from the illness in part, that Mr. Woodley caused her and because of that I’m just asking this court to sentence Ms. McGrew to a reasonable sentence where she will have the opportunity to be released.”

What she claims

McGrew testified during a sentencing hearing in April that she was diagnosed with psychosis and post-traumatic stress disorder when she was Baker Acted before the murder.

Watch her full testimony below:

McGrew said she hit Woodley multiple times with a hammer after she lured him to her apartment by saying she wanted to have sex.

McGrew said it wasn’t her plan to have sex or to kill Woodley, but instead to collect evidence of his alleged abuse that could be used against him.

“This was not supposed to happen. I really wasn’t in my right mind when this happened. I’m not violent, and I’m sorry for this situation,” she said in a message to the courtroom.

Woodley’s mother spoke on behalf of her son.

“Everything changed in a second when your only son has been murdered,” his mother said in court. “Yes, this has affected my family, my daughter, my granddaughter [...] We don’t know how to cope.”

When McGrew was asked if she had a message for the family, she responded:

“I am sorry about what I did,” McGrew said. “I know how much I impacted your family and mine. I’m really sorry for what happened.”

The killing

According to her arrest report, Jacksonville police were called to the Cross Creek Apartment complex on July 2, 2025, about a dispute.

When officers arrived, they found Woodley suffering from what appeared to be blunt force trauma to his head and face. Woodley was lying on the ground in front of McGrew’s apartment.

According to the arrest report, Woodley had a white piece of paper on his chest that read, “PEDO Touches Children.” The writing was in green ink from a green highlighter.

Officers ordered McGrew to come out of her apartment, and she complied. As she was being detained, the report said she asked if Woodley was still alive.

After a search warrant was obtained for McGrew’s apartment, police went inside and found bloody footprints leading from the front door to the bathroom.

According to the arrest report, when officers entered McGrew’s bathroom, they found a metal hammer in the sink. Officers discovered blood on the hammer’s handle. The sink drain plug was later found in McGrew’s bedroom. The arrest report states that the liquid found on the drain plug tested positive for blood.

The arrest report also states that police found a pair of pink Crocs slippers covered in blood, along with a tank top and a pair of pants that were also covered in blood. The search also turned up a notebook with loose paper and a green highlighter.

McGrew told investigators that Woodley had been sexually grooming her since she was 8 years old and had sexually assaulted her multiple times, the report said.

The report went on to say that on July 1, she sent Woodley a text, saying that she had been sexually fantasizing about him and regretted treating him poorly. That night, she invited him to her apartment, according to the report.

McGrew told police that by 1 a.m., Woodley pressured her to have sex, which she denied him and asked him to leave. She said as they were leaving the room toward the front entrance, she grabbed a hammer and hid it behind her back.

The report said that when the two got to the front doorway, Woodley grabbed her in a non-forceful manner, and that’s when she began hitting him with the hammer.

Police asked her if she had invited Woodley over with plans to kill him, but her response was redacted from the arrest report.

News4JAX conducted a criminal background check on Woodley and could not find any criminal offenses related to sexually assaulting or abusing children.

McGrew said she never reported the alleged abuse because she lived with Woodley and feared being kicked out. She also testified she told friends when she was young, but didn’t share with her family or doctors until she was in her 20s.

The standoff, in the village of Qusra, has seen groups of settlers surround several Palestinian houses and prevent residents from leaving. The United States has condemned the siege and the Israeli military has deployed troops it says are there to maintain order.

The siege of Palestinian homes by Israeli settlers comes as violence in the West Bank has soared in recent months. The settlers, emboldened by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, have ramped up attacks on Palestinian towns and villages, harassing residents and setting homes, mosques and fields ablaze.

Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 87 Palestinians so far this year, according to Palestinian health officials. Palestinians have killed three Israelis, including two who were killed during clashes in the West Bank village of Tell last month.

As Loui Ridi, an Ohio-based owner of one of the houses, landed in Israel, settlers were still roaming near Qusra, according to video footage taken by his brother. It showed settlers driving ATVs and speaking with soldiers.

Ridi had also watched the scenes unfold from afar through his home security cameras.

“I've been watching this live for many days and now this is the second week. I can't sleep,” he told reporters at Israel’s main international airport. “I can’t let the settlers steal my house while I was watching."

He finally arrived in Qusra on Monday evening, where he first reunited with his mother and sister before moving on to his house. Ridi's brother, Qusai Abu Rida, and his teenage son had stayed inside the home to protect the property.

As Ridi waited for Israel’s military to escort him to the house, he said he believed little had changed since early last week, when the siege began.

Israel has since declared the neighborhood where Ridi’s home is located a closed military zone. But on Monday, his brother’s footage still showed soldiers interacting amicably with settlers.

“I should be able to go to my house freely, anytime I want,” he said. “It is a frustration and a nightmare for the entire family.”

__ Metz reported from Tel Aviv, Israel.

Syrians have taken to social media and the streets in recent days to demand answers about the death of Mohammad Ghamira, who was buried Monday in his hometown of al-Haffah in coastal Latakia province.

When insurgents unseated former President Bashar Assad in December 2024 after a nearly 14-year civil war, they opened the country's notorious prisons. During Assad's rule, rights groups say, thousands of prisoners were killed in mass executions or died from injuries and disease. Detainees were subjected to torture, beatings and rape.

Officials with the government of interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa have promised accountability in Ghamira’s case, but rights groups say it is not an isolated incident and that abuses persist in detention centers.

The detainee had hemophilia, which affects blood clotting

Ghamira, a 29-year-old father of two, was a former volunteer with the White Helmets civil defense organization, which operated in opposition-held areas before Assad's fall.

He died in a hospital in Latakia on Sunday after being released from jail. He had been detained days earlier following an "allegation of theft involving a sum of money,” Latakia’s internal security command said in a statement, without giving more details.

Syria’s Minister of Emergency and Disaster Management Raed al-Saleh, who was previously head of the White Helmets, said on X that Ghamira had died of “complications from cerebral and gastrointestinal hemorrhaging” that “resulted from a beating he sustained after being detained at the al-Haffah police station.”

Al-Saleh and Ghamira’s relatives said he had hemophilia, a condition affecting the blood’s ability to clot.

Ghamira’s uncle, Issam Ghamira, said in a video interview with state news agency SANA that the family had told the police chief in al-Haffah that his nephew had hemophilia and warned against hitting him. Despite that, he said, his nephew was hit while in custody.

Syria’s interior ministry announced an investigation into Ghamira’s death and said seven interior ministry personnel were detained for questioning.

Syria’s Interior Ministry spokesperson Noureddine al-Baba, speaking to journalists, acknowledged “shortcomings and deficiencies” in some of the country's police departments but said others were doing “exceptional” work.

“God willing, this painful incident will serve as a catalyst for positive change in the operations of the ministry of interior," he said.

Watchdogs call Ghamira’s death part of a wider problem

In a report released in March, the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic said it had documented “torture and ill-treatment” in 18 official detention facilities and 12 “makeshift facilities” in different areas of Syria between January and October 2025, in the months following Assad's ouster as the new government asserted control.

The practices it documented included beating prisoners with rifle butts, sticks, pipes, bars and cables; the use of electric shocks and other forms of torture; mock executions; and sexual violence.

Syrians for Truth and Justice, a human rights organization that tracks abuses, in a report published earlier this month said that “severe beatings, electric shocks, humiliation, threats, deprivation of basic necessities, and deaths in custody continue to be common practices at the hands of multiple security and military actors.”

The group concluded that the incidents were too widespread to treat as isolated incidents but that there was not evidence of a “single centralized system equivalent in structure and direction to the torture apparatus entrenched by the Assad regime.”

“It is somehow widespread, but it’s not structured,” Bassam Alahmad, the group’s executive director, told The Associated Press. “For us, there is no evidence that these orders came from the commanders to torture people, but still (the authorities) have a responsibility to stop this behavior."

Syrians whose loved ones disappeared or died in detention centers during Assad’s rule said they were disturbed to see the patterns being repeated under the new government.

Families for Freedom, a group representing relatives of detainees, said in a statement, “What happened to Mohammed reopens the wounds of torture and death in detention for thousands of Syrian families — practices Syrians have struggled for years to end, and the recurrence of which cannot be accepted today.”

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Sewell reported from Beirut.

The Tempo guard has been out for two months with a left plantar fascia injury she suffered in a June 16 game against the Indiana Fever. Without her the team has struggled, dropping 10 straight games. Toronto was in the mix for a playoff spot before the skid that has left the Tempo at 10-23 for the season, the third-worst record in the league.

Sykes said at practice Monday that she just needed to get cleared by the doctor to be able to play.

"It’s been a testing eight weeks, but, you know, it taught me a lot about myself. I got to show up for my teammates and the org in a different way,” Sykes said. “I’m just grateful that I got that time. I got a lot of therapy sessions in. I got to find out a lot about myself. In this point in my career, I’ve been here before, but it seems like this injury was way harder to deal with.”

Even when she wasn't able to play, Sykes was a veteran presence on the team, trying to keep her teammates' heads up during the skid.

She could make her return against Caitlin Clark and the Fever on Tuesday. The Tempo have a busy week ahead, with back-to-back games against Indiana at home and then against Washington on the road. Then Toronto will trek across Canada to Vancouver to face Portland on Friday and Las Vegas on Sunday.

It will be the second straight season that the WNBA will play games in Vancouver; Atlanta faced Seattle last season there in front of a sold-out crowd.

The timing is tough because the Tempo just came back from a five-game road trip that saw them criss-cross the U.S., with games on the West Coast, Atlanta and Dallas before returning home.

After the two games in Vancouver, the team finishes off its pre-World Cup schedule with three more road games in Seattle, Las Vegas and Phoenix.

The Tempo also played a pair of games in Montreal in July, splitting with Dallas and New York.

Power poll rankings

Minnesota held onto the top spot in the power poll again this week as the unanimous choice. The Lynx beat Portland and Las Vegas on the road last week. Golden State was second and the Aces were third. Indiana, Washington and New York were next. Atlanta was seventh, with Dallas, Portland and Chicago following the Dream. Phoenix, Los Angeles, Connecticut, Seattle/Toronto rounded out the poll.

Honoring Diana

The Phoenix Mercury retired Diana Taurasi's No. 3 jersey on Sunday in a halftime ceremony with a star-studded crowd in attendance. At the end of the evening, Taurasi stepped to the microphone one more time, pausing as the crowd gave her a 45-second standing ovation. Her 30-minute speech was a mixture of seriousness and comedy, drawing laugh from the thousands of fans who stayed after the Mercury lost to Portland.

Player of the week

Clark was the AP player of the week. Indiana's star guard averaged 25.7 points, 9.7 assists and 3.3 rebounds to help the team win all three of its games last week. Other players receiving votes were Allisha Gray of Atlanta, Olivia Miles of Minnesota and A'ja Wilson of Las Vegas.

Game of the week

Indiana at Dallas, Thursday. The teams will play for the second time in two weeks, with the Wings looking to get a measure of revenge for the loss last week in Indiana. Paige Bueckers put on a show for Dallas, but it wasn't enough to overcome the play of Clark, Kelsey Mitchell and Aliyah Boston.

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AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

Investigators say Willie Lamar Rogers, 23, was arrested Monday July 27 after communicating on social media with an undercover Columbia County Sheriff’s Office detective specially trained in child sex sting operations. Rogers allegedly expressed interest in having sex with the ‘child’ and sent pornographic images during the exchanges, while knowing the stated age of the person he was communicating with, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators say Rogers provided the ‘child’ with his address and instructed the child to pick him up so they could travel to the child’s residence to have sex while the parents were away. When a vehicle arrived near his home, Rogers was met by detectives instead of the child.

Rogers was arrested and booked into the Columbia County Detention Facility on a $325,000 bond.

Negotiations to bring the war to a close remain deadlocked and complicated by the fractured Iranian state.

Osamah Khalil, an expert on U.S. foreign relations and the modern Middle East from Syracuse University, joined us on The Morning Show to discuss Iran’s increasing rhetoric, President Donald Trump’s plan to declare the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory, and whether there is any strategic way out for both the U.S. and Iran.

Here are some of her most memorable films and television shows, and where to stream them.

“A Bug’s Life” (1998)

She was already a veteran of soaps (she got her first role at age 4, playing Sarah Roberts on “One Life to Live”) and commercials when she was selected to voice Princess Dot in the Pixar movie. Co-director and writer Andrew Stanton said he wanted to include a little girl because of his newborn daughter.

WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Disney+.

“Remember the Titans” (2000)

Playing the football-loving, wise-beyond-her-years Sheryl Yoast was a breakthrough moment for Panettiere, who was 10 at the time of filming but playing “nine and a half, thank you very much,” as she so memorably informed Denzel Washington’s Coach Boone. It was her absolute favorite movie to film, she told ET in 2023. “What an incredible time in my life … I was surrounded by the cutest boys. Kate Bosworth was like my big sister,” she said in the interview. “If I had wished to go back to any time in my life, it would be going back to ‘Remember the Titans.’”

WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Hulu and Disney+.

“Ice Princess” (2005)

A teen sports trifle that’s now bonded in tragedy after the deaths of both Michelle Trachtenberg and Panettiere, who played Casey Carlyle’s (Trachtenberg) fellow junior ice skater Gennifer “Gen” Harwood and daughter of Kim Cattrall’s coach character. Panettiere did much of her own skating in the film.

WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Disney+.

“Bring It On: All or Nothing” (2006)

It might not be a particularly good movie, or her only cheerleader role of the year, but the third “Bring It On,” co-starring Solange, has become a nostalgic millennial classic. Rihanna also had a cameo as herself, as a cheerleading competition judge.

“I loved the passion that people had for ‘Bring It On.’ When fans would come up who loved that movie, they would freak out — have a physical, visceral reaction to me that I had never seen before,” Panettiere told Entertainment Weekly this year.

WHERE TO WATCH: Available to rent on various platforms.

“Heroes” (2006-2010)

“Save the cheerleader, save the world.” Panettiere was the indestructible Claire Bennet at the heart of the popular sci-fi series, the first season of which regularly drew over 14 million viewers.

“I think ‘Heroes’ is really hot because it's just a really great combination of everything that people love,” she told The Associated Press in 2008. “They love reality, they love sci-fi and then things like ‘X-Men’ where they get to, you know, dream of something bigger. And at the core of it are these human stories that people just can relate to.”

WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Netflix.

“I Love You, Beth Cooper” (2009)

Chris Columbus directed this teen rom-com about a nerd (Paul Rust) and the popular girl of his dreams. Yes, her character here was a cheerleader as well.

WHERE TO WATCH: Available to rent on various platforms.

“The Cove” (2009)

When she was 18 years old, Panettiere, who advocated for whale and dolphin safety as a spokesperson for The Whaleman Foundation and creator of the “Save the Whales, Again!” campaign, went to Taiji, Japan, to protest and disrupt the dolphin hunting with a group of activists on paddleboards. A tense encounter with the men on the boats was featured prominently in the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove.” Weeks after the film won, she returned to Taiji to try to meet with officials about their whaling practices.

WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Tubi, Fandango and Pluto TV.

“Nashville” (2012-2018)

Playing rising country superstar Juliette Barnes was perhaps her defining role, but she wasn't even originally envisioned as the series' main star. Connie Britton's Rayna was.

“Unfortunately, after the pilot, it was clear that my billing had gone way up. I went from maybe number five in terms of importance to nipping at Connie’s heels,” she wrote in her memoir. “I was deeply uncomfortable with this development.”

On Jay Shetty's podcast this year, she spoke about how closely Juliette's trials resembled her own. “I didn't know where Juliette began and Hayden ended,” she said. “I didn't even realize I was becoming her constantly, and I wasn't able to take care of myself.”

WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Netflix.

“Scream VI” (2023)

Fans immediately took to Panettiere’s horror movie loving character Kirby Reed in the otherwise much-derided “Scream 4,” which left her fate ambiguous. In the 2022 “Scream,” it was revealed that she was still alive. Panettiere played a part in advocating for her return in “Scream VI,” which became a box office hit.

“It was thrilling that people fell in love with Kirby,” Panettiere told ET in 2023. “I loved playing Kirby, so I’m glad they love her as much as I did.”

WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Netflix.

The answer: quite a bit.

During a shopping trip to Goodwill Industries of North Florida, I found seven items for just $54, including a mix of clothing and housewares.

The haul was a reminder of one of the biggest draws of thrift shopping you never quite know what you’re going to find, and finding a bargain can be part of the fun.

But Goodwill says there’s another story behind those secondhand purchases.

Shopping with a local impact

Revenue from donated goods helps Goodwill Industries of North Florida provide job training, career services and employment assistance to people in our community who may face barriers to finding meaningful work.

That means the $54 I spent didn’t just buy seven items. Purchases like mine help fund programs designed to help North Florida residents build skills and find jobs.

“National Thrift Shop Day is a moment to celebrate the excitement of thrifting and the impact it makes possible,” said David Rey, president and CEO of Goodwill Industries of North Florida. “When people shop at or donate to Goodwill, they are supporting neighbors in our community while helping keep usable goods in circulation.”

Across the United States and Canada, the Goodwill network provided services to nearly 1.9 million people last year, according to the organization.

Thrifting is also about sustainability

There’s an environmental benefit to buying secondhand, too.

Instead of clothing, furniture and household items being discarded, donating and reselling them gives those products another life.

Goodwill says it helped keep 4.6 billion pounds of goods in circulation last year, including textiles and other donated items.

And thrifting has increasingly become about more than simply saving money. Shoppers looking for vintage clothing, unique home décor, designer finds or pieces that aren’t available at traditional retailers have helped make secondhand shopping part of mainstream fashion and culture.

Want to become a better thrift shopper?

Goodwill says shoppers can find everything from work attire and casual clothing to home décor, formal wear and unexpected treasures.

A few things to keep in mind:

• Go often. Inventory changes constantly, so two trips to the same store can look completely different.
• Look beyond your usual size or section. Secondhand clothing can be organized differently depending on the brand and how an item fits.
• Check the housewares. My seven-item challenge wasn’t just about clothes. Home décor, kitchen items and other household goods can offer some of the best bargains.
• Take your time. Unlike traditional retail, you may have only one chance to find a particular item.
• Don’t forget to donate. Cleaning out your closet or home can help put more usable goods back into circulation while supporting Goodwill’s local programs.

My final tally? Seven items of clothing and housewares for $54.

Not bad for a morning of shopping. And knowing those bargains can also support job training and employment services in North Florida makes the price tag look even better.

Bad day? Tap the app. See a sale? Add to cart. Need a little pick-me-up? Buy now. For a lot of people, shopping isn’t just shopping.

It can feel like a reward, a distraction, even a way to take the edge off stress, boredom, or loneliness.

From stress spending to “treat yourself” splurges, psychologists say buying something new can deliver a quick emotional lift, but if it becomes your go-to way to cope with stress, boredom, or loneliness, it can start to damage more than your bank account.

“It can get to the point of overindulgence or escapism,” said Kathleen McHugh, a licensed psychologist.

That’s why experts say the big question isn’t just what you’re buying, it’s why you’re buying it.

“It can turn into a way to solve short-term distress without solving the underlying problem,” explained McHugh.

“Treat yourself” has become its own kind of lifestyle with haul videos, flash sales, “TikTok made me buy it” posts.

“You know if it’s something that’s repetitive and it keeps on coming up, then we’re probably just using that short-term solution,” said McHugh.

So how do you know when “treat yourself” has turned into a problem?

Watch for patterns. Are you shopping every time you’re upset? Do you feel a jolt of relief when you buy something and regret it when the charge hits?

The first step: slow it down. That pause matters. Try a 24-hour rule before you buy.

Delete stored payment info so it’s not one-click easy.

Unfollow the accounts that always make you want something.

And if you notice you shop when you’re stressed or lonely, try replacing the habit with something that actually addresses the feeling, like calling a friend, going for a walk, or just stepping away from the app.

Here’s another red flag to watch: “buy now, pay later.”

J.D. Power found 37% of U.S. consumers used BNPL in the past 90 days, and LendingTree reports nearly half of BNPL users say they’ve paid late on one of those loans in the past year.

So, if “treat yourself” is starting to come with installment plans, it may be time to take a harder look at what’s driving the spending.

Police say just after 6 p.m. on Aug. 16, a resident of Park Avenue Apartments on Baymeadows Circle East, was walking near the community pool when he noticed a dark object resting at the bottom of the water. Upon closer inspection, the resident realized it was a person.

The resident jumped in and pulled the victim from the pool while screaming for help. A neighbor heard the calls and rushed over. Together, the two Good Samaritans attempted CPR as they waited for emergency responders to arrive.

Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department crews arrived on scene and transported the victim to the hospital. The victim, an adult male, was pronounced dead at the hospital.

JSO detectives responded to the scene and are investigating the incident. Police say no foul play is suspected.

A Heat Advisory is in effect across most of the region from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. An Extreme Heat Warning has been issued for Glynn and Camden counties in Southeast Georgia, where the combination of heat and humidity will become especially dangerous.

Afternoon temperatures will climb into the mid and upper 90s, but it will feel considerably hotter. Peak heat index values are expected to reach between 108 and 115 degrees across the area.

Jacksonville will reach a high near 96 degrees, with mostly sunny skies through the first half of the day. Scattered showers and thunderstorms are expected to develop mainly after 2 p.m., with rain coverage around 40%. Winds will come from the west at 7 to 11 mph, with occasional gusts up to 15 mph.

Any thunderstorms that develop could produce frequent lightning, locally heavy rain and gusty winds. The storms will remain scattered, meaning not everyone will receive rain or relief from the heat.

Storm coverage will gradually decrease Monday evening, with most activity ending before 8 p.m. Overnight temperatures will only fall into the upper 70s, offering limited relief from the oppressive humidity.

Tuesday could be even hotter. Jacksonville is forecast to reach 97 degrees, with heat index values as high as 112 degrees. Showers and thunderstorms will become more numerous late in the afternoon and evening, with rain chances increasing to approximately 60%. Gusty southwest winds could reach 20 mph.

High temperatures remain near 97 degrees Wednesday and Thursday. Storm coverage drops to around 40% Wednesday and 20% Thursday, allowing the dangerous heat to remain the dominant weather story.

Rain chances increase again Friday and continue through the weekend. Scattered afternoon thunderstorms are expected Friday, followed by daily rain chances around 40% Saturday and Sunday. Temperatures will gradually ease into the lower to middle 90s, but the humidity will remain high.

Anyone spending time outside should drink plenty of water, take frequent breaks in the shade or air conditioning and wear lightweight, light-colored clothing. Outdoor activity should be limited during the hottest portion of the afternoon. Never leave children or pets inside a parked vehicle, even for a short period of time.

Police said Panettiere was found unresponsive in an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina, shortly before 2 p.m. Sunday. Lifesaving measures were performed but she was pronounced dead at the scene.

No cause of death has been determined and Panettiere's death remains under investigation. An autopsy found no signs of trauma and police said officers saw no signs of foul play.

The television and film performer, who would have turned 37 on Friday, had been open about her private battles and wrote at length about them in the memoir, “This Is Me,” which came out in May. She described lifelong scars from her early fame, and acknowledged being addicted to alcohol and enduring postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter, Kaya, with Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko in 2014.

“It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden,” her father, Skip Panettiere, said in a statement provided to ABC. “She was an incredible light and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her — and to the millions who watched her onscreen.”

A publicist for Panettiere did not provide any additional details in response to inquiries from The Associated Press.

Panettiere started out as a child actor

Panettiere was one of two children born to Skip Panettiere, a former New York City fire captain, and Lesley Vogel, a former soap opera star who had been the prime force behind her early career before the two became estranged. Panettiere began acting in commercials and soap operas, including as the ever-troubled Lizzie Spaulding on “Guiding Light.” In “This Is Me,” she wrote that the traumas her character endured, from being kidnapped to killing her mother’s boyfriend, led her to associate “catastrophe with adoration.”

“Grown-ups gave me positive attention when — as an actor — I failed, got sick, screamed and cried, killed, grieved, and suffered,” she wrote. “Is it any wonder why I’ve faced so many real struggles in my life? I’ve often wondered whether — unintentionally — I’ve brought on my traumas because I’m wired to think they’re good for me.”

She had much warmer memories of her role as a cheerleader with supernatural powers in “Heroes,” which propelled her to fame in 2006. The series revolved around the mantra: “Save the cheerleader, save the world.”

“I think ‘Heroes’ is really hot because it’s just a really great combination of everything that people love — they love reality, they love sci-fi and things like ‘X-Men’ where they get to dream of something bigger,” Panettiere told the AP in 2008. “And at the core of it are these human stories that people can relate to, very rugged. And it’s just grabbed everyone in every age group.”

She went on to win three Teen Choice Awards for that role and was nominated for a Grammy for a children’s spoken word album, “A Bug’s Life: Read-Along,” also voicing a role in the Disney animated movie.

Panettiere later played a brash country upstart opposite Connie Britton on “Nashville,” which aired on ABC for four seasons before being canceled and revived on CMT. She did her own singing in the show, which scored some hits on country charts, spawned U.S. tours and earned Panettiere two supporting actress Golden Globe nominations. Eleven songs that Panettiere recorded for “Nashville” appeared on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs charts during the show’s run, including two featuring Britton.

She checked herself into rehab

Panettiere’s daughter, now 11, began living with Klitschko full-time in Ukraine when she was 2. At the time, the actor was struggling with mental health and addiction.

“I think there’s been this very common misconception that I just gave up my child,” she said in an interview with podcaster Jay Shetty in May. “That could not be farther from the truth.”

She said she was in a “horrible cycle for years of battling depression and anxiety and alcoholism and substance abuse” while “just trying to find my way back, my way out of the darkness.”

She entered rehab in 2015, while filming “Nashville.”

“I was the one who put myself in the first treatment center. I was drowning,” she said in a 2023 interview with Women’s Health magazine.

Panettiere had endured numerous family struggles, and tragedy. Her parents' marriage was strained, and eventually ended. Her younger brother, Jansen Panettiere, who was also an actor, died of a heart condition in 2023, at age 28. Years earlier, Hayden had made the painful decision to part professionally with her mother, who throughout her childhood had “defined and driven her” and watched her “struggle, learn, grow, fall apart, and triumph.”

“She and I spent so much time together, so deeply enmeshed in each other’s lives, that we started grating on each other,” Panettiere wrote in her memoir. “I hated when Mom whispered about other actors during auditions, positive that they could hear her compare them to me. I hated when Mom went to industry parties and got tipsy on the merlot she loved.”

In recent years, she had been in a tumultuous relationship with actor Brian Hickerson.

On Shetty’s podcast, Panettiere recalled how she exploded into the public eye through “Heroes,” including the first time she was tracked by the paparazzi. She described her response as “sheer terror.” In her memoir, she would remember unwanted encounters with fellow celebrities — from an Oscar-winning actor-director exposing himself to her to being forced into bed with a “famous thirtysomething British singer-songwriter.”

She had spoken positively about her experience filming “Remember the Titans,” saying she felt similar to the character she played — Sheryl Yoast, the opinionated, football-loving daughter of Will Patton’s Coach Bill Yoast. Panettiere also appeared in two of the “Scream” movies, and starred as the title character in the 2009 film “I Love You Beth Cooper.”

In her memoir, Panettiere described herself as an “optimist to the core” who refused to be defined by tragedy.

“One thing I know from my 36 years in the public eye is this: Life is a process that evolves day by day, year by year and — like it or not — you are engaged in a cycle of growth until the moment you take your last breath,” she wrote.

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Associated Press writer Dave Collins and National Writer Hillel Italie contributed reporting.

For months after Jared Bridegan’s murder, his widow and those who loved him in the community pleaded for answers about who would fatally shoot the Microsoft employee with his 2-year-old daughter watching from the back seat.

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

A little over a year after the deadly ambush shooting, investigators announced the arrest of Mario Fernandez Saldana, the estranged husband of Bridegan’s ex-wife, Shanna Gardner.

Prosecutors say Bridegan was killed in a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by Fernandez and Gardner, who they say hired Henry Tenon, a tenant at one of their properties, to be the gunman.

All three are now indicted on first-degree murder charges in Bridegan’s death.

Fernandez is the first of the three to go on trial. As that trial begins with opening statements on Monday, News4JAX is taking a look at everything we’ve learned about Fernandez since his arrest in March 2023.

NOTE: The details below are compiled from court documents and previous reporting.

Who is Mario Fernandez?

Mario Enrique Fernandez Saldana was born in April 1988 and attended Sandalwood High School in Jacksonville.

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

As an adult, Fernandez joined the Army and eventually became a drill sergeant. But in January of 2018, he faced an allegation of sexual assault from a recruit under his charge. The charges were dropped, but Fernandez was given a less-than-honorable discharge.

A few months after the allegations, in April 2018, Fernandez married Gardner, whom he met while working as a maintenance worker at her CrossFit gym.

Gardner and Fernandez both later told investigators in separate interviews that they did not know each other very well when they got married. Gardner said the marriage was suggested by her mother when Gardner took Fernandez to Utah to meet her family.

Gardner and Fernandez both indicated that the main reason for their marriage was Gardner’s children and the contentious ongoing custody disputes with Bridegan over their twins after their 2015 divorce.

Gardner told at least one friend she knew it would look better for her in court during those custody fights if she were married again.

Relationship with Bridegan

Multiple witnesses said Fernandez described those custody and legal battles with Bridegan as tense.

Fernandez told investigators he tried to reach out to Bridegan after he married Gardner, with no response. He said the families typically communicated only through text messages.

Bridegan’s widow said her husband interacted with Fernandez mostly at court hearings, school events and doctors’ appointments for the twins.

But Fernandez and Gardner said the two couples rarely acknowledged each other at events involving the children.

Multiple witnesses said Fernandez often complained about the ongoing conflict with Bridegan.

One friend of the couple even said they talked about getting guys to “to take care of” Bridegan and that Fernandez told her, “You know I’ve killed people before,” apparently referring to his military service.

Despite siding with Gardner in the custody disputes and telling investigators after the murder that the twins were “better off” with Bridegan “out of the picture,” Fernandez admitted that he and Gardner also clashed over parenting styles, which made their marriage rocky.

Financials

Gardner’s parents own a successful multi-level marketing craft supply company called Stampin’ Up! After their daughter married Fernandez, the Gardners made Fernandez the trustee of Shanna’s irrevocable trust.

That gave Fernandez administrative and financial control of the trust, which included a clause that Shanna could only become trustee of the fund when she had “no further legal entanglements with her ex-husband, Jared G. Bridegan.”

According to records, Fernandez and Gardner were listed together as owners of First Choice Home Rentals LLC, which received incoming transfers from the trust that was funded by Gardner’s parents.

Investigators said the LLC was used to manage at least one rental property on Potomac Avenue in the Biltmore neighborhood of Jacksonville’s Westside.

The ownership of the property became key during the investigation into Bridegan’s February 2022 murder.

The murder

Bridegan, a Microsoft design manager, was fatally shot on Feb. 16, 2022, while on his way home after dropping off the twins he shared with Gardner at her home in Jacksonville Beach.

Investigators say a tire was placed in the road in a plot to distract and kill Bridegan, 33, in Jacksonville Beach.

When Bridegan stepped out of his SUV to move the tire, he was ambushed by gunfire. At least one bullet missed his 2-year-old daughter by mere inches in her car seat.

Eventually, detectives tracked down the man they say pulled the trigger: Henry Tenon. Investigators say Tenon’s DNA was on the tire that was blocking Bridegan’s path.

Investigators said the single link between Tenon and Bridegan was Fernandez, who is accused of paying Tenon, now 65, at least $10,000 for fatally shooting Bridegan.

Rocky relationship

By the time of Bridegan’s murder in 2022, what Gardner referred to as a marriage of “convenience” was ending. She and Fernandez had decided to divorce and even told the twins’ school in early January 2022 that they were separating.

Fernandez and Gardner told investigators in April 2022, just months after Bridegan’s murder, that despite attempting counseling, their parenting styles were too different and they were divorcing, though Gardner planned for Fernandez to remain in their shared home through that summer.

The pair later told the twins’ school, however, that they would not be separating after all.

By January of 2023, Fernandez and Gardner publicly claimed to still be living together as a couple, but investigators said surveillance revealed they were separated, with Fernandez living in Orlando and Gardner living in Washington state with the twins.

Arrests

Exactly one year and one month after Bridegan’s murder, an indictment was filed against Fernandez on charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation to commit a capital felony and child abuse.

He will only face two of those charges after prosecutors dropped the conspiracy and child abuse charges shortly before jury selection began.

Fernandez was arrested in Central Florida before being transferred to Duval County to face the charges.

According to the indictment, the conspiracy to kill Bridegan began as early as November 2021 and involved a tenant at the Potomac Avenue property named Henry Tenon.

Investigators zeroed in on Tenon, who was the first to be arrested, in part through the rental home owned by Fernandez. Detectives visited the property in July 2022 and collected a spare tire that they said later matched a tire used in the roadway setup on the night Bridegan was killed.

When police obtained Tenon’s bank records, they found three checks totaling $10,000 written from First Choice Home Rentals LLC — all signed by Fernandez. They were for $2,000 and $3,000 dated March 28, 2022, and $5,000 dated April 4, 2022. The memo lines described work such as landscaping, roof upkeep and “Kickstarter Good Luck!!,” according to copies released by prosecutors.

Tenon initially pleaded guilty in the case on March 16, 2023, and agreed to testify against any “co-conspirators.” That same day, Fernandez was arrested in the Orlando area.

Gardner was arrested in West Richland, Washington, on Aug. 17, 2023, and was eventually extradited to Florida to face murder charges.

Records show investigators focused on Fernandez and Gardner early in the case, interviewing Gardner the night of the killing and subpoenaing her and Fernandez’s phones within days.

Those phone records, according to investigators, showed Fernandez and Tenon were together the night of Bridegan’s murder.

Who drove the truck?

Investigators say GPS evidence showed Tenon twice drove the route prosecutors say mirrored Bridegan’s normal drive home, in what prosecutors described as a “practice run of the homicide route.”

The first “practice run” was on Jan. 5, 2022, and the second was on Jan. 29, 2022.

The report said Tenon’s cellphone tracking data and surveillance video placed him along the route the night of the killing in a dark blue Ford F-150, and that the truck and tire were later recovered.

Another set of documents said Fernandez’s phone “pinged” at the Potomac Avenue rental property the day before Bridegan was killed, for about 15 minutes in the morning and about an hour in the evening.

Recently, prosecutors pointed out that Tenon could not have been alone the night of the murder, because he was captured by multiple surveillance cameras running from the scene on foot -- and someone else drove away in the blue truck.

A truck that was later tracked back to Tenon, who had inherited it from his father.

1st of 3 trials

Tenon withdrew his guilty plea earlier this year and will get his own trial in 2027. He will not testify in Fernandez’s trial, which 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. She will be represented by high-profile attorney Jose Baez, who is best known for defending Casey Anthony and getting an acquittal in the death of her 2-year-old daughter.

Tenon will go on trial in March 2027.

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

Russia has repeatedly battered the Ukrainian power grid since its all-out invasion more than four years ago. Moscow hopes to sap Ukraine’s will to fight by denying civilians light, heating and running water during the bitter winter months.

Ukrainian officials, who say Russia is “weaponizing winter,” fear Moscow will pursue its campaign through the coming winter, too.

Russian drones and missiles struck facilities in several regions of the country, with one asset hit multiple times during the week, Naftogaz said, reporting serious damage to equipment and production capacity. No employees were hurt in the attacks, the company said.

DTEK Group, a coal mining and power production company which says it is the largest private investor in Ukraine’s energy sector, also said a Russian attack started a fire at one of its mines, killing a 52-year-old man.

With troops largely bogged down by drones and robots along the roughly 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) front line, both Russia and Ukraine are expanding their aerial campaigns and devising new long-range weapons.

Ukrainian long-range attacks on Russia killed seven people, while five civilians died in Ukraine after strikes by Moscow’s forces, officials said Monday as they collated overnight attacks.

With the Russian capital now within range of Ukrainian drones that regularly attack the region, organizers canceled a large military music festival due to be held on central Moscow’s Red Square from Friday.

The organizers of the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival said on social media Monday that the event was postponed until next year due to reasons beyond their control.

In May, authorities significantly scaled back Russia's annual Victory Day celebrations on Red Square for the first time in nearly two decades. Officials put the move down to the “current operational situation” but did not elaborate.

Ukraine depended heavily on foreign military aid after Russia’s full-scale invasion of February 2022 but has gradually increased its domestically produced firepower, firing a salvo of more than 800 long-range drones at Russia on Sunday.

Ukraine also has successfully targeted depots owned by Wildberries, Russia’s main online retailer, as far as 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) from Ukraine’s border.

Russian forces have increasingly hit apartment blocks, ports, schools and hospitals, among other urban targets, killing close to 17,000 civilians, according to the United Nations. The death toll of 437 Ukrainian civilians in July was 70% higher than the same month in 2025, it said last week, as Russia's barrages intensified.

Russia has exploited Ukraine’s severe shortage of U.S.-made Patriot air defense interceptors, which are the only way of countering ballistic missiles.

But Kyiv is swiftly innovating, with Ukraine now developing its own ballistic missile to hit back at Russia and working with European countries on developing more anti-ballistic air defenses.

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

The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, with assistance from the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, arrested Amjad Otor, 32, of Tampa, on charges of organized scheme to defraud and theft from a person 65 years of age or older. He was released from the Broward County Jail on a $10,000 bond.

How the alleged scam unfolded

In February, investigators say the victim hired a company doing business as Universal Air Duct Cleaning LLC to clean ductwork in her Palm Coast home. Two men arrived in an unmarked, dark-colored Chevrolet pickup truck, cleaned part of her system and charged her $500. They then told her some of her ductwork needed to be replaced and offered to complete that work for $5,000 — if she paid half upfront, with part of that payment in cash.

Otor, who investigators say also gave the victim a false name, took $1,000 in cash and showed the woman a new piece of ductwork he claimed would be installed. He later told her the work was complete and collected two additional checks totaling $3,000.

Suspicious of the work, the victim asked her handyman to inspect the job. The handyman determined no one had been in the attic and the damaged duct had never been replaced. When the victim called the company to request they return and complete the work, they stopped answering her calls, investigators say. She reported the fraud in March.

Investigation leads to arrest

Through the investigation, detectives say they determined Otor was the registered owner of the vehicle used during the service call and that the victim’s checks had been deposited into the company’s bank account.

With help from Seniors vs. Crime — a partnership between the FCSO and the Florida Attorney General’s Office — the victim had a certified inspector examine her ductwork. The inspector confirmed the ducts were never replaced. The victim then identified Otor in a photo lineup as the man she had paid.

Detectives say they also worked with the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, which confirmed the company is out of business, holds no current license and carries an “F” rating with the Better Business Bureau, with multiple complaints of unfinished work. The company’s owner hired Otor as a subcontractor.

The FCSO’s General Assignment Unit obtained a warrant for Otor’s arrest Aug. 12.

Sheriff warns residents: ‘When they ask for cash, run’

Sheriff Rick Staly had a pointed message for would-be scammers — and for residents looking to protect themselves.

“This fake AC repairman sold an 88-year-old woman nothing but hot air and took $4,000 for it,” Staly said. “It is a disgusting lowlife that would take advantage of anyone, but especially a senior. Remember to always thoroughly research companies you plan to do business with and never pay in cash, no matter how great the deal may be. When they ask for cash, run. That’s another sign of a fraud. Construction scammers beware; we treat fraud like the crime it is!”

How to protect yourself from contractor fraud

Before allowing anyone into a home to perform work, officials recommend confirming the contractor holds a valid state license at myfloridalicense.com. Residents should get the full scope of work, the price and the completion date in writing before anything starts.

Reputable companies do not pressure customers into paying most of the money upfront, and they do not ask for cash. Paying by check or credit card creates a paper trail and the final payment should be held until the work has been confirmed as complete by the homeowner or a trusted third party. Homeowners should also have lien releases signed when a contractor acknowledges payment for materials and workers — otherwise, under Florida law, they could end up paying twice.

Tip line open for additional victims

The investigation remains active and additional charges are pending. Anyone who paid Universal Air Duct Cleaning LLC or Amjad Otor for work that was never completed is encouraged to call the FCSO non-emergency line at 386-313-4911.

The verdict against Lev Shlosberg, a senior member of the Yabloko party, was another step by the Kremlin to stifle dissent since Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022. Yabloko is the only official political party overtly opposing the war.

In a separate ruling Monday, Russia’s Supreme Court upheld its earlier decision to bar Yabloko from the ballot in the Sept. 18-20 parliamentary vote, denying an appeal by the party.

The moves against Shlosberg and Yabloko highlight the Kremlin’s intolerance toward any criticism of the war, now in its fifth year.

It was Shlosberg's second trial in 2 years

Shlosberg, 63, is Yabloko's deputy chairman and served in the regional legislature of Pskov from 2016-21. He stood trial in the city of Pskov, some 600 kilometers (370 miles) northwest of Moscow, on charges of "discrediting” and spreading “false information” about the Russian military.

The charges stemmed from a debate in which he called for ending the war and from posting on his Telegram channel a British tabloid front page featuring an image of a bloodied woman next to one of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the headline: "Her blood ... his hands.” Shlosberg has rejected the charges as unfounded.

It was the second trial for Shlosberg in the last two years. He has also been designated a “foreign agent,” a label that carries strong pejorative connotations in Russia and brings additional government scrutiny. He was convicted of violating the foreign agent regulations.

In December 2025, he was placed in pretrial detention on the new charges and has been behind bars ever since. He is one of several prominent Yabloko members in recent years to be jailed or designated a “foreign agent” as Kremlin pressure on the party has mounted.

Yabloko called the sentence ‘barbaric’

In his final statement to the court Friday, Shlosberg said that for 30 years, Russia has traveled “a path from hopes for freedom to the almost complete destruction of human and civil rights and freedoms.”

He said the war in Ukraine has “changed the lives of every Russian citizen without exception,” and predicted that once its true death toll becomes known, “the entire country will shudder.”

Yabloko said Shlosberg received a “barbaric sentence” for “love of the Motherland and calls for a ceasefire.” In a statement on Telegram, the party said Shlosberg will appeal.

Amnesty International denounced the verdict against Shlosberg.

“His arbitrary prosecution and sentencing are blatant reprisals for exercising his right to freedom of expression to call for peace,” said Marie Struthers, the group's Eastern Europe and Central Asia director.

“The Russian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Lev Shlosberg and quash his conviction," her statement added. “They must repeal legislation criminalizing peaceful anti-war expression, end the persecution of Yabloko members and supporters, and respect the rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly and political participation for all Russians.”

Supreme Court upholds removing Yabloko from the ballot

In Moscow, the Supreme Court upheld its ruling of a week ago to remove Yabloko from the ballot in the election for the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, denying an appeal by the party.

The Central Election Commission in July had allowed Yabloko on the ballot along with 10 other parties. Young social media users and many Russian opposition figures in exile have since come out in support of Yabloko, urging voters to back the party, once a leading liberal voice in parliament that later lost its bloc of seats as the Kremlin tightened its grip on politics.

In recent years, Yabloko was the only registered opposition party that opposed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Its campaign slogans for this year’s election included, “For a ceasefire agreement, diplomacy and peace!” “Our goal is to prevent nuclear war!” and “For a Russia free from fear and political repression!”

Several Kremlin parties publicly assailed Yabloko for its anti-war stance after it got a slot on the ballot. The Motherland Party filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court, demanding its removal from the ballot, accusing Yabloko of copyright infringement and exceeding campaign spending limits. The party also viewed Yabloko’s stance on Ukraine as unlawful and tantamount to calling for the violation of Russia’s territorial integrity.

Yabloko rejected these accusations, but the Supreme Court sided with the Motherland Party.

As the court met Monday on Yabloko's appeal, the party's supporters gathered outside the courthouse and Russian media reported that several dozen people were detained.

Liberal politician Grigory Yavlinsky, who co-founded Yabloko in the 1990s and chairs its political committee, deplored the court's ruling in an online statement. It marked “a serious, deepening crisis in the Russian political system and a lack of understanding of a desired future,” he said.

“People begin to feel this more acutely, regardless of their political views and positions," he said, adding that Yabloko's campaign “for peace and freedom” hit this particular “sore point.”

Yabloko chairman Nikolai Rybakov told reporters after the ruling that the party will continue its fight by lodging a complaint to the Presidium of the Supreme Court and possibly going to the Constitutional Court.

“We achieved the main thing: The whole world knows how many people in Russia want peace, want to live normally and to raise children under a peaceful sky in their country,” Rybakov said.

Regarding the prison term handed to Shlosberg, Rybakov said that “our feelings are with Lev and other political prisoners who have fought and are fighting for peace, for people to not die.”

Adams, a three-time Pro Bowl selection, is expected to have season-ending surgery.

The 30-year-old Adams was injured in his first game with Minnesota after signing on the eve of the start of training camp.

The Vikings signed cornerback Bryce Phillips to fill Adams' spot on the roster. Phillips originally entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent with Kansas City following the 2026 NFL draft. His brother, Clark Phillips III, plays cornerback for Atlanta after starring collegiately at Utah.

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See AP’s full NFL coverage here

John Christopher Ortiz, 34, of Palm Coast, faces six charges — including a felony count of fleeing and attempting to elude law enforcement with lights and sirens active, felony possession of cocaine, misdemeanor DUI, misdemeanor refusal to submit to DUI testing, misdemeanor obstruction without violence, and misdemeanor possession of drug equipment.

Witnesses report gunshots, reckless driving

According to the arrest report filed by the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office, witnesses reported seeing Ortiz driving recklessly northbound on I-95 near mile marker 323. Witnesses also reported hearing the driver fire a firearm from the vehicle approximately seven times.

A responding deputy located Ortiz’s black 2016 Ford Escape swerving between the far-left and middle lanes of I-95 northbound, traveling at approximately 30 mph, according to the report.

Deputy conducts PIT maneuver to stop vehicle

The deputy activated emergency lights and sirens. According to the report, Ortiz initially changed lanes — indicating he acknowledged the traffic stop — before returning to the far-left lane and continuing northbound. The deputy then performed a PIT maneuver to stop the vehicle.

While being detained, Ortiz allegedly refused to comply with lawful orders, tensing his body and turning away from deputies before being handcuffed, during a search, and while being placed in a patrol car.

Cocaine, loaded handgun found in vehicle, according to report

During a search, deputies found a red plastic straw in Ortiz’s pocket containing a white residue. A field test yielded a presumptive positive result for cocaine, according to the report.

Deputies say they also discovered a black Ruger Max-9 9mm semi-automatic handgun on the driver’s side floorboard. The firearm had one round in the chamber and five rounds in its 10-round capacity magazine. A spent 9mm casing was also found on the driver’s side floorboard, according to investigators. Ortiz was wearing a black EcoMaxx concealed carry pistol holster on his belt, which matched the handgun.

DUI suspected; Ortiz refuses testing

Deputies noted a smell consistent with alcohol on Ortiz’s breath, along with slurred speech, difficulty maintaining balance and difficulty keeping his eyes open. The report states Ortiz made several spontaneous utterances about being “high.”

At a hospital where Ortiz was taken for medical clearance, a deputy requested a urine sample to test for the presence of alcohol or controlled substances. Ortiz refused. Deputies then read him the implied consent warning, and he continued to refuse.

Ortiz was booked into the St. Johns County Jail just before 6 a.m.

The 6-pound, 9-ounce (3-kilogram), girl born Aug. 3 in Lisbon, Portugal, is the third child of Eugenie and husband Jack Brooksbank.

“Two weeks ago today we welcomed our girl to the world," Eugenie said on Instagram. “And since then we’ve had the most special, cosy and love-filled time.”

Eugenie is the younger daughter of the former Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson. She's the niece of King Charles III.

The infant girl has two brothers, August, 5, and Ernest, 3.

She was named in honor of three people “we love and admire past and present,” including Eugenie's late grandmother Queen Elizabeth II, and to reflect her English and Portuguese roots.

The name was also inspired by Queen Adelaide (1792-1849), who was married to King William IV, as well as Maria Adelaide of Portugal. Annina is the name of a close friend.

The Buckeyes received 40 first-place votes and Oregon received 14 in voting by 69 media members who cover college football.

Ohio State will go into a season No. 1 for the ninth time, and first since 2015. The Buckeyes are now tied with Alabama for second-most preseason No. 1 rankings behind Oklahoma's 10.

Oregon has its highest preseason ranking in program history after having opened No. 3 four times.

Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas round out the top five. Defending national champion Indiana starts at No. 6 and is followed by Miami, Texas A&M, Mississippi and Oklahoma.

Notre Dame received six first-place votes, Indiana got eight and Miami one.

This is the first year a conference has held down the top two spots in the preseason poll since Oklahoma and Nebraska of the Big Eight were 1-2 in 1987.

The last time the Big Ten had the Nos. 1 and 2 teams in the preseason was 1961, when Iowa and Ohio State topped the poll. The Hawkeyes lost four of their last five games after a 4-0 start and finished that season unranked. The Buckeyes went 8-0-1 and ended the season No. 2 behind unbeaten Alabama.

The Big Ten has won three straight College Football Playoff championships (Michigan, Ohio State, Indiana) and will be going for an unprecedented fourth straight national title. This is the fourth consecutive year the Big Ten has had two of the top three teams in the preseason rankings.

The Southeastern Conference leads all conferences with nine teams in the preseason Top 25, marking the third straight year it has had at least that many. Five of the top 10 teams are from the SEC for the first time since 2013.

Four Big 12 teams are ranked, with conference champion Texas Tech the highest at No. 12. The Atlantic Coast Conference has three ranked teams, with the Hurricanes joined by No. 19 SMU and No. 24 Louisville. There are no Group of Six schools in the Top 25.

Top-ranked Buckeyes

The offense is loaded. Heisman Trophy finalist Julian Sayin was the most accurate passer in the nation by a wide margin last season, Jeremiah Smith leads the nation in receiving yards and receiving touchdowns over the last two years and Bo Jackson is coming off a 1,000-yard rushing season as a freshman.

There is little concern about the defense even though eight starters must be replaced for a second straight year. At least six transfers are projected to start or play major roles.

Ohio State will get tested early and often. The Buckeyes visit Texas on Sept. 12 and five of their nine conference games are against preseason ranked teams, including at Indiana and against Oregon at home.

The Buckeyes have ended a season No. 1 in the AP poll six times (1942, 1954, 1968, 2002, 2014, 2024).

Bulldogs best of the SEC

The beat goes on for Kirby Smart's Georgia Bulldogs. They're in the preseason top five for the ninth straight year. The two-time defending SEC champion Bulldogs are favored to play in a sixth straight conference title game and appear in the CFP for the sixth time in 10 years.

Texas, the preseason No. 1 last year, opens in the top five for the third straight year. No. 8 Texas A&M is in the preseason top 10 for the first time since it was No. 6 in 2022, the year that marked the beginning of the end for coach Jimbo Fisher.

Pete Golding's first full season as Mississippi head coach starts with the No. 9 Rebels in the preseason top 10 for the second time in three years and third time since 1970. No. 10 Oklahoma is in the preseason top 10 for the first time since 2022, when it was in the Big 12.

What about the Hoosiers?

Indiana is the seventh returning national champion in 40 years, and second in three years, to be ranked outside the top five in the preseason (Michigan went into the 2024 season ranked No. 9 after winning the national title).

The Hoosiers became the first team in the modern era to go 16-0, and they return lots of talent and signed a top-10 transfer class. The move from Heisman Trophy winner and No. 1 NFL draft pick Fernando Mendoza to TCU transfer Josh Hoover at quarterback apparently put doubts in the minds of voters.

Poll nuggets

— Ohio State will try to become the 12th team to start and finish No. 1 since the AP preseason poll debuted in 1950. The last team to do it was Alabama in 2017.

— Notre Dame has its highest preseason ranking since it was No. 2 in 2006. The Fighting Irish, who have a Heisman candidate in quarterback CJ Carr, bring a 10-game winning streak into the season and are still smarting from being left out of the playoff.

— Lane Kiffin's first LSU team is No. 11 after finishing 7-6 and unranked under Brian Kelly and Frank Wilson.

— Ten of the 12 CFP teams last season are ranked. The two that aren't are James Madison and Tulane from the Group of Six.

— No. 23 Houston has its first preseason ranking in four years and third since 1991.

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

The number of people worth at least $100 million whom the Republican president has appointed to his administration is more than four times the combined total under the three previous presidents, according to a report from the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

It’s the numbers for the Trump administration, in the context of previous administrations, that stand out in Public Citizen’s report, published on Monday. In all, 57 Trump officials are worth at least $100 million, including 17 ambassadors and the remaining 40 in senior posts across the executive branch.

Look no further than Trump's Cabinet. Eight of its 23 members fit the category, notably Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Education Secretary Linda McMahon, both billionaires.

The president, himself a billionaire, has described his inclination toward appointing the ultrawealthy as deference to financial success. And yet, Trump, who owes his White House comeback to support from middle-income, working Americans drawn to his pledge to lower everyday costs, now faces a midterm election electorate decidedly less keen on his handling of the economy.

Presidents have long sought counsel from the nation’s wealthiest people and tapped some for high-profile administrative leadership roles. Likewise, presidents routinely reward wealthy and influential supporters with ambassadorships.

Among the most notable examples is Andrew Mellon, the aluminum, oil and banking tycoon who was among the handful of the nation’s wealthiest people in the 1920s and served as treasury secretary for three presidents.

The Trump officials worth at least $100 million include Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg and Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler, who are also billionaires, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and special envoy Steve Witkoff, both worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

By comparison, Republican George W. Bush’s administration and Democrat Joe Biden’s each included five members worth $100 million or more. Democrat Barack Obama’s included three, the report states.

A government populated by so many of the economic elite presents potential problems, the report's authors said.

"When the people holding the reins of government are drawn overwhelmingly from the ranks of the ultra-rich, it leads to misplaced incentives and corruption, and begs the question, ‘Whose interests they are truly serving?” said Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen’s co-president.

The list does not include Trump, whose net worth Forbes estimates at more than $6 billion. Nor does it include space and social media giant Elon Musk, who advised Trump last year on an effort to reduce the federal government's size, scope and workforce and is the world's wealthiest person, with a net worth Forbes estimates at about $860 billion.

Trump's views are well established: Financial success is evidence of executive mastery and negotiating strength.

“They have great competence, those people. Incredible competence. Some of the smartest business leaders,” Trump said last year in explaining why he put considerable weight on advice from business executives.

He has also pointed to investments by wealthy people as a signal of future economic growth. To encourage billionaires to deliver, Trump, in his first year back in the White House, pursued policies on artificial intelligence and financial regulation that could benefit wealthy people, along with tax cuts and reduced regulatory burdens for large-scale investments.

Still, last month, only 32% of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, down from 40% at the beginning of his second term and as his Republican Party faces headwinds in its attempt to hold both majorities in Congress in November.

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This story has been corrected to show Lutnick is commerce secretary, not treasury secretary.

In a recent case, a family member received a call from someone claiming to be a “lieutenant” with a law enforcement agency. The caller instructed them to pay money to enroll their arrested relative in a program called “Second Chance Community Supervision” — promising it would secure the person’s release from jail and provide an ankle monitor. The victim withdrew cash and paid at a local gas station using a barcode sent to them by text.

The scam didn’t stop there.

A follow-up call instructed the victim to pay an additional amount for bond. Again, they were directed to withdraw cash and pay via a barcode at another local gas station. The family only discovered they had been defrauded when their relative wasn’t released at the promised time — and a call to the Columbia County Detention Facility revealed their loved one was being held on no bond pending a first appearance before a judge.

Know the warning signs

The Sheriff’s Office says several red flags can help people identify these calls as scams:

• The caller claims to represent a law enforcement agency and demands payment for a “crime,” “fine” or “failure to appear.”
• The caller instructs you to withdraw cash and visit a convenience store or gas station to pay for a program, ankle monitor or bond.
• The caller asks you to deposit cash into a Bitcoin ATM or send cryptocurrency.
• The caller asks you to pay using gift cards, such as Google Play, Apple or Visa gift cards.
• The caller requests personal information — such as a Social Security number, bank account number or debit/credit card number — to “confirm your identity.”

What to do if you get a call like this

Officials stress that caller ID can be “spoofed” to display the Sheriff’s Office’s real phone number, meaning a familiar number on your screen does not confirm a call is legitimate. If you receive a suspicious call, hang up immediately and independently dial the agency’s official published phone number — never a number provided by the caller.

The Sheriff’s Office also notes that scammers are increasingly targeting elderly residents, and encourages community members to check in with older family members and neighbors to make sure they are aware of this scheme.

Legitimate fines are always paid directly to a government agency — either in person at the Columbia County Detention Facility or through the official online payment portal on the Sheriff’s Office website. All transactions related to someone in custody will be handled directly through a bail bonds agency you contact yourself, or at the Detention Facility. Payments will never be processed through a convenience store bill payment portal, via cryptocurrency or through texted links.

Contact the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office directly

• US-90W Administration Office: (386) 752-9212
• Fort White District Two Office: (386) 497-3797
• Detention Facility: (386) 755-7000
• Website: www.columbiasheriff.org

Marsh died Friday in Connecticut, his friend Jeffrey St. Clair, a co-editor of the online magazine Counterpunch, told The Associated Press. St. Clair said Marsh had been suffering from a degenerative brain disease for several years. Jim Rotolo, the SiriusXM radio host, announced Marsh’s death on his social media accounts.

Springsteen paid tribute to Marsh in an Instagram post, writing that the loss had left the band “heartbroken.”

“My great friend Dave, with his straight out of Detroit attitude, was a true Rock ‘n’ Roll lifer. He was soulful, intelligent, heartfelt, opinionated, bruising and often fantastically argumentative,” Springsteen wrote. “He deeply believed in what I was trying to accomplish and his lifetime of support meant the world to me.”

Steven Van Zandt also wrote a remembrance on Instagram, writing “he was fearless, relentless, arrogant, everything you'd want in a RocknRoll troublemaker. And by the way, a tremendous writer.”

Marsh was an early champion of Springsteen, writing about him for Creem magazine and penning his first Rolling Stone cover story in 1978. In 1979 his biography “Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story” was released and became a best seller. He followed it in 1986 with “Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s.” Legend has it that he was the one responsible for getting Jon Landau, Springsteen's longtime manager and record producer, to his first Springsteen concert.

Born in Pontiac, Michigan, in 1950, Marsh dropped out of Detroit’s Wayne State University in 1969 to write for the new rock magazine “Creem,” where Lester Bangs was among his friends and mentors. Springsteen wasn’t Marsh’s only subject, but he was always close by. In 1979, he married Barbara Carr, who would go on to be Springsteen’s co-manager alongside Landau for decades. The rocker even attended their wedding.

He and Carr also devoted much effort to The Kristen Ann Carr Fund, a charity that they started named after their daughter who died from sarcoma at age 21 in 1993. Later that year, Springsteen hosted a benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, where they raised $1.5 million.

Marsh also wrote “The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made,” a biography of The Who, and a book about The Kingsmen hit “Louie Louie.” In recent years he was a frequent co-host and guest on the E Street Nation SiriusXM channel.

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National Writer Hillel Italie contributed from New York.

Tyler's “If I Sing You A Love Song" played as her rose-covered coffin was carried into Swansea Minster for the invite-only funeral that was projected on a screen outside. Her “It’s a Heartache” played as the coffin was placed in front of the altar.

“Bonnie was always a star but never a diva,” her manager, Matthew Davis, said in one of several tributes. “She never forgot her roots or where she came from. She would have been amazed and very gratified at the massive outpouring of love from all over the world that has occurred since her sudden and unexpected passing.”

The Grammy-nominated pop star, beloved for her 1983 chart-topping power ballad “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” died last month in a hospital in Portugal at 75. She had been hospitalized in May in Faro, where she had a home, for emergency intestinal surgery.

The funeral was held less than a week after her signature song served as the soundtrack at celebrations marking a total eclipse that darkened skies across parts of Europe.

Crowds lined the streets Saturday in her seaside Welsh village of Mumbles as a hearse carried her coffin, draped in a Welsh flag, home.

Kathleen Davies, who joined the crowd outside the church, said she was starstruck when she first saw Tyler but later came to learn she was down to earth.

“She’s Welsh through and through,” Davies said. "Everything about her, she’s natural, there’s no fake stuff. When you see her on the interviews, she’s just who she is.”

Tyler was born Gaynor Hopkins, a coal miner’s daughter in public housing with an outside toilet in Skewen, Wales, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) outside Swansea. She grew up with three sisters and two brothers.

Canon Justin Davies said in a eulogy written by her family that she first performed in a contest at a rugby club in the late 1960s, singing ”Those Were The Days,” made famous by Mary Hopkin.

“She came in second and won just one pound, but was hooked," Davies said. “The rest, as they say, was history.”

Tyler went on to earn three Grammy nods and in 2013 represented Britain at the Eurovision Song Contest, where she came in 19th. She was honored as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2022 for her services to music by Queen Elizabeth II, thanks mainly to “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

The ballad shot to the top of the charts in Britain and the United States and has had more than 1 billion streams, boosted by real eclipses in 2017, 2024 and most recently during last week’s solar eclipse.

She was also known for “Holding Out For a Hero,” from the soundtrack of the film “Footloose.”

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Melley reported from London.

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. Laura 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.

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This story was first published on Aug. 14, 2026. It was published again on Aug. 17, 2026, to correct the name of the lawmaker who represents New York’s 4th Congressional District to Rep. Laura Gillen, not Rep. Lauren Gillen.

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

A spokesperson for Burnham declined to comment, saying it was policy not to discuss “national security matters.”

Politico cited four unnamed officials in first reporting that Burnham thought he was messaging with Susie Wiles before he became suspicious and cut off communications.

The White House said the incident had nothing to do with Wiles’ devices being hacked.

Last year, the U.S. government investigated a series of messages that elected officials, business executives and other prominent figures in the U.S. received messages from someone posing as Wiles.

Soon after those incidents, the State Department warned U.S. diplomats of attempts to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio and possibly other officials using artificial intelligence. The warning followed the discovery that an impostor posing as Rubio had attempted to reach out to at least three foreign ministers, a U.S. senator and a governor.

The FBI had warned of “malicious actors” misusing AI to impersonate senior U.S. government officials.

Burnham, who became prime minister less than a month ago, has tried to forge good ties with the White House. Trump initially warmed to Burnham's predecessor, Keir Starmer, before souring on him.

The primary for governor could set the direction for both parties in the state. A longstanding rivalry between DeSantis and President Donald Trump broadly shapes the Republican contest, while moderate and progressive candidates compete to guide beleaguered state Democrats out of their electoral doldrums.

Eleven candidates are competing for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, including Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, former investment firm CEO James Fishback and former state House Speaker Paul Renner.

Donalds has Trump’s endorsement and enjoys an overwhelming financial advantage over the rest of the field. He backed Trump over DeSantis in the 2024 presidential primaries and was considered as a possible Trump running mate that year.

Collins is a close DeSantis ally who says he is running to “protect the DeSantis legacy.” He was tapped by DeSantis to serve as lieutenant governor in August 2025. In his announcement, DeSantis said Collins, an Army Special Forces veteran who lost a leg to combat injuries, was “the Chuck Norris of Florida politics.” Nonetheless, DeSantis has not endorsed a candidate in the primary.

Six Democrats are running to succeed DeSantis, including former Republican U.S. Rep. David Jolly, state Rep. Dotie Joseph and former high school math teacher Dayna Marie Foster, who is backed by the state’s Democratic Progressive Caucus.

Jolly took an unlikely path to running for governor as a Democrat, joining the party in 2025 after leaving the GOP in 2018. He has a commanding fundraising lead over the rest of the field in spite of his past political affiliation. He has tapped former Democratic U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham as his running mate, and her name will appear alongside his on the ballot. Graham is the daughter of the late Bob Graham, the longtime Democratic U.S. Senator and governor.

Florida Democrats have faced a drought in statewide elections, particularly for governor. A Democrat last won the governorship more than 30 years ago. DeSantis was reelected in 2022 with a 19-point margin over former Gov. Charlie Crist, another former Republican-turned independent-turned Democrat.

In the U.S. Senate race, Republican U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody faces minimal opposition for the party’s nomination. Moody was state attorney general in January 2025 when DeSantis appointed her to fill Rubio’s vacant U.S. Senate seat. She is now running to complete the final two years of Rubio’s term.

Her Democratic opponent in November will be either state Rep. Angie Nixon or retired Army Lt. Col. Alex Vindman. Vindman, a former National Security Council staff member, was a key witness in Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. His brother, Eugene, was elected to Congress from Virginia's 7th District in 2024.

Nixon, along with Joseph in the race for governor, was among a group of Black state lawmakers who led unsuccessful Democratic efforts to block Republican redistricting plans in 2022 and 2026.

The new congressional boundaries Republicans enacted in May essentially eliminate four congressional districts currently or most recently represented by Democrats. Democratic U.S. Reps. Kathy Castor in the 14th District around Tampa and Darren Soto in the 9th District near Orlando are both running for reelection in their new Republican-friendly districts and will face the winners of crowded GOP primaries.

In South Florida along the Gold Coast, Republicans redrew the area with the hope of reducing the number of Democratic districts from five to three. Like Castor and Soto, U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz is running for reelection in a new Republican-friendly district, but he must first clear a primary challenge from union organizer and democratic socialist Oliver Larkin.

In another South Florida district, former U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is mounting a comeback bid after resigning from the 20th District in April. She’ll face U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in the Democratic primary in the new 20th, which is no longer a majority-Black district.

Republican U.S. Reps. Randy Fine and Cory Mills face competitive primary challenges in the 6th and 7th Districts, respectively, while a crowded Republican primary to replace Donalds in the 19th District has attracted a lot of out-of-state interest. Former U.S. Reps. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and Chris Collins of New York, as well as a former Illinois state senator, all seek the Republican nomination.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

When do polls close?

Polls close at 7 p.m. local time, which is 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. ET. Most of the state is in Eastern time, and polls there close at 7 p.m. ET. A few counties are in Central time, and polls there close at 8 p.m. ET.

What’s on the ballot?

The Associated Press will provide vote results and declare winners in contested primaries for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, governor, chief financial officer, agriculture commissioner, state Senate and state House.

Who gets to vote?

Only voters registered with a political party may participate in that party’s primary. Democrats may not vote in the Republican primary or vice versa. Independent or unaffiliated voters may not participate in either primary.

How many voters are there?

As of July 20, there were about 13.5 million registered voters in Florida. Of those, about 5.6 million, or about 42% were Republicans; about 4.1 million, or 30%, were Democrats and about 3.3 million, or about 25%, were not registered with any party. The rest were registered with other parties.

How many people actually vote?

About 1.5 million Republican primary voters and about 1.1 million Democratic primary voters participated in the 2024 U.S. Senate primaries.

How much of the vote is cast early or by absentee ballot?

About 63% of the Republican primary vote and about 77% of the Democratic primary vote in the 2024 U.S. Senate primaries was cast early in-person or by mail.

As of Friday, about 663,000 Republican ballots and about 610,000 Democratic ballots had already been cast in Tuesday’s election.

When are early and absentee votes released?

Florida counties release all or almost all of their results from early in-person and mail voting in their first vote updates of the night, usually before releasing any results from in-person Election Day voting. Less than a third of counties release any in-person Election Day results in their first vote update.

How long does vote-counting usually take?

In the 2024 state primary, the AP first reported results at 8 p.m. ET, just as the final polls closed in the state. The last vote update of the night was at 11:47 p.m. ET with about 99.9% of total votes counted.

When will the AP declare a winner?

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

How do recounts work?

Florida requires a machine recount in races where the vote margin is 0.5% or less of the total votes cast. A manual recount of overvotes and undervotes is then required if the machine recount results in a vote margin of 0.25% or less of the total votes cast. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

Are we there yet?

As of Tuesday, there will be 77 days until the 2026 midterm elections.

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

Ukraine's drones have pummeled the giant depots belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer, burning billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise and bringing the war home to the broad public.

The attacks on about 20 Wildberries facilities have underlined Kyiv’s ability to strike far and wide inside Russia and posed a new challenge to President Vladimir Putin nearly 4½ years into his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

They have badly shaken the empire built by Tatyana Kim, the country’s richest female entrepreneur, whose fortune has been estimated at $8.1 billion.

Hundreds of thousands of individual sellers have lost their merchandise, sending shock waves across Russia’s economy. Wildberries has drawn massive loans from VTB and other banks as it expanded and likely will have trouble repaying them, putting more pressure on the financial system.

An online giant began in a Moscow apartment

Kim, 50, was born in Grozny, the capital of the province of Chechnya, to an ethnic Korean family of an engineer and a teacher. She launched Wildberries in 2004 from her Moscow apartment soon after giving birth to her first child while working as an English teacher.

“The idea was born from my own needs, and turned out to be needed by hundreds of thousands,” said Kim, now a mother of seven. “If a product or service makes your own life easier, you’re on the right track.”

Wildberries initially sold clothing before expanding to appliances, household items, cosmetics, books and more. The platform with its distinct purple logo has become an undisputed leader in e-commerce, accounting for about half of all online orders in Russia. Businesses big and small use it to store, ship and deliver merchandise across the country's 11 time zones.

An estimated 500,000 to 800,000 sellers use Wildberries, often described as Russia's Amazon. After Western brands fled following the war in Ukraine, online retailers filled the void with merchandise from China, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere.

The company also acquired a bank, expanded to tourism and even considered buying an airline.

In 2024, Kim divorced her husband, Vladislav Bakalchuk, triggering a fight for control of the company. Bakalchuk sought the support of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and his feared paramilitary forces but eventually lost the battle, which peaked in a shootout at a business center near the Kremlin that left two people dead and several wounded.

Wildberries depots are easy targets

Unlike smaller competitors Ozon and Yandex Market, the company has prided itself on relying on about two dozen mammoth warehouses as the core of its vast logistical network, stockpiling the goods before shipping to about 100,000 storefront distribution points.

As Ukraine embarked on a strategy of long-range drone attacks deep inside Russia, it has expanded from striking military bases, oil refineries and other infrastructure to Wildberries warehouses, which provided particularly soft targets.

Since the first attack July 18 in Elektrostal, just east of Moscow, and in the southwestern Tambov region, Wildberries depots burned one after another in massive fires that flooded social media.

The depots, some as big as 300,000 square meters (about 3.2 million square feet) were unprotected. It took three days to extinguish the fire in Elektrostal, a key Moscow region hub.

On Sunday, Ukraine set ablaze another such hub in Podolsk, also near the capital.

Seven of Wildberries' 10 largest logistics centers have been knocked out of operation, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said. Wildberries did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“These are not military and high-value political targets, therefore they’re not especially secured, they’re not really built to be able to shrug off drone strikes,” said podcaster Mark Galeotti, a Russia expert who heads the Mayak Intelligence consultancy.

The strikes have stretched from the European part of Russia to Yekaterinburg, over 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) from Ukraine's border.

There's scarce public data, but some estimates indicate up to 20% of the company's total warehouse space has been destroyed, with assessments of losses running as high as $6 billion.

Kim said Wildberries’ sites have been “reinforced and strengthened” defensively, but the attacks continued. Some warehouses suffered only minor damage, and Ukraine tried to hit them again.

Wildberries said it's rearranging supply chains to create “partner hubs” for storing merchandise — a challenging process, given its dependence on big depots.

Attacks cause a ripple effect

Ukrainian officials have said Wildberries sells gear and technical components, including drones, to the military. Moscow denied it, but such dual-use items as drone components, flak jackets or thermal weapon sights remain available on the platform.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the attacks were designed to disrupt military supplies, breed popular discontent and cause a domino effect in the Russian economy by putting stress on major banks, including VTB and Sberbank, that made massive loans to Wildberries.

Wildberries’ debts were estimated at the equivalent of about $15 billion at the end of 2025.

Russia's small and medium businesses already have been hit hard by tax increases, regulatory hurdles and, most recently, a fuel crisis from attacks on oil refineries.

Chris Weafer, CEO of Macro-Advisory Ltd. Consultancy, said Monday the attacks have exacerbated Russia's business environment and are an attempt by Kyiv “to undermine public confidence.”

“There is a segment of the manufacturing sectors in Russia and elsewhere that are definitely suffering significantly from that,” he said.

Wildberries had recently changed its seller policy, exempting it from liability for stock damaged by a “force majeure” that includes drone attacks.

Kim pledged to support sellers with discounts on storage, free transfer of goods to other sites, discounted loans and other measures. Wildberries also issued some reimbursements that covered only a fraction of the losses.

Russia’s Central Bank has asked lenders to restructure loans to small and medium businesses that lost merchandise.

Meanwhile, many owners of Wildberries pickup points face lost revenue amid the plunging deliveries. Some vented frustrations on social media about going out of business.

The lost goods mean tens of thousands of small businesses can't continue to operate, service their loans or pay taxes. Many are pleading for government support.

Galeotti said the strikes reflected Kyiv's effort to bring the war home to Russia.

“It’s not just about seeing great clouds of black smoke over your cities because of some oil refinery on the outskirts being hit," he said. "You might be a small business whose inventory has just gone up in smoke in one of the Wildberries’ warehouses. Or else you just simply might be an ordinary consumer who just suddenly is no longer going to get the goods that you plan to buy.”

Some analysts warn the attacks could fuel stronger anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western fervor.

The Wildberries attacks have played into the hands of Russian hawks who urge escalating the war, said pro-Kremlin political expert Sergei Markov.

“It strengthens the view that it’s necessary to hit Europe,” he said. “And better sooner than later.”

Former President Dmitry Medvedev sought to stir up anger at Ukraine for trying to destroy an essential daily routine for millions.

“Our enemy is fighting not the Russian leadership or the army, but ordinary citizens,” he said.

The upcoming departures of Gov. Mark Gordon and U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, along with U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman’s decision to run to replace Lummis, marks the first time in 32 years that Wyoming has had open seats for governor, U.S. Senate and U.S. House at the same time. The races for Wyoming Secretary of State and state Superintendent of Public Instruction are also open seats, with both incumbents seeking higher office.

All statewide elected offices in Wyoming currently are held by Republicans.

Gordon considered seeking a third term and challenging a state term limit law but ultimately decided against it. Four candidates now seek the Republican nomination to replace him: state Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder, former state House Speaker and current state Sen. Eric Barlow, retired Marine Corps colonel and 2022 gubernatorial candidate Brent Bien, and professional bull rider and rodeo producer Curt Blake.

The Degenfelder and Barlow campaigns are on roughly even financial footing, with Degenfelder raising about $1.3 million and Barlow raising about $1.2 million. Bien raised about $192,000, while Blake reported raising no money.

President Donald Trump has endorsed Degenfelder. The winner will face Democrat Kenneth Casner in November.

Among the five Republicans running to replace Lummis in the U.S. Senate are Hageman, former Kirby Mayor Sam Mead and former environmental services business owner Jimmy Skovgard.

Hageman is in her second term in Congress. She was Trump’s pick in 2022 to defeat then-U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the president’s harshest Republican critics following the attack on the U.S. Capitol and his attempts to remain in office after his 2020 election defeat.

Trump has once again endorsed Hageman in her U.S. Senate bid. She has raised about $2.4 million for her campaign, nearly 10 times that of Mead, her closest competitor in fundraising.

The winner will likely face former Democratic state Rep. James Byrd, who is the only candidate in the two-person primary field to report raising any money for the campaign.

Nine active candidates are competing for the Republican nomination to replace Hageman in the U.S. House in what’s shaping up to be the most expensive contest on Tuesday’s ballot. The field includes former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow, Senate President Bo Biteman, businessmen Steve Friess and Reid Rasner, and Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray.

Friess, Rasner and Gray have outspent the rest of the field, thanks to sizable loans each candidate has made to their campaigns. Friess, who is a son of the late Republican megadonor Foster Friess, loaned $3 million to his campaign. Rasner loaned about $1.9 million to his campaign, while Gray floated his campaign about $1.4 million.

Neither Trump nor Hageman have made an endorsement in the primary.

In the Democratic primary, former Democratic state Sen. Lisa Kinney, like Byrd in the U.S. Senate race, faces an opponent who has not raised any money.

About half of Wyoming’s 31 state Senate seats and all 62 state House seats are up for election in 2026. Democrats hold only eight seats across both chambers, giving Republicans overwhelming supermajorities. Republican members of the conservative Freedom Caucus movement hold an outright majority in the state House.

Laramie and Natrona counties, home to Cheyenne and Capser, respectively, are the state’s most populous and most influential in statewide elections. Campbell, Sweetwater, Fremont, Sheridan and Park counties also tend to play important roles in primaries. Albany and Teton counties are the most Democratic-friendly in the state and tend to have an outsized say in Democratic primaries. They were the only counties that Cheney carried against Hageman in the 2022 primary, before a 2023 law prohibited Democrats and Republicans from changing their party affiliation at the polls.

The winners of Tuesday’s Republican primaries will have an advantage heading into the general election in a state that’s only elected one Democrat statewide in more than 30 years. Wyoming is one of the most reliably Republican states in the country. It was Trump’s best state in 2024 and 2020 and his second-best state in 2016.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

When do polls close?

Polls close at 7 p.m. MT, which is 9 p.m. ET.

What’s on the ballot?

The Associated Press will provide vote results and declare winners in contested primaries for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, governor, secretary of state, treasurer, state school superintendent, state Senate and state House.

Who gets to vote?

Only voters registered with a political party may participate in that party’s primary. Democrats may not vote in the Republican primary or vice versa. Independent or unaffiliated voters may not participate in either primary. Voters registered with a party had been able to change their party affiliations at the polls on Election Day, but the 2023 law ended that practice.

How many voters are there?

As of August 1, there were about 272,000 registered voters in Wyoming, including about 212,000 Republicans, about 30,000 Democrats and about 25,000 voters not affiliated with any party.

How many people actually vote?

About 104,000 Republicans and about 10,000 Democrats participated in the 2024 state primaries for U.S. Senate. More Republicans voted in the 2022 primary for governor, with about 164,000 voters casting ballots, compared to about 7,000 in the Democratic primary. 2022 was the last statewide primary held before the law restricting party affiliation changes was enacted.

How much of the vote is cast early or by absentee ballot?

About 30% of the Republican primary vote and about 52% of the Democratic primary vote in the 2024 state primary was from absentee ballots cast either in-person or by mail.

As of Friday, about 30,900 Republican primary ballots and about 4,300 Democratic primary ballots had already been cast in Tuesday’s election.

When are early and absentee votes released?

In recent elections, more than half of Wyoming counties released all their vote results in their first vote updates, regardless of vote type. Almost every county released at least some in-person Election Day vote results in their first vote updates.

Laramie County tends to release a significant amount of in-person Election Day vote before releasing any results from absentee voting.

How long does vote-counting usually take?

In the 2024 state primary, the AP first reported results at 9:27 p.m. ET, or 27 minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 12:58 a.m. ET with about 98% of total votes counted.

When will the AP declare a winner?

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

How do recounts work?

Recounts in Wyoming are automatic if the vote margin is less than 1% of the votes cast for the winning candidate. Candidates alleging fraud or error in the result may request and pay for a recount. The cost is covered by the affected counties if the recount changes the result. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

Are we there yet?

As of Tuesday, there will be 77 days until the 2026 midterm elections.

___

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

Trump cited his good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for the decision, a likely bid to reengage with Kim, who views U.S.-South Korean military exercises as invasion rehearsals. But experts say the North Korean leader, now emboldened by his advancing nuclear arsenal and expanding military cooperation with Russia, won’t likely return to talks unless he is assured of serious U.S. concessions.

The 11-day, summertime Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises began Monday morning as scheduled and it wasn’t known which parts of the training were being downsized. Trump's announcement baffled many in South Korea, a key U.S. ally in Asia where national security is a top priority due to threats from nuclear-armed North Korea.

Trump orders military to ‘substantially reduce’ drills

Trump said in a social media post that the exercises are not only costly but “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which he said “has been unthreatening and respectful” during his time in the White House.

Trump instructed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” the exercises. He added that he recently asked President Lee Jae Myung if South Korea would join the U.S. in the “denuclearization” of Iran, “and they said, ‘No thanks!’”

Trump’s move is the latest example of the American president appearing to turn against an ally in favor of a leader cast by previous administrations as an adversary. Trump and others in his administration also have railed against NATO allies over a perceived lack of support for his war against Iran, even as they seek to confront an increasingly aggressive Russia in the Baltic region.

The trust many South Koreans have in the U.S. has eroded following a tariff war instigated by Trump’s administration and his transactional approach to security.

South Korea hopes for talks between US and North Korea

The office of South Korea's president said later Monday that the government hopes “friendly relationship” between Trump and Kim would lead to “meaningful dialogue” between the U.S. and North Korea and start discussions on promoting peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. It said that South Korea will make necessary diplomatic efforts for that.

South Korea and the U.S. are closely discussing practical and military contributions that can be made to restore freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, according to South Korea's presidential office.

Lee is a liberal who espouses improved ties with North Korea. Since taking office last year, his government has taken proactive steps to improve ties with North Korea, including turning off front line loudspeakers that blared K-pop music and world news. On Saturday, Lee offered to hold talks to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The conservative People Power Party, the main opposition party, lambasted Lee for allegedly “turning a blind eye on the public's security concerns” caused by Trump's announcement and prioritizing hopes for U.S.-North Korea diplomacy.

North Korea has shunned any talks with South Korea and the U.S. and accelerated weapons testing activities since Kim's high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with Trump broke down in 2019. Kim also has bolstered his diplomatic credentials by aligning with Russia over its war against Ukraine and taking steps to deepen cooperation with China.

In September 2025, Kim suggested he could resume talks with the American president if the U.S. drops “its delusional obsession with denuclearization” of North Korea. Experts say Kim likely aims to use his enlarged nuclear arsenal to win major concessions like extensive sanctions relief.

“Trump’s recent social media posts about Kim Jong Un suggest a willingness to reengage, but North Korea is busy profiting from Russia’s war against Ukraine while modernizing its own military,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

Downsizing the U.S. and South Korean drills “can damage alliance coordination, slow the process of South Korea taking on greater responsibility for its own defense, and weaken deterrence against possible conflicts in Asia,” Easley said.

Duyeon Kim, a senior analyst at Washington’s Center for a New American Security, said “reducing joint drills weakens military readiness over time against another potential North Korean attack.”

Military drills test tactics and anger North Korea

South Korea's military earlier said the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises this year would be similar to previous years in scale, with about 18,000 South Korean soldiers taking part.

The U.S. military said the drills would incorporate lessens from recent conflicts such as North Korea's battlefield experiences in the Russia-Ukraine front, while including a live-fire exercise to test joint precision targeting and maneuver, a wet gap crossing and distribution of prepositioned military equipment.

North Korea's Foreign Ministry on Friday accused the U.S. and South Korea of plotting more provocative drills this year and vowed to respond with “a new level of a deterrent.” Earlier this month, North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the sea in a likely protest of the drills.

Duyeon Kim, the analyst, said North Korea uses U.S.-South Korean drills “for domestic propaganda purposes to create a false narrative of a hostile America and justify its nuclear weapons program.”

This is not the first time Trump has sought to suspend the drills. After his first summit with Kim in 2018, Trump unilaterally announced the suspension of the U.S.-South Korean summertime exercises, calling them “very provocative” and “tremendously expensive.”

Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said North Korea feels less urgency to return to talks with the U.S. and South Korea now than when it entered talks with its rivals in 2018, but is unlikely to completely ignore Trump's overture.

He predicted North Korea will likely say it has noted Trump's post but will wait for further action showing the U.S. intends to drop hostilities against North Korea.

The crash happened around 8:51 p.m. Aug. 15 at the intersection of West U.S. Highway 90 and Northwest Centurion Court, according to the Lake City Police Department.

Police said a Ford F-150 was traveling west on U.S. 90 when it hit the passenger side of a Chrysler minivan that was turning at the intersection. Witnesses told investigators the Ford was traveling at a high rate of speed.

Officers, firefighters and emergency medical personnel found two women inside the minivan. Both women died at the scene. Their names have not been released.

The driver of the Ford left before officers arrived. Investigators later identified him as 31-year-old Jaron Christofer Carr and located him a short time later.

Carr was transported to the Columbia County Detention Center. He is charged with leaving the scene of a crash involving death and driving with a suspended or revoked license. He is also being held on active warrants from Missouri and Brevard County, Florida.

The police department’s Traffic Unit continues to investigate. Additional charges are possible.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Lake City Police Department at 386-752-4343. Anonymous tips can be submitted through the LCPD TIPS line at 386-719-2068 or Crime Stoppers of Columbia County at 386-754-7099.

Although the state has long been safe Republican territory in federal elections, this year marks the third consecutive election cycle in which Alaska finds itself among a handful of states at the center of the fight for control of Congress.

At the top of the ballot, Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan faces a strong challenge from Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola in his bid for a third term. They are the most notable contenders among 16 candidates in the state’s all-party primary, in which the top four vote-getters will advance to the general election regardless of party affiliation. The winner in November will be determined by ranked choice voting, as is the case for all Alaska general elections following a new law approved by voters in 2020.

Sullivan was first elected in 2014 after defeating Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, 48% to 46%. He won his 2020 reelection with 54% of the vote and a 13-percentage-point lead over his Democratic opponent.

Peltola was first elected in a 2022 special election to replace longtime Republican congressman Don Young, who died after almost 50 years in office. She defeated Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich in Alaska’s first statewide ranked choice voting election. She was elected to a full term later that year but lost her 2024 reelection bid to Begich, who is the nephew of the former U.S. senator.

Peltola has raised about $18.5 million for her campaign, compared with about $11.7 million for Sullivan. As of July 29, Sullivan had about $7.3 million in his campaign account, compared with about $4.6 million for Peltola.

The only other U.S. Senate candidate who reported raising any money was another Dan Sullivan, a former teacher who shares the same first and last name as the Republican incumbent. Republicans tried unsuccessfully to block the other Dan Sullivan from appearing on the ballot, accusing him of colluding with Democrats to help elect Peltola by confusing voters, which he and the Peltola campaign have denied. An Alaska court overturned efforts to boot the challenger from the ballot.

Sen. Sullivan will appear on the ballot as “Dan S. Sullivan” alongside the labels of “Registered Republican” and “Incumbent.” Challenger Sullivan will be listed as “Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.” without any party affiliation listed, although he filed for office as a Republican.

Nick Begich also faces a crowded field in his bid for a second term in the state’s lone congressional seat, but only commercial fisherman and former Bristol Bay Borough School Superintendent Bill Hill has emerged as a credible challenger. Hill is running as an independent, but he has the backing of several local union organizations as well as that of Anchorage pastor Matt Schultz, the top Democrat in the race before he suspended his campaign and endorsed Hill.

Begich raised about $5.5 million for the campaign, compared with about $1.3 million for Hill, and the incumbent sits atop a far larger campaign war chest.

Seventeen candidates are running to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy. Among them is former Gov. Bill Walker, who is running as an independent.

Republican candidates include former state Sens. Click Bishop, Shelley Hughes and Lesil McGuire, former Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, former state revenue Commissioner Adam Crum, Matanuska-Susitna Borough Mayor Edna DeVries, former state Attorney General Treg Taylor and business owner and conservative activist Bernadette Wilson.

Former state Sen. Tom Begich and former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins are the two Democrats in the race. Begich is the brother of Mark Begich and the uncle of Nick Begich.

Voters will also decide a statewide ballot measure that would impose contribution limits on state and local political campaigns. A 2021 federal court ruling lifted limits on what an individual could give a candidate.

Half of Alaska’s 20 state Senate seats and all 40 state House seats are up for election in 2026. Republican lawmakers outnumber Democratic lawmakers, but both chambers are organized by multiparty coalitions rather than along strict party lines.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

When do polls close?

Polls close at 8 p.m. local time, which is midnight and 1 a.m. ET. Almost all polls in the state close at midnight ET, but one polling location in the Aleutian Islands closes at 1 a.m. ET.

What’s on the ballot?

The Associated Press will provide vote results and declare winners in contested primaries for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, governor, state Senate and state House, as well as a statewide ballot measure.

Who gets to vote?

Any voter registered in Alaska may participate in the state’s all-party, top-four primary system.

How many voters are there?

As of Aug. 3, there were about 602,000 registered voters in Alaska. About 380,000 voters, roughly 63%, were either undeclared or nonpartisan voters; about 142,000, or 24%, were Republicans; and about 70,000, or 12%, were Democrats.

How many people actually vote?

Roughly 190,000 voters participated in the 2022 U.S. Senate and gubernatorial primaries. About 108,000 voters participated in the 2024 U.S. House primary.

How much of the vote is cast early or by absentee ballot?

About 23% of the U.S. Senate primary vote and about 28% of the U.S. House primary vote in the 2022 state primary was cast early in person or by mail.

As of Thursday, about 18,000 ballots had already been cast in Tuesday’s election.

When are early and absentee votes released?

A mix of vote results from in-person Election Day and early in-person voting are released in the first vote update of the night. Typically, nearly all in-person Election Day results and in-person early voting results are released by the last update of the night, with the bulk of mail voting results released in the days following election night.

How long does vote-counting usually take?

In the 2024 state primary, the AP first reported results at 1:03 a.m. ET, or three minutes after final polls closed. The election night tabulation ended at 4:58 a.m. ET, with about 89% of total votes counted. The count reached 100% on Sept. 1 at 6:57 p.m. ET, 12 days after the election.

When will the AP declare a winner?

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

How do recounts work?

Recounts in Alaska are automatic in the event of a tie vote. Candidates may also request and pay for a recount. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

Are we there yet?

As of Tuesday, there will be 77 days until the 2026 midterm elections.

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

A Florida DOT camera at the scene showed a car upside down in a pond near the on-ramp.

Tire tracks could be seen gouged into the grass in a path from the on-ramp toward the pond.

One lane of the on-ramp was closed as first responders investigated the crash.

That’s true — with a caveat. Wasserman Schultz is seeking her 12th term by running in a new district after Republicans scrambled the state’s congressional map earlier this year.

The fallout pushed Wasserman Schultz, a former national party chair with powerful ties in Washington, to cross district lines from her Fort Lauderdale exurb and be the only white candidate against four Black candidates in an area of Broward County that has helped send Black Democrats to Congress since 1992. That’s yielded an uncomfortable fight following the U.S. Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act provisions undergirding minority voting strength and effectively cleared Old Confederacy states, including Florida, to reshape House districts.

“For her to come in like this is just another Broward seat, it's a complete erasure of our history, our fight for Black access,” said former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, 47, who resigned from the seat in April while facing an ethics investigation but now wants it back.

Another candidate, 27-year-old progressive organizer and substitute teacher Elijah Manley, said Republicans’ redistricting ploy is not Wasserman Schultz’s fault. But she “had other options,” Manley added, including running in her new home district, which was gerrymandered to include the more conservative Gulf Coast.

“Instead, she stabbed us in the back, trying to take away Black representation,” Manley said, pointing to Congressional Black Caucus warnings that it could lose more than a quarter of its 60-plus members this fall.

Wasserman Schultz, 59, is by far the best funded out of five Democratic candidates and benefits from Florida rules that do not require a majority to win primaries.

She argued that she can ably advocate for the whole region after representing wide swaths of Broward as a state and federal legislator across three decades. “I’m not air dropping myself into this district,” she told The Associated Press. “I have represented diverse communities. I know how to tailor my service to them and represent a district more broadly.”

A win by Wasserman Schultz would be a rarity

President Donald Trump started pushing Republican-run states to redraw House boundaries last year to help preserve the party's fragile majority. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded with an effort that clusters southeast Florida Democrats together, intending to reduce five Democratic seats to three. Broward, the state’s most Democratic county, situated between Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, now has just one presumed-Democratic district anchored in and around Fort Lauderdale.

Nationally, white lawmakers typically hold some of the 115-plus House seats where the voting-age population is majority non-white. Wasserman Schultz does it in her existing north Broward-Palm Beach district, which was drawn after the 2020 census to be 42% Hispanic, 18% Black and about 6% Asian American. White voters compose the remaining third.

But a white lawmaker is a rarity for majority or plurality Black districts, like the new Florida 20th. The district is 42% Black, 23% Hispanic and 4% Asian, the rest white. The Black share includes a large Caribbean population, most notably Haitian Americans.

Going into November, an Associated Press analysis found that Wasserman Schultz is the only white Democrat positioned to represent any of the remaining districts with a Black majority or plurality.

Cherfilus-McCormick said she can win, despite losing Black constituents she previously represented in Palm Beach County. She dismissed concerns over federal criminal charges accusing her of stealing $5 million in federal disaster funds. She has pleaded not guilty and has denied alleged violations of House rules.

The criminal case and redistricting fit together, she insisted, and “the people see what’s going on — them trying to silence the only Haitian member of Congress and take away our voice.”

Manley, though, was more circumspect about Wasserman Schultz’s status as the favorite. He mused about upsetting the veteran congresswoman on Tuesday yet looked ahead to the 2028 elections, hoping Black Democrats rally around one candidate rather than four. The current field also includes former 2 Live Crew rapper Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell and real estate broker and former local elected official Dale Holness.

Von Howard, a Black resident of Plantation, said the choice was wrenching. He declined to disclose his vote but said he wanted someone who “understands the totality of the district.”

“If you're not of the people, and you just want this for the clout, in some instances, that could be a turnoff,” the 47-year-old said.

Broward NAACP President Marsha Ellison was more direct, without endorsing any candidate.

“The whole mission was to take away Black power, so we don’t have representation to understand our lived experience,” she said. “That may not be important to Debbie, but it’s certainly important to us.”

There's a debate over what representation means

Wasserman Schultz said she occasionally hears those concerns from voters. Her response is that “lived experience matters, but experience broadly matters" as well.

She notes her Appropriations Committee seat, which could be even more influential should Democrats win a House majority. She recalls programs impacting Black communities she helped create and fund since her first years in the Florida Legislature.

“I fight every single day to help improve the lived experience of the people that I represent,” she said.

Wasserman Schultz also said she’s worked to connect across race and culture in Broward. Because of her existing district makeup, “I spent six years learning Spanish,” to converse with individuals and in town halls, news conferences and interviews broadcast on Spanish-language stations.

“Out of respect,” she said, “anything I can do to inspire people’s confidence that the person representing them understands them.”

Wasserman Schultz is a recognizable figure

Several times outside of early voting sites, Black, white and Hispanic voters waved or stopped to talk to the congresswoman. Among them were Broward County sheriff’s deputies who wanted photos and a trio of women who lamented they had been drawn into a new Republican-leaning district.

Yusdefs Delgado, a naturalized citizen from Colombia, told Wasserman Schultz that he enjoys her social media posts but wants to hear more about policy and less about the president.

“We know Trump sucks,” he told her, smiling and confirming that he voted for her. “I don’t agree with her on everything, but she’s closest to where I am, and I trust her to try to do the right thing for us,” Delgado explained later.

Cherfilus-McCormick and Manley said that’s not enough given the environment after the Supreme Court decision, Trump’s attacks on diversity initiatives and his push to rewrite how the U.S. tells its history on race and racism.

“We’re not at a place in this country where we can be completely colorblind politically,” Manley said. “We’re just not.”

Wasserman Schultz said the new district “is drawn in a way that the plurality population has the ability to elect the person of their choice” — language that alludes to the now-diminished Voting Rights Act. Voters, she said, can “consider all of the qualities that matter to them.”

As for putting herself on the ballot again, she remained unapologetic.

“Trump and DeSantis did this to our community,” she said, adding, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them steal Broward’s political power, de-unify us and prevent us from standing up for our community’s values.”

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Associated Press journalist Matthew Klein contributed from Washington.

With two Democrats competing on the ballot, the seat in California’s 14th Congressional District is guaranteed to remain under Democratic control and further narrow an already fragile Republican majority in the chamber.

State Sen. Aisha Wahab and Bay Area Rapid Transit Board President Melissa Hernandez were the finalists in the June 16 special primary, in which the top two finishers regardless of party affiliation advanced to Tuesday’s special election. The two also will compete in the fall in a slightly redrawn district for a full term that begins in January 2027.

Wahab placed first in both the June 16 special primary and the June 2 primary for the full-term seat to replace Swalwell, who has denied the allegations against him. In both contests, Wahab led Hernandez by more than 20 percentage points.

Hernandez has more than doubled Wahab’s fundraising and spending for the campaign, but as of the end of July the two were on roughly even footing in terms of cash in the bank.

The race has also attracted the attention of several outside groups, including some affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization. United Democracy Project, a super political action committee backed by AIPAC, spent $1.2 million on the race in August in support of Hernandez and in opposition to Wahab, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Another group, Bold America, which has received funding from United Democracy Project, has spent about $1.7 million on the race since the special primary, also in support of Hernandez and in opposition to Wahab.

Collectively, outside groups have spent about $4.1 million on the race since mid-July. About $3.7 million was spent to benefit Hernandez’s campaign, compared with just shy of $400,000 to benefit Wahab’s.

The boundaries of the 14th Congressional District were redrawn as part of a new congressional map approved by voters in a 2025 statewide ballot measure known as Proposition 50. The map goes into effect for the full-term seat in January, while the winner of the special election will serve under the current boundaries for the remainder of the year.

Proposition 50 was placed on the ballot in response to mid-decade redistricting efforts led by President Donald Trump in several Republican-controlled states. While the plan created a congressional map more favorable to Democrats, no dramatic changes were made to the 14th District. Under the current boundaries, Democrats make up 50.4% of registered voters in October, compared with 17.6% for Republicans. Under the new boundaries, Democrats comprise about 49.7% of registered voters as of mid-May, compared with about 17.4% for Republicans.

In 2024, Democratic then-Vice President Kamala Harris carried the current 14th District with 65.8% of the vote in the presidential election against Trump. If the election had been held under the new boundaries, Harris would have received 65.4% of the vote.

Both versions of the district are contained entirely within Alameda County in the East Bay. The current district includes Hayward, Livermore, Pleasanton and Union City, as well as parts of San Leandro, Fremont and Dublin.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

When do polls close?

Polls close at 8 p.m. PT, which is 11 p.m. ET.

What’s on the ballot?

The Associated Press will provide vote results and declare a winner in the 14th Congressional District special election.

Who gets to vote?

Any registered voter in the current version of California’s 14th Congressional District may participate in the special election.

How many voters are there?

As of May 2026, there were about 423,000 registered voters in the 14th Congressional District, including about 210,000 Democrats, about 73,000 Republicans and about 116,000 voters with no party preference.

How many people actually vote?

Nearly 124,000 voters cast ballots in the June 16 special primary. About 276,000 people voted in the regularly scheduled 2024 general election in the 14th District.

How much of the vote is cast early or by absentee ballot?

About 98% of votes in the June 16 special primary were from absentee ballots delivered in person or by mail.

As of Wednesday, about 52,000 ballots had already been cast in Tuesday’s election, about 32,500 from Democrats, about 7,800 from Republicans and the rest from unaffiliated or third-party voters.

When are early and absentee votes released?

In Alameda County, the first vote update of the night usually includes only results from mail voting, but the county typically still has a sizable number of mail ballots left to tally by the next morning.

How long does vote-counting usually take?

In the June 16 special primary, the AP first reported results at 11:17 p.m. ET, or 17 minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 1:03 a.m. ET, with about 87% of total votes counted. The vote count reached 99.9% complete at 7:26 p.m. ET on June 18.

When will the AP declare a winner?

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

How do recounts work?

There are no automatic recounts in California. Any registered voter may request and pay for a recount. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

Are we there yet?

As of Tuesday, there will be 77 days until the 2026 midterm elections.

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

One person died in a landslide that struck an apartment building in the southern city of Geoje on Monday, the Interior and Safety Ministry said in a report. It said two people were injured in Geoje and two others in nearby cities.

The heavy rains that have pummeled southern South Korea since Saturday have forced about 390 people to evacuate to safe places and caused power outages at about 3,580 houses, the ministry report said.

In the Philippines, heavy monsoon rains flooded key streets and snarled traffic early Monday in the densely populated region of metropolitan Manila and a dozen outlying provinces, forcing the government to suspend government work and cancel classes at all levels starting at noon. Schools were asked to shift to online learning.

About three weeks of intermittent monsoon rains and a storm that lashed the main northern island region of Luzon two weeks ago left at least 23 people dead, mostly due to landslides and floods, and affected 5 million people, including nearly 25,000, who remained in government emergency shelters on Monday in several northern provinces, according to the Office of Civil Defense.

Among the dead were 10 people, including children, whose houses were buried by an Aug. 9 landslide in the northern mountain resort city of Baguio. Three others were dug out alive with injuries by rescuers from the avalanche of mud, rocks and debris that collapsed from a mountainside as people slept, officials said.

It might make for a fascinating playoff race.

There are seven teams fighting for the final AL wild-card spot and all of them have a record below .500. The Baltimore Orioles would make the playoffs if the season ended Sunday, sporting a 61-63 record.

Right behind them: The Texas Rangers (61-64), Toronto Blue Jays (61-65), Detroit Tigers (60-64), Minnesota Twins (60-65), Cleveland Guardians (60-65) and Seattle Mariners (59-66). The Houston Astros could be in the mix as well with a 63-62 record that gives them a narrow advantage in the AL West.

Many of those teams were sellers at the trade deadline this month. The Blue Jays traded outfielder Daulton Varsho to the Astros, the Orioles traded former No. 1 pick Adley Rutschman to the Red Sox and the Tigers dealt ace Tarik Skubal to the Dodgers and right-hander Casey Mize to the Padres.

Now at least one of those teams might find itself playing baseball in October anyway.

Only three teams in MLB history have made the playoffs with a losing record and all of them happened during seasons when the schedule was much shorter than normal.

The 1981 Kansas City Royals (50-53) qualified for the postseason thanks to a split-season format caused by a players' strike during the middle of the summer. In 2020, the Houston Astros and Milwaukee Brewers both squeezed into the playoff bracket with a 29-31 record during the pandemic-shortened season that had an expanded playoff field of 16 teams.

Trivia question

Joshua Báez became the first player to hit three home runs in his big-league debut, leading the Cardinals to an 8-4 victory over the Chicago Cubs on Saturday.

Only seven players have hit even two homers in their first regular-season game in the majors since 1900. Who are they?

The workhorse returns

Miami Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara has had a great bounce-back season with a 13-7 record and 3.43 ERA after struggling last year following Tommy John surgery that caused him to miss the 2024 season.

He's also doing what he does best — pitch deep into games.

The 2022 National League Cy Young winner has already thrown 170 2/3 innings this year, which leads the big leagues by a large margin. If he continues at this pace, he'll throw roughly 220 innings in 2026.

Throwing more than 200 innings has become increasingly rare over the past few decades as teams lean more on their bullpens. Only three pitchers reached the mark last season — Logan Webb, Garrett Crochet and Cristopher Sanchez.

Just 20 years ago in 2006, there were 45 pitchers who hit 200 innings.

If Alcantara manages to make it to 220 this season, that will be most in the big leagues since — Sandy Alcantara. He threw 228 2/3 innings during 2022 when he won the Cy Young.

Dodgers in the dumps

The Los Angeles Dodgers are the two-time defending World Series champs and one of the favorites to win the title again this season.

They sure aren't playing like these days.

Los Angeles is 5-11 in its past 16 games, having been swept by the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs and losing series to the Arizona Diamondbacks and Milwaukee Brewers in that span. Since July 1, the Dodgers are 18-21.

“I say this because it’s just been four or five, six weeks of below average production in our offense. It’s just the truth, and I think we have just haven’t played clean baseball for quite some time, and that speaks to the defense,” manager Dave Roberts said.

The Dodgers have a chance to gain some momentum this week with three games against the Colorado Rockies and three more against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Rockies are in last place in the NL West while the Pirates have fallen to 61-65 after a promising start to the season.

Trivia Answer

Jose Fernandez (D-backs, 2026), Chase DeLauter (Guardians, 2026), Trevor Story (Rockies, 2016), J.P. Arencibia (Blue Jays, 2010), Mark Quinn (Royals, 1999), Bert Campaneris (Kansas City Athletics, 1964), Bob Nieman (Browns, 1951)

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

The 41-year-old superstar’s contract with Riyadh club Al-Nassr, signed in December 2022, expires next June, and he has told Vogue magazine that another is unlikely.

“This is probably my last year of football, and I want to leave a spectacular legacy,” Ronaldo said.

The Portugal forward, who has scored 976 career goals, married long-time partner, Georgina Rodriguez, earlier this month.

“I have my future all mapped out,” he said. “I have so many things to keep me busy that to tell you just one thing is hard. Because football could leave a big hole, you have to fill your time in various ways, not just one.

“And also have more fun, travel more, watch and play padel, which I really like, and continue to enjoy what I’ve earned — what we’ve earned. Because after all, it’s been 25 years with a lot of sacrifice.”

The 2026-27 SPL season is Ronaldo’s 25th as a professional. During his career, he has won five Ballon d’Or awards and five UEFA Champions League titles.

Ronaldo’s 28 league goals last season helped Al-Nassr become champion of Saudi Arabia in May to secure his first trophy since arriving in Riyadh, and a first league title for the club since 2019.

After returning from his wedding, he missed Al-Nassr’s first game of its title defense on Saturday, watching from the sidelines as it opened with a 3-0 win over Al-Fateh.

“Cristiano is here today, and he is always present with us,” Al-Nassr coach Ange Postecoglou said after the game.

Ronaldo could play against Al-Diriyah in the King’s Cup on Tuesday.

“The most important thing now is recovery, especially as we have only two days after this match,” former Tottenham Hotspur and Nottingham Forest coach Postecoglou said.

Ronaldo’s comments came days after long-time rival Lionel Messi revealed that, following his father’s death, he may soon retire.

“I don’t know how to carry on,” Messi, 39, said. “I used to just play football, and now I’m really not sure if I’ll carry on doing it for much longer.”

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See AP’s full soccer coverage here