The 18-year-old, who once found classes boring and put in only enough effort to pass, found renewed purpose to come to school everyday.

“It motivates me. I like making connections with the kids, I like helping them,” Dillon said.

It began in his junior year when he enrolled in career training courses. Soon, Dillon said, his grades improved. He graduated in June from Chief Leschi Schools in Washington and is now considering going to college for a teaching degree.

Administrators at the school say a shift in focus to technical training and career readiness is paying off, with more students not only staying in school but graduating on time.

Those gains are emblematic of progress across the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education, which oversees 183 primary and secondary schools serving over 40,000 students. In 2015, just over half of high schoolers at BIE schools graduated within four years. That number soared to a record high of 79% by 2025.

Some BIE educators attribute that surge to local innovations. Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Billy Kirkland says they reflect the Trump administration’s commitment to Native American students, including efforts to strengthen teacher training. In addition, the way graduation rates are reported across BIE schools was changed to address flawed data collection that previously depressed the numbers.

But concerns loom that changes reshaping the BIE under the Trump administration — including the planned dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education and continued fallout from cuts instituted by DOGE — could undermine progress and prevent struggling schools from improving.

Reporting standards net more accurate data

The surge in graduation rates reflects, in part, more accurate reporting rather than a sudden leap in student academic improvement, according to agency officials.

For years, school administrators across the system used flawed methods to track graduation rates, often counting students who had transferred to other schools as dropouts.

“We had to come to a consensus and set an accountability framework for our schools,” said Carmelia Becenti, the agency’s chief academic officer.

Beginning in 2018, BIE began standardizing data collection methods. In the years since, Becenti said, the data has painted a more accurate and encouraging picture.

An AP analysis of BIE data found that graduation rates across the system are up 55% since new reporting standards began rolling out, with 11 of its secondary schools reporting 100% growth or higher.

New approaches help students connect

Less than one-third of BIE schools are operated by the agency itself. The rest are run by tribes and receive federal funding. At some of those, educators say data collection is only part of the story.

Don Brummett, superintendent of Chief Leschi Schools, said his staff has been working to correct a “disconnect” between the high school's previous laser focus on getting students ready for college and many students’ goals of finding a job upon graduation.

“We devalued the trades. That was a mistake,” Brummett said.

The school launched its career and technical curriculum in 2020 with funding from the Puyallup Tribal Council. Since then, Brummett has seen students who might otherwise have dropped out instead enter health sciences, education and fisheries management and find new motivation to stay in school.

Dillon, the recent graduate, said hands-on job training was a better match for his learning style.

“It was kind of the first time I felt excited to go to school,” said Dillon, reflecting on his time helping second graders practice reading skills and learn the life cycle of a frog.

Between 2019 and 2025, Chief Leschi Schools reported four-year graduation rates rose from 53% to 87%.

A focus on trades is just one of the ways tribal-controlled BIE schools have innovated to keep students on track. At Choctaw Central High School, a BIE school operated by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw, administrators said a COVID-era experiment in virtual learning contributed to a surge in graduation rates from roughly 70% to 93%.

“For certain kids that have more responsibilities at home, kids that need to work, we saw that (virtual learning) gave them a flexible schedule and an opportunity to earn their diploma,” said principal Alaric Keams.

When pandemic lockdowns lifted, the district maintained a virtual learning option for all high schoolers.

But not all tribal governments have the resources to pay for these kinds of programs or take over management of BIE schools.

Peter Lengkeek, chairman of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, says the BIE-operated high school serving his community is chronically understaffed and crumbling under a backlog of deferred maintenance, including a gymnasium with sinking walls and a rodent infestation. It has reported graduating fewer than 60% of students on time in recent years.

“If we were able to, we would step in and try to remedy a lot of these things,” said Lengkeek. “We have to rely on the government to fulfill its treaty promise.”

Tribal leaders push back against education changes

From the dismantling of the federal Department of Education to DOGE reductions that swept out longtime staffers, as well as repeated threats of deep funding cuts, tribal leaders fear the progress that has been made could be undermined.

In November 2025, the Department of Education began handing off oversight of dozens of programs that serve Native students to BIE.

At a tribal consultation session in February in Washington, D.C., dozens of tribal leaders spoke in opposition, saying the transition could overwhelm the already understaffed and stretched BIE with additional responsibilities. Several accused the department of ignoring its legal responsibility to seek their input before moving forward.

“We are here too late,” said Herschel Gorham, lieutenant governor of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. “The ink was dry on the agreements before the tribes were ever notified. That should never, ever happen.”

Jason Dropik, executive director of the National Indian Education Association, said turmoil at the agency's Washington office trickles down to schools, pointing to a Trump administration executive order that aimed to turn the BIE into a school choice system but was scaled back after an outcry from tribes.

“That caused some delays and disruptions to services,” Dropik said. “When drastic changes go into motion without tribal consultation, there can be unintended consequences for our students.”

Lengkeek worries the BIE could be consumed by political upheaval while schools like the one serving his community continue to underperform.

“This system holds the future of our nations in its hands,” Lengkeek said. “We need stability. We need increased funding. We need infrastructure.”

——

This story is published through the Global Indigenous Reporting Network at The Associated Press.

___

This story has been updated to correct that 11 BIE secondary schools, not nine, reported 100% growth or higher.

If dominance was overrated, Harris, now a two-time Varsity 4 All-News4JAX player of the year, was overqualified. He leaves the Spartans as one of the best players in area history, including state championships in two of his final three seasons.

Not only was Harris the ultimate gamer in the biggest season of his career, he did it after an offseason pivot. Harris competed in his fall baseball schedule as a hitter, but he didn’t step on a pitching mound for roughly six months.

“It was the first time I’ve done that,” he said. “I’ve never gone like half a year with no games [pitching]. Once I found it, I was good. And every week, I just kept improving.”

All-News4JAX baseball players of the year

It may have taken Harris a few weeks during the season to find his stride and get the adrenaline aligned, but the success came back in a hurry. Harris was

Across five seasons, Harris whiffed an astounding 526 batters and finished with a 32-8 record. Five of those losses came during his eighth grade season, making Harris’ true varsity record a stellar 28-3.

His final two wins will go down as perhaps the most unbelievable

Harris threw 45 pitches in a state semifinal win over Schoolhouse Prep, leaving in the fourth inning with a 4-0 lead. Two days later, Harris started (and finished) the state championship game, a 6-2 win over Orangewood Christian for an unbelievable double. Harris hit the 105-pitch limit on the number, striking out the final batter to earn the program the second championship in program history.

“The work I put in all year prepared me for throwing both of those games and being able to be good in both of them,” Harris said.

“Because most kids, they don’t train their body enough to take one day off and then come back and throw 100 pitches. And also just the experience. I’ve been on varsity for five years straight in playoff games. Every year we’ve made the playoffs and I’m pitching every year, too. And I think that experience just really helped me get to that.”

In the pitch count era, the notion of a high school hurler throwing 10.2 innings and earning decisions in the final four and the final is outlandish. So many things have to line up for something like that to happen.

“I’ve never seen someone do that. And whenever we found out the dates for the final four and state game, I knew that it could be a possibility,” Harris said. “And like Coach Tom [Lucas] was saying, he was like, ‘y’all better hit if you want me to take him out.’”

Harris, the pitcher, was elite. He finished with career highs in wins (12), strikeouts (165) and innings pitched (85). Harris won five of St. Johns seven playoff games.

Harris, the batter, was a puzzle for opposing pitchers to try and solve. Not only did he crank out career highs across multiple categories (.400 average, 31 RBI, 24 runs scored, 1.117 OPS), but hurlers never figured him out. Harris had smacked just one homer in four seasons before this year.

He hit seven this year, all of those coming in the postseason.

“I wouldn’t say I felt the pressure, but again, that’s like what I want, the other team to bring it, because then that gets me more locked in,” Harris said. “And I know teams are going to start trash talking, especially just us being good for so long. They’re going to say we’re overrated, we’re not that good, which we’re hearing that even in the playoffs, teams are saying that. I think us as a team, we like that. It helped us play better in those games.”

Varsity 4 All-News4JAX baseball first team

Position, player, school, class notable

P Gavin Duprey, Creekside, Jr.

Went 7-0 with 76 Ks in 56 IP with 1.00 ERA. Is 14-2 over his last two seasons. Had career-best 16 Ks in 5-1 win over state semifinalist Clay.

P Brayden Harris, St. Johns Country Day, Sr.

Back-to-back Varsity 4 All-News4JAX player of the year with incredible final season. Led the team in the Triple Crown categories (.400, 31 RBI, 7 HR). All seven of those homers came in the playoffs. Had 42 hits. As a hurler, finished 13-2 with 165 Ks, 1.07 ERA and wins in the state semifinals and title game. Had 526 Ks in his career.

P Preston Matricardi, Fernandina Beach, Jr.

Big time arm for the Pirates. He went 7-2 with 81 Ks in 45 IP, 1.08 ERA. Committed to Florida State.

P Rylan McMahon, Clay, Jr.

Ignited Blue Devils’ surprising run to the final four by delivering in all the big games. Went 9-4 and whiffed 122 in 68.1 IP and finished with 1.84 ERA.

C Hunter Rodgers, St. Johns Country Day, Sr.

Breakout season for the Jacksonville University signee. Hit .390 with five homers, 25 RBI and 22 runs scored. A career .320 hitter with 76 RBI, 12 HR. Second team selection last year.

IF Aiden Arnett, Trinity Christian, Sr.

Hit .340 with three homers and 22 RBI. Added eight doubles and a triple for Class 2A state champs. Scored 26 runs and had 36 hits. Two-time All-News4JAX first-team selection, and a second teamer in 2024. Career .363 batter with 105 runs scored and 93 RBI. Led team with .493 on-base percentage. Virginia Tech signee.

IF Preston Cole, St. Johns Country Day, Jr.

Two-time All-News4JAX selection. Hit .340 with 34 hits, 17 RBI and six homers for Class 1A state champ. A .329 hitter with 58 RBI, 14 HR in career.

IF Ilias Mamea, Bishop Snyder, Sr.

Second on the team in average (.400). On-base percentage (.505) cemented how valuable he was to the offense. Belted six homers, scored 28 runs and drove in 27 for regional finalist Cardinals. Had 32 total hits. Headed to Santa Fe College.

IF Jordan Martinez, Trinity Christian, Sr.

Facing the state’s most difficult schedule, Martinez hit .365 with 20 extra-base hits (12 HR, 5 doubles, 3 triples) and 43 RBI. Scored 33 runs. As a spot duty pitcher, he was 2-0 with 10 Ks, 0.84 ERA in 8.1 IP. A career .346 hitting with 24 HR, 96 RBI. Second team selection last year.

OF Brady Harris, Trinity Christian, Sr.

Four-time All-News4JAX selection. Hit .296 with 20 RBI, six doubles, four homers and a couple triples. Career-best 34 hits and 36 runs. Signed with the University of Florida.

OF James McCranie, Bolles, Sr.

Huge final season for the Bulldogs. Hit .484 (more than doubling his average last year) to lead Bolles in hits (31)m average and RBI (22). Belted four homers. Washington & Lee University signee.

OF Gage Petrutz, Trinity Christian, Sr.

He’s also one of the best catchers around for the Class 2A state champs. Led the Conquerors in average (.372) and hits (42) while playing the state’s most challenging schedule. Added 25 RBI and three homers. Alabama signee.

UT Bane Barker, Sandalwood, Sr.

Career-best year at the plate (.342) with six homers, 27 hits and 20 RBI. Whiffed 108 batters in 60 IP for 18-10 Saints. Selected in the 12th round of the MLB draft by the Marlins.

UT Cole Dennis, Bishop Snyder, Sr.

Runner-up in player of the year voting by coaches after an unbelievable final season that made him a fourth-round draft pick of the Braves. Faced the state’s second most difficult schedule. Went 10-1 with 103 Ks, 1.90 ERA in 62.2 IP. Had a massive season at the plate (.432, 12 HR, 31 RBI, 7 doubles, 1.014 slugging percentage).

UT Tommy Glasspoole, Tocoi Creek, Sr.

Led the Toros all over the stat sheet. Hit .330 (30 for 91) with 10 doubles and 23 RBI. On the mound, he was Tocoi’s most consistent arm. Threw 50.2 innings and whiffed 81 with a 1.68 ERA. Fired the program’s first perfect game in five-inning win over Menendez.

UT Gehrig Severdit, Episcopal, Sr.

Four-year player for the Eagles who wrapped up his career with a .381 average, 20 RBI, 26 runs and three homers in his final season. Career .330 hitter. Also finished career with 4-0 mark on the mound with 27 Ks in 25.2 IP.  St. Johns River State signee.

Second team

Position, player, school, class notable

P Matthew Bysheim, Creekside, Sr.

Had throwing righty went 6-2 with 67 Ks in 56.1 IP for 23-5 Knights.

P Gavin Coffey, St. Johns Country Day, Jr.

Team-leading 16 appearances for Class 1A state champs. Went 5-2 with 74 Ks in 47.2 IP in a dominant season. Had six saves.

P Tyler Ellis, Trinity Christian, Sr.

Finished 6-0 with 0.62 ERA, 53 Ks in 34 IP for Class 2A state champs. Second team All-News4JAX selection last year. Went 17-3 in his career with 199 Ks in 126 IP. At the plate, he hit .274 with a couple HRs, seven doubles and 19 RBI.

P Clem Nelson, Episcopal, Sr.

Three-year varsity player for the Eagles who turned in his best season in 2026. Finished 8-2 with 87 Ks, 2.11 ERA in 56.1 IP. Headed to Charleston Southern.

C Ranses Venero, University Christian, Jr.

A catcher as well. Led team in the Triple Crown categories (.422, 25 RBI, 8 HR). Team-best hits (30) and runs (26), too.

IF/P Kendall Carter, Union County, Jr.

Led Rural state champs with a .457 batting average. Pounded out 37 hits and drove in 24 runs en route to state title. On the mound, was 2-0 with a pair of saves, 27 Ks in 18.1 IP. Didn’t allow an earned run.

IF Jeter Farina, Oakleaf, Jr.

Great all-around season for the JU commit. Hit .410 with 20 RBI, 29 runs scored. Drew 29 walks to boost OBP to .564. Had 13 extra-base hits (8 doubles, 5 triples) and went 22 for 27 on stolen bases.

IF/P Trace Farmer, Fernandina Beach, Jr.

Second team All-News4JAX last year. Hit .432 with 31 RBI, 13 extra-base hits (9 doubles, 2 HRs, 2 triples). On the mound, he was 4-2 with a 2.30 ERA and 53 Ks in 38 IP.

IF Parker Loew, Trinity Christian, Sr.

Hit .297 with career bests in hits (33), doubles (8), RBI (29) and homers (5). Earned a win in limited pitching work. Signed with LSU.

IF Gray McCarthy, Bolles, Jr.

Two-way star for Bulldogs who played shortstop and also threw it. Hit .304 with 21 RBI, 5 homers, 16 runs scored and 28 hits. On the mound, he went 7-3 with a 2.72 ERA and 57 Ks in 57 IP.

IF/C Jace Moran, Suwannee, Jr.

Led Bulldogs to the regional finals by topping the list in each offensive category (.365, 38 hits, 26 RBI, 11 doubles, 4 HRs). Nearly flawless on defense (one error in 167 chances). Committed to Florida.

OF/P Jonathan Alvarez, Beachside, Jr.

Helped lead Barracudas back to playoffs in a two-way role. Was 5-2 with 1.54 ERA, 61 Ks in 41 IP. Hit .289 with team-best 24 RBI, 15 runs scored.

OF/UT Gavin Duva, Providence, Sr.

Played infield, outfield and pitched. Hit .300 (21 for 70) with 18 RBI, six homers and three doubles. Headed to Enterprise State.

UT Cody Boshell, Bishop Snyder, Sr.

Tennessee signee was first-team selection last year. Hit .284 with 3 homers, 22 runs scored and 16 RBI. Added 12 stolen bases and had .454 OBP. On the mound, he was 4-2 with 67 Ks in 47 IP. Was 11th-round draft pick of Diamondbacks in MLB draft.

UT Cullen Garner, St. Joseph, So.

Two-way force went 6-1 with 54 Ks in 42 IP, 1.83 ERA and a no-hitter. Hit .259 with 33 RBI and 12 extra-base hits (8 HR, 4 2Bs) for 19-7-1 Flashes.

UT Storm Lickliter, Ponte Vedra, Sr.

Two-way star for Sharks led team at the plate (.405, HR, 26 RBI, 10 doubles). Scored 21 runs and had 30 hits to lead the team. On the mound, went 6-2 with 70 Ks in 53.2 IP. Had 1.57 ERA and fired three complete games.

Honorable mention

Position, Player, School, Class

IF/OF Daylon Adams, Yulee, Sr.

IF/P River Ahrens, Eagle’s View, So.

IF/P Tanner Akers, Palatka, Jr.

IF/P Brian Allen, Orange Park, Sr.

P Brennan Bachtell, Trinity Christian, Sr.

OF Rylan Baker, Bolles, Sr.

C Connor Balazic, Creekside, Jr.

P Jeter Barnes, First Coast, Jr.

UT Trent Baskin, Sandalwood, Sr.

UT Fisher Bennett, West Nassau, Sr.

IF/P Rodney Blackwelder, Palatka, Sr.

IF/P Zach Bouchard, Mandarin, Jr.

OF Elijah Brown, Oakleaf, Sr.

OF Jeffrey Brugh, Union County, Sr.

OF/P Robert Bryson, Paxon, Sr.

OF Luca Candella, Ponte Vedra, Sr.

IF/P Nicholas Chowaniec, Baker County, Jr.

OF Evan Christmas, Union County, Sr.

OF/IF Marion Clayton, Flagler Palm Coast, Sr.

OF Brian Cobb, Christ’s Church Academy, Jr.

P Kline Cummings, Bolles, So.

OF/IF Colby Dean, Bartram Trail, Sr.

IF Denzel Del Valle Delgado, Bolles, Sr.

IF/P Andrew Detlefsen, Sandalwood, Sr.

P Croix Dibacco, Bartram Trail, Jr.

IF Hank Dyal, Baker County, Jr.

UT Dan Exline, Stanton, Sr.

IF Turner Farah, Baldwin, Sr.

IF/P Ryne Fennell, Covenant School of Jacksonville, Fr.

IF/P Carson Flis, Flagler Palm Coast, Sr.

IF/P Nick Fischer, Wolfson, Jr.

IF Paxton Frederick, Wolfson, Sr.

IF Jason Gillespie, Beachside, So.

OF Aramis Guanchez, Creekside, So.

IF/P Tyler Gunsaulus, Clay, Sr.

UT Orlando Gutierrez Jr., Covenant School of Jacksonville, So.

C Zack Gwaltney, Beachside, Sr.

Of Kaleb Hammond, University Christian, Sr.

IF Tripp Hannah, Bishop Snyder, Sr.

OF/P Landen Holbrook, Fernandina Beach, Sr.

IF/P Jackson Ingram, Middleburg, Sr.

UT Ethan Karaim, Middleburg, So.

P Kyler Keen, Columbia, Jr.

P Maddox Lee, Middleburg, Sr.

C/IF Jesse Macik, Baldwin, Sr.

OF Luke Manderson, Providence, Sr.

UT Mason Malloy, Palatka, Jr.

IF Madden Mann, Columbia, So.

P Aidan Maris, Bishop Kenny, Sr.

IF/P Joshua Marshall, Paxon, Jr.

IF/P Ethan Mathis, Clay, Sr.

P Kors Matthews, Bartram Trail, Fr.

P Tison McCray, Columbia, Sr.

P Jude McDonald, Episcopal, Sr.

P CJ McKenzie, Ponte Vedra, Jr.

OF Ford Mercer, Episcopal, So.

OF Sam Miller, Baker County, Jr.

OF/P Lukas Moore, Clay. Sr.

C/OF Braylon Morgan, Nease, Fr.

UT Jhai Mosley, Paxon, Jr.

P Max Mracek, Ponte Vedra, Sr.

P Bruce Neel, Fletcher, Sr.

IF Gavin Nickel, Beachside, Sr.

OF/IF Derek Ochoa, Beachside, Sr.

C Drew O’Quinn, St. Augustine, Sr.

IF/P Easton O’Quinn, Suwannee, Fr.

IF/P Caleb Pasko, Bishop Kenny, Sr.

OF Michael Perez, St. Joseph, Jr.

IF Logan Riege, Yulee, Jr.

IF/OF Ryan Robinson, Creekside, Jr.

C JC Rosette, Clay, Jr.

OF Zach Sandell, First Coast, Sr.

P Hunter Simpson, Mandarin, Jr.

IF/P Nolan Slaymaker, Columbia, So.

IF Sam Smedley, Mandarin, Sr.

UT Evan Snyder, Providence, So.

IF Chase Staley, Baldwin, Sr.

P Daly Stephens, Bishop Kenny, Jr.

P/IF Grady Stevens, Fernandina Beach, Jr.

P Kaleb Stockwell, Tocoi Creek, Jr.

UT Jasen Sullivan, Union County, Sr.

P Caden Swartz, Fleming Island, Sr.

IF Parker Swartz, Christ’s Church Academy, Jr.

IF/P Paxton Sweat, Palatka, Sr.

IF/P Carter Terryn, Atlantic Coast, Fr.

UT AJ Toledo, Atlantic Coast, So.

OF/IF Yandi Torres, Stanton, Fr.

P Lewis Turner, Bishop Snyder, Sr.

IF/P Miles Tyson, University Christian, Jr.

IF Tanner Upton, Bishop Snyder, Sr.

OF/P Garrison Wade, St. Joseph, Sr.

IF/C Brady Watson, Christ’s Church Academy, Jr.

P Kyler Watson, Suwannee, Jr.

UT Jonas Wells, St. Johns Country Day, Sr.

P Ethan Wheeler, Trinity Christian, Sr.

UT Kenai Wilkins, Ed White, Sr.

IF Madden Williams, St. Johns Country Day, Jr.

OF Ryan Witherington, Baker County, Jr.

The landslide occurred at around 9:08 a.m. in Pengshui County on the outer edge of the Chongqing municipality, when massive amounts of rocks and soil washed downslope, burying more than 10 residential buildings, state broadcaster CCTV said.

Ten people were rescued from the debris, including two who were seriously injured, Pengshui County Mayor Ren Xujiang said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping asked authorities to determine the cause of the disaster, state media said.

Water, electricity and gas supplies were cut off within a 1-kilometer (0.6-mile) radius of the landslide to prevent further disruptions. Over 800 rescuers were on site, a local government statement said.

Images by CCTV showed part of a mountainside collapsing onto a residential area. Several buildings were located next to the collapse site, while rescue crews combed through the debris. Rescue efforts were hindered by the unstable terrain and the risk of another landslide, according to the broadcaster.

Images shared on social media showed orange-clad rescuers using excavators to dig through the rubble. At one point, a team of rescuers pulled a survivor out of the debris.

Large slabs of rock had slid beside buildings into a waterway below. Two buildings that looked about five and 15 stories high were damaged but still standing.

The rain-triggered landslide occurred near a section of the Wujiang River, which cuts through karst mountains peppered with small towns and terraces.

Authorities said they sent more than 8,000 disaster relief items to Chongqing, including tents, folding beds and family emergency kits.

Pengshui County is located in the southeast part of Chongqing, bordering the provinces of Hubei and Guizhou.

___

AP video producer Wu Jia contributed to this report from Chongqing.

The body was identified as Tondra Madruga, 58, also known as Tondra Miller, the San Francisco medical examiner said Friday.

Madruga's body was recovered Thursday by a police marine unit, two days after the Volare, a 49-foot (15-meter) cabin cruiser, sank with 20 people aboard after being hit by a wave and capsizing. The group was on the boat to scatter the ashes of a loved one.

“Our family is heartbroken by the loss of our beloved mother, daughter, sister, and aunt, Tondra Madruga,” family member Quin Madruga said on Facebook. “Our hearts remain with every family impacted, and we sincerely appreciate your kindness and understanding.”

One man, Clifford Boisa, died immediately after being retrieved from the chilly water. The U.S. Coast Guard suspended rescue efforts Wednesday evening but police are still looking for the missing.

Ralph Boisa said his extended family and some close friends were on the boat Tuesday to celebrate the life of his daughter, who died over a decade ago. Madruga was a friend.

The two people who remain missing are Ralph Boisa's sister, Carol, and Clifford Boisa's wife, Jackie, he said.

Madruga's body was discovered in San Francisco Bay near Treasure Island, a former naval station, when a boater first reported it, police said.

The bay is notorious for its strong currents, and within hours of the boat’s sinking, rescuers were also searching the open ocean beyond the Golden Gate Bridge.

Crews searched more than 800 square miles (over 2,000 square kilometers), according to the Coast Guard. That’s an area roughly half the size of Rhode Island.

The boat is believed to be submerged on the rocky seabed in water 120 feet (36 meters) deep. When the wreck is located, authorities will determine whether a safe recovery can be conducted, police said.

The changes will take effect July 23, with warnings issued through Oct. 1. After the grace period ends, penalties can be imposed.

The city said a year-long staff review and public input informed the changes, which are necessary to “improve the city’s ability to regulate operations, improve public safety, provide means of enforcement, and better manage and protect the transportation and sightseeing industry.”

Key changes taking effect next week include:

• Creating a second-tier franchise for businesses providing tours with 11 passengers or fewer, the second-tier franchise has a 15-franchisee cap with up to two permitted vehicles per franchise
• Establishing a cap of 15 total pedicab operators, including a maximum of two pedicabs per operator
• Updating driver qualification requirements, including background checks and a Florida state driver’s license
• Improved rules and regulations for horse-drawn carriage operations focused on animal health, safety, and welfare
• Stronger penalties for violations, including an impoundment provision for operators without a license/permit

The city said everyone is expected to know and abide by the new rules by Oct. 1.

Assistant City Manager Reuben Franklin led the initiative to overhaul the ordinances, working with staff, hosting public meetings, and meeting individually with stakeholders.

“It’s been a long process, but it was something that we really needed to address,” Franklin said. “I believe we listened to the industry stakeholders, took into consideration feedback from our residents, and the outcome is a fair and balanced solution for everyone.”

The costs of enforcement should be covered by application fees, the city said.

Trump's amplification of debunked theories about the election six years ago and his inability to accept his loss led to one of the darker moments in American history when a mob of his supporters led a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in the final days of his first term.

Now back in power, Trump opted to revisit the subject, despite persistent voter concerns about the cost of living, American forces escalating strikes on Iran in a conflict for which there is no end in sight, and an immigration crackdown facing bipartisan scrutiny for its sometimes deadly tactics.

His address Thursday hinged on contradictions.

A twice-elected president complained about his one personal defeat, alleged a cover-up by officials in his own first administration and surfaced claims about countries attempting to harm his own prospects while staying silent on steps taken by other nations to boost him.

Trump used the remarks to justify his push to pass a strict voter ID bill in Congress that has not advanced because it lacks enough support from his fellow Republicans.

“America is back and doing really well, but we still have a major challenge that must be urgently addressed, because no country can be great without fair and honest elections,” he said.

Trump doesn't raise doubts about his election wins

Trump began Thursday night with a stark warning about what he described as flaws in the voting system and said he was releasing previously classified documents related to the 2020 and 2018 elections, when he lost the presidential election and when his party suffered losses.

Trump’s speech presented allegations of interference and influence in ways that lacked key context and did not produce evidence that votes had been manipulated or that the election outcome had been altered.

Notably, Trump focused on China but glossed over Russia, a country that intelligence officials have said favored Trump in 2016 and 2020 and engaged in wide-ranging influence campaigns aimed at boosting him over Democrat Joe Biden in the latter campaign.

Despite focusing on China in his speech, Trump did not criticize or issue a warning to Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he has long praised.

Election security experts say America’s decentralized voting system, with the power over elections residing with the states instead of the federal government, is a strength. Americans vote in more than 10,000 different jurisdictions with different rules, making the nations’ elections extraordinarily complicated but safe from widespread fraud.

No credible intelligence has emerged showing that the vote count in 2020 was manipulated by foreign actors. Repeated audits and reviews -- manyrun by Republicans, including Trump’s own then-attorney general -- have found no significant fraud occurred in 2020.

Even if substantiated, Trump’s claims did not amount to conduct that would have altered the outcome of any race, let alone the 2020 race for the White House.

He also did not raise doubts about his election wins in 2016 or 2024.

As Trump spoke, the White House unveiled a website containing documents that were presented without context and included selectively released pieces of investigation files, intelligence analysis and correspondence.

Former intelligence official calls address ‘dangerous’

Sue Gordon, principal deputy director of national intelligence in Trump’s first term, called the president’s address “a dangerous speech about an incredibly important topic.” She said the intelligence community throughout Trump’s first term was alarmed about foreign interference in elections, but Trump scoffed at them, angered at the investigation of his campaign’s relationship with Russia.

“He had an entire term to deal with it and I don’t know how you can believe how the same community that told him about it, that was excoriated about it” wouldn’t warn him in 2020, Gordon said on CNN.

Conservative commentator John Solomon, who joined the White House staff last month and was seated in the East Room for Trump’s speech, later told MS NOW that “the intelligence community has zero evidence that someone has flipped – that a foreign power flipped -- a vote in 2020, ‘22 or ’24.”

But, he added, “We’re not through all the documents.”

Trump urged the Justice Department to conduct investigations and prosecutions, though it was unclear from his speech what sort of criminal conduct — if any — could be identified, proven and charged.

In a contrast with his concerns about foreign interference in elections, Trump in his new budget proposes a $707 million cut in the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, the group charged with protecting American election systems from overseas cyberattacks. Trump and other conservatives have been frustrated that the organization pushed back on election claims in 2020 and beyond.

Some networks did not air it live

In past presidencies, primetime addresses have typically been reserved for major milestones or nationally significant events.

Trump last spoke to the nation in April, giving an address on the Iran war a month after it started. He said then that the U.S. would accomplish its objectives “very shortly” and that “the hard part is done, so it should be easy.” The war, however, has dragged on and strikes between the U.S. and Iran have intensified this week.

Trump also delivered a politically charged primetime speech in December in which he sought to blame the challenging economic climate on Democrats.

ABC, NBC and CNN did not air Thursday's remarks live but carried them in full on their streaming services.

CBS and MS NOW both cut away from Trump’s speech before he finished, while Fox News continued to carry his address.

Trump called out the media outlets for not carrying it live, accused them of being “part of a plot" and suggested their broadcast licenses be revoked.

Networks typically — but not always — carry presidential addresses to the nation live. In 2022, when Biden delivered a primetime address full of warnings about Trump and his adherents’ “extreme ideology,” the networks did not carry it live.

In 2014, the major networks chose to stick with their primetime programming instead of airing an address by President Barack Obama on his plans for immigration reform.

Democrats accuse Trump of seeking to discredit next election

Democrats warned that Trump was trying to revive false claims of past stolen elections in order to delegitimize the 2026 midterm elections, in which Trump’s Republican Party is facing headwinds.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia called Trump’s claims “totally bogus.”

“The fact is our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that China did not even try to change a single vote in the 2020 election,” Warner said in a statement on X. “A single concurring opinion suggested China may have tried to sway voters’ opinions … but that’s been public knowledge since 2021."

Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the ranking Democrat on the administration committee that handles federal voting issues and elections, said Trump is trying to sow confusion before the midterm elections.

“This is a pretext for the president, I think, calling into dispute the 2026 elections,” Morelle said on C-SPAN, adding that “we have secure elections.”

“I heard no concrete allegations that foreign actors actually changed the results of an American election,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said on CNN.

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Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Lisa Mascaro and Will Weissert in Washington, Ali Swenson and Jocelyn Noveck in New York and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.

Water rescues were ongoing in several areas west of San Antonio including Sutton, Crockett and Zavala counties, authorities said. Floodwaters spilled over Interstate 10 in a rural area near Ozona, and a section of a bridge over the Nueces River in Uvalde County collapsed, officials said.

Emergency personnel aboard boats and helicopters have saved more than 200 people including stranded drivers and people trapped in homes since storms began Tuesday, Gov. Gregg Abbott said.

The National Weather Service issued a flash flood emergency in the early morning for the city of Sonora in Sutton County, about 170 miles (274 kilometers) northwest of San Antonio.

The local sheriff's office used a boat to rescue one person and local officials were urging residents in low-lying areas along the Dry Devils River to evacuate as heavy rain fell, although the request was not mandatory, said Chief Deputy Jon Gann.

“The water's up to the top of the banks,” Gann said. “If we get any more, we're going to be into homes.”

Officials in nearby Crockett County said there were multiple boat rescues underway near Ozona, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) northwest of San Antonio and many roads were flooded and impassable.

About 180 miles (290 kilometers) to the south in Zavala County near the Mexico border, emergency responders were rescuing people from floodwaters and asking residents to stay away from the area, officials said. The Texas Department of Transportation said high waters closed a 50-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 57 from La Pryor to its junction with Interstate 35 southwest of San Antonio, and parts of the highway were not expected to reopen until Monday.

Flash flood warnings were issued Friday for several counties including many areas still reeling from devastating floods a year ago. Flood warnings also were in place through the weekend in many locations downstream from hard-hit areas, where rain was tapering off Friday. Some rivers were expected to reach historic levels.

Some areas have seen 2 feet (60 centimeters) or more of rain this week.

The storms and flooding threatened multiple counties close to the Mexico border and in the Hill Country. Roughly 6 million residents across Texas were under a flood watch this week.

One person who died was driving on a flooded road and was swept away near Uvalde, authorities said. Another victim, 65-year-old John Mark Steward of Kerrville, died after his mobile home was swept into Goat Creek on the Guadalupe River, his wife said. The Guadalupe is the same river wrecked by flash floods last year when two dozen children and counselors died at Camp Mystic.

The slow-moving severe weather system was expected to meander in a northwesterly direction on Friday and make its way toward the Texas Big Bend in the western part of the state, the weather service said.

In Uvalde, one of the hardest-hit cities from flooding, waters were receding and officials said a major highway, Route 90, had reopened. Crews there were out clearing debris. But later Friday morning, police were urging people in the Chalk Bluff area to evacuate due to rising waters. Floodwaters had overrun the city overnight into Thursday, cutting off most outside routes.

Sandra Gomez was assessing the damage at her Uvalde home on Friday after having left it before the flooding. She said about 6 inches (15 centimeters) of water got inside and left mud throughout the house, where she's lived since last year. She said she was luckier than other people she knows whose homes were under 5 or 6 feet (1.5 to 1.8 meters) of water.

“Well, really it’s very, very emotional," she said, adding "Material things I can replace. It may take a while, but I can replace those but I cannot replace my family. So, my family’s safe and that’s all that really matters.”

The unfolding crisis brought back haunting memories of last summer’s unimaginable Hill Country floods that killed more than 100 people over the July Fourth holiday.

So far, the Guadalupe has remained below the record levels reached in 2025. Close to Camp Mystic, which hasn't reopened since last year's tragedy, the Guadalupe near Hunt on Thursday reached about 20.5 feet (6.3 meters), which is enough to cause flooding, according to U.S. Geological Survey and National Water Prediction Service data.

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Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut.

The S&P 500 fell 0.5% after dropping as much as 1.4% in the morning. It's on track for its first losing week in the last three and only its third since March, just a couple days after it climbed within 0.5% of its all-time high.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 149 points, or 0.3%, as of 12:53 p.m. Eastern time, after veering between an early loss of 566 points and a modest gain. The Nasdaq composite fell 0.7%.

Chip stocks once again were at the center of the shakiness. They’ve been under pressure for weeks on worries that their prices shot too high and that voracious demand for computer memory and processors may be unsustainable if AI ends up producing less profit and productivity than promised.

Applied Materials sank 2.6% to trim its surge for the year to about 112%. Micron Technology rose 4.6% after sliding earlier in the day.

Earlier in the morning, tech sold off worldwide. Indexes tumbled 6.5% in Taipei, 4% in Tokyo and 3% in Shanghai as stocks like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. dropped 7.3%.

South Korea’s stock market was closed for a holiday, offering some respite, if only temporary. It’s been at the center of the AI swings because it’s dominated by two huge tech companies, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. This past week alone, Seoul’s Kospi stock index had one day where it surged 6.2% and two others where it sank 6.4% and 8.9%.

News of a Chinese open-sourced AI model by startup Moonshot, Kimi K3, further shook markets. Similar to when China’s DeepSeek announced its AI model in early 2025, another low-cost rival to big Western AI models like ChatGPT and OpenAI could potentially hurt demand for computer chips and other components.

European stock indexes, which have less of an emphasis on AI and tech, had milder moves.

Adding to the pressure on Wall Street Friday were drops for several stocks following their latest earnings reports. It’s a departure from much of the rest of the week, when companies like Goldman Sachs and BlackRock jumped after delivering better profits for the spring than analysts expected.

Netflix sank 6.8% after its revenue for the latest quarter fell just short of analysts’ expectations, even though its profit was bigger than expected. Its forecasts for upcoming revenue and profit in the summer also fell below expectations.

Intuitive Surgical, a maker of robotic surgical systems, dropped 12.6% despite topping expectations for the latest quarter. Analysts pointed to worries about slowing procedure growth because of the expiration of enhanced tax credits that helped lower the cost of health insurance for many Affordable Care Act enrollees.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX fell 4.1% and touched its lowest level since its stock began trading on the Nasdaq just over a month ago. The owner of the xAI business has been swept up in the swings of AI stocks, and it had to abort a test flight of its mega Starship rocket Thursday within a second or so from blasting off.

More climbs for oil prices also pressured the stock market.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, rose 3.9% to $87.48, up from roughly $76 a week ago.

The United States expanded its airstrike campaign against Iran early Friday by hitting more bridges and collapsing a tower at a key Iranian port. That raised further worries about whether oil tankers will be able to use the Strait of Hormuz to carry crude from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide.

High oil prices have sent Treasury yields upward in the bond market, which threaten to slow the economy and undercut prices for stocks and all kinds of other investments. Higher yields have already sent the average 30-year mortgage rate to its highest level in nearly a year.

But Treasury yields eased Friday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.54% from 4.57% late Thursday.

A report suggested sentiment among U.S. consumers is improving more than economists expected, while expectations for upcoming inflation eased. That's important for the Federal Reserve, which is considering hikes to interest rates to keep a lid on inflation. If expectations for inflation remain anchored, it could prevent a vicious cycle where people make moves in anticipation of higher inflation, which only worsen it.

The preliminary reading from the University of Michigan’s survey for U.S. consumer sentiment hit its highest reading since February. But much of the rise was due to recent drops for prices at gasoline pumps, according to Joanne Hsu, director of the survey. If gasoline prices rise again because of crude’s recent rally, the improvement could be under pressure.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.

He was the most productive tight end in the NFL, a near-unanimous All-Pro selection and made his second straight Pro Bowl.

McBride’s success has also landed him the top spot at tight end in a preseason survey by The Associated Press. He received five first-place votes from a panel of eight AP Pro Football Writers who ranked the top five players at the position, basing selections on current status entering the 2026 season. First-place votes were worth 10 points. Second- through fifth-place votes were worth 5, 3, 2 and 1 points.

George Kittle finished second with three first-place votes. Brock Bowers came in third, followed by Sam LaPorta and Kyle Pitts.

1. Trey McBride, Arizona Cardinals

McBride had a breakout year in 2024 and followed that up with a record-setting season in 2025.

He caught 126 passes last season, breaking Zach Ertz’s record for most in a season by a tight end, had 1,239 receiving yards, and his 11 receiving touchdowns tied for first. McBride also led tight ends with 566 yards after the catch.

He got one second-place vote and two thirds to go with the five firsts in voting for this season's Top 5.

2. George Kittle, San Francisco 49ers

Kittle had 57 receptions for 628 receiving yards and seven touchdowns in only 11 games last season, averaging 11.0 yards per reception.

He had just two drops and 259 yards after the catch.

The seven-time Pro Bowl pick and two-time All-Pro is one of the best blocking tight ends in NFL history.

Kittle, who tore his Achilles in San Francisco’s playoff victory over the Eagles, got two second-place votes to go with the three firsts and appeared on seven ballots.

3. Brock Bowers, Las Vegas Raiders

After a sensational All-Pro rookie season, Bowers was plagued by injuries last year. He caught 64 passes for 680 yards and seven TDs in 12 games and made his second Pro Bowl.

Bowers gained 296 yards after the catch, and had three drops. A dynamic receiver, Bowers is still a work in progress as a blocker.

He received three second-place votes and was on each ballot.

4. Sam LaPorta, Detroit Lions

LaPorta was limited to nine games because of injuries last season and had 40 catches for 489 yards and three TDs.

He wasn’t charged with any drops and totaled 273 yards after the catch. LaPorta is one of the best all-around tight ends in the league and an asset in Detroit’s run game because of his outstanding blocking skills.

5. Kyle Pitts, Atlanta Falcons

Pitts earned second-team All-Pro honors after a career-high 88 catches for 928 yards and five TDs last season.

Pitts, who was the highest-drafted tight end in NFL history in 2021 when the Falcons selected him No. 4 overall, lived up to expectations as a rookie when he made the Pro Bowl. But he was disappointing until a breakthrough season last year.

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

David Brouillette has a history of terrifying and violent behavior, according to those relatives. They accuse him of attacking women in his life over the years, and one shared a voicemail with the AP from last winter in which he told her that he thought someone should slit her throat.

Brouillette’s troubling past further challenges how thoroughly the Department of Homeland Security has vetted recruits as it went on a hiring spree to help carry out President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

At least 10 people have died in encounters with immigration agents since Trump launched the crackdown after retaking office, including 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national who was shot and killed by Brouillette on Monday while in his car near his home in the coastal Maine city of Biddeford.

DHS, which hasn't released the name of the officer who killed Durán Guerrero, has said the “vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.”

Brouillette didn’t respond to text messages or an email seeking comment. Three relatives who said they had spoken to him since the shooting, including an ex-wife and daughter, said he told them he acted in self-defense.

When reached for comment about Brouillette's record and his role in Monday's shooting, ICE spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement that, “We will never confirm or deny attempts to dox our law enforcement officers," and that “The ICE officer in question has nearly a decade of federal law enforcement experience with required training including use of force training.”

The White House referred all questions about the shooting and Brouillette to ICE.

A new career in ICE

Brouillette, 37, told his ex-wife Ashley Brouillette late last year that he had been hired by ICE. She said that because of his long history of psychiatric issues, she thought he was having a mental health episode and she didn't believe him. She didn’t realize he’d been telling the truth until this week, when videos began circulating online of the moments surrounding the shooting.

Ashley Brouillette told the AP that she spoke to her ex-husband in a Facebook audio call, and he acknowledged that he had killed Durán Guerrero. Their 18-year-old daughter, Madison Brouillette, also told the AP that her father called her Wednesday and said that he shot and killed Durán Guerrero.

David and Ashley Brouillette were high school sweethearts who got married in 2007. She said she divorced him in 2009 because he had become physically violent with her, which began after she got pregnant with their daughter.

According to Ashley Brouillette, he once threw boiling water at her while she was holding their child — an incident her mother Avis Collins also recounted.

The abuse continued after she left him, she said.

David Brouillette doesn't appear to have a criminal record in Maine, as a check with the Maine Department of Public Safety returned no records for him.

But hundreds of family court records obtained from the Augusta District Court clerk’s office detail years of allegations of physical and verbal abuse raised by his second ex-wife on behalf of herself and his daughters.

The ex-wife — whom the AP is not identifying because she fears retaliation — alleged that he had stalked and harassed her and physically and verbally abused his daughter, according to multiple requests for temporary protection orders. Brouillette tackled his teenage daughter and smashed spaghetti in her hair, and during another outburst, he dragged his daughter around the house as she cried, she said.

“Dave needs counseling or something for his PTSD & depression,” she wrote in an application for a temporary protective order on behalf of his teenage daughter which a judge granted in 2021.

In court filings, David Brouillette said that his second ex-wife had slandered him.

His oldest daughter, Madison Brouillette, said she also witnessed her dad’s volatility.

“I watched my dad struggle a lot with a lot of things,” she told the AP. She said she came home from school once and he told her he had been sitting on a tree stump with a gun to his head.

“If you don’t really, truly take care of yourself, there’s no way you can protect other people. And with my dad, he never wanted to get help,” she said.

An immediate relative of David Brouillette who spoke on the condition that their name not be used said he was diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder as a child — a diagnosis that Ashley Brouillette confirmed. The immediate relative described him as “extremely mentally ill" and said he attempted suicide twice at age 12 and was hospitalized multiple times.

The relative said they've been estranged for years, after they broke off contact because they feared he would harm them. He did not respond to their outreach this week, the relative added.

A military deployment and law enforcement aspirations

Growing up in Gardiner, a city of about 6,000 people roughly 60 miles (97 kilometers) northeast of Biddeford, where Monday's shooting occurred, David Brouillette was enchanted by law enforcement and the military, his relatives said.

High school yearbook photos show he was a member of the school’s Naval Junior ROTC, and he wrote that he planned to go to college and become a police officer.

Brouillette was initially rejected by military recruiters because of his mental health diagnoses, but recruiters encouraged him to go off his medications for a year and reapply, which he did, his immediate relative said.

He was eventually able to enlist.

According to U.S. military records, Brouillette enlisted as a chemical equipment repairer in the Maine Army National Guard but then changed jobs to be a medical logistics specialist. He was in the Guard from November 2007 until January 2010, according to records provided by the Pentagon.

A 2009 article in the Kennebec Journal listed Brouillette as a private in the Maine Army National Guard’s 152nd Maintenance Company in Augusta.

In January 2010 he joined the regular Army as a human intelligence collector. Brouillette deployed to Afghanistan from May 2012 to February 2013 and eventually left the Army as a sergeant in December 2015.

His immediate relative believes Brouillette's time abroad worsened his emotional struggles: “Afghanistan destroyed him -- trained him to be a killing monster, a machine. They took someone who was extremely mentally ill and turned him into a killing machine.”

Life after the Army

After his discharge, Brouillette held a hodgepodge of jobs — some in or adjacent to law enforcement — and was injured in an accident while training to become a firefighter, public records and court documents show.

Brouillette worked for the Maine Correctional Center — a medium-security prison — and for the state’s Health and Human Services Department, spending less than a year at each.

In 2019, court documents show, he was a police officer at a Department of Veterans Affairs medical center near the state capital, Augusta. A Veterans Affairs department spokesperson on Thursday referred questions about Brouillette’s employment to DHS.

But by the end of 2021, he wrote in a text message included in court filings, he was broke, going to school full-time and making money delivering food for DoorDash.

Brouillette was enrolled in a firefighting program at Southern Maine Community College and was struck in the head by a steel beam while unloading a trailer at a training facility, according to a lawsuit he filed over his injury.

He sustained a concussion and post-concussive syndrome, with symptoms including impaired memory, cognitive deficits, headaches, vertigo and light sensitivity, and was unable to complete the program, according to the lawsuit, which was settled out of court.

In recent years, court filings show, he was collecting disability pay through the VA. He also drove a truck, but quit in January 2025, citing health issues.

In March 2025, Brouillette passed an exam to become a real estate sales agent. His license was active until December. In a Facebook post, Realty of Maine announced Brouillette would be working in the firm’s Bangor office.

“David lives in Maine after retiring from the United States Army,” said the post, which has since been deleted. Brouillette is no longer listed as an agent on the firm’s website. Messages seeking comment were left for Realty of Maine.

In March, the Maine agency that handles child support matters filed a lien against him, public records show. The filing suggests that Brouillette may have been in line for a permanent impairment or disability settlement.

‘I don’t think he sees himself as a killer’

In late 2025, around the time he joined ICE, his ex-wife Ashley said he left a three-minute voicemail mocking her for taking out a restraining order against him. According to the message she shared with AP, he repeatedly called her “disgusting” and suggested that she and the other women and girls in her “bloodline” should die.

“And all of you should have your f——--g throats cut,” the voicemail said. “Yeah, you should. Am I threatening that I’m gonna do that? Nope. Nope. But do I think that you should have your f——-g throats cuts? Or should have had them cut? Yep.”

She said she cut off contact with him until Wednesday, when his picture began circulating online.

Ashley Brouillette reached out to his current wife on Facebook and they spoke on the phone for several minutes. Her ex-husband spoke with her, according to cellphone screenshots of the phone exchange she shared with the AP. He acknowledged he had fatally shot Durán Guerrero.

“He was asking if I could tell them that he was a good person and not to talk about the abuse and stuff that I had endured while with him and he said that the most important thing is his character right now,” she said.

She said he told her he is now hiding in protective custody.

“I asked him why he did it,” she said. “He said it was a justified shooting. The guy was trying to run him over with a car.”

His daughter also said he told her it was justified.

“I don’t think he sees himself as a killer,” Madison Brouillette said.

“I think he thinks that he genuinely did the right thing,” she added. “All he said was that he did what he had to do. He said that he had to protect himself.”

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This story was updated to correct that that Gardiner is northeast of Biddeford.

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Brook reported from New Orleans, Sisak reported from New York and Galofaro reported from Louisville, Kentucky. Associated Press reporter Will Weissert in Washington contributed to this report.

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

The Commerce Ministry said that the U.S. made commitments on Hong Kong issues and other matters during the U.S.-China trade talks in Madrid last year. The U.S. recently confirmed to China that the President’s Executive Order on Hong Kong Normalization would end, the ministry said in a statement responding to media questions.

“The U.S. side’s actions represent an important step in fulfilling the consensus reached during the bilateral economic and trade talks. China appreciates it,” it said.

It is not immediately clear what all the implications of the decision are. The White House referred questions about the executive order lapsing to the Treasury Department.

The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control said in a statement Friday that the national emergency declared in the executive order had expired and that it delisted people who were sanctioned under the order. But it said people who remain sanctioned under another act related to Hong Kong have been added to a different sanction list.

The statement showed Hong Kong leader John Lee and his predecessor, Carrie Lam, were removed from the first list but added to the second one.

The U.S. decision came two months after President Donald Trump met with his counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing. It could warm ties between them ahead of Xi's expected visit to the U.S. later this year. Earlier this month, a pastor of a prominent underground church who was detained in China in October was released after Trump brought up his case with Xi.

Trump signed the now-expired executive order in July 2020, during his first term in response to Beijing imposing a national security law that year. Trump's order was last renewed for a year in July 2025.

Under the order, Trump said Hong Kong was no longer sufficiently autonomous to justify differential treatment in relation to mainland China under certain laws. It eliminated the preferential treatment for Hong Kong to the extent permitted by law and in the national security, foreign policy, and economic interest of the United States.

China considers the national security law for Hong Kong necessary to restore stability in the city after massive anti-government protests in 2019. The pro-democracy movement back then posed one of the biggest challenges to the Communist Party in Beijing and the Hong Kong government since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Six years after the law's introduction, many leading activists, including pro-democracy former media tycoon Jimmy Lai, were imprisoned under it. Critics say the Western-style civil liberties that Beijing promised to maintain for 50 years after the handover have declined.

Hong Kong government said in a statement that it noted the “positive shift in the U.S. policy” toward the city.

“Safeguarding Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability serves the common interests of China and the US, and also aligns with the general expectation of the international community,” it said.

It said it hopes the U.S. will respect China's sovereignty and the rule of law in Hong Kong and resume normal economic and trade exchanges with the city.

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Associated Press writer Joshua Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

It's a delicate balance for the candidates, who are vying to face Collins in a contest that could decide control of the Senate as Platner’s shadow hangs over the race. In their first debate Thursday night, one of the first questions candidates were asked was: What was Graham Platner's best idea?

Moving past Platner is just one of the challenges facing Democrats. The never-before-used process to pick a new nominee means candidates have less than three weeks to pull off what typically takes campaigns months or years, from organizing volunteers to raising money and preparing for debates.

The whiplash many of the candidates are facing was on display Thursday.

Asked by debate moderators about President Donald Trump's decision to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife earlier this year, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows gave inaccurate information about Collins not pushing back against Trump, a Republican. When a moderator called her on it, Bellows said she was on vacation on the Kennebec River last week after previously focusing on her unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign and hadn't expected to be running for the Senate.

“When I need to know the facts, I will. I’ll do my homework," said Bellows, who lost to Collins in 2014.

The field of 12 candidates also includes former public health leader Nirav Shah and union-backed logger Troy Jackson, who campaigned alongside Platner in a failed bid for governor.

Platner's exit means the clock is ticking

Platner quit the Senate race last week after he was accused of rape, which he denies, and his campaign quickly imploded as supporters revoked their endorsements and resources.

Democrats have until July 27 to choose a new nominee, according to state law. The Maine Democratic Party's succession plan calls for a state party convention at which 601 delegates will meet on July 25 and vote for Platner's replacement. The majority of the convention delegates will be selected this weekend from each of the state’s 16 counties.

Candidates hoping to replace Platner have been recruiting delegates who will vote for them at the convention. The candidates also must collect 500 voter signatures needed to qualify for the convention vote.

“I don’t think anyone’s happy that we’re in this situation,” said Dan Jenkins, a Maine Democrat who has applied to be a delegate. “We would have preferred that this had broken many, many months ago and then Graham had exited the race when there was a time for a democratic process. But it's where we are.”

Some candidates might see a boost from prior campaigns

Jackson is among the handful of candidates pivoting to the Senate race after running for other political offices, likely giving them a leg up in not having to launch from scratch.

Our Revolution, a progressive organization founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont that had originally backed Platner, has thrown its support behind Jackson, the former Maine Senate president. Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, has not endorsed in the race.

Shah, former director of Maine’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, also unsuccessfully ran in this year’s Maine Democratic governor’s primary. He has been pitching Platner’s supporters that he’s also an outsider who can unify a fractured Democratic Party.

“You have an important place in this campaign, and we welcome your voices,” Shah said earlier this month speaking to Platner’s base.

Bellows also ran for governor. She's hoping that her previous battles with Trump will bolster her argument that she’ll be an advocate for the working class.

Bellows previously tried to unseat Collins in 2014 as the Senate Democratic nominee and lost to her in a landslide. She later went on to win a seat as a state senator before becoming Maine’s secretary of state. She’s since downplayed her prior loss to Collins by pointing to the Democratic establishment’s unwillingness to take on the Republican in 2014.

Another candidate, Jordan Wood, initially announced his intent to run in the Maine Democratic Senate primary. He dropped out last fall to run in the state’s 2nd District but lost that race.

Candidates seize on recent ICE shooting

The fatal shooting by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Maine this week has been top of mind among the potential Senate nominees.

The Embassy of Colombia has identified the man killed Monday in Biddeford, roughly 15 miles (24 kilometers) southwest of Portland, as Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian national. The Department of Homeland Security has since said an ICE officer fired his weapon when the man officers were pursuing attempted to flee the scene, threatening “public safety.”

Many have rushed to connect Collins to the embattled federal agency.

All the candidates who debated Thursday said they agreed with the call to “abolish ICE,” though Wood stopped short of saying the agency should be completely dissolved.

“I believe that when I say we have to abolish it, what I mean is that we need a new law enforcement agency that has the trust of the people,” Wood said.

Jackson disagreed, calling ICE a “rogue agency that goes around doing things that they’re being told to on high.”

Candidates asked about Platner's best ideas

Platner attracted more than 150,000 votes during the June 9 primary, an eye-opening number that signaled a progressive base eager to support a candidate known for his promise to defend the working class and ability to rally large crowds.

With little more than a week until the state convention to find Platner's replacement, it still remains unknown just who will be able to capture that same excitement seen among Platner's base.

When pressed during Thursday's debate about Platner's best idea on the campaign trail, Jackson pointed to his commitment to “Medicare for All.” As a gubernatorial candidate, Jackson also voiced support for replacing job-based and individual private health insurance with a government-run plan that guarantees coverage for all with no premiums, no deductibles and only minimal copays for certain services.

Bellows said that she agreed with Platner’s description that democracy in the U.S. has been corrupted by those in power.

Shah said he would take up Platner's commitment to “abolish ICE,” while Wood said he admired Platner's decision to say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, something Israel denies.

“Graham got into this race saying, ‘this is genocide.’ And I learned that it is so important in these moments to draw those moral lines,” Wood said.

A report released Friday by the Department of Commerce shows the state’s jobless rate for June at 4.7%, a reduction from 4.8% the prior two months. The rate is still 0.5 percentage points higher than the national average.

Driven by increases in restaurant, hotel, health care, transportation and warehousing jobs last month, the state saw an 11,100 increase, 0.1%, in overall new positions from May to June.

The June numbers show 525,000 Floridians qualified as out-of-work, up 107,000 from a year earlier, from a workforce of 11.14 million, up 56,000 in the same time.

The state’s unemployment rate had been on a gradual upward trend since ticking down from 3.5% in November 2024 to 3.4% in December 2024.

Nationally, the jobless rate stands at 4.2%, up from 4.1% a year earlier.

Even with the one-month decline, the state’s unemployment rate stands 0.9 percentage points higher than a year ago.

Construction jobs have decreased by 3,200 over the past year, including a 900 drop from May to June. Positions in the retail trade were up 100 from May to June but still are down 5,900 from a year earlier.

The field of finance and insurance reported adding 1,600 positions in the past month, but is still down 8,700 over the year.

Real estate jobs dropped by 1,000 and are down 4,200 over the last 12 months.

Governments in Florida shed 900 jobs in the past month and 10,500 over the year, with the federal government accounting for 7,700 of the decrease over the past year.

The biggest gain over the past year involved health care and social assistance, adding 5,500 in the past month and 32,400 on the year.

The area of transportation, warehousing, and utilities grew by 4,100 in June, which put the field at a positive 900 over the past year.

Manufacturing is up 400 on the year after reporting the addition of 600 positions in June.

Educational services, which are up 6,600 jobs on the year, posted a drop of 500 jobs in the June report.

Hotel and food service jobs grew by 4,000 in the June report but remain down 2,700 from a year earlier.

South Florida continues to have the lowest unemployment rate, with the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metropolitan statistical area at 3.9%, up from a revised 3.7% in May and 3.3% in June 2025.

The Orlando and Panama City regions were next at 4.6%.

The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area was at 4.7%. Jacksonville, Naples and Melbourne were at 4.8%. Pensacola and Sarasota both stood at 4.9%.

Tallahassee has a 5% unemployment rate, followed by Daytona Beach at 5.3%, Gainesville at 5.5%, Vero Beach at 5.6% and Lakeland at 5.7%.

The Wildwood region, including The Villages has the highest unemployment rate at 7.8%, followed by Homosassa Springs at 6.7% and Sebring at 6.6%.

Federal health officials identified iceberg lettuce from Mexico served at Taco Bell locations in five states as a source of widespread infections from the diarrhea-causing parasite cyclospora. A U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigation identified a single supplier as the source of the suspect lettuce.

Taco Bell issued a statement on Thursday saying that “the affected ingredient from our supplier is being indefinitely removed from our supply chain nationwide and will be replaced within 24 hours in select states.” The company described the move as precautionary.

A federal official who was briefed on the outbreak investigation and not authorized to discuss it identified the supplier as Taylor Farms, a company based in Salinas, California, that produces fresh vegetables for commercial use and meal kits and bagged lettuce products sold at supermarkets.

Federal health officials stressed that other “brands, restaurants, retailers, or distribution channels” could be identified as the investigation continues.

Here’s a brief history of some other recent outbreaks that roiled restaurant companies and sometimes changed how food safety is regulated in the U.S.

Taylor Farms provided onions implicated in an outbreak linked to McDonald's hamburgers

E. coli bacteria caused a 2024 food poisoning outbreak tied to raw onions on McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers. The outbreak sickened at least 104 people in 14 states, including 34 who were hospitalized, according to the FDA. One person in Colorado died.

McDonald's said the onions came from Taylor Farms and temporarily pulled the Quarter Pounder off its menu in the affected states. Other national restaurant chains temporarily stopped using fresh onions in some of their locations.

Likely E. coli contamination gets lettuce pulled from Wendy’s sandwiches

Wendy’s pulled lettuce from sandwiches in its restaurants in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania in August 2022 after some people reported falling ill.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at the time that it was trying to determine whether romaine lettuce was the source of an E. coli outbreak that sickened at least 37 people and whether romaine used at Wendy’s was also served or sold at other businesses.

One person was also sickened in Indiana, according to the CDC.

Extensive E. coli outbreak at Chipotle leads to criminal charges

In 2015, Chipotle was hit by an E. coli outbreak that sickened more than 50 people and it temporarily shut down dozens of restaurants on the West Coast, but that was just the beginning. A month later, 30 Boston College students, including at least eight members of the men’s basketball team, complained of gastrointestinal symptoms after eating at a Chipotle restaurant.

Federal officials declared the outbreak over by February 2016, but the chain shut down every one of its restaurants to retrain employees and allow them to regroup.

By the end of the year, however, Chipotle Co-CEO Montgomery Moran stepped down as sales plunged.

In 2020 Chipotle Mexican Grille agreed to pay a record $25 million fine to resolve criminal charges that it served tainted food that sickened more than 1,100 people in the U.S. between 2015 and 2018.

The company admitted that poor safety practices, such as not keeping food at proper temperatures to prevent pathogen growth, sickened customers in Los Angeles and nearby Simi Valley, as well as Boston, Sterling, Virginia, and Powell, Ohio.

Taco Bell removes green onions nationwide after an E. coli outbreak sickens dozens

In December 2006, Taco Bell ordered the removal of green onions from its 5,800 restaurants nationwide after samples taken by investigators appeared to contain a harsh strain of E. coli. The outbreak sickened at least 71 people in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware, with most of them hospitalized, according to the CDC.

Eight people developed a type of kidney failure called hemolytic-uremic syndrome.

Eventually, it was determined that contaminated lettuce was the probable cause, with the vegetable used in numerous dishes on the menu.

Almost immediately, Taco Bell launched a newspaper ad blitz and sent its president on a string of media interviews to assure customers that its food was safe.

Deadly outbreak traced to Jack in the Box hamburgers leads to regulatory changes

Four deaths and more than 700 illnesses in Washington, Idaho, California, and Nevada between 1992 and 1993 eventually were traced to undercooked Jack in the Box restaurant hamburgers contaminated with E. coli.

The ensuing investigation by federal regulators changed regulatory practices in the U.S., experts say.

An investigation by the CDC identified five slaughter plants in the U.S. and one in Canada as the likely sources of animals used in the contaminated lots of meat and identified potential control points for reducing the likelihood of contamination. The animals slaughtered in domestic slaughter plants were traced to farms and auctions in six western states. No one slaughter plant or farm was identified as the source.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture mandated a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point system, which helps identify and control hazards within the system of food production. The system provided for more monitoring and controls to rapidly limit the spread of outbreaks.

Jack in the Box lost more than $44 million in 1993 and did not post another annual profit for another three years.

Now those images of the longhaired Messi, his hands covered in soap suds as if anointing Yamal as soccer's Next Big Thing, have become the most talked about — and gawked about — in the runup to Sunday’s World Cup final, when Messi’s Argentina will play Yamal’s Spain for the biggest trophy in the sport.

“I have never been a believer or thought that anything was destined to occur, but I am beginning to have my doubts. This is beyond all reasonable explanations,” Monfort told The Associated Press from his home in Barcelona on Friday.

Monfort, who works as a freelance photojournalist for the AP, took the photos in 2007 as part of a charity calendar produced by local newspaper Sport and UNICEF.

Luck dictated that Yamal’s mother, who appears in the calendar photo, won a raffle of families in the city of Mataró, near Barcelona, who wanted to participate. Soccer destiny then deemed that her baby boy, who would become a star for Barcelona some 15 years later, was paired up with the Argentine who would become one of the greatest of all time.

A tearful Messi left Barcelona in 2021 when the club was in financial trouble. Yamal erupted at the club two years later. The journey is now complete, from bathtub to World Cup final, where the 19-year-old Yamal will face a Messi who is 20 years his senior.

The famous photo was forgotten until ...

Monfort had no recollection of the photos until Yamal’s father posted one on social media during the 2024 European Championship, when a teenage Yamal was enjoying his international breakout and led Spain to the title.

The photo went viral then. But now, with the World Cup final looming, Monfort said, interest in his photos has skyrocketed.

“This has exploded all over the world, and the fact that the final is in the U.S. has given it the extra push,” Monfort said. “And now this has culminated with the final between Messi and Yamal. It is better than any film script.”

Monfort said he has been bombarded by queries for the photos by professional media outlets, while also seeing his images reproduced countless times on social media and the internet without any credit or compensation.

Yamal's Spain teammate Mikel Merino had the same reaction as most people who see the photos.

“The first time I saw it, I thought it was AI and that it wasn’t even real,” Merino said Friday. “It’s unbelievable that two of the best players to have played the game — and hopefully Lamine, in the future, will be one of those — share a picture like that. Hopefully we’re going to see a very bright final with those two protagonists at their best, playing and giving all the fans a great spectacle.”

Barcelona fans are torn by love of both Messi and Yamal

Like many Barcelona fans, Monfort's loyalty is split. It is common to see children wearing both Yamal’s Barcelona and Spain shirts, as well as any Messi shirt, whether from his Barcelona years or Argentina or his current club, Inter Miami, on the city’s streets.

Monfort, 58, is considering traveling to see the final in New Jersey, but whether he watches it in person or at home, he said he will have trouble cheering for one team or the other.

“My heart is split. I don’t know if I want Messi or Yamal to win,” said Monfort, a lifelong Barcelona supporter.

“I have an everlasting love for the best player of all time (Messi),” he said, but “Yamal has broken the mould here” and represents a new, diverse Spain, thanks to his parents from Morocco and Equatorial Guinea. “Maybe they can both win. I wouldn't rule it out after everything we have seen.”

___

See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here

Kerr, the 2023 world champion over the 1,500 meters metric mile, has called it “Project 222” — for each second he aims to take in breaking Hicham El Guerrouj’s mark of 3 minutes, 43.13 seconds.

“It’s in my favor," Kerr said Friday at a news conference at London Stadium that staged track and field at the 2012 Olympics. “My body is capable of the mark and so my job tomorrow is to have my mind to be available to let my body do its job.”

The 28-year-old Kerr has targeted the mile race at the Diamond League meeting as a main goal in a track season with neither Olympics nor world championships.

“I’m very excited. It’s been on my mind, my team’s mind, for a long time,” said the 1,500 silver medalist at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

The mile is not a championships event yet has iconic status in track history, with the four-minute barrier finally broken in 1954 by another British runner, Roger Bannister.

El Guerrouj’s record set in 1999 is more than 16 seconds faster than Bannister, and Kerr is the sixth-fastest athlete on the all-time list. One of his rivals Saturday is No. 4 in that list.

Yared Nuguse set a United States record three years ago, 0.84 slower than El Guerrouj, in a race won by Jakob Ingebrigtsen at Eugene, Oregon.

While Bannister’s feat running 3:59.4 is remembered in track lore, he held the record just a few weeks before Australian John Landy lowered it by 1.4 seconds.

Jim Ryun of the U.S. later held the record for nine years until Filbert Bayi of Tanzania took it in 1975.

A stellar 10 days in August 1981 saw a British rivalry play out: Sebastian Coe took Steve Ovett’s mile record, Ovett got it back then Coe beat it again clocking 3:47.33.

In the 45 years since, the mile record was held only by Steve Cram, Noureddine Morceli and El Guerrouj.

___

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

Trump used the primetime address to the nation to elevate his yearslong push to raise doubts about the legitimacy of U.S. elections and dispute his 2020 loss — this time, to justify his push to pass a strict voter ID bill. His allegations of interference and influence didn’t include key context. Nor did he produce evidence that votes had been manipulated or that the election outcome had been altered.

Here's the latest:

DHS secretary says ICE hitting arrest records ‘every single day’

Mullin said the department is ramping up enforcement and hitting records for the number of arrests.

“Our arrests are up. We’re hitting single day records every single day,” Mullin said.

Mullin also said the agency deported 442,637 people in 2025 and so far this year has deported 403,294.

“We’re trying to perfect our ability to work with local law enforcement, state law enforcement,” he said.

ICE and DHS do not release regular data related to deportations, arrests and detention, leading to criticism that there’s no way to verify their work.

Unlike his predecessor Kristi Noem, Mullin has attempted to keep a lower profile for immigration enforcement operations. But the recent shooting deaths of two people who were killed by ICE officers during operations has brought the department back into the spotlight.

Trump’s envoy greeted by protests in Venice on latest stop of super yacht diplomacy tour

The billionaire U.S. ambassador to Italy was met by protests when he arrived in Venice on Friday aboard his luxury yacht as part of a coastal diplomacy tour marking the 250th anniversary of American independence.

Hospitality mogul Tilman Fertitta’s arrival represents an unwelcome display of American wealth and influence for many Italians at a time when they see the Trump administration as upending the post-World War II international order.

The so-called Coastal Diplomacy 250 tour of 13 Italian coastal regions on a super yacht is intended to celebrate “our shared history, our economic partnership, and the cultural bonds that make the U.S.-Italy relationship so special,” Fertitta said in a social media post.

In Venice, many of the same groups that protested the wedding last year of Jeff Bezos to Lauren Sanchez are mobilizing against Fertitta’s arrival aboard the 117-meter (384-foot) luxury yacht, Boardwalk, which features two helipads, a pair of swimming pools and a fully equipped spa and gym.

▶ Read more

Mullin won’t comment on ICE shootings and says arrests are up

The Homeland Security secretary said during a news conference that he hadn’t heard about allegations of violent behavior against a deportation officer who shot and killed a Colombian man in Maine earlier this week.

Relatives of the officer told The Associated Press he struggled with serious mental health issues, had a history of violent behavior and never should have been given a badge and gun.

Mullin said the shooting was being investigated and he’d allow the investigation to go forward.

“We understand that it’s being investigated, and we’ll allow the investigation to go through. That’s all I’m going to say about that,” said Mullin.

He wouldn’t comment on whether the officer was on leave but said that was standard practice in the aftermath of any shooting.

DHS secretary pledges to aggressively chase voter fraud cases

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said if anyone votes illegally in the upcoming midterm elections, “we will hunt you down, we will find you and we will prosecute you.”

In a White House briefing doubling down on Trump’s primetime election claims, Mullin also threatened fines, penalties or prison time for state election officials who refuse to hand over sensitive voter data to DHS.

He said states that don’t elect to use DHS’s recently updated tool for identifying noncitizen voters, will become “a priority” for investigations.

The comments come as a federal judge has blocked the use of DHS’s updated system, citing voter privacy and the fact that it can result in the wrongful purging of eligible voters.

Why American elections are so complicated — and secure

In his speech to the nation Thursday evening, President Trump said Americans deserve secure elections, and he claimed to be using federal authority to prevent them from being “stolen.”

In fact, one of the strongest security features of U.S. elections is the fact that they aren’t conducted at the federal level. America votes in more than 10,000 different election jurisdictions, each with different rules set by state and sometimes local governments.

That structure makes the nation’s elections extraordinarily complicated — and also safe from widespread fraud. And when misconduct does happen — rarely — security protocols frequently catch it.

▶ Read more

ICE has seen a surge in new hires

In January, Homeland Security said it had hired 12,000 new officers and agents since the hiring surge began and said thousands of those new officers were already out on the streets assisting with investigations. The number includes both deportation officers and agents for Homeland Security Investigations, a separate agency that falls under ICE.

ICE has said the majority of new hires are police and military veterans. But evidence has been mounting that applicants with questionable histories were either not fully vetted before they were brought on or were hired in spite of their past, an investigation by The Associated Press earlier this year found.

Maine shooting and officer’s background raise new questions about ICE’s rapid hiring

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been rapidly expanding its workforce, hiring thousands of new officers as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to ramp up immigration arrests and deportations.

The supersizing of ICE — fueled by an infusion of billions of dollars granted by Congress — has raised concerns about the agency’s hiring practices and whether officers being brought on are receiving proper vetting. Those concerns have been rejected by the Department of Homeland Security.

Relatives of the ICE officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine this week told The Associated Press he struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood and never should have been given a badge and gun to patrol American streets.

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Lawmakers demand answers after ‘bombshell’ report of ICE officer shooting in Maine

Democratic members of Congress demanded answers about Homeland Security’s vetting and training of immigration enforcement agents after it was disclosed Thursday that the ICE officer involved in a deadly shooting this week in Maine had a history of mental health issues and violent behavior.

The Associated Press reported that David Brouillette, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine, is an Army veteran who’s struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood, according to several of his close relatives.

The AP reached out to congressional leaders and several key lawmakers of both parties for response.

The top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said Brouillette’s history of violence and mental health issues, as well as the death in Maine, “directly call into question the supposed vetting and training ICE does of its recruits.”

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To air or not to air? Nation’s TV networks struggle to find the right balance for Trump speech

As President Trump threatened sanctions for those who didn’t cover his address live Thursday night, the nation’s broadcast and cable news operations wrestled with the thorniest of questions: To air or not to air?

Networks and their news operations, broadcast and cable alike, spent the hours leading up to Trump’s address debating how to cover it — and struggling to balance delivering the news with handing over their airwaves to potential falsehoods about the 2020 elections.

In the end, a patchwork quilt of coverage was largely united by one common strategy: real-time fact-checking as much as was possible even while the president was still speaking.

The dilemma took place against a backdrop of deep tension between the media and a president working to exert control over it by whatever means he can. Even in his speech itself, Trump excoriated networks that chose not to carry it live.

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Rubio set for Asia trip

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is heading to the Philippines next week to attend meetings with foreign ministers at a gathering of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN.

The State Department says Rubio is going to meet with his counterparts and senior officials from governments in the region as he pushes for a free and open Indo-Pacific.

Rubio is scheduled to leave for Manila on Sunday and head back to the U.S. on Thursday.

China rejects Trump’s election interference claim as ‘groundless accusations’

China on Friday said it has never interfered in U.S. elections and has no interest in doing so, urging Washington to stop making what it described as “groundless accusations” after President Trump accused Beijing of meddling in the 2020 election.

In an address to the nation Thursday, Trump again raised doubts about the U.S. elections results in 2020 and accused China of interfering in them.

“The relevant allegations by the U.S. are entirely fabricated and aimed at vilifying China,” said China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian. “We have no interest in interfering in US elections and have never done so.”

In a daily briefing in Beijing, Lin called on the U.S. to stop making groundless accusations against China.

▶ Read more

Former intelligence official calls Trump’s address ‘dangerous’

Sue Gordon, principal deputy director of national intelligence in Trump’s first term, called the president’s address “a dangerous speech about an incredibly important topic.” She said the intelligence community throughout Trump’s first term was alarmed about foreign interference in elections, but Trump scoffed at them, angered at the investigation of his campaign’s relationship with Russia.

“He had an entire term to deal with it and I don’t know how you can believe how the same community that told him about it, that was excoriated about it” wouldn’t warn him in 2020, Gordon said on CNN.

Conservative commentator John Solomon, who joined the White House staff last month and was seated in the East Room for Trump’s speech, later told MS NOW “the intelligence community has zero evidence that someone has flipped — that a foreign power flipped — a vote in 2020, ’22 or ’24.”

But, he added, “We’re not through all the documents.”

Trump doesn’t raise doubts about his election wins

President Donald Trump began Thursday night with a stark warning about what he described as flaws in the voting system and said he was releasing previously classified documents related to the 2020 and 2018 elections, when he lost the presidential election and when his party suffered losses.

Trump’s speech presented allegations of interference and influence in ways that lacked key context and did not produce evidence that votes had been manipulated or that the election outcome had been altered.

Notably, he focused on China but glossed over Russia, a country intelligence officials have said favored Trump in 2016 and 2020 and engaged in wide-ranging influence campaigns aimed at boosting him over Democrat Joe Biden in the latter campaign.

Trump’s Thursday night address hinged on contradictions

A twice-elected president complained about his one personal defeat, alleged a cover-up by officials in his own first administration and surfaced claims about countries attempting to harm his own prospects while staying silent on steps taken by other nations to boost him.

Trump used the remarks to justify his push to pass a strict voter ID bill in Congress that hasn’t advanced because it lacks enough support from his fellow Republicans.

“America is back and doing really well, but we still have a major challenge that must be urgently addressed, because no country can be great without fair and honest elections,” he said.

Coca-Cola, which owns Fairlife, announced Thursday that its dairy company had identified “unauthorized access by a third party” to a portion of its systems, including those related to production. The company disclosed that this was in connection to a ransomware event — and in response, it took some operations offline.

“Product quality and safety have not been impacted,” Atlanta-based Coca-Cola said in a statement. “However, as a result of the incident, production operations at fairlife in the United States are temporarily suspended.”

Fairlife’s Canadian operations were not affected. The full scope and impacts of the attack are otherwise still unknown, Coca-Cola added — but the beverage giant said it had informed law enforcement, and is also working with cybersecurity experts as it continues its investigation and recovery to restore operations.

A company spokesperson said there were no further updates to share as of Friday morning.

Cyberattacks are on the rise across sectors. Beyond dairy goods, other breaches have recently resulted in anything from core education services getting knocked offline to empty shelves at popular clothing or grocery stores.

Ransomware attacks — in which hackers demand a hefty payment to restore hacked systems — also account for a growing share of cyber crimes. And experts note that attackers know there’s a particular impact when going after well-known brands and products that shoppers buy or need every day.

Fairlife, based in Chicago, touts over $3 billion in annual retail sales today. The company produces a range of lactose-free products — which beyond milk, includes protein shakes.

With several riders closing in behind them, Schmid made the decisive move with 200 meters left and held off Tejada before lifting his front wheel at the line in celebration. Olympic mountain bike champion Tom Pidcock finished just behind in third.

Pogacar's yellow jersey group cruised in a few minutes later as the high temperatures of recent heat waves finally dropped.

Four-time Tour champion Pogacar remains 3 minutes, 36 seconds ahead of two-time champion Jonas Vingegaard in the overall standings, and 4:06 ahead of Remco Evenepoel in third place. Pidcock climbed up to fourth at 4:15 behind Pogacar.

Stage 13 was the longest of this year’s race at 206 kilometers (128 miles) and featured a sharp nine-kilometer Category 1 climb — the second-hardest climbing category — up Ballon d’Alsace. Schmid won in just over four hours.

A large group of riders formed at the front at the foot of the big climb, with Pogacar's yellow jersey group not contesting the stage win. The group was whittled down on the descent toward the finish in the northeast city of Belfort, and became a two-way duel to the line.

Saturday's 14th stage is a mountain stage with three big climbs in the Alsace region and ending at Le Markstein ski resort.

The race concludes with its traditional finish in Paris on July 26. ___

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

The man was arrested Thursday morning inside 30 Rockefeller Center in Midtown by an officer responding to reports of a disorderly individual inside the building, police said Friday.

NBC News says in a statement that an individual approached Melvin after entering an unauthorized area in a vestibule near Studio 1A. Melvin notified security, who held the man until police arrived, according to NBC.

No altercation occurred and no injuries were reported. NBC did not say how the man gained access to the area.

“We are reviewing the incident and our security protocols and remain committed to providing a safe and secure environment for everyone who works at and visits our studios,” the network said in a statement.

The man has been charged with burglary, menacing and criminal trespass as hate crimes, as well as harassment. It was not clear Friday if has appeared in court or if he has an attorney.

Police did not say what led to the hate crime enhancements on the charges. Police records show a court date has been scheduled for Wednesday.

Melvin, who is Black, discussed the incident on-air Friday morning.

“Unfortunately, an intruder made his way into an unauthorized area here at Studio 1A,” Melvin said. “Thankfully, he was apprehended quickly. He was placed under arrest. We are just very happy that everyone is safe.”

Melvin also posted about the incident on Instagram.

“Hey everyone. I’ve heard from so many of you over the last few hours,” he wrote on Thursday. “I’m doing just fine. Thanks for reaching out."

Longtime “Today" show meteorologist Al Roker also took to social media to thank everyone reaching out to check on Melvin.

“We are both okay,” Roker posted on Instagram. “It’s moments like these that serve to pull us together. You all, like Craig, said ‘You come after one of us, you come after all of us.’”

Melvin and Roker are among a relatively small group of prominent Black journalists and anchors with regular, highly visible roles on national broadcast network news programs.

That’s according to a new study by home care agency 24 Hour Caregivers, which compared the best overall retirement conditions in all 50 states.

The study analyzed air quality, life expectancy, violent crime, environmental quality, Medicaid spending, the proportion of residents aged 65 and older, and nursing home quality across every state.

Each factor was given equal importance before the results were combined into an index score out of 100.

With all of the Snowbirds who come down to Florida, you might be surprised to learn the Sunshine State didn’t crack the top 10 for the best states to retire, according to the study.

Florida came in at No. 14 with a life expectancy average of 77.9 years, Medicaid spending at $4,948 per enrollee and the fourth-highest percentage of population aged 65 or older (21.8%).

Georgia, on the other hand, ranked ninth among the worst states for retirees, despite a stronger natural-environment rank of 20. The study found that nursing home quality placed 45th, Medicaid spending is just $5,015 per enrollee, and only 15.8% of residents are aged 65 or older.

After Hawaii, most of the rest of the top 10 states for retirees are in the New England area, according to the study:

1. Hawaii
2. Rhode Island
3. New Hampshire
4. Massachusetts
5. Maine
6. Vermont
7. Connecticut
8. New York
9. Minnesota
10. New Jersey

“What stands out about Hawaii is that it ranks first despite comparatively low Medicaid spending, because its life expectancy, natural environment and nursing home quality are all exceptionally strong,” said Allen Tahir, founder and CEO of 24 Hour Caregivers.

On the other hand, a majority of the worst 10 states for retirees, including Georgia, are in the South (ranked worst to best):

1. Oklahoma
2. Texas
3. Louisiana
4. Nevada
5. Arkansas
6. Tennessee
7. Illinois
8. Alabama
9. Georgia
10. New Mexico

“Weaker nursing home quality and lower Medicaid spending often appear alongside poor health or safety outcomes,” Tahir said of the bottom 10. “When several of those factors overlap, families may face fewer good care options and more pressure when support is eventually needed.”

According to the study, 24 Hour Caregivers’ home state of California ranked No. 30 overall.

Methodology & sources:

24 Hour Caregivers compared all 50 US states using seven factors linked to retirement:

• Air quality: Average AQI in 2023, sourced from World Population Review using EPA data. Lower scores were considered better.
• Life expectancy: Life expectancy at birth in 2022, sourced from the CDC and National Center for Health Statistics. Higher figures were considered better.
• Violent crime: Violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2024, sourced from USAFacts using FBI data. Lower rates were considered better.
• Natural environment: The 2025 U.S. News Natural Environment ranking, sourced from U.S. News & World Report. A lower rank was considered better.
• Medicaid spending: Annual spending per full-benefit enrollee in FY2023, sourced from KFF State Health Facts. Higher spending was treated as a stronger safety net.
• Population aged 65 and older: The share of each state’s population aged 65-plus in 2024, sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau. Higher percentages were treated as more retiree-friendly.
• Nursing home quality: The U.S. News nursing home quality ranking, sourced from U.S. News & World Report. A lower rank was considered better.

Cleaner air, lower crime and stronger U.S. News rankings were treated as better results. Higher life expectancy, Medicaid spending and 65-plus population figures were also scored more positively.

Each state was ranked from best to worst for every factor. The seven rankings were then weighted equally and combined to create the final order.

The results were converted into an index score out of 100, with a higher score representing better overall conditions for retirement.

The people, who were not authorized to speak publicly, said she has started having conversations about a potential campaign.

Plans for Lindsey Graham's funeral were also announced on Friday. There will be a service in Washington on July 28 and more in South Carolina on July 29.

Darline Graham's eventual decision could dramatically shake up the scramble to fill her late brother's seat after he died last weekend. The filing period for a special primary runs from July 21 to July 28, and the primary is scheduled for Aug. 11.

Several other noteworthy politicians — including Reps. Russell Fry, Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman, as well as Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette — have been eyeing a run.

Darline Graham's conversations were first reported by Semafor.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster appointed Darline Graham to serve the remainder of her brother's term, which ends in January. In his announcement on Monday, McMaster made no reference to her as a placeholder or symbolic appointment.

The first woman to represent the state in the Senate, Darline Graham called it "such an honor,” as dozens of her brother’s staffers and campaign advisers stood behind her, some with eyes glassy from welling tears.

“Lindsey has always been there for me. And now, I will be there for him," she said.

Lindsey Graham died on Saturday at age 71. A preliminary report from the medical examiner said he suffered a tear in his aorta.

He never married or had a family of his own, but his sister was often by his side for the political touch points of his career, speaking at events and appearing in some of his campaign ads.

___

Kim reported from Washington.

___

Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP

The move comes just days after Rodriguez, a leading establishment Democrat from the pivotal Milwaukee suburbs, fired her campaign manager after discovering her campaign had hundreds of thousands of dollars less on hand than expected.

“As we have continued to dig into our financial reports, it has become clear there are issues that would be an ongoing distraction,” Rodriguez said in a social media post Friday. “Part of being a leader is taking swift action, doing the right thing and being as honest as possible when there's a problem."

“And because I believe that, I cannot, in good conscience, allow these questions to become a cloud over an election Democrats need to win,” she added.

The shake-up comes less than a month from the primary election on Aug. 11, when Democrats will be choosing a successor to Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who opted not to seek a third term.

Rodriguez had been endorsed by Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who quit his campaign on July 8, over remaining Democratic candidates, including democratic socialist Francesca Hong, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and others.

The increase underscores a broader shift in the foreclosure landscape, ATTOM said: foreclosure starts have climbed nationwide while average timelines for completing foreclosures have shortened, a combination that points to growing homeowner stress in some Florida communities and faster lender resolutions that could reshape local housing inventories and markets.

The numbers

• Florida’s filings equaled about 0.27 percent of housing units — roughly one in every 373 homes — the highest rate of any state in the first six months of 2026. Filings in Florida were up about 33 percent from a year earlier and about 37 percent from two years earlier.
• Nationwide, there were 227,548 properties with foreclosure filings in the first half of 2026, about 0.16 percent of U.S. housing units (one in every 632 homes), up 21 percent from the same period a year earlier.
• Foreclosure starts nationally rose 18 percent year over year; 164,566 properties entered the foreclosure process in the first half of 2026.

Where Florida stands

• Florida ranked second only to Texas in the number of foreclosure starts in the first half of 2026: Florida had 20,358 starts; Texas had 20,739.
• Lenders repossessed (REO) 2,070 Florida properties in the first half of 2026, the third‑most of any state behind Texas and California.

Metro trouble spots

• Several Florida metropolitan areas were among the worst in the nation for foreclosure rates (metros of 200,000 or more):
• • Punta Gorda: 0.50 percent of housing units with a foreclosure filing (worst among metros)
  • Lakeland: 0.48 percent
  • Cape Coral: 0.35 percent
  • Jacksonville and Ocala: 0.31 percent each
• In the second quarter alone, Lakeland recorded the worst rate among larger metros — one in every 421 housing units had a foreclosure filing.

Trends and timing

• Lenders completed foreclosures (REOs) on 27,983 U.S. properties in the first half of 2026, up 33 percent from the first half of 2025.
• The average time a property spent in the foreclosure process for homes foreclosed in the second quarter fell to 563 days, the shortest level since 2013, indicating faster completions even as filings rise.

“Foreclosure activity continued to increase in the first half of 2026, but the broader picture remains one of a market that is gradually returning to more typical patterns,” Rob Barber, chief executive officer of ATTOM, said in the report.

Click here to read the full report.

By this evening, the focus shifts to storms. Areas along I-75 from Lake City southward face the potential for localized heavy rain and localized flooding.

This weekend: A tropical airmass moves in

A deep tropical airmass is set to overspread the region through the weekend, bringing numerous showers and thunderstorms each afternoon and evening, regardless of any tropical development offshore.

The east coast sea breeze is forecast to push far enough inland to keep the most intense storms further west, leaving the coastal areas relatively dry.

Flooding the primary concern

The main hazard with this weekend’s storms will be periods of heavy rainfall capable of producing localized flooding. Repeated rounds of storms in those areas make flooding the primary threat.

Frequent lightning and locally gusty winds will also accompany the stronger storms throughout the weekend.

Saturday: Still hot with dangerous heat index values

Despite all the storm activity, temperatures Saturday will remain seasonably hot, with highs expected in the lower to middle 90s. Peak heat index values are forecast to range between 102 and 107 degrees, so be sure to stay hydrated and always have an indoor space nearby to seek relief from the heat.

Sunday: Slight cool-down, but still humid

Increasing cloud cover and widespread showers and storms on Sunday should knock high temperatures down a bit, with most areas will see upper 80s to lower 90s.

Atlantic wave stays disorganized

A broad area of low pressure, associated with a tropical wave and located a couple of hundred miles southeast of the Cabo Verde Islands, continues to produce disorganized showers and thunderstorms.

Development, if any, should be slow to occur during the next day or so while the system moves west-northwestward at 10 to 15 mph. By this weekend, the system is forecast to move into a hostile environment, and further development is not expected.

The National Hurricane Center puts the chance of the system forming into a tropical cyclone at just 10% over both the next 48 hours and the next seven days — keeping it in the “low” category.

Gulf system could develop early next week

An area of low pressure is forecast to form this weekend over the northeastern Gulf. Some gradual development of this system is possible while it meanders over the northeastern Gulf or moves slowly northeastward toward the coast of the southeastern United States early next week.

The NHC says some gradual development is possible, though the system’s formation chances remain low — near 0% within 48 hours, climbing to 20% over the next seven days.

Herbert bent over with hands on his knees after missing a 5-foot par putt on the 18th hole at Royal Birkdale, knowing the 30-year-old Australian was an inch away from being the first man with a 61. Burns wasn't even aware of the record when he holed a bunker shot to cap a birdie-birdie-birdie finish.

“I'm absolutely disappointed, and at the same time, so proud of today,” Herbert said. "Very, very proud to put my name on that list of guys that have shot 62 in a major championship. So it's kind of holding two emotions there at the same time.

“It's a pretty good problem to have, too, to be disappointed you shot 62.”

Most remarkable about Burns is that the 29-year-old American — the runner-up at the U.S. Open last month — wasn't even planning to play in The Open. His wife was due this week, and when she gave birth to a daughter earlier than expected, Burns decided a week ago Friday to make the trip.

Still steaming from a bogey-bogey-bogey finish on Thursday for a 3-over 73, his goal was to get back under par and keep his hopes alive in the championship.

“The finish there the last three holes was just a bonus,” Burns said.

And what a finish. He holed from 40 feet off the green at the 16th for birdie, made a 20-foot birdie putt on the 17th and then made the first birdie of the day on the tough 18th by splashing out of the pot bunker and calmly raising his right arm when it went in.

“It was a tricky bunker shot because I had to land it in the fringe there and use the slope down to the hole. Definitely very lucky for it to go in,” Burns said.

That two record-tying rounds happened so close together was reminiscent of Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele — also two groups apart — each with 62 in the U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club in 2023.

The record was first set by Branden Grace in 2017, also at Royal Birkdale. It had been matched four times since then at two majors — Schauffele and Fowler at the U.S. Open, and Schauffele and Shane Lowry at 9-under 62 in the 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla.

The amazing rounds came one week after Haeran Ryu set the women’s major record with a 60 at the Evian Championship in France, where all lowest scores in LPGA majors have been set.

Herbert's round was simply flawless until the final hole. A self-described golf nerd, he allowed himself a thought about a record score on a par-70 links after three straight birdies to start the round. And the birdies kept coming until he was 8 under through 12 holes, with the two reachable par 5s still to play.

“I might not play 12 better holes in my life,” he said.

Herbert was a foot away from a mid-iron into the par-5 14th, but it just caught a pot bunker, and he had to save par from a greenside bunker. But he holed a 7-foot birdie putt on the 16th to reach 9 under, and he missed a 10-foot birdie attempt on the par-5 17th.

He went into the right rough off the 18th tee, came up short of the green and from 50 feet away on the baked fairway, Herbert rolled it some 5 feet short of the hole. The putt looked left of the cup from the moment it left his putter.

“I didn’t hit a bad putt. I can at least sleep easy tonight knowing I didn’t hit a bad putt,” Herbert said. “I just misread it. It’s pretty tough when you’ve got a putt for the major championship record to get everything to work and to get everything to sync perfectly still and straight.”

Three of the seven rounds of 62 have come at Royal Birkdale, and weather played a role. There was a breeze for so much of the morning, and players took aim. Eric Cole was first out with a 64. Patrick Reed (66) reached 6 under through 12 holes before he slowed.

“It’s pretty benign, and if you were ever going to do it, this was the morning for it,” said Herbert, who now plays on LIV Golf and has won on five tours. “These guys are good. I’m probably not as surprised as you think that there’s another 62 out there. I’m probably more surprised at myself shooting 62, to be honest.”

Of the seven rounds of 62 in the majors, Schauffele at the PGA Championship is the only one to leave with the trophy.

___

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

What struck Le then, and amazes him still, is Pannakara’s iron-clad determination.

“When he decides to do something, he goes all the way,” said Le, secretary of the temple — the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center in Fort Worth. “He’s never been afraid of obstacles. He always finds a way through them.”

That indomitable will was in full display during the meditative Walk for Peace that Pannakara led earlier this year with an international group of monks and his rescue dog, Aloka, who has become a mascot for the movement. The 2,300-mile (3,700-kilometer) journey started in Fort Worth on Oct. 26 and ended in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 14.

An ascetic walks into the spotlight

Pannakara’s discourses on mindfulness and kindness in churchyards, town squares and in front of the Lincoln Memorial drew large, diverse crowds. Millions worldwide followed along online.

Within weeks, the Walk for Peace had propelled this obscure monk into the spotlight as a leading voice for inner peace and unity in an increasingly divided nation. His popularity continues to soar, with some drawing comparisons with the Dalai Lama, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the late Thich Nhat Hanh, a revered Zen master and peace activist who shared Pannakara’s Vietnamese roots.

Pannakara, who traveled to Southern California last weekend with Aloka for several speaking engagements, said he doesn’t care for all the attention.

“There is no fame for monks,” he said. “I made a vow to walk to raise awareness of peace, loving kindness and compassion. That’s what it’s about.”

As part of his Theravada Buddhist practice, he follows “Vinaya” — a strict code of monastic rules. That means no social media accounts, personal possessions or handling money, and the practice of celibacy and modesty.

He doesn't eat after noon and, according to Le, sleeps sitting up, which is not mandatory for Theravada monks, but adopted by some as an ascetic practice to deepen mindfulness.

The pivot from engineer to monk

Pannakara was born in Dak Lak, Vietnam, in 1981, the youngest of 10 children. He says his family was Buddhist in “name only.” He immigrated to the U.S. in 1997 and graduated with a degree in information technology from the University of Texas at Arlington. He said his first exposure to Buddhism was in the U.S. through temple summer camps and youth leadership.

Pannakara stepped away from his engineering career to become a novice monk and became fully ordained in 2010 by his teacher, the Most Venerable Ratanaguna, who he has often cited as his source of inspiration. There was not one life-changing event that prompted his decision, he said, but the cumulative effect of seeing his loved ones suffer and people trying to step on each other to move up.

“To me everything just seemed fake,” he said.

Le recalls that Pannakara’s parents were inconsolable.

“Even on the day he was ordained, his mother came, and she cried a lot,” he said, adding that they eventually accepted it.

Le said Pannakara was a quick learner, completing several projects on their campus including landscaping, a new kitchen, homes for the monastics and a memorial hall for deceased members.

At his teacher’s direction, Pannakara traveled to Myanmar between 2018 and 2020 to study and practice Vipassana meditation, an ancient technique taught by the Buddha himself as core for attaining enlightenment. When COVID hit, he returned to Fort Worth and organized food drives, said Amanda Phan, a temple member.

“(Pannakara) is a rare human being,” she said. “He is an embodiment of kindness, compassion, wisdom — a bodhisattva — a being whose purpose is to relieve others from their suffering.”

Transformative journey tracing the Buddha's steps

In late 2022, Pannakara joined about 100 monks in a 2,100-mile (3,380-kilometer), 112-day pilgrimage tracing the footsteps of the Buddha — from his birthplace in Lumbini, Nepal, to Bodh Gaya where he attained enlightenment; Sarnath, the site of the first sermon; and Kushinagar, where he died. The monks emulated Buddha's journey — walking barefoot, eating one meal a day, and sleeping under the stars.

“I had learned the Buddha’s teachings from the Tipitaka (Buddhist canon),” Pannakara said. “But with this walk, I experienced it.”

He also learned about himself — about his strength to bear adversity and pain.

“I learned that we can do much more than we think we’re capable of,” he said.

That journey also brought Aloka into his life. Aloka means light in Pali.

“Even when he faced challenges and almost died he walked with us,” Pannakara said of his dog.

It was on a previous trip to Bodh Gaya — under the Bodhi tree where the Buddha attained enlightenment — that Pannakara said he had a vision to build stone stupas to preserve the sacred teachings for generations to come. Seven years later, he told Ratanaguna about his desire. With his teacher’s blessing, the plan for the $200-million Dhammacetiya project was born — 840 stupas bearing Buddha’s teachings in 10 languages, built to last 4,000 years.

Pannakara knelt before an assembly of monastics and visitors during the temple’s 2022 International Vesak Ceremony and vowed that if he is unable to complete the project in this lifetime, he would “be reborn to continue this project until its completion.” This project and the peace walks — which he plans to do more of — together uphold his vow to promote peace and preserve the Buddha’s teachings, he said.

Ajahn Nisabho, a Seattle-based Theravada Buddhist monk, said he was moved by Pannakara's authenticity and commitment.

“The story of his quilted robe that he stitched it together from pieces of cloth he picked up during the walk in India — he was honoring that past and that ethos,” Nisabho said. “As a fellow monk, it was inspiring for me to see floods of people walking behind him during the peace walk.”

A conscious decision to steer clear of politics

The Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi, a senior Theravada monk who spoke at the conclusion of the Walk for Peace in Washington, said Pannakara was wise to remain silent on politics during his walk. But Bodhi, 81, hopes he does speak up on critical social issues like poverty, hunger, housing and the climate.

“I just hope that as (Pannakara) becomes more established and gets accustomed to publicity, he’ll consider taking a stand on these issues that have deep moral and spiritual significance,” he said.

Nisabho believes Pannakara made the right decision to steer clear of politics and activism. He said there are not many spaces today that are able to welcome the kind of diversity the peace walk attracted — with the exception of Dolly Parton “who brings truckers and drag queens together.”

“The vision of a monastic is the one chance someone has, to be inspired toward awakening and find an escape from suffering,” Nisabho said. “If you bring politics into that, you cause damage by alienating half the country.”

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

The Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp confirmed the number of casualties, saying people were struck at the funeral for a Palestinian killed in a strike earlier on Friday.

Israel and the Hamas militant group agreed to a ceasefire deal in October aimed at halting a two-year-long war.

The heaviest fighting has subsided but at least 1,123 people have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire took effect, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.

The ministry, which has been part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. It does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants but says women and children make up most of the dead.

Militants have carried out shooting attacks on troops, and Israel says its strikes are in response to that and other violations. Five Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire.

The war began after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killed around 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 73,264 Palestinians, including those killed since the ceasefire, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.

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Coach Didier Deschamps takes charge of his last game for France on Saturday when Les Bleus face England at the World Cup in Miami. The winner gets third place, an anti-climactic award brought about by agonizing semifinal defeats.

It is a disappointing end to Deschamps' reign when many observers touted his star-studded attack to win another World Cup. Zinedine Zidane is widely expected to be confirmed as France's new coach in the coming days by the French soccer federation.

The Deschamps years

France won the World Cup under Deschamps in 2018, lost a gut-wrenching final on penalties in 2022, and fell short tactically against Spain on Tuesday.

In his 14 years in charge, Deschamps won just one major trophy — albeit the biggest of all — having lost the European Championship final on home soil in 2016.

Some observers suggest that was not quite enough given the talent at France's disposal — including Kylian Mbappé, Paul Pogba, Antoine Griezmann and Ballon d'Or winners Ousmane Dembélé and Karim Benzema — while others argue France was remarkably consistent under Deschamps, who is now 57.

Whatever the view, France's next coach has big shoes to fill and a big aura will help. As arguably France's greatest ever player, and a prolifically successful coach with Real Madrid, Zidane seems the perfect fit.

Polar opposites as players, Zidane and Deschamps are forever linked by glory.

The industrious midfielder Deschamps was France's tireless captain when it won the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000, while Zinedine was the unstoppable creative force that drove that brilliant team to new heights.

Here's a look at how France might look with Zidane in charge.

What would Zidane change?

France's 2-0 defeat to Spain in the World Cup semifinal was more crushing than the score suggests.

France was found wanting tactically when put under sustained pressure by the slick Spanish. Completely dominated in midfield, France got its pressing game all wrong. The attack was blunted and Deschamps had no Plan “B” to turn things around.

Deschamps has had his detractors over the years — chief among them Christophe Dugarry, his former France teammate — who said his approach was too restrictive and lacked sufficient creativity in central midfield.

Zidane would doubtless want a more expansive approach, such as during his heyday when he roamed the field as a playmaker. Michael Olise or Rayan Cherki could fill that role.

Both are technically gifted although neither are a playmaker by definition like Zidane was. Another option could be Dembélé dropping deep into that role, as he has done well with Paris Saint-Germain.

Benzema's return?

Zidane is a huge fan of Benzema and they became close friends when Zidane coached him at Real Madrid.

They won three straight Champions League titles together from 2016-18 and Benzema became a more complete player, as well as a ruthless finisher, under Zidane's guidance. Benzema is 38 and his advanced age may prove a stumbling block.

But given how the age-defying Lionel Messi has dazzled at this World Cup aged 39, Zidane may think Benzema — a Ballon d'Or winner in 2022 — has something left to give. Especially if he plays in a more withdrawn role, where he can use his excellent technical skill and passing ability to good effect.

Critics of Deschamps never forgave him for leaving out Benzema for the best part of six years, due to Benzema's alleged part in a “sex-tape scandal” targeting then-France teammate Mathieu Valbuena.

However, France won the World Cup without Benzema.

He was finally recalled in time for the European Championship in 2021, where he was France's top scorer with four goals, and combined brilliantly with Mbappé when they won the Nations League later that year.

Benzema fell out with Deschamps after being released from the 2022 World Cup because of a thigh injury, with Benzema contesting events leading to his departure.

It would be a big call for Zidane to recall him, but it's not impossible.

Five years away from the game

One question is how ready Zidane would be for such a high-pressured job, giving that he has not coached since leaving Madrid after his second spell in 2021.

Yet he will also be fresh after several years away from the stress and scrutiny of management.

Should the 54-year-old Zidane take charge, his first game would be away to Turkey in the Nations League on Sept. 25, followed by a match in Belgium three days later.

Home fans would need to wait until Oct. 2 for a glimpse of Zidane at Stade de France, when France plays Italy.

Zidane's last game as a player for France was against Italy in the 2006 World Cup final. He scored early with a Panenka-style penalty, before an infamous moment saw him red-carded for headbutting Italy defender Marco Materazzi during extra time.

France lost the final on penalty kicks but the French public quickly forgave Zidane — affectionally known as “Zizou” — for getting sent off, such was his deep bond with the nation.

___

See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here

Iran launched missiles into U.S.-allied nations in the Middle East, including Qatar, a mediator in the war, and Kuwait, where one of the desert nation's water desalination plants was damaged.

The interim ceasefire agreed to last month has collapsed — though efforts remain to salvage it — and the region has endured days of back-and-forth attacks by the U.S. and Iran as they battle for control of the strait vital to world energy supplies.

Iranian officials say recent U.S. strikes have killed dozens of people and wounded hundreds, with new casualties reported Friday.

When the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic, a move that sent the price of oil soaring and gave Iran major leverage in negotiations. Crossings through the strait have fallen to a three-week low, according to an international shipping tracker, and the price of oil rose Friday above $86 a barrel, close to its highest level in a month.

In an address to the American public on Thursday, Trump insisted the war was going well. “We are likewise winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly,” he said.

Before the war began, the U.S. had been in talks with Iran over its nuclear program. Trump now faces political pressure to bring the war to a close and avoid the kind of prolonged Middle East conflict he had campaigned against.

Bridges and 'electrical infrastructure' hit in Iran

The U.S. airstrikes hit bridges overnight into Friday in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, killing at least seven people, Iranian state television reported. The attacks hit Bandar Khamir, a city on Iran’s coast on the Strait of Hormuz.

The highway and railway bridge strikes appeared aimed at cutting off Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port, from roads leading into the Islamic Republic’s central region onward to Tehran, the capital.

While other routes still are open, the U.S. strikes could expand further, potentially disrupting both the movement of military materiel and goods needed for Iran’s 90 million people.

Iran acknowledged “attacks on power infrastructure” during the U.S. airstrike campaign for the first time Friday when its Energy Ministry issued a call for people to use less power in southern provinces "experiencing extreme heat.” The ministry did not say whether it was power plants, transmission lines or other equipment that had been attacked.

Tower at key port collapses in US strike

The U.S. military’s Central Command said it hit dozens of targets in its latest airstrikes, which concluded at dawn Friday, after the sixth night in a row of American attacks.

The strikes collapsed a tower at Iran’s Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman, a key trade route for landlocked, neighboring Afghanistan, the state-run IRNA news agency reported and the U.S. military later confirmed.

Chabahar port, which Iran had been running with support from India, has been a repeated target of American airstrikes.

Iran said the tower oversees commercial traffic into the port. But Central Command said it was part of a maritime surveillance network used by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard to “track and target” commercial vessels in the strait.

“The destruction of the tower directly degrades (the paramilitary's) ability to coordinate attacks on innocent civilian crew members,” Central Command said in a social media post Friday morning.

As of 6 a.m. Friday, the U.S. strikes had killed at least 38 people and wounded more than 400 in Iran, Health Ministry spokesperson Hossein Kermanpour said.

Iran retaliates by targeting Qatar, a mediator in the war

On Friday, Qatar twice warned the public to take shelter as a barrage of Iranian missiles targeted the nation. People heard explosions overhead as air defenses fired to intercept the missiles. Qatar’s Interior Ministry said falling debris wounded a child.

Qatar, along with Pakistan, is a key mediator in trying to reach an end to the Iran war.

Iran also targeted Bahrain and Kuwait early Friday. In Kuwait, authorities said Iran attacked a power and water desalination plant, causing widespread damage to the station. About 90% of the country's drinking water comes from desalination.

Kuwait said it extinguished the blaze and was working to assess the damage and get the station working again.

Jordan's military said it intercepted three incoming missiles Friday morning launched by Iran.

Explosions also could be heard Friday morning in Irbil and Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region as air defenses targeted incoming fire. The attack apparently targeted the Iranian Kurdish dissident group Komala, killing at least nine people and wounding others, said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Iran did not immediately claim the attack but has targeted Komala in the past.

Also on Friday, a tanker came under attack traveling through the Strait of Hormuz taking the route closest to Oman, the British military said.

The report from the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said the ship sustained minor damage without any of its crew being injured.

Iran did not immediately acknowledge any attack. In recent days, it has openly targeted ships using the route, which is overseen by the U.S. military and intended to be outside of Tehran’s control.

Strikes come as Iran and US vie for Strait of Hormuz

Iran has said the strait must be under its sole control and that vessels should pay fees to Tehran — even though the world for decades has considered it an international waterway.

Trump has returned in recent days to his threats to target Iranian power stations and bridges to try to compel Iran to loosen its hold on the strait, through which about a fifth of all oil and natural gas traded once passed in peacetime. The U.S. also reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to halt its shipments of crude oil.

Crossings through the strait fell to a three-week low of just eight vessels on Thursday, according to MarineTraffic.com. It said seven of the vessels used a route operated by Iran and none used the route closest to Oman.

A growing amount of the region’s energy is being shipped through pipelines, but not nearly enough to offset the decline in shipping through the strait.

___

Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, Annika Wolters in Rayong, Thailand, and Stella Martany in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report.

Whether you're hoping Argentina will become the first repeat champion since Brazil in 1958 and 1962, or that young superstar Lamine Yamal will score for Spain, everyone's a winner across these 10 tracks.

Read on below and then stream the full playlist on Spotify, here.

“Dai Dai,” Shakira and Burna Boy (2026)

Kick off your World Cup final listening party with this year's official anthem: “Dai Dai” from Colombian superstar Shakira and Afrobeats icon Burna Boy. The song is the perfect intersection of their musical languages, Afrobeats and Latin rhythms, on an undeniably global, multilingual track. After the first chorus, they take turns tackling verses, singing back and forth, before joining in a duet. It's a message of unity and victory. Take it from Shakira herself: “Fútbol is a thing that unites so many cultures and people of different walks of life,” she told the AP. “The big responsibility of making a World Cup song is that you’ve got to make a song that represents people’s feelings, emotions, and passion.”

“DNA (More Than A Game),” Andrea Bocelli, David Guetta, EJAE and Megan Thee Stallion (2026)

You read that artist list correctly. On this World Cup song, tenor Andrea Bocelli, EDM star David Guetta, singer-songwriter EJAE from “KPop Demon Hunters” and rapper Megan Thee Stallion team up for the genre-agnostic “DNA (More Than A Game).” Performed in English, Italian and Korean, it's surprisingly anthemic and has a strong empowerment message. “’Cause it’s more than just a game / it’s our DNA,” Bocelli and EJAE harmonize on the chorus.

“It's a kind of music very, very far from the scores that I’m used to performing in general, but sometimes it’s very nice to do something different and to discover new atmospheres,” Bocelli told the AP. “It's very happy, the song. I think it gives happiness.” That it does.

“La Copa de la Vida (The Cup of Life),” Ricky Martin (1998)

A Spanglish global smash and one of the most addictive World Cup anthems of all time, Puerto Rican superstar Ricky Martin was really onto something when he released “La Copa de la Vida (The Cup of Life)” for the 1998 tournament held in France. It is the standard to which all World Cup anthems should be held — from its unmistakable soccer themes to its multilingual mambo-pop, unyielding horns section and Eurodance-club intensity. Ale, ale, ale!

“Despechá,” Rosalía (2022)

Supporters of Spain are more than familiar with this up-tempo, merengue-pop tune — it has become a celebratory track for the team upon victory, played after they score and post-match. And now that the 2010 World Cup champions are in the final, it's not unlikely it's played out loud on stadium speakers again. It's a cool pick from a team with swagger — and fitting for this playlist.

“Mi Gran Noche,” Raphael (1967)

The legendary Spanish singer Raphael is central to celebrations in the country this World Cup season. “Mi Gran Noche” is just one gem in his treasure trove of hits — a '60s Latin pop classic with intergenerational appeal, played in clubs, bars, football clubs, on the radio and television specials and beyond. There’s a reason it has stood the test of time, with its big band brass and cheerful chorus.

“La Roja Baila,” Sergio Ramos, Niña Pastori and RedOne (2016)

What do you get when you combine Spanish footballer Sergio Ramos, flamenco-pop singer Niña Pastori and Moroccan record producer RedOne (known for his work with Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez and many more)? “La Roja Baila,” the Spanish team's official anthem for the 2016 European Championship. (It translates to “The Red One Dances,” a reference to the team's nickname, La Roja.) The results that year weren't in Spain's favor, but that's no reason to stop chanting along to the song's cheery post-chorus: “España ey ey! / Cantamos gol, gol / España ey ey! / La Roja baila.” (“Spain, hey hey! / We sing goal, goal! / Spain, hey hey! / La Roja dances!”)

“La Cumbia de los Trapos,” Yerba Brava (2000)

It was Argentina's signature song in 2022, when they won in Qatar, and it has been their statement track this tournament, too. Argentine band Yerba Brava's 2000 hit “La Cumbia de los Trapos” was written as a soccer anthem, and a soccer anthem it has remained. It's a high-energy cumbia with a title that directly references “los trapos,” or “the rags” — the flags flown in Argentine stadiums.

“Matador,” Los Fabulosos Cadillacs (1993, remastered 2008)

Ska-samba-reggae-rock group Los Fabulosos Cadillacs' “Matador” is heard when Argentina scores. The hit — with its Afro-Argentine candombe rhythms, big brass and chant-along chorus — is undeniably spirited. On first listen, it's an upbeat party record. On closer inspection, it's an indictment of the late-'70s and early-'80s period of dictatorship in Argentina.

“Dumbai,” Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso (2024)

The Argentine duo of Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso is making some of the most exciting music in the modern mainstream. Call it genre-averse, hook-heavy Latin pop with trance and trap beats atop tropical rhythms performed through an absurdist, comedic lens — that is, if you have to call it anything. “Dumbai” is arguably one of their more reserved tracks but still a fun romp about a fun night out.

“Waka Waka (This Time for Africa),” Shakira featuring Freshlyground (2010)

No such playlist would be complete without the greatest World Cup anthem committed to record: “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa),” also courtesy Shakira. It was the official anthem of the 2010 World Cup held in South Africa and featured the South African band Freshlyground. The song, with its soca-influenced beat and reference to the 1986 song “Zangaléwa,” recorded by Cameroonian band Golden Sounds, manages to do what all World Cup songs should: Take local sounds and make them global, all without sacrificing hook and rhythm. It's an earworm with a capital “E.”

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See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here

Through DNA testing and old-fashioned sleuthing, the Maryland teenager who died in one of the last big battles of the American Revolution can now take his place in history, just in time for the 250th birthday of the nation he fought to create.

“There was a sense of divine timing, I guess,” said Allison Peacock, founder of FHD Forensics, a company that helped with the search. “I don’t know what else you want to call it.”

Pumphrey died Aug. 16, 1780, at the Battle of Camden, South Carolina. It was one of the Continental Army’s most devastating defeats, where British Gen. Charles Lord Cornwallis routed patriot forces under Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates.

Many of the 900 killed were left where they fell, abandoned to the predations of wild animals, South Carolina’s scorching heat and its ruinous humidity.

Bones emerge from a Revolutionary War battlefield

Archaeologists surveying the area in 2020 came across human bones protruding from the ground. Eventually, 14 sets of remains were identified — 12 of them Continental soldiers. The others were determined to be connected to the British side and were reburied at the battlefield.

The Richland County Coroner’s Office had worked with Texas-based FHD Forensics on modern-day cases and asked for their help. Peacock took to calling it the case of “America’s oldest John Doe.”

“What we did is pretty much the same as what we do with any other John Doe case,” she said. “Nobody really knew for sure whether we could get genetic profiles suitable for a genealogy investigation on 240-plus-year-old remains. But we got lucky.”

Unlike most, Pumphrey and four comrades received a cursory burial beneath a thin layer of dirt. He was dubbed “Camden 9B,” because his were the second set of remains retrieved from burial nine. The remains were examined and cataloged.

The 12 Continentals were later reinterred with full military honors. Camden 9B’s headstone read: “UNKNOWN. REV WAR. BATTLE OF CAMDEN. AUG 16 1780.”

DNA unlocks a centuries-old mystery

Meanwhile, samples from two of the soldiers were sent to Astrea Forensics in California for DNA extraction and sequencing.

“Typically, in a case like this, we work with teeth, because teeth are in the jaw and are protected, the roots are protected,” said Peacock. “In this case, they were just coming up with nothing on the teeth.”

With remains this old, it's often difficult to separate the human DNA from all the other genetic material in the grave, said Astrea co-founder and scientific adviser Kelly Harkins Kincaid.

“It gets colonized by the microbial environment in the soil and the water in the environment,” she said.

Although she's worked with DNA samples as old as 10,000 years, this was the oldest sample her company has ever used to try to reconstruct a family tree.

From a petrous portion of the temporal bone, a delicate structure behind the ear at the base of the skull, they successfully extracted DNA that generated Pumphrey's entire genome. Peacock’s team then uploaded the data to FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch to trace three types of DNA matches: autosomal, X chromosome and Y chromosome.

“We got 20,000 matches to work with,” she said. “So, it was a lot to kind of comb through.”

An orphan soldier's life comes into focus

One of those matches, from the maternal line, was Russ Hudson.

The retired federal agent in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, offered to help do archival research. A profile began to emerge of a young orphan from Maryland’s Anne Arundel County, dispossessed and looking for his way in life.

“I learned that probably when he was 13, he went to Baltimore and he enlisted in the militia,” Hudson said. “And who knows what his story was? What did he accomplish in order to become a member of the militia at such a young age?”

Because no birth record has been found, it’s unclear how old Pumphrey was when he went to war. He signed his reenlistment papers with an “X.” But he was young enough that, when he died, the growth plates around his knees had not yet fully closed, Peacock said.

A witness to history

Researchers now know Pumphrey and his comrades from the 7th Maryland Regiment were with George Washington in the snows at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Peacock said his unit was involved in some of the major contests in the Northern Theater, including the battles of Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth.

She figures he had marched 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) before he met his end in the pinelands of South Carolina.

“We don’t really know what John Pumphrey’s cause of death was because they did not find a particular injury on his body,” she said. “It’s possible that he had a soft tissue injury, like a bayonet injury, but it’s a little hard to tell after 246 years.”

An unexpected twist and an emotional reunion

Work continues on the other set of remains, Camden 11A. One thing is certain: Peacock is related to him.

“One of the first things I do when I take on a case is I run my DNA against the remains to see if it’s somebody I’m related to, just on the wild chance that it might be,” she said. “It’s never happened before, but I am related to Camden 11A. So, I’m very motivated to get him identified.”

Last month, Peacock was confident enough in the research to put a name to Camden 9B. Relatives wept during an emotional ceremony at the 19th-century Benson-Hammond House in Anne Arundel County.

“The fact that some archaeologists just happened to stumble on bones that were protruding from the earth, and knowing that it would be difficult to identify those people by DNA, I just found it really exciting,” Becky Berman of Daytona Beach, Florida, Pumphrey’s first cousin, several times removed, told The Associated Press.

For Hudson, the retired federal agent, the story won’t be over until the U.S. government confirms the research and replaces his fifth great-uncle’s “UNKNOWN” gravestone. He said America owes it to John Pumphrey.

“He sacrificed himself, along with some others,” Hudson said, his eyes tearing up, “for the sake of this new nation.”

The team deployed under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, which allows states to send resources to one another during disasters. The firefighters are members of JFRD’s Urban Search and Rescue Team and Florida Task Force 5 and make up a Type 3 swiftwater rescue unit trained to operate in fast-moving water.

Rivers in the San Antonio area and Hill Country — including the Guadalupe, Medina, Nueces and Frio — surged after relentless rain, forcing rescues from cars, trees and rooftops, officials said.

The deployment is expected to last seven days. The unit will search for people trapped by floodwaters, extract them, provide emergency medical care if needed and move them to safety. The team is self-sustaining, bringing its own boats, food, water, fuel and equipment so it can operate for days without outside support.

“Our team trains for high-consequence, low-frequency events like this year-round so we’re ready to help neighbors in need, while still fully serving Jacksonville residents,” Fire Chief Percy Golden II said.

The department said it will provide updates as the team arrives and begins operations in Texas.

“I kept reading how you have to wait to sing this big repertoire,” Brownlee said. But there was one bit of Wagner — Wolfram’s “Song to the Evening Star” from “Tannhäuser” — that’s “a little bit lighter. I figured it was more appropriate.”

So he brought it to his teacher, Thomas Rowell, at the University of South Alabama and asked what he thought.

“I just laughed at him and told him to go away,” Rowell recalled. “He knew that big voice was there, and he was so eager to try on the clothes, but they didn’t fit for a while. It was still a very young instrument.”

Reminded of that exchange nearly 20 years later, Brownlee smiles. “I was a bit ambitious,” he said. “But this was just me.”

Now that ambition — what he calls “a fire in my belly that burns brighter every day,” — has helped propel Brownlee at age 37 to the very top of his profession. And he’s done it by singing a lot of Wagner.

All hail a new Wotan

He just made his debut as Wotan, embattled king of the gods, in “Die Walküre” at the Bavarian State Opera House, part two of a complete “Ring” cycle directed by Tobias Kratzer. He had previously sung the role in “Das Rheingold,” the opera that opens the cycle.

The critics reached for superlatives. “A heroic baritone straight out of a textbook,” wrote Markus Thiel in Merkur, “with a powerful, resonant voice, a force of nature.” Carlota Moseguí in Platea Magazine praised his voice and said Brownlee “possesses all the qualities to become the definitive Wotan of his generation.”

Next, Brownlee heads to the Wagner shrine in Bayreuth, Germany, where he will star as the title character in “Der Fliegende Holländer” (“The Flying Dutchman.”) And his upcoming season is one Wotan after another.

“It’ll be ‘Siegfried’ time in Munich, then ‘Walküere’ time in Buenos Aires, then ‘Rheingold’ time in Barcelona,” he said. Add to that two of the “Ring” operas in Frankfurt and then two complete cycles next summer back in Munich.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing to have a student who goes that far, especially from a small regional state university like ours,” said Rowell, who remains close friends with Brownlee and officiated his wedding to mezzo-soprano Jennifer Feinstein. “I have to pinch myself. I’m enjoying it vicariously.”

Does Brownlee worry at all about damaging his voice from so much heavy singing?

“I don’t think you’re supposed to say this, but no, not really,” he replied. “We like to put this big stamp on Wagner and say ‘Be Careful!’” But he said he finds the demands of each opera different enough to help him avoid burnout.

Still, he promises that his roles the following season will be more varied, including a return to one of his favorites — Baron Scarpia in Puccini’s “Tosca.” And down the road are two Verdi roles — the villainous Iago in “Otello,” and the comic Falstaff.

Of the latter, he said, “I want to flex a different muscle. I talk fast, I’m a bubbly, fun guy, but what I do on stage is so serious all the time. Boy it would be fun to just be a jolly fat guy!”

From Conway Twitty to Richard Wagner

Just how did a boy from a working-class family in a small town outside Mobile, Alabama, become one of a handful of go-to singers in the world for these demanding roles?

His first success as a vocalist actually came as the youngest grandchild in a large extended family, performing Conway Twitty imitations to grab attention. Classical music had to wait until he fell under the spell of his high school choral director.

When he went to college, he planned to study conducting, but Rowell heard him sing and cajoled him into joining the Mobile Opera chorus.

“I went in the first day and I hated it,” Brownlee recalled. “I said, this is in Italian, who cares? That’s for stuffy elite people, not for us blue-collar fellas.”

Still, his curiosity made him determined to figure out why some people loved the art form. So he sat by the side of the stage one night to watch the emotional final scene of Verdi’s “La Traviata,” when the heroine dies after being reunited with her lover.

“When she said, ‘O, gioia!’ and she fell into his arms, and now she’s dead, Alfredo’s weeping over her, and Germont is feeling half-responsible, I was weeping uncontrollably,” he said. “And I didn’t even know what they were saying.”

That’s when he started taking voice lessons, and from there followed years of study and apprenticeships both in the U.S. and later in Germany. Along the way he competed twice in the Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions.

The first time, still in his early 20s, he made it to the semifinals in New York. “I did not go on to the finals, which was absolutely correct,” he said. “Failure is a great lesson.” (Coincidentally, one of the winners that year was Ryan Speedo Green, who will be singing Wotan in the Met’s upcoming “Ring” cycle.)

Brownlee returned in 2015, and this time he took home one of the top prizes. Other awards have followed, including in 2025, best male singer at the International Opera Awards and the Richard Tucker Award for most promising American singer.

Finding fame far from home

Yet this American singer is still barely known to most opera audiences in his native country. Brownlee’s career has so far been largely in Germany, where he and Feinstein are raising their two daughters and are currently applying for dual citizenship.

“I can perform anywhere in Europe and be home in two hours to see my girls,” he said. “In America that’s just not something you can do,”

He may be rooted in Europe for now, but major U.S. houses are beckoning with increasing urgency.

When he appeared at Chicago’s Lyric Opera this past spring as the prophet Jochanaan in Richard Strauss’s “Salome,” general director John Mangum called his performance “absolutely thrilling.” He said Brownlee is “definitely going be at the top of our list” as the company charts its future Wagner performances.

And Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, who heard him sing a major role for the first time during the Munich run of “Walküre,” said “I was blown away. … We’ll definitely be offering him big roles at the Met in upcoming seasons.”

He'll have to do much, much more to lift the claret jug.

The world No. 2 bounced back with a 3-under 67 in the second round at the British Open on Friday, ensuring he'll make the cut with his score of 1-under par overall.

The projected cut is currently at level par.

McIlroy knew he'd left a few shots out there, though, especially when he saw that two other morning starters — Lucas Herbert and Sam Burns — tied the major championship record with rounds of 62 in gorgeous conditions.

“It was a little better today,” McIlroy said, “but still didn’t feel 100% comfortable. Hopefully try to figure that out as the week goes on.”

He might have left it too late.

McIlroy was seven shots off the clubhouse lead held by Herbert, on 8-under par. More relevant might be No. 4-ranked Cameron Young being at 6 under, while players like top-ranked Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau were just starting out their second rounds and already higher on the leaderboard.

McIlroy, who won the Open just down the road in Hoylake in 2014, struggled on the greens in shooting 72 on Thursday and said he still hasn't figured them out.

“I felt like I hit good putts and they did something completely different to what I saw in the read, and I think that’s a little unnerving,” he said.

McIlroy was, however, very happy with his driving. He drove the green on the par-4 ninth hole — for the second straight day — with a 377-yard tee shot that settled 11 feet from the pin, setting up the third of his four birdies on Friday.

Yet, for all his excellence off the tee, he has only made one birdie on the par 5s this week.

McIlroy hopes the conditions allow him to be aggressive off the tee over the weekend.

It might be his only hope of a victory.

“I think any time I can get a driver in my hand, I’m going to try to,” he said. "I just feel like with how I’m feeling with the driver, I think it’s a big advantage if I can get the ball down there and take out some of these fairway bunkers.

“l continue to do that when I can, and then I’m still trying to figure out these greens a little bit.”

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

Europa, a crowned lemur, is the Zoo’s first female crowned lemur baby!

Born in May to parents Bryan and Jupiter, Europa joined her older brother in carrying on the family’s celestial tradition; both siblings are named after moons of Jupiter.

Odessa, the Zoo’s newest mongoose lemur, was born in April to parents Olivia and Ignacio.

“While Europa and Odessa are still growing and spending time behind the scenes with their moms, we can’t wait to share more updates as they get bigger!” the Zoo wrote in a social media post.

The zoo’s Primate Forest exhibit, which features a 40-foot Kapok Tree, is home to a variety of primate species, including: Bonobo, Angolan Colobus, Guereza Colobus, Western Lowland Gorilla, Black-and-white Ruffed Lemur, Ring-tailed Lemur, Sifaka Lemur, Crowned Lemur, Blue-Eyed-Black Lemur and Mandrill.

The verdict underlined the determination by authorities to stamp out any remaining sign of dissent ahead of September's vote as the fuel crisis caused by Ukrainian strikes on oil facilities across Russia threatened to erode public support for the Kremlin.

The charges against Nadezhdin, 63, were based on a 2023 online video in which he briefly showed a picture of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who at that time was serving a 19-year prison sentence on charges of extremism that were widely seen as politically motivated. Navalny later died in an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16, 2024.

Nadezhdin rejected the case against him as absurd and argued authorities were trying to keep him from campaigning in September's parliamentary vote. The court in Dolgoprudny, a town on Moscow’s northern outskirts where he lives, convicted him and ordered him to pay a fine of 1,000 rubles (about $13).

The Kremlin's main United Russia party is seeking to preserve its dominance in the lower house of parliament in a race against so-called “systemic” opposition, including the Communist Party and a couple of other parties that vote in sync with the Kremlin on key issues. The campaign comes amid signs of growing public fatigue as fuel shortages and economic pain from the Ukraine conflict increase, an environment that reduces the tolerance by the authorities for even token opposition.

Nadezhdin's run for parliament triggers a quick response

In January 2024, Nadezhdin collected thousands of signatures in his run for president as he openly called for a halt to the fighting in Ukraine. But he was kept off the March 2024 ballot after Russia’s Supreme Court ruled that more than 9,000 signatures submitted by his campaign were invalid — enough to disqualify him. Putin faced only token opposition in the election and easily won a fifth term.

A veteran politician, Nadezhdin worked in the government in the 1990s when he was an adviser to Sergei Kiriyenko, now a top Putin aide. He also served as a lawmaker and more recently became a member of a municipal council, one of the few remaining liberal voices on Russia's political scene.

Last month, Nadezhdin declared his bid to run for the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, but the Justice Ministry quickly branded him a “foreign agent” — a designation that carries strong pejorative connotations and brings additional government scrutiny. It also bars him from holding public office, but he was still able to wage his symbolic campaign for a parliament seat until Friday’s verdict.

Another blow came Monday, when police detained Nadezhdin for a few hours before making the charges that were punishable by a fine or a 15-day jail term. He said he was considering going abroad but was barred from leaving Russia.

He told the court that he was too sick to serve any prison time, saying he “will just die” behind bars. “The real goal of what's going on here is to shut my mouth and prevent me from running for the State Duma,” he said.

Nadezhdin complained of feeling sick at Friday’s hearing, which was interrupted to let an ambulance team check his condition.

After the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, authorities ramped up their crackdown on dissent and free speech, relentlessly targeting rights organizations, independent media, members of civil society organizations, LGBTQ+ activists and some religious groups. Hundreds of people have been jailed and thousands of others have fled the country.

Another Putin critic is arrested

Also on Friday, Ilya Remeslo, a pro-Kremlin activist and blogger who has become a Putin critic, was arrested in St. Petersburg on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military — an accusation widely used against those who oppose the government's policies.

The state Tass news agency reported that he would be taken to Moscow to face a court hearing.

In March, Remeslo criticized the military action in Ukraine and called for Putin's resignation. Soon after, he was placed in a psychiatric clinic and spent a month there in what he cast as a punishment for his remarks.

Lawrence emerged as one of the league’s most dynamic dual-threat passers in 2025, helping Jacksonville return to contention with a season that blended big plays through the air and on the ground.

He finished the 2025-26 campaign with 4,214 passing yards and 32 touchdown passes, completing 60.8 percent of his throws. He also ran for 390 yards and nine rushing touchdowns. Lawrence was credited with a 7.1-yard average per pass attempt and had 14 interceptions and five fumbles.

See what Lawrence’s teammates and colleagues said about him.

No. 62 on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2026…@Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence! @NFLFilms pic.twitter.com/vPxM2Fi8zq

— NFL (@NFL) July 17, 2026

The Irish character actor died Thursday night in Dublin after a period of ill health, her agent, Phil Belfield said in a statement.

Fricker became the first Irish woman to win an Academy Award in 1990 for best supporting actress for her portrayal of the determined mother of Christy Brown, who was born with cerebral palsy and could control only his left foot. Daniel Day-Lewis, who played Christy Brown, won the award for best actor.

“We will never see her like again and the world is lesser for the lack of her,’’ Belfield said. “I was honored to know, love and work with her and she will always have a place in my heart and in the heart of so many film and TV fans the world over.”

Fricker, who appeared in more than 90 films and television shows between 1964 and 2024, was known for her role as the “pigeon lady” in the 1992 film “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” where she played a homeless woman who befriended Macaulay Culkin’s character in New York’s Central Park.

She also featured in the original cast of the BBC medical drama “Casualty” and appeared alongside Cate Blanchett in “Veronica Guerin,” the story of an Irish investigative journalist who was murdered in 1996.

Born in Dublin in 1945, Fricker received the city’s highest honor earlier this year when she was awarded the Freedom of the City.

In her autobiography “She Died Young: A Life in Fragments,” Fricker describes both happy childhood escapades with her sister Grania and her struggles to overcome sexual violence and mental health issues, which caused her to be institutionalized several times. Published in September 2025, the book appeared on the Irish Sunday Times bestseller list.

Simon Harris, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, said the country had lost a national treasure.

“She truly was among the greatest exports this country has ever produced and an ambassador for Irish talent on the world stage,'' he said. "Quite simply, we will never see the like of her ever again.

Tickets, sponsorship opportunities, and vendor registration are available on Eventbrite and at www.agppearls.com (www.agppearlsfashion.com).

Get your tickets today, follow AGP Pearls on all social media platforms, and stay connected for exciting updates.

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The former mayor of Greater Manchester was the only contender in the center-left party's leadership contest to replace departing Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was forced out by a rebellion within his party. Friday's announcement was a foregone conclusion after Burnham secured nominations from 379 of the 403 Labour lawmakers in the House of Commons.

Burnham pledged to serve “people and places who have been waiting too long for politics to let them hope again.”

“We’re going to give them hope back,” he told an audience of lawmakers, party activists and trade union leaders in his first speech as leader. “I am ready.”

“I have a plan,” he added, in a bid to reassure a party that has seen its popularity nosedive since winning a landslide election victory two years ago. He pledged to end Labour's factional disputes, saying “we won’t beat Britain’s new right if we are consumed by infighting and pulling in different directions.”

The prime minister in waiting is about to take office

Burnham has been prime minister-in-waiting for weeks, since winning a special election for a seat in Parliament a month ago, but he has revealed little detail about his policy priorities. He will arrive in Number 10 Downing Street largely unknown to voters outside Manchester.

He sketched out some priorities in Friday's speech, promising to deliver “hope in every heart” and “good growth in every post code,” in part by transferring power from central government in London to local leaders in cities and regions.

“We will take power back from Westminster and Whitehall and give it to the place you live,” he told the audience. “More power over life’s essentials so you can make them work better.”

Starmer announced last month that he would resign after two years in office marred by missteps and judgment errors that eroded his standing with his party and the public.

Labour regularly trails behind anti-immigration party Reform UK in opinion polls, and the governing party had catastrophic results in local elections in May, triggering pressure on Starmer to step down that he couldn’t resist.

Burnham deemed a better communicator than Starmer

Burnham brings a more relaxed style of leadership than the rather stern Starmer, and is regarded as one of the Labour Party’s best communicators. But he faces many of the same problems as his predecessor, including a sluggish economy, a cost-of-living squeeze fueled by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and overstretched public services.

And his promises of a new, less divisive politics are not too different to what Starmer pledged when he took office in 2024.

“I will work to build a new politics. The country is crying out for it,” Burnham said. “How can politicians point fingers when living standards are falling and politics as a whole isn’t working for them? It infuriates them and makes them switch off.”

He said he would have the “courage to fix the big things that politics has neglected,” such as tackling the patchy access to social care for those who need it because of age, illness or disability. It’s a pressing issue in a country with an aging population, and one that has foxed previous Labour and Conservative governments.

Burnham says he'll reverse 40 years of bad decisions

He highlighted plans to focus on economic renewal, more public control of key sectors and creating new modern industrial jobs, arguing that Britain took “a series of wrong turns in the 1980s” when “political power was centralized and economic power privatized.”

That’s the decade when Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher oversaw policies of privatization, deindustrialization and political centralization that transformed the U.K. economy.

“Slowly, at times imperceptibly, over four decades, political and economic power drained away out of our communities in every region and nation of the U.K.,” Burnham said, calling Britain's change of prime ministers — for the sixth time in a decade — “the most significant change moment in our politics for 40 years.”

Starmer will remain prime minister until Monday, when he formally tenders his resignation to King Charles III. The king will then ask Burnham to form a government.

Britain’s parliamentary democracy allows governing parties to change leaders, and thus prime ministers, without the need for a general election. The next national election doesn’t have to be held until 2029.

New prime ministers have come with increasing frequency in recent years. Burnham will be the U.K.'s seventh leader since 2016.

He faces strong and sometimes conflicting pressures.

Unions welcomed his focus on living standards but said the test would be whether he can deliver. Business group the Confederation of British Industry praised his emphasis on economic growth, but also aid that “the challenge is execution.”

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Associated Press Writer Brian Melley contributed to this story.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s major shake-up of his government on Thursday, which included the dismissal of Mykhailo Fedorov as defense minister and the appointment of a new prime minister, unsettled the country’s military leadership and triggered a public outcry. It tested Zelenskyy's authority and was an unwelcome difficulty after Ukraine in recent months gained traction in the war.

Zelenskyy said he had asked Maj. Gen. Yevhen Khmara, acting head of the state’s security service and a highly regarded special operations expert, to take over the defense minister’s duties.

Zelenskyy said late Thursday he would ask Parliament to formally approve Khmara’s appointment as defense minister, as required by law.

That step could be delayed by bureaucratic hurdles, however. Ukrainian law requires the defense minister to be a civilian, so a serving soldier or security service officer must leave active duty before being formally appointed. Also, lawmakers will be on summer recess through mid-August.

It was not clear whether Khmara would have enough votes in Parliament to be confirmed in the job.

Relations between 35-year-old Fedorov and Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the 60-year-old commander of Ukraine’s armed forces who started his military career in the former Soviet Union, had broken down, according to Zelenskyy, and made Fedorov’s position untenable.

Fedorov, who is credited with pushing forward Ukraine's innovative drone technology that has brought advantages on the battlefield and fighting corruption in the military, defended his record after just six months in government.

“We transformed Ukraine into a global tech leader and a defense powerhouse,” he said Friday on social media.

A second day of Kyiv protests demand Fedorov's return

The surprise departure of Fedorov, a youthful, digital-savvy modernizer, drew thousands of people to demonstrate against his dismissal in cities across Ukraine on Thursday.

Further street protests took place in Kyiv on Friday, where one sign read, “Don’t ruin something that works.”

“I don’t think they should replace an effective leader and manager like Fedorov,” Olha Horoshkova, one of the protesters, told The Associated Press.

She said her father has been serving in the armed forces since 2022 and told her he has seen “noticeable changes” under Fedorov.

“There’s a little less bureaucracy now, and things have genuinely become easier,” she reported her father saying.

Another protester, Yehor Pohrebniak, said army chief Syrskyi had had some notable triumphs during the war.

But he added: “Syrskyi’s vision of war is already outdated, because war is changing very rapidly ... We need more technological solutions.”

Ukraine's interim defense minister is a special operations expert

Khmara, tapped by Zelenskyy to replace Fedorov, has been in charge of the SBU security service since January.

He had previously led the SBU’s elite Alpha special forces unit and is known for being an architect of Operation Spiderweb, one of Ukraine’s most spectacular attacks when it struck Russian air bases last year.

He joined the Alpha unit in 2011 and became its commander in 2023 before being promoted to major general the following year.

Russia and Ukraine trade more long-range attacks

Moscow’s response to its recent battlefield difficulties and Ukraine’s targeting of Russian oil facilities, which has caused severe fuel shortages, has focused in part on relentless strategic bombing of civilian areas of Ukraine.

Russian attacks on Ukraine overnight killed at least four civilians and wounded 20 other people, Zelenskyy said.

Two people were killed and 10 others injured, including children, in a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa, regional military administration head Oleh Kiper said. One of those killed was a woman who had been walking in a park with her children, who survived, he said.

In the Zaporizhzhia region, two people were killed and five were injured in a strike, according to Zelenskyy. He said three people were injured as a result of Russian shelling in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

Officials said more people were injured in Russian strikes on five other regions of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defenses downed 243 Ukrainian drones overnight into Friday.

Three civilians were killed and seven others injured in Ukrainian drone attacks over the previous 24 hours, according to Vladimir Saldo, the Moscow-appointed head of the Russia-occupied part of Ukraine's Kherson region.

Ukrainian drones struck 12 Russian vessels in the Black Sea overnight, Robert “Madiar” Brovdi, head of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said Friday. The vessels included nine dry cargo ships, one tanker, one gas carrier and one tugboat, according to Brovdi.

Ukrainian forces struck 159 Russian vessels in the Black and Azov seas over the past 12 days, he said, in its campaign to stop Russian shipping.

Ukrainian forces also destroyed a Russian Tu-95 strategic bomber in Engels, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the Ukrainian border, Zelenskyy said.

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Dan Bashakov and Dmytro Zhyhinas in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.

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

The bus crashed Thursday night in the Kapchorwa District in eastern Uganda on the way back from the region’s Sipi Falls, the Uganda Police Force said in a statement posted on X.

Survivors, including three adults and several children, were taken to several hospitals, according to police. More than 28 children were being treated in hospitals, nine of them in critical condition, Ugandan Minister of Local Government Balaam Barugahara Ateenyi said on X.

The adult among the 21 people who died appeared to be the founder and head of the school, Barugahara said.

Video from the Uganda Red Cross showed bodies of victims in and around the wreckage as people arrived to help following the nighttime crash. Some of the survivors were transported to a hospital in a pick-up truck, according to the video provided to The Associated Press.

Education Minister John Muyingo said the government had suspended all school trips and tours across the country of around 45 million people in response to the tragedy.

The bus belonged to the King David Junior School, an elementary school in the capital, Kampala, police said. The village where police said the crash occurred is near the Uganda-Kenya border, some 300 kilometers (some 190 miles) from Kampala.

The driver reportedly lost control of the bus, which veered off the road, struck a rock and overturned, according to the police statement, which added that the information was preliminary and the cause of the crash was under investigation.

A police photo showed the bus lying on its side with the entire roof ripped off and the seats exposed, including some that were mangled. Luggage and clothing lay strewn on the road.

Road accidents are common in the East African nation and often are blamed on poorly maintained vehicles, speeding and poor road conditions, which are problems across Africa. At least 14 people died when a bus collided with a truck in a remote area of northern Uganda earlier this month.

Africa has the worst road safety record in the world, with more than 300,000 annual road deaths and around 26 deaths per 100,000 people. In Europe, which has far more road traffic, there are around 20,000 deaths yearly and nine deaths per 100,000 people, according to the World Health Organization and the United Nations.

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

The Florida Department of Health’s Reportable Diseases Frequency Report showed 50 cases of cyclosporiasis had been reported between May 1 and July 4.

By July 11, just one week later, that total exploded to 96 cases.

That includes 12 cases in Northeast Florida counties:

• Duval: 4
• St. Johns: 3
• Alachua: 2
• Flagler: 2
• Columbia: 1

But experts say there could be even more cases than what has been reported.

“This infectious disease may be hard to monitor due to the nature of the signs and symptoms,” said Dr. Norman Beatty, an associate professor of medicine and hospital epidemiologist at UF Health Shands. “It’s common to get a diarrheal illness at times, and other infectious diseases can resolve on their own, but cyclosporiasis is important to identify right now because there are multiple outbreaks across the country.”

There could be as much as a six-week reporting lag between illness onset and reporting, according to the CDC.

Since May 1, the federal agency has received reports of 1,645 confirmed domestic cases of cyclosporiasis but is aware of more than 5,100 cases that require further analysis, the CDC stated Tuesday.

In Florida since May 1, DOH data shows Miami-Dade County has seen the most cyclosporiasis cases with 17, followed by Lee County with 14 and Broward with seven.

Other counties outside Northeast Florida with cases include: Brevard, Collier, Escambia, Gadsden, Highlands, Hillsborough, Lake, Manatee, Martin, Monroe, Okaloosa, Orange, Osceola, Palm Beach, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Seminole, St. Lucie, Sumter and Volusia.

In Alachua County, Beatty said he has seen several cases at UF Health Shands, which doctors believe stemmed from eating produce.

Previous outbreaks in the U.S. have been linked to raw produce, like lettuce and raspberries.

According to DOH data, Alachua County has seen two cases of cyclosporiasis since May 1. But the department’s data is several days out of date, according to DOH’s website.

The last day cases were uploaded to the report was July 11.

Cyclosporiasis is a gastrointestinal disease caused by the parasite cyclospora, which causes diarrhea, abdominal pain, nausea, fatigue and loss of appetite, according to the CDC.

Once a case is confirmed through testing, a report is sent to the state department of health. But if someone doesn’t seek medical attention, the case could go unreported, Beatty said.

In most scenarios, people who get cyclosporiasis will recover on their own. But in some cases, people can have persistent symptoms and relapsing infections over time, so any suspected cases should be tested, Beatty said.

Direct human-to-human transmission is rare, he said, but if infected, people could shed the parasite into the environment, where it could become infectious again within a week or two, contributing to another outbreak.

“It’s a very hardy parasite,” he said.

The outbreak was first reported in Michigan on July 1, with other outbreaks later reported in Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky, according to the CDC.

While 34 states, including Florida, have reported cases, the source of the outbreak is still unknown.

James Aren Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die at noon on July 28 at Florida State Prison near Starke, according to a death warrant signed Tuesday by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. Duckett was convicted of raping and drowning the girl while working as a police officer in a small central Florida city.

The execution for Dominick Anthony Occhicone, 80, was previously scheduled for 6 p.m. that same day. He was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986.

First executions on same day in more than 60 years

This is the first time Florida plans to execute two inmates on the same day since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty nationwide in 1976 after temporarily halting executions in 1972. According to Florida Department of Corrections records, Emmett C. Blake and Sie Dawson were executed for murder on May 12, 1964. The state records show multiple executions on a single day were more common in the past.

Duckett and Occhicone would become the 11th and 12th inmates to be executed in Florida this year if their deaths go as scheduled. Appeals in both cases will eventually go to the U.S. Supreme Court before any executions are performed.

According to court documents, Duckett was the only police officer on duty in Mascotte, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of Orlando, the night of May 11, 1987. Witnesses reported seeing Teresa McAbee getting into Duckett’s patrol car outside a convenience store that evening, and her mother reported her missing several hours later. Her body was found the next morning in a nearby lake. DNA from fluids and hair collected from the girl’s body were probable matches to Duckett, and fingerprints matching Duckett and the girl were recovered from his patrol car, investigators said.

In Occhicone’s case, authorities said he showed up the morning of June 10, 1986, at a home in Holiday, just north of Clearwater, where his former girlfriend was living with her parents and her two children. After the woman refused to speak with Occhicone, he left for about an hour and returned with a handgun, investigators said. Occhicone cut the exterior phone lines and then fatally shot Raymond and Martha Artzner as Occhicone’s former girlfriend fled with her daughter. Occhicone didn’t deny the shootings, but his attorneys argued during trial that the murders weren’t premeditated.

DeSantis oversaw a record 19 executions in 2025, more in a single year than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The previous high was eight executions set in 2014.

A short reprieve for Duckett ends

DeSantis previously signed a death warrant for Duckett in February, scheduling his execution for March 31. But the Florida Supreme Court issued a stay just days before the execution to allow for DNA testing of old evidence that couldn’t be performed because of technological limitations at the time of the original trial. The results came back inconclusive, meaning that they did not exonerate Duckett or definitively connect him to the crime. Judges have allowed the jury verdict to stand, and Duckett’s stay was lifted earlier this month.

Duckett’s attorney, Mary Elizabeth Wells, released a statement calling the rescheduled execution shameful and claiming the state’s handling of the DNA evidence is the reason for the inconclusive results.

“Mr. Duckett has consistently maintained his innocence,” the statement said. “The State’s duty is to ensure that justice is done, and not rush to kill in a case with such serious doubts over guilt. We are committed to seeking every avenue of relief for Mr. Duckett ahead of his scheduled July 28 execution so that the State of Florida does not execute an innocent man.”

The governor’s office declined to comment on Duckett’s case or these particular executions, but DeSantis has previously said that his goal is to bring justice to victims’ families who have waited decades for death sentences to be carried out.

“Some of these crimes were committed in the ’80s,” the governor said during a November 2025 news conference. “Justice delayed is justice denied. I felt I owed it to them to make sure this ran very smoothly. If I honestly thought someone was innocent, I would not pull the trigger.”

Occhione would be oldest to be executed in Florida

Occhicone would also become the state’s oldest inmate to be executed. Occhicone has several age-related ailments, including kidney and prostate problems, according to his attorneys. He needs help getting in and out of the shower, they noted.

On June 25, Florida executed 74-year-old Dusty Ray Spencer for the killing of his estranged wife. He was the oldest inmate executed in Florida until Tuesday, when Dennis Sochor — just a week older than Spencer — was put to death for killing a woman in the first hours of 1982 after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party.

Occhicone also would become the second oldest prisoner known to be put to death in modern U.S. history after 83-year-old Walter Moody Jr. Moody was executed in Alabama in 2018 for killing a federal judge and a Black civil rights attorney during a wave of mail bombs in the South.

Florida executions are conducted via lethal injection using a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

Even as the buzz was wearing down, there was a reminder that a name in the record book is not nearly as satisfying as the name to be etched in the silver claret jug on Sunday.

Halfway through the second round, it was abundantly clear anything was possible.

Herbert's record-tying round could have felt like a consolation prize. The 30-year-old Australian was practically flawless until he stood over a 5-foot par putt for a 61. He pulled it left and dropped hands onto his knees when he realized his shot at history was over.

“So it was a strange one – knocking that in and knowing I tied the record but feeling like it might be one of best chances we’ve ever had to shoot a 61,” he said.

It was only 20 minutes later when Royal Birkdale saw another 62, and it came out of nowhere. Burns, who wasn't even planning to play in The Open until his wife gave birth to their second child earlier than expected, was having a good round that turned into a great one.

He finished with three straight birdies — from 40 feet off the green at the 16th, from 20 feet on the 17th and holing a bunker shot for the first birdie of the day on the 18th — for his 62.

Herbert has the early lead at 8-under 132, two shots ahead of 18-hole leader Jackson Suber (69) and Cameron Young, who birdied the last two holes for another 67. Burns was another shot behind.

Defending champion Scottie Scheffler teed off in the afternoon, when the wind was expected to be at least slightly stronger than a wee breeze that led to so much low scoring in the morning.

Rory McIlroy had a 67 that didn't feel all that great compared to what was going on around him. He saved par on the final hole and was at 1-under 139, leaving him at least seven behind.

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

Researchers around the world are in a race against time, working to save memories before they’re lost for good.

But there’s a shift happening right now. Researchers are no longer just trying to treat decline. They’re trying to slow it — or stop it — before it starts.

“We wanna stop the disease from ever happening,” said Dr. Patricia Andrews, a geriatric psychiatrist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

The latest Lancet Commission estimates that up to 45% of dementia cases could be prevented or delayed.

In 2025, the FDA cleared the first blood test to help detect Alzheimer’s earlier. And new drugs like leqembi and kisunla are now available for early-stage patients.

Brain changes linked to Alzheimer’s can start 20 years or more before symptoms – and your brain health may be shaped decades earlier by how you move, eat, sleep, and how we manage conditions like blood pressure, diabetes, and even hearing loss.

“It’s the combined impact of all these factors,” said Jeffrey Katula, a health psychologist at Wake Forest University.

So, what does that look like in real life?

For people in their 40s and 50s, watch your blood pressure. The National Institute on Aging says high blood pressure from the 40s to early 60s is linked to a greater risk of cognitive decline later.

In your 50s and 60s, don’t ignore hearing loss, diabetes, sleep, smoking, or too much alcohol.

And for people 70 plus, it’s more about protecting what you have. That means staying physically active, keeping the brain engaged, and staying socially connected.

And while you do your part, scientists are pushing forward, too. More than 180 clinical trials are now underway, testing everything from the gut-brain connection and how the microbiome may influence dementia risk to looking at anti-inflammatory therapies and vaccines.

“It can be a pill that people could take with their morning coffee and then not be worried that they’re gonna develop the disease in 10 years,” Andrews said.

So, the message isn’t panic or a life overhaul, it’s starting small, starting early and sticking with it.

Researchers say the next frontier may be personalized brain health, using blood tests, genetics, and even wearable data to create individual plans to lower your risk.

Some studies are now tracking sleep, heart rate, and activity levels to see how daily habits may predict, or even change, cognitive decline.

RELATED: ‘You let a predator around our children’: Clay County parents press school board after wrestling coach’s arrest

Jermaine Lonon is facing charges after using an online site to solicit what he believed were teenage girls for sex, the sheriff’s office said. The people he contacted were actually undercover detectives, the office said, and Lonon continued to solicit them even after they told him their ages.

Lonon did not travel to meet either person, but detectives obtained a warrant after the operation ended, and a U.S. Marshals Task Force arrested him at his Westside apartment on July 10, the sheriff’s office said.

With Lonon’s arrest, the operation has resulted in 31 men being taken into custody, officials said. Authorities said they still have an outstanding warrant for another suspect identified during the operation.

RELATED: JSO announces 29 arrests in child predator investigation dubbed ‘Operation Checkmate’

The sheriff’s office also said it has a dedicated Internet Crimes Against Children Unit with detectives working around the clock to identify and stop people who exploit children online.

Anyone who suspects someone is trying to lure a child online is asked to notify the CyberTipline at 1-800-THE-LOST, the sheriff’s office said.

It attacks the body immediately, spiking asthma cases with increased ambulance runs within hours, swamps emergency rooms in a day or so with people suffering from heart attacks and other cardiovascular and lung issues, as well as mental health issues, doctors and scientists told The Associated Press.

Smoke also harms pregnant women, increasing the risk of premature births and low-weight babies who could have breathing problems the rest of their lives, doctors and studies say. And then there are long-term risks connecting prolonged smoke and other air pollution exposure to some cancers and dementia.

After huge global fires in 2018 and 2019, the medical and science communities started looking at the health effects from the smoke with “more and more studies coming out finding that there’s all types of impacts that may not have been so obvious before,” said Dr. Mary Johnson, a Harvard School of Public Health environmental health scientist.

Smoke causes inflammation by triggering the body's immune system to go into overtime to fight the irritant. Scientists have found it can harm the brain, the skin and men's sperm, with almost no system of the body spared, Johnson said. People over 60 become more prone to stroke in wildfire smoke, she said.

“Wildfire smoke is the toxic product of combustion of whatever burned,” which could include houses and cars, said Dr. Courtney Howard, an emergency room physician, chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance and president-elect of the Canadian Medical Association.

“So really it's a big giant toxic soup of particles and gases.”

Scientists have counted at least 1,000 toxins in wildfire smoke, according to Colorado State University environmental toxicologist Luke Montrose.

“If I gave you a list, you would recognize some of these as being very bad, oftentimes associated with the burning of diesel fuel or cigarette smoke, things like formaldehyde or volatile organic compounds,” Montrose said. “So just the smoke itself can be bad.”

Rising global temperatures from climate change means more fires

So far this year, more than 5,740 square miles (more than 14,860 square kilometers) of the United States has burned from wildfires, which is 31% more than the average of the previous 10 years on this date, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The amount of U.S. land burned each year in the 2020s — averaged out over a decade — is now more than twice what it was 30 years ago.

Europe saw a record high amount of land burned in 2025, Canada has had several record or near-record fire years in the 2020s and the Arctic recently has had unprecedented levels of burning.

“Wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense because of climate change, and when a fire happens, you have smoke,” said Colleen Reid, a University of Colorado geographic health professor.

Most of the biggest particles in wildfire smoke fall close to where a blaze is burning, while the smallest particles — the ones that scientists say do the most damage — travel the farthest. In a typical wildfire, the nasty particles that harm human health are about the size of one micron, Reid said.

Inside the body, particles attack

First those particles have to get by your body's protection, mainly nose hairs and mucus, then they get into your lungs and from there the bloodstream.

Montrose said the particles can be coated in lots of chemicals and have large surface areas. That triggers the body's defense system to “send signals to other cells that say, ‘We have a problem. We need to mount an immune response to this.’ And that’s where you get your acute effect or your effect within minutes, hours or even that day.” It's mostly happening in the hearts and lungs, he said.

And many people die.

On average 24,100 people died each year in the Lower 48 states between 2006 and 2020 due to long-term exposure to tiny particles from wildfire smoke, according to a study this year in the journal Science Advances. A Stanford study projects that U.S. wildfire smoke deaths will increase with climate change and by midcentury hit an annual cost of $244 billion in terms of the economic value the government puts on each life.

On a global scale, wildfire smoke particles cause 677,745 deaths annually, with almost 39% of them children under age 5, according to a 2021 study that combined observations, studies on how the body responds to the particles and computer models to calculate the toll.

The biggest nonlethal effects have to do with the way people breathe, especially those with asthma.

“We did a study here in 2014 after we had about two-and-a-half months of smoke off and on, because we’re in the subarctic so we’re warming at triple the global rate, so in a way we’re kind of canaries in the coal mine of the health impacts of climate change,” Howard said on a clear day from Yellowknife, Canada. “We found a full doubling of emergency department visits for asthma and about 50% increase in pneumonia.”

“Even in individuals that don’t have asthma, the air can be so irritating that you could have difficulty with your respiratory system regardless,” Johnson said, “whether it’s coughing, whether it's chest tightness, whether it’s sore throat, headache.”

There are ways to minimize the risks

Studies have linked smoke to people having more trouble with decision making and other cognitive issues. People come to the emergency room depressed, Howard said. That's why it's important to find a place with clean air — including designated shelters or libraries — to get a break from the smoke and possibly exercise, she said.

Experts suggest people wear high-quality masks when outdoors, even though they don't provide perfect protection. Inside, check windows and doors for seals, invest in a good ventilation system and check air filters, they say.

“Staying away from the smoke is No. 1 if you can,” Johnson said.

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

According to an investigation conducted by the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, former police chief Michael Giddens was being investigated for having sex, while on duty, with a woman who was the estranged wife of the suspect in a criminal investigation.

The report also reveals that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation started in November of 2025, a month after Giddens was sworn in as Howey-in-the-Hills police chief.

The report says Giddens, while he was a lieutenant, was investigating a man for contractor fraud when the suspect stopped communicating with him. In March of 2025, Giddens began reaching out to the suspect’s estranged wife to try to locate the suspect.

According to the report, Giddens and the woman had sex twice while he was on duty at a hotel in Lady Lake. The report also says Giddens continued to talk to the woman via WhatsApp, even after she began to divorce her husband and date someone else.

The woman said the sex was consensual, and she never felt that Giddens was harassing her or cyberstalking her, according to the FDLE report. She didn’t want him to get in trouble.

However, on May 4, 2026, Giddens was put on administrative leave because the town had received an anonymous complaint regarding his conduct.

After receiving the FDLE report on May 29, the town manager asked the Lake County Sheriff’s Office to conduct an internal affairs investigation, based on allegations of improper conduct.

Giddens resigned on June 3. Because of that, he will not be penalized by Howey-in-the-Hills.

Now that the internal investigation is finished, the findings will be submitted to FDLE’s professional-compliance staff for review and to determine if any action is taken.

We’re talking about the KISS Demon (Dale Torborg) and his wife Asya (Christi Wolf-Torborg).

Dale Torborg was given a character inspired by the band KISS and discusses it in this interview. Asya discusses being WCW’s response to Chyna in the competing WWF. A muscular, powerful dominant female performer.

A decade ago, Burnham abandoned a 20-year climb up the Labour Party ladder in London to head north and run for mayor of Greater Manchester. A month ago, he returned to Parliament by winning a risky special election. On Monday, he will become Britain’s 59th prime minister.

The sudden downfall of Prime Minister Keir Starmer after just two years in office has swept the 56-year-old Burnham into office — unelected and largely untested. He will enter No. 10 Downing St. carrying the heavy weight of expectation, and big questions about how he will shoulder it.

“A whole range of people across the Labour movement and in the country have projected onto Andy Burnham their hopes and their fantasies about how the country should be run and what Labour should stand for and what Andy Burnham stands for,” said Joshi Herrmann, founder of Manchester news site The Mill, who has covered Burnham for years.

“He has got lots of people’s hopes up.”

He was born in Liverpool and attended Cambridge

Burnham has made his name in Manchester, but he was born in Liverpool, and grew up in a commuter village between the rival northwest English cities.

His father worked as a British Telecom engineer and his mother as a receptionist, and he was raised in a close-knit Catholic family. Burnham has said he’s “not particularly religious,” but Catholic teaching, along with the center-left Labour Party, helped forge his values and sense of social justice.

Burnham and his brothers were the first generation of their family to go to university. And not just any university — Burnham attended Cambridge, one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious institutions.

“He needed a lot of persuading to apply because he felt that as a working-class boy, going off to Cambridge wasn’t for him,” Stephen Harrington, Burnham’s former English teacher at St. Aelred’s Catholic High School, told the BBC. “He didn’t believe in himself. But he did it, and the rest is history.”

Burnham has said he felt out of place at Cambridge, where many of his classmates had gone to posh private schools in the more affluent south of England. But he got a degree in English and met his future wife, Dutch fellow student Marie-France Van Heel, now a marketing executive. The couple married in 2000 and have a son and two daughters.

After graduating, Burnham worked as a journalist at trade magazines before becoming a researcher and adviser to Labour politicians.

Elected to Parliament for the Manchester-area district of Leigh in 2001, he rose through the government ranks under Labour Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He served in Brown’s Cabinet between 2007 and 2010 as chief secretary to the Treasury, culture secretary and health secretary.

A formative experience came in 2009, when he was heckled at a commemoration of the 1989 Hillsborough Stadium disaster, when 97 Liverpool soccer fans were crushed to death. Bereaved families had fought for years to overturn a false narrative offered by police that unruly fans had been to blame.

Burnham became a champion for the families and helped push for a new inquest, an apology and a law that imposes a duty of candor on public officials to tell the truth about tragedies whatever the impact on their reputation.

As mayor, he became known as King of the North

After Labour lost power in 2010, Burnham ran for leadership of the party that year and in 2015, losing both times. He quit Parliament in 2017, a low ebb for Labour nationally, to run for mayor of Greater Manchester.

Being mayor played to his strengths: an ability to bring people together, a sharp eye for opportunities and a wide streak of pragmatism. His approach became known as “Manchesterism,” a brand of business-friendly socialism that aims to harness private and public money to invest in areas like transport, housing and infrastructure.

Manchester was a former manufacturing powerhouse — known as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution — that had been hollowed out as British industry crumbled. During his tenure the city boomed, with skyscrapers blooming on vacant post-industrial sites. Burnham won praise for taking a piecemeal public transport system under public control and improving it.

He shed suit and tie for jeans and dark T-shirts, spoke about his love for Oasis, The Smiths and New Order and spent spare time playing soccer or spinning 1990s tunes during DJ battles.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he harangued Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson over what he called a “London-centric” approach to the crisis that was punishing northern cities. That’s when he gained the nickname King of the North, a “Game of Thrones”-inspired nod both to his championing of his home region and his political ambition.

He has said he saw his work in central government as “unfinished business,” and got his chance when Starmer was pushed to resign by Labour colleagues alarmed at the party’s unpopularity.

But Burnham still needed a seat in Parliament. A Labour lawmaker agreed to resign, triggering a special election for the Manchester-area district of Makerfield. Burnham trounced the candidate from anti-immigration party Reform UK, cementing his credentials as a winner.

In the subsequent contest to replace Starmer as Labour leader, he was the only candidate.

He’s promising to restore hope

Now he says he will deliver “a new politics based on unity and hope” and “an economy that works for everybody,” no matter where they live. A key plank is giving regional leaders more powers, and he plans to move part of the prime minister’s office to a “No. 10 North” in Manchester.

Herrmann said Burnham has clear strengths, especially an ability to tell a persuasive story and a sense of empathy that many politicians lack.

He added that the incoming prime minister has “a set of principles about trying to make the country fairer, trying to bring people out of poverty, that he really does believe in.”

Critics claim Burnham’s politics are vague on key points, such as where the money will come from to pay for his pledges. He will face many of the same political and economic challenges that stymied Starmer, including a sluggish economy, overstretched public services and a cost-of-living squeeze. He has little experience of foreign policy issues, from the Ukraine war to dealing with U.S. President Donald Trump.

And running a country of 70 million is a lot different from overseeing a region of 3 million.

But Sacha Lord, a Manchester music entrepreneur who served as Burnham’s nighttime economy adviser, said the politician has a steely side that will help him rise to the occasion.

“He’s not scared of locking horns with people,” Lord said. “Everybody thinks Andy’s this nice, cheeky-chappy guy. But trust me, when he wants something ... he tends to get it.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late Thursday warned consumers not to eat shredded iceberg lettuce from Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia. A record number of cyclospora cases have been reported in more than 30 states, and experts have said not every recent U.S. illness might be caused by a single source.

A Food and Drug Administration investigation identified a single supplier of the lettuce. The federal warnings to consumers did not identify the company, but a federal official who was briefed on the investigation and not authorized to discuss it told The Associated Press it was Taylor Farms of Salinas, California.

Taylor Farms, which has been tied to foodborne outbreaks in the past, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“FDA is working with the supplier of iceberg lettuce to determine if potentially contaminated shredded iceberg lettuce remains on the market,” including in other states, the CDC said. “Taco Bell has committed to stop using any lettuce from the supplier identified by FDA’s traceback investigation.”

In a statement, federal health officials stressed that other “brands, restaurants, retailers, or distribution channels” could be identified as the investigation continues.

CDC, FDA and public health officials in several states have been investigating a multistate outbreak of cyclospora infections.

More than 30 states have reported infections this year, and current data from them shows the number of infections surpassing the record U.S. mark of about 4,700 set in 2019. The illness is not usually life threatening and is typically treated with antibiotics.

On Tuesday, ahead of the federal government's confirmation, Taco Bell issued a statement saying it had “voluntarily and temporarily removed limited ingredients at select restaurants as a precautionary measure. We will continue to closely monitor the situation and follow the guidance of public health authorities.”

Cyclospora is a microscopic, spherical parasite that commonly causes watery diarrhea “with frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Outbreaks tend to occur most often in the late spring and summer.

The heat-loving parasite infects the bowels and spreads through feces. In the past, people have been infected by consuming fruits or vegetables that were exposed to feces-contaminated irrigation water.

The illness, called cyclosporiasis, is less common than foodborne illnesses caused by other germs, including salmonella and E. coli. Many cases are never linked to a specific food or other source and, for years, few U.S. cyclospora outbreaks were reported. But the number started rising about a decade ago, with a particularly notable spike in 2018 and 2019.

Experts say it’s likely that cyclospora cases historically were underreported, in part because some common tests used to check for food poisoning have not been geared to detect cyclospora. They attribute the increasing trend in cases to climate change and better detection.

Taylor Farms also was tied to a 2013 cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to salad mix and a 2024 E. coli outbreak tied to onions served at McDonald's.

___

Stobbe reported from New York.

Jacksonville Fire and Rescue responded to the scene. Officials with SkyWest Airlines said there were 67 passengers and four crewmembers aboard the flight.

SkyWest said one crewmember was transported to the hospital for evaluation. The company says it’s working closely with Delta to support passengers and resume their travels to Atlanta.

The preparations come as meteorologists warn that El Nino is already underway and increasingly likely to strengthen through the remainder of the year. Unlike hurricanes or earthquakes, the climate phenomenon develops gradually over months, which gives governments time to prepare before its most severe impacts arrive.

But experts say authorities across the region have often struggled to turn forecasts into action, raising questions about whether countries will be better prepared than during previous El Nino events that caused widespread economic damage and disrupted water, energy and food systems.

“Now is the time for decisions, for effective preparedness and the political consistency to really be proactive this time,” said Rodney Martinez, the World Meteorological Organization’s representative for North America, Central America and the Caribbean.

“El Nino is confirmed. El Nino is ongoing. It’s not simply a possibility,” he said.

Many countries have stepped up preparations

Previous strong El Nino events have caused billions of dollars in damage across Latin America, contributing to severe drought in some regions while triggering floods and landslides in others. The phenomenon has disrupted agriculture, strained drinking water supplies, fueled wildfires and, in some countries, reduced hydroelectric power generation, leading to energy shortages.

Martinez said countries should use the months before impacts intensify to secure alternative energy sources, protect vulnerable communities and prepare for potential strain on public services.

In hydropower-dependent countries such as Ecuador, that could mean bringing thermal power generation online to offset lower reservoir levels during drier conditions and completing maintenance and procurement work well in advance. He pointed to Ecuador’s energy crisis last year, when drought depleted water levels at hydroelectric facilities and contributed to widespread power outages.

Central America, parts of the Caribbean and northern South America are already experiencing drier-than-normal conditions associated with the phenomenon, according to the WMO. Those conditions are expected to expand into parts of the Amazon basin, raising concerns about water availability, agriculture and wildfire risk.

The threats vary considerably across the region.

In Brazil, Colombia and parts of Central America, authorities are focused on drought, water shortages and wildfire risk. Brazil has hired more than 4,600 federal personnel for wildfire prevention and response, expanded firefighting brigades and deployed aircraft ahead of what officials fear could be a difficult fire season. Colombia has activated water-monitoring systems, strengthened wildfire preparedness and urged local authorities to prepare for potential shortages.

Elsewhere, governments are preparing for flooding. Ecuador, where strong El Nino events have historically brought damaging rains to the Pacific coast, has ordered local governments to develop contingency plans and allocated millions of dollars for flood mitigation, emergency response and agricultural recovery. Local authorities have begun clearing drainage channels, stabilizing hillsides and preparing emergency shelters.

Costa Rica says it has launched more than 200 measures under a national contingency plan, including efforts to protect water supplies, expand renewable energy generation and prepare for a potentially severe wildfire season. In Peru, authorities have strengthened monitoring and early-warning systems while expanding meteorological observation networks.

Panamanian authorities have developed plans to address potential impacts on operations at the Panama Canal, where lower rainfall can affect water availability needed to maintain shipping traffic through one of the world’s most important trade routes.

The WMO official warned that drought and heat could threaten food security across parts of Central America’s Dry Corridor while increasing wildfire risks in several countries. In areas expected to receive excessive rainfall, flooding can damage infrastructure, contaminate water supplies and increase the risk of disease outbreaks.

Advance warning does not always translate into action

Colombia's environment minister, Irene Vélez, told The Associated Press that El Nino is not new, but “what is new is its intensity. And because of that intensity, what is also new is how long it could last and the area it could affect.”

Despite the advance warning, Martinez said preparations remain uneven across the region.

“The reality is that this preparation doesn’t happen until they have the emergency,” he said.

Martinez said some authorities continue to delay decisions despite increasingly strong forecasts, either waiting for additional confirmation or assuming their countries will avoid the worst impacts. He warned that postponing decisions despite increasingly strong scientific evidence could leave governments scrambling to respond once droughts, floods and heat waves intensify.

Recent studies examining previous major El Nino events found their economic impacts can linger for years and ultimately cost the global economy trillions of dollars.

His message to governments still waiting to act was simple.

“Be prepared in advance, in a serious way,” Martinez said. "“The information is there. Now is the time for decisions.”

Vélez said the challenge extends beyond responding to a single climate event and requires governments to adapt to increasingly extreme conditions.

“Climate change is here to stay,” she said.

___

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

Thanks to the “Help on the Home Front” partnership with News4JAX, the USO and Navy Federal Credit Union, those troops received care packages filled with snacks and essential items to take on their journey.

RELATED: Help on the Home Front drive supports Jacksonville military families through USO partnership

The 146th Expeditionary Signal Battalion is deploying to Washington, D.C., in support of the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force.

Those care packages, handmade by volunteers with the USO and News4JAX staff members, were created with generous donations from our viewers.

The travel kits include a postcard thanking them for their service.

For many service members, those small comforts can make a big difference while they’re away from home.

One of the big questions is whether his continued rhetoric will resonate with voters, or if he’s just “preaching to the choir?”

Sean Freeder, a political analyst from the University of North Florida, joined us on The Morning Show to discuss Trump’s speech and its potential impact on voters and the body politic.

Kimi Antonelli heads into the Belgian Grand Prix with a piece of advice he picked up recently from Roger Federer.

After a run of car problems cut into the Italian's Formula 1 standings lead, Antonelli's chat with the tennis great in the Royal Box at Wimbledon offered a fresh perspective on how to stop these blips turning into a slump.

“About pressure, he just told me to really focus one race at a time, just focus on what you can control, and also to control the emotions, especially the ones that can make you do mistakes,” Antonelli said Thursday.

“Those were the main pieces of advice. Other than that, it was an incredible experience to witness.”

So far, Antonelli seems to be staying focused, even as Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton threaten Mercedes' supremacy. Antonelli doesn't seem to have lost any of his race-winning pace, unlike last year, when his confidence hit rock-bottom after errors on the European tracks he was meant to know best.

“I just need to maximize every opportunity I get, what I have in control, and then we’ll see what the rest will be,” Antonelli said. “It's part of the sport and the team are doing a tremendous job to make sure that all these issues are not happening again.”

Mercedes off the practice pace

Antonelli was only sixth and teammate George Russell eighth in first practice Friday, a rare session this year where Mercedes failed to make much impression.

Instead, it was Belgian-born Max Verstappen who led the way by 0.145 of a second from Hamilton, with Leclerc third, .208 off the pace, as Ferrari showed signs of building on Leclerc's surprise win at the British Grand Prix.

The session ended with McLaren's Oscar Piastri limping back to the pits with a technical problem.

Russell's struggles

While not everything is going Antonelli's way, at least he knows why. His more experienced Mercedes teammate Russell is finding his problems harder to fix.

A second-place finish for Russell at the British Grand Prix was more about luck than speed, as he benefited from Antonelli's car trouble, a crash for Max Verstappen and a strategy blunder for Hamilton.

Russell cut Antonelli's lead to 25 points but said he felt “less satisfied” with that home podium finish than he had breaking down from the lead in Canada.

The fast, sweeping Belgian circuit has key similarities to Silverstone. That could pose a challenge to Russell and offer an opportunity to Ferrari.

Leclerc and Ferrari were surprised he had the pace to win in Britain and they've been working since then to understand what worked so well to deliver that pace this weekend, too.

Mercedes remains the team to beat and “should be a lot further ahead" in the standings by now, Hamilton told Sky Sports.

Norris hits another setback

One driver who almost certainly won't be in contention for the win is Lando Norris. The defending champion comes into this week's race with a 10-place grid penalty after McLaren switched out a troublesome electrical part on his car.

His teammate Piastri spent Thursday stressing he trusts McLaren's assurances he'll stay with the team next year despite reported interest in signing Verstappen.

Four-time champion Verstappen left his future open Thursday but had warm words for Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies, who started his tenure a year ago with a stunning win for Verstappen in a sprint in Belgium.

After Verstappen fumed at Red Bull's “dangerous” car after back-to-back crashes caused by rear wing failures, the team is going back to an older design this week, potentially affecting Verstappen's pace.

___

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

It's the latest attack on essential infrastructure across the Middle East that have exposed extreme vulnerabilities in one of the world’s driest regions, which relies almost exclusively on technology to produce freshwater that sustains cities, hotels, industry and some agriculture.

Kuwaiti authorities said the strikes damaged a large number of power generation units and sparked a fire. They added that a fire has been contained, and that they activated emergency contingency plans.

In Kuwait, about 90% of drinking water comes from desalination, along with roughly 86% in Oman and about 70% in Saudi Arabia. The process removes salt from seawater, most commonly by pushing it through ultrafine membranes in a process known as reverse osmosis.

Hundreds of desalination plants sit along the Persian Gulf coast, putting systems that supply water to millions within range of Iranian missile or drone strikes. Without them, major cities could not sustain their current populations.

For people living outside the Middle East, the main concern of the Iran war has been the impact on energy prices. Fighting and attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz have upended world markets and pushed oil prices to record highs.

But the infrastructure that keeps Gulf cities supplied with drinking water are equally vulnerable.

Throughout the past few months, Iran has struck close to several desalination plants in the Gulf. Kuwait previously reported damage at the Doha West desalination plant early in the war, which resulted from debris from intercepted drones or attacks on the nearby port.

Iran accused the U.S. of striking Iranian desalination plants on Qeshm Island on March 8, cutting off water supplies for 30 villages, though Washington did not acknowledged the strike.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have also targeted Saudi desalination facilities amid regional tensions in the past.

Many Gulf desalination plants are physically integrated with power stations as co‑generation facilities, meaning attacks on electrical infrastructure could also hinder water production. Desalination plants have multiple stages — intake systems, treatment facilities, energy supplies — and damage to any part of that chain can interrupt production.

Gulf governments and U.S. officials have long recognized the risks these systems pose for regional stability: if major desalination plants were knocked offline, some cities could lose most of their drinking water within days.

A 2010 CIA analysis warned attacks on desalination facilities could trigger national crises in several Gulf states, and prolonged outages could last months if critical equipment were destroyed.

More than 90% of the Gulf’s desalinated water comes from just 56 plants, the report stated, and “each of these critical plants is extremely vulnerable to sabotage or military action.”

The desalination plants are also vulnerable to climate change, including storm surges and extreme rainfall that can overwhelm infrastructure, as warming oceans increase the likelihood and intensity of cyclones in the Arabian Sea. __

Associated Press writer Melanie Lidman contributed from Tel Aviv, Israel.

The revisions include adoption of distant male relatives to father future heirs and allowing princesses to keep their royal status after marrying commoners.

Royal watchers and experts fear the new measures could doom the 1,500-year-old hereditary institution by insisting that only males can be emperor.

Emperor Naruhito ’s 24-year-old daughter is hugely popular, and many Japanese want her to be his successor, but Princess Aiko is ineligible because she is a woman. Japan’s male-only succession rule means the line must move to the emperor's younger brother, then to his 19-year-old nephew Prince Hisahito. Next in line after him is the emperor's 90-year-old uncle.

In an imperial family that places a premium on male royal babies, Hisahito is the first such boy to be born in four decades. Only five of the 16 adults in the imperial family — there are no children — are men.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and other conservatives insist the male bloodline is “the only source of the emperor’s authority and legitimacy,” which is the basis for the upcoming measures.

“I'm deeply moved,” Takaichi told reporters after the enactment.

While an emperor's mother can be a commoner, as is the case with the current one, only boys born to men with royal blood can be heirs to the throne, according to the Imperial House Law.

The revision to the antiquated law is meant to solidify the principle of that crucial bloodline by allowing the adoption of distant royal male relatives to father future heirs, pushing the Emperor's daughter to the side. It will also allow princesses to keep their royal status and serve duties if they marry a commoner.

“It’s a declaration to prevent female monarchs … and to defend the male lineage at all costs,” said Hideya Kawanishi, an expert on monarchy at Nagoya University. “They cannot say it’s male chauvinism, so they call it tradition.”

Imperial Household Agency chief Buichiro Kuroda said in a statement that his agency “will do everything it can appropriately to support smooth activity for the Imperial Family members in line with (the revisions), while fully taking into consideration their feelings.”

Takaichi supports male-only succession

There have been eight female monarchs. The last was Empress Gosakuramachi, who ruled from 1762 to 1770.

The paternal-line male succession was stipulated for the first time in the 1890 Imperial House Law, when Japan promoted patriarchal systems. That law was largely carried over to the current 1947 version.

Friday’s revisions have led to protests from Japanese who see the government efforts as meant to eliminate Princess Aiko from ruling and to justify discrimination against women and a patriarchal system.

“It’s very ironic that the first female prime minister herself is the leading proponent of the obsession with male succession,” Chizuko Ueno, a prominent feminist scholar, wrote recently referring to Takaichi.

Ueno said the new measures “treat male royals as stallions and put female royals under pressure as ‘childbearing machines’ to produce male offspring.”

After Aiko’s birth, her mother Empress Masako, a Harvard-educated former diplomat and a commoner, developed a stress-induced mental condition, apparently over criticism for not producing a male heir.

Imperial family is shrinking

Because of the male-only succession rules and the dismissal of princesses who marry commoners, the monarchy after Hisahito is “extremely unstable,” former Imperial Household Agency chief Shingo Haketa told Kyodo News recently.

Historians say the current system is unworkable, as Japan more broadly faces a fast-aging, dwindling population. It only worked in the past because concubines produced half the emperors until about 100 years ago, when the practice ended under Naruhito’s great-grandfather, Emperor Taisho.

A government proposal in 2005 to allow female monarchs was scrapped following Hisahito’s birth.

Naruhito's two male heirs are his brother, Crown Prince Akishino, 60, who is only six years younger than the emperor and has reportedly said he would be too old to serve, and Hisahito, Akishino’s 19-year-old son. Third in line is Naruhito's uncle, Prince Hitachi, who is 90.

Distant relatives

The more controversial of the two measures allows unmarried male descendants, aged 15 or older, of distant imperial relatives — but only of paternal lineage — to be adopted into the royal family.

Fifty-one members from 11 branch families renounced their royal status in 1947, mainly to ease the postwar financial burden on the monarchy, Imperial Household Agency official Yoshimi Ogata told a recent parliamentary session.

Those people are at least 36 generations removed from Naruhito because they split from a common male-line ancestor 600 years ago, Ogata said.

There is criticism of what some see as the government's extraordinary efforts to make sure that male royals are producing male emperors.

“Who wants the son of an adoptee who nobody knows to be emperor instead of Aiko?” asked Yoshinori Kobayashi, a cartoonist campaigning for Aiko’s succession.

It may also be unrealistic to ask former royals to reenter a very strict family known as “an enclave without human rights.” Royals cannot choose their jobs or homes, and must follow other serious constraints.

“I wonder if anyone would raise a hand,” 81-year-old Asahiro Kuni, whose family renounced its royal status when he was 3, told TBS television. “I imagine many people, by age 15, have some idea about their future. It’s cruel to tell them … to change the course of their life.”

Kuni, who worked as an engineer at a major Japanese company, said he would tell his family to decline if asked by the palace. “You are asked to sacrifice your life for the happiness of the people. I can’t tell my family to choose such a difficult life.”

He expressed support for female monarchs in interviews with other Japanese media.

Princesses who marry commoners can keep royal status

Aiko, known for her engaging smile, enthusiasm and witty conversation, is a public favorite.

Five single princesses, including Aiko and her popular cousin Kako, 31, may be affected by the other main revision to the Imperial House Law, which would allow them to keep their royal status and continue serving official duties if they marry commoners, although their spouse and children wouldn't be accepted as royals.

Aiko’s elder cousin Mako renounced her royal status and moved to New York after marrying her college boyfriend, a commoner who now is a lawyer. The move was largely seen as her attempt to flee from the restrained imperial life.

Ueno calls the system inhumane and urges the princesses to follow Mako's example and leave when they can.

Hisahito, possible adoptees and their future wives will face enormous pressure to produce male offspring, Kawanishi said.

Many Japanese want Aiko to be emperor

“The emperor is a symbolic figure, and I don’t see why women cannot serve in the role,” said 78-year-old Junichiro Tsujimaru, a sushi chain founder.

Yoshio Iwase, 78, said Aiko, as the daughter of the emperor, is the legitimate successor. “I think it’s fine because there used to be female emperors in the past.”

There is worry that the government's push will upset former Emperor Akihito's legacy, which included making amends for the victims of World War II, fought in his father’s name.

Akihito, who abdicated in 2019, also tried to bring what was seen as an aloof monarchy closer to the people, an example followed by his son, Naruhito, and his family.

Akihito reportedly supports Aiko's succession. He avoided directly answering a question about the 2005 government proposal but said female royals served a major role in the monarchy and that its role was to work for the happiness of the people — a remark interpreted as his support for female monarchs.

Naruhito also said in June that he hoped discussions about the measures would reach a conclusion that “will gain understanding of the people,” a comment palace watchers said was his nuanced displeasure.

Japan on Friday also enacted a controversial new law prohibiting desecration of its national flag, a key right-wing agenda pushed by Takaichi. Opponents see it as an attempt to intimidate the public and silence criticism against her government.

Colin Wade Harris, 26, is accused of orchestrating the scheme, which involved stolen identities, forged checks and attempts to steal more than $100,000, according to the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office.

Harris faces multiple felony charges, including first-degree grand theft of more than $100,000, uttering forged bills, fraudulent use of a credit card, using the identity of another without consent, and using a two-way communication device to facilitate a felony.

Harris, who was previously on probation for trafficking in counterfeit credit cards, is being held in the Nassau County Jail & Detention Center without bond.

“It’s not his first rodeo. He’s done it before, stealing credit cards,” Leeper said. “So hopefully, through the courses, they’ll give him a lengthy stay in jail and think about what he’s doing. Hopefully, he can get a real job when he gets out.”

NCSO said the investigation began in December 2025 after a victim reported a $100 check had been altered to $1,000 and deposited with the intended recipient’s name changed.

Surveillance video from a local bank later identified Harris depositing the check using another person’s identity, investigators said.

As detectives continued their investigation, they uncovered a pattern of similar fraud cases. In one case, Harris deposited seven checks totaling more than $5,000 that were intended for a local nonprofit organization.

Detectives said they also found photos on his cellphone of 15 checks made payable to the same organization, including one for $175,000.

Investigators determined Harris opened bank accounts using stolen identities to deposit checks into. After seizing his cellphone while he was in jail on separate charges, detectives discovered he had purchased the personal identifying information of at least 109 individuals, most of them local residents, including an employee of the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office.

While in jail, Harris also attempted to have someone remotely erase data associated with his Apple account after learning detectives had obtained a search warrant for his phone.

“I would imagine he was actually working with somebody else that was also helping him open up bank accounts,” Leeper told News4JAX. “It’s still under investigation, and we’re still looking for other people, who may be arrested here soon.”

In the meantime, Leeper urged people to keep a close eye on their bank and credit card statements and report anything suspicious right away.

But all that frothy foam obscures a cold reality: Beer sales have been struggling globally, and it’s unclear if soccer's world championship tournament can reverse the trend despite having three countries and 16 cities as co-hosts this year.

In the U.S., beer consumption has fallen steadily for a decade, according to the Brewers Association, a trade group for craft brewers. Canada has seen a similar decline, according to the national statistics agency. The Brewers of Europe trade association says the story is the same in the European Union.

Consumers are buying less regular beer and more ‘wellness’ drinks

Many consumers are cutting back on alcohol for health reasons. Last year was the first time in Gallup’s polling that a majority of Americans – 53% -- said drinking “one or two drinks a day” was bad for one’s health.

While sales of non-alcoholic beer have grown, they still make up only around 1% of the U.S. market, according to the Beer Institute, a trade group for brewers.

Economic worries also have taken a toll on sales. U.S. consumption of all types of alcohol – including wine and spirits – fell 5% last year, and affordability concerns were partly to blame, beverage market research company IWSR said.

Craig Purser, the president and CEO of the National Beer Wholesalers Association, said he thinks smartphones and Netflix have taken consumers away from socializing with a cold beer in hand.

“If you have this behavior where we’re cocooning and we’re not spending time with other folks, that’s going to affect beer consumption,” Purser said.

World Cup host cities saw a bump in beer sales at stadiums, bars and restaurants

Enter the World Cup and the soccer fans who traveled from around the world to support their national teams and engage in communal celebration or sorrow.

In the first four weeks of the tournament, beer sales in bars, restaurants, stadiums and other venues rose 14% in U.S. host cities compared to the same period last year, according to the Beer Institute. The bump extended beyond host cities; sales were up 4% nationally, the institute said.

Jim Koch, the brewer, founder and CEO of the Boston Beer Co., which makes Samuel Adams and other brands, said the company had to make two emergency deliveries to its Sam Adams Boston Taproom on the first day that Scotland's fans were in town.

“At one point, we were pouring them a Sam Adams Boston Lager every 12 seconds. What a wonderful group of people,” he said.

But that wasn't all that warmed Koch's heart.

“I didn’t see a single soul on their phone," he said, “They had a beer in their hand and they were talking to each other. They were doing what beer is meant to do, which is helping people enjoy each other’s company.”

The plentiful drinking on display in stadiums stood in stark constrast to the World Cup held four years ago in Qatar, where the government banned the sale of alcoholic beer in match venues.

Brewers leaned heavily into this year's tournament. Budweiser and Michelob Ultra maker AB InBev, the World's Cup's official beer sponsor, doled out marketing support to bars and hosted 200,000 watch parties in 40 countries.

Molson Coors said it would spend 60% more than last year on marketing in June and July; it also debuted a limited edition soccer ball that can hold 12 cans of Miller Lite.

A team's loss can make supporters cry, but not in their beer

Maybell Romero, a law professor at Tulane University School of Law in New Orleans, usually prefers cocktails over beer. But she says she opts for beer during the World Cup since it has lower alcohol content than liquor or wine and watching games can be an all-day affair.

“If I drink cocktail after cocktail, I will not be functional after a few hours,” Romero said.

Romero, who has been watching this year's matches at bars in Mexico City, said she’s enjoyed trying new beers, especially those with novel ingredients like champagne yeast. She might order an occasional beer once the World Cup ends but expects to go back to mostly drinking cocktails.

Beer consumption was expected to fall in some markets even before the World Cup ended. Shares in AB InBev and Constellation Brands — which owns the U.S. rights to Mexican beer brands like Corona and Modelo — tumbled after Mexico and Brazil were eliminated from the tournament.

Romero observed the mood shift in Mexico City after those losses.

“The city is collectively depressed,” she said. "Everything is a lot quieter, and people aren’t going out as much."

Major sporting events on the horizon allow the beer industry to hold out hope

Purser remains hopeful the World Cup will remind people how much they like to gather and cheer on athletes, especially with the Summer Olympics heading to Los Angeles in 2028. Occasions are expanding, he said; college and professional football games are now played on more nights of the week, for example. And beer's consumer base is widening as more brands put out low- and no-alcohol versions, he said.

In May, the NCAA reversed its long-standing ban on alcohol advertising during March Madness, allowing makers of beer, wine, spirits and hard seltzer makers to sponsor the college basketball tournaments for the first time starting next season.

The Boston Beer Co.'s Koch said he's not fretting until then.

“People worry that the beer business has declined for a few years, and I always remind them that beer has been a part of human society, human civilization, for 10,000 years,” he said. “Beer will always be a part enhancing our enjoyment of our lives and the time we spend on this earth.”

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AP Video Journalist Rodrique Ngowi contributed from Boston.

Detectives said officers responded around 10 p.m. to a report of an unconscious person on Broward Road, just off I-95, and police activity was focused on the area of Breakwater Studios.

JSO said the man, believed to be in his 20s or 30s, was taken to UF Health with a gunshot wound to the chest.

Investigators said they do not yet know what led up to the shooting and have not released information about any possible suspect.

A neighbor in the apartment complex said they believe the man lived in one of the units.

JSO also said witnesses have not provided many details, and officers have not received reports from neighbors about hearing gunshots or an argument before the victim was found.

Anyone with information is urged to contact the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office at 904-630-0500, email JSOCRIMETIPS@JAXSHERIFF.ORG, or contact Crime Stoppers at 1-866-845-TIPS.

“We were looking at different flights home (to Florida),” Cole said.

No need to change the reservation. All the bounces that went against the 38-year-old American were in his favor Friday as he ran off three straight birdies on the front nine, four in a row on the back nine and improved 12 shots from the previous day with a 6-under 64 to get back to even par for the championship.

He was not yet in position to contend. But he was not quite ready to leave.

“I was just trying to have a good day and relax and enjoy The Open Championship,” Cole said. “Hit some good shots and didn't get any weird bounces.”

Cole was the first example that Royal Birkdale was more vulnerable in the second round, with lighter wind and accessible pins. Lucas Herbert of Australia tied a British Open record with a 28 on the front nine.

Most peculiar about the 12-shot improvement was that Cole didn't feel as though he played all that much differently than his opening 76 that included three double bogeys.

The shocker was on No. 11 when his right foot slipped on his tee shot, he barely made contact and the ball tumbled about 25 yards away into thick, high grass.

“We never found the ball,” he said. “It just rolled into the gunch. So I had to re-tee. That was another double bogey.”

Then on the par-5 17th, his club caught a clump of grass and turned over, leading to a shank into the trees that forced him into taking a penalty shot and replaying the shot. Another double bogey.

“Tee to green yesterday, I felt like I played great. I know that’s weird to say, but I really did feel like I was hitting the ball where I was aiming and the swing felt good,” he said. “I’m just chalking it up to random outlier.”

This is Cole's second Open but he knew what to expect. His father is South African player Bobby Cole, who finished one shot out of the 1975 playoff at Carnoustie that Tom Watson won and twice has played at Royal Birkdale.

Eric Cole created some memories of his own over two days, good and bad. Friday was so good that Cole briefly thought about a record score when he was 6 under for the day with two par 5s ahead of him. Instead, he finished with five straight pars that figured to give him two more days at Birkdale.

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

FIFA announced the pick late Thursday. It's the second straight World Cup final where Argentina, now the defending champion, will have a European referee to face a European opponent.

FIFA has faced criticism during the current World Cup for Argentina seeming to get the benefit of some refereeing decisions — including when soccer great Lionel Messi escaped a red card for a rough challenge on an Algeria opponent — with the coaches of Egypt and South Africa claiming inconsistencies.

After Egypt formally alleged bias in decisions during its 3-2 loss to Argentina, FIFA director of referees Pierluigi Collina said: “Nobody can question the integrity of the FIFA World Cup match officials.”

In his three games so far at the 2026 World Cup, Vinčić has shown seven yellow cards and one red card, and awarded no penalty kicks.

In the most recent of his games, in the round of 32 more than two weeks ago, Vinčić sent off Ecuador’s Piero Hincapie after a video review for covering his mouth in a confrontation with a Mexico opponent.

Vinčić also worked two group-stage games, when Brazil and Morocco drew 1-1 and Algeria beat Jordan 2-1.

Bayern-Madrid epic

In the last European club season, Vinčić’s biggest match was Bayern Munich’s 4-3 win over Real Madrid in the quarterfinals of the Champions League.

Vinčić showed yellow cards to five Madrid players, and second yellows to Eduardo Camavinga for timewasting and Arda Guler for dissent to send them off late in the game.

Those were among just three red cards that Vinčić showed in nine Champions League games and he awarded just two penalties.

The 46-year-old Slovenian refereed Madrid’s 2-0 win over Borussia Dortmund in the 2024 Champions League final.

The Slovenia link

FIFA’s pick of Vinčić surprised some observers given ongoing tensions between its president Gianni Infantino and UEFA, led by Slovenian lawyer Aleksander Ceferin, who should attend the final at East Rutherford, New Jersey.

UEFA claimed FIFA “crossed a red line” in suspending a mandatory one-game ban for United States forward Folarin Balogun to let him face Belgium in the round of 16, and called the decision “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable.”

On day four of the World Cup, some soccer federations published a letter during a FIFA-hosted conference in Miami criticizing Ceferin personally for a reported comment made days before the tournament in Slovenia about the expanded 48-team competition format.

Vinčić follows Szymon Marciniak of Poland in being chosen to officiate the biggest match in world soccer. Marciniak awarded a penalty to each team in the thrilling 3-3 draw in the World Cup final between Argentina and France in Qatar in December 2022. Argentina then won the penalty shootout in which Marciniak showed a yellow card to goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez for unsporting conduct in trying to distract French players.

The pick of Vinčić continues a pattern for 10 straight World Cups since 1990: European referees are chosen for finals played outside Europe, and referees from other continents are picked for finals played in Europe. Those include Italian Collina, the premier referee of his generation, who worked Brazil's 2-0 win over Germany in the 2002 final in Japan.

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See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here

RELATED: Jacksonville man charged in $240K gold coins theft from FedEx facility

The coins, taken March 18 from the FedEx facility on Commonwealth Avenue, were valued at $240,939.40, the arrest report says. Latent-print analysis of a pawn transaction form later identified Jennifer Meria Owens as a suspect, the report says.

JSO conducted surveillance July 8 and stopped Owens as she left an apartment on Collins Road. She was taken into custody and admitted she sold the coins, but didn’t know they were stolen, the report states; she told investigators a co-defendant, identified as her husband, Victor Lagrane Owens Sr., had given her the coins to sell them. She later told JSO she believed the company named on the paperwork, Logistive Delivery LLC, was part of a scam, the report says.

Victor Owens, 50, was arrested June 24 and faces charges including grand theft of more than $100,000, dealing in stolen property and false verification of ownership on a pawnbroker transaction form.

JSO said Victor Owens got the coins by working for the Logistive Delivery LLC company and picking up boxes from the FedEx warehouse.

He told police he thought the person who was supposed to get the package was dead, but the man was alive and well in Clay County.

Jennifer Owens was booked on charges including dealing in stolen property, a second-degree felony under Florida law, the arrest report shows.

Her arraignment will be on July 20, and his next court date will be July 23.

William L. Upham, 35, was taken into custody after appearing in federal court in Jacksonville and has been ordered detained, United States Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe said. If convicted, Upham faces a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison.

The Marine Corps is aware of the disturbing statements made by William Upham, who was medically discharged on May 30, 2025. The comments made by Upham are a direct violation of the oath he swore to uphold and are not in keeping with the service's values.

— U.S. Marines (@USMC) July 15, 2026

According to the complaint, the United States Secret Service received reports about potential threats made by Upham, a former Marine and former state prosecutor. Agents reviewed two videos posted to Upham’s social media accounts in which he wore his military uniform and urged action against the Trump administration.

In one video, Upham said, “this is a call to arms,” and urged the overthrow of the administration. The complaint says he recommended using a semi-automatic rifle and described a method of shooting that he said would likely be fatal. In a second video, agents say, Upham repeated similar statements and said President Trump “must be killed.”

The Secret Service also received a message Upham allegedly sent to a third party saying he made the videos to “declare war” on President Trump and that he would “kill President Trump at the time that God chooses,” the complaint says.

Investigators say Upham had access to firearms and made concerning statements to law enforcement as recently as July 2026.

Troopers said the motorcyclist, who was from St. Augustine, was headed north on Coastal Highway (A1A) and then tried to turn left onto Cedar Avenue around 11:30 p.m. Thursday.

According to the crash report, a car being driven by a 25-year-old man from Ponte Vedra Beach was also headed north on Coastal Highway, but veered into the southbound lane, trying to pass another car in front of him.

The car hit the motorcycle as it was turning left, knocking the rider off the bike and onto the shoulder, troopers said. The motorcyclist, who was wearing a helmet, died at the scene, according to the report.

Troopers said the collision with the motorcycle sent the car careening off the road and into the display sign for gas prices at the Circle K on the corner of Cedar Avenue and Coastal Highway.

The driver of the car was wearing a seat belt and was not hurt, FHP said.

The speakers were selected because they were relatively small, fun, and could withstand some exposure to elements such as dust and water.

Many of these speakers are designed with rugged, water-resistant exteriors that can handle pool days, beach trips, and life on the go.

One standout is the Sony ULT Field 5 for $198. Consumer Reports says it delivers plenty of volume and strong bass.

CONSUMER REPORTS: 7 Best Waterproof Wireless Outdoor Speakers, Tested by Our Fun-Loving Experts

Several recommended models also feature compact cylindrical designs that slide easily into backpacks and even water bottle pockets – Like the Bose Soundlink Flex for $159 and the JBL Flip 7 for $100.

Another strong option is the Ultimate Ears Megaboom 3 for $150. It earns solid scores across the board, and Consumer Reports says it’s powerful enough to fill a medium to large room with sound.

And for something even smaller and more budget-friendly—there’s the JBL Clip 5 for $80. Its sound quality falls short of the others, but CR testers say it works well for casual listening and podcasts. Plus, it has a built-in carabiner that allows you to hook it onto just about anything that has a loop or latch, so it’s great for taking it on-the-go, making it easy to bring your music along all summer long.

And keep in mind, most Bluetooth speakers work best when your phone or other music source stays within about 30 feet. Beyond that range, the signal can start to cut out.

The rule announced by the Department of Homeland Security will do away with the “duration of status” system, which allows foreign journalists to stay and work in the United States as long as they meet eligibility requirements. That will be replaced with a fixed period of time, though the visas may be extended.

The agency says it's necessary to better vet the visa holders. But advocates for foreign journalists oppose the change, saying the drastically shorter stay would severely restrict their ability to live and work in the States.

The even shorter visa rule for Chinese journalists, which does not include those from the “special administrative regions” of Hong Kong or Macao, is particularly harsh and could add tensions to the already fraught relations between Washington and Beijing, despite both leaders stating they intend to stabilize ties.

The decision comes at a time when President Donald Trump is targeting news organizations with multiple threats and legal actions at home and his administration is tightening immigration policies, though foreign journalists are not considered immigrants.

Journalism organizations denounce the decision

The rule will take effect 60 days after it’s published in the Federal Register. Congress can reject a rule, but it's extremely rare.

“We are outraged that the Trump administration has cruelly limited the duration of visas for foreign journalists from a period of up to five years to a fixed eight months,” the advocacy group Reporters with Borders said in a statement. “This change destroys international journalists’ ability to report from the U.S. and makes it extremely difficult for international outlets to operate here at all.”

“The relentless cycle of visa renewals restricts press freedom, as journalists will feel compelled to avoid drawing the administration’s ire, lest their applications be rejected,” it said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists released a statement calling the new visa policy “the behavior of a backsliding democracy, not the international vanguard of free speech.”

In proposing the change in August 2025, the federal agency said the rising number of foreign journalists in the U.S. “poses a challenge” to its ability “to monitor and oversee these nonimmigrants while they are in the United States.”

It added that students and foreign visitors also will see their previous rule of “duration of status” replaced with fixed periods by the same decision.

By admitting them into the country for a fixed period, the Department of Homeland Security said it could better vet the visa holders to ensure their activities are permissible. The visas can be extended.

This isn't the first time shortening visas has been proposed

The first Trump administration sought to change the visa rules in 2020, but the proposal was withdrawn in 2021 when President Joe Biden took office.

But the White House then tightened visas for Chinese journalists to only 90 days, in response to the treatment of U.S. journalists in China, including the expulsion of three Wall Street Journal reporters, as tensions flared up during the COVID-19 pandemic between the two countries. The Biden administration later relaxed the rule, allowing stays to increase to up to a year.

When the Trump administration proposed to revive the 90-day rule last year, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said it opposed “the U.S.’s discriminatory move targeting a specific country.”

China warns of reciprocal measures

China's Foreign Ministry called the decision “discriminatory” and said it would affect the work of Chinese media in the U.S.

“China urges the U.S. to immediately revoke its discriminatory policies targeting Chinese journalists and effectively safeguard their lawful rights and interests in the U.S.,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian at a daily briefing in Beijing. He added that “China reserves the right to take reciprocal countermeasures.”

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AP journalists Fu Ting in Washington and E. Eduardo Castillo in Beijing contributed to the report.

The signs likely feel redundant right about now as thousands of milkweeds produce thick umbels packed full of pentagonal buds and fully developed flowers.

Many of these flowers and all the monarchs they attract have the same attention-grabbing orange color as the safety vests worn by workers who carefully planted each milkweed by hand months earlier.

“It’s been a lot of work but also really exciting to see,” said Jaret Daniels, curator of Lepidoptera at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “We’ve had good success with plant establishment, and we’ve seen monarchs using the plants already in the field.”

The work is part of an initiative led by the University of Illinois Chicago to transform the vacant rights-of-way alongside roads, powerlines and train tracks into environmental corridors for monarch butterflies and other pollinators.

The Florida Department of Transportation signed on to this voluntary initiative — given the lengthy name of candidate conservation agreement with assurances for the monarch butterfly — in 2024, agreeing to manage 10,200 acres of roadside real estate for conservation, in part, by adding a few pollinator pit stops in strategic locations.

Milkweed areas benefit pollinators and people

FDOT proactively awarded a $150,000 grant to the Daniels lab in 2023 to select, grow, plant and monitor 9,000 milkweeds along Florida roads for a period of three years to understand the most effective planting strategy for milkweed establishment.

The grant was recently extended through 2029 with the goal of getting an additional 6,000 plants in the ground.

“It’s a no-brainer,” Daniels said. “We don’t have enough conservation lands to maintain pollinator populations through time in many areas, so we have to look to environments that we, as humans, manage every day. Roadsides are managed regardless, so why not do so in a way that confers greater benefits?”

The benefit to pollinators is obvious. Most of the crowd favorites in the insect world — bees, moths, butterflies — along with those of equal ecological importance but less esteem — wasps, flies, mosquitos, ants — subsist completely or partially on nectar.

A long stretch of country road straddled by wildflowers is a buffet for nectivores, and milkweeds are an excellent source of nectar for representatives from all of these groups.

Milkweeds are in the dogbane family of plants, Apocynaceae. Several species in this aptly named group produce toxic glycosides and alkaloids to discourage herbivory.

But as often happens in these cases, animals have consistently found ways of sidestepping the issue of imminent death following ingestion by developing physiological coping mechanisms.

In 2011, for example, scientists discovered that the world’s only poisonous rodent steals its toxin from a type of milkweed in East Africa, after which the toxin is administered to anything that tries to eat it through contact with the long quills on its back that give it the appearance of a porcupine.

Monarchs have pursued a similar idea by preventing the glycoside toxins present in milkweeds from binding to receptors in their bodies.

Rather than expelling the toxin, they store it in various tissues to deter predators.

Monarch larvae have gotten so good at doing this trick that they’ve lost the ability to eat anything that isn’t a milkweed. An environment characterized by the presence of milkweed is thus also a potential monarch nursery.

Milkweed corridors are of particular importance to adult monarchs as well, which have an insatiable sense of wanderlust. Individuals can travel more than 100 miles in a single day. That kind of long-haul trekking requires ample energy reserves, which monarchs get by making frequent stops at household gardens, natural areas and overgrown abandoned lots to refuel on nectar.

But the dividends of wildflower corridors pay out to more than just pollinators.

Birds and other predators get a piece of the pie, and lands adjoining the roads get the benefit of pollinator spillover.

Suitable locations of each roadside milkweed area were assessed years in advance to maximize these benefits as part of a separately funded initiative.

“We had done a one-year project where we mapped native milkweed populations along roadsides, so we had that as a starting point,” Daniels said. “By partnering with FDOT, we’re trying to fill in gaps where we know appropriate habitat occurs, but there are limited or no milkweeds that grow there.”

Many of the suitable spots are directly adjacent to conservation areas, where the extra pollinators will help augment and strengthen pre-existing biodiversity.

Others are near farmlands with crops like blueberries and watermelons that get a boost from wild insect pollination. Plus, a mosaicked landscape buzzing with insect activity is also just a lot of fun to look at.

Florida is a test case for future milkweed corridors

The six-year project is also an experiment to see what does and doesn’t work. Daniels and his team are currently focused on planting and monitoring milkweeds in Alachua and five other North Florida counties.

What they learn there will later be used to expand the initiative to other counties and states.

There are several variables being evaluated before that happens, including the type of milkweed that stands the best chance of surviving in these unique environments.

From an initial pool of six native milkweed species, Daniels has focused on pinewoods milkweed (Asclepius humistrata) and butterfly weed (Asclepius tuberosa), which have a proven track record of supporting monarch populations and thriving in conditions that many other plants struggle with.

“Both are upland, sand-loving species that would normally be found in pinelands and sandhills,” Daniels said.

Their preference for dry, poorly developed soils gives them an edge when it comes to growing on unsheltered mounds with little to no nutrient input, but it also makes logistics more challenging.

Butterfly weed is grown and sold commercially, but the pineland species has a taproot that requires special elongated pots for propagation. That, along with its preference for the types of poor soils that aren’t generally a hallmark of a well-tended garden, has prevented their entry into the horticultural market.

To get around that problem, Daniels’ team created their own milkweed supply chain. They start by collecting seeds from a few sites where they know pinewoods milkweed is common.

This involves traveling to each site multiple times a month during the plant’s flowering season to tie small bags around developing seed pods. This ensures the seeds don’t unfurl their silky mop of cellulose fibers and fly off in a gust of wind before they can be harvested.

Next, the seeds are transported to the University of Florida Native Plant Nursery, where staff and volunteers perform the understated miracle of guiding a picky plant from embryonic stasis through reproductive maturity.

“The last batch of seed we gave them had about a 98% germination rate, and we’ve seen really good establishment of these plants in the field,” Daniels said. “The Native Plant Nursery has been an invaluable partner in this project.”

They purchase butterfly weed from Green Isle Gardens in Groveland, Florida. Then comes the hard work of landscaping.

“We plant them when they’re dormant during the winter months, which is great for us and the young plants, because neither of us has to deal with the extreme heat of summer.”

Finally, the team regularly monitors the plants and does all the downstream number crunching that will ultimately tell them whether their efforts were a success worth replicating elsewhere.

It’ll be a few years before they reach a final verdict, but you can judge the results for yourself the next time you drive through an official Florida milkweed area.

Speaking at a conference in Shanghai, Xi said AI should not be dominated by any single nation. American-led restrictions have blocked China from accessing some of the world's most advanced technologies, spurring China's efforts to build its own know-how and intensifying the rivalry between the world’s two biggest economies.

“The development of artificial intelligence should not be a solo performance by any single country but rather a symphony of global cooperation,” Xi said at the opening of China's annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. Others attending included the leaders of Kazakhstan, Cambodia and Thailand and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

Xi opposes the ‘overstretching’ of national security in AI

“We should together oppose the practice of overstretching the concept of national security in the field of artificial intelligence, and of placing one’s own security above that of other countries,” he said, repeating a longstanding Chinese complaint.

China will expand AI cooperation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the League of Arab States, the African Union, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS countries, Xi said. He promised to provide access for 30 countries to a Chinese-developed AI meteorological tool that provides early warning systems.

Over the next five years, Xi said China will provide 5,000 AI training opportunities to developing countries.

Closer partnerships can help prevent “historical injustice in AI,” he said.

China’s new AI cooperation body seen as response to the U.S.

Ahead of the conference, 29 countries including Pakistan, Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement with China to establish a World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization. State media described it as an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Shanghai promoting global AI governance.

The new AI cooperation organization can be viewed as China’s answer to the U.S.-led Pax Silica initiative, said George Chen, partner and chair of digital practice at Washington-headquartered consultancy The Asia Group.

The Pax Silica framework, launched late last year, focuses on strengthening collaboration with U.S. allies and partners on AI-related supply chains. Signatories include Japan, the U.K., Australia, the Philippines, Israel and India.

Following a visit by U.S. President Donald Trump’s to Beijing to meet with Xi in mid-May, China and the United States also agreed to conduct a dialogue on AI development and governance.

Chen, who was at the conference in Shanghai, also said Xi’s speech can be seen as a signal that China can be a reliable partner to the developing world, or “Global South” countries. “China will not let America be the monopoly of AI technology.”

China's advanced tech showcased as it steps up self-reliance

More than 1,100 companies and 1,400 guests are participating in the annual AI conference this year, Chinese state media said.

During the conference that runs until Monday, tech giant Huawei is showcasing its powerful AI computing system, the Atlas 950 SuperPoD.

Some technology analysts now believe China has become an innovator in AI and is no longer just catching up with the U.S. China’s five-year plan until 2030 has prioritized progress in frontiers of science and technology including AI.

China’s open-source AI models, like DeepSeek, are seen, especially across the developing world, as appealing and often more affordable than U.S. AI models, which are largely closed-source.

Coinciding with the conference, the Chinese AI startup Moonshot released its latest AI model, Kimi K3. It said Kimi K3's 2.8 trillion parameters — one of the measurements of an AI model's capability — will make it the world's largest open-source model. DeepSeek's V4 Pro version has 1.6 trillion parameters.

Last month, another Chinese AI company Zhipu, or Z.ai, rolled out its new flagship GLM-5.2 open-source model in a challenge to U.S. rivals including Anthropic’s models.

But U.S. politicians and several major U.S. AI companies including Anthropic have accused Chinese AI models of illicit “distillation” of their models to extract their technologies, a claim that Beijing says is “groundless.” U.S. policymakers have also raised concerns over Chinese AI posing an economic threat to the United States.

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Chan reported from Hong Kong. Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu contributed from Beijing.

The Knesset, which was scheduled to break for its summer recess on Friday, will not reconvene before the elections scheduled on Oct. 27.

The expected dissolution comes as Netanyahu is struggling to hold onto power ahead of the next elections as Israel grinds toward the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack that sparked nearly three years of war. Israeli polls are showing a groundswell of support for opposition parties, led by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and a popular centrist former military chief.

Over the past week, the Knesset passed several controversial laws in marathon sessions as Netanyahu attempted to ram through several of his pet projects.

Earlier this week, the Knesset passed two bills that effectively halt the enlistment of ultra-Orthodox men in the military in an attempt to ensure ultra-Orthodox parties join Netanyahu’s coalition in the next government.

The Knesset also recently passed several bills connected with Netanyahu’s attempts to overhaul the judiciary, including increasing government control over broadcast media and weakening the role of the attorney general. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has opposed the overhaul, and been a frequent target of Netanyahu and the Israeli right.

“We are completing a four-year term, we passed nine budgets and hundreds of bills, I thank you for the trust you placed in me, through which together we succeeded in maintaining a four-year term,” Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana said as he announced the dissolution.

Completing a full, four-year term is a rare occurrence throughout Israeli history.

The last time Israel’s government fulfilled a full term without breaking for early elections was in 1988. Israel has no term limits, and Netanyahu has served more terms than any other prime minister in Israel’s history, but it is rare even for him to finish a full, four-year term.

Between 2019 and 2022, Israelis went to the polls five times. Israel holds elections on average every 2.4 years, making it second-lowest ranked country in the OECD for periods between elections, a marker of political instability, according to the Israel Democracy Institute.

That was May 24, 2000, the day Israel ended its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon.

By then, many Israelis had grown to view the invasion — initially aimed at ousting Palestinian militants — as a strategic failure, akin to the U.S. military quagmire in Vietnam.

Now, 26 years later, Israel is again occupying much of southern Lebanon, and while polling shows that a majority of Israelis currently support an extended military presence in Lebanon, some, including Barak, who remember the pitfalls of the last occupation, are afraid that Israel is falling into the same trap.

“Our very presence will become the only goal,” Barak said in a recent interview, recounting what he said he thought of the occupation in 1985, when he was a general in the Israeli military, and Israel was shifting from active fighting to long-term deployment in Lebanon.

“We will protect our fortresses, we will protect our convoys of supply, the logistics, the patrols, everything," he said he warned. “But we were not serving Israeli security, we were not serving the state. There was no logic to this in 1985, and there was no logic in 2000, when we pulled out.”

An open-ended occupation

Israel again invaded Lebanon in March and now controls more than 600 square kilometers (230 square miles) of territory. It began the operation after Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group, launched a wave of drone and missile attacks in retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Last month, Israel signed a framework agreement with the Lebanese government to use at least two areas in southern Lebanon as “pilot zones” for removing Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure and handing over security to Lebanon’s army. Israel would then redeploy or withdraw its forces from those areas. Hezbollah was not part of the agreement and has vowed to oppose it.

In the meantime, Israeli officials have vowed to keep troops inside a broader “security zone” in Lebanon as long as Hezbollah retains its weapons. After the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas that sparked the war in Gaza, Israel has maintained smaller “security zones” in Gaza and Syria, which it says are needed to prevent future attacks by militants.

“We didn’t ask anyone’s permission to enter Lebanon, and we don’t need anyone’s permission to stay in Lebanon,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said recently, calling it Israel's “right and our duty” to protect residents in northern border towns.

A former prime minister warns of similar pitfalls

Barak, who served as Israel’s military chief before coming prime minister, still considers the pullout one of his proudest achievements.

As a general, he recalls visiting soldiers stationed in Lebanon in the early 1980s. He said they told him, “We are fighting to remove the threat from Hezbollah so that our children will be safe and won’t have to serve here.”

But when Barak ordered the withdrawal nearly two decades later, he said some of the children of those same soldiers were serving in Lebanon.

Israel’s self-declared security zone inside Lebanon did not deliver for Israelis during the previous occupation, and it is unlikely the new zone will either, Barak said. Even in the 1990s, rudimentary Katyusha rockets launched by Hezbollah could easily bypass it and hit northern Israel.

“In order to destroy, totally destroy Hezbollah, you’d have to conquer the whole of Lebanon,” Barak said, something most Israelis consider to be impractical.

But even Israel's presence in the south, and the widespread destruction of villages there, runs the risk of rallying Lebanese support for Hezbollah, he said. Israel says the group embeds fighters and weapons in these border towns, but Israeli operations since March had displaced around 1 million Lebanese.

About 40% of them have since returned home, according to the Lebanese government. More than 4,300 people have been killed since hostilities began on March 2. Nearly 40 Israeli soldiers have also died, as well as a defense contractor and two civilians in northern Israel.

Same place, different war

Hezbollah was founded in 1982, as a response to the Israeli occupation, and fought a deadly guerrilla war that included high-profile suicide bombings and assassinations, roadside bombs and ambushes.

Israel carried out bombing campaigns and airstrikes against the militant groups. It also helped establish a local proxy force, a mostly-Christian militia known as the South Lebanon Army that carried out patrols and provided a buffer between Israeli troops and Hezbollah. Thousands of SLA fighters and their families fled to Israel following the withdrawal.

But the type of warfare between the two sides has also changed.

Israel is now operating without a local proxy, instead relying on monitoring and strikes either by air or from vantage points on ridges and hilltops. And Hezbollah, which once relied on insurgent tactics, now uses high-precision missiles and drones, including fiber-optic drones that are hard to defend against and have caused Israeli casualties.

Unique diplomatic opportunity could shift balance

One key difference from 2000 is the possibility of a diplomatic solution with Lebanon, said Orna Mizrahi, former deputy director of Israel’s National Security Council.

Israel has an opportunity in Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Mizrahi said. Since he was elected last year, he has publicly condemned Hezbollah and expressed readiness to negotiate a permanent ceasefire with Israel.

“The military operation needs to complement a diplomatic process,” said Mizrahi, now a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank.

Although Hezbollah is unlikely to agree to disarm, it has been severely weakened by wars with Israel, she said, adding that its main sponsor, Iran, is also busy weathering U.S. strikes and battling for control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Mizrahi said this has created an opportunity for a new balance of power inside Lebanon, by strengthening the Lebanese government and military. Israel will never destroy Hezbollah completely, she said. But while the group is scrambling to reorganize, Israel can work with international powers to empower Lebanon to confront it, she added.

4 mothers against the war

By the time Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, the occupation had become deeply unpopular, in large part because of the more than 1,200 Israeli soldiers killed in operations.

In 1997, four mothers of soldiers serving in Lebanon founded a grassroots movement advocating for withdrawal.

Brurya Sharon, now 84, one of the founding members, recalls sending both of her sons off to fight in Lebanon. At the time, she said she felt like Israel’s government and military were maintaining the occupation out of inertia, without stopping to consider if it was effective.

The “Four Mothers” movement has been widely cited as a major factor in Israel’s withdrawal in 2000. They tried to steer clear of politics, instead focusing on the soldiers’ lives, a bipartisan issue, Sharon said.

But now, the country is so divided, especially after the Oct. 7 attack, that Sharon says she sees no option for a broad-based public movement to pressure Israel to withdraw.

Israelis, still traumatized from the Hamas attack, are also concerned about leaving the country's borders vulnerable. Currently, more than seven in 10 Israelis support a permanent security presence in southern Lebanon, according to a recent poll by the think tank Israel Democracy Institute.

“I don’t see a sunbeam of hope, I don’t even see a speck of light,” Sharon said.

Aktar's work is demanding, with each worker expected to produce thousands of garments a day. Precision is essential, and even small mistakes can slow production or result in rejected items. Aktar said her new glasses have helped her thread needles faster — and they've also relieved her headaches and eye strain.

“Before I got the glasses, it took me a long time to thread the needle. Now I can thread it in just a short time. I make far fewer alterations than before,” she said.

In Bangladesh, home to the world’s second-largest garment industry after China, some factory owners are working on supplying more glasses to workers to boost productivity. The country's garment sector contributes about 11% of gross domestic product and employs around 4 million workers.

VisionSpring, a global nonprofit social enterprise supplying affordable glasses to people in poorer countries, estimates that roughly one in three Bangladeshi garment workers need glasses but do not have them.

The group has supplied glasses that cost less than ten dollars per pair to some workers through a partnership with the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, which represents factory owners.

Ella Gudwin, chief executive of VisionSpring, said the benefits were immediate, as workers were better able to meet quality and production targets. Better vision also reduces mistakes such as skipped stitches, uneven hems and misplaced buttons, cutting the need for rework, she said.

Fahima Akhter, a director of Bangladeshi garment company Masco Group, said managers initially did not realize how many workers had vision problems because they rarely complained. She said Masco Group has screened about 5,000 workers, with around 30% receiving glasses.

Akhter said her company plans to extend the program to its remaining workforce of more than 20,000 employees.

“We don’t consider it a cost. It is an investment. If the workers are working with better vision, their productivity and workplace safety will improve, and eventually this will translate into better productivity and profit for the company," she said.

A randomized controlled research trial in India that was co-authored by Gudwin suggested that sewing machine operators who received reading glasses increased productivity by 6% while making fewer errors. The study, published in April in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, found that every $1 spent on vision screening and glasses generated $3.37 in productivity gains over 12 weeks.

It estimated that expanding similar programs across the global textile and garment industry could generate the equivalent of $27 billion in additional annual output.

Gudwin said vision correction has long been overlooked because eyeglasses were often seen as a luxury rather than an essential workplace tool. She said many factory workers develop age-related short-sightedness in their late 30s and early 40s, but delay treatment because they assume glasses are expensive.

Gudwin said bringing eye screenings directly into factories removes those barriers.

Masco Group’s Akhter said Bangladesh’s garment sector should make vision screening a standard workplace benefit.

“Having a clear vision is not a luxury, it is a necessity now,” she said.

The Associated Press reported that David Brouillette, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine, is an Army veteran who has struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood, according to several of his close relatives.

The AP reached out to congressional leaders and several key lawmakers of both parties for response.

The top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said Brouillette’s history of violence and mental health issues, as well as the death in Maine, “directly call into question the supposed vetting and training ICE does of its recruits.”

“This senseless tragedy must be investigated and the officer responsible should be taken off our streets and face justice for his actions,” Thompson said in a statement to the AP.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who led a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year as Democrats tried to impose restraints on immigration enforcement operations, said the consequences of failing to put guardrails on ICE are now being measured in lives.

“The Trump administration rushed 12,000 agents onto our streets without ensuring they were fit to carry a badge and a gun — and Republicans gave this rogue agency vast power and no accountability,” Schumer said in a statement. “They empowered ICE. Now they must work with us to prevent more killings.”

The report on Brouillette’s troubling past comes as the Department of Homeland Security has been on a hiring spree, fueled by vast sums from Republicans in Congress to help carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. It raises fresh questions about the department's efforts to quickly hire, vet, train and dispatch recruits who are being sent to patrol communities across America.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the Republican chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee, referred back to her prior statement that “an impartial investigation into the shooting in Biddeford needs to proceed, as the details surrounding this tragedy are important.”

Collins had said earlier that it is “extremely unfortunate” that the agent did not have a body-worn camera.

The senator ensured $20 million for expanded use of body-worn cameras and $2 million for deescalation training as part of the Homeland Security funding bill that Republicans approved to end the department shutdown.

“The Democratic government shutdown delayed enactment and implementation of these important safety measures,” she said.

At least 10 people have died in encounters with immigration agents since Trump launched the crackdown after retaking office, including 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national who was shot and killed by Brouillette on Monday while in his car near his home in the coastal Maine city of Biddeford.

“This bombshell is absolutely appalling — exactly the intolerable danger that we feared as a result of arrest quotas and inadequate training,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., in a statement to the AP.

“This agent clearly should never have had a gun — let alone one provided to him by the United States government. And now a man is dead. I’m going to continue demanding answers and accountability,” he said.

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., said Trump and his administration “have encouraged ICE and CBP to enter and terrorize our communities, even if those agents are untrained, improperly vetted, or lack experience,” referring to Customs and Border Protection.

“The killing of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was horrifying,” he said in a statement to the AP, “and there must be a credible, independent, and transparent investigation so that those responsible are held accountable.”

Networks and their news operations, broadcast and cable alike, spent the hours leading up to Trump’s address debating how to cover it — and struggling to balance delivering the news with handing over their airwaves to potential falsehoods about the 2020 elections.

In the end, a patchwork quilt of coverage was largely united by one common strategy: real-time fact-checking as much as was possible even while the president was still speaking.

The dilemma took place against a backdrop of deep tension between the media and a president working to exert control over it by whatever means he can. Even in his speech itself, Trump excoriated networks that chose not to carry it live, saying that “NBC and ABC fake news” avoided it because they “don't like the topic.” He also threatened them with consequences, using the presidential pulpit to suggest they should be sanctioned for their editorial decisions.

"They and others in the media are part of a plot," Trump said, offering no evidence for his assertion. There is also no evidence of fraud in the 2020 elections.

“They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going," he said. "Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses. They use our public multibillion-dollar-in-value airwaves for absolutely no money. They pay nothing. All we want is honesty in our elections and honesty in reporting.”

The tension between Trump and the news media during his second term has taken many forms, from sanctions against members of the White House press corps to regulatory actions through the Federal Communications Commission to outright lawsuits.

There were a variety of approaches to coverage

The media outlets' decision-making — seemingly last-minute, for many, with networks divulging their plans minutes beforehand — produced a variety of coverage scenarios for the 24 minutes of Trump’s address.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins anchored her nightly program. “We aren’t taking it live,” she said of the speech, given the president’s “well-documented history” of falsehoods. Panelists were on hand for analysis and fact-checking. “Sadly, we have no choice to be skeptical when this president talks elections,” said the network’s veteran correspondent John King.

Fox News and Fox Broadcasting aired the president’s speech live. But ABC and NBC did not, sticking with regular programming — “Press Your Luck,” in ABC's case, and an animal show featuring alligators in NBC's. But they were ready to cut in as they deemed newsworthy, as well as offering special reports afterwards.

Both ABC and NBC, however, provided live coverage on their streaming channels — NBC News NOW and ABC News Live — as well as ABC News Radio. In the still-young era of streaming, that is increasingly a decision that allows network news to play it both ways.

As for CBS, the network did preempt regular programming — a summer rerun of “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage” — to air a special report anchored by Tony Dokoupil. The report joined the live speech a few minutes in, at 9:06, and left it before the end, at 9:23.

MS NOW started airing the speech, then cut away for analysis and commentary after 17 minutes on host Jen Psaki’s show. Psaki used the split screen for a bit, with her speaking on the right and a muted Trump appearing on the left.

By the end, of the top networks, the speech was continuing live only on Fox News.

Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture, said coverage of the 24- minute address made for “a weird evening, where the reporters quote and describe the speech but show little of what they’re quoting." Thompson said full coverage was the way to go even — and perhaps especially — if the speech was believed to contain falsehoods.

“When the president of the United States makes an announcement that there is going to be a major speech with major information, however cynical we are … I think that is, by definition, important civic news significant to the citizenry,” he said. “It’s the president making the speech, and if the president does what everybody’s worried about him doing, that is a real reason to be covering it, to bear witness on exactly what gets said."

Networks had been urged beforehand to carry it live

Earlier Thursday, at the White House briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt had urged TV networks to carry the speech live. And Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity said on his show that major networks not going live was “pretty unheard of for a primetime address for a president.”

Broadcast networks, though, have previously declined primetime coverage to President Barack Obama for a 2014 speech on immigration, and President Joe Biden for his speech on democracy, “Battle for the Soul of the Nation,” in 2022.

The backdrop of Thursday’s speech was an ever-increasing tension between the media and the administration. Broadcast networks have been under close scrutiny by the Trump-appointed chair of the FCC, Brendan Carr, who has launched early reviews of licenses of some ABC-owned stations and threatened to revoke the long-held exemption from equal time rules for the popular talk show “The View.”

Trump’s animosity toward news outlets whose agenda runs counter to his own isn’t new. But in his second presidential term, he has launched an escalation, often harnessing the levers of the federal government or attempting to do so. The efforts have taken place both in actual courtrooms and in the court of public opinion.

The police operation on Wednesday was the third round of arrests targeting independent bookstores within four months. Critics have raised concerns over the city's freedom of expression under what they called an unclear red line. Two of the booksellers were seen released on bail on Friday morning.

On Thursday, Secretary for Security Chris Tang told reporters at the legislative building that the law is clear.

“If you are a bookseller, you have the responsibility to make sure the books you sell won't endanger national security,” he said. “It's equal to, for example, when you are selling food, you need to ensure the food won't cause a stomach ache and is not either poison or illegal.”

Asked if authorities would make a list of banned books, Tang said that would not be conducive to effective law enforcement targeting titles that “intend to harm the country.”

“We will not let criminals off the hook like this,” he said.

On Wednesday, police raided Have A Nice Stay, a bookshop founded by a group of former journalists, and the longstanding Greenfield Book Store. Police said the five people who were arrested were suspected of displaying seditious materials and selling seditious publications.

A police statement alleged that the content stirred up hatred against the city’s government, judiciary and law enforcement agencies.

Have A Nice Stay had already announced it would close Aug. 30. In a social media post, it said financial difficulties and an elusive red line were among the factors.

It said it cannot read through every single book and lacks the ability to judge what books are “problematic.”

In March, police also arrested the owner and staff of the independent Book Punch store, reportedly on suspicion of selling seditious publications. They included the biography of former pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in his national security case.

In June, Hong Kong police arrested two booksellers on suspicion of selling seditious publications and receiving funds from foreign political organizations.

In Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy that China claims as its own, President Lai Ching-te noted Hong Kong's freedom of expression and publication are under pressure in a Facebook post.

“Every independent bookstore is vital in guarding free thought,” he said.

Liang Wen-chieh, deputy minister of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, told reporters that some Taiwanese publishers have self-censored their list of books when participating in a Hong Kong book fair.

In fact, one of the strongest security features of U.S. elections is the fact that they aren’t conducted at the federal level. America votes in more than 10,000 different election jurisdictions, each with different rules set by state and sometimes local governments.

That structure makes the nation's elections extraordinarily complicated — and also safe from widespread fraud. And when misconduct does happen — rarely — security protocols frequently catch it.

Decentralized elections date back to the nation's founding

America's highly decentralized system of voting exists because the nation’s Founding Fathers gave authority over elections to the states, rather than the federal government. While Congress has the power to regulate elections — and has used that authority to pass such laws as the Voting Rights Act — the Constitution makes clear that states have primary authority to set the “times, places and manner” for elections.

There also is no national election agency that administers the presidential contest, something that's different from many other countries. And when it comes to doing the day-to-day work of running an election, the responsibility falls to officials at the local level — usually a clerk or election supervisor — with help from staff and volunteers.

While differences in election laws can get confusing, election security experts say this structure is a strength. That's because to pull off stealing a presidential election — as Trump falsely claims was done to him in 2020 — it would require large numbers of election workers in the most competitive counties across the country who are willing to risk prosecution, prison time and fines while working with officials from both parties willing to look the other way. And everyone somehow would have to keep quiet — a highly unlikely scenario.

There are also shared practices and security measures in place across the country that together work to ensure that only eligible voters can cast a ballot and only one ballot is counted for each.

Voter fraud can happen, but it's rare and there are safeguards to catch it

Most Americans by now have probably heard stories about someone casting multiple ballots, or voting in the name of dead relatives, or stealing mail ballots from mailboxes.

When these incidents happen, they are often caught and prosecuted.

Voting more than once, tampering with ballots, lying about your residence to vote somewhere else or casting someone else’s ballot are crimes that can be punished with hefty fines and prison time. Non-U.S. citizens who break election laws can be deported.

For anyone still motivated to cheat, election systems in the United States are designed with multiple layers of protection and transparency intended to stand in the way.

For example, for in-person voting, most states either require or request voters provide some sort of identification at the polls. Others require voters to verify who they are in another way, such as stating their name and address, signing a poll book or signing an affidavit.

For absentee voting, all states require a voter's signature, and many states have further precautions, such as having bipartisan teams compare the signature with other signatures on file, requiring the signature to be notarized or requiring a witness to sign.

That means even if a ballot is erroneously sent to someone’s past address and the current resident mails it in, there are checks to alert election workers to the foul play.

AP review found there was too little voter fraud to tip the 2020 election

Trump has spent six years insisting he won the 2020 election, a campaign he lost to former President Joe Biden.

An Associated Press review in 2021 dug into every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states that Trump disputed. It found fewer than 475 cases — a number that would have made no difference in that race.

Allegations from Trump of massive voting fraud have been refuted by a variety of judges, state election officials and an arm of his own administration’s Homeland Security Department. In 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee, told the AP that no proof of widespread voter fraud had been uncovered. “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” he said at the time.

At Trump’s last primetime presidential address in April, he said the U.S. would accomplish its Iran war objectives “very shortly.” But days of back-and-forth attacks by the U.S. and Iran across the Middle East and in the Strait of Hormuz have shredded the interim deal to pause the fighting. U.S. strikes intensified early Thursday against a widening set of targets, including a ship it accused of breaking its blockade on Iranian ports. Iran retaliated by firing on U.S. allies in the region.

Here's the latest:

Solomon says he’s seen no intelligence that votes were flipped

Conservative commentator John Solomon, who joined the White House staff last month, was seated in the East Room for Trump’s speech.

He later told MS NOW outside the building that “the intelligence community has zero evidence that someone has flipped — that a foreign power flipped — a vote in 2020, 22 or 24.”

Solomon added, “We’re not through all the documents.”

He also defended Trump’s decision to discuss intelligence that Venezuela interfered with voting results on their own election machines, not ones in the U.S. Solomon argued that Venezuela’s “machine protocols are the same as America.”

Trump uses primetime address to the nation to once again raise doubts about past elections

The president used Thursday’s address revive a subject he’s long used to make unproven claims and deny his loss in the 2020 election.

Trump’s speech presented allegations of interference and influence in ways that lacked key context, and did not produce evidence that votes had been manipulated or that the election outcome had been altered.

Trump began with a stark warning about what he described as flaws in the voting system and said he was releasing previously classified documents related to the 2020 and 2018 elections, when he lost the presidential election and his party suffered losses.

No credible intelligence has emerged showing that the vote count in 2020 was manipulated by foreign actors.

Repeated audits and reviews — manyrun by Republicans, including Trump’s own then-attorney general — have found no significant fraud occurred in 2020.

He did not raise doubts about his election wins in 2016 or 2024.

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Top Trump officials were in the room for the speech

Nearly the entire Cabinet, including Vice President JD Vance, was in attendance for the president’s primetime speech, underscoring the centrality of elections — and continued preoccupation with his 2020 loss — for Trump and his administration.

A photo of the audience shared by Communications Director Steven Cheung showed Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick among those in the first row.

The speech came a day after a contentious confirmation hearing in which Jay Clayton, Trump’s pick to head the nation’s intelligence agencies, clashed repeatedly with Democrats as he refused to acknowledge that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

That stance has become a litmus test of loyalty for the president.

DHS secretary to speak Friday on voting system security

Trump said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin will hold a briefing to talk about his department’s cybersecurity findings related to electronic voting systems.

The president said the systems are in “bad shape in so many states” and his administration is informing political leaders of potential issues in their states.

Election experts have long acknowledged that the technology used to facilitate elections carries risks that officials work to identify and address. Nationwide, the vast majority of ballots cast included a paper record, helping to prevent cyberattacks or errors from affecting the accuracy of the vote count.

Trump obsesses over election security after cutting election security agency

The president’s concern about foreign interference in the 2020 election is a striking contrast with how his administration has treated the federal agency charged with protecting election infrastructure from overseas tampering.

The Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency was founded in Trump’s first term in the wake of Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 presidential vote. When its director, Chris Krebs, said the 2020 vote was secure, Trump fired him.

After returning to office, Trump cut the agency’s staff and programs. His budget this year cuts $707 million from CISA as it says it will restore the agency “to its original mission of securing cyberspace and protecting critical infrastructure.”

CISA’s attempts to combat election misinformation in 2020 and beyond angered Trump and some of his allies.

Trump calls for prosecutions

The president urged Justice Department investigations and prosecutions, though it was unclear from his speech what sort of criminal conduct — if any — could be identified, proved and charged.

At one point he suggested prosecutions for government officials who had left documents he said were related to election investigations in “burn bags” to be incinerated. The FBI under Director Kash Patel investigated that, but no charges have been filed.

Despite the vague claims, Trump’s push could matter because the FBI and the Justice Department in this administration have proved willing to act at his behest.

House Democrat says Trump is trying to weaken democracy

Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Administration committee, which provides oversight of federal voting issues and elections, said what’s troubling about the president’s address is the way he is trying to sow confusion and spread misinformation ahead of the midterm elections.

“This is a pretext for the president, I think, calling into dispute the 2026 elections,” Morelle said on C-SPAN.

“We have secure elections,” Morelle said, inviting Trump to spend some time understanding the state systems.

“This is a fundamental effort to weaken the foundation of our democracy.”

Former Trump intelligence official pans speech

Sue Gordon, who was principal deputy director of national intelligence for Trump, noted that the intelligence community was alarmed about foreign interference in his first term but the president was dismissive, apparently angered by the probe into his campaign’s possible ties with Russia.

“This was a dangerous speech about an incredibly important topic,” Gordon said on CNN. “He had an entire term to deal with it, and I don’t know how you can believe how the same community that told him about it, that was excoriated about it” would ignore a danger in 2020, she added.

Gordon also said none of the president’s speech surprised her and noted that new intelligence documents may simply recount theories without showing anything actually happened: “Even if there’s new data that’s released, that doesn’t prove anything.”

Voting by noncitizens is uncommon

“According to the DHS review, state voter rolls and public records, they identified approximately 278,000 noncitizens who are registered to vote in federal elections.”

Multiple studies and investigations in individual states have shown that noncitizens casting ballots in federal elections is exceedingly rare.

For example a Georgia audit of its voter rolls conducted in 2022 found fewer than 2,000 instances of noncitizens attempting to register to vote over the last 25 years, none of which succeeded. Millions of new Georgia voters registered during that time period.

A 1996 U.S. law makes it illegal for noncitizens to vote in elections for president or members of Congress. Violators can be fined and imprisoned for up to a year. They can also be deported.

Trump looks toward the midterms

During his speech the president referenced November's midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.

“We have very important elections coming up,” he said. “We want those elections to be honest.”

Trump has been eager to overhaul the country’s voting systems and has said changes are necessary to ensure that Republicans can still be successful.

Election officials and voting system experts maintain that the decentralized nature of U.S. elections and the many safeguards in place to catch meddling ensure that the vote can be trusted.

The SAVE America Act is stalled in the Senate

Trump has made legislation to require proof of citizenship for voters a priority for his presidency.

However, it doesn’t have enough votes to pass.

Trump has unsuccessfully pressured Senate Republicans to scrap the filibuster to eliminate the need for Democratic support, but there aren’t enough votes to do that either.

Trump has concluded his elections address

After 24 minutes, the president closed out his speech by urging the passage of the SAVE Act.

The bill, known as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship for anyone registering to vote — something voting rights group have warned could disenfranchise millions of Americans.

Noncitizen voting is illegal under federal law and already rare.

Trump says California vote count 'worse than any Third World country'

Trump zeroed in on California’s routinely prolonged vote count but he vastly misstated the scope of the issue. He complained the state only finished the count for the June 2 primary on July 10. It takes most states a month or more to formally certify the vote, which is what California did on July 10.

The winners of the state’s big races were known sooner — but not exactly soon. It took a week before the Los Angeles mayoral primary was called, for example. That’s partly because California tallies mail-in ballots that arrive up to a week after Election Day as long as they were postmarked by the end of voting.

There are issues with California’s drawn-out vote count, but there’s no indication of any sort of fraud. Indeed, when Republicans have done well in the state’s elections, such as in 2022 congressional races, Trump hasn’t cast aspersions on the results.

Fox goes live, CNN, ABC and NBC do not, CBS airs special report

As Trump arrived at the lectern and began speaking, networks launched into a variety of coverage, after days of intense deliberation.

Fox News and Fox were airing the speech live. ABC and NBC were not, staying with regular programming but ready to cut in as deemed newsworthy.

CBS did preempt regular programming — a summer rerun of “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage” — and was airing a special report anchored by Tony Dokoupil.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins was anchoring her nightly program. “We aren’t taking it live,” she said of the speech, given the president’s well-documented history of falsehoods.

MS NOW started airing the speech, but cut it off for analysis after 17 minutes on host Jen Psaki’s show.

By 9:25 p.m. the speech was only continuing live on Fox News.

Trump claims his own appointees were wrong in 2020

Trump’s vague allegations included a rant against one of his favorite targets: “members of the deep state.”

He claimed that intelligence agencies covered up China’s attempt to disrupt U.S. elections. But Trump appointed the very people who led those intelligence agencies in 2020. Indeed, Trump was given the assessment from those agencies on Jan. 7, 2021, that no foreign country tried to change vote totals or fake ballots in the election. There’s no record of him objecting to the findings at the time.

Now, of course, Trump has restocked the leadership of intelligence agencies with people who echo his often-debunked allegations about elections.

Trump says the benefits of his war with Iran will soon be realized

In his speech on election security, the president said the U.S. is “winning big in Iran and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly.”

The comments come as the U.S. expanded its airstrike campaign against Iran early Friday by hitting bridges as part of a broader attack on the nation’s infrastructure to pressure Tehran to ease its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz.

The White House has created a new website posting documents that Trump claims reveal major ‘areas of concern’

The White House has created a new website with documents that Trump says reveal major ‘areas of concerns’ in election security.

The site went live Thursday as Trump was delivering a primetime address on foreign interference and foreign influence in U.S. elections.

Trump devotes the opening minutes of his speech to repeating campaign-style boasts

The president ran through a long list of what he said were his administration’s accomplishments – including cutting drug prices.

He avoided speaking about elections or the conflict with Iran, including new strikes.

Trump beings his speech saying America is safer, stronger and wealthier

Trump has started his primetime address saying “We are doing great.”

He’s promised he will focus on elections and may revisit some of the unproven claims he has previously made about Republican losses.

The White House has offered few concrete details on what Trump will say, insisting he could still alter his remarks up until the last minute.

But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt promised it “will shock you.”

ABC, NBC and CNN decided not to air the remarks live. CBS said it was “airing a special report” during the address.

CBS plans special report while CNN will not air speech live

More networks revealed their plans for coverage of Trump’s speech, with CBS saying it was planning to air “a special report” at 9 p.m., anchored by Tony Dokoupil. A person familiar with the plan, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it included various scenarios, including taking the speech live, or cutting away for analysis. There would be experts on set to provide analysis and fact-checking, the person said. As for CNN, the cable network said it would not air the speech live, but would cover it “as a news event,” monitoring it for developments and providing analysis and commentary from CNN experts on elections, intelligence and the FBI. A live feed of the speech, alongside analysis and expert commentary, was being made available on CNN.com and on CNN’s All Access streaming platform.

— Jocelyn Noveck

Top Democrat on House Homeland Security panel questions vetting, training of ICE officers

The top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, is calling into question the vetting and training of ICE officers after details have emerged about the officer involved in a fatal shooting in Maine this week.

Thompson’s remarks come after The Associated Press reported that the ICE officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine is an Army veteran who has struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood, according to the officer’s relatives.

David Brouillette has a history of terrifying and violent behavior, according to those relatives. They accuse him of attacking women in his life over the years.

“This senseless tragedy must be investigated and the officer responsible should be taken off our streets and face justice for his actions,” Thompson said in a statement to AP.

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AP Exclusive: ICE officer in Maine shooting has history of violent behavior, family and records say

The ICE officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine this week is an Army veteran who has struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood and never should have been given a badge and gun to patrol American streets, several of his close relatives told The Associated Press.

David Brouillette has a history of terrifying and violent behavior, according to those relatives. They accuse him of attacking women in his life over the years, and one shared a voicemail with the AP from last winter in which he told her that he thought someone should slit her throat.

Brouillette didn’t respond to text messages or an email seeking comment. Three relatives who said they spoke to him since the shooting, including an ex-wife and daughter, said he told them he acted in self-defense.

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Democrats warn Trump’s intelligence officials against misleading Americans on election security

Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut and Democratic lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee sent a letter to CIA Director John Ratcliffe, FBI Director Kash Patel and others ahead of the president’s primetime address.

“The President is within his authority to declassify intelligence,” the lawmakers wrote, “but if he does so in a way that is intended to mislead Americans about the most basic foundation of our democracy and that may compromise sources and methods, it is incumbent on you to stand up for the agencies you lead.”

Before any intelligence is publicly disclosed, they said, “it should be coordinated with all relevant Intelligence Community elements.”

The lawmakers said, “We remind you that you are statutorily obligated to keep the Committee fully and currently informed, a requirement that should include notification of new intelligence related to election influence or interference as well as any significant declassification.”

Hegseth backs low-altitude military flyovers as a series of maneuvers draws scrutiny

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is sticking to encouraging low-altitude military flyovers after a fighter jet buzzed a Florida beach during a show this week.

Video spreading widely on social media shows a jet from the Navy’s demonstration squadron, the Blue Angels, flying so low over a crowded beach in Pensacola that chairs and tents went flying, sand kicked up and children held their hands over their ears.

The U.S. Navy said in a statement shortly afterward that it was “conducting a thorough safety review.” Then on Thursday morning, a host of Trump administration officials heaped praise on the maneuver.

“The flyovers will continue until morale improves,” Hegseth wrote on his personal X account, without elaborating.

The Pentagon’s top spokesman, Sean Parnell, wrote “Carry on Patriots” on social media alongside a photo showing a Blue Angels jet with a wingtip just feet above the heads of beachgoers.

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Flyovers might not violate rules but that doesn’t make them safe

Former Transportation Department Inspector General Mary Schiavo said military planes flying low over people probably don’t violate military rules because the Pentagon doesn’t have the same restrictions that the FAA imposes on civilian flights.

“They are air demonstration teams, and what they do is exceedingly dangerous — amazing and wonderful — but dangerous,” said Schiavo, who is also a pilot and used to work in air shows years ago. “And so it is really not something to be performed over people.”

Florida beachgoer Alexandra Belcher, 34, called the Blue Angels flyover this week a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“I didn’t realize how close it was, until everyone around me was like, ‘That was so cool,’” she said. “It was not normal, but it was such a blessing to be able to witness that with everybody that I was with.”

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Trump administration to drastically shorten visas for foreign journalists in US

The Trump administration will drastically shorten visas for foreign journalists in the U.S. to 240 days, down from years, and cut those for Chinese journalists to only 90 days, raising concerns over press freedom in the United States and retaliation against American journalists overseas.

The final rule announced by the Department of Homeland Security will do away with the “duration of status” system, which allows foreign journalists to stay and work in the United States as long as they meet eligibility requirements. That will be replaced with a fixed period of time, though the visas may be extended.

The agency says it’s necessary to better vet the visa holders. But advocates for foreign journalists oppose the change, saying the drastically shorter stay would severely restrict their ability to live and work in the States.

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Trump media firm plans to sell high speed access to Truth Social posts

Trump’s media company is planning to charge for special high-speed access to Truth Social posts, including possibly his own affecting national security and financial markets.

The move announced Thursday would allow Wall Street trading firms and other institutions to get news from Truth Social contributors in milliseconds so they could profit off subsequent moves in stocks, bonds and interest rates. The most popular Truth Social poster is the president himself and, as the biggest shareholder of the public traded parent company, he would directly benefit.

“He’s selling expedited, privileged access to information about what he is doing as president,” said Kathleen Clark of Washington University School of Law and an expert in government conflicts of interest rules. “It’s yet more brazen corruption, an improper exploitation of government power to enrich himself.”

The Trump family company declined to comment about whether the new feature is profiting off the presidency.

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GOP senator says Blanche must meet Epstein accusers to earn his vote for attorney general

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was expected to meet Thursday with accusers of Jeffrey Epstein after a key Republican senator said it was necessary to earn his support for Blanche’s nomination to lead the Justice Department.

Sen. Thom Tillis had indicated during Blanche’s confirmation hearing on Wednesday that he was leaning toward backing Blanche, who has been leading the department in an acting capacity since April.

But after an Epstein accuser testified a day later, Tillis said he expects a meeting to occur before he’s “willing to vote out of this committee.”

Without Tillis’ support, Blanche’s nomination won’t make it through the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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Trump stops offshore wind development while citing national security

President Donald Trump’s administration has worked to stop offshore wind development on the grounds it’s a national security risk since late last year, halting work on major projects and buying back leases.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says a classified report from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth proves offshore wind is a national security threat.

This comes against the backdrop of the Republican president’s hatred of wind turbines and desire to boost fossil fuels for “energy dominance” in the global market. Wind turbines interfere with radar, but that isn’t a new problem.

The Pentagon reviews wind farm construction plans and can deem areas off limits. And there are upgrades to radar to mitigate turbine impacts.

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The supersizing of ICE -- fueled by an infusion of billions of dollars granted by Congress — has raised concerns about the agency's hiring practices and whether officers being brought on are receiving proper vetting. Those concerns have been rejected by the Department of Homeland Security.

Relatives of the ICE officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine this week told The Associated Press he struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood and never should have been given a badge and gun to patrol American streets.

The precise circumstances surrounding the officer's hiring were not immediately clear. But the revelations about the man, David Brouillette, shine a new spotlight on ICE's hiring spree and the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.

Here is a look at the agency's hiring and training practices:

A surge in new hires at ICE

In January, Homeland Security said it had hired 12,000 new officers and agents since the hiring surge began and said thousands of those new officers were already out on the streets assisting with investigations. The number includes both deportation officers and agents for Homeland Security Investigations, a separate agency that falls under ICE.

ICE has said the majority of new hires are police and military veterans. But evidence has been mounting that applicants with questionable histories were either not fully vetted before they were brought on or were hired in spite of their past, an investigation by The Associated Press earlier this year found.

At the time, Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, would not answer questions about specific hiring decisions. It did say some applicants received “tentative selection letters” and offers to begin working on a temporary status before they had been subjected to full background checks.

It defended its hiring practices, saying it does rigorous vetting.

ICE’s former acting director, Todd Lyons, said during a congressional hearing in February that he was proud of the hiring campaign, which drew more than 220,000 applications.

“This expansion of a well-trained and well-vetted workforce will help further ICE’s ability to execute the president’s and secretary’s bold agenda,” he said.

The vetting process includes reviewing applicants' criminal histories and credit scores and conducting background investigations that include interviewing prior employers and other associates, which can take weeks. ICE also promised signing bonuses of up to $50,000, advertised that college degrees were not required and lowered the age of new recruits to 18.

An internal memo, first reported by Reuters in February, told ICE supervisors that if they receive “derogatory information about a newly hired employee’s conduct” they should refer the allegations to an internal affairs unit for investigation. Such information could include the employees’ termination or forced resignations, the memo said.

The DHS inspector general last August announced plans to audit ICE’s hiring and training processes, but no findings have been released.

Applicants have to get a security clearance

Recent job advertisements for deportation officers spell out the current qualifications, including that the person must be a U.S. citizen to apply and will have to pass a background investigation and a drug test.

New deportation officers also have to take a physical fitness test and be able to obtain and maintain a security clearance. Once hired, new deportation officers may have to serve a one-year probationary period.

According to the job advertisement, deportation officers are required to carry a firearm, which means anyone convicted of domestic violence is ruled out.

Applicants undergo a medical exam and should be prepared to possibly be polygraphed. The application cautions that any false statements on the application can translate into the job offer being pulled or, if the person has already started work, they can lose their job or go to prison.

The background investigation can include a credit check, reviews of any financial problems like failure to pay child support or taxes and a look at the person’s criminal and drug history.

Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former ICE official under the Obama, first Trump and Biden administrations, said hiring a new deportation officer is similar to any other federal hiring.

Generally, applications are reviewed by a hiring manager who decides which candidates to advance. Once someone gets a tentative offer, the agency conducts a background check.

When people are applying for jobs that involve getting a security clearance, Trickler-McNulty said, they have to disclose on their application any drug use, interactions with police, groups they’re affiliated with, mental health concerns, prior addresses and job history.

Depending on the clearance level, they’ll also ask for references that a background investigator will contact. If there’s red flag such as a DUI or a history of debt, that can trigger a deeper investigation.

“You want to make sure the person is appropriate for a public trust position,” she said.

Concerns over changes to ICE training schedule

Generally, new candidates for deportation officer positions have to go through a 50-day immigration law enforcement training program, according to the job advertisement.

Ryan Schwank, a former lawyer at ICE who was responsible for training new deportation officers, told The Associated Press that the agency reduced the overall amount of training new recruits received and reduced the testing needed to pass before graduating. Homeland Security has denied that it has removed any training requirements or lessened requirements for officers.

Trickler-McNulty said she has concerns over reports the agency shortened training as it was aiming to hire thousands of new officers. ICE officials revamped the training as part of efforts to swiftly hire and train an additional 10,000 deportation officers with an infusion of billions of dollars last summer from Congress.

At the time, the agency had about 6,500 deportation officers. That led to allegations that the department was cutting corners in an effort to get more officers in the field, which Homeland Security and ICE repeatedly denied.

In June, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the agency would be increasing the amount of training for new officers starting this month. In a statement Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security said all new academy training classes beginning July 1 will last for 71 days and officers who graduated under the previous curriculum would get more training under a separate field officer program.

The department also said it was adding new training in crowd control measures, high-risk vehicle stops, live-fire exercises and medical training, in response to what they called coordinated attacks against their officers and ICE facilities.

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Associated Press reporter Jonathan J. Cooper contributed to this report from Phoenix.

The interim ceasefire agreed to last month has collapsed, and the region has endured days of back-and-forth attacks by the U.S. and Iran as they battle for control of the strait. Iranian officials say U.S. strikes have killed more than 35 people and wounded over 300 others, with new casualties reported in Friday's strikes.

When the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic, a move that sent the price of oil soaring and gave Iran major leverage in negotiations.

Speaking in a primetime address to the American public, Trump insisted the war was going well.

"We are likewise winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly," Trump said.

US airstrikes hit bridges in Iran

The U.S. airstrikes hit bridges overnight into Friday in Iran's southern Hormozgan province, killing at least seven people, Iranian state television reported. The attacks hit Bandar Khamir, a city on Iran's coast on the Strait of Hormuz.

The U.S. military's Central Command said it hit dozens of targets in its latest airstrikes, which concluded at dawn Friday, the sixth night in a row of American attacks.

Iranian state media said the U.S. strikes Thursday hit around Tehran and Semnan province, home to Iran’s ballistic missile production and space program.

On Friday, Qatar twice warned the public to take shelter as a barrage of Iranian missiles targeted the nation. People heard explosions overhead as air defenses fired to intercept the missiles. Qatar’s Interior Ministry said falling debris wounded a child.

Qatar is a key mediator with Pakistan in trying to reach an end to the Iran war. But talks have broken down over Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran earlier targeted Bahrain and Kuwait over U.S. airstrikes hitting bridges in the Islamic Republic overnight.

Strikes come Iran and US vie for Strait of Hormuz

Trump has returned in recent days to his threats to target Iranian power stations and bridges to try to compel Iran to loosen its hold on the strait, through which about a fifth of all oil and natural gas traded once passed in peacetime. The U.S. also reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to halt its shipments of crude oil.

Week-to-week cargo shipments through the strait dropped by almost a quarter at the beginning of the month, according to Maritime data firm Lloyd’s List Intelligence. And that was before the recent surge in tit-for-tat attacks.

Given the risks, some oil shippers are transiting the strait with their location devices turned off, but many are just staying put, Lloyd’s said Thursday. A growing amount of the region’s energy is being shipped through pipelines, but not nearly enough to offset the decline in shipping through the strait.

U.S. forces have redirected three commercial vessels trying to run the blockade, disabled one that did not comply and boarded another “to ensure full compliance,” the U.S. military's Central Command said in a post on X.

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Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut, Mae Anderson in New York and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Heavy, pungent wildfire smoke darkened skies in the U.S. from the Great Lakes to parts of the East Coast, reducing visibility and prompting warnings that breathing the air outside could be dangerous.

Officials in many cities urged residents to stay inside or wear masks outside as air quality reached unhealthy to hazardous levels, meaning it’s unhealthy for anyone, regardless of health conditions. The National Weather Service said a lingering high pressure system has trapped the smoke close to the ground.

The Philadelphia region is experiencing smoky and hazy skies. The game's start was moved to 6:10 p.m. EDT from 7:10 p.m. It is the only game on the big league schedule coming out of this week's All-Star break.

“It’s definitely different,” Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper said on ESPN during the broadcasting of the game. “Not the greatest idea, I guess, to come out here and play in this type of weather, but we’re doing it.”

After his team’s 4-1 victory, Mets interim manager Andy Green was asked how the conditions affected the game.

“I don’t think they really did,” Green said. “I think it felt like they could have at any moment, especially as visibility got tougher. But, guys managed to see baseballs that I couldn’t when they went up in the air as popups. So, good thing we’ve got good athletes on the field that can see things.”

Phillies manager Don Mattingly said tracking fly balls later in the game seemed to become an issue.

“It didn’t seem to be a huge problem,” Mattingly said. "The vision, later on, was a little bit like foggy conditions more than the air quality. As far as the guys were concerned (visibility) seemed to be the problem.”

This is the second time wildfire smoke has affected a game in Philadelphia. In June 2023, a game between Detroit and Philadelphia was postponed due to poor air quality related to smoke from Canadian wildfires.

Poor air quality due to wildfire smoke also forced the Major League Soccer game between the Vancouver Whitecaps and Fire at Chicago's Soldier Field, along with a scheduled postgame concert, to be postponed. The game, which was expected to draw 40,000, will be made up on Oct. 6.

Also, the Canadian Premier League postponed Thursday's scheduled game between Forge FC and Pacific FC that was to be played in Hamilton, Ontario, due to “worsening air quality issues.” The league said on its website that conditions “deteriorated in the final hours leading up to kickoff.”

Trinity Rodman, a member of the U.S. women's national team, said the smokey sky was difficult to deal with during Wednesday night's NWSL game between the Washington Spirit and Gotham FC at New York's Citi Field.

Rodman said she wasn't a fan of the hydration breaks every 15 minutes in the game as the temperature reached into the 90s.

“Air quality was rough,” Rodman was quoted as saying by The Athletic. “Not to make excuses at all, but I think on both sides we were all like, ‘another break, another break, another break.’”

A crowd of more than 42,000 attended the rematch of teams in last season's NWSL title game. The crowd was a record for a women’s sporting event in New York City.

“If we have to have a hydration break every 15 minutes, then we shouldn’t be playing the game, and that’s my opinion,” Rodman said. “But at the end of the day, there’s 40,000 people. It’s a whole event, so it’s really tough. It’s just a really hard situation for everyone to work around.”

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AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

The Jacksonville Immigrant Rights Alliance identified the man as Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran. He was killed Tuesday morning on State Road 16 after crossing paths with a tractor-trailer during an encounter with ICE agents, according to the group.

JIRA organized the emergency rally, which drew about 80 people at its peak, two days after the incident.

What JIRA is demanding

The group is calling for four specific actions: an end to the 287(g) agreement that allows local deputies to act as immigration enforcement agents, a full independent investigation into Coronilla Duran’s death, accountability for multiple deaths involving ICE encounters across the country in the same week, and an end to the repression of immigrant rights defenders.

Maria Garcia, an organizer with JIRA, said the increase in deaths from encounters with ICE is concerning.

“We demand answers and accountability and we demand an end to the 287G agreement that is deputizing our local law enforcement here in North Florida that directly led to the death of a 28-year-old man,” Garcia said.

Garcia said what happened on Tuesday makes her angry and sad.

“Just hearing what the community members are saying, that they feel terrorized, that feel hunted just for who they are, just for not having the right paperwork,” Garcia said. “Seeing people try to justify it — I mean, how far gone have we gotten from our humanity.”

Crowd voices frustration

Stephanie Stroud, a JIRA member, said she was not surprised by what happened in St. Johns County, even as she was heartbroken.

“There’s no reason to draw a firearm to chase somebody in the streets,” Stroud said. “It’s not okay, it’s not fair, it is just terrorizing the people.”

Stroud said her motivation is rooted in community.

“I am not an immigrant. However, this country is built on immigrants. It’s full of immigrants, and these are my neighbors,” she said. “I know if somebody was terrorizing me, I would want my neighbors to intervene.”

Rally attendee Barbara Cecil said the issue comes down to basic humanity.

“They’re human beings, and they deserve so much better,” Cecil said. “What they have contributed to our society, from financial to cultural, deserves to be celebrated, not what they’re doing.”

DHS responds

The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement Wednesday acknowledging the incident.

“On July 14, DHS law enforcement conducted an operation near St. Johns, Florida. Florida Highway Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations are investigating an incident resulting in the death of a Mexican national. We will provide an update when available,” the statement read.

Florida Highway Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations are handling the investigation, according to DHS.

One video posted on social media showed a man yelling and crying on the ground in Terminal 3 at Harry Reid International Airport on Monday when a man and a masked woman, both in plainclothes, tried to control, handcuff and detain him. When the pair realized they were being filmed, they walked away, leaving the man with a handcuff attached to one arm.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police found no outstanding warrants for the man, removed his handcuffs and notified ICE.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, ICE officers on Monday did not proceed with the arrest at the Las Vegas airport of Phu Nguyen, a 57-year-old citizen of Australia who overstayed his visa. ICE arrested him at his flight departing the Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security said.

“ICE is continuing to act with impunity — instilling fear in our communities and scaring tourists, which hurts our tourism economy,” Democratic U.S. Senator for Nevada Jacky Rosen said in a statement. “Enough is enough. ICE must follow the same commonsense guardrails as other law enforcement agencies."

The Nevada Latino Legislative Caucus and the Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Caucus are calling for a full investigation into the aborted arrest by ICE at Harry Reid International Airport, urging Gov. Joe Lombardo to explain the transparency and accountability for federal law enforcement agencies operating in Nevada.

As of 8:32 p.m., lanes remained closed as traffic was stalled for miles.

Drivers should expect delays in the area.

Dozens of family members of the victims packed the courtroom as Chief Judge Paolo Lepri read the verdicts against 57 defendants, including former executives and officials. Many relatives broke down in tears as the sentences were read.

A representative for the families of the victims, Egle Possetti, expressed satisfaction with the verdicts, saying they showed “there were serious failures in management, and 43 people paid with their lives.”

The former chief executive of highway operator Autostrade per l'Italia, Giovanni Castellucci, was sentenced to 12 years in prison, the longest sentence handed down after four hours of deliberation in the trial that spanned four years.

Castellucci’s lawyers said they would appeal, noting in a statement that as CEO, their client had relied on Italy’s leading engineers and suggesting that he had been scapegoated.

“The suffering caused by the Genoa tragedy is immense and deserves respect. But the gravity of the event requires justice to remain based on individual responsibility, not the search for a scapegoat,” they said in a statement.

Also convicted were Autostrade’s former head of maintenance, Michele Donferri Mitelli, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison. The former CEO of the SPEA engineering company, Antonino Galatà, received five years and six months.

The court says the bridge collapse was foreseeable

The most serious charges included negligence resulting in the collapse, aggravated manslaughter and vehicular homicide stemming from failures to properly monitor and maintain the bridge, which was part of a main route linking northern Italy with the French Riviera.

The court will issue its full reasoning within six months. But in a summary accompanying the verdict, it said the convictions were based on findings that identified a system of defects affecting one of the bridge’s stay cables and concluded that the collapse was “foreseeable and preventable.”

The court said that some defendants from the highway concession and its engineering subsidiary failed to carry out the requiring monitoring of the bridge, relying in part on a 1967 Ministry of Public Works circular, while some transport ministry had officials had failed to exercise proper oversight of Autostrade's safety monitoring.

In all, 32 people were convicted and handed sentences ranging from 1 year and 11 months to 12 years. The rest were either found not guilty, or lesser charges had expired under the statute of limitations.

Lawyer Raffaele Caruso expressed satisfaction that court had held people resonsible at the three main players: the highway concession, its engineering subsidiary and the transport ministry.

“What emerges is that this bridge did not collapse by chance — this bridge collapsed due to specific, precise, individualized, personalized, and specifically identified responsibilities," Caruso told a press conference. “There has been much talk about the construction defect ... But this does not rule out the existence of liability.”

Warning signs of defect were ignored

Shortly before noon on Aug. 14, 2018, a 200-meter (650-foot) section of Genoa’s Morandi highway bridge gave way during a rainstorm, sending dozens of vehicles plunging to the ground.

Images of the collapsed bridge were seen around the world and shocked Italians on one of Italy’s busiest travel days, as millions headed out for the traditional Aug. 15 Ferragosto holiday that marks the peak summer vacation season.

Prosecutors argued that years of maintenance neglect led to the collapse, and demanded combined sentences totaling nearly 400 years for all of the defendants. The defendants denied wrongdoing and say the fault was caused by a construction defect.

Considered an engineering marvel when it opened in 1967, the Morandi featured three A-shaped concrete pylons and concrete-encased stay cables.

Caruso said that the trial showed that warning signs about defects in the pylon that collapsed had existed for decades. He cited maintenance on the other two starting in 1993 that was never extended to the third.

“From 1993 onward, the problem was known. We had three identical pylons. Two had already shown the same defect, and no one seriously asked whether the third one had it as well,” Caruso said.

Autostrade had reached a deal to avoid trial

The current Autostrade chief executive, Arrigo Giana, issued a public apology Thursday in an open letter published in major Italian dailies.

“The actions and decisions of some people left indelible scars,’’ said Giana, who joined Autostrade as CEO last year. “Offering today the apology that was not made then is, for us, a moral imperative that goes beyond establishing legal responsibility and the course of justice toward the truth.”

Autostrade and its subsidiary reached a deal on corporate liability earlier in the proceedings, paying roughly 30 million euros ($34 million) in financial penalties. The agreement spared the companies from a trial as corporate defendants and potentially much harsher sanctions, including exclusion from public contracts.

The settlements were reached after the companies adopted new compliance procedures aimed at preventing similar accidents, and after victims were compensated.

A new bridge designed by Genoa-born Italian architect Renzo Piano opened in 2020, spanning a memorial to the victims of the Morandi Bridge collapse.

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Barry reported from Milan.

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This story corrects the number of convictions to 32.

Rescuers aboard boats and helicopters have saved more than 200 people, including stranded drivers and people trapped in homes, Abbott said.

The governor said the hardest-hit areas are expecting more rain into Friday and are not out of danger yet, with some rivers expected to reach historic levels.

After days of pounding rain, the National Weather Service said a large wave on Thursday barreled down the same river wrecked by flash floods last summer when two dozen children and counselors died at Camp Mystic.

Much like last year, the floods came in the middle of the night. But this time some residents in the Texas Hill Country said they received more warnings.

Forecasters urgently warned, “Move to higher ground now!” as rivers rose hour by hour. Some spots of the Guadalupe River rose by more than 30 feet (9 meters).

The governor said more than 2,000 first responders had been deployed and some evacuations began before the worst of the flooding.

“What happened last year was a warning to people on or near rivers," Abbott said. “No one can be complacent.”

As much as 28 inches (74 centimeters) of rain fell over the past three days in Uvalde County, which was spared from the worst flooding a year ago, the weather service said Thursday. Other areas saw roughly a foot of rain.

Victims in Texas floods were swept away

The governor said one of the victims was driving on a flooded road and was swept away near Uvalde while the other died in Kerr County.

Jennie Steward said the body of her husband, 65-year-old John Mark Steward, of Kerrville, was found Thursday.

She was visiting her parents when a neighbor called overnight, saying her husband was missing after water had risen to the door of their mobile home, which stood off the ground.

The entire home was swept off the platform and floated down Goat Creek on the Guadalupe, she said.

“It’s really hard that I wasn’t there with him,” she said. The two last spoke by phone Wednesday to celebrate their third anniversary.

Hill Country residents say they were better prepared

The unfolding crisis brought back haunting memories of last summer's unimaginable Hill Country floods that killed more than 100 people over the July Fourth holiday.

“It’s crazy happening two times in one year,” said Josiah Rodriguez, who awoke to the sound of heavy rain around 2 a.m. Thursday in Kerrville. He navigated flooded roads to help evacuate relatives.

“Last year there was no warning of it,” he said. “It just kind of happened overnight and it took everyone by surprise. This year, a lot more alerts have gone into place, a lot more safety measures.”

Residents said they were caught off guard a year ago and didn’t receive any warning when floods overtopped the Guadalupe. Some local leaders were criticized for not acting quickly.

The storms and flooding this time threatened multiple counties close to the Mexico border and in the Hill Country near San Antonio. Roughly 6 million residents across Texas were under a flood watch this week, and many were expected to remain in effect into Friday.

Several agencies sent rescue helicopters to the flood zone, including Travis County in the state capital of Austin.

Residents rush animals and campers to higher ground

At a wild animal rescue, Katie Buck evacuated several dozen animals to higher ground in the dark Thursday as the normally dry Lazy Creek overflowed. She got all of the animals to safety, but flooding destroyed several enclosures at the Buck Wild Animal Rescue and Wildlife Rehab near Ingram in Kerr County.

“We were just starting to get back on our feet again,” Buck said. “To have to go through this again is just devastating.”

Residents at an RV park in Comfort moved their trailers as sirens sounded, manager Duke Earwood said.

Water rose over the hoods of vehicles parked near the river at the Comfort RV Resort. Markers showed the flooding already matched last July's big flood.

“Too familiar for sure, and too soon,” Earwood said.

Uvalde residents isolated by floodwaters

Floodwaters also overran the city of Uvalde overnight, cutting off most outside routes. The Leona River, normally dry most of the year, filled streets with water.

“People really can’t get anywhere,” said Carmen Rodriguez, who nervously watched water engulf her neighborhood as a helicopter roared overhead. “We have a place to go, but all the streets are closed.”

Rodriguez said authorities seemed to be prepared, ordering mandatory evacuations and notifying people directly.

After staying up most of the night, Casy Sanford and her husband felt like things were OK at their home in Uvalde as the downpour and heavy winds let up. Texas Game Wardens were outside their door just a few hours later, evacuating the couple, Sanford’s son and three daughters, her mother-in-law and two dogs by boat Thursday morning.

Sanford said she felt “mere shock” as they left most everything and closed the door behind them, water seeping into the ground floor of the only home her little girls have known.

“My little one was scared. She kept grabbing my hand real tight,” Sanford said of her 8-year-old. “I’m not sure what we’ll see when we get back.”

Sanford later said a neighbor had visited her family’s home and found water had climbed as high as their kitchen counters.

Texas Game Wardens rescued close to 150 people by the afternoon, according to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesperson. Video released by the agency showed crews hoisting children from a house surrounded with water into a helicopter.

Uvalde resident Jose Maldonado said water reached the first step to the entrance of his RV on Wednesday and rose above the door on Thursday. Floodwaters took down nearby walls, moved cars, flipped a trailer and left behind debris, he said.

He and his wife planned to stay with his parents until they could return to clean up.

Flooding hasn't reached last year's deadly high

So far, the Guadalupe has remained below the record levels reached in 2025. Close to Camp Mystic, which hasn't reopened since last year's tragedy, the Guadalupe near Hunt reached about 20.5 feet (6.3 meters), which is enough to cause flooding, according to U.S. Geological Survey and National Water Prediction Service data.

In Kerr County, where summer camps dot the river's shores, the sheriff’s office said all campers were safe. Several camps said the children were staying inside, with one camp reporting normal flooding.

While the water didn’t rise as high as a year ago in Ingram, Mayor Claud Jordan believes this round of flooding was more widespread in his city.

“There are a bunch of businesses that haven’t reopened from last year,” Jordan said. “This doesn’t help.”

The Hill Country is especially prone to flash floods because the area’s signature limestone is covered by just a thin layer of soil. During heavy rains, water can quickly shoot downhill before filling the narrow river basins.

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Stengle reported from Dallas and Fingerhut reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Associated Press writers Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut; Michael Phillis in Washington; Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; Anna Wilder in Austin, Texas; Laura Turbay in Little Rock, Arkansas; and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.

Elon Musk, the company's founder and CEO, said two engines will be replaced “to be confident of a good flight” before sending Starship from Texas on a space-skimming journey halfway around the world. It will be the 13th flight for Starship, which at 407 feet (124 meters) tall with 33 main engines is the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket.

SpaceX's launch webcast showed the start of engine ignition three seconds before the planned liftoff, viewed from a drone high above the pad. Although the company did not elaborate, onscreen data showed four engines not firing, with the remaining 29 engines immediately shutting down and keeping the rocket anchored to the pad. It was the first time a full-scale Starship experienced a last-second abort like this.

The launch team immediately began draining the fuel from the rocket.

"Most probable launch timing is early next week," Musk said via X.

Everything was going SpaceX's way, even the weather, until the partial engine ignition. In the end, the rocket’s automatic launch system worked as planned by halting everything. Too few operating engines could have doomed the launch. Some earlier Starship flights ended in explosive fireballs.

Elon Musk's company had newest, most advanced Starlinks aboard

Twenty of SpaceX's newest and most advanced Starlinks were on board Starship for release during the planned hourlong flight from Starbase, the company's hub near the Texas-Mexico border. The internet satellites were going to try communicating with Starlinks already in orbit while taking photos of Starship's heat shield.

Neither the first-stage booster nor spacecraft were meant to be recovered, with both ending up in the sea.

The rocket's automatic launch system worked as planned by halting everything. Too few operating engines could have resulted in a failed launch. Some earlier Starship flights, for example, ended in explosive fireballs.

World's biggest rocket is key to putting astronauts back on the moon

NASA is counting on Starship to land its astronauts on the moon in the next few years. The space agency has hired SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to build and fly the lunar landers that will return humanity to the surface of the moon after an absence of more than half a century.

Both companies need to have their landers — Starship and Blue Moon — ready to fly by next year so that the newly named Artemis III crew can practice docking their capsule with them in orbit around Earth. The mission after that — Artemis IV planned for no earlier than 2028 — would use one of those landers to take two astronauts to the moon's south polar region.

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

The advance notice was intended to give city officials adequate time to prepare for a smooth leadership transition and determine the process for selecting the next chief of police.

“This reflects Chief Smith’s longstanding commitment to ensuring the Jacksonville Beach Police Department remains well-positioned for continued success,” the news release said.

At this time, department officials said they cannot speak to the selection process, as that decision rests with the city manager and the City Council.

“As a department and as a city, we are committed to maintaining open and transparent communication with the public,” the release said. “Because we are in the very early stages of this process, there is no additional information to release at this time.”

Officials say the community should be assured that there is adequate time for a thoughtful transition and that both the department and the city are in a strong position moving forward. Additional information will be shared as it becomes available.

The ceremony for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national who was fatally shot last Tuesday by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer while driving his construction crew to a job site in Houston, comes amid mounting scrutiny of President Donald Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown. Encounters with ICE have resulted in at least 10 deaths since the start of Trump's second term last year — two of which happened in the days after a federal agent killed Salgado Araujo.

“My family would like to express our heartfelt gratitude for the unbelievable and incredible support we have received,” Salgado Araujo's son, Ronaldo Salgado, said in a Facebook post Thursday.

Salgado Araujo, 52, who had no criminal record, had lived in the U.S. for 35 years.

In the fallout of the shooting, three men whom Salgado Araujo was driving when he was killed have adamantly disputed the government's official account.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said Salgado Araujo had rammed an ICE vehicle, and that a federal agent fired a weapon in self-defense. Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a staunch supporter of Trump’s immigration crackdown, said Wednesday that the state’s top law enforcement unit would investigate the fatal shooting.

More than a week after the shooting, new court records show the FBI is investigating whether drugs were found in the van, according to a search warrant application signed by a federal judge on Tuesday.

FBI Special Agent David McNeilly stated in an affidavit that he observed four plastic bags of a white substance appearing to be meth inside the van. DHS has not stated that suspected drugs were the reason why ICE officers engaged in the traffic stop. The FBI referred all questions to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas.

U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz emphasized in a recorded video statement on Thursday that all information was preliminary and not conclusive.

“We are doing everything we can to seek the truth and do the right thing,” Reitz said. “In the meantime, I encourage the public to give the FBI and DHS the opportunity to investigate.”

An attorney for Salgado Araujo's brother, who was in the van when the agent killed Salgado Araujo and who was subsequently detained by ICE, said that the powder is a homemade electrolyte mix that the construction crew used to stay hydrated while working outside in the grueling Texas heat.

Ruby L. Powers, the attorney for Salgado Araujo’s brother, in a statement called for officials to test the substance to establish that it isn't an illicit substance.

“But no test result, whatever it ultimately shows, will change the fact that deadly force was used against Lorenzo,” Powers said. “You cannot shoot first and ask questions later.”

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Riddle reported from Los Angeles.

Blanche spent about an hour at Justice Department headquarters in Washington with the group of Epstein accusers, who have criticized the Trump administration's handling of the disgraced financier's investigation and a trove of files related to his sex trafficking case.

After the meeting, Blanche told reporters that he encouraged the accusers to come to the FBI with any information that could help investigators build cases against additional figures tied to Epstein.

But Blanche acknowledged he couldn't assure them additional prosecutions could be brought. The Justice Department has repeatedly said it will investigate further if new information surfaces, but the government doesn’t currently have evidence to support prosecutions against others in Epstein's orbit.

“It wasn’t all cordial,” Blanche said of Thursday’s meeting. “Because there’s something that they want that I don’t think I can give them, which is some form of justice. And I want to be able to give justice in the form of prosecutions, and maybe we can do a prosecution at some point,” Blanche said.

But Blanche added, “I don’t know.”

The political firestorm over Epstein has been a persistent headache for the Trump administration, which released millions of investigative documents over the last year in response to right-wing clamoring for answers about the disgraced financier's crimes and connections to high-profile people.

One accuser is disappointed in Blanche meeting

One accuser, Dani Bensky, expressed frustration after the meeting, saying Blanche appeared to treat it as “a mere ‘check-the-box’ exercise intended to secure votes for his confirmation.”

"He danced around his wording, repeatedly interrupted us and could not commit to anything that would demonstrate good faith or begin to restore trust," she said in an emailed statement. She said Blanche offered “no credible plan to investigate and pursue accountability" beyond Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.

Earlier Thursday, Bensky told lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee that women harmed by Epstein repeatedly asked to meet with Blanche “through multiple channels and he never responded.”

“We deserve to be heard directly, not dismissed and ignored,” Bensky said.

Blanche has pushed back on suggestions that the Justice Department has been dismissive of the Epstein's accusers, saying officials have spoken with more than 30 representatives of the women over the course of their sweeping review of the files.

“The Department of Justice will always meet with victims or their representatives, and if those victims or their representatives have evidence that anybody committed a crime — whether it has to do with Jeffrey Epstein or anybody else — we will of course move forward and investigate and prosecute,” Blanche told reporters.

Blanche needs key Republican support to get confirmed

The meeting came hours after Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said it needed to happen before Blanche could earn his vote.

Without Tillis’ support, Blanche’s nomination won’t make it through the Senate Judiciary Committee, which questioned Blanche for hours Wednesday about the Epstein files as well as the creation of a fund to compensate President Donald Trump’s allies, a tax immunity deal for the president and a slew of other issues.

Another Republican, Sen. John Cornyn, has also expressed concern over the fund and has said he remains undecided about his vote.

Tillis indicated during Blanche’s confirmation hearing Wednesday that he was leaning toward backing Blanche, who has been leading the department in an acting capacity since April. But after lawmakers heard Bensky's testimony, Tillis said he expected a meeting between victims and Blanche to occur before he’s “willing to vote out of this committee.”

Tillis later Thursday commended Blanche for holding the meeting, writing in a social media post, “I appreciate his willingness to directly engage and listen to them.”

After missteps by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi that enraged Trump's base, Blanche as deputy attorney general oversaw a massive review and the release of millions of files related to the investigation into Epstein. The case has captivated internet sleuths and conspiracy theorists for years, in part because of Epstein's connections to other powerful individuals.

Blanche has also defended the department's staggered release of the Epstein files, a process beset by problems, including redaction errors that left exposed nude photos showing the faces of potential victims.

Blanche said during his confirmation hearing Wednesday that he takes responsibility for mistakes that were made, but noted that department lawyers were given a "herculean task” to quickly review millions of files for release. Blanche said department lawyers took pains to protect the women involved, and quickly fixed any errors that were found.

“I am sorry that in about 1% of the documents mistakes were made,” Blanche said Wednesday. “But what I will say on top of that is we put tons of resources to rectifying those mistakes immediately, including pulling down documents within minutes of being informed that there were mistakes.”

The summer pattern continues with hot temperatures and isolated showers and thunderstorms tomorrow.

Isolated showers and thunderstorms will continue through Friday. Damaging wind gusts, lightning and locally heavy rainfall remain the main hazards. Storm coverage will increase this weekend with waves of showers and thunderstorms possible on Sunday and Monday. Heavy rainfall could lead to flooding for northeast Florida. Heat Advisory conditions will be possible Wednesday of next week.

Tonight: Isolated showers with thunderstorms through around 11 p.m.

Friday: Partly cloudy skies with isolated showers, thunderstorms. Rain chances for SE GA, , 20-40 percent, NE FL, east of Highway 301, 20-40 percent; west of Highway 301, 40-60 percent. Lows in the 70s. Afternoon highs in the 80s and low 90s. Wind: SW 5-10 mph. Partly cloudy overnight.

Weekend: Increasing rain chances Saturday and Sunday. Currently, models show more rain moving through on Sunday. Locally heavy rainfall could lead to flooding. Temperatures will trend near seasonal, with lows in the 70s and afternoon highs in the 80s to low 90s. Wind SW 5-10 mph.

Looking ahead: Wet conditions are expected Monday with drier and hotter days to follow. Possible Heat Advisories next week.

The National Weather Service in Jacksonville is modifying flood stage levels for the North Fork Black Creek near Middleburg: www.news4jax.com/weather/2026/07/16/new-flood-levels-reflect-75-years-of-black-creek-flooding/

Tropics: The NHC is monitoring two areas with weak potential for development. www.news4jax.com/weather/2026/07/16/tracking-the-tropics-no-major-changes-as-national-hurricane-center-follows-two-areas-of-development/

Sunrise: 6:35 p.m.

Sunset: 8:30 p.m.

The dangerous flooding for a second consecutive year set off hundreds of high-water rescues, washed out roads and killed at least two people, authorities said. Relentless downpours served as another frightening reminder of the flood-prone Texas Hill Country, following what experts say was fueled this time by the right mix of air and lots of available moisture.

“Last year, it was one big wave that came through. And it wiped everything out, and then it receded, and then we could deal with the damage. This time, we’re on day three of heavy rain and everything keeps continuing to rise, and it’s expected to rain today and tonight,” said Suzanne Sutphin Gschwind of Kerrville, where some of the worst flooding took place.

Hot weather over the middle of the continental United States ensured storms that formed would move slowly, and rounds of rain over roughly the last three days at times reached several inches an hour. The flooding is “about as bad as it gets” — conditions that are typically rare, said Bob Oravec, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

“Obviously, something like this doesn’t occur every year, but it has occurred over two years in a row and it has occurred over a region that is prone to flash flooding by its topography,” Oravec said.

Nearly 1 trillion gallons of water fell on the three hardest-hit counties in Texas over three days — Uvalde County alone got more rain in that period than California has seen over the last month, according to Ryan Maue, former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

Flooding over the Fourth of July weekend last year killed more than 100 people, including roughly two dozen children and camp counselors at Camp Mystic, a now-shuttered Christian camp for girls. These storms dumped rain on a wider area, overlapping with some of the places where floodwaters overturned cars, ripped down trees and sent rescuers hustling to save lives last July.

A local official in Travis County, which includes Austin, said people were trapped on barn roofs and in trees. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said drones and helicopters were airborne for rescues.

"We are looking at every square inch of the entire area for anybody who may be stranded anywhere. And there will be help coming very rapidly to whoever may be displaced, wherever they are,” Abbott said.

The flood in Texas Hill Country

The rain hit Texas Hill Country, a part of central and south Texas with steep terrain. Shallow soil covers limestone hills that have been soaked for days. Instead of the land absorbing the water, it shoots into rivers with steep banks.

That causes water to rise fast, a dangerous scenario that catches people by surprise.

When rivers rise so fast “it’s almost like a river tsunami,” said Tyler Roys, a senior meteorologist with the forecasting company AccuWeather. These conditions are so deadly because water is heavy and moves quickly. Just one cubic foot of water — imagine a box a bit larger than the size of a basketball — weighs about 62 pounds (28 kilograms).

Compared to last year's flood, the rain fell hard, but in some places it wasn't quite as intense and rivers in many places didn't rise quite as quickly, Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said. Plus, the previous days of rain previewed the flood threat.

“This one is producing greater overall precipitation totals, but it is mostly doing it with lower rain rates. They are still fairly high, but they aren't as high as they were last year," he said.

While swollen from rainfall, so far Guadalupe River levels have largely remained below record levels, some of which were reached during last year’s deadly floods. The river did surpass last year's mark at the small community of Comfort, rising to 37 feet (11.3 meters) early Thursday, a mark 1.5 feet (0.5 meters) higher than it reached last year. At its height then, water weighing as much as the Empire State Building flowed downstream roughly every minute.

The river's record at this spot is 42.3 feet (12.9 meters) set in 1869.

Climate change and forecasting

It is difficult, especially as storms are happening, to know whether climate change has made the event more likely or worse.

Oravec said that the conditions that created this storm — hot air that steers and slows storms — have long occurred, but that climate change could make these conditions more common. A warmer atmosphere also has the potential to hold more moisture and heavier rains.

Last year's flooding did raise awareness of the dangers floods create, especially when they occur at night, Oravec said.

“I think overall it has been a good forecast. The effects are catastrophic, but the signal was there for potential heavy rainfall,” he said.

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Associated Press writers Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia and Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed.

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